As everyone else in the room stared at their fallen, soulless lord, Adam let his gaze fall on a pair of stained glass windows. I never got the chance to really look at them before, he thought, overcome by a slow grin. Aspreay always had me standing at an awkward angle.
From where he was now, Adam could see how the scarlet glass aligned with what appeared to be the flames of a dragon. While entrancing, what truly elevated the piece was its segments of sapphire-blue. They were finely made, filtering light from the outside world into a soft, wintery hue that colored the night. Man, stained glass artwork is beautiful. Wonder how it’s made.
Suddenly, Adam became aware of the fact he must have been staring at the windows for quite some time, yet no one had bothered to get his attention. That...was a problem. Ah well, back to work.
He leaned back in his throne and impatiently tapped at its armrest. Every person in the room shifted their eyes between him and Aspreay’s soulless husk lying down on the floor, saying nothing but thinking much. For now, neither Aspreay nor Adam was their ruler – silence reigned supreme, every man and woman its willing servant.
Hope they don’t rise up and kill me, he thought, smiling with a confidence he did not feel. I’m not sure I can use Aspreay’s Talent perfectly yet. Gonna need some time before I get used to it. If they try to overthrow me, they just might manage it.
Which was, of course, exactly why he had chosen to act so brazenly. As Adam glanced at the pale Esteban, and then at the trembling Lord Vasco, he felt confident that he’d made the right choice. His public show of force had gotten them scared, drained their will to fight.
Now it was just a matter of capitalizing on momentum.
“I have tried to be patient,” Adam protested, in a loud voice, “yet it has been five minutes, and no one’s said a word. Lord Vasco!”
“Y–yes?” The older lord was a massive man, but his trembling voice and unsteady knees made him appear much smaller and a little younger. “Pray tell, what do you wish from me?”
“That is my question. You are here to negotiate with the Lord of Penumbria, are you not?”
Lord Vasco’s gaze started shifting toward Aspreay’s husk, but before his neck could finish turning Adam had already shouted, “Well, don’t make me repeat myself. I am Adam, Lord of Penumbria! What business do you have with me?”
None of those words sounded natural inside his head, but he delivered them with enough confidence to fool damn near anyone. While he wasn’t feeling particularly brave at the moment, he wasn’t nervous, either. He’d learned long ago that nervousness only affected him when he cared about the possibility of failure.
And right there and now, he simply didn’t. So what if they kill me? Adam thought, bitterly. Even now, six months out from being transported into this painted world, it was still hard to care if he lived or died. As far as he was concerned, he might as well have died when he ‘lost’ that contest, anyway.
But since he was here anyway...well, no point in just quietly passing away, then.
Better to burn to ashes than to fade in silence.
“Ah, Lord Adam then,” Lord Vasco quickly answered. “Forgive me, my good lord. I was not informed you had taken over Penumbria.” He spared Aspreay’s husk one last glimpse before turning away to look up at Adam. Vasco adopted a jovial countenance and banished most of his trembling with a stiff upper lip. “Had I known I was not dealing with Aspreay, I would have come more prepared. You appear much more reasonable than him, and so I should prepare better terms, first. Would you give me a fortnight?”
I appear more dangerous, you mean. Adam had to give credit to Lord Vasco. Everyone else in the room was horrified to the point of numbness. Esteban wasn’t even able to look Adam in the eyes, rapidly muttering something to himself and seeming to struggle to keep his knees from buckling. Most of the noble courtiers appeared torn between wanting to shield their eyes as if Adam were the goddamn sun, and gazing at him like they were at the Louvre.
This lord though...he recovered fast. “You want a night?” Adam asked, laughing as if granting requests from supplicants was something he’d done a thousand times before. “I will give you two. We can negotiate after that time has passed.” Lord Vasco had asked for a fortnight, not a night, but Adam wasn't above playing up his 'ignorance' as an upstart commoner to twist words.
To Vasco's credit, the lord didn't express whatever frustration he must have felt, instead bowing respectfully. “You are too kind.”
Adam stood up and mimicked the gesture. At least those six months were good for learning all this crap. “It is the least I can do, Lord Vasco.” Here, he grinned and looked at Roland. The man in the black coat had been Aspreay’s right-hand man until today, and if anyone at all was going to challenge Adam, it would be him. “Roland, escort Lord Vasco to his chambers. See to it that he’s taken care of.”
