“I find that an over-abundance of cleverness is not needed to rule Praes at all. After all, it remains substantially easier to solve people than problems. Once people have been dealt with, the complications tend to go away. Sorry, what was that, Chancellor? I couldn’t hear your voice over the screams.”

– Dread Emperor Nihilis I, the Tanner

----------------------------------------

Grimacing, I levitated myself off the now damp table and took a look around.

The Bard was definitely gone.

Well then.

This was the second time she had appeared out of seemingly nowhere and helped me indirectly. If that were the extent of it, I would probably be feeling grateful. The problem was the circumstances of each event. Not only did she know too much about me, but I strongly suspected that she had a hand in arranging Max’s death.

Floating myself to the floor, I willed away all the excess mess and quickly cleaned off my own clothing. I walked over to the dead wizard and pulled my knife out of his throat. After cleaning and sheathing it, I made my way towards his desks on the left.

There were many books strewn liberally across them. Evidently he had not been an organized sorcerer. I wanted to search them for important information, but I suspected that I didn’t have time. Whatever plan the Black Knight would have put into action was executable within twenty-three hours from the point of my capture.

I encased them all in a solid golden dome and levitated it beside me instead. I surrounded myself in a forcefield and then made my way to the curtains. Opening them, I looked out onto a scene that sent chills down my spine.

Orange flames flickered over many of the buildings in the distance. Smoke rose into the sky, and the late afternoon sun could barely be made out through the haze.

I didn’t have time to dawdle.

I willed the window frame away, surrounded myself in a transparent sphere, and then flew outside with the confiscated books trailing in the air behind me. Turning around, I briefly examined the prison I had been holed up in. It was a part of the location in the slums I had been heading to.

The guards who had followed me had been impaled on stakes in the front of the building, their faces locked in a rictus of agony. I… hadn’t wanted that for them. For anyone. I gently imposed my will against them, turning them into clouds of white smoke. Maybe they would have wanted to be returned to their family. I felt it was more likely that their corpses would be desecrated during the ongoing disaster, then their last wishes would have been upheld. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to try to find their families, so… this was the best I could do for them.

I looked back at the building I had escaped from.

At least I know where I am.

The place looked in just as poor a shape as it had when I last saw it. Remembering my former plan, I willed away the building’s roof and slammed it down with debilitating amounts of compassion. The angels did not intervene. It surprised me. I had expected them to help me once more. I proceeded to fly overhead and survey the place from above.

So that’s why they didn’t bother.

Aside from the corpse of the man I had killed, there was nobody else inside. It had been entirely deserted. There were signs that suggested that the occupants had left recently. Dust hadn’t accumulated, and the interior was mostly clean.

If there wasn’t anyone remaining here, then it was time to work out what else I needed to do. I’d start by surveying the city. I needed to understand exactly how bad the situation was.

Looking to the sky, I flew up higher and higher. The wind battered against the surface of my sphere. If I had been exposed to the elements, I imagined it would have been exhilarating. Unfortunately, I had bigger problems on my mind.

I came to a stop several hundred feet up and looked down on the city below me.

At a glance, almost a third of the city appeared to be on fire. It was the richer parts of the city. What I would term the financial and industrial districts, as well as some larger estates. I had no idea what the locals would call that part of Aisne. I hadn’t been in the city long enough to find out. It was difficult to make out from up high, but there was fighting on the thoroughfares as well.

The conflict had reached its tipping point.

What should I do?

There was no Warlock or Fae Prince to contest me here. If I succeeded or failed in handling this situation, it would be on me and me alone. The city looked to be in a state of total anarchy.

I recalled the Bard’s advice. I didn’t know for sure how right she was about the story I had fallen into. Neither did I know if I could trust her. What I did know was that the larger the story I was within, the harder it was for me to feel. A narrative involving an entire city’s worth of people was so broad that… It was almost impossible for me to feel the threads of it. I had to work almost entirely off of my knowledge of stories, rather than rely on my sense of them.

I might not trust the Bard, but that didn’t mean her advice wasn’t good. It didn’t conflict with my existing plans in the current circumstances. For now, I would treat her guidance as well-intentioned.

That meant prioritizing. I’d start with the fires. They would kill the most people and do the most damage in the long term. Suffocation, burning to death and the destruction of critical infrastructure were all problems that would be caused by the flames. Meeting up with Songbird and Yvette would be a good idea if I had the faintest idea where they were. I had been trapped in that prison for some time and even though they knew where I should be, they hadn’t broken me out.

I hoped they were safe. There was no telling what their situation was like. No, I chose to believe they were safe. I wouldn’t let myself consider any alternative.

They must have been busy with something else.

I didn’t bother to descend. Instead, I flew horizontally towards the first of the fires. Smoke rose up into the air. I coughed for a moment, it was difficult for me to breathe. That was easily corrected. The smoke vanished with just a thought, and my sphere started to actively filter the air.

I focused my attention back onto the fires below.

It took heartbeats to snuff the first inferno out. I shifted my gaze from blaze to blaze and killed them one at a time. It took a while, but eventually there were none left within my range. I began to move. At the height I was operating at, people looked like nothing more than ants down below.

Another fire, then another. There were so many of them that my fists started to clench in frustration. No matter how fast I worked, it wouldn’t be fast enough. This disaster was still going to claim so many lives.

Some movement caught my attention far down below. I narrowed my gaze, squinting. It looked like there were two people locked in conflict at the edge of a building. There was a loud boom as I threw myself towards the fight. I heard a loud scream only a few heartbeats later as I closed in on the scene.

