Chapter 152 – The Theater of Fractures.

The coppery sun had barely crept over the horizon when Diana gathered the faction's six members in the manor's ground-floor parlor.

She did not light the pine lamps and kept the velvet curtains on the front windows drawn shut. The Commander stood near the meeting table wearing only her gray shirt and combat trousers, unarmored.

“The scout from House Morvath is still on the cooling tower of the old foundry,” Diana began, her low voice echoing clearly through the room. “He spent the entire night up there with a brass spyglass trained on our courtyard. This morning, we are going to deliver the exact report he is dying to write.”

Kael crossed his broad arms, curious: “What's the script, Commander?”

“We are going to drill in the courtyard with the gate unlocked,” Diana explained with analytical chill. “Except we will drill with manufactured flaws. I want House Morvath to build their arena strategy upon lies we plant ourselves.”

She handed out roles with the precision of a stage director:

“Kael, you will pretend the fracture in your left arm never set properly. When you parry Mai's strikes, let your elbow buckle, fake pain, and pull back the shield sluggishly. Aurelia, when you conjure your barriers, delay the cast by three seconds and cough at the end, faking that your mana pathways are inflamed from the last dungeon. Seraphina, make the Quartz Titan falter and dissipate prematurely.”

Diana turned to Mai, who sat on the floor tying her hand wraps:

“Mai, you play the insubordinate. Yell at Kael, complain about the drills, and refuse my orders right in the middle of the courtyard.”

Mai flashed a broad grin of bared fangs: “Yelling and complaining is my specialty, Commander!”

Diana looked last at Rhea, who leaned against the staircase railing with the hare-fur blanket draped over her shoulders.

“And you and I, Rhea...” Diana said in a serious tone, “...are going to stage a real fight at the end of training. I want that spy to witness my primary scout break loyalty and slam the house gates.”

Rhea blinked her amber eyes, silver ears shooting up in shock: “A fight with you, Diana?!”

“A staged fight.” Diana offered a small, sharp smile. “House Morvath needs to believe our squad is fractured from within. Understood?”

Rhea stared at Diana for two seconds, until letting out a quiet giggle and nodding her head: “Understood, Commander. I'll put on a show.”

***

At seven in the morning, the Bastion's iron gate was unlocked and the team stepped out into the gravel courtyard.

Two hundred meters away, the spy's brass spyglass on the cooling tower caught a faint glint of sunlight between the rusted iron plates.

The performance began.

Kael took his position in the center of the courtyard with the Volcanic Shield. When Mai lunged forward throwing a black-fire punch, the vanguard parried the blow high on the plate, but let out an audible groan of agony, buckled his left knee, and let the shield drop two inches into the dirt, clutching his elbow with his free hand as if the bone had cracked.

“Damn it...” Kael grumbled loudly enough for the wind to carry the words. “This arm is still locking up whenever the hit comes from above!”

On the side of the porch, Aurelia-Elysia raised her staff to cast a protective barrier.

The priestess hesitated on purpose, butchered the pronunciation of the runic word twice, and brought a hand to her chest, coughing dryly while hunching her frame: “My mana is burning... my pathways can't handle sustained casting today!”

Seraphina struck her hand against the silver grimoire.

The Quartz Titan materialized on the gravel, took three heavy steps, and began cracking across the chest, crumbling into gray dust before throwing a single punch. The summoner stamped her foot on the ground, faking a childish fit of temper: “The imperial core is rejecting my flow again!”

Mai threw an empty wooden bucket against the manor wall with a crash of splintering staves: “I'm not going to train with a bunch of cripples who can't take a hit! This faction is absolute garbage!”

***

That was when Diana strode into the center of the courtyard.

The Commander had her coat unbuttoned, both obsidian horns crackling with sparks of mana.

She stopped before Rhea, who leaned against a porch column feigning carelessness with her Dragon Daggers resting loose at her waist.

Diana pointed the tip of her black claw straight at the wolf girl's face, raising her voice in a harsh, cutting tone that reverberated across the entire block of the southern street:

“Rhea! What kind of pathetic display is this?!” Diana barked, her voice carrying an authority that sounded frighteningly real. “That flank leap was two seconds late! If you cannot keep pace with my spell rotation, you are nothing but useless dead weight to this faction!”

Rhea took a step forward, ears pinned flat against her head and white fangs bared.

The wolf girl blinked her amber eyes three times in rapid succession — the agreed-upon signal that she was holding back laughter inside — before letting loose a furious scream at the top of her lungs:

“DEAD WEIGHT?!” Rhea screamed, lunging forward until her chest pressed against Diana's. “I nearly died buried alive in that temple while you tumbled into the abyss! You think you own my life just because you tossed a handful of silvers for my freedom in the First Circle?!”

Rhea kicked a bucket of wash water on the ground, splashing dirty water across the gravel stones.

“You were garbage in a cage and you'll go right back to being garbage if you don't learn how to follow orders!” Diana fired back with calculated cruelty.

“I am sick of you and your filthy greed!” Rhea screamed back, ripping both Dragon Daggers from her belt and slamming their hilts against the porch railing. “Keep your gold, keep your manor, and keep your dungeons! I do much better on my own in the rifts anyway!”

Rhea turned her back on Diana with a sharp snap of her blue cloak, dashed across the courtyard gravel, and tore through the double iron gates, slamming them shut so violently that the iron latch groaned against the stone.

The girl bolted down the packed-dirt street at full tilt, feigning an uncontrolled flight, vanishing around the corner of the commercial sector.

Diana remained motionless in the center of the courtyard in dead silence, staring at the empty gate with her hands in her pockets and a look of pure, icy rage.

***

Backed by her 92 Perception points, Diana glanced out of the corner of her eye toward the abandoned foundry's cooling tower two hundred meters away.

The silhouette of the House Morvath spy was leaning over the iron catwalk, writing furiously with a bone quill inside a thick leather notebook.

The man snapped the notebook shut in a hurry, packed away his brass spyglass, stowed the tools into his pack, and bounded down the tower's iron ladder in hasty leaps, dashing off toward the palaces of the aristocracy to deliver his report that the Arcane Greed Faction was broken from within.

Kael waited for the spy's presence to disappear from his radar before dropping his left arm and letting out a booming laugh that shook his ribs:

“By the gods... Commander, you should have been a stage actress on Earth! Even I almost believed you were going to take Rhea's head off!”

Aurelia-Elysia wiped tears of laughter on her mantle, and Seraphina put away her grimoire with a wide smile: “His report will say our vanguard is fractured, our rearguard is out of mana, and the lead scout has abandoned the team.”

***

At midnight, the latch of the basement door leading into the underground water cistern clicked softly open.

Rhea entered the Bastion's kitchen barefoot, silver hair disheveled and blue coat slung over her shoulders, carrying a paper sack with five hot meat pastries she had bought at the plaza market while 'on the run.'

The wolf girl padded over to the dining table where Diana sat reviewing maps, placed the bag of pastries before the Commander, and took the chair beside her with a sweet, mischievous smile, ears perked:

“Was my performance good, Diana?”

Diana took a meat pastry from the bag, took a slow bite, and looked at the girl beside her with a small, sharp smile on her dark lips:

“It was flawless, Rhea. House Morvath is going into that arena thinking they're facing a pack of fractured cripples.”

The bait had been swallowed whole by the enemy.

And the Red Cauldron Arena was merely twenty-four hours away.