A wicked curse had been cast upon the Kingdoms of the West. Inflicted by a monstrous serpent that skulks in the pits of the underworld, what was once clean air now rots the dead into rabid beasts, and what was once fresh water now poisons fatally all who drink it. When monsters infest the countryside, and a sip from not even lakes or rivers, but even rain guarantees death, how does anyone survive? A Westerner would grin at this question, then boast. From the tallest crag to the deepest canyon, this land has never been easy.
Torn by fires, blizzards, winds, and drought, the Kingdoms here have warred since the continent’s creation. The regularity of natural adversities taught the West to stockpile such necessities as water, and the constancy of battle taught them how to handle their blades. Malevolent as the curse was, it could not wipe out the West. Cushioned by their hoards, kingdoms promptly set to trade, pillage, or improvise new supplies of uncontaminated water, while warriors rose to become legends upon the bleeding corpses of uncountable monsters.
So shortly this curse turned into just another challenge of life — one yet again conquered, essentially, by the West’s varied ingenuities.
But still, people remembered a time when clouds hung only as weather, not as reapers.
And still, people knew that death hadn’t always been so bitter, or cruel.
If anyone could curb the rising intensity of the water wars, clean the rivers, and end the rot, that man would be hailed across the West and even beyond as an unquestioned hero.
As anyone who had even glimpsed him could tell, Renard Cox would not be that hero.
Renard was born from the unpropitious union of a noblewoman from the kingdom of Lacren and a barbarian from the clan Tekse. Inhabiting the arid crags on the outskirts of Lacren, the Tekse were a more canny, and more delightful bunch than the word ‘barbarian’ would imply. Other gangs survived by brutalising travellers and pillaging their goods, but the Tekse knew something better.
They would kidnap the daughters of noble households and bring them home to the crags. They ushered these girls not with chains or threats, but comforting respect and professionalism. Once assured of their safety, and settled upon satin cushions, the curtain would raise and the Tekse would brilliantly display their speciality — for they were unmatched entertainers.
The girls’ eyes soon lit with spectacles. If somehow unimpressed by the men who breathed fire, or who swallowed swords, then the jesters, the acrobats, and the beastmasters would quickly woo them with performances never again seen or forgotten. Awe shattered the girls’ reservations. Pampered and treated to delicacies, they would be returned to their fathers with an implicit, but not enforced, demand for compensation.
At risk of earning their daughter’s resentment for short-changing the Tekse, that compensation was consistently high. And so the Tekse would prepare for their next mark and next performance, with success enough to sustain themselves for generations upon generations.
In fact, the Tekse were so famous and so successful, that noble girls of Lacren would boast upon being selected. It became not just a mark of status, or a fantastic story to tell, but a rite that legitimised their worth. Girls would actually dream of the day they would be kidnapped by the Tekse.
But everyone understood that this was a transaction. If there was any single rule of the arrangement, beyond the Tekse’s good treatment of the girls, it was this: you do not lay with the Tekse.
You do not lay with the Tekse.
But Renard’s mother, a firecracker, did it anyway.
Renard’s paternal grandfather, his mother’s father, was horrified to discover that his daughter was not only pregnant with a bastard, but likely pregnant to a Tekse. Before the news could circulate and disgrace the family, the grandfather locked Renard’s mother inside the estate and forbade her any guests. Once Renard was born, his grandfather wrenched him from his mother’s hands and sent him to live with a friend of a friend of a friend’s servant, far far away from anyone his mother knew, under the conceit that Renard was an orphan.
The couple that adopted him were peasants who lived in a backcountry village in Lacren. With only one son, and struggling to conceive new kids, they gratefully accepted Renard. As far as anyone cared, he was theirs. And indeed, if there were ever suggestions of secrets, or of a strangeness behind his being here — Renard could push those worries aside and assert that, as far as it mattered, this was his only family.
His father was gruff and stern. A trapper who hunted everything from rabbits to bears in the nearby woods, he was one of the village’s more prominent water-sourcers. Blood from his catches could be distilled, as was custom in Lacren, into water, topping off the local wells to supplement the aqueduct pipes from the capital. It was serious work, and he was serious about how he did it.
Renard’s mother was kind but frail. With a back too damaged for her to stand or even sit for long, she was principally bedridden and dependant on the rest of the family to care for her. That said, the thought of her condition restricting her children filled her with guilt. Her care relied far more on her husband than the kids, who she encouraged to go out and be active.
Then was Isen, Renard’s brother.
Lord above, that boy was a saint.
Principled, diligent, clever, and caring, something about Isen just shone with kindliness, skill, and potential. Everyone in the village adored him, so much they would wish he was their own protege, their own lover, their own friend, their own son, or own brother. For all that popularity, too, he never boasted or tried to do anything more than what he naturally wanted. He was just the type of person who always did things right, well, and with enough love to make people sense he was special.
More than just seem it — Isen was special. The local lord saw him one summer and, noticing that same spark of goodness everyone else had noticed, demanded to train him as a page. Renard’s parents accepted, Isen accepted, and so it was. Isen was trained like a nobleman’s child, to become one day a squire, and one day a knight. That such an opportunity fell to a peasant boy was beyond exceptional.
Everyone in the village celebrated, proud of Isen.
And though Renard would not deny that he too adored Isen, and too was proud of Isen, and too thought it incredible that Isen was his brother—
—it hurt, more than a little, to know that no matter what he did, he would never be as good as Isen.
People liked Renard. They didn’t adore him. He was bold and audacious and silly, always prone to doing or saying outrageous things that he thought greatly entertaining, but that others would acknowledge as a nuisance even if it did make them laugh. Kids who went along with his impulsive schemes always got scolded, as every time he would cross the line into something that was a little too much. He was cavalier and slow to notice when others were hurt. He wasn’t considerate, and for his obvious smarts, he didn’t like to think, as though terrified of the conclusions he’d draw. Though he never meant to bully or harm, he just seemed naturally prone to doing things that were wrong.
Still, he was conscientious and generally true to his word. He might slow down a job with his antics, but he would still get it serviceably done. People could appreciate that he existed because, for all his quirks, and for how ferociously he would showboat and try to impress, he was still a dependable and basically well-meaning boy.
As the seasons turned, Renard was soon skirting the deadline of that boyhood. Sixteen years old, as he stared over the fields with his chin planted on the butt of a pitchfork, the pressure to find a vocation was mounting. Soon it would not be acceptable to simply be the trapper’s son, who helped bale hay for one man on one day, then shopped for another on the next, then sorted produce on the next. ‘Errands!’ his father barked, ‘you won’t build a household on that’. He needed to commit to refining a trade, whereby he would eventually become Renard, the merchant, or Renard, the farmer, or Renard, the trapper.
Something about all these prospects, and the very prospect of being anything in this town, sickened him.
With his father’s frustration building, home grew less and less peaceful. Silent and not-so-silent expectations demanded for him to do something.
As that spring came to a close, Renard would find that something.
START
Heralding the end of spring and start of summer, the town’s annual summer festival kicks off. As he does every year, Isen is attending. Since he spends most of the year living with the local lord, this festival is one of the rare opportunities where he can visit home. Just as much as the townsfolk celebrate the turning of summer, they always celebrate this return of Isen. Cheers peal through the main square as his carriage rolls into town.
The dappled Percheron pulling his painted carriage halts. Isen, dressed in richly-dyed silks and armed with a real sword on his hip, smiles and laughs his hellos as friends and townsfolk crowd around to hug him.
Renard uncrosses his arms and kicks off from the post where he’s been watching, stung by the fanfare, but accustomed to it. Isen smiles upon seeing him. Renard welcomes Isen with unsubtle teasing about him visiting ‘us little folk’, but Isen, accustomed to Renard’s provocative manner of expression, is reassured to hear that he’s fine. The crowd backs away as he speaks with Renard. After filling in the broad catch-up of ‘yes, the parents and I have been fine,’ Renard grins and audaciously reveals that once the festival’s over, he’ll be leaving town.
It’s an impulsive confession, and the first time he’s put the sentiment to words. But now that he’s confided it to Isen, it feels refreshingly like a commitment. Before tomorrow night, he’ll march right out of town and follow the road to the grand city Sebilles, where he’ll look for work as perhaps, an exterminator. Isen is surprised to hear it, but supportive. However, sensing the subtext that Renard intends to leave without telling their parents, he invites Renard along to see them first. Renard is reluctant and urges Isen to go ahead alone, but relents when Isen entices him by noting he’ll get to ride in the carriage.
On the short trip to their home, Renard asks what Isen has been up to. He’s an established squire now, not too far from securing his knighthood. He has participated in active combat and is a veteran of several battles served at the side of the Lord, and though he doesn’t go into detail, that he’s on the precipice of breaking into higher noble circles is unmistakable. While Renard is awed at this news, it also leaves him feeling quite hollow.
They arrive home. They greet their mother, who is waiting for their father to return from checking his traps before they set out to the festival. On cue, their father returns with several baskets of hares. While the family chats, Isen looks to Renard, questioning if he’s going to tell their parents he’s leaving, but upon seeing Renard’s wince of discomfort, lets the issue pass. Their father asks for one of them to sort out getting the hares bled, skinned, and sold. Flipping back into cheerful boisterousness, Renard volunteers himself to do it before Isen can speak. Fine with that, their father tasks the job to Renard.
The brothers load the hares into the carriage and return to town. As Renard sets to skinning the shrieking hares and draining their blood into water distillers, Isen watches pleasantly and eventually offers to help. Inexplicably pissed by the offer, Renard yells at Isen that he doesn’t need help and angrily returns to the work. The flash of rage peters out quickly, leaving Renard confused and already regretful. Isen, changing the topic to Renard’s departure, carefully offers that he could put in a good word to get him connections, or at least give him a ride to Sebilles. Again, even more furious, Renard yells at Isen to shut up and bangs his fist on the table. And again, this anger simmers out quickly in the ensuing silence.
Isen quietly sets to smoothing out the skinned pelts. Renard soon lets his frustration drop enough to gesture Isen to skin some hares, and as they sit together in the silence, finding the rhythm to the work, Renard finds himself grateful that Isen didn’t leave. They sell off the hides and meat for a higher profit than normal, getting a sympathy bonus for working during the festival. Surprised, and realising that their father won’t notice its absence, Renard starts to consider pocketing the surplus coin as funding for his trip to Sebilles.
Isen notices Renard contemplating this. Though as a knight-in-training he should discourage penny theft, as a brother he sees no problem with Renard cushioning himself and advises him to keep the money. Before Renard can figure out the right way to negotiate this, Isen’s girlfriend arrives and whisks him away to finally partake in the festivities — people are wondering where he’s been. Unable to refuse, Isen joins her, leaving Renard.
Renard feels alienated and abandoned as he exits the building and sees the people celebrating through the streets. Rather than join them, he goes to the edge of town and looks over the long road to the city. The coins lay heavy in his palm as he considers. If he’s going to leave, this feels like the right moment.
Still carrying the money, Renard sighs and decides the right thing to do is pass the coins to his father. He returns to town and hands the money over; his mother, father, and their friends are attending the festivities now, watching the younger folk dance in a great circle. Noting the great time everyone’s having, Renard’s father urges him to join in. Unable to argue against it, Renard does, smiling outwardly but internally cringing for every hop and skip to the music.
The festivities wind down and everyone returns home for the night. Tomorrow will be the last day of the festival — but Renard’s mind, as he lays awake in the bedroom he and Isen share, is elsewhere, ruminating over the day’s events.
He feels angry, frustrated, and broadly just terrible. Everyone else was having fun. Why not he? Thoughts of Isen’s offers play again and again in his mind, until he cannot help but feel lost and jealous. What did Isen do that let him be chosen? Why was he that lucky? But at the same time, even flirting with these questions feels somehow presumptuous, and leaves him with a lingering guilt. Discontent with stewing, and still intrigued, Renard gets out of bed to inspect Isen’s sword.
Checking over his shoulder that Isen has not stirred, Renard dares to touch its scabbard.
The moment freezes.
But still Isen doesn’t wake. Somehow disappointed, and too scared to do anything more with the sword than stroke the scabbard, Renard instead fondles Isen’s silks. Shot with abrupt disgust by how smoothly they spill in his hands, he throws the wad of silks to the ground and marches out of the house, furious.
He stomps on sticks and kicks over buckets, hungry to vent his anger. He grabs rocks from the ground and throws them at a nearby tree — one, two, three, four… as the rhythm calms him down from wrathful panting, the vision in front of him registers, and Renard is taken aback. He has managed to aim the rocks to stick between the junctions of the branches of the tree. Intrigued, he continues the impromptu performance, and finds himself able to land every shot until the balanced stones make the tree resemble a sculpture. Renard bows and is left quietly staring, feeling that he has just done something kind of beautiful.
Alright, he concludes. So maybe he’ll never be as respectable as Isen, and maybe he’ll never have whatever factor it is that makes Isen so great. And nevermind that Renard did return the coin to his father, because Isen’s specialness is apparently more than just being respectable.
But the sight of that tree assures Renard, that he can still be someone this town will remember, as a legend.
Every summer festival ends with the capture of the summer lamb — the last lamb born the previous spring, which is then released, captured, butchered, and eaten in a townwide banquet. Eager to leave his mark on the town before he departs, and leave a story people will talk about for years to come, Renard conceives a plan. He breaks into the lamb’s pen, steals it, and marches to the bog at the border of town.
In that bog, upon an isle of dirt, there is a massive, dead tree. Renard will throw the summer lamb up into the tree, to leave the townsfolk beholding at a perplexing spectacle that will never again be replicated, and, even if regarded initially as odd, will be remembered with intrigue and laughter. The image in Renard’s head is perfect. This will be his goodbye to the town.
When he comes to the bog, he is surprised to find it still wet. The sodden ground here usually dries over the summer, which is when Renard typically visits this place, but it is still too early in the season for that. The mud sucks at his boots when he steps in, and an abrupt feeling of danger strikes him. This bog goes deeper than it looks. Heeding this feeling, Renard backs out of the bog to consider.
Perhaps it would be better to throw the lamb onto the town hall instead… but as the lamb struggles in his grip, Renard finds himself committed to assure it he’ll get it on that tree, and follow through with his original plan. He scales a small outcropping over the bog and, despite his gut’s growing anxiety, throws the lamb into the tree. It yells and twists, but stays securely stuck in a junction of branches.
Renard’s slight sense of accomplishment immediately drowns under unexplainable trepidation and fear. He flees home to his bed, as if to deny that anything happened.
Unfortunately, things did happen. While having breakfast the next morning, Renard’s family is visited by townfolk who have found the lamb and want Isen’s help to retrieve it. Isen agrees to investigate. Renard mocks the insinuation that a sheep could get into a tree, and even jokingly accuses the visitors of lying about it — then finds himself perplexed as to why he made such a pointless accusation. Fixing his bravado, he joins the group to investigate the scene.
Indeed, the lamb is still in the tree. Townsfolk are gathered around, staring up at it — but the overwhelming attitude here isn’t one of fascination or awe. Rather, beyond a thin veil of mystification, everyone seems worried or peeved at the interruption to the festival. Unease spikes in Renard as he quietly steps back from the crowd. Isen, having inspected the situation, takes his first step into the bog.
Framing it as a taunt, Renard interrupts to advise Isen he put down boards before entering the bog. Heeding this, Isen lays down bales of hay to form a bridge across the bog — which does go deeper than it looks, making the bridge vital — and crosses to the island with the tree.
Slowly, Isen climbs the tree. The dead branches creak whenever he shifts his weight, but with vigilant patience and care, he winches the lamb out from between the branches and onto land again. As he tosses it safely back to the onlooking crowd, Renard releases a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. The crowd claps and cheers.
Renard sighs, turning away, and again feels that impulse to keep walking until he’s left town for Sebilles. Probably, this is the best result things could’ve reached anyway. Even if nobody will bother to acknowledge Renard for it, he did get to make Isen look cool. Renard begins to march away.
But Isen is not done with the tree. He again climbs up, this time to retrieve the garland the summer lamb wears, which got caught on a more distant branch. He leans out over the thinning twigs, stretches out his fingers, reaching for that garland…
—CRACK.
The branch Isen is sitting on collapses. Screams arise from the onlookers as Isen goes plummeting down and lands, with a ‘flump’, face-first in the thick, wet bog. Renard turns, horrified at the sight of Isen’s back heaving, futilely, to pull out of the bog, but the thick and viscous mud holds a solid grip on his face. Renard’s body moves on its own, yelling, screaming at others to get out of the way, shoves them aside as he scrambles over the hay bales, pulls and pulls at Isen…
…Even though, poisoned by the water, his body already lays limp.
Mother is crying again. That has been the soundtrack of Renard’s life for the past week, confined inside the family house, too scared to leave or to flee, lest anybody see him and lest anybody accuse him, of being the one responsible for the death of Isen.
Nobody can prove that Renard stole the summer lamb or put it in the tree. Still, Renard knows that he did it — and fears the guilt and shame oozing from his soul will be obvious the second a critical eye even glances upon him. But here, in his home, it is safe, and there is no need to fear accusations. His father has been silent, and his mother has been crying.
Renard cannot help but think: what under the grace of the sky is she crying for.
Isen barely visited anyway. What’s so goddamn different for her? She wasn’t even there. Renard was the one who had to see it. Who had to learn the unthinkable weight of a lifeless body. Who had to watch his brother’s corpse sink and disappear into the muck. Who couldn’t even find the soul! Why is it all tears for Isen? Where the hell are the tears for Renard?
While his mother cries in her room, Renard sits with his father for dinner. Cutlery scrapes across the plates in silence, doing nothing to drown out the sobs wafting from the room over. Renard’s grip tightens into a fist around his fork, but stabbing the meat and clattering the plate still will not make the crying shut up.
“Does she fancy to be a bugle," Renard voices out loud, “whining long as the wind blows."
His father’s knife scrapes over his plate.
“Breathe’d thence by a little cat, miaowing for supper," Renard laughs, pantomiming playing a trombone.
A sharp peal rises from the plate.
“Miaow!" Renard goes, extending the invisible trombone. “Miaow!" He does it again.
The cutlery goes still.
“Not a morsel goes thereby. Ho, but what vitual is silence to our starv’d minstrel?" Renard says, waiting to align his irreverent punchline with a truly horrible wail. Sensing one coming, “—his mouth round of gusty breath, his lips press to her bottom…"
“Renard!" snaps his father, slamming his fist on the table. The plates and cutlery clatter, and Renard jolts as if slapped. All the confidence he had to be saying such things crumbles, flooded out by the terror of a shrew before a lion.
His father loudly scolds him and threatens to belt him bloody if he ever again says such things about his mother in this house. Renard would like to puff out his chest and mock, ‘very well, I’ll do it outside the house! Hoho!’ but his strength to do so is utterly gone. He cries, with his father seeming disgusted by it. Recognising he can’t stay at the table, and rather too scared to be near his father right now, he takes his plate to finish his dinner outside, alone, and sobbing.
He finishes his food and recognises that his father won’t be coming to comfort him. Steeling himself, he returns to the house. It’s quieter now — his mother has calmed in the interim, and his father waits silently for him at the table. He acknowledges Renard’s return with a slow nod.
Aware that his father is angry with him, and that he must have messed up, Renard weakly apologises, though he can’t say exactly what for.
It satisfies his father, whose stern air slumps into another nod, more exhausted and accepting this time. Seeing the change, Renard chances to hug him. His father accepts it and with surprising weakness requests that Renard do the dishes. Renard is fine with this — his father pats him on the shoulder. Good lad.
After dishes, his father returns to talk. He gently advises Renard that his mother’s not in a good way and Renard needs to be more gentle about her. Though Renard feels impelled to explain that he didn’t mean to say or do anything harmful — that he just wanted to lighten to mood — he simultaneously knows he cannot say these things without it sounding horrible, and without again angering his father. Instead of negotiate another fight, he quickly turns off his brain and agrees to obey. His father squeezes his shoulder and repeats: good boy. There’s a good lad.
The subtext of his father’s advisory, which Renard does subconsciously grasp, is that Renard should spend more time outside and less cooped in the house.
Instead of listen to that, he does the exact opposite. Still too intimidated by the thought of being in public, and scared to divulge these thoughts to his father, Renard decides to interpret his father’s words literally. He focuses on earnestly tending to his mother, doing housework, and asking almost incessantly if there’s any more chores for him.
But when his father requests that Renard go shopping, or deliver some hares into town, Renard refuses with excuses upon excuses. ‘There’s other work here I must do first’, or ‘oho, are you incapable?’, or ‘sorry, dear mother needs me.’
Seeing that Renard is becoming stubborn and dependant, and that he’s not going to leave, his father again goes quiet.
Some weeks pass like this, when one day, Renard’s father invites him to go trapping.
Though initially hesitant, Renard takes it as a sign of his father’s approval. More than that, it feels like his father offering to help him regain his confidence. The privacy of the woods is an excellent starting place for venturing out again, and even if things have been strained, the company is reassuring while the work provides an opportunity to reconcile and bond. His father is a man who shows his emotions through work, after all, and for Renard to express his seriousness is just a matter of not jesting too much and doing that work well.
Maybe it’s too hopeful a thought, but this might be the start of them putting Isen behind them, and beginning again with something new.
Renard agrees to the trip. As he and his father tramp into the woods, the simple pleasures of the wind on his skin and blood pumping from physical activity refresh and invigorate him. He cannot stop himself from making casual conversation of the sights around them, then sunnily cracking some jokes.
Though his father does respond to the chitchat, the jokes don’t land with any laughter. Rather, they repulse the man utterly, ignored with stern dismissal as his father returns to tramping. Unease twists in Renard’s gut. He remembers now why he never did pursue his father’s vocation — he could not get through a trip with a serious enough attitude for his father to enjoy teaching him, (Isen, of course, would nail it), hence Renard always found these experiences extremely nerve-wracking, (especially when Isen was absent), and not a place to focus his ethic.
Pushing that unease aside, Renard forces himself to keep quiet and let the uncomfortable, sombre air predominate.
They reach the heart of the forest and begin checking the traps. Shortly, Renard’s father rules they split up; he’ll check and lay traps on the west path, while Renard takes the east. Accepting this, Renard tends to the job, dedicating himself to stay properly sober instead of dallying with his usual malarkey, even though his father’s not watching. The work goes fine — his antics always made him just slower, not worse.
Coming near to the end of the eastern trail, Renard arrives at the lip of a valley. An abrupt feeling of alarm overtakes him.
The last trap he needs to lay is a little ways into this valley. However, as Renard stares over the gulf, he finds himself incapable of understanding how he is meant to return to the trail after descending to the demarcated spot. The incline down is ferociously steep, and if there’s a path, Renard can’t see it.
If he goes down into this, he might not be able to get out. He freezes, forced to think.
He could trust his gut, not go down there, and — what? Return to his father after failing such a simple task? Or does he discard the trap, lie, and hope his father never checks? He can’t do that. Besides, if—
Renard’s fists tremble around the trap and his eyes squeeze out tears as he makes the horrible, horrible connection that his father may not be expecting him to return from placing this trap, either. From the loose dirt and undisturbed foliage, it doesn’t look like anybody has gone into this valley in years, if ever.
Should he run? But—discarding this entire train of thought, Renard again looks over the valley. A river runs through its length. Many old settlements are built on rivers like these, so if he follows it long enough, he should reach civilisation somewhere. Then imagine his father’s face, having thought Renard was gone, only for him to parade himself back into town a week later with such an incredible story as that!
Fixated on this image, Renard inspires himself to descend. He sets the trap, but as expected, finds no path back up the steep incline, which is also too sheer to scale. Turning silently away from the cliff-face to the valley, Renard puffs out his chest.
Very well! He laughs. What is this silly valley, but another worthy challenge to conquer!
With this audacious bravado shielding him from confronting the possible implications of the situation, and from seeing his own fears that underpin this decision, Renard disappears into the bush.
The sky overhead turns purple with the evening light. On the other side of the forest, Renard’s father heaves himself up from the stump where he has been waiting. If this much time has passed, Renard isn’t coming back.
He leaves the woods and returns to town. People ask him, where is Renard?
Boy got fed up doing the work, he answers. Threw down the traps, said he’d make himself in the city, ran off without another word.
The townspeople nod.
That does sound like Renard.
Hours turn to nights turn to days Renard spends in that valley.
Though he has passed the timeframe wherein he expected to reach a town, or at least leave the valley, the simple work of following the riverbed keeps his mind off the worst-case scenarios. He does have some hares on him, in a basket on his back, which he retrieved from his father’s traps to sustain him comfortably through this little tramp. Because surely, the valley cannot go much longer.
But it does go much longer. Another night forces Renard to camp on the cold, hard ground. He brains a hare against a rock, sucks the blood from its severed neck, rips open the creature’s body with his hands slurp out the raw meat like an animal. No longer enjoying the experience, and rather resentful of it, now when he looks at the crystalline river and the lush trees and the stars above, all he sees is a place he is sick of, and that he would rather not be. .
Morning doesn’t restore his morale. As he trudges for another day under the waves of blistering Western sun, sweating despite the shade of the trees and cool of the river, he grows light-headed and lethargic. Without running it through a distiller, blood can’t substitute for water forever. He cracks open another hare and pauses to water the couple remaining, aware of his dwindling resources.
Sighing, he sets back to the road. Toxic as it is, the tinkling of the clear river beside him is growing kind of tempting.
But those concerns can wait. Renard freezes in surprise as the river before him plummets into a waterfall, though the drop is not so massive as to be impossible to scale.
He carefully climbs down, but partway his footing slips. He lands on the tough, rocky ground below. He is lucky not to break any bones, though his hips to his ankles all hurt and his last hares have escaped from his broken basket. Thoroughly dejected, he can only return to the thought of, ‘surely, now, it can’t be much longer’. And in fact — he shortly comes to the end of the river.
It flows into a small hole under the brush that must be an opening to a cave system, disappearing into the earth. Renard can’t go any further along it, and there’s no settlement to find.
Rather, as he turns around to survey the area, he finds he is just stuck. His efforts to climb back up the cliffs abutting the waterfall reward him only with scrapes (nevermind the hazardousness of the water, which could splash into his cuts or eyes), and every other direction is mountain. He has trapped himself in a sort of ‘bowl’ in the middle of the valley.
Forced now to stay put, it finally, for the first time, starts to dawn on Renard that he might die.
All the same, it is not until he is lying half-dead on the rocks, barely conscious, head pounding, vision blurred, too weak to even sit up much less stand, that he thinks that he actually will.
He doesn’t have any thoughts of regret, or of anything truly poignant at all. Perhaps some would question their place in the universe, or curse the world for its cruelty. Others might scream for the people they would leave behind, the potential they never realised, or the business they never finished. Renard is not any of these people. When faced with his own impending mortality, all he can think, insofar as he thinks anything, is ‘nobody cares anyway’.
But even that’s wrong, since Renard cares, and if Renard cares, somebody cares, and if somebody cares, nothing bad can happen. Surely the forces of the universe will align to conform to this logic. How could they not? But even these sentiments aren’t held with any conscious will, so much as a feeling of intrinsic correctness.
Nothing bad can happen. Whatever Renard does, the outcome will be good.
Or so are the half-formed, half-conscious thoughts in his degrading brain as his eyelids begin to droop. A blurry silhouette shifts on the waterfall above him, but its presence is less significant than the comfort of oncoming sleep, even as voices rise, and the world moves, in the darkness.
Renard wakes in the medical tent of some kind of encampment, still in the valley, but far from the bowl. Though initially disoriented as to where he is or how he got here, he recognises almost immediately that he must have been found, treated, and saved by the owners of this camp. Stunned by this turn of incredible luck, indeed so stunned it defies any trace of that strange death-accepting delirium from before, Renard simultaneously feels the need to express his gratitude, and incredible fear of doing so without knowing who these strangers are.
Though still exhausted, he’s been treated enough that he can ably stand up and peek out from the tent. The group outside look to be nobles, dressed in matching tabards over expensive armour, each with swords at their hips. Though they are currently chatting around the central firepit or idly doing chores, Renard intuits from the ramshackle tents and constant flow of burdened pack animals, alongside all the weapons, that this is a military encampment.
The soldiers notice Renard and invite him over. He emboldens himself, slaps on a smile, and dives into the conversation. While the soldiers ask him about how he wound up in the valley, the chatter attracts a dignified man who introduces himself as Sir Galfrey, and chides the others for disturbing Renard while he’s still recovering. It is only upon hearing his title that Renard realises these soldiers are not just soldiers, but knights.
Renard assures that he’s fine and decides to stay in the circle. But, feeling alienated as the conversation flows away from him, he changes the subject to recount his tale of throwing a sheep into a tree. The knights are sceptical, but receptive. Encouraged and eager to impress them, hence secure their acceptance, Renard shows off his accuracy at throwing stones and hand-eye coordination by juggling them.
Genuinely impressed, the knights note the talent he may have as a slinger, and that his technique is like that of the Tekse. Though put off by the imposition of these outside suggestions of what to do next, Renard is heartened he has been accepted, and comfortably settles into life at the camp. In his dense, blithe way, he neglects to say thank you or question more of what they are doing here, or even what he is doing here.
Several days later, change comes to the camp.
A group of knights arrive that Renard has not seen around before. They have been out on a mission, and have finally returned.
Successfully, as it seems. An air of great cheer and relief surges through the camp, which aborts immediately when one final figure emerges out of the bush, at the tail of the group.
What is that! Renard reels upon seeing the silhouette, That’s a monster!
The elegant figure looks like a man, finely dressed with keen intelligence in his coal-black eyes, but the instincts screaming at Renard to flee are the same ones that would fire when faced with a stampeding buffalo. Bloodstains cover his ripped finery, as though he has been fighting, but he wears no armour and carries no sword. The hand resting anxiously upon a flask at his belt ends in a set of sharp, but dainty, black claws.
He swoops his head up as he stares over the encampment, surveying the men as would a commander. His motions as he approaches are deathly fluid, either those of dancer trained at court, or a predator.
The only thing that stops Renard from pointing, screaming, and fleeing, is that everyone else here instantly kneels and bows their head in deference upon this creature’s arrival. Not wanting to be noticed, Renard anxiously does the same.
“My Lord," greets Sir Galfrey.
A whisper cuts to Renard: “He is the one who saved you." Not wanting to look impudent, Renard frantically bows his head lower.
The creature nods in acknowledgement to Galfrey. And it speaks:
“The threat of the Pilamines can shackle us no more," every word tugs at the spine like a spider weaving its web, delicate and insidious. The creature grins. “We have taken the water."
The energy of victory rolls through the men, but not a single person moves or speaks to release it. A graveness hangs about this creature that forbids such expressions of levity.
“To Lacren," the creature announces, “and her people."
“To Lacren," the knights echo.
The creature bows its head, satisfied.
Once the short address ends, the camp kicks back into motion. Tents are packed away and provisions are loaded onto wagons, alongside a seemingly endless string of barrels brought by the creature’s returnees. Only now that everything is over, and the question of ‘where are we going’ strikes Renard, does the ‘why’ of the encampment’s presence grip him with any sense of importance.
That man — that creature — is called the Iron King. Though ostentatious, the name does not come from vanity. He is in truth the firstborn son of Lacren’s monarchs, or rather ex-monarchs, since he deposed them some weeks ago. News of that, of course, still has yet to flow through the more backwater reaches of the kingdom, hence Renard’s ignorance of it.
He is also a ghoul. Already dead when he left his mother’s womb, this young prince’s first action was not to suckle his nurse’s breast, but bite it and lap up the blood. Though aware of his monstrous nature, and aware that such a beast could never be heir, his mother couldn’t stand to desert him. While healthy new siblings claimed his spot on the throne, the Iron King was locked away in a cell in the palace, often receiving visitors, but never allowed free.
As ghouls go, though, he is special, hence why he got visitors at all. Most ghouls are mindless creatures. Even those that mimic human speech or behaviour are not conscious of themselves any more than are animals. But, by ingesting human blood, thankfully in small and sustainable amounts, the Iron King can suppress his ghoulish nature and reclaim the full mental faculties of a regular human.
Otherwise said, he is a ghoul uniquely able to operate according to a sense of humanity.
In this way, he cultivated strong relationships with his family, deep knowledge in warfare among other princely studies, and an intense investment in the welfare of Lacren. The warm feelings he harboured for his intimates, and the duties he owed the nation as royalty, for him defined that always slipping, and always fading feeling of humanity. Desperate to hold onto it, he dreamed of doing something truly good and truly selfless, that he may define himself as more than simply a monster people ought flee from immediately.
That was when Lacren’s water crisis began to hit its tipping point.
Though not obvious to peasants like Renard, Lacren has been struggling for the past few years to secure sufficient reserves of drinking water to sustain its populace. The animals the nation hunts and bleeds for water have been thinning viciously in numbers, especially the larger game like the buffalo, such that the monarchs had to consider alternatives. They desperately procured seeds of water-producing plants from eastern shamans, but even these would not grow in Lacren’s mostly dry climate.
Cornered, they began to consider buying water from the nearby city-state of Pilamine.
The implications shook the Iron King. The Pilamines were powerful merchants, positioned on a strong trade route between many other powerful kingdoms. Lacren, meanwhile, was not particularly gifted with any covetable resource but game, so if they were to sell their wood and stone to the Pilamines, (who would refine it, resell, and profit), then use those profits to buy water also from the Pilamines, that meant becoming both economically and vitally dependant upon the Pilamines.
Meaning, if the Pilamines ever desired to conquer Lacren, they simply had to buy all of Lacren’s wartime valuables then price the water too high for them to pay. Lacren would effectively become a vassal state of Pilamine, unless some larger enemy of the Pilamines wished to use the Lacrenese, in which case Lacren would become a vassal state of that enemy. In any case, Lacren would quickly lose most of its autonomy.
No, impermissible! The Iron King cried. Mother, father, battle them, plunder them! Take those merchants to war! We mustn’t compromise with subtle diplomacy against an enemy as this; we will lose!
But the walled city of Pilamine could certainly fortify itself against a siege for longer than a year. Unless the Lacranese could somehow break through Pilamine’s walls, guarded as they were with powerful cannons and archers, before the Pilamines realised how desperate Lacren’s position truly was, Lacren would lose anyway. Submitting the kingdom to the Pilamines and quietly learning its weaknesses to leverage them later felt a more reliable, if longer-term plan.
The Iron King rebuked these ideas, banging madly at his cell at the thought of them. He knew that this compromise was not one the Lacrenese needed to make.
Still, his parents hesitated enough to postpone their plans with Pilamine for next year. This year, they conducted one last hopeful buffalo hunt, releasing the Iron King from his cell so that his keen nose for blood could uncover the last hidden pockets of the creatures. That was where he met these knights, who he soon impressed and befriended over the course of the hunt, and who ultimately agreed with his cause.
It was Sir Galfrey who unshackled him, unlocked his cell, and helped him seal his family away in the tower.
And now the Iron King has done it.
With victory over the Pilamines, he has reciprocated that faith.
Uncaring of the politics, all the story matters to Renard is this: these knights are serving a monster, and they just committed insurrection and guerrilla war in its name. These are not people he should involve himself with and this is not a place he should stick around. As the wagons roll out, Renard seats himself at the rear, eager for an opportunity to jump off and flee.
This ‘Iron King’ of theirs is still chatting with Sir Galfrey. True, the look of nervous admiration from the Iron King as they talk is far more human than the chilling air he exuded some minutes earlier, as is the shy, curious glance he gives to Renard midway in their discussion. This still does not change Renard’s discomfort with the creature.
Sir Galfrey departs to join the wagon trail, but the Iron King returns to the bush, opposite of everyone else. Perplexed and suspicious, Renard sneaks off the wagon to follow the Iron King deeper into the forest.
Renard hides behind a fallen log as the Iron King pauses in a clearing, waiting for something.
Soon a group of soldiers emerges from the forest, these ones not wearing the Iron King’s tabard. They are elite knights from Pilamine, here to tail and assault the Lacrenese forces, who draw their swords and introduce themselves by naming the Iron King as a stillborn ghoul.
The Iron King takes the jibe with grave composure, but still the Pilamines voice their disgust that such a creature has secured enough followers to encourage delusions of its legitimacy. Though their passion excites him, concern and confusion also spike through Renard. Don’t these people realise the Iron King is stronger?
The Iron King straightens himself and says that he is blessed, like all men, with the ability to choose his principles.
It doesn’t matter, the Pilamines assert. You are a ghoul — only that matters. Do not think I merely face you as a Pilamine facing a Lacranese saboteur. I face you as a servant of good, exterminating the taint of your wretched existence before it touches, hence ruins, anyone else.
The Iron King steeples his fingers, as if praying, and asks if that is all they have to tell him.
No, the Pilamines respond. If the Iron King wishes to fancy himself on the level of a man, then he may prove it now by recognising his own evil and killing himself.
The Iron King does not oblige. Their dialogue over, the Pilamines surge in with their blades and the battle commences. An immaculate dance of swords, dodges, and teamwork unfolds through the clearing, and though transfixed by the skill of the combatants, Renard has enough mind to be rattled by his desire for the Iron King to win. For all his fear, and his impulsive distrust of the ‘creature’, the Iron King held far more composure in that talk than the Pilamines, whose rhetoric rubbed Renard as distasteful.
After all, someone conceited enough to call themselves a servant of good ought back that up with some kind of sympathy. Even for — especially for — someone most would deem wicked.
The Pilamines manoeuvre the Iron King into a bad position. Renard’s breath catches as their leader secures a decisive thrust straight into the Iron King’s stomach — but rather than tear through his flesh and pierce through his back, the blade bounces off his skin as if striking metal.
Before the Pilamines can comprehend this phenomenon, a switch flips. Like a feral beast, the Iron King’s claws rip through his assailant’s throat and down his stomach, splaying blood and innards to the ground. More swords come upon him, but he catches the strikes with his hands and mauls these unwitting fools who so blundered as to get into his range. Hands, limbs, bones, guts, brains — all of these go flying, the Iron King a ceaseless flurry of claws, teeth, and murder.
The clearing soon falls still. As if breaking water, the Iron King gasps as he unfurls back into proper posture. He observes the remains of the slaughter with resignation, and exhaustion.
His gaze locks on the log where Renard is concealed. Renard freezes, but as the Iron King approaches, he realises there is no point in hiding and cautiously reveals himself.
“Renard, yes?" the Iron King confirms.
“Yes… my liege," Renard confirms awkwardly. ‘Liege’ is a word that tastes strange in his mouth, but in all technicality, he is addressing the figure currently sitting on Lacren’s throne. Moreover, the Iron King accepts it.
It’s strange how unafraid he feels. After witnessing that slaughter, he should by all rights be screaming. But to have witnessed such an uncompromising show of power, from a figure that asserts itself as Renard’s ally, certainly leaves Renard intimidated, but also wondering if he might be in good hands.
The Iron King turns to the giblets strewn across the ground. He confesses that he prefers not to indulge in the benefits of his nature; however, those who cannot harness their darker sides by their own will, and utilise them as they would any other faculty, are most often the ones who will be destroyed either by their own powers rebelling against them, or by an outsider who has grasped both faculties.
Renard considers this, finding it true, though it perplexes him why the Iron King would tell him so. Most people do not have such defined ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sides to draw on as sources of power. Still, he is arguing that if one could harness ostensibly evil forces for purposes that are good, then the individual will operating that force has effectively destroyed the evil of it, and in fact become more capable of committing good than a person burdened by moral convention. Renard finds himself liking the idea, though something makes him hesitate to voice it.
“It is by your intention that you defeated these men in this manner," he observes instead, kicking a giblet with the point of his boot.
The Iron King confirms yes.
Thrown off-balance by the lack of further explanation or justification, Renard’s brow creases. A simple person could condemn the Iron King for rending the Pilamines apart rather than slicing their necks with a sword, but apart from leaving prettier corpses, if he was to kill these combatants anyway, what does the difference especially matter? Even as Renard considers that the Iron King could’ve pretended to fight as a normal human would, he struggles to see what the point would have been, outside the vague and childish complaint that the Iron King had an unfair advantage. But what was he to do about that? Not have been born as he was?
It is an awesome, admirable thing to use, rather than reject, one’s power.
Seeing Renard come to this conclusion, the Iron King nods and calmly shatters the Pilamines’ souls. What an odd gesture. Would it not have been right to let the Pilamines rot into the same creatures they failed to defeat? These thoughts defy everything Renard has ever considered correct, but somehow, stick in his mind.
But then again, the Iron King’s point is that he is capable of both savagery and mercy. Or from savagery, has become merciful. …Or something to that effect…
This dissonance fades from Renard as the Iron King’s hand on his back eases him warmly forward. He advises Renard not to be afraid.
‘Hah! Who should fear their own monarch?!’, Renard wishes to bark, but even with these reassurances, the temptation to run remains high. He glances despite himself to search for a gap in the woods.
A note of pain comes over the Iron King’s features.
Stricken by guilt, Renard puffs out his chest with gumption. Those Pilamines shan’t dare tread upon Lacrenese soil for a hundred years!
Indeed they shan’t, the Iron King replies, though the hurt is not fully assuaged.
The bush opens shortly onto a road. The Iron King points one way, informing that he and his band will be convening at a town along this route to celebrate their victory before moving on to Sebilles. The other way leads back to Pilamine.
The Iron King advises that, while he has allied with knights and soldiers, Renard is the first civilian he’s met. He continues: If you will walk with me, then follow.
The Iron King turns away, departing down the road. Renard is stunned in awe at the gravity of the offer. By the time he can collect himself, the Iron King’s silhouette has already shrunk.
That instinctual aura of distrust still hangs around the creature’s path, but positive feelings of being wanted — and of wanting to see where this opportunity leads — flood that unease out. Renard departs along the same path, after the Iron King.
He’ll prove this decision was not a mistake.
Renard catches up with the Iron King’s forces in the indicated town shortly after. After a night of drinks and revelry, he is permitted to join them again as they return to Sebilles.
Upon arrival in Sebilles, the Iron King talks privately with Sir Galfrey. Having ruminated upon his encounter with the Pilamines in the forest, he resigns that his place on the throne will turn every nation in the area hostile to Lacren. Though the Iron King has the capacity to rule Lacren by the same ethic that anyone else could, the moral code of this region demands the destruction of ghouls without compromise, especially ones favoured as patrons, gods, or kings. Precedent has told the horror of such circumstances — the corrupted ruler unfailingly becomes cruel and tyrannical, sadistically toying with the followers who depend on the ghouls’ supernatural powers for survival, or who were simply too weak to escape their reach and found no choice but to do their bidding.
These parodies of society were called hexant kingdoms. The instinct of anyone who came across them, before even needing to acknowledge this urge as ‘moral’ or ‘just’, was to overthrow the villainous ghoul, liberate the nation it tortured, and secure by even half-decent treatment the permanent loyalty of these new subjects. Lacren’s neighbours will view it the same way.
Though Sir Galfrey and his knights hold faith in the Iron King’s unique humanity, this faith will force them to compromise. Either they must defend the Iron King’s worth before foreign leaders and suspicious local nobles, defying their own moral code and so debasing themselves, or distance themselves from him to continue adhering to their noble title of ‘knight’.
The thought that his very presence will erode the nobility of his loyalists grates at the Iron King.
Further, attempting to alter this wideheld moral perception will only validate its point. He can conquer the neighbours to rewrite their ethos, but cannot prove himself human through his behaviour, as the moral behaviour demanded in this case is suicide. Else, ideally, he could simply rule Lacren fairly, without impinging on the territories of the neighbours, and earn enough favour that citizens would defend him of their own accord…
…But this too cannot be. He must inevitably involve himself with the Pilamines to maintain Lacren’s source of water.
Obviously, plundering Pilamine’s water reserves year after year is not a sustainable or attractive option. When he infiltrated the city’s gates, and demonstrated himself powerful enough to single-handedly raze the city, he did not secure the transaction of water by actually murdering everyone. He simply established the reality of his threat, then negotiated with the city’s leaders that he receive their reserve of water in exchange for the handful of seeds that had failed to grow water-plants in Lacren, but that likely would bloom in the more temperate Pilamine.
It was diplomacy — quite clever diplomacy, too, the kind a human King would make. These were the warfaring manoeuvres kingdoms all across the West took routinely.
Of course the Pilamines accepted. Now was to ensure they cultivated that crop and sent its annual yield to Lacren, to which the Iron King saw another clever solution. With the Pilamines’ guard force weakened after the Iron King’s offensive, and the need to restock their own water stores at priority one, those many large and powerful neighbours the Pilamines traded with would have good footing to swoop in and claim the city themselves.
Rather than allow that, the Pilamines would likely, begrudgingly, accept that Lacren install significant regiments of its own guard force in the city. The guards’ service would be the collateral given for the water, while the quiet threat of their presence ensured that water’s delivery. This would secure a bond of allyship — rather, of permitted occupation — while protecting Pilamine from an immediate threat of invasion by its powerful trade partners. Lacren, being comparatively weak, would be much easier to subvert or overthrow later. Given that Lacren did not mistreat the Pilamine civilians — and it would not, if only to ward the notice of those powerful partners — it worked in everyone’s interests for them to take it.
But what would the ultimate consequence of that be? How long could that arrangement last?
If there was any singular good thing the Iron King had done or could do, it was to secure the continued autonomy of Lacren and its people.
In a way, it feels he has achieved that to his utmost ability, and the positive offerings he has to the world are done. His parents still live in the tower. If he were to abdicate now, would they successfully navigate the board he has arranged to maintain Lacren above water? Is even asking that question presumptuous?
How he would love to push aside these doubts, and assert his devotion to good, morality, or humanity would forever steady him through the intrigues of politics. When he takes his knife to his throat, its blade fails to even nick his corrupted, adamantium skin.
This shall become a hexant kingdom, the Iron King confesses to Sir Galfrey. You must surrender me, and flee from this country, if you will not surrender your ethic.
The admission startles Sir Galfrey. Concerned, he questions that if the Iron King recognises himself incapable of humanity in the future, could he not simply abdicate the throne back to his parents and return to his cell?
The Iron King smiles ruefully.
To know there is still someone who would choose me, even when aware of my darkness, cloys this human heart with gratitude too great to ignore. Guilt shakes him as he continues. It seems I betray you in either case, Galfrey.
Fist gripped on the hilt of his sword in its sheath, Sir Galfrey soon turns away.
Outside the palace in Sebilles, the Iron King gives a victory speech to the gathered soldiers. Being a public event, it’s also his inauguration speech, where he announces the baseline principles that will guide him for the rest of his rule. The Iron King’s are quite simple. He wants Lacren to remain free, and for its citizens to always have water and day-to-day security. Though not a particularly ambitious platform, with the Iron King being a ghoul and that itself being a massive departure from convention, this level of conservatism is reassuring — provided that his acts prove him truthful.
In the crowd, Renard brims with awe. Though the scepticism of the townsfolk grates him, the combined force of the knights’ accreditations, the plundered water, and the Iron King’s passion works just enough to balm anyone from screaming or throwing rocks at him, the sentiment of proud victory from the knights radiating instead.
The speech ends and the Iron King retires into the palace to afterparty with the nobility. Renard scampers after the retinue of soldiers that join him, but the guards bar his entry to court. Renard, nervous, puffs out his chest and insists that he’s with the King. A guard leaves to confirm this claim, with the commotion also attracting the Iron King’s attention anyway.
The Iron King rejects Renard, speaking as though he has never seen him before, and harshly dismisses him from court as a peasant.
Renard flees from the palace to cry on its outer steps, hurt and utterly confused. Didn’t he and the Iron King have a thing? Didn’t the Iron King ask him to come? Didn’t the Iron King save his life? Then why on earth…
Through his tears, he peers around the square in front of him. Upon the sign of the Swordsman’s Guild, an organisation that trains lower-born civilians to handle weapons that they may become mercenaries or local guardsmen, is the same symbol on the Iron King’s forces’ tabards.
Renard then realises, embarrassed at how obvious it is, that duh! The Iron King couldn’t just give him status. At the very least to maintain appearances, Renard can’t cavort with the man without having done something to justify being there.
Feeling he has found the ‘something’ that will earn the Iron King’s approval, Renard picks himself up, and enters that hall marked with his symbol.
Weeks, months, and years smoothly pass. Renard is a fresh adult, and life has settled quite well.
He is now a city guard of Sebilles, trained under the guild. His ascension to journeyman has secured him his own sword, and a salary that funds his day-to-day comfortably. City locals know him and find reassurance not just in his commitment to catching miscreants, or his efficacy at doing so, but in his boldly upbeat demeanour that dispels the tension of conflicts instantly. Though not the height he envisioned when he entered this work, the sincere respect and gratitude he has earned from everyday townsfolk is enough for him to feel refreshingly purposeful, with eventual long-term prospects of perhaps leading the guard, staying in this vocation indefinitely.
He has even, and this is truly amazing, been trained how to handle a horse! Though not able to personally own one, or experienced in mounted combat, that the guild carries prestige enough to even allow this opportunity in its parades is breathtaking.
Actually, the guild has received substantial upscaling from the King recently. There is of course a need to replace the local guard forces that were posted in Pilamine, but even then the crown’s focus on training decent bladesmen has been quite high, these past years…
Rather, speaking of Pilamine. Today a missive from the guild reaches Renard, ordering him to discipline some Lacrenese guards who’ve been harassing Pilamine citizens. Finding the task both quite simple and quite important, he gathers a team and sets out to Pilamine.
He arrives and locates the miscreants. After a sting to confirm they are bothering civilians, Renard dresses them down in a public square, strips their lead officer of his rank, promotes the guardsmen who weren’t involved, and has them inflict the theatrical humiliation of the miscreants further. The Pilamines must feel reassured that Lacren will not tolerate such behaviour from their authorities, but also cannot feel too bold as to not respect the Lacrenese presence. Though the balance in how hard to disgrace the miscreants is delicate, Renard feels, looking over the tense but amused crowd, that he’s found it.
An onlooking Pilamine noble rolls his eyes at the display. Ah, the joys of occupation…
Pricked, Renard asks what he means.
The noble spreads his arm and drolly continues. It irks him that a Lacrenese presence remains here at all, much less one that’s been badgering the populace and making nuisances of his everyday life. Now we have these productions in our square… what fantastic presents that ghoul of yours gives us.
Mostwhich your offices, untaken by foreigners, Renard snaps, growing angry.
Yes yes, I have nothing but gratitude to Lacren, the noble says with no gratitude at all, for stealing our water, thirsting our poor, and filling our city with muscle-brained brigands.
Renard feels himself growing more frustrated. It’s true the Pilamines suffered casualties from water shortages in the year following the Iron King’s first campaign, while the water plants were still growing in. But that was years ago. Their supplies have stabilised now, it’s all a matter in the past. So what alternative is this man implying is so preferable? That the Iron King annex the city, oust its citizens, and convert the land into Lacren’s water farm? Or that, buying water, Lacren subordinate itself under Pilamine influence in a manner similar to what this man bemoans now?
In the first case, he is an ingrate who fails to appreciate the Iron King’s mercy. In the second case, he is a hypocrite chewing on sour grapes that his side didn’t win — even though, considering the Pilamines’ continued existence, they’ve hardly lost either.
And yes it’s true the guardsmen have been rowdy and undisciplined, but that’s why Renard is here, on the Iron King’s orders, to fix it! Even if you don’t appreciate it, and will spit the Iron King’s kindness back in his face, he’s enough of a human being to give a crap about you people!
Spittle flies as Renard yells at the nobleman’s disrespect. Do you not appreciate how well the King holds this city!
The noble’s eyes widen, taken aback at Renard’s intensity. Baffled, he questions why Renard cares so much about the honour of the ghoul. He is only a foot-guard; professing so much loyalty won’t win him any special reward.
Hearing this, Renard snaps. Overtaken by rage, he beats the nobleman brutally, still screaming all the while. Attention shifts off of the punishment of the miscreant guards, onto Renard’s outburst — a show of barbarity as bad, if not worse, than the behaviour he came here to discipline.
Once Renard reclaims himself, finds himself holding the lapels of an unarmed nobleman he has pulped into the cobbles, he is mortified. He backs away in horror and shame from the noble, who lays there curled with palms raised for mercy.
An exceedingly quiet journey proceeds back to Sebilles. The gazes of Renard’s teammates bore into him, nobody daring to say anything, but all plainly amazed at how badly Renard erred. As they report what happened in Pilamine, all Renard can do is find a good corner to tremble in and try not to cry.
He could stand to be demoted — at least. The worst part is he can’t even explain why he acted so violently. If someone were to accuse him of being a simple thug, or a puffed-up mercenary, drawn to the guild that he may batter civilians and be generally dishonourable without consequence, no real counter-argument to that coheres in his mind. Surely his superiors know that’s not why he joined, and not an ethic he’s ever abided, so surely they’d understand, surely, surely, but, wouldn’t it also reflect badly on them to let him go unpunished? A nobleman so bold must have influence, and Renard’s hardly valuable enough to matter more than relations with Pilamine…
Either way he’s a disgrace. Even if the guild miraculously doesn’t drop him, the damage to his career will leak inevitably, and the reputation of being the guy who fucked up one simple mission and mindlessly brutalised a Pilamine noble will stick for as long as he stays in this city.
His heart hammers as he stands before his superiors. Their calm, confused, and vaguely disappointed demeanour inflicts a far keener shame than if they’d just shouted. They predictably ask why Renard beat the noble, but Renard can only squeak with a strained throat, shaking his head, mouth open stupidly. He weakly manages, knowing it is no excuse: The man spoke poorly of the King.
Renard, the man is a Pilamine, his superior calmly notes this truth that Renard already knows. It is unpleasant, but not treason, for a Pilamine to speak in that manner.
Renard’s face flushes with shame. What nonsense is it for Pilamines to be allowed such a privilege — was that not a breeding ground for rhetoric that could provoke threats toward Lacren’s throne? But he cannot voice this, for the relative freedom the King has given Pilamine is a demonstration of his good character, and compromising that liberty gives Pilamines the grievances to accuse the King as a ghoul. Moreover, it’s not that different from the liberty of speech Lacrenese civilians have, either.
Renard’s superior continues, noting that regardless of that, Renard’s behaviour was unprofessional.
So he’s not getting out of this. So he is going to get demoted — and maybe have to leave the city to some podunk town and locals will wonder why he was transferred and they’ll hear the rumours and figure it out and they’ll know what he did and they’ll all think he’s stupid and that he messed up and even if he does perfectly he’ll never get a position in Sebilles as a guard again and even if he did people would still know and think he was unfit for it and so if he wants to stay in Sebilles he has to—
—well maybe he ought hear what his punishment actually is first, and if it’s anything that’ll put him outside of the city, then he can trust this surge of urgency to move him to announce: I quit!
Forcing himself to keep quiet and still, his superior glances down at his desk and takes a breath to speak.
A knock at the door interjects. A courier has arrived from the castle to summon Renard. The Iron King wishes to speak with him.
Relief washes through Renard, followed quickly by confusion and hope. Yes, it is scary that the Iron King noticed Renard’s misbehaviour — but perhaps there are factors unknown to Renard that will lead the Iron King to lessen his punishment, for he is merciful. Forgetting the circumstances, the opportunity to show the Iron King how far he’s come as a guardsman might also, make him proud.
Renard pursued this whole course for him, after all. See! Renard wishes to announce. I got this far thanks to you — you’re a hero! And here are all the wonderful experiences that devoting myself to you has given me…
With this odd blend of fear, uncertainty, hope, and admiration mixing in his chest, Renard is escorted to the palace.
The Iron King waits atop the outer steps, which pricks Renard as awry. Is this all going public? But what does the King benefit by publicly going soft on Renard?
Steeling himself, he shoves aside that doubt and climbs the stairway to the King. But with every step, more and more, the idea of joyfully regaling the King with the positives he’s brought to Renard’s life feels less and less smart. Unable to discern whether it’s coming from his own guilt or the Iron King’s aura, the impulse to grovel for leniency overtakes his gut.
Caught between these contrary attitudes, and unsure which the Iron King wants, Renard freezes stuck before him.
The Iron King smiles brightly, and as though he’s greeting an old friend, “Renard, I’m happy to see you."
…
Renard’s face crooks into a smile to reciprocate. Faced with such ideal words, why does he still feel the need to reassure himself this encounter will go okay?
Renard stumbles his reply, “m-my Liege…"
The Iron King dips his head in acknowledgement and notes how long it’s been since they last spoke, and how well it seems Renard has done for himself in the interim. With this being the topic he wanted to talk about anyway, Renard eases himself into responding sincerely despite this unassailable, lingering doubt. Even so, he cannot deny a dampening of his enthusiasm, and a wariness that restricts him from telling his stories with the detailed flourishes he naturally would. Actually, surprisingly, he is somewhat hoping for this conversation to end quickly.
Satisfied, the Iron King switches topics to Renard’s encounter with the Pilamine noble. A strange relief comes over Renard: finally, the punishment can be given, he can leave, and begin working on redeeming himself over the next years…
The Iron King claps Renard’s shoulder, still smiling, as he turns to the small crowd below.
“I name Renard Cox," he announces, “an exemplary knight of Lacren."
…
What?
Unsure whether he can trust his ears, the entire world to Renard pales like a tasteless farce. But as the Iron King leads him into the palace, to discuss the impromptu promotion privately, it becomes clear the King was not joking. He is seriously giving Renard the title of knight for brutalising that unarmed Pilamine.
Rather, as the Iron King phrases it, for ‘an unmatched show of loyalty.’ You walked with me seven years ago, and I see you walk with me still.
How on earth is he still so attached to that!, thinks Renard. Fairly, Renard hasn’t forgotten that day either, but…
The King continues heedlessly. As though peering into Renard’s heart, he asserts what stoked Renard into such violent passion was his devoted conviction for the Iron King. Those are sentiments the King can only reciprocate, with joy, that one would wish so to be at his side.
Renard’s mouth twists. Even if the King was happy to know someone cared, Renard’s behaviour was wrong. It was wrong. It shouldn’t be rewarded. Much less with something as momentous as a knighthood! The King surely ought know that this… sentiment doesn’t justify bastardising one of the world’s most esteemed noble titles, and before that, know that Renard simply doesn’t deserve it. Unsure how to express these thoughts, Renard stays quiet.
As they come to the Iron King’s throne, Renard realises something. All during this walk, he has not seen any of the knights that joined the Iron King in his first campaign, at least one of whom would typically attend the King as a bodyguard.
Where are the knights?, Renard questions.
They left, explains the Iron King. Their codes of moral chivalry conflicted with their service to the King. Every single one of those knights, year by year over time, opted to leave for other kingdoms rather than forfeit that chivalry. The Iron King smiles wanly as he stokes a claw down his lapel.
Renard hesitates. For the knights to unanimously disavow the Iron King suggests—
Speak!, barks the Iron King, seeing Renard’s timid refusal to voice his doubts.
—Renard speaks. For all the knights to have left him, it sounds like the Iron King did something bad. And for him to pass the title of knight to Renard for doing something so awful is solidifying that impression. It’s plainly not right.
The Iron King relaxes and explains. Does Renard think he’s governed this nation poorly?
Renard concedes no. Things in Lacren, and Pilamine too, have been good with the King in power.
So the Iron King continues. The reason why the knights left him is fundamentally because he is a ghoul. Foreign orders mocked his knights as servants of a ghoul, an insult that consistently landed, because it was true. Even his closest loyalists and most ardent defenders came to find that, by treating the King as a special exception, they lost that social support whereby others would look upon them and automatically know they were good people. Without that assurance, doubts spread among the knights whether they truly were doing the right thing. Nevermind the nation’s peace and safety under his rule, the conflict that preoccupied the knights operated entirely on the philosophical level. Navigating these greys disturbed them. The shunning and shaming they endured for it overwhelmed them. A spotless white mantle was what they preferred, and ultimately returned to.
Though Renard resonates with the principle of the King’s explanation, barking out in anger towards the hypocrisy of the knights, it doesn’t exactly change that Renard’s behaviour was awful. He remains on edge, unsure of how to voice these critical thoughts.
The Iron King continues again, massaging his temple. His devotion to Lacren has been ironclad. All the same, the desertion of his knights has made it clear that the righteous reject this kingdom.
Something about this statement twigs Renard as deeply sympathetic. His reservations ease despite himself. Though he confesses that the Iron King has been an excellent ruler, he still hesitates to accept a promotion for what he’s done — and it may be betraying the Iron King’s own ethic, in this moment of weakness, for him to offer it. Renard will earn the right to stand—
“Renard," the Iron King interrupts. “You have that right."
Renard chokes silent.
A lever clicks in his head. Maybe it’s okay to be a little bit awful? With the Iron King watching sombrely on his throne, Renard puffs out his chest and boldly asserts that he would never defy the King’s desires. He understands now why what he said was wrong. Of course he could not stand to be the same as those so-pious knights.
The Iron King tilts his head and smiles. He reveals a key from his pocket and divulges that his parents are still locked in the tower. While Renard struggles to grasp the implications of this reveal, the Iron King stashes the key away again and leans forward conspiratorially. We ought assert the principles we as a kingdom embrace, going forward.
Though on edge, Renard unhesitatingly agrees.
Then let us see the valour of those twelve defectors pit against you, the King says. We shall stage a competition by which you sequentially face these twelve knights — should they prevail, I abdicate. Should you prevail, I stay upon this throne.
Even as he automatically goes to agree, Renard can’t help but pause. Such odds dramatically favour the knights, so much the whole premise sounds frivolous as to be anticlima—
The Iron King squeezes Renard’s shoulder, grinning horribly: of course, I do mean to the death.
With a tingle of fear and expectation strangling out his doubts, Renard’s back straightens and his arm thumps to his chest in salute.
What the hell has he just agreed to, thinks Renard upon returning to his lodgings.
Before the stipulation of ‘to the death’ was specified, Renard can confess that he planned to throw the tourney. Hardly would it be surprising for an everyday guardsman to falter when forced to fight twelve experienced knights in turn. Such thinking, of course, was underestimating the Iron King’s ambitiousness.
How dare that vile creature try to kill me alongside him! Or so Renard could shout, kicking and punching his furniture to splinters, but the actuality of the situation is not so.
If the power of loyalty and devotion can outperform twelve trained and pious knights, that venerates the Iron King’s ethos. It also stands to scour the dishonour of irresolution from Renard. Had he thrown, and so disrespected the King’s esteem, that shame would have stuck with him for a lifetime, as would the lingering question of what heights he could have reached if he tried. And maybe Renard is humble enough to imagine the King existing in society as anything other than a King — but plainly, the King is not, and if Renard is to support him, adhering to his ambitions is paramount.
So the options to flee or to conspire a loss do not exist, despite what Renard’s cowering gut says. Chained by a need to impress the King, and to prove himself capable of meeting these incredible expectations placed upon him, he must face these twelve challengers with full zeal, determination, and sincerity. It’s not a question of whether he wants to or not. It’s simply that he has to do this.
If it is within Renard’s capacity to win this tourney — then for him to do so is awesome, admirable thing. Run away now, and he might as well die anyway. Despite his nerves, and despite the dark churning in his gut, the heaviness of the demand inspires an odd kind of pride.
But can Renard actually win?
Though Renard trains as strenuously as he can over the following weeks, sparing barely a moment for rest, he can’t shake the worry that he’s simply not prepared. And it’s not that he’s unconfident in his ability to handle a sword or move on a battlefield — he has rehearsed these motions well enough that they come to him as naturally as a musician strikes a chord.
It’s that he’s never killed a human being before.
In a battle to the death, the ability to confirm kills is paramount. Renard can only imagine himself, even if he does best the first knight in the tourney, faltering, and hesitating, and in the end being undone. Either the knight collects himself and strikes a fatal blow on Renard, or Renard tires himself by protracting the fight and goes into the second round off-balance, and more likely than not, loses.
The option to not the cement the kill, and beg from the gladiatorial pit for the tourney to stop, is of course forbidden. Again, such mewling is the same as taking a blade across the neck anyway.
Renard resolves. If he’s to go into this tourney with a proper desire for win, then before it even begins, he must shed his discomfort with murder.
Renard travels to the border of Lacren and situates himself near a crossroads. Travellers often come through this area, they being the demographic Renard sees fit to target.
Were there anything poetic or difficult about the process, Renard would note it, but murder is truly straightforward. The only hard thing about it is finding the mentality to actually do it. As much as Renard could not prevent himself from going into the valley, or from accepting to kill in this tourney, or from throwing that sheep in that tree, it’s simply a matter of knowing there are no alternatives that solidifies that mentality for Renard.
An unwary couple comes to the crossroads. Renard greets them jauntily, puts a sword through their chests, dumps their bodies in the bushes, and leaves in a span of barely ten minutes.
Their screams and faces stick in his mind on the way home, as they should. A fog of guilt, regret, discomfort, anxiety, and awareness of sin rolls inside him, but cannot break into action before a cold, iron core of certainty casts them aside. Some cheerful part of Renard feels to have died.
Renard clenches his fist and purses his lips, knowing that, by that death, and by tempering himself in this coldness, he has already succeeded.
The tourney unfolds in the days after that.
The first knight does not expect him. He comes to the battle anticipating a misguided boy, moved by deception and fear, forced into a gaudy suicide by a ghoul’s sadistic whimsy. What he gets is a tempered soldier, not merely thirsting for, but devoted to victory. A single, brutal stab through the neck smoothly fells this first knight.
And so that tone holds for the eleven matches that follow. Some knights attempt to pacify Renard with assurances of protection and appeals to morality — it is too late for these to work. Even if they desire to do the right thing, none of their souls burn with the same hunger as Renard.
Silence dominates the field as the twelfth knight falls. Renard lets out a breath, sheaths his sword, and nods not with a sense of great accomplishment, but merely of having done what he must. A void tightens in his throat as he straightens his back and glances soberly to the King for approval.
The King stands dumbstruck, eyes wide like marbles, as if having witnessed a miracle.
He dashes to Renard and hugs him, elated.
Time once again passes.
Years have gone since the defeat of the twelve knights. If reservations nagged Renard about too easily securing a title, his efforts in that tourney erased them — he has become the Iron King’s right-hand man, ostensibly his bodyguard, ostensibly his confidant, but in reality ‘lackey’. Since the King needs no bodyguards, and since he rarely divulges his worries to Renard, Renard figures the King keeps him so close because his presence gives the King a feeling of purpose, and lessens his loneliness.
Which is the role Renard always desired. Renard cannot dispute where he’s wound up, in that sense, and in fact feels quite proud.
In every other sense, though, he does not feel proud. An undercurrent of unease, cynicism, and shame dominates Renard’s life. People no longer smile or feel protected in his presence. For how the tension in the air irks him, he feels no right to brighten the mood with jokes or bold claims of valour. Actually, knowing what he has committed, and knowing why people do fear him, any attempts to laugh his sins off would ignite an instant desire to strangle himself.
All he can do is dismiss his old self as an idiot, adhere to the just laws of the King, and try not to snap at townsfolk for cowering when he passes by.
He never did get that title of Knight, by the way. Owing to the different tenor of what Renard represents, as a loyalist to a hexant King, the title he did get is Cavalier. It entitles him to enforce the King’s word, as a knight would, protect the King’s honour, as a knight would, and fight in the King’s wars, as a knight would, but without the trammels of chivalry that would otherwise guide his behaviour. In a sense, since he has the King’s favouritism anyway, it entitles him to do whatever he wants without suffering punitive consequence.
Though everyone knows he has it, it’s a product of Renard’s own pride that he declines to exploit the privilege. Between attending the King, overseeing the guard for hints of conspiracy, and drinking himself gormless in the darkest corners of taverns, life goes on.
Lacren, too, has endured a widespread change of reputation. Though previously guarded from scrutiny by the relative peace of occupied Pilamine, the slaughter of the twelve knights has locally certified it as a hexant kingdom. Neighbours of Pilamine previously too occupied with their own business to spare Lacren notice have now alarmingly, and with great impetus, fixated their attention on the evil emanating from the Iron Throne of the Blood Kingdom of Lacren.
Let those hypocrites think what they will, Renard bitterly grouses. The people here yet live well, and nothing either has changed for the Pilamines.
But the Pilamines disagree, as Renard finds, when the Iron King calls him for debriefing that day.
A courier from Pilamine requests the King’s presence in the city, to discuss a pressing issue.
The Pilamines are refusing to deliver Lacren’s shipment of water.
The Pilamines’ rebellion infuriates Renard, mostly because it is foolish. If the Pilamines dig in their heels, the King slaughters their leaders and takes their throne too. Obviously. What is the point of such a stupid invitation?
It is possible, the Iron King notes, that the Pilamines’ neighbours are pressuring them into this antagonistic move, hence, there may be a diplomatic resolution to this problem, at least between Lacren and Pilamine. Renard considers this novel angle, finding it wise and agreeable, and joins the Iron King on a diplomatic visit to Pilamine.
They come to Pilamine’s gates. Guardsmen welcome them with no resistance, opening the first portcullis.
Standing in the gap between the city’s two wall-gates, they wait for the second gate to rise.
Thoom! The portcullis they just passed crashes down behind them. Renard flinches and twists, but the guards outside give no acknowledgement to his shock.
A trap! Renard thinks. One they walked so stupidly into. But even this flash of indignation fades to rising fear, as the passing seconds confirm the second gate never will rise.
Renard glances over.
If the Pilamines have stuck him between their gate walls with the Iron King…
The King stands with hands cupped, back straight, his annoyance towards the Pilamines barely a hint.
…That means he is stuck in an enclosed space, with the Iron King. Renard glances over. If the King is panicked, he is not showing it, or responding with much fervour for anything at all, in itself an unnerving response.
Renard bangs the bars and demands the Pilamines explain what they’re doing. But they turn away. His throat constricts. For all his stated devotion to the King, right now near him is truly the last place Renard wants to be. Because if the Pilamines hold them here more than two or three days, and the King’s bloodthirst begins to assert itself, that translates to Renard being locked in here with a monster.
The King’s claws rending him from his guts to his gullet, his teeth gnashing through his throat, globules of viscera splattering over the stone — and then the King unfurling back into human stature with that horrible air of dispassion. Screams from his survival instincts command Renard’s body to shout at the Pilamine guards even more insistently, demanding they find the humanity in themselves not to keep him locked in here with a ghoul.
It works. They chain the Iron King’s hands to the portcullis and escort Renard out. The Iron King smiles subtly through the bars, rubbing his wrists once the Pilamines unchain him, and encourages Renard on this course of action. He seems to think it was some strategy of Renard’s to better position himself to do something about the situation, and not an entirely sincere and genuine terror that moved him.
Renard wobbles with nerves. The Pilamines distance him from the Iron King’s earshot to confirm that he is Renard the Cavalier, who slaughtered the twelve knights. Straining, he confirms yes but also that the Iron King forced him to do it on threat of upending Lacren. Fearing in his gut that the Pilamines will incarcerate and torture him, Renard begs that he be allowed to plead his case and divulge Lacren’s side of this whole affair.
Again it works. Though not sympathetic to him specifically, the Pilamines do empathise with the difficulty of being trapped in a hexant kingdom, and on principle see it as justified that he be allowed to speak. Being so close to the Iron King, he also is in a good position to have witnessed the King’s deeds. They escort him to their castle.
The castle hosts many guests. Dignitaries, knights, governors, and soldiers from many neighbouring kingdoms pace through the halls — a coalition has formed between these forces and Pilamine to unseat the Iron King. Even a shaman woman from distant Palida, too dignified to be anxious but still a sore thumb in this castle, mills among the ranks.
Renard unwinds and breathes in relief. Though apprehensive the strangers may not receive him well, the sheer number and diversity of parties helping against the King reassures him. He is presented before the Pilamine lords and the other leaders of this coalition.
They are intrigued to hear from him. Eyes and ears lean in attentively from atop their thrones.
Renard takes a breath, puffs out his chest, and lets a well of suppressed fear predominate. He divulges the hostage-like hold the Iron King has over Lacren with the composure of a weeping child, pleading for the coalition to understand how coercive and frightening the King has been and how insignificant Renard has felt beside him. Though contrary to the ideas that got Renard here in the first place, presently these words shine with more conviction than anything he has said in his life, as though the Iron King has never even once treated him kindly.
And as much as Renard believes himself in this moment, the coalition leaders believe him too. Moved by his plight, they discern the role he can serve as part of the coalition, earning himself amnesty for the killing of the twelve knights.
He can be the coalition’s spokesperson, smoothing the locals through the government shift as these foreign princes conquer Lacren.
The meeting breaks for dinner and Renard rushes to his guest room, panicking.
In retrospect he is not sure why he thought — well, no, he wasn’t goddamn thinking anything. Dumb gut reactions upon dumb gut reactions cornered him into this predicament, and though he’s been erratic in his allegiances, he can at the least say he absolutely doesn’t want to be the reason Lacren winds up being conquered.
At the same time, he still finds himself wavering on whether he truly wants to release the King. Renard thought he had scoured himself of this irresolution, by the dreadful commitment he’d made in the King’s name, but now he can only wonder if he’s actually just a very shallow person.
That being, the kind of person who would abandon his principles at even mild urging, or in fact never truly had any to begin with, but still wanted accolades and an authority’s justified recognition. The desire to flee right now is immense. Unfortunately, beyond being an impossible option for him psychologically, it is also not practicable in a hostile walled city as Pilamine, anyway.
Perhaps, then, he best align with the coalition — but before he can even complete this thought, a furious word blasts through his mind: hypocrites! Renard clenches his fists, grinds his teeth. They thirst for power as fervently as the Iron King must thirst for blood, yet they haven’t the incontrovertible binding of ghoulishness to excuse it. They are pretentious warlords, reaping the livelihoods of simple civilians that they may press their own culture’s vanities upon them, expecting to be so celebrated for their graciousness and righteousness that none will raise even a thought of complaint against them. Were these accusations untrue, they would conduct their business and simply leave, allowing Lacren the dignity of its own sovereignty. But they will not! They want the power!