Roland didn’t wait so much as a second before obeying. He practically dashed out of the room, stopping only to bow to Adam before nearly dragging Vasco out of there.
It felt strange to issue orders, but even stranger to have people follow them. Adam had to admit he liked the feeling, although his enjoyment was tainted with unease. When the large double-doors shut behind Lord Vasco, Adam was left alone with those who once served Aspreay, and who would now serve him.
He looked around the room, studying the courtiers once more. Uncertainty, shock, and fear had seized their very beings. Little wonder, that. It wasn't often you saw someone steal the soul of the man who’d threatened to send you flying through walls on a whim.
Yet even now, some of them retained a burning defiance in their eyes. Tempered by fright, yet defiant nonetheless. Despite their terror, a singular complaint of outrage was plain on their grimacing faces: How dare you, a mere painter, sit on the throne of a lord?
This could – and would – be troublesome.
Best to stamp it out early.
“You all have duties,” Adam stated, pushing back the chair as he stood. His voice echoed in the heavy silence. “And you all serve under the same lord. Aspreay is no longer that man. I am. But your services are still required.” He let his gaze linger on each of the faces before him. On the wide-eyed stares, the open mouths, and the hushed whispers. “You will serve me as faithfully as you served him.”
His proclamation was met with silence. A young woman, who Adam recognized as Lady Valeria, the exiled daughter of some general, had the courage to speak up first. “I suppose you will not give us the right to refuse?”
“I am not unreasonable. If you don’t want to serve me, you are free to live in this city as any other free man of the Empire.” Adam let the unspoken threat hang in the air – ‘But you won’t be able to live in this castle anymore.’ He knew that Penumbria was, in a somewhat literal sense, the Empire’s tumor. No one of noble blood was here because they wanted to be. They were simultaneously too spoiled to live outside a castle, yet too poor to afford to live in one without the grace of a lord’s favor.
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Lady Valeria nodded, her face serious. “That is most fair, Lord Adam.”
Lord Adam. Now *that* sounds like a joke. Before he could consider the point, another man spoke up, this one Adam recognized as Balmor, the bastard son of Lord Edmundo Crepusculo.
“What of those who choose to stay, but refuse to kneel?” Balmor asked. The man was a bastard who legally owned nothing, but his parentage was enough for him to waltz around the castle with overinflated pride and swagger. Balmor had plenty to gain from trying, not enough brains to realize how dangerous trying would be, and just enough noble blood to have the more obstinate noble sorts following him like lemmings over a cliff.
There were two ways to go about this. The first one, the smarter one, would have been to placate the man. Balmor was merely a poor, landless bastard hungering for glory. He should’ve been painfully easy to appease.
But Adam had spent six months with nearly no sleep, feeding himself on his hatred of Aspreay and his sycophants more often than on bread.
He knew he was being rash, and that this reasoning was more reliant on his ego than logic.
So be it.
He would make logic submit to his ego then.
“That is not an option,” Adam said, softly. “You will kneel, or I will have your knees.”
Silence fell over the courtiers again, although it was different this time. No longer was silence the ruler of this blue night.
It, too, knelt to Adam.
--
“Wake up. Come on, you got a lot of work to do.”
Adam stirred on the floor and grunted. Not one more painting. I can’t. He’d gotten so used to waking up to the command that it was almost enough to fill him with dread. It stopped at ‘almost’ because Aspreay’s Talent stirred within his gut, reminded him that things had changed ever so slightly since yesterday.
“Hang on—I’m not —I’m not painting for Aspreay anymore!” Adam sat up in a snap, feeling wide awake. Righteous indignation at the idea of doing even more work woke him up like no amount of caffeine ever could. “That’s all done with, I’m the goddamn Lord now! I’m never painting anything—”
Then again, those stained glass windows looked pretty rad. I *do* kinda want to try digitally painting something similar.
“—I’m never painting that much in that little time—unless I want to—”
“Easy now, ‘my lord,’” said Tenver, stifling a chuckle. “I’m not here to make you paint. I am, however, here to make you get some work done. Your eight hours of sleep should be enough, don’t you think?”
