The King did not look bigger, now that Ado had been diminished in her power. That was curious.
She’d noticed long ago- or rather, several months that felt long ago- how most of the men she knew were lessened in her current eyes compared to the towering beasts they’d once been. Ado had thought that might simply be down to the power they once had over her, and held no longer. Now she knew differently.
Whether anything would come of her epiphany, she didn’t know. The King’s voice rang out before she could much process it, dancing along the walls of his expansive study, reverberating through indulgent chandeliers and sliding across thick carpeting.
“How many last chances do you intend to have us give you?” The man asked, sounding more…Weary than anything. There was the same look to his eyes that Ado had glimpsed before, but now it had evolved into outright pity.
She could understand why, at least, but that still needled her. She was not to be pitied.
“This isn’t my chance.” Ado told him. “It’s yours.”
The King frowned, his brow furrowing with a depth that only the perpetually worried could ever muster.
“What are you implying girl?”
“I’m not implying anything.” Ado replied. “I’m spelling it out clearly for you. This is your last chance to save your people.”
Before the King could even sigh his exasperation, let alone have her escorted back to her cell, Ado pressed on.
“And I’m not talking about what the Dark Lord will do should he win, either. I’m telling you what Silenos Shaiagrazni’s wrath will be like. That is your real concern, believe me.”
At last, that had him listening. Tentatively, perhaps, more from curiosity than urgency, but that was far more than Ado had been working with before.
“You seem to think he’ll be licking his wounds if he wins, but I’m sorry to say that could not be farther from the truth. Whichever side comes out victorious in this bout, they will have absorbed much of the enemy side’s army. Hundreds of thousands of undead- in Shaiagrazni’s case exceedingly potent ones- and suddenly without their greatest enemy. And Shaiagrazni’s sights would be set upon you, instantly.”
The King’s face coloured, with fear or rage Ado wasn’t sure.
“Why the hell would they?!” He demanded. God, it never ceased to amaze Ado how slow on the uptake the world’s rulers could be.
“Because, as of this moment, you have unlawfully imprisoned a diplomatic emissary from his nation. Within a few days, you’ll have executed her. Aside from this being a gross violation of diplomatic conduct- one that the rest of the world will not soon forget when considering negotiation with you- it is also an act of direct contempt towards House Shaiagrazni themselves. Tell me, how do you think Silenos Shaiagrazni is likely to respond to something like that? Because I’ve seen how he reacted to mere resistance. I will never unsee it, no matter how long I live. My father now lives, forever, as a part of his cloak. In agony, conscious, and eternal. And all he did was fight back.”
Ado could not have drained the colour from the old King’s face more quickly even if she’d cut his throat instead of speaking.
“You….How could you serve a creature like that?”
The question had no political aim at all, that she could see. It was pure confusion. Ado found herself considering it, too. How could she?
Because she’d been ambitious, rejected by wider society for reasons beyond her control or merits, overlooked and scorned by all except Shaiagrazni himself. But that was not all, or at least not anymore. Somewhere along the way Ado had realised that Shaiagrazni had a point about it all. If she could be so easily overlooked, why not others?
“Because the choice I have been left with,” She replied, “Is between a cruel man, and a world of fools. I will choose the cruel man. He, at least, can be reasoned with.”
She was almost surprised to hear the truth from herself.
The King was silent for a long while after that, simply falling back into himself as if he were concentrating on some great effort of physicality. Ado knew better than to interrupt him. He was thinking, considering what she’d said, and if she just waited there was a very strong chance he’d do the rest of her work for her.
He was afraid of Silenos, she knew. Utterly and completely. And the terror that gripped him was such that it pushed him away from the very notion of acting against the caster. No matter how wise it may have been- and Ado firmly believed defying House Shaiagrazni was about the least wise thing he could do- he’d be biassed against the notion.
In this, she saw power. In this she saw the genius of Shaiagrazni’s deeds. The world would have hated him already, no matter what he did, simply for the justice of his cause. And so he had turned that hatred into trembling, seizing fear. Because fear could be used.
“You would have me free you.” The King said at last, voice tight as a strangling noose, face purple as the man whose neck it was about.
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“I would.” Ado nodded. “For a start, that is, you understand you’ll have a lot to make up for even after earning Shaiagrazni’s mercy. And his mercy is in short supply these days.”
The King’s eyes were affixed on the floor as if someone had bolted them there.
“Even if everything you say is true, I am not the man to resolve it. My influence in this city is second to the High Priest. Surely you know that.”
As a fact, she did.
“Of course.” Ado began, slowly, cautiously. “But, with so much at stake, you must realise…There are other ways to do what is necessary than the direct, lawful approach. Ways of taking power and placing it where it needs to be.”
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King Galukar must have fallen two, even three hundred yards. He’d landed hard, skull coming down upon a great boulder, dozens of stone in body weight and armour breaking the rock to pieces. For his part, he seemed to have taken barely even a scratch from the actual fall.
It was the Demon’s mauling which had so deeply savaged him.
Galukar was alive when they found him, but barely. Sphera had seen sides of beef less cooked than he was. His body was littered with wounds, inches deep and…Festering. Some were rotting as any other injury might, remarkable only for the impossible short minutes the necrotising decay had taken to seize them. Others were aflame, hissing with steam or lightning. Even clutched by some dark, technicoloured substance that sizzled and spat like shadestuff, and ignored all Sphera’s efforts to examine it.
