Dark Parasyte
Chapter 47: The Duchess, the Mage, and the Envoy

Chapter 47: The Duchess, the Mage, and the Envoy

Valyne followed the palace steward down a polished hallway lined with gold veined marble and anxious silence. Her footsteps echoed lightly behind the servant’s, her long robe brushing against the stone floor like a whisper of mischief. The corridors were grand and reserved. Adorned with deep red banners and the polished crests of House Vellgard. It smelled faintly of citrus oil, parchment, and barely concealed tension.

The doors ahead opened with theatrical ceremony, of course they did and she was ushered into a throne room that was far more understated than she had expected for a city known for its gilded name. No towering columns or gem inlaid flooring. Just authority wrapped in quiet discipline.

Two women occupied the chamber.

One sat upon the throne with the weary poise of someone balancing pride on top of exhaustion, her posture measured, regal, and just a touch wary. The other sat slightly to her right, legs crossed, fingers folded atop a thick, rune etched tome. Sharp eyed and still, she exuded the kind of calm that only came with magical control and, Valyne noted, the unmistakable aura of being very prepared to murder someone.

Valyne’s gaze locked on the woman to the right.

Aether shimmered faintly around her like a restless mist. Valyne didn’t need to focus to see the thin lattice of displacement snares, spatial redirection veils, and at least one rather crude spatial anchor. All primed and humming. It was like walking into a very polite cage made entirely of subtle, unwelcoming spells.

She couldn’t help herself. Being an instructor for a long time left it’s marks on her.

Her head tilted like a curious cat examining a particularly fragile vase.

Then she turned to the throne and bowed with perfect, practiced control, low enough to show respect, not enough to concede.

"Valyne Yrithis," she announced, her voice serene and velvety, far more confident than she felt. "Magistra form Umbral Synod. Envoy of the Obsidian Gate. I come seeking an audience with Corvin Blackmoor."

She omitted her affiliation with the Umbraxis Arcanum, of course. That wasn’t for public consumption. The Arcanum, nestled within the secretive folds of the Synod’s more arcane institutions, wasn’t registered with the Council of Arbiters, because the Synod didn’t care to register what they didn’t want scrutinized. They operated the way shadows did: indirectly, without asking permission.

The woman on the throne, Duchess Yvanna Vellgard remained seated. Her expression was diplomatic, though tension pinched the edges of her mouth.

"Welcome to Goldhaven, Lady Yrithis," she said smoothly. "Your arrival was... unexpected."

Kaelyn, the woman to her right, did not stand. Did not smile. She simply stared.

Valyne turned toward her and offered a graceful nod. Her eyes, however, roamed.

"Clever," she said aloud, gesturing subtly at the magical lattice. "Although..."

Her head tilted again. She tapped her chin thoughtfully.

"You could refine the trigger strands. They’re flaring a little too brightly. The spatial anchors, in particular, feel like someone stitched them with a fireplace poker. Very... blunt."

Kaelyn blinked.

Then frowned. Deeply.

"You can see them?" she asked.

Valyne blinked back in genuine confusion. "Of course. They’re practically humming. I assumed they were meant to be decorative. Very rustic flair."

Yvanna glanced sideways at Kaelyn.

Kaelyn’s frown deepened.

"Even Corvin..." she stopped herself, biting the words midair.

Yvanna’s voice sharpened slightly. "Corvin what?"

Kaelyn cleared her throat. "Nothing important."

Valyne folded her arms and offered a shrug that carried centuries of elven elegance. "For what it’s worth, this is my first and hopefully last mission as a diplomatic envoy. My usual job involves... The soulbound oath pulled her back. She stopped. and continued "...no political navigation."

Yvanna leaned forward slightly, fingers interlaced beneath her chin. "Then let us skip the dramatics, Lady Yrithis. Why are you truly here?"

Valyne drew a slow, measured breath and straightened.

"To find Corvin Blackmoor," she said, her tone shifting back to formality. "Deliver a message. Convince him to return. And... remain in his proximity."

Silence.

A beat passed.

Then Kaelyn let out a small, involuntary snort.

"Good luck with that," she muttered.

