“You should not do this,” Adara stated. “We can just wait them out.”
“I concur,” Tucker said. “There’s no real benefit except time, and a whole lot of ways it can go wrong. We have no idea what this is going to look like.”
Jasper added, “That’s not true. The Radiant Host has a long history of solving their grievances via single combat. There is a list of rules they must follow.”
“These are people who enslave innocent people and would prefer killing them rather than allowing them to be freed,” Pudge pointed out. “We cannot trust anything they claim.”
“We can trust them on this,” Jasper insisted.
“Jasper isn’t wrong. We adopted a similar system in Adontis,” Adara explained. “It is a duel of honor, undergone with no skills or other advantages. There aren’t even weapons allowed.”
“How does that work?” asked Zeke.
“There is an arena here in the city. You’ve seen it,” Adara said. “With the right rune flags, they can activate the native enchantments to rob the participants of their skills. It also forces all attributes to the same level.”
“But not stat tiers?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not that I know of. But you still shouldn’t do this. Tucker’s right. There isn’t any advantage to it. They’re desperate. That’s the only reason he came out here to offer the duel in the first place. We don’t need it.”
It was patently true. They did not need to give the Radiant Host – and their leader, a man named Ignatius – what they wanted. Instead, Zeke and his army could simply keep doing what they were doing, and nothing would really change. They wouldn’t be in any more danger. No one was coming to save the Imperium, and even if they had allies, those forces certainly wouldn’t challenge the armies that had so thoroughly defeated one of the most powerful militaries in the Eternal Realm.
No – there was no imperative to give Ignatius what he wanted.
Yet, when Zeke thought about ignoring the challenge, his stomach twisted into knots so dense that it made him nauseous.
“You’re going to do it, aren’t you? All of your closest advisors tell you not to, but it doesn’t matter,” Eveline interjected as the rest of the group continued to discuss their options. Zeke had already begun to ignore them, so he barely heard their chatter.
“I can’t let the challenge go, Eveline.”
“Even if it’s the wrong move?”
“Even then,” Zeke acknowledged. “I don’t know if I have it in me.”
Was it pride? Or was there something else in there? Sure, the argument could be made that the longer they stayed in one place, the more danger they were in, but Zeke knew that wasn’t really valid. Everyone did. As he’d previously acknowledged, no one was coming to challenge the army that had defeated the Imperium. Doing so was suicidal.
But in the back of his mind, Zeke knew that the real reason he was even considering giving the Imperium the duel they wanted was because he couldn’t fathom backing down from a fight. Especially when he knew he was better.
“Stop,” he said quietly. It didn’t stop the chatter, so he raised his voice and repeated himself. “Stop!” Everyone went silent and looked his way. He took a deep breath, then went on, “I’m going to do it.”
“Zeke…”
“I can’t let this go, Adara. You know that,” he stated. “This isn’t just about me. This is about the Crimson Tower. What do you think the kobolds would think of Ak-toh backed down from a fair fight?”
“We follow you,” Silik said. “Always and entirely.”
Zeke shook his head. “For some of you, that’s probably true. I don’t question your loyalty, Silik,” he explained. “But everyone here knows that these people are all here because of the strength I represent. For the former slaves, I’m their savior. The man who freed them. I provide safety and opportunity. For the kobolds, I rescued them from the Blood Wraith. I helped them grow. I gave them the chance to become something more. If I back down, if I let this challenge go unanswered, they’ll start to have doubts. And those doubts will slowly burrow into their minds until, one day – maybe not soon – they’ll let them push them into doing something stupid.”
He pushed himself to his feet. “I can’t allow that. My most important task is to be a rock upon which all of this can rest,” he explained. “I can’t show weakness. I can’t let them see cracks. That’s why I can’t afford to turn away from this duel.”
It was all a lie.
In the strictest sense, it was an accurate enough depiction of how precarious the balance in the Crimson Tower was. However, it was not how he truly felt. In truth, he didn’t care about any of that. Sure, he would do everything in his power to help the kobolds, as well as the rest of the residents of his tower, but in this case, that was not his largest concern.
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Instead, he just wanted a good fight. He wanted to face down his enemy and come out ahead. Anything else was anathema to who he was.
“You’re lying to yourself again,” Eveline said in his mind.
“What do you mean?” he asked inwardly.
“You do care how they look at you,” she pointed out. “You can’t help it, either.”
“You think you know better than I do about how I think?”
“Of course, because I know something you don’t. I can see it, weaving its way through your very mind. It affects who you are. It dictates what you feel. It permeates your entire being to the point where you can’t even sense it, much less deny it,” she explained.
“What are you talking about?”
“Divinity, Ezekiel,” Eveline answered. “It enhances you. It strengthens you. But that doesn’t come without a cost. Going forward, you will find that you are more inflexible, that you will start to embody certain ideals. That is what being a god means.”
“I’m not a god.”
