With tattered garments and a face masked in soot, Alexander burst through the dense forest with a speed that shattered sound barriers. Branches snapped and trees quaked in his wake. The direction he ran toward was inconsequential; the moons that navigated others were absent in this forsaken part of the world. Not that he could have used them—his grasp on the date, or even the week, had long since slipped from his panicked mind.
All that mattered was escape. The Land of Men would be ideal, but any distance from the dark confines of his recent captivity would be considered a victory. His breath ragged, his heart pounding against his ribcage, Alexander dared not glance back. The fear of seeing his abductors—the psychopathic elf, the mysterious girl with the visor, the chained brute figure, or that white monstruosity—close on his heels propelled him forward. He ran until the forest blurred into a mere backdrop of his escape.
Only after crossing what he estimated to be dozens of kilometers did he allow himself to stop. He leaned heavily against a tree, his chest heaving. Time stretched thin as he peered into the dense foliage behind him. Seconds ticked into minutes, and still no sign of pursuit. A deep, shaky breath escaped him, a sigh of profound relief.
Alexander—despite his disheveled appearance—was no ordinary man. He was a king, the seventh and most recent to serve under the One and Only Emperor. His rise to power, 137 years ago, had seen the fall of the queen of what was once called Wiedenfeld, a kingdom he had claimed and renamed through conquest. From a minor lord to a king, he had not only changed the name but had eradicated the old royal family entirely, ensuring no future threats could arise from their lineage.
He had heard tales of mercy leading to ruin. In one such story, a king spared a formerly royal family, merely exiling them to a remote territory and reducing their status to that of a ducal house. This act of magnanimity allowed them to return with vengeance—a thorough and deadly one—toppling his scarcely century-old dynasty. Having learned from that piece of history, Alexander chose to take no chances. In establishing his kingdom, any potential claimants had been ruthlessly hunted down and permanently eliminated, though a few elusive members remained beyond his reach.
Yet, it was the rumor of a child—a grandchild of the queen he had overthrown—that troubled him the most. This child, a 'Charlie' born of a secret love between the ousted queen's secret daughter and an elf, supposedly unlocked at a very young the coveted longevity skill. Alexander himself had mastered this skill, but the ease with which this child had begun to develop it hinted at a potential rival who could threaten his newly established dynasty.
As he had done with the other members of that dynasty, he intended to eliminate her. But centuries before his ascentions, the former queen had spirited her granddaughter away to her father's ancestral elven lands—Quel'thalas. The thought of this child, possibly surviving and thriving, had hung over Alexander like a sword of Damocles for years. Despite his efforts and the establishment of a vast intelligence network with the help of his new allies within the church with the sole purpose to find that child, her whereabouts remained a mystery.
However, recent intelligence had unexpectedly pinpointed her in a remote part of Quel'thalas. The information was scant, but it led him to a small elven village on the southern edge of the continent. The odds of finding her in such a vast land were slim, yet there she was. The descriptions matched, even the name she now bore.
As he stared at her, relief flooded his mind, dispelling the weight he had felt hanging over his head. Alexander made a mental note to thank the priest who had provided the intelligence. That single piece of information had proven invaluable, and gratitude—though a rare commodity in his life—was duly owed.
Despite his initial expectations, the girl's strength was lower than he had anticipated, but not to be underestimated. Her longevity skill made her a latent threat. Determined to extinguish any remnant of the dynasty he had overthrown, he approached her with resolute finality, only to be blindsided by an ambush.
At first, Alexander assumed the assailants were allies of the elf girl, especially when he spotted one of her kind among the attackers. However, the situation quickly escalated as the more non-elven figures joined the fray: a girl with the visor, a chained brute, and a white aberration that dealt him the most devastating blow.
Confusion and questions plagued him as he lay captive, pondering the identities and motives of his mysterious captors.
Now, as he sprinted through the elven landscape, the urgency to leave this godforsaken continent consumed him. The girl, a looming threat to his reign, was momentarily forgotten in his scramble for survival. His strides carried him hopefully towards the Land of Men when a chilling shadow and an inferno interrupted his escape.
The sky exploded into flames as something collosal unleashed a fireball at subsonic speed. Alexander reacted instinctively, summoning a Shield Wall just in time. The defensive magic erupted, vaporizing the surrounding trees within a fifty-meter radius. As the smoke cleared and his heartbeat thundered in his ears, he looked up to face the monstrous creature responsible for the attack.
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What he saw flying in the sky made his heart skip several beats. Circling above was a creature he recognized—a colossal red Wyvern. Ironically, it wasn't the sight of the creature itself that made his heart skip, but rather the sight of the colossal beast being ridden by a humanoid silhouette, which he struggled to make out.
