Arthur woke up with Tabby shaking him. His head was pounding. His mouth was dry. He’d only been hungover twice before in his life, but it wasn’t a feeling you forgot. His thoughts seemed slow like wading through the ocean, and the light hurt his eyes.
“Her glorious majesty, the goddess of the moon, and bringer of magic has requested that you attend her. She has a dire quest which needs your service.”
His body ached. He could feel the bruises on his face, and it sort of felt like he’d been one of the pieces of meat Rocky Balboa used to train. His back, especially, hurt. Arthur was trying to remember why. He’d drunk way too much last night. He’d gone to about a dozen bars, and been in more than a dozen bar fights. Even without magic, his magical power had reinforced his body to the point where he could lay out most men with a single punch. Even strong ones. He remembered deciding to slap as many people as possible too. And the tally for that bounty put it at over 23 people in the last 24 hours.
There were a lot of people in the capital who had been eager enough to fight him. He’d killed people’s friends and family when he had attacked the castle - there was a reason Coco hated him. And the army loathed him for how he had embarrassed them as a whole.
It was after stumbling out from a bar fight. Someone had challenged him, and when he’d laid them flat with a punch their friend had stabbed him in the back. And then…
“How’d I get home last night?” He asked, looking at Tabby. The exceed had been with him, playing Jiminy Cricket and telling him not to drink so much. Or fight so much. Or slap so many people.
“I fed you one of your potions, and called the castle after you got stabbed. They had some healing bandages,” Tabby said, his voice obviously annoyed.
“Thanks Taberius Clawdius Germeownicus Kaiser,” Arthur said. “I owe you my life don’t I?”
“That’s right. So you’d better get my name right. It’s Taberius Clawdius Kaiser Germeownicus!”
“Sorry, Taberius Clawdius Kaiser Germeownicus. It’s not like you remember my full names and titles,” He said, rubbing his head. “I need some of my potions.”
“Your full names and titles? Isn’t your full name Arthur?”
“I have a last name,” Arthur noted. “Now where are my potions?” Hopefully a vitality potion would help with a hangover.
It was a few minutes later when Arthur was dressed - via requipping his Mifune Robe - and ready to meet with Selene. The dragon was in her human form, a moon-yellow haired beauty, wrapped in a kimono that failed to fully conceal her egregious chest. There was a faint scowl on her face as she looked at him.
“You’re lucky that I have need for you to do something other than talk with the priestesses of the White Out Temple,” She said. “What were you thinking going on a late night bender when you had a diplomatic meeting tomorrow. Do you know how many bar fights you were involved in?”
“14?” Arthur hazarded. He had apparently started that many.
“Is that all?” Selene growled. “You’re lucky you weren’t arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct the way you were acting out across the city last night. I hope that the medical treatment has got you to full fighting prowess.”
“Why do I need to fight something?” Arthur asked. His potion had helped some, or else the glass of water he’d downed to chase it, but his head still screamed with her raised, aggravated tone.
“The Dorma Anim was stolen. It would be embarrassing if that got out, at least without proof we could destroy the thieves. Go and deal with it,” She said.
“Two requests down. Consider it done,” Arthur said, starting to turn on his heels.
Selene growled a bit. “You’re really counting it against my requests for you? This is all to make your little plan work.”
He turned and looked at her. “Altaface was my plan. Making the world work for you is on you. I agreed to kill Acnologia, I agreed to play dragon slayer. This is having me play your attack dog. It’s precisely what the requests were supposed to be for, no?”
Selene frowned. “Fine,” She said. “Then coming to aid with the storm shouldn’t have counted.”
“You interrupted me in the middle of a job, forcing me to leave children to fend for themselves. Coming ASAP definitely counts.”
“But it was for your plan and making it work.”
“Give me the dorma anim and we’ll count these both as just 1 between them,” Arthur countered.
“What? No!” Selene said. “Why do you even want that thing?”
“Chicks dig giant robots.”
Arthur’s response got a long, dragged out stare. “You can’t be serious.”
“How about I want it and that’s reason enough.”
The two glared at each other for a time. Selene was obviously weighing her options. There was the problem of how far Arthur would honor his agreement being ultimately an unknown variable. In theory it was simple; give him the Dorma Anim and demand it back as one of the three requests if it was ever needed. In practice the most likely reason it would be needed is that he had decided to turn it against her at which point promise or no promise he’d not give her his weapon. And it was that scenario that worried Selene.
She didn’t think the Dorma Anim could actually threaten her. But she didn’t know what it could be made to do with a powerful and talented mage, and whether she respected Arthur’s intelligence, or decision making ability, she had to admit that he was terrifyingly talented as a mage. He’d learned everything her hand could teach him in little more time than it had taken to have it made, simply absorbing knowledge she had painstakingly accumulated over the centuries. He still couldn’t match her with Moon Dragon Slayer Magic. But he knew more from that hand alone than she had ever actually intended to teach him. It scared her, even as it stirred hope inside of her.
