A Wolf's Howl, A Fairy's Wing

They were once again standing in the same clearing as before, which was only a short distance from the castle walls, and Seraphina was looking at Erik with disbelief at his plan.

"Surely we can come up with something better than that?!" she exclaimed, questioningly. "Maybe we can sneak in? Or blow a hole in the back of the castle?"

Erik smirked a little, and shrugged, "Maybe we could, but I don't want to. Sneaking in has far too many things that could go wrong, and blowing a hole in the wall would cause them to alert Alexandre immediately, which is when our timer starts."

Seraphina scoffed sceptically, "And a frontal assault wouldn't?"

This time, it was Elora who answered with a confident smile, "Not immediately. An explosion with unknown cause would make the guards panic. They would assume the worst, and immediately contact their leader."

Erik shrugged and continued Elora's explanation, "But if they see us coming from the front, they'll react sceptically, just like you're doing, and underestimate us. They won't contact Alexandre until it's too late."

Seraphina's eyebrows twitched, because she hated how that actually made some sense. But that didn't mean she was done. She helplessly threw up her arms, "But that still doesn't explain how we're going to survive this frontal assault of yours!"

"You'll see," Erik grinned mysteriously, not intending to tell her much, because he liked teasing her.

Seraphina's eyes widened and she nearly did a spit-take at his arrogance. "That's not good enough!" she cried out. "And who put you in charge, anyway?!"

This time, Erik just kept quiet and stared at her, as did everyone else in their group. Blinking, Seraphina looked around at the other's and finally groaned when she realized the truth, "Right… I'm alone here."

Fact was, even if Katya told them Seraphina was in charge, Emma, Emily, Astrid, and Alice would obviously listen to Erik before her.

In the end, a leader's authority is merely the shadow cast by the collective will of their followers, because leadership is granted by the people that choose to follow orders, not the other way around.

Emily grinned slightly as she approached Seraphina and put a comforting arm around her shoulder, "I wouldn't say you're alone, Sera. Just not in charge."

Seraphina sighed, "Yeah, yeah." But despite her attitude, she did feel a little comforted by Emily's display of friendship,n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Emily started guiding Seraphina away from the others, "Come, now that we're done scouting, all that's left is to wait. So why don't we use this time to catch up." Her grin widening, she stealthily winked at Erik behind her, "I'll tell you all about me and Master."

"Master?!" Seraphina exclaimed in shock, which allowed Emily to easily lead her away, while the others in the group giggled at her reaction. After the earlier conversation shifted to the tattoo's and Erik's harem, the collar around Emily's neck had fallen into the background.

After the two old friends had taken a seat a few meters away from the others, not enough to be out of earshot of these powerful Arcanists and Runebound, but enough to get the illusion of privacy, the others took a seat as well.

It was now time to wait and prepare.

* * *

Several hours later, the sounds of a moving helicopter echoed across the area, causing Erik to look up calmly. Beside him, Alice, who had been getting some last-minute training in with her teacher, looked excited.

"Does that mean it's time?!" she exclaimed eagerly.

But Erik was forced to shake his head with a wry smile, "Sorry, Alice. Not yet. We need to wait for Katya to tell us the meeting has actually started. That helicopter takes a little over three hours to reach the Council meeting place in Brussels, and we need every minute we can get."

If Alexandre was already in the council meeting, his guards there would likely hesitate to disturb him, which would give them an extra bit of time. This was crucial, because even after freeing Dimitri, they still needed to create as much distance between them and this castle as they could.

Ideally, it would take up to four hours after they started their assault, before Alexandre managed to return.

Erik denial caused Alice to pout, but they quickly focused back on training, while impatiently awaiting Katya's message.

* * *

Another few hours later, the news they'd been waiting for finally arrived. Katya had messaged them that Alexandre was in, and the council meeting had started, which meant this was their time to strike.

Instantly, Erik jumped up and alerted the others, who all stopped what they were doing and prepared themselves for combat. Unsurprisingly, they all had different expressions. Emma appeared indifferent, Seraphina was anxious, and everyone else was excited.

They quickly made their way to the town of Bamburgh, which was a small village that housed maybe five hundred people before the awakening and was now entirely inhabited by a similar number of Arcanists, who followed Alexandre here from France.

Fortunately, they wouldn't need to worry about most of them.

Setting aside that almost no number of first rankers would be a real threat to them, they'd also taken precautions to ensure they wouldn't be disturbed in the unlikely event that these five hundred or so Arcanists would even feel the desire to assault their group.

Thus, their group now quickly made their way through the town, and on to the castle. The town's inhabitants naturally noticed them, but didn't dare to interfere due to the clear power radiating into the surroundings.

But unsurprisingly, there were some lookouts located in the town, which quickly became clear when Erik noticed the top of the castle walls had become a bustle of activity. 'Probably warned through one of the Council phones, or a short-range communication sigil,' thought to himself, uncaringly.

If he cared about being discovered, he wouldn't have opted for the frontal approach. The whole idea was that the guards now knew their composition and would underestimate them.

The second rankers in the castle outnumbered them, after all, not to mention that the one or two hundred first rankers stationed there had the capacity to come together into formations or use defensive sigils.

A normal group of a mere five second rankers and one first ranker would stand no chance at all.

But this was no normal group.

As soon as they left the town and stepped upon the road leading directly to the castle, which was now just about two hundred meters away, a loud voice reverberated across the area.

"Intruders!" the male voice stated with authority and arrogance, likely amplified by sigils. "State your business at the residence of Lord Alexandre de Beaumont!"

But Erik and the others entirely ignored them, speeding up instead. Unfortunately, they had to adjust their speed to the far slower Alice, Emma, and Emily. Since Erik didn't want to advertise his ability to make people appear and disappear at will, he kept everyone outside his dimension for this.

Even so, they speed was fast enough to cross the distance in no less than 20-30 seconds. Seeing they had no intention of explaining themselves, the guards quickly reacted.

A mere five seconds into their charge up to the gates, the air crackled with energy when a large volley of variously coloured bolts of energy were fired from a great many sigils lining the castle walls.

The assault of Bamburgh castle had begun.