Valyne sighed with theatrical weariness and stared at the ceiling. "Yes. That’s roughly how I felt too. It’s like asking a storm to wait politely outside the door."

"Or worse," Kaelyn added dryly, "to leave its boots at the threshold."

Valyne allowed herself a small, defeated smile. "It seems we met the same... " She tilted her head a little thinking of a word to describe Corvin, after a while she sighed and said "That cursed Elf." At the same time with Kaelyn. They both stopped blinked a couple of times. and Smiled, feeling the a kinship born of annoyance of the same person while nodding enthusiastically. Yvanna on the other hand was thinking if Corvin would hold her responsible for these two headaches.

--

Corvin watched the Sanctified Council’s envoy ride off until they were little more than pale specks swallowed by the horizon. He remained still, a quiet figure on the ridge, long after the dust from their horses had settled. The camp behind him continued its perfect mimicry.

Only when the sun dipped low and the sky inked itself in purple and ash did he turn away.

"Break camp," he said, no louder than a whisper, but every Covenant Bound soldier heard it like a war drum.

In under an hour, the façade vanished. Tents collapsed without touch. Fires dimmed without smoke. Wagons, weapons, and warhorses, all vanished into his spatial inventory. What had appeared to be a formidable rebel force was now a flat, empty plain, scoured by the passing of four thousand undead in perfect formation.

Bob was the last to disappear. The Bearkin tilted his head, gave a grunt of annoyance at missing the fun, and stepped into the veil of inventory space.

Corvin exhaled slowly.

His form wavered, a shimmer of wind through leaves, and reformed. No longer flesh, but vaporous. An Air Elemental Aetherborn, built for silence and speed. The threads of his essence reknit themselves in a swirl of translucent magic, and he launched skyward.

Verranus sprawled below like a beast at rest. Its northern wall was lit like a battlefield, beacons lit, guard formations doubled, siege engines half assembled in paranoia. The Sanctified Council expected a storm to break from the north.

But Corvin had always preferred shadows.

He swept silently along the outer walls, ducking between towers and dark of the night, until he reached the southern side. The difference was immediate. Fewer lights, sparser patrols, bored guards who hadn’t seen real action in months. They expected calm.

Corvin promised none.

He slipped through an invisible seam in the barrier wards, bypassing the perimeter with nothing more than a pulse of Aether. Within moments, he was past the gatehouse stone and into the barracks beyond, phasing into the heart of the resting city like a phantom.

Inside the south barracks, all was mundane. A few soldiers in light armor played dice near a sputtering oil lamp. One guard scribbled a letter to a lover. A young recruit slept with boots still on. Swords leaned against racks. Armor polished but unused.

Corvin let the Aetherborn form fade.

His Sylvan Elf form rippled into place. Elegant and inconspicuous, but wholly alien in the dim, smoky room.

The dice clattered to a stop.

The letter writer blinked.

Then the oil lamp exploded.

A wave of telekinetic force flattened the table and snuffed out light and breath. In the darkness, panic flickered.

A blade slid beneath one man’s chin. Blood flowed out and tunred to a whip which caught another across the throat, sealing screams before they could be born. Corvin danced through the chaos like a ghost stitched from vengeance. One by one, he snuffed them out. No cries. No alarms. Only the quiet tap of boots against stone.

He approached the senior officer last, catching him in the act of fumbling for a wardstone.

Corvin hurled him against the wall and pressed two fingers to the man’s temple.

The siphon began.

Images rushed in, rotations, passwords, patrol times, names, map layouts. Council orders. Secret routes. Weak points. It all poured into Corvin’s mind like wine down a throat.

When the officer began to foam from his mouth, Corvin caved in his skull with a flick of psychic force.

He looked around.

Blood spread in winding paths between the cots. Bodies littered the room, some still twitching in muscle memory. He signaled mentally.

And from his inventory, soldiers emerged.

The undead, clad in Verrenate armor, fresh with the stink of blood and faith took their positions. Some began reading documents on desks. Others assumed sleeping poses in bunks. It was a flawless replacement. This continued with each and every soldier at the south gate. Till gate became his.

But the real work had just begun.

Corvin moved like a saboteur through the veins of the city. From street to alley, from rooftop to underpass, he struck with precision honed by death itself.

