Chapter 188 - Fallen Crown

Virillius Augustus frowned as he gazed upon a bountiful, kilometer-wide gully from his perch atop an ancient tree. Gnaruhn’s Valley was packed to the brim with Kryddarian soldiers. Scores upon scores upon scores of white-furred moths patrolled air and ground alike, waiting to swarm him and his men immediately upon their discovery.

The hundred warriors he had brought with him were true elites, seasoned fighters capable of triumphing against the moths a thousand to one. Conventional wisdom dictated that it would have been easy for the shock troopers to break through the enemy lines. The command tent was only a dozen kilometers away, lying well within sight of the secret Cadrian encampment. But King Ragnar Unfrid’s presence ensured that any such measure would end in failure.

As the nation’s sole aspect, he was the one man that could turn the tides. Unlike the duke, his skill in close quarters fell far behind his other capabilities. A one-on-one encounter between them was sure to end in victory for the Cadrian representative. A larger-scale battle, however, was impossible for Ragnar to lose. There was no felling a man imbued with his spark. If they wished for victory, they would have to locate the king and launch a direct offensive on his position during one of his few times of weakness.

The sky made for an easy access point. Centaurs could fly much higher than moths; their feathered wings were more powerful than insects’ membraned counterparts, and their warm-blooded nature allowed them to remain functional well above the clouds. It would not have been difficult for the strike team to evade the barricade and claim the capital, but such a roundabout victory was sure to be short-lived. They would still have to deal with Kryddar’s armies, and defending a castle with a mere hundred men was nothing if not a pointless exercise in futility.

The darkhorned cervitaur had no interest in Kryddar’s conquest, let alone a conquest only in name. To him, the nation was an added bonus, its subjugation a means to the end that was its ruler’s execution. King Unfrid was his sole target, and his presence upon the battlefield assured that Virillius would focus his efforts on the valley—or so the Kryddarian royal assumed.

Three days after his men discovered traces of cervitaurian activity around the valley, Ragnar received a headache-inducing report. Duke Augustus had appeared in person and breached the gates that the ruler was sure he would ignore. Edelgrove, the capital city, was taken; its royal castle flew not the Kryddarian flag, but the Cadrian standard.

The king was annoyed, but not distraught. Though he had assumed that Virillius would not take the castle, his knowledge of the duke’s wily ways had driven him to prepare for every potential eventuality. His progeny had been long escorted to Paunse, and he had drafted a dozen different ways to siege his own fortress, each delivered alongside a plan for future improvement.

On the fourth morning, Ragnar set out with his men and prepared to lay waste to the capital city. He was ready to see the once beautiful haven completely deprived of life, for the beautiful trees that made up its forest to be dripping with blood and entrails, but there was no such haunting landscape to be observed. The citizens were still happily fluttering up and down the ancient trees, the guards were present, and the gate was intact. Not even the flag was as described; the Kryddarian banner was exactly where he left it, fluttering proudly in the wind.

The only thing that was missing, according to the bureau of intelligence, were the four officers that had provided the report with its stamp of authenticity. Again, Ragnar was struck by a twinge of annoyance, but he fought back the urge to scream at those responsible and marched back to his field camp.

Over the course of the next week, the Kryddarian monarch was forced to endure a barrage of harassment in a similar vein. His intelligence department continued to fail in their reports, and those that he sent after them, even his most trusted men, would always confirm that they had seen exactly what was described. But whenever he set out himself, the result would be the same. The capital was never taken, nor were any of the nearby villages ever under assault.

There was something fishy at play. King Unfrid was well aware that it was some sort of Cadrian mind magic, and that his men were just as befuddled as he. Still, it was impossible for the general and ruler to keep the seeds of doubt from sprouting, for him not to consider the faith and allegiance of his men.

Ragnar was a natural commander, not a natural leader. His orders were precise, but those that flocked to his side rarely did so for the quality of his person. They were interested only in his authority, in the power he held then as crown prince, and now as the king. It would not come as a surprise if they wished to humiliate him for their own leisure. Still, he fought back his pride and continued his operations, checking himself each time an attack was reported.

The harassment continued for over a month, a month that made him feel as if he had aged a century. Upon returning to his tent, after his fifteenth time inspecting the capital, he found himself so weary that he stumbled over to his cot and collapsed face first.