“Fine,” She said at last. “If you can reclaim the Dorma Anim it’s yours. That will encourage you not to blow it apart. And on that note I want the commander of the thieves alive.” It was just to make things harder on Arthur, which she immediately had minor regrets about. She should be making certain that he liked her. That he wouldn’t turn his power against her. After all he was her sword with which to slay Acnologia, and she did not want him to prove double edged. He was valuable, and dangerous, enough that she was realizing she needed to put more effort into playing nice.
Eran Mikolv was an officer of Duke Solamen. He was among the elite crew of Salamun’s Ark. Built with one of the great lacrima chunks which the false goddess Selene had handed out to try and bribe the good people and leaders of Edolas into allowing her to have her way with the world. Duke Solamen, though, had accepted her lacrima, but he had recognized it for the poisoned fruit that it was and used it to create his Ark, a mobile fortress with which to liberate all of Edolas.
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And yesterday Eran’s unit had stolen the Dorma Anim and brought it back to the Ark. That meant his lord, Duke Solamen, now held the two most powerful war machines in all of Edolas, both the mobile fortress which was the Ark, and the mighty Dorma Anim which could draw upon the world’s very magic to gain infinite power.
With this power behind them, Eran felt almost invincible. That feeling of invincibility was shaken, however, when he heard a voice sounding out inside of his head.
“By order of her Imperial Highness, Selene, your vessel is to stop for inspection. Resistance is futile. You will be examined.” The voice seemed to have an almost smugly knowing wink at the end. As if it was telling a joke that it knew that the listener wouldn’t understand.
“If you do not cease your movement now, I will be forced to halt you.” The voice continued. Eran was rushing up onto deck as alarms rang. An order was being relayed from Duke Solamen himself. This representative of the Empress was to be the first blood in the war with the false goddess.
The main convergent cannon did not have to charge. It simply fired. Magical artillery, enough to reduce a castle to rubble. The man standing before the hovering mobile fortress would be destroyed like the vermin he was.
The flash of the beam cleared, and Eran was startled to see the man on the deck of the Ark. He wore a simple robe, tied around the waist by a silk sash. An iron, or steel, hand adorned one arm, and two swords hung sheathed at his waist, one long, the other shorter. His hair was oddly spiky, bone-white but touched with tinges of blue.
Eran realized he had to have teleported to reach the fortress’s deck. This was no ordinary man. Still they were 88 of Solamen’s finest men. Each one hand picked for the operation, and armed with the finest magical tools that the Edolas army had ever produced. The magical abundance of the last 6 months had been put to fine use.
As soldiers began to arm themselves and range around him, the man clapped his hands and then he became a blur. Eran had been in the midst of raising his weapon - a thunder cannon - and placing it on his shoulder when the metal tube disappeared, including the handle. No it hadn’t disappeared, it had joined the pile that had suddenly formed around the man.
There was a wave passing through the troops around him. They were flickering and doubling over, grasping their faces. And then the wave hit him. He saw the white haired man’s face, dominating his vision, and felt an open palm strike him across the face before he was suddenly back where he had been. It had all been almost too fast to see, only the pain convincing him that single frame of vision had been real. That was the blur he saw. His allies appearing and disappearing from in front of the man as he slapped them one by one.
It hadn’t been 10 seconds and 3 dozen men, and half a dozen emplaced weapons, had been disarmed and now piled around the man.
“I said resistance was futile,” the man stated. It was only now that Eran noticed one of the tyrant goddess’s angels behind the man. The gray furred creature wasn’t even waist high to the man, but Eran suspected it was behind his actual power. “Surrender now and I will be lenient,” the man continued. “Continue to attack me, and I will be forced to assume you are truly a hostile force and deal with you with the full might at my command.”
The man clapped again then. And weapons began rapidly blinking into existence behind him. A second team had climbed out, readying weapons to strike him and they had been disarmed and removed, blurred into a series of corporal punishments as he dealt with them almost like they were small children.
Eran had heard the false goddess was a woman. If this man was not a god, though, then what was he? And where was Duke Solamen? Could even he stop this foe who moved between seconds?
Eran was relieved to hear the Dorma Anim activate, flying out of the Ark’s hangar. It erupted into the sky, and suddenly a hail of missiles shot down towards the Ark’s deck. Explosions blinded Eran, and when he looked again, he didn’t see the man. Still who could say how much damage the Ark itself had just suffered. A good quarter of its point defense guns had been on the deck, and most of them lay ruined with the wreckage of the armaments that the man had seized.
