Adam didn’t sleep for long inside the carriage. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but a short while later, he was awoken by the buzzing sound of his tablet. A smile came to his face as he inspected the notification. Good.
“I trust you,” Solara abruptly said. When Adam turned to meet her gaze, she repeated, “I trust you, Lord Adam. You seemed on edge since we left the tower, and I imagine Lord Belmordo’s attempts at planting those seeds of doubt are largely the cause. So I need you to know this – I trust you.”
Adam grunted, turning back away from her. He planted his gaze outside the window, towards the city of Gama they’d just left behind. “You really shouldn’t put faith in people so easily.”
“I’d rather endure the sting of betrayal than wall off my emotions to the point where I never trust anyone.”
“Trust me,” Adam replied, bitterly. “You don’t.”
He didn’t trust her, even now. This speech could very well be an attempt to guilt trip him into not betraying her. Or worse, she could already be convinced that he would betray her, and was merely using this speech to get him to lower his guard. At any moment, she might sink a knife in his chest and run for the hills. None of those options seemed likely, but then again, they weren’t zero. If there was a chance, any chance at all, he needed to be on guard for it.
“It’s not that I’m naive,” Solara continued, in a straightforward tone. “This approach to life will one day drive a dagger into my back, I’m certain. But I’m just as certain that living differently would drive me mad.”
At this, she sighed. “And here I should be the one to say – trust me, Lord Adam, you don’t want to live like that either.”
He considered her words. Looks like there is more to her than what she told me back then...which makes sense. My painting knew enough of her soul to steal her Talent, but not everything. “Fortunately for me, I’m already mad.”
“That you are.” She laughed, and it felt more genuine than her noble speech thus far. “Very few sane men would have stalked into that tower while the Ghost still haunted me.”
“So, me being crazy helped you? Is that what we’ve established?” Adam asked. “In that case, there shouldn’t be any problem with me not trusting people. It’s good for you in the end.”
“You may take it that way if you wish. But if you aren’t bothered by the poisonous, untrusting nature that Belmordo thrust upon this very cabin...” There was some pointedness to Solara’s words, but Adam chose to ignore it and motioned for her to continue. “Well, then I would like you to tell me – what’s got you in such a dark mood?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “Belmordo himself. I don’t like the game he set up. Not one bit.”
“Ah...yes.” Solara’s voice turned dark. “My dear uncle is something we will have to handle soon enough. Mayhap Father will have an idea on how to deal with his...his plan.”
Adam looked outside the carriage window, observing the Penumbrian soldiers escorting them outside. Brave men and women, with families, probably. None were aware that their futures were being decided at this very moment. By the whim of a single noble craving petty vengeance, everything they held dear might perish before the day was out.
“While I trust you, Lord Adam,” Solara continued, “I must confess that I have no solution to the problem at hand. The devil of a man has cursed us. We cannot inflict violence upon him. We cannot steal from him. We cannot even order others to harm him on our behalf.”
She laughed darkly at this. It was a sad, bitter sound that seemed to keep her from despairing altogether. Adam glanced at her for a moment, and saw that her hand had curled into a fist.
“I sacrificed so much for power.” Solara’s voice was low and melancholic. She was speaking aloud, but Adam didn’t think she expected a response from him. The elf was facing her own window now, looking out of it as if peering into a different world. “You painted me correctly, my lord. I need power to achieve my final goal.”
Slaying the Emperor, Adam thought. Even when alone, she wouldn’t say it out loud.
“And not just that. I need power for so much else. You know, Uncle has hated me since the day of the massacre. I remember him laying on the ground after Father bested him in their duel. He was covered in blood, of both my people and his own sire, whose corpse he’d cradled desperately moments before. Yet when he glanced at me, you’d mistake elven blood for blue, and Belmordo to be colorblind.”
She laughed again, her voice shaking slightly. “He looked at me like I was to blame for what had just happened. Gods...I was only a child, a victim of his and his father’s violence. And yet he dared to do more than simply accuse. I am sure that in his heart of hearts, he truly believed that he was without fault, and I was to blame. That my birth was crime enough.”
Solara studied her clenched fist as if it held the answers she so urgently sought. “I needed power. More than just for my goals – I needed it to keep myself alive. He would come for my life one day, I always knew. And now he has.”
She shook her head sadly. “And now that he has made his move, no amount of power I have gained will make up for it. This man is immune to our violence. More than merely stronger than us, he has made it so that we cannot even attempt to fight him. I risked my life – my soul in order to become strong enough that he wouldn’t be able to harm me. Yet now he stands in a realm where strength means nothing. We cannot harm him. We cannot steal from him. We cannot even order others to attack him. This strength that I have gained – the one I have now lost – meant nothing! My sacrifices were meaningless!”