If not for the dancing shadows, driven by candlelight, he never would have noticed the assassin waiting in the corner of the room.

Summoning up his strength, he rolled out of the way before he was struck and drew his own blade. The holy sword, blessed by Rikael herself, cleaved straight through the assailant’s gut as he spun, splitting him in half and ending his life. Ragnar breathed a sigh and lightly massaged his head, but his relief quickly turned to horror when he unmasked the dead spellweaver and looked upon his face.

So familiar were the features that he wished to dismiss them as a lie, a false visage constructed for the sole purpose of ensuring his suffering. But alas, it could not be denied. The head belonged to Anders, his oldest son, and the heir to the Kryddarian throne.

Everything clicked into place as he cast his eyes on his bloodied hands. He finally knew why the men had all turned against him. When standing by one another, the two certainly did appear as would a father-son pair. They shared many of their features, and possessed the same sort of aura. But if asked to correctly pick out the royal and his heir, most would deem that it was Ragnar and not Anders that was the son of the other.

The younger moth had never completed his third ascension. He was only two hundred and sixteen years old, but looked every bit like a man with a middle-aged crisis under his belt. Ragnar, on the other hand, appeared not a day past twenty. If things continued the way they did, Anders would perish without the opportunity to sit on the throne, just as his own children had before him.

It was all a scheme, a scheme to wrench away his power—the one thing he still had—from right under his nose. And despite being completely unaware, he had managed to trump it. As a king and a warrior, he was driven by the urge to celebrate the attempted usurper’s death, but as a father, he felt only regret. He had refrained from relinquishing the throne because he knew that Anders was hardly capable of running a country. The boy was unable to separate his work from his feelings and took negative feedback as he would a personal attack. But even with all his flaws, he was still his son. The monarch couldn’t help but think that he should have spoken to his assailant before he retaliated, that he was wrong to have put the country’s best interests over his own child’s ambitions.

Clenching six of his twelve fists, he gently closed the young boy’s eyes and placed his head down next to his body, “Are you happy now, Virillius? With what you’ve done?” Then, and only then, did he finally break the silence.

“Very.”

A cold, empty voice came from just beyond his tent’s flap, its owner stepping through soon after. His weapons were slick with blood and fat, remnants of the king’s royal guard. The viscera was a sore reminder. The Kryddarian’s sentinels had died because he had forgotten to renew their sparks.

“He looked up to you,” muttered the moth. “Anders never would have fallen so low, had you not been the instigator.”

“And Violet would have lived, had you not refused to lend me your aid, brother.” The cervitaur’s eyes were even colder than usual, marked with a bitter tinge of hatred.

“That has nothing to do with this.”

“It has everything to do with this.”

“A more incorrect presumption, I have never heard.”

The king slowly got to his feet and brandished his blade. He was trembling with anger, twitching with rage. The more he thought about the cause of his son’s death, and the reason for his month of suffering, the more he thirsted for his sworn brother’s blood.

Still, Virillius made the first move. He closed the distance between them and delivered a flurry of heavy, one-handed slashes. The attacks were fast as lightning, completely invisible to the average soldier, but the king deflected them with his bare hands. Each of the limbs was enhanced by a shining bulwark, guarded by the power of first light.

The cervitaur’s weapon groaned each time it made contact with the moth’s defense. The standard issue weapon was far too flimsy to hold beneath the force of the monstrous moose’s attacks. Its solid mithril frame bent with every strike, snapping in half on the seventh.

Taking half a step forward, Ragnar drove three of his fists straight into Virillius’ gut. It was a heavy blow backed by a six-digit strength stat and further enhanced by his belief in the goddess of the dawning sun. The punches themselves were powerful enough to topple a mountain, and the energy blast that followed was capable of felling a range. But there was hardly any effect. The only thing blown away was the command tent, revealing the battle taking place around it and the barrier that robbed his ears of their distance. His target, the moose, stood strong. He didn’t keel or bleed; the blow was taken as easily as any other.

