Princess Sierra looked at the piece of magical paper on her hand. It changed, the seal of Sancus shifted and some provisions of the contract activated. Brody lost. Her brother was dead. Beheaded, gutted and defaced. It was as if that Aidan didn't want an open coffin burial. She looked again at the seal of Sancus but she was sure he had cheated.
"You!" She stood up and pointed a finger at Aidan. "You cheated! I don't know how, but you cheated!"
He walked around the bloody mess of gore and reached the grandstand. "I didn't cheat, your Highness. I played by the rules we agreed upon. Sancus himself saw to it."
"Murderer! A mere heir to a Baronet has no right to fight a Prince! I claim my right as a Royal to deliver punishment to this commoner!"
Sierra tried to cast a spell. It fizzled. Aidan looked in her eyes, "I am not a mere Baronet, Sierra. I mean, that is my current title, but that is so by choice."
"You are lying. There is no noble that would stay at the lowest rank possible, lower even than a Knight by choice."
Sierra was out of her mind with grief and outrage. She felt the same way she did at the bakery. Her mana vanished before it could power the spell diagram she cast. She didn't even try to cast another spell. At the end of her wits, the woman knew not what to do.
"You can believe what you want. I have no reason to lie to you. I could be almost any rank I wanted."
"Liar! I dare you to prove it."
Aidan turned a bit to the side and bowed before Helios. "Your Majesty, if Yutis were to grant me any court rank, which one would it be?"
"Despite that scene at the balcony being just a thespian play, Lumina is now available and of marriable age. If you don't want to marry my daughter, I have a Duchy assigned to you by the morrow."
Nobody paid any mind to Lucien cringing at the thought of Lumina marrying.
He turned to Sierra, "And there you go. Want more? Princess Pearl, if I were to ask King Jett for a court rank, how do you think he would answer?"
Pearl laughed. "I am the Heiress Apparent and am not currently available. But I have three sisters younger than me, I am sure that one of them would be a good match. If none of them is willing, I think father would make you at least a Marquis."
"And there you go, Sierra. I hold this rank because I can't be involved too much in court politics. But your brother was defeated because he fought Yutis' strongest champion."
The term was not something coined on the go. That title belonged to a man, the strongest S-rank hunter. A man Aidan knew intimately.
Sierra cackled, "Nonsense! We made sure to confirm that he was trapped in a dungeon! You are just a pretender, you murderer!"
Aidan lifted his hand and Sierra's laughter stopped immediately. In fact, she couldn't breathe. Or feel the ground underneath her feet as she was floating a hand above ground. She looked at her tormentor and saw a face full of grief and anger, "Interesting, Princess Sierra. Could you please elaborate on the location of my parents?" She gasped and struggled. Aidan released her. "My bad. You can't speak under the effects of a Sylph's Hand spell."
She gasped and huffed to catch her breath. "Was that a mere Sylph's Hand spell? What kind of monster that man is?" She drove a hand over her mouth when she realized she was speaking out loud.
"My bad again. I used a truth spell without even thinking. Allow me to introduce myself, your Highness. I am Aidan, this generation's God-Slayer. And right now, I have half the mind to march north and wreck your nation. I don't think Brody told you, but he used a mystical poison on your father the King. He has less than a month to live. I am sure I can do a great deal of damage during the chaos of the succession. Especially given my Underworld Element."
Aidan glanced at the corpse near him, measuring the pool of blood that seemed to have stopped growing. "I think that I can even reanimate Brody and place him as my undead puppet in the throne. What do you think?" He lifted his hand and used the spell every student learns to show their Element. The one he used as a basis for Soul Reveal. An image of a flaming stone skull appeared over his hand, its eye sockets darkness that sucked everything in.
In the grandstand, everyone was stuck in their seats, watching the scene unfold. Sierra was slowly realizing she made a big mistake. It was obvious that this man's family was a trigger. One that she pushed with a sledgehammer. Worse yet, if he was really the scion of the God-Slayer, he could very well destroy their country. Did Sierra doubt him when he spoke of Brody poisoning the King? Not for a second. Putting everything together, it all made sense. Brody wanted to stage a double coup, seizing both Yutis and Heath at the same time.
Sierra was scared enough. She was already saying her prayers to the Twelve. "What do you want from me? Add me to your harem of Princesses?" She looked at her brother and discovered that Brian collapsed and was currently frothing on the floor.
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"You think too much of yourself, Sierra." He felt the words coming to his mouth from his tenant and he let it flow, "You are a self-conceited ignoble frumpy ditzy, Sierra. I am amazed at how you never grow. Always in the shadow of your elder brother, indulging in your incestuous fantasies hoping he would one day notice you. Funny how even a deranged rapist like Brody that would fuck even his own mother never laid a finger on some frigid, clammy and dirty mudslinger like you.
"The fact is, I could drive you naked before the whole court, there would be not a single man that would want ye royal baby factory, Sierra. Not me. Now about what I want."
"I want you to say all you know about my parents, now! Speak or Heath will have to find a new Royal Family before the week is over."
Another dreary realization came to Sierra. The current God-Slayer was a necromancer. A Soul mage. One with the power to raise armies of the undead. One with the power to slaughter whole armies and then raise them as undead. She had no choice.