I was too late.

“And one for when I asked for an extension,” a nail pierced the corpse’s left eye under the force of a hammer. “And one for when you told me no.” Another nail into the other eye.

A man was singing while gleefully driving nails into the decapitated head of a woman in an extravagant dress. I guessed from the gore that the decapitation had taken more than a single blow. Despite this, I suspected she had died quickly. The head had been pinned to the side of a building. Even though she was dead, he continued with his macabre act.

What… should I do?

There was no justice to be found in Aisne. Only anarchy. There was no reason for me not to impose my own sense of right and wrong because there was no other justice for me to even consider deferring to. Unfortunately, it wasn’t an efficient use of my time to judge people one at a time right now. I seized him with force and dragged him up into the air.

The man struggled and snarled for a moment, before turning my way. He stilled. I branded the words, “singing nail man,” onto his forehead in white lettering as a reminder of what he did later. It wouldn’t surprise me if I ended up with many prisoners before the day came to an end.

I created a large golden half sphere with a flat platform at the bottom and trapped him inside of it. Air was allowed through, but nothing else. It would suffice as a half measure until I had time to evaluate his actions later. I started to move once more with both the books and my prisoner in tow.

Flying up into the air once more, I returned my attention to putting out fires. I stopped numerous times. A group of guards that looked to be stringing up revolutionaries. They went into a second dome. A band of revolutionaries that had trapped some screaming women and children wearing expensive clothing in a building and were in the process of setting it alight made me pause.

Fuck it.

This went beyond what I was willing to defer. If justice was working in Aisne these people would die. I didn’t believe they deserved to live. Suspending judgement until later would only result in the same outcome. I firmed my resolve and made a choice. Moments later, the arsonists vanished into a cloud of white smoke.

The action was effortless, and it made me want to hurl. Not because I killed a man, but because the conflict in the city had made people into monsters. I was angry, frustrated. The corners of my eyes stung and tears rained from above onto the ground below.

I just wanted it all to end.

There was nothing good about any of this. Nothing just, or kind, or deserved. Everything was just so… pointless.

I continued onwards. The number of people in my two temporary prisons continued to grow. There were many communities that had been cordoned off, with residents peering through makeshift fortifications that had been cobbled together out of broken debris fearfully. Twice more, I witnessed scenes that I was unwilling to put off. I rendered judgement immediately before continuing to extinguish the flames. A fight only broke out once within my globes before the prisoners realized that tempting fate was not a good idea.

I came to a halt outside the House of Light I had visited. There were wooden barricades established outside and a mob trying to break through. Flying down, I added them all to my temporary prison.

“Your assistance is a soothing palm against the fever plaguing this city,” the priestess called out. “Are you able to aid with tending to the wounded?”

“Bring out only those that are hard for you to heal,” I declared abruptly. “There is too much going wrong for me to stay in one place.”

Fitting inside the building would be impractically hard with the need to manage my prisons.

Her face softened as a look of pity crossed the priestess’s face.

“Then we shall endeavour to hasten your departure.”

A group of people ran inside and brought out those with more nasty wounds. They carried them carefully on makeshift stretchers. I took a moment to fix their wounds. It didn’t take me long to reach the final patient. It was a boy who was surely not even ten years old. He had large parts of the right-hand side of his body burned off.

I shoved my grief aside as I finished up.

“Thank you-”

“I’ve done what I can here,” I interjected. “While I’d love to stay, there is still so much I need to do. Farewell for now.”

I missed anything else that was said as I flew up into the sky. I took a moment to survey the city once more. There were still so many fires. It felt like I was slowly losing one step at a time.

This is too slow.

I wasn’t putting out the fires fast enough. What else could I do? I needed something indiscriminate that wasn’t harmful. Like… magical rain.

I hadn’t been able to perform sorcery, but I was certainly capable of imbuing water with esoteric effects. While I had no idea how to construct this working myself, I knew it was the type of effect that my family would help me with achieving.

Grasping onto the idea like a woman drowning at sea, I flew up and up and up into the sky. Higher and higher until I was just below the clouds. My globes orbited me like planets around a star as I rose. I needed to modify both my own orb and my prisons in the process. The air in the sky was just a little too thin for us to breath, and the temperature too chilly as well.

I pictured a scene. A comforting, grey cloud stretching across the sky. Rain would fall from it. Rain that would nurture, heal and extinguish flames with but a touch.

The first of my ghosts vanished.

The angels reached out, assisting me with my working. A cloud extended out from one end of my range to the other. Heartbeats later, and glowing silver raindrops began to fall. I descended with them. Gold and Crimson light from the west was broken up by the storm I had created. It was almost melancholic to see.

The plaza in front of the palace stood out like a sore thumb as I made my way down. People were mulling around on it. Enough of them that their movement was notable even from high above. I adjusted my course towards it.

The rain picked up as I continued downwards. It rapidly shifted from a light downpour to a deluge, cascading onto the city beneath. The sound of the droplets falling around me was so loud it almost drowned out the screaming of my soul at the sheer misery around me.

I arrived just above the plaza.

What… what do I even do?

Should I… Should I kill all of them?

There was a crowd of thousands outside. Many of them were actively in conflict with the guards. Others were busy dragging people out of their homes towards a line of stakes which had been planted into either side of the road. The loud, agonizing cries of people screaming as they came to horrendous ends called out to me. The sizzling of skin, along with the scents of burning flesh and smoke, could only just be heard and smelled over the pouring of the rain.

What was worse were the people alive on the stakes. The people who were being healed by my rain, only to suffer through trauma again and again.

