32 This Is Gonna Cost Me
The Captains had arrived.
All bolstering might at the Fourth Order, they were ready to join the battle to capture Evian Stygian.
The eyes of everyone previously on the scene were wide at the spear whose sharp tip was now sunk into the ground beside its victim.
The Larnak Guards were happy. Especially those in the Second Order who had watched Elites of the Third Order lose their lives to the threat before them.
"If they died, and so easily too, what hope is there for us?"
They even felt foolish at the Spiritual Pressure they used to shield themselves somehow believing Evian would render that useless. Of Course, they were not wrong.
Seconds after the Spear cut through Evian's flesh, the Captains arrived but Evian, as should have been expected by all who had witnessed his antics so far, was gone.
"FUCK!" yelled the Spear-wielding Guard as he pulled his weapon out of the ground.
"Donan, your aim was off," said another Captain, and the Spear-wielder, apparently called Donan, quickly rounded on him.
"You know damn well, that's not true. He just had good reflexes." he retorted.
"Good reflexes? You barely scratched him," Said his Colleague.
Donna groaned but he had no retort.
The point had been to run the spear through Evian, inspiring and shocking him enough to be apprehended. Clearly, that had failed.
Amira stepped forward and bent to touch the spot Evian had been standing in just a second before.
"Slippery little bastard," she said and then let her eyes roam to the bodies on the ground,
"He probably could have been gone before we even got here. He deliberately hung back to kill."
The whoosh of a movement spell called attention to the most recent arrival.
Daria had a slight look of worry on her face but that cleared up quickly when she saw Evian was not on the scene.
"He's gone," she said flatly.
Amira rounded on her.
"Yes, he is. He escaped. You like that, don't you?" she said.
The rest of the Captains glared at Daria as well but she just sighed and held herself with the same graceful poise as always.
"As I already made clear. Violence was not the answer. Calm conversation was."
"Calm conversation? Look what he did!" Amira pointed at the corpses.
Daria looked at them and then her brows furrowed at the shriveled-up Corpses. She spread her Spiritual sense towards them to investigate but nothing seemed particularly out of the ordinary.
The blood was dried just like the skin but there was no remnant of an otherworldly aura. The corpse just looked strange. Instantaneously mummified.
Amira and her fellow Captains trooped back to the Larnak Estate to give their report to their Lord.
"He's not going to like this," Amira mumbled as she and her colleagues turned their backs to Daria.
The boundary-line guards left soon too. Taking their dead with them. Daria watched them all leave and then she turned her sights past the boundary line into the Stygian Estate.
*Sigh*
She let out a breath of relief before casting her movement spell and leaving the Larnak territory behind. On her way, only one thing was really on her mind;
"Oh Evian, what did you get yourself into?"
-
...
Evian had made sure he was many many feet underground and had truly changed angles before he turned off by phasing spell and returned to the surface. Conveniently on Stygian Territory grounds.
The Phasing spell proved again the best choice he could have made for a spell. Quick evasion was just too valuable an option to have.
Alas as happy as he was about his success with his spell casting so far -Wraithic Phasing and Eldritch Arrow- he gritted his teeth at one downside to the recent sequence of events.
'Damn it!' he said while he grabbed the injury to his arm without slowing down his run.
'This is going to cost me.'
The wound, small as it was, was not only leaking blood but also Evian's Eldritch essence. The leak was mild and only really visible to Evian's eyes but it would not stop and the wound would not close unless it was actively healed with a Health pack.
'Damn it!' Evian swore again.
A hundred more paces and he could see the Stygian Estate sprawling as ever and steeped with Guard placements and patrols.
Unwilling to raise some sort of immediate alarm because of his bloody clothes, Evian decided to bypass the front gates and Guards by simply walking through the Estate walls and making his way to his room.
On his way to his room, of course, he could not avoid patrolling Guards but other than acknowledging their presence and greetings with nods, he did not stand still enough to have them scrutinize his clothes and the state he was in.
A few sharp-eyed and attention-paying guards spotted the blood splatter but either did not dare to ask Evian about it or were completely thrown off by how at ease his walk was.
He bypassed the Guards at his door by walking through the wall and into his room where he promptly took off his bloodied clothes and walked into his massive bath to take a well-needed soak.
He prepared the water himself. Added the scents, added the cleansing elixirs, before waddling in with a sigh.
'Open the Decadent Store'
[As you wish]
The store interface opened and Evian selected the Health Pack setlist to behold the three levels of healing he was privy to.
'Do I really have to do this?' he asked, disgruntled at the loss he was about to suffer.
[No, you don't. However, it is the only way for your wound to heal.]
[You lack any actual metabolism that is required to clot the wound and start a slow 'natural' healing. You either use the health pack or keep the Injury as it is. Bleeding and leaking your Eldritch essence.]
'Fine,' Evian groaned before choosing the Light Injury Health Pack (Tis but a Scratch)
Not only was it the only one of the three options he could afford but it was also best for the current injury which wasn't deep enough to warrant a Heavy Injury Health Pack and not life-threatening enough to warrant a Fatal Injury Health Pack.
He felt the deduction of Soul points even before he saw it presented on the Interface and then he felt a surge of Eldritch energy that concentrated over his wound.
It stung a bit but then Evian could feel the wound start to stitch together and in seconds, only unblemished perfect skin was left behind.
Afterward, Evian glared at his Soul Point Balance of [110] with a deep frown and a determination to make back what he had lost.
'Fucking bastards.'
...
Once Evian left the bath and changed his clothes, he showed himself to the Guards at his door. Allowing them to confidently answer the question of his whereabouts should they be asked- And of course, they would most definitely be asked by his Mother. The fact that everywhere was so quiet despite Evian's absence all day spoke of a brewing storm already.
Evian even did the Guards a courtesy by leaving his room with Wraithic Phasing and returning through the front doors so they could believe he only just got back.
Anyway,
After feeding on a good helping of Souls, Evian was not starving for human food and allowed himself a nice rest. Pushing aside thoughts of what had gone wrong today in favor of the things that had gone right.
His moment with Yvette in her bath was one of the latter as well as how much fun he had had evading Larnak's forces.
The next morning,
Evian was ready to get right back to the Larnak Territory but this time, to meet up with the rest of the Thieving Crew. The only ones who knew of dead Evian's stupidity in sending a confession recording to the man they stole from.
However, before Evian could leave his room, whether by phasing or through his doorway to the knowledge of his Guards, he got a visitor.
"L- Mother?"
Lady Myrine stood behind the doors she had ordered the Guards to open. Looking as elegantly dressed as ever, she glared at Evian.
Just like Lord Stygian had an habit of barging into the room whenever he wished to speak to Evian, Lady Myrine also had no qualms about his 'privacy' but she was the only one of his parents who gave a reason.
"I've seen it all dear. There is no compromising situation of yours that can shock me," she said.
Evian chuckled secretly.
'Yeah, I highly doubt that,' he thought.
Evian took one step forward. Already dressed to leave.
"Why are you here?"
Lady Myrine frowned at the question. He made her seem unwelcome. Evian realized this but before he could apologize or rephrase, his Mother interrupted in a gentle yet sharp tone.
"Have Tea with me."