As far as masters go, the Iron King, at the very least, has not once salivated over prospects of taking mighty Coquain, or unconquerable Oppenveist, or even the humble neighbour Pilamine. He aspires to keep the Lacrenese people fed, free, protected, and watered. That is the only height to which he has aimed and he has not once faltered from this goal. Next to those tyrants, he is impeccable.
But even knowing himself too disgusted and indignant to even hypothetically submit to the coalition, Renard still cannot erase his unease around the Iron King. Plus, he is not sure how he actually can release him from the gates unnoticed, or what consequence could follow except the Iron King slaughtering the coalition — yet again impressing to every observer the exploitable notion that he is a savage ghoul.
What can Renard do? He tries to imagine what arguments he could present to the coalition’s leaders, but his tongue only twists in his mouth. He is not a studied diplomat or an ambassador; he cannot win a contrary argument against a roomful of clever and semantically trained princes.
Finding no solution in these trails of thought, Renard allows them to fade. His fear and uncertainty rise back into consciousness to choke him: something, do something!
I don’t know! What should I do? Help me, He wants to sob back.
Something!, is his gut’s only reply.
Allowing once again that gut to reign, Renard gets up, exits the room, and marches down the hall.
Behind the door of the guest room at which he knocks comes a slender silhouette, of that strange Palidan shaman.
She seems surprised by Renard’s visit, but not inherently uncomfortable with his presence.
“Soothsayer, which conniving prince bounded eastward and pluck’t ye flower to plant in his court?" Renard asks.
She leans in, glancing down the hall and easing open the door. “My roots recede from your princes; their soil is swamp for us missionaries."
“Hoh, fortune," Renard laughs blandly, bowing his head as he presses into her room.
She shuts the door behind him. Her room is plainly furnished but cluttered with small stone vials, mortars, strange-smelling powders, and odd little tools she must use in augury. Thick plants grow from damp hides wadded against the wall, among piles of fat, messy notebooks and buckets filled with ash. .
The shaman herself is also peculiar. Her white skin and long, pale blonde hair are exoticisms Renard has seen on house-bred rabbits and dogs, but never before on a human. Wooden beads and bangles, carved with symbols, clatter around her wrists, with blooming flowers twined through her hair and coiled over her breast, seeming to grow out of her clothes. Deep, patterned scars, remnants of some childhood ritual, pock her arms. Though still some decades from seniorhood, her light crow’s feet betray her as some years older than Renard.
She turns gracefully to him, hands folded behind her at the door, her gaze questioning and vaguely suspicious.
Renard grinds his teeth and clenches his fist, pricked by her somewhat accusatory manner. Recognising the fruitlessness of growing angry or violent with her over nothing, though, he releases the anger with a sigh and plops himself in her chair at the desk, rubbing his temple.
“A missionary," Renard mutters to confirm it, weighing the word.
He probably can trust a missionary.
“Though the esteem of the Architect’s word less waters these territories than my practice as a Taurine…" she confirms, stepping away from the door with a glance to the shrub-growing lumps. Her manner softens with quizzical realisation. “Your land has been very defiled."
“It is these princes," he snaps, “warlords, snapping as buzzards at bones! So stretches the pious pride of dignity."
The shaman purses her lips as if facing a challenging question, and carefully explains the situation as she sees it. The esteem of Lacren has become weak, as she implies, owing to the rule of the Iron King. The same way that a river flows downward, the overflowing esteem of these conquering princes drives them to occupy and renew this cavity, filling it with their esteem. She sees this as a fundamentally good thing. But since this is a foreign energy, she can understand the acrimoniousness of this situation to Renard and the tribe of Lacren as a whole. However, she cannot conjure esteem for Lacren, or for Renard as its executor, that can reverse or stabilise this natural flow of energy. If he doesn’t want Lacren to be conquered, he must reap and use esteem from a higher source or assert his authority to alter the existing flow of esteem.
Gobbledygook.
“I do not care of this ‘esteem’!" Renard snaps again, and sighs, his hand trembling on his forehead. As the flash of anger fades, though, and anxiety eclipses it to churn in his chest, Renard finds a certain logic underneath the jargon of the shaman’s words.
Essentially, the conquering princes are attracted to Lacren because there is opportunity to take it and they have power. There isn’t a hunger to claim it for any material reason; it’s simply a matter of course to consolidate the weak into the strong. So if Lacren itself was just a smidgen more powerful, not even enough to be a threat but just enough to say ‘no, we don’t need you’, the princes would be rebuffed without argument.
But the greatest locus of Lacren’s power, indeed so powerful as to keep all of these varied kingdoms timid and shivering, an unshakeable well of this ‘esteem’ the shaman raves about, is the Iron King. Single-handedly, he is Lacren’s bulwark. But, the problem is…
“By this pious conspiracy, my Lord cannot action his power…" Renard mutters to himself with grief. If these outsiders would give him the chance to operate as their peer in princehood, and resolve contentions by conventional diplomacy and trade, this ‘problem’ of the hexant kingdom they see so fit to liberate would disappear overnight. They corner him into this conception of ‘ghoul’! But if they would only accept him…!
“You name the monster your Lord?" the shaman says, eyes wide in alarm.
Renard’s throat and shoulders lock. A cold sweat oozes down his arms and back, the shiver of fear only barely staying under his skin.
What of it!, he wishes to snap. But aggression will only worsen his straits, more than the stupid confession he just made. The shaman pads across the room to the shrub-lumps, ready to use them if needed, but as much wary as confused. Renard finds himself sharing in that confusion.
Why is he so attached to someone who makes him so scared?
Renard looks down, hand over his face, straining not to show weakness in front of this woman. His face reddens and palm warms. But through this strain and hurt, an odd rush of levity opens in his chest like a window into summer. Wonderful images flow into his mind of the Iron King, recognised and loved for his equanimity and kind justice as a firm but loving King, bold and glorious in a triumph of human spirit above his ghoulish nature. The sun glints off his raised palm and the breeze splays his hair as a majestic cape, jubilant and free from the trammels of sin. More than just wanting to see him happy, the prospect of the Iron King’s exaltation into virtue feels to prove some fundamental, and powerful, principle to the world.
That is what Renard truly desires. It is for this prospect of redemption, that determination and love may grant the King the joyful life his birth ought have owed him, that Renard is so loyal to the King. Realising this, Renard thinks it a wonderful thing.
“I do not even know his name…" Renard’s palm falls from his face, still red but not wet. Not even the Iron King knows his name; he died too young to conceive it.
The shaman relaxes.
Renard puckers his lips in thought, then turns to her. He asks if there is any way she knows, with her mystical teachings, to cure a ghoul of being a ghoul, in the sense of purifying them or returning them to a human state.
This question takes the shaman off-guard. There is no precedent for the purification of ghouls — the typical answer is to just kill them. But the suggestion, audacious as it is, hooks her interest. She gnaws her lip, thumb to her chin. Theoretically… theoretically, since a ghoul is a corruption of a human soul, were there a way to reverse the process of soul rot…
If such an innovation could be achieved, it would change everything…
But she shakes her head. It’s all hypothetical. Even if she can see principle for it, garnering results would likely take years of intensive study… She gives Renard a suggestively questioning look, as though she might say more, but stays quiet.
Renard heaves himself off the chair with a grunt. The shaman has given him an idea of what to do.
The shaman warns that she can just as well study the Iron King under the coalition’s captivity as Lacren’s — it does not necessarily serve her to argue for Renard, before the princes, if that is where he is thinking of taking this.
Renard raises the back of his hand dismissively in his stride for the door. He pauses at the doorframe to shoot her a grin. “Why doth victory argue?"
The shaman bites her tongue, unable to deny these words. She hums in consideration as he turns again to leave.
“Pleione Gayle, cavalier." She smooths her hand through her hair, smiling. “Called so for a reason, I see."
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 at 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.
Renard, alongside Pleione, enters Sebilles’ throne room to present the confined Iron King and parley with the new regent.
The man draped across the throne is one Renard recognises — a local nobleman from a house that advocates Lacren adopt a more Pilamine-scented mercantile culture — but not one Renard expects. Truthfully, though it is obvious that the local aristocracy would swoop in to fill the power vacuum in the Iron King’s absence, Renard’s gut had not imagined anyone so brazen as to dump themselves in the seat without any consideration for ceremony, process, or the existing claims of the Iron King’s distant relatives.
Rather, though he may not be involved in the intrigues of politics, Renard was sure the Iron King had selected a regent to rule if he himself was infirm. That shouldn’t be this nobleman. So who the hell is this guy?
The man on the throne — Herjas of Asbury — picks his fingernails with a letter-opener, bored and frowning as Renard comes in.
Renard stands speechless, his brow knotted, looking from the caged Iron King to Herjas.
Herjas raises his brow over the Iron King’s banging and shrieking. “Haven’t you a report for me?"
“What farce is this?" Renard blurts.
“Timeliness from a subordinate hardly ought be a farce?" He minutely straightens in the throne, frowning as he adjusts the crown atop his head. “Your coalition didn’t dispute my claim, when they wrote to me."
Renard quickly adjusts his tongue, explaining that by his understanding the appointed regent was someone else.
Herjas explains that said regent forfeited his position to Herjas the second he got it. The implication of the Iron King’s legitimacy, represented by his appointed regent, given that the King had been subjugated and his regime so over, tasted poorly on both Herjas and the regent’s tongues. Now, Renard did an excellent job getting the combined heat of the coalition off Lacren’s neck. But Renard’s intentions of reinstating Old Iron to the throne read to Herjas as very transparent.
Herjas nods to a gaggle of guardsmen, who whisk away the Iron King’s cage. Actually, now that Renard sees it properly, this room is teeming with guards all staring at him, each holding a tight grip on their weapons.
Renard’s hands tremble as he steps forward. What of Lacren’s obligation to the purification of soul rot?
Ah, Herjas chuckles, then continues, That’s not something to concern you. He straightens to address the topic more seriously. ‘Cavalier’ Renard, even if you were not loyal—
Renard feels Pleione trying not to be noticed as Herjas makes these assertions. Renard’s back tightens; her face is unreadable.
—to Old Iron, you represent a centrepiece of his regime. It isn’t suitable to this Kingdom that you remain in your current position.
Renard’s hands and shoulders now quake, jaw clenched and eyes peeled as if to rip the man off the throne. Fear and anger demand that he act, but the threat of the guards paralyses him, pouring out sweat, to this spot.
Conscious of Renard’s success in mediating the coalition, and of his basic talent and worth, but also of his ignobly-gained position and devoted tie to a political enemy, Herjas offers a compromise. Renard may retire from the military sphere, surrender his sword as a memory, and accept a position on the outskirts of Lacren as the head of a minor Barony.
The life Herjas is offering flashes through Renard’s mind. It promises a retirement from the Iron King, and from the responsibilities of being so intimately tied to the political future of Lacren, but not such total estrangement as to discard all ambition. If Renard desired, he could struggle up the ranks and assert himself as a legitimate force to pressure Herjas, within a proper framework of decency, intrigue, and legality. But Renard knows he does not desire this. If he were to become some minor Baron, secure in a privileged position but not so direly pivotal as to be expected or needed for anything serious, it’s possible he’d rather settle in to the comfort of that and forget about everything that’s happened.
It’s upon recognising how truly appealing the prospect of relief is that Renard’s fury boils over into explosion. Coursing with rage, blind to all thought or reason, he surges forward to tear this impostor off that seat and bludgeon his skull into mush on the stone.
Two guards aside the throne spring forward with their halberds. They intercept Renard and pin him, struggling, against the wall. Herjas watches dispassionately, cheek in his palm, as though disappointed, but not surprised.
Renard points at him through the halberds crossed over his chest and shouts. Hypocrite! All of you rulers, power-thirsty as the next, caring of nothing but your games of war! You haven’t the dignity the Iron King has in his finger. You wipe your vain taints across the soil and drive daggers into the strong so you raptors can pretend yourself equal! It is perfidy! You grasp honour not in the slightest and serve none but your conceited selves! You…
While Herjas weighs whether Renard’s retaliation warrants unpersoning or execution as punishment, Pleione steps forward and raises her hand. “If I may, a word, Your Grace."
Herjas raises his brow. Is it a word in any way pertinent to him?
Renard, astounded in the background under the press of the two guards, chokes out a derisive laugh at this arrogant attitude. Pleione awkwardly concedes, “…Potentially."
Herjas shrugs for her continue.
She nods, and informs him that he should not fear a political threat from the Iron King if he were purified. She has no doubt that the King would reject the throne, too disgusted by his past to touch it.
Herjas falls into meditative thought, the subtle air of tension dissipating around him. Pleione’s words have apparently worked as assurance that cooperating with the coalition will not spark civil conflicts later, if the purified Iron King tried to stake a claim to the throne. So Herjas may adhere by the coalition’s demands safely, and accept Pleione’s presence, studies, and cause here in good faith or better, encourage it.
To Renard, though, her words just sound like another insult towards the King’s character. He howls and yells at her now, calling her a wretched opportunist that will never know the meaning of virtue.
Herjas rises from his spell of thought, aware again of the Renard issue. The guards pinning Renard look to Herjas for instruction. Herjas nods. “Take—"
In straining to listen to Herjas’ command, their attention wavers minutely. Though truly tiny, the distraction is enough that the strength in their halberds eases a slight, and Renard forces himself forward. He rips a halberd away from one guard, knocks him against the wall, pushes the other back, and breaks free.
Every other guard in the room rushes to respond. Instantly recognising he can’t win this fight, Renard abandons the halberd and bolts into the single corridor out of the room not flanked by guards, heart pounding and muscles tight as he sprints. He realises dimly he is running deeper into the castle, down paths that will eventually lead to a dead end — but as long as he can do anything, he must do something, smarts smothered by reaction and adrenaline.
Heavy metal boots echo behind him, the fear of this growing noise driving him on like a whipped, panicked horse. But sounds of chaos soon peal from ahead of him too — screaming, clanging, rattling — and he turns a corner to see a gaggle of guardsmen struggling with something in the hallway.
Heedless, Renard tucks in his head and barrels through them. Like bowling pins, the first fall, but Renard only clips the next and tumbles. To catch himself and adjust his momentum, he slams this guard against the wall — but stumbles against another guard and trips, tumbling to the ground anyway.
Caught in a tangle of limbs, Renard fails to pull himself free of the mound or push himself to his feet to keep running. Breathless, terrified, he glances up and behind him.
The man he pushed against the wall is screaming, pinned with his feet kicking air by a pair of arms that have coiled around his neck from behind in a chokehold. The wall is not an actual wall — it’s the bars of a prison cell. The Iron King’s cell!, Renard realises dimly, and so too recognises the silhouette looming over the man from behind the bars as the Iron King, whose face is pressed against the metal, fanged mouth gnashing and flapping with spit, desperate as feral dog in its muzzle to devour the man through the prison bars.
The Iron King tears off chunks of the man’s face as if tearing soft mouthfuls of bread. He squeezes these lumps like fruits, thirsting for the blood but discarding the meat. The man’s body slumps, dead or dying. The Iron King’s claws yet mutilate his torso in strips.
Renard, paralysed by the horror of witnessing this and burning from the panic of knowing himself pursued, heaves again to escape the pile.
Though metal boots still echo from corridors behind, the screaming and banging falls quiet. A small metal object scrapes across the ground. The Iron King has retrieved a key from the dead guard’s pocket. With a twist and a ka-chunk, the cell door unlocks and shrieks quietly open.
Renard strains to catch his breath, tears burning at the corners of his eyes. The Iron King, sated back into sanity, steps delicately out of the cell and lifts Renard back to his feet. Though the Iron King’s face is grave, sober in that dispassionate way it often is after a feed, he squeezes Renard’s shoulder as if to reassure him things are well, and to stay steady. Despite his fear, Renard’s cheeks slacken with relief.
The Iron King wipes the wet blood from his mouth with a strip of the guardsman’s tabard, guiding Renard to step over the pile and proceed back to the throne room. That is when Renard’s pursuers turn the corner. They jolt at the sight of the Iron King out of his cell, stooping their halberds as if to charge, but their feet do not move as they all know these weapons cannot even nick him — it is just a gesture for their peace of mind.
Silence stretches along the corridor as the Iron King stares exhaustedly over this group. He soon straightens his shoulders, raises his hand, and smoothly gestures the guards to stand down as he has hundreds of times during his rule. Recognising the sign, and the Iron King’s familiarity towards them, the guardsmen waver and stand aside, shamed like children before a firm parent.
The Iron King and Renard return to the throne room. Again, the massive chamber falls silent the second the Iron King crosses its threshold.
The Iron King spares a withering look to the few guards that remained in this room, who also shuffle awkwardly as if reprimanded, but pauses upon noticing Pleione. A moment of uncertainty holds until he orders a guardsman to take her away and put her into holding for now. Finally, he turns to an extremely nervous Herjas, and informs him that he did not recall instating him as his seat-warmer.
Herjas babbles aborted syllables, unable to find the right words. Realising he can’t talk his way around it, he scrambles down the steps of the throne and presents the crown to the Iron King.
The Iron King dryly considers the offering.
Renard’s shoulders slump with relief. If there’s anything to say about the Iron King, it’s that he’s always been great at firmly, but naturally, establishing easy authority in most any situation. Watching him retake the kingdom that belongs to him with such little argument is breathtaking. Obviously, affairs with the coalition will require finesse to navigate, the kind that Renard doesn’t have and can’t ever envision having, but that the Iron King will doubtlessly—
With an arrow’s precision, the Iron King’s claws pierce through Herjas’ neck. Renard’s throat tightens. The Iron King withdraws his hand and Herjas’ body falls to the floor in a grand spray of blood, spouting jets from his arteries that gradually die down. The Iron King retrieves the crown, brushes it off, ascends the steps to the throne with a frown.
He deposits himself on the seat, knuckles his brow.
“We take blades to the Pilamines," he announces. “So it shall be; bring those zealots to war."
After his dismissal for the night, in his quarters, Renard’s mind eddies around that announcement. While part of him cheers in reverence that the Iron King has, again, demonstrated his power, a pit in his gut weighs heavily, telling him that this is wrong.
There are legitimate reasons to bring Pilamine to war. They incited hostilities by trapping the Iron King, so to say the Iron King is merely responding to that provocation is fair. Moreover, Lacren still needs Pilamine’s water. Abandoning the compromises and claiming Pilamine as Lacrenese territory removes the persistent issue of water Lacren will otherwise always have, and disallows Pilamine from manoeuvring into a more advantageous position in both the short- and long- term. Just as they did before, if they desire to defeat Lacren, all they have to do is withhold water. And indeed, with only a couple months’ worth of water left in the wells, the Iron King feels impelled to strike now.
Equally, though, Renard feels only uncomfortable with this aggression. Pilamine has a whole coalition of allies who all want the Iron King gone, and who would all claim Lacren for themselves in his absence if able. What conquering Pilamine does is commit Lacren to massive escalation, drawing more and more hostilities from more and more powerful nations in what will ultimately be a gauntlet of every great power versus Lacren. Even if Lacren survives this onslaught, which Renard suspects it actually might, it will do so as an aggressor and conqueror, annexing the territory of its broken foes.
Annexation of enemies is hardly atypical — so why does the prospect of this kingdom growing to such a great size feel so horrible?
Maybe because Renard can see a path whereby it doesn’t need to happen, and cannot understand why the Iron King picked war when there was an alternative.
Murdering Herjas worked to establish the Iron King’s unquestioned authority, but it was also an extremely brutal and needless dismissal of what could have been a valuable pawn. Or even ally, since negotiating agreements and swaying people to causes is the core of sophisticated politics, which the Iron King is supposed to be good at. Either way, the Iron King could have concealed his return to power from the coalition, and probably from Lacren itself, while using Herjas as his mouthpiece. Soon nobody would have suspected Lacren to still be under the reign of a ghoul, eliminating the core problem that has always hampered the Iron King politically. In that way, he would be free.
Why escalate? If Renard perceived this course, surely so did the Iron King.
Is this voice of doubt just cowardice? Is there some rationale he’s too dumb to get? Or is Renard now a hypocrite who scorns open ambition? Though he does not pursue this thought, it flits through his mind: what would Isen have done?
Renard smooths the covers of his bed and sighs as he takes off his boots. Maybe he can sleep off these thoughts, and if he’s truly so bothered, present them to the Iron King in the morning, with the benefit of a sleepless night’s worth of rumination backing his rhetoric. …Then again, with Herjas dead, to insist the Iron King take a softer track now probably isn’t useful.
A gentle knock comes at Renard’s door. Surprisingly, it is Pleione. When Renard asks what she is doing here, she answers that she has spoken with his Iron King, and from that talk, learned something she thought prudent for Renard to know.
Renard deposits himself on his bed, already sick of the subject, but unable to send her away. He cannot even find it in himself to boast of the Iron King’s equanimity, and how it surely must have impressed itself upon her, or how she must see now that he is as reasonable as any other man, but only make the bitterly dry observation of, ‘is that why you come not in shackles?’
Pleione absent-mindedly rubs her wrists, answering yes, and seats herself beside Renard.
He shoves her off the bed and back onto her feet.
She gulps minutely, glances away, and backs off a couple steps. Her gaze lowers to the ground briefly. “Come," she says, “I will show you something."
Reluctantly, Renard heaves himself off the bed and follows her to the parapets. The city of Sebilles stretches far below them, familiar dwellings bleeding into taverns and shops and guild-houses, out to the gates, out to the forest that blankets the south road and easterly hills. It’s an everyday sight for Renard, but still one that impresses light sentiment. Here is his home, full of humbly ambitious and industrious people, whose day-to-day struggles, smiles, and triumphs are precious. Though he may be a black sheep, it’s a place where Renard can say he carved his spot and found his flock.
But what Pleione wants him to see is not this familiar panorama. She splays her hands to the sky, urging him to look up.
Overhead is the night sky, bloated with stars that peek from behind wisps of cloud. She may well have pointed to a rock or slobbered over a twig, as her brand of naturalists infamously do. Because yes, the sight is pleasant, but it’s one too distant to matter to Renard.
Each of these is the soul of an ancestor, Pleione explains, of men and women who lived hundreds or thousands of years before us, who can be traced by bloodlines back to eminent progenitors, hand-crafted from a vision of God. The legacies of these progenitors carry on in the blood, for every human alive today, and of course for Renard.
Renard crosses his arms and frowns up at the sky, uncomfortable. Whatever she is implying feels somehow dangerous to consider, and better laughed off as prattle from an airbrained spiritualist. But given how the stars overhead do shine like souls now that he thinks about it, the idea that God would have put these in the sky, stringing them like pearls on a necklace, does feel weirdly feasible.
This is the true order of things, Pleione continues. The care taken to glorify each one will forever remind us, despite the curses that poison our earth today, of how much God loved every one of us.
Cease this! Renard snaps, feeling her words prickle at his brain. The more he listens and stares up into this blackness, the more fingertips scrape at the corners of the night, to peel away the mask of empty sky and reveal something underneath. He cannot explain what is so terrifying about the shift of perspective Pleione is trying to impose on him, but if he lets these ideas settle in his head, it risks changing him into a different person.
Pleione falls quiet.
Renard accuses Pleione of using her shamanistic powers to beguile him, though he cannot say to what end. He is unable to grow angry enough to further accuse her of manipulation, hostility, or treachery, as indeed it doesn’t feel like any. Rather, she is a missionary, and a foreign element rife with foreign ideas. Her world is simply different to his and spreads to his mind when she opens her mouth. Renard could curse her for it, but blame lies more in the surprising potency of the effect, and the apparent weakness of Renard’s spirit, than in her for being different.
In the silence, the night sky readjusts properly into a bland backdrop, instead of some significant thing of the universe. Relieved that her ideas are flushing themselves out of his mind, Renard asks if that’s all she brought him out for.
She bites her lip and tells him carefully that she has been released from holding, and allowed to work freely in this castle, because the Iron King would like to see the fruition of research into the purification of ghouls.
The Iron King wants to be purified, is her meaning.
Renard trembles, sweating, terrified again for reasons he cannot pinpoint. You’re lying! He would yell. Or, it’s a good thing to want that research! But why does this prospect bother him in the first place? Why does it feel like such an attack when it should be something that Renard supports?
Pleione bows her head and turns to leave, commenting that Renard is welcome to speak with her if he is ever in need of it.
Again, Renard wishes he could grow angry, and levy accusations of arrogance or trickery at her, but the patient sincerity in her offer disarms him. As she disappears from the parapets, Renard can only growl, clench his teeth, and strike his trembling fist uselessly upon a merlon.
Conflicted, lost, afraid, indignant, and despondent, Renard returns to his quarters for the night, ruminating on nothing but how he must sleep fast and prepare for the war.
At the gates of Pilamine, the Lacrenese army is gathered.
With no formal pronouncement of war given to the Pilamines, nor any scouts who could know of the assault permitted from leaving Sebilles, the Pilamine forces are highly unprepared for this attack and disorganised in their response. Still, they understood the meaning of an army on the horizon, and promptly sealed the city’s gates shut and posted more archers on the parapets.
It’s a predictable, and indeed predicted, response.
Renard loads the Iron King into a catapult and launches him onto the parapets. He reams through the archers, slaughters the gatekeepers, and opens the grand portcullis gates using the mechanism inside the walls. Perfectly uncontested, the army enters the streets of Pilamine.
The objective of this war is to plunder Pilamine’s water stores, depose Pilamine’s rulers, and assume command of its castle. So, the complete capture and subjugation of the city into a Lacrenese territory.
After bringing in their supplies, the Iron King first orders the gates closed and posts a battalion to guard them so no Pilamines may leave. The rest of the contingent, he orders to assemble around the castle. Again, with so little warning given for the Pilamines to organise, and its primary defence being its walls anyway, no serious skirmishes arise with any soldiers as the Lacrenese army mobilises to this point.
The army arrives at the castle. They are too late to storm it — the drawbridge is already raised — but do unpack their supplies and quickly establish a base from which they can siege it. Renard reasons that Lacren will now lock down any other exits to the city, plunder what valuables they can find, scout for back entrances to the castle, and hold high-ranking figures ransom until the Pilamine lords capitulate.
And indeed, the Iron King orders squads from their army to sack the city. This is normal. Renard looks to the Iron King for instruction as that contingent departs.
Abnormal, the Iron King orders Renard’s contingent to begin rounding up Pilamine civilians. Renard pulls the locals from their houses and assembles them into a line, figuring these must be the ransom. But the Iron King surprises him again by unpacking a water distiller from their supplies and presenting it at the front of the line.
The Iron King then orders that the civilians be executed and their blood drained one-by-one, so it may be distilled into water.
Water is, fundamentally, the reason why they came here, the Iron King explains. If they shall take this city, they shall take it for every last drop.
Renard freezes, as does every other soldier present. There are brutal tactics of war, and there are cruel but necessary ways to pressure lords — and then there’s this, a proposition beyond inhumane. Silence stretches, on and on.
A thin hope lingers that a voice will speak up against the Iron King, but none does. Nor does his dispassionate air open room for jokes or debate. He is serious, and expects no resistance. Recognising that someone must fold to start the momentum going, despite the pit sinking in his throat, Renard steps up and slits the throat of the man at the front of the line. With that boundary crossed, and this course established, the other soldiers equally suppress their objections and smoothly drag more Pilamines forward.
Every strike of the blade, and gurgle as the Pilamines sob and bleed like livestock, makes Renard feel sicker and sicker. Equally grows his anger. He wishes to beat each gurgling, crying, squealing Pilamine over the head and shout: Shut up! Don’t make this hard! We must do this. What, you think I’m to blame, that I’m taking fun from this? You cow’s droppings! Why couldn’t you have gotten away?
But he cannot yell these things, snorting grimly at himself for thinking them, as he knows there is no way they could have escaped. The Iron King watches idly over the procession, scanning for stragglers, knocking on doors and dipping into buildings himself. It is clear to Renard that he will slaughter anyone who refuses this work.
For God’s sake, somebody stop this! Renard internally screams as he throws another corpse onto the pile.
“Daddy!" shrieks a little girl a short ways down the line. Renard’s heart sinks. “Daddy! Daaahhhhdeeeee!!", keening in the horrible way that only a little girl can.
Before she can reach him at the head of the line, Renard surrenders his post. When the Iron King is not looking, he pawns the job to another soldier and advises he’s going to find a Pilamine higher-up to use as ransom to get the castle open. Though initially only an excuse to get him away from the girl, this pretext soon becomes real as Renard goes door to door to door, yelling at folks to get in line and praying one will be important.
He is rewarded as he finds a magistrate of the city. The magistrate is terrified of Renard’s arrival, only for Renard himself to break down and beg that the magistrate do something, anything, that he come with Renard and appeal the lords to open up the castle so this madness can end. But the magistrate does not want to go.
Renard hoists the magistrate by his lapels and yells at him, impressing how dire the situation is and how he absolutely has to do something — when the rear gates of Pilamine open, blocks away but visible to Renard. Armoured, armed, and mounted reinforcements have arrived from the coalition, who had departed the city only hours before, and are evacuating everyone they can through the rear gates. Relieved, Renard releases the magistrate and urges him to run.
The thought of joining the coalition’s evacuation efforts does not even flit through his mind — it is clear to Renard he will not be accepted. Before he can be captured, questioned, or otherwise caught in a melee with the coalition’s forces, Renard runs back to the Lacrenese base to advise the Iron King about the evacuation.
The Iron King surmises that the lords are so staunchly remaining holed in the castle to buy time for the evacuation while likely evacuating out a backdoor themselves. While staying here to oversee the base and the bloodlettings, he orders one squad to escalate the abductions and assault the coalition forces at the rear gates head-on, shifting them into a more exploitable position, while Renard leads another squad to pincer the coalition from behind.
Renard mounts up and does as instructed. After looping around the city, his force comes upon the rear of the coalition, who are frantically shuttling women and children out the gates to safety. Plainly, rescuing the civilians is their priority.
Judgemental stares bore into Renard’s shoulderblades. Sweat burns on his neck. He senses that his own forces may be apt to desert if he orders them to attack. Equally, he knows he cannot defy the Iron King’s will and pacify the squad by waiting for the evacuation to finish before engaging.
Steeling himself, Renard charges forward. His initiative works to draw the rest of the squad into following, and a melee erupts between Renard’s forces and the coalition soldiers. Horses panic, blades sing, crescents of blood arc into the air, and the typical chaos of battle asserts itself boldly. No overpowering force rises from either party, the struggle remaining for now, about even.
Renard, locked in the zone, catches his breath between blows for one vital moment. A blade screams across his armour, narrowly missing a vital chink, thrust with force enough to almost topple him from his horse. Critically, this blade comes from behind him — it must be wielded by one of his own men, whose accuracy suggests they did not mistakenly friendly fire, but willingly attempted to assassinate Renard.
A second strike comes at that same chink, the perpetrator galloping by on his horse. Renard swiftly manoeuvres his own steed out of the way, unable to sight the perpetrator’s identity in the chaos, only to realise he has positioned himself vulnerably before the coalition forces instead. He frantically repositions, breaking out of the melee, and takes some meters of distance — in this short interim and from this clear vantage, he sees his own squad throwing down their weapons, raising their hands, and defecting to the coalition unilaterally.
Realising he is in serious trouble, Renard turns and flees as fast as his mount will carry him. But the thought of returning straight to the Iron King frightens him. Should he hide until things calm down, or take a circuitous route? In any case, pressed by the echoes of defectors and coalition soldiers pursuing him, he cannot stop or slow down. In the end, he does waste considerable time winding through sidestreets before looping back round to the castle.
Which, as Renard arrives, is now open. The drawbridge is down and Pilamine soldiers are assembled on its tongue. Too upon the parapets are archers. Veins in Renard’s neck bulge as he presses his horse faster, before a soldier might intercept him or an arrow might strike him, but through the clamour of distant screams and clopping hooves and banging metal and mental static, a dignified voice pierces him as cleanly as the point of a lance.
“Renard Cox!", it calls.
Renard’s horse rears back, having run into a gaggle of Pilamine spearsmen who raise their weapons at it. Renard, preoccupied with dread at hearing that stranger’s voice call his name, barely reins the animal back onto stable footing before turning to see who addressed him.
Upon the drawbridge is a man dressed in the colours of Pilamine, plainly a knight by the quality of his equipment and the grace with which he walks. Curly, light-brown hair spills down his shoulders like lamb’s wool, framing his beautiful face and complimenting the long, feathery lashes that fan around his dreamy eyes. Perhaps a hundred spearsmen stand behind him on the bridge, with as many archers on the parapets above, their bows all trained on Renard. Behind him, the other spearsmen close the exit, trapping Renard between them and the knight.
The Pilamine knight steps forward, and with a jerk of his chin, orders Renard off his horse.
Reluctantly, but without any choice, Renard dismounts. The Pilamine knight draws his sword and announces that still no recompense has been given to the twelve honourable knights Renard has slain. In their memory, he will hold Renard to account.
It’s a formal challenge to duel, ostensibly to the death, as if to correct the outcome of that tournament several years ago. Renard draws his own blade and steps onto the drawbridge, the spearsmen backing off to allow Renard and the knight some room. The knight waits, poised, for Renard to strike first — striking first against a trained duellist is almost always disadvantageous, but very well, Renard will initiate. The knight’s eyes bulge in shock as Renard not only reads, but smoothly hooks the counterattack, almost disarming the knight on the first swing.
In any case, the knight is now taking Renard seriously as an opponent. He redoubles his assault, thinks smarter about his strikes, lunges and parries with expert precision. However inflamed he is, though, Renard is not. With all the spearsmen waiting in a circle around them, and the archers on the parapets training their bows on Renard, Renard’s eyes dim and a bitter snort lodges in his throat. What a great and honourable and dignified send-off this knight is giving to the memory of his fallen comrades, undermined by the fact these onlookers ensure Renard can’t win, and even if he does win, he will be promptly felled by a hundred spearpoints and arrowheads anyway.
This unbalance saps the significance of this fight for Renard. Rather than pursue victory, as such a stupid situation allows no victors, Renard resigns that the best he can do is stall. Yet again the vain essence of knightly piety shows itself, Renard thinks with exasperation, affirmed once again to the idea that none as good as the knights would ever regard him as equal.
The Pilamine knight steps back and pauses the duel, alarmed. Having realised that Renard is not fighting to win, and in fact not regarding the duel seriously at all, and still the knight is not winning, he promptly orders the rubbernecking soldiers to disperse and evacuate. Though confused by this order, the enemy soldiers do break from the bridge until only Renard and the knight remain present.
Renard’s eyes widen with a childlike wonder. Gratitude stirs in his chest as he again regards the Pilamine knight, who Renard suddenly dares to think exactly as honourable and chivalrous as his title suggests. This might be genuinely, a rather good person.
Moved by the show of respect, Renard adjusts his stance and his grip on his blade. The Pilamine knight, though slightly intimidated beneath his decorum, does the same.
The duel resumes. With both Renard and the knight fighting to their utmost ability, Renard feels himself invigorated, and the knight energised in turn. The rhythm in each strike, dodge, and parry carries that of a vital conversation, with every twitch translating from the heart through the muscle into some expression of each fighter’s soul. More than anything his mouth could say, this trance of battle is Renard’s most fluent dialect. It’s a liberating thing to indulge in. Brighter and brighter, in each strike, he feels himself shine.
Equally he feels the rapport coming from the knight. If Renard sweeps a blow that proudly asserts, ‘my devotion to the course I’ve chosen is ironclad!’, then the knight’s desperate parry carries the question, ‘but how could you place that devotion to a cause that is so wicked?’. Such questions or sentiments are ones Renard would typically reject, but having already softened his heart toward the knight, and opened himself to this communication, he is able to accept the sincerity in them — and by that sincerity, accept the knight’s growing confusion.
More and more, the knight cannot understand why Renard aligned himself to the Iron King. He is not proposing that Renard turn against him, as he acknowledges that Renard’s principles ensure he will not. But he cannot see how someone who he indeed recognises as having such principles, passion, and quite a positive core of desire ultimately fell in with the Iron King. The knight seems to be conceiving a course where Renard could have been honed exceptionally into an instrument of good, and though not quite mourning the loss of something that did not and could never pass, is left with the burning and lingering hunger of ‘why?’ did that not happen.
In a sense, even more than the honour of the twelve knights, it feels like this knight is fighting for the honour of that hypothetical good Renard — and by respect for that ghost, is ever more inflamed with passion to defeat the twisted, imperfect thing in front of him.
It is in recognising this sentiment that Renard feels himself waver, and realise, he wants this knight to win.
Not now, necessarily. But he wants this knight to live and encourage whatever he does in the future. With two decisive whacks, Renard disarms the knight’s sword and batters him to his knees, winning the fight.
The knight stares up at Renard, panting and sweating. He cannot accept the loss, but also cannot reject the significance of the duel, so against his manic instinct to live, he does not scramble to flee or reach for his sword.
Convention demands that the loser of such a duel dies. But Cavalier Renard is not so inexorably bound to chivalry. In the stillness and the silence of the bridge and its vacated environs, Renard sheaths his blade. The knight dips his head in a strange mix of shame and gratitude, aware that he has been spared.
Renard exhales and turns to leave the bridge — when a chilling shift hooks the air, and a shadow falls over the two.
Oh, no, Renard’s guts squeeze in on themselves, already knowing what he will see behind him.
It’s the Iron King, covered in blood. He smiles thinly, his sharp teeth peeking between his slit lips, as he strides onto the bridge. Far in the distance, over the Iron King’s shoulder, Renard sees that the rear gates, through which the evacuation had been happening, are now closed.
Frozen by this observation, Renard fails to properly react when the Iron King joins his side. The Iron King, still wearing that horrible grin, glances to the defeated knight — who, furious, surges for his sword.
Before the knight even gets to his feet, the Iron King’s clawed hand pierces like a javelin through his stomach and out his back. He slumps, dead, on the Iron King’s arm. The Iron King withdraws his hand.
“Were you saving this one for me, Renard?" he asks.
Cold and numb, Renard cannot find a fitting reply. A profound darkness feels to sweep and settle over the world, like wind on a candle wick, snuffing out the light with nothing but a dispassionate grin and pride in its own dominion.
“Have we won, milord?" Renard asks.
“Beyond measure," the Iron King replies, bringing his bloodsoaked hand to his lips. He smiles. “Lacren drinks well tonight."
With both gates to Pilamine closed, the coalition soldiers repelled, and the Pilamine forces beaten or fled, the evacuation is now over. Many thousands of civilians remain in the city, rounded up to be drained for water. Every slide of his sword across a civilian’s neck drives Renard further and further from his sickened body, as though it were someone else doing this, the movements mechanical — and still, the screams and the gurgles and the bodies and the souls littering the cobbles repulse him, leave this objective observer shouting, ‘how! How! How! How, why, why was this let to happen!’.
He returns to Sebilles too sick to be numb. As other soldiers unload the many barrels of water produced by this conquest, weighing them and sorting them for transport to Lacren’s main wells, Renard retreats to the castle and, in there, to the laboratory of Pleione.
Pleione jolts at his arrival. Rather than press her on that reaction, Renard asks how the research into the purification of ghouls is going.
Given that Renard was adverse to the prospect before, Pleione regards this line of questioning as odd and senses something has changed. Moreover, though she was not personally there, stories are already wafting out of Pilamine, and she carefully prompts Renard by observing that people have been saying the Pilamines were slaughtered.
Renard breaks down, sobbing, vomiting. Unlike before, where he could say there was a greater cause to his actions, there is absolutely nothing about what happened in Pilamine that Renard can say was right. The last horrible moments of hundreds of screaming, crying old men, women, children play again and again under his eyelids, unnumbed by any kind of ‘principle’ or ‘resolve’, each herded along and bled like animals.
Pleione swoops down to hug him. Renard wails into her embrace like a boy, messily, too distraught to care about anything except crying this pain and these visions out.
“What have I done!" he screams.
Pleione squeezes him tighter.
What have I done, he repeats, every one of his actions since meeting the Iron King flashing through his mind. All of them, all of them — mistakes. Everything he fought for — wrong. And all those people who told him, from the very beginning, exactly what the Iron King was, exactly what an error it was to follow him, exactly why such creatures as him are so uniformly reviled as evil — they were the ones he should’ve listened to. Had chosen, so many times, not to listen to!
Pleione rubs his shoulder and draws away as he composes himself, forehead in his palm, breath ragged but no longer sobbing. She produces a cloth and tamps his chin clean.
“You must think me a fool, after all I have done," Renard grimly laughs to Pleione.
Pleione hesitates, but nods. Evil, though deceptive, rarely hides its nature. Renard let himself be idealistic in the wrong direction, idealism in itself not being a sin, but a lack of wisdom in using it being deeply contemptible.
“The wisdom of boyhood," Renard bites back in defence, then laughs at himself. As if it matters. That was only true at the beginning; at some point, he should have grown to know better. Fist clenched, he divulges how truly horrible the slaughter at Pilamine was, how he cannot believe that monster did something so… so…
He hesitates to use the word evil, but struggles to find an appropriate substitute. Renard sighs, unclenching his hand.
I don’t understand how he could have surrendered to that, Renard confesses. In his mind, it’s inconceivable someone would throw away prospects of love, trust, veneration, glory, victory over one’s own nature… for what? From what? Because it was hard?
Pleione suggests that there was nothing to surrender to. He was always simply like that.
Pricked and uncomprehending of her surety, Renard counters by asserting that he has assuredly seen the Iron King operate at a higher level than that. Many times, he felt more loved, understood, and wanted by the Iron King than anyone else in his life, and equally seen genuine hope, devotion, and aspiration towards good prosperity from him. Could those have all been deceptions?
Pleione considers her answer. No, and she thinks Renard also knows they were not. She does not doubt the Iron King’s devotion to humanity is genuine, but it is only so in the same way that a dog, chained out of reach of food, will madly guzzle any meal placed before it, and howl in agony once it is gone. The impulse is not fake.
Renard falls quiet.
But the mind is not real, Pleione’s voice softens. This man you love died a very long time ago.
As these words sink in for Renard, a horrible pain lashes across his chest, followed by a deep numbness. That glorious, shining vision of the Iron King with his hand aloft withers grey and disintegrates into dust on the wind. Renard covers his brow in his hand, hiding his face and trembling lips. Pleione is right. Renard has grown enamoured with the ghost of a dead man, and so attached himself to the churning dregs that defile his memory.
It is agonising to know what the Iron King ‘could’ have been, to have seen glimpses of hope and potential, and simultaneously understand that the potential truly meant nothing, ruined long before Renard ever came in the picture. A deep infatuation holds for the person who could-have-been, as does an overwhelming pity for the confused remnants of him that have screamed to exist, but a sober reality falls when his mind shifts to the present. The thing that killed Herjas and bled Pilamine was not a human. It was a ghoul.
A profound despair settles over Renard at this realisation, but there is nothing to blame it upon. Even the foolish decisions of his younger self come from a sentiment of innocent admiration and desire for love that Renard can’t begrudge. Could he have done or said something that would have changed the Iron King’s course? Speculating it only brings pain, and even then, the answer is inevitably no.
Renard chews his lip, staring into the distance. Once again he desires to run, as though he may simply exit this scene and return to a peaceful meadow, rescinding his decisions up to now as a poor experiment, and delivered to a world where he never made them. Reality, though, is more claustrophobic, and affords only one real course.
Soberly, but with quiet hope and determination of knowing the right thing to do, Renard asks Pleione how the Iron King can be killed.
Pleione pauses as she considers this question, impressed by Renard’s certainty that she would have such an answer. She concedes, glancing aside, that she knows.
Renard jumps to his feet. You must tell me!
Rattled by Renard’s enthusiasm, Pleione lets herself speak more openly. Truthfully, a major reason for her coming to the West was to conduct research on a miraculous substance called ‘argent’. She believes it one of the fundamental elements to understanding the riddle of creation. It is hard to distil in most cases, but she knows stories of one specific way that appears to yield consistent results.
She tells Renard a story from a Palidan tribe that spearheaded her branch of research. In the custom of this tribe, a young boy was undergoing his trial into manhood by attempting to slay a ghoul. This ghoul had been prepared for him some months in advance, originally a sick man kidnapped from another tribe, who predictably died despite their hosts’ stringent ministrations. So recent was his death, however, that he had not fully transformed into a ghoul when he faced the boy — the conversion process was still ongoing, even as they fought.
During the brawl, the boy bit and unwittingly swallowed a mouthful of the ghoul’s half-transformed flesh. The boy then puked up a mouthful of argent, which ran down his chest and bound on the feathers of his shawl. The ghoul, screeching, would no longer touch the boy, who finished off the creature adroitly.
It is from this episode that Palidan mystics conceived the existence of ‘witchbane’ — a specific form of argent produced when a human swallows parts of a soul that are yet undergoing the transformation into a ghoul. The swallower’s soul rejects the corrupted material as it attempts to bind to the swallower’s essence, and the remains of the failed binding are excreted as argent. Specifically, as argent inherently opposed to ghouls, witches, and other perverted materials, that will frustrate their magical powers.
Slaying the Iron King, then, could be achieved with a weapon infused with witchbane. Pleione herself had been considering this track, as an alternative to purification, when she heard of the stories from Pilamine. It is better though that Renard be the one to do it. He’s a superior fighter, and has more opportunity to be close to the Iron King.
Which is all wonderful to hear, but there is the fundamental problem of supplying a newly-dead soul that could be used to produce the witchbane. If they wish to act promptly, Pleione sounds to be suggesting murder.
“No," Pleione quickly dismisses this thought. She has a better idea. She will go into communion with the ancestors, and request that one of them shed a fragment of themselves that she may use to make the witchbane instead.
That is to say, she will ask a star to fall. Though she sounds confident about this plan, and concludes the talk having resolved what to do, as Renard nods and leaves the room, he feels only doubtful.
It strikes him as odd that Pleione, knowing this information, would not have imparted it to the coalition. Further, it’s odd that she would not have crafted such a weapon the second she got involved with the Iron King, or even as preparation in coming to the West. It suggests she herself doubted whether she could achieve what she’d claimed, and so never tried it before. What she’s proposing is untested ground for her, too.
Which means it could go wrong.
Uneasy about leaving it all to Pleione, Renard grasps the hilt of his sword and nods with determination.
He, too, has an idea.
After that talk with Pleione, Renard departs Sebilles to return to his hometown.
He does so without telling anyone, and only sends a letter back to the Iron King once he has put days’ worth of distance between himself and Sebilles. His excuse? Scouting around the borders for possible coalition spies, or for chokepoints coalition scouts may exploit. As viable a reason for his absence as any.
As wheat fields and paddocks swallow the scenery around him, Renard soon reaches his village.
Little has changed since his last visit. The same thatched buildings are all in their same places, the same stores are run by the same faces, and the same townsfolk Renard has always known still follow the same humble routines they did years ago. The sheer constancy evokes a certain nostalgia, as the dust of the road settles around his horse’s hooves, but also tells Renard how he has changed.
Pedestrians turn with mild alarm to acknowledge, “Renard’s back." Renard grins through his anxiety and informs with a warm flourish that ho, he is on business. People nod and return to their day. Yup, that is Renard.
Moved by the familiar ease the town has towards his presence, Renard slows his horse, his heart contemplative as he passes each building.
His last visit, it should be said, was to see his family shortly after achieving the title of Cavalier. He had rushed to them with hope that they would cheer for the accolade.
To put how it went short, his father was not impressed. Apart from visiting Isen’s grave, he did not spend much time in town after.
The sight of the town’s little church breaks Renard out of his thoughts. He had never been very religious, nor had his family ever attended church outside of service days. On those rare attendances, Renard never cared to listen so much as find ways to make fun. With Pleione’s words misting through the back of his mind, Renard hitches his horse on a strange impulse and enters the church.
Like the rest of the town, nothing inside has changed. Flanked by empty pews and tall windows, Renard wanders up the aisle, as if to feel in the air that sacred essence Pleione seems to see in everything. He cannot say he feels stricken by anything particularly holy, but it is quiet and peaceful in a way that inspires pensive calm.
Soaking in the atmosphere, Renard lays his hand on the wooden altar. Quiet footsteps pad behind him. He turns to see the priest, who even more than finding an unfamiliar horse hitched outside the building, is surprised to find Renard approaching anything — much less religion — with an air of humility. Not to say it’s a bad thing. Just odd.
They talk. Over the course of the conversation, the priest informs Renard that Renard’s mother passed away in the last couple years and, after that, his father left town to live with his side of the family. Though shaken by this news, Renard swallows his alarm so he can focus on returning to the house, which indeed is empty.
That Renard was absent in his mother’s last years moves him with profound despair. In retrospect, she had not been in great straits when Renard visited, and in his excitement for his parents’ approval, he had not focused much upon it. Rather, he refused to acknowledge it. Perhaps what he should have done then was retire. Renard sighs, knowing it fruitless. Sitting on his old bed, the stillness and emptiness of his old house soothes his sadness for a more sombre nostalgia.
Deciding he’s spent enough time immersing himself in memories and ghosts, Renard gets up with a determined huff. He retrieves a shovel from the barn and marches out to the bog.
It’s late summer, almost autumn, and well into the dry season. The bog has dried as expected, leaving that old, dead tree standing not on an island in the middle of thick muck, but in the middle of a plain of parched, cracked mud. Renard throws the shovel into the air and watches it spin.
Back when Isen died, so many years ago, the village fretted persistently over the whereabouts of his body. Obviously, it had sunk into the bog, but even after several years attacking it every summer, nobody dredged it up. People could only speculate that it sank too deep for them to find, that it shifted into a spot nobody thought to try, or that nobody had properly remembered the point where he fell in the first place and over time lost it completely. Eventually, everyone gave up, and a gravestone was stood with no body. Heavily distressing to Renard’s mother, every year, or so was the word.
The shovel spins through the air, and bounces to the ground with a clatter. Where its head points, Renard decides must be the spot. And so he drives the shovel into the dirt, digging with total confidence in his method, as though the air that twisted that shovel carried in it the guidance of God, despite the persistent failure of all others who tried.
What worried people more than the body, though, was the fate of Isen’s soul. A misplaced body made tearful mothers — a misplaced soul, if the resultant ghoul was dangerous enough, could wipe a town off the map. But again nobody could find it, and neither had anybody seen it dislodge. After days, then weeks, then months without word of trouble from the bog or any other indication of a ghoul forming, the townsfolk hesitantly but hopefully concluded that the soul must have also sunk into the muck, and the ghoul suffocated without complications, or, and this truly was a merciful thought, that the soul had never touched the air, never contracted the rot, and never morphed into a ghoul in the first place. If so, then for all these years, Isen’s soul has remained as pure as the stars in the night sky, as though equally selected and treasured as a pearl of the Demiurge.
That prospect did balm the tragedy. Nobody could say it was true, but Renard, preferring not to think about the subject at all, had at some point decided it must be.
And that is why he is here, and why he is digging. Because if Isen’s pure soul is sitting here somewhere under this mud, that is the perfect material that could be converted to witchbane.
Renard wipes his forehead, sweat dribbling down his back in the sweltering sun. Shades of orange and purple tint the horizon. His jaw clenches with abrupt dread. If this wasn’t the spot, then what has he come out here for? He would return to Pleione, head hung in shame, quietly knowing that he had failed.
Which is an odd thing to think. Rationally speaking, he could just try again in a different spot if this hole produces nothing, since it’s not as though tonight is a deadline. Still, Renard feels his enthusiasm with the shovel slow, resigned that if he finds anything, it will be the remains of a ghoul. Well, even finding that would be its own kind of success.
The shovel bites into the dirt. When it comes away, it unveils a glint of silver beneath.
Renard’s eyes bulge and he redoubles his digging like a madman. He kneels down, wipes away the dirt, and plucks the finding out of the earth. He laughs in disbelief and heaves himself out of the hole, then observes the silver orb in his palm shift into fractals, bloom into liquid, vaporise and twist in odd patterns. This is what he came for. He has found Isen’s soul.
An air of dreamy unconsciousness unfurls over the skin of Renard’s palm. But his hand trembles with disproportionate terror, soon quaking, as his throat tightens, gut twists, and eyes peel near to bursting out their sockets. Renard throws the soul to the ground with a squeal, but its imprint lingers in his fingers. Renard dry-heaves into his hands, scrapes at the skin, shoves a digit in his mouth as if to bite it off entirely.
The air around the soul lurches. Renard strains to refocus, sweating with wide eyes. What was formerly a pleasant atmosphere of a mind hung in the dream between waking and sleeping now prickles with confusion, discomfort, and fear, but not in any way that snaps the consciousness inside into lucidity. Rather, it is the air of one wracked with extreme dementia, unable to comprehend what is happening even as a beast rakes them with its claws.
Renard punches himself in the head and screams. Stupid, stupid, stupid! If Isen’s soul has been at peace this entire time, why did Renard disrupt that! Was killing him just not enough! Impelled to eat dirt and grovel for forgiveness, with frantic explanations how he just wasn’t thinking and didn’t mean to do harm whizzing in his head, ultimately Renard can say nothing when he knows the recipient of his words would be an unresponsive orb, and just groans.
The agonised air around the soul prickles and twists. The rot has taken hold. Renard squeezes his eyes closed, opens them, but nothing changes. No matter how he hesitates, there is only one action he may now take.
Hope to me a thousand hopes say’d truth from that medicine woman. So steeling himself, Renard reaches for the soul.
Well brother, I’ll need your strength again. Hoh, I never did find how to do much uprightly.
Not allowing himself to think, in one sweep, Renard scoops the soul into his mouth, and swallows.
Renard returns to his parents’ house, prepares himself a simple dinner from wellwater and garden vegetables, then wonders if horfing food while having his brother’s soul in his gut might be a step too sacrilegious.
As he sits with his untouched bowl of stew, such apprehensions towards his choices arise. He dips two fingers into his mouth as if to make himself vomit, but withdraws them with sober resignation that he can’t back out of this now.
The guilt, shame, sickness, and fear as he lets himself sit is immense. From the root of him up, these actions feel to be wrong. Stripped of their context, and even with it, too, he can imagine how his present choices would evoke judgements of contempt and disgust, that he has desecrated the dead, that he has disrespected his brother, that he is a stupid and simple boy dabbling in things too big for someone as stupid as him to get right.
Renard sets his hand on his stomach. For all that fear, however…
In Pleione’s story, the warrior-boy produced the ‘witchbane’ swiftly upon imbibing the half-ghoul. Renard cannot say he feels close to puking, or any physical discomfort or strain. Without the soul in front of him asserting its presence, and with the prickling of its distress blending imperceptibly into his already twisted gut, things presently seem stable. The belief settles in Renard’s mind that Isen’s soul is okay.
Which means that he can’t have messed up too bad. If things stay just like this, and he can imagine Isen is simply with him, that is actually rather comforting.
Isen, all along, was the one who should’ve found glory. Were this a story of nobles and knights and of the triumph of good and the struggle against evil and the celebration of the best of humanity, of the journey of a humble peasant-boy into a hero that men for generations would model in their behaviour and aspire to become, Isen is the one of whom it should have been told. If he had been able to pursue the opportunities already firm in his grip, had secured that knighthood, and had broken into noble circles in Sebilles, Renard does not doubt that Isen’s presence would have single-handedly shifted the entire course of the nation of Lacren towards triumph, heavenliness, and prosperity.
In any case, he wouldn’t have abided the Iron King. Though, he would not have boorishly aggrieved him as those Pilamine agents did so many years ago, either, with offensive self-righteousness and repulsive condescension. His respect and compassion would have been undeniable even as he struck the King from the throne to the dirt. With that special core of humility, optimism, clearheadedness, and strength, he would have resolved every one of these conflicts perfectly.
Renard may have made a mess of everything, but it feels he is somehow honouring Isen by bringing his soul to clean it all up. By so summoning this spirit to take him, to hijack him, it would guide Renard to trace the righteous steps Isen himself would have taken, and in that veneration, lay that spirit to rest, and let Renard be dismissed from his own hotheaded, impetuous errings.
Having found peace by this mindset, Renard untenses and prepares for bed. He can return to Pleione with his head held high above his shoulders tomorrow.
Sleep descends.
Renard awakes.
A chill wracks him out of his slumber, like the cold finger of a witch trailing itself down his spine. He gasps, teeming with sweat so thick it pastes him to the covers, but still so cold he might well be caught naked in a winter field. He stumbles out of bed, wobbling on weak legs, in some half-conceived attempt to flee his frozen blankets, and steady himself with a glass of water.
He leans on furniture, hobbling, to even get to the kitchen, and slumps immediately over the sink. The exertion of even this tiny journey threatens to black him out, his vision swimming with warping masses and nausea churning so thick that he vomits, just barely out the window. It is the sickest he can remember being in his life. He strains for a cup, pours out a shaky glass of water, limps back to the table. His body hits the chair with the relief of a runner freed from a marathon, and the water cup lands on the tabletop as promptly as a thousand-pound barbell.
Renard pants, eyeing the water like a panacea. Eventually he finds the will to drink, but spits out the liquid the second it hits his tongue.
Anguished, but growing too feverish to understand much, he abandons the water. He needs it, but cannot have it, so he will not have it, and that is the way. He cups his wet forehead in his wet palm, doubled over off the side of the chair. He is sick, sick… his body must fight it off… soon…
He retches in announcement of imminent vomit. Initially relieved to be getting whatever is sickening him out, he hazily realises this must be the ritual.
Renard yanks his sword from its scabbard, glad to have made such a habit of carrying it. If… a story… story… he struggles to align such thoughts into words, but lays the blade over his lap that he may puke on it, getting the crux of the instructions correct. He still reflexively fists this wave back into his throat, not wanting to messy over himself.
Relocate. Renard lifts himself from the table, but sinks to his knees, then his belly upon reaching the bedroom, finding standing too nauseating to even make the last mile to the rag-well.
He lays the sword flat on the floor, close to his face. A mouthful of puke gorbles out from his throat. Though he squints, his dizzy eyes cannot tell whether he achieved something by this rudeness, and enchanted the blade, or whether he just made a mess to clean up. He slumps back to his side, breath laboured toward relief or exasperation, but even with every limb resting, his sick gut only grows only more uncomfortable.
Something in his stomach twists, scrunched and pulled like a rag. Dread sweeps over Renard. He flails as if to run, but is too weak to even stand, collapsing under his own body weight. Swimming around his flesh, little blots of black sludge condense out of the crevices between his guts, dripping and collecting like a cluster of mouse droppings. His limbs shudder so vigorously they rattle. Fury and disgust, of feeling these profane corns swill their taint through his body, gleefully smearing him from inside out with flaky lines of dung, disintegrate that simple nausea. This isn’t illness. This is violation, humiliation, a demon chewing on his soul.
Renard heaves onto his hands and knees and retches aggressively, murderously. A jet of thick, black fluid with an odd silver sheen glops onto the sword. Renard cannot even care, fist clenched, breath shaky. He can combat this enemy, defeat it, rip its revolting hands off of him, bite out its neck and tear out its ribs leave it screaming and wailing until it is tortured insane and dead. He retches again and again, producing more and more of the black glop, the act of expelling it in itself carrying an addictive sense of triumph.
The volume of the crap is ceaseless, growing only thicker and heavier. Renard panics. The vile substance is clogging his throat and nose, churning too evenly and constantly out for him to cut it, break it, or stop, and only choking him should he try. His throat convulses of its own accord, the weight of the viscous mass flowing from his mouth folding in on itself, drawing out a tubular chunk that keeps growing longer, and longer, and longer. Renard thumps his fists and squeezes at his throat as if to break the stream — more flows up to gag him, instantly.
He claws at the chunk as if to yank it out, but it drips amorphously through and over his hands ever at its own steady pace. Tears prick his eyes. He collapses onto the ground totally, as his eyes roll backward and body seizes in an unshakable current of epilepsy. He folds his hands behind his back to watch himself struggle, dispassionately. Simultaneously, he feels the texture of cracked vinyl drawing itself out of the core of the mass, breaking through a deep glassy membrane that his spirit knows must not be punctured. Panic rises like an ocean, as Renard recognises that he has gone blind.
Blackness consumes him. Light still strikes his retinas, and so nearby objects remain present as phantoms, and he still must be on the floor in the bedroom, but the veil of darkness wrenches him away to impress that he is no longer there. Suspended he witnesses, as if caught in a jar and thrown into an ocean, a great mass of candescent tree roots, or perhaps bald tree branches, that crackle and stretch out so far into the infinite night that he cannot see where they end. The night is the black is built from lines, inestimable short and squirming little lines, and each line is a serpent’s slit pupil.
They regard him with passive disconcern, as one might regard a leaf on a stream. A current of mist effuses from this lazy attention, wisping around waist-level but unable to penetrate the jar. The eyes seems to accept his presence, so shielded, as fine. Feeling safe, or assured, he regards the forks of the glowing, rootlike mass, and traces his gaze down their million offshoots backwards, in search of the root.
The serpent-pupils erupt into frenzy, snapping to full, seething attention. Lines flurry down to blot out the thicker branches that would lead to the core of the root-mass, transposing themselves thickly between his gaze and it, a wall as thick and impenetrable as an angel’s thousand folded wings. The light below disappears. The current of mist bulges into a ferocious jet, but this force does not break the jar. So guarded and untouchable he is, but the lines bend to collapse themselves outward and between themselves reveal wiggly, iridescent streaks of silvers, pinks, and blues; these are the threads of an iris. Over them falls the imprint of scales, which draws back as a snake poised to lunge, or an arm winded to punch.
Painless inside the jar, he realises his shape has contorted, stretched and twisted into a long, thin rope, fraying at the ends…
Renard gasps. His cheek lays on the floor of his bedroom; the sword is but an inch from his nose. He hasn’t the strength to look up, but from a caterpillar's vantage sees a horse’s hooves, that such a creature must be in the room with him.
“At least you killed me for a purpose."
As Renard’s consciousness fades, he hears the bitterly distorted, but somehow still satisfied, voice of Isen wisp into silence.
When Renard awakens the morning after, it is as though the night before was a dream. That he wakes up on the floor, by the sword, attests that it wasn’t — but aside from typical poor-sleep grogginess not worse than a mild hangover, he feels fine now. Truly, like none of those horrible things happened.
Renard collects himself and inspects the sword. Its blade has turned black, the same colour as that peculiar substance, and now breathes with a subtle but tangible aura. “I am alive!" the blade silently cheers, “Let my feasts spread my name!". Renard surmises with relief that the ritual worked, or at least did something.
Too exhausted to be jubilant about it, Renard goes for a glass of water. At the doorframe, he pauses. Fetches the sword, shakes ashy flakes off it, sheaths it, and secures it on his hip. He cannot say what impelled him to do this, but it feels correct. He drinks his water, saddles his horse, and departs for Sebilles.
Several days later, he arrives at Sebilles.
The Iron King welcomes him into the castle, and goes to hug him, but pauses in confusion upon approach as if smelling a poisonous gas. Wondering if he can sense something from the changed sword, Renard questions this reaction. The Iron King dismisses the odd feeling, smiles, and asks Renard how his scouting went.
Renard answers to satisfy him and swiftly closes the conversation. The Iron King advises he’ll be in his office, writing up the water-yields and day-rations across the regions for the next year, and bids him off.
Renard bitterly turns away, unhappy for the reminder of that Pilamine water, and visits Pleione’s laboratory.
Pleione harshes Renard for his abrupt disappearance after their last conversation. She had been terrified he was snitching to someone, then when it became clear he was not, was left thoroughly clueless as to what he was doing. But no matter, she continues excitedly, eyes bright as a child’s. She has successfully communed with the ancestors.
Renard, having assumed she would fail, hears these words as some weird joke.
Look, Pleione says, presenting something from out of her satchel.
Standing proudly upon her palm is a rock.
Just a rock.
Hooray?
Pleione buzzes as she explains. Yes, the ritual worked! The ancestors shed parts of their selves for her, and she infused this rock with witchbane. Indeed, the rock has the same black colouration as the sword Renard enchanted. But if she is so excited over a rock…
Renard unsheaths his sword, grinning. Hoho! How about this! Quite a step up, no?
Pleione almost drops her rock she is so stunned. She blubbers, eyes wide, and after several failed exclamations of “wha-", touching the sword to confirm it real, and a long silence, she asks in alarm if Renard killed someone for this.
“No," Renard curtly replies, and sheaths the sword. He uncomfortably appends, “Twas my brother’s…"
Pleione falls quiet, then jerks back into amazement and non-comprehension. Renard regales her on his adventure in his hometown and his experience with enchanting the sword.
Pleione shakes her head in disbelief, pinching her forehead. She informs Renard that what he did was absolutely, utterly reckless and borderline insane, and that he actually succeeded speaks to incredible luck or incredible favour of the Demiurge. Argent does not bind to materials unless that material is highly receptive to the argent’s concepts; the witchbane would not have bound to the sword were Isen himself not innately an exaltation of a swordsman archetype. Further, Renard is outrageously lucky that the rot didn’t spread to him, given that this was his brother, and frankly she can only call it a miracle that it didn’t. And finally, he is lucky that he didn’t bleach his ego into nothing or just choke on the argent. The story tells to use only a sliver of a soul! Not the whole thing! The stress he must have put his self under is unimaginable…
Renard pushes away his abrupt nervousness by reminding, again, that he is fine and did make a cool sword.
Pleione concedes an exasperated yes, the achievement of what Renard has done is too great and obvious for her to remain so critical. Renard asks her to inspect the sword closer, just to confirm that all has indeed gone correctly. She stares at the blade, turning it over in her hands.
“Incredible…" she murmurs. The witchbane has not just formed a coating on the steel; it has sunken and pervaded to the core. She again asks Renard if he’s certain nothing feels awry.
Pleione’s insistence on this point is unnerving. But he really does feel fine.
Pleione accepts this but urges that if anything peculiar does arise, he should come see her. But, that aside… she carefully sheaths the sword and returns it to Renard. The enchantment’s worked perfectly. This sword will work to slay the Iron King — it’ll slice through his impenetrable skin like paper.
Renard accepts the sword and sobers, remembering the point of all this. Pleione gives him a contemplative look, as if she wants to say something, but looks away when questioned and dismisses it as not being her business. Renard shrugs and accepts her rock as well.
As equipped for this as he’ll ever be, Renard exits for the Iron King’s office.
The Iron King happily invites Renard into his office.
Truthfully, the plan was to run him through the second Renard got in the room. But the King’s guileless smile and plain happiness to have an interruption from this work, that is not just any interruption, but an interruption of Renard, does make Renard falter.
The Iron King chirpily informs how the work is going, excited to share it. All the national wells have been filled without trouble, and these water yields are the highest Lacren has seen in decades…
How your name shall last in song…, Renard says.
Well, it’s not about that, says the Iron King. Simply, it is a relief, and truly gratifying, to know nobody will be thirsting this year. I would not be so bold as to build a fountain… he smiles slyly, jesting. But it tempts me to say, we could afford to, with how the children may laugh and splash.
Is it not a grim thing, to frolic and drink of a man’s blood?, Renard asks.
The Iron King quiets a slight. It becomes custom, he says, and most will not question… does it bother you, Renard?
I shall hear the screams in every cup.
I see. The Iron King folds his hands and glances down. He truly wishes there was another way things could have gone. If these foreign kings would simply leave us to our affairs, or restrain the loathing the label ‘hexant kingdom’ reflexively evokes, just long enough to scrutinise the character of this land not by my birth, but for my rulings… but the Pilamines have made it clear, this will not be a humility ever afforded to me. The land we have taken is fertile enough that we should not ever again need to war.
The Iron King closes his eyes.
But it will come to us.
That is your fault! Renard’s fist tightens around the hilt of his yet sheathed sword. The Pilamines killed no Herjas, used no lives as grist, and compelled me to butcher no children! You utter monster, have you not seen why what you have done is wrong!?
For as long as you seat the throne, Milord?, asks Renard.
Yes. Renard, I truly wish… but as he opens his eyes, his tongue freezes. He stares stupefied at Renard’s blade-ready fist, like a child uncomprehending of their parents’ fury. Innocent fear and guilt flash in his gaze, but drain quickly as if smothered and numbed. He regards Renard now with a crocodile’s blank, but calculating stare.
The sentiment isn’t even, so even you have betrayed me. Or, You found me out, then, Renard.
It’s, Watch this — glory denies you again.
Renard grits his teeth and shings his sword from its scabbard. The Iron King surges forth to parry the incoming blow with his hand — and shrieks in confusion and pain as the blade slices through his palm, up his wrist, up his forearm, to imminently lodge in his chest. He adjusts his trajectory at the last moment to claw for Renard’s neck, but Renard swiftly sidles aside and flicks his sword, momentum flinging the Iron King hard against the wall. Renard adjusts his grip to stab the Iron King through while he is disoriented — heedless, like a feral animal, the Iron King leaps straight for Renard yet again and impales himself on the blade.
The blade spears out the Iron King’s back. Squealing, folded over it, he messily tries to slide himself off with his hands, but only cuts open his palms. He sets his feet on the hilt to push himself off that way instead, yanking backward so hard the strength overwhelms Renard, who releases the sword. The Iron King tumbles backwards into a pile on the floor.
The Iron King scrambles to pull out the sword as Renard catches his breath. The Iron King wobbles to his feet, using the sword as a cane, but his bones and skin are cracking and breaking under their own weight, fragile as eggshells, by such close proximity to the sword. As the Iron King drops the sword, Renard throws the office chair at him. The chair lands a direct hit on his skull, which shatters open and splays its innards like fruit pulp over the floor.
The Iron King collapses, struggling on the ground, but unable to orient or move more than twitching and spasms. He gasps out a mournful prayer, “Renard!"
The point of the blade lands in his throat. Draws downward to his chest.
“Then shatter."
With a final twist, in his heart, the Iron King at last lays still.
As he looks down at that body, Renard cannot say he feels glad. But he feels not meek or unjustified either. In the sober silence, he kneels, retrieves the Iron King’s crown, and snorts. Kingship is not a position in any way suited to him. He rifles further through the body and retrieves the key to the tower where the Iron King’s family has been kept, deciding to return them to the throne.
With that decided, Renard stands. The sword in his hand beams with murderous delight. Like a tiger taught the taste of human flesh, this blade now knows what delicacies are blood and life, cheering greedily for more, more, more! Admire my art, how I am peerless!
Cringing, Renard sheaths the sword deep in its scabbard. The air of mad, orgasmic bloodlust still uncomfortably wafts around his hip, even as he shoves everything out of his mind to venture up to the dungeons.
The old king and queen are frail — the one who answers the door is their daughter, the Iron King’s eldest sister. Having had very few visitors outside the Iron King during this incarceration, she is intimidated to see Renard. Not recognising him, she fears him an executioner, or agent for some rival family.
Renard presents her the crown, exhaustedly.
“May we call this the end, of this mess."
With the old monarchs back in power, and the princess now Queen, things in Lacren quickly change.
Many kingdoms of the coalition lose interest in this smaller nation’s affairs and return to their usual bickering. A push to mend relations with Pilamine through marriage of Pilamine and Lacrenese leaders stands to rebuff the rest, who still eye Pilamine’s weakened state. Funds invested to the swordsmans’ guild wither, put instead into rebuilding Pilamine and conservation efforts for local buffalo. War no longer hangs in the air. Diplomacy shall reign in this decade.
For all of that, an average civilian doubtful even noticed that their leaders had changed. The transition has not disrupted their routines at all, keeping everything peaceful and mundane. Renard wishes that he, too, could feel that mundanity.
Because his life has remained anything but. He has been formally knighted as Sir Renard Cox, wielder and forger of the blade Kingslayer, whose ingenuity and initiative ended the hexant reign of the Iron King, and freed Lacren with daring heroics. Anyone who knew Renard before this knighting would also know his reputation under his title of Cavalier, but the new Queen seems invested in defending Renard as he is now from suffering by the sins of his past.
Which frankly, feels awful.
It does not feel he has truly earned this position. Rather, it does not feel like he fundamentally deserves it at all. The atmosphere around the castle is far more formal and proper than Renard can bear, and he cannot even say he would sincerely pledge himself to this Queen or any ruler that was not the Iron King. Nor even raise his sword and proclaim, ‘for Lacren!’, knowing that this shout would be in the name of this Queen he does not know. A knight who cannot serve his liege with conviction is nothing, and the tepid affairs of this woman will never stoke Renard to passion.
Fundamentally, Renard’s one proper achievement was running to Pleione and Isen. Renard Cox, otherwise though, is still just a stupid village boy, not trained in propriety or diplomacy like real nobles, nor trained in honour or chivalry like real knights, yet easily swayed into idealistic buffoonery and making horrible choices. He doesn’t belong in this company.
But now that he has the title, he can’t just rescind it of his own accord. With an invitation from the Queen to a noble party next week, too, the pressure to integrate into Lacren’s upper crust is clear. But the only thing he can imagine doing there is announcing, ‘I resign’.
In this weird but definite way, it feels like all the good he has to offer the world is done. He has finished the single thing he needed to do. What is he now here for?
So he skulks through the town, thick with discomfort, and tight with frustration that he can’t untangle. His thoughts persistently drift to asking Pleione for advice, but flash away scared from this track just as easily. Sickness settles on his tongue as civilians blithely gather wellwater and sup drinks at the tavern. He wishes to barge over, knock the cup from their hands, and scream, Stop that! Think of what you are drinking!
Renard sighs, returning to his house. The atmosphere of the castle is too discomforting, so he has moved back into the humbler lodgings he kept as a guardsman. Perhaps that is what he should do. Return to his career as a guardsman, pursue a position as captain of the guard…
Renard sighs again, slumping his arm over his knee, knowing this prospect is not feasible.
He fetches a rabbit from a pen, kills it, and lets its blood into a portable distiller. The blood steadily drains into water as Renard butchers the rest of the rabbit for dinner. He cannot even hold a cup of Lacren’s wellwater without seeing Pilamine faces upon its surface, the shrieking, the screaming, the mounds of pale corpses, the mechanical motion of his arm, and becoming ferociously sick. This alternative of buying animals from the market to drain everyday is expensive, but, otherwise, he would not be drinking anything at all.
