“-And that’s really the crux of it, my idiot nephew doomed our nation when he handed it over to the Dark Lord. Necromancy, I can understand, Fleshcrafting almost. But really, a female general? It’s mad. There’s just some things that aren’t meant to be- aren’t natural- you understand? You at least have the blood for it, even if you’re just keeping the throne warm for your brothers, but that Sphera woman…Pah. Bad enough she studies magic, let alone putting her in command of the occasional army. Dark Lord indeed, hm?”

Ado nodded, and did not strangle King Dazarick. It was an exertion of will on her part to manage either, let alone both.

It wasn’t just the rampant bigotry, and it wasn’t even the fact that he seemed to embody every kind of it at once. King Dazarick was gnawing away at Ado’s nerves for the simple reason that he was a fucking imbecile, completely without self awareness or introspection. Her truest, deepest, most awful realisation of the conversation had been that the old bastard wasn’t even mimicking his nephew’s psychological tactics in exposing himself to her.

He was just a pervert, and Ado was stuck feigning patient negotiations with him. She was actually glad Baird had no idea of the particulars, for he’d surely have gone deliberately slowly just to prolong her suffering if he had.

“That’s very interesting.” She nodded, forcing the bile back down her throat. “However-”

The ground shook, and a moment later the sound reached Ado’s ears. Distant, booming, almost like hearing one of Shaiagrazni’s cannons going off. For one single instant she felt nothing but relief to have been handed a larger concern than her diversionary task.

Then, of course, the implications of what she’d heard sunk in. Dazarick’s eyes were wide, and a moment later the doors flung open as guards stumbled in.

“My King.” One of them gasped. “It’s the library, something’s happening there.”

“The library.” He echoed, then instantly turned to Ado.

She made her decision quickly, largely due to it being the only one Ado really had any option of making at all. Her magic was in her hands, power salting the air, and in an instant magi and Knights were closing in.

***

“Alright, hold on, there’s no need to get mental here.” Collin tried, struggling enough to even keep himself calm, let alone the mad bastard attacking him.

Everything was on fire; the walls, ceiling, floor. One section of the room- quite a big, thickly built section- had been simply blown to pieces. Debris was scattered all over the place, a mix of broken and melting stone. Amid it all was the…Thing.

It was hard to make out any details about its appearance, because even looking at it hurt. It was hotter than a bonfire, brighter than a forge, and a single moment of lingering eye contact left bright spots centring Collin’s sight. Around it the floor glowed with second-hand heat, and the air was rippling and drying with every moment it remained in the room. It wasn’t a living thing, he knew that much. No living thing could stand in the middle of such apocalyptic devastation, and yet undead feared heat and fire even more than people.

Was it…It surely couldn’t be…

“Burn.” The creature- the thing, whatever- snarled. Its voice was like a chorus, like a thousand thousand other voices chanting and groaning in unison. It ran through Collin, quiet and loud at once, almost threatening to stumble him with the sheer intensity packed into every syllable. The room shivered around them, wood straining at the pressure of its speech. Loud, then, apparently. It was loud.

“Hold on.” He gasped, barely even hearing his own words over the ringing in his ears and the roar of flames too hot and potent to be a thing of nature. “Calm down, relax, let’s not get crazy here-”

“Burn the human, burn him black, stuff his giblets in a sack. Take the sack and carry it far, send it up high bright like stars.”

It was every nightmare Collin had ever had compressed into a single being, and growing closer with each word. He stumbled back, bow forgotten, all his old combat instincts leaving him. This was a Demon. A fucking Demon, made of death and destruction, an army-eater. There’d be no fighting this thing, not with a dozen more of himself to help.

“Xekanis, no!”

The Prince’s voice, somehow cutting through the chaotic din of Collin’s executioner. Remarkably, ridiculously, the Demon actually halted. A face appeared in the flames, abstract and ephemeral of barely-visible eyes and teeth, turned towards the Prince without a doubt. The Demon’s voice rang out again.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“It frightened you, it wanted to hurt you, to take you away.”

“That’s no reason to burn him!” The Prince shot back, showing not the slightest scrap of fear as he stared down the Demon.

Well, not stared down really. More pleaded with his eyes, appealing with all the same ways a little boy might his friend. It was perhaps the most ludicrous thing of all that a person might try in moving something of its kind.

And it looked like it was working. The Demon’s flames died down, heat abated, and Collin found the stinging of his Fleshcrafted skin abated somewhat as the ambient temperature started to plummet. To his amazement, not a single book had been so much as singed by the flames engulfing them.

“It listens to you.” Collin breathed, struck stupid and slow by the impossibility of what he’d seen. Before the Prince could reply, the doors were swinging open.

Several men stormed in, most big, all armed. Collin had snatched his bow back up off the ground before any of them had even taken two steps, nocked an arrow by the third and put the length of iron clean through a man just as they swarmed him.

