Ayla smiles again, softer, and passes out. Blood and char and smoke and wet remains fill the air. The smell of… victory, I guess. The young woman in my arms is light and I rise with her to seek a Healer. At the tavern party, a few townsfolk had raved about their Divine Gift and ‘healed’ a few revelers of their alcohol ‘poisoning’ as demonstration.

A quick flash of light, a tap, and she’d be fine.

I feel weak as the crowd parts, kids younger than myself and gnarled seniors as common as fit men and women; all wielding anything with a sharp edge. With a pointy end. Children and the elderly, bloodied and dead as I stood and shouted orders. I spot the covered wagon, black cross painted on the side because we had no red paint.

Ayla’s given water and a healing hand; I stand and watch.

The healer says she needs rest. I think I’m in shock. I can still smell the bodies cooking.

The healer says I need rest. The feeling in my gut says I have somewhere to be.

I follow my instinct. It feels right to do something. Even if I don’t know what, it’s better than nothing.

It’s better than watching.

I’m a mechanic, not a warrior. I fix shit around my dad’s shop, not countries. But then there’s Ayla, from the same world as me, around the same age, and she fought for these people until she passed out after learning magic, what, last night? I’m supposed to be some ‘Saviour of Prophecy’ and instead I’m wandering silently through a camp of half-dead strangers that fought to the burning end at my word.

So… I look up. I talk to people. I find out what they need, and get it if I can. The sun gets low as I wander from tent to tent, sharing as many words as I can with everyone I find. The forest gets dark as I make it to a campfire; four people, barely silhouettes, sit on logs around it. Conversation pauses and I sit. I stare into the fire for a moment, watching the flames lick a small pot bubbling over the stone ring. I look around, my newly sworn companions each battered and bruised, but sitting here at the end of the day and grinning at me over the stew.

“So what’s next, boss?” Kevinn asks, then tries to drink from a bottle to find it empty.

“We strike first,” I say without hesitating. I’ve been turning a plan over in my head since the first wounded soldier I spoke with. “The soldiers say the Dark Lord heard stirrings of Prophecy in the forest and mustered this force as quick as he was able. I’ve heard his monsters spring forth from nothing, but it takes time.”

Deidamia understood immediately. “We hit the nearest city, maybe a few towns first to free some more fighters, but we might be able to take a garrison force.”

“There’s a duchy on the edge of the forest and the scout that warned us claimed it was left nearly empty. Just the Duke and a personal guard.”

“If you’re planning an assassination, you could probably use some magical assistance,” suggests a voice from the edge of the fire’s light. Ayla steps into view, still tired but holding strong. “Is that stew?”

A chorus of yesses.

“So, then,” Toni says, lifting his lute, “Any requests for the dinner show?”

Ayla stifles a giggle and asks, “Do you know Wonderwall?”

It’s a dumb joke, but it’s the first time I’ve laughed since our journey began. I feel a little lighter, for a minute.

I’m sure the vivid flashbacks and regularly recurring nightmares are nothing to worry about. The Healers all assure me I’m physically well and I still haven’t found a good therapist.

The Royal Counselor just isn’t cutting it, these days.

The Empire has been on shaky footing since the day of the Unification, each day revealing new cracks and peels in the paint on the continental utopia I tore bloody and dripping from the corpse of the Darkness that had swallowed this land. There was supposed to be a happy ending – a long, slow sunset where my Queen and I would shepherd the land into a Gilded Age. Ayla’s genius and knack for finding those of similar intellectual disposition have led to the fastest magical renaissance I’ve ever seen. And the only one, that may be true, but shifting from the technological equivalent of the middle ages to a society that runs entirely on magitech in the course of twenty years is an accomplishment.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

You’ll have to excuse me, I’m quite fond of my wife. Forced by the Prophecy into the role of Sage, she’s lived up to even the most outlandish hopes pinned upon her.

I had, until recently, considered myself her equal. The Tribes have withdrawn their support of the Unification, a single blunder of mine the morning after the celebrations sending them back to their mountains, enraged. Apparently the refusal of the High King’s daughter’s advance by a member of the Court had escalated into a fully fledged ‘diplomatic incident’. By the time everyone involved had been healed and the blood was mopped up, the entire wing they’d been given was abandoned.