I rapidly willed those stakes away.

The palace gates had been broken open and part of the crowd mulled inside. Corpses were strewn haphazardly all over the floor, some piled up into mounds. Watered down blood ran across the tiles. I could taste the salty tang of tear drops as they reached the edge of my lips.

Right in front of the gates, two figures had been set apart from the rest. Both had been crucified. The first was on the left-hand side and the other on the right. I didn’t recognize either of them, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t guess. It would be Verill and Garson. They were the only two I could imagine earning that kind of distinction.

Are the people of Aisne really no better than this?

These… These were the people I was trying to help. It stung me like salt poured over an open wound. What was I even supposed to do? I felt so very lost. Absently, I lowered the two spheres of prisoners beside me down onto the ground and deposited the contents.

There was no point in containing them.

They were no worse than anyone else.

The Bard’s words came back to me again? What would a heroine do here? A speech. It would almost certainly be a speech. I was so emotionally wrung out that I didn’t know if I had one in me, but I’d at least make the attempt.

I’d lean fully into theatrics if it ended this horror show.

There was a plan I had considered in the depths of the swamp. A scheme involving using my abilities to put on a dramatic display. It was intended for Prince Amaury, but could be used here. This wasn’t the same set of circumstances. It didn’t mean that if I modified my original idea, I couldn’t achieve the result I wanted.

What should I say? I only had one chance to do this right. I wouldn’t talk about what I felt. They wouldn’t care. This was about them and their anger. I wouldn’t ask them to empathize with the nobles. Even if both sides were human, I doubted there was much empathy to go around. How about… the future? Yes, I’d talk about the future and nothing else. Stick to a single theme and hope that it would work.

I was about to consume multiple ghosts to fuel the working when both innovate and the angels suggested an improvement. I seized upon it. This was cheaper than trying to create a Grey Boy bubble and about as effective for what I wanted.

My second phantom vanished. The entire palace disappeared along with it. Multiple floors of painted marble tiling, exquisite artwork and priceless historic relics gone in just a second. It was a price I was willing to pay if it brought this conflict to an end. I needed the building as fuel. The working I was envisioning was complex and would only appear once my speech was done. It was exhausting, and I didn’t bother to hide it. This was not the time when feigned strength would matter even the slightest.

A loud cheer went up from the crowd as I acted. I suspected that they believed I was acting on their behalf. It wouldn’t take long to disabuse them of that idea.

People started to fall. The stakes along the road all vanished, and gravity was temporarily weakened in the area where the palace once stood. Their descent slowed to a crawl. Once they had all touched the ground, I banished the effect with a thought.

“Enough,” I declared.

A wave of brilliant white light rippled outwards from me and crashed against the plaza below. My voice was projected along with it, slamming into the crowd. The effect was harmless but attention grabbing. It was partly ruined by a small section of the cone that slammed against the sphere of floating books, but I doubted that anyone had noticed. Irritably, I floated them all behind me. I hoped this display would be enough to stall the carnage.

Everyone paused and looked up.

“Does this make you happy? Look around, are you satisfied with this?” I gestured broadly, pointing towards the smouldering wreckage of buildings and the fires still burning in the distance.

I was modulating my voice in a way that made it possible for everyone to hear me over the downpour. If I had not done so, then I likely would have gone entirely unheard over the crackling of the rain on the tiles.

There was a roar from below. A shouted cry that yes, the crowd were satisfied. This was what they wanted. This was the justice that they sought. They wanted their oppressors brought low. This is what the nobles had earned. Some peasants looked like they were about to take up their weapons again.

I felt my shoulders begin to sag at the futility of it all.

The charred wreckage of another building vanished. I pushed what I felt out towards them. My disappointment, sadness, anger, and disgust. Everything that this farce of a revolution had brought on. Finally, a huge wave of compassion crashed into all of them. The crowd staggered and their voices stilled.

I could have blamed this on Praes. In some ways, I likely would have even been partly right to do so. I chose not to. It didn’t matter who had stoked the fires of their fury, they were still angry. I needed to snuff the embers of their anger out.

“Really, this satisfies you?” Another ruined structure disappeared. I created a staircase of light descending just past the gates of the now missing palace and began to walk down. The crowd remained silent while I made my descent. I could feel their eyes follow me from the sky to the ground.

Eventually I came to a stop. The sound of my boots striking solid ground was muffled by the raindrops. I was standing right before a large elevated bronze statue of a man holding a sword up towards the sky. It was probably one lord or another. I neither knew nor cared about which one it was. The books landed in a weather shielded pile to my right. I turned around to face the crowd, then mentally shoved away the detritus and sat down on the top step.

Start with the present. Drag them into the moment.

“Look to your left and right. Observe the people around you. See the blood on their faces and hands. The stench of bile in the air. Or how about the flecks of entrails hanging from your hair? Let what has happened here truly sink in. Does the feeling of those weapons in your hands – the knives, or stakes or even broken pieces of furniture – make you happy? Does this feel like a victory to you?” My voice reverberated quietly through the air.

The crowd looked around at each other uncertainly. I could see the horror of what had happened dawn in the eyes of some. For others, the realization had yet to arrive.

“Raise your hands if you can read.” I whispered.

The mob shivered. Less than a tenth of them raised their hands. About half of those looked to be victims that had yet to be killed.

“Now raise your hands if you can do more than basic arithmetic. If you can solve engineering problems or forecast future crop yields. How many of you know how to calculate how much weight a bridge can hold or estimate how much grain is needed to last everyone through the winter months?” Almost every hand remained down. Only a few put their hands up.