Kingslayer sings on his hip with crazed bloodthirst. Incredible how something so objectively dead can feel so alive, spirited as a carnal beast with its ever-present demands: more! More! More! More! Renard finishes his meal and cleans his plates as if strangling them. Only his own self-consciousness around throwing a tantrum at a hunk of metal keeps him from unsheathing Kingslayer, beating it all over the cupboards, and yelling at it to shut up.
Renard marches into his bedroom and tosses the thing onto the bedside table, as though dumping it there were an insult. He settles into bed, less tormented by its urges now that they’re not whispering into his hip.
Even so, Kingslayer’s waiting silhouette locks his throat with guilt, resignation, and dread.
Pleione called Kingslayer incredible — her assessment is completely correct. More so than even slaying the Iron King, which he truly did not even wish to do, the forging of this blade is and will always be the most important thing Renard has done with his life. This is a weapon with unique properties that have proven themselves inavluable against otherwise unconquerable threats. Even after Renard’s passing, the sheer effectiveness of this blade demands that it continue to be used.
Or, as Renard sees it, every second he remains in possession of this weapon, but is not using it, he wastes it. He sins by inaction. He betrays the incredible heights he could be reaching by embracing its power and his own skill. As long as he holds this blade, he can and must only be a swordsman, a bladesman, a knight, a weapon — pointed by a gentler master, to always fight and kill and fight and kill and fight and kill and fight…
And why not? Why not do that? Kneel to the Queen and put his deeds to her name? Fight for this country to the end of his days? Put his soul in the court’s hands?
Renard turns in bed, balling the covers over himself, sickness knotted in his throat.
O bonny under the pear tree, I know she waits for me, rivers run and thunder comes, but still she waits for me… Renard hums the gentle melody of a love song the bards in the local tavern sing, a place he has caught himself going frequently these past weeks, despite taking nothing to drink. Teariness laces through the words. He hiccups, and sighs.
Even as his lids close over his drowsy eyes, and sleep ushers him into its embrace, a clear resolution wisps through his mind:
I cannot do this anymore.
The next morning, Renard takes Kingslayer and rides out of Sebilles. His destination is the craggy hills that stand at the outskirts of the city’s territory, also called the buffalo trails. These hills lead to valleys and plains where the creatures can often be found, as well as being a common hiking spot. The downtick in buffalo numbers has cut traffic to these hills, but they are still relatively well-visited by able-bodied and adventurous people.
Such, they are the perfect place for Renard to throw away Kingslayer.
He hitches his horse at the base of the hill and hikes several hours up the trail. Near the peak, he pauses to behold the winding trail of hills he has just climbed, and distant Sebilles below, and decides this is the spot. Renard unsheaths Kingslayer and drives it blade-first into the dirt, until it stands as stable as a headstone.
Renard steps back to admire the sword. Its grave, condescending vigil over Sebilles feels profoundly correct, and Renard untenses with a laugh.
Whoever comes next upon this blade will be its rightful owner. There’s no logic behind this thought, but it holds to Renard with absolute certainty. Even if it be an urchin or a thief, confused by the weight of the thing or eager to sell it, fate will deliver the blade through such people and artifices to its ultimate and proper owner. Now that it’s not in Renard’s hands, it can finally live.
Which makes this a wonderful thing he has done. He smiles gleefully as he turns to the panorama of the valley and city below, exhaling a huff of the crisp mountain air. It’s not Renard’s responsibility anymore. The blade can feast, and Renard is free!
Free! From the toe to the tip of this valley, he may embark and begin anew! A knight is not a knight if he has no sword, and indeed without one, Renard must not be a knight. Perhaps he shall be a carpenter in a rural town, or a fisherman on a wee boat, or a field researcher in Palidan sciences. Perhaps he will build new wells or prospect gold from rivers… perhaps he shall seek out the Tekse…
Renard sobers minutely on that last thought, fear and curiosity prickling at him equally. But he shakes his head and refocuses. Infinite potential is open to him as he grins and marches down the hill.
Abrupt nausea strikes him as he turns a bend on the trail. He gasps, sweat streaming down his forehead and hands trembling violently. Go back! His gut shouts, as urgently as if he had left his firstborn in a burning building. Go back! Go back! Renard stumbles, trying to obey the command, but is too disoriented to distinguish uphill from downhill. Dizzy, with the world spinning around him, he only stumbles further into panicked confusion and nausea — and with as little warning as this fit began, falls to the ground like a discarded puppet, unconscious.
Light, voices, and motion batter Renard. He gasps awake, blinking under the lofty hillside sun, his mouth dry as cotton. Men are shouting, calling. Kingslayer is before him. Renard grabs it and sheaths it smoothly, then shoves himself out of the hoisting hold onto his own feet.
He is still on the arid hillside. The sun hangs lower east than he remembers. Men crowd around, all dressed in the Queen’s colours. They are fussing about him with alarm, announcing to their fellows that Renard is awake, or urging him with reassurances that all will be well, they will get him out of here…
“Fuss elsewhere!" Renard snaps, and storms down the hill. He stumbles on the trail’s loose stones, uncoordinated, panting, lightheaded, dizzy… he massages his forehead, and pauses to sip from his canteen.
The leader of the group comes down and wraps his arm around Renard’s shoulders. Renard scowls, pops his canteen’s cap back on. The leader addresses him familiarly: “Sir Renard…"
Renard slides his glare away from the man and smacks his lips.
Heedless, the leader-man informs that they are a group of trackers the Queen sent to scout for buffalo. They have presently aborted their mission because they discovered Renard up here, unconscious. Their priority now is to get him down the mountain and take him to the castle in Sebilles to see a doctor, and from there figure out what on earth happened.
The leader-man gives Renard a smile and rubs his shoulder.
Renard heaves himself out of his grip and proceeds his march down the hill. He announces, he does not need anyone’s babysitting to get himself down. He is well and able to…
Breathless, he leans on a tree. It only now strikes him how exhausted he is — how every muscle aches, how momentous every step feels. His skin is burnt red and pocked with sores, as though he has laid out on the hillside for several days straight, to cook under the sun while the sandflies and mosquitoes had a banquet. In fact, that may be exactly what happened.
Pushing himself onward, Renard determines he can still get himself down the hill. But he cannot do so while outpacing the Queen’s men, whose leader jogs down and urges that if Renard had a medical issue, they can’t just leave him alone. Several members of their group break away to escort him down, his stubbornness be damned, and by early evening they all reach the bottom uneventfully.
Renard’s horse is absent — the Queen’s men have already taken it to the royal stables to recuperate, as the creature was in a poor state. Only now realising that he cannot simply hop on his steed and go home, Renard finally resigns to let the Queen’s men take him for a check-up.
He drifts in and out of choppy naps on the wagon, still not feeling rested at all by the time they arrive, and rather only sick at the sight of the castle. Renard swallows his frustration and discomfort, asking if he can go home after this physical. Many interested faces peer out of the rooms that he and his escort pass. The escort assures him yes, which gets him begrudgingly into the physician’s room.
His physicals are fine. Water, ointments, and bedrest should get him over his present condition. Cross-referencing when Renard left to climb the hill with the day that the Queen’s men found him, he indeed was unconscious for two days, and is suffering from dehydration and exposure. Though he will recover easily, truthfully he is extremely lucky that he was discovered when he was and came to when he did. Another day, and the damage might have been permanent — or worse.
Great, Renard grumbles, ready to go home.
…But that doesn’t explain why he fainted in the first place. What was he doing when it happened, does he remember anything odd?
Odd! Odd is this healer’s inquisition, Renard snaps, rising from his seat on the bed. He shoves the physician aside. If he is well enough that home treatments will mend him, then very well, he shall tend to himself. But before he can make it halfway to the door, the physician’s stern, reproachful gaze wrestles him back to the bed. Plainly, he is not done here.
Renard, sighing through grit teeth, seats himself and looks aside.
The physician nods to dismiss the escort that brought Renard on with a task, then refocuses on Renard. He kneels to meet Renard’s eye level, assuring that he is only asking these questions out of a concern for Renard’s health.
Renard nods, reluctant but accepting.
The physician continues. Renard should not be afraid or embarrassed of whatever condition caused him to faint — many respected individuals throughout history suffered from quite serious conditions in their lifetime, largely ones that tended not to be obvious. If it turns out Renard has a weak flow of blood, or a predisposition towards seizures, these things can be managed such that nobody will ever know.
It is no such malarkey, Renard grumbles, I already know.
The physician stands up, brows raising curiously. The escort returns, knocking on the door, with a small cup in his hand. The physician nods him over to Renard. He offers Renard the cup of water, Renard’s face reflected in the rippling surface.
Renard snaps, shoots to his feet, knocks the cup messily to the ground. He has used up what water he had in his canteen over his hike down the mountain — now these physicians, well-intentioned as they are, will force him to take their vile well-begot offerings. Renard screams that the Queen’s men should have just left him to die, that the sun should have thirsted him quicker, that fanged beasts should have supped upon him, that he ought have just died on that hill for there is no purpose in him staying alive! It is done. He is done! If he will have to thirst himself to convey the seriousness of this message, then very well, he will! That horrible blood-water disgusts him too much for it to ever pass his lips anyway!
All of you, curse all of you! Renard spits, shoving the escort aside, slamming his fist on the physician’s desk, throwing his papers at his face and his trinkets at the walls. The physician and escort scurry out of the room, knowing they cannot overpower Renard, and not wanting to be caught in his tantrum.
Renard slumps back onto the bed, face in his palm, having worked out the worst of that outburst. The room is a mess, but nothing too important is broken, and the things that are can be replaced without great drama. He would like to enjoy the calm of being alone at this moment, but without any distractions, the aura of Kingslayer on his hip seething for blood dominates the little room. Renard clenches his teeth, tears prickling at his eyes, barely able to keep himself from screaming.
He draws the blade with its scabbard off his hip onto his lap. First he envisions to throw it away, then to beat it against the stone walls as if to harm it, then to bash his own head against the walls, then, with an oddly serene shift like a tide changing its current, to simply plunge the blade through his own neck and have this whole thing be over.
The prospect is strangely soothing. Renard leans back against the wall, exhaling. Though an awareness clenches in his gut that he probably will not follow through right now, fantasies do cohere of how he might hold the point of the blade to his throat, finish his stupid life on the highest note it could ever reach, and by that how sincere would be his apology towards Isen, how loyal would be Renard’s devotion to the Iron King, how free would be Kingslayer to find a proper master, how much will Renard not have to think about doing right or wrong or being trapped or hurt anymore…
It really is tempting.
A knock comes at the door. Renard recognises the rhythm, but is still surprised to see Pleione, peeking out from behind the doorway. He tenses, fearful she might somehow know exactly what he had been thinking.
Her air as she strides in is strained with grim concern, but not overwhelmed or alarmed in the way of knowing an acquaintance, or perhaps friend, was considering suicide. Renard untenses a slight and stares down at the blade, laid flat across his lap. She follows his gaze and comprehends what has happened, basically, with Renard. Some abnormality has arisen through Kingslayer.
Rather than clinically address the specifics of that abnormality right now, she carefully urges that the medics sent for her because Renard was not in a good state.
Renard wishes he could grin and brush off this observation with cheery bravado, but the strength for that just isn’t there. His smile cracks into a wince, into sobs, as he pinches his brow to hide his reddened face. At the very least, if he had to cry in front of someone, he’s glad that it’s Pleione. If she is still willing to even look at him, much less treat him as anything more than scum, after all she has already seen, then she will probably be gentle and sympathise.
And she does. She swoops over to hold his hand and lays her chin on his shoulder in a hug, patting his back. Though odd, she really is a rather beautiful woman, and to know she is offering her support does ease Renard's chest.
Seeing that he is calmed, Pleione withdraws with a reassuring smile. Renard smiles back, but a strange anxiety has lodged in his gut and constricted the pit of his throat. A possibility is cohering in his mind, that maybe…
Pleione’s attention has already shifted to Kingslayer. She carefully unsheaths the blade, and asks Renard what happened on the hill.
Renard swallows his sentiments and confesses that he tried to throw Kingslayer away, and fainted after he left it behind.
Pleione considers this. With Renard’s permission, she brings Kingslayer across the room. Renard can feel an invisible string between himself and the sword starting to strain; like a taut muscle, the link is only tangible when stressed in this manner. It is not a great distance, indeed only a handful of steps, but already his body is warning him not to distance himself from the sword.
Unable to feel or observe the sensation herself, Pleione takes another step out. Renard’s heart quickens, gut panic rises. Stop, he commands.
She eyes him askance, but does not press further to see him actually faint, taking his obvious panic as its own confirmation that something abnormal is happening. She closes the gap to relieve Renard and after a moment of consideration, returns Kingslayer. He scoops up the thing so desperately you would think it was his only possession. Pleione steadily works out what has happened.
Basically, Renard cannot be physically distanced from Kingslayer, or else he will pass out until he is returned to its proximity again. On top of that, the ‘safe range’ before he does pass out is small — even forgetting the sword a room over while doing house chores would be enough to topple him, and even potentially kill him, if nobody came upon him and returned Kingslayer before fatal dehydration set in.
Truthfully this is not unexpected news for Renard. It is frightening news, and news he has been avoiding, but also something he had subconsciously understood while forcing himself not to think of it. Because it’s true, he has persistently been having this instinct to always keep Kingslayer on him. To leave it behind on a bench or really anywhere outside of immediate arm’s reach feels extremely discomforting, in the same way that having your internal organs dangling out of your mouth would be extremely discomforting.
What Pleione can supply, though, is the ‘why’. She deduces that, what has likely happened is, the stress of enchanting Kingslayer did have an effect on Renard’s soul after all. Basically, it seems he has bound at least a fragment of his own soul to Kingslayer — and the reason for his fainting would be, because he is quite literally disconnecting himself from an essential portion of his soul when he strays from Kingslayer.
But, says Pleione, it doesn’t seem that fragment has been corrupted. In all respects, Renard is fine, and he’s functioning perfectly… provided he stays within reach of Kingslayer.
Though it is more dangerous a condition to have than not have, it’s not something that needs to be treated, and given how novel of a condition it is, any attempts to treat it likely would make it worse. So is Pleione’s judgement on what to do about this: nothing.
Renard quietly sets Kingslayer back on his hip, already half-resigned to this outcome, and so able to accept it smoothly. The dreadful, cold weight of inevitability falls into his chest once again, as many bright doors of where he may go with his life slam themselves shut, leaving only a narrow handful of terrifying, and truly quite dark and miserable, courses still open.
Pleione gives a subtle frown and offers him a drink from her canteen. She assures that she is also unnerved by Lacren’s wellwater and has been making her own supply from her water-plants, so it’s okay to drink. Renard snorts airily but accepts the offering, grateful for it.
This is something you do with your eastern augury, Renard notes.
Yes, Pleione confirms.
Renard wipes his chin and returns the canteen, mind drifting. Why have the practises and beliefs of her homeland not spread further, when they are demonstrably real and strong…
Pleione sits down, curious herself to that question. Her gaze lowers as she considers it. Perhaps the tangible nature of the miracles she can perform, in itself, erodes an outsider’s faith in the principle behind the miracles; that the esteem is given to the effect, not the lessons, the theory, or the cause. She is not really anyone special, outside of knowing how to let herself open to appropriate flows of esteem — she suspects many who hear these words become curious, as to how they too might direct these flows, but on their own terms, rather than those of the Demiurge.
She stares down at her arms, covered in those deep, open scars. It abruptly occurs to Renard that she, too, might have hemmed herself in to a very strict course, and may have suffered quite greatly to get there. As she smiles to herself, brushes her hair over her shoulder, and moves to stand up, Renard without thinking reaches out and calls to her: Pleione…
She jerks back to him with surprise, taken off-guard by his anxious, but pleading, and hopeful tone.
Her gaze slowly averts as she shakes her head. Gently as she can, she urges that he should at least wait for that party, and meet some Lacrenese noblewomen, first.
It’s a gentle enough rejection that Renard can smoothly release that thread of hope and let it turn to smoke. Still, in that formless way, the essence of it still lingers in the air.
Pleione spares an apologetic glance as she reaches the door. She sighs pertly and smiles a silly, humorous smile to dispel the room’s awkward tension. She advises that she’ll reserve some of her personal water for him, in case he finds himself wanting it, since producing some extra isn’t a problem for her, and finally, she urges he look after himself and get himself home.
After pushing his way through the doctors, Renard indeed returns home.
He feels beyond conflicted. On one hand, he wants to bawl, on another, he wants to hurt Pleione. What wicked nerve has she, to offer such concerned words while wounding him with her rejection? But on the third hand he just has to sigh, and swallow those first two feelings as unproductive, and maybe not moves he needs to make.
Renard lays in bed, arm swept over his forehead, considering. Embarrassing as it is to say, Renard is unsure how to handle women. And moreover, despite hoping for her to accept and love him, and comfort him through this dark moment, and give him something outside combat and chivalry to live for, he isn’t sure he even really loves Pleione.
Of course, he likes her. Her insights and abilities as a shaman are extremely intriguing to Renard, and feel to hold some power and truth that, now that he has felt them, he wouldn’t wish to turn away from. More personally, she has been basically kind and extremely gentle, and accepting of Renard even in his unsightly moments. She does feel to have a basic concern for him that he can consistently rely upon when he needs it. Her looks, though queer, are not wholly unattractive, either.
But it’s only when thinking about how she looked at those scars, after speaking as she spoke, that he finds himself holding any curiosity about her. If his default regard of her is dismissive, then maybe he is just desperate, and not really invested.
But to say he’s uninvested makes him shift uncomfortably, because it’s wrong. He does care about Pleione, it’s just… well, he doesn’t know. Just, not like that. Unless it could be.
Still, she was probably right to advise he try other women first. In fact it strikes him as outrageously sensible. People probably would mock him for courting a foreigner, and he questions how well Pleione could blend into Lacrenese culture, too. But he also wants to shrink away and sob at the prospect of putting himself before noblewomen, who would, or should, know immediately that he was a sham, that would never match up to a proper aristocrat.
Though, he wonders if Pleione herself might help by playing wingman. More than wonders — a weird conviction tells him that she would really enjoy it. He is not sure of the social life she has outside her lab, but his impression has been she does not have many friends. Perhaps having a reason to get out and scout new things would be fun for her? At the very least, they would have something to talk about.
Renard smiles.
Perhaps that is what he should think about, for now.
The next day, Renard resolves to invite Pleione out for friendly fun.
Best they find something memorably pleasant to do before the party, so as to make the atmosphere between them during it less awkward. But the day of that party is approaching rapidly. Exciting events may rise like daisies in the weeks after it, but to find something suitably thrilling in the short gap before will be rather a challenge.
A simple challenge — just how Renard likes it! Hoho!
Scouring gossip and message boards across the city, Renard finds several goings-on Pleione might enjoy. But his pride in having achieved this fades, as anxiety arises over that ‘might’. Kingslayer, absent any distractions, burns with horrible whispers. You undermine my power with frivolities… A lump lodges in Renard’s throat.
He swallows, shakes his head. He must be bold, muster his courage…
But the fear is great. Hesitating, he finds himself comforted by the thought of inviting Pleione out, rather than actually doing it. Paralysis, though, is forbidden. He ventures to the private library of one of the city’s noblemen — as a prominent local figure, the master allows Renard access, as he allows most scholars — and settles in with a book on Palidan theology.
Honestly, he’s not a great reader. He is soon skimming over the text, not focused, mind wandering.
Much of Palidan mysticism, he knows, revolves around the notion that people’s fates are written in stars. It’s a romantic thought, but also poppycock, at least in the simple terms that he’s always heard it said. Perhaps there is some nuance, though, he has never known to grasp, which could lend credence to the idea…
And by extension, to the idea that reading these fates can divine whether two people will fall in love…
Renard pours over drawings and charts, more focused upon these. Pleione, so the reference notes state, signifies a birth under ‘taurean’ concepts, but specifically under the ‘dove’, and precisely under the ‘mother dove’, who is the one who proliferates. Should he perhaps call her by her name Gayle, rather than this tribal signifier? The mythos of this prevailing star tells that she was a kind eastern matriarch, one with many children, who made valuable things that were small in number become very abundant…
Renard flips back to the charts. There are mathematical formulae that can measure what prevailing stars have influenced an individual, and upon what dimension they have done so, but this requires the date, time, and location of birth. Renard is not certain of these for Pleione. But if he can estimate, then the things that appeal on the ‘romantic’ dimension, or even just the ‘friendship’ dimension may be…
A voice interjects from over Renard’s shoulder. It’s another nobleman who has been studying in this library, and, bored, thought it odd to see Renard here, and became curious as to what he was reading. Seeing that it is esoteric Palidan mysticism, and specifically the exciting sections of it commonly known to deal with romance, he cannot stop himself from lightly razzing Renard.
Renard, embarrassed, tries to hide the book, but it’s too late.
The nobleman expresses his surprise that Renard is consulting such ideas. Though he finds them romantic enough to be interesting, and strange enough to be intriguing, he’d like to offer his own brain as a sounding board for whatever Renard came here to study, first. Heaven knows the headache it would be if one of Lacren’s more important military figures fell too deep into eastern hoodoo and turned into another zealot against snakes.
Renard, confused, questions what snakes have to do with it.
The nobleman, again, is surprised. Taken off-guard by how Renard was legitimately only consulting this foreign mythology for relationship advice, he is torn on how much to tell him. In the end, he does simply say that Palidans regard snakes as evil, to the point of wishing to exterminate all those born in a certain month, because they associate that month with snakes.
Renard is shocked to hear this and rather betrayed. He looks at the book in horror. Surely, the man must be exaggerating…
But the way he shakes his head, so serious and rueful, assures that he is not.
Renard stares paralysed at the book. Struggling to make sense of this news, Renard blurts in frustration what he figures the nobleman means: similar to how lords of Western kingdoms so passionately pit their ‘honour’ and ‘righteousness’ against treachery wherever they may find it, the easterners, too, have a hunger to destroy evil villains. But they do not even regard people for their individual acts when determining this villainy, but rather their inborn association with an arbitrary symbol of an unpleasant animal.
Renard clenches his teeth. For how acerbic a screed he has just said, he deeply desires to forgive the Palidans — rather, to find reason by which he can rationalise such a stance as reasonable, and still accept the general worldview Pleione has been easing him towards as positive and legitimate. The point that most strongly holds this hope is that, by his research and his interactions with Pleione, he does not think the Palidans would assign such a symbol arbitrarily.
At the same time, to consider that there could be good rationale to kill someone purely because of the day they were born, or to regard someone as inherently evil for the same reason, and let himself accept such an idea, would be to enter onto a ferociously dark path.
It is savagery to kill a man for such a reason, says Renard, flipping through the book for reference to this snake-month.
The nobleman, not exactly defending the Palidans, but willing to clarify their thought, informs that it’s because Arsene is a snake.
The book thomps to a stop, landing open on a chart of the night sky and its constellations. There is no chapter devoted to the snake-sign, but it is shown and labelled here, indeed set upon the meridian the Palidans have decided confers astral, symbolic energy to newborns — now that he considers the pictures before him in those terms, somehow it all seems quite shallow and stupid.
‘Arsene is a snake’. It’s an association so banal an infant could make it. The romance drains out of the pages, leaving the tome before him as a mundane lump of ink from a delusionist’s quill set on paper as much as any fiction.
Renard may not be religious, but he does recognise the name Arsene. It is the name of an ancient deity that formerly served the Demiurge, but usurped him to construct Nix, and so severed the surface world from that Demiurge. In the way Renard always heard it, Arsene had flattered the Demiurge away from humanity but towards himself, and though this carried no formal theological backing or even much involved consideration on Renard’s part, he always imagined the Demiurge and Arsene had constructed new planes within Nix, as though establishing fresh boards of a board game, and invested themselves in that instead. Then left that for another — and another, and another, only really caring about themselves and the romantic process of creation.
He imagined that the Demiurge held a nominal affection for the worlds he had abandoned, since they were his creations, and so would not destroy them. Arsene was more lucid about it and recognised they would never return to these shelved worlds, and, as a good servant, gave their inhabitants rationale in the form of his ‘usurpation’ for why they had been left to rot, protecting the esteem of the Demiurge. This is of course all personal thought, but it makes sense to Renard. How else could a figure everyone asserted was all-powerful and all-loving allow himself to die?
To say that someone born under the ‘energy’ of a snake is evil, because Arsene is a snake, and Arsene is evil, indeed requires the assertion that Arsene is evil. Renard has never truly believed that. If anything, the one more responsible for the wrong in the world would be the Demiurge, who left everyone.
But it’s not like Renard can’t understand that, or would call that evil, either. A child cannot always be dependant on its parents — eventually, the parent will leave, and the child must grow by himself into what he will become. Evil is then the product of man, who simply chooses to be evil. But then could the Demiurge not have made man minus the capacity to be evil? Could he not have created a world where hurt or wickedness simply never existed?
Renard is scared, the same way he would be of criticising his parent, of regarding that oversight as just spite or pointlessness.
That fear gives way to a strange kind of hope. For the first time, he wonders if things didn’t go the way he always hazily imagined they did, and if maybe it really is so straightforward that Arsene is just evil — that he was not really the devoted servant Renard fancied him to be, that he did somehow defy the pure intentions of the Demiurge, and that he did, through artifice that Renard cannot understand, kill him and for whatever reason not take his place as the lord of humanity.
But just as much as he can feel hope and perhaps yearning in these thoughts, he is disgusted by the proposition that a whole subset of people exist who deserve to be killed because of their birthday.
The nobleman departs as Renard redoubles his research, brushing off the noble’s invitation to hang out at the upcoming party. Renard pours through books meticulously, hunched over line after line.
It is in the course of this study, as the sun blooms streaks of a new morning outside the dark library windows, that Renard stumbles over the revelations he hadn’t known he was searching for:
Arsene, by his own admission, was not created by the Demiurge.
And soul rot, a phenomenon that only came to effect the world within the past two hundred years, coinciding with the death of the Demiurge, was not simply a natural effect of the Demiurge’s departure, but instated purposefully by Arsene, and was not only instated purposefully — it emanates from him, like a smell.
Arsene, who is not something the Demiurge designed, is the source of soul rot.
The information Renard needs to reach this conclusion is scattered, assembled snippet by snippet across testimonies and off-hand hypotheses from philosophers, shamans, theorists, historians. But these are the points their individual analyses all cohere into, and all basically agree upon.
Renard reels, too stunned to look at the book anymore, as the implications set. Soul rot is not a natural phenomenon of this world, nor its natural state. And if there is a source of it — then, if the link between that source and the land could be severed, or if that source could be destroyed, logically, soul rot could be ended.
Renard jolts to his feet, stricken with the urge to announce this revelation to anybody he can find, that they might understand the importance of what he’s uncovered. Even so, he marches past servants in the hallways as if they are not there, too trapped in his whizzing brain to recognise anything. Even as he exits the building entirely and returns to town in a semblance of his usual routines, all he can think about is this new information.
The Palidans, too — though not conscious, Renard feels the relief that their notions of murdering the snake-born are hopelessly misguided, not intrinsically bloodthirsty, but in fact likely another example of Arsene subverting a legitimate concept into an illegitimate mockery. A human being will never synthesise the blessings of an entity so fundamentally alien into their soul. It’s why people were created in the shape of the Demiurge, not as serpents in the shape of Arsene. They are Demiurge’s children — not Arsene’s — and until they are literally twisted out of their humanity by soul rot, their nature will always reflect that.
Questions do still linger. Why did Arsene instate the rot? Is it a voluntary effect or not? Is his situation one that is difficult, or could be helped? None of that matters. As long as the source of soul rot can be destroyed, none of these questions matter.
Renard had conceived to go out with Pleione today. But now he is too concerned with these thoughts to even possibly pursue that. Struggling to grapple the implications of his discovery, he finds the day soon over and himself soon in bed.
Renard awakens the next morning somewhat more composed, no longer running on an all-nighter and having had time to process his find.
Still, thoughts float around his skull. Fantasies are cohering: if a team could be gathered, if an initiative could be formed to scout and delve Nix… someone more suited to this project, and with a better sense of leadership, would have to organise it, and choose more suitable agents as the commanders for it, people like the Pilamine knight, but Renard still might have use as a tool or adviser in such an adventure…
These dreamy thoughts snap into panic as Renard realises he has to pick an outfit for the Queen’s party today. He scrambles to get himself into something that would be even marginally presentable before proper nobility, with their proper senses of fashion and clothing budgets out of reach of Renard, but in the end the odd wavelength of his ponderous fantasy insulates him from real meltdown, and he calms again en route.
He steps into the castle and enters the ballroom. Countless men and women in ostentatious silks circle around the floor like motes of dust. This is not the first time Renard has attended such a function, or been in the presence of nobles — but it is the first time he has ever been expected to interact with them as their peer.
The people he invests in, and the impression he makes now, will determine his course for years under this new Queen’s regime.
Nobody jumps upon Renard or even takes his entrance with great attention. That is, people do notice, and acknowledge him, but have already formed into their own groups and regard him as not important enough to immediately break away for. Relieved for this mild reception, as he had half-expected the whole room to freeze on his entry, Renard retrieves a glass of wine (dated before Pilamine) for himself from the refreshments table and joins Pleione, who he spots awkwardly watching the pageantry from aside, as a conspicuously out-of-place wallflower.
Pleione relaxes from his company. They chat, pointing out people here and there and who they are and what they do, and laugh about how clueless they both seem to be about socialising with them. That said, the gossip between him and her piques Renard’s curiosity mildly, and he wonders if he should branch out a little to meet the more interesting ones. Or should he retreat somewhere with Pleione? Ask her about going out this week… Renard swishes his wine in his glass.
Similar to his own curiosity, he notices people sending infrequent but curious glances to him, though they seem unsure how to approach. He shelves his thoughts of eloping with Pleione, letting the interest of these guests ground him instead, conceding that doing so is probably appropriate.
Though relieved that the ball has accepted him, his gut screams that he needs to impress these people with a dramatic icebreaker before he can really talk to anyone. Rather, as he considers the kinds of questions he may be asked — about the Iron King, or how he liberated Lacren, his stomach twists with profound discomfort. Rather than talk about that, he thinks, as the band’s music swells, he would like to make a performance.
Renard makes for the refreshments table, an image cohering of himself getting upon the table and juggling full plates while doing a jig to everybody’s uniform awe, then throwing pies at those present. As if she herself saw this image, Pleione frantically grabs his arm and hisses for him to wait. Annoyed, Renard turns upon her — what does she think she is—
A sharp, contemptuous laugh shocks Renard. Jolting with terror and embarrassment, he turns to the source of the noise — and is surprised the mockery wasn’t aimed at him. Rather, a small group of nobles chats a little ways behind him, and one could not constrain his laugher at his fellow, who, with sweat on his brow, raised palms, and curled shoulders, appears extraordinarily nervous.
The nervous man stammers a joke to appease his bully, but the bully’s snide composure stays firm. Rather, everyone in that group appears to be in agreement with the bully, their stares upon the nervous man ranging between ‘unimpressed’ and ‘observing a clown’. The animosity shocks Renard. Should he help the guy?
He wants to intervene, and make sure the fellow’s okay — but without knowing who he is, or why he has earned this contempt, aligning himself with the unpopular man may mean tanking his own social position and alienating himself from everyone else. Intimidated, Renard catches from their conversation that the nervous man is a Baron called Asphodelis, and he has… done something, mismanaged funds… something about rubies… realising the topic is noble business he does not understand, Renard resigns that not barging in on the conversation is probably the right move, and that if he did, he’d be laughed out, too.
His throat is cold, jaw is tight, and hands are rigid when he turns back to Pleione. She asks if he’s okay, but he brushes the concern off. He abruptly feels extremely unwelcome at this event and nervous about involving himself in it, not because he thinks anyone will particularly mock him, but because the shame of not defending Asphodelis is already, as he stacks more food on his plate, overwhelming. What does having ‘fun’ at this function matter if he did not help that man? How can he celebrate this pageant while that man suffers across the room? It’s disgraceful.
But even worse, even as Asphodelis nags at his brain, he cannot find the nerve to approach him. Even to offer a plate or a reassuring word… Renard himself is not a stable enough figure to give that kind of help. Worst case, others see them talking, and it cements them both as pariahs.
Maybe after the party, then, he could find Asphodelis and make it up to him… Renard’s chest warms a slight as he slants towards this plan. He would best socialise with other guests, and establish his footing, then see Asphodelis afterwards. But with the prevailing atmosphere in his heart still scared and bitter, he dismisses that initial idea of table antics, and resigns that he will have to talk about his time as the Iron King’s Cavalier. His hand floats to Kingslayer’s hilt, in absent acknowledgement, nausea rising in his throat.
Who of these noblemen should he start with. Renard turns to Pleione for advice and guidance—
“Renard! Renard Cox!" shouts a furious voice that has, seemingly, been trying to get his attention for some time. A man in light armour shoves through a break in the crowd as if emerging from a wood, glaring Renard down and attracting many stares of his own. “Unbelievable!" he spits, “The comfort! When a blackguard as you, ‘cavalier’, prances about the court’s bosom like a real soldier. How are you all not ashamed," he addresses the whole crowd, “to cavort with a murderer?"
Renard freezes. But relaxes just as quickly, not from confidence, but resignation and exhaustion. It’s the backlash he expected, finally showing up, though he should figure out what this guy specifically wants. “Ease, my fellow…"
“Ohhh I ease natch, for we are enemies, deeply," the man announces, and laughs. “Not and never fellows, so scrape that word from your tongue. You are the rogue who butchered a gracious and noble man, known to this court and to kingdoms beyond as the good Sir Liadus Penn. I am his brother, Orpheus Penn, sheltered fortunately within foreign walls from the intrigues that slaughtered my family. Free as am I now by the Queen’s grace to this homecoming, you happily will hear my oath, sworn to my brother’s grave, ghost, and ghoul, and to those of all others you murdered. You, ‘Sir’ Renard, are this land’s blackest villain and a mockery of knights, who with all my soul and wit I will deny any shred of regard. Before this peerage and before even peasants, it is not until you are begging in the mud that I will know justice is sated."
Renard slumps. He finds himself unsure how to respond, as onlookers whisper and titter with open eyes, some receptive to Orpheus’ passion and the rest, though aware Renard has been formally exonerated and so unconcerned with Orpheus’ rhetoric, curious to how Renard will respond to such a zealous challenge. But Renard’s hesitation isn’t because he’s unsure of how to defend himself. It’s because Orpheus is honestly right.
As in, if he could, Renard would shout: I know!!! Go ahead, ruin my life, hells above, tell me how and I’ll help you. For god’s sake, do destroy this tainted husk, let it be murdered before justice, and absolve me to start again as something better and new. I want that as much as you!
But in the end, without passion, he can only say, “the good Queen has ruled my case… I stand in this company by the felling of my old master, and the preservation of Lacren from foreign interests… the debts of my sin are so paid by reasonable virtue." As he considers these words, he feels himself growing annoyed, then angry with Orpheus.
Indeed, the debts of his sin are paid… indeed, he has little option before him but to act as, and be, a good person! Why cling to vengeance against a Renard that no longer exists — one Renard himself murdered upon Kingslayer — what is the point? Would it not be a greater defeat of the villain he was, and of the pain in Orpheus’ own heart, for Renard to truly become a genuine servant of the virtues chivalrous men espouse. Is that not what this good brother of his would have wanted!
As the Queen steps out of the crowd to mediate, Orpheus, not yet noticing her, begins, “Never would I doubt the compassion of our good Queen, nor her judgement to keep an accomplished bladesman within her retinue. Your presence among lords, however—"
“—If you are so married to light!" Renard bursts, stomping a step forward. “Then shining by what ray is vengeance on me! Good man, so hoist your blade to swing upon what, a wretch mired in the dirt? Shall fifty unbathed peasants be an eyesore, or shall any of you lose your dignity when robbed of your dress and thrown from your houses! Is it the wolf that bites, or what is bitten, that must die to end wolves? All my fangs are taken from me."
Orpheus flinches, taken aback at the rebuttal’s intensity, as the Queen relaxes, impressed by Renard’s defence. Silence reigns the crowd, their stares fixed on Renard, commitment growing to contemplation, agreement, or rejection of Renard’s stance. The only one thrown off-balance, and desperate for him to stop, is Pleione — but not even she can, or can try to, interrupt this.
“No paltry apologies of my mouth may mend the pain and indignation that I know you feel. So stand not I to give them! Let it be by my deed that new integrity be shown. To every good and noble man, so I tell, nay, to every ear on earth, I tell, the identity of the true beast that confounds brothers as us into bickering." Renard wets his lips. “It is the same beast that killed our creator! Oh chuckle, I know, as so many will, by the vanity that he is so distant — but can you not see by every corpse felled that the beast is not far at all? Snort shall you whilst I acknowledge what wrongs our home, and spite the solution to dolour, because it is so obvious, because it is not inside us, because it is something that others have said?
“Or will you call to me, what does it matter! It is not stones before me, what does it matter!" Renard howls. “What did it matter when twenty-more kingdoms called war upon my old liege! Who at the vanguard held Kingslayer and pointed it on his neck — none! Yet every soldier shone with zeal to die for that cause, and prevailed by that conviction.
“Does our valour disappear! Is righteousness a wisp, a gown, we don selfishly over our motives? Balderdash! It is our soul’s deep hunger, pour’d from a love of our maker. So moved we chop at wickedness’ fingers, sprout’d before us on our earth, we celebrate our victory, but we do not sever the wrist! Hear me, all, what I must say."
Renard takes a deep breath.
“This rot upon our souls rises from a fountain in Nix, the very beast of which I speak. Fell the head of this beast — and the rot is done."
Even deeper silence prevails. Renard looks to the Queen, with meek but hopeful expectation, one far too heavy for her when thrown into her lap so suddenly. But just as much as the coalition could not ignore the proposal to purify soul rot, nobody in this room can ignore the attractiveness of perhaps ending it altogether. It is as though Renard has thrown an idealistic meat haunch into a den of starving hyenas.
“You speak with true nobility… of that, nobody can doubt," the Queen takes a breath to steady herself. “But, we…" she winces. “We must only consider these thoughts, once we as a kingdom are more sure." She straightens her neck, though a strong discomfort still underpins her confident words. “An underplanned initiative cannot lose us our country."
Finding these words just vague enough, and still clinging to a childlike hope, Renard innocently questions, “you will?"
The Queen gives a strained smile. “No… no."
Most observing the exchange accept this conclusion without argument, and even with greater confidence in the Queen, aware that Renard’s proposal was beyond unreasonable. Nonetheless, an air of intense dejection and disappointment settles over the room.
So it is for Renard. He looks to Orpheus, who has been thoroughly silenced by that proposal. Orpheus finds himself with nothing to add, acknowledges Renard’s win in this bout with a wary but respectful jerk of the head, and splits from the break in the crowd to be with his own thoughts. With the Queen also melting back into the crowd, the former space between her, Orpheus, and Renard quickly fills with people.
Some who now wish to speak with Renard. Before anyone reaches him, Pleione frantically grabs him and drags him aside to a corner, where she questions, wide-eyed, if Renard is serious about killing Arsene.
Without much thought, Renard nods.
Pleione clutches her head like a madwoman, in disbelief of what she’s hearing. She snaps herself back into focus and hisses to Renard that he should pack his bags right now, go to another country, and repeat that proposal — and repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it, until he finds one that says yes. Pleione will go with him. They best start with Oppenveist; it has the best prospects.
Renard quirks his brow at her urgency, confused by how rash of a plan this is for her. He says simply that he’s not going abroad for this.
—But Lacren is too weak, Pleione snaps. It hasn’t the allies or resources to fund an assault against Nix.
Renard, realising, notes the error in Pleione’s thinking. No Kingdom of the West would throw its sons into Nix, especially at the word of a foreigner, unless it were truly desperate for glory. Places where the lords are known as comfortably righteous and successful would not be inspired towards this cause, unless their weaker neighbour were showing them up by pursuing it instead. It’s something that resonates with people, not governments, and neither Renard nor Pleione are respectable enough figures abroad to preach such a grassroots change in policy. However, here in smaller Lacren, it is now a matter profoundly in the aristocracy’s consciousness, some of whom will adopt it to pressure their own ambitions against the Queen. Put in shorter terms, Renard doesn’t think Pleione’s plan would work — nor does he want to abandon Lacren over something he figured wouldn’t be accepted anyway. That’s just unreasonable.
Pleione falls speechless.
The glory for this conquest better goes to Lacren, Renard grins, hand on Kingslayer.
This is larger than… the politics of one nation, Pleione begs. The entire East would aid you if you could bring the West’s military to this cause.
But Renard shakes his head and wags his finger. Invite too the north and south, let us bring the whole world to battle! No, these numbers mean little in real war, for it is not a claim to bodies, but a claim to hearts, that dictate the victor. A hundred bladesmen unified with conviction win surely against a hundred thousand who doubt their place on the battleground.
Pleione gives the most miserable look Renard has ever seen. She tries one last push: When that coalition united against your King…
Mm, they were slavering also to conquer Pilamine. Renard rolls his eyes.
Pleione’s shoulders slump, defeated.
Pleione, Renard calls, his tone softening. I don’t jest with you.
But she can only throw up her hands, too upset and disgusted to talk. If he is serious, but will not invest into bringing a proper warlike campaign against Nix, or otherwise collaborate with local governments, then he is essentially saying he means to conquer Nix single-handedly. It is such an obviously stupid, harebrained, impossible, unworkable thought — and yet this breed of foolhardy stupidity has garnered Renard unthinkable successes before. She cannot help but wonder if he will pull out another miracle, or if she should just resign that she should have expected this from Renard. In the former case, she doesn’t want to discourage him. In the latter, she doesn’t have the right to.
While Pleione sulks, and Renard smiles to her pityingly, a sharp ting-ting-ting of glass peals over the chatter of the room. Renard looks to the source of the noise. The Queen, standing on a dais, hands off the glass to a servant and straightens herself for an announcement.
Which is thus: Apart from just fun and networking, the purpose of this party was to inform the nobility of a personally relevant change of regime. In the years that the Iron King held the throne, chivalric teachings were heavily deemphasized and knights who could teach these manners surreptitiously to noble children had largely been run out of the kingdom. There is a generation of aristocratic Lacrenese scions who are severely lacking in their moral and tactical education, and equally have lost important, fundamental life experiences of in-field training as a page or squire. The deficit has been massively concerning to parents, who fear their children may grow to be tactically, practically, and ethically illiterate in a way that will never measure with their properly-trained peers, or foreigners.
And so, the Queen is instating an organised training program to get this generation their proper education. She has invited many accomplished foreign retirees, and former Lacrenese exiles, to act as tutors in this cause. She has drawn rosters for those who would like to enrol their children…
Renard notices Pleione slip away from his side and exit the room, uninterested in these proceedings and apparently wanting time on her own. Renard, too, agrees now would be an opportune time to leave, though he will hear out the Queen’s speech further. Soon he feels he has the gist, and indeed, it’s not really his business.
As he puts down his glass and strides for the door, the Queen introduces the tutors—
And chokes with panic at her call, of ‘Orpheus Penn’.
The instant Renard returns to his house, he packs up supplies to leave.
It is night. The sun has set. Renard snaps his horse awake, loads her with luggage, and bridles her up to ride.
Renard had fled to an isolated balcony when he heard Orpheus’ name called, and cowered there for minutes, sweating as if it were the end of the earth. He can’t explain why the prospect of Orpheus being a knightly tutor was and is so frightening — but it is absolute truth that Renard’s guts were about to drop out his rear at that moment, and probably actually would have, if anybody had found him in his hiding spot, as he feared they would.
Even then, the impulse to run back to the party was immense, to explain… he doesn’t know what. That he isn’t a horrible person, even though Orpheus is a proper knight, and Orpheus hates him, so logically Renard is horrible.
In the end, though, nobody found him, and he got home without interruptions.
He double-checks his canisters of water, stashes his map in his sabretache, and mounts his horse. With a steadying nod, and a crack of the reins, he dashes out into the night.
His destination is Nix. Of course.
And though he is scared — still thinking of Orpheus — it’s not that he’s running away. Rather, similarly to how he had committed himself to murdering an innocent traveller so many years ago, or to dredging up Isen’s soul for witchbane, Renard’s heart has already committed itself to going to Nix, by the words he spoke at that party and the oaths he has made to himself, to the Queen, and to Pleione. It’s just an imperative, beyond any argument. He must go to Nix and slay Arsene. It is really as simple as that.
And apart from that fear he is anxious, nervous. He well knows there are people greater than him who would have had the same idea before. But he must not think of them, or of the implications of their present lack of success, or of anything — because he must go to Nix and slay Arsene. There is nothing else here to consider.
Lacren does not border Nix. There are over eight countries Renard must pass through before he will reach his destination, none of which would be happy about a Lacrenese knight traipsing around unannounced in their borders. But that does not matter to Renard.
He reaches the outer border of Lacren. A roadside inn, with lanterns lit, stands as a final landmark of home. A woman, having heard Renard’s horse, exits the inn and gazes to him softly.
Renard grits his teeth and cracks the reins, pressing his horse on. And so becomes his momentum and tenor in this journey — charging across borders heedlessly, through less-travelled margins that are more loosely patrolled, never stopping to fraternise with anyone else, sleeping on the rough or in isolated travellers’ cabins. Though a great adventure in itself, still he can only think, without stopping to immerse himself in much of anything: I must slay Arsene.
Several weeks pass like this. Soon he enters the final kingdom, the one that borders Nix: Verdanheim.
This nation is tiny and dark. A tangible air of distortion pervades the hamlet he enters, and the trees in the distant forest, and even the sun in the sky. The light feels pale and weak, withered like a man on his deathbed. Though Renard knows he entered in daytime, the sun chokes and flickers, smothered, sending the region into a bizarre half-night.
Renard shakes off his mystification and discomfort with this strangeness, charging his horse onward again. Arsene, Arsene, Arsene.
And so he reaches his destination.
Renard falls silent as he takes in the sight before him.
He stands on the edge of a cliff, which descends into — nothing. All that expands from this spot, so absolute and final as to be the end of the world, is a cold, dark, dense, nothing.
This utter blackness stretches like an ocean into infinity. The sight of it wracks Renard with a sense of total insignificance, and all he can do, as he disbelievingly hops off his horse, and stares into the dark, his breaths growing more ragged and rapid, tears heating his eyes, is scream.
He collapses onto his knees, screaming, wailing, sobbing in denial of the thick void in front of him. Just jump in! Just jump in with your can-do gung-ho and have every light you’ve ever loved in this world leave you. The aura that arises from this pit echoes that of the Iron King, though it is a million times more powerful, visceral, primordial. While as flat and calm as a still lake, the emptiness roils with deep cold hatred, which would not just see Renard killed — but debased, dismantled, humiliated, sapped of all his values, and destroyed to his root. It is cruelty beyond cruelty. It is a heated, passionate war against everything bright inside him, that will not even concede that such things are good — but rather that they are stupid, disgusting, pointless, fake, contemptible, bad, gross, and if Renard opens himself to this force, it will infiltrate and illustrate exactly why it thinks this.
For how definitely Renard knows this all is true, it is not this arcane animosity, but the simplicity of the sight of the bottomless hole that breaks him. Mindlessly, he screams — a scream of such absolute pain, one he has kept inside since slaying the Iron King, since becoming his servant, since following him into the woods, since marching into the valley, since throwing that sheep in that tree, since maybe even before then.
WHY!
WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN!
Why is here HERE but to FUCK UP and LOSE! WHY CAN’T ANYTHING HE EVER WANTS JUST BE RIGHT!? WHY ARE ALL HIS CHOICES AND CONVICTIONS JUST WRONG? WHY IS HE JUST ALLOWED NOTHING THAT’S GOOD?! BY THE ANCESTORS’ GRACE, WHAT DID HE DO!?
If he could, he would FIX IT! He would be SORRY! Even if he isn’t rewarded for it, it’s what he’d DO. That’s why he killed the Iron King, why he listened to Pleione, why he gave back his father his money! Because he knows he’s not he best at it, but he’s trying to do what is RIGHT. He doesn’t want to be bad. It’s not even in him. It’s not him.
So why can’t he be allowed comfortable joys? Why can’t he date Pleione? Why can’t he be a proud son? Why couldn’t he care for his mother? Why couldn’t he support Isen as his compliment? Why is even the Iron King gone? Why is there nobody left who he can just do right by, love, and be loved by in peace?
Or is he just stupid and shallow, a wretch with no real convictions, who can’t help but mess things up. Is he thinking too selfishly. Is he too thoughtless. Why is this part of him so deep and consistent? Are the sins he’s accumulated still just too great.
Renard furiously raises Kingslayer over the pit as if to stab the darkness. But his grip on the blade trembles as he knows the action is pointless. Frozen in place, his thoughts shift smoothly, and calmly, into instead, dropping the blade.
It’s yet a comforting prospect, just letting go.
But the sword’s aura breathes as it ever does, joyfully heedless to Renard’s intentions: kill! Kill! Kill! Faces from Pilamine follow. You don’t deserve to be free. You’ve left us with nothing.
In the end, Renard slumps back onto the grass, crying, the sword discarded on the ground beside him.
He doesn’t want to go back to the Queen and use this sword to kill people. He doesn’t want to be respected for this. He doesn’t want to put on a charade for some high-bred woman. He doesn’t even want to be an aristocrat. But that’s all he can do, isn’t it?
So if it’s all he can do, maybe it will be fine. Has to be fine. If he just embraces it. If every door but one will close, then what’s the good in consigning that last door as awful when he’s barely dipped his toes into it. What if he really tries to make the best of this opportunity where he has wound up? Would it be stupid to throw that away?
And though these thoughts encourage him enough to stand and sheathe Kingslayer, all that remains under this last veneer of hope as he takes his horse’s reins, and turns away from the blackness of Nix, is overwhelming, insurmountable, shame.
Renard returns to the town, trudging, no longer in a rush. Rather, he would like to prolong his return to Sebilles, where he reasonably can, if that would be possible. But even that reluctance speaks to a kind of failure…
Miserable and frustrated, he enters a tavern and takes a chair. The wellwater here in Verdanheim is not tainted, so anything to drink here should be safe. Even so, he finds himself less with the appetite to down his liqour, than to upturn it over his head, beat the tankard over his skull, and sulk while flopped over a table. He needs some idiot to punch, a heretic to beat… though no, he does not really mean that.
Locals give him odd glances and whisper amongst themselves. Renard returns them a stink-eye. What? Lacrenese knight or not, can’t a man peacefully stew in his misery. Soon too aggravated to simply dismiss it, Renard thumps his fist on the table and barks for the tavernkeep to do something about the other guests, then snaps at them himself. Though not escalated enough to get to blows yet, the temptation to let go, be furious, and smash something is immense.
Two men in red uniforms then enter the tavern. Sensing the air of authority about them, Renard warily reins himself down and returns himself to his seat. Indeed, these are members of local law enforcement, and once the tension in the room dissipates, the younger of the pair playfully turns to Renard with a too-welcoming smile.
Renard harrumphs a cynical laugh, aware he is about to be inquisited.
Indeed, the young guard jokes the confrontation away and tells Renard he’s caused a bit of a stir. Not a big deal, mind, but it’s odd here in Verdanheim to see any travellers. We’re not all a popular destination, with the big hole in the ground. It would probably calm everyone’s nerves to know what exactly Renard is here for.
Renard chews his lip, snorts, and snidely answers that he’s here to throw a dance party.
The guard’s smile stiffens momentarily and his companion fingers the sheathed sabre on his hip. With that threat established, the young guard fluently forgives the gaffe and assures Renard that it’s doubly strange to see someone as well-equipped and armed as him gallivanting around; he looks like a proper knight from some mysteriously unfamiliar province. He can understand Verdanheim’s trepidation here, yes?
Uncomfortable with the way this questioning is going, Renard reaches for Kingslayer — slowly unsheaths it, and lays it on the table to show himself as unarmed. Oh, good boy, the younger guard murmurs to himself.
Something weird about that sword, the older guard grumbles. The younger guard nods.
“Lacren," Renard answers, “is where I hail. But I am merely a mercenary. I am not a knight," he spits the word.
The younger guard quirks his brow. The elder fills in the gaps: Lacren is very distant — to be here, as a mercenary, means their stranger is strong, but has questionable circumstances… else, he’s here on business…
The guard asks moreso to himself than Renard — Lacren, isn’t that a hexant kingdom?
Renard again chews his lip, reluctant to answer.
“Are you Renard Cox?" the young guard says with surprise.
“No," Renard quickly answers, panic spearing through his chest. Guests of the tavern shuffle quietly out the door, sensing this is not a safe conversation to overhear.
“He’s Renard Cox," the guard confirms incredulously. Renard gulps, and seeing his discomfort, the guard quickly raises his palms and shakes his head. No, no, he’s not here to hassle Renard about it, it’s just surprising to run into him. He should know that rumours about him stretch all the way here to Verdanheim — that he is a very skilled, and very loyal, servant of a relatively diplomatic ghoul-king. Well, that clears some things up, but also opens a bunch more questions. Is he here as a dignitary, or something?
Though taken aback by the agreeable posture of Verdanheim’s guards towards servants of ghouls, Renard can only be resigned and bitter when he informs them the Iron King is dead.
This surprises the guards, but the elder stoically notes that Renard must’ve got run out of Lacren. The younger nods, quickly putting these pieces together. The elder further comments that they should take him to see lord Verdan.
“—Yes, he will want to see him," the younger agrees.
Renard stands and sheaths Kingslayer, confused where they’re going with this. I had no plans for a meeting with your lord, he challenges.
“You got a hex," the older says, nodding at Kingslayer. “Verdan knows ‘bout hexes."
Renard sets his hand on Kingslayer’s scabbard protectively. Even if these guards have figured out something about Renard’s circumstances, his affair with this sword is not really their business. Rather, the certainty with which they are goading him to follow, and see this Lord Verdan, is unsettling. Instinct tells Renard he is better off departing, now. …But he can’t erase his uncertainty, in that, if this Verdan can possibly help, then maybe…
The younger guard steps in and adds that Verdan is likely to have a job opening.
My soul is not for sale, Renard retorts, and shoulders for the door.
The younger guard intercepts him quickly. Wait wait wait, he says. He doesn’t know what’s led Renard here to Verdanheim, and frankly would rather not release him until his motives here were explicitly clear, but if he’s not here as a scout or envoy, or to petition Verdan, then the guard figures his goal had something to do with Nix. Glancing over the emptied tavern, and lowering his voice, the guard continues, You can’t think we’ve been here all this time and never been curious about it?
Renard purses his lips. You have been there, in that hole?
The guard shrugs and jerks his head to convey that he can’t divulge that information. But he does think Renard and Verdan may be able to help each other, and that for Renard to leave without seeing him would be a massively wasted opportunity.
For myself, or for your lord? Renard thinks bitterly, but cannot argue. Whatever Verdanheim has been doing with Nix, he’ll admit, he does want to know.
Though wary and reluctant, he follows the guards to see Lord Verdan.
The guards escort Renard to a small castle not too far out of town. Being such a small country, there are no fiefs within it but the one Lord Verdan presides over, which means he rules the whole country. It’s a position that on the face sounds like kingship, but exactly because he doesn’t have any fiefs or territories governed by lords beneath him, were his authority scaled against comparable figures in Lacren, he’d be much closer to a Count than a monarch.
Which isn’t to say that his influence is lacking, but that his short reach likely has kept his ambitions insular. The manner of the two guards as they escort Renard remains serious and quietly tense, as though capacity remains for Renard to decline Lord Verdan, which in itself reinforces Renard’s confidence that going forward to see him is safe.
An attendant in the antechamber asks for Renard to disarm. He does, then panics as the attendant motions to separate from Renard — but acquiesces quickly, seeing Renard’s strangely and surprisingly abrupt urgency, to staying within Renard’s vicinity. The younger guard returns from speaking with Lord Verdan, and announces that Verdan will now see Renard.
Renard enters the throne room. Though decently spacious, the darkness and plainness of this room’s uneven stonework saps any feeling of grandeur, as though he has more entered a vacant dungeon than anywhere a king would want to sit. Verdan himself is similar. Though his outfit is richly ornamented and plainly well-kept, an underwhelming lack of authority in his posture degenerates him into an everyday brigand on a throne.
He is also wrapped head-to-toe in bandages, many of which are stained and seep with yellow fluid. The cloth obscures his face, eyes, and expression, but Verdan’s head dips with clear amusement at Renard’s alarm upon seeing him. That alarm fades quickly, as awareness he stands before a leader of a potentially hostile nation jerks Renard’s chin up, feet forward, and back straight.
The bandages are thin enough not to muffle Verdan’s voice. He greets Renard by expressing his surprise that he came here, but in wistful contemplation, also voices that it is perhaps a motion of fate that a servant of a ghoul would find himself cast to Verdanheim.
Discomforted, Renard snaps. And what are you, creature? Also a ghoul?
No, no. Verdan laughs, rivulets of that subtly odorous fluid frothing and streaming like piss down his front. That young guard, who remains present and watching, winces at Verdan with pain, then at Renard with accusation. Verdan smooths his dirtied bandages, though his hands cannot clean them — whatever horrific constitution he has underneath, he seems long accustomed to it.
He is not a ghoul, or a witch, he continues. But only a man who has tampered with Nix. It’s truly an unfortunate state. Some would think you lose all your humanity, upon even touching the venom that rises out of that hole. Kha-HAH, HAH, HAH, he spits up more laughter as if puking.
Renard cringes, but understands. Surely few would wish to associate with a nation run by a man who looks like this — rather, if Verdan speaks true, it’s incredible his land hasn’t been persecuted and destroyed as a hexant kingdom. He is conceding himself corrupted by Nix. Renard glances to Kingslayer, abruptly nervous about staying too long on this cursed soil without it, but refocuses to Verdan.
And what, your grace, solidifies your good soul?
Ahh pish, s-s-s-so sceptical, sceptical of me, Renard? The Cavalier. Verdan shifts in his seat, his frivolity waning with genuinely wounded disappointment. He explains, Nix has its way of enslaving people… whether that’s by body, mind, or soul. Everyone comes to it eventually. Some of us are just more damned, to feel that sting echoing before we have died… a lash for the ambition of breaking this cursed thing apart. So scepticism, no, it’s not new at all, and poor Verdanheim is left all alone. The eyes and tongues of lords and ladies squeal, cockroach! Skitter to your dark! Now I… my state frightens the prospects. It quite likes us to feel disgusting.
Though Verdan is saying profoundly reassuring things and agreeable motives, Renard cannot help but feel more and more uneasy, and this conversation more and more precarious, as Verdan grins beneath his bandages.
What have you come for?, he asks Renard.
Renard’s hand floats to where Kingslayer’s hilt would normally rest on his hip, but finds only air as he clears his throat. Though unsure how to answer, he forces confidence into his voice as he requests that Verdan give him more insight into the nature of this land and this kingdom, first.
Finding this fair, and content to talk about it, Verdan obliges. Verdanheim is a nation of dregs. Founded not long before the calamity that was the opening of Nix, it is the only nation anywhere near Nix’s border that did not relocate its key settlements and structures away from the pit and abandon the territory as a holding entirely, or even just stay put, but actively drew closer. That’s because Verdan’s grandfather, the nation’s founder, was drawn to Nix with incredible curiosity and a sense of higher purpose. Though aware from the second he saw the pit that it was a dangerous place, he suspected that the solutions and secrets behind the phenomenon of ghouling could only be found by delving the hole.
Verdan pauses as Renard considers these words. Was Verdan the Elder successful?
Verdan splays out his arm to indicate himself. If Renard is asking whether his forebearers entered Nix — yes. And even came out again. By Renard’s reaction it’s clear that he regarded the very prospect as doubtful. Which is a fair, even correct, thing to think, if you have ever stood at the top of the pit. Simply descending into it won’t necessarily send you downward. The air and space itself is warped, especially at that opening threshold, as if forming a barricade. This is the quality that complicates organised delves, of which there have been an attempted handful over the decades… the Ordish, for example, have attempted to construct bridges to establish a trade route here to the West, though to say ‘attempt’ is rather a disservice to them, as truthfully they were successful. But the barrier shifted like a rolling tide, devoured their bridge, and left them where they began. The same is true of stairways down that we in the West have built.
Though fundamentally curious how these delves went, and eager to know Verdanheim’s secret method of entering Nix, Renard shifts his focus to question how and why a community remained here regardless. Surely not every civilian shares Verdan’s personal interest in Nix. Because that’s the population Renard has seen here — civilians.
The young guard shifts uncomfortably as Verdan too shifts in his seat. Then cackles. How scary it is to know another lord’s soldier was eyeing the breadth of his military resources!
Tis merely reflex, Renard rebuts.
Hoo, poor Verdanheim hopes! He puts his hand to his forehead dramatically. Well, well, Renard, he will gladly talk about his bloodline’s achievements until the whole of Nix closes up, but probing into the circumstances of the local peasantry is a little too much for a stranger. Oh, Verdan’s no tyrant, of course, but let them first be less of strangers. Renard has come to Verdanheim in allegiance to what lord?
Renard falls quiet.
Verdan tilts his head, unsure what to make of this. Because Renard hasn’t been acting like a rootless mercenary, but it also strikes Verdan as odd for him to be comfortably welcome in Lacren, when it’s highly probable that his former ghoul lord marked him. Others perhaps can’t understand the attraction darkness demands once it courts you even in passing, how irreparably it snares you… Verdan can. Verdan also has lodgings and money, and an open position in his ranks for a talented swordsman.
For Nix, of course, notes Renard.
Of course, Verdan mutters. Ohh! You are a hard little nut. There’s other lords in your mind, and I’m just not pretty at all!
Though vaguely guilty, Renard cannot shake his basic question, and basic suspicion, of why Verdan has been delving Nix — a question that even Renard can tell is a little too delicate for the answerer and revealing for the questioner for him to straightforwardly ask it. Though it ostensibly aligns with Renard’s goals to place himself with Verdan, if his motives are not righteous ones Renard can agree with, then he would rather stay with Lacren than do anything by his tune.
It seems unlikely to Renard that Verdan too seeks the destruction of Arsene. His words do not seethe with enough hatred or zeal, but with the quaint paranoia of a petty lord happily farmsteading his patch of ground, which happens to include the enticingly unconquered frontier of Nix… and that which, after corrupting him, has asserted itself as his place. By that impression alone, despite his twisted appearance and erratic demeanour, Renard does not doubt his nature as basically, entirely human.
To the ghost of a man that I never knew, Renard answers. That is to whom I am pledged.
Though he had conceived it as a confident denial of Verdan, doubt flashes through Renard’s chest as he speaks. If these words are true, should he not ally with Verdan anyway?
Pledged to a dead man, but I am alive. Verdan implores. There’s nothing good I can give you?
Stricken with an abrupt wave of sadness, after a pause, Renard shakes his head.
I see… ohhh… Verdan moans, frowning beneath his bandages. Maybe we aren’t so compatible. Wah! That’s so sad! I thought we and Verdanheim maybe could be good friends. Boo hoo! Oh well. Verdanheim’s here if you lose your tether. …Lacren knows this?
Thrown off-balance by how smoothly Verdan seems to be letting Renard just leave after everything, Renard nods. It’s not openly spoken about out of politeness, but it’s also not a secret in Lacren that he’s still, at heart, the Iron King’s lackey.
You’re incredibly lucky to have such a kind home, says Verdan sincerely. He rolls his shoulders. But now a Lacrenese general has just gone romped over his lands. As a statesman, that’s a bit problematic. Mmh, but it doesn’t need to be bad. If Renard could sate Verdan’s curiosity about something, then we can retroactively agree this was his condition to entry and Verdan will forgive him for all the trespassing.
Renard clicks his throat and turns his head aside. If you are the lord, you will do as you will.
Don’t be sour when it’s true, Verdan chides teasingly. Renard’s visit really is very scary! If his allegiances and motives are unclear even to himself, then who knows who he could fall in with, or whose purposes this visit could wind up serving. But if his loyalty is still with Lacren, well, Verdan sees no reason not to reach out to them with good will. Yes, what he would like to do, and what may serve Lacren in the future, is if Verdan could get a look at that sword.
Renard freezes. What good is that for!? He wishes to snap, balanced against a profound awareness that Verdan is not making this move frivolously — this is a political manoeuvre that is going over his head, where he doesn’t have the place to say no. A shudder rises across Renard that he cannot suppress.
Delicate, is it? Verdan hums, waving his servant holding Kinglsayer to him. Come, come.
As the invisible string between himself and Kingslayer strains, Renard’s panic bursts out. Shouting, he sprints after the servant and grabs their shoulders, wrenches them to face him, and pleads for them to return Kingslayer. Guards along the room startle and move to restrain Renard — Verdan gestures them to stop, as Renard is not attacking the servant, but is hysterically begging, “stop, stop!"
These pleas do not move Verdan though, who extends his open palm to Renard to urge him calm and to halt. Guards stand ready to intervene if Renard takes another step closer — as the servant scales the short steps of Verdan’s dais, an absolute sense of paralysis and powerlessness closes over Renard more than anything he has felt in his life. The terror drops him to his knees, and though the sight of that servant and Verdan fondling Kingslayer locks his mouth in a silent scream, he cannot look away, as much as Renard would not be able to look away if Verdan were bouncing Renard’s beating heart off his ankle like a hackeysack.
He cannot even move like this. His body is Kingslayer, helpless.
Fascinating, Verdan mutters as if Renard is not there. He glances up from the inch of unsheathed blade he has been scrutinising to raise Kingslayer over his head—
Renard gasps, pushing himself off the fl—
—off the floor, he cann—
—cannot breathe, so much—
—darkness, he is drowning, he must, escape this dark and—
Satisfied, Verdan lowers the sword without lifting it experimentally back up this time, allowing Renard to stay properly conscious. Renard gasps, flails, and panics back to his feet, the mindless urge dominating him wholly to sprint up that dais and rip Kingslayer safely back into his grip. Dizzy and nauseous, he struggles to orient.
“Hm," Verdan holds out the sheathed Kingslayer for Renard to retrieve. “Steady-steady, there you go. What a very interesting phenomenon! How frighten—" Verdan cuts himself off and hugs the blade back to his chest, staring at it through his bandages. Renard, sweating and with tears in his eyes, takes the first heavy step towards the dais — Verdan absently raises his palm, gesturing him to stop.
Hopelessness and confusion, in this silence and under this easy authority, are all Renard can feel as he indeed pauses. Despondency weighs in his face and in every muscle. Verdan’s guards watch him, but moreso Verdan, themselves off-guard and curious of what spurred this order.
Verdan’s fingers inch up to his head, slip under his bandages, and slowly, begin to unravel them.
“Lord Verdan!" that one young guard shouts, breaking position to rush up to the dais. He moves with a paramedic’s urgency, as if he were watching a child heedlessly bring to his lips a bottle of poison.
But he fails to intervene before the bandages fall, and the horrible visage beneath is exposed both to scrutiny and to the elements—
—The visage of an entirely ordinary young man, eyes bulging wide, who pinches and squeezes the flesh of his own cheeks, disbelieving.
Verdan wordlessly jolts as the realisation settles that the flesh he is feeling is his own and real. The young guard’s advance too halts in shock. Verdan hugs Kingslayer even closer as he frantically unstrips the bandages from his hands, too, and again finds the appendages beneath to be completely smooth and normal. His astonished stare needs no explanation as his gaze carefully shifts to Renard: ‘oh, my god’.
Though Verdan can’t know how this happened, it seems the witchbane in Kingslayer has — temporarily — removed his corruption.
Verdan can’t let him go now. Though Renard knows this, he still cannot move — the anger that would move him to bash Verdan’s skull in is being restrained by the fear of knowing such an action would destroy him, and when he consults deeper inside himself on whether attacking Verdan may be a righteous action worth destroying himself for, all he finds is a village-boy petrified by problems too great for him.
Verdan lowers Kingslayer to his hip.
“—Be my servant," he says abruptly.
“You snake," Renard snaps. He punches the stone pillar beside him — Verdan is poised to move out of Renard’s conscious range if he makes any move for him, and even if the guards are theoretically weak enough for Renard to barrel through, there are certainly enough to grapple and slow him so Verdan can run, with Kingslayer, out of Renard’s range.
If that happens, who knows if Renard would ever wake up again. If he did, it would be in a cell.
Renard punches the pillar again, harder. “You snake! Worm! Snot!" He punches again, veins throbbing on his neck. More furious insults pour out of him, but even as they do, Renard cannot find the courage or the idiocy to move and so declare actioned malice against Verdan. He howls, Lacren will hear of this! She will take you, wicked rogue, and cut your neck from your shoulders!
But still, Renard does not move, only panting and screaming in impotent fury. Sadness and resignation shade Verdan’s gaze as negotiation removes itself as an option. Renard plainly doesn’t have the capacity to give Verdan reasons not to imprison him. Would the mercy of returning the blade, and the lightness that act would have on his conscience, be worth losing the immense practical benefits of keeping it?
While Verdan contemplates that question, Renard simmers. Rushing forward to attack Verdan, stupid as it is, may be his only option. Chin jutting out, Renard lowers his throbbing hand from the pillar to his hip, closed into a fist. A bulge in his pocket brushes against that fist. Renard’s brow scrunches as he kneads the bulge, then reaches into his pocket — in his grip, he finds Pleione’s rock.
He’s kept it on him this whole time. He’d just forgotten about it after dumping it in his pocket, since he hadn’t needed it.
Renard’s mind blanks. A fury roils so great and so incendiary inside him, it snaps past Renard’s capacity to even express. Not because he is angry to have discovered the stone — but because the solution it presents both for himself and for Verdan is so perfect, he hates it.
“This stone," Renard presents the rock on his open palm, precariously calm. “Is enchanted in the same way as Kingslayer."
The call works to pique Verdan’s interest. He calls a servant to retrieve the rock, takes it, then experiments to confirm its enchantment as effective as Kingslayer’s by having that servant bring Kingslayer away to the edge of the room. Indeed, Verdan does not begin leaking or seeping anything foul, nor does his body twist into any kind of abomination.
Verdan tosses the rock up, snatches it out of the air, and smiles to Renard happily, as if he had not just been on the precipice of enslaving, imprisoning, or indeed killing him, but rather as if they have been friends on the same page this whole time.
Renard forces his sneer down into a scowl, swallowing his anger to further inform that Lacren’s court is in possession of a shaman who knows the principle, and the method, behind infusing objects with this enchantment.
This information satisfies Verdan, who returns Kingslayer and tasks Renard with delivering a letter of introduction to Lacren’s Queen, so Verdanheim can begin negotiations and diplomacy with her to learn these secrets of witchbane. The letter will also, hopefully, help Renard get back to Lacren with less fuss from the kingdoms between there and Verdanheim, now that he has a legitimate reason to be passing through as a courier.
This all arranged, Verdan smiles to Renard and wordlessly fondles the stone. Renard, too disgusted to speak, stuffs the letter of introduction into his luggage and adjusts Kingslayer’s set on his hip, frustrated that it, and his tongue, must remain in their scabbards.
With that silent resentment as his chilly goodbye, Renard resupplies, and exits Verdanheim.
Renard rides out of Verdanheim. Though the neighbours of Verdanheim are mostly not hostile towards it, and Verdan has instructed Renard on how to convey himself to border guards that they will not become too intrigued or suspicious of him, Renard finds himself again intruding past unpatrolled, isolated border-lines, rather than simply following the main road.
He just doesn’t want to speak to anyone, right now.
Given the shady atmosphere of Verdanheim, whilst he was in the country, Renard had begun to fear that something in its air or soil or food could have marked him. He remembers childhood stories of witless boys who stumbled into parallel realms, where they discovered empty dining rooms and tables spread with incredible banquets. Innocently hungry, the boys would partake — and from that moment, be bound to that realm, barred from returning home, made into playthings or slaves for the natives, and even if they assimilated and secured some hard-won semblance of respect, it was clear that they were different, and that their hearts never truly belonged there. Horrific stories, Renard had always thought.
Ho! Were I one of those lost boys, I would see the empty seats and throw all the food to the floor! I would so abash this realm’s kings, that they would admire and release me! I would become so powerful in their culture, by echoes of me they would change all their ways! That was how he bragged, as a child.
He could take relief that no, crossing into Verdanheim did not physically bind his soul to it like some fairy realm, but as these thoughts skim under his mind, all he can feel is that persistent rage.
He stops his horse a short ways inside a salt flat and dismounts. The dry, cracked earth extends to the horizon, rimmed along its circumference by a perfect crown of tall, jagged mountains. The black night sky, thick with stars, watches the world so dispassionately.
Seated on the dirt at the base of a mountain, Renard slams his fist into the ground.
Why is such scum as Verdan rewarded!
A man who would even consider enslaving another, and who would callously toy with their weaknesses as Verdan did to him, deserves to feel so impotent and loathed that they would not dare even look at another human being without first kneeling to suck their toes. They should feel, always, at the mercy of their moral betters, who may kick their face and stomp their head, and they should say ‘thank you!’ to have even this regard, for until they are offered mercy, it is exactly that regard they deserve. Verdan should be a snivelling leper, confused in his hubris as to why he can just never do right, be liked, or be happy!
He should not have the composure or the control to arbitrarily do whatever he wants. He should not be happy. He should not be securing allies in foreign kingdoms. He should not have gotten his body back! He should have to be damned to live with himself, knowing that he is a horrible person who deserves every loss and misfortune fate would cast upon him! That so many people are better than him who detest him! That it’s his fault for being wicked! That is what threatening someone so utterly at his mercy should have got him!
That he got anything good for that — it is just wrong.
Renard punches the ground two, three more times. His soul screams with the desire to take Verdan’s letter of introduction, rip it up, piss on it, and let the consequences of Verdan’s villainy be forever set, simply to disallow this scoundrel from getting what he wants.
But Renard then punches himself in the head, knowing that he cannot do this. Because he is the man who traced the steps of a real hero of Lacren, who boldly claimed he would secure it glory, and who is inescapably one of its knights loyal to the will of the Queen. Defy that, and where can he go? What can he do? Lie until he is nothing? Hope a new master would take him, and then what? With Kingslayer binding him, he would as well kill himself.
