The Heir Announcement

The sun rises.

Attendants button the vest of Raum’s outfit and winch his belt tight. One goes to take his radio — Raum smiles and gestures her down, she bows in deference, and it remains hooked under his coat. He strides out of the changing room, adorned in threads so ostentatious it makes his usual digs look cheap, and is received by Aquila in the hall outside. A ceremonial sword, in an ornate silver scabbard, dangles on his hip.

The two share a smile. Raum pauses a moment to breathe out, breath in, nods, and falls into step beside Aquila.

Though the confidence in Aquila’s smile is reassuring, Raum cannot stop himself from glancing down the halls and through open doorways as they pass.

Is it paranoia to think Mason could spring, sword drawn, from any of them? Are his snap assessments of whether so-and-so servant seems shady or not just a little too much? Given nothing has happened, yeah, probably. Raum tugs his cuffs taut, fiddling.

They come to a stop in the wings of the balcony that Aquila orated upon yesterday. The area is crowded, with guardsmen up top and a lawnful of citizens chattering beneath. In fact, with the immensity of the crowd, not even an inch of the green is visible. A band on the pavilion plays raucously. As Aquila gazes with satisfaction over the turnout, Raum quickly glances to check that none of the suited guards are wielding a blade with the dimensions of Kingslayer. Indeed, none are.

Focus. Chill out.

Aquila nods a signal to an attendant and strides into view on the balcony. The guards blow their trumpets. All the bustling noise flips into absolute silence.

His Majesty speaks!

Aquila sets his hands on the banister, once again scans the crowd, and begins.

“It graces me that many ears may hear this proclamation. Hear, you artisans, you warriors, you frontiersmen and you scholars. You wives and mothers, you teachers and doctors, you servants and men of the guild. My people all, I ask today, to what does our nation strive? I will tell, we strive ever onward to our future, sovereign upon our own principles. Shall we bow to the dracht, or preen in our Maker’s bassinet? No, we shall not! We are the blood of Asphodel, and our souls are whet on rain and war. Where others flee, we tread — and by no power but our own wit, prevail.

“So we strive, that the free and valorous spirit of our kingdoms may never again bend, not to the most wicked or to the most driven of tyrants…"

A servant shuffles in the opposite wing of the balcony. Raum arcs his head up to watch them. Though they look somehow familiar, Raum isn’t sure from where. Discomforted, he asks another servant if they know that guy, and they whisper that they don’t, but also that they may simply work in a different field of the palace. If they’re familiar, it’s probably from seeing them in passing on the grounds.

Right. Well, nobody else seems to mind them.

“…Twenty years ago, the horizon before me was nought but ash. Now it blooms again with towers and rumbles as the tank engines pass. For the length and difficulty of these past decades, even the silhouette of the land around us symbolises our resilience. We have not merely recovered our old peace, but through innovation won a prosperity ever superior! What must this mean? I shall tell: the sun has shifted, and the shadow that our enemy casts falls imminently away from our lands. But has he not grown bolder, these months? No, my people, I shall tell. He has grown merely more desperate and cowardly. As with any panicked beast, what we see are his death keens as our jewel of a nation slips finally from his reach.

“And I shall tell you the fruit of his efforts. The Knight of the Archwitch, scourge of Lacren, Toreas is slain!"

Barely a second after that last word crosses Aquila’s lips, a storm of cheers and hoots rises from the ground below. Full minutes pass with no lull in volume or enthusiasm, upon which Aquila finally gestures for silence. The familiar servant in the wings shuffles off.

“Toreas is slain. Too, the last of his minions are known and extinguished. What remains is only the Archwitch, punished in the ruins of Sebilles. His impotent hands cannot reach outside it. Hence, I deem the time of his terrors now ended—"

Another round of hoots rises, and again Aquila must smile blandly and pause.

“—and our stability as a nation enough assured that we may focus, whole-heartedly, upon the concerns of our present and the pillars of our future."

Raum stares after the servant’s blank space, torn on whether his discomfort warrants sending a guard.

“It is by that ethos that I shall now announce my heir, who, upon my passing or abdication, shall become the one hundred and fiftieth monarch of the United Kingdoms of Asphodel."

—Showtime. Nevermind. Through the stark silence of the crowd, broken only by nervous shuffling, Aquila bows his head.

“My time cannot be infinite. Even without my presence, far in the future that may be, I have assured a continuation of the covenant."

All the shuffling in the crowd settles instantly. Oh.

