You are already a murderer of innocents, the Trickster whispered. You just have to accept that it is the price of change.
I almost said ‘never’ aloud. “It is not the right time.”
Serah was not easily dissuaded. “If not now, when? Each day the Nine Usurpers tighten their grip over the South and eliminate their enemies. They burn books, kill sorcerers, persecute the non-human, and convert more to their cause.”
I grimaced. “They have taken the reforms I made with Jassamine centuries ago and turned the Grand Temple into a kind of….holy cause.”
I tried not to think about all the people Jassamine and I had killed in our attempts to reform society. We had been able to do so because of the desperation of the circumstances but they had just led to greater evils. Well, not all was evil; we had ended slavery. Unfortunately, those very reforms had strengthened the power of the Imperial throne to the point it had been able to seize power across the entirety of the South.
“The Nine Usurpers’ supporters call it the Second Reformation.” Serah sniffed the air. “The empress has called for unity and any who disagree with her new laws are sent to die in her labor camps or to be burned at the stake. If we do not act now, there will be no one to ally with.”
“The people cry out for salvation.”
I think they both overestimated how many people would ally with the King Below and his wives. We were, after all, heads of an army of monsters and the figures mothers used to scare their children at night. “Serah, Regina—”
“We need to begin making preparations now, while we are at our strongest and they are still consolidating power,” Serah said. “The longer the Anessian Empire occupies its territories, the more legitimate its authority becomes. Not all people hate the Nine Heroes’ rule. Draconian as their laws may be, they are universally applied and fair. The empire’s rule brings riches to its loyalists.”
Much to my surprise, Regina came to my rescue. “Jacob has brought us this far, Serah. They are not the Nine Usurpers anymore but the Seven. Two of them have already fallen and gone to meet their maker. We but need to focus on destroying the remainder to achieve victory.”
That had been my original plan.
Things had changed.
“If that is our goal, then we have made little progress to it building roads and grain silos for goblins,” Serah said, using a slur about our Formor allies. “We have gained great power and should use it.”
“You would have us tear down our homelands to get at seven people?” Regina asked.
“Eight,” Serah corrected. “Jassamine, too, must die. Nine if we have to overthrow the Lawgiver.”
I tried not to snort at her idea of overthrowing the God of Gods. Mind you, Jassamine was the Lawgiver’s right hand.
The Lawgiver is no more or less a god than you, the Trickster said. Older, yes, but not more powerful. In the end, whether you can defeat my brother or not depends on whether you step off the path he has cleared for you.
I ignored the Trickster’s statement. “It will not be as easy as that, Regina. If we kill them, the empire will not magically fall. I have viewed the Southern Kingdoms through the divination stones. They have recruited many lackies from the worst of humanity. If we strike down the Nine, or Eight, then a power vacuum could appear that could place someone even worse on top.”
Jassamine and the Lawgiver were the evil heart of all this. If they survived, she would just choose new champions. But you couldn’t kill a god. The Trickster’s continued existence in my head was proof of that.
“Then what is your plan, Oh Dark Lord of Dark Lords?” Serah asked, surprising me with her viciousness. She was angry about something and I didn’t know what. Serah had been one of the least hawkish individuals in my inner circle.
Regina turned, now looking concerned. “As much as I am wondering where this newfound viciousness is coming from, Serah, I have to wonder as well. Jacob, I have been giving you time to formulate a strategy while you build up our forces but if not war or assassination then…what?”
What, indeed.
I looked away, ashamed. “There is no plan.”
You could have heard snow fall.
“What?” Regina finally said.
“I knew it.” Serah cursed, clutching her staff. “You’ve been vacillating for over a year now.”
“I was focused on other things,” I said, undaunted. “I had many plans at the beginning while trying to forge this land into something that might grow stronger and purer but the hypocrisy is not lost on me. If I bring war to the lands of my birth, how am I different from them?”
I clenched a fist, feeling a metal gauntlet slowly form from the shadows around my hand. Seconds later, I was once more wearing my demonsteel armor and hooded cloak. It was protection against my true self: the ghost who pretended to be a man.
“Have the courage to look us in the eye, husband,” Serah said.
“My eyes rotted away long ago.”
Serah narrowed her gaze.
The truth was I was sick of war and didn’t want to start yet another one with the entirety of the Southern Kingdoms. Even if we would win, which was a great if, it would be a conflict that would last decades and kill hundreds of thousands. I had already spilled more blood than any man in history through my use of the Terrible Weapons during the Fourth Great Shadow War. I didn’t want any more blood on my hands and was hoping, against hope, something would allow us to find a peaceful solution for all this.
Or a way to victory that did not require setting the continent on fire.
Peasant women hope a handsome prince will sweep them off their feet and men desire to discover a genie that grants wishes. Neither of these are things you should count on, the Trickster taunted. Especially when my brother is involved.
“People die in war.” Regina said, putting her hands on her hips. “Did you not make me a promise that you would hold the Usurpers down as I cut off their heads off?”
“You were considerably more graphic,” I said, remembering what she’d described as wanting to do to the Nine Heroes’ teats and balls. “I have not forgotten, though. I am…simply torn.”