Were Isen in that same situation, he would have been so relieved that a positive solution existed for everybody. He would not be spitefully thinking to advise the Queen to dismiss Verdan as cruel and worthless. The disparity between the heroic position he has been cornered into and the vindictive wretch he really is presently is great. It is truly always great. But betraying the grace afforded to him to perhaps elevate himself, or at least mimic a saint of greater calibre well enough that nobody minds his private nature, would be massively stupid, and betraying his own capacities.
Stars in the barren night sky shine high above, beyond reach. Pleione called them this: Reminders of how much God loved us.
Renard shouts in grieving frustration, tears streaming down his face as he beholds the sight. The profound unfairness of the world asserts itself to him keenly in this moment. If an era did exist when God lived on this land and adored everyone, why couldn’t Renard have lived then? What did he do to deserve the misfortune of existing now, when the only light in the world is so tauntingly far away, and all that happens around him feels so tainted and horrible? Abandoned and left in the charge of a monster who does not care a lick, and in fact hates every soul.
It’s not fair. None of it is fair.
Renard clenches his teeth and wipes his face, glad for the privacy of this emotional outburst, but still embarrassed to be having it at all. Little makes him feel more weak than crying instead of acting — Renard imagines that true of all men. He yanks Verdan’s letter out of his satchel, allows himself the anger of again considering destroying it, and hisses a sigh through his teeth as he shoves it back unmolested into the satchel and mounts his horse.
Unfair, unfair, so the world hates him, it is unfair — but that is why there is power in getting what you can with the hand that you have. Renard spits a sigh as this calm yet bitter resolve settles over him.
There’s little to do but go forward on the decent path he is on.
Renard cracks the reins, and departs the flat.
Some weeks later, Renard arrives back in Sebilles.
He enters the castle to deliver Verdan’s letter of introduction, his anger dulled into a simmer. A servant accepts the letter, then departs down the chambers to forward it to the Queen.
Renard is so left to drift the halls and consider what he should do now that he’s back. The atmosphere of the castle and the city are peacefully normal. Perhaps he could sign on to aid in the buffalo hunts? It’s not the most thrilling idea, but at least it puts him out in the field…
He plants his chin on his palm as he stares out a castle window over the city, more and more impressed by the sight to his utter lack of inspiration of what to do with himself here. Indeed, the calm surety he felt in his journey away is breaking, slowly consumed by the dark, churning listlessness that Renard had forgotten drove him to leave the city in the first place.
If he was being honest, he’d already say he regrets coming back.
A different servant catches Renard as he contemplates this, and hands him a letter from Pleione she prepared for his return. Renard is surprised — inside the envelope is a handful of herbs to burn for incense, but no great sentimental queries into how he is or what happened. She apparently expected he would come back fine, and is not mad after their last conversation. Renard is not sure what to make of it, but at least it seems Pleione was thinking of him.
Maybe she has advice on where he should go now. But same as it was before leaving Sebilles, Renard frustratedly shakes his head at this thought. There are plenty of courses he can pursue of his own initiative… dating, or perhaps pursuing Pleione… maybe all he needs is to get out of the city.
His thoughts wander. Guilt lashes through him upon realising he left he city so quickly, he didn’t follow up with Lord Asphodelis. In fact Renard forgot about him completely. Though on one hand checking on him is probably the right thing to do, on the other it feels shamefully brazen to approach someone with a concern so shallow that Renard forgot them, as if he actually cared.
Harrumphing, and growing sick of this mopey stillness, he shoves Pleione’s envelope in his pocket and marches down the castle’s halls towards the exit. He’ll dump Pleione’s gift at his house then go on a walk outside the city. He’s not sure to where — he just needs something to do with himself.
He is barely a hall from where he started when that first servant, who he had given Verdan’s letter, jogs over to catch him. The Queen would like to speak with him privately about this letter and about his journey this past month. Renard’s shoulders unwind with immense, inexplicable relief — indeed, only upon feeling it, does Renard realise how much he wished to hear these words.
He bitches that if the Queen wants him so much, she could stand to be more punctual about it.
The servant goggles at him, aghast.
Renard laughs off his own comment as a joke and affirms that of course he’ll see her, he will just have to stretch his legs afterwards! With that, he dismisses the servant and goes to Queen’s quarters to speak with her.
She welcomes Renard with obvious concern. She had been extremely worried when he disappeared after the party, and had thought to arrange search teams for him — but was assured by Pleione that such impulsiveness was normal for Renard and that he probably had gone to Nix. Of course, that was still worrying information, but again Pleione assured they should only really worry if seasons passed with no word. The Queen trusted her judgement, and it seems she read the situation correctly, since Renard is back remarkably safe for how random and perilous his outing was.
Though Renard crosses his arms at the implication he would have needed so much pampering, that the Queen was thinking about him does reassure him. Of course, he says abruptly. Under the Iron King, I conquered much greater perils.
The Queen quietly digests that, seeming to realise that she has been treating Renard too softly. Another wave of gratitude and relief washes over him as he intuits this.
The Queen continues, this time concerned to know about Renard’s experience with Verdanheim. She wants to judge whether the place was trustworthy enough to approach as an ally. Renard’s thoughts sober despite himself. Being so far away, there is no real benefit of Lacren allying with Verdanheim — and so being obliged to involvement with its diplomatic scuffles — unless the Queen had some intention to herself do something with the nation, or more specifically, with Nix. Renard cannot discern much more than that, and the spark that drove him to personally try conquering Nix has been heavily dimmed by his failure, but encouraging the Queen to move in that direction of her own accord feels good.
So being, Renard swallows his resentment towards Verdan and gives as charitable a recount of his experience there as he can. Of course, he does not imply that Verdan is harmless, or a saint, but his desires likely have been sated enough that the offer of allegiance is genuine. There is an oddness to the air and soil there, but it did not seem to be damaging, though Renard must caution that he could have been protected from ambient effects by Kingslayer. As he says this, he realises that, whatever Verdan did to get himself so horribly hexed, he most likely did it alone — a fact that seems significant, though Renard cannot say how. He files the information away nonetheless.
The Queen quietly considers all this. His curiosity stoked by his own report, Renard asks if she has intentions to move against Nix.
She pauses, and absently shakes her head. The aspirations Renard has voiced around purifying, dismantling, or slaying soul rot, if they can be achieved, are the most important causes in the world. She can understand his desire to see them realised, as she too deeply desires their realisation herself. However, it is not the kind of thing she can rally the whole nation toward overnight with conscriptions; the enemy is too abstract for most people to visualise. Further, the rot is insidious. Counterattacking it requires powers that, right now, Lacren doesn’t have.
That is to say, rather than march an army to Nix, she’d prefer to assemble specialists like Pleione and use them to survey the rot. But if Verdanheim is already doing this, and is already surveying Nix, then she sees no reason to act in parallel to that — she’d rather just give Verdan the resources to do what she would have done. Then Lacren may have proper footing, and proper knowledge of the enemy, to enact a meaningful resistance later.
She informs that finding Verdan, and establishing this friendly link to him, was honestly the best thing Renard could have done. That he achieved it is more like a miracle, given that he couldn’t have known about Verdan or about what he wanted when he departed Sebilles.
She smiles, and with that commendation, seems content the dialogue is over; all that needs to be said, has been.
Renard’s brows rise in alarm and confusion. Does she not have any duties or orders for him?
Now the Queen is confused. Because, no. Renard is a military asset and she isn’t worried about Lacren being dragged into war anytime soon. As far as work she has that suits his skillset, it’s all civil defence: guarding Sebilles, guarding border towns, road patrol, guarding the buffalo hunters… all below his level. Though, he could go work with Verdan?
Renard asks if Pleione will be sent to Verdanheim. The Queen informs that Pleione is based in Lacren because the nation has given her a laboratory and lodgings to study her theurgy in peace; she isn’t actually under the Queen’s authority. She could go or she could not, but knowing that Easterners are superstitious around ‘corrupt’ places, she would assume it safer to keep Pleione here while in correspondence with Verdan.
Hearing that, Renard admits that he would not like to return to Verdanheim. He knows doing so would help his personal goals, but the discomfort he feels when he thinks of Verdan — and of being under his jurisdiction — is so great, he cannot even hypothetically stand it.
The Queen accepts this, not wanting to send him there anyway. Rather, if he needs something to do, then a topic she has wanted to float with him was one of knight training.
Renard perks up, eyes brightening. If he can receive proper education as a knight, then perhaps he’ll feel like less of an out-of-place sham in the company of Lacren’s court, and like more of a representative of its ideals both at home and abroad. He asks if there is a slot for him on the training roster.
The Queen pauses. No. No, she quickly explains, she didn’t mean as a student — she was thinking of instating him as a trainer.
Renard falls dumbstruck. He snipes, how can the lackey of a hexant king be expected to train youths to chivalry?
The Queen, extremely confused, notes that he killed the Iron King, saved Lacren from being conquered, returned the crown to her, and sparked clearheaded initiatives towards the righteous cause of ending soul rot. These achievements speak to a dedication to chivalry stronger than what can be found in half her employed knights. If Lacren could have more warriors with the ethic of Renard, that would be an excellent thing.
Ethic! There is not a bone of such thing inside me! Renard laughs.
But you—, The Queen starts.
—’Less you prefer a generation of butchers. Ridiculous. Ethic is found in men as that Orpheus Penn. No wonder you would waste my time with half-hearted nonsense; you haven’t the mind to conceive even a quarter of what I have done. That man, is he still in the city?
You killed the Iron King, the Queen sharply asserts. If you had not committed to change your ways, you would not have done that.
Renard falls uncomfortably silent, arms crossed, unable to rebut her observation. He mumbles, deaf, daft woman… is Orpheus in the city?
The Queen’s mouth flattens. She is not going to help Renard start a fight with—
Vacuous wench, Renard barks. Renard isn’t going to fight Orpheus, obviously, he is going to petition him. Yes, if he’s going to ‘change’ his ‘ways’ and be a ‘knight’ for Lacren, he would best do that under the instruction of someone who has half a clue what that means.
Stunned by his audacity, the Queen begins: Orpheus isn’t going to—, but she cuts herself off and exasperatedly wipes her forehead. Enough of this. Here are her orders for Renard. Since he did such an excellent job establishing relations with Verdan, his new duty under the throne is to reach out to Lacren’s neighbours, and secure more of those ‘specialist’ assets Lacren seeks towards the purpose of combating the soul rot, a purpose which, of course, is also Renard’s.
Renard clenches his teeth and squeezes his bicep in his crossed arms, unable to meet her gaze. He would like to explode and deny he ever cared about soul rot, but such a claim would be dangerous and horrifying even to his own ears.
Further, she’s right that he succeeded with Verdan — and by extension with her, with the court, and with Pleione. He truly might be able to do this, or at least has shown an aptitude for it that demands he at least try. It’s also something meaningful he can do without killing anybody, which he’ll admit, feels very merciful.
Seeing Renard’s silence and subtly softened atmosphere, the Queen nods. You understand?
Renard uncrosses his arms, sets his hand on Kingslayer’s pommel, and jerks his chin in a vague assent where he still does not need to meet the Queen’s gaze. It’s an option, he mumbles to himself.
Though still blatant insubordination, the Queen lets it slide, as she is coming to understand is mandatory for dealing with Renard. Her firm posture crumples minutely as she slips a genuine plea that Renard not meddle with Orpheus, since he will do whatever he can to undermine and isolate him further.
Renard waves his hand to dismiss these words as if he did not hear them, then announces that he will have to assemble his supplies and make his arrangements to depart the city.
Relieved, the Queen nods: dismissed.
On the way back to his lodgings, Renard stops a loitering noble near the entrance of the castle and asks the whereabouts of Orpheus Penn. The man divulges that Orpheus is in the city, occupied in his family manor near the edge of town.
Renard thanks the nobleman brightly and marches to the streets. Though, it’s not as if he’s ignoring the Queen’s orders entirely. As he passes shopfronts, he equips himself with necessities for a journey out west, and stops by his lodgings to ready his travelling supplies. Plans of how he should approach this diplomatic work, and strategies of which neighbours would gift powerful and zealous researchers or warriors toward Nix do churn through the back of his mind. All the same, in the end, his feet carry him without error to Orpheus’ manor.
The front gates are locked, which Renard imagined they would be. Actually, the distance they represent is comforting in this moment. Renard approaches a gate-guard and confers a letter to deliver to Orpheus, requesting training in knighthood, worded in a manner Renard would say was very respectful and humble.
At least, that was the sentiment in his chest when he wrote the thing, alongside tense hope, admiration, and excitement. If his eager goodwill to obey Orpheus’ teachings communicates, then surely…
The guard disappears into the manor, but Orpheus is currently busy and will get to his mail later. Aware that his message isn’t now-or-die urgent, and convicted he will get a positive response, Renard accepts this and returns to his lodgings.
He exhales.
Alone, and with the space to think about his actions, doubt seeps into his mind. Though his purposeful shield of stupidity prevents him from acknowledging how contrary his deeds are — how profoundly studying under Orpheus means defying the Queen, as his mental image of that study means years of living here, ignoring that the Queen ordered him to do something else — his heart knows that, honestly, he has just done something very awry.
He’s at a crossroads. That’s how it feels.
The purpose and duty the Queen has presented before him is, fine. It’s fine. There is no rational reason to reject it and even Renard can resign that following that path would likely be good. But a deep discomfort hangs over that course. To so nobly petition skilled people into joining a righteous cause, and hold himself with sombre dignity reflective of the Queen’s good nature, and of Lacren as a whole, feels wrong. The flourishes and speeches he envisions himself performing before lords and nobles do not feel like him.
It is of course an extension of the ‘principled knight’ the Queen perceives him as, and has been trying to let him reconstruct himself as, with his past left behind him. It is a profoundly fake reading of Renard’s character, achieved only because he leaned on nobler others as role models, and only once cornered by his own scumminess into a darkness so wrong he had to mimic those others to defy it. His heart does not naturally enjoy knighthood at all. After seeing how he responded to Verdan, he can say that certainly.
The good pretence is passionless, empty. Even as he assembles travelling supplies, and tells himself he might as well make a positive of it, if he has no other reasonable choice, he can feel his heart sink with quiet reluctance. To even say it would help him achieve the Iron King’s aims, or contribute to the excellent cause of destroying soul rot, feels empty — having seen and crumpled before Nix, Renard knows he has already bungled and failed this cause, as far as it matters to him personally. It would be the Queen’s cause now, by her principles, and not the ones that would glorify the Iron King by saying, ultimately this incredible thing, came about due to love and unwavering dedication to him.
The victory over soul rot is hollow, if it does not exonerate that man.
That is maybe a selfish way to see things, but it is what his heart truly thinks.
Renard seats himself on the bed and takes Pleione’s envelope from his pocket. She would probably help him, no matter where he winds up. She would also probably understand why the Queen’s approach is so vacuous and painful. But she is also strong enough that she does not really need him. She reaches out because she is caring and knows Renard is mentally weak. But if she knew how troubled he really was, she would probably tell him to go back home to his village, so he might clear his mind of the obligations his service to the Iron King has foisted on him, and let himself just be Renard. Her advocacy of such a course would dull the edge of Kingslayer’s presence — as someone more versed in these matters, and who Renard does look up to, if she says he’s done enough, then he’s done enough.
Renard cranes his head back.
But, for all the comfort of that thought, Renard does want to be strong. If he has the capacity to do incredible things, then he wants to do them. And if he could achieve things so great, it would repay the kindness people like Pleione have shown him, then he wants to do them. As he has discovered over his life, that capacity does feel to be there. He just does not know how to aim or define it.
Which is something he might find through Orpheus. Renard’s chest lightens with incredible hope as he considers this, and considers himself refined into a proper knight, so devoted to the principles of honour and chivalry that it would impress even a man who detests him, and properly earn his forgiveness, in a complete and proper atonement for the sins he has committed, and for the betrayal his past choices have inflicted upon his own potential for goodness.
Then he could prostrate himself before the Queen without effort, never hold a tinge of resentment, and be selfless in all his motives. With this tutelage, he could maybe, really, echo what Isen would have been.
His devotion and dedication to these lessons would be his apology for all of it.
Renard goes to his kitchen simply to move cookware around. If he keeps himself moving, even in this pointless fashion, then time too is moving, and Orpheus’ response will arrive quicker. Anxiety simmers with the seconds beneath Renard’s mind, but never breaks into consciousness. Soon, the reply will come. Soon, soon.
Orange evening light is streaming through the window when the knock finally comes. Renard bounces to the door, and hugs the man behind it, when he passes Renard the envelope. Renard skips to his bedroom and admires the calligraphed letters undoubtedly penned by Orpheus’ hand, then tears the thing open like a Christmas present.
Hands trembling, he unfolds the paper.
It is blank but for one word, large and unambiguous:
“No."
Renard reels as if slapped.
He checks again, but the word shines out from the white like a fat middle finger: ‘no’.
Hands trembling, Renard rips the paper apart and screeches. He shoves scraps of the page in his mouth, gnashes them, spits them out mindlessly, all while beating his fists on his furniture so ferociously he breaks his dining room table, as well as many shelves, doors, and chairs.
He yells inarticulately, and slams his forehead on the wall. The impact leaves a hole, soon joined by others, and by smears of blood. Renard wipes his forehead, sees the blood, and punches the wall. Though this displays some control, to say he is in any way calm is wrong. He grabs his horse’s saddle-mat, slaps it on her, fixes the reins, and leaves the city at full pace.
There is nowhere in particular Renard is aiming for. Rather, all that’s clear is what he’s not aiming for, as he avoids following any track that would bring him towards destinations he already knows, instead breaking from the roads and heading towards the wilds.
What did he think he deserved? Though his mind is voided with rage, this snickering voice of mockery rises into coherence from the shadows of his heart. What did he think he deserved? Who did he think he was, this whole time? Maybe the people of Sebilles could forgive and forget he was the Iron King’s stooge, but whatever fragments of God still reined and judged the souls of this world certainly hadn’t.
It’s grown late. He dismounts his horse, both it and himself very tired. He settles himself against a tree and sleeps.
When he wakes, it’s morning. He is in a dense, unfamiliar forest near to a little pond. It reminds Renard that he did not bring supplies except what was on his person and in his saddlebags — so he has no food and only one canteen of water. Renard contemplates this as he waters his horse at the pond.
Objectively, this is a bad situation, and to leave the forest would be rational. He sees no paths or indications of any exits, but this observation does not scare or even worry Renard. Rather, it’s a relief.
Because it feels to confirm, that the very first instinct he had, after killing the Iron King, was correct. Renard Cox had done all he possibly could or needed to do, and now he needed to end. But his binding to Kingslayer, as on the buffalo trails, has clarified that he cannot escape to any new life. The paper mache face the Queen has allowed for him is revolting, and his true heart rejected even the most sympathetic master he would find in Verdan. There are no alternative paths. That means the current true purpose of Renard Cox is to die.
By the will of the Demiurge, as were Pleione’s words.
Renard purses his lips, not scared or sad at the prospect, but resigned with cold understanding. He would rather not prolong the affair, but this feels like an awful place to leave Kingslayer. The blade does need to be found and Renard would rather not have his ghoul make its retrieval even more difficult.
Renard lightly holds Kingslayer, point down, to the dirt.
He hesitates. Immense sadness rushes over him at the sight of his horse. If he could trust in the reality of divine justice and so request any act of mercy, it would be to ask that this innocent animal doesn’t also die here because of him. But if he could ask that, then he would want to ask more — and run back into comfort, away from death.
He steels himself and expels a breath. He raises his hand from Kingslayer’s hilt, allowing the blade to fall to the ground. The direction the fallen sword points to, like a compass needle, shall tell his course, and orient him towards the spot to die and deposit Kingslayer. He hugs his horse’s neck, weeping, and sets into the thick, wild forest on foot, guiding his horse along by the reins.
Hours pass into nights into days.
Many times, Renard’s resolve weakens. Anger, fear, resentment, and sadness well up and intermittently burst, but whatever the emotion, all tell him to stop following Kingslayer and instead escape the forest. But whenever he searches for landmarks that could point him to safety, there are none. Indeed, as much as outside the forest as inside the forest, there is nothing to guide him except trust in where God may be pointing him, and acknowledgement that there is nothing else left for him.
He doesn’t really want to die. But he must. And that’s all there is to it.
The endlessness of the forest is disorienting and hypnotic. Multiple times he pauses, unsure of whether he’s going in the right direction, with impulse to let Kingslayer fall and redirect him. Once again, profound feelings of error and lostness settle upon Renard. He points Kingslayer to the dirt.
The sound of rushing water then crosses his ear. He pauses, feeling what he should do is ignore the sound and continue as he has been thus far, but the solid landmark and goal the sound represents fills him with precarious hope, far too tempting to resist. If this is a stream or a river, maybe he can let his poor, thirsty horse drink.
Renard sheaths Kingslayer and follows the sound. He breaks out of the treeline into a clearing at the foot of a mountain, with a river visible far below in a basin. Knowing better than to pursue it, he instead spots a trail up the mountain, and a waterfall further ahead flowing down its face into the river below. He decides he will water his horse at the waterfall.
Staring over the forest and the basin as he treks up the path, Renard considers. This trail was definitely man-made, cut into the side of the mountain, and though the thick weeds confirm it hasn’t been maintained, the toughness of the stony ground has kept it from being overgrown. Renard found edible plants and signs of boar in the woods, and though primitive, the combination of the food, the mountain, and the river would make this a decent place for an isolated commune to live. Indeed, peering down the river below, Renard glimpses signs of ruined buildings in the distance, along the riverbanks.
Renard comes to the waterfall and lets his horse drink — a bridge spans over the water, man-made — as he considers further. That abandoned settlement must date to before the opening of Nix. He cannot see any paths or trails out of the basin, which is otherwise thick with forest, from this vantage. That is to say, the way out of this region, and the way people would travel to or from that settlement, would be over this mountain path — which means this path has a decent chance of leading back to civilisation.
Which means also, if he can get to the end of this trail, he can probably deposit his horse somewhere she’ll be found. Then, he just needs to find a good ledge off which he can throw Kingslayer, where it might also be found. Renard sips from his canteen, but as he goes to return its cap, snorts, pours out the water, and dumps the canteen off the cliff. His commitment to this course is cemented.
His horse is still drinking. Growing impatient, Renard strides forward to yank her back to the trail, when a profound unease clenches his chest, similar to the unease he felt while looking over the abandoned settlement. His horse’s ears swivel; something from beyond the waterfall’s froth is—
—A great rumble shakes the earth, and the face of the mountain explodes.
Barely in time to react, Renard shouts for his horse and shields his face with his arm from the waterfall’s spray. His horse panics in the chaos and sprints across the river, disappearing around a bend. Though Renard’s heart wavers with concern that she may lose her footing and tumble down the cliff, there is not really time for that, because looming in the air over him is a massive, black silhouette, which, Renard’s lagging brain hurriedly registers, is a colossal wormlike beast, with a mouth gaping like the head of a pipe.
Human hands and faces bubble beneath its rubbery skin, occasionally protruding as if trapped and desperate to push themselves out. Its mouthparts pucker and suck the air obscenely, and a membranous lip descends like a sheath to twitch and snuffle towards prey. It contracts upon itself, as if squeezed, and for a moment, the garden of humanoid statues under its skin is very defined.
This is obviously not a beast made by nature. It is a ghoul.
It has probably been here since the river was poisoned, which means that for over one hundred years, it has survived all encounters with those who would slay it. Renard draws Kingslayer with determination to fight, but also with acceptance that this is where he will die.
The worm crashes down. Renard barely sidesteps it and drives Kingslayer into its exposed flesh, latched on the ground as it is; but the worm’s rubbery exterior is so thick and pliant that Kingslayer struggles to pierce it. The worm detaches from the ground, rears back, and slams down again — this time, it does catch Renard.
The outer lip-sheath of the worm drapes around him like a tent, with the earth beneath him and the body of the worm, with its puckery pipe mouth, suspended overhead out of Kingslayer’s reach. A strange, thin, fibrous tongue descends; Renard grabs it and yanks. The worm thrashes in alarm, withdrawing its tongue into its body reflexively, and with it, bringing Renard.
The slimy innards of the ghoul are rapidly wilting, drying, and flaking into chalk — this cannot be normal. The worm thrashes more now, in greater panic, as Renard drives Kingslayer into the thing’s soft inner flesh to inflict as deep a wound as he can. The tip of Kingslayer tinks against something solid — the underside of the humanoid forms that cover the worm’s outer body. The worm spasms and writhes like a dying thing, in too much distress to remember Renard, as its body flexes outward and a great crack resounds. Like a salted snail, the inner flesh withers, as the robust mineralized corpses that had been sustaining the ghoul flip by Kingslayer’s enchantment into a talcum-like poison intolerable to it.
The worm falls feeble, then still, even as the flesh inside buzzes and withers. Renard spelunks out thing’s mouth at an untroubled pace, satisfied the thing won’t survive. Indeed, at the outer lip-tent, he sees the protruding silhouettes have shattered, and the worm is dead.
Renard waits, but nothing happens. A strange, indignant confusion falls over him in this silence. Without much else to do, he cuts a slit through the outer sheath and exits to the fresh air of the mountain. The worm sags sadly pathetic from this vantage, weepy and deflated.
Renard kneads his forehead and sits against the mountain. His gaze shifts between the worm’s corpse and the bright blue horizon, sun hung over the forest, still in disbelief.
What in the crickets was that! For how imposing the creature was, that barely felt like a fight. The most perilous part of that whole combat was if a boulder brained him or a spray from the waterfall whipped his eyes when the worm made its entrance. How on earth was that silly thing meant to beat him?
It was such a onesided battle that Renard cannot even trust it. He presses his ear against the cliff to hunt for rumbles of the monster’s kin that might burst out, ambush, and kill him. He searches his hands for infections, diseases, pox — none. There is not even any smell of stomach filth about him, just the white talcum powder he dusts out of his hair, harmless and scented faintly of soap.
Even Kingslayer is laughing. Stupid beast. No exhilaration or joy underlies this sentiment as with the Iron King’s defeat, but only the insulted frustration of being under-challenged.
Under-challenged? Against a ghoul that—…
The realisation dawns for Renard that perhaps he was not meant to die here. A ball lodges in his throat as he glances to the dead worm, his hand quivering angrily around Kingslayer’s sheath. The same loathing Renard felt when the perfect solution of Pleione’s rock came to him, is solidifying and rising again, this time, aimed at the sprawling blue heavens.
Of course I’m not letting you go, the world says. We agreed you’d make a good blade, and I’ll use you ‘till you shatter.
Renard collects his horse a short way down the path. Even the mercy that she is okay feels like a sublime mockery.
How funny Renard always thought himself to be!
Grunting through his teeth, he follows the mountain trail down to a bend. The panorama shifts — the dense forest breaks into a flat, vast, grassy meadow, in the middle of which is a small town. Signposts aside the road wear that town’s name proudly, adorned also in the seal of Lacren’s royal family, as would a hound soil a fencepost. Renard rides to the town and locates its well.
Usually faces from Pilamine rise when Renard stares into Lacrenese wellwater. But this time, the only image reflected on the black surface of the water is Renard, who coolly reaches for an empty wineskin.
Fear, sadness, pleading, anger, begging, begging, begging — no part of Renard wishes to do this. You don’t understand me, his heart insists. I am fragile; helpless and weak, what I am is a foolhardy boy desiring of comfort and love. I wished to see something bad made into something good, tell me, is that wish wrong? My mistakes were innocent and my penitence is honest. I am not actually cruel.
But as it was a long time ago, the cold resolution of where he must go and what he must do quiets that lightness into unfeeling iron. Renard scoops the wineskin full.
There is no penitence. The Queen, Pleione, Orpheus, Verdan — these were paths shown to Renard only so he would understand that they were moot. Because it is true, he did kill himself on Kingslayer. But the brightness of Lacren in the wake of his death does not mean he is sanctioned to begin a new life.
It means what is left is a corpse. Corpses have no need for love, masters, families, salvation, future, hope, or nation. They wear memories of these things, but they have none themselves. Lacren’s brightness may be shown, but it will never permeate to him. For a corpse that still moves is only a puppet for the slaver who owns their soul, and in Renard’s case, that is Kingslayer, who he exists merely to hold. A dead man — that is what I shall be.
Renard takes the wineskin to his lips. For how bitter and disgusting is the sin that crosses his tongue, it flows down remarkably smooth. His throat spasms and kicks, as though the Pilamines were punching him from inside, yet he swallows it all, knowing that he has done evil and imbibed it deeper into himself once again. Renard laughs, wipes his mouth, and lets the dark aftertaste simmer, gulping back the vomit until he is still.
So perhaps his true heart is just a murderer.
But at the very least, there is a purpose that will bring this villain he is to his end.
It is in this way that Renard becomes a slayer of ghouls.
In the following months, then following years, he travels around the backcountry of Lacren. Though initially reliant on heralds and rumours, he soon understands the ghoul habitat: most often, they linger in isolated areas where ambitious men attempted to do things few others had done, and been punished badly for that ambition. Mountains, caves, canyons, and forests — these are dwellings of ghouls. Then are the disaster zones, where harsh weather or sudden rains wiped away settlers, explorers, or labourers. Deserted villages from before Nix’s opening, too, number among these. And finally is the pure accidents — the unfortunate cases of elderly men dying unseen in their houses, producing a vicious ghoul, and slaughtering a town overnight. Though somewhat rare, such cases do happen.
As much as Renard acquires that sense of where ghouls are, he comes to understand how to fight them. While the underlying principle of slaying any ghoul is not too complicated (stab them until they are dead, using Kingslayer’s enchantment to cripple them if necessary), the specific constitutions and malevolences of any two ghouls are as varied as any two people. Some may fly, and some are constructed of lava. Renard comes into the habit of knowing, broadly, what he is about to fight before fighting it, and exploiting the idiosyncrasies of individual ghouls to lure them into traps or expose their own weaknesses.
That being said, many ghouls do simply unlace once exposed to Kingslayer. All do posses at least one supernatural quality for Kingslayer to reject — if that quality is one basal to the ghoul, or serves as a vital organ, it will die the second that Kingslayer touches it, as was the case with the worm. Ironically, it is these cases, which are the easiest foes for Renard, that are the most dreaded and impossible enemies for everyday people. But that is why Kingslayer is what Pleione called it, incredible.
This means, ultimately, that Renard comes to slay many terrifying beasts people had thought so unconquerable, locals had stopped encouraging anyone to even try.
And what that all means, is a reputation.
People know Renard. Though he sincerely wishes to be dead and a nobody, most all who meet him have preconceptions about him: that he is a Lacrenese knight, and so a distinguished noble who demands that courtly respect, or the Iron King’s servant still, a monster who slaughtered hundreds of innocents. Renard jeers at those who treat him with knightly admiration, spites those who imply such a ghoul’s servant could be living for anything, and rejects all others curtly. What am I? A corpse! He would yell, and throw out those interested to know him, beat them if they kept trying. He never kept companions, and even his hunts, he did alone.
Hah! Good! Thought Renard, once he let himself deny all filters. Now they all see — I am no one worth knowing.
But to say that Renard despised people… no, that was not true. He was just a man with little hope, who felt he deserved nothing, and rather lived so that he would not dare to think he would ever have more than a sword. Each and every ghoul he hunted was a suicide attempt. The engagements he entered, he entered yearning for this one to kill him. That was the only hope he let himself have.
But it never happened.
More and more, it just never happened.
Years of this, ceaseless hunts, countless ghouls, and yet, it never happened.
The resentment and anger supporting Renard breaks slowly into confusion. As a younger man, he may have cursed the world and taken his longevity as another of God’s mockeries, but having lived by such a dark credo for so long, any shift means a shift to the positive. Despite himself, Renard has to wonder if maybe, he is not necessarily meant to die dashed across rocks at the talons of some beast, but is rather marked for mercy and has permission to live with joy as he’s able.
Is he really allowed that?
Attitudes towards him have shifted. Of course he’d done his best to make everyone hate him, but when he looks clearly at the townsfolk, all who cross his path are — smiling. Beaming. Children, mothers, workmen, they are happy Renard is here.
Fools! You do not know me! His spiteful mind would snap, but today in this weird liberty, such a retort feels unnecessary. Because of course they know him, or at least know what he’s shown. He has been a terror, rude, wild, rejecting, disrespectful, and sometimes even violent across every corner of Lacren, and has begrudgingly represented the country in this hideous fashion even in kingdoms beyond. He has publicly cursed and contradicted the Queen hundreds of times. Despite all that, no matter how horrible of a person Renard has been, there is no doubt or hesitation in the overwhelmingly positive sentiment everyone has towards him.
It is like they are all keeping a secret, or playing a game, that Renard is only now noticing. Oh, there is Renard the wicked… hoho, we must keep mighty our distance, else he may safen our communities, reopen lost trade routes, and return us access to lucrative soil, stone, and lumber!
The profound benefits of what he has been doing simply outweigh the thorniness of his attitude. A hundred times over. A thousand times over. In the eyes of the people, no matter how wrong he’s been, he has done good enough.
Is defeating evil all you need to do to really be a good person?
Renard staggers into the tavern of the small town he is in, reeling at this revelation. Too stunned to even touch his drink, he rests his temple in his palm and watches the patrons, aghast. The men who play cards, or laugh, or joke, or dance, no longer feel like displaced residents of a brighter dimension that Renard can spitefully observe but not enter, but rather quite ordinary and cheerful people whose atmosphere he could connect with, provided he let himself muster the courage to try.
Though enticing beyond anything, the prospect is also terrifying. Renard swallows so hard he chokes on his beer.
As he cleans himself up, Renard notices a buxom barmaid. Taverns like this often double as brothels, whether by the owner’s or the employee’s design. Having repeatedly encountered that underbelly to traveller’s lodges, he senses that this establishment indeed has it too. The warm, cloying gaze the serving-lady gives upon noticing his stare feels to confirm it, as she smiles and approaches Renard.
While she refills his drink, she discreetly signs her availability in what is undeniably the way of a prostitute. Renard awkwardly asks to see her in his room and she answers with a nod and subtle smile. Her movements flow with grace as she takes his empty stein, and her form is obviously beautiful in the way of a ripe plum. Renard’s tongue dries and insides melt with a warm, wobbly feeling for the first time since forging Kingslayer, as he lets himself even imagine that he could indulge in that fruit.
Her shift ends in twenty minutes. Renard wraps up his meal, and bolts upstairs to his room, nervous and excited as a schoolboy.
Renard has never actually bedded a woman before.
In fact he’s never even kissed a woman, except for his mother, and girls in his village as jokes. So what on earth is it like? Will it be as incredible as everyone says? Bubbles rise light in his chest as he covers his mouth and reddening cheeks.
Kingslayer, now a mature and proud beast, effuses its dark judgemental aura. The coldness of it, as always, inspires in Renard fear and doubt about what he is doing. He unhooks Kingslayer’s scabbard from his hip, hand trembling around it, but hesitates to set the blade down. Similar to that night before the Iron King pronounced war on the Pilamines, when he was speaking on the parapets to Pleione, if he allows this maiden into his head, it may change everything about him. It’s terrifying.
But, on that night, Pleione had been correct and helpful. Renard swallows the lump in his throat, lets out a breath, and gently lays Kingslayer aside the bedstand. He kneels down to it.
“Now, old chum," says Renard, “is it not fair for the horse that climbs many hills to drink?"
Kingslayer does not respond, regarding Renard’s love affairs with disinterest.
“Good lad…" he mutters, as a knock comes at the door.
Renard hurries to his feet and opens the door. The smiling serving woman slips into the room, and once the door is closed, lays her head on Renard’s chest as if listening to his heart. The intimacy of the gesture disarms him — unsure what to say, he blubbers, and she twirls away with those deep, playful eyes. She turns her silhouette into profile, begins slowly loosening her frock, and asks Renard for his tastes.
Though the cold and rational part of him would throw the woman out, that part dissolves at the sight of her unveiled skin, and her elegant swan-arms poised over her round chest with artful, teasing modesty. Renard, tongue-tied, jolts with the realisation he should probably undress as well, and scrambles to do so. She helps, sensing his inexperience, but not being judgemental or in any way scornful. She is kind, a little like Pleione.
She gently guides him onto the bed.
It is incredible.
She is incredible, an incredible person. The warmth and light that her earnest, sensitive, gentle, and dutiful ministrations have drawn out of Renard’s soul are as vital as water drawn from a well, loosening some current that for a long time has been still. Renard lies beside her in the warm, fuzzy afterglow, and gazes up at her beautiful form as she quietly counts the money, when a wave of sadness sweeps over him.
He sits up. “What is your name?"
She sweeps her hair over her shoulder and smiles. “Isobel."
For such an incredible woman to be living this contemptible lifestyle — surely something has gone wrong. Unfortunate circumstances and judgemental glances must have ground her into the dirt, until little was left for her but the soiled coin from this job. Someone who could make Renard feel such joy and comfort does not deserve what Isobel has. They deserve much more. An estate. A castle!
An image coheres swiftly in Renard’s mind, of this woman swathed in golden silks and reclined in a marble parlour. Though Renard himself rejected it, his knighthood does grant him minor nobility, and through his noble connections he—
Renard grabs her hands. “—Isobel."
She eyes him carefully, alarmed, but not afraid. She gently curls in her fingers and eases his arms down — his grip is firm, but not aggressive. She rubs her thumb over his palm and notes, he has such powerful hands…
Renard squeezes to try and steady his train of thought. Hurriedly retrieving Kingslayer from the bedstand, he asks if Isobel knows who he is.
She does, but she understands discretion. …Though, he wasn’t what she expected.
It’s a harmless comment, but it still worries Renard.
They say you’re cold, she tosses her neck and smiles. But, it’s just the armour.
Renard is shaken once again, his insides quivering like a plucked string. Isobel’s observations feel dangerous, in an odd and subtle way he can’t define, that the cold part of him again advises he should throw her out ruthlessly. But the rest of him, the meek part of him, the soft and scared village boy part of him, is simply fearful and wanting of Isobel to think well of him, and is left somewhat anxious by the things she is not saying, which lace the space between her words profusely.
Though he cannot tell what those unspoken sentiments are — lingering in her eyes and her smile — his gut surges with desire to answer to them.
Renard clears his throat to steady himself and stands with a broad flourish. “Ho!" he announces, allowing ostentatious bravado to propel him forward. “How in such a bordello may a little bell ch—" he chokes, abruptly feeling stupid. “—chime, yet upon a polished step… are you kept well, here in this place?"
She smooths down a lock of her hair. She is kept, she answers vaguely — her unspoken words feel to say that her life is too modest and frugal, that at home she must wear rags and strain over a washboard like a common peasant, with no man, sibling, or parent to offer her any way out, but only the tavern-master who has allowed her this work.
Reclaiming some boldness, Renard propounds that this backwater hamlet is limiting her and her life could be much more fruitful than this. Suffer he a lily be planted among the thistle?
Isobel shrugs and insists that her straits truly aren’t so bad — but again the unspoken words tell Renard she is hesitant to take or reject whatever change he will offer, though she is curious to know.
Nay, a lily be made for the garden, and you as much would stand in chiffon as any powdered woman of Sebilles. Having found his groove, Renard continues, laughing: The lily of Sebilles!
Oh, I could not… Isobel sweeps her hair behind her ear. If I may look like a flower, but my heart is still that of a girl…
Something of what Renard said has disappointed her. Shaken out of his bravado, and nervous again that he may be losing her, he wets his tongue and frantically looks for something to win her back over and prove that his intentions are good. He scoops a stack of coins out of his bags and presents it to her.
Money? She questions, and the unspoken words are clear: are you trying to buy all my dignity?
Renard upends his entire coinpurse, kneels at her feet, kisses her hands, and sets his forehead against her knuckles.
Isobel, considering this, strokes his head while counting the money. She expresses that this is a lot of coin, but not enough to buy her.
But am I not Renard Cox! Renard announces with a flourish, sweeping Kingslayer in a playful slash against an invisible ghoul. Someone of his prestige surely can earn more — and those earnings, he vows, would all go straight to Isobel.
Well, where would you keep me tonight? She asks.
Renard stammers, having not considered this. Indeed, being that Renard does not have a palace at the ready, where is a place she can go to feel valued and pampered? Tongue-tied, he lapses into silence.
Isobel laughs, gestures him back onto the bed beside her, and hugs and kisses him.
One day you’ll get me to Sebilles, she whispers, and I’ll pine for you every day.
She rubs circles into his shoulder and again lays her chin on him affectionately as she scoops up the coins. She rises from the bed, dresses herself smoothly, and gives him one final comment before leaving the room:
Speak with me in the morning.
The image of her smiling sweetly in the doorway lingers in Renard’s mind, making it hard to find sleep.
He did it! Yes? That is what she means?, he breathes exhilarated and confused. A mute voice grumbles in the back of his head with the warning, again, that this woman is not worth the time and he should throw her out. Excitement drowns that voice utterly. Oh, if he could throw off the covers and rush straight to her home now… before she might leave, or steal the money… and yet again, close this door…
Renard pulls the covers over him higher. No, no, he tells himself. She would not do that. The idea settles in his mind with the same certainty as his sureness that Isen’s soul would still be in the bog, and, soon calmed, he gets to sleep.
Renard wakes and exits the tavern. The atmosphere of the town outside is so different than it was yesterday, it is as if he entered the tavern in one dimension, and exited it into another. The sky shines brighter and bluer as if the season shifted from autumn to summer overnight, and all the townspeople going about their business gallop about gaily like children rather than skulk and eye those outside their cliques. Even the squeaking of passing wagons sounds cheerful, teasing complaints about the weights of their loads, but in truth proud to be carrying them.
Of course, in truth, none of these changed since yesterday. The only thing that changed is Renard, and by that change, the world looks much brighter.
To any one of these people, he could prance over and brag: I am Renard Cox! A peerless slayer of monsters, who has brought nothing but good to the world, and I will protect each of you to the last! All of you men, whatever good you need — by my tireless ethic, you can depend on me!
In fact the desire to brag exactly this is so great, rising bubbly in his chest like an explosive buoy, that he must tamp it down furiously to stop himself from grabbing pedestrians off the street and yelling his glee in their faces.
Restraining himself, he marches to Isobel’s home. It is a small thing, moreso a hovel than any of the houses back in Renard’s hometown, with nobody living but Isobel, who opens the door.
With daylight casting out the night’s air of passion and mystery, and the understanding settled that their interest is transactional, now is the time to define the terms of that transaction. Of course, Renard could not wish to admit this publicly, but there is purpose to Isobel that, while not quite cold, is calculated enough that it makes Renard himself shiver.
The purpose is this: if he can tell himself he is devoting his actions and efforts to Isobel, it gives him something to live for. It divorces him from a quest, necessarily, of trying to die. Because he has something to live for, he can embrace a more positive attitude towards the world and towards others, since, however outsiders may see him, he knows what end his blade serves: the realisation of that woman in the golden silk.
All Isobel must do is let herself be this muse.
And Isobel, quite quickly, says ‘yes’.
The tenor of Renard’s ghoul-slaying changes in the next months.
The first element is that he is now doing it for Isobel. Rather than acceptance, fear and worry bubble up when Renard weighs whether one ghoul or another would be in his power to slay — that is, that his life is at risk now matters, because if he dies he will die having not met that promise to Isobel. This has made him shy from pitting himself against threatening ghouls. More than once, the temptation flits to abandon ghoul-slaying entirely, and find means for money through less hazardous occupations. But when that temptation rises, a stern voice clamps it down: no. If it is Renard’s fate to ever be released from this penitence, then the world will express it, by the fulfilment of his oath to Isobel without dying to any ghouls.
So if he does die, he can figure that stepping away from this path would have brought him nothing but misery anyway.
Still — still, now that he wants to live, he wishes all this business finished and put behind him quickly, so that he can say his life as a swordsman is over and he can move on to something more joyful.
Which leads to the second element affecting Renard’s new atmosphere: money. Lords commonly place bounties on problematic ghouls, however, this is not always true, and not every slain ghoul will necessarily carry a financial reward. Living off bounties has funded Renard for most of his time as a ghoul-slayer, but even when the profit has been good, his spending has been frugal because relying on the constant availability of lucrative bounties is infeasible. In fact, embarrassingly, Renard has more than once lived off the Queen’s charity money in these dry spells. Now when he browses contracts promising 300 lucras or 150 pyrii, sums that would have supported him for months as a vagrant, he abruptly feels underwhelmed, knowing that a beautiful woman as Isobel would blow through these pittances by the purchase of a single good dress.
Isobel must have all the excellent dresses she wants, eat all the finest delicacies she wants, live in the finest estates in all the cities she wants, and never be barred from luxury! That is what he promised, and if Renard cannot deliver, he feels profoundly anxious.
Renard scans, again and again, over the contracts he has assembled. As it has been in the past weeks, none are especially lucrative. He thumbs his sweaty brow and bites his lip — it is embarrassing that he send Isobel sums withering week by week, and indeed is becoming doubtful that these meagre earnings will ever amass into a fortune that would put her in a castle.
It may be time to get more creative.
There is a principality called Fayette. Isolated upon a mountain, and ruled by only one family line with no drama around its succession, it is a quaint little place like Verdanheim. Though Renard has never visited, he has been to countries on its border, and knows Fayette owns holiday mansions in several local kingdoms. Not Lacren, but in Thresha, Poiterroi, Oppenveist — yes, quite grand estates there.
No different from many old houses. But Fayette, tantalisingly, is facing some problems.
Ghoul problems. Renard’s bread and butter.
400 lucras, the bounty-criers say, a sum most would call beyond fair. Oh, how Renard’s contemporaries must salivate over that number, pennies he would dismiss as near trash, so quick to pounce and polish their swords — but if he can get in before them, Renard Cox believes he can get more.
Renard tacks up his horse, and rushes for Fayette.
Turning the peak of a far mountain, Renard arrives in Fayette.
Different from most cliff settlements, with castles perched like watching eagles to spy on neighbours below, Fayette is deeply cloistered between the jagged spines of peaks and claustrophobic walls of rock. It insists that no world exists except that cupped here, a secret garden between the mountains.
Nestled in those mountains is the small, forested village of Fayette. Upon a bluff overlooking the town is its magnificent castle.
Experience tells Renard that in small settlements like this or Verdanheim, prompt introductions between himself and the lord is prudent. Unlike kings whose lands are too vast for them to traverse in a day, small lords make business of knowing every tiny thing that happens in their fief, and respond to even minor incursions with dramatic speed and intensity. The formality of the visit is usually an annoying bump between Renard and a dead ghoul, but this time he is glad for it.
Renard rides to the castle, and with joyful bravado announces that he is here to slay the ghoul.
Servants buzz at his arrival. The face of a curious woman in silver peeks from a balcony over the throne room.
The Lord of Fayette, too, welcomes Renard with an attitude less businesslike than bubbly: The good Sir Renard! You’ve my blessing and then some. Enjoy your time here in Fayette, when you are not occupied.
Renard unwinds with relief that he is not too late to take the job. Curious to confirm, he asks, not very subtly, the age of Fayette, as he has seen its symbol on houses in other kingdoms. Did Fayette once own the territories on which those manors are placed?
The Lord furrows his brow, but easily answers no. Those manors are not holdovers from another era, but holiday homes with attached lodgings from which Fayette’s merchants can trade. So, it’s the other way around — Fayette has been on the mountain so long, God himself must have placed its first denizens here, and those forefathers cut the road down, not up. Renard’s interest in the history flatters him, though he didn’t expect it. Is he curious?
Renard explains with serious alarm that Fayette, being isolated and enclosed, is a massive hazard zone for ghouls in that case. It speaks to either incredible luck, incredible efficiency, or incredible skill that they have suffered no major incidents with ghouls in the time they have been here.
Shaken by Renard’s urgency, the Lord sombres somewhat. Of course they’ve had ghouls before, but none that were ever great problems, or that swordsmen like Renard could not fix…
Renard snaps that Fayette is doomed if the Lord establishes no countermeasures to ghouls. Shelters, or evacuation routes — these must be higher priority, else when comes the day a colossus barricades the mountain pass and reams through the village for sport, the questions you call of, where is Renard!, will be answered by the dread silence, for he is twelve days away under the mountain, and your courier is cleaved into pieces.
As he finishes this screed, Renard’s face flushes in shame. That was genuine backtalk at a man with whom he wishes to earn favour – and now who must wholly hate him, rendering Renard’s plan in coming to Fayette, pointless. Cold terror locks in his throat and clunks in his chest.
Straining, sighing, Renard softens himself. Else, Fayette ought invest in dedicated census-men, to keep an account on where the souls in the town are and ensure none slip by and mutate into ghouls unaccounted. This all being said, where is the haunt of today’s ghoul?
The ghoul is quite deep in the forest, the Lord explains with burgeoning worry. But Renard should be careful… now that Renard has said this, the Lord fears it may be a more formidable creature than he initially thought. Particularly, the previous swordsman he sent after the monster still hasn’t come back…
What! Renard interrupts. When was this?
Oh, only two days ago, the Lord answers. We hadn’t thought too much of it… in the past it has taken weeks to properly rout such creatures…
If the creature is of an especially problematic constitution, campaigns against ghouls can indeed take some time. That being said, after scouting its constitution, and discerning the tools needed to counteract it, a hunter would typically return to civilisation so to amass his resources and arrange his plan. That this hunter has not done so sits badly in Renard’s gut.
Renard’s gaze drifts to the woman watching from the balcony. Her brow is knit and mouth is pursed – but the prospect that the previous hunter could be in active danger strikes him as more urgent. Waiting here even another second is another second things could go wrong, when, if he moved now, Renard maybe could stop it.
So being, without sparing to even investigate the Lord’s intelligence on the ghoul, and abandoning the course he came to Fayette for in the first place, Renard breaks away from the discussion.
Ah, wait! Calls the Lord. He beckons, and a nervous boy totters in from a side-wing. I was hoping, Renard, while the opportunity is here, that you might show my son how you hunt and handle a blade in the field…
Renard stares. A thread of golden possibility twangs in his chest: if this may curry him to the Lord… but as soon as he thinks it, Renard rolls his eyes at himself in exasperation and loathing. What an absolute, stupid joke was this! Bringing children to what could be an emergency zone, and turning a serious situation into one to preen and showboat! This Lord doesn’t understand an inch of what this business can be like!
With a spiteful and contemptuous chuckle, Renard bites back: No.
Not even bothering to watch the Lord’s indignation, Renard mounts his horse and departs.
Urging his horse faster, Renard dashes into the forest. When the birds stop twittering and the wind hangs still, he knows himself close to the ghoul. Renard dismounts and draws Kingslayer.
He knows nothing to expect of his quarry – which simply means he will find out. Cautious as he creeps through the forest, Renard strains his senses for signs of its presence. Odd noises, queer smells, distinct tracks, abnormalities: such are a ghoul’s calling cards. A pungent smell of soap soon wafts to Renard from upwind.
He follows the smell to a clearing. There, a slimy green gel like a massive amoeba is puddled across the ground and upon fallen logs. In the centre of the puddle, there sprouts a large, white, fleshy frond that tilts mildly to and fro. At the head of the frond is a cavity from which the amoebic gel is divulged.
Renard idly tosses a stick into the gel puddle. Slowly it sinks into the slime, and slowly, indeed so slowly that Renard must wait minutes to confirm this is what’s happening, begins dissolving and flowing up to the frond. The frond wiggles as if perturbed, soapy bubbles frothing and popping at its base.
So Renard intuits the creature’s anatomy. The gel seems a digestive sac that draws food into the mouth of the frond, which is the body holding its vital organs and magical processes, with rudimentary ability to extend itself to grasp food. Apart from being a nuisance dissolving the plant life and trees in this spot, the particular ghoulishness of this creature may be in a concerning process its waste inflicts on the land, or it may simply have a strong diet for humans despite being anchored here and apparently slow. As ghouls go, this one is not too threatening.
Like treacle, the gel inches towards Renard’s feet, hungry to suck him up, but so atrociously slow that a couple steps back is all it takes to outpace it.
Not too threatening — but, it is always good to give these monsters their due respect. If it has some secret, magical weapon, well, Kingslayer will shield Renard, but another hunter could have been taken off-guard.
Case in point: several arrows protrude from the side of the frond, and there is a brown stain creeping up the gel towards its mouth. A bloodstain. The previous hunter, if not fully dissolved (for the stain seems not nearly big enough), was at least injured here deep in the forest.
Renard purses his lips as he considers his approach. Instinct tells to return to town for oils and torches, to perhaps burn the gel, but with worries of the other hunter’s state rattling in his mind, to turn back breeds guilt and anxiety, as though it would mean abandoning the man. Renard pokes Kingslayer into the gel. It urgently parts and retreats, and the frond waggles in ferocious protest, but its corrosiveness appears not supernatural. Dragging Kingslayer through it could dull the blade.
Renard wipes the gel, already crusting into a grey scab, off Kingslayer. The frond angrily farts a cloud of caustic gas, but this dissipates and reflects to bother the frond by one easy slash of Kingslayer.
While the frond waggles and chokes in its own altered mist, Renard settles his solution. He fells a bridge from young trees, traverses the gel, and just stabs the frond. It thrashes – the logs underfoot undulate as the frond wildly sweeps to whack Renard, threatening to shove him into the gel. Rather than dodge, he commits to the cut, slicing through the frond, and severing the top from the bottom.
The frond slumps still, defeated. Already the green gel hardens grey, confirming the creature is dead.
Simple as Renard makes it look, there are many ways the encounter could have gone wrong. He bends over to inspect the arrows lodged in the corpse, case in point. Their fletching feels familiar, but Renard cannot place from where.
To act is more important than to waste time in memory. Renard so trawls the area for signs of the previous hunter. If the man was injured, he probably has not gone far.
Rewarded, a smeared trail of blood leads out of the wood to a cave gaping on the mountainside. Though relieving to think that the hunter reached shelter, Renard can feel only wary, hand closed for reassurance around Kingslayer’s scabbard, as he creeps up to the cave’s mouth.
A silhouette sits against the wall of the cave, identity mired in the dim. On Renard’s approach, the figure jolts, and with joyful recognition, as though meeting an old friend by chance at an inn, shouts: “Sir Renard!"
As Renard peers into the cave, and his eyes adjust, he too recognises the figure.
“God, I didn’t think I was out that long. Hauhh, haaauh," he wheezes heavily, but alert and alive. His head cranes against the wall as he eyes Renard, his mouth cutting into a sly, reptilian grin. “You poached my kill, didn’t you?"
It is a fellow ghoul hunter, a spirited younger fellow known as the Black Arrow, though Renard distantly recalls his real name to be Marion. An accomplished marksman from a faraway kingdom with the true soul of a mercenary, Renard’s only interaction with the young man — insofar as they’re interactions at all — is occasional sightings of him in traveller's inns. They’ve so seen each other, but never talked.
Even so, that basis of passing familiarity proves solid enough for Renard to, surprised at how strong his investment in this career acquaintance actually was, be deeply alarmed at the boy’s state.
“You poached my kill — didn’t you!"
The boy snarls, rage flaring in his repulsive, slit-pupiled eyes, and a crocodilian tail rising to thrash at the stone behind him. Thick black scales cover his arms, which end in wicked claws. For the boy’s hostility, however, he does not lunge at Renard. He is too weak to.
“Good god, Marion. What has become of you…" Renard says, truly dumbfounded.
Mortality rates are not low in this occupation. Not a year goes by without someone of note passing. But here is something else utterly.
Marion, panting, pauses as if struggling to consider Renard’s words, then runs his clawed hand over his scalp and slumps back to the wall with a snickering, lizardy grin. His gaze lowers to his leg.
It ends in a bloody stump just above the ankle, tightly bandaged with strips of cloth from his shirt. Sodden through with blood, ugly stains smear the rock underneath.
“That stupid thing got me. Moves so slow it makes you forget the damn thing is moving at all…" Marion sighs a chuckle.
He tells his encounter with the ghoul. While focusing for a good shot on its vitals, the gel seeped up and covered his foot. Realising then that the gel was extremely adhesive, and he could not pull free his foot, Marion panicked, tripped, dropped his bow out of reach, and realised in horror that over the course of hours or days, the gel would slowly encompass his whole body and he would be painfully dissolved into nothing — the kind of insidious hunting method fitting for a ghoul.
Marion went for his knife, to amputate his foot. But already the gel formed a boot that rose above the ankle, and he count not find a way to break his shin-bone so he could cut through the limb, and estimated, even if he cut as far as he could and let the gel dissolve the bone for his escape, he would bleed out long before that actually happened.
It was then that Marion made the desperate choice to become a witch.
Renard is not studied in witches, but he has encountered enough about them through his work to know everything he needs to know. Witches are a halfway-point between man and ghoul; a human who allowed a severed fragment of their soul to rot, and eats the infected fragment to incorporate its corruption back into themself. By this, they acquire the corresponding magical powers while retaining a sense of humanity, consciousness, and identity.
Souls are usually severed through the murder of a close-held relation – but it does not always need to be so. In Marion’s case, he sacrificed his ability to handle a blade.
And fortunately for him, the gamble worked. The ghoul sensed Marion was no longer human, and let him go.
“—And that’s my story," Marion finishes, panting weakly as he leans back against the wall. “It’s not the worst way it could’ve gone… at least, I didn’t actually die," he mutters as uncomfortable consolation. Yes, for a passionate hunter as Marion, who has faced horrible ghouls, there was serious importance in not producing another brainless monster to terrorise the world.
But all that means is he may have, for all his good intentions, produced something even worse: a monster with a brain.
Marion itches his chest as new scales grow in. His gaze lowers weakly to his mangled foot.
“Spare me water? Or a poultice, for the pain? Go back to town, if you need…"
“Whatever could these demands be asking, Marion…"
“Who’s that? I don’t know him!" he snaps, tail lashing, before his posture again wilts. “Please, Renard. I didn’t kill anyone for this — I’m not a murderer. Think about it. I’m not the same as any others," he hisses. “So what harm should I cause to anyone? No, I don’t need to. I don’t need to do anything nearly so vile. I swear it, Renard. I’m not that wicked a person… this will is still strong in me." A melancholy smile rises in his eyes. “I don’t think the folk of this town will let me leave the valley… I’m set to staying here, then…"
“Marion—"
“—Stop using that name!" he screeches. Magic crackles around his arms, but peters out, just as quickly.
“—for how long, in this valley?"
Marion scrunches his brow as if confused, still itching the patch of new scales. He then licks his teeth and glances aside. “Renard, have you ever considered—" Marion’s throat bulges as if stricken with gout. He rubs it, and when he speaks again, his voice has dropped three octaves into a crocodilian rumble. “—that ability is just ability, power is just power, and it’s the will that aims that power that says if it’s put to good or bad use? I could protect this valley… yes, I could protect it! I’m still here enough for that, Renard. No, Renard, have you ever considered? If more hunters like us of the creatures we hunt, became in bodily ways like those creatures, but held strong our hearts, we could so more effectively do our work? So many tens, hundreds of those monsters — finally, destroyed with some quickness! Isn’t that wonderful? What I’m seeing before me is wonderful. Hah, why have we never done it before?"
It’s familiar. The desperation, the pleading, the need for some righteous cause — to Renard, who has heard these words near verbatim before, it’s painful beyond painfully familiar.
Great sadness then sweeps through Renard, who pinches his brow to hold back the tears. Steeling himself, he draws Kingslayer.
“—No! No, no no, plea," though Marion scrambles to crawl away, he is too exhausted to even possibly escape the unerring bite of Kingslayer, which plunges solid into his skull.
Marion soon lies still. In the silence, his soul dislodges.
Renard wipes Kingslayer clean and retrieves the soul. Forks of blackened gunk sprawl against its otherwise pristine surface, like veins on a rotten egg. It has been a long time since Renard last did this, but even more ably than back in Pilamine, he numbs and steadies himself through his revulsion as he brings the soul out of the cave, to the open air, and closes his fists around it with the command: shatter.
The uncorrupted soul disperses into less than dust, and the remainder collapses into a black glop that mucks Renard’s palms. He shakes his hands clean and tamps the splodge of muck under his heel, until anything that could rise from it is assuredly dead.
Once the task is done, Renard’s whole body shakes. With trembling knees, threatening to buckle, he hobbles to a large rock that he may sit upon, and cries.
Surrounded by the forest’s tall conifers, the looming cave-mountain, and the serenely crisp air, Renard is like a lost toddler: small.
The name of the enemy settles in his mind. The one who cornered him into this tragic outcome, the one who authored it into being at all, and so the one fundamentally to blame, is not desperate Marion who meant no ill but could not avoid it, nor Renard for any dispassion or cruelty, and not even the innocently savage ghoul for existing, but the loathsome snake that poisoned this world, and curses it still from its den deep in Nix.
Renard clenches his teeth as tears stream his face. He thought he had moved past this pain and desire, but he has not. And may never.
With a steadying breath, he wipes his face clean. A sober, prophetic certainty fills him as he envisions himself back in Verdanheim, and then a step lower, in Nix. It’s a bitter image of course — but for all the pain, the discomfort, and indignation that flares in his chest at the thought of Verdan, or the Queen, a calm sense of inevitability smooths and bridles these emotions numb.
It is not a conscious thought or knowledge, but an idea risen from some part of his heart so fundamental, he could not even begin to guess at its source.
In this strange and sober mood, Renard returns through the forest to his horse. The sight of her fills him with exhaustion, as it reminds him he must return to the lord of Fayette to debrief… then as he mounts her and begins setting out, is stricken with panic at the realisation he doesn’t know what to do about Isobel.
Asking the Queen to send him to Nix feels like what he should, and needs to do, and what he now thought he would do upon returning to Lacren — but what about Isobel?
Not ready to confront that question, Renard shoves the thought aside and urges his horse to the castle.
The Lord of Fayette receives Renard and asks how the ghoul hunt went.
“The creature is vanquished,” Renard answers. Though aggravating before, the Lord’s upbeat ignorance around the seriousness of ghoul hunting does dull the edge of imparting this information, and even with Renard’s rather flat tone of voice, makes it sound like the good news that it fundamentally is.
Wonderful! With you on the job, we hadn’t a doubt, the Lord replies. But did you find the other man who went? Surely, I hope he is well…
“He is dead," Renard says flatly.
The Lord falls silent in genuine surprise.
Renard thumbs his forehead and forces back his anger. There is an air of mythicality that hangs around successful ghoul-hunters, and in deference to that, the Lord may not have conceived this outcome. But if Renard ever needed a reminder not to indulge in delusions of invincibility, today was it.
While Renard struggles to find the right way to broach the topic, the Lord asks if they should retrieve the body.
“Dare you strip him of dignity? You will let the man lie," Renard growls with severity that surprises himself. He runs his hand over his face to steady his composure, then soberly informs that he was partway to ghouling, but Renard dealt with this — short of there being a mystery third ghoul lurking in the wilds, the forest should now be safe for whatever timbermen or adventurers want to go there.
“…Well, we should pay you then 800 lucras," the Lord notes.
Money! Such an insignificant thing against life that Renard had forgotten about it. …But actually, for how he called 400 trash, 800 in one job is quite a sum, and probably would satisfy Isobel…
Confused now to his purpose, but undeniably softened, Renard thanks the Lord for being so gracious.
Merely fair pay for fair work, the Lord answers. Although — there is another thing for which the Lord wished to employ Renard…
I will not tutor your son, Renard snaps, then is confused why he spoke so emphatically. He could make a lot of money training noblemen’s sons in swordsmanship, at quite a low risk, too. But it is that straying, and uncertainty of who or what he’d truly be serving...
Oh, no. It wasn’t that. I’m sure you’re busy, and there’s countless kingdoms like Fayette facing problems with ghouls that Renard’s business is to fix, instead of hanging around here. No, what the Lord was going to ask…
The Lord beckons down the side wing for someone to approach. Renard cranes his head to look, or at least catch a glimpse.
…You see, in truth, the Lord continues, the warnings Renard gave about Fayette’s vulnerability to ghouls have rattled the Lord. He’s never thought about it before, but the worst-case scenarios Renard described truly are, now that is thinking, frightening. So while he investigates countermeasures to such a scenario, for the time being…
Though Renard wishes to politely keep his eyes on the Lord while he speaks, the silhouette striding from the side-wing robs his attention.
It’s a woman — a rather young and pretty woman with keen eyes like an eagle. Swathed in silver, she is who was watching Renard from the balcony. She sweeps her wavy hair over her shoulder, returning Renard’s gobsmacked gaze with a subtle smile which, while evenly professional, is not rejecting or cold.
…We’ve decided it best to send a branch of the family to situate themselves in our holiday lodgings, so that, if the worst did happen here, the blood would survive. This is my niece, Colette Cayns du Fayette. The Lord plants his palm on her little shoulder. She clasps her hands, dainty and bare, in front of herself politely, beneath that even, intelligent look.
We’d be in your debt if you could escort her down the mountain, and if you could, move her in.
Too stricken by the providential excellence of this opportunity to resist it, indeed presented with the very thing Renard came to Fayette to pursue, but thought had escaped him, and regarding this beacon in his life with awed amazement, Renard drops to his knee, takes her hands, and announces to the Lord in shock too earnest for poetics:
“Your Grace, I wish that I may marry this woman."
Though Renard with head bowed sees it not, what flashes through Colette’s eyes at this bold pronouncement is a fire, of deep satisfaction.
Renard joins Colette in her carriage on her journey down the mountain.
Given her great retinue, with multitude porters and guards and coachmen for the several wagons stuffed with her luggage, she hardly needs Renard as another bodyguard. Seated across from her in her wagon, festooned with silk and cushioned with velvet, and with absolutely no view of the road or its threats, Renard indeed fails to feel anything like such a bodyguard.
Which should be expected, since this is now his fiancee.
The family accepted his marriage pronouncement with such ease it was unreal. But Renard too doubted not for a moment, not at all, zero, that he would succeed. For the second he resolved to take the job in Fayette, he envisioned he would leave with the Lord’s daughter dangling off his arm. This outcome so feels not strange, but natural, or even ordained.
Ordained, pre-ordained. I know only how to open myself to the appropriate channels of esteem, Pleione said. It’s both a heartening and scary thought.
Colette gazes out the window with an airy smile. Her own comfort only reinforces how natural the development was. She has no questions, has no complaints, and for Renard, this is perfect.
Because rather than clawing money paycheck by paycheck, marrying into a family with wealth is an easy way to acquire a palace.
In which Renard would put Isobel.
Is it mercenary? Yes. Does he care about Colette? No. What regret should he have about it? Daughters of noblemen already know they exist to be spoils of war. It isn’t fair, but—
—Guilt twangs through his chest at the thought. Is it not horrible to live knowing you will never marry someone who loves you?
Suddenly uncertain, but sure the proposal wasn’t mistaken, Renard scrambles for conversation. If he could assure that she’s the most beautiful thing he’s seen, who melted his heart… but that would be a lie. Should he tell a funny story, then? Or tell her how happy he is to have a future together? But what’s the point of making gestures to please her when he doesn’t mean them, and doesn’t want to follow through with them, at all!
Still staring out the window, Colette breezily asks if Renard ever gets much time to explore the towns and cities he stays in between hunts.
Nervous about failing to be a good guide, Renard boldly assures he knows many good places — while inwardly panicking that said places are all bawdy taverns, where he wouldn’t dare take a noblewoman.
She waits for him to continue.
Of course, I would take you around! Oh god, why is he saying this!? But, ah, for a woman of your standing…
Colette twists a lock of her hair and tells Renard bluntly that being well-travelled doesn’t mean much when that time is all spent in inns.
The directness, and correctness, spears Renard with shame. “I—I said nothing of—" He stammers rebuttal, but her cynical smile silences him, and his face only flushes redder. How has this woman so precisely managed to cut through him and make him feel so horrible.
Colette muses that it’s rather odd to know so much about a person, at least by reputation and hearsay, and then for her first meeting with them to be a proposal. In a fairytale, it would be perfect. And it’s nice to imagine things like that… she trails off, tone softening. I’ve always wondered how you can work as hard as you do.
I—I, Renard stammers. Are you quite serious, asking this?
I love knowing secrets, she says. And I keep them well.
Rattled by her incisiveness, Renard freezes. A thousand evasions, insults, snubs, jokes, and rejections bolt through his mind, but even so, these impulses cannot overwhelm the surprisingly solid core in him that truly, does want to talk about this.
…Truly, does want to talk about this. His shoulders slump and the wall falls, and what tumbles out of his mouth is: “My father… he was a stern man."
And to be a good son, I took up his ethic! Hoho! Yes, I have merely refined his vigilance and pointed it towards a purpose so great and vital, it lights me with such tireless passion! Oh father, I owe the success I am to you, and to all who took me to their bosom.
Renard’s throat tightens and mouth puckers. In lucid counterpoint to ideas of bravado, so many doubts and confessions plague his mind. ‘I am not sure he ever loved me’, ‘Nobody truly believed in me’, ‘I am not truly worth anything’, ‘I see more of myself in the darkness than the light’, ‘I damned myself in attempts to run from my nature‘, ‘I wish I could be like light, but all I can do is reflect.’ Although, those who have given me their mercies and stability, I do truly adore.
He does want to talk about it — but even touching this mass of dread, doubt, and inadequacy to even be alive is too much. The more and more he looks at it, the heavier and heavier it weighs, and the heavier it weighs, the more solid the sense that he is fooling himself with these women and with these prospects of a future at all, and what he really should do, is pack up for Nix as soon as he’s able so he can finally let himself die.
“Is he not around anymore?" Colette asks.
Renard trembles, setting his hand on his knee. What did become of his father? Renard is without any idea. He’s not heard word of him since enchanting Kingslayer, and even if he did follow up, can confidently suppose that the man would not want to see him.
Unable to confront or express this deep pain between himself and his father, Renard’s thoughts shift in a strange direction.
“C-Colette, I have my own question," he says. “If a man… if villainy were a counted weight, scaled upon scale like coin, and we may know how deeply into it is any heart sunk… is slaying the ones who can never rise an act that brings men to virtue?"
In fact, is ending evil not the most virtuous act? Between a man who embraces a woman while a rat nips at her feet, and a man who stomps on the rat with no affection, is the second not the more venerable? Renard would never judge another human in such a way, but with ghouls the distinction between ‘maybe good inside’ and ‘purely malicious’ is unambiguous — they are, unfortunately, all the latter.
But a man without tender affection surely cannot be good.
Perhaps the answer must be both. To kill the evil, then love what it oppresses… but that may be too much for a black heart like Renard’s.
“I think you are," says Colette.
You barely know me! Renard clenches his fist, but lets the anger his between teeth wisp into nothing.
“It amazes me that you didn’t die," she says airily, but with a coaxing edge of compassion.
“I did try," Renard spits. “Many times."
Colette rises from her seat, plants herself beside Renard, and cradles his head to her breast to kiss him, the way one kisses a child.
And though the sympathy she has for this weak, cold, and dark part of him leaves him too soothed to lash out, clinging instead to the sentiment this pampering rises of ‘maybe? Maybe?’, the wall that closes over his heart is numb, and grey as steel.
Renard and Colette arrive at a Fayette estate.
Too depressed and exhausted to help the servants move the luggage, and not actually meant to do that as the man of the house anyway, Renard retreats to ‘his’ bedroom to pen a letter to Isobel.
He had hoped thinking of her would cheer him, but his quill just taps the parchment, no words of love or devotion flowing. Even to brag of the 800 lucras feels hollow. Colette’s stupid game of questions has scooped everything inside him the way a young doctor rips the guts from a frog, dissecting him of that joyful drive he only recently won.
And though he tries to remind himself physically of the feeling of Isobel’s warmth, this does not work.
Stupid Colette! How has this woman done this to him, and why did he answer? She romped into his soul within a second of meeting him and ripped everything he wanted buried out. It has made him too conscious of how terrible he feels to even feign being happy, and worse, feels that if he does, she’ll strangle him with more of those disapproving, judgemental looks, then rend him apart with more cutting questions. If she wants him to be honest — well, what on earth for! The honest him sucks!
But with the sympathy she showed, maybe she does want the best for him…
Kneading his brow, Renard adjusts his grip on the quill and reattempts his letter to Isobel. Dearest Isobel, lily of Sebilles…
Tap, tap, tap, goes the quill. Stupid. He has already used these tired words before. Anyone would know how passionless is this letter.
…Thine jewel’d eyes pierce this writ to mine soul, so keen as the brightest King’s jewels. The spectre of you comes to me, crown’d in cowls of opal and ruby, but it is the sculpture of your face, sweet madonna of mercy, that beams bright as the sun. What I have done in these months for you…
So the letter goes to the end, concluding with the plunder of the 800 lucras, which he shuffles into the envelope.
Renard slumps back in his chair, staring over the opulent room.
Fiddlesticks! Now what. And what are these horrible lies he is telling to Isobel? For how excellent the plan of marrying for wealth was, now that he has pursued it, there is no way to pass that wealth on. Coming into this, he had envisioned… he’s not even sure. That he would sweep up a house and a fortune from Colette, Isobel would morph into a queen and true woman of the house, and Colette in rags would meekly, quietly disappear into a broom cupboard. It’s nonsense.
Especially given that Renard does not even have the money. He is only a fiance. If he actually wants Colette’s fortune, he needs to court her well enough in the following months that she and her family cement the marriage. But if he puts on bravado, Colette will rip him apart so he can’t! Then without the bravado, he cannot care about Isobel!
And he can’t truly make Colette disappear — that’s unconscionable and defeating the point.
It’s these women, these damned women! Renard twists the quill so hard it snaps. These hopes and comforts they offer, petty distractions from his fate in Nix. There’s no future to be had with either of them. But as he thinks of Marion, and again settles that dreadful core of conviction that Renard will go back to face the monster that did that, a thought tugs like a fishing-hook that keeps him grounded here, and it’s the thought of, what if he’s messing up?
He could just go along with Colette…
…
What is he thinking! Renard pulls his face as far as it will stretch. He can’t court a noblewoman!