“How about economics, statecraft, and strategy? Were any of you taught those subjects?”

Only the merchants and nobles raised their hands in the air.

“Come winter and without proper governance, many of you will starve to death. Consider your friends and family. Are you happy to consign them to that kind of end? I know that I wouldn’t be. If it isn’t food, then how about plague or disease? Are those more pleasant? If that’s not bad enough, how about an invasion by the Dead King? What would you do then without proper leadership?” I paused for a moment and let them take in what I said.

Some nobles and merchants were smiling. A few let out cries of affirmation. I turned my gaze their way and glared.

“Don’t you dare think this makes you any better. You were educated. You did learn. Unlike them, you have no excuse. Many of them didn’t know what this would lead to. Instead of bickering among each other, you should have done your duty. This revolution would never have happened if you were half the men and women you claimed to be.” My hands were balled into fists in my lap as I spoke. By now I was shouting. My voice was angry and hoarse.

The cheers died down.

“So tell me, what comes next?”

For a while there was silence.

Then I felt the tugging of a story.

“You were chosen by the Gods Above. Does this not make you the one best suited to guide us from this point onwards?!” a voice shouted at me from somewhere within the crowd. At first, I couldn’t hear it over the rain. It was only once the cry was taken up by many who were with him that it made its way to my ears.

Great.

I couldn’t deny their claim. I needed the authority, even if it was just to rein in the mob. Worse, I couldn’t say yes. What did I say? If I knew how to govern a city, then this wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately, I didn’t. Which was why I had spent the past few days trying to find someone else. Now that many of the nobles were dead, I had no idea where to start.

I said nothing as I continued to think. The silence stretched out awkwardly. The nobles started looking at each other like sharks during a feeding frenzy, as if smelling an opportunity. The peasants looked around wearily.

This wasn’t bad enough to temper their ambitions?!

“I believe that it is within my means to provide a solution to this quandary,” a familiar voice called out. I tilted my head to my left and saw Songbird approaching. I wasn’t sure how she made her way onto the palace grounds. She was dressed up in far more regal clothing, although the rain spoiled her appearance. Her red hair was both muddy and plastered against her head. She looked like a bedraggled cat caught out in a storm.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Songbird also wasn’t alone. I felt relief upon seeing Yvette and confusion as a large contingent of guards clinked their way towards me. They were surrounding an emaciated woman with sunken eyes and pale skin. She was clad in a gorgeous yellow dress.

“Introducing her Royal Highness, Princess Clotilde, the rightful ruler of Aisne,” Songbird declared, bowing towards the woman.

My eyes narrowed on her.

“Are you really her?” I demanded sternly, glaring at her.

She opened her mouth and then shut it again quickly. I suspected that she was about to say something unwise. Her eyes quickly darted towards the now empty plot of land where the palace had once stood. The woman’s throat constricted as she gulped. Eventually, she began to speak. It was difficult to hear her. She had to shout so that she could be heard over the rain. “That is indeed both my name and my title.”

I looked her over more critically. Despite affecting a regal bearing, there was a tremor to her hands. I didn’t know what she had suffered through, but I could tell that it was rough.

Fine.

I had made up my mind. I didn’t know if this was the correct decision, but it was better than any easy alternative.

“All the nobles, their guards, and administrators stand there,” I ordered and pointed within the palace grounds to my left. “All the merchants stand there,” I pointed to my right. “And all the peasants remain standing in the thoroughfare.”

Everyone hastened to follow my orders. None were willing to question what I said. People shuffled around awkwardly under my glare as the rain continued to hammer down.

“I want a count of how much of the administration was killed. I know that not all of them are present here. We will work with what we have.”

It didn’t take long for the tally to be completed. Even at best, over half of the ruling class was gone. I didn’t know exactly how much of a catastrophe that was. Trying to make sense of tragedies on this scale was… pointless. Everything just became a wash of meaningless numbers. That remained true even when it was staring me right in the face. Some things were simply beyond quantification. What I did know was that it wasn’t good.

Now, how to phrase the next part of my speech? I was going to have to propose ideas that made people unhappy. There was no way about it. I’d stick the unpleasant news between two pieces of less unpleasant news for the peasants, and hope packaging the shit sandwich that way was enough to curb their anger.

“Right. This is what is going to happen. All of you,” I pointed to the peasants, “will vote for the twenty people you believe will best represent your interests. I suggest selecting some individuals who can read and write. They will list all of your complaints and bring them to Princess Clotilde in two days' time. She will look over them and see what she can do. I will be there to ensure that she doesn’t play you for fools. I can probably tell if she’s not acting in good faith.” I looked over the crowd meaningfully.

Now, the part that the peasants wouldn’t like.

“She is going to be in charge,” I pointed at Princess Clotilde, “because nobody else can reasonably be in charge. I do not know how to govern a city, even if I can resolve this conflict. She will not involve herself in continuing the pointless civil war that is occurring outside the borders of this Principality. Furthermore, she will not spend time scheming and conniving. I expect her to begin the process of reorganizing the governance and reconstruction of Aisne.”

I turned towards the nobles.

“You will all do your best to assist her. You will toe the line and do your duty. None of you will have any higher ambitions. If you think to test me on this, then look at the state of the palace. There is nothing preventing me from doing the same to you. Don’t believe me? Ask the people with words branded on their foreheads what happened to those who exceeded my level of tolerance. They were there to witness it first-hand. I’m giving you a chance to fix this because you’re the only people with the required knowledge to keep Aisne from falling apart. Don’t make me regret that. It won’t end well for any of you.”