"They were hired to investigate a dungeon that nobody ever got out alive. it is a dungeon in the northwest corner of the continent, one of the seven great dungeons of the world. Heath anonymously sponsored the hunter association bounty to bring the supreme S-rank hunter to investigate the dungeon. Just that. I don't know anything else."
There was a long silence after Sierra stopped talking. Aidan was immobile, apparently absorbed in thought.
"I know what dungeon Sierra is speaking of, Aidan," Astromelicus broke the silence. "We shall talk about it when we resume our lessons."
"Thank you, uncle Astro," Aidan nodded at the Archmage using his pet name.
It only gave Sierra reassurance that the man was who he claimed to be. Stupid Brian, not even that he could discover. But Aidan was seething.
"I'll tell you, Sierra. As we agreed, both you and your brother are safe. I will personally take you to the border tomorrow. Good luck in trying to save your father from certain death. But if I get a single whiff of Heath causing trouble for me or mine, I can guarantee you that the image of the army I can raise that flashed in your mind is not accurate. Triple that at least."
"Can you read minds?"
"That is for me to know and for you to worry about. You are dismissed, Princess. Take your wimp of a brother back to your quarters and vanish from my sight. Tell your two servants to pack your things up, at the first light of dawn you'll be gone from here. And one last thing before you go. You make damn sure you abide by the terms of our duel contract because Sancus has all incentives to enforce it with great prejudice. Because if he doesn't, I'll collect what is owed from the god himself."
Sierra called their last surviving Knight to carry Brian and left the training arena without looking back.
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"I'm sorry for my improper behavior, your Majesty," After the visitors from Heath were escorted back to their chambers, AIdan knelt before the King.
That included Brody's corpse. He was entombed whole in a stone coffin created with magic from the ground. Otherwise the entire arena would be too smelly.
"Arise, Lord Aidan. We understand very well your grief and let none speak anything but praise for your actions today. Come here near us."
Aidan approached and stopped right before the King's seat on the grandstand. Helios stood up and hugged the young man, to everyone else's surprise.
"I know what you are feeling, Aidan," Helios told him. "For your father is also my brother and your mother my sister, just not by blood."
He could barely hold himself. Helios' arms felt warm, inviting. He knew that part of that feeling was Lumina's longing for her family. "Thank you, uncle Helios."
"Aidan, this I swear on my crown. Whenever you march into war, Yutis will march by your side. Your enemy is our enemy. And I don't say this just because it is in our interest to keep your family near us. It is because we are your friends. Alina loved you as if you were her own son. She regretted until the end of her brief days letting you go away because you reacted to what Lumina did. I was a fool for letting pride speak louder than love. Look what it did to Lucien."
Most people present laughed at the King's joke. Lucien grimaced but endured.
"And my offer stands. If you want to become my son, Lumina's hand is yours."
Aidan peeled himself off and shook his head. "I'm afraid I am not man enough to withstand Lumina, your Majesty. I have absolute certainty she is too much for me to hold."
Only the King and Lucien missed the double entendre. Another round of laughter ensued. It might seem insensitive or callous to be laughing when a man died not five meters from where they were, but between the capture and termination of the assassins hired by Brody and the Prince's abuse of Dawn, he might have been a cockroach.
"It is late and everyone is tired. I, the King, order all of you to have a good night's sleep." Helios ushered everyone away.
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"And this is why I like the castle. Look at the size of these beds!" Cythrel quipped after she dove headfirst over the bed sheets.
"At least take off your clothes and bracers. You are going to tear the sheets," Sora chided her.
"I could sleep in my clothes," Aidan retorted. He was already down to his trunks.
"I don't know how I remove these bracers. Aidan?"
"Imagine them dropping to the ground and say 'Release'." She did and her arms came free from the bracers. "But there are no parts to clip on the bedsheets or pinch anyone. If you can sleep with them on in the future, it will help charge the cores overnight."
"Not tonight. Tonight I want to do some God-Slaying," Cythrel purred.
"In our dreams, you mean." Sora chided her and pushed the elf into the center of the bed.
"Sorry, Cy. I am too tired. These last few days were a big hassle." Aidan climbed from the feet and found his place between the two.
"How are you?" Sora asked with worry on her face. Aidan could read her like an open book. She was asking about his conversation with Sierra about his parents.
"I am concerned but not too much. They are alive and as long as that holds true, there is hope of rescuing them. I know we are too weak to go and rescue them. But at least now we have a lead. Maybe after we take Pearl home, we can go looking for that dungeon. We will go back to Gohar before midsummer. It will take a month to recover Lumina entirely.
"A month?" Cythrel gasped in surprise. "Don't you have to just cut and slap her soul back in her body?"
"I wish it was that easy," Aidan replied. "You see, the reason Dawn merged so well to her body was because the soul was molded into the body during the slow healing process. But Lumina stayed inside my male body for too long. We need to reverse the process, doing to her the same that happened to Dawn. It is not just healing the soul. We need to knead body and soul together. In a way it is what happens to a baby while it grows inside the mother's womb. And this will take at least a month."
"What a bother," The elf sighed.
"But once I am separated from her, I can finally finish healing myself. I spent too much time being only half of me."