“About what?” Regina asked, as if it was the clearest thing in the world to lay waste to a land I had once protected.
“Do you still harbor affection for that madwoman?” Serah asked. “Is the specter of Jassamine binding you from acting with the courage we fell in love with?”
I clenched my jaw, offended at the very suggestion. “Hate is all that dwells in my heart for her.”
“Then why?” Serah said, reaching up to my hood and removing my helmet. It revealed only shadows and cold.
“I have said my words and you have chosen not to hear them. I see in you both power beyond belief. You are the greatest mage in an age, Serah. You have absorbed centuries of learning in our time here and you, Regina, have taken an insurmountable task to heart. Yet I ask if you truly are ready to burn and ravage your kinfolk in the name of building a better world.”
I referred, of course, to humanity when speaking of their kinfolk. Serah had already proven capable of killing her family and Regina’s own family had been slain by the Usurpers. It might not have been the best choice of words.
Regina looked away. “My kin are dead, Jacob. All at the hands of this scum. Evil thrives when swords are sheathed in the name of mercy.”
“The kingdoms are already burned and ravaged,” Serah said, turning around. “You just refuse to put a stop to it. I will form my own force to invade them if you won’t. I expected better of you.”
“He will do better,” Regina said, looking at me. “After he thinks on it. In the meantime, I’m going to the baths and am going to drink myself silly before breakfast because, as a god, I can do that and be right as rain before the water cools. Care to join me, Serah?”
“As I said, nay,” Serah said, dropping my helmet on the ground and striding to her dresser. “I have other matters to attend.”
I reached down and placed
my helmet on my head. “I will find a solution to this problem that does not require invasion.”
“Let us hope the frozen wastes of the World Below do not catch fire before,” Regina said, going to put on her armor.
Knowing I’d been dismissed, I took my leave. The fish-like Formor guards at the door stood at attention when I passed but I gave a half-hearted wave to relax. I was uncomfortable with the prestige of monarchy, let alone godhood, and half-wished I could go back to my status as Lord Commander of the Shadowguard, but those days were past. My old comrades would hunt me down to the ends of the World Between if permitted by their empress.
I needed something to calm my nerves. In the old days, I would have gathered a group of my Shadowguard brothers and sisters to get utterly pissed on alcohol. Sadly, that was forbidden now. I could not taste the fruit of the grape or honey or hops anymore, so drinking was out of the question.
Sex was out of the question, with neither Regina or Serah likely to want my presence, and I wasn’t the kind of man to seek their attendants. All that was left was the forge to work at and even that was not much of a respite anymore. No, I was a monster who needed to be alone with his thoughts and there were very few places the King Below could go to hide from his responsibilities.
Not that I wouldn’t try.
Casting a spell of obscurement over myself, I walked through the halls of the tower without drawing attention to myself. I could not deal with my worshipers, subjects, or scattered few friends right now. Instead, I just focused on my surroundings and looked for some place to be alone with my thoughts. The Tower of Everfrost was one of the largest buildings in the world: surely it had some place I could go to to think?
I wouldn’t count on it, the Trickster said. It was as much my tomb as my palace.
Wandering out into the halls outside my bedchamber, I took in the sights of the tower. The hallway walls and floors were made of thick black metal, illuminated by green glowstones, with white-and-black banners glorifying the new regime everywhere. The halls were crowded with workers of a dozen races hammering and sawing away on new additions to the tower, despite the fact I could conjure almost anything I wanted within its eldritch walls.
This was to give the population something to do and take their minds of the fact they were now subjects to a foreign-born ghost. Others were supplicants who had come to pay homage to new King Below or hold audience with one of the many bureaucrats I’d spent much of the past few years appointing. They were the most frightening since I could hear their prayers to me, many of which were sincere.
I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed it all. Thousands depended on me and millions more worshiped me as a god, which I found to be insane. Even worse, they were the heathens and monsters I had been raised to believe were the enemy of all that was good and pure in the world. My life felt like a dream some days, and not always was it a pleasant one.
“Praise be to the Black Sun!” a black-robed Bauchan priestess spoke to a gathered crowd at the end of the hall I currently walked down. She had silver-white hair tied in a topknot and wore a medallion bearing my sigil around her neck. Bauchan were a gray-skinned angular-faced race with coal-black eyes, more resembling elves than either their Formor or human parents. The Bauchan were surpassingly beautiful to most species and possessed of great magical power.
This one was named Nyht and that she was a true believer in my divinity. I had made it a point to memorize the name of each of my clergy, if not my worshipers. “He is the guidance in the winter, the gift that protects us from the cold, and the blade in the night that slays our enemies.”
“Created by the old King Below, we have long suffered in toil and damnation, but the new lord promises rebirth and redemption!” Nyht said, holding her hands in the air. “Where once we have known starvation and poverty, we shall know bounty. Where once we have known suffering and persecution, we shall know glory! From the ashes of the dead god has been reborn his successor!”
I grimaced. I hadn’t exactly done all that much for them.