The peasants looked like they were about to mutiny at the very idea. I needed to find a way to placate them. I turned my attention towards the last group. Those I hadn’t yet singled out.

“And you,” I pointed to a small crowd of merchants standing gathered to my right, “will not price gouge people due to the ongoing crisis. You will price your wares fairly and take the current circumstances into consideration. If you do not, I will personally drop the value of your wares into nothing, and you will spend the rest of your lives living on the streets. I have had enough of blatant greed ruining people’s lives to last me until the end of the decade.”

Any goods that were needed for survival I would manifest regardless. I didn’t care how upset that would make the merchants.

The last of my energy drained out of me. I looked over the crowd searchingly.

Should I talk about guilt?

No, it was a bad idea. Everyone was guilty. There were no innocents in this tragedy. The nobles for their unrestrained ambitions, and the merchants for their greed. The peasants were guilty of starting a revolution without asking what happens after it comes to an end. Ignorance may not be a crime, but in these circumstances, acting on it certainly was. They were also guilty of killing people in horrific ways. If I judged this crowd, all of them would be dead. The nobles, the merchants, and the peasants. I considered that to be a tragedy all on its own. The topic of guilt needed to be discussed, but I had to do it without ascribing fault. How do I do it?

Talk about it in the context of the future.

“I’m offering an amnesty for the crimes done today,” I whispered. “Until midnight, judgement has no place, so long as you put down your weapons and work on rebuilding. If there are specific crimes you want redressed that occur after today, Princess Clotilde will be responsible for reorganizing the justice system as well. Do not think of abusing my goodwill. It is my compassion that you are relying on, and nobody else’s. Everyone will have a second chance. We will all work on trying to do better together. So please, don’t make me regret this. None of us are satisfied, but let’s not make a bad situation worse. Enough has gone wrong already. Let's try to make this right.”

I paused. There wasn’t much time before my working had to be completed. Was there anything else I wanted to say? Every word needed to be considered carefully, because it would be so easy for me to lose the crowd. I felt that there was only one question left for me to voice. It was time for me to bring this back to where it all started.

I stood up and raised my arms wide, palms upturned towards the sky above.

“So here we now stand in the ruins of your once fair city and I pose these questions to you once more. Do you find yourselves satisfied? Is this the dream that you aspire towards?” My voice bellowed out and echoed across the plaza.

The crowd was quiet for less than a heartbeat before I had my response. I felt the smallest amount of relief when my audience raised their voices and this time shouted no.

I gradually lowered my arms again as the cries of the crowd died down.

There was more that could have been said, but I decided it was wiser not to. The working completed. Behind me, above the ruins of what was once the palace, an illusion coalesced into existence. A crystallized moment of time. What I was hoping would be the end of the revolution. I had captured the event in vivid detail.

Everyone paused to watch.

It started from the first word I spoke before descending from the sky and ended with the final time that the crowd called out in response. That was when the scene faded into white smoke and began all over again. The scents, the smells, the raw emotions of the scene. All of it was captured on repeat. Unlike my first idea it was not a localized illusion trapped in a time loop, instead it was a recursive illusory display. It was a smarter idea anyhow. This way, people could walk inside the vision and truly feel how horrific it actually was. I did not know how long the illusion would continue for. I suspected that it would last for an exceptionally long time.

Hopefully it would be long enough for the message to become engrained.

“Let this be a reminder to all of us of what happens when ambition reigns unchecked.” I finished.

I took a moment to watch one repetition. My speech… hadn’t been the greatest. Certainly not worth immortalizing. But I felt that it would do after taking into account all the added details. Piles of dead bodies, men, and women with washed out gore staining their clothing. The crazed and frenzied looks in people’s eyes. The scene had an intensity to it that I felt was moving enough to hold up on its own.

I turned away from it.

Princess Clotilde began to organize the response. After taking a moment to talk to her, I did my best to assist. There was just too much for me to do. Between healing wounds, breaking up conflicts and putting out fires, I was at the very end of my wick. The flame at the end of my candle was soon to gutter out.

The sun had long since set when Yvette and I made our way back to the Fated Connections. Somehow, the building had not burned down. I dropped the pile of books in the corner of my room absently. I took off my boots and changed into nightclothes, then said my prayers and collapsed into bed. There wasn’t a single part of me that wasn’t exhausted.

I felt the angels hug me tightly as I slid under the duvet. And as I drifted off into the land of dreams, I curled up into a ball and wept in a way that I had not done for an exceptionally long time.

----------------------------------------

Dawn arrived and I felt drained.

After changing into a proper outfit, I padded over to the piles of books and started to drag them to an indoor table on the second floor. Since I was cut off from my abilities for the day, it ended up taking me several trips. I didn’t want to sit on the balcony. I didn’t want to know if the city was worse off today than it was when I had gone to sleep.

After opening the first of the books, I noted that it was written in a cipher and I couldn’t make out a word of it. I placed the book carefully in a new pile on my left. A pile for any books that I could not read. I’d ask Songbird if she could make anything of them, although I doubted she could. We would probably need a proper cryptographer to decode them.

Gradually, the pile grew.

Maude walked by. She took one look at me, then went downstairs. She came up with a steaming pot of tea and a cup and saucer not long afterwards. I accepted them gratefully and rested them carefully on a chair to my right. The table space was fully occupied with books.