“I have chosen a man, not of my blood, but of a soul so closely twined that I might call him brother. A valiant heart, honest mind, and humble faith are what mark his aptitude as the greatest servant of this nation — further, you shall know, here is the man whose diligent service has undone our enemies by the root, and whose own blade felled the Knight of the Tyrant. I name this man, who is my heir.

“Earl of Daversham, Duke of Morraine, Duke of Haverford, Baron of Lacreloix…"

Aquila nods to Raum in the wings. Raum takes a quick breath and strides forward on legs that, despite his efforts, quake.

“…Dauphin of Quilonne, Earl of Ullessi, Count of Feser-duqoi-Neman, Duke of Guellicurotte…"

Flecks of plaster sprinkle down to the balcony floor. Something creaks in the walls. Hold on, thinks Raum, eyes snapping wide at the realisation that it’s more than just his legs quaking. Waitwaitwait, Aquila, hold on.

“…Earl of Oronaux," the silver sword shings smoothly out of its scabbard, its raised point glinting in the sun, “and slayer of Toreas of Lacren…"

Raum steps into position just an arm’s length from Aquila. From the corner of his eye, he glimpses unrest over the grounds as people look questioningly between their neighbours, some too transfixed to respond; ‘do you feel that?’. Aquila’s eyes before him, in a perfect counterpoint, flare like a junkie’s.

“…Raum Whitewood!"

BOOM.

An artillery of explosions rattles the palace grounds; shrieks rise from the lawn below. Raum anchors himself on the banister, straining to keep his footing against a quake so massive, he feels himself sliding down the back of waking giant. Holy shit he DID bomb the ceremony, Raum barely can think, blinking through a smokescreen of loose plaster and yellow dust.

Despite that thought, his body yanks him forward to assess the situation below. Who’s hurt? Between the thinning ribbons of dust, Raum glimpses people fallen and people shaken and people screaming, but no victims disembodied by the blast zones. In the lingering mist, Raum’s heart jumps at the hallucination of a figure surging toward Aquila — but it is only an illusion, and another wave of shrieks rises. As Raum’s focus snaps back to the lawn, his throat locks.

A curtain of fire covers the sky from horizon to horizon, casting everything in red. The ground still rumbles with an earthquake, and paired with the crackling of the inferno above, the stench of the smoke, and smothering heat, the world has fallen into hell.

Raum looks to Aquila for a cue. But Aquila is too busy to even acknowledge him, jolting forward to the banister, his jaw set forward, eyes wide in a complex sequence of confusion, shock, betrayal, fury. Raum judges, Wait, holy shit. Actually this doesn’t look planned.

Sweat dribbles across Raum’s body, both from the heat and the nerves. What’s going on, where are these flames coming from, how can Raum help fix this? But just as Raum calls, “What—", a thick column of flame surges down from the sky and crashes into the space between himself and Aquila. Raum flinches back, shielding his face with his hand; the column dissipates like a discarded shot shell, leaving black scorch marks on the ceramic floor.

Aquila is presently a teenager shitting his pants. That’s all Raum can see in the brief moment that their eyes meet, before a roar a rushes down from the sky, casting up vortexes of wind, itself laced in merciless fire, course locked to incinerate Raum from the head down like a fingertip squashing a bug. MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE, scream his instincts, and dear god does his body listen, tensing—

“Halt!" roars Aquila, lunging forward with a wide swing of his sword.

Raum freezes. Then thinks, I’m dead.

He’s not. As he dares to peek upward, and break the spell of this moment’s stillness, he sees the finger of fire has stopped, only some meters above his head.

Aquila straightens himself, sheathes his sword, smooths his hair, and finally looks up again, focused. He strides to the banister and announces dryly: “I see the blackguard casts his final threat." Then scans the crowd, to confirm none are injured. He glances over to Raum again, checking his safety also, then looks upward to the burning sky and calls, “Does my voice reach even you, locked as you are in your palace of ruins? Mayhap that be another of your god-given punishments, to know the progress of a nation that you shall never again claim."

The fire in the sky crackles, and withdraws a slight like an animal reeling.

“We know your nature. It is betrayed by your very name, Tyrant. You are the wicked king, who strangles the souls of his subjects — but subjects you must have, else over nothing you may call yourself master. May I guess, you delusional relic, that you feel the last of your claims to Asphodel slipping? Are your servants gone, your intrigues extinguished, and even your entitlements of birthright now faded to dust? How perceptive you must be to your future. Lost of your prospects of kingship, even your blind eyes see what God has made you: A little wicker-man, built merely to burn."

The flames creep back, and back, as if frightened of Aquila’s words. Then surge forward, roiling, furious, the pillar above Raum retreating and stabbing down like a knife. Horrified squeals rise from the onlooking crowd—

“Halt! Halt," Aquila again urges.

