Everyone took their respective seat around the rectangular table centered in the conference room. Ranun sat at the head of the table, his back against the double doors while his eyes positioned forward to a curved wall of several tall oval windows, all but the middle two covered in orange curtains.

To his right past where the Colorsword higher-ups were seated, an enlarged map of the known world. Valoria being the largest continent, took up sixty percent of the drawn land, while Anfana to the east and Brontos to the south could be puzzled together to form half the size of Valoria. The water separating the continents wasn’t to scale, looking like narrow streams representing significant ocean divides.

The flags of Soucrest, from the silver first edition with a red sword as their emblem before it changed to black with the crest of a shield two rules before Nolan—the king Ranun decrowned more than sixteen years ago. Soon after Ranun became king, he united Soucrest under an orange flag, bringing Soucrest out of the dark and into the sunlight.

The light from outside barely crept in as the lights and orange decor inside already gilded the conference room a fair amount. It was the first day City Hall reopened and the very day he and Soucrest’s highest officials held their seasonal meeting.

It seemed like a statement of some sort. The fires couldn’t chain Soucrest down for long. The resilience it took in the face of adversity, not for Ranun but his people to bounce back, very well contributed to a fast, beautiful recovery of their capital.

“How is everybody?” Ranun asked the group. There were five on each side of the table, bringing the room to eleven individuals.

Simple remarks replied such as “good” and “fine.”

“This is what, our sixty-seventh meeting?” Ranun asked Symond to his left. He was the most stout of the bunch, opposed only by perhaps Ironhead who sat across from him on Ranun’s immediate right. Ironhead had great size himself, taller than Symond by two inches, but in terms of strength, Ironhead wielded one greatsword while Symond fought with two at a time. The Sixth Wonder of the World, a name well-fitting for the man who fought like nobody else could.

Symond grunted, speaking as if he hadn’t been a part of every meeting, spewing out his opinion whenever he felt like it.

He had been one of two people in this room to know about his condition; his curse.

The other, of course, being his brother, who sat between Ironhead and Mord. Gordon arrived yesterday, coming in from Steepcreek as he held the induction of Aeryn and a dozen others into the Color’s ranks. His brother looked as old as ever, but not a doubt entered Ranun’s mind about his drive.

Few worked harder than the Colors, and few Colors worked harder as Gordon Fall. He trained every day since they were both little, never skipping a day.

Gordon had also participated in every meeting since Ranun first took the crown, one of the remaining three. The next oldest member being the agent-general nearest the window. Faithful Jon, a title granted to him by the Church of the Square, as shown by the sacred symbol held around his neck. As old as Symond, he wasn’t exactly a fighter. He instead led a squad of priest-agents all tied to the Church.

Jon shouldn’t be in these meetings. He wasn’t a warrior, nor was he someone vouched for by anybody in the room. His only reason for being in here was that the Kingdom Summit demanded such out of all kingdoms. It was voted on and passed, meaning the prestigious priest had to either be present or, at the very least, briefed.

Despite all the reasons Ranun had reservations about Jon—and the power-grabbing nature of the Church as a whole—he would be lying if he didn’t credit Jon for his help rebuilding Central. He and his team of agents worked day and night to bring the city back to function. But he subverted meritocracy. He undermined the Order of Nations.

But so am I, Ranun thought. So why do I judge him?

There were many strong, capable warriors in this room. All beside Jon had a chance of defeating Ranun if he accepted duels like a true king should. The men and woman of this room could all make a finer king, but Ranun had enough confidence now to know that he was at least the right king for the job.

Ranun set his elbows on the table, folded his hands over each other to warm them. “There are a few matters we need to discuss. With the rush of repairs to Central and the stimulus provided to the people, we are way under budget. I need not point the finger on who we ask for such advice.”

Carter smiled slightly. As Gordon looked older for his age, Carter looked even younger, easily mistaken for being his twenties rather than thirty-four. He ruffled his Soulsmithed glasses through his short blond hair.