Eventually I found a book I could read. It looked like a collection of the wizard’s notes. It did not surprise me to learn that the Praesi sorcerer was attempting to overreach and wasn’t following the plan. Rather than simply leaving the city, he had been attempting to find a way to correct the Warlock’s working after it had been deployed. It seemed that the idea of having a demon on a leash appealed to him too much.

I skimmed through his notes further.

It turned out he was one of four “apprentices” the Warlock had taken on in the aftermath of Liesse. Although, it wasn’t much of an apprenticeship. He was required to assist the Warlock. Providing assistance ended up translating into performing menial chores. In exchange, he was allowed to observe the Warlock perform magic. There had been no real teaching involved. The man had rather predictably been unhappy with the arrangement.

It made me wonder why the Warlock had taken on apprentices in the first place. Surely he didn’t need the help?

The Warlock had also allegedly needed to help rebuild the city of Liesse with magic. There weren’t many details on that process. The descriptions that were given made it seem as if the task was treated more like a complicated puzzle than a punishment.

“There you are,” Songbird sang in subdued tones. “S’pose you don’t want bad news?”

“Give me it anyway,” I sighed and looked up.

Her clothes were unchanged from the night before. However, they did look dishevelled after both her time in the rain and going unwashed for so long. In her right hand was a partly eaten pastry. Despite how whimsical she sounded, her eyes were bloodshot. There was a wild look to her. I didn’t know how long it had been since she had last slept.

“Nah, m’gonna start with something more upbeat,” she paused and took a bite out of her snack. “Nobody is scheming. Everyone is toeing the line. The remains of the guards have been organized and have been doing their best to quell the unrest.”

“Are they killing people?”

“Nah. They’re taking prisoners.”

“Good. What’s the bad news?”

“Some idiot went and vanished the palace,” she grinned at me as she spoke. “Now, m’not naming any names here, but could you think of anyone who could do that?”

“Nobody comes to mind,” I answered drily. “Why’s that a problem?”

I could guess, but I’d let her say her piece. She’d helped me salvage the situation, and I’d let her indulge her need for theatrics.

“All this year’s documentation was stored there. Population censuses, stock counts, you name it. Older stuff is in the Hall of Records. At least that isn’t also torched. But somebody turned everything recent into a fancy light show. S’pose you couldn’t tell me who did that?”

“It was a decision that I made in the heat of the moment,” I admitted. “Where were you two?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Songbird raised an eyebrow and took another bite. “S’pose it isn’t. First, Yvette needed to creatively incapacitate some Praesi fucks who didn’t know better than to wander around Aisne near the Hall of Records and cause trouble. That was when we were making our escape. They were prob’ly after the Princess. Funny thing, she was imprisoned there. Then all of us were hiding from the revolution. M’not a terrifying force of nature, and neither is Yvette. We came to the palace when we noticed the big display.”

There was plenty to unpack there. I’d deal with it when we weren’t in a crisis. For now, I’d worry about my friends.

“Where’s Yvette?”

“She’s sleeping. Yesterday exhausted her. Y’should talk to her. She needs to talk to somebody, and it can’t be me.”

That statement alone made me nervous. If Songbird was giving emotional advice, something must be very wrong.

I pointed to the pile of encoded books. “See if you can make sense of this.”

She took a brief look over them and shook her head. “Y’should hand that off to Cordelia. Maybe she has someone who can help.”

“Anything else?”

“S’not as bad as it could be,” she told me seriously. “Plenty of folk stopped fighting when the palace disappeared. Smaller fights ‘casionally start, but the remaining guard is quick to step in. Most folk who were angry wandered over to the empty space to look at your display.”

“What about casualties?”

“Deaths are still being tallied. There are too many bodies. They’re prob’ly gonna be cremating them all soon.”

That was about as bad as I expected. I was hoping for better news, but it didn’t come as a surprise to me.

“And infrastructure?”

“Much better, but also not good. A few fancy buildings were burned down, but we don’t care about them. Then there were some shops and two more granaries. One of the timber stockpiles went up in smoke and a couple of forges were raided. Lotsa buildings with partial but not complete damage. S’pose it’ll all be an issue later, but the situation is recoverable.”

It was a disaster, but not as bad of a disaster as I had expected. That didn’t stop it from feeling like a loss.

“Food shortages?”

“Nah. Princess Clotilde will cut back on exports. I gave her your thoughts on the subject. Funny that. She was keen to follow along.”

“Anything else?”

“Lotsa stolen weapons from the Royal Armoury. S’pose it will be hard to reclaim them. The palace was the biggest loss,” she glared my way again.

I averted my gaze.

“Good. It doesn’t make any of this any better but…”

“You’re glad s’not a total catastrophe.”

“Yeah.”

“Winter’ll still be rough. Lotsa people will struggle.”

“Hopefully we can soften the blow.”

Songbird said nothing for a while, then poured me a cup of tea and sat it carefully beside me. I had been so engrossed in reading that I had forgotten it was there.

“Thanks,” I accepted it gratefully. The first sip I took had me wrinkle my brow in distaste. It was lukewarm. I had nobody but myself to blame for that.

“Y’know, there’s nothing saying we need to stay. The city has its new ruler. Mission complete. We can just leave,” Songbird suggested.

“No. We stay. Not forever, but at least until Aisne is more stable.”

“M’not sure why you want to. The job is done.”

“The job is not done,” I snapped at her vehemently. “The job was never about putting a Princess in charge in the first place. It was about making the situation better. It was about helping people. That is what being a hero means. Not stopping monsters or fighting villains, but helping people. Pulling them out of a dark place and showing them that the world can be better. If you run away at the first sighting of the real problem, then you’re not a hero.”

