Apocalypse: Fairy System by Macronomicon (fox in socks read aloud txt) 📕

The judge droned on, and Jeb could feel Zlesk’s eyes boring into him.

“This isn’t over,” Zlesk whispered under his breath.

******

“Well, that was awful,” Jeb said, clipping his murder-buckler back onto his belt, blue arrow down. The buckler had been painted with four arrows in four cardinal directions: yellow, red, blue, and green.

It’d needed a little dash of color to liven up its ugliness.

“It could have been much worse,” Zlesk said, rolling his shoulders. “We could have been executed. It’s thanks to my insisting on passing everything through a Truthseeker that we were able to walk out alive.”

“I knew there was a reason I kept you around,” Jeb said, putting on his fingerless glove and foot before grabbing his staff out of the weapon bin.

Of course they didn’t let him walk into the court armed to the teeth.

Strangely, Jeb actually felt overdressed when the two of them stepped out into the open on the sunlit steps of the courthouse.

Rather than a stream of ordinary citizens going about their boisterous business and the occasional purse-snatcher, there was a more muted sense of potential energy in the crowd.

They passed by the imperial guards stationed on every street corner, their sharp eyes boring through each and every passerby, and especially Jeb and Zlesk.

The emperor’s arrival two days ago had seen the entire city placed under a curfew, especially in the upscale areas where the man might be visiting.

Today was the last day they had the mercenary bodyguards, but Zlesk was back in fighting condition, Legolas was armed, Ron was able to sit up, and Jeb’s arm was healing nicely. Even his missing fingernails had stopped hurting. They were ready to meet up with Brett and Amanda.

They’d gradually reinforced the orphanage, leveled the older children and their supervision, so hopefully once the mercs left, they didn’t present an appetizing target.

Still, if anything is going to go down, it’s going to go down soon, Jeb thought, patting the legalese in his coat pocket. It was a series of testimonies and stolen financial information that linked the murder of children to financial transactions.

Maybe Jeb couldn’t get all the bad guys, but he could definitely sway public opinion; make these guys politically toxic enough that some kind of reckoning would come their direction.

Then again, maybe not.

All of this had been in Jeb’s letter, and now all he needed to do was hand the list to Amanda and Brett. Then he could stand back and let the new human aristocrats handle human politics. Kind of a bitter half-win, but being an adult was basically a long string of bitter half-wins.

“You ready to party?” Jeb asked, straightening his jacket and the revolver on his hip. He was ready to party.

Zlesk grunted, making sure his collar was even. They weren’t going to ‘The Party’, which was where the emperor was being hosted by the richest local aristocrats. They were going to the little servant’s entrance in the back of the magnificent mansion, which made Zlesk’s orphanage look like a dingleberry by comparison.

They were going to meet Brett there, hand off all the dirt they’d uncovered on the local leadership, then slink away into the darkness—maybe grab a beer.

Would it change anything? Probably not. One or two people might be mildly inconvenienced, but at the very least, it would grant an iota of political clout to non-child-murdering humans over people who viewed thinking creatures as a resource to be used for their benefit.

Still, Jeb expected his faceless keegan friend might want to make an entrance, so he was loaded with every weapon he could think of, and ready to kick some ass.

I’m gonna be ready for him this time, Jeb thought, eyes narrowed, thinking back to dodgeball.

The sun was arcing down in the sky when they arrived at the mansion, a brightly-lit jewel among the slowly darkening streets. Imperial guards got thicker the closer they got, but Jeb and Zlesk were able to mix into the crowd easily enough.

Despite being heavily armed, they seemingly weren’t considered much of a threat, especially when weighed against the aristocrats on either side of them: men and women with decorative, but functional magic swords that burst into flame or treated stone like warm butter, and an average of three wands per person sticking out of their belt like old-fashioned gunslingers.

Jeb and Zlesk fit right in, albeit rather poor-looking and mismatched in comparison.

Jeb let his eyes wander as they waited to get through the oversized main gate. The luxurious wands the aristocrats bore had designs and murals along their sides that hinted at their function, and Jeb was pretty sure he’d seen a mural of two melas humping.

“I could’ve brought my party lenses,” Jeb said aloud, thinking back to the ones he’d gleaned from the strip clubs between Kalfath and Solmnath.

Zlesk glanced over to where Jeb was looking and snorted. “Don’t bother. Nobody likes that guy.”

They slipped away from the stream of aristocrats slowly entering the front gate and kept walking around the back.

Jeb was fairly sure one of the imperial guards was going to stop them as soon as they stepped out of the stream, but the guards posted every ten feet or so simply watched them dispassionately.

Weird, Jeb thought, watching them back.

You’d think they’d stop and question every single suspicious actor, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

There weren’t a whole lot of humans, and none of them were dressed quite as overtly combat-oriented as Jeb was. You’d think that would earn a few questions, but for some reason, they just watched the two of them passively.

Well, no skin off my back, Jeb thought as they headed for the back of the oversized mansion. At least he didn’t have to worry about being attacked by the assassin. The guy probably wouldn’t come within