Cornered without a solution, Renard hurries out of the bedroom to the lounge. Colette is there, seated in an armchair with tea and book. Renard announces he is going out to get water. Colette absently turns a page of her book and notes quizzically that it’s rather late, but, unbothered, doesn’t press further.
Relieved, Renard beelines to the stables, tacks up his horse, and flees with incredible speed to Sebilles.
After a week, Renard arrives in Sebilles.
At the gates he catches his breath triumphantly for escaping Colette, then visits Isobel.
She moved out of her village months ago, after receiving her first paycheck. Then she hopped from town to town around Lacren, but landed ultimately here in Sebilles – a place with uncomfortable memories for Renard, but one that proves his good work, to successfully fund her life in Lacren’s most expensive city.
Her house, too, is a great improvement on her old shack. Though, compared to the majesty of Colette’s holiday manor—Renard wrangles the thought down there, tamping down a lash of guilt and of profound failure.
He fixes his smile, knocks on the door. As he waits, for the first time, he feels nervous about perhaps being seen visiting this woman.
Overcompensating, the second the door opens, he hoists Isobel off her feet into a hug and spins her around the room. She yelps, then laughs a bright chirping laugh with recognition: “Ren!"
“It is I, plumpest peach, it is I," he announces, quickly closing the door.
As they laugh and flirt and play cute teasing games, Renard reveals his bounty of the 800 lucras. Isobel’s eyes widen, impressed, and so further she fawns and hugs: Oh, you are such a good boy!
She takes him into a deep kiss, begins unbuttoning her shirt. This scene will soon progress how it has many times before, since the only times he physically visited Isobel, instead of sending her money through couriers, was for sex. Truthfully, these trysts were infrequent. To take her without fulfilling his duty of dangling luxuries upon her always struck him as impudent, but at the same time, he would resolve to reward her next week with even better profits, tell himself she wanted him, and he’d done well to show up. She would coax him professionally, no matter how nervous he was: it was allowed.
This time, a deep sickness jerks Renard to grab her wrists. Her hands freeze, only at the second button.
She eyes him, too alarmed by this interruption to hide the chink in her performance, and aware this move was not foreplay for anything more experimental.
For — still thinking of Marion, and unable to obliterate the dread and anguish risen in him by his most recent hunt, Renard finds himself not in the mood. It’s not even about having failed Isobel. Simply, with Marion dead, Renard should not be here.
Isobel’s wary look melts into a smile. With flowing grace, she morphs the hold into a hug that presses her breasts against Renard’s arm, also twirling herself out of the grip. It is clear Renard does not feel great right now. But Isobel’s skill is to make others feel good, so she gently cups his back to ease him towards the bed.
“Not tonight, Isobel," Renard mutters, stopping still.
She dips her head, yet still pulls him nearer.
“Not tonight," he repeats, with shockingly firm composure.
The silence holds for long seconds.
Isobel is seated on the bed, gazing up at him with those eyes full of unspoken words: ‘What’s wrong?’ But she does not actually want to hear it, just as much as he does not want to speak about it with her.
That vision of the woman in gold tempers cool, its vitality absent. Steeling himself against the suddenly chilly air, Renard purses his lip, gives a light nod, and exits the room.
Renard returns to his little house in Sebilles.
The cupboards are bare and water-pots are empty. Out in the small yard, under his horse’s lean-to, Renard checks beneath a brick to find a small cache of lucras. It’s his stipend from the Queen. In addition to keeping the house rented, she has ensured him a baseline of money, despite the extreme chilliness that has developed between him and her over these past years.
He would like to be grateful, but it is a gesture borne of politics, not of liking for Renard, since he has thoroughly trashed his relationship with the Queen over this past decade. As it stands, even this charity carries a bitter sting that reminds him of failure.
Evening is seeping into the sky. It’s late, and the markets will be closing. As Renard silently counts the lucras, his hungry horse nudges him with her snout. Renard winces with guilt as he pats her and assures he will go shopping tomorrow.
It’s a necessary reassurance, since he had been seriously thinking of withdrawing into his house, curling into a ball, and hiding here from the whole universe.
Renard stares over the street. Neighbours are going about their lives — though relieved that none have come to talk, some have noticed Renard. He clenches his fist around the lucras. With his horse hitched in the yard, there’s nothing he could have done to stop his presence from leaking out. This one isn’t his fault.
But he has to say — he really, truly, does not want to go out to town, among the everyday bustle of people, and know that they are staring at him with awe or expectation, for being in the presence of that fabled Renard Cox.
Hoho! Indeed, it is I, that faultless peerless monster slayer upon whom you may all depend! No, he’d sooner puke than put on that bravado, knowing how this persona has failed to glorify Isobel. But he also hasn’t the will to snap and be churlish, with that suicidal lust to throw himself into the maw of some fanged monster. If he has to be in conversation with anyone, he is presently clueless as to how present himself.
Grunting a sigh, Renard fetches his pail and goes to the well for water. It is late and quiet enough that the task is not too difficult and not too observed, and Renard soon returns home to cuddle his horse, kiss her cheek, and let her have a bucket of water before retiring to bed for the night.
Renard wakes the next morning and goes to the market.
The gazes he feared aren’t as oppressive as he thought, but still assuredly present. For every person whose eyes meet and slide off him with passing curiosity, there is another who pauses to whisper to their companions: I think that was Sir Renard…
He has learned to shrug off whispers during his time as the Iron King’s cavalier. It still is not comforting to know that, for all he has done, his position has not shifted hugely since then, and he still feels so awkward in his own home.
Shaking off his thoughts, Renard arrives at the market. The mundane routine of picking out carrots, tomatoes, cabbage, radish, and bread unfolds, when, as he goes to purchase meat, the sight of a certain figure working at a certain stall makes him pause and stare.
It’s a young woman in gloves and a headscarf, working away selling eggs and live poultry, who would be likely attractive if she weren’t wrangling dusty chickens and wearing a dowdy work-frock. Pedestrians bump and shuffle past Renard. Indeed, there is a subtle grace in her harried movements as she serves her patrons that is slightly reminiscent of Isobel.
Renard shakes his head clear, when the woman registers him and startles.
“No fear, my good lass. I mistook you for a woman I know," Renard assures.
She stares at him uncomfortably, then spreads her hands welcomingly over a tray of eggs.
“Rather an enchanting one, too," Renard continues to himself.
She sighs, glances aside at the stall’s other clerk, an old man preoccupied bartering with a customer, and sweeps off the headscarf just enough to show the line of her scalp and the flow of her hair. It is in properly seeing the full frame of her face that Renard recognises—
“—Isobel!?" he squawks.
“What brought you here?" she hisses.
“Only my stomach? I ask that of you!" Renard pushes forward to the front of the stall, brow scrunched in confusion. He questions if she has been blackmailed to become some kind of egg-servant.
“No, this is my job," she insists, a crowd of impatient customers accumulating behind Renard.
But what does Isobel need a job for! The money Renard gives her should—
The older man at the stall interrupts the conversation, snapping that Isobel stop chatting and get back to serving the customers. Renard in turn snaps at him — Silence! I have my business with her. The man, recognising Renard, backs off, intimidated.
Isobel will not leave on her shift. She promises to rendezvous afterward, which Renard can only agree to, despite his frustration.
Renard returns home, feeds his horse, and marches to the rendezvous point.
It is in a small park just outside the market, at a bench under a gazebo on a gentle hill. Renard sits and crosses his arms as he scowls down at the wood of the bench.
What else has she been hiding from him. Though largely unoccupied on a weekday, some families do wander about the park green below. Renard shifts uncomfortably in his seat.
Footsteps crunch on the gravel path leading to the gazebo — Renard glances behind him, and is stricken with immeasurable relief to see Isobel, no longer in that dowdy scarf or frock, but carrying two yoghurt pastries. He had been braced for her to ditch him. She offers one to Renard.
“What is this," he says flatly.
Isobel shrugs.
Renard’s flat stare shifts from the pastry to her.
“I can’t have both," she insists.
Renard rolls his eyes, slaps his arm, and accepts the pastry. An awkward moment stretches as she sits down opposite him, neither of them certain of where to begin.
“So, you have been lying to me," starts Renard.
Isobel slumps with exhaustion, then sweeps her bangs off her face. “Renard, what did you think I was doing?"
The intensity of her stare makes Renard flinch with guilt. He has done something wrong, though he cannot tell where.
“I just do not understand," Renard admits, letting that guilt show through. “An arrangement it may have been, but surely… what became of the money?"
Renard gestures to her outfit. She is wearing a simple dress that is pleasant and flattering, but not eyecatching, and in no way comparable to the dress of nobles or even decently-off businessmen.
Receptive, Isobel tells that she has been saving the money. She then presents from a satchel a notebook full of papers, covered in impressively accurate diagrams of, and impressively realistic drawings of, animals from the local region. Thorough observations are noted on such things as how they move or what they like to eat — the sheer detail of it, beyond professional, leaves Renard dumbfounded.
Dumbfounded, and hurt. If she has such incredible skill to catalogue creatures like this, and can even write this articulately, or draw this proficiently, what has she been doing all this time as a prostitute?
“Have you struggled with your tutors?" he asks.
“I’m self-taught."
It’s the realisation that he never knew anything of this person that stings that most. As far as it matters to her life, Renard is astoundingly expendable.
Isobel quietly pages through the notebook, then closes it to pack it away.
“With talent as that, you would excel in a guild. In any practice of pen that you wish," Renard notes. “The Queen, too, I know, yet seeks surveyors for buffalo."
Isobel’s lip quirks awkwardly as she pauses to stare at the book’s cover.
Slowly, she shakes her head and explains that to a real guild, these are all scribbles. She probably could apply her talents in other ways that would garner her more stability and more of a position in society, but she also doesn’t see the point in that. The thought of being constrained in her work, and never sure if she was doing something because she wanted to do it, or because she believed in it, or because she thought others wanted it or told her to do it, sickens her deeply. Further, other people are already doing what she would do, but more proficiently, so it’s not as if society needs her.
It’s been far more peaceful, to quietly do what I do, Isobel says, than to compete against others whose ways are alien to her anyway.
What a waste of potential! Renard thinks, though parts of what she says do resonate. What she may be saying is that, similarly to how it overwhelms him to try and be a nobleman or other figure of high public standing, she is most comfortable being a nobody.
That being said, fame and reputation are an inevitable result of significant action. There’s nothing inherently negative or frightening to being someone who commands positive influence that others look up to or rely on. Renard just wishes he could feel he deserved such a position, and was filling it correctly.
Isobel packs away her notebook.
She truly could excel with her talent. Even if she doubts her worth, some refinement under a guild would turn these ‘scribbles’ into an encyclopedia kept in royal libraries. But she would simply rather be an inconsequential prostitute.
Renard chuckles dimly. An inconsequential prostitute who works for perhaps an hour a week and makes thousands of lucras a month, free in coin, time, and responsibility to do whatever she wishes, because she worked the right person! Though not as glamorous as his woman in gold, perhaps Renard truly has enabled substantial luxuries for Isobel — not that the idea makes him especially proud, knowing the coward she is beneath that profession.
“You play that grocer as a fiddle, to find fun in his daily toil."
She grins a shy, cheeky grin. Renard chomps at his pastry.
“What an ugly spirit you are," he concludes.
Still as if it were a game, Isobel’s eyes brighten. She smiles a captivating smile, leans forward on the bench, and lays her arms to frame her breasts, which are pressed together. The face of the woman staring at him from across the table may have dipped down from out of the heavens and filled the whole sky, for how it dominates his attention. This is exactly the muse he dreamed about, and wrote about, and adored enough in his body and thoughts to live for, many times over.
Disgust strikes Renard at this move. He rises from the bench, marches over the gravel, and throws the last of his pastry in the wastebin as part of his departure.
A voice behind him calls, divorced from any angelic visual, laughing but playfully confused, “Renard, I love you! See you whenever!"
Renard returns to his house, in an oddly tranquil state of mind after that weird encounter with Isobel.
Though not inclined to meditate on his own opinions, or even his own observations about her bizarre behaviour, he has become strangely inspired in a way that sees all these doubts as pointless.
He investigates maps of Sebilles for its counties, and which families hold claim to each region. Armed with this research, he goes to the castle and requests audience with the Queen.
She must not be busy today, as he is summoned shortly after to the throne room.
It is with incredible consternation that the Queen regards him from her throne. A puckered lip and stony eyes wrinkle her face’s composure. Renard is not a thorn so insidious as to pluck, but certainly annoying to her rule.
He’s insubordinate. He’s disloyal. He’s disrespectful. For the last decade he’s openly called her a fool and a skank, while atrociously representing Lacren as one of its knights abroad in his spiteful demeanour and conduct.
But, he is valuable. His insane success in ghoul-slaying has bolstered the region noticeably and earned him civilian, noble, and mercantile popularity, even across borders. To claim him benefits Lacren in politics, more than ousting him that another would swoop him up. So, despite everything, the Queen has continued his stipend and kept him a knight, while resigning him as too unruly to use as a hand of the state.
“Sir Renard, your presence in this hall is a rare pleasure," she speaks, her words thick with congenial sarcasm.
“Of course, my lady." Renard gives a quick bow.
“You seem in chipper spirits."
“Indeed, I’ve chipper thoughts."
“Glorious." She blinks heavily and rubs her temple. With more pleasantries back and forth, she asks what Renard wants, aware his correspondences over the past decade have all been to beg for money.
“Not today, my lady, I’ve ambition more than a pittance." He raises his finger. “It was offered to me, quite some time ago, a barony I’ve come to collect."
“A barony?"
“As offered to me by Lord Herjas, a representative of your brother’s at the time."
The Queen frowns. She knows not of the Iron King's dealings, but asserts that, even were there a barony waiting for Renard all this time, which is something she would need to scour her archives to confirm, it is still within her discernment to say whether Renard would be eligible before the crown for the title. What brings him to raise this now?
Renard thought owning a house only suitable for a noble, which is what his knighthood has made him.
The Queen leans back in her seat, surprised, but not unpleasantly.
Or are my deeds not greatly on par with those born into the blood? Renard draws Kingslayer, twirls it in a lazy arc to display his total familiarity with the blade, and smoothly sheaths it again in one motion.
No, you exceed most all as a swordsman, The Queen answers unpretentiously. You’ve also achieved greater glories, and done greater service, than many in this nation. In those terms, I’ll freely call you suitable to hold a title. However, the military skill and valour you possess is not one that necessarily translates into statecraft. Particularly, your finances — I understand they are rather poor.
“Ho, but may I invest?"
Yes, answers the Queen, grateful that he understood. The upkeep of even a small estate drains the coffers quickly, and if you haven’t income consistent enough to pay workers, you will not have the labour to sustain yourself on the land. Do not, she warns, pointing her finger, think you may tax people out of their homes so you may stay in yours. Such a position is a responsibility.
“I knew the lord of my own village; he treated us well."
The Queen holds her stern stare, then relaxes. “Good," she says, and emphasises again that alongside the tithes he would be obligated to send her, he would need to maintain industry and economy enough in the area to self-sufficiently cover his own costs of living. She falls quiet again, intensely considering him.
“Yes, yes," he dismissively states. “Where is wood, ought be axes, where is stone, ought be picks, and where is soil, ought be ploughs."
Done thinking, the Queen straightens her neck. She comments that it’s more intricate than that, but Renard seems to grasp the basic gist of what he needs to do: find what is valuable on any hypothetical land he would own, harvest it, use it, maintain it, and sell it. Bright enough, and amenable enough to the idea that she even sounds surprised herself, she announces that she’ll put serious thought into this proposal and come to a solution by the end of the week.
Though the delay irks him, Renard bows.
Renard returns to his house.
The confidence that marched him into the throne room and sounded words from chest had, in the moment, been stable. But now that he must wait and wonder, he nervously turns in his bed.
Could statecraft be hard? Surely not enough that Renard never could learn it, he’d thought. Which was not to measure Renard against a King, but to say he expected no lands but ones too humble and too unimportant to need more than a few active fields to sustain. Much like his own village was.
In essence, that it would run itself. But what if it doesn’t?
What if he is handed a place on a frontier, and must build up a new settlement from scratch?
What if he is handed a place with a difficult history, that would force him heavily into politics?
What if, even before that, the Queen distrusts him too much to give him anything in the end, even though she has conceded him achieved enough to deserve something? It’s this thought, more than the others, that leaves him clenching his blankets in veined, shaking fists, and truly fills him with fear.
Maybe you can make a home for yourself. A prospect considered, just to be ripped away.
Night closes on these thoughts. A day, a night, a day, a night — with the morning comes a knock on the door.
Brimming with energy, Renard swings the thing open. A courier gives the awaited message: the Queen would like his attendance.
Renard rushes to the castle and beelines to the throne room.
Or, he attempts. Joined on a carriage lent by the courier, when he passes through the gates, he spies a chaotic procession of fancy wagons, horses, and porters with luggage barking about the grounds, hunting after parking space for their truly enormous party.
Visitors. Renard shrugs them off as his carriage passes them by.
At the base of the castle steps, Renard leaves the courier to navigate himself out of the tangle. He proceeds inside and tells a servant of his invitation to see the Queen.
The servant advises that the Queen is in audience and Renard may need to wait.
Ridiculous, Renard spits, but does patiently wait in the foyer outside the throne room, arms crossed for two, three minutes...
His brow scrunches. Through the heavy stone doors echo two voices, muffled by its weight but plain in their heat, intense as warring jackals circling around the same kill, but neither so unwary as to expose a chink in their composure and let their subdued anger explode into the proper, messy yelling that most would indulge in, were they so furious.
The Queen’s wrestling hard with somebody. To both check she’s alright and force attention to his appointment, Renard shoulders past the guards and marches through the door.
The groan of the stone door dragging against the stone floor silences the arguing couple, whose attention snaps to Renard.
The first is the Queen — standing rather than sitting atop the dais with her throne, eyes rattled wide in alarm at Renard’s abrupt presence.
And the second figure, addressing her from the centre of the room, is—
“Hello, darling," she coos, face softening into a smile.
—Colette Cayns du Fayette, the fiancee Renard ditched several weeks ago.
Thrown off-kilter by her presence, Renard stumbles into the room and follows her welcoming hand into vague procession beside her. He confusedly looks from her, to the Queen, and back, but her genuinely happy smile answers none of this situation for Renard.
“Now, your most honourable Grace," Colette snaps, voice freezing cold and sharp as a spear when her attention falls back on the Queen. “Would you repeat the terms of that contract, for me?"
The Queen purses her lips, blinks back a sigh, and half-heartedly welcomes Renard.
As Renard discerns over the following dialogue: Colette arrived in Sebilles this morning, took lodging in the palace as normal for noble foreigners, discovered that Renard owned no funds or property despite his reputation and rank, and hijacked what the Queen thought would be a quick friendly audience of hellos between Lacren and Fayette to instead threaten sanctions if she did not give Renard that barony posthaste.
“For his good work across this whole region, an estate is more than fair," Colette presses. “This he would find without falter in Fayette — but here, in his own cradle, you’d pause? Is he not one of your men, too? The politics of this land are so bitter I taste them on my tongue."
“As I have many times said, we do not slight our friends in Fayette. Sir Renard," the Queen switches. “You are truly betrothed to Miss Colette?"
After all his hardships, why does two quarrelling women staring at him feel like the world’s most unnegotiable battle? Unsure of the politics, and not hugely caring what either thinks, he awkwardly concedes, “…borne ‘round my fingers is no ring, but tongues spake surely of the arrangement."
While Colette juts a vindicated nod, the Queen closes her eyes for full seconds.
“Congratulations," she finally says, sagged on her throne like a weepy intestine. “I wish for you two a fantastic relationship. The land is assured, then, alongside the title. However, it defies none of Fayette’s interests that a knight of this nation regardless be posted to work."
“You women speak swift plans without me. What ‘work’?" Renard interjects.
Colette crosses her arms, squeezing her flesh with her delicate hands. Her lowered gaze flicks to Renard, then the Queen.
The Queen straightens herself on her throne. Prior to Colette interfering, she had, on the tail of a week of strenuous deliberation, concluded what to do with Renard. She planned to offer him the barony, but that he would first secure funding for it by working on the Queen’s behalf for five years in Nix. She would accordingly increase his stipend, over that time, that he would be more than financially secure enough to start farmsteading a community when he returned, without being in debt.
“Considerate plans and great estimations you have of my darling, to thank work with more work," Colette spits. “Were he only a trapper of buffalo, perhaps you’d concede him a roof without going to that dark place."
“Colette is from high money. No loans, debts, or stipends are needed, in this case," Renard mutters to himself as he considers.
The idea of the Queen dangling the barony before him as a reward for service in Nix, truly, infuriates him. Though he can surmise she wants his skills and experience applied there, the insinuation that he would only do it once she had leverage to force him to stings. Is Nix not an important battleground? Is it not one that matters to Renard? Of course it is, on both counts. But is his service really so needed there?
“Surely, in this time, you have found specialists equally able of blade," says Renard. “And Pleione has shared the enchantment that gave me success. To your forces, my sword cannot be unique." He snorts. “Never before did you hunger to beg for me at my feet."
The Queen tilts up her head. Renard is correct there are capable soldiers equipped with witchbane artefacts currently working in Nix, however, that does not mean they are cleaving through obstacles there as cleanly as Renard does his hunts. Particularly, Pleione has been reluctant to say how dead souls could be used to make witchbane, and rather emphasised the importance of stars, fearful of the West wrongly thinking that using the dead as Renard did is in any way reliable or safe, and murdering people by that misguided notion.
Which means, the enchantments the delvers have are all weak. They are still effective, of course, but moreso as a means for protection than as a means of offence. Kingslayer is still humanity’s most valuable asset in attacking Nix’s influence, and with the blockades the delvers have recently faced, which have so far proved immovable, she wants Kingslayer down there.
Not to mention Renard, who is, in himself, the most experienced ghoul-slayer she can name and a peerless swordsman even before that.
Pleasant flattery, or just fact. Renard’s shoulders slump either way.
Two conflicting images pass through his mind.
One is Marion, pleading then dead, and the cold resolution Renard felt as he left that cave in the forest. A sense of inevitability still shrouds that thought. If Renard is to question what worth his life could have, then regardless of the Queen’s or anyone else’s intrigues, it would be in ensuring the world had no more Iron Kings or Marions, screaming for a place in the light as the dark dragged them down, and down further.
The other is Colette. Though appreciative of her support in this moment, Renard still feels no attraction towards her, and the more he thinks about it, the more frightening the reality of her nobility is. Whatever she wants from a husband, he will never satisfy her. He is far too bawd, too base… and too sickened at the thought of uprooting his lowborn history with mimicked gestures of erudition to ever want to remodel himself that way.
But weighing these options against each other, one is a resigned deathwish, and one still carries hope.
“You’ve the tools as much as I," Renard says to the Queen, stepping into line with Colette. “What principle founds me? As I’ve told you, yet nothing. You will give me two castles, a parade, dancing goats, and a harem, I still will not go where you lead."
“Ever I wonder," the Queen says, kneading her brow. “How I can hope so much of what I know you could do, and every time be betrayed."
“Perhaps it’s your ambitions that betray you, far before any man," says Colette.
“They were Sir Renard’s ambitions, to start. No, Miss Fayette, I’m quite sure my most minor expectations of this man have never once been met, least not as I ever imagined it, and what holds in my chest is rather queer disappointment. I know he is swift, and he is strong, yet when I reach to him he bucks to trample me. I call it only faith that I give him even a sliver of leniency, much less troughs of it, that he would not one day raise a blade against me, and instead continue doing only the well that he wishes."
“Your Grace, I don’t mean to disappoint you," Renard pleads. “I’ve tried, and done well, in my follies."
“I know. You have." Her face falls. “My brother often spoke the same way."
Renard’s throat locks at this precarious, but perhaps accurate, comparison. Is she insinuating—what? That he’s like a ghoul? That he’s frightening or wicked? After everything, it wasn’t the jibes, the murders, or the mistakes by which she concluded this, but a sincere wish for mercy?
The Queen sighs, massaging her brow again. “Like him, you’ll be inconsolable. I don’t know what has made you like this, but my will to wrangle it is already fading."
“I’m not a ghoul," says Renard miserably.
“Your Grace, look on this man. Don’t be cruel," says Colette.
“…Fairly so," the Queen murmurs, tone softening. “The land, the title, and no summons to Nix — you’ll have it all, then, as you want, Miss Fayette. And you, Sir Renard, you can have her."
The heavy doors of the throne room thoom shut behind them. Colette grabs a disconsolate Renard by the hand and rushes him to the privacy of a guest room. She sits him on the bed and hugs him, rocking, her heartbeat pulsing in his ear faster than the feet of a jackrabbit.
She pulls away, gasping a wispy breath, shed entirely of the composure she held in the throne room.
“Are you okay?" she asks, near crying.
Renard’s brow scrunches.
With a breathy sigh, Colette dips in again for another loose hug, stroking his head.
Rising out of his quiet, sad funk, Renard eases her off him. “Colette, enough. I—" He runs his hand over his face, events in the throne room only now catching up to him, slamming into his mind like a runaway wagon. “—am well, but…"
Lowering his hand, he stares up at her in confusion. She herself looks a horror, grooves of worry cut deep in her forehead, eyes rimmed red and blinking furiously, yet failing still to clear the sheen of tears from her eyes. Between the throne room and here, she has aged twenty years.
Renard chuckles bitterly. Allowing a lady to look like that means he’s been a pathetic showing of a man. “How do you ask me such a question?"
She whistles out an airy breath, tension easing out of her shoulders. “I was so scared," she says, “I didn’t know where you’d gone — knowing what we spoke about, I feared…"
“Me?" Renard asks incredulously.
“Of course, you."
“But I do not understand, how could you care?"
Colette smiles grimly, choking back a darkly amused sob.
“I… have not given anything to you, have done nothing for you, have had poor motives towards you, and left you. We are barely strangers, how could you care?"
If Isobel spoke in profound silences, Colette speaks in numbed ones. If Isobel was a saccharine pouring of sunlight that dripped and beamed thickly into the heart, Colette is a long, still lake, the quiet face of which gently demands reflection and meditation. Perhaps it is that cooling, gentle presence of hers that makes it so hard to wear any bravado around her, and so easily rips what is buried to the fore.
“Is it worth so much, a careless promise?"
Colette shakes her head, smiling still, and blinks heavy to stare with chagrin. Her dark irises suck him in as were he staring into the pit of a well, as he had in those days after the slaughter of Pilamine, horrible and deep and transfixing, but painfully full of ghosts. To hear the voice in her silence requires this plunging, this immersion in darkness, and when it is heard it is heard as a whisper. The answer to Renard’s question, which she is struggling to speak, is obvious. It is a plain, unpretentious, I love you.
Even Renard knows that love, when real, is not something to interrogate with ‘why’s.
Stunned, Renard recoils and covers his mouth. His gaze shifts away. Is Colette’s love real? Did she uproot herself and come all this way to Sebilles, hunt him down, pressure the Queen, fight for him, rip him from a deathly rail, then collapse into a sobbing wreck at the end of it all, because she had some political motive in owning a Barony in Lacren with the clout of the legendary Sir Renard behind her?
It’s stupid to even consider. The clout of a killer? Of course she didn’t.
Renard’s hand falls from his chin in shock. His eyes widen as he turns to her, fear shooting like thunder in every heartbeat. He stammers, “Colette, I am not—the habits of a nobleman are not… inside my inclinations." Images flash through his mind of himself, dressed in fine silks, playing croquet, orating congenially on this or that courtly gossip and huffing over the tired politics that nobles often do. As it had been before when the Queen demanded he play ambassador, or when he went to party in the castle with Pleione, the person in these images does not feel like himself. “They sicken me. Yourself being of blood, I cannot imagine my partnership would… satisfy you, in this fashion. I was not raised in castles."
“But, noble habits did not carry you to here… titled men are not much different from any else, many of them, but taught pride too much to stray from agreeable dealings and words… this dignity is shallow. These who would do the motions because they must, they worry too much of trifles. You must not think you have to be like them, confused… I do not find much more distasteful than I imagine anyone would."
“You say."
She nods.
“You cannot think of how I could embarrass you. In so many foolish ways… I would gut a pig’s belly and wear the beast as a hood, to skulk through the fields, pounce, and say — boo! Nonsense antics…"
“Would you, though, outside of boy’s fun?"
Would he? Renard shifts uncomfortably. His brand of humour is innately crass and obnoxious, but he has not been ruled by humour in that way since he was a teenager. Then again, that humour does feel natural to him. He could resent that Colette would approach him with love and yet not love the parts of himself even he finds disgusting, or he could take it as a continuation of how he has felt for a long time, that he has simply grown more mature than he was a child.
It’s an odd thought. For how easily the idea came to his mind, and how much fun it still sounds to be, he can say now how stupid and inappropriate it would be in most contexts. Rather, he would probably only do it if he were trying to offend and repel someone, and in this hypothetical case, Colette, as to harry her, disgrace her, and break the relationship.
Darkness bubbles inside him. To break this relationship, given the lifeline it represents, means he must be already fantasising the life it offers as being horrific and stressful. Yes — these images that flashed through him, of smiling over champagne or attending parties or dressing up in formalwear to go play croquet — are indeed so horrific and antithetical to himself he would rather just die and go to Nix.
Fantasising pain on someone approaching him with sincere affection is a horrible thing, however. If Colette’s care is genuine, then the more prescient fear may be…
“Colette, would it not disgrace you? To receive men of pedigree, and I be beside you? If you would live as a Baroness, among the peers you have always known, to the station you have always known, with the luxuries you have always known, by what standard does my presence improve that? I am not cultured or affectionate; not clever or kind. I am merely cold enough to thrust in a blade. You may keep teasets beside flagons — to you, is that truly pleasant? Shallow dignities, may as they be, but dignities they are. How these prestigious men would look at me, then look at you — does that not strangle you at all?"
“In their heads and in their clades, those prestigious men can whisper what they wish. They have not done what you’ve done."
Renard falls silent.
He supposes that’s true. You’re an awful, base, embarrassing person, but you’ve brought much good to the world, so you’re exempt from much judgement. The balances now are even. Still…
“You are the only one who has done what you’ve done," Colette continues. “The only one. What’s taken you here, it was you."
But Isen, Pleione, they would have walked my steps more wisely and with more justice. They would have faced the problems I did and found superior solutions to the ones I chose, or so Renard would have once protested. Now he cannot help but feel that Colette is correct.
Isen would have never taken a blade against ghouls. With a more gentle and positive core of sentiment driving him, he would have circumvented the problems that imparted Renard his insane drive long before it could ever be forged. Even if Isen had Kingslayer, no slaughter of ghouls in the thousands across this whole region would have occurred at his hand. The Lacren that Isen’s presence would have crafted would be positive, no doubt, but now as Renard considers it, likely, unrecognisable.
And if Renard is being honest, the actual state of Lacren currently is — fair.
It’s good. Though to call himself the primary driver behind that success would take more brazenness than Renard cares to sit with, his presence has been far from inconsequential in shaping this territory into its present state, in a fundamentally positive fashion.
Is there some trap he’s missing here? Is there more he must do?
Would Isen have even opened the prospect of going to Nix? Shockingly, he may not have. Renard had been exceedingly pushy, exceedingly rash, exceedingly sanctimonious, exceedingly impulsive, and exceedingly fraught with a unique personal pain when he arrogantly impressed that idea into court. If Isen had already resolved matters with the Iron King peacefully, obsession with the ghoul menace may not have occurred.
He may have actually surpassed Isen in this regard. Were he alive, Renard can imagine now the two of them each upon mountain peaks, parallel in their talents, but standing at the same height. The image is incredible — were Isen alive.
The work is unfinished, Renard surely thinks, even as he slides his mind away from the snake in its pit to the woman, still tearful, in front of him, and his heart kicks with a peculiar warmth.
“The bitter blood of that woman, so black and vile, that is the thickness that makes me not breathe!" says Colette. “She says she would use you — no, she would kill you! She would kill you, she would kill you, she would kill you…" she drapes herself over his shoulders, presses a kiss against his ear.
Renard clasps her hand as she, with a sigh, withdraws. Tears she had composed off her face now dapple again the pits of her eyes, soon wiped away. She shakes her head absently.
A sense of strange ease falls over Renard. In a life where every road feels inevitably to end at Nix, as though every step he treads is upon an incline funnelling him slowly down into that black, and into death, there is from this woman a ray of springlike brightness slicing through, a plane of level ground upon which he may walk stable, and perhaps even turn and see something he had not conceived he would ever find again, a prospect of life, and of future.
Allowing this calm to settle in his chest, despite his uncertainty, Renard smiles lightly.
Patting Colette’s back, he quietly assures, “I will try."
Time passes for Renard and Colette under this new routine.
With Renard securing the land and title of the Barony, the two move in to an estate that oversees the territory of Meurille, a small county within Lacren that is both distanced enough from Sebilles to not automatically be roped into its politics, and close enough to it that commuting there is not a hassle. Meurille is indeed a modest place, not notable in any enticing way or important for anything, boasting a small but stable community of mostly farmers and quarrymen.
It is exactly the humble self-managing Barony that Renard wished he would get, to the letter. Relieved that finangling the logistics of this land requires no immediate strenuous effort, Renard allows himself to focus more on the other half of this lifestyle change — the domestic.
His relationship with Colette has stayed optimistic and then simply positive. The fears he had of feeling restricted, or forced, into shaping himself as a stereotypical nobleman to impress her have thankfully not been realised, and though overwhelmed by the majesty of the ornate estate he now inhabits, Colette has reassured him down from doing anything self-destructively rash, impulsive, or performative. He has steadily become accustomed to the idea of being allowed to own this house. He has also become steadily more appreciative of Colette, whose support has been sincere and unfailing.
Though socially fluent and cunning enough to navigate politics, she is a reclusive woman who regards many as falling below their own standards, and has become tired of most who’d pursue her. At the same time, she is assertive and steady in her self-worth, desiring of simple things and pleasant luxuries, which she is keen to share with others. She likes gentle beauties and driven passions. Dates over these early months soon solidify their engagement, formalised with a ring, consummated with marriage in the following year.
It is Colette’s ingenuity that keeps Renard afloat in politics. Though not a hugely important territory, invitations to parties and summons by lords are still typical, and still stressful to Renard. Colette arranges that such audiences either stay as written correspondences, or happen in Meurille, which has kept Renard comfortable.
Renard’s initial nervousness over how Meurille would receive him has also faded. Connecting quickly with the rustic hospitality of the townsfolk, and with Colette’s help restraining him from overeager missteps in governance, he soon feels himself accepted and welcome in the community. Grateful to have this environment, his investment in the place becomes strong, with the time he does not spend on recreational pursuits or administrative work being spent personally resolving simple on-the-ground problems, like finding lost pets and fixing old fences.
Renard finds his rhythm in this simple life, and over time, relaxes.
As he takes one of his breeding horses back in to the stable, an idea then crosses his mind: He’s retired.
Renard reels at this thought, growing more baffled at its truth. Being a high mortality occupation, most ghoul-slayers older than him, those names he knew held sway when he first started, have either died or quit. The names that have replaced those contemporaries are unfamiliar, and though he knows his own reputation still carries much weight, the rumours milling through bars, gossip given by guests, and calls of travelling barkers inform that near everyone active in the occupation is now profoundly younger than him. A new generation has risen, and Renard is the old veteran who hung up his sword — because he has completed the span that most would ever work it, and retired.
Renard unsheaths Kingslayer, holding it flat on his palm. Sheaths it again. Uncertainty niggles.
Having reestablished contact with Pleione, and even occasionally Verdan, Renard knows the broad status of Nix. Though able to regard the whole matter as the Queen’s issue rather than his, Pleione’s testimony of the situation has been dire, and her sincere desire that Renard join the effort has been less subtle than Renard suspects she intended. Still, while the guilt of denying this call tickles his mind, as does the dark fated feeling of Nix being his destiny, the sight of Colette waving him back in from the fields tempers that feeling away.
Familiar summer air, muggy as it is in this place, tousles the familiar grass, long and yellow as it is in this place, around his ankles, and wafts the smell of the dirt, full of red clay as it is in this place, to his nose. The slant of the sun and the subtle hue it casts upon the field is familiar — by the light alone, he can exactly tell the time of day, and know who has retired from the day’s work, what stores will be open, who will yet be at the tavern, and what routines the people of the town will be pursuing. It has become intimate, his knowledge of this place.
He marches back to Colette, content with his choices. Those who would call him to Nix are too late. From the outside, he will cheer on their endeavours, but he has completed his tenure.
A letter comes to Renard from a neighbouring lord.
As he unwinds in his study to read it, with Colette peeking from over his shoulder, his brow scrunches further and further for each line of the text.
This neighbour speaks of an anomaly that has arisen on his land. The nature of this anomaly is hard for the lord to describe, dressed in vague sweeping words as ‘odd occurrence’ and ‘abnormal thing’, which, while not useful in explaining why this anomaly hooked the lord’s attention, do carry an air of instinctual concern that demands the matter inspected. Though nothing in the letter says this ‘anomaly’ is threatening — as it is apparently stable, not expanding, localised to one spot, and not doing anything — all the locals who have gone to inspect it were reportedly puzzled, and nobody the lord had sent could discern why the anomaly had appeared, what its presence could signify, or fundamentally what it even was. The strange mystery of it has left the lord intrigued and uneasy.
Given the suspiciously supernatural quality of the anomaly, the lord questions if Renard may have insight. He has sent bladesmen who have faced ghouls to inspect the anomaly already, who have also been puzzled with no epiphanies, but Renard is experienced in a way these greenhorns aren’t. If the anomaly is indeed ghoulish in nature, he may be able to pick up on something all others have missed.
Renard leans back in his seat and glances to Colette, herself puzzled with her brow knit.
“No taxonomies leap to my tongue," Renard admits. Whatever the lord is describing, Renard doesn’t recognise it. Nor does it sound like anything specific he’s seen — that said, the lord’s description is vague, and to suspect something ‘abnormal’ as ghoulish is likely correct. Renard plants his mouth in the crook of his thumb and reads the message over, still stumped.
“What shall you write back to him?" Colette asks.
“I’ve not the words. Lord Byrus is a peaceful neighbour, a good man, and has always been pleasant to us." Renard stands from his seat and files the letter into his desk. “I would wish to myself see this ‘oddity’, before I would let this caper leave him vexed."
“It’s certainly mysterious," Colette muses.
“Yes… it draws my imagination, too," Renard mutters. He shrugs on his coat and voices his suspicion that it probably is just a ghoul, though, that manifested in a weird way. If that hypothesis is true, then for Renard to deal with it may be overkill — but if the hunters Byrus already asked have failed to do much, then the favour of popping in is not skin off Renard’s back.
Plus, Byrus is a reasonable man. If he hesitates to call the anomaly one thing or another, that hesitation likely has merit, and if he thought Renard was not totally necessary, he would not have asked his opinion.
“Are you leaving tonight?" asks Colette, seeing Renard lumber to the doorway while he buttons his coat. “Very well. Be careful, love, and tell me all about it." She signs her farewell with a peck on the cheek and the lips.
‘Be careful!? Why should I need to be careful! I’m Renard Cox! I crush trifling beasts as these under my boots like trapped mice!’ All this time in peace with Colette, knowing fully of her good intentions, and strange that such sentiments do still spear from the depths of his heart like flame-wreathed lances. The man who would act on these impulses, though, has been buried, and a flow of calm understanding balms the burn back down.
Smile light and shoulders untensed, Renard squeezes her reassuringly, kisses her back, and exits the door.
Renard boards his carriage and leaves Meurille that evening.
Several days later, he arrives in Daversham, the county that neighbours Meurille to the north. This is the whereabouts of the anomaly, and the territory of Lord Byrus.
Daversham is a much larger region than Meurille, and larger than most territories Renard ever visited during his time hunting ghouls. Were he still of that strict hunter’s mindset, he likely would have ignored any chance to parley with Byrus and raced instead straight to the ghoul, but now it feels correct to visit Lord Byrus first.
Further, Lord Byrus has been a pleasant acquaintance over Renard’s time lording Meurille, and though the idea of embarrassing himself within Byrus’ chambers does shake him, with gifts prepared to ease him through the first introductions, Renard finds himself sincerely looking forward to seeing him.
Renard arrives at Lord Byrus’ estate and stays there for the day. Between the friendly socialising of the visit, Renard asks Byrus for any information he has on this ‘anomaly’ that did not make it into the letter. “It is something like a honeycomb," Byrus struggles, cringing at his own inadequate description, miming at the air as if packing together a tight, twisted cloth, “but it is… there is an odd—I apologise, Renard." So is the extent of his information, Byrus’ struggle puzzling in itself, but the need to personally see the ‘honeycomb anomaly’ so confirmed. Byrus gives the specific location of the anomaly as the village Ashurst.
Renard departs for Ashurst. It is a small village, deep in the woods, at the corner of Byrus’ territory. It is one of those places where, despite all the life and beauty in the thick trees and rolling hills that cradle the settlement, one has to question why anybody ever settled there. Perhaps a holdover from pilgrims bound elsewhere who only meant the place as a camp, it is inconveniently isolated in a way that does not serve any purpose, but only makes resupply from out of town difficult, since the only difficulty of entry is bothering to use obscure roads. The few farms present here are small; the woodlands have not been cleared enough to foster success in that industry, and even concluding that this is a lumber town, there is nothing remarkably lucrative about the pines here except that there are a lot of them.
It is a bread-and-butter town, thick with cool, damp, verdant forest air. Though a more pleasant place to look at than Renard’s old village, the reliance on imports to keep the place fed likely makes it a worse place to live.
Not that the locals here reflect such a sentiment. As Renard rolls into town, he meets only strong, proud, assertive folk, freemen and sons of freemen, who fancy their pocket of beautiful but unusable land as the hidden jewel of Daversham, tied with a cosmopolitan sense of independence and community disproportionate to the needy backwater the place is. Still, the atmosphere is not unpleasant, and when Renard asks about the anomaly, the people are excited to talk.
The rumours cycling through town conflict with each other and clarify nothing, as rumours do. Renard in the tavern asks to meet the hunters who have seen the anomaly, so they may escort him to it.
“Ohh, then you want Mr. Klee. Poor luck; family business got him out of town ‘least a handful of days. We’re all jabbering about it, thinking to go out and scour for it, but it’s only him what’s seen it, him, the mayor, and that boy Fidel. Guess the thing ain’t so bad to have Klee patrolling all day ‘round the place anymore… been a full month of zip."
“Who is Fidel?" asks Renard.
“Ahh, Fidel, he’s just a kid. Found the thing," advises the patron of the tavern, tilting his tankard to and fro. “Hard to talk to. Best you’re off waiting for Klee, or catching the mayor when he ain’t busy."
Though not doubtful of the advice, Renard asks where he might find Fidel.
The patron again urges Renard to speak to the mayor, since Fidel is seriously just a kid and not even a very forthcoming one. While it’s true that Fidel was forthcoming enough to excitedly report his find to Klee, there isn’t much point taking him as an escort up to the thing.
Renard taps his chin and resigns the advice as fair. His instinct to check Fidel comes from his knowledge of teenagers; things they get tight-lipped about are things they are often burning to say. In finding the thing, he may have insight about it, or think he has insight about it, and secretly want to spill an interesting detail or two.
But pumping him for his story doesn’t mean bringing him to the anomaly. It’s smartest to go with the mayor, in an official capacity, and keep the child away from what could become a dangerous situation.
Though doubtful Fidel knows anything special, the patron concedes his workplace — he helps clean equipment at the lumber-yards — and his address. Still, when Renard finishes his questions and marches determinedly out, the patron can only see him off with a shrug of ‘good luck’.
With it still being afternoon on a weekday, and Fidel likely being at work, Renard first pursues the mayor. It would be nice to study more before going up to the anomaly, but the longer he puts this meeting off, the more awkward things will be later. The mayor’s office is also in town, rather than out in the forest as Fidel’s work is, and just closer.
Renard enters the mayor’s office. Ding ding ding, and rings the bell at the reception desk, but the only response that comes is a voice wafting from deeper inside the building: “One moment!".
Ten minutes of waiting passes to twenty. As Renard crosses his arms and cringes up at the ceiling, he begins to wish that no voice had answered at all. Just when he flirts with the thought of storming outside, a door creaks, and a man in a dark cloak and spectacles seeps out from down the hall, passes by blankly, and exits.
Figuring that the mayor’s previous guest, Renard begrudgingly approaches the desk to be received.
The mayor emerges from the hall. Though he smiles pleasantly, waddling penguinlike in his cutely pressed formalwear — dressed exactly how his parents must have taught him — Renard can only stare, astonished, as if he had just been sprung an encounter with someone as horrifically ghoul-touched as Verdan.
The mayor is huge. Not in stature, but in girth, weighed with such corpulence that his very ability to walk seems some supernatural enchantment. Though Renard recognises swiftly that it is not, he still fumbles a moment to find his words and curses inwardly for his own impoliteness.
“Hello!" The mayor cheers, his voice as clear and pleasant as the bellish tones of a meadowlark. The bright cadence of it loosens the tension in Renard’s shoulders. There is nothing concerningly erratic, chopped, or unnatural to his speech as there had been with Verdan, and it hearing it warms the chest. “Sir Renard Cox! I am Mr. Thames," he beams, leaning forward to take Renard’s hands in a jolly handshake. “Mayor of Ashurst. I’m terribly sorry for the wait, that dark beaky fellow swept in just five minutes before you had, with quite a table of issues to sort through. You didn’t stay in here this whole time?"
“No, no, ‘tisn’t an issue," Renard begins.
“Oh, joyful news, come along then!" the mayor interrupts, too enthusiastic to notice Renard had meant to say more. “We’ve tea and biscuits if you like," he says, escorting Renard down the hall to a parlour with pink carpeting and many sculptures of cats, which lounge fancifully upon most every shelf and pin down large mounds of paperwork. The mayor floats to the kitchenette where he heats a kettle and pours tea into two dainty, petalled teacups. “You take a seat at the table. Anywhere that you fancy comfortable," his brows knit with focus as he pours.
He seems a friendly fellow, Renard thinks as he sits and gazes out the bay window to the colourful rose garden outside. The mayor places the finished tea upon the mahogany table and seats himself across from Renard, his chair creaking as he settles in.
After pleasantries, Renard and the mayor discuss Renard’s visit and business in Ashurst.
Like Byrus, the mayor struggles to convey anything specific about the anomaly, and in fact it is from the mayor’s reports that Byrus has the information he does. He speaks cheerfully of the time he has spent up in the woods with Mr. Klee, trying to make sense of the thing.
Were you not scared when you came upon it?, Renard asks.
The mayor reports that it had been a lovely day and, while worried a little at first, it seemed more to him like a piece of a puzzle, or a funny interruption in the air similar to how a geode interrupts stone, than anything actively frightening. It’s certainly been stable for all Klee has been watching it, and nothing odd has happened in Ashurst since its arrival. I’m surprised Lord Byrus sent you, not to discount how thrilling it is for you to be here, but it has yet been such a benign thing I just would not have thought to have that kind of urgency. Perhaps my letters carried a tone that misrepresented the situation somewhat. It’s quite forgettable, if it weren’t peculiar.
Renard asks how he might get to the anomaly.
Well, it is deep in the forest, says the mayor. You would need a map and a guide... It’s quite an excursion.
Apart from yourself and the hunter Klee, I have heard the only one who knows the way is a village boy, Renard notes.
“Oh, yes, Fidel… he’s a good boy, but private. It was quite surprising, his enthusiasm when he came to Mr. Klee. I wouldn’t trouble him too much. I doubt there’s anything he knows that we don’t," the mayor advises, then wiggles in his squeaking seat. “Would you be thinking to go to the thing before Mr. Klee comes back? The thought of adventure of hiking back up with you has stricken me with excitement, and tomorrow is Saturday, so I would have the time clear to take you."
Renard pauses, wiping biscuit crumbs from his fingers, unable to stop himself from awkwardly considering the mayor’s physical state.
Unable to avoid the question, he asks bluntly if the mayor is fit for it.
The mayor, taking the question well, assures that he is. Oh! And he’s so excited, he’s already thinking of all the things they’d have to prepare… all the things to pack in his bags…
Reassured by the mayor’s enthusiasm, Renard asks when Klee would be coming back, though not with particular intention to follow that track. The mayor informs it would be three or four days — not too long, but long enough to feel like a waste if Renard spent the time doing nothing. Dismissing the thought, he hums, and confirms his plan to go hiking with the mayor tomorrow.
Oh, splendid! Chirps the mayor, who claps his hands charmingly. We’ll meet here just before dawn, then — going up there and back will take the whole day, so it’s best to leave early.
Content with this plan, Renard shakes the mayor’s hand and departs.
It is late afternoon when Renard leaves the mayor, having chatted longer than he thought. The sun is setting and day workers are wandering home. Renard secures himself a room at a local inn, then mounts his horse and leisurely ventures towards the house of Fidel.
The mayor did say that the boy had no information — Renard’s gut would still like to meet him. This ‘odd enthusiasm’ the mayor mentioned suggests Fidel discovered something that struck him as greatly notable, that maybe the mayor did not press on enough, since his overall attitude towards life seems to be jolly and laid-back.
Hooves clop relaxedly over the cobblestone, and the house Renard seeks comes into view.
It’s tiny, not so much humble as simply poor. While Renard himself grew up in a house made and lived in by a family of peasants, this structure is queerer the longer he looks at it. This location is distanced from the heart of town, enough to make getting anywhere inconvenient without a horse, but not so distant as to be useful for anything else. It’s a place you pick simply because you either have the money to make the inconveniences negotiable, or because you do not have the money to pick somewhere more dreamy or practical.
That being said, the street isn’t a slum. The other houses along the way are all pleasant, and even if none scream ‘well-born’ or ‘rich’, they all feel at least ‘reasonably average’ and ‘proudly freemen’. Except this one.
Dark lichen grows over its bricks and shingles are missing from the roof. Gutters strain visibly, full of muck that must be waiting years for a clean. The yard outside has been massacred, reaped into a field of open mud, that hurts Renard’s head to realise must be a crude attempt at a vegetable garden. A potato box sits quietly under the eaves, and a single chicken squawks away in a woven box too small to ever call a coop.
Even living in a thatched peasant home, Renard’s family had the means to properly maintain the house and its assets. That this household, while owning a more expensive property, cannot make its day-to-day match the easy comfort of money is what makes it feel so poor.
Shaking off this impression, Renard hitches his horse to the fence and marches up to the door.
As he does, unease strikes him. The house keeps silent and all its windows are dark, even though the sunset has dimmed the sky enough for neighbours to light candles. But he does not feel the house is empty. A coil twists in his gut, as though he were about to knock on the door of a mausoleum, whose restless spectres he would wake.
Footsteps patter on the cobbles and Renard’s horse snorts, tossing her neck. Renard glances over.
A boy is on the street, staring up at his horse. No older than fifteen or sixteen, the lad’s clothes are so worn they are nearly rags, formerly white and comfortable but now stained yellow and starchy beneath blotches of grease, mud, dried blood, and copious resin. His hair is short, unbrushed, and wild, and though his face has an attractive look of intrepid boyishness, there is a measured quietness about him that says he is not too impulsive. He carries a leather satchel fat with cans and bottles that exude a pungent, chemical smell.
“Hail! Fidel?" Renard calls.
Attention shifting to Renard, the boy quickly nods and jogs to the mouth of the fence. He smoothly jerks his head to pull Renard away from the door — it is a strangely commanding gesture, unconscious, and Renard cannot help but concede an odd relief to join him away from the house.
“Hello, sirrah," says Fidel, quizzical but respectful as he glances from the house to Renard and back. “Are you here to speak with Father?"
“With you, boy," Renard leans on his knee to meet the boy’s eye level. “Do you know who you speak to? I am Renard Cox."
Fidel gapes with the awe of a child who has just found himself in an audience, one-on-one, with Superman.
“Hoh, seems you didn’t. Come, let’s quickly fix that," Renard chuckles and offers a handshake.
“I didn’t know you were coming to Ashurst," Fidel babbles, the lazy kick of the handshake rocking through his body. “I… I—I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t realise, auh," he mutters, scrambling to stuff the cans in his satchel down, out of view, his cheeks growing red with familiar embarrassment.
“Steady now, lad. Ho!" Renard cheers, drawing Kingslayer with a great flourish. He tosses the blade into the air so it spins once, twice, and smoothly catches it by the hilt with a fluidity that mesmerises Fidel. Renard presents the blade to him, held flat on his palms, and conspiratorially invites Fidel to touch it.
Fidel does so, tracing his finger over the flat of the blade. As if breaking from a dream, he gasps and steps back.
Renard sheaths Kingslayer, grinning.
A lot of him hates himself for even imagining to use Kingslayer in such a frivolous manner. But it has worked to break Fidel’s tension and made him less self-conscious, and probably given him a memory that will stick for the rest of his life.
“Now, boy," Renard barks, “it is on the tail of a letter from Ashurst’s Lord Byrus that I have come to this place…" he begins, explaining to Fidel the circumstances of his visit and divulging his understanding that Fidel was the one to find the anomaly. With that established, he asks if there is anything more Fidel knows that the Mayor may not have said, and expresses curiosity in the ‘enthusiasm’ people say Fidel had when reporting it.
“Yes!" Fidel blurts. “I tried to tell Mr. Klee, I thought he might figure it out… it’s hard to describe, but it looked to me like a scar, sir."
“A scar," Renard considers.
“Yes, a horrible one, sir. It wasn’t large…" Fidel concedes, “but the more I looked, the more I felt that this was… an injury upon the air. I thought it might even be a wound on the backside of an invisible beast," he confesses, “but there were no other indications of that being true, it was only a sense I had."
“You were frightened it may be a beast, and ran in that fear to find Mr. Klee?"
“No… no, it wasn’t that fear, sir," Fidel muses, wandering further along the fence away from the house, dragging Renard along too. “I had to think before I felt fear — when I first saw it, I only felt, ‘that is odd’, as it might be when an egg yolk is deeply orange. It was that inoffensive sort of peculiarity. I was afraid when I thought it a beast, though, but I quickly considered that must be wrong…"
Renard presses his thumb to his lip, in thought.
“…then I thought my wisdom too weak and that I must tell Mr. Klee. I thought I would just need to show him, and he would reach the same impressions as me, but he didn’t have my urgency… once he saw it, he only thought what I had, that it was odd. Nothing attacked us and nothing seemed dangerous, and for the past weeks I believe he has only been patrolling it as a formality."
“And I hear it has been stable in those weeks. Yet the memory of it, it rankles you?"
“Yes," Fidel repeats, hands wandering to mime a globe of air. “It is… it’s an injury," he emphasises.
In dealing with ghoulish matters, gut feelings are often wise. Though Klee and the Mayor may dismiss the anomaly as safe because it has not done anything concerning, it may really only be that it has not done anything concerning yet. Fidel’s apprehension, which the other adults have discounted as the product of a young, active mind, probably carries enough merit to investigate further — if he has such a certain instinctive impression of this being an ‘injury’, it likely actually is.
The question is more about why the implications of it being an injury matter, if that is true. Fidel’s surprising eloquence is plainly failing him on this point.
“You do believe me, sir?" asks Fidel.
“Without doubt, the sceptical perspectives of yourself and Lord Byrus are the canaries that did call me here." Renard thumbs his chin. “I would not doubt Mr. Klee as a diligent man, as I would not blacken my tongue towards any I’ve yet to meet, but perhaps the matter demands diligence more than he can give. Knowing only comes to me once I have seen the cut myself."
“Sirrah, I could take you," Fidel jumps from his seat atop the fence. “The path begins not so far from here, and I’ve a lantern—"
“What! In the dark, boy?"
“—sirrah, I do know the way—"
“Now? Through the night!" Renard balks. “No, no, boy, I will not be stumbling and tired on this hike, however well you do know the hill. Restraint at your age would have frustrated me too, but your testimony serves me far more than would an ill-conceived, ridiculous jaunt. Tell me a last hint, young Fidel, for how long have you known this ‘scar’?"
“It has been in the forest for a month at the least, for two at the most—sir, this forest’s trails are more tamped with my footfalls than many of Ashursts’ main roads. Mr. Klee isn’t here… it wouldn’t be a trifle, maybe not tonight," Fidel insists, rifling through his satchel. He draws lantern oil, rope, a sickle, demonstrations of his preparedness. “Mr. Klee wouldn’t be angry. It would only be to zip up and back, to survey it, before… before he tells you it’s all just nothing," Fidel mumbles to himself.
“Young Fidel, I am already going tomorrow."
“Alone?" he gasps.
“The mayor offered."
“The mayor?! He knows? Sir, greenhorn I may be, but…"
“And I am sure his softness will not blunt my own impressions. Boy, ease your vigour. If it is trouble, it will be treated as trouble, and if it is not, there is no cause to worry."
“I have to show you. I want to show you," Fidel insists, “I just… I do not know how to explain without being there."
Despite Renard’s spoken rejections, Fidel’s insistence does impress him. Renard considers. If the boy is so aflame with drive to be there, is there much harm indulging that? Well, potentially, but…
“Hear, boy, this I propose," Renard says, “I will speak with the mayor on the morrow about adding you to our hike. If he is well for it, then let us bring you along. I imagine this course would suit everyone."
Fidel deflates a slight, the offer too sensible to deny, but his passion still set on going alone as soon as tonight. But, seeming to accept the concession, he composes himself with a calming breath, nods, and packs his supplies back in his satchel.
“Good lad," Renard mutters.
Fidel wanders along the fence to the path back up to the house, turns, and bows fluidly. “It has been an honour to be granted your presence, sir, passing as the moment may be. I wish only for success in all your endeavours and for fortune to join us again quickly."
“Quick I will grant: wait a step, young Fidel," Renard calls.
Fidel pauses midway to the house, glancing curiously over his shoulder.
“Is apprenticeship under the college of bards a course you have much ruminated?"
“Huh?"
“I have thought this for all the time we have spoke. For a pauper’s living, boy, your words flow as would any orator’s."
“Ah," Fidel clicks his throat. “No, I had not considered it."
“Then the wealth of talent you sit upon may be as great as the gold in a mountain. Refined, I imagine success for you far greater than a lumberjack’s pittance."
“My Father once attended Lords’ courts, sir. I sometimes fall into this speech."
“Then you are predisposed to the patterns of the scripts."
“He was a Baron."
Renard falls silent, humbled. Fidel isn’t some untapped peasant with great potential for upward mobility. He’s a former noble, not in any way performing or inflating himself, but instinctively speaking his native tongue around fellow gentry, who fell very, very far down.
Fidel smiles bitterly, thumbing the frayed edge of his raggy shirtsleeve. He sighs, closes his eyes, and fixes his smile straight. “It’s past. Tomorrow?"
“Of course," Renard’s mouth moves, while his mind weighs heavy with guilt. He had not really been thinking of bringing Fidel, but now it feels he owes the boy something. “I myself have been thrown from many courts," he adds stupidly, as if it’s a consolation.
“You haven’t been thrown from the top of one," Fidel darkly mutters to himself. Though his smile falters, as the last oranges of sunset fade, he shrugs and switches thought. There is a surprising air of liberation in his gaze as he pats the lid of his satchel and glances to Renard. “Well, but how much is blood, really? A dove who sits on his pedigree is hardly doing much that’s to laud," Fidel’s voice lowers bashfully as if sharing a secret, “I’m looking at a testament to that, sir, that simple Ashursts can make very great men."
“—Indeed. Indeed, exactly, boy. That is why I am often thrown; I have ruffled up those nestled doves." Renard snorts. “Beautiful words they coo often but little abide — it is in ignoring their talk, and walking the narrow beam of bare truth, that I’ve been afforded my successes."
“Afforded… are you very religious?" Fidel wonders.
“There are waves, boy, there are waves." Truthfully, religion is a subject he has preferred to avoid since meeting Colette. “A keen rider knows which ones will not crush him."
“I’ll think on this, sir. Thank you."
“Do not worry too much upon it. The magicians who ponder this business are dreary folk," Renard advises. “What paddles the ship is ambition, and what steadies the compass is your own heart. When you do not spit at God, you are carried well. That is what I have found." Renard falls silent, then bursts, “so it is, young Fidel! Let me free you to sleep, and see you on the morn."
“I have never considered things as that," Fidel muses. “Sir, I’m sorry to hold you, but there is a last thing I’d wish to ask. I suppose, what is it all for?"
“Fidel! That’s a very big question," Renard laughs, unhitching and mounting his horse.
“But that’s what makes hunters so amazing," Fidel says. “Here in Ashurst… we’re freemen who live here just to live, to wake up with food and money tomorrow. But to wake and be willing to risk yourself so severely — nobody does that merely to reach the morn. There’s a reason, for what?"
Renard straightens himself on his saddle. There’s several decent answers to give: it is for Lacren, for the Queen, for humankind, for the sake of the innocent that I took my occupation. But truly… “Well, boy. Then I am the same as Ashurst; I have taken blades so I may wake and live. I have achieved life," Renard nods to the sky, “at the sides of great men, to land in a lover’s hand, and now I am Lord of Meurille."
Happy with this retrospective on the path of his life, and finding it inspirational that such a wretch as him managed to straighten himself in the end, Renard flashes Fidel a grin. This talk became more personal than anticipated; but with the boy’s receptiveness, that does not feel bad.
Hopefully, he has taken a positive message from all this. Renard cracks his horse’s reins, and trots his merry departure across the night-lit cobbles.
And does not see Fidel, frozen in total silence on the path to a ruined house, jaw agape, then teeth clenched, staring to the ground, with balled fists that hopelessly loosen into resignation.
Renard wakes the next day and goes to meet with the Mayor.
Dawn yet glows below the horizon. The town’s piney air is even fresher, crisper, and more vitalising than usual, scented and moistened with the dew that clings to every leaf. Thick mist carpets the boughs of the forest up on the hills, but this potential impediment to Renard and the Mayor’s hike will doubtless fade by morning. Early as it is, the streets are quiet, but the windows of the houses Renard passes are warmly lit, the people awake.
Renard arrives first at the Mayor’s office, its door locked and windows black. Crossing his arms, he breathes in, breathes out, and lets himself coolly focus on the upcoming task for today, leaned against the building’s facade and staring up at that thick, hilly forest. Water, rations, spare clothes, first aid kit, compass, matches, rope… he has everything essential while still packing light.
The Mayor’s rotund figure toddles around the bend of the street, his silhouette disrupted by a towerlike protrusion that extends high over his head. Renard squints as the figure approaches, and is both stunned and alarmed to realise this ‘towerlike protrusion’ is a comically massive backpack, stuffed to stretch its seams.
“Good man, is that load not too heavy?" Renard asks once the Mayor drags himself close.
Panting and puffing, he nonetheless smiles chipperly. He assures Renard, seeming not to understand his concern at all, that it is a little weighty, but nothing he can’t manage. He is simply so excited that he had to bring everything good. As he explains this, he drags a second heavy bag forward from behind him — this one, he packed for Renard.
Brow clenched with growing uncertainty, Renard peeks through the pack to see what on earth the man thought to bring. Inside are blankets, biscuits, pieces of a tea set, a foldable seat, a backgammon board…
“What is this?" Renard questions, presenting the backgammon board.
“Oh, that is for teatime! In case we would like a little game when we rest."
Luxuries! Renard massages his cheek, hopelessly confused by the Mayor’s carefree attitude. Though the packs have useful things like water and rope hidden in there, it is squeezed between layers of junk. Gutting this mess could take hours, especially given that the Mayor is ready to argue the merits of every fun bauble, and will need to be convinced to abandon anything.
He is a simple, jolly man excited for a pleasant adventure. Headache as it is, Renard struggles to snap at him — he means only well, would not understand the problem, and it would rattle his mood, a burden even heavier than the damnable bags.
With permission, Renard sets to dissecting the bag, not exhaustively, but at least attempting to strip ten or twenty pounds off. As he observes, the Mayor chirpily informs that he got a letter from Mr. Klee last night. The news that Renard would be coming to Ashurst has taken much pressure off him, and, trusting that Renard will handle things in his absence, he will be spending a few more weeks away to manage his personal problems.
“Great confidence the man has in you," Renard notes, presenting the Mayor with the lightened pack.
“Oh yes. He’s a wonderful fellow," says The Mayor, testing the weight of the new pack. “He helped me write all the directions down right here, so that I can remember." He unfolds a map from his pocket — one more of Ashurst than of the forest, with the path lined abstractly in pen alongside such instructions as, ‘left at the mossy rock.’
Suddenly suspicious, Renard asks the Mayor if he has actually gone into the forest before. The Mayor asserts that he has, though only with Mr. Klee guiding him, and as the subtext tells, only once. His actual grasp of the forest and skill as a navigator smells weak.
Renard is not a navigator by trade, but he’s not new to orienteering either. This being a completely unfamiliar forest, he may have to muster himself to compensate if the Mayor begins getting lost. As Renard thinks about this, the Mayor asks what is to be done about all the items Renard has removed from the pack, desiring to return to his house and deposit them. He has forgotten to bring his keys to the office and cannot simply put them in there.
Renard packs the junk into a sack and hides it under the garden veranda, noting a trip back would cut into their daylight. The mayor, though troubled to leave such treasured things there, is assured enough by Renard’s confidence to accept it.
Finally done with this rigamarole, Renard shoots the Mayor a smile, points to the crest of the forested hills, and begins the march. “Ho! Onward we go, into the pines that tickle the clouds!"
“Oh yes!" The Mayor chirps, toddling into step. Map in hand, he takes the lead.
The enthusiasm is cute. But not even a minute goes by before Renard’s endeared smile freezes and melts, a shock jolting his chest, as he realises he is already tempering his pace so as not to overtake the Mayor, whose gait is extremely slow.
And further than that, they have not even left the main street, but the man is already panting. Wheezing in… out… in… out…
Clarity then strikes like a lightning bolt that going with the Mayor is a horrible idea. Dread clenches around his gut like a clawed fist, scrunching and twisting his insides. Of course! Why on earth did he accept this? It is the Mayor’s atmosphere — it is so harmlessly tender, it completely sucked Renard in. He hadn’t even thought twice about it! Renard automatically shifted into the position of tour guide on the Mayor’s stupid adventure! (And yet would that adventure not be pleasant—
Those heavy breaths wheeze in, out…
“Excuse me," Renard says. “Greatest apologies, I have just remembered that my horse is terribly ill."
“Ohh? Oh no," moans the Mayor.
“Yes, I will need to check on her. My apologies. One moment," Renard blabbers, then breaks away, mind aflame with only the thought of escape as he turns the street corner — and bolts.
Renard quickly tacks his horse and dashes to see Fidel.
It’s strange. This clarity in ditching the Mayor roils worries inside him like crashing waves, sensible worries, of the anomaly’s potential danger and the need to approach it with a strict eye — exactly as Fidel, prepared with weapons and poisons rather than board games and cakes, had insisted last night. Renard had forgotten all through that conversation with the Mayor that he had promised anything to Fidel! Or, no, somewhere he did remember, but so obviously incompatible was Fidel’s serious approach with the Mayor’s day hike that Renard had abandoned him before even trying to bring him up.
The realisation that he thinks in this manner is frightening. Choking back a pit of dread and guilt, Renard refocuses on his task and comes to Fidel’s street.
Renard dismounts and hitches his horse to the fence. Peering down the path to the shabby house, Fidel is outside. He sits in the shade against the side of the house, staring over the patch of mud that has replaced the garden.
“Hail, young Fidel. Come up off of the dirt there, we will talk," Renard calls.
Fidel crosses his arms on his knees, head tilting in confession that he did hear Renard, but gaze still locked on the mud.
“You and I will scale the forest," Renard calls again, to no response. Fidel is ignoring him.
Renard puckers his lips, irritated but moreso concerned. Fidel had been so excited to go on this adventure. Something has either happened, or, more horrifyingly, without knowing how or why, Renard has once again displeased someone so thoroughly they have come to hate him. Anger lighting his gut, Renard stomps past the threshold of the fence and onto the property’s grounds.
Fidel rises, fetches a hoe, and begins tilling the empty dirt.
“What is this joke, boy? Pushing the mud." Renard snaps his fingers. “I am here; look to me."
Fidel rolls his neck and plants his chin on the butt of the hoe. “I’m sorry, sir. It turns, my duties are here today."
“Your duties? What, this farce?" Renard spits as Fidel again raises his hoe to swing it back into the dirt. Its edge crunches the ground, deep and heavy. “You look as a slave, shoving the earth — ridiculous. Speak frankly if you are to speak, and straighten your back if you are to stand. You are troubled by me."
Fidel strokes the hoe twice more, each time slower. He glances aside, guilty, uncomfortable, and plainly a little intimidated. His silence now is less so defiant, than simply uncertain and scared.
“Well," Renard huffs. “Scribe for me a map, if you will still help. Then you may sit back in this dirt," the instant Renard says this, he snorts at the idea, “the first of many great experiences you will lose by stewing in your own thoughts."
“Sir, I…" Fidel tries, but the thought wanes, too complex to articulate.
“Will you accompany me into the forest or will you not?" asks Renard.
Fidel, still struggling to convey anything, falls silent again. By his uncomfortably averted gaze and half-hearted shrug, however, Renard surmises his answer leans more towards ‘no’ than ‘yes’.
“Come then. I’ll fetch some parchment." With that, Renard paces back to his horse and shuffles through his saddlebags for paper and quills, Fidel trailing miserably behind. Resigned pain spears through Renard’s chest as he searches. Part of him, it seems, had been greatly looking forward to going with Fidel. But in giving up the possibility of it happening, a cooler voice assures Renard that this may be for the best anyway. Now he won’t be putting the boy in any potential danger.
“Here." Renard presents the parchment, quills, ink, and nods for Fidel use the fence as a table to write. “The court did train you in letters?"
Fidel winces as if stabbed, then wispily answers, “yes." He takes the quill, and in mumbling to himself as he scribes, comes in to a rhythm: “You begin here at the head of Duruchs street… duck around the gate and up the trail until you reach the large, fallen tree… cut overtop of it and hook left to rejoin the trail…" In reciting these familiar pathways, he is walking through these very scenes in his mind, and more than that, imagining himself guiding Renard through them.
A tinge of regret comes into his voice, his quill slowing. It seems the boy may still want to change his mind about not going.
Renard plants his thumb on his lip. Actually, realistically, the boy wishes to go. Some devil in his mind, though, is hampering him. Renard has never been graceful about emotional matters, but does find himself moved enough to ask, What’s wrong?
But, just as he gasps to speak, colour and movement flash in the house’s front window. Renard cranes his neck – the motion is already gone. Given the deadness of the building, Renard had forgotten that others inhabit the property.
Fidel’s father, particularly, who may want explanation for a stranger chatting up his son — a cumbersome prospect, but nothing difficult. Renard shifts onto the path to receive him.
A great clatter of metal pots and smashing objects sounds out from the house. Someone could be buried under a mound of fallen items in there! Renard jogs to help; glass shatters, midway there, the front door slams open.
The figure that emerges glares once over the yard, bony fingers clutching the doorframe, and as if lashing a whip, screams, “FIIIIIDEEEEL!"
This man, skinny, hunched, and wicked-faced as a troll, reeks of alcohol. Simultaneously put-together and utterly dishevelled, he wears an outfit of expensive blue silk that has been horribly muddied with dirt and sweat, as much as the poorest pauper’s rags, but with too much pride to ever swap to something more clean. His face is poorly shaven, with whiskers sprouting all over his chin like weeds. In the room behind him is a hall, stuffed thick with antique junk and discarded liquor bottles. His eyes protrude madly round, but are pitted in deep bags.
“Stop bothering the guests!" he shouts at Fidel, precise as an arrow. Fidel sets his ink and quill aside and stands. The man’s glowering stops and he straightens himself to address Renard. “I’m sorry for him. He forgets how to—" the man coughs, fondles for an ale bottle, swigs it, and wipes his chin dry with his sleeve. “—conduct himself. Fidel!"
“The boy’s been a cherub, sir. Pray me, have we met?" asks Renard.
“Have we? Ohh, I’m sure so; someone dressed as fine as you, ah. Perhaps at one of those galas…" he slumps against the doorframe as if about to faint, his glazed stare rolling again to Fidel. He beckons the boy over. Snatches his satchel, and scrounges through it, messily shoving aside the canisters of chemicals.
“Well, if you’re curious to my business…" Renard offers, trying to fill the awkward silence.
But the dishevelled man ignores the prompt, scraping through the bottom of the bag like a pig snuffling at a trough. He then withdraws two copper coins, flat on his palm, and chuckles, rolling his eyes to Renard as if sharing a joke.
Extremely unnerved and unsure what to make of this, Renard can only grimace.
He throws the satchel at Fidel. “He’s being a little thief and put it all in his socks. What is that face for? Are you cringing at me?"
“It’s on the mantle, Father. You were sleeping," says Fidel.
“It’s on the mantle…" the man mumbles, and lumbers into the house. Another peal of smashing glass sounds ferociously, as Renard stands with Fidel in stunned silence.
“I do not know what to say of this," Renard admits.
“Mother and I look after him as well as we can," says Fidel, unbothered by the smashing.
“After that wrecked drunkard." Renard kneads his forehead and temple. Muttered spite quietly flows off Fidel’s tongue, ‘he takes all our paychecks…’, confirmation of Renard’s suspicions. A boy cannot ‘look after’ a man as broken as that: drunk by daybreak, shouting around guests, barely able to register Renard. The very thought of it feels obscene.
Lumbering steps stomp back through the house. The man returns to the doorframe and grins yellow-toothed up at Renard. “Twenty-five, twenty-six, it’s all there, ah."
“Wonderful, sir," says Renard.
“Yeah." Leaned heavy against the doorframe, he squints. “What were you here for? Oh, you should come in."
“He’s from Sebilles, Father," pipes Fidel.
“Sir Renard Cox," Renard presents his hand for a handshake.
