33.

Angkou, capital of Hesia, center of the world

To call the capital large was an understatement. It sprawled from horizon to horizon, grids of cream-colored stone buildings and bustling streets seemingly endless. A huge river cut the city into two halves, so wide and calm that it could easily have been mistaken for a lake—one end flowing west to the ocean, one end culminating with the moat that surrounded the royal castle and spread like spiderwebs into the canals that lined the city. Whoever had chosen to put all the arriving gates on the top of a hill overlooking it had known exactly what they were doing. It was impossible to deny that this was the center of the entire continent.

Dominic walked down the hill, passing by lines of hawkers trying to sell him souvenirs. Aster stuck by his side, staring in a daze. The sheer scale of everything—even the annoying peddlers trying to empty their purses—made Helwin look like the countryside.

“Wow, brother, what’s that?” Aster said, pointing towards a stand selling wooden statuettes. Some were tiny versions of the viscount’s castle, others mimicking different monuments that they hadn’t seen yet. The one the boy was gesturing towards, though, was a monkey figurine, the creature sitting on its hind end, looking mischievous.

“It’s…ugly,” Dominic replied. It really was. The eyes were weirdly carved and the mouth was teethy and open obnoxiously big.

“I wonder if they have monkeys here?” Aster said.

There was nothing like that in Helwin, but they’d traveled over halfway across the continent to get to the capital. The environment was totally different than it was by the shore. And judging by the hundreds of tiny presences Dominic was picking up outside and wandering between the stalls, there were definitely monkeys.

Aster pulled Dominic’s sleeve as he spotted a stand selling candied fruits.

“Look,” he said. “You like sweets, don’t you?”

“What? No, I—”

“Two, please!”

The stand owner, a short, elderly man, smiled as he received the order.

“That’ll be four coppers, boy,” he said.

Aster handed him the money, and then picked up two sticks skewered with candied strawberries.

“Thanks, old man!”

“Come again.”

He handed one to Dominic, who just stared incredulously at it, having been completely ignored.

They both bit into the snack. It was sweet and refreshing, not too heavy despite the sugar coating. Aster made some strange noises as he enjoyed it, his mouth completely stuffed from having eaten the top strawberry in one bite.

“Hrngph?” the boy exclaimed, stopping and looking down suddenly.

A monkey, tan colored with big eyes, had appeared and grabbed onto the hem of his clothes. It had spotted the food in his hands and likely judged him an easy target.

“Wh-what does it want?” he asked, hurriedly gulping down the last of his bite.

“Your snack,” Dominic replied.

“What?! No, you can’t have it! Shoo!”

The monkey didn’t budge despite the gentle nudge Aster gave it with his foot.

“Please go away!” he pleaded. “I don’t want to kick you!”

Dominic narrowed his eyes as he glared down at the creature.

“Shoo,” he muttered.

The monkey froze up like ice, then bolted immediately, fleeing into the cracks between the stalls and disappearing in a blur. Aster glanced up at him with a look of doubt.

“What did you just do?”

“Nothing.”

“Brother.”

“Didn’t you want the monkey to leave?”

Aster bit into the next strawberry, unpersuaded, but eventually let it go.

“Do you want to look around for a bit?” Dominic asked, changing the subject. The area surrounding the gates was filled with markets and stalls, many already up and running despite the early time of day, some still in the process of being set up.

“I want to talk to the king as quickly as possible, but I can meet you back here,” he said.

“Okay,” Aster agreed. “Your audience is the reason we’re here, so take care of what you came for.”

“Is the allowance Thelo gave you enough?”

He snorted.

“More than enough. I’d have to try in order to spend it all.”

Somehow Dominic felt like the boy would still, somehow, end up spending it all. He ignored the fleeting thought and just nodded.

“Alright,” he said. “I’ll come find you when I finish.”

Aster waved as they parted. He made his way down from the hill, heading towards the conspicuous silhouette of the giant royal castle in the distance.

The guards at the gate were reasonably wary of him as he approached—a lone man, no servants, no carriage, walking on foot to the entrance—until he took the invitation out of his sleeve and handed it to them. Their attitude changed dramatically, and, ignoring the stares he was getting from the people on the street, he calmly walked into the estate.

The gates shut smoothly behind him, without even a sound from their hinges. A butler with dark skin and silver hair greeted him, bowing.

“I was informed of your audience,” he said. His voice was deep and baritone. “I will lead you to the location.”

Dominic simply nodded to him.

“Please.”

They continued slowly down a long path lined with stone statues of guard animals, which stretched all the way to the castle. There were dogs, bears, huge wildcats, and intermittently other creatures that were foreign to him. Deer with teeth like a carnivore’s. Elephants with four tusks. Something that looked like a giant, armored lizard.

Dominic opened his mouth to ask about them, only to realize suddenly that the butler was no longer around. He glanced behind him, but there was nobody. The empty path only stretched back towards the gates. The trees and statues of the garden stood proudly alone. Around him was the smell of trees and stone and the occasional signature of an animal—no sign that anyone had left him, little sign that anyone had even been there to begin with.

There was silence as Dominic turned and stared at the front door to the castle in the distance, the path before him bare. Yeah, that was right. It had been silent the whole way. Why hadn’t he noticed? He had thought that it fit the aura of the royal castle for everything quiet inside, but it shouldn’t have been. There were busy streets just beyond the gate. He could detect the presences of animals wandering the gardens. The trees were being blown in the breeze. Yet there had been nothing. All of it had been plugged, suppressed by something greater.