“A suggestion I have,” Carter started. The Soulgem in the thick temples of his glasses turned on to a glow; a slight pink mist rose from its shell. “A lot of Falcon Hill is still hurting financially after the fires despite our efforts to keep normalcy. To get back to budget, I suggest a tax on the other cities.”

“General or exclusive?” Ranun asked. General was a base tax rate applied to the income distributed to workers by their noblemen employers. An exclusive tax conducted after the purchase of a specific class of goods.

“Soucrest hunting season is starting soon,” Carter said. He spoke with confidence despite his… nerdy demeanor. While he wasn’t a warrior, he was well respected in this room for his mind, arguably among the smartest heads in Soucrest. “So, I suggest a tax on hunting goods. The bows and guns, the machetes and carving knives.”

“I don’t believe there is a tax for those two,” Ranun said. He knew too well of the sword tax. He experienced that two days ago. And many warriors did, and many warriors complained. “So, do you suggest we bring it up to twenty percent?”

Carter nodded.

“Raise your hand if you’re in favor,” Ranun said.

Unanimous. None of them had the need to buy those goods in the first place, so it was obvious to them. They, however, didn’t represent the people who suffered under these proposals, an issue Ranun liked to address from time to time again, but to no avail. Most of them are ultimately selfish. But then again, so was Ranun, in a way.

“It’s settled then,” Ranun said. Of course, as king, he had complete authority over all forms of government. This was merely a gesture but a much appreciated one. Minds worked better when they were together. “We install a tax of twenty percent to all hunting equipment. But that won’t do, and hunting season won’t last forever.”

“Why not just raise the general tax temporarily?” Captain Bolt asked, sitting across from Jon, furthest down on the right.

“What percentage would bring us back to budget for next season?” Ranun asked, eyes on Carter. He was in the process of writing down the previous tax suggestion. He sighed, taking a page from the middle, then doing math with a pencil, scribbling numbers down.

“Fifteen percent, and it would be like the fire never happened,” Carter finally said.

“Outrageous!” Mord, a Colorsword general, said with his arms crossed, hands tucked underneath the armpits of his armor. As Mord spoke, his jaw dropped a brown goatee, the only hair on his otherwise bald head. “We would have riots!”

“But if it’s temporary,” Ranun hesitated. Eyes turned to him, knowing that his words were the actual law. “We can be over and through with this. Otherwise, we can cut it in half and be done within two seasons, right?”

Carter nodded. “You’ll get complaints either way, but half a year will recover what we’ve lost.”

“Vote to consider, not to install,” Ranun prepared the room. “Raise your hand if you are in favor of proposing the fifteen percent tax.”

Only Carter raised his hand.

“The seven-and-a-half,” Ranun said. The remaining hands followed. “Now, raise if you are in favor of proposing the tax itself.”

Five dropped their hand voting nay, while Carter raised his, joined by Ironhead, Foxa, Bolt, and Kinler. A tie among his higher-ups. The eyes flipped back to Ranun.

“If not this, then what else do we have?” Ranun asked the naysayers. With no response, Ranun sighed before finally speaking. “The king authorizes the tax increase of seven-and-a-half percent.”

Carter started writing down the notes.

What is it like seeing through the lens of your glasses? he thought, eying Carter looking down. Ranun could tell lies through an expression needing only the eyes. But Carter’s glasses… they could pierce through the skin to perceive the anxiety of a beating heart. He could see how people really felt underneath—the Detective’s Glasses, useful in many, many ways.

“I suppose it’s time to bring up the hostages in Dormoor,” Ranun said. “They have two of our agents, presumably alive. Some complications took place between the two of us.”

“There is nothing wrong with picking a complaint with the Kingdom Summit for their return,” Jon suggested.

The Kingdom Summit had all eight kingdoms participating but had ten votes in total. Donta-Montal was ruled under one king but counted as two nations. It also happened to have the Church of the Square hosted within their borders, who also had an independent vote. There hadn’t been a vote in years where Donta-Montal went against the Church. With only two more of the remaining kingdoms supporting their cause, they could pass anything they wanted.