He recognised Dazarick among them, and the plated armour of Knights in most others. Not an issue, Collin had killed creatures far deadlier than a group like that. From afar. He was in tight quarters now, and already too close for his weapon of choice. Discarding the bow Collin switched to his long knives, swearing and slashing as they came.

Knife first he hit a Knight frontally, then slipped around as his guard raised and hamstrung him. Two more were charging in behind, and Collin rolled between them before leaping back up swinging and slashing. A circle formed around him, patrolled by pointy steel as he drove the surrounding men back. Caution didn’t last more than a few moments, though, and he had no chance of winning defensively, not against weapons with their reach. Collin leapt on the nearest one.

A polearm came down for him, he sidestepped and stabbed into the wrists which held it. Before the metal tip was even clattering to the floor he’d driven his knife down to the hilt in the man’s neck, ripping it out with a spray of crimson and rushing onto the next.

This time they moved, last second. Collin’s knife hit a pauldron, punching through and drawing blood, but not going nearly deep enough to nick bone or cut all the big veins. The Knight reached out, hand closing tight around his wrist, and Collin barely escaped by taking off half the bastard’s fingers with his free arm before a halberd came down. He rolled away, watching the floorboards smash to pieces where he’d just been standing.

Knights were strong, Rangers were fast. It was the way of things. Collin had been stronger than most Knights even before Shaiagrazni’s improvements, but these were clearly a cut above the norm. He snarled as he straightened up, knife torn from his hand and left in the shoulder. Prince Dazarick closed in on him.

“Spy!” He snapped, speaking in that slow, sluggish way non-Rangers had when adrenaline was high and the world was dragged back to a crawl. His hands were closed around the hilt of some stupid fucking sword, almost half the Godblade’s size and looking like it was made to be bolted above a mantle and bragged about rather than swung in anger.

It was swung, though, and swung fast. Collin leapt back from it, ten hands of steel whipping by him, smelling of magic as it passed. Enchanted, brilliant. He needed to get himself an enchanted weapon, one of these days.

The Knights tried encircling him, which further split Collin’s attention. He tried to go for one on his right and keep them from completing their flank, but Dazarick closed and kept hacking away with strength enough that Collin had no choice but to focus on him. Chunks fell from his thick dagger with every parry, the supernatural edge to his enemy’s weapon too much for mundane material to manage. Then the encirclement was complete, and the blows started coming down.

Shaiagrazni made good armour, for sure. Lighter, tougher than steel, something which would have changed war forever had he given it a few years to integrate even on its own. But there were limits to everything, and a half dozen greater Knights swinging at once was one hell of a problem.

Cracks, creaks, flexive surrendering to the material as Collin abandoned offence and focused on just curling up to put his armoured greaves between the enemy’s steel and his own skull. It was done, a man didn’t get out of positions like the one he was stuck in. He’d had a good run, but nobody’s luck lasted forever.

“Enough!” Came Dazarick’s voice, and Collin sensed a parting to the metal-clad bodies before him. Just in time for the enchanted blade to come down and bite deep into his shoulder.

Collin had been wounded before, of course, and more than once. The agony of meat cut open in his body was a familiar feeling. That barely made it less debilitating, though.

His legs weakened, body dropping, knees hitting the ground as he barely blocked another swing aimed for his neck. A greave surrendered, this time, enchanted metal cutting him down deep into the muscle as he fell. Dazarick moved past him, disgust twisting his face.

“The Kaltan.” He spat. “I should have guessed. Tell me, was the plan for you to attempt an abduction, or were you just unable to reign in your animal impulses long enough for the Princess to finish her diplomacy?”

Collin had about a hundred retorts for the man, but none made themselves known to his hazy wits and swimming vision.

“And you.”

The Prince was speaking, now, to the other Prince. Nemo, who stood cowering and trembling against a bookshelf with eyes left widened in horror. His uncle approached, sword still drawn, face tight with murder and rage.

“Conspiring with our enemies, really boy?!”

“I…I didn’t…”

“Silence.” The Prince snapped, raising his blade to hover inches from the younger man’s nose. He stared at it, cross-eyed through his spectacles and looking as if the metal were made from the stuff of nightmares. “I’ve had enough of you.” Dazarick continued. “It was one thing to have you tucked away silent and unthreatening, but this is beyond the pale. You hear me?! BEYOND THE PALE!”

He paused, inhaled as his eyes fell for a moment. Then looked back up, cooler and calmer, but no less deadly.

“Your father wouldn’t have wanted this, but I don’t care. Everything I’ve done was for this Kingdom- everything- and I’ll not have another sheltered brat pilfer it from me.”

He raised the sword high, edge glinting in the lamplight, and Collin watched as it came down.