His blood was plentiful, and scattered out for a dozen paces around him where it had rained down. Black hair spilling out, eyes shut and tight with pain, bones nicked or cracked. The Godblade stuck in the ground just beyond his arm’s reach. That, alone, was untouched. Its divine power was something Sphera had always been sceptical of, as far as she was concerned Arion Falls had had the right of it when he called it nothing more than an ancient relic made by simpletons with more magic than brains.
But seeing it there, standing tall and unmarked where it erupted from a surrounding of molten dirt and stone…She could understand the reverence her men were showing as they beheld it.
There were other, more convenient times to indulge her awe however. Sphera focused on the King.
“Healers!?” She demanded, looking around, frantic. “We need healers!”
There were not that many disadvantages to her Master’s approach of rule, but among them was that it was quite hard to convince people to import into his nation. The natural self-sufficiency of Shaiagraznian magic offset this, mostly, but one area in which they lacked was casters.
Healers, above all. A half dozen hurried forth, swarming around Galukar and blasting him with restorative spellwork. Sphera watched it all, mouth dryer by the moment.
Everything had been hinged on King Galukar. He was their not-so-secret weapon, a man equivalent to tens of thousands all on his own, able to cross battlefields faster than any formation to either support a defence, or crush the enemy’s.
And now he was bleeding and convulsing in a pile at her feet. All because a single damned Demon had shown up.
“Where’s the Demon!?” Sphera called out, suddenly remembering the creature- the thing- and thrown into a frenzy by the recollection. That was their biggest concern, if it had so much as a spasmodic death rattle left inside it, many more might well perish.
“Over here, sir.” A soldier called, Kaltan, and all the more unnerving for it. His face was a testament to human terror, wrung like a chicken’s neck and pale as a sheet. Sphera almost couldn’t bring herself to follow the man.
She did, though, and the remains she saw, Sphera knew, would follow her through the rest of her life. The Demon’s corpse was beyond description and comprehension. But not beyond recollection. Life was far too cruel for that.
“Burn it.” She whispered. “And burn everything within an acre of it.”
Her voice sounded shrill, squeaky. It sounded like she was a child again. Because she was. And so was each and every one of the people now surrounding her. They were all stupid, blind, simple infants stumbling through the world without the slightest idea of what it held. And Sphera’s glimpse behind the curtain left her wishing for the first time in her life that she’d never learn more again. Better to be an ignorant animal than subject her mind to a truth as dark as this.
Better by far.
Days passed, and King Galukar did not recover. Sphera knew the Godblade granted some measure of vitality to bolster the raw physical prowess of its wielder, King Galukar looking as youthful as he did at close to one hundred was proof of that.
Apparently, the miasma of Demon-inflicted wounds was beyond even his capacity to weather. While he remained unconscious, she was left to maintain the army’s cohesion by herself.
Her Master had done a fine job of inspiring obedience, of course. Such was the bare minimum to be expected of a Shaiagrazni Named, but it was still an uphill battle for her.
Men were scared, of course. And those few hundred who’d actually seen the Demon up close were beyond scared. Sphera could empathise. When she wasn’t dealing with the metaphorical nightmares of daytime command, her nights were plagued with terrors that shook her out of sleep a dozen times before dawn. Twice she shit herself, bowels laxed like a hanged man. Not once did the shame even register.
Nothing registered anymore, except the fear.
Within a week, though, she had adjusted. The horrors were still there, but Sphera had come to terms with the simple pragmatics of what they meant and begun to work around them. She would not fail Master Shaiagrazni simply because she was cowed by the sight of some cluster of magic. She would sooner die. Marching became Sphera’s newest concern, the mundane inconveniences of orchestrating a hundred thousand pairs of boots her new torment. They made progress.
Not as much as would have been possible under Galukar, however. Sphera saw it only now that the task had fallen to her, but that man had a way of moving men through sheer presence. It was the weight of The Hero, she supposed. Not something which could be matched by a Necromancer, not even her Master.
With the battle’s result, there would be no more holding against the Dark Lord. His forces had been just as awestruck by the Demon’s death as Shaiagrazni’s had by its presence, which was the sole reason Sphera was able to march from the battlefield without being swamped by cavalry. That wouldn’t last, however. And her men’s terror would.
Galukar’s infirmity already scythed away a great fraction of the army’s combat power, and that was worsened by far as the harassing attacks finally began in earnest. Cavalry, yes, as Sphera had expected. But Demons, too. More of them.
Not a one was half the equal of the entity which had first attacked, but all bore a whisper of its power. Giant things with too many faces, or no faces at all. Formless and dynamic, esoteric and unstoppable. They came at night, mostly, and the Kaltans were well accustomed to that. But it made little difference. Their arrows punched through bodies of liquid, casters’ fireballs sizzling out against the weight of magic infusing their enemies. Lives were lost, ground given, morale destroyed.
Day by day they marched, bleeding out more men with every new attack, and Sphera took to spending much of her time beside the bed of King Galukar. He didn’t awaken, and his wounds began to smell of that sickly sweet death-scent that betrayed a rotting body.
She almost expected their army to match that scent, too.