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Her voice rose at the end, anger touching her lips. “What can we – what can I do against someone like that? It doesn’t matter how strong we get. The man is the devil incarnate, may the Rot take him, but he planned for everything. Bravery isn’t enough. Power pales. Decency falls. For how many years must we put up with that man? How can we–”
“I killed him forty-five minutes ago,” Adam said.
The carriage hit a small bump in the road. He frowned as a jolt of pain lanced through his body. “Can’t wait until I get proper healing. At least the seats are comfortable; would’ve been torture to travel on horseback or something.”
Solara was quiet. At once, Adam realized the problem. “Oh, sorry for interrupting you. I hate to do that, it’s generally very rude, but you seemed distressed, and that seemed relevant.”
“What...do you mean?”
“Forty-five minutes ago,” he repeated. “Give or take. Don’t have a watch, so it’s hard to tell–”
“Not that!” Her voice was manic. “What do you mean you killed him – I was with you the entire time! He was alive when we left Gama!” The vestiges of tragic nobility within her speech eased away as she spoke. “How in the everliving fuck did you kill him? With the curse, neither of us should be able to attack him! You couldn’t even steal his Talent!”
Adam sighed. She was being very loud, and he was feeling very tired. Still, he drew a deep breath and gazed out the window into the now-distant city of Gama. “You asked me earlier why I was so upset, didn’t you?”
“I did, but what does that–”
“I’m not like you people,” Adam grunted. “Murder doesn’t come easy to me. I’ll do it if it needs to be done, but I can’t take it as nonchalantly as you lot do. By which I mean you nobles,” Adam added, “not elves. That’s not the part I take issue with.”
Solara hesitated, then said, “Lord Adam, I’m afraid I don’t...” She shook her head, then shrugged, giving up on the attempt to regain the nobility in her manner of speaking. “Look, just start making some goddamn sense will you?”
“Tenver murdered people so easily for me,” Adam stated. “So casually. I know that’s the way things are done here. And since I’m not keen on dying – our duel made me sure of that much – that means I have to be willing to kill. There’s no point in whining about how it isn’t right to take a life when my own life, not to mention the lives of the people of Penumbria, are at constant risk. But I did decide that at the very least, I owed it to the people who died because of me to look them in the eye before I killed them. It didn’t feel right to delegate murder to Tenver back then, even if he acted out of his own free will.”
“Where are you going with this?” Solara asked, suspiciously. “Did you get someone else to kill him for you? No, that can’t be it...we weren’t allowed to order anyone else to act in our stead. What did you do?”
“The curse stopped me from killing him, from harming him, from stealing his soul or Talent, and indeed from taking away anything from him at all,” Adam admitted. “Which is why I didn’t take anything away from him.”
Solara’s eyes widened. “You mean...?”
“Yes.” Adam nodded, allowing himself a grin. “I gave him something instead.”
He hadn’t lied to Belmordo, either. Not truly. The small gift he’d left for the noble contained his answer. It was an attempted painting of Belmordo’s own soul. Of course, as Adam had no idea of the man’s life or his character, there was no way he could portray him accurately – and he didn’t even try.
Adam wanted to get it wrong, and had.
Earlier, he’d been woken up by a message on his tablet letting him know things had gone as hoped.
TALENT LOST
Stained Flames
Your wager was unsuccessful. Your painting was not a good enough portrait of his soul.
You have forfeited your Talent of ‘Stained Flames’ to Belmordo, who shall retain it until death.
“I...I can’t believe you...” Solara’s eyes darted to the window, toward Gama. “You mean—?”
Adam didn’t respond. He just looked out the window and waited. If he had been awoken by the notification of his Talent being lost, the next step should happen any moment now.
He’d figured things might turn out like this. Earlier, Belmordo had shown him the letter that he’d sent to the Emperor. It was purposefully vague in case of interception. ‘Gama requires aid. A Stained Monster took over noble blood, and must be put down. We request an Imperial Hangman.’
Now...with that ambiguous information, if the Imperial Hangman, a nearly almighty creature of destruction, arrived and found Belmordo, a man of noble blood possessed by a Ghost...what would he do?
Adam’s expression tightened as he remembered what Belmordo had said at their departure. He narrowed his eyes and fixed his gaze on the fading city in the distance, and spoke softly, as if the accursed bastard was standing right before him. “What was it that you said before, Belmordo? When your cause is just, there are no sins – even using another’s blade to fell your enemies is a noble act.”
His voice turned cold. “Then you will have no complaints about this."
A bursting flash of light went off in the distance – in Gama. It was an eruption that soared to the sky and made the carriage they resided within tremble. Solara watched it with shocked awe, both hands covering her mouth.
Adam didn’t blink. Not liking a game doesn’t mean you find it difficult, Belmordo.
TALENT REGAINED
Stained Flames
Your target, Belmordo of Gama, has been killed. Your Talent has now been returned to you.
CURSE ACTIVATED
Belmordo's 640,124 Orbs have been transferred to you.