“He has done nothing!” an angry Formor among the crowd gathered around her spoke. “We have killed many of our brothers and sisters but when shall we lead our armies south?”
Nyht had an answer for him and I wondered if he was a plant. “Brother, I speak to you that the time of the Endless Night is coming! Revenge will be yours and your ancestors! For millennia, we have been hunted as vermin. Driven to the dark corners of the World Between, lest we be exterminated.”
“We will exterminate them!” the man in the crowd shouted.
“Yes,” Nyht cried out. “For centuries, we have known nothing but defeat, but the Black Sun shall fly over all nations and bring them under our sway.”
That got the crowd truly excited.
“Such is what happens when you do not write your own religious texts,” I said, shaking my head. “If I refuse the mantle of kingship, then the mantle will conjure its own monarch. Dammit, I need to figure out something to tell them. Set down some rules and let them know…” What? I knew less than anyone what I was going to do.
I decided to risk a divination in hopes of gaining some insight into my situation. I had never been a fan of divination since it was tricky business. Self-fulfilling prophecies and the desires of the seeker tended to influence the revelations. The future was composed of a million separate destinies that could be altered by foreknowledge or simple will. Closing my eyes, I tried to see if peace was an option or if there was a way I could avoid the coming war.
What I saw was death. Death on an unimaginable scale. If I did not attack the Southern Kingdoms, then they would attack en masse and drown the Northern Wastelands in the blood of their own dead. Whole villages and cities were massacred from the eldest Formor to the youngest cub. Where the city of Everfrost stood outside of the tower became nothing more than a graveyard of frozen bodies with all the hopes and dreams I’d had for the Shadowkind left to rot in the garbage pit of history.
I shifted my vision, seeing what would happen if we attacked first instead. What followed was equally horrible its own way, a century of war with millions of dead on both sides as whole cities were caught up in a conflict that neither side was strong enough to triumph over. In some realities, the Nine Heroes killed us. In other realities, we killed the Nine Heroes. In some realities, Regina killed the Lawgiver only for their battle to leave the world an uninhabitable ball of ice.
I tried to adjust the terms of my vision several times but it all came back to numbers and logistics. The Lightborn races would not bow to the King Below. The Formor would not kneel to the Lawgiver. The Lightborn races had a decided military and infrastructural advantage that could only be compensated against through horror and genocide. Peace was the only option, but our enemies did not want peace. The Lawgiver, Nine Heroes, and Jassamine all believed the destruction of the Shadowkind was righteous.
It was insoluble.
“Fuck.” I stared at my hands, ones that held the fate of the Three Worlds.
I had no idea what I was going to do.
That was when I heard a voice behind me. “Milord, we have a problem.”
Chapter Four
I turned around, expecting to see Regina or Serah behind me.
Instead, I saw a woman with long, silky hair and pearl-white skin, angular-shaped eyes, and sharp features. She was dressed in a sparkling white dress covered in teardrop-shaped diamonds conjured by magic. Both her earrings and bracelets glowed with supernatural energy, providing her with protection spells as well as constant contact with her spies around the Iron Order’s territories. An amulet around her neck sported a black sun, moon, and star in one symbol.
“Midori,” I said, speaking to my chamberlain. “How pleasant to see you.”
Midori Silverstone was a woman of mixed G’Tay and Gaelish blood who had once been the heiress of a prominent merchant house as well as a priestess of the Great Mother. Serah and she had been friends, which resulted in me lending aid to recover her when Midori
had run afoul of the Temple Archons.
The Great Mother was considered an aberration now, only to be worshiped in relationship to the Lawgiver. Those who worshiped her exclusively or even as the Lawgiver’s equal were considered heretics now, blasphemers equal to those who worshiped the Gods Between or the King Below. What I’d found had been done to her in the Grand Temples’ dungeons had chilled my blood, and I was far from squeamish. It amazed me she’d managed to rebuild herself.
“I wish to have your attention, milord,” Midori said.
“Did Serah send you to convince me to go to war?”
“I doubt I could do so where your wives could not. Besides, this may surprise you, but I find your lack of bloodthirst endearing,” Midori said.
“Thank you.” My people had worshiped the Great Mother to the exclusion of all the other gods. I had no idea what the Great Mother’s opinion, if any, was on her husband’s actions. Indeed, of all the Gods Above, she remained the most mysterious. “What is it you want?”
“Your opinion, milord.” Midori produced a small crystal from her pocket and held it in front of me. It conjured an image of a short red-haired woman with elfblooded features and conspicuous freckles. She was dressed in a rich moonsilver chainmail coat with a fur-lined leather cloak, absent of any markings or signs of nobility. The woman was riding on back of a Lesser Yellow Dragon across the Devil’s Sea. She would reach the edge of the newly expanded borders of the Iron Order soon.
I then saw a dozen dragons following her. Great Blacks. The Great Blacks were some of the most powerful dragons in the world and even one of them could destroy a Great Yellow Dragon easily. Whoever had chosen them for the chase, though, had done so poorly because they were not fast creatures. They did, however, have stamina and would catch the Yellows when they tired.
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