Lea's Liberation

Festival Activities

Festival Activities

For the next few days, the three fell into a familiar pattern of seeking, hunting, and fighting in order to rout the remainder of the bandits and pirates. They had taken care of the majority of them, but there was still a small group leftover that, without their more intelligent leader, were now little more than thugs and low lives that were no longer trying to remain quiet. As though made desperate by their dramatic and sudden loss in numbers, they became far more ruthless and less discriminating about their choice of targets.

Addie would spend the day collecting information on any new attacks and where the attackers had started hiding, then Emilien and Lea would go to dispatch them that night.

After three days, the massive increase in power and skills stolen from the original group faded away forever. Lea could only steal things for a limited time. After three days, if it didn't return to their original owners, it was just gone. She was still taking from the men they captured and doling out their strength accordingly, but they weren't as ridiculously strong as they had been on that night.

Emilien thought that was only right. It didn't seem like a good thing for any one person, even someone of such impeachable moral character as a paladin, to only to compound their strength and abilities infinitely through their life.

After the first night, the entire city began spreading the news that a paladin was in their midst. It wasn't the kind of thing that could be kept quiet, especially not with groups of bandits being left weakened in the streets every night. Lea hadn't identified herself, but every paladin and her power was known throughout the kingdom – with the sole exception of Addie. It didn't take long for them to put the state of the men together with Lea, Naught of Power, and guess it was her.

However, none of them actually knew what she looked like. Lea remained in their borrowed house unless she and Emilien were going out hunting. Addie fetched anything they might need, but Marc's wife provided most of it. There was little reason for either of them to show their faces. People could only guess at who, of the dozens to hundreds of new faces in the city at any given day, might be Lea.

After the second night, when the weakened and helpless bodies of a dozen more of the bandits were found in the streets, the mayor made an announcement. The three of them didn't bother to go see it in person, but Marc brought them the gist. He had asked Lady Lea to please come forward. He wanted nothing more than to thank her in person, to house her in his manor where, by all rights, she, as a paladin, should be staying.

Both Addie and Lea assured Emilien that, under no circumstances, would they be gracing his manor with their presence. Emilien thought it only to be a desire to keep themselves – and himself – a secret for a while longer.

However, the truth was revealed the next day when rumors began abounding that Lady Lea had snubbed the mayor's invitation. That night, Lea and Emilien had taken down a pirate ship and left a group of seven men in the streets for the city guard, so everyone knew that she was still there, but she had deliberately ignored the mayor.

Which was not only a grave insult, but it sent a message. The lady paladin had condemned the lord mayor's actions without saying a single word.

People began to talk about what would happen to the mayor now. They had always suspected that the mayor had been keeping their plight a secret, but it was as though Lea's refusal to see him had confirmed it. They began to talk about him possibly being removed from office and what that would mean for Guarin.

Lea said that they probably weren't wrong. The king would likely strip the mayor's title from him for his actions.

But that was neither her problem nor her concern.