Each district had guardposts. Each followed predictable military doctrine, three squads on rotation, two on rest, one in alert, minimal numbers at night. He exploited it all.

He knocked using the right codes.

He quoted orders stolen from the minds of the victims.

He entered as a friend.

And then he butchered.

In one garrison, he triggered poison glyphs with a whispered command, paralyzing every soldier in place before they hit the floor. In another, he conjured threads of blood into garrotes and slipped them around necks, pulling in perfect unison. He launched daggers of compressed air into exposed necks, shattered skulls with invisible force, used the stone beneath their feet to form spears through spines.

Each building became a tomb for verrenate soldiers.

And each time, his undead followed, slotting into armor, carrying on routines as if nothing had changed.

Not a single scream escaped the city.

He took officers alive only long enough to steal thoughts, then unmade them with surgical finality. He collected layouts, secret vault codes, interior sanctum maps. By midnight, he knew Verranus better than the Council did.

At one point, he stood at the center of a slaughtered hall, arms outstretched, feeling the ebb of magic from the dozens of corpses around him.

"This city," he whispered, "was never yours."

By dawn, the southern half of Verranus belonged to the dead.

And no one knew it yet.

--

Kaelyn hadn’t expected to like Valyne.

She had expected haughty airs, arrogant assumptions, and maybe a half dozen veiled threats laced into every other sentence. What she got instead was a energetic, expressive, and completely overwhelmed Aether mage who looked one unnecessary political form away from throwing herself into the sea.

Which, oddly, made her likable.

"...and then I asked the steward if there was any tea that didn’t smell like boiled sea weed," Valyne was saying, "and he looked at me as if I’d personally insulted his ancestors."

Kaelyn snorted into her cup. "You did. That was saffron leaf ceremonial blend. Only served during high feasts and blood oaths."

Valyne blinked. "I’m sorry, did you just say blood oaths?"

"It’s a very festive culture," Kaelyn said with a mock straight face.

They both burst out laughing.

Yvanna, seated just across the small tea table, did not laugh.

Her left eye twitched. Just a little.

She watched the two women, one a foreign mage, the other her personal arcane advisor. Bonding over sarcasm and shared trauma like two sisters at a particularly niche tavern.

This... was an envoy?

This girl, this bright eyed, sharp tongued, tea offending and aether seeing disaster?

Was this what the Obsidian Gate considered appropriate diplomatic personnel?

Valyne set her cup down, hands waving animatedly.

"And the worst part?" she said. "I wasn’t even suppe that Corvin will be there that day! But noooo, someone from the bsidian Gate has gave him permission, and there I was, minding my business, and then bam, Corvin Blackmoor sits in front of me and explaining something about Lightning. How come he knows so much about Aether alignment?"

Kaelyn leaned forward, nodding approvingly. "Oh, I do. I woke up once and found him sitting in the chair across from my bed. Just... holding a goblet. Said what he needed to and dissappeard like a bad vibe . At the first lights of the morning."

"Was he smirking?" Valyne asked.

Kaelyn’s expression darkened. "Worse. *Half *smirking."

Valyne gasped. "The asymmetrical menace. I know it well."

They nodded solemnly.

Yvanna quietly pinched the bridge of her nose.

She didn’t know what part of this concerned her more. The fact that the Synod had sent this woman as an official envoy, or the fact that the envoy and her trusted court mage were now trading stories like war survivors of some elegant, well dressed disaster.

No. That wasn’t fair.

Valyne wasn’t useless. She was perceptive. Skilled. And utterly, completely out of her depth.

Which meant this visit wasn’t just a formality.

It was a signal.

There was something deeper at play. Yvanna just couldn’t decide if she wanted to know what it was... or if remaining blissfully ignorant would keep Corvin from deciding her kingdom needed a "cleansing."

She glanced at Valyne again ...laughing, animated while showing some notes to Kaelyn.

It would be wise to keep her close.

Not because she liked her. Not even because she trusted her.

But because if anything happened to this naive, chatty, wonderfully sharp Synod envoy, Yvanna was no longer sure the Gilded Dominion would survive the consequences.