—but again, it does not crash over him, instead jerking to burn another mark on the floor. Raum slowly straightens himself, breathing through his adrenalin, and sets his hand on his hip, as a ring of flames draws itself around him, licking up to his knees. Aquila seems to have this. Rather, oh god, Aquila better have this.

“I shall examine the rationale of this threat. Allow myself to do so without more interruptions. Very well; the flame does love you as ever. But here is the nature of your curse: all you shall touch, you shall burn, and all you shall meet, you shall kill. Even the dead you once abused shatter themselves before you may leash them. What, then, shall you rule but the ashes of suicides? Why have you not smote me in twenty years, but intervene as you have on this ceremony?

“I find, you must seek a rule, as you have been cornered to, made legitimate by my very mouth!" Aquila laughs. “As ever, what madness! What absence of reason. After the destruction you have wrought on this country, you fancy that I should make you the heir?"

All the fires leap and flicker to blue with an emphatic hunger.

Aquila leans away from the banister, taken aback. A note of caution enters his voice, as though he is watching a scales bob, precariously.

“Shall this be your voice, then, fires cast upon the unlawful?"

The flames recede and crackle dimly, as though the hand directing them stares into a deep pool of water. Then they bloom, licking slowly up to Raum’s torso, and spreading out from his feet like a halo. Every hair on his body tingles, his skin shuddering cold through the heat. Though previously the Tyrant had moved to smite him like thunderbolt, this time he squeezes like a slow fist, inevitable.

Even with that pressure, Raum’s mind locks on the image Aquila has crafted: pillars of fire crashing randomly from the sky, incinerating everything from pickpockets to conspirators to murderers to jaywalkers without any nuance or trial. Not even Ordanz could be so draconian, or so founded in paranoia. What would be innocent? What would set him off?

Oh god, oh no, and after finally securing a place in this country…

“That’s gonna make everyone crazy…" mutters Raum.

“Even you must recognise what you would become," Aquila continues. “If you have hesitated so long to use such means."

The flames dim to orange, but this time do not recede. Beams of gold and soul-white lace the fires, as they snap blue again, and whorl with unmistakable shapes of cities, seas, and continents. The earth shudders, and a roar like a thunderclap peals from the sky, as if declaring: So be it, then! I am a god!

It’s a transfixing show of pure dominance. Not even the lawn can scream or wail — even those natural instincts to signal help realise such things have no purpose in the face of this power, and only serve to draw the attention of a finger that shall slam down upon them. But for the sound of light weeping, every person here might as well be a doll, relevant only as props in the Tyrant’s punitive game.

The flames around Raum smear together, like a rag sweeping over a countertop.

“Hold," says Aquila with jarring calm. “I consult our advisers and return with our judgement. The lord Whitewood numbers among that; release him."

With a relieved promptness, the fire around Raum drops to nothing. Too, the lacings of gold and silver ebb from the sky, and the rumbling of the ground stills silent. Though the flames still cover the world like a ceiling, idly churning and crackling, under the blue glow, there comes some illusion of calm.

Aquila nods to the crowd, jerks his chin for Raum to follow, and strides back into the balcony wings. The instant Raum steps out of the crowd’s view, his knees disintegrate into jelly. Every nerve wants to dribble out of his skin, as he stumbles behind Aquila, covered in sweat and struggling to breathe through his panic.

He’s not the only one with this reaction. The servants they pass huddle together in little pairs or groups, curled in and whispering, while the guards strain with hard grips on their weapons, their postures and expressions kept stable only by a discipline trained up over years. Still, gazes fall on Raum and Aquila unilaterally, all rife with question and expectation: What do we do?

Feeling the fear behind this question, Raum forces his neck straight, breath even, and gait marginally more steady. If people are going to look to him for leadership, his own fear must take a back seat. Maintaining this pretence of strength is difficult, though, as Raum glances forward to Aquila for his own reassurance, and finds only a look of quiet, strained dread.

Aquila instructs a servant to assemble the council and advises he’ll join them shortly. A second servant, at his command, opens the heavy wooden door to a side office.

Aquila and Raum enter. With this moment of privacy, before the door even finishes closing, Raum slackens his shoulders and urges the question: “What do we do?"

Aquila hoists himself to sit on a table, his back to Raum. Blue light from the window plays over his feathers, strobing gently as the flames dance.

The door thooms shut.

Aquila glances over his shoulder, hand over his mouth.

And he laughs, drawing his hand down, revealing a gleeful smile. “I might propose you applaud my pyrotechnics. Ahah. Tahaha, haha, hahakkthhahaha!"