“Oh! Then I know you," the man nods vigorously, then loosely shakes Renard's hand, barely remembering to. “Sir now, so you’re a Sir now? That’s great to hear. Renard Cox from Sebilles… ah, you’re here for the contracts. Moving up in the world then, oh yes. Sharp as those blades you carry you are, to come and do business with me. Like a lot from Sebilles, ha! They cannot see a good deal like we can, eh?"
“It takes a keen eye."
“Mhm." He swigs his ale and shuffles through a desk aside the door, withdrawing a piece of parchment. “That is 60,000 lucras, for the deed to the mines in Meurille. You’ll make that back in—"
“What mines in Meurille!"
“Compose yourself! Braying rude as an ass in my house," The man snaps. “You’ll make back that deposit within a year of operation. Now, it is true, the Crown stripped from me the resources to properly further this enterprise, but it is in that very abortion of my efforts I can assure you yet the presence of the lodes. It is a steep contract for some, but for one bold enough to take it, more than worthwhile. 60,000." He huffs, straightening his back and tilting up his sharp chin in an echo of the nobleman he once was. But behind that highbred haughtiness, lingering in his peeled eyes is a sense of extreme desperation and pressure.
As the sweat rolls down the man’s brow, a faint recognition solidifies. Squinting, Renard voices incredulously, “Lord Asphodelis?"
The man straightens his shoulders, rubs his chin, then rolls his eyes and swigs his drink. “They say only Asphodel now," he confirms, “maybe you can do me back the last syllable," and waggles the parchment noisily at Renard.
Though stunned to learn where this old, barely-even-acquaintance ended up, even Renard can tell the questions on his tongue are foolish ones to speak. The matter is also passed enough that it is less so guilt than relief, for having correctly not involved himself in this mess, that crosses Renard’s chest when he remembers Asphodelis’ bullying. Stinking of liquor, in a house too expensive, unkempt and unwashed in luxurious silks — this is a man whose failure was so great, it broke him, and even if Renard did accuse him of drinking away his son and wife’s prospects, of miserly clinging to rotting heirlooms, of forcing by his poverty of spirit his family to live on an embarrassing homestead surrounded by irascible temper and shattered glass, there would be no point.
How did this happen? How did you, a Lord, let this happen? These questions too, while serious ones for Renard, have no point being spoken right now.
His drunken mind wandering elsewhere in the silence, the former lord Asphodel lays the parchment aside. It is not a deed for any mines, much less any mines in Meurille, a flat plainsland where valuable metals are unlikely to form. It is an invoice for a modest purchase of salpeter and lye, a leftover from Fidel’s work.
Former-lord Asphodel stares at that paper, dreamy and lost. He grasps the door as if to leave, when his gaze trails again onto Fidel.
“Your mother’s still working today. Go on and help her," he mumbles, lingering to know Fidel heard him, and closes the door.
The silence that stretches outside on that doorstep is truly oppressive. Even trying to laugh off the pressure by mocking the former Lord Asphodel feels dangerous.
Fidel, too, is speechless, staring motionless down at the ground. While the specific emotions this encounter invoked are complex beyond Renard’s fathoming, that this boy feels defeated, and may be near crying, is obvious. What to say here? Well, as Renard has found, oftentimes action makes a better solution than words, and whatever Fidel thinks he will do, he is better off not doing alone.
Feeling this subtle attention on him, Fidel glances up and meets Renard’s gaze. He nods, wiping his eye, and in this silent but immediate agreement, the two walk together, up the path to Renard’s horse.
Renard and Fidel ride to the mouth of the forest trail, where the pair dismount.
The refreshing scent of damp earth and healthy bark calms the nerves, both for Renard and Fidel. Though initially conspicuously quiet, the simple, familiar, and indeed exciting work of escorting Renard through the trails soon focuses Fidel away from his pain and relaxes him greatly.
His familiarity with the forest, and enthusiasm to be sharing it, is obvious. A great smile beaming on his face, he tells stories of how certain big trees fell, how the lumber from different species is used, and how these paths were first explored and forged. Though truthfully not all that interested, Renard nods along to indulge the boy, who is regardless proving a keen and quick navigator.
Particularly, when Fidel pauses on a mossy ledge and splays his hands to present a hole in the canopy below, which exposes a sweeping view of the shrunken roofs of the town of Ashurst, and announces they are halfway there, Renard is stunned. Even with the interruptions, they have barely been walking an hour.
The Mayor’s estimate of this being a day-long hike is probably only accurate when a member of the party is highly unfit. A blush lances across Renard’s cheeks for his slowness in realising this, and with inexplicable shame for abandoning the man, while all the same knowing that doing so was right.
Tamped leaves and dirt crunch beneath their boots. The heat of embarrassment soon fades in the nippy mountain air, and when ducking through a string of logs fallen off the trail, Fidel stares up at the canopy and lightly sighs.
“I often come up here to get away from Father," he confesses, then proceeds on.
“I have known that man too well for my tongue to lash him," Renard says, ducking under the same logs, “but today I saw a cockerel, legs trapped beneath his nest, pecking at his own brood. I would be ashamed to fight my son before company, much less before company of worth, as much as I would be ashamed to strike myself across the face."
“Like a trapped cockerel… it sticks well," Fidel mutters. “Sir, I will ask, you knew him."
“Very briefly. We spoke at a party, most a decade ago. Some matter of finance earned him poor repute — by courtesy, I pried not further."
“I see."
“I would not pry you either." But, unable to restrain himself, he sharply barks a laugh, “for those mines in Meurille."
“It was on the word of a careless prospector that he considered the project," Fidel interjects like a spear, “then by the cruelty of an Ordish developer that he was scammed for all he was worth. He was a trusting man," Fidel insists, difficult to place whether he is defending his father, or criticising him for foolishness.
“You are hurt either way," Renard notes.
“It’s all nonsense," Fidel mutters with a surprising edge of spite, even as he heaves a breath so leaden and heavy he might cry.
He shakes off the sentiment, refocuses, and scrambles up a rotting tree trunk. Leaned against an elevated ledge, it forms a precarious bridge over the steep, unnavigable remains of an old mudslide, the end of which extends so far down, it is beyond sight.
Renard tests the bottom of the unsteady bridge, leaning the weight of his foot on it as if dipping his toe into water. Fidel observes him from above like a lion upon a rock.
“How much happenstance has brought us here?" Fidel muses out loud. “And what use is the light when it’s God who spits at me?"
Too preoccupied with the log to grasp Fidel’s words, Renard scrunches his brow. Fidel waits with chin raised in an unshakable, unconscious echo of natural authority.
The log is rickety, but Fidel scampered up. Renard fumbles step one... two... three, focus demanded in every footfall to keep the log from spinning or snapping. A loud creak issues underfoot. Tongue tight in his teeth, Renard grasps a thin, nearby branch for support. Four...
“—Wait," says Fidel. “Please, go back down. Let’s use another way."
Renard does.
Fidel scampers back down, hugs his arms, and trembles beside Renard like a hunted rabbit.
“Steady up, boy," Renard claps him on the shoulder. “You steer the course well yet."
Fidel digests these words, then weakly dips his head.
“Lad, be assured. This venture would be greatly more arduous without you." Though, it may be hazardous to let him near the anomaly — but that is a bridge to cross once they get to it.
Fidel delicately slides his thumb down the leather strap of his satchel — then nods, reclaiming his spirit. “Forward, then," he announces.
“Onward," agrees Renard.
Trudging through the fallen leaves and tickling shrubs, the two proceed deeper.
Despite that spell of doubt, Fidel cuts through the forest as smoothly as a fish up a river.
His demeanour holds more focused now than he was playing tour guide. But his energy intensifies with quiet excitement as he begins to whisper, “we’re near…"
The treeline ends at a clearing. Fidel crouches in the bushes to hide himself, points, and whispers, “there."
Renard slaps the boy along and strides into the clearing.
For, though he cares not to discount Fidel’s caution, hunting ghouls has honed Renard’s sense for the presence of danger. As testified by the Mayor and Mr. Klee, that sense is not firing now, and the atmosphere of this damp, moss-caked clearing is as inoffensive as the rest of the forest. A shallow stream trickles down a ledge and slices through the clearing on a mild incline. Renard steps over the piddly thing and then, observes the ‘anomaly’.
Floating just above eye level, overlaid on the air, is an array of iridescent, semitransparent ‘tiles’ of pure light. Like twinkling stars, each tile’s presence is persistent, but ephemeral, seeming to fade in and out by the angle they are observed but never giving the sense that they are not there. Even at their brightest, the trees, moss, and stones of the clearing are clearly visible through the titles, though somewhat distorted as if the image were filtered through water. Queerly, no matter the angle Renard regards the thing at, the array always faces him in the exact same alignment, though it does not feel to be rotating. It feels both flat and static; moving but still. Renard’s head aches mildly at the impossible logic.
He backs up a step. Once he stops thinking, the headache fades.
It is bizarre. When he is not thinking, there is also no sense of danger — or even really anything. The absolute lack of presence this ‘anomaly’ has is perhaps the oddest thing about it, because it ruthlessly tempts Renard to do the same as the Mayor and Mr. Klee did: shrug and say, ‘what an odd thing. It’s there,’ as if there were nothing to note about it. There is no urgency. It evokes nothing. In fact, because it is so inoffensive, but so obviously strange, it actually becomes funny.
“Sir Renard, do you see?" insists Fidel.
A chuckle rolls from Renard’s chest like Jupiter’s thunder. “It is nothing!" He thumbs his throat. “…Is what instinct begs, a light mockery of this strange thing." He breathes out and massages his head, straining to shutter his heart with iron, and squints in to inspect it again.
Amid the overlapping jumble of the twinkling array, like the pit in the eye of a whirlpool, there is a single, strange, ash-blue lump poking from the spot where most of the tiles converge. Unlike the rest of the array, the lump behaves like a normal object when Renard changes his angle of observation; it does not rotate to face him. Otherwise, the nature of this lump is hard to define: in its stability, it appears stonelike, but the softness about it looks the same as living flesh.
It is like the tip of some larger form, poking out of the anomaly. A single trail of yellow fluid drips slowly down its peak. On Renard’s hip, Kingslayer hums.
“That wasn’t there before," says Fidel. “What is Mr. Klee telling everyone, some harmless balderdash… you’ll solve this."
“Hm," agrees Renard.
Renard fetches a stick off the ground and pokes the array. The stick passes through without any resistance, not acknowledging the array at all, as if it were simply passing through air.
Fidel nervously backs off several steps. Renard removes his glove and touches the array — same effect. There is not even a tingle on his skin.
“Take distance," orders Renard, unsheathing Kingslayer. Eyes fixed on the anomaly before him, he watches Fidel scramble up the ledge and back into the treeline in his periphery. Satisfied the boy is as secure as he’ll get, Renard draws Kingslayer closer, and closer to the shimmering breach—
—And that is when, with a scream, the world snaps.
With a ferocious scream like a burst kettle, the ground lurches, the air bursts, and swept on the tide of a ferocious torrent, Renard’s spine slams against a post. The world behind his closed eyelids flashes white. Pain rips through his beaten back. Submerged in thrashing, frothing water, its current more swift and massive than even the harshest of flash-flood rapids, Renard barely has the presence of mind to know that he is presently pinned against a column of bark — except for one arm, dangling free in the overpowering tide, holding Kingslayer, the current only an inch from ripping it from his yet failing grip.
No! Screaming inside himself, Renard’s heart races quicker than lightning. He strains for leverage against the tree — but his body is not moving. Far beyond the basic strength of the current, Renard realises in horror, the frigidity of this water is so unfathomably absolute, it has sapped the vitality from his very flesh and marrow, so that despite the incredible heat and panic burning circuits through him internally, he can only stay cold, posed, and still.
Except for the arm that holds Kingslayer, whose blade shudders tremendously, as if about to snap from its own frenzied vibration. Submerged in this water, its enchantment is plainly working in overdrive, stressed as it has never been before — but Renard will never doubt Kingslayer’s might or power. It is always a trustworthy thing.
The water crashing over Kingslayer is, so blessing of blessings, comfortably warm. Straining his digits to the utmost, Renard forces his hand closed around the hilt with as vicelike a grip he can manage, and heaves his arm forward against the ruthless current. His biceps scream, veins begging to pop, bulging up his from fingers to his temples, and his neck is a heaping of cord. The water is so strong that fighting it feels like wrestling a mammoth, that it will amputate his shoulder from its socket as easily as a child tears off the arm of a paper doll, but by a miracle of unremitting adrenaline and force of will, Renard draws the blade flat to his chest, where the water will not steal it, but only pins it to him more surely.
Kingslayer buzzes. The water warms. Though his heart kicks with joy, there can be no celebration. Having been submerged underwater all this while, his eyes clenched shut, mouth clamped shut, and having inhaled nothing as urgently as he holds for dear life, his chest kicks and strains with agony, begging for air. It is already a testament to his incredible physical control that he has not taken in poison, but if he gasps, it is over.
Calm as he can manage as his throat bucks, Renard throws his free hand up and drags himself up the tree. His head breaks out of the water — every instinct commands: breathe! — but he forces himself yet to hold. Only once secured as high as he can get, hanging himself out of the water by a branch, and only after tilting his head down and shaking off the worst flowing trails that still stick to his skin, does he finally indulge in a breath.
Restricting himself to just that careful gasp, droplets of water trickling yet down his face, he squints to survey the scene.
Two immediate things catch his attention.
First is the anomaly. Those ephemeral, shimmering tiles have solidified into a pale rainbow of chalky squares, which have separated and dilated. Within the oval they now form is a visible tear, and though Renard has only a glimpse before the image fades, he sees within that tear a vision of somewhere else — a lakeside with black sky, gnarled trees, and the silhouetted peaks of tents — so real that, if he tread forward, he would find himself in that place. The deadened tiles then putter inert completely, clattering against each other like decorations of a mobile and falling, like shells, into the rushing water below. A stationary mass is left in the centre of where they hung — Renard is too distracted to inspect this further.
For the second pressing thing is Fidel. Safe upon the elevated ledge from the rushing water, he is nonetheless scowling with anger as he faces his own threat. Trailing out from where the rift once was is a strange mass of slime, seeping itself along with air towards him, with five distinct long tendrils. Though initially appearing like some five-pointed star, the longer Renard squints, the more the impression solidifies that there is something distantly familiar about this shape. The moment too urgent to contemplate further, Renard realises this shape feels familiar because it is humanoid. It is as though the ghost of a man has been horribly stretched and all his limbs have become these whipping, boneless, melting taffy masses.
The man-slime is snotlike, watery and mucoid, containing many interspersed flecks of crimson that glow, shift, bloom, and wither in fractal patterns — an image comes to Renard’s mind of tiny plants in an airy ocean. There is again an odd familiarity to this sight, though how so is beyond Renard.
This slimy man-effigy sweeps up towards Fidel, as if to engulf him in its trailing appendages. It is a strangely still and sober moment, watching this monster bear down on the boy. There is no panic, there is no guilt. There is only the simple, factual acknowledgement in his heart that it is impossible for Renard to intervene quickly enough, and that he should not bother worrying about issues he cannot change.
Screaming with furious indignation as the man-slime’s arm lashes up to crash upon him, Fidel rips his full satchel off his shoulder and tosses it at the slime. Direct hit. Cans and bottles go whirling through the air and lodge solidly into what should be the thing’s face, while the satchel and its weightier contents land in its torso. Though seemingly a desperate and fruitless gesture, it garners immediate and shocking results: these objects seem to absorb, or rather soak in the slime, the shape of which flags, heavier and now anchored to these objects, and comes sagging to the ground.
Confident and quick, Fidel darts out of the thing’s shadow just as it collapses upon where he stood. Renard glimpses just enough to see the slime-effigy now sinking into the dirt, withered as if miserably melting, and Fidel standing above it, wary enough to keep far enough back that it will not surprise him with any sudden attacks, but staring down at it with vicious and victorious contempt.
That cold factual surrender of this boy vanishes from Renard’s chest instantly. As Renard closes his eyes, conscious to shake his face dry of those yet-trailing droplets, what bubbles in its place is the excited warmth of joy and amazement. This boy’s instinct and nerve, to fight and win, are both extremely good.
Sparing himself only this thought, Renard heaves to pull himself into the boughs of the tree—
You’re so annoying. A voice, smooth and whispery, cuts into his thoughts.
Like he were a fruit, an invisible force then plucks Renard from the tree and tosses him through the air. It is an odd sensation — while he has no visual bearings on what has happened, the motion feels simultaneously as if he has been lobbed like a toy ball from a hand, and like the entire world has knifed sideways so that Renard would fall parallel to the earth, the gravity hoisting him along smoothly.
Renard lands, mildly tumbling, upon only vaguely moist earth. While plainly not a kind gesture, an instinctive sense comes over Renard that neither he nor Fidel are in danger, as the noise of the thrashing rapids eases calm. Squinting up, he has been deposited upon the ledge beside Fidel, whose impression of the situation is apparently the opposite of Renard’s. Tensed to fight, he holds his sickle, his attention locked elsewhere even as he glances down at Renard.
Renard towels his face dry on Fidel’s shirt and gestures him down. Though uneasy, Fidel heeds the order and steps back, his shoulders and grip untensing.
In the middle of the clearing, where the anomalous rift once was, there now hangs the upper torso of a man. Extending from the air like the figurehead of a ship, the sight is unnerving, grotesque, and bizarre, his midsection severed perfectly and innards exposed, but not falling or trailing out of their place inside the man’s chest cavity. The back of his head oozes with pus. He is posed as if shielding himself, and his face is blank.
The man is dead. No wisp of vitality radiates in these preserved remains, sitting motionless as a gargoyle. By the ashy blue skin, Renard intuits this is the grim fossil hinted by the ‘tip’ of that lump, which pressed open the rift. But even for the great impression the sight of this body leaves, it is not the most vital thing here.
Standing upon the dead man’s shoulders is a second figure. Short in stature, with arms crossed, its slit-pupiled eye stares down at Fidel and Renard, watching them coolly. There is a cherubic air to this entity, its gender hard to place, but inhumanity attested by the fine, shimmering iridescence of its hair and skin, twinkling like a snake’s scales. It wears a green bandanna around its neck, a cute adornment more fitting a loyal and beloved dog, but the fabric at the knot shifts in a strange illusion, as if there were two images of this creature superimposed on each other, fading and overlapping in which is more prominent, with a purposeful twitch, of broken, withered wings unfurling.
Renard’s dumbfoundedness dissolves the instant it clicks, what exactly this creature’s identity is.
A tornado of incredible rage and hatred crashes over Renard’s mind and rips control of his body out from under him. It is strange, knowing he is acting insensibly but having no means to stop it, as he howls like a barbarian, fluidly draws Kingslayer, and charges for the precipice of the ledge, as if to run in a straight line over the air and plunge a death blow into the creature.
He is a bull, that monster is the capote. Nothing else in the world exists except trampling, slashing, mincing, destroying this horrible, horrible thing…
But something is wrong. His knees buckle; he crashes face-first into the ground. He is not roaring or howling so much as gagging and choking, moss pressing in to his eye and cheek. But these hindrances do not matter. Renard throws his arm forward, shuddering against the forest floor like a seizing worm, dragging himself inch by inch forward, closer towards that fixed image, of the serpent, staring at him so dispassionately out of the corner of its eye.
That whispered voice cuts again into his mind: stupid.
Nausea spikes through Renard’s blood. Blackness blots his vision. He gasps, throat convulsing, the air too thick and heavy to breathe. The heat and adrenaline coursing through his body, Renard realises abruptly, is now not actually from anger, but from panic, as every nerve screams he is dying.
How!? He dimly thinks. Straining to heft up his arm, he sees. He is not holding Kingslayer.
Dread drops cold in his gut. Stupid. The meaning of this word, spoken frankly but layered with tenors, comes clear. You’re not in a state to fight me. Even trying to was a horrible choice. You wouldn’t have won. But now you’re going to kill yourself before I even touch you. And I wasn’t even going to touch you. But you’re still going to let me win. On your own. By me doing nothing. Because you are stupid.
And everything you’ve lived for, and everything about you, that made you even try that, is stupid.
The last strength exits Renard’s body as his face slumps to the dirt, mentally defeated. The panic pressing at all angles of his mind is now indeed familiar; it is the same powerlessness he felt before Verdan. But even for the sirens blaring, and the frustrated hatred boiling impotently away at the back of his skull, his mind holds impeccably lucid, that this encounter in front of him is an important one to heed. Every snippet of data he can get from this beast now, he needs.
The creature — Arsene, the root of this world’s rot — regards him and Fidel yet. Its eye shifts smoothly from Fidel, who it apparently judges as no one important, to Renard. The stare holds, one, two… and the creature relaxes, seeming greatly relieved that Renard has understood its fundamentally non-hostile approach enough to stop fighting.
By the way the creature shimmers in and out, in the same ephemeral way of the anomaly, Renard’s mind catches up to his gut with the realisation that he and Fidel are only seeing a projection. The creature is not truly here. He can intuit that the real Arsene would be vastly more powerful just by its presence. Its decision to address them in this fashion is a merciful, and perhaps noncommittal gesture.
Its crossed arms loosen somewhat, and it nods shortly, as if convincing itself to an agreement.
Fidel, still uneasy but sensing no attack, drags Renard away from the edge of the ledge. He sits him against a nearby tree, where, with a vague jerk of the head, Renard commands him to fetch Kingslayer, which lays on the sod only some feet away. Every muscle inside him burns with fatigue. How he lost Kingslayer is clear to him. Exhausted after fighting the current, and impassioned with blind fury, he overtaxed his body and simply dropped the blade.
It was a monumentally stupid mistake, moreso just plain buffoonery. A punchline of a bardic jester, so audacious it would become common myth, earning the children’s curious oohs and aahs of ‘but really? Could that happen? How?’.
Renard’s attention is pulled from Fidel, as exhaustion too strikes Arsene. Perched still upon the gargoyle-corpse, the creature’s shoulders slump and its posture wholly deflates. The voice that weaves into Renard’s mind this time is not chiding or snide so much as purely miserable: Just leave me alone.
Incandescent rage sears Renard’s mind sheer white.
Youuuuu demon! Renard wishes he had the strength to scream, jaw clenched, eyes and neck bulging in reignited fury, but body too weak to do anything more than seize against the tree. If he could leap through dimensions and bite this thing’s head from its shoulders! Leave you alone!? Leave you alone! The evils you’ve weaved, the souls you have ruined, the rot you have given us, the wars between men, the loss of our father, the death in the water, and the phenomenon that we should die at all — but we are the foul, and we must leave you alone! We do not know you! We can not reach you! So how dare you!? While you slink through your pit weeping as if you are some poor, battered dove!!
But for how Renard’s mouth froths with rabid conniption, Arsene’s gaze has already turned away. Like a mirage shimmering out of view, between one wrathful convulsion and the next, the image of Arsene vanishes as if it was never there at all.
Renard could howl all the curses in the world, but the only thing to hear them now would be the chilled forest air.
Strangling a scream in his throat, Renard punches the ground. Flecks of battered mud squelch under the moss and spatter across his arm. And he would punch it again, and again, and again, pulp the earth like a rotten peach, were it not for Fidel, toting Kingslayer, who approaches him with wide, fearful eyes.
It is not Renard’s anger that has troubled the boy; he is simply rattled by the encounter. The rage recedes shockingly quickly as instinctive awareness of what he must do comes to him. Renard wrenches on a smile, accepts the sword, and thanks the boy.
Fidel nods distractedly, staring still over the clearing.
“The trouble is passed," Renard assures him, a sliver of strength returning to his muscles with the retrieval of Kingslayer. He holds to rest only a moment, breathing yet ragged and body still aching, before hefting himself up to the ledge to join Fidel. Though he does spare a glance to the spot where the snot-man dissolved, there is no mark or indication of anything peculiar there; it has indeed passed.
“Was that a ghoul?" Fidel murmurs, as if not daring to draw attention to himself by speaking louder than the water gently tinkling below, gaze shifting laggardly to Renard.
Renard purses his lips. With an absent-minded nod, unsure what to tell the boy, the words that rumble out his throat are, “yes, it’s like one."
Fidel falls silent. He does not need to know the specifics. Adrenaline tempers away as the two of them breathe this pause, the information for each slowly digesting.
But the more the peace of their safety veils itself over Renard, the more forcefully his heart hammers below. It is not a fight or flight warning or a sign of nearby danger; this vice of a fist that twists his heart into a hard pit is a far more delicate horror, of a spectator’s objectivity calmly assessing his place in the last five minutes; how a waylaid traveller sprints without pause through a wicked thunderstorm towards the distant lantern-light of a sole, roadside inn, but only in the clarity of the day afterward can see the path he took, the unseen river behind, and the utter, sheer coincidence that his route that night aligned with the bridge.
He came very, very close, today, to never returning to Colette.
Renard shoves his present worry out of his mind to address the scene left before him.
Arsene is gone. So is the rift. The gargoyle half-corpse remains, floating in the exact same fixed spot it has been this whole time. The clearing is also now flooded with water, though this no longer a violent, rushing stream, but a calm, smooth lake whose overflow meanders further down into the forest. A trickle of water is what feeds the lake, descending in a gentle but consistent flow from an inexplicable spot in the air, positioned where the rift once was.
Knowing the supernatural coldness of the water, Renard instructs Fidel to stay upon the ledge. The boy does so without complaint, watching and seeming calmed that Renard has control of the situation. That calmness confirms to Renard that Fidel does not understand the gravity of what they just encountered, though that ignorance is frankly for the best.
Kingslayer hums on Renard’s thigh as he sloshes through the shallow water. Ugh! Dare you not think me weak! I’ve might enough to show you, it brays impetuously as it warms the lake, pride wounded by its stressing at all. Renard pats its scabbard, rolling his eyes. It does not feel, intuitively, like the blade has been damaged, but the prospect of Kingslayer’s powers having a limit is something that, in all his career after so many battles, he has never before had to consider.
The corruption in this water must run very, very deep. Renard bends in to inspect the remains of the rift, where the water is trickling through.
It’s strange. Similar to how the torso of the gargoyle abruptly ends, this water seems to be abruptly sourced from nothing, flowing perpetually from a tiny fixed spot in the air. Though he prods around, he also determines that there is no portal here. That scene he saw of the campsite at night is now inaccessible, and even easing his finger into the flow of the water, there is no greater flow beyond the spot he sees; it simply ends.
He does, however, sense that he could force the edges of the hole wider if he pulled them with enough strength. Fidel’s impression of this being an injury comes to his mind. If the anomaly was something like a scab, this may be more of a direct, open wound. A small one, granted, but still one. Whether it would close by itself is unclear, but if it can be pulled wider, perhaps it can also be squeezed shut.
Coming to this conclusion, Renard shifts his attention to the gargoyle.
It is a man, ashen and dead. Though Kingslayer hums when Renard brings it near to the fellow, the only effect is a receding of the pus-polyps that dribble down his head, similar as to what happened with Verdan. Otherwise, though, there is nothing. Renard judges that the man is indeed completely dead and inert, with no lingering ghoulish surprises afoot from his apparent corruption.
Renard feels the body. The surface squeezes soft like living skin, stretched across what feels like uninterrupted stone underneath. Though the body is locked in place in the air, Renard deduces by jostling it mildly that he may be able to dislodge it, and carry it elsewhere for identification or burial.
Renard looks closer, two more salient details now jumping out to him.
For one, clutched in the man’s hands is the hilt of a dagger. The blade is shattered, and wreathed around the shards that remain are several strange, wilted, inky ribbons, with the exact same glossy black hue as Kingslayer. Interested, Renard gently tugs a ribbon — they are all tangled together, and a gentle but persistent crackling noise arises from them as if Renard were marching over a shell beach. White fractures, like lightning marks, spread over these ribbons and the remains of the blade. Renard stops his investigation there, lest these remains shatter too, but does peek to inspect the innards of the blade. The metal is grey. The blackness is only adhered to the dagger as a thin outer coat.
And the second major thing, the scraps of the tunic the man wears are a striking scarlet red, the same as the colours worn by Verdanheim’s military guard.
A sinking sensation comes over Renard’s gut that this affair with the anomaly may have been more than coincidence.
Renard orders Fidel to collect branches and rope, if he has any. Fidel nods and gives a dubious look to his satchel as Renard joins him upon the ledge, but when he musters the courage to touch the thing, is surprised. The quality of the leather has actually improved, as has that of all the implements inside, including the rope. Though Renard would not dare to consume any food or water Fidel brought, it seems that contact with the crimson snot-thing actually had beneficial effects on these tools — an uncommon, but possible phenomenon as a side effect of some monsters’ properties.
Renard and Fidel then fashion together a frame of branches that Renard ties tightly around the water-hole. They also construct a sling out of branches, rope, and cloth to carry the gargoyle-corpse. Finally, Renard fishes from the water the fallen tiles of the anomaly, which are now inert squares of a chalky, talc-like material, all evoking no reaction from Kingslayer.
Renard removes the bundle of branches from the water-hole. As hoped, the pressure of the branches squeezing in on the hole has closed it, and no new water is flowing into the clearing.
“You’ve a fresh lake in your woods," heaving the full sling onto his shoulders, Renard jokes to Fidel.
“The story of this blights its beauty, sir," says Fidel.
“So it is, keen ranger. Come then; to trail."
Their business in the clearing done, the pair depart down the hill.
For several days, Renard remains in Ashurst to organise the pumping and removal of the water.
While it might be safe to leave it there and cordon the area off, the extreme response of Kingslayer and the sheerness of its cold suggests to Renard a depth of corruption that demands diligent countermeasures. If this water is especially cursed, it is probably best not to leave it around. And even if it isn’t, its unassuming appearance could quickly mislead hikers to its danger. It is shallow enough to ford, but the cold would freeze a man still and potentially dead if none intervened.
This work lets Renard distract himself from thinking much about his and Fidel’s encounter in the woods. He will, of course, have to confront it eventually, as he will have to give a more serious report about the matter than the reassuring ‘problem’s solved!’ he gives the Mayor, to Lord Byrus and eventually the Queen, but for as long as he can avoid it, he will.
Further in Ashurst is the issue of Fidel. Spending these extra days in the town, Renard sees that Fidel spends most of his time contriving reasons not to go home. Between his work, Fidel has been inserting himself into the water removal efforts and drifting around Renard for things to do. Renard indulges this drive as casually as he can; if not for fear that the boy will wander back into the forest at night without other distractions, then for understanding that living around his father makes him miserable.
Under normal circumstances, Renard would pile a thousand shining accolades on the boy for his genuinely impressive work, tell every good school and employer of his worth, and leave having buffed his reputation enough that a thousand new doors would open for him.
But with Fidel’s father sucking all the family’s funds down the bottle, and with his acerbic temperament battering at the boy’s heart, that may not be enough to give Fidel’s life even a single opportunity.
That impression is strengthened after meeting Fidel’s mother, a woman withered from working five jobs who still struggles to put bread on the table – and yet loves her husband too much to leave him alone in that grave of a house. Beyond just physically, she is exhausted emotionally, and it is with an eerie kind of passive disregard that she hears Renard’s proposal in a restaurant over dinner.
“Great. What am I meant to do, then," she sighs at the conclusion.
“What do you sigh for? For what have you toiled? He is not a pet," Renard spits.
She twirls her wine in its glass. “Of course. Yes." And massages her eye.
“These connections value more than any so pence by drudgery farmed," Renard assures. “That opens a shimmer of possibility, for yourself and your husband, as well."
“Optimistic, now? But yes… you speak sense, of course." A distant smile rises on her lips. “Back into court… it is strange, how I can feel so bitter, but so happy. I would scream at you, in a heartbeat."
“Your propriety slips, my dear lady. Careful, what daggers flash on your tongue."
“Oh, Sir Renard. I’m not a lady in these rags," she laughs at herself. Her gaze falls to the full plate before her, and out the window, to a brilliant view of the distant suburbs and forest cloaked in silver moonlight. “But thank you, just tonight, for letting me feel like one."
Closing that encounter, the moon falls to tomorrow, and the pumping of the cold water is done. Renard loads up a cart with the gargoyle-corpse, the anomaly’s chalk tiles, and the cursed water barrels. As faces from the town gather to bid him farewell, Renard calls for Fidel and offers that he leave Ashurst with him.
Though surprised by the sudden reality of the offer, it takes little deliberation for Fidel to say yes. It is venerating to Renard’s judgement that he does not even bother to tell his parents farewell — they will have to learn his ventures later, by letter.
Fidel seats himself on the rear of the cart, eyes wide in equal fear and wonder as the town he has lived so unfortunately in fades, into only a speck on the road.
The dirt road cycles on through the flat plains of Daversham.
Renard truthfully has no plans on what to do with Fidel.
Of course, the most important thing he could do for the boy was get him away from that dead-end town and out of that dead-end house. Now that Renard has achieved that, he would love to jump off the cart and pronounce, ‘now you are free, young Fidel! Go out into the world, and seek your fortune!’. But even if ditching him would allow such a delusion of hope, that is really all it would do. In practical terms, between abandoning him in the middle of nowhere, and leaving him in Ashurst, he would probably be better languishing in Ashurst, where the dangers are known and predictable.
If Renard is going to leave the boy, it is important to first find him a patron. Someone whose way and presence would steady him upon the uneven ground of a new environment, and give him a direction to pursue, which he may one day master and use for his own purposes.
Such turn the wheels in the back of Renard’s mind as their cart arrives at the estate of Lord Byrus. Having cleaned Fidel up and bought him a fresh outfit, after soberly reporting to Lord Byrus of Ashurst, Renard brightly presents the boy over dinner. He asks if Lord Byrus would wish to hire him, or if he knows anyone within his charge who might. Though Renard fastidiously mentions Fidel’s skill as a ranger and navigator, alongside his good spirit and good aid in the encounter at Ashurst, Lord Byrus does not seem to see the same shine in the boy that Renard does.
More out of politeness than genuine need, Lord Byrus concedes that he could take Fidel as a house servant.
It’s not the most awful suggestion. In fact, it’s by starting as just such a servant that most pages become knights. What leaves discontent niggling in Renard’s chest, though, is that it feels unlikely for Lord Byrus to train Fidel as more than, at absolute best, his maitre d. This path would certainly be liveable, but also quite restrictive and unfitting to Fidel’s demonstrated ambition and skillset.
Fidel swiftly pipes up that he would rather, in that case, proceed to Meurille with Renard. Renard nods without complaint and drops the matter with Lord Byrus there.
After a friendly dinner and night staying at Lord Byrus’ estate, Renard and Fidel proceed the morning after to Meurille.
Renard and Fidel arrive some days later in Meurille.
Returning home to his estate, which stands on the plain with the same homely face and composition as ever, feels so normal as to be eerie after meeting the Devil in Ashurst. It is like a promise that not even the end of the world could rip away the mundane comforts of having a wife, owning a house, and needing to tend to his horses. Indeed, as he pulls into the drive, the reality of the problem festering instantly melts, replaced with the thoughts he’s had thousands of times before, of wondering how the village has been, what work he needs to catch up on, and a strong desire to spend time with Colette, who has rushed to the front door to receive him.
Her eyes widen in curiosity upon seeing Fidel. Upon explaining that he is a guest, and the son of an old friend who got himself in a rut, Colette quickly welcomes him in with great warmth. Though she’s far from a cold woman, she can often give a critical first impression, and seeing how quickly she flips into cooing and caring to ensure the boy feels welcome tickles Renard pleasantly. She would probably make a great mother.
Once Fidel has occupied himself with exploring the manor, mystified and plainly transfixed as he trails the floral reliefs in the stone, Renard joins Colette in their parlour for some privacy.
Renard collapses with exhaustion upon the couch. Colette curls aside him, soon tucked under his arm for a long kiss. Her dark hair spills like silken sheets over his skin, and as she pillows her head on his shoulder, he wonders how he could have ever forgotten this scent so synonymous with comfort, with life, and with home.
“How was the work?" she asks.
“Harrowing." Renard wipes his brow, resting the back of his head upon the couch’s wooden arc. “Now, Fidel…"
“Yes — he has an air. Is he noble?"
Renard chuckles bitterly. “I made a damn fool of myself before I figured that out." And continues, explaining Fidel’s circumstances — that he is not really a noble, but a stray, from a family that fell far into poverty and a household that did not deal well with the change. Though curious to the family’s identity, Colette refrains from prying too far into the political side of the issue, as Renard expresses with surprising force and earnestness that all that really matters here is the welfare of the boy.
Not even Renard himself can explain why he has become so attached to Fidel. Perhaps it is the simple sense that Fidel, a born noble, and indeed his whole family, deserves much more than the hand that they got, and could do much more if their circumstances were shifted minutely.
Under Colette’s subtly imploring gaze, Renard admits that Fidel’s house is Asphodelis.
“Asphodelis…" she muses. “Weren’t they the landlords here, before us?"
Renard purses his lips, weakness coming over him as he shrugs the question away. He would love for this fact to have no implications. Hence he has preferred to ignore it. Sensing this shift, Colette shakes her head to dismiss the issue and reaffirms that the politics aren’t really relevant. Her silent curiosity shifts footing to what, exactly, Renard thinks to do.
Gratefully untensing a slight, Renard further explains that he only means to keep Fidel in the estate for a couple nights, until he can find him more appropriate lodgings and work. Renard isn’t seeking to… adopt, the boy. He just wants to know that he’s stable and doing well.
Though she notes Fidel would expect Renard to be more involved, Colette accepts this plan as a good approach. The conversation flows towards mundane topics of planning for dinner and dates and what Meurille has been doing, and how peaceful and quiet it’s been, which was really quite frustrating for how few distractions it offered, from how worried Colette has been with Renard absent these past weeks.
Renard grins and reassures her with a light slap and a squeeze, ho, he is well and handled everything fine. Though she smiles, his bravado wilts quickly as the unavoidable affairs of Ashurst return to the forefront of his mind.
Though he avoids details, Renard’s atmosphere flips into sombre seriousness as he confesses that the anomaly that manifested in Ashurst, likely, has some direct relation to the Queen’s affairs in Nix.
“What do you mean?" Colette asks urgently.
But Renard cannot find the words for an answer.
After a moment of consideration, Colette asks if Renard plans to make audience with the Queen, and if she might draft him to Nix.
“No," Renard chuckles. No, she can draft how he wants, but that won’t get him there. He should not need an audience either, just correspondence. It does mean he may get tied in this business for a while longer as a consultant — but hopefully, that should be all.
Accepting this, Colette falls silent and nods. Renard, bravado restored, reassures her with a grin and a shake, and departs the parlour with her to summon Fidel to dinner.
After a pleasant dinner, of entertaining a brightened Fidel with jokes, tricks, and stories, and of Colette’s chirpy table-chatter, the three push in their seats. Colette departs to attend to her usual evening rituals as Renard pulls Fidel aside.
Renard asks if their hospitality has been keeping him well.
Fidel responds that it certainly has, and asks, with a note of boyish hope and innocence, whether he’ll be staying here.
Guilt rattles Renard’s chest. Colette was right — he is about to severely disappoint the boy, and even having braced himself for it, Renard feels his heart begin to race, body begin to tremble, and pores begin to weep as he forces himself to hold his nerve. “No," he says, with that honesty that feels so dangerous to express anywhere except with Colette. He will not be hiring Fidel.
Fidel holds his silence, subtle expression unreadable.
—Of course, Renard blabbers, that is not to disrespect Fidel’s capacities or slight his ambition. Rather, Renard is…
…not comfortable teaching others how to kill as a profession, his mind supplies. Were Renard in Fidel’s position, he would be drooling over fantasies of receiving personalised lessons in swordcraft and monster-slaying from one of the most accomplished knights in the country. It’s a prospect from a dream, and the first, most critical rung on a ladder by which one might raise oneself to myth.
As if anything Renard did, the Pilamine slaughter, the bowing to hypocrites, the suicidal confrontations with ghouls, is worth modelling. There was never any future in that. He could refine anyone into a superb mercenary, a revolutionary assassin, or a hunter beyond par — and ensure they would ruin themselves or die by age twenty.
For as much as he’d like to help Fidel, Renard’s morally blank ethos is probably not worth passing on. At least, the thought of taking a bright-eyed boy and springing a life upon him where he is really only good as a well-aimed murderer, not even a soldier with cause or principles, fills Renard with too much unease to even imagine teaching the boy the most basic swing. ‘What is it for?’. Well, can you fill that question?
And of course, to have the direct patronage of Renard Cox, but not be taught swordsmanship, is a snub.
A memory comes to Renard’s mind of himself at Fidel’s age. Old pain stabs through his chest. The Iron King had rejected him, and he’d been crying on the steps of the palace…
Like flowing silver, a dark coolness settles over Renard’s guts. It purges all his anxiety, solidifying him instead with the suretude of an ancient black stone. As if the Iron King’s soul were speaking through him, Renard announces with frightening cold that Fidel will not be staying with him, but if he will nonetheless stay, he will stay in the town.
Fidel’s breath hitches sharply. It is tamer than how the Iron King treated Renard — but the frigid, cruel nature of this sentiment, ‘I will give you nothing’, still breaks whatever fiery, teenage determination Fidel had flickering in his chest like the impact of a cudgel. Authority spoken without compromise is, of course, terrifying to children and most adults. It shatters so many dreams, in an instant.
And though Fidel is terrified, he still admires Renard too much to speak against him. He trembles, wide-eyed, tongue-tied.
Renard clicks his throat heavily as if grinding a rock against the iron anvil that is his larynx. Colette will find you a bed tonight, where I find you one tomorrow. And that is all I will do for you. As charity, this is beyond fair. Yes, boy?, every syllable seethes like black iron, cooling in a forge.
Shaken, Fidel fails to respond.
Yes?, Renard presses further.
Yes, sir, Fidel nods quickly.
Renard straightens himself out of his oppressive looming and nods. Go as you would, he orders.
So dismissed, Fidel again nods and skitters to the parlour, scared, but also mystified with disbelief that Renard Cox could be so frightening. He glances thoughtlessly over his shoulder as if sending a fishing hook to snag upon Renard, that would tempt him to stay until the image of what just happened made sense, but his quick feet outpace these dumb thoughts.
Seeing him go, Renard chews his lip. His shoulders and his neck sag with the release of tension, he snorts a sigh, and he lumbers a return to his quarters.
That night, Renard rolls in bed, Colette turned away and heaving the even, heavy breaths of sleep beside him. Though a ridiculous thing to think, there is a sense of isolation in the lumplike fullness of the bed, and in the weight that pins the covers away.
He is like a child laying soldier-straight and staring up at the ceiling, whilst a large teddy bear snuggles aside him, that he should have company, but none truly is there.
With the curtains drawn, no meditative beams of moonlight puncture the dim of the bedroom. Ghosts of a bedstand and of patterns in the white tile resolve out of the murk, useless and entrappingly familiar. Renard lugs his head upon the pillow, adjusts his grip against it.
The issues rolling in his mind are not ones he can talk away, and not ones he presently wishes to. Like rocks tumbling down a mountain, even without his intervention, they may settle of their own accord and not truly damage him much. It is more a question of how much he wishes to let those rocks damage each other, and how far is really, consciously okay to let them fall.
He does not know if his treatment towards Fidel is right. Rather, he feels a deep contradiction in how he has decided his approach that pulls against his heart like the hands of a giant, straining to rip his core in twain.
It is with guileless glee, joy, and liking that half of him regards Fidel. This half wishes only for his success and happiness, wherein he may escape the demons of his disgraced house and rebuild himself into a man whose life teems with positivity, comfort, and fellowship. Anything the boy wants, this part of Renard earnestly wishes to provide, alongside a desire to shield him from undue hurts and overwhelming experiences.
It may be in paradoxical deference to this amicable first half the second, crueller, half rises. This is the half that desires Fidel to be great, settled deep in the back of Renard’s mind and twined inexorably with memories of the Iron King, by whose auspice Renard first rose himself. Ambition hums just under Fidel’s skin, like a wildfire barely restrained from reaching and bursting and devouring whatever it clutches. That is a good hunger — a wonderful hunger — pleasant and yet familiar to Renard, that makes a very deep part of him grin.
How tragic it would be, for that flame to one day explode, incinerate his surrounds, and then wither! Renard has the honour of Fidel’s regard in this aspect, that the boy deems Renard able to refine this voraciousness into something exceptional, as Renard has done for himself. It is more than a compliment; it is an expectation. The deep part of Renard chuckles. Yes, boy, I can meet that and more. Far be me to spit upon you or I by pretending any else.
But there the doubt strikes like a lance. And the refrain comes, how worthwhile, truly, is it, to model oneself after Renard? It was only by the sheer stupid chance of meeting Colette that he began to be happy. Everything before that was pain. Is it really worth it to teach pain to somebody he likes, when the ultimate goal of that pain was to become happy? Does it not make more sense to cut out the middleman, and simply teach him to be happy? In that case, Renard is less qualified than any of the humble folk of the village. Does Fidel have any alternative drive that could justify suffering? Something that simply demands to be done to the eschewing of all other sense? A cause for these methods — what is it for?
I can’t give you a cause for greatness, but I can make you great. Satisfaction is not in greatness; satisfaction is in the cause. So what I can teach you is little but unaimed power, by which you may achieve much, but without an even fulcrum that guides, sooner or later, would greatly destroy you.
Renard sighs, pressing his fist to his forehead. He wishes he had been clever enough to articulate these words to Fidel yesterday. Then perhaps his rejection would have been more kind and more sensible, rather than making Renard seem at best inconsistent, and at worst insane.
Guilt rumbles through his chest like a tumbleweed that he may just be wasting Fidel’s time. But that deep part lingers with desire, and with complete honesty, regards the prospect of Fidel achieving happiness or success without ever reaching for greatness with incredible disappointment. Where’d the hunger go? Why would you leave? Perhaps we weren’t so alike.
Renard again sighs. Cyclical traps of the mind like these are why he does not like thinking that much. He shifts his thinking away to an issue that may be less complicated.
Arsene.
Renard flinches in bed, speared by rage and terror at the word. Nevermind. Fidel is less complicated.
But still, he has now brushed the topic, and now he must struggle to escape it as if fleeing quicksand.
Renard had not realised until that moment, when he rushed blind to sprint across air and murder the beast with a sword he did not have, how much he truly loathed Arsene. Somewhere below his mind, below his life, and in another dimension entirely, there has been percolating a second him that consists of nothing but single-minded hatred for, and need to kill, Arsene. It has been built from the memory of every pain of the Iron King, every Marion, every ghoul, and every senseless corruption of dignity he has ever seen. While Renard certainly knew he harboured these dark sentiments, he thought his relationship with Colette had numbed them ineffective, or at least sealed them inert. But now he knows that is not true. They have only been waiting, amassing like grit, that Renard would one day rip off his tamed facade and burst furious out from underneath, for that one, single, decisive moment.
‘Just leave me alone’. Renard scoffs. When an enemy makes demands from such an open position of weakness, it fires every instinct within Renard to do the exact opposite of what they say.
Kingslayer hangs on the wall over Renard’s bedside table. The weight of expectation emanating from the blade, heavy as a sergeant's stare, presses in a way it has not in years. Renard shrinks deeper into the covers, glances away, but finds an odd thread of anticipation within him that carries no fear at all.
Renard raps his fingers impatiently upon the mattress, then slides himself out of bed. His innards clench hard and black, like eels coiled around a thick bubo, the familiarity of the estate’s halls discordant against the purposeful need that has caught him. Though he knows there is no stopping himself, uncertainty rises on every step.
Renard enters his study and begins penning his report to the Queen on what happened in Ashurst. Repeating the simple facts of his outing, practised twice before, is not too hard. It is when he must recount the actual visitation of Arsene, and his supposition on what it may imply, that his quill begins to falter.
Ink drips, blotted and full, onto the page.
He takes a long breath. I am moved by the mantle of duty and opportunity, for it is expressed to me that the quarry is, by your seeming persistent efforts, harried and withered of will, and that, by this sign of frailty so queerly revealed, I am summoned at this time to your efforts, to insist the prominent inclusion of myself within your enterprise.
It feels good to get the words out. Renard reads them over, strikes them through, and writes a second message.
In the years of my craft, I must tell, here ‘twould the fair voice of prudence whisper to you, and the fine spirit of victory whisper to me, which unto you I also forward, a message of caution. Your quarry is manoeuvred to strike against you, for in the commendable success of your campaign to present, by which you have begun to corner the beast, you have, by my estimation, drawn the creature’s concern towards you, from which it has appraised rightly what faction assaults it. Verily, I tell you, ease now your push, and appear to withdraw, that it may see concession to an armistice and settle.
Thereon, I advise, let be repositioned the armies concurrent to the sending of scouts with great stealth, that the strike upon the beast be swift and total. In the absence of keen mystics, who may assure this stealth, I raise you to meditate upon the option of parley—
And if you cannot find such means to hide yourself from the beast while traversing its pit, stop now all progress in this venture, and wholly desist.
Parley! Desist! Renard beats his fist on the writing desk’s lower table and his forehead upon the upper. Sure, the presence of an anomaly in Lacren is unnerving, but what on earth is he thinking, conceding anything to the monster!
—and dismiss it utterly. Glory to Lacren and may her blood flow to perpetuity.
By your Grace, Baron of Meurille, Sir Renard Cox, esq.
Renard leans back from his desk. The urge still presses in his skull to leap up like a shrieking baboon any pull every string possible to shoot him across over twenty countries and get him into Nix as soon as tomorrow, but the sensation that he has at least done something upon this front does dull the edge just a slight. There are still questions and mysteries about the anomaly — this ‘injury’ — that may be researched here, and in telling the Queen to slow down, it feels he will be buying some time to breathe.
It feels odd to admit, but Renard does feel a twinge of commiseration and pause when he considers the total exhaustion and misery the beast expressed to him. It does not want to fight. How dare it!. But just as quickly the sure and sentimental truth reasserts itself in Renard’s heart and mind; it does not want to fight, and so long as that wish is respected, it will not shake the status quo of, rot or no rot, the mundane routines of everyday life that allow for most people peace.
Renard stares down at the desk, flexing his hands.
A creature as this, if it were inclined to, could shatter Lacren’s peace overnight.
He sighs out his nose, shakes his head, and raises himself from the desk. Well, he has finished his report and letter. The achievement does brighten his chest, just a little.
“I will await the Queen’s judgement," Renard announces to the air as he traverses the unlit halls back to the bedroom. “Then we may consider this further." Patting Kingslayer, he nods.
A quiet patter of fabric and motion catches Renard’s ear from down the hall — he looks, and glimpses a silhouette darting across the way.
“Is that Fidel?" Renard calls.
The noise quiets. Upon turning the corner, it is indeed Fidel, his expression even, but back straight as a ruler.
“Sir," he says.
“Pig’s ankles, boy," Renard exclaims. He asks what Fidel is doing wandering the halls in the middle of the night.
Seeming uncertain and somehow guilty, he says he was trying to find a privy.
“Ah, yes," Renard nods, and points him warmly down the hall with directions. Though the urge strikes to hold him and chat about inconsequential things as he goes, Renard restrains himself and lets Fidel depart. There is a definite guilt of conscience in the boy’s steps. But it is not an issue. Not interested in probing the encounter, Renard returns to bed.
In the following days, though largely mundane, life begins to change.
The first priority for Renard is sending that letter to the Queen. He arranges couriers to deliver the report and the items from Ashurst that morning, who depart without fuss — seeing their wagons go from his study window, Renard feels the satisfaction of a simple task done, his role completed, and the eagerness of wishing for the Queen’s reply.
Next is Fidel. Renard finds him a room at the local inn and discharges him into the employment of the town’s huntsmaster. While Renard already knows the man and they enjoy a positive acquaintanceship, the fact that Renard pays him, though secret to Fidel, encourages him further to take on the task without complaint. And though not wishing to breathe down the boy’s neck, Renard inevitably asks the hunter on an incessant basis how Fidel is doing.
First impressions sound great. Fidel has taken to the work — and second impressions, then third impressions are the same. As the season turns, Fidel settles in to this role, growing more comfortable, confident, and skilled, though still withdrawn and unsociable with the people around town. Not impolite, simply distant.
This distance intrigues Renard. While part of him cheers to hear Fidel is doing well, this hint of hesitance, and of dissatisfaction, stokes a smile in that black pit of his heart that desires far more from Fidel than some everyday peasant. If the hunger of ambition underneath may burst and bring him back to Renard — then let it, and let it soon. After the passage of a full season, Renard himself is growing impatient.
He swallows back that darkness, though it lingers still, as the calm routines of the rest of his life move equally on in their rhythms. Behind these everyday scenes, quiet anxiety rises, about what may happen with the war on Arsene. Will the front stay quiet, or will it grow worse?
Though he confesses some worries to Colette, Renard finds himself unable to discuss the true crux of what is bothering him: the agonising juxtaposition of the seemingly divine hand of coincidence that is pointing him towards Nix, in fulfilment of the righteous pact made with the forging of Kingslayer and the uttering of the Iron King’s last helpless plea of, ‘Renard!’, and the perhaps cowardly sense that this whole crusade could stop here, and everyone could retire to enjoy everyday life at the side of a loving spouse until they were both grey-haired in rocking chairs, contented on the happiness that this house and this land gave them until then.
And even if the serpent would strike him in death — truthfully, for all Renard’s life, this system has been so mundane and constant that it took him conscious thought and research to even conceive there was something abnormal. People have thrived, built families, made dynasties, and enjoyed themselves greatly for generations in spite of this curse. It is horrific, and it is spiteful. But is it the end of the world?
The Queen has responded by letter. She is polite, but terse in her writing, thanking Renard for his report and for his handling of matters in Ashurst. ‘I will discuss this valuable information among my advisers’ — of which Renard apparently is not a part. A profound disappointment and feeling of lostness comes over him as he realises that, in such an important and personal matter, he will not be kept in the loop.
At least, not by the Queen. A second letter comes soon after from Pleione, who is an adviser, and one apparently close to the Queen’s ear and mouth for all the detail she writes of her plans.
Pleione! Renard raises his hands to the sky over his reading desk. You fast dove of a woman! Come to Meurille and we will make you a parade!
Renard fixes his reading glasses and leans deep over the letter upon the desk.
These findings in Ashurst are first of all, concerning. While much of the letter contains Pleione’s questioning for more details of the encounter with Arsene, she also confirms a lot of what Renard had been thinking and offers her speculation, and knowledge, to fill the gaps inbetween.
The corpse Renard found, that emerged from the rift, indeed belongs to a soldier from Verdanheim. Cross-referencing reports from Verdan, Pleione concludes that this soldier, in particular, must have been part of the forward force in Nix, and that before he died, must have been assigned to seek pathways around the barriers that have been frustrating the army’s progress for some months.
Nix, Pleione reports, is filled with ‘spacial barriers’. These are invisible, but highly potent planes of distorted space that repel passage and twist away motion vectors of whatever nears them, situated on a consistent point or spread across a consistent area. This makes them distinct from the ‘spacial holes’ that shift constantly throughout the region. Indeed, most all of Nix’s geography shifts in that manner, but there are specific regions and routes where the land is more stable, which are where the barriers become prominent.
The army has been progressing deeper into Nix along these stable routes, but has also been running into more of these barriers. Most of them, they have been able to circumvent or break through application of witchbane. But now the army has been stuck for over a year at the threshold of a truly enormous and truly robust barrier; so great that Pleione can only envision it to mark ‘the end’ of the relatively navigable levels the army has traversed thus far.
This soldier’s knife would have been one of the more powerful witchbane-infused implements supplied to the army. Verdan has reported numerous failures in attempts to break this strong barrier, and that attempting to force it produced a dramatic reaction that consumed the soldier who administered the procedure. Pleione thinks this body is the result of this incident, and that the witchbane must have had an effect… but not enough of one, and somewhere between the initial reaction and the destruction of the witchbane, been redirected to open that tiny hole in Ashurst, which Kingslayer then widened.
This all said, the closeness of the rift in Ashurst seems to worry Pleione less than the appearance of Arsene’s projection there. She is not sure what it implies, but does give her the impression that Arsene’s attention is shifting upward, though that he would likely be growing more hostile towards those actually positioned in Nix, if they are bothering him, than Lacren specifically.
As for the Queen, she is confused on how to take Renard’s report since it does not feel to her that she has pressured the beast at all. She is, however, thinking strenuously about the encounter, and wishes first to speak with Verdan. She’ll decide whether to push further or commit to a different approach once she’s heard from him, while instructing the army to hold in the meantime. This correspondence will take some months due to courier times.
Great relief takes Renard upon reading this letter. It sates his anxious mind with confidence that affairs in Nix are still moving, while indulging his hesitant heart with the assurance the ‘next’ motion will be slow. Once again, if Renard is obligated to act, that is contingent on the Queen’s choices, and until she herself decides a trajectory, Renard can enjoy his normal life with Colette and Fidel in the meantime.
He can, he can, he can, and still — the very knowledge that he is waiting so attentively for letters, news, and signs, for that moment where he will and must be unsheathed, tells him upon which slow, inevitable current his heart is currently resting.
Fields roll into plains dotted with sheep and cows. Upon a small hill on horseback, along a trail he often traverses for leisure, he looks down upon the town filled with the people he knows and protects, the humble villages on the outskirts, the great house where sings his precious Colette. As the yellow wheat sways in the wind, and the warm breeze crosses his skin thick with the smell of the earth, the profound sense comes again over Renard that he is finally home.
Is it worth giving this up?
Renard sighs out his nose, the question ever hanging, and straightens his grip on the reins to go forward.
A new letter comes from Pleione.
Renard grabs the thing, walks quick to his study, and tears it open. Upon skimming only the first line, he about has a heart attack.
More rifts!
Forcing himself steady despite the panic locking a ball in his throat, Renard, with his tight shoulders and clenched jaw, squints back down to the paper.
More rifts, reports Pleione. Reports have come from several principalities around Lacren of similar anomalies as the one found in Ashurst. These were all found in their ‘initial’, or ‘prodromal’ state, as Pleione has taken to calling it, wherein the most visible aspect of the forming hole is those queer and unstable ‘shimmering tiles’. Though the Queen and Verdan have been in correspondence, there is still a delay in forwarding orders from base camp down to the forward camp in Nix. Pleione suspects the soldiers in the forward camp may still be trying to assault the barrier, and this has produced more ‘rifts’ — these pockets of weakened, reflected space where the veil between the earth and the void is not yet open, but visibly thin.
Stricken by the localisation of these rifts to Lacren, Renard whips out regional maps and charts their reported locations. No pattern emerges; albeit within the radius of Sebilles, they are sprawled all over the territory. Could one even be in Meurille, undiscovered? No, surely not. Renard patrols this land diligently and doubtless would have found it if so. The randomness calms him minutely as it suggests a lack of conscious intentionality behind the formation of the rifts, supporting Pleione’s conjecture rather than evincing any attack.
Renard reads on.
In the manner that Renard himself did in Ashurst, minus the application of Kingslayer to ‘pop’ the rift, the Queen’s men have blockaded and shut several of the rifts. Renard releases a breath of relief. The Crown appears to be addressing the situation suitably, dampening any urgent, immediate need for Renard’s intervention.
It is over the next weeks that Pleione’s words grow more frantic.
It was not the soldiers, Pleione writes. Your monarch may suspect the Lord Verdan’s faith, but I trust his report wholly. All attempts to strike the barrier ended after the death of the man with the knife, and the witchbane-tipped arrows they shot at the barrier prior shattered before even touching it. Rather, Verdan attests there is a visible current that occasionally appears and fades, running as a river but shifting sinuously as an eel, that runs beneath and is somehow tied to the barrier. He struggles to explain the phenomenon in the same way that everyone in Ashurst struggled to explain the rift, but even this vague testimony has instinctively worried Pleione.
The Queen then has decided her plans. If the barrier cannot be broken, they must lure the beast up to them. They shall decide the battleground, and there spring a trap, by which the army will strike Arsene’s throat swiftly and utterly. The principle of the tactic is long tested and effective, but Pleione thinks this plan is monumentally stupid.
It took all the enlightened knowledge of a bodhisattva to banish the beast down; surely, it would take an equal degree of enlightenment to countermand and lure the beast up. Plus, to break and allow Arsene above his seals, and closer to the earth, is a fundamentally terrible precedent to establish. And then Pleione questions, does this army have a single weapon that can even scratch the beast, is there a single warrior or mystic who would not immediately be turned and overwhelmed, is she cutting due process, is this not too hasty, could a wild tactic as this even work?
Further meditation on Verdan’s report of the ‘current’ shakes her too. Her mind conjures an image: a great beast is sleeping, but tosses, shifting, in its slumber, unable to comfortably settle, as there is a needle in its bed. The needle pricks it; this opens a rift, and the beast shifts again, and as the needle scratches its skin a new plane of flesh is pricked…
The Queen’s strategy and the motions of this current must be broken now, Pleione urges. She has made her stubborn mind and does not listen to me. If words and revelations will not pierce her bones, what can must only be action — the one implement I know attainable within my power that might break this course is the one sheathed at your side, which, although with careful precautions, should not be impossible to replicate.
With reports of yet another fresh rift screaming up from the paper on his desk, Renard writes back and assures her no need.
He feels strangely composed as he again looks over the town. Renard sets his hand upon Kingslayer’s hilt, and in a difficult mood, visits Colette.
Renard divulges his correspondence with Pleione, and confesses the growing weight pulling him towards Nix. Though he does not say definitely that he will be drafted, or will be going at all, the underlying sentiment of fated responsibility to be there does communicate. Colette argues, she fights, in her quiet way; ‘can the Queen not tend what she’s wrought?’ ‘these rifts — she must see the danger, can she not stop?’. And oh, oh, oh, that is exactly what he had been thinking, and what he had begging; that she would see the futility and stop of her own accord. But therein rises hatred and anger simmering like a smoking coal. Give up! Give up on this? How could she dare!
Were there not need he be there, had the Queen exact control, indeed, Renard wouldn’t go. But it is more and more seeming that he is in fact needed, indispensable as if by divine edict, and that, if left to her own hands, the Queen very well could bungle everything, explicitly because, that among her available options, she did not have Renard.
Is it only to bridle the foolish pride of the Queen? Colette cries.
No. Of course it is not, Renard snaps.
But then why must this thing die?, Colette wails. How could it be so thick in your heart?
Renard truly cannot answer that question. Why is it he is drawn so obsessively towards Arsene? Is it for the good of the world — no, not really, and never really. It was more Iron Kings and Marions, people he actually had seen and knew. But the Iron Kings and Marions are long dead. Is the memory and vengeance of some dead men, who do not control Renard’s life any more, worth the risk of losing his life with Colette? Why is he so willing to sacrifice it, over — what?
“I fear a disaster," Renard admits. “I truly do."
Seeing Renard’s doubt, Colette calms and composes herself. A sly gleam flits through her eyes, quickly drowned by longing and compassion.
“A child," she proposes, stroking her belly. “To remember you, no matter what happens."
The perfection of this compromise rattles Renard with surprise and satisfaction, as the two of them collapse into the sheets.
A knock comes to the estate’s door from Fidel.
This is yet another sign of Renard’s fate, another pointer towards inevitability! Let this not be anything serious, and let him only wish to give thanks for the humble peace he has found as a hunter! Part of Renard recoils.
More of Renard bounds gleefully over, guffawing with raucous laughter. This is it, and this is the sign! The course is becoming more clear and more sure. Renard opens the door with such enthusiasm he near rips it off its hinges.
Fidel stands before him, expression composed and back straight. Though the ragged look of physical labour clings to him still, in his messy hair and robust clothes, the slavish air of poverty is now gone, replaced by quiet but natural pride and intrepid determination.
“Sir," he says, “good morning."
“And hail to you, young Fidel. It is a grace as the passage of swans on the river to have you before me again. Tell me, has the good huntsman been keeping you well?"
“Yes. Y-yes, sir," Fidel stumbles, taken off-guard at the earnestness of Renard’s greeting. “He has been excellent, and I have been…" He thumbs the buttons of his shirt, by no means a luxurious garment, but much better than the rags he once wore. “I’m very glad you bid him to take me."
“Oh, but it is only a favour to him that he would have such a capable student." I have heard thrilling tales that somebody has gone and felled one of the largest wolves in this region on record.
Fidel blushes slightly. With that prompt, he divulges his own account of the wolf-hunt, but soon trails off and stops himself with a note of hesitation and confusion. The attitude of this conversation has diverged from what he intended when he came to this house, and in Renard’s enthusiasm to talk, they are still chatting at the stoop. Fidel is awkwardly unsure how to change the subject with Renard being so chatty.
“And the pelt of such a beast must have made quite the trophy!" announces Renard.
“Oh, yes. The master took the smaller ones, of course, so I could keep the larger…" Fidel tilts minutely to and fro as if steadying himself against a battering of wind. His voice weakens with an odd, bitter, but self-targeted coolness, “it was worth frighteningly more coin than… I knew what to do with. Sir, I—"
“Hold, Fidel," Renard interrupts, feeling a shift. “Let us speak elsewhere." He glances over his shoulder as if to lead Fidel into the house — and surprises the boy by instead stepping out to usher him tersely along the grounds, glancing every now and again to check they haven’t been followed. That Renard plainly wishes this conversation kept secret strikes Fidel as extremely odd, and makes him fall quiet in suspicion, as he is guided into an empty stables on a corner of the property.
Only mildly weathered, this stable is a new addition to the estate, built in Renard’s time rather than Asphodelis’. It is also, on second inspection, less so ‘empty’ as simply ‘unused’, with no hay laid in any lot and every rib of pale wood clean of any muck that comes with animals. There is a larger space in the back of the structure that Fidel deduces must be a garage or workshop, as it has a long bench littered with tools, cans, and strangely some books.
Renard seats himself upon a crate, the only chairs in this space, and Fidel distantly follows suit.
Renard massages his knuckles as he inspects the boy, who is distracted staring over the empty stables, the lots, the benches, the ceiling, as if wrenching information from every speck of dust and grain of wood available. He is plainly uneasy in this environment, and would have preferred the comfortable familiarity of the parlour.
Guilt stabs Renard at this thought. Strange, the worry in Fidel’s eyes as his gaze lands finally upon Renard; as if the silence is meant to be as intimidating as it is, and not simply a byproduct of Renard’s insides being a hurricane so dissonant — of well wishes, good intentions, guilt, pain, and the curiosity of whether his dark anticipation from the past months will be met — that he is simply unable to find words to speak.
If he opens his mouth, he cannot tell whether the voice that comes out would be his own, bubbly and fawning and apologising at the boy’s feet, or the Iron King’s, great and cruel — or a mix of both so puzzling it would be utterly useless.
“All right, boy," he grates out of his throat. “Burst the pustule on this goose."
Fidel smiles, distracted from his edginess by the strange turn of phrase. “This may be so large, the explosion would stain all the poor bird’s feathers."
“Kill the damn thing," Renard laughs darkly, unconsciously miming slitting a throat. “Let it bleed on the floor."
“Well, I’ve been very happy in Meurille. I deceive nothing about that." Fidel leans back on the crate, the ramrod formality melting under the lurid little wordgame. In its place returns his natural air of dominance and authority, as though he has forgotten in this moment who Renard is, how scary Fidel finds him, and his superior rank. “I suppose, sir… I suppose, for all my gratitude, I’ve come to wonder, if this town," he looks up again to the ceiling, “is… if this is all there is, for me."
Renard opens his mouth to speak.
“I’m not dissatisfied," Fidel quickly adds. “I’m not dissatisfied. This opportunity is greater than any with which I’ve ever been blessed, and I’m not blind to what… extensive good Meurille has cast upon my life. It is like a spring from which flows many powerful waves. The people have been kind, and I love all I’ve met here dearly. I do. I truly do, honestly," he insists, a wetness creeping into his voice. He gulps a hard breath. “B-b-but, I am, so… I-I-Is this it!? After it all, the line of Asphodelis is… disappeared into the muck of a two-bit animal hunter for some podunk locale." He gulps again. “It does not even sound bad!"
“Oh, child…"
“I’m sorry. I know this is more that I would ever else have, and I know these matters shouldn’t vex me. We weren’t any famously eminent Dukes, and Father’s failings are not even my fault to mend! The legacy was forfeit soon as I was born…" He wipes his face. “So nothing was for me. But what do I care! What is for most people? They are fine, they are happy, these commoners do their work well… they’ve enough money and love and camaraderie; at home, they are not yelling or thieving or throwing bottles. And yet I am too ashamed to even speak my name in this place, or in any place that I can think! Fidel Asphodel — who hunts wolves!" he screeches through tears, as though the very idea is murder. “It’s asinine! That it even hurts, it is asinine…"
His words dissolve into heavy sobs. Hisses intersperse the weeping as he attempts, and fails, to reclaim even a speck of composure. Renard lumbers over to steady the boy and squeeze his shoulder, but the instant he makes contact, Fidel grabs him and squeezes his face into Renard’s chest. The tears, though hidden, trail hotly, and the motion morphs quickly into a hug.
“There, alright now. Come now," Renard mutters, patting Fidel’s back. Slowly, the boy’s breaths ease smoother, though still sharp, and the weeping wanes as an outgoing tide.
Too caught in his own emotions to even be embarrassed at this display, he withdraws and absently wipes his face, sighing.
“I know it wouldn’t heal Father," Fidel mutters. “But I thought so much… Sir Renard, I thought I might murder you," he chokes on the word. “And reclaim Meurille… I keep imagining that I could. But the people here are so happy," he strains, tears trailing down his face, “I couldn’t… imagine any backhanded means producing… anything, anything like this. These thoughts and desires are just unconscionable. I wouldn’t make anything good, I wouldn’t even hold the polity for long…"
He chews his lip.
“My sense tells me these truths. …So it wouldn’t be you, Sir Renard, but if I listen to my heart… I think I will kill somebody." Fidel smiles strangely, nervous but happy to have shared this deep secret. He lays his hand neatly on his lap, gulps, and after a glance to confirm Renard heard him, stares blankly ahead at a wall. “You’re a great man," his voice trembles so weak, “what would you think I do."
Renard squats down to meet Fidel’s level, considering the question.
Could a boy sobbing like this really kill people? The question is somewhat beside the point for Renard. If Fidel could commit murder, he’s not at that point yet — so rather, the question is...
“Fidel, must you carry the name your Father lost if it only binds you to his ires?" Renard tests. “Any syllables are suitable to swaddle a soul; if it be a shame that Fidel Asphodel hunt and not govern, could that skill not instead be a glory for Fidel Birch, or Balthazar Leto? You speak correctly that Meurille is not anywhere known."
“But it is me," Fidel insists. “That words could erase fifteen years… it’s me, Sir Renard, it’s still me," he scoops up his hands, begging.
Indeed, Renard thinks, rubbing his chin.
“It would be such a betrayal," Fidel spits, clenching at his heart, but then seeps in a doubt. “Or do I think too grandly of my limits…"
“Ease, boy. Calm yourself steady. Your thoughts are right; I shall talk when you are ready."
Renard again squeezes his shoulder. Fidel huffs out a long breath as he now comes to realise how badly he has been crying. He sniffles, and snuffles, and slowly brings himself even. Sighing, he nods.
“Verily then, I will tell you, Fidel." Renard stands. “One thing may erase fifteen years of a history; and that is another fifteen. If ‘twould Fidel Asphodel loathe to live commonly, so too would be Fidel Birch, although perhaps more quietly. Here, you have already broke."
“Broke," Fidel mutters as if slapped. His face flattens sober. “Then, you did not mean I should actually entertain a new name… correct?"
“I… did not, young Fidel."
“Then for what did you tell me…"
“I spoke that you may consider, how well you may endure though such distasteful circumstance. By five years of indignity, you may become something decent; but be that first tide too unbearable, you will snap and not succeed," Renard answers, surprised at the cogency of his own words. “Equally I measure your skill for self-deceit. But only grows my surety, you’ve no satisfaction to find in humility."
And that’s a sad thing.
Renard steps back to roll his own ideas around in his head. For how eagerly that ‘dark part’ of himself yearned for Fidel to return and beg, when actually faced with the boy, it really is just sad.
Inside Renard’s heart there is an image of Fidel; here, he is a simple but well put-together boy, happy, standing upon the main street of a city on a sunny day and comfortable, like a trundling breeze, that all he would meet would be glad to meet him. All gates of possibility are open, and he would excel in any. Massive, grey hands descend into this vision and rip off the boy’s head, that his eyes roll and jaw gapes, and with that death, the entire bright world, like his soul were a candle snuffed, and the scenery were mere mirage, vanishes into black.
The murderer is revealed; it is a second Fidel in a void, not any larger than Renard yet towering over the tiny space where happened the bright scene in the city. He crushes and rolls the head of his smaller self in his fingers, until it is trailing dust and then nothing, eyeing Renard dispassionately and yet curiously as he does.
Renard straightens himself.
“Now, what do you want, boy?"
“From you, sir? Well, I thought…" but he trails off, shifting from staring longingly up at Renard to glancing down at his cupped hands as if realising something. His brow quirks. “I want to kill something."
“Oh, come now."
“I do! I truly do. It’s a shockingly deep hunger. Maybe it runs in every nobleman’s blood, and that’s why we kill each other so much," he mutters.
“Some wolves didn’t sate it," Renard notes. “Where is the moon, boy?"
Fidel pauses to consider the question, then slumps. “I just wish Father wasn’t like that," he says. “I wish… I could’ve been what I would’ve been if he hadn’t… sold it all." He sighs. “…Or something like it. It’s so…" He presses his forehead to his palms. “Stupid, arrogant… What’s to say I would’ve done well? I would’ve done better than Father," he quickly adds. “But a title, a house... so what is that for a man. Would I be much any better than I am if I’d been born spoilt to lord over laws." He gnaws his lip, then bursts. “That’s why it’s so frustrating. I know it doesn’t matter; real great men earn these houses with deeds, and if I’ve that capacity…!"
“Young Fidel, hear your own words. What attracts you is no house or title. What you desire back is your soul."
Fidel’s spine shoots straight as if struck with an arrow, himself reeling at the observation. He squawks incredulously, “my soul is right here!"