“The Summit isn’t until too long!” Symond complained. “My men need to come home!”

“Agreed,” Ranun said. “Is there a faster alternative?”

“We return the girl we took from them,” Jon said.

The room went silent. Ranun lowered his eyebrows in distaste for the man. “That is not an option.”

“What Symond did was an international crime!” Jon snapped. Symond turned red beside Ranun, growing angry. The Faithful sighed, showing his hands as if he had no words to say to the Supreme Commander. Ranun himself felt a slight sting of sourness boiling up inside. Jon continued, “We could exchange the girl for our agents back. Let him pursue his evil deeds. They too committed a crime, but these laws aren’t held against independents, but us.”

“You speak so brazenly,” Ranun said, “about sending a victim back to its abuser. Do not forget, Jon, that they committed a taboo, not only to Valoria as a whole but the very Church you are a part of. Sending her back, cuffing her when we finally freed her from her chains, we would be just as guilty as Aidan. It is not an option.”

“It is an option,” Jon countered. “We could actually negotiate—”

“It is not an option,” Ranun reinforced. “Think of something else, or otherwise, stop wasting precious time.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Foxa,” Ranun said. “Do you have a suggestion?”

“No, sir,” Foxa said. Like the Colors, she wore her armor as well, though it was a lighter, more comfortable set to wear throughout a meeting. Her long, solid black hair covered a good portion of her face from the side. She wore the same serious expression Ranun remembered from years ago when she finally climbed the ranks through the colors before landing her own joint agency. Unlike other agencies, her team worked on the battlefield rather than working out of them. “We could perhaps ransom them.”

“With coin…” Ranun said. Aidan always hated coins. Thought they were too mighty for such tiny objects. “I doubt it would work with Aidan.”

“Perhaps a threat,” General Fench suggested. The Color who sat left of Bolt, more reserved than most but talented with the blade. He was the second youngest after Bolt but had the more prestigious general next to his name. “We could demand it out of them.”

“Threats are an open invitation to conflict,” Ranun said. “Damn it! Why is it so hard!”

“Because we’re in this situation in the first place,” Kinler said, his first spoken words in a meeting ever. And they came out so mockingly that he became the center of everyone’s attention. His dark, Lycen skin and short straight hair stood him out from the rest of them. He came into the meeting the third youngest member, thirty-two years old. A legend when he was sixteen.

“Do you have something productive to add, Sir Kinler?” Symond asked with irritation. He always came off annoyed whenever Kinler came up in conversation. Perhaps it was petty. Of the few who stood ground against Symond, Kinler lasted a full half-hour against him during the swordsmanship exams. He never won, but surviving that long when most couldn’t even crawl their way to two minutes was impressive, to say the least.

“I think if you were a better leader, your men wouldn’t have been captured in the first place,” Kinler said.

Oh boy…

“Excuse me, boy!” Symond snapped. His fists clenched—Ranun could spot them under the table. “Most are wise to watch their mouth in a room filled with wiser, more experienced men.”

“Age does not equate to wisdom, nor does experience make you any less wrong,” Kinler said. “I read the reports, as I’m sure the rest of you have. The enemy spotted your scouts and promptly taken them out. If I recall, you would be four agents down if not for an outsider’s help, isn’t that correct?”

“That outsider is a part of our team now,” Symond grunted. “But go on, tell me what you have to say. It’s always amusing to hear a fool speak out of his own ass!”

“Where you lost all logic in your operation was the attempted assassination of a foreign leader,” Kinler said. “A task you no doubt understaffed, leaving it to a single individual. Who was it again? Mason? Gem God rest his soul. I heard he came close too. If only he had an extra hand, perhaps one of the three on the roof, or one of the three sitting around in the carriage doing nothing. Or maybe he wouldn’t have had to die at all if you simply saw how absurd the task you gave him was.

“Mason is dead, and we are already found,” Kinler said. His words hung in the air for a few seconds, and Symond was hardly laughing at the man he called a fool. “His Soulsmithed sword is lost, same as his body. Two of our agents captured, but only after Anemone had returned to the carriage. If you have simply forgotten about the assassination attempt, we would be in the clear. Nobody dead. That, Symond, is where you failed as a leader.”