Things progressed poorly from there. The Western Bazaar on the coast declared independence, taking everything on the far side of the Border Mountains to found the base of their new nation: Capitalia. A major blow, the east was impassable with the eternal storms pinned to the sky by a goddess of the sea generations ago. The only route for trade ships to take was the other coast, passing straight through the new nation.

The secession and subsequent annexation emboldened traditionalists and opportunists alike, vultures and scavengers come to circle as the continent bleeds. I… I was used to things working as intended, before. You take stock, make a plan, and adapt where you can. Being a hero wasn’t easy – I spent as much time covered in my own blood as leading glorious charges – but it was never complicated. If the plan didn’t work? You tried again. Now? Each misstep is one further from the path we worked so hard to lay out before us.

The loyalists that held to the Empire were, to put it politely, eschewed from their lands. The influx of refugees in the foothills led to hunger amongst the populace for the first time in eight years. I… Made the wrong choice.

Hoping that the sense of camaraderie that had carried disparate populations through the war would still hold was naive, I see that now. The officers and career soldiers all knew one another, but the rank and file did not. These were young men and women, reared as much in peace as strife.

I am told that there was confusion that day. The possibility of false orders being passed by provocateurs seems the most likely explanation. I trust those involved with the investigation. They were supposed to bring aid, artifacts to produce food and water, mages that could draw a city up from the stone below in a matter of days.

The casualties were substantial. Amongst local citizens, refugees, and soldiers. Leaps and bounds in medical magitechnology, but every one of those was a loss. The Church had refused to send aid, the militant sect that had taken hold of the institution during the war finally dropping the other shoe; until we brought armed forces to bear against the treasonous Capitalians, divine healing was on hold. And sorcurgery was truly coming into its own as a field, rumors of a successful Soul Transplant at one of the Universities making the rounds, but it was no substitute for hosing someone down with ye olde Manna from Heaven. The weakest priest could sneeze into your open mouth and cure a lifelong ailment, but it takes a team of biomages and alchemists to grow you a fresh hand. Which is incredible, of course. We can grow a replacement for anything at any of our medical facilities, but it requires a medical facility to attach.

Priestesses and preachers only need food and water to keep the holy tank full. Better yet, they didn’t take any training at all. Touch the afflicted and channel divinity. Holy Magic: It cures what ails ya.

But it requires willing cooperation from the person of religiosity.

Nearly every survivor, down to the last person, took up arms against the remaining Empire loyalists among them and hung them all. Their bodies were dumped at the border of what is now the Honorable Republic of Thieves. HRT has managed to prevent or eliminate all crime within its own borders by providing asylum for any committed within mine. And a lot of capital punishment, if the few reports our agents have smuggled out can be believed. Functionally, any crime is legal there so long as you don’t get caught.

Getting caught? Punishable by death.

My attempts to send further aid to the refugees led directly to the Brigands’ Council forming. There was corruption within my own ranks, rot creeping in deeper than I feel comfortable to admit.

I’m still searching, now. Hunting the archives and praying for anything that might offer a solution, a whisper of a chance to pass through this gauntlet and emerge with a nation intact. It does not go well.

Stubbins performs his Regal duties and his assistant currently aids the search. Perhaps less experienced, Cubbins has been making a dent in the Mythologies, putting his near-photographic memory to use. He’s also been managing the auxiliary researchers, a task I’ll freely admit to having lost the patience for. Useful they may be, attempting to work under their gaze has me feeling like a young lad again, whistling merrily away, oblivious to the rabid librarians bearing down from every angle.

The HRT and Capitalia have been the only new countries to be founded so far, but the hold Issachai bears on the provinces has grown fragile in light of their successes. Plots and politicking of the kind not seen in my court before have grown commonplace, the current heir to Nowaire changing no less than seven times in as many days being the current record, all of them coming down with a hereditary case of poison intolerance. And magical poisons are not kind.

Every decision made by me, personally, has led to catastrophic consequences for the future. Every choice, the wrong one. So Stubbins leads the Empire. My generals lead their soldiers. And I lead a futile search, hunting through prophecy and legend in the vain hope some line offers absolution.

Between the natural strength of a Saviour bound by Verse and the treatments from Ayla’s colleagues, I only need to sleep about once every few weeks to retain full function. I’ve had these changes to my biology for years now, but for the first time since the Adversary fell, I am tired.

More than that?

I’m afraid.