“Nach, nach. For what imposition it be that a noble demand the rights of their birth; nay, it is merely a procession of order," Renard continues. “There is what your Father broke when he opened his ear to a salesman. Such ruling men who buck their yokes are cast down to burn, I know." Their own will, rather than that of the Demiurge… “But what feeds a child too into fire is only hubris. Yes, Fidel. Had you kept the entitlements your blood had owed, you would be greater than you are now."
Fidel’s eyes widen, his fingers clenching the edge of the crate, as if he has never, absolutely never, heard these words affirmed before.
“Never would you have doubted, nay, questioned, your rightness to exalt yourself. As a lark singing on a twig, that flits from tree to tree, you simply would have done it. What that man did is break your wings, that you must curse either the sky, your heart, or your limbs."
Fidel glances down at his hands.
Renard rubs his chin. “Now, what can say I, that it would not have been you to then squander the fortune? But the matter is elsewhere."
“—Sir Renard," Fidel interjects. “Exactly, there I question, I speak in this way—but, I-I am not, truly… a noble."
Renard stares at him dully.
“I’m not," Fidel continues. “By law, circle, upbringing. I haven’t the deed to anywhere." He rolls his eyes, shrugging open his hands at the surrounding stables. “I am furious that a potentiality that could never happen got taken away. I’m mad about something that never existed."
“Certainly it existed, Fidel," Renard says quickly with surprising concern. He then snorts at himself. “The first thing my wife asked me upon seeing you was your house."
Fidel falls quiet, staring at the ground. His shoulders tremble, and his body quakes as though he might start crying again. When Renard goes to take the boy in another hug, Fidel steadies himself and pushes Renard away, not needing it. Fidel stares at the ceiling and composes a thought.
“Sir Renard, I question," he says. “If it is only natural procession that a ruler begets a ruler, how is it that you have come to be Baron? And a good Baron." He pauses. “Or any first ruler. Because if you say, it is true there is falling, will you say there is only a fall? How do those rise, who come from the commons, or by what quality? Some happen."
“Some do," Renard concedes, staring distantly at an unseen horizon. The genuine nature of the question catches him, and answers do swirl around in his thoughts: appointment, and then comes another word: esteem. But those are only general answers. In Renard’s case specifically, the fitting word is, penance.
Penance. His hand lands heavily on Kingslayer’s hilt, tilting the blade in its scabbard. But maybe that word is deceiving. With the signs moving around Nix, this comfortable life is now less feeling like a final reward for a good job completed, than a transient reprieve in an eternal contract that demands really only one end.
“Fidel," he says.
Fidel sits up.
“What I have spoken in this room to you," Renard says, “are glories recycled from minds righter and wiser than mine. Such thinking lifted me from what I may only call villainy; had you have known me without them, you would look upon me only to spit. But now I will tell you the one wisdom I have conceived by myself."
Fidel nods, murmuring to himself, “surely not so bad…"
Yes, boy! Yes, you fool boy, I very much was, and I would throttle your neck that you would see how cute your little death fantasies are beside me! Renard swallows the sentiment behind a rictus grin and point his finger to the sky to announce, “of all the acts of a man, but one is unquestionably just!" He swishes his finger down, “and that is," his hand lands upon Kingslayer. “The killing of evil."
Fidel’s eyes widen boyishly at the dramatic flourishes, but his brow crinkles at the conclusion.
“My life’s one surety dissatisfies you? Speak up, where is your trouble?"
“I’m sorry, sir. I thought… it is just an odd thing to hear. I suppose it is right, but, my heart sees it broad. How may something so abstract be actioned?"
“Ho, boy. I am no mystic. I do not speak a trifle of abstract." Renard sucks his lip. “What men extol as heroics — I will tell you boy, it is just that, a dragon guttering its blood in gouts and a ghoul that collapses with a great thump — that you see and touch, corpses! I speak of the killings that provoke men to love you, for what you have killed is evil." Renard straightens, staring off vaguely. “A scoundrel or a saint is exalted the same for the rightness of this deed."
“I know you must speak by experience," says Fidel. “But a wolf that takes a sheep, for the menace it is, hardly is evil. A ghoul—"
“Close your ears, will you, to the existence of evil!" Renard snaps. “Nay! Where evil is felled, I tell you, it is as the sun breaking through a storm. It is as solid as the wind, that you will not see, but that will batter you to the ground! A heart that beats for sympathy of a creature that will sup upon men’s blood, rip away a woman’s chastity, and rend open the chests of babes; for it is without capacity of else; is the shell of piousness most wicked. Are you in those things? You are not! Collect your sense, boy."
Face beet red in embarrassment, Fidel lowers his gaze and nods.
“Now, I will tell you, I am no judge of men’s souls. I became heroic in the way of an undertaker," Renard spits, “a disposer of dead and of corpses, for there was nothing else just without question. It is the one deed just without question. It is by that desperation I became intimate enough with the dark to succeed in it; I cannot teach you how good men succeed in the light." Renard’s shoulders slump upon hearing his own words. It’s shameful, and frankly too honest.
Rather than disgust, Fidel’s eyes widen again with curiosity. “Sir Renard, I cannot imagine much malefaction happens in Meurille. And you’re here."
He’s right. Well, it is mostly Colette— Well, that’s the work of the citizens— Well, this is just a reprieve in a terrible contract—any of these deflections would mean undermining the truth of how well Renard has done in simply not running and ruining this Barony into the ground, as regardless the efforts of anyone else, to do so was very much in his capacity. A strange lightness pools in the dark bog of his chest, and for the first time, the thought crosses his mind that if he were to descend into Nix, he might actually come back.
“Is it statesmanship you think I may teach you?" Renard asks.
“Truthfully, I’d rather learn the sword," Fidel admits sheepishly as he swings himself onto his feet. “But from you, I would take anything."
So it was not truly about being great at all! The dark part of Renard screams, but falling, back down into silence and disregard, as the rest of Renard’s heart can only think: oh, boy…
Renard puts his hand to his forehead, as if bracing himself against a great tide. Indeed, the sunlike wave that sweeps through his heart is warm, unrelenting, and utterly incontrovertible. He stifles back the great emotion, lowers his hand, and releases the breath.
Steadied, he walks to Fidel. “Come then," he says, taking the boy by the shoulder. “Let us keep you in the house tonight, and speak with the huntsmaster in the morn."
It is arranged with the huntsmaster that Fidel return to the charge of Renard.
After an awkward first couple days of adjustment, a rhythm soon comes to Fidel’s presence in the house: that Renard train him in the practical matters of swordsmanship, equestrian arts, equipment maintenance, battle strategy, and other useful skills all men ought know, whilst Colette, who becomes highly interested in this whole pursuit, whisks him away for secret talks in the parlour about the intricacies of art, etiquette, politics, and diplomacy.
Between them both, Fidel is catching up on the typical nobleman’s education that he missed in Ashurst, and he fundamentally is Renard’s squire.
For how Renard worried his influence may harm the boy, it is clear that his worry was really just that. Fidel is a decent swordsman. He is not anywhere near a spectacular one, and by that alone, he will never be a soldier, or an assassin, or a second Renard. The natural talents Renard divines through observation and training are the ones Fidel already displayed in Ashurst: a quick mind, an eloquent tongue, good intuition, and skill in navigating himself and others through questionable terrain. So if he were to excel, it would be as an adviser, a strategist, a scout, a warden — and in all those roles, if kept near a lord, he would likely be comfortable.
Renard feels stupid for realising this truth only after the fact, but the single thing Fidel truly needs is a supportive patron with recognised noble clout. If to be ‘Fidel Asphodel, who hunts wolves’ is unbearable on his dignity, to be ‘Fidel Asphodel, who great men favour’ is not; for the dignity of his master shields him from his own doubts. Ideally, he would come to find himself a greater lord than Renard, but for now, while he is learning, the training wheels Renard provides are enough.
With this training of Fidel being a far more positive, and far less grim, malicious, or draconian affair than Renard had anticipated, Nix becomes a complex subject to broach. ‘Will you come with me down to that pit?’ Renard asks, and Fidel says yes without deliberation. ‘The dangers would be great. What we faced in Ashurst…’ and upon truly knowing, Fidel does shiver. I am not sure I would go to the bottom, sir, he says, but at the very least, I would go.
It’s strange that Fidel’s fear so vividly stokes Renard’s own.
He is just a boy. Even so, the thought of Renard having him at his side in Nix truly does fill him with confidence, and returns to him that light feeling of the possibility of absolute success. But then to imagine that Fidel would stop — that, to reach Arsene, there must be a threshold into darkness that Renard must cross alone — that is what makes Renard’s core tremble, and doubt, and know that for every step, the isolating void of dark nothing would swallow him deeper.
The Iron King, Marion, these causes are not enough. Even filled with hatred, even knowing with all his heart he must face and kill this serpent, such passed memories can not fortify him with purpose against the fear.
Renard sighs, twisting in bed, a spiky black bur poking about his insides.
Colette is sleeping beside him, her hair tressed across the pillow like silk. The elegant cut of her chin from behind peeks over the great, mountainlike curve of her shoulder, then her chest, rising slow and falling with the majesty of the tides. A simple warmth radiates comfortably in Renard’s gut at the sight, casting out the cold and shadows, and lifting his cheeks into a smile.
It is then, at that moment, that an incredible thought strikes him.
In twenty, thirty, forty years, this woman will be twisted. Her soft flesh will be stretched over elongated bones like stinking leathers on a tanner’s rack, her fingers will be whittled into iron stakes, she will not speak but only screech through a sopping lamprey-mouth and her eyes will bulge like soulless tumours that wobble out of her face. She will be a clown juggling her own shrunken head, a slime-caked hag that pisses maggots, a buck-faced donkey that kills with its laugh. A horrible amalgamation of all the monsters Renard has seen and slaughtered interposes itself, switching ever with more and more grotesque possibilities, over her silhouette.
Pyroclast explodes. Renard strangles the empty air as viciously as he ran to murder the snake back in Ashurst, enraged growls and hisses half-aborted in his seizing throat and behind his clenched teeth. For how great the temptation is to take his blade, march down to the empty stables, and snap a wooden beam into splinters, however, Renard instead sheaths this rage, allowing it to simmer just under his heart, very, very near to the surface.
He wafts in and out of dreams that night, not truly sure if he slept, or simply fell into bouts of meditation, where his soul stands upon this sure purpose as though walking upon an ocean of steel.
Barely-tempered aggression teems from Renard in the days following, quickly noticed by Colette. Though she pleas, ‘what is wrong’, and ‘are you well’, and even must at one point urge him he is being too rough, the only response Renard can give, after quick apologies, is an obsessive, seething growl of, ‘I must kill that snake.’
He pens letters as if carving the paper with the nib of the quill, indeed ruining several drafts with rips from the force of his writing, not simply demanding but asserting that the Queen add him to the front lines of Nix. These messages are only satiations of fantasies for now, rewritten fresh every day. Though softened a slight around Fidel, even with him Renard has grown forceful, and in any moment he is not called elsewhere, he is practising his swings in the stables.
Weeks pass.
A clear morning comes, the sky pale and lucid outside the grand upstairs window. A panorama stretches of grassy autumn planes outside, all the way out to the mild curves of distant hills, and even past that to the imprint, barely visible on the horizon, and only visible today by the queer fidelity of the air on this morning, of the mountain trails around Sebilles.
“Darling," Colette calls, catching him at the window.
Renard tears his eyes from the view. Her hand is planted upon her stomach, and her gaze carries a heavy profundity.
Stricken by the oddness of her expression, he answers, “mountain-lark?"
She walks to him, her silver gown flowing after her careful motions like the wisps of a ghost. She licks her lips, and as if sharing an old secret, whispers, “I’ve not bled, for two months."
She withdraws, eyes wide, smiling subtly behind the fingers that shield her lips.
Renard pauses.
The implication of the words only strikes a second later, and he double-takes in disbelief. ‘Truly!?’ his wide, boggling eyes urge, but she simply nods and strokes her stomach as if it were the surest thing in the world: truly.
Though nothing shows yet in her silhouette, this information in itself infuses the sight of her smooth belly with a sanctity as natural as sunlight on clouds and as deep as the springwater hidden in the root of a well. Breathless, Renard grabs her, squeezes her, spins her in a hug, able only to articulate a reverent cheer of, “Colette!" between his awed kisses and amazed laughter.
He sets her back on the floor, giddily drunk. A proud, venerated smile blazes in her eyes.
“Will you write your letter to the Queen, now?" Colette asks.
“No," Renard says, the word jumping straight from his heart to his tongue. He wipes his hand down his chin, the incredible truth of this answer only registering into sense after it has been spoken. “Not now. Far later, if I will tell her anything…"
Renard stumbles back, mystified at his own thoughts. Indeed. What a stupid thing it feels to even contemplate touching Nix, when what he clearly must and should do is stay here to care for this blooming beam of sun, his wife! And after that, after the child is born… Renard’s heart wrenches as an image flashes to his mind. A little toddler giggling up at him, reaching with a tiny hand to grasp Renard’s finger.
All dark of that void, of that pit, of that cursed den of rot and death and sick aberration, shatters at the thought of this image. All of it — that whole place, it’s utterly irrelevant. But there worry strikes. Was this not to be the starting gun for his descent, as affairs in Nix clearly were worsening? And what of Pleione’s worries? Is he to tell her that yes, he merely wasted her time for two months, and she should craft for herself a Kingslayer?
Renard can only stand in disbelief with himself as the answer coheres in his mind: ‘yes’.
It is insane. That he could finally, after months, work up the resolution to go, only for it to collapse so totally.
Renard truly is, and has always been, a despicably cowardly person with not a shred of virtue or principle. But right now it does not even matter. The sun is an ocean beneath his feet, that soaks and permeates every inch of him, until any steel in him is just a smothered, tiny pit.
Colette marches to him with a grin of uncompromising victory. She reaches out for his chest, to take him closer to her.
In that instant before her fingers make contact, the sky outside the window rolls, screams, and shears apart, leaving a massive crescent swath of night bleeding into the morning.
A quake topples the pair to the ground. Glass shatters, wooden beams crack and crash, and ceiling tiles fall like stones that break the porcelain floor — Renard scoops Colette’s head under his chest protectively — and through the aftershocks of this abrupt pandemonium, wailing voices rise outside all from the estate down to the town.
But even the immediacy of this destruction is overshadowed by the sight outside the broken window.
A massive shearing has occurred, as if two layered blankets of the blue sky have been pulled apart and exposed a gap between them. That gap is pure blackness, which arcs violently down from the clouds and slices through the mountains. The span of the umbral cut is too great to figure, with trailing forks like fissures ravaging lines across the sky and occasionally tearing through the ground, which sprawl up and disappear far off in different branches all on different angles of the horizon.
Inside the veins of this cut there slides a subtle, rainbow sheen like the oily skin of an eel. It overlays the whole of the crack’s innards, never seeping from this boundary, but flows with a sure and sinuous movement. Only in squinting past this semitransparent, filmlike layer does a second image peek through, also constrained within the crack: the exact scene of the night camp that Renard had seen in Ashurst, magnified so impossibly large that it is distinguishable even from this distance.
Renard gasps, wrenching his eyes to the ceiling above as if he can see through it. The map of the rifts he charted layers itself over the sky. No arm is trailing toward Meurille, but one is certainly disappearing towards Ashurst, and another, visible straight before him, has extended decisively through the mountains towards Sebilles, matching exactly.
Trees have fallen and rocks have severed in the path of the cut. A deep instinctual horror rises as the trajectory of the arm boring through Sebilles’ mountains extends itself in Renard’s mind.
“But that must have stricken the water tower…"
Drinking water in Lacren is distributed into regional wells through aqueducts linked to a central reservoir. There are several such reservoirs throughout the country, but the largest and most eminent is within Sebilles, which is also the water source for Meurille.
Another quake shakes the house. More shingles fall and beams creak. Returning to his senses, Renard hurries to guide himself and Colette out of the house to the open garden outside. Servants whizz about the halls as they go, themselves collecting valuables and evacuating promptly. The fragmented remains of a china pot crack into dust beneath Renard’s boot as he turns the corner to the guest wing. Like a whale battering a tiny dingy, another quake hits, throwing the pair against the wall, where they must brace through the tide.
“Fidel!" Renard calls down the hall.
“—Sir!" Fidel’s voice answers, lightly out of breath, from the other side of a cloud of plaster and splinters. Having realigned his bearings, he shoulders through the cloud to join Renard and Colette, and the three quickly escape out a side-door to the garden.
Servants from the house, but also people from the village, are assembled for refuge here. Tremors still rock the ground intermittently, but with no trees or structures on the fieldlike lawn that could fall upon anyone, the atmosphere is one of hopeful, tentative calm through what is otherwise great stress. Women are counting heads and searching for neighbours, parents hold wailing children close; men are ushering people up from the village onto the grounds. Many stare at the sky in dumbstruck horror, this their first time seeing the anomalous crack.
Looking down the hill to the village, several buildings have collapsed. There is a greater panic unfolding down there, as teams assemble between screaming families to rescue loved ones stuck beneath wreckage, even as the quakes still continue on.
“Lord Baron! It is a relief beyond all that you and the Lady are safe. I Report!" Announces a servant of the house, having sprinted away from ushering villagers to instead address Renard. There has been obvious property damage across the area and though most civilians appear to be safe, there are still many people who are yet lost or unaccounted for. After the immediate business of rescuing people, Meurille will be facing two massive problems: of where those who have lost their homes should be housed, and more critically the issue of ensuring any lost souls are found and severed before this turns into a mass ghoul event. And then there is the crack in the sky…
The situation demands firm and fast leadership. Renard bites his scrunched lips as he thinks, palming Kingslayer’s hilt in its scabbard.
The servant glances furtively about and continues in a hushed voice, Preliminary reports also suggest Meurille’s aqueduct line from Sebilles has been severed. The well itself still holds what it had, but may no longer be sourcing new water — if this is indeed the case, rationing may be vital until the line can be repaired…
Renard’s jaw clenches harder as he rubs his chin. Colette and Fidel, too, wait to hear his judgement.
A hollering rises from the grounds. A grungy-looking man, joined by his seedy friends, hoots belligerently and throws a rock at the sky as if to strike the crack. Of course, the stone merely arcs through the air and falls back to the ground, but this apelike expression of aggression succinctly tells how attitudes are turning. The man and his friends retrieve more rocks to throw — a deputy of the village intervenes to urge the addled men calm, but they only spit, yell, begin a vulgar argument that could quickly become a fight. The servant reporting to Renard swallows his breath.
“Your orders," the servant insists.
“Yes," Renard muses, his gravelly voice reflecting nothing of the quivering ball of fire bouncing around his insides. “Yes," he snaps, more decisively. “You are swift of ear, quick to act, and well-ranked — I charge you to manage this conundrum. Convene with the mayor and others of station who have the insight to order this mess; ensure they are listened to well. Charge the huntsmaster to slaughter all the game he is able, and arm for him the old distilleries. Let the water he mills from his hunts be rationed, and be frugal. There is another store of water beneath the house; tap this if you wish. But most must be evacuated, to Pilamine or Bromhide or Joliet. Speed this travel for all who would go. I will be leaving to Sebilles."
“You flee the county? But Lord—!"
“Quiet!" Renard roars. “Do you see the sky? Are we aggrieved by nature, a wind or a flood? We are struck by an old adversary, and I am reporting to my monarch for war. You hear your orders."
“Yes, sir," the servant concedes, though not without bitterness. He looks to Colette hopefully.
She nods and simply repeats, “you’ve heard your orders."
Another hoot screams out from the gang of stone-throwing thugs. The servant curses and peels away to address them, while Renard marches with Colette and Fidel for the stables. Fidel glances about, quietly, but intensely, at the people rushing to and fro over the green, calling for help.
“Colette," Renard announces. “Take a carriage and leave this place swiftly for Fayette. The water tower has been struck; this land will be thirsted within the month."
“Sir Renard," Fidel interjects. “The people need to know that."
Renard stamps his fist to his forehead, face burning red. Fidel is correct, but in Renard’s anger, he had forgotten to convey this message to the servant. Every second feels so precious that even the slight detour of correcting this omission is too much, and invites far too much deviation. Could it be another hour or another second before Arsene splits the world open further? Growling, Renard drags one of the spooked horses out of its pen and begins tacking it to lead a carriage.
“I hope we’re not abandoning them," Colette muses aloud. “If the Queen would reach out to Uncle, we would spend whatever we can. It does more, but it is so far." Her face falls morosely, but with a steady determination. “It’s painful."
Renard escorts her into the prepared carriage and dips in to kiss her. “Merely keep yourself safe," he whispers. “I will fix this all."
She smiles a warm, subtle laugh, but squints as if stung with a dagger.
“Fidel," Renard announces next, standing yet on the boarding platform of the carriage. Fidel breaks away from staring at the panicked people, slow to register Renard’s words, but stunned once he does. The invitation is open for him to leave with Colette.
Discomfort rises on the boy’s face as his gaze is pulled back to the people. Renard hops down from the carriage and begins swiftly tacking another horse.
“This situation, at least, should be calmed first…" Fidel mutters more to himself than Renard. Colette cracks the reins of the carriage, which begins rolling away. “Shouldn’t it, sir?"
Renard mounts his horse. “I will tell your message to the mayors on my way out. Fidel, if you stay here, you will soon be toiling against ashes. If it is not to fallen roofs or risen ghouls, those stubborn men with their roots in this county shall wither with it once goes the water." He straightens his back, bringing the horse around to Fidel. “The Queen alone is who relieves the drought and directs imports through Lacren. I am going to her."
Though hesitating, when Renard extends his arm to him, Fidel does take it. Renard pulls Fidel onto the saddle and ferociously cracks the reins, sparing barely a second to tell the mayors nearby of the water tower, Fidel’s forehead pressed hard against Renard’s back, before sprinting out of the county, that the clouds of dust trailing from the mount’s hooves, and the cacophony of human screams and panic, both wisp away in the wind.
Renard and Fidel camp on the road that night.
Though Renard would wish to press through the night, the horse is too tired. In all, at their pace, it will be another two days before they reach Sebilles.
Even with the sun down, the profane crack across the night sky is plainly visible as much as a violent crack in glass is visible. The blackness that sculpts the absence between the night is moonless, and its shape is jagged against the flowing sprawl of the constellations. Renard’s jaw juts out in consternation as he stares up at it.
People will be dying in Meurille. People may be dying in Sebilles. Their path on the road split from Colette’s very early, and she is an unguarded woman travelling through what could quickly become a lawless situation alone. These anxieties roll around in his head, but none truly catch into great meditation — the overriding sense of purpose, to by any means get to Sebilles, smooths and insulates his brain against these thoughts’ barbs.
Like a cat’s claw trailing down silk, a new fork sprouts from the crack and arcs down through the sky with the same laziness as a cloud. Its trajectory disappears behind the far mountains, but like thunder crashing laggardly after a lightning bolt’s flash, the shockwave of a distant impact thooms all the way to Renard and Fidel’s camp. Their fire sputters, their hair gusts about their faces, the horse spooks and pulls fruitlessly against its bridle, which is tied to a tree.
Fidel, seated before the fire with his arms crossed on his knees, also jolts, but only minutely. He glances up. “Will that keep happening?"
“The woman who knows of these things suspects so," says Renard. “That it will continue until it is stopped."
Fidel falls silent and feeds another twig into the fire.
“A retreat is no loss," Renard says, “as it is no loss to flee from under a wave, then return to plumb the lake once it has settled. Others too know this."
“I suppose," sighs Fidel. After some more minutes of prodding the flames, both he and Renard retire for sleep, the land quiet but for crackling embers and the far, fading thunder.
After two more days on the trail, Renard and Fidel arrive in the morning on the outskirts of Sebilles.
Many tentacles of the black crack in the sky have plunged into the earth around and in the city like spindly fingers of a looming hand, aligned to scoop the entire place up. At seeing this, Renard’s mind blanks with purposes as he pushes his horse ceaselessly through the gates, which are open and only loosely guarded, into the streets of Sebilles.
Though not as visceral as the panic seen in Meurille, given that citizens have had time to adjust to these new, tumultuous circumstances of ever-present quakes and emergencies in their home, chaos still dominates every road. Buildings have collapsed, and the only people skittering through the streets are pursuing shelter, water, friends, weapons, or loot. A group of guards shouts from down a passing block. In the three days of travel from Meurille, the souls of the men who perished in the first quakes have rotted and are now becoming the disaster’s first ghouls. Blades and arrows hail upon the creatures as Renard whizzes by, civilians and soldiers alike taking arms and forming patrols against the strange monsters that now dot the sky and shamble through the streets.
Death-keens of these creatures trail in the wind as Renard surges on.
Like any decent polity in the West, Sebilles does not keep the entirety of its water in its single water tower, which is indeed shattered on the hills overlooking the city. Many houses and halls have their own personal reserves for sieges and disasters as this, and the Crown especially has multiple secondary reserves for both private and civilian use. The water situation here is not as dire as it will be in Meurille; still, those who cannot brave the streets or who cannot reach these secondary reservoirs will now also be beginning to thirst.
All these scenes and considerations are fleeting to Renard, snippets he sees and passes within the same second. Given how quickly he travels, that he already witnesses so much trouble speaks to the true direness of the city at present, as he and Fidel arrive at the gates to the castle.
After brief identifications, the single guard at the gate frantically ushers him, and Fidel, and even the horse, in.
Many civilians are huddled inside the castle for refuge, with stressed guardsmen overseeing them. Leaving his horse for the staff to tend, Renard strides through the halls to the Queen’s office, knocks once as a formality, and invites himself in.
The Queen is seated at the desk, bent over a mound of papers with eyes so glassy, red, and sunken it is clear she has not slept in days. She startles belatedly at Renard’s intrusion, purses her lips, and signs off the paper she is tending before acknowledging him. “Sir Renard."
“Reporting, my lady."
She nods absently and scrawls a sign on the next paper in the stack, then pages through sheet after sheet, as if looking for something. She peers over Renard’s shoulder at Fidel. “And he is?"
“Fidel… of Ashurst, the Sir’s squire, Your Majesty," Fidel quickly recites with a bow.
The Queen’s brow crinkles as if perplexed by this statement, but she is too occupied to probe it. She finishes inspecting the stack, seeming not to find what she wanted, and heavily massages her brow. “Somehow, I did have faith you would appear in these circumstances — or at least, I’m surprised by how unsurprised I am. Can I pray you’ve come to cull the ghouls troubling the city outside?"
“Nay, my lady," Renard says with mild surprise. “I had thought I would do greater, and mend the crack in sky." He points up with one hand and lays the other on Kingslayer’s hilt.
The Queen nibbles her lip, torn between exasperation and a powerful, unmistakable hope that Renard is entirely capable of achieving the incredible things he claims. “Alright," she mutters to herself, and stands, scooping up her papers. “Wait for me in the parlour; we’ve the throne room occupied, and at this moment I must send off these papers. Might I borrow your squire briefly, as well? One hand is worth twenty at present."
“You’ve no need to ask permission of me, your grace."
The Queen quirks a sardonic smile, but ushers Fidel along. “Come then," she says, and the two march down the hall in the opposite direction of the parlour, with her handing him sheets, hurriedly explaining which must go where and to whom…
A mild sting pierces Renard’s chest as he watches them go. It has been a long time since he has spoken in person with the Queen. In that time, he forgot how much the woman distrusts him, or perhaps less than distrust, dislikes him. Stewing in this sadness is pointless, but Renard still pauses at a window to gaze over the city, an act that has become a habit in such sombre moments as these.
A flying beasts flags and falls, pierced by guardsmen’s arrows. Despite all the chaos on the way here, at this moment Sebilles below is quiet and still. Renard raps his fingers on the windowsill. That a lull can occur even in these circumstances sparks a queer flame of hope, like a promise, that all will go better than expected.
Renard splits from the windowsill and resumes for the parlour. It occurs to him, marching down these familiar old halls, that he is close to the old room of Pleione.
Renard forks left at the next junction into the guest wing and strides through the stone halls to her door. Approaching it, at the end of the hall, is a group of men in full military regalia heaving boxes down a corridor towards the main floors. Renard’s brow scrunches, but he shakes off the sight and knocks upon Pleione’s door.
No answer.
“Pleione?" Renard calls, and tries the knob. It judders against his hand, locked.
Renard laughs and repeats, “Pleione?". But there’s still no response.
She must be out, busy elsewhere in the castle. In these circumstances it was rather foolish and presumptuous to assume she’d be waiting for him in her room. This observation does not assuage Renard’s mild disappointment as he stares at the door. But in fact, what she must be doing is using her augury to grow more of those water-plants for the people. She is likely in the garden or the kitchen, then, and not so hard to visit after all. He can go to her at any moment he wants. A grin blooms on Renard’s face at the thought.
“Do you want to see her?" a voice asks from beside Renard.
Renard jerks in surprise. His thoughts had preoccupied him so badly, he did not even see the porter approach. Dumbly, and a little confused by the question, he says, “yes."
The man nods and withdraws a key from his pocket. As the key turns and latch clicks, Renard’s gut sinks to the bottom of his stomach, his instinct acting much quicker than his eyes or brain.
Pleione’s room is bare of all the things that previously marked it as hers — her books, her chemicals, her strange tools for augury — swapped instead for clean, flat walls and vacant desktops. In fact, the only thing present here that separates it from being an empty room is the figure lying on the bed, motionless but for the slow swells of breathing.
It is Pleione. Something is strange, though. Her arms are folded over her chest as if specifically posed, and she is not lying under the covers, but over them. Her cringing face is sickly and gaunt, as though she has not eaten or drank for several days, and her eyes, though open, stare vacantly at nothing, void and not even twitching. The floral ornaments growing out of her clothes are also all dead.
Renard’s brow scrunches.
This image makes little sense.
“Is she asleep?" Renard asks the porter.
The porter jolts as if shocked, and after a hesitant pause, simply nods.
Renard rubs his chin. Odd. It feels like his mind is squeezing, that there are conclusions he could draw if he spared them a few seconds of consideration, and that the puzzle here is truly not hard — but the tracks that would lead him down these trains of thought are being severed before they can start, and all he can do is wander repetitive circles of the same observation: ‘how weird’.
“Well," Renard announces. “The Queen summons for me."
Renard exits the room. The porter trails bewilderedly behind him and locks the door — again, the sound of that horrible latch strikes Renard with terror as keen as the tip of a spear. But, facing away from it in his march down the hallway, and unable to even reach to grasp for a cause or consequent implication, the feeling and even the memory of feeling aborts, as if vanished behind a fallen stage curtain.
The Queen is only just settling onto the couch around the table when Renard enters the parlour.
Renard apologises for his tardiness and explains that since it has been so long that he’s been in the castle, he became lost wandering the halls. He lumbers to the opposite couch, an ornate rosewood thing carved with beautiful spiral patterns like wind, and pillowed with plump red cushions. Leaning on its back, he squints about the room. “Where is Fidel?"
“You’re on time," the Queen notes with a raised brow, shuffling a wad of papers in her lap. Fidel is still delivering missives about the castle, and may be busy for a while, but his attendance shouldn’t be necessary for this debriefing anyway.
Rather than that… the Queen mutters as Renard plunks himself onto the couch. She looks aside to a door, linked not to the hall but to an ensuite kitchen.
In the doorway is a man, straight-backed and elegant, with an aura of militant dignity so natural it is intimidating. At his hip is a sword — and it is only upon feeling the raw condescension in his quiet, unflappable stare that Renard belatedly recognises him as Orpheus Penn.
Renard’s heart bucks into his mouth for a beat.
The Queen rubs the bridge of her nose, sighing. Orpheus has been serving in Nix for the past several years, she explains, and has distinguished himself enough to be the Queen’s general down there for the past one. He, better than anyone, knows the situation in Nix and what to expect when traversing it.
Coolly silent, Orpheus sets two glasses of wine he has prepared for himself and the Queen on the table. He quirks his brow at Renard, but like a shadow, smoothly disappears and returns with a glass and bottle for Renard to pour himself. Snorting, Renard does.
…If he did not have the necessary skills to eke a success from the venture, I would not have put you two in this room, the Queen warily explains as she smooths out a map of Nix upon the table.
“Yes, my lady, and what venture is this?" Orpheus asks, scooping up his glass between his middle and ring finger. “Could it be the gallant Lord Renard has found time to sign to the war effort? Whatever could have sparked him to this cause with such heart?" He sips his drink deeply.
“Sir Orpheus," the Queen scolds, though only as a half-hearted mumble.
“I simply observe that a man of his particular reputation would be rather the champion in a land infested with ghouls," Orpheus says primly, “how pleasured we are to have you, now, that the inundation is lighter in Nix than in Lacren."
“Have they come out?" Renard blurts through the terror racking up from his core, shaking him, flushing him red…
“No," Orpheus concedes with a strangely mild frustration, circling his finger around the rim of his glass. “I speak to mean they would not need to." He looks to the Queen questioningly.
“I’ve not heard any reports of the like," she says. “Your camp should be cleared for… some miles. Even if vacated, I wouldn’t imagine anything would breach it so quickly. Though, given time, perhaps…"
She trails off, but Renard has already stopped listening. The utter terror of being in the presence of Orpheus is a sharp as it was decades ago, his achievements and titles acquired in the meantime be damned, as the contemptuous judgements Orpheus has towards him have not dulled a whit. Panic quietly rattles him in his seat and shakes a rain of sweat from his pores, the wine glass quaking in his hand as occupies himself with a sip. The Queen and Orpheus are looking at him strangely — the Queen concernedly, Orpheus dryly, but both of them expectantly.
It takes Renard full seconds to remember that Orpheus had asked him a question.
“A-uh-a-b-ah, ah, up," he stammers pathetically, pointing up. He swallows the rock in his throat, face blazing red, quietly glad for Fidel’s absence. “I seek to mend the crack in the sky."
“A lofty aim. And how is this done?" asks Orpheus.
Renard sighs heavily. This question, at least, he was prepared for. “By correspondence with Pleione—"
The Queen lowers her gaze with strange guilt and as she murmurs under her breath, ‘Pleione’. Orpheus’ lips flatten into a stern line, as though he is holding a stone to the roof of his mouth.
“—I had learned, she thought the rifts a consequence of… a barricade in Nix, imperfectly chipped. I would cast my proven blade Kingslayer upon the barrier that the ward would be severed as has this blade severed the root of a thousand other perverse forces."
“So shattering the ward. Would this not widen the rift?" The Queen questions.
“Pleione believed it would not," Renard insists, growing agitated. Renard relays Pleione’s conception of the rifts as a static needle tugging at a shifting loom, and explains his belief that, if the loom were destroyed outright, this should also remove the imperfections upon it… though, upon hearing himself speak, he trembles with recognition of how counter-intuitive this solution sounds. If the problem is the ward is damaged, why does breaking it further help? For how weak the argument is, he finds himself with only quibbling doubts that it is correct, heart standing stable upon his absolute confidence in Pleione’s judgement.
Orpheus straightens his neck to look down upon Renard, a steely intensity in his gaze, as if he is aligning facts, evaluating… “When did Miss Gayle inform you to this?"
Renard’s guts constrict into a tight knot, dripping black sludge.
“Quite—but a week ago," he stammers.
Orpheus holds his stare for a moment, then looks away with a mocking, hateful grin. He opens his mouth to speak, when the room bucks like an untamed horse, sending books flying out of their cases and all unsecured objects tumbling off their perches like hail. Another quake, from the rift splitting through the ground elsewhere. Though Orpheus and Renard brace themselves quick enough not to be thrown, the Queen is tossed like a ragdoll to the floor — unhurt, but rattled, she gasps to hastily recollect her composure.
“Let us hurry this along," the Queen announces, sweeping her hair out of her face. Given that she has no other ideas, and given that she fundamentally also does believe in Renard, she approves of his plan. Now, usually—
A hasty series of knocks comes at the door. It is Fidel, done with his courier work and a little breathless. The Queen quickly orders him to clean up the room and wash out the used wine glasses, not in the manner of purposefully distracting him, but in the manner of simply not thinking him relevant to the plans unfolding, like any servant.
Though now preoccupied doing dishes in the kitchen, Renard spots Fidel straining to peer through the doorway and eavesdrop as the Queen continues.
—usually, there would be the concern of travel time between here and Nix, but given the nature of this calamity being a spacial rift, it is actually possible to simply walk through it, at one of the lower branches, to instantaneously arrive in Nix, and vice versa. In fact, that is how Orpheus is here. So, time is not a huge obstacle presently, and the instant they have concluded this briefing, Renard can be down there with Kingslayer. If all goes well, and if Renard’s plan works, the matter of the rift could be resolved within the hour.
So what is concerning the Queen now, instead, is what their plan should be after the rift is, ideally, closed. The instant travel between Lacren and Nix would of course be severed, then…
She glances down, takes a breath.
I have already withdrawn our army from Nix, she asserts, as the forces will be more necessary here. The aqueduct lines between Sebilles and many local counties have been damaged so badly and in so many places, that it will be vital to arrange tens of squads of water-runners to deliver water around the country. It’s not an efficient method, and invites many opportunities for disaster, but for some principalities, it may be the only way that they stay afloat. Not to mention these units’ effectiveness against ghouls, which we also will need…
Renard asks how much water Sebilles has, to be able to do this.
Sebilles has enough to hold itself for a year, the Queen answers, but it also has the money to purchase more and bide a little longer. Splitting up what is in the reserves, and distributing it to droughting counties, it should last perhaps four months. Though, depending on how well local leaders handle water shortages in their territories, the need may be alleviated somewhat. Regardless, by that time the reservoir and aqueducts should be fixed, so things should start returning to normal once the new crop of water-plants come in, which should be in eight months.
Four months is cutting it thin in terms of resupply, with another four months of interim. Renard urges the Queen to tap in to her allies in Fayette for water support.
She nods, and adds that Verdan has also pledged quite generous donations of water.
Renard’s brow scrunches. Verdanheim is a very small country. While the gesture is appreciated, do they have much to give to sustain Sebilles? Well, if it is only to tide that interim four months, perhaps they do have that in their reserves.
The Queen falls oddly quiet. Orpheus speaks up to voice that he, too, finds it strange that Verdanheim has so much water, and is unsure how Verdan even sources it.
Does he not purchase it from the Ordish? Renard notes. Orpheus’ brows raise as if he had not considered this. Although, Renard continues, I would not know what enticing thing he would sale to them in exchange, but Verdanheim’s economy is hardly a great matter…
Well, the Queen interjects, let’s not get too distracted about the water. She had only brought up this subject to explain why she had withdrawn the army. Now, Verdan’s forces will still be down there, but if you would close the rift, you would have to return overland…
She bites her thumb, glancing down at the floor.
Abrupt recognition comes to Renard of what is circling through the Queen’s chest: shame. As it bit Verdan and Renard, the Queen herself, in the course of this campaign, has also become irrevocably transfixed with Nix, perhaps to the point of obsession. Withdrawing her forces as she has is a concession of failure, and so she hesitates to voice her real wish for Renard, as it is wholly unreasonable: don’t come back too quickly. Push down there as hard as you can, to wrest a victory where my whole army couldn’t.
Because, the moment Renard emerges from Nix to Verdanheim, that marks the end of Lacren’s ambitions to ever combat Nix. For the Queen, who regards this cause as the most vitally right and important in the world, it’s a crushing thing to give up on. Renard straightens his back, piqued by this unspoken admission of weakness, and regret for that weakness.
…You may be alone down there, she finally finishes.
A plate squeaks loudly in the kitchen.
Orpheus says that no, he may not be, as Orpheus volunteers himself to oversee the closing of the rift and ensure the safe delivery of Verdan’s water. He would like to ensure, at least, that much is done properly and carries some level of account.
The Queens nods, accepting this.
Copying cue from Orpheus, Renard takes a breath to speak. “And I shall—"
Stop, the Queen interrupts. I don’t need to know what you do. I’ll know what you do by the results of it.
Pain and grief knot Renard’s throat. He blinks away the heat in his eyes, stricken by how deeply the words cut from a woman he already knows barely puts up with him, but despite reason, still does. He wipes his red face. There is very little dignity to lose in front of people who hate him, but still treat him better than he deserves.
“Adjourned," says the Queen, standing up. “Return to me, if it doesn’t work. We’ll reassess then." She pauses to massage her temple and collect up her papers, passes the map off to Orpheus.
As Renard rises and Orpheus collects the map, Fidel’s voice cuts across the room, “Your Majesty."
A fleck of irritation flashes in the Queen’s smile. “You’ve done very good work, Fidel. The porters in the receiving room will need more help. If you’d report to Master Porter—"
“No. —N-no, I," he shrinks up, aware that he just spoke over the Queen, but a vicious and determined fire then sparks, and he straightens his back, juts up his chin. “I wished to speak of… to report of Meurille, the barony just some days north of here. It is in a horrible state… many houses have crumbled, and people are tapped under rubble. The aqueducts are cut, with the people screaming, in distress…"
“These are not novel words. I have heard them over thirty times now," she sighs, “by different names; we consider them all."
“But it was horrible," Fidel insists. “They truly need help there."
The Queen’s brow knits with further irritation. Though Renard urges a warning with a mutter of, “Fidel…", no grand distraction or suitable change of topic can intercede before she continues, “Meurille is rather well off, is it not? If you have been Lord Renard’s squire, you must be familiar to the place. Other principalities nearer the centre of the rift have been levelled, others still are shattered; but there is no fork yet to menace Meurille. I do not hear that as so urgent as requiring action before even securing Sebilles."
“But then there is such greater chance Meurille could be helped; more than these other places," Fidel argues. “Do you roll a bandage on the arm of a man that is bleeding, or on the arm that is already black with gangrene? There is no sense in the second."
“You’re well-spoken. Report to Master Porter," she repeats.
“Your Grace," Renard interrupts, “I am not well-spoken, but attest I will to your insight; principalities not actively menaced shall bide the first drought by the discernment of their governors. My swiftness in coming to you has made, in Meurille, those posts arranged very hastily."
The Queen falls quiet in contemplation, when her mouth quirks sardonically. “Lady Colette didn’t stay."
Panic stabs through Renard’s gut. “Nay."
The Queen closes her eyes.
“She goes to help you from Fayette," he adds nervously.
And the frustration drains from her crunched brow and shoulders, filling instead with familiar resignation. Renard cannot help the bloom of elation in his heart at seeing it, knowing it means he has won. “All right," the Queen barely murmurs, with a very weak nod — not of agreement to immediately aid Meurille, but of acceptance to the idea that the place is facing disorganised anarchy, and will need more attention than initially thought.
Fidel’s gaze shifts between her and Renard, confused. Though he can tell Renard has done something, what that ‘thing’ is, and how it worked, perplexes him so greatly that he cannot even be happy it came to his benefit, so much as simply distracted, as if trying to scrape a strange taste from his tongue.
A low, distant rumble begins to shake the room, not violent and jagged like the previous quakes, but a deep emanating hum. Orpheus strides past Renard to exit the room, commanding him to follow with a jut of the chin.
“You’ve certainly not taught that boy principles," Orpheus whispers as smoothly as an assassin’s dagger as they pass the doorframe.
Renard’s fist shoots out faster than he sees it himself. Uncoordinated, the blow only clips the tail of Orpheus’ cloak, and though Renard then barrels into the man and pins him down underneath him, groping to take Orpheus’ throat and throttle it, pull it apart, Orpheus does not even gasp or make the slightest squeak of alarm. All that stares up at Renard is that same face of unshakable composure and righteous contempt.
It is as though, even though he is the one being brutalised, the very fact that Renard is assaulting him is a victory in itself. There is nothing — nothing — surprising to Orpheus about what Renard just did. It is a silent castigation of Renard’s character even worse than if Orpheus began shouting insults.
Stung, Renard recoils.
“What on earth—Renard!" Fidel shouts from the doorway.
As Fidel rushes over, Renard eases himself off Orpheus, who slips like swirling mist back onto his feet. ‘Ho! I tripped!’ the words flash to his mind instantly, with the grin, the pose, the joke that would dismiss this whole incident, but even greater than the shame of looking like a tempestuous brute in front of Fidel, is the shame of so brazenly lying to him, which paralyses him on the floor.
And now Orpheus will say some terrible thing to defame me in front of my squire!, Renard’s mind yowls, Why must such pathetic quibbles accost me, when I am hardly what is important! So objectionable am I that ought I be raked before we speak of the breaking sky or the war front towards which we march — for what but the lingering grudge of a petty hypocrite that basks in the shine of his armour!
“Calm, young sir. He simply tripped." Orpheus’ smile to Fidel is so effortless that it could burst a flock of doves into existence.
Fidel untenses slightly, relieved but not entirely trusting, as he touches Renard’s shoulder. The warmth and concern that transmits through that contact tugs Renard’s heart mercifully like a current guiding a school of tropical fish towards the water’s sunlit surface. Simultaneously, a cold dead pit congeals tightly somewhere far under, a dense consuming star of total hatred, looking at that smile.
‘We are enemies, deeply.’ It only now comes clear to Renard how much Orpheus was not joking.
Swallowing the strain in his throat as he rights himself, Renard allows himself mentally to roll his eyes and snort at Orpheus: I did not know you were capable of lying. As if he heard this comment, Orpheus eyes Renard mildly, but says nothing.
Indeed. Spatting with him is truly not the important thing at this moment. Renard pats Fidel’s shoulder for his own moral support as Orpheus strides down the hall, but meets resistance when he goes to follow. Fidel has frozen in place under his palm, and is peering uncomfortably down a different hall — the one that leads back to the receiving room, where the Queen ordered him to go.
Technically, no one had said that he should go with Renard, or even considered Fidel going to Nix as an option. Knowing that the Queen will only trust him to busywork as a servant’s servant, and unimpressed with how lost and uncertain Fidel looks in this moment, Renard does snort and yanks him along by the arm.
Though unbalanced at first, Fidel quickly falls into step behind them. Orpheus notices Renard’s delay in following and turns — and, now seeing Fidel trailing him, snaps with the first open irritation he has expressed today. “Lord Renard, whose son is that?"
“Ho, be now the time to speak politics?"
“Decency. Whoever has trusted you with charge of their son thought not you would kill him in Nix. ‘Kill’ cannot even encompass the fate your naivety would push that boy into, down there."
Hidden under his skin, every muscle in Renard sweats. “He is no tot in his nappies, nor page learned only in sticks. He can quite choose for himself." A horrid squeak sounds as an old, heavy table begins sliding down the hall. And it is course for any squire to see a battleground before he is sixteen. You would pilfer him of his milestones? What a poor educator you are, and how frustrated must have been your boys. The next ready arrows slide themselves into his mental bowstring.
“And I am emancipated, Sir Orpheus. More whisky than blood runs through my parents that would tie them to think about me," he says, “I simply wish to help to my best," he finishes, a little unsteadily. “So I will go," he adds.
For how supportive Fidel’s words were, Orpheus’ face only twists with deep, dreadful disgust upon hearing them — but strangely, not for Fidel. Renard stands bewildered at the aura of hatred emanating out like a blade towards him, completely unsure of its source. Orpheus then shakes his head in one sharp flick as if severing a cord.
“No," he says. “If you both will rely on my judgement in that place, then take that as my judgement. He may be a prodigy as much as are you; but virtues become crooked, and the skills that give strength become liabilit—"
Glass sings, strained, in the windows.
“—Already arguing?" The Queen’s voice cuts over Orpheus’ from the parlour doorway. She leans against the doorframe as if exhausted, but not surprised. “Please, you boys, organise yours—"
“Hardly be there for an hour," Renard grumbles under her words and the rising groan of the vibrations. Orpheus opens his mouth to voice a reprimand, when that persistent hum swells like a sudden tide into a tremor that rockets through the whole castle. Everyone in the hall is thrown to their bellies as the windows shatter, the floor buckles, and a support beam aside the parlour door crumples as easily as a wet pillar of sand. It crashes through the damaged floor and spins whirling to the level below, landing with a horrible boom that rattles the bones of everyone above so ferociously their skeletons are near catapulted out of their bodies. Equally, through the plumes of swirling dust and grit, pours a hail of stone bricks from the ceiling, which too slants, buckles, and collapses, right upon the doorway to the parlour.
Taktaktaktaktaktakcltakcltakcltak, the avalanche of stone goes as the fractured bricks bash against each other and begin to settle.
“—Your Majesty!" Renard screams, sprinting through the dust to the foot of the pile, heedless to the last debris still falling, and fortunate not to be pelted himself. Mindlessly, he rips at the shingles still solid enough to grab, as if a mound so thick and heavy could be dismantled by hand. “Your Majesty!"
So weak it could be a mirage, a groan seeps from under the pile.
Renard’s breath locks and his heart jumps a beat. She does live! Which means—brain disconnecting, Renard rips at the fallen bricks with redoubled vigour, but even though Renard is not a weak man, they are interlocked too tightly to budge — which still does not dissuade, or impact Renard’s mindless effort, at all.
“Stop." Orpheus pulls on Renard’s shoulder. “We have duties elsewhere. Someone else can attend this."
Renard reels at these words, struggling to catch up to them, not only for how counter-intuitive they are, but for how utterly rational and composed Orpheus is. Though a hint of stress pulls over his features, it feels backwards that Renard is the one shooting to the ground to help, and Orpheus is standing coolly distant, when he surely is more aligned and familiar with the Queen than Renard.
As his head still swims in confusion, he sights Fidel — who stands paralysed in shellshocked powerlessness. Regret and sorrow tremble through Renard’s chest as the intuition settles, that there is no way Fidel will be joining them in Nix, if the sight of this destruction has already broken his nerve.
Orpheus taps his thumb to his forehead, clicks his tongue in frustration, and pulls his gaze also away from Fidel with a sharp shake of the head. “Come. Hurry," he addresses Renard with a beckoning wave, then turns to stride down the hall.
With the cold factual stability of understanding and purpose veiling itself over his mind, Renard gets to his feet and swiftly follows. But for the obedience of his body, as they leave Fidel behind in that hall, his mind quietly shifts into a darker current.
It feels he has failed.
Pleione, Colette, the Queen, now Fidel — it feels there has been a fundamental mismanagement in how Renard approached everything that has resulted not only in their discomfort or misfortune, but in discomforts and misfortunes so great that all these points of positive contact in his life are becoming ones he will never see again, slipping from him, wholly by his fault.
Fidel, for all his spirit, truly is just a child. It is a horrifically selfish and pathetic thing to hinge one’s own confidence not only on the support, but on the active physical presence of a boy several decades younger than oneself, who will, in innocence and admiration, say with total truth and conviction that the most horrific things can be effortlessly conquered. Why else does it feel like Renard truly could push to the bottom of Nix if Fidel were there, but be too scared to take even a step into the untested dark without him? He cannot even feign an illusion of courage to himself. If Renard goes into Nix alone, he must die.
Taking Fidel from Ashurst was not an error, making him a squire was not an error, even moving him away from Meurille was not an error, but he should not be here.
Then there is Pleione — Pleione. Renard owes an immensity of who he is to Pleione. Had he answered to her calls of warning and distress with promises that were a little less callous, had he been straight to his word and moved just an instant quicker, then… the censoring curtain of black closes over his mind again and shutters the corollary of this thought from his consciousness, but a feeling of certainty nonetheless comes to him that, had he indeed done these things and kept true, Pleione would be healthy, well, and present now.
And Colette, his thread of life and of future. Even in these circumstances, thinking of her rises a soft smile on his face and in his heart. By all hopes, she will have escaped the country and now be safely en-route to Fayette. Their child will be born giggling and bright and though vicious is the pain at knowing he will be raised without a father, and that Colette must raise him without a husband, this pain and fury and guilt is not enough to rip him away from his course. The joy that he could have had in this family is like the joy one remembers of childhood — nostalgic, and familiar, but distant, as though looking upon the life of someone else. The ghost of that man may remain in Colette’s life, but the real Renard will not; as the real Renard was the Renard obsessed with metaphysical vengeance and murder, too hateful and livid to ever firmly tell the Queen, ‘yield’.
And she is another heart that Renard’s impuissance has failed. He did not even need to do anything so dramatic as discard Kingslayer on a cliff, nor force himself to bow to her ill-fitting perceptions, nor even just listen to her earlier, though these things all would have dismantled the dominoes that led to this moment, as Renard does not regret them and knows he did good even despite them. His error in betraying The Queen was far more fundamental and inconsequentially stupid than any of that.
At the same time, it is the sheer basic stupidity of this error that underlines why Renard, for all his life, has always been getting and doing things wrong.
The one thing he needed to do, the one tiny thing that would have saved The Queen, was to swallow his pride for even a second and just not start fighting with Orpheus.
As they scale a stairway to the upper levels, Renard glimpses up at Orpheus’ back — broad, purposeful, and ever composed.
Orpheus is a better man and Renard has always known this. When in the presence of better men, it is always the right thing to kneel and serve that their good ways be glorified, far more than it is to usurp them. In fact, for a wretch like Renard especially, it is an honour to even lick the toes of a man whose path is just, as even if Renard cannot uphold it in the end, it is a gift beyond equal that he be condescended even a hint of what attitude to copy to mirror even a fraction of a good of these men.
But it was not envy that made him snap at Orpheus. It was the knowledge that a great task had been desired of him, and the fear that, without someone there who he loved and who believed in him to turn to in moments of doubt, he would fail the important task and disappoint everyone toward whom he owed so much gratitude.
It’s weakness, in other words, but less so of ability than character. Renard clenches Kingslayer’s hilt, the dark blade humming as with laughter, as he purses his lips and stares at the floor, feet yet following Orpheus.
The wall abruptly opens up beside him, the stone bricks fallen away in one of the previous quakes. From this vantage so high up, he can see the breadth of the destruction below — which is truly incredible, as the castle has been cracked in half and that missing half has fallen away like a listed ship, opening the building’s foundations to the sky like a gutted fish, and in the open slash, exposing the whole panorama of Sebilles.
Orpheus curses under his breath and hurries on with redoubled speed. He catches a group of porters on their way down from a hall ahead of them, and orders them to attend to The Queen. As they drop their boxes and sprint off, Orpheus and Renard charge up a final, long stairway to the top of a spire.
At the top is a circular room with a circular balcony. Lining the walls are trunks and crates, which the porters have been carrying down — the ultimate source of these crates, however, is a thin weedy tendril of the umbral rift that that has pierced through the spire’s balcony, and now sits queerly in place like a parasite. A rope extends out of the rift as a consciously placed lifeline, tied to a pillar. Through the rift, as has always been the case, is the scene of the campground.
Orpheus nods for Renard to go through.
With Fidel, Colette, Pleione, and The Queen all gone as anchors, the person whose desires and expectations Renard now feels most required to meet is Orpheus. Renard has no illusions that Orpheus would desire anything more from him than to close the rift and then die — and Renard is fully willing to put himself in the circumstances that would best produce this outcome.
If he can do it quickly enough, then Renard may be able to close the rift before Orpheus can get through. Then Orpheus will be available to manage events in Sebilles, and Renard will be so isolated that he would doubtless lose any nerve to return to the surface. To even think of climbing out already feels shameful. Taking a steadying gulp, the mongoose-fast turn and strike he must perform already rehearsing itself through his mind, Renard grips Kingslayer’s scabbard tightly and steps forth.
The oily tendril shimmers, flickers, closer…
“—Hold," Renard pauses.
Orpheus’ chin tilts up, though with genuine interest rather than impatience.
“I cannot enter this."
“Whyever so?" Orpheus asks.
Renard palms his sweaty brow and steps quickly back from the fractured balcony. Memories from Ashurst strike him like lashes of a whip. Of course. Applying Kingslayer to that rift, though it was not open then, produced an extremely destructive effect that Renard may have been one or two foolish steps from replicating here, in a far more precarious environment. Though Renard wishes to destroy the ‘loom’, or spacial barrier present in Nix, these rifts are very likely also things Kingslayer will respond to in their own right if Renard attempts to pass through them.
“What blessed armaments did your men take though this portal? Any?" Renard asks as he pries off the lid of a crate. Inside is a bundle of sheets, clothes, and bedrolls.
“Ah—all we had, once we found how," replies Orpheus, hand on his hip, peering over Renard’s shoulder. Indeed, as Renard sweeps aside a cloth, beneath it is the mangled remains of a hairpin tangled in shattered strands of broken witchbane. “Many before that broke by proximity. Even twenty paces out, the rift strained them—" shuffling further through the crate, wrapped in another bundle of linens, is a ceramic plate coated in the characteristic black sheen of witchbane, this time fully and functionally enchanted, if unwieldy in form. No wonder the army has struggled so much if these knick-knacks were all they had! “—but wrapping them in cloths shielded them from this effect. It must need direct exposure."
“So simple," Renard chuckles darkly as he whips bundles of linens out of the crate and begins frantically, and thickly, wrapping them around Kingslayer’s hilt and scabbard.
Orpheus does watch this bitterly, and though he does not say it, his smile speaks for him: it already has a scabbard.
Renard forces himself to smile through his sweat as if the seventh layer of cloth he is mummifying Kingslayer in is just an anxious joke. Can never be too careful!
Orpheus dismisses the issue and idly thumbs his ring finger. Good. If Orpheus can be distracted, that increases Renard’s chances of slipping away and slamming the door on him. In fact, Renard’s gut screams at him: this is a good moment! Go for it, now!
“W-what of you, Orpheus?" Renard stammers instead, words squeezing out of his tight throat as if grinding against an iceberg. No! You idiot! You lost it! His gut screams, but he frantically assures himself otherwise. If he can get Orpheus rummaging through a crate…
Orpheus raises his brow and nods, still fiddling with his ring finger. It only now clicks for Renard that he must be wearing an enchanted ring, under his glove.
“Might I see it?"
Orpheus squints and shakes his head. “Time is thin. You’ve well enough swaddled that blade that I might rest my head upon it to sleep. Go in."
Renard releases a long, sharp breath. Turning to the rift, he hugs the bundled Kingslayer to his chest.
This is it, then. The cold iron of focus closes over his mind, cutting out even prospects of closing the rift on Orpheus, as he exits to the balcony, pace utterly even — even as a distant tremor, and the frantic peal of distant footfalls, echo up from the chambers far below.
The oily film coating the inside of the rift has the consistency of thick jello. To push his hand through takes concentrated force — but once his fingers breach the jello-layer, he waggles them about and feels no resistance. He has breached into some strange, airy liquid. Taking a last deep inhale and holding his breath, Renard plunges into the rift.
The world spins as if trapped in a murderous whirlpool, slamming discordant scenes of fallen cities, of dark forests, of silent lakes, and of blossoming stars together in a repeating sequence, shuttering rapidly from one to the next — cities forest lakes stars cities forest lakes stars. A ring of these images is projected around him spinning at impossible speed. But no, that is not right. What is actually spinning is Renard. He is like a cotton seed caught and whirling madly on even a mild breeze, the weightless stellar water ghosting its touch over his skin but lacking substance enough to slow or catch him.
It is different from air, in that there is viscosity to it, in which many gleaming lights hold stable, but just as permeable. There is a very strange familiarity in this sensation of being immersed in it. Before Renard can grasp what this could be, what this means, or where he is, his back impacts hard against a level surface. He tumbles, spinning rear over crown, for some meters before the momentum wanes and he rolls to a stop.
Renard spits out a mouthful of mud and grass, the stains of which have now caked his clothes, and meekly raises his head.
He is in a grassy meadow aside a gentle lake. On the far side of this meadow are the distant peaks of tents, quite many of them, which must be the remains of Orpheus’ war camp. Though the Queen mentioned the camp had been vacated, Renard sights with alarm moving silhouettes, hard to make out at this distance, but certainly seeming like people. Perhaps there is a group that stayed behind, or rushed back to collect some lost items, who should be advised to Renard’s imminent monkeying with the rift.
Renard, getting to his feet, first inspects the rest of the scene. Behind him is a ledge that reaches just over his head, the bottom of which is stone and the top of which is sod. The stones are cut as if worked by masons, but make no distinguishable structure, and are stricken through with a gash that must be the spacial rift.
From this side, the rift is not an oily inset tendril but a protruding scar of phosphorescent blue light, haloed by sharp splinters of glass. The air itself screams against the sharp points of the rift and its splinters – exactly as Pleione had envisioned — like a tortured animal ripping open its own flank as the currents of air slide over the rift. Like blood spilling into water, trails of plasma burn into the surroundings following the motion of the air, then these trails smear, fluoresce, and dissolve not into nothing but into a dilute, murky mass that proceeds upwards along the air current.
As Renard cranes his head back to observe the full breadth of this plasmic ‘blood cloud’, dread sinks in his stomach. The cloudy clots of plasma spread so tall and so vast that it is as though he is looking up at a dam, but the space outlined by the presence of this ‘blood cloud’ is not simply a straight vertical wall. It curves, and bends, and spirals, like a massive ribbon, which spreads over a ravine that Renard simultaneously feels he is staring down into, as if from atop a valley, and looking up at, as if from the base of a mountain. As it had been when encountering the pre-rift in Ashurst, his mind shakes off the dissonance of this sensation by simply dismissing it as ‘a little weird’.
No, the more horrifying thing is the way the current of the ‘blood cloud’ moves. Though adhering to its current, it is like it is shifting within its own skin, constrained as if stuck in a tight bedroll. Every time it shifts, the air around the open rift screams and effuses a fat glut of plasma.
Renard takes a breath and steps back. The only other thing of note in the vicinity is the lake. A slight current from a distant river teases it quaintly. If not for the dark sky, the total silence, and the itching sensation in the air of an implacable offness similar to what he once felt in Verdanheim, this spot would be so bucolic as to be eerie.
Renard shakes his head and scans over the area again. But there is only the one rift, nothing else, and no others. Several ropes dangle out of it, anchored under crates and rocks, that serve as guidelines. Flags of different colours are tied on the end of each rope, and upon the flags are written such things as: ‘ASHURST HILLS’, ‘SEBILLES VALLEY’, and ‘SEBILLES CASTLE’. Holding the corresponding rope when passing must be how one reaches their destination reliably, lest the current shift again.
Finally, Renard steps forward and extends his hand aside of the rift. His hand does not contact an invisible wall, but feels to slow and grow heavier the further he pushes it towards this direction, and though he certainly feels this weight and heaviness, it does not become any more difficult to hold his hand aloft. In fact the motion of his arm still feels to follow the momentum of the initial push, even as the actual motion slows so dramatically that his hand no longer looks to be moving. But there is still an impetus of motion, and further to go to complete the arc, so his hand certainly is still trying to move forward as he commanded it, at a ferociously slow rate of one fingertip’s worth of distance a year, or a million years, or more.
Panicking that he may be stuck in this motion, Renard frantically tears his hand back. The effect reverses smoothly as it came and his hand shoots back to impact his chest. He nurses it and huffs a sigh of relief.
That is the spacial barrier.
Pursing his lips, Renard unwraps Kingslayer from the linens and secures it on his belt. His hand rests on the pommel, the blade tilting in its scabbard. He could strike at the barrier now, if he wished…
Moved by a hint of hesitation, he backs away and turns toward the distant campground, curious to know who is there. No! Kinglsayer hisses on his hip. You fool! You missed it again! Even as guilt tightens his throat, his stride to the camp remains steady.
The grass underfoot drags strangely, as though it is a carpet being pulled behind Renard, not in a way that disturbs Renard’s balance, but in a way that dramatically shortens the distance he must travel. Indeed, what had looked like trek of minutes over the meadow ends within only seconds, and the sudden sprouting of tents all around him disorients Renard so utterly he must pause.
“Oh, hellllo!" A merry voice calls. “Now who was expecting it’d be you! Sir Ren-arrrrd!"
Struggling with the whiplash of his arrival to camp, Renard is slow to locate the speaker.
“That’s a tinge more exciting than another gaggle of porters. I hope it bodes well, sincerely, to jiggle this lock. Sir Renard."
Called again, the voice comes from a short ways behind him. There upon a crate aside a tent sits a man who must be Renard’s age, but who holds himself in such a casual manner it gives him the air of someone much younger, and not in a way that compliments him. His grin is so white and wide it is like a knife slashed into his otherwise handsome face, and his dark eyes are tinged with slight madness.
Around his neck hangs a pendant, which carries a rock black with witchbane.
“Oh! Do you remember me? You’ve only seen me like this, haven’t you?" He smiles and waves shyly, muttering, “hi, hi, hi."
“Lord Verdan," Renard says tiredly. “You?"
“Ah! No your grace? No hello? Just ‘you!’ You, Verdan! Heavens, heavens, Sir Renard. Is it that wrong to see me? My boys are gallanting ‘round all down here, now how do I watch when I’m waiting upstairs? I hhhate that! Let me get involved, and mud up my elbows!" He wails and beats the crates like a little boy throwing a tantrum. In a fashion Renard remembers is typical of Verdan, the man’s erratic attitude then snaps into unnerving clarity. “And we’ve got envoys coming in and out of that portal, like you."
Renard presses his palm to his sweaty forehead. Indeed, all the men about camp that Renard can see are Verdan’s men, dressed in the crimson military uniform of Verdanheim, and all busy transporting crates and barrels about. It seems they are packing up, too.
“You don’t happen to have an army marching in right behind you?" Verdan asks.
“—Nay," Renard refocuses. “Lacren is dire. We need…" his tongue catches. What does Lacren need?
“A shame," Verdan murmurs. Staring down at the crate, he runs a blunt penknife back and forth over his fingers.
“—Regardless," Renard continues, “I will be our last envoy, and deal now to that rift. You have no messages?"
“Nope," Verdan glances away from his men to Renard. Awkward silence holds between the two, when Verdan abruptly laughs, shrugs, and tosses his head in indication that Renard should proceed.
With a complicated sigh, Renard turns on his heel to depart for the rift. Though he glimpses Verdan resume fiddling with his knife, once his back is turned, Verdan’s gaze settles upon him, distantly watching.
“Wait," Renard turns, “Lord Verdan—when you came into the, ah, condition you had during our first attendance, what had you stumbled upon that conferred it to you? May it be something that can be seen and avoided?"
Verdan’s brows shoot up. “Well, Sir Renard, that is why we’ve accessorised with these little black baubles. If they won’t hold for you… you’ll quickly find out!" He grins, slipping the stone of his necklace over his palm. “Because my granpawpaw thought he was just taking a walk. Why do you ask that?"
Renard thumbs the pommel of Kingslayer, struggling to find appropriate words to explain anything.
“Are you going further down!" Verdan exclaims, shooting off the crate to grab Renard’s hands and bob them about like an excited puppy. “Oh well, well, that changes a lot! Hold on, Sir Renard. Let me fetch more than this silly—" he throws the penknife to the dirt, “—junk." And disappears into the tent to loudly rummage through what sounds like a crate of supplies. “One moment," Verdan calls, “one moment."
Renard rolls his eyes and departs to the lake. It was only a brief detour to the camp, and everything at the lakeside remains exactly how Renard left it.
A wrongness tweaks Renard’s chest. Where is Orpheus?
‘Brief’ does not mean ‘nonexistant’. He should have come through by now.
Renard sets Kingslayer aside on the grass, and, holding the rope to ‘Sebilles Tower’, peeks his face through the rift.
What welcomes Renard is a wall of cacophonous, shrieking chaos. The entire room of the tower he left barely three minutes ago is seizing in the throes of another violent earthquake, raining more cobbles and making it questionable how long the tower will even keep standing. But even more urgent than these vibrations that rock Renard’s heart, as if he were affected just by proximity despite touching no surface, is what he sees. So massive that its girth takes up the entire far side of the room, and indeed so large that it has broken the doorway from the stairs just by entering here, is a giant, screeching ghoul.
Winged like a bat, and with the posture of a vulture, a mess of intertwined, slimy tendrils extend from its rear end that encircle the room. It has five ratlike heads that are all ravaging Orpheus — who is pinned on the floor, bleeding, under its taloned forelimbs, and using every inch of his strength to ward off the many gnashing teeth by holding his silver sword perpendicular across many of the beast’s maws. Familiar with such melees himself, Renard knows that if Orpheus surrenders one grain of focus, lets even one muscle in his straining biceps fall slack, he will be overpowered and consumed immediately.
And even more urgent than that is—
“—Fidel!" Renard screams, extending his arm through the rift.
—Fidel, who stands at the threshold to the balcony, between the ghoul and the rift. But he is not facing, or running for the rift. Bristling with hatred and fury, he is facing the ghoul.
And though he startles at Renard’s call, this judder does not interrupt him from what he was doing — which is hoisting up a brick from the tower’s broken walls, and lobbing it violently at the creature.
“—Fidel, just come though! I will handle—" Renard insists, too slowly.
The brick lands square in one of the monster’s skulls. A wet ‘crack’ resounds even through the rumbling of the quake, piercing as a dagger. Though the ghoul shrieks and convulses, it does not stop its assault on Orpheus — but the interruption is just enough that the ghoul is the one to surrender its moment of focus. In an opening as brief as a blink, Orpheus smoothly slashes through three of the monster’s ravening jaws and rolls out of its grip, onto his feet, in one motion.
But a blink is only a blink. The ghoul rears instantly to rake its talons down Orpheus’ back, and the only thing that stops this attack is Fidel, who darts in and catches the ghoul, as it crashes down, on the point of his sword instead. In this opening, Orpheus dashes — to Renard, and the rift.
Hatred freezes Renard as he looks down upon Orpheus. When Orpheus looks up at Renard, and sees his expression, the coldness of his own gaze reciprocates the sentiment fully.
How dare he, Renard thinks. Try to escape minus Fidel! Certainly, Orpheus is wounded. He is hunched with his hands to his stomach and his whole body is slathered with blood. And certainly, Fidel is not wounded at all. These facts do not affect Renard enough for him to, in these slow two, three, seconds, pull Orpheus through the portal, but only glare and be glared at in turn.
A yell sounds from the fight. Renard’s gaze jerks back to Fidel. The ghoul’s mighty forelimb is reared back to swipe — and though Fidel adroitly jumps back, time itself slows down as the trajectory of the blow becomes clear. These massive talons, each as big as Fidel’s torso, will imminently catch the boy, ream through his stomach, and slam him against the tower’s stone walls to turn him into a large smear of blood. Renard’s throat tightens, sweat burns from every pore, and yet…
And yet, minutely, the ghoul’s angle recedes. The entire ghoul is slanting backwards away from Fidel, in a very unnatural motion, because it is not the ghoul that is moving — but the floor on which the ghoul stands. Renard’s projection of the oncoming strike adjusts to this shift. He sees the talons whizz, by barely a millimetre, straight past the tunic of the retreating Fidel. With a gasp as if breaking from water, time snaps back to its usual pace. There comes the crash of the ghoul’s wicked blow missing — Renard hastily yanks Orpheus through the portal — and then the ferocious cracking thunder of the whole tower breaking in twain.
The quakes have finally felled it. With a horrific shriek, the ghoul disappears from sight as its side of the spire-top shears away and tumbles far, far down. Equally, though, is Fidel quickly disappearing, as his own foothold upon the balcony is also dropping straight into open sky.
With time enough to only sprint a single step, Fidel leaps for the rift, hand outstretched and straining for Renard’s own. Already the rest of him has fallen out of sight, and the desperate face of his palm with outstretched fingers is dropping—
—Contact.
Stretching himself to his limit, just as it dips below the rift, Renard catches Fidel by that hand. Sparing only a single relieved sigh, Renard tightens his grip on Fidel, who is now dangling in the air above a long, deadly freefall, and pulls him in through the portal.
A manic whirlpool of images again assaults Renard as he pulls back through the rift. Like before, he is spat to the earth, and like before, he skids for metres, dirt caking itself down his front and chin. Laying face-down on the mud, he mildly pushes himself up to find himself again at that same lakeside meadow, this time in the company of Fidel and Orpheus, who are also collecting their bearings.
Adrenalin pounds away like a decaying fire. Sudden lightheadedness rattles Renard — Kingslayer is lying on the grass where he left it, only a slight distance away, but still enough for the bond between himself and the blade to tug him. Renard goes to retrieve it.
Fidel snaps into motion. From a satchel that he wasn’t wearing when Renard last saw him, he quickly retrieves a roll of bandages and begins administering them to Orpheus, whose state, now that Renard sees him properly, makes Renard double-take.
He is mangled. Three pronounced gashes run down Orpheus’ body — he has taken a hit from the ghoul’s vicious talons. One runs down his collar, one over his torso, and one through his right forearm, though the last has been mutilated so thoroughly it looks more like a strip of raw rabbit jerky. At the end of that arm is, connected to the wrist by only a tendon, a dangling hand. Orpheus had not been clenching his hand to nurse a bleeding gut. He had been holding his injured wrist stable so the appendage would not fall off.
Further, the blood gushing from his wounds is tremendous. It has already dyed him entirely red. That he could fend off that monster for even a second in this state is a miracle, and that he has not already passed out from weakness is also. But now that there is a moment of safety, as he tries to raise his head, it only flags and wilts like a dying flower.
“I’m sorry," Fidel confesses quickly, his hands moving with surprising speed and practice, “it was my fault. I brought it up there — it was following me…"
Of course it’s not your fault, Fidel. The consolation jumps to Renard’s tongue, as he sheaths Kingslayer and approaches Fidel and Orpheus, but the words do not leave his mouth.
“I’m sorry," Fidel repeats, hands dutifully whizzing even as tears leak from his eyes. “I’m sorry."
Renard bites his lip. The right thing to do is help Fidel apply the bandages, but, more embarrassingly now than it has even been before, Renard is a terrible medic. Though trained in first aid long ago as a guard in Sebilles, the occasions he needed to use that training were few, and his actual ability in it was remedial. His talent has always been in killing, not in mending.
Renard so averts his gaze.
A whispered groan rises from Orpheus, as though he is trying to speak.
“What say you?" asks Renard.
Orpheus breathes, takes a roll of bandage, begins steadily wrapping his own shoulder. To be that strong even while bleeding out… His whole body then shudders and strains, throat bobbing, and as though speaking these words takes as much effort as it would to shove a great boulder, his gravelled voice repeats: “Close the rift."
Message so conveyed, he pulls tight a swath of bandage, slumps and teeters. Renard nods—when bestial screech pierces the silence of the lakefront, and a massive shape barrels out of the rift, glimpses of slime, rodent teeth and talons, swooping in like a crazed battering ram.