The room looked at him in stunned silence.

“If I were there… it would have been different—”

“You weren’t!” Kinler snapped. “Mason isn’t Symond Whyte. Mason is dead; you aren’t. His blood is as much on your hands as it is his. Take responsibility. Otherwise, you are more fraud than leader.”

“Enough, Kinler,” Ranun said. It was too much. Symond wasn’t oblivious to hindsight. He, too, knew what went wrong was his fault. “We aren’t getting anywhere with this.”

“Awww, but I was enjoying the banter!” a voice said. High in tone, unfamiliar to the room. “The best part of the meeting so far!”

It came from near the windows, but he couldn’t tell where. Eyes joined Ranun in searching.

A white mask peeked from behind the curtain covering the rightmost window, joined by a figure wearing chain mail over a black outfit underneath. “Hello!” he waved. Kiba, the man who had captured Vason and Meek.

Foxa launched up to her feet, her hand on her Soulsmithed sword, Windlord. She pulled the hilt, blade following by a few inches before she checked Ranun’s eyes. Ranun lifted his hand to give her pause, then gestured her to sit down. The masked man didn’t look like a genuine threat with his posture resting on the windowsill.

Kiba stretched his arms over his head. In his hands, a long metal bar holding a Globe Compass, leaking Soulgem mist. “I’ve been hiding here all day, waiting for excitement and humor, but you went on and on and on about taxes. Taxes! You almost bored me to sleep!”

“We’ve been spied upon!” Fench spat. Everyone tensed from their chairs, fearful of the masked man who appeared so carefree.

“The enemy comes to us? Is that so?” Gordon growled from the right. “I say we take him prisoner, force him to return our men to our side. That will settle it.”

“Enemy?” Kiba said. “I didn’t know we were enemies. That changes everything!”

He pulled a crystal shelled box out of his trouser pocket, which he held from a string—hints of pink underneath the shell.

“What’s that?” Bolt asked, his torso turned off of his chair and his hand resting on his sword.

“From the looks of it,” Carter said, frowning. Never was it good to see Carter concerned. “It’s a Soulsmithed bomb!”

“That’s right,” Kiba said, swinging the box around on the string, swaying from left to right. If it ripped free from the box, it would ignite the fuse. “Think of it as insurance. Make a move toward me, and this building you just repaired… it all blows up.”

It was tricky to tell with eyes alone and the mask covering his entire face, but the little he could see out of his calm blue eyes confirmed to Ranun that he told the truth. He also wouldn’t get past Carter’s glasses with a lie either, as he could read the beat of his heart.

“Forget this building,” Carter said. “Half of central could be pulverized by the bomb. We’re better off listening to him.”

“Lord Aidan requests a negotiation,” Kiba said. “We seek the return of Vessel immediately. The body of the man we identified to be Mason Volgar is in our possession, as well as his sword. The two agents as well. All can be returned, and everything can be forgiven. Forgotten.”

“I refuse,” Ranun said.

Kiba lowered his chin, and his eyes stared upward at him.

“Wait,” Symond said, lifting his right hand to Ranun’s chest, holding him to his seat. “What are the conditions of the live agents?”

“Well,” Kiba started. “We had a lot of information to crack out of them. We tortured them, broke their spirits, and they eventually squealed. Don’t worry though, the most we took from them were a few fingers—”

“Liar!” Ranun shouted, spotting his eyes tremble slightly, ramping up more and more as he continued.

“You lie!” Carter said simultaneously.

“Excellent!” Kiba said. He lifted off the windowsill to stand at the head of the table opposite Ranun. “So it is true! Aidan had mentioned it offhandedly once, but I never believed it to be true. You can tell if a man is lying or telling the truth!”

Ranun said nothing. Was it all a setup to get a reaction out of him?

He played me like a fool!

“No, they are healthy, hardly touched. I can bring them here, right now if you agree to our terms.”