Maybe if you weren’t trying to catch up on sleep, sure. No way in hell was it enough after the last few hellish months. But even if that’s what he wanted to say, Adam was a lord now, and he had a lord’s dignity to uphold. With that thought in mind, he managed to retain some composure when he grunted, “Go on. What did you wake me up for?”
Tenver smiled. “Information travels faster than your dreams. The entire city knows about you unseating the late Aspreay. It’s not just a castle thing anymore; most of the common people have heard rumors about it by now. People are terrified of you.”
“Are they?” Adam asked, forcing a yawn down his throat. “Just how afraid are they?”
“Extremely. Imagine: a mysterious court painter shows up out of nowhere, gains the Lord’s confidence, and then traps his very soul inside a painting. Of course they’re panicking – they have no reason to believe that the Wall is even protecting our city anymore.”
That was a fair concern, and something that had crossed Adam’s mind as well. Before going to sleep last night, he’d checked to make sure that stealing Aspreay’s talent hadn’t somehow messed up the Wall. He wasn’t trying to make that happen, but, well, it was a possibility. And the common people probably didn’t know he’d stolen Aspreay’s talent; just that he’d effectively killed him.
“I suppose that makes sense,” Adam muttered. “Guess I gave them good reason to fear me.”
“Oh, it’s not just you that they are afraid of. They’re also afraid of how the Emperor is going to react when news of your ascension reaches his ears. If he sees it as an attack on the Empire, he could form an army and send them over here in short order.”
Adam took note of the word ‘form.’ That implied that the Empire had no standing army – or at least not one large enough to crush a rebellion without leaving themselves exposed to danger. He had surmised as much from conversations he’d overheard in the last couple months, but he wasn’t sure until now. “They won’t do that, though.”
Tenver smiled again. “And why not?”
“Because Penumbria is the dumping ground of the Empire for a reason. We barely have any farmland as it is, and it’s not like we’re near the ocean, either.” Adam had made sure of that much before deciding to become the city’s lord. “If they march an entire army here, how the hell are they going to feed it? We’d kill half their army without having to fight a single battle. Not like we’d even need to go full Fabian tactics at that point.”
Tenver tilted his head. “What are Fabian tactics?”
“Ah...don’t worry about it.” Adam wished he hadn’t said anything. Partially because he didn’t want to hint towards his true origins, and partially because he didn’t really know too much about Fabian tactics aside from ‘the time Rome burned down its own farms to keep Hannibal from invading.’ The point probably held, anyway.
“What I’m getting at,” Adam continued, in an impatient voice, “is that we’re too far away for them to invade. It would cost them a lot of Orbs. Way too many to be worth it.”
And Orbs are worth more than life and death. Adam knew as much ever since Tenver explained to him how Talents worked, but his time spent as Aspreasy’s painter, listening to downtrodden plaintiffs day in and day out, had really hammered in the extent of it.
A person needed Orbs to improve their Talent. They also needed it to buy food and pay for housing. Sure, you could theoretically make more Orbs if you improved your Talent, but how were you supposed to do that and afford the basic necessities needed just to fucking survive?
Such a ripoff. For better or worse, thanks to student loans, Adam knew firsthand how it felt to live in a system like this.
“The Empire has options,” Tenver pointed out. “They might order Vasco to march his people here instead. Not like his city would last long without Empire support.” He smirked, as if greatly amused. “Why, the same applies to us. It would take a little while, but the Empire could just starve us out. Although we receive little aid from them, I still don’t think Penumbria can survive for long without their Orbs.”
“And that’s exactly why I had to do this while Vasco was visiting. I need him to be afraid of me.” Adam drew a deep breath. It was a long, exhausting road, but there was no other way to settle things. If Vasco had heard of the takeover without witnessing it in-person, he probably wouldn’t have hesitated to exert ‘righteous’ justice upon the usurper – and plunder the devastated city while he was at it.
Tenver’s voice took on a jovial tone. “Ah, and you succeeded at that. I’ve never seen the man more terrified. He’s just as scared as everyone else.”
“That makes sense. You know what doesn’t, though?”
“What?”
“That you aren’t scared. Not of my powers. Not of what I’ll do to this city. Not of me.”
Adam stared up at the guard. “Why?”