Postscript

The battle with Arsene is so ended.

Through his pact with the Demiurge, Renard has been turned into a sword.

A fate like that often means death, but things produced by a miracle of Camellia’s are never that crude. Indeed, as Arsene and Fidel collect themselves — Arsene from the shock of Camellia’s intervention onto the scene, and Fidel from the shock of being resuscitated by magical tree sap — and take stock of their mutually awkward situation stuck somewhere between solemnity and ceasefire, Fidel collects the remains of Kingslayer and the newly produced sword Renard. He recognises that this is Renard because, upon touching him, an irresistible impulse overtakes Fidel that he stab the blade right through his own heart.

Whereupon Renard returns to consciousness. Both of them panic, as the broad thoughts and feelings of each other become accessible like extensions of their own bodies, bonded irreversibly as sword and wielder. Much like how someone driving a car can feel its condition as they use it, except the car in this case has a soul and opinions, which it will schizophrenically announce into your head — not a comfortable position when you are not in sync with that car, which Fidel finds at this moment, he is not.

Waters are still precarious with Arsene present. He, teetering madly between gushing adoration of Camellia and envious hatred of Fidel and Renard for being the primary recipients of his attention, is no longer offering free rides out of Nix. Fidel uses the wish from his camellia to return to Verdanheim. He intends to reconvene with Orpheus. He is shaken to find that Orpheus is dead, never having recovered enough to leave Verdanheim.

And more shockingly, Fidel discovers that being drenched in the sap of the Demiurge’s corpse — which entered his bloodstream through his wounds and polymerised with or even replaced his blood — has changed his constitution, even his soul’s basic nature, and imparted him with astounding powers.

By a single drop of his blood shed upon Orpheus’ soul, the rot beginning to infect it is cleansed away, permanently.

That is, Fidel’s blood can purify soul rot.

He then binds that soul back into Orpheus’ body, in the same way a witch binds a familiar, but without the cruel manipulations witches inflict on their chattels.

That is, Fidel can resurrect the dead.

This is revolutionary. Between these intrinsic powers, his mastery of Anelle’s water-generating rock (which is found to misbehave when others use it), and his possession of Renard (come to be known as Render-All, Rended-All, All-Render, and Renderdall, whose unbreakable blade can slice through anything, and whose aegis renders his wielder invulnerable), the sheer depth of the life-changing powers suddenly conferred on this boy are more apparent to those around him than they even are to himself. For, enraptured with the memory of the Demiurge shown at his own resurrection, Fidel’s aspirations with all this divinely-imbued strength remain unremarkably the same as they’ve ever been: to restore Lacren.

Lacren — which, in the short months of his, Renard’s, and Orpheus’ absence, has already been utterly ruined and conquered. As much as Orpheus’ death was a horrid surprise, Lacren’s fall is a horrid surprise, but not one that shakes the ambitions of Fidel.

Just one that reinforces the importance of this reclamation, and makes the shadow of his deeds stretch much longer.

Months pass. Years pass. In striking alliances, reforming lost settlements, casting out foreign kings, purging soul rot, refilling water reservoirs, enriching the soil, and successfully rebuffing whole armies alone, rumours of his power begin to spread, and spread widely.

‘Is this a hexant king?’ some whisper.

‘You idiots! This is a scion of God’s very blood! What do you confer upon yourself by resisting him — but doom!’ others crow, growing zealous.

Whether fearful or friendly, aggressive or humble, reverent or reserved, it is sure that everyone who hears of Fidel’s powers wishes to have them, one way or another. ‘A life in service, for a death in peace’ — such becomes the motto spreading across the West, of pilgrims deserting from even prosperous nations to beg that Fidel would adopt them into Lacren, and by that adoption, free them from soul rot. It’s the only motto that survives. Because the ones who hunger to forcefully rip his blood for themselves, are all broken before Renderdall.

And while Fidel himself worries about the growing cultishness around him, Renard absolutely does not.

Because it dawns on Renard, whose frustrations with Fidel’s personal priorities promptly vanish, the actual depth of Fidel’s position. He is not, actually, just rebuilding one little kingdom. He is, like it or not, becoming the heir of the whole West, and the means by which salvation from rot will be granted at the very least to this whole continent. Such grand aspirations are only validated when Fidel’s blood proves to be heritable.

Suddenly understanding and awed of the Demiurge’s motives, Renard pushes Fidel to pursue the absolute conquest and unification of the West. Fidel ultimately agrees with this ambition, and though some holdouts are stern, his principal weapon is diplomacy — for it is not his interest that all the kingdoms, or princes, or peoples of the West should kill their own hearts to grovel on their bellies, but that they could keep their own kings, provided that those kings would swear loyalty to the central crown not of Lacren, but of Asphodel.

And every citizen of every lord who took this oath, therein could rest in knowing, that while their days stayed mostly the same, their baptism in death was assured.

And inevitably as allies, bound by the same oath to the same king, even neighbours who reviled each other would stay their hands from blades of war, but learn courtly blades of the tongue.

And so it is, the founding of the United Kingdoms of Asphodel.

The beginning of a dynasty that would hold for centuries, that the very name ‘Asphodel’ would signify the whole of the West. Rooted upon the covenant, that no citizen born under her banner would ever die to be broken into dust, or to ever know the horror of soul rot, but in calm repose be kept as whole and as safe as the stars.

Such is the soul of this nation.

That the duties sworn of her princes were not those of merchants or warriors, but of morticians and gravekeepers.

That not even the most careless, sadistic, or sulphurous royal hearts could destroy her, for the terms of their power were laid very clear. That even through deceit, corruption, and tyranny, she would return always to perch upon a rock hewn of generosity and of faith, and that so every time she faltered, she would rise through fire again stronger, and with even greater faith.

And that is why every male born to this blood bears also the name ‘Fidelis’, a name never forgotten, and the name of a hero.

Such is the manner of destiny for anyone who comes into possession of Renard. If they aren’t remembered for heroism, they aren’t remembered at all, their necks gutted out from the instant Renard saw the thoughts of those wielders who wished him for evil. Overshadowed by his wielders, his name nonetheless in itself is a myth, and one more quietly persistent through the history books than the mortal lifespan of any one human.

In that time, his ambition has tempered. It is less so his own mania for slaughtering Arsene, but the unique passions of virtuous wielders he resigns he exists to draw out and glorify — with his own thirsts being the more general ghoul-killing and good-doing he always has done, if such a wielder struggles to know where to point him. There is a peace in such an existence. And certainly he can say, by necessity, it did stop being about his own glory, but the inherent good for others he could bring.

But still, if he could keep any tie to his own humanity, if he weren’t fundamentally divorced from keeping his own relationships, causes, or pursuing his own hobbies or ends, to have a house or to even move or speak on his own, he would seriously have to question if he’d changed at all. His hunger for virtue for virtue’s sake is still manic. He’s still often petty and impulsive, and he’s certainly violent. The blessing and the curse is that only one person really knows, and can veto his bad ideas before they draw consequence.

He can’t even find the nerve to admit to Colette what happened. All he does do is leave her with questions, and all he does for his son, is leave him with a reforged Kingslayer.

And he would like to call that the end of his human life, but honestly it still isn’t.

There are simply too many places, and too many problems, in this world, that he can’t say he’s satisfied to just leave alone.

So for as long as there are cliffs that look too perilous to climb—

—then for as long as there’s Renard, there will always be an answer.