"This has to be a joke," Alexander muttered, his voice trembling with paralyzing disbelief and intense desperation. He recognized the draconic beast, recalling a past encounter with a Red Wyvern—one also ridden by a person, though that Wyvern had been smaller.
As he caught a better glimpse of the figure astride the beast, the initial shock subsided, replaced by relief. He heaved a loud, unrestrained sigh. The rider of the red Wyvern was a young man with striking red hair—not the one he feared.
The wyvern swooped down, spewing fire once more. Alexander defended himself with another burst of his Shield Wall, emerging partly unscathed. Bereft of his sword, confiscated from him by his assailants and captors, he prepared to retaliate with sorcery. But before he could unleash his spell, a blur of motion struck him with force enough to send him tumbling down a hill, crashing into a large tree that splintered upon impact.
"What the hell was that..." he groaned, struggling to his feet. As he oriented himself, his gaze stumbled on a figure approaching—the last person he expected to encounter in such chaos.
"Well, well, well, look who we have here," a voice teased with a mocking cheer, "if it isn't the young Alexander."
"You..." Sweat beaded Alexander's forehead as fear knotted his stomach. The figure before him was a young woman, her dress deceptively mature for her seemingly early-twenties appearance. But Alexander knew better; beneath that youthful exterior lurked a centuries-old tyrant, older and far more ruthless than he could ever claim to be. His mind raced with disbelief and dread: How? Why? What is she doing here?
As if immobilized by her hexes she infamous for, Alexander found himself frozen, the only words he could muster were a choked out, "Why are you here?"
At his query, she chuckled, her amusement clear. "Why wouldn't I be here?" she teased, her smile sharp as a blade. "Do I not have the right to be here just like you are, or did you expect me to be elsewhere in particular?"
Indeed, Alexander had expected her to be anywhere but here. The last rumors whispered that after her audacious defiance of the One and Only Emperor, the Kingslaying Queen Arianna had sequestered herself within the perilous depths of the Voidborne Catacomb, issuing a challenge he never answered. The silence that followed her declaration led many, including Alexander, to speculate she had either perished in that terrible place or was still lurking there, perhaps waiting in vain or hiding in fear of imperial retribution.
Yet here she was, not a ghost but as vivid and formidable as ever. To Alexander, a fellow usurper and kingslayer, Arianna had once been almost a figure of reverence—a role model of sorts—until he realized the madness that fueled her actions. While the emperor might tolerate the overthrow of one king by another of sufficient strength, Arianna's subsequent regicides, especially her elimination of the Second King—one of the last original kings from the emperor's early reign—surely crossed a line that no one before her had dared to cross, as it was done with clear intent to provoke the emperor and challenge him to a battle to the death.
Now, confronted with her presence, Alexander felt the acute threat she posed and the madness she exuded. If she had obliterated the Second King to weaken the emperor, what would stop her from killing him for the same reason?
Desperate to preserve his life, Alexander quickly bowed low, an act of submission he hadn't performed since his ascension, save before Emperor Cleon himself. "I didn't mean to offend in any way or form. If I did, please forgive me," he implored, his voice laced with genuine fear.
As he cautiously raised his eyes from the bow, he saw her smile widen ominously. "Tell me, little Alexander, did you really believe that with that little bow and apology I would simply let you go, especially after the trouble I had to go through to bait you here?"
His heart sank. "Baited?" he echoed, his voice barely a whisper, his mind racing as he tried to piece together the events leading to this moment. It suddenly clicked—the mysterious figures who had abducted him, their unexpected mess-up that allowed his escape—it had all been orchestrated by her. But why, and how?
She frowned at his confusion, then burst into a chuckle. "From how cowardly you usually are, I'd assumed you'd figured everything out. But it turns out you're denser than I thought," she remarked, her laughter echoing with a chilling cadence.
As daunting as her laugh was, the cold look that followed sent shivers down his spine. Alexander knew that fleeing was futile; an invisible force, his own sense of reason, held him in place. He valued his life dearly, and with his longevity skill recently advanced to level 4—promising him at least another 350 years—he was not ready to relinquish his future. "I have so much to live for," he reasoned internally, "I can't afford to die now, not when I've just secured centuries more life."
Gathering his courage, he spoke, desperation clear in his tone. "Surely there's an arrangement we can make," he pleaded, ready to bargain with everything he had—even consider betraying the emperor, if that would secure his survival.
But Arianna was unmoved. "Don't waste your energy, Alexander," she declared, her voice void of any mercy. "I, Arianna, will kill you, Seventh King Alexander. You will either fight back or surrender obediently. Either way you will die today."
As if these cold words weren't enough, in the corner of his vision, a chilling notification flashed from his appraisal and identification skill combo: