The king sat in the chair he was offered, wry amusement still dancing in his eyes. This wasn’t the man Rowan had met in the throne room, back when he was first summoned to his new and dangerous world.
That man was stern, focused, the kingdom personified, and cast out of granite.
This man was relaxed, irreverent, and full of easy self-confidence that filled a room and kept it on edge. Not because the person emanating it was obviously dangerous or threatening, but because they demanded attention. Because it felt natural to hang onto their every gesture, just in the hopes of fulfilling whatever need they might indicate.
Likewise, the man before him did not keep his power carefully leashed and ready to uncoil. It was spooling around him, like a well-worn, supremely comfortable cloak.
This was a man unwinding at the end of a long day filled with nothing but stress and anxiety.
Or rather, a king unwinding after he cornered the pesky little heroes that were causing trouble in his domain so he could slaughter them all and open up his path towards divinity.
“I have to say, out of everything I expected, it wasn’t this,” the man mused, letting his eyes roam over the assembled hero parties. They paused longer on his daughter, pale, shivering and ready to pass out, but he didn’t make any special note of her. “How curious. How did you know I was coming?”
“Please, like you were very subtle about what you were planning to do,” Kayla said, dismissing the king.
In spite of that, Rowan felt a very, very faint pulse of fear from the woman. He licked his lips, trying his best to ignore both the newly formed bond and the feedback he was getting.
It did, however, reassure him that Kayla apparently had no way of stonewalling him completely, unlike Blake.
The other hero was still acting off, even if the revelations about the princess and her immediate reassurance that she wasn’t forced into their relationship had done wonders to bring more life to his features.
“I do believe I was, yes. Why, even the man who betrayed me and refused to follow my plans did not share the details of them with his new ward. Isn’t that so, Rowan?”
The king’s eyes found Rowan, and the hero froze in spite of his best efforts. There was a vague, orange glow in the other man’s eyes. A glow that made it feel like he was seeing right through the hero and into the depths of his heart, judging, piercing, searching for personal faults.
“My father? My father knew about this?” Olivia demanded, her voice more outraged than Rowan had ever heard it. Even the sudden attention of the king was not enough to make the alchemist back down. “He would have said something. Done something.”
“And he did!” The king laughed, light and airy and frustratingly pleasantly. “He took the hero he could, didn’t he? As for doing more, no, I don’t imagine he could. Not with the limits placed on him upon his refusal.”
Rowan’s mind spun back to all the conversations he’d had with the baron. All of the veiled references. All the refusals to pursue certain topics. His face twisted as he realized how much he’d pushed the man for certain answers he simply could not give.
It was only after the group had gleaned or earned information elsewhere that the baron was really willing to discuss things and get involved, and even then, to a very limited extent.
“You cast our family low just because he didn’t want to help you kill heroes? You promoted her family because they accepted?” Olivia pointed at the Treagon accusingly, making the girl shrink in on herself, eyes wide and shocked.
“Correct.” King Harold sighed, shaking his head. “Your father was my best friend. My loyal Duke. The one I knew I could count on to support me. To suddenly be betrayed like that… It wasn’t easy.”
Olivia’s face twisted into something dark and ugly, but it surprisingly wasn’t her who lashed out. “Betrayal? Refusing to toy with the fate of the kingdom is not betrayal. The goal of all this, is it really worth risking so many? Sacrificing so many?” Blake growled out, eyes glowing with divine light.
For once, Rowan knew his friend wasn’t being influenced. He knew that the anger and the vitriol were genuine. Especially since not a whisper of emotion passed through their link.
“You do not know what you’re talking about, boy,” the king snapped, straightening for a second as his presence filled the room, threatening to crush everyone. Then, with a sigh, he settled back down and the aggression bled out of him.
“Then enlighten us. Why do all this? Why not just help us and send us away? You could have manipulated us into leaving. Forced us into leaving. Don’t say you couldn’t,” Rowan insisted, eyes fixed on the king.
“You are right. I could have. However, where would that leave us? Rebuilding a damaged army, trying to patch up the frontier, rushing to prepare for the future invasion before time runs out… No, that is no way to live. No way to guide a kingdom.” The king’s voice was impassioned.
He looks crazy, look at that determination. What kind of heart card makes a man this deluded?
“And this will fix it? It will make all of that better?” Milena mocked, the beast folk’s gaze narrowed and suspicious.
“You have no right to accuse me of anything, northerner.” The king’s voice went flat as he turned to Milena. “Your people hide away, safe away from all major conflicts. When’s the last time your armies bled against demons? When were your numbers last decimated?”
“Before or after the most recent conflict with humans?” Milena mused, making the king’s face twist in displeasure. “We bleed, when our neighbors say we must. Your plight isn’t unique. If you weren’t fighting demons, you’d be fighting each other. The tribes have seen it. Our history goes back far further than you’re making it out to.”
When he spoke next, the king’s voice was decidedly smug. “Oh, that will stop too, I assure you. When we grow far enough from the slaughter of demons, we will sniff them out. Who will be left to challenge us then? The other kingdoms? Our so-called neighbors, who refuse to send armies, supplies, or any form or assistance? Those circling to devour the carcass of my kingdom?”
The man paused, taking a deep breath. “No. Things end here. With you. You will die, and the cycle will go with you. With the kind of power we will wield, with that kind of lifespan, heroes won’t matter. Other gods won’t matter. They’re stuck in their heavens, only able to watch! They can’t do a thing.”
The surety of the man was startling enough to make Rowan almost believe the nonsense he was spouting. If he hadn’t seen the way commoners were treated, the way the kingdom was content to sit and let the lower classes suffer, the way the baron was demoted for saying no…
Well, he might have believed it.
“And who’s going to join you in your ascent, hm?” Kayla mocked, eyes drifting between the trio. “Three heroes, three cards, three potential chances to earn apotheosis. My master and the head of your knights will become divinities too?”
The expressions of the people named were something between avarice and caution. Their glances at the king, full of fear and anxiety, were also rather telling. His silence was too.
The king finally turned to regard the heroine in a way that reminded Rowan of a rather unpleasant looking animal sizing up prey. Before he could respond, Kayla twisted the knife. “Or are you going to keep them stuck at the legendary tier, and take all the power for yourself?”
“You were amusing.” The man sighed, like he was genuinely sorry. “And then you started spouting venom. Truly, I hoped that you would die during your test at the start of our acquaintance. That goddess of yours… so very troublesome. More so than the patrons of your friends, even.”
“You do know you will be antagonizing the gods too?” Blake asked conversationally, but the king laughed.
“I do indeed. Nothing for you to worry about, however. It’s time for you to die, I’m afraid.” The man reached for his sword, and Rowan tensed.
Then the dome of darkness sprang up around them, cutting off the outside world.
It was time to see if their plan would actually work.
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Lucius had done as he was ordered.
He tagged along with the heroes, an artifact capable of transmitting his location in hand the entire time. He’d triggered the artifact the second he knew that the third hero was planning to join up with the rest, and then again when she finally arrived. Finally, he’d organized the few men he knew he could trust with his life to set up the ritual circle.
All the while hoping, praying to whatever deity was out there and willing to hear him out, that Rowan had caught on. That the hero had used their link to full advantage, and accepted his presence in the expedition solely as a means of monitoring and catching the Mercenary King in the act.
Then the summoning started, his emotions reached a crescendo, and the heroes did nothing at all to stop him.
Lucius’s hands were shaking, at that point, almost to the point of uselessness.
The emotions that built up in his chest were too much.
He’d finally met someone he believed he could trust. Someone he saw as worthy of following one day. A young, earnest hero, looking to make a difference in the world. And his contracts completely prevented him from providing any aid, instead driving him to harm the man.
There was nothing to be done about it. No way to alter the contracts, to step out on his own. He’d signed away his free will knowingly, all to spare the people who followed him from a swift execution for the cheek of him accepting a class like [Mercenary King].
An affront to nobility.
So, as the king patted his shoulder and instructed him to round up the hero’s troops and bring them to heel, as Lucius’s body started shaking even harder, there was nothing he could do.
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He could only shout out orders for his men, grasp hold of his sword, and start heading out of his camp.
“Going something, at this time of day?” Tamara’s voice was silky and smooth, and one of the sounds he loathed most in the world.
“Tamara.” The name was a mangled snarl, more than making his feelings on the subject clear. Lucius was in no mood for small talk. “I suppose you won’t come quietly, will you? And that you somehow know? No matter, this will be the one kill today I’ll actually enjoy.”
Lucius took a deep breath to shed all the stress and tremors, grasped the hilt of his sword as he reached for his shield, pulled it out, and took a stance, right there in the middle of the camp. Or he tried to.
Instead, the Mercenary King watched with wide eyes as the blade slipped past numb fingers that were barely twitching even when he tried to close his fist. “What is this?” is what the large man meant to say, but the sounds that came out of his mouth were garbled white noise.
“Really. Did you think my lady wouldn’t know? That a mage of her talent and caliber wouldn’t account for you in her plans?” the deranged magus laughed, loud and shrill, as she let her levitation magic drop.
Lucius was locked in place, every muscle quivering in an attempt to do something as the woman drew near. She raised her arm slowly with a taunting smile on her face, taking her time and safe in the knowledge that he was helpless.
His soldiers around them were starting to stir, to whisper and protest what happening, but none of them dared step forward. None of them were, rightly, crazy enough to charge an epic tier mage confident enough to stroll through their camp and apparently capable of immobilizing their leader.
“No, you big dumb lump of muscles, my lady is much greater than that. She is the beacon of truth, the gift of our goddess, the purveyor of secrets that slip past any set of lips. She is the one who is going to guide us back to the greatness we deserve and destroy those fools in their towers,” Tamara said.
Fanaticism. Plain, rabid fanaticism. Even when control of his body had been snatched from him, Lucius hadn’t been afraid. After all, that meant that he couldn’t follow orders. Couldn’t make things a bit easier for the king.
Now, though, Lucius was afraid.
As figures in cowls stepped out of seemingly nowhere, emerging from all around the main tent, then thrust their hands up into the sky, heralding the appearance of a dark, churning dome, that fear only grew.
He’d heard stories, of course. Stories about cultists that served the goddess of secrets alongside her priests, willing to throw all semblance of true life away to become one of her Secrets. An order with stealth abilities so profound they bordered on divine. Or heretical, depending on who you asked.
The fact that he’d never once associated any of the events in Rest’s Remorse with them galled him, especially when all the unexplained things that happened over the years began to float to the top of his mind.
Of course, this also brought along a certain symbol that had recently been retrieved within the city. An eye, rays of sunlight that formed lashes, and a crown hovering at the top.
A symbol and insignia, which now that he thought about things, bore a striking resemblance to another.
An eye behind a veil, with two hands coming up to cover the eye, yet still left enough space to peek through. The symbol of the goddess of secrets.
The Mercenary King tried to gurgle out a question, or perhaps a plea, eyes flicking to the tent and the heroes that he knew were within it, heroes he couldn’t even see with the barrier in the way.
“Don’t worry, Lucius. We won’t hurt you, or your people. The troublemakers are already being dealt with. Non-lethally, of course! So, why don’t you take a little nap?”
The Mercenary King couldn’t utter a single word as the world narrowed to a single pinprick of light, then winked out completely.
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Once again, Rowan was immensely grateful for his enhanced stats. Even with the difference in tiers, they let him process in a fraction of a second all the different reactions of the king as the barrier went up around them.
Amusement, incredulity, then anger. “What is this? This is impossible! The only ones who could —”
The man’s tirade was cut short when a dagger whipped past his head, the blade was angled right, and then swiftly drawn over his throat.
Wet gurgles escaped the king as blood erupted from the wound in unnatural amounts, soaking the table and the entire front of the man’s armor.
The Tower Master and Head Knight reacted instantly, spell and blade drawn and readied in a fraction of a second.
Neither could do much when the man who attacked their king seemingly phased out of existence.
“Find him!” the king’s knight snapped, closing the distance to his king and reaching out to try and steady him somehow. “He can’t have —”
The man reappeared, or rather came into focus, slotting into reality like he’d always been there and Rowan’s eyes were simply refusing to process his presence. His dagger whipped forward once again, but before it could do much, a gauntlet gripped his wrist and squeezed.
The assassin gasped in shock or pain, Rowan couldn’t tell, before the former won out when he looked down into the angry eyes of the half-kneeling king.
The king wrenched him forward and drove a fist into his stomach, doubling over the assassin and giving the Tower Master and Head Knight enough time to strike.
Except a moment later they were blinking in confusion, attacks readied to hit yet incapable of even remembering who their target was. The king seemed to have the same issue, frowning as he loosened the fingers grasping at empty air, then howled in pain as another shower of blood bathed the room, this time from the dagger dug deep into the side of his neck, right into an artery.
The assassin faded away and dodged the strike entirely, but Rowan wasn’t feeling particularly good about their situation because the king was still moving like he’d never been hurt to begin with.
Rowan couldn’t even catch sight of his wound healing. One second it was there, spurting blood. The next it was gone, sealed over, and the only sign of it left was all the scarlet liquid all over the place.
Another eruption of blood. Another snarl of pain. Mounting panic on the faces of the kingdom’s representatives. All of these things were details Rowan was extremely grateful his stats let him catch.
So, he couldn’t have missed it if he’d tried when vicious desperation entered the eyes of Amanda’s father.
“Filthy infiltrators. You think you can slip into my kingdom from that bitch’s lands? That you can toy with me?” The king was snarling, red, frothy liquid spilling between his lips from all the wounds he was taking. “I know who brought you here.”
The heroes and their retinue had backed off towards the opposite side of the tent, setting up as many barriers and precautions against retaliation as they could. A decent number of the wards were preset too, boosted by as much mana as they could put into them.
They should have been enough.
However, things were hardly going to plan.
Kayla had strutted in, promised them to turn an ambush into a counter, and introduced a legendary assassin from her goddess’s order. One whose skills and poison would be enough to instantly take out the king at the very start of combat.
The rest of the process was supposed to be a simple mop up of a panicked mage and a distraught knight.
She’d even demanded that Rowan make her his final [Knight], apparently unaware of how the other hero’s card worked exactly but knowing that it would provide some kind of security to her.
The same link that now let Rowan know exactly how terrified out of her mind the heroine was as she became the sole focus of an enraged, undying king.
Rowan had to admit, he really didn’t like it when the shoe was on the other foot.
The king lurched towards Kayla, suddenly having to deal with dozens of wounds that ranged from deadly to crippling as the assassin upped his game. Rowan could even spot sprays of black, diseased blood, and whole sections of the king’s body that sloughed away, only to be replaced less than a second later with unblemished flesh.
That was to say, the king was making progress, slow and steady, and their assassin was floundering.
Freed up by the increased attack speed of the assassin, the Tower Master and Head Knight were cutting loose too. Most of their attacks missed entirely, and some even hit the ruler of their nation, but they didn’t seem to care.
Their attention was focused solely on taking out the boogeyman before he could take them out himself.
“Stop the bastard!” It was all Rowan could say to rally the others as he rushed forward, blocking the king’s path himself.
The man snarled at the hero, striking out. His arm was hamstrung no less than five times in that one motion, robbing his blow of most of its strength. Even then, when the strike landed on Rowan’s spear, it almost drove him to his knees.
Instinctively, even as he stumbled to the side, Rowan lashed out. There were enough holes in the man’s armor now that it was harder to find an intact piece of medal, and when the tip of Rowan’s spear slipped into the king’s skin, Rowan was almost shocked. He had been aiming at the king’s heart, and the man hadn’t stopped him.
Almost as shocked as the king himself was when the blow to his chest sank deep into his flesh, sending a torrent of blood spinning out of his body and into the hero. He ripped the weapon away, gripping it to stop the weasel from slipping away, then struck.
Rowan couldn’t react quickly enough. With the king being dissected by the assassin, his dexterity was enough to let him keep up. However, the second the man’s blood had washed over his spear and up Rowan’s arm, he froze up.
Because the power within it was intoxicating.
As Marcus jumped in front of him, taking the blow on his shield, and Blake joined the fray, hacking at the king’s arm in an effort to force him to release Rowan, the Stalwart Hero himself could only hear the echo of his card’s voice: more.
He was ready to oblige.
The battle turned into a whirlwind of chaos, of barely dodged blows and razor-sharp focus. In the middle of that, Rowan and the king looked like they were having an entirely different battle altogether.
The king was tearing into everyone who dared come close with impunity, taking all the punishment that came down on him in return as barely an afterthought, and painting the room with more blood than ten elephants should have combined.
Rowan, too, was taking damage. The king was not unskilled enough for the hero to avoid that, but most of the wounds came from taking a blow meant for one of the others, or even charging into strikes on purpose just to open up the king to more attacks.
Unlike the king, however, Rowan wasn’t loosing blood.
His card’s voracity grew with every wound he inflicted, and as more and more power was sent thrumming through the hero’s system, the card’s ability to control blood grew.
Ribbons of the stuff were sent splashing out of Rowan’s body, only for them to come curling back around, seeping right through his skin again.
And as that happened, Rowan could feel the power build. He could feel it reaching some kind of threshold, and then…
Perception +1
Vitality +1
Strength +1
The notifications started very slowly rolling in, his card yanking the power of the king directly into Rowan’s bloodstream.
The man seemed to notice it, too, when his eyes focused on Rowan briefly with burning hate.
With the scream of an animal, the king burst into motion several times faster than before. His sword carved up his enemies faster than the saintess could heal them up, and then he pushed off towards the mages trying to build up their spells.
Straight towards Kayla.
Rowan didn’t know why he did what he did next. He didn’t know what made him press on the power of his card, making it burn through all the power currently stored within his body.
The boost, no matter how wasteful, did let him react.
Rowan practically teleported right in front of the sword set to skewer Kayla, taking the blade right through his heart.
The blow savaged his insides, and even Rowan’s regeneration card stuttered briefly before it kicked into gear again.
The blow did not, however, prevent him from retaliating.
Rowan’s spear effortlessly punched through the king’s chest and right out his back almost at the exact second Rowan took the man’s sword, and both fighters froze for just a moment as their eyes locked.
Then the flood of blood burst from the king.
The rule of Rowan’s Scarlet Envy was simple: the more grievous the damage, the more energy invested into the blow, the more mana fed into the card, the bigger the bleed effect.
And the bleed effect was, on this occasion, quite considerable.
The world around Rowan was washed away in the red tide. The power thrumming in the blood, the vivid scarlet color, the smell of copper that was oddly alluring, they all superimposed on each other, captivating the hero and pushing him to drive every dreg of his mana, even as it regenerated, into Scarlet Envy.
So he did.
The space around the two became a sphere of churning, roiling blood, where nothing else mattered other than the scarlet liquid.
Rowan’s card desired the blood, and he sought to provide.
The king desperately pushed at his own regeneration card, looking to overwhelm the hero’s capacity before it was too late.
Rowan couldn’t hear, or see, or even perceive anything beyond the blood. Beyond the need to keep it coming, not even the sword that had become encased in his own flesh.
He couldn’t see the sight of the assassin backing off, then going for the knight first. Couldn’t see Kayla, vindictive joy on her face, as she drove the most powerful spell she could manage into her master’s back.
He couldn’t see the concern on his friend’s faces, the panicked shouts, as the expression of sheer power building between the king and the hero drove them back.
He couldn’t because Rowan was drowning. Even then, he refused to sink before the King expired first. Mind caught in a daze of focus, the Stalwart Hero stubbornly held on.