Songbird reared back as if struck. The reaction only lasted a moment. It wasn’t long before the mask was back on. That hadn’t stopped me from noticing that it had broken in the first place.

Something I said must have rattled her.

She might have faked the reaction. I didn’t believe that she had. I hoped that whatever it was, she took my message to heart.

“M’going to help organize. You stay here for the day. Y’should prob’ly know there are guards posted outside. Don’t worry about them. They’re there so that people won’t bother you. Sounds good?”

“Wasn’t planning any differently,” I answered. “But you’re going to wash up then head to sleep.”

She looked like she was about to protest.

“No. You’ve done enough. Sleep. I won’t have you dying or collapsing on me,” I cut her off. Her mouth clamped shut.

Songbird wandered up the stairs, and I turned my attention back towards the books. There was a small pile of tomes on Trismegistan sorcery. I would turn that over to Cordelia. Neither Yvette nor I could risk trying to learn it.

I turned to another book. Finally, something that I could personally use. It included notes on the Revolutionary. Apparently, the man actually existed. Praes had only co-opted his movement after the man had left. There wasn’t much about him. He had been a scribe that lived through a series of tragedies before deciding that the whole world needed to burn. I found his method of coping with his losses repulsive. The information was useful, even if it was bare-bones. It was better than having nothing at all.

Reading them only made me feel even more depressed. It didn’t matter that Praes had stuck their fingers into the revolution. The pieces had already been there. Sooner or later it would have ignited, with or without their involvement. This was… people were just like this. Push them far enough and this was what they were willing to do.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. There was plenty that I had done that I had come to regret. It did come as a surprise. In my head, I had been considering myself an exception. I had been thinking that I was just a little worse than other people. Now I knew for certain that it wasn’t the case. Push anyone far enough, and we all go too far.

Yvette made her way downstairs half an hour later. Her movements were stilted, skittish, as if she was working her way up to something that she didn’t want to do. She sat down opposite me and looked weary, drained in a way I had never seen her before.

“Are you coping?” I asked softly.

“Does it ever get any better?” she mumbled back.

It wasn’t what I had been expecting her to say. She wasn’t chattering for once and that, if anything, made my heart clench.

“Be more specific.” I carefully inquired.

“I… killed a lot of people yesterday,” she admitted, averting her eyes. “Some of them I didn’t mean to, others I had to. I told myself I was fine at the time but…”

How do I deal with this?

I hadn’t been expecting to have to comfort a thirteen-year-old who had been forced to kill. It was another open wound, another hurt inflicted by this city. I had swiftly come to hate the time we had spent in Aisne. I wasn’t sure how to handle this, but I would do the best that I could.

“But now that later has come, all you can do is think about it and wonder what else you could have done?”

“I… I told myself that maybe some of them weren’t dead. That the priests could heal them. But I knew that it wasn’t true. I think that before the plaza I might have managed, but after I saw what happened there I started to understand,” she whispered.

“Keep talking. I won’t judge you. I promise. No matter what you did, I’ve probably done worse.”

Yvette looked at me as if she doubted what I said.

“No, really. I’ve done a lot that I regret. I once killed a child. There were mitigating circumstances and I justified it to myself at the time, but they don’t take away from what I did.”

Yvette scrunched herself up into a tight ball. She looked so small. She took two deep breaths and seemed to be working herself up towards continuing. Eventually, she opened her mouth and spoke.

“So many people there lost somebody important to them. All the people I killed had family as well.” Yvette paused for a moment. “They’re all going to hurt like I hurt. Does the pain ever go away?”

“From when your mom and dad died?”

She nodded.

“No. It just scars over. With time, it becomes easier to deal with. But it never goes away. It will always hurt. Always feel like there is something missing.”

“How do you keep going?”

“One day at a time.”

I stood up and dragged my chair over next to hers, then leaned in close and gave her a one-armed hug. She seemed uncertain for a moment, as if she was unsure whether she should lean into the embrace or shy away from it. A few heartbeats later and she made up her mind, then she clung to me like a limpet.

“What brought this on?”

“The fighting… the revolution. Everything that happened yesterday was just too much. I tried not to focus on what was happening… but then at the plaza.” she shuddered and rocked back and forth slowly, lost in thought. “The peasants do really deserve better. They’re just like us. They get angry and scared and frightened, and when they’re hurt, they hurt us back.” A faraway look made its way into her eyes. “So many people lost everything yesterday,” she whispered.

What I didn’t understand was why Songbird had allowed all this to happen.

“It’s a tragedy,” I agreed. “Why did Songbird let this happen?”

“It wasn’t her fault!” Yvette shouted out defensively. “She asked me to distract people, and my distraction… didn’t go to plan.”

It sounded like I needed to be much more involved in supervising Yvette’s use of magic than I already was. If Yvette was allowing her distractibility to kill people, then it was more than a minor problem.

I also was not willing to let Yvette just absolve Songbird of any guilt. I had kept my issues to myself when I was younger. Convinced myself that my dad had too much on his plate. It had been a horrible mistake. I wasn’t about to allow Yvette to make the same mistakes I had made.

Songbird had been the adult. She should have been the responsible one. When I had a moment, I would take her aside quietly and find out more about the specifics. However, I would not be pressing Yvette further on the subject for now. She seemed fragile, as if she would break. I would give her some room until I felt she was in a better state to talk.

“I think I’m going to be restricting your use of magic for a while,” I told her, keeping my voice soft.

“Am I a bad person?” she asked hesitantly.

It was telling that she didn’t disagree.

“You’re not a bad person, Yvette,” I told her slowly. “But… you did something that can never be undone, and you need to recognize that. Accept what it means and then try to do better. Don’t let it drag you down, but don’t forget about it either.”

Am I responsible for turning a child into a killer?

I wasn’t sure what to do about this. Was this my fault, or was this just the way Calernia was? It was a question that I wasn’t prepared to answer.

“How can we make this better?”

Some things you couldn’t make better. They stayed with you forever, always haunting you at the back of your thoughts. Right now, that wasn’t what Yvette needed to hear. So I didn’t tell her that. I told her a comforting lie instead.

----------------------------------------

Evening came sooner than I expected. I had remained indoors as promised. Songbird had slept for twelve hours straight before stumbling down and heading back out. Once she had eventually returned, she had filled us all in on what we had missed.

The situation remained tense, but nobody had dared to test the rules that I had laid down.

The three of us were clustered around a table on the second floor. We had been playing a game of cards. I felt almost guilty that I was wasting time doing so instead of looking through books or helping deal with the aftermath, but I pushed the feeling aside. Yvette needed something to distract her, and a small part of me admitted that I did as well.

“You’re just a spoilsport who doesn’t like losing you always complain about it no matter what happens.” Yvette chattered.

Yvette had returned to her previous state of excitability. Her malaise had not lasted very long. That concerned me far more than it would if she had remained subdued. I wasn’t able to assess how much support she required. For now, I’d give her as much as I reasonably could.

I noticed Yvette staring off into space every so often. I used to think she was just distracted. Now, I suspected that wasn’t the case. I wasn’t sure how to help. I was not equipped to be the mother to an ordinary thirteen-year-old. Yvette was not ordinary. She came with a whole host of baggage a normal child would not have.

The only positive of this situation was that all her other issues made the idea of explaining sex and relationships to her seem far less daunting in comparison.

“What was that!” Songbird affected an air of outrage. “That’s not so. M’perfectly graceful when I lose.”

“How is it you’re the only one who ever complains?” I asked.

I passed the deck over to her regardless. She started shuffling it.

“Besides, heroine’s don’t cheat.” I stared at Songbird solemnly.

Both of them looked at me dubiously.

For once, it was true.

The game continued for a while and my mind drifted. I wasn’t truly paying attention to it. The revolution still plagued my thoughts at almost every moment and with it, the sheer enormity of what I was trying to do.

“What’re you brooding about?” Songbird asked.

“Nothing.”

“That moody look you have tells me you’re lying,” she pressed.

I sighed, “Just thinking about everything wrong with the world.”

“Everything?” She sounded dubious.

“Yeah.”

“Gimme an example.” Finally done shuffling, she started handing out cards.

“The Gnomes,” I answered.

I may not have been thinking about them, but it was easier to talk about them than about my long term goals.

Not that I could really do much about the Gnomes. They were a problem that could only theoretically be solved. However, their behaviour was easy enough to predict. Try to improve the lives of people through technological advancement and they will kill you. In Calernian story terms, they were the Sword of Damocles. At least… I thought they were. It was odd. The Sword of Damocles didn’t usually drop, and this one already had. I wondered if that weakened its potency. Either way, they were an issue for the far future. They were not something I had a hope of solving any time soon.

“Can’t really do much about them.” She picked up her hand, then snorted in disgust.

“I know.”

“How’s about the Dead King. Thinking about him too?” she inquired.

“He can probably be killed.”

I wasn’t sure if it would be worth killing him, but I believed that it could be done. The losses would likely be catastrophic. I imagined that something like half the people living on Calernia would die in the process. It was a trade that I was almost always going to be unwilling to make. But I was confident that if push came to shove, it wasn’t impossible to do.

Songbird was taking a sip of wine as I spoke and choked.

“You planning on starting the tenth crusade, then?” she gasped.

I gave her a flat look.

“I think there has been enough disaster here to last us for a while,” I answered diplomatically.

“S’pose you were trying to fight him, how would you do it?” she pressed.

“Where I came from, the traditional story involved in killing the ancient undead monster locked away in the fortress of doom is to unite all the living good races into one fighting force and march them against him. So if all the living good races unite, I expect he will die shortly afterwards.” I explained.

In my mind, the Dead King was Sauron taken to the extreme. Far more dangerous and competent, but potentially the same story. Unfortunately, I was more or less convinced that this Sauron would come back if he was put down.

“Granted, Calernia follows an entirely different set of stories, but… he seems close enough to some of the stories I know to feel my old homeland’s stereotypical solutions have some merit.” I continued. “He likely also has his soul bound to something. That also fits the narrative. Traditionally it would be a piece of jewellery like a ring, but I’d bet he’s smarter than that if he’s lasted so long. It would almost certainly be something outlandish, like an island or the moon. You would need to destroy whatever it is if you wanted him to stay dead.”

“So it’s never gonna happen then?” Songbird laughed.

“Not any time soon,” I agreed.

It took half an hour before the conversation died down. It was late and shortly afterwards we all said our farewells. After saying my prayers, I made my way to bed. I was already dreading what I knew was to come. Dreams or nightmares. Memories of my failures, or visions of mirrors spiralling up in the sky. They drew me, called to me. One pushing me from beneath, the other pulling me from above.

As my eyes closed and my head hit the pillow, I saw pieces of a grand puzzle slowly slotting into place.

Soon, the strings called to me, dancing in my mind's eye.

The ruined city to the north beckoned to me silently. I didn’t know what had changed, but something deep inside me told me that change had come. That sensation warned me that not long remained until I learned why.

Soon.