The moth found the three fists used in the assault battered and broken. Cracks ran all the way up the bones in his arms, fracturing them in a dozen places apiece and leaking blood from his torn muscle and skin. The outcome was not a testament to the cervitaur’s durability, but rather the effect of a spell of which the monarch had been unaware, a passive skill that would reflect half of the damage dealt by any physical attack, learned by certain types of hemomancers upon the acquisition of their two thousandth levels.

Unbothered, Ragnar continued his assault. Wreathing his sword in the searing light of his goddess, he drove the blade towards Virillius’ midsection—the weakest part of any centaur’s body. He swung his legs and twisted his hips, putting all the power that he could muster into the spinning strike.

The attack was met with one of the moose’s own. Virillius smashed his shieldlance into the king’s sword and drove it into the ground. The earth cracked and collapsed, forming a haphazard crater beneath them. So powerful was the accompanying shockwave that it blew away the noise-isolating barrier, exposing them to the battlefield where the Cadrians and Kryddarians clashed.

The moth raised his holy sword for another attack, but a hoof caught him in the chest, shattering his ribs and piercing his lungs. Two spears of hardened blood passed through his gut soon after, sourced from the halves of Virillius’ broken weapon.

And then, a shieldlance through the chest. Destroying his heart.

His health hit zero as his organs exploded.

His demise should have been imminent.

But he was the aspect of first light. Death would not come to him so easily.

The sun’s searing rays burst from his wound, restoring his broken entrails and igniting a spark within his soul. Power burst through his body, filling every nook and cranny, from his toes to his still broken fingers. It was not the might of undeath, but rather a negation of the concept of sunset. It didn’t matter how badly he was broken. He would only continue to rise. Just like the army that he had immediately marked, upon the destruction of his tent.

He could not bring back those that had fallen prey without his influence, but those that still lived, prior to the application of his ability, became functionality immortal, until the sun next dipped beneath the horizon. But that was another twenty hours off, and he would simply have to mark his army again to reapply the effect. There was no cost, only the need to gaze upon those that he deemed worthy of life.

That was why his army was feared. It was unstoppable; his men could only be killed at dusk.

As one of the ability’s past beneficiaries, Virillius knew that well. Just as he knew the weaknesses that came with its strengths.

The cevitaur tore his shieldlance out of the kryddarian’s chest with a downwards cleave, destroying his bowels and forcing another revival. Twisting his chest, he evaded the blade aimed for his ribs, and with two quick strokes, removed the other man’s arms and wings. Another slash severed his legs, forcing him to fall to the ground with his back against the cratered soil.

The king’s crown rolled as Virillius crushed his head, again and again with his hooves. Each time, only the fatal wound was cured. It was nothing but torture, inflicting pain for pain’s sake. It was a fate the Kryddarian king had placed upon himself. The continued burning of his ashen wick.

“Why?” He was only allowed to speak when the moose finally let up, his voice a bloodied croak. “Why did you do this, Virillius? You brought my son here. Just so you could watch as I slew him.”

“You went out of your way to ignore my desperate pleas. So that I would be forced to watch as my wife died in my arms.” Virillius spoke slowly, lacing each word with the grudge he had festered for a decade.

The cervitaur’s reptilian bride had met her end at the hands of a disease known as Mana Consumption. It was a deadly ailment that would affect a few in each nation every year, one that would eat away at the victims' insides over the course of six grueling months, slowly but surely killing them as their immune systems waged war against their magic circuits, rejecting them as they would a transplant. The disease’s cause was unknown, but its cure was not. Its removal required only a blessing from a priest whose level was in excess of a thousand.

Such holy men were scant in number; Ragnar and the wandering harbinger were the only two that Virillius knew, and it was impossible, even for a royal, to intentionally seek the latter.

“I loved her, Ragnar.”

“I know.”

“Then why?”

There was a brief moment of silence as the two sworn brothers exchanged fierce stares, the moth eventually breaking it with a laugh.

“You’ll never believe me.”

“Say it.”

A hoof was applied to his chest, the pressure forcing the air out of the Kryddarian’s lungs.

“I never knew.”

“I sent hundreds of letters and envoys. You even repl—”

“And I received none, Virillius. Not a single one.”

Virillius looked at him again, before slowly lifting his foot and stepping away. Without rallying his men, without speaking another word, he took to the sky and turned towards the Cadrian border.

It was time for another crown to fall.