A winged horse shot from the sky then, ramming into the Dorma Anim. It was like a living comet, and Eran could only watch in shocked horror as the most powerful weapon in Edolas was forced to battle a few too fast for it to properly aim at. The horse seemed to lack the sheer power needed to destroy the Dorma Anim, but the Dorma Anim lacked the speed to match the horse’s, especially without destroying the Ark.
And then suddenly, without explanation that Eran could perceive, the Dorma Anim stopped and fell from the air, crashing into the Ark with force enough to bring the mighty fortress momentarily dragging on the ground.
“To all crewmen of the ship. I have captured the pilot of the Dorma Anim. Surrender now and I will be lenient. Persist in this battle and I will destroy your ship and all who are on it. It is within my power.”
The Ark surrendered.
Taberius Clawdius Kaiser Germeownicus looked at the men arrayed before them. He wasn’t certain why Arthur was starting their punishment with a good hard slap to the face. Still, Selene had just known where the Legions had headed with the Dorma Anim. Arthur had found the ship with his bird. Had gotten in front of it with a single spell. And had defeated the ship in mere minutes.
Taberius Clawdius Kaiser Germeownicus had been proud of what he and Team Pax had been doing to fight dark guilds under Arthur’s guidance. Now, though, he had the heart wrenching feeling that Arthur was just letting them play at importance. That he held an impossible power inside of himself.
The hover-ship they had taken was massive, at least to the exceed who wasn’t used to seeing a true battleship up close. Around 70 ft wide at the widest point, and almost 400 ft wide, with some parts 40 ft tall. The main cannon it had fired had been devastating, though it had hit only empty countryside the crater it had formed was huge. Taberius had no doubt at all in his mind that this weapon could have taken all of Extalia by itself, even if Pantherlily had returned to aid them.
And then there was the Dorma Anim; the magic eater. The semi-mythical weapon that had established first hegemony among the humans and then a single world order. The greatest weapon of the old age of magic when lacrima had been so plentiful that stories say it fell like snow.
Arthur had simply located it. Sent his steed to distract it. And then he’d teleported away, poured a jar of water on the ground, and used it to open a portal inside of the cockpit, circumventing space itself to get around the sealed chamber and reached in to pull the pilot from its seat.
He had made defeating a weapon of ancient legend, the physical manifestation of royal might, look easy. But after what he had seen last night somehow it didn’t surprise Taberius.
Taberius had not told Arthur how the miscreants who had stabbed him had been driven off. Taberius had tried to fight them off. It was an epic duel, his sword flashing as he had fought the two humans hard in a battle which… Taberius wanted to remember it thus. He had attacked one of the two, and been near to victory for short as he was his sword still was a more dangerous weapon than a small knife. But the other had kicked him in the back of the head and he’d been disarmed. They had been preparing to “cut [him] up like a squealing pig or the exceed scum [he was].”
Arthur had risen then. His body was disturbingly elongated, his spine and limbs longer than they should be, black wings spreading from his back, black covering his flesh. His hand had become a terrible claw. He had demanded they drop his cat and cut one down with a swipe of his clawed hand. The man had died and the look on his face as he did would haunt Taberius to his final days. The other had fled then. But Arthur had pursued to, in his own words at the time, “Swallow [the man’s] soul.”
Then he’d promised not to let anyone hurt his cute little kitty, before reverting to his normal appearance. But watching him now, Taberius had to wonder if Arthur was even human, or if he was a demonic monster of evil wearing a human disguise.
Taberius had to question if he really wanted to follow this creature. The exceed wasn’t disturbed that he had killed two people. They had only been humans. They had been trying to kill him and Arthur both. But he had swallowed their souls. He had become a demonic entity. Taberius knew it was theoretically a type of magic called Takeover, but he couldn’t quite escape the nagging feeling that the demon might be the real man.
But he hadn’t killed anyone here. He hadn’t used lethal force even after the cannon had been fired at him. He had threatened, but he hadn’t done anything. Even now that they were captive, he was mostly lining up the crew and just slapping them each in the face to let them feel the “stinging pain of rebellion”. He was trying to help Edolas. He had gone up against that Altaface creature for Edolas.
He was the greatest knight in Edolas in the modern age. No. He was the only knight-errant who dared hurl down his gauntlet to this bleak and unbearable world that had become as base and debauched as could be. But he was no shining knight. He was no idealized and perfect knight. But even Sir Ronald had had his bouts of madness, and red rage.
Taberius hoped that it was just that. And not that Sir Arthur was a monster. Until he knew for certain, though, he would be a faithful squire.
And if Arthur was a monster.
Had the thought not struck a chord of cowardice in his soul, a part of Taberius might have hoped he was. For a monster of such greatness would make Taberius the greatest knight in the land if he could slay it.
If.
That was a big if. Even Taberius recognized that.