“You need to start taking this more seriously, Kifeda,” Milima Ogeto scolded him. “These classes are designed to teach you how to protect Therania. You shall be her shield and her confidant. The hopes and fate of the Kuangaza Kingdom may one day lie with you.”

Kifeda didn’t respond, nor even show any sign that he had heard his mother. They were in a lower room of the palace as she attempted to train him in his duties. She had changed the room in the hopes that he couldn’t just look out at the sky.

It hadn’t changed anything.

“Can’t you at least pretend to listen to me?” she asked him, frustrated grief shining through her words. “I know you’re excited for next week, but this is your future we’re talking about!”

“What were you saying, Mother?” Kifeda said, eyes finally coming into focus.

His mother simply glared at him for a moment. He gave her a cheeky smile, drawing an exasperated sigh from her.

“I know that this isn’t the path you would have chosen for yourself—” Milima started saying, until the door burst open.

“Milady Milima!” the guard who had slammed open the door shouted immediately. “You must come immediately!”

“Lower your voice!” Milima bellowed in response. Kifeda snorted over the irony, earning himself another cutting glare. “A guard should maintain decorum at all times. What is your name, soldier?”

“Rajabu, milady,” the guard said. He was clearly struggling to contain his impatience. “You must come immediately. The king is dead.”

“What?!” she shouted in alarm, blurring through the room with her incredible speed. When her form resolved she was gripping the guard tightly by the front of his tunic. “What happened?!”

“We don’t know, milady,” the guard gasped out. “He was found in his bed by his favorite concubine this morning. His body is still there, awaiting you.”

Without another word, Milima triggered her teleport spell and disappeared. The guard gaped like a fish for a moment at her sudden departure. He noticed Kifeda still seated at a desk and blushed a red dark enough to show even on his ebony skin.

“Milord,” he mumbled before departing the room with the same alacrity he had arrived with.

the real Kifeda thought as the memory faded from the fog. Melancholy

King Jata had been like the father Kifeda had never known. His real father had died in one of the kingdom’s border wars, when Kifeda had still been an infant. He and his mother had never found out if he had journeyed to Hel or been selected for service by one of the Aesir. Battlefields on Midgard frequently became too chaotic to track, spawning Valkyrie crystals as they frequently did.

Those crystals could lie buried for months or years after the battle, until someone died near enough to spawn at one. By then it was typically too late to review the crystal’s logs.

Kifeda was utterly unsurprised when the next vision formed in the mists around him.

“Princess Therania Kuangaza,” Milima Ogeto’s voice echoed through the fog. The swirling clouds transformed much quicker now, revealing his mother standing over the kneeling form of his childhood friend. “Do you swear to serve the people of the Kuangaza Kingdom faithfully, and uphold the laws and borders of our kingdom?”

They were in the throne room that Kifeda had so recently been ungraciously thrown from. Therania was nearly a decade younger, only just growing into the woman she would become. The queen she would become.

“I so swear,” Therania said. Her voice didn’t so much as tremble, though her countenance was marred slightly by her red-rimmed eyes. King Jata’s funeral had been just that morning, but much was demanded of royalty.

“Then by the power vested in me by the late King Jata, may he serve faithfully in the halls of the Aesir,” Milima said, “I present you with the [Crown of Kuangaza] and name you Queen Therania Kuangaza. May all of Yggdrasil’s creation bow before you, and may you lead the kingdom to greater heights than ever before.”

The crowning ceremony of the Kuangaza Kingdom was a simple affair in comparison to most of the kingdoms of Midgard. It didn’t take place in front of crowds of loyal subjects. It didn’t involve elaborate oaths and recitations of numerous titles.

Instead a single, simple oath was sworn. Then the crown was placed on the new ruler’s head.

The light show that accompanied the ceremony was therefore lost on a full two-thirds of the audience present to witness it.

The room was suddenly rent in a fractured kaleidoscope of gold, black, and purple. The colors didn’t mix or blend, but stood out like windows into worlds where only those colors could exist. Only through shadows and shades could detail be made out.

The crown itself was the lone exception, sitting on Therania’s head unchanged. Its gold filigree overlapped the plush purple fabric and onyx jewels that adorned it. Just underneath it Therania’s face was washed in gold light to Kifeda’s gaze. Her upper body was split into no less than six windows of each color. The windows were in fact more concentrated on her than anywhere else in the room.

As he watched, Kifeda saw them split further and further, compounding the impression of a kaleidoscope.

He wasn’t sure, even now as he watched it through an Aesir’s trial, exactly how long the effects lasted. The only thing that was obvious afterwards were the effects.

A fresh and sharp sense of danger filled the room. Kifeda fidgeted slightly, and blood sprouted from his fingers. He found himself clamped tightly under a foreign perception. Therania’s perception.

He quailed inwardly at the monstrous strength he found himself in the presence of now.

“Please withdraw your power, Queen Therania,” his mother said from the dais, blood sprouting from her lips and tongue as she dared to move them.

The [Crown of Kuangaza] was an A-Tier artifact for a reason. It allowed the forcible activation of the Player System for any member of the royal family rightly crowned ruler of the kingdom. Additionally, and even more incredibly, it bestowed upon them the power of the Kuangaza family and kingdom. Even young Therania, only fifteen, was brought to the heights of A-Tier.

Like an indrawn breath, the power pinning them in place receded. Therania’s dark cheeks deepened in a blush, but her gaze remained firm. She didn’t apologize for the inadvertent wounds. A queen was above such things. Even should the Aesir descend from heaven, the Queen of the Kuangaza Kingdom would not bow or abase herself.

The vision faded just like the others, leaving Kifeda alone with his thoughts.

Alone with his grief.

He had lost the man who had treated him like a son, and the girl who had been his best friend in one fell swoop.

When the neighboring kingdom of Kolombazi had attacked less than a week later, they had found the source of King Jata’s death.

Therania had destroyed their armies single-handedly.

Kifeda was broken from his melancholy thoughts as he stumbled into a bright blue clearing.

‘How long do you plan to mope about over things you will never get back?’

Shock froze Kifeda to the core as the message scrolled onto his Player interface. Anger followed swiftly thereafter.

“Who are you to say such things?” he whispered in rage.

‘This conduct is utterly unbecoming of one who should have become the greatest shield his kingdom had ever known.’

Grief returned then. He distinctly and painfully felt the loss of the things he had once cared about.

A final image formed in front of him then. He saw himself standing over the corpse of the first monster he had killed. He had mustered up all of his spite, grief, anger, and courage before he went on this hunt. He stood with blood painting his features and dripping from the knife he had pilfered from the palace kitchens.

Not all of the blood belonged to the small desert cat he had slain. A good portion of his own blood mixed with that of the cat’s on the sands surrounding them.

Kifeda felt nothing of his wounds as his grief and rage burned brightly in his chest.

‘This is the face that the enemies of the Kuangaza should have come to fear.’

“What’s the point?” Kifeda asked no one in particular, the vision gone now. “For five years, I threw myself into dungeons and raids. For five years after my Player system awakened, I was the scourge of the low level monsters in and around our lands. For what?

I could never catch up to Therania like that. My progress slowed to a crawl by the end of it. My strength still nothing compared to hers. How can an ant stuck on the ground hope to protect a bird soaring through the skies?”

‘Grow wings.’

The text faded then, to be replaced a second later.

‘Congratulations on passing the first trial, aspirant!

Your determination and quick thinking served you well. You’ll need both of them for the next trial, the combat trial! Keep your wits about you, aspirant.’

A now familiar growl rumbled from behind him and Kifeda began cursing inwardly.