“I refuse,” Ranun said again. Eyes joined him. With all of this effort and chaos, he turned down the chance to return Vason and Meek to Soucrest. All for a single life. But that life is supposed to be my daughter now…

“That’s a shame,” Kiba said. “I suppose you leave us with little choice. We will tattle to the kingdoms of your wrongdoings!”

Ranun shook his head. “I don’t think you will.”

“Oh?”

Ranun adjusted his jacket. His hands sometimes absorbed some of the ash marks that remained on it. “You will return us our men, and we will give you nothing more but our silence. Don’t forget; you Soulsmithed a live human being. With the church's support and one other kingdom, perhaps Wargon to your north, we can eradicate you in a Season’s time. Dormoor has no sympathy to plead with. We kidnapped her, yes, but it is you who forced our hand in doing so. It’s the responsibility of the kingdoms to keep independents in check, to keep you honorable with Valorian tradition.

“It is you,” Ranun stood from his chair, standing eye level with Kiba. “Who is in need of our silence. Be wary with your words representing a country when you speak threateningly to a king—a king who can swallow your whole. Pick a fight with us, and Dormoor will vanish off the map for good. Return the agents to us, or else it’s war.”

A hanging feeling of concern and confusion sprung throughout the air. Few would ever expect Ranun Spring to threaten such a route. But he did, and he did so knowing it was the best option he had. A war between a kingdom and a country inevitably spelled disaster for the country, as most kingdoms turned a blind eye to those considered “third world.” It was why Dormoor could bully Dork for so long.

Anticipation. Ranun’s words left wonder and thought throughout the air. Perhaps it wasn’t wise to threaten a man with a bomb in his hands, capable of blowing up ten of Soucrest’s greatest warriors.

Eventually, Kiba spoke, but with a more transparent, straightforward tone. “Bold of you, Ranun Spring. Swear to me that you will speak nothing of our experiments, and we will return your agents. That is the best offer I have authority to make.”

Ranun nodded. “I swear.”

“Hurrah! Then it is settled!” Kiba said with joy. “That is what I was sent here to accomplish anyway. Have your agents back.”

A flash of light appeared in front of him. A humanoid shape, with life animating before them. Vason appeared. Another flash, and then Meek followed as well.

Symond had a sigh of relief. Everybody looked at least a little bit relieved.

Kiba swung the bomb by its string, twirling it to spin around his finger. “Be warned, Soucrest. One day, Dormoor will rise, and Aidan will claim his rightful property. Until then, Soucrest, I say—”

The string popped out from the box. Kiba gasped, lifting his Globe Compass. The globe at the top spun rapidly, and his body turned white. “Goodbye!” he finished before vanishing into thin air; the box flew onto the table opposite Ranun.

Ranun winced, willed his boots to turn on. Accelen’s Boots altered his body to feel as light as a feather, and so he pounced on the table, dashing across, sliding to catch the block while his momentum carried him off the table. His feet set, his body torqued, and he threw the box forward, smashing through the window as it hauled through the air before reaching its limits, halting in the air.

The room ducked into cover.

Ranun braced for impact, closing his eyes as his life flashed before him. He started thinking. He started regretting. I wish I could have embraced you once more, Calace… I wish I could have been with you more, my son… I wish I could have spent more time with you, my daughters; both of you…

An explosion.

He opened his eyes, feeling nothing more than a slight pop in his ears. Confetti rained down into the street below. The box clanked pathetically on the sidewalk while the strips of colorful paper fell slowly behind.

“False alarm,” Ranun said. “We’ve been duped.”

Chairs slid from behind him, and breaths collected. A fool terrified eleven of Soucrest’s best.

“Vason?” Symond tended to the agents. “Meek? Are you alright?”

“Yes sir,” they replied immediately, both soft in their voices.

Ranun’s eyes remained out the window, however. Carter eventually joined him by his side.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Carter asked.

Ranun nodded. The way he talked about the bomb, the calmness in his eyes.

“He lied,” Carter said. “And it passed right over the both of us.”