Dominic didn’t tear his gaze from the big, black wood doors at the end of the path. This was the power of the king’s mana. Oppressive and ubiquitous. Nearly scentless, like mid morning, or the last traces of dew. Even though he’d walked straight into it, even though it was everywhere, he had almost failed to recognize it at all because he’d never met mana so intricately woven before. Mana usually came off of a person like a cloud—murky and opaque.

The king’s was architecture. A complex magic lattice extended over the landscape like scaffolding. Minute invisible corridors, doors and latches opening and closing meticulously, stretched over the entire castle, creating a network of pathways for mana to flow through. The thread-like highways shot over the walls and extended into the city, mingling into the marketplaces, propping themselves against every street and corner. The entirety of the capital was woven into this magical tapestry that not a single soul outside seemed to be aware of. Even Dominic had missed it.

Suddenly, all the latches in the estate unlocked. The doors plugging the invisible pathways flew open, mana flowing through in a controlled, tumultuous flood.

It hit him all at once. Something like twilight, like nighttime. Like the last streaks of purple as day bids goodbye, barely holding onto a drop of color in a deep, blue sky. Dreaming of comets and meteor showers. Dreaming of a good night’s sleep, out on the lawn, grass tickling the tops of your ears, a cool breeze ruffling your robes, just barely keeping you awake as you start to drift off in the darkness. Dreaming that this imaginary moment can last forever.

Dominic stared forward, his gaze fixed on those big, black doors. How lonely they looked, despite their grandeur. How strange it was to think that the monarch’s mana felt a little melancholy.

He took a slow breath and continued down the path.

He approached the door and put his hands on it. Two smooth wells had been dug into the wood, worn away from hundreds—maybe thousands—of years of use. Centuries of palms had been placed here, time and time again, to open the way to the castle. And he was just as significant, or insignificant, as all of them.

He pushed. With a deep groan, the doors swung slowly open, and Dominic stepped inside.

The corridors were wide and tall, their ceilings arching high above his head. A light wind blew through, ruffling his hair. He glanced around. It was impossible to know where to go from there. He normally would follow the scent of the mana the host gave off, but the king’s was everywhere.

Suddenly, the doors creaked ominously behind him. They snapped shut, sending a gust of tumultuous air through the hallway.

Dominic looked back and reached his hand out to touch the wood. Inside, he could make out the magic circuits, pulsing with the energy that had been injected into them—locked tight. He could’ve broken it if he tried. But he hadn't come here to turn back.

The host wasn't telling him to leave, but to stay. Dominic turned around and headed down the hallway.

The castle was expansive, and, more than anything, empty. There were no servants. The furnishings were minimal, pushed to the side as if inconsequential. The glass of the huge, arched windows was so clean that they could have been mistaken for being open.

The king’s mana was everywhere, those intricately woven lattices criss-crossing the halls and parting across his skin as he stepped through them.

Suddenly, from multiple locations above, he felt the pathways opening, surging, letting magic through. He looked up. Out of thin air, pointed shards of ice appeared, hovering for a moment before abruptly shooting down towards Dominic.

He dodged to the side and raised his arm. One whizzed past his head and another pinged off his wrist, the halinium glove keeping it from piercing his skin. But they kept coming. He stepped back, wondering if just making some space would help. Some impacted the stone floor at his feet, impaling themselves there and staying. But from above, new ones continued forming, and they followed him.

The spears of ice were fast, and they hit hard. He could dodge them fairly well since their target seemed to be fixed to his head only, and blocked with his gloves when he couldn’t. But his arms were starting to sting. The halinium could keep them from cutting him, but it only lessened the impact force by a fraction.

Dominic continued to move backwards, keeping from staying in one spot for too long. He felt another point of mana gathering behind him, and he whipped around to block what he expected would come—but instead of a shard of ice materializing, a tiny block of it appeared behind foot. His heel immediately jammed on it.

Dominic clenched his jaw as he felt himself lose his balance over such a tiny thing. He rolled backwards and came to stop, but the ice magic hadn’t paused for him. A shard smashed into the top of his head before he could dodge it, shattering and sending a dense pulse of pain through him.

He raised his hand to block the next one, the furrow between his eyebrows growing deeper.

What kind of king was this irritating? Attacking in such petty ways? He obviously wasn't actually trying to hurt Dominic to any major extent, but he was still going out of his way to inconvenience him.

“If you’re testing me,” he mumbled, pushing himself to his feet and swiping another shard away with the back of his hand. “Then please get to the point.”

He clapped his hands together. The sharp sound snapped and echoed through the huge hall. A thick wave of his mana was released with it, cascading over the spines of ice that were still charging at him, stopping them in their tracks. They froze midair, then clattered lifelessly to the floor. For someone who specialized in brute force, disabling magic was a simple task. He just had to overload the circuits and connections fueling it with his own mana and burn them out. If the king had really been trying to hurt him, the ice would have been better protected. Instead, the shattered remains flaked away into nothing with no signs of any forming again.

Perhaps the king had been waiting all along for him to react like that, but no voice rang out to explain it, nor to greet him. Silence stretched through the vast, empty corridor.

The mana began to move again. He felt it around him, invisible but impossible to miss, shifting slowly, flowing thickly, gathering to one point and building up. He watched it, waiting for something to happen.

He blinked, and suddenly Dominic was looking at himself.

Amber eyes ringed in red. Black hair. The same dark robes that he’d brought from Helwin, the same halinium gloves around his hands and arms, the same gold earring on his ear.

A copy of him stood there, unmoving, staring back calmly.

It took a step forward and charged.