“Not yet,” she said. “But if you keep going the way you are, you will be. And here’s the thing, Ezekiel – I don’t think you can stop it. One way or another, if you survive, you will become a god. That’s what ascension to the Ethereal Realm is all about. Right now, you are building a foundation of what you will represent. So, you need to think long and hard about what you want, about who you want to be. Because one day, and sooner rather than later, it will be set in stone.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, not nearly as distressed by that as he might have expected. He knew who he was, and more importantly, he liked himself – flaws and all. There were worse fates than to have his personality etched across his very being.
“The cost of divinity is immutability. Gods do not change, Ezekiel. I thought you knew this.”
In a way, he had, even if he’d never actually given it any thought. It made sense. But as interesting as it might have been, it also wasn’t his primary concern. The reality was that he had no doubts about his choice. He needed to fight the duel. Partially because of his personality, but also because it was the right move for the development of the Crimson Tower.
“Are you sure?” asked Tucker after everyone else had gone silent.
“I am,” Zeke said. “I don’t need skills to defeat some jumped up knight of the Radiant Host.”
That much, he definitely believed. After all, he’d spent month after month training precisely for such a situation, and he’d not had his skills – aside from [Titan] and [Hand of Divinity] – available to him since defeating Micayne. So, he thought he was well prepared for just such a duel.
Such was their faith in him that, once he’d made his stance clear, no one else argued with him. They didn’t try to talk him out of it. Nobody questioned his motivation. Instead, they simply accepted it and began planning their next steps. For months, they’d been sending out people to search out a means of reaching Hell, and they’d narrowed it down to a location on another continent. Reaching it would require Tucker’s and Iris’ ship, the Mercury, but they’d both made it clear that they were up to the task of ferrying him to his destination.
But they didn’t want to abandon the former lands of the Imperium or Adontis – not until the people there could govern themselves. To that end, they’d spent more than a year working to ensure their self-sufficiency, and to a degree, it had worked. They weren’t yet strong, but they could at least survive on their own.
Of course, there were plenty of people who had chosen to live in the tower. Once the fear of their liberators – or conquerors, as many saw them – had worn off, many had migrated into the tower. And with Eveline watching over them in her role as the steward of the Crimson Tower, they had flourished.
And she’d kept any dissidence to a minimum.
Before they could address issues like that, though, Zeke needed to make good on his claim. He needed to accept the duel, kill Ignatius, then take over the rest of the Imperium.
So, without further hesitation, Zeke and his companions headed out of the gate and found their way to the clear area in front of the citadel’s gate. Once he was there, Zeke raised his voice and shouted, “I accept your challenge!”
A disembodied voice responded, “Very well.”
A second later, the man himself strode out of the gate. He wore no armor, and instead was clad only in a simple white robe with the hood drawn. For the briefest of moments, Zeke considered attacking and ending the war then and there. Yet, his sense of honor would not allow for it.
In the back of his mind, he wondered if that was his divinity at work. Was it restricting his actions because it was out of character? Or was it a genuine choice on his part? He had no idea, but he didn’t question the decision itself.
When Ignatius was only a few feet away, he pushed the hood back, revealing a handsome, middle-aged face. His gray hair was short, and his beard was immaculately trimmed. By comparison, Zeke knew that he was quite shabby.
“You do not look like a monster,” Ignatius said.
“Funny,” Zeke responded. He hadn’t bothered with [Titan], so he looked like any other human being at the moment, save for the scars concealed beneath his white shirt. He wasn’t one, but that didn’t really change the way he looked. “I was going to the say the same thing about you. I guess looks are deceptive.”
“I suppose so,” the man responded, reaching into a pocket. When he removed his hand, he held a scroll. “This is the standard contract for an Honor Duel. I won’t insult your intelligence by asking you to trust my explanation.”
He handed it to Zeke. After unfurling it, Zeke read the contents. The terms were clear and concise. Neither combatant would harm the other until they reached the arena. Other than that, it specified the terms they’d discussed before. If Zeke won, the Imperium would surrender. If the Champion of the Radiant Host proved victorious, then Zeke’s army would disperse.
“Good terms,” Eveline remarked. “Even if you lose and are horribly killed, at least the kobolds will survive. Well, the ones outside the tower. Surely, the ones inside will perish.”
Zeke had already ordered everyone out of the tower, and at present, the non-combatants were congregated in the area around the gate in the Muk’ti Plains. If he died and the tower collapsed, then only a few would die.
“Any loopholes?”
“Other than the champion stuff, no,” she said. “It’s possible that he won’t be the one to fight you. You realize that, right?”
“I’m aware,” Zeke stated inwardly. “But it doesn’t matter. When I win, he’ll surrender. That’s the important thing. Who I kill doesn’t matter.”
“Then there’s nothing wrong with this contract.”
“Good,” Zeke said. Then, he signed it. A burst of mana announced the binding of the contract. Aloud, Zeke added, “There. When do we fight?”
“There’s no better time than the present,” the leader of the Imperium responded. Then, he motioned to the gate, and a huge figure emerged, confirming Eveline’s suspicions. For Zeke’s part, he hadn’t expected anything different. From what he knew of Ignatius, the man was no fighter, after all.
Still, the sight of the enormous figure was enough to send a tiny note of fear down Zeke’s spine.