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For Éliane, the banquet and reception had been enlightening. The food had been exceptional, if simply for the variety it offered. The bread and the pastries at the end she found wanting, but even she was able to recognize the inherent bias that colored her opinions there. The coffee, on the other hand, was nothing short of fantastic. 

With no one awake, she hummed to herself. [b]“Coffee~ Coffee~ How I love you so~” [/b]

It was a pilfered carafe of this god’s nectar that Éliane was nursing in her room, slowly caffeinating even as the night drew on. Her three companions had long since gone to bed to rise early on the morrow, and despite the coffee, she would probably soon follow. She really was not the type to contemplate overmuch, but the spectacle that King Leonhardt and his guests gave –and that was all it really was, in her opinion—only served to reduce her opinion of the foreign king. The formation of such hastily assembled teams and the carrot of ten million gil felt to her that the man was simply throwing stuff on a wall and seeing what would stick several months later. If someone like herself could recognize that, then no doubt others had thought the same. It had been entertaining, though. She did like shows.

Éliane and her small delegation of two had come all this way, but she was of half a mind to turn around and go back to Skael. With the resources of her country’s scholars, the Garden, and the Household Guards combined, she was confident her countrymen could discover the solution to the Blight, or defeat a harebrained Valheimen scheme if they had been the cause of it like some had suggested, no collaboration with foreigners needed. 

Intellectually, she knew that was a stupid opinion, but it was tempting train of thought. She was here as much as an act of diplomacy as much as she still needed to see what was going on, and she would be derelict of duty otherwise. 

Taking a last sip of the delectable black beverage, she began to reluctantly set her cup down to change and turn in for the night. Before she finished the motion however, she caught the faint, hasty movement of heavy boots and froze. A Knight returning from the washroom? No, too many footsteps. An Edrenien patrol? Not in these hallways. It could only be…

[b]“Ambush!” [/b]

Éliane yelled as she lept from her seat, coffee still in her hand as she grabbed her gunblade from the side of her bed. She was just in time for the bedroom door to crash open, revealing armored soldiers with guns pointed into the room. 

An ambush by soldiers of Valheim? How… interesting!

A moment later, the entire room descended into chaos. 

The two gunslingers that had been part of her delegation barely had time to rise and snatch up their weapons before their assailants opened fire. The fourth member of her team, a rogue that they had met in the banquet with the bed closest to the door, had no such luck and had managed to tangle himself in his bedsheets trying to get up before being riddled with bullets. 

Instinctively, but with great reluctance, Éliane threw her coffee at the lead soldier, shattering the porcelain against his helmet and forcing him to stagger back into another soldier. It bought just enough time for her side to respond, and soon the small space erupted into a full firefight. Éliane opened up with her gunblade before she moved to close the distance, sticking to the wall as she made a wind-propelled dash to avoid the bulk of the fire being exchanged quarters. A fusillade of lead met the Valheimens, but the same number poured into her allies. She didn’t have time to contemplate the result before she made contact with the enemy. 

She shot one in the head at near point blank before pivoting to the side to line up another shot. That too connected, but pinged off the thick point of his armor. Éliane, undeterred, lanced forward and stabbed out at the man’s exposed armpit as he turned to respond to the threat. Her gunsabre found purchase, driving deep into his chest before she pulled back with a kick. The soldier staggered back before collapsing to the floor with his heart pierced, joining three others on the ground. The remaining two had been shot dead by her comrades, and the room was now silent…

...Which wasn’t good. She turned back to her comrades, grimacing at what she found. Jacques was plain dead, Anne was bleeding out, and the rogue –she’d already forgotten his name—had clearly never gotten out of bed before eating shit. 

[b]“Damn, this sucks,”[/b] she muttered, pausing to collect the rest of her kit before jumping out the door. There were still sounds of fighting outside. Her comrades were a lost cause, but the others weren’t. And now she had a score to settle.