Foxed

The lords return from their dinner to the throne room. They are suspicious, and curious, to see Renard waiting for them, and question his absence from dinner.

Renard ignores the question and announces that he finds the coalition’s manner quite bold. Fairly, he may not be a King with the entitlement to dictate policies on behalf of Lacren, but he is a man with a moral conscience who knows opportunity when he sees it. He requests that the coalition trust Lacren with the confinement of the Iron King, who the coalition’s blades cannot kill, hence cannot simply be exterminated, that he be used as a test subject into the reversal of soul rot.

The room goes silent.

The lords recognise quickly that they are in an awkward position. One of them questions Lacren’s ability to feasibly pursue such research.

Pleione steps forward from her bystander position to volunteer her expertise. She advises the room that the idea is not without basis, and that she personally would be interested in heading such work, regardless of under whose purview the Iron King winds up.

The lords contemplate. With Pleione’s backing, none can inherently reject the idea and in fact, none truly wish to. The prospect of reversing soul rot — or even just conducting more generalised research on ghouls with a shaman’s influence present — is an objectively good and desirable cause for everyone in the room. For the entire human race, rather. The magnitude of it is too great to ignore.

However, the proposition does remove any justification for the lords to conquer Lacren. Lacren has just voiced an extremely potent way for the nation to be valuable to all kingdoms on its own merit; conquering them and forcing them to conduct the policies they were already enacting is now not only ignoble, but treacherous. The only way they can justifiably say that they should head the research is if they assert themselves as more able to conduct it than Lacren. But, being that the kingdoms have all aligned themselves as allies against a force of mortal evil, honour would demand they again collaborate against the evil, by aiding Lacren on whatever dimension makes their laboratories inferior.

Only the question of whether Lacren would actually conduct such research remains that could stoke opposition. But that is the kind of question that answers itself with trust and time, and if the outsiders do not trust them, they may capture a ghoul and pursue the research themselves. Or, to conquer Lacren, if it proves itself treacherous.

The lord of Pilamine quickly voices support for the idea. Though there’s surely benefit in pushing to get the Iron King away from the area, it seems the threat of the coalition lords asserting themselves in the region stands as the longer-term, more political threat.

Envoys are sent to parley with Lacren’s noble houses. It is only after transport back to Lacren is prepared, and the Iron King is debriefed by coalition representatives, that Renard allows himself to retreat to his guest room to relax.

Some days pass.

Renard joins Pleione and other coalition representatives in the journey back to Lacren. His job is to transfer the Iron King into captivity in Sebilles, and negotiate the shift in power from the old regime to the new as allies to the coalition, essentially as the coalition desired of him, minus the loss of Lacren’s sovereignty.

The King is locked in a cage for transport, feral from blood starvation. Shrieking, he slams against the bars. Though painful to witness for Renard, with the coalition convoy’s eyes upon him, slipping him a drink would be taken as conspiring. But, suppressing the urge to ask someone to feed him is torturous. In the end, Renard fails to, urging the leader of the convoy to end the terrible racket.

The convoy leader notes suspiciously that giving the ghoul his human voice back, presently, is the greatest weapon it can be offered.

Renard weakly insists that the noise is just uncomfortable.

Seeming to understand Renard’s discomfort, the convoy leader assures that, for all the racket, the ghoul likely is not in any pain it will remember.

Renard opts to believe it, letting the worst of his guilt fade.

The feeding will have to happen once the King is secured in his cell in Sebilles… but there Renard pauses with discomfort. If things get to that point, will there really come an opportunity to get the King back on the throne again? By thinking this thought, and feeling this unease, Renard recognises his fundamental desire is for the King to remain in power.

Why? Is the plan of letting Pleione cure him of his… this, all that insensible? Or is Renard just afraid the coalition will neglect him to suffer screaming in that dank cell? Deeper discomfort tightens inside Renard as he flirts with this train of thought. He rubs his throat, looks away, and considers other things.

Such as, what will the King think when he awakens in that old prison? Would he be happy? Probably not. How should Renard explain that he failed to smooth things out properly? Will he ask Renard to get him out? Then shouldn’t Renard just ensure he doesn’t get put in there in the first place? Or will he have a plan, and Renard should stop overthinking things?

Renard glances around the convoy, lips pursed and lightly sweating. A sidelong gaze from Pleione locks his throat frozen as he straightens his back and forces his anxieties under his skin.

The convoy soon rolls in to the sprawl of Sebilles, and to the courtyard of its castle.