Reflex dominates. Renard leaps forth — Kingslayer flashes free, and carved by the beast’s own momentum, through the metal of his blade crowing: Yes! Yes!, Renard feels the cleaving of a great weight deeply in the ghoul’s flesh. An ocean rains of vile blackish-green blood that bursts so thick the sheer mass of the spray blinds like a curtain.
The beast crashes, tumbles, shrieking in unquestionable pain. Embedded deep in its flesh, a grip any less iron than Renard’s surely would have here released Kingslayer — but indeed Renard does not, being instead dragged along with the beast. Without hesitation, he rights himself to his feet and plunges Kingslayer again into the undulating flesh and muscle underfoot.
Another hideous shriek — convulsions, and the ghoul rolls onto its feet, tossing Renard off its belly to the ground.
Now able to see the state of the beast, it is horribly wounded. Even as it looms over Renard, viscera dangles from its stomach, weeping and trailing onto the grass. The vile little eyes in its five vicious rat-faces burn with hatred but also with fear, every one panting seething breaths as if sick. Two of the heads have their lower jaws broken and a third is completely missing. Drool pours from all its mouths, thick and green like snot, but as the rivulets flow, becomes progressively more watery and diluted like the stream of a pure spring river.
The ghoul’s muzzles scrunch and its heads recede as if trying to withdraw into itself, jaws snapping at air in a futile attempt to scour a vile taste off its tongues. Unable to escape own its tastebuds, it confusedly beats its massive wings as if this will help it flee — but its left wing is deeply cut. The vigorous flapping only jettisons more thick pumps of arterial blood out of the beast, and, upon slapping the ground, snaps off its injured wing.
Rage and pain flash in its eyes. Confused, damaged, and sick, desperation screams to it that the only escape now is through attack.
Renard braces. The ghoul dives for him, talons outstretched. Artfully, fruit of years of ceaseless experience, Renard ducks under those talons as if dancing, lands a cut on a forelimb as it passes overhead, and, spinning, plunges Kingslayer into the beast’s chest. The rat-ghoul reels, screeching. Its heads in unison all snap at Renard, pushing over each other like chicks squabbling for a meal, but Renard loops his strong arm around the neck of the nearest head and is again ferried into the air. The ghoul bites itself, over and over, trying to reach him. Renard flexes his arm — a great ‘crack’ resounds as that neck of the beast breaks, and falls limp.
The other heads surge in relentlessly. Renard plants Kingslayer into the crown of an oncoming skull, which whips backwards in pain. Swiftly, Renard alights onto the monster’s back, its talons passing just a moment too slow in reaching up to rend him apart. Two quick slices, two heads lopped off, thoomping onto the earth.
Its remaining necks twist — its talons reach further for him, but the weight of its own muscles is now too much to bear. The monster flags and slumps to the ground, its arms wandering like poles tilting in the wind. Its thrashing tails, dissolving in their own purified mucus, wither and snap apart.
Shluck, shluck. The last heads fall. A final, desperate spasm rocks through the beast, and then nothing.
Victory is pregnant in these moments after slaughter. Renard breathes in deeply, the taste poignant in the air.
“—ah! AAAAAAAH!"
“—Fidel!" Renard gasps.
Snapping out of the haze of triumph, Renard whips back around to the source of that bloodcurdling scream: Fidel. He has been swept several meters from where he was treating Orpheus, his trail writ in a swath of bloodsoaked meadow.
The ghoul struck him, in its first charge, and the manner of ‘how’ remains grisly and obvious. The lower jaw of the ghoul that snapped off is here, lodged by the incisors deep into Fidel’s calf. But even as jets of blood shoot out onto the grass, it is not the pain or the severity of the injury that is making Fidel scream with such primordial horror.
Rather, it is the mass of writhing, slimy, eel-like tentacles that have burst out of his leg. Knotted and intercorded akin to the ghoul’s tails, they balloon out from each other in interweaving spirals, ripping open Fidel’s pant leg and spreading airward in a fat helix, panickedly — for they are moving not with the will of a foreign aggressor, but by the will of Fidel, and they are not a parasitic intrusion, but Fidel’s very flesh itself. Raw injured red muscles weave and melt together into another smooth sludge-black strand of the mass, the open wound disappearing under the slime-layer as blood thickens, blackens, and clots like jelly.
It does not stop there. Quick as serpents, streaks of black upon his skin rush up along his thigh, accelerating, as wildfire, outlines of the coming shift with their volition plainly clear, that to his torso, to his crown, every inch of flesh will turn in seconds, until Fidel Asphodel is nothing but a quivering mass of black eels.
Renard sprints — as does Orpheus. Hatred spears through Renard’s heart. Orpheus! What does he think he’ll do! But Orpheus is the one already nearer, and the one who reaches him first. He skids onto his knees and sets his good hand upon Fidel’s leg.
Now what, now what shall you do! But just as quickly as Renard thinks these unkind words, a shift comes to the motion of the eels — they compact, and retract, as if wilting…
“Close the rift!" Orpheus yells to Renard.
Awareness that Orpheus is healing Fidel sweeps aside his resentment. Renard nods, without an inch of falter, adjusts his stride, shoots like an arrow instead for the unassuming face of the rock-ledge, the flank of the invisible loom.
In a motion practised thousands of times, Kingslayer sings out of its scabbard.
Time freezes in that instant where Kingslayer’s tip bites into the loom.
There is resistance, of a strange sort. Where before motion slowed and became heavy in proximity to the barrier, here the motion and the swing flow smooth and uninterrupted, but upon the contact of Kingslayer to the barrier, all the world simply pauses. It is not that there is a force preventing Renard from moving; indeed, there is not even fear of being stuck, or room for conscious thought, but merely airy perception. The subsequent end of the swing will continue perfectly fine. It is simply that this one single specific moment has been picked apart from the sequence of time, as if for inspection, and inevitably will be returned to it.
Rather, the natural consequence of this action, whatever that may be, is truthfully already in place, and in a strange way, has happened.
Though all the world holds still in this painted moment, the barrier quivers. It is the quiver of knowing what another is thinking; the quiver of witnessing intention rise up from the soul to the mind. But where should be a considerate mind to steer the course of this juncture, there rises at the wheel only a profound absence of captains. Governance is ceded to the blank mindless will of the barrier itself.
Which is a ridiculous prospect, as much as would be ceding to a stone the decision of whether or not to be hewn. Before the actioned will of Renard, and the unconquerable might of Kingslayer, the barrier soon buckles, and like nothing…
Time resumes. Shards of the barrier rain over the world as, like nothing, it shatters. Renard stumbles only now with the odd interruption of the temporal judder, tailing the end of the smooth swing, a step into the grass that was formerly blocked, to quickly regain his footing.
The shards that rain are like glass, and burst out in all directions. They are invisible, but their presence is obvious and can be felt in the gut, again in the same way as glass. Unlike the scar that was the rift, however, the edges of these shards do not cut or burn, and there is no sulfurous glow about them that hurts or bleeds into the air. Exactly as Pleione said, the loom has been broken.
And with the loom broken, the glowing rift itself shatters too. The globs of glowing, injured, bleeding air all run together to one distant nexus, and, in the scurrying motion of a fish released to the sea, dissipate as the intangible shape they were cut upon shakes them off of its body and hurries along into the current of space, free, as is its natural will to be. Indeed, not a second passes after that behemoth leaves than does the last particle of light dim into nothing, and the uninterrupted fabric of night overhead smooths beautifully healed and even again.
Renard releases a short, relieved breath, and turns to rejoin Orpheus and Fidel. He does not make it two steps before a subtle tremor comes over the earth and the sky begins to shake. That long ribbon of distorted space he first saw when inspecting the barrier whips about like a leather belt shot off from a centrifuge, cramping and shattering and falling and unfolding with an insane momentum, and a streak of black sweeps over the sky so absolute that it swallows the stars.
And everything flips — the curtain sweeps too underfoot, then arcs overhead, carries the meadow, and slides underfoot, yanks the horizon, sweeps overhead, the entire vista revolving in somersaults around the trio of Orpheus, Fidel, and Renard. It is like they are standing stable in the hollow centre of a spinning ball, whose movement is only growing more quick and erratic, and whose every rotation further distorts the environment. Like an oil painting, defaced and melting, so the meadow shears apart, and like a snowball charging down a hill, accumulating greater and greater size, more and more scenes of foreign places flash and whirl in and out of the land, their conjunctions disorderly.
Soon the vistas blur so quickly together they cannot be seen. All of this happens in only a second.
In the next second, that raging snowball settles. It does so smoothly like it is confused, and pausing, why had it ran with such strength? Then the first ribbon of black distorted space again snaps, shooting away from the bounds of the large orb it drew around the three men, to fly off into the dark like a gnashing dragon, rippling along, with greater concerns than them, and blinks out of sight.
It is dark. They are no longer in the meadow.
That orb of distortion has deposited them in a strange place. There are no landmarks — in fact there is nothing, nothing at all, except for a void of darkness that stretches eternally in every direction, and the very faint, very distant, suggestion of stars an impossible distance away. In fact their light is so frail that the men must be an even further distance away from them than they would be if looking up at the sky from Lacren.
Despite the darkness, Renard can see Orpheus and Fidel clearly as if they were lit in daylight. Too, he sees Fidel’s satchel and, a moderate distance away, the corpse of the ghoul, which quietly falls into the void. Renard cranes his neck to peer after it. A mass of shadowy humanoid figures rises out of the black, fighting and squabbling like starved rats among themselves, shoving and swarming all to that body like maggots to rotting flesh. At least ten of them flood into the corpse, which twitches, and kicks, and whose glassy eyes sheen over with fresh mucous — Renard tightens his grip on his sword — but just as soon as the body reanimates, it shudders, like an epileptic, nips and claws at itself, every limb flailing without unity. Shadows are pushed out and flood in to the body in ceaseless cycles, never resolving. Renard relaxes his grip. Whatever things swarmed into that shrinking body, they care more about squabbling for it than about Renard or his group.
Renard returns his attention to the place where he stands. His heart jolts. There is another crowd of shadowy figures who did not pursue the corpse, but who are staring with their flat, blank faces towards Renard’s group. Like wolves at a treeline peering into a meadow, there is an air of wariness about them, but they certainly are not scared.
Renard’s throat tightens. He wets his lips.
The darkness in this place exudes a subtle pressure, squeezing upon the skin. If he has landed in a nest of these creatures, and it is their inclination to swarm, they are presently failing to do so. Kingslayer’s hilt burns under his hand. The urge to strike is immense.
No.
No, he instructs himself, gritting his teeth and shaking his head. Orpheus and Fidel need attendance — they are not even thirty steps away. And yet every nerve in his body screams that he is in such incredible danger, inside this coliseum of stares, that a single lapse in vigilance will destroy the world. Like an ocean, they will flood in, and sink this place of refuge….
…Indeed, refuge…
Renard experimentally raises Kingslayer an inch out of its scabbard.
From the shadows there rises a tittering of flowing whispers. Though their voices are too indistinct to solidify into any words, the clear sting of quaint bemusement scrunches Renard’s guts. What stays their assault is not Kingslayer. And if they do not fear Kingslayer, it is questionable what power Renard could have before them at all. Defenceless… they laugh, he is defenceless…
Renard forces his gaze forward.
Orpheus is slumped over Fidel, who is laying on the ground with his hands planted over his eyes. Their exact states are hard to tell from this distance, but Fidel’s leg is no longer thrashing and Orpheus is bandaged enough that he is no longer gushing blood so profusely.
They cannot reach into here, Renard assures himself, noticing the distinct, hard edge the shadows draw around the small void-island upon which the group have fortuitously landed. With that thought as his anchor, even as sweat teems down the back of his neck, he marches a step to the others.
A single shadow strolls out of the mass directly onto the platform ahead of Renard.
Renard’s guts drop to his rear. Kingslayer flashes into his grip. The shadow simply stands there. Nothing about its size, depth, or silhouette suggests it is more eminent than any of its fellows — conversely terrifying, for if this one could leak into the wall, surely, the whole legion could. His head shakes itself in denial, no, no… but there is only one path to take. It does stand somewhat off to the side… if he is careful, he might skirt around it.
Eyes peeled so wide that sweat drips into them, he approaches the thing at bladepoint.
It merely watches, waits.
The rolling whispers hush. The others are all watching too.
Two careful steps, to inch around…
But it merely watches, waits.
Inching slowly, step by step, never even glancing away from it, passing so near that a single footfall would drive Kingslayer into its belly…
But it merely watches…
—What on earth is it doing! Annoyance strikes Renard. Standing there so innocently, as if it is not a ball of evil so pungent that Renard’s very soul demands it purged!
“Stay back," Renard warns. The onlookers titter, but no other response comes.
Renard takes a final step, having now circled the shadow. It should be a direct path now to Fidel and Orpheus behind him — if he does not wish to turn his back, he may simply walk backwards. But no. No, no! Renard Cox, slinking away from a monster, when it is he whose single unquestioned strength is the one that will doubtless vanquish these shadows, the footing of more than a decade of life where he would without fail kill evil!
If they saw a chink in even his heart, how bold would these things grow! How dare he let himself be cowed by a beast that has done only nothing!
Nay! By righteousness, by virtue, by all good holy things! Kill evil! Kill evil! Kill evil!
Kill!
Roaring, without warning, Renard surges forward with Kingslayer to pierce the shade. He makes it a single step — a single, heavy, momentous step — before jolting immediately with the realisation that everything forward from his heel has just landed on air. He wrenches himself back and aborts the charge, reeling.
Hah, it was a trap! A trap?! There must be a hole in the barrier there! Nay, rather — who is to say the outline of the island is as large as Renard imagined it? That cursed shadow goaded him by coming to the edge! If he had completed that swing, he would have fallen into the void like that ghoul!
…Though truthfully, he may have fallen more readily if he had stayed confused as to the size of the island!
An uproarious peal of mocking laugher thunders out from the onlooking shades — but the target of their derision and amusement stunningly isn’t him. It’s their fellow shade. They are laughing at it. Renard can only stand mystified as the goading shade reams at itself, melts, and explodes into fragments that seep back into the air. The others just cackle louder, underscored with disgust and hatred.
These things have no loyalty and extremely cruel notions of entertainment. But if they attack by trickery, and are intelligent enough to understand the grim humour of this interaction, they might not be as immediately dangerous as a mindless thrashing ghoul. At the very least, they must have ego. If they can die in such an odd fashion, perhaps all they have is ego.
“Hoh," Renard spits as he turns on his heel. No longer so scared, he scoops up the discarded satchel and jogs to Fidel and Orpheus.
“We have been transported strangely," Renard announces in his approach. “Orpheus, how fare you?"
In coming nearer, Fidel and Orpheus’ states are more apparent. Cords of knotted eels still pulse under Orpheus’ hand, but the span of leg that they cover has shortened to the initial injury across Fidel’s calf and shin. They also move less freely, as though they have been compressed into the bounds of a normal leg. Finally arriving, Kingslayer twitches. In a reversal of the current of the infestation, smooth new planes of pink healthy flesh spread up and down over the eels, and the leg is restored to normal.
Orpheus is unconscious, or so weak that the distinction doesn’t matter.
Renard sets Kingslayer upon Fidel’s leg and spreads Orpheus out to asses him. Fidel, in his initial treatment, has bandaged the most vital wounds across Orpheus’ chest and collar. What remains is his mangled arm. Hopefully Renard will be able to follow up Fidel’s work suitably.
Or, he could take Kingslayer, lift Orpheus up by the hair, and lop the man’s head off. —What!?
It would be one less burden to deal with, and one less annoyance eating into resources. —What!!
Renard shakes his head as he snaps open Fidel’s satchel. Certainly, Renard and Orpheus are on poor terms. That does not mean Renard has ever had any drive to kill the man, who on all metrics is better than him, and who he would rather impress. Moreover, in this dire situation his guidance is vital, the privilege of his cooperation is present, and he is already in danger here anyway. It is a far more glorious thing to exit this ordeal with everyone still alive, and protect who he can to his best.
Plus, it is Renard’s fault he was injured in the first place, for not being there when the ghoul first attacked him.
It must be Nix inserting thoughts into his mind. With a shake of his head, Renard retrieves a roll of bandages and begins hastily wrapping Orpheus’ arm, sweeping the strange thoughts beneath his mind as easily he does his regular ones. For once this foolish habit of his is being a strength.
Dissatisfied with his sloppiness in one loop of bandage, Renard goes to peel it off and reapply it. Orpheus flinches and gasps in incredible pain, eyes popping wide — the length of bandage Renard has unfurled has flayed off a length of Orpheus’ already mangled flesh, which is stuck on the underside of the linen as if caught there by burs. By reflex, Renard hastily finishes bandaging down to the wrist.
Orpheus massages his forehead with his good hand, jolted an inch back to life by the rush of pain.
“Alive again, Orpheus?" Renard asks.
Orpheus jolts in search of Fidel to reapply his hand to his leg. Tension drains instantly into relief upon seeing him fine.
After a moment of silence, “ho," Renard mutters, “still, now. I’m to fix your hand, next."
Orpheus glances down to his mangled hand. With a frown and a heavy, resigned blink to brace himself, Orpheus snatches the bandages from Renard and fashions a splint from a wedge of metal in his boot. As he wraps his own hand, he eyes Renard strangely, evaluating: ‘Can we go forward without him? How well would that work?’.
As if there is room for such questions! Something plainly is wrong here. Orpheus, too, seems to realise it, for his expression drops and strength drains out of his shoulders as Renard snorts off the look and sits back on his heels.
Shades still crowd in a ring around the men, in that same wary, distanced fashion as they initially did. Darkness stretches eternally beyond them. Silence dominates but for the light huffs of Fidel’s weeping.
Renard’s heart wrenches, but he lets steel coat his heart, for an instant, as he instead looks to Orpheus, who is gazing coolly out into the black.
Orpheus then shakes his head with a sigh, but says nothing.
“May we be further from the earth than ever has been a man," Renard laughs.
“You jest now?" Orpheus snaps.
“No," Renard replies timidly. “It… Sir Orpheus, you are meant to be wise of this place. Where next can we go from this…" he trails off, looking into the black.
“—This is a pocket," Orpheus explains. “Tides of Nix will carry apart great masses of earth, breaking into many pieces what was once whole… spaces as these are the remainder of that. What eludes me is the quality of this one." He presses the heel of his hand into his eye. “Whether it is a shifter, or a yoke, a place that is moved or is moved to… There are more here than I’ve ever seen."
“More of what?" Renard follows his gaze, to the mass of shadows.
“Natives," Orpheus mumbles. “They often watch us… constant and skittish. It’s wisest to not pay them heed."
Indeed, Renard thinks, though an objection does rest on his tongue. Intuition screams that these ‘natives’ would be extraordinarily dangerous if they ever stopped being ‘skittish’, but the argument is not worth it.
“We cannot stay here." Orpheus says, setting his hand on Fidel’s leg. “Look around for an exit."
Renard pauses as he gets to his feet, struggling to grasp this command. There is very obviously nothing here but blackness and shadows.
“Everywhere you can… just look," Orpheus repeats.
Best you not make a fool of me, Orpheus, Renard thinks as he retrieves Kingslayer. Upon stepping barely two armspans away, horrible squelching noises arise as Fidel’s calf morphs back into a mound of intertwined, writhing, slimy black eels. The progression of the curse to anywhere beyond that calf is again restricted by proximity to Orpheus’ ring, but Renard’s heart still falls.
Fidel’s constitution has been altered permanently for the rest of his life. Whenever he is not near to witchbane, that rapid transformation into a vermin will resume. It’s like Verdan.
No.
It’s worse than Verdan. At least Verdan retained a human shape and speech; it is unclear whether Fidel, if his affliction were allowed to resolve, would keep even these basic faculties, or if he would just be a wriggling puddle of muck best shoved in a terrarium.
At the very least, Fidel has stopped crying. He now simply stares at the sky with exhausted resignation, listening as Orpheus speaks to him quietly.
Chop that damn leg off, growls Kingslayer, but Renard shakes his head. The boy hardly needs to be cursed and an amputee…
Orpheus looks to Renard: Go ahead. I’ve got him.
Chop it off! Swallowing back this burst of anger, and the pricks of jealousy evoked by Orpheus, Renard wrenches himself away from the pair and begins searching for an exit.
It’s a questionable proposition, given the utter blankness of everything around. Renard arches onto his tiptoes and peeks under empty air, feeling remarkably foolish. Perhaps what Orpheus means is that, somewhere beyond the tide of shadows, there will be some manner of obfuscated doorway? It is hard to imagine where else an exit could possibly be.
Shadowed figures in their hordes follow Renard about from beyond their bounds, spectating. Their whispers weave through the thick air like a mist. The more solid voices of Fidel and Orpheus, though hushed, rumble against the wisping sound.
“There is nothing," Renard announces.
“Keep looking," says Orpheus.
Where! The only place left would be to dunk his head into the shadows — surely, Orpheus does not mean that?
“Perhaps nearer the edge," Orpheus continues.
Surely! A growl sheaths itself in Renard’s throat as he shoots a dirty glare to Orpheus. “I have cycled this path sixteen times, that you’d have gone dizzy had you both watched. I tell, there’s as much here as upon a friar’s head. Nothing!"
“Try circling the other direction," says Orpheus, “Renard, there’s little else we can do…"
What change does it make if he goes left, right, or upside down on his head! With a frustrated grunt, Renard stomps away from the pair to circle in the opposite direction. But there is already no reason why any fruit should come from this production.
Yes, production… more and more, it is beginning to feel that Orpheus is having him on with these nonsense demands. Simply telling him to do this and to do that, so that he may snicker while Renard makes himself look like a moron!
He ought grab Orpheus and throw him into the black, then he can go searching for exits!
And rather, rather… rather, could it be possible that Orpheus does know a way out of this space, but is feeding poor information to Renard? When Orpheus says, ‘there’s little else we can do’, why does that sound like a lie? An image coheres in Renard’s mind. A secret method, a bold flourish into the dark, hoho, hoho, hoho! If Renard simply does something audacious enough, the world surely will answer. Then it will be Orpheus eating the eggs, with a gasp, ‘Oh curses, Renard! I didn’t think you would figure it out!’.
Renard glances back to Orpheus and Fidel from the corner of his eye, grinning, as this genius plan slots itself together.
Staring back at him is Fidel, laying yet as he was on the ground, but watching Renard with an expression as grave as it is hopeful. Guilt wrenches Renard a step nearer to rationality. Even if Orpheus’ directions are bad, Fidel earnestly believes in Renard’s ability to solve this dead end. And if Fidel believes, this surely can’t be a dead end. There has to be a solution. But why can Renard not see it?
Renard sighs and takes one last step. He can’t in good conscience keep walking in circles; now may be the time to surrender this course and properly discuss even the unlikely alternatives. He goes to turn—
—When something flashes past Renard’s eye.
Renard wrenches himself back in surprise, and again the same flash of colour comes and passes, too quick to be intelligible. Carefully, Renard inches his posture forward, backward, up, down, like a falcon adjusting its strike. A vertical bar of bright colour flashes in and out of his sight, itself not moving an inch, but by some strange aspect of its nature, only becoming visible when viewed from extremely specific angles.
Slowly, Renard settles into a posture that holds the bar reliably in view.
“—I’ve found it," he mutters.
Orpheus and Fidel lurch to attention behind him, but Renard cannot focus on them. He peels his eyes wider as he stares at the bar, as though glimpsing away even once will mean he will never find it again. He inches closer, peering in.
The more Renard focuses on it, the more it seems to expand, consuming more of his vision without actually growing larger in size. The nature of the bar comes clear. It is like a pair of mirrors, angled towards each other at a hinge like the pages of a book, endlessly reflecting into each other hundreds of thousands of images. Each image is a ‘page’ in this book, and each page displays a different scene…
Horrible, horrible scenes. Cliffsides made of flesh and teeth that bubble over a caustic sea; a field of leaden smog so thick that simply viewing it constricts Renard’s throat; a nest of biting insects; an endless flow of slime… and then are the truly strange ones, where the walls and surfaces bend through each other in ways that Renard can see are wrong, but that his mind refuses to try and comprehend, for attempting to give these shapes order will undoubtedly make his mind snap. Then are the ones that are blank… truly, utterly, blank…
Renard senses that stepping through the bar at the correct angle will deposit him in the corresponding scene. The group is no longer stuck in this ‘pocket’.
But none of these are good destinations. If not simply worse voids, they all look actively hostile. Renard massages his chin in thought. Greater hostility would suggest them reaching deeper into Nix, and closer to Arsene. If they can power through to the bottom, mayhap that be a way out…
Regardless. Renard announces his findings to Fidel and Orpheus, and together they discuss their route. Though the debilitated condition of his allies has been obvious for the last hour, it only now strikes Renard how heavily he will need to compensate. Orpheus, while conscious and no longer bleeding, is too weak to even stand without leaning on Fidel’s shoulder. And Fidel cannot be separated from Orpheus’ witchbane ring — or from Kingslayer — else he will be turned to eels. …And Renard himself cannot give Fidel Kingslayer, for, if Fidel exited the radius in which Kingslayer affects his leg when wielded by Renard anyway, Renard would pass out on the spot.
Very well, Renard thinks. Those are the conditions he must play by in Nix. The abject insanity of accepting these handicaps while consciously pushing deeper down, as though he will sweep smoothly to the bottom and conquer it all, does not even occur to him.
Orpheus recognises none of the scenes and identifies no characteristics in them that would indicate passage back to familiar, or even just to more surface, regions. All being equal, the group decides the cliff of flesh and teeth to be the least acrimonious route, as, while uninviting, it at least has a structured environment.
Renard secures Kingslayer, takes Orpheus in his arms, and lets Fidel brace on his shoulders. A cruel thought spears through his mind to crush the weakened Orpheus, but it is easily discarded. Renard takes a breath, fixes his aim upon the cliffs—
—and, glimpsing at the last moment a flash of green trees, twists his footing to fall into that scene instead.
Travelling through the rift between Sebilles and Nix had been chaotic. Travelling between the pocket of void and the scene in the image, however, is only disrupting for how sheerly undisrupting it is. A mild sensation passes as if pushing through a membranous sheet, which instantly and easily gives, and upon the next step, the group stands somewhere utterly else.
It is another void. This one is darker than where they just came from, despite being absent of those shadowy voyeurs. No stars even vaguely suggest their presence in the sky. It is a blackness so encompassing, it suggests itself both to span to infinity and end as a wall before Renard’s face, that he shall bump gracelessly into the moment the should step off of the island on which he stands.
For indeed, as it was before, this is an island in space. Unlike before, the surface of this one is visible, laid as elegant stone tiles that form a path through a small garden. Renard lets Fidel and Orpheus down. While not the place they expected, Renard does not doubt his impulse to divert here was correct, and indeed, though disoriented, nobody complains.
Behind them is another vertical bar of scenes. At a glimpse, the selection of destinations has changed — and thus they may hop through, and are not stuck — but what more grips Renard’s attention is the sight before him of the garden.
It’s lovely, and very small. It is like a fragment nobleman’s yard has been chiselled out of the earth and hung like a jewel. The stone path winds between beds of flowers, small iron trellises, elegant tables with seats, and lemon trees proudly bearing fruit. For how familiar and pleasant the place is, though, it is steeped with a quiet melancholy, found in the darkness of the surrounds and the stillness of the scene. There is no wind that tousles these plants or carries their scent, no taste of day or night in the blandness of the light, no chirp of birds and no whisper of leaves. It is so alive, and yet, so flatly dead.
A noise of trickling water alone breaks the stillness, from a fountain at the end of the path. And there, upon that fountain, is—
“Maiden! Be ye lost?" Renard calls.
—a woman, seated on the rim. She perks mildly to attention at Renard’s call, but does not seem surprised or disrupted by the group’s presence.
She is extremely beautiful, with long flowing hair and a long flowing dress. Her eyes and skin have that same exotic light hue as Pleione’s, but something about her presence shines even brighter in a way that is positively ethereal. Moonbeams reflect through a thousand facets of diamonds inside her, and tenors of their glow shoot from underneath up to her skin. Though dirt muddies the tail and sleeves of her dress, the whiteness of the rest of it is so pure that it must have been woven from clouds in heaven. The air of serenity in her eyes only accentuates her attractiveness further.
The fountain she is seated on blends into a rock face, artfully carved and inlaid with hundreds of precious and glittering gems, all in different colours. Their arrangement behind her evokes the illusion of her having resplendent, rainbow-hued wings.
“Leave as promptly as you measure safe," Orpheus urgently mutters. “Have caution."
“Hardly much of manners, to turn away from a lady upon seeing her face!" Renard laughs, sidling unworriedly up the path. “Maiden, how comest ye? We explorers may guide your way—"
“Ah," she gasps, raising her palm.
“—out," Renard finishes, and his foot falls, and the entire vision of the fountain and the woman closes instantly to black, as were a candle snuffed, and left Renard in darkness. Renard jerks back a step and the sight of the fountain and the woman returns.
Addled by this strangeness, and now heeding an instinct of caution, Renard readies his hand upon Kingslayer and eyes her askance.
“Please wait," she says in a voice as quiet as a thread but as strong as a church bell. “It is that dark blade you carry, it broils horrible things in the air… I must close my eyes, when it comes so near."
“It is a blade that banes the rotten blights of the ghouls," Renard notes suspiciously.
“And yet other things," she assures. She tilts her head to peer over Renard at Fidel and Orpheus, her hair spilling like water over her shoulders. “You’ve come very far into the night, further than I think you could know. Here is my garden of respite… not anymore loud with the host, but that I have kept for ones such as you." A mild smile rises on her face. “I am glad these years of waiting have not been without purpose."
Renard scrunches his brow, struggling to grasp the meaning of the strange implications in her words.
“Is the purpose that you would gobble us up?" Fidel calls from beside Orpheus, setting him on the grass. “That has been the reception of most we find here. So different are you from screaming and pits that your sanctuary shines mostly as dubious."
“Is it so peculiar? That light shines in the darkness?" She shakes her head with quiet pain. “Was this world always so sick? Even so far out as here, the foulness is young… but here to you is our home now made home to beasts, shadows, ruins, and curses, that it is all the terrestrials could… or will see." Her mouth quivers, and her expression drops with incredible sadness, and sympathy. “It hurts me, to know what’s been done to you."
Fidel falls silent, and Orpheus hesitates, but for Renard, something clicks.
“You claim you are one of the ancestors," Renard blurts.
The woman nods.
“Those stars, to whom Pleione speaks," he continues.
“I have known many Pleiones," the woman answers vaguely.
“Pleione Gayle, she missions in the west. Do you know of her?" Renard insists.
“I have known ones who have known her," she answers. “And who have given their aid to her. She’s uncovered the alchemy that rejects this disease, and turns its nature against itself… an incredible good that resists the tide. By her advance, travellers now come, and my vigil is made fruitful… this I understand."
This testimony is all correct. To know all of this so precisely, she cannot be lying.
Renard’s hand upon Kingslayer relaxes as his mind wanders. He has always known, or rather been told, that the stars in the sky are the souls of people. Further, though he had not consciously considered it, it does make intuitive sense that ‘Nix’ has brought them further away and in stranger places than simply down and down into a hole. The pervasive darkness, and occasional beacons of distant stars, attest they’ve come so deeply into the abyss they are crossing the night sky itself.
The possibility that one could encounter a star, and in fact talk to it as one would any person while traversing Nix, though startlingly sensible, never occurred to Renard. Pleione’s arcane manner of contacting these celestials made conversing with them sound far more abstract.
“What has been done to us?" Orpheus interjects. “You speak of injuries, afflictions?"
The woman opens her mouth to speak, but Renard interrupts first. “Nay; she speaks of the rot. Were not for its poison, we…"
…would become like her. All of us, when we would die, would become not like ghouls, but like her.
It is not hypothetical — it is how it was, for every one of us, until the last hundred years.
Renard falls silent. Become like her — beautiful, graceful, surrounded by pleasant things? No, though they are enchanting, it is not these aspects that makes the comparison, and acknowledgement of humanity’s lost birthright, so painful.
It is rather the aura of absolute peace that exudes from every pore of her. She is not a robot, or without independence, for she expresses her own sadness, will, and regret. But there is an utter contentment that underlies these things, a foundation of total satisfaction and kinship, that she is not alone, but connected to hundreds of dear fellows, not self-satisfied, but suffused with compassion for all lovely things, and not ever afraid, but comforted in pure virtue and secured transcendently into the best version of herself she could be.
Jealousy, though vile, itches in Renard’s chest.
Proceeding the conversation, the woman nods. “This is a projection of a rib of the independent summit, Anelle… I was never so prominent that a stranger would know my name. All of your predecessors grieve for your fates, and all of us wish ever to aid you, that this curse upon the earth may be defied…"
The beautiful ancestor, Anelle, pauses to again look over the party. Seeing that trio are all silently listening, and attentive to her words, she continues.
“But we are limited," her expression again falls. “A weight presses against us the lower that we reach — it smothers us before we could touch the ground. It’s only by the invitations of dedicated children like Pleione Gayle that we are able to act, but the weight of the earth even then can greatly constrain the communication of our gifts."
Pleione’s ability to grow those water-plants must be exactly one of those gifts. But the question that jumps to Renard is: “Maiden, who is the coupling that fathered the West, and the blood that fathered the land of Lacren? In what image are they found?"
“There were many first couples in the West," Anelle mutters with an odd hint of rue. Her eyes haze over and she recites, “by Yuriatrus, son of Tybald, son of Hashar, son of Kriotone, son of Feren, son of Lat, son of Irelle, son of Kothat, son of Ruamatus, son of Richet, son of Duadoros, son of Lamal, son of Timothy, son of West, son of Jocar, who is a seed of Herbert and Josephine, was the nation of Lacren sown; these bones are spread across many images, but many are in the ward of the glorious conquering sun, that you see as a lion."
Impressed at the breadth of her knowledge, a new, and more delicate, question also jumps to Renard’s mind. “Maiden, then can you also know, of this generation, the name of the firstborn to Lacren’s throne?"
“This one did not reach us," Anelle answers.
It had been a fragile hope, but hearing that someone with such power and knowledge does not know something that Renard conceived as so simple rattles him with profound sadness. There exists for the ancestors a world so interconnected that they may effortlessly rattle off the histories of men to the beginning of time. And yet, of those of the present… nothing.
That old image of the Iron King in exalted gold returns to Renard’s mind. It has truly, truly been a long time since he has ever considered this thought. But had the Iron King been born — rather, had he died — a hundred years earlier, that image would have been undoubtedly realised, up here, in the heavens.
Everything, Renard thinks. That serpent robbed everything.
As Renard falls morosely silent, Orpheus speaks up instead. “Lady Anelle, forgive our wariness. In such straits, we are bound to take your help, and gratefully. We are—I am, greatly wounded, may you heal these wounds?"
“To impart that is not my authority. I’m sorry," Anelle answers.
“And this boy has been afflicted by the curses of this place, can your wisdom mend this?"
“Nobody has that authority," Anelle answers, peering over at Orpheus’ hand upon Fidel’s writhing leg. “But, by the work of Pleione Gayle, you’ve the implements to mend that on your own."
Hardly more than a temporary solution, to adorn him in witchbane in the same way as Verdan, Renard thinks, but lets the disappointment fade. It’s not ideal, but it is workable. Moreover, Anelle is probably suggesting that a more considered application of witchbane could mend him permanently — it’s something for the group to figure out later, and a very hopeful prospect.
“Then what is your ‘authority’?" Fidel asks.
Anelle grins and cranes back her head with satisfaction, as though she had been waiting for this question. The rainbow of gemstones inlaid in the cliff-face behind her all flash, and she gracefully reaches back her hand. A turquoise-blue gemstone falls out of its place like shed feather and lands smoothly in her palm.
She leans forward, presenting the gemstone. Her thumb rubs its smooth edge — and from between her fingers then falls a stream of glittering sand, which gives way to a flow of blazing molten steel, which gives way to a jet of yellow vapour, which gives way to trickling cascades of crystalline water.
The sight stuns the three men silent as Anelle straightens herself and holds the jewel out in offering.
“It is pure?" Renard asks. Even as Anelle nods, he is already squatting to collect a bead of the liquid upon his finger, as it runs down the trails between the tiles in the path. He pops the bead into his mouth before anyone can object or even grasp what he’s doing. A scandalised yelp, a little too late, rises from Fidel.
Renard has not made a habit of tasting the venom in natural water. Still, there is no burn or bitter taste to impress him to any poison — in all regards, this is the same as what he’d retrieve from a Lacrenese well, or actually purer. Seconds pass, one, two, and he does not keel over. This appears to be an enchanted artefact that can (indefinitely, as the ceaseless flow soaks up past his soles) generate drinkable water.
Renard urgently marches forward a step to claim the gemstone — as happened before, Anelle and her fountain instantly vanish from sight, and reappear when Renard embarrassedly shuffles back again. Cursing under his breath at his own slowness, he fumbles to unlatch Kingslayer’s scabbard from his belt.
What stops him is Anelle, who slowly shakes her head at him. Not you.
Though dejected, he follows her gaze to Fidel and Orpheus with understanding acceptance. Her gaze wavers as if she is uncertain who should receive it.
Renard marches back to join Orpheus and Fidel, deposits Kingslayer on the ground to cover Fidel’s leg, and props up Orpheus to guide him to Anelle. The journey should be short, as she is barely even six, seven meters away from the seam in space where they started, but in feeling him so closely, and seeing how he strains to even lift his head, it is clear to Renard that Orpheus is so horrifically weak that he would not have managed this trip alone. It is frankly a miracle he is even still conscious and speaking.
He also seems only an inch from vomiting all over Renard’s boots, and it is unclear if this nausea comes more from physical weakness or from physiological disgust of being so near to Renard.
“Fair mistress, we come so far," calls Renard as the tug of Kingslayer strains lightly in his chest, and as Orpheus’ heavy breaths rasp up to his ear, only halfway to Anelle. “Pass it the distance?"
But Anelle does not respond. She only remains holding out that cascading gemstone, her stare as severe as a statue.
Abrupt guilt lashes Renard that he must have said something wrong. Carefully, he sets him palm on Orpheus’ back and inches him forward as far as he can reach while not approaching nearer himself. Orpheus looses a sigh and steadies himself to walk further.
He takes a single step, and a sharp, unpleasant hum cuts through the garden. Orpheus yanks back his hand and falls back to Renard for support. His ring finger on his good hand is ratcheting madly, as though it wishes to rip itself from his hand, but it is not the finger itself that is wrong. As it had been in Ashurst when Kingslayer was immersed in that corrupt water, Orpheus’ witchbane ring is stressed, and is coming near to snapping.
“You are struggling," Anelle notes.
Orpheus grunts in his throat as he carefully begins winching the ring off along with his glove. He pauses.
And he turns, and he stumbles past Renard, in the exact wrong direction to retrieve the gemstone. Even as he falls to his knees, had he not purposefully changed course, he would’ve been able to reach it!
“You bumblefoot, what are you doing?" Renard hisses.
“Let’s check our exits," Orpheus mutters. “Our place is too queer…"
“We are in Nix, of course it is queer! Are you not the one who most knows that?" Renard snaps.
But Orpheus’ only response is a look of mild disdain, mild merely because his lightheadedness has sapped even the strength to keep his eyes open confidently. Nursing his sweat-sodden brow, he jerks his chin for Renard to inspect the exit bar.
Renard makes it only a step through the wet ground before frustration and hesitation wrench him to glance back at Anelle, still holding out her gift expectantly. Ridiculous! Renard thinks. They fell a ghoul and flee a pocket of nowhere, but cannot even reap the rewards of something as simple as crossing a room!
And because they are fumbling something so simple, Renard finds himself frozen in place with shame and regret, that if they depart now, they will be massively failing Anelle. It is not even the disgrace of failing to secure Lacren such a powerful artefact, and struggling to explain to the nation why they surrendered it, that sticks in his mind as the greatest concern. It is rather the image of Anelle staying here in the dark, hand outstretched forever, until even her spirit breaks to the slow sorrow of defeat and resignation, that the people she waited a hundred years for that she could confer this gift, did not even take it, and left.
“Lady Anelle," Orpheus calls, “you say there are others — can they too make footholds like this, that could bridge us, to our camp?"
Silence stretches as Anelle considers these words. Slowly, she withdraws her hand, stops the flow, and sets the gemstone on her lap.
“No… this is not possible," she answers. “Our wards are too estranged to intersect, of those who would bare to come to this depth. This is not a pleasant state for us…" she looks down at the dirt straining her sleeves. “…but it is the only one by which we could ever reach you, so tangibly. At this density, most fear falsities in their gifts and intentions. …My nature is such that I will bide it anyway, as my house is receded from the ones more available for children to reach." She quibbles with her lip, her gaze lightly downcast, but not defeated. “If you will leave here, then, I will reach where I can for a pathway… that will return you to where you wish…"
She closes her eyes as she says this to focus, the gemstones behind her again glittering. The vertical exit bar expands horizontally and clear scenes spread in the air in their own quadrants like pages of an unbound book. Unlike how it was getting here, most of these scenes appear mild, of meadows and towns rather than fleshscapes or acid pits, though all seem lonely, lost, still, and deserted.
“That one," Orpheus gasps.
Anelle nods. A scene of a dirt path aside a barren field, unfamiliar to Renard but apparently familiar to Orpheus, spreads like a massive fan across the floor behind them that pushes all the other scenes out. They are free to leave.
“Go, to mend your bodies," Anelle says. She crosses her hand over the gemstone. “I will be here, to await your return."
Guilty hesitation niggles at Renard. “Orpheus, you know these fields?"
Orpheus nods.
Plainly, though, Orpheus’ army did not stumble on a portal to Anelle while traversing the field before.
“Wise maiden, how do we return to you?" Renard asks.
“By the same route you came, if the space has not shifted…" Anelle answers. “Even so, I am confident, ones as you could find a way."
Renard puckers his lip. Curse it! How they even arrived at the pocket that linked to Anelle was a fluke uncertain to replicate, and instinct insists that any normal linkages to her sanctuary would also begin at a depth far lower than the camp. If they leave Anelle now, it is crushingly unlikely they would find her again. And yet, even as he frustratedly musses his hair, a placating certainty closes over Renard that their reunion is an absolute law. Visions arise. Himself pushing down and down into the deep, striking through masses of shadows, an unstoppable slash plunging through the night, and, as if raising a lighthouse out of the sea, victoriously, finding Anelle…
“You’d like us to climb a mountain." Fidel’s voice cuts like a lance through the vision. Renard jolts to look upon him.
Standing surely with Kingslayer in hand, as it had been when first meeting the boy, all from the noble jut of Fidel’s chin to the firm accusation in his tone teems with effortless, natural authority. A dash of teenage impetuousness completes the portrait, of someone who could truly utter blithe resentments at royalty. But in his eyes wavers a tension — a nervousness, seeking a specific response, that these were not coincidental words.
All the same, what cheek! First the Queen, and now this, mouthing off to his betters. “Fidel, dare you not—" Renard growls.
“—Ah," Anelle gasps.
Her surprise stays Renard’s tongue. Anelle looks this way and that, in flustered alarm.
“A lion, an oxen, on three vertical stripes…" Fidel continues, tension draining out of him like a long exhale. Like some rambling madman, he is describing the Lacrenese flag.
Anelle in a panic rises from the rim of the fountain and rips a large leaf off a nearby shrub. She sets the turquoise gemstone on the leaf, and like a little paper boat, pushes it on a course towards Orpheus and Renard. It skiffs over on the shallow water still coating the ground to bump against Orpheus’ knee.
Renard can only stare in stupefaction as Orpheus reaches to pocket the stone — his hand flinches back, and he tugs on Renard to help him. Renard hurriedly stuffs it in Orpheus’ beltpurse, his body moving separate from his mind as he boggles: what on earth did Fidel just do!
But Fidel presents no obvious answers and neither does Anelle, who merely stands there in paralysed shock.
Renard pats Orpheus’ purse secure and rises, his tongue too numb and knotted to find the right goodbye courtesies.
“—Wait," Anelle urges, seeing them ready to leave. “I am not so confident now that my gift will stay virtuous… please, be swift to take it from this place. …Truly, be swift as you can, or I fear all I gave you was..."
“Was what, woman, what!" Renard snaps. “A coal or a bomb, what curse do you now regret!"
“Sire," Fidel murmurs. Though quiet, the reprimand works to temper Renard’s outburst away from Anelle. Instead he glares down to Orpheus, and the full pouch on his belt, stricken with a fiery urge to rip the damned bag off of his girdle and fling it into the black.
The urge fizzles down into a simmer as Orpheus hoists his injured hand over the pouch as if to protect it and returns the glare: Don’t.
Was it not you who was sceptical? Was it not I who agreed to receive her?
Fine.
It is so frustrating to be the only one who doesn’t understand what’s going on!
“Please, be quick," Anelle says. “And be well."
Orpheus and Fidel both bow their heads, sparing Renard the need to need to voice a goodbye. Still, he can only bite his lip in roiling frustration as he scoops up Orpheus and readjusts Kingslayer on his hip.
How pathetic is it to part with another without sparing even a goodbye. But now, for some opaque reason, to wish a sincere and goodhearted farewell to Anelle now feels the act of a moron, of a buffoon who truly knows nothing. So are Renard’s final impressions as he spares one last glance over his shoulder to Anelle, and steps, with Fidel, into the fan.
Again the sensation passes over Renard of breaking through a thin membrane. He falls through the floor into the scene — with a light, ‘hup’, he catches his footing and lands without issue in the sod of the barren field. The sky overhead, which disappears behind rolling green mountains, is a sick, pallid blue, rather than the black that has been so prolific across Nix — but the persistent air of sickness and stillness assures that this is indeed still Nix, and not the surface or even Verdanheim.
Two things strike Renard immediately.
Firstly, in his mind’s eye, is the image of Anelle. There she sits, in her garden on her fountain, bright in his sight as a beacon — that grows impossibly distant, shrinking, further and further, into just simply a pinprick. The moment Renard’s attention shifts even an inch from this image, it disappears utterly, shrunken too small in the air to be more than a speck of dust on the road.
And secondly, is the atmosphere. An implacable pressure so pervasive that Renard had not realised it existed abruptly lifts, draining away smoothly as his body enters this new scene. The difference is as starkly obvious and refreshing as stepping from a humid tropic into a snowcapped mountaintop. The frightening thing is how profoundly Renard did not realise the ‘humidity’ was affecting him.
For as quick as that mountain-air lightness washes over him, smooth as an exorcism, so does his anger fade out of him. Renard jolts with recognition that the resentment he held not even a second ago towards Anelle and Orpheus and Fidel, and even himself, had been needless. More than simple realisation, though, comes the profound lack of impulse to do anything so ill-considered as throw away Anelle’s rock or curse himself for slipping behind.
Instead there is only clarity, and fear. Anelle’s warning to move swiftly now registers as earnest, rather than provocative.
So being, following the guidance of Orpheus still slumped in his arms, Renard breaks into a run through the field. Fidel follows aside him.
“Young Fidel!" Renard calls, natural curiosity welling over the scab of impelled jealousy. “How did you know to impress that ancestor?"
“I do not know much to boast, sir, the place was just very strange!" Fidel answers. “Everyone seemed faintly mad, and Anelle — the way that she spoke was like a riddle, woven with allusions more solid than any of us. How else couldn’t she see she was acting against her purposes?"
Purposes? What purposes? Renard thinks, but an implicit understanding comes over him. Yes, it is rather strange, after professing an unconditional desire to help them, that Anelle needed to be coaxed to just give them the rock. Perhaps that disconnect had not been a result of ceremony or vetoing or limitation or judgement as Renard had naturally assumed, but of Nix’s atmosphere also affecting Anelle.
Dread washes over Renard in that second, but passes as quickly as his next footfall racing upon the sod. The kid is a genius… or at the least, saved them from stumbling into an irrational end.
“And yourself, Fidel? You are well?" Renard checks.
“I’m all together, sir," he answers. Indeed, at this range to Kingslayer, nothing would tell that Fidel had been altered.
They breach a threshold in the middle of the field, and as if stepping from one face of a cube to another, enter into a different scene that heaves up to meet them — of the familiar, still, lakeside meadow, and of the merciful silhouettes of tent-tops.
Several days pass after the group arrives at the campground. After such a tumultuous entry to Nix, the uneventful calm of these days recuperating at Verdan’s camp, (after easing the spirits of a scorned Verdan), is highly appreciated.
Orpheus is no longer with them. Without the adrenalin of immediately threatening situations keeping him conscious, and the determination to fulfil his duty for Lacren keeping him in charge of the group, he quickly flagged and submitted to injuries that demanded him stuck on a gurney. Obviously, he would not be going any deeper into Nix.
His debilitated state worries Renard, but one shard of strength did return to the man when he joined the row of concerned soldiers at his bedside. His hand shot out from under the covers to limply grasp Renard’s wrist, and with eyes burning like furious jaspers, he said: “I will manage Lacren." Then he fainted.
You’re hardly in a state to manage anything, Renard thought then, and thinks now, seated upon a crate at the lakeside as he gazes across the water. But if anyone will make good on such an impassioned promise, it would probably be Orpheus. To return to the surface, and shoulder in on his role, indeed now feels presumptuous. Here, in Nix, is where Renard will stay, until he has done everything to help that he conceivably can from this vantage.
Within the hour, Orpheus was whisked away for medical treatment by an emergency team bound for the surface. If all has gone well, and the runners have been quick, he should be back in Verdanheim now — with Anelle’s gemstone, preparing his departure for his relief effort in Lacren.
Renard’s gaze lowers to sweep across the bowed grass of the meadow, hands interlocked at the knuckles. No longer broken by the screen of the barrier, the full breadth of the lake is pooled as smooth and as vast as the full moon, settled in a serene kiss to the horizon. A river winds far down the opposite bank, barely visible, then not at all visible, curving behind the spearlike feet of sheer mountains, into places untouched and unknown.
Truthfully, it’s frightening.
With verity, all Renard’s guts and even the squelching curves of his brain scream there will be no good end to this. If the land shifted poorly, if there rose a sea of those shadows, if the air turned vile and bitter, if the humidity drove him mad — there are countless possibilities for failure, even from only the tracks he has personally seen.
Killing the snake? Pah, it’s a lark’s dream. It’s so distant that rage cannot run the wheel, but only hope, that one could wish on a star to get near enough, because attaining even the opportunity to try would already be a miracle. And if such a miracle could happen, that is wholly by the auspices of God.
But the iron coldness of certainty is already locked hard in his chest. No matter what he thinks or feels, no matter what is wise or foolish, no matter whether he has done well or poorly, no matter what fate rests forward, because there is nothing but death and betrayal in turning back, this is something that he must do.
The dewy grass of the lakefront crunches softly from approaching footsteps. Looking over, it is Verdan, in an elegant but dirty black coat.
“Sir Renard, so lonesome out here. What a fiend I feel breaking such a nice picture."
Renard stifles an exasperated grunt with a shrug. “Hail, Verdan," he manages.
“The last battalion is all done packing up. Goodbye. Go back home…" he hums. “Even a pretty lake like this, nobody ever-ever-ever loves. Those hard pointy hearts will never have roots here. Nnnneee-ver!"
Perhaps speaking in obtuse riddles is the first sign of corruption by Nix.
Still, Renard understands. If Renard is to return to the surface, with the departing soldiers, this would be the last window to do so. They are not returning.
Which means that preparations should now commence for himself — and Verdan, who insisted to join — to proceed into the next stretch of Nix. Though it is shameful not to leap and propound, ‘yes, yes, yes! I am ready!’, truly weak and reluctant of heart, Renard kneads his interlocked thumbs together and replies with only a nod.
Seeming to understand, and to sympathise, Verdan smiles thinly and joins Renard’s side, staring over the water in silence.
The commiseration is nice, but as the seconds tick, also embarrassing. Renard grunts in his throat and starts to heave himself up, saying, “The—"
“—I’m happy I came here," Verdan’s own voice interrupts. “Yes, I’m really quite ready, oh, to go where nobody goes. You feel, we peek our faces in to see, and something big is getting the honour? Ooh, little Verdan. You came all this way just to see me? Well, sir Renard, that’s not what my grandpawpaw did. He skittered around for the reins; now that’s how I got so ugly. Well, I’m satisfied with what I’ve seen, yes, I’ve got all my answers. Oh, hallelu! Good job, young Verdan. But, Sir Renard, maybe you’ve not heard the big thing? It’s better you haven’t heard it. I’m happy to tell you now."
That thin smile splits into a precarious, toothy grin.
“What if it was said as truth that Camille is still alive?"
“What madness leaps from this tongue?" says Renard. “His murder brought us under the rot."
“Oh—yes, yes, you’re not confused there." Verdan blinks owlishly, like a child. “But how could even we come back, us wee little things tickling his cockles, and the best of us not. Have you seen in Nix that things like to change their form?"
A screen of frigid dread creeps over Renard at the insinuation. Nix could affect Anelle. Could it even affect God?
And moreover, he is here?
“When this big hole opened, right on Verdanheim’s back yard, my grandpawpaw went down and saw. Oh, such a big thing he saw. A hundred miles, Verdan! The boughs could stretch over more than twenty kingdoms, the leaves are larger than houses and the bark is shimmering gold — and this is only a sapling!
“And on those branches I saw flowers, and I knew that they were power. One fell onto the river — as all rivers run back to the root — and I ran to snatch it up. But as it drifted nearer to my feet upon the riverbank, and I plunged my hand into the waters, it withered. The petals all fell away and drifted on through my fingers, until they sank and faded, and I saw nothing down the river.
“Its beauty and power, Verdan, any would have reached out as I did." Verdan pauses. “Silly grandpawpaw. He didn’t say it with his mouth, but my ears heard it all the same: oh wee Verdan! Go take one of these flowers and with it take over the West! Silly, silly, silly."
Renard’s heart quickens in further terror. That had been impetus for Verdanheim’s investigations into Nix? To hold a monopoly on… on God, or to become emperors of the world through a… flower?
“Ridiculous," Renard spits.
“Oh? What what?" chirps Verdan.
“A flower could not do such a thing," Renard asserts uncomfortably, trying to wipe the tale from his mind. He heaves himself onto his feet and hoists the crate he had been seated upon. “Enough sitting idle. We ought prepare."
Verdan’s expression falls quietly sober. “But did you hear the important thing?"
“Your nation has lusted over illusions bred of Nix," Renard barks over his shoulder as he marches for camp. “I do not care."
“Ow! Sir Renard, not that, it’s the rivers," Verdan insists, tottering after him. “The way is over the rivers. Do you hear now?"
Guilt rises inside Renard like a balloon rising out of a swamp. “Yes," he admits, now ashamed. The story was probably not meant to scare him so much as guide him, and Verdan’s corruption makes it hard for him to express himself clearly. “Thank you, Verdan."
Verdan nods happily behind him as they arrive at the camp. Indeed, Verdan’s soldiers have most completely taken down their tents and packed up their supplies, calling out ‘hup!’, and ‘huhup!’ as they load burdens onto donkeys and wagons. A soldier hails Verdan, who splits from Renard to help his men finish up.
The only person left apart from the bustle is Fidel. He sits upon a crate outside Verdan’s tent — the only one still standing — as he quietly watches the soldiers.
His gaze drifts down to his leg. It squelches, constricting, relaxing, yet an entangled mass of revolting black tubes, as though Fidel is testing his command of the limb, and frankly not uncomfortably.
Though confident that Anelle was not wrong or lying about Fidel’s leg being treatable with the witchbane the army already had, they have failed in these days to find how to rightly administer it as to keep the effect permanent. The compromise they have settled upon is a brace around his calf and thigh in which they have installed enough witchbane trinkets to keep his leg mostly normal.
Noticing Renard, Fidel hurriedly slots the infused nail he removed back into his leg brace. Healthy flesh smooths over his leg. But, even being caught, his demeanour is not really panicked. “Sire."
“Young Fidel, the men are set to march their exit," says Renard, joining his side. “Be you not transfixed as…" Renard snorts a harsh laugh at himself.
“Auh, sir?"
“I sound as Verdan. Cor! Mere seconds ago heard I such an earful from him. Do you part here, Fidel?"
“Sir Renard, that’s a strong word." Fidel smiles weakly, but shakes his head. “Had you asked such to me a mere week ago, I would leave with a heart full of lead, or stay as a sputtering coward." He leans back and cranes his head meditatively to the black sky. “But it’s strange, now I could not imagine anything good about leaving. There’s… little for me, up there, and I…" he tilts his head to and fro, searching for the right words. “…it’s very clement."
In a more literal sense than anyone else, Fidel has been bitten by Nix.
It’s only because the inset of corruption has been so obvious in Fidel that Renard even bothered asking the question. The shift of his attitude from a boy’s rightly terror to total comfort about being infected has been extremely quick, and his manner in tramping the fields around the camp, of admiring the water and soil and plants, and even of breathing the air, is that of a creature happily in its natural habitat; because without the intervention of witchbane halting his total corruption, that is what he’d already be, and inwardly he has already acclimatized partly to that condition.
The prospect of shouting or insisting he deny this influence, and force himself back to normalcy on the surface, feels oddly cruel and hypocritical.
“Then ought we prepare!" Renard theatrically claps his fist to his palm, marching into the tent. “Come, you’ve a good sense of useful things. You search through those crates for extras to pack; I will check over our rations."
“Yes sir!"
Fidel zips to scrounge through the boxes piled in the corner of the tent, full of items that soldiers discarded to lighten their loads on their journey back. Three satchels on the floor wait to be packed, as do three bedrolls for himself, Fidel, and Verdan. Several racks of armour are prepared along the tent’s long side, and before those, a small rowboat. Renard grabs his satchel and strides to the trunk on the opposite end of the room, full of packed grainstuffs and waterskins.
While charting in a logbook how much they can and will take, so turned away and immersed in work that the chipper Fidel won’t see it, Renard looses a sigh, pinches his brow, and allows the tears to fall silently.
Renard, Fidel, and Verdan stand at the shore of the lake, the packs upon their backs heavy and the armour over their bodies secure.
The last of the soldiers have departed, and all that remains of the distant camp are scattered crates and burnt-out fire pits. This will be goodbye, to the last sure haven there is in this place.
With them also is the rowboat. Cutting deep grooves into the earth, Renard drags it to the lakeside, lets Verdan and Fidel hop on, heaves the last push float the thing, and scampers on himself. A few strong strokes of the paddles, and the vessel sets off.
Renard heaves forward, back, forward, back, allowing the mindless rhythm of rowing to flush his muscles with blood and occupy himself from his thoughts.
But, being that he is seated to face Fidel and Verdan, and being that the lake is both massive and calm, it is impossible for his mind not to wander, and impossible to completely avoid the discontent squeezing in his chest.
“It’s beautiful…" Fidel murmurs, gorging on the black sky, the full moon, the stately mountains, and glimmering water — each majestic in themselves, but exponentially mysterious when married together. It is enchanting. That Fidel voices so with such admiration, though, still pierces Renard’s heart like the prick of a needle.
Verdan voices his agreement, nodding and smiling, to cheerfully discuss the other great sights his army has seen on this venture. There’s lots of beautiful places in Nix — gardens, oceans, forests, mountains, and between those all, so many sweet little towns. A hundred years it might’ve been, but this was the old home of the Demiurge, and though his grandpawpaw’s grandpawpaw scowled at the barrier with the sourest grapes, saying, ‘Hmpf! There can be nothing so great in there.’, it’s pleasant to know such a sourpuss was wrong.
Fidel nods absently. “People used to live here," he considers vaguely, before letting the thought fade and instead saying, “I’ve never been on a boat before." And Verdan claps like a child, and goes, ‘Oh!’, and spills a tirade on how fun such an experience is and what a shame it is people don’t do it more often…
Forward. Back. Forward. Back. Gritting his teeth, too sick to speak, Renard rows.
If it’s between Verdan’s cheery banter, and Orpheus’ grave caution, Renard would rather have Orpheus — Orpheus, who wants him dead — on this boat than bear another word out of Verdan. He and Fidel, it is like… like they are children buzzing over a camping trip.
And even when a beast rises out of the water, even when the willows bowed on the riverbank snare them, even when they must pitch camp upon stinging weeds, even when the river boils, even when the earth turns to char, even when they sail into a field of geysers shooting evil acid, even when they near crash into a pocket, even when winged falcons screech down upon them, even when spirits in the trees try to draw them off course, even as they prevail over hundreds of dangers and obstacles in their path following up the river, it’s the discomforting eagerness of his travelling companions that preoccupies Renard’s mind more.
“Quite the what-for you gave those water beasties!" Verdan chirps, poking his head out of their freshly pitched tent.
Renard, with one last heavy hammer blow on the last spoke, sighs and glances up to him.
“Ooh, if those big claws had got me. Poor Verdan wouldn’t have any arms!" He hugs himself, dramatically.
Is it heartening that Verdan has such faith in Renard’s skill? Or just tiresome that Verdan doesn’t take himself seriously?
“Oh, don’t be sour," Verdan tuts at Renard’s grimace, but his expression does soften. I know this is rough on you, his pained smile says. Just think about now, not tomorrow.
A grin cracks over Renard’s face. “How many nights bunkered with a gremlin as you ‘fore a man forgets all of sweetness."
“Ack! Hauh? Ohh, I’ll turn all your socks inside-out! Humpf! Gremmel gremmel, dum-dee-dum…" Verdan hums a ditty to himself as he ducks back into the tent, followed by the light sounds of him rummaging through a rucksack.
Renard rolls his eyes, despite himself.
At this depth, having long left the lake, little resembles or follows the logic of the surface. Particularly, with no cycle of night and day, but only constant skies of blood red or sickly yellow or more commonly a star-spangled void, time has become hard to judge. Whether they should make or break camp is judged entirely by their own tiredness after hours on the river, alongside the hospitality of the environment, for the latter is becoming rare.
Relative to their place earlier ‘today’, a desert of spires that fired upon them beams of burning light, coupled with manlike ghouls in the water that clung to and slowed the boat, this lush little valley clearing is a suitable refuge for camp. The trees here are hospitable enough that there is even birdsong.
But, it’s wise not to wander. Go even twenty steps from the tent, and as experience has taught them, there can be holes.
Standing up, Renard glances after Fidel, who has dragged the boat to shore a short distance from camp. The boy grins to himself, lets out a light breath, and stretches.
In the seconds that Renard’s heart waver on whether to hail him, the continuing rummaging noise from inside the tent strikes like lighting: Is Verdan actually scurrying through Renard’s stuff!? Startled, Renard storms in through the tent-flap. “Verdan!"
“Mm?" Verdan hums, bent over his own belongings, having just excavated oils and rags to clean his daggers.
Nothing, after all. Renard sighs, massaging his sweaty brow, and lumbers to his own corner of the tent to cavort with his belongings. If being pestered with Verdan’s unpredictability is something he will always have to endure… like a shrew nibbling at his toes through the night… then how much more pleasant would it be to run the man’s neck over the whole length of Kingslayer.
Maybe then there will be some godforsaken peace!
Verdan shrugs to himself, tends to his daggers. “Sir Renard! I have a castle, and a court, and a whole kingdom of maidens who coo ‘oh, Verdan!’, but you haven’t called me a Lord in a week! Boo hoo. The most knightly of knights across the whole West is going to make Verdan demoted…"
“Knightly of knights. As you have not done I?" Renard chuckles grimly over his backpack. “Would you conduct yourself more as a prince, then answer I would to your court…" Though, given that Verdan’s titles are legitimate, it may be Renard’s foul for allowing himself dismiss to them so casually…
“You’re even knightlier? Are you Sir Sir Renard?"
“No. I am also a Lord," Renard’s brow quirks. “Did you not know that, …Lord Verdan?"
The way Verdan squeals like a gibbon confirms that no, he did not.
“Wherefor? Whatfor? Whither? How!" Verdan cheers, crashing across the room like a cannonball to pour a hug across Renard’s back. “Oh! Sir Sir Lord Renard!"
“Och! It is only a principality within Lacren," oh, what modesty! Bashful warmth rises in Renard’s chest and on his cheeks as he shoos Verdan off his shoulders. “A little farming place, of no eyecatching repute…" yet larger and more loved than Verdanheim.
“No repute! It’s just the ward of the world’s best ghoulslayer in 100 years… which is also how long there’s been ghouls!"
Renard blushes, turning away. It’s surprising that Verdan didn’t know. If he has been in contact with the Queen, then surely… but aha, is that not the rub. There exactly proves how little the Queen must have brought him up.
Shaking off that note of regret, a smile rises on Renard’s face. Yes, things must be in a poor state up in Meurille right now… but so many memories, incorruptible and beaming with light bolster Renard’s heart away from such sorrow. The swaying fields, the merry laughter in taverns, Colette spinning in her sundress — all far more real images than the unseen ghosts of men fleeing and struggling in an earth ruptured by quakes and thirsting for water.
Renard unclips the flap of his pack, the warmth of the memories lingering.
“Do you have a big golden statue? Do you have fields of sugarcane?" chirps Verdan.
“Off with it," Renard chuckles. Yes… for his sourness towards Verdan, and his pestering, if he has taken the role of morale-booster upon himself, then by offering an open ear to reminisce, he is executing that role flawlessly for Renard.
A thread of concern wisps through Renard’s mind — is that not a stressful position, and one Verdan truthfully ought not need to fill, if Renard could simply hold himself better? But that wisp like a broken spiderweb passes, shouldered out by the warmth of the joy geysering from his heart to his throat as he takes a breath to speak.
And as the words tumble out, first the stories and visions of joyful and beautiful Meurille, he retrieves the logbook from his pack and feels around its depths to count their rations. Absent-mindedly he takes his notes, jots a heading: Day 7. A week now into the delve… and given all the challenges they’ve bested in this short period, they probably have made good progress.
Probably have, and yet…
Renard’s mouth twists into a frown as he tallies up the water and food in his pack. Months of victuals remain, yet unease prods Renard as he rips open their second water-pack. His words grow distracted, then silent, as he tallies, one, two, three, four litre-skins…
Verdan peers over Renard’s shoulder curiously.
…five, six…
Renard sighs and palms his forehead. Where had he left off in his story? As he refocuses, a strange hum in the air pricks his attention — and he jolts, as he realises this subtle hum, and vibration, akin to Orpheus’ ring with Anelle or Kingslayer at Ashurst’s rift, is coming from Verdan’s pendant.
“Verdan," Renard gasps.
Verdan leans back, looking aside as he loosely cups his pendant. But his hand soon falls and a cheeky gleam hits his eye: guess you got me!
“Verdan, your…"
“I’ll cuddle up with you if I need to!" Verdan laughs seriously.
But Renard’s attention is already not on Verdan. It’s on the flap to the tent, and on the illusion of the boy outside — Fidel.
Renard leaps to his feet and storms a step to the exit—
“Sir Renard."
—ignoring the call,
“Sir Renard," Verdan repeats, yanking back firmly on Renard’s arm. Though the muscle disparity is like a stoat trying to pin back a bison, and though Verdan’s everyday demeanour would not suggest rulership as a tool in his arsenal, the uncompromising authority in his tone hits as keen as a whack over the forehead. Like a scolded child, Renard freezes and tenses up, scared.
“That boy will be fine. He’s got waaaay more pieces than me, and they’re all waaaay stronger."
But that is not the issue. The issue is… Renard’s tongue flops uselessly in his mouth, unable to articulate what is wrong. Verdan has given such a sensible reassurance, yet every cell of Renard yearns to push back: no, that’s not right.
With a tired smile, Verdan claps his hands together. “You aching to make another go at that leg?"
“…I could not imagine how, we have already…" attempted every application of witchbane that made sense, and none of it stuck. Rubbing his temple, Renard glances away. Witchbane itself is a substance they barely understand; they would need the help of a proper shaman, like Pleione.
“We could experiment! Chop off the whole leg — chop!"
“Do not be stupid," Renard snaps. But, like an aftertaste, the thought lingers that it might not be the worst idea.
“It’s bothering you."
“As it surely would, Verdan," Renard continues. “Ought that boy even be here? He is—I make no slight on his capacities, for he is well talented and able to do what he wishes without leaning on me. Yet where do we go but to an obdurate destination? What is forward for us but more days on a river? And he does not tremble; he does not see to shrink back. He behaves barely as human."
Orpheus had been right.
That is the problem. Renard had been told to the letter what would happen, and he, like a moron, had once again, chosen to ignore it until it came to pass.
Where could he have changed anything? It’s not as though he can go back, but surely there must have been some point, where, if he’d been a little smarter, he could have kept Fidel safe from both the destruction in Sebilles and from injury in Nix.
“Mm, keep your voice down when you say things like that," Verdan murmurs. “You’re a little lucky, Sir Renard. If you didn’t have half your soul hexed into a vessel of witchbane I don’t think you’d be looking very human right now, either."
“So what of it, Verdan?"
“You’re the weird one here!" Verdan insists.
Renard flinches as if slapped.
“You should be some big googly thing that keeps running us into caves and getting mad when we don’t follow." Verdan pouts. “Ooh, and then you’d get us deep into the dark and hack us up with your sword. That’s normal! That’s normal, Sir Renard. Now that child, Fidel’s, a little harmless thing. He’s a little boy in a big place with grown-ups. I can look after that. Don’t you worry about that, I know how to get by with all that, you’re here to worry about the river. Think about this, Sir Renard, how come it’s hard to kill princes with poison?"
Renard buries his face in his palms. Verdan and his stupid riddles, winding speech.
“Hey, follow with me. It’s soothing to think. How come it’s hard to kill princes…"
…with poison. The trembling fury in his chest wilts impotently as he whirls the question around. For the answer is simple, and one Renard himself is impressed that he knows. “They are fed small amounts from when they are babes… that when they are men, they may take a mouthful, and become sick, but not die." Renard snorts. “For this is an obvious way an enemy may try to kill him."
“—Exactly." Verdan nods, deeply satisfied. “That’s a thimble of a poison. Now he’s just a bit sick, not lots."
Renard leans back in surprise. When Verdan puts it like that, it’s like he’s saying Renard accidentally gave Fidel a superpower.
When Renard thinks of it like that, all those times where Fidel carelessly followed him along into danger, and smiled at ghosts of Glennite towns, and took in the corrupt air like it were fresh on a glacier, and all those times Renard has caught him fiddling with his brace or massaging his leg or letting the mass of slimy tentacles free like a scientist experimenting with new parts after puberty, no longer feel so disgusting but wondrous. It means his resistance to ‘poison’ is working.
That, when they face the serpent, he will not be afflicted, but strike a shocking blow upon its face.
But how is that something to be happy about?
Adaptation to this place — is that not still wrong?
“Better it be, yet, the sickness is sucked out…"
“But not now and not here." Verdan shakes his head. “You hollow that essence out of him, ‘less you hex his soul into a stable phylactery like you, then just even worse venom flows in. What he has now is manageable. Way way, super manageable. You got to him really quickly. It’s a bad thing, but it’s a bad place, and right now, it’s helping him, here."
Renard’s hands tremble in his lap. How can Verdan say such things as if there is no doubt? And yet, the consolation is still effective.
“Once we’re back on the surface," Verdan says. “Then we can tell the boy he’s sick and see if we can solve Anelle’s riddle!"
Verdan claps his hands cheerily.
Renard falls silent, stunned.
The reason why Renard is so troubled, he now realises, is because he does not truly think this venture will succeed.
There is no future after this. There is no ‘back on the surface’. Were there a chance to venerate these mistakes, were Fidel’s corruption a temporary tool and a help, and not simply a degradation before he dies in a dark pit, unrecognisable in his manner and only half-human, then they would be passable, even appreciable in the moment. But that is not how Renard’s heart, mind, or anything measures the situation. Renard’s heart, to its deepest depth, is certain they will wander into nowhere and die, they will fall into snares and die, they will face too strong a ghoul and die, they will go mad and die, they will die, die, die… meaninglessly, wiped into darkness, that all their souls meant were nothing.
‘You’re stupid.’ It’s not cute, and it’s not reassuring.
Insides trembling hot near to tears, Renard swallows back fire and pinches his brow to hide his face. “How do you hold such faith, Verdan."
“That’s weird. I’m not alone, you’re not alone, and Camille’s still rolling around," Verdan says. “I feel like I have a lot of good friends! For coming all down here, I’d think we’re pretty special."
Underneath his palm, Renard smiles despite himself. Oh, Verdan…
Sighing warmly, Renard refocuses on the logbook. About a month of supplies, perhaps more if they ration… just as quickly as Verdan’s warmth hit his chest, his confidence again wilts. Two months, three months, four at the best, is that enough to get the bottom of the pit? How many things could go wrong in that time, how could they predict—
“It is all an attack, isn’t it?" Renard says suddenly.
“Hm?"
Renard reels in revelation.
“All of it," he says, with no explanation. Hand cupped over his jaw, he turns his face away to consider this lightning bolt of thought, the essence of his insight permeating as certainly as truth. Everything. This place, Nix, is not some static, passive thing that innocently came to be as it is through circumstance, though it masquerades as such. That there are so many traps, that there is no way to see the bottom, that it is so easy to lose faith — there is intelligence behind all of this.
And it is insidious! Is the serpent like a general, who stands with blade before his army? No, for it is an honourless thing. It is a maggot in the mud of a rock that, when its stone is lifted, and its filth is bore, will say, “what! I have no war with you. Why do you torment me by forcing me to feel such filth? Villain! Villain!"
And all the while it is the one who laughs while every grain of good wheat is withered! It is the one who made the meadow to mud!
It is your fault you withered, for you are not good enough wheat. It is your fault you fought a ghoul twenty times your larger and it dashed you on stones, because it drank more of my power. It is your fault you took the left fork over the right when you could not know where either went, because I concealed the way. It is your fault you broke to despair, because I took away every thing of joy. It is your fault you tried to live! It is your fault you didn’t do well enough! Everything bad you got — it’s your fault!
Why are there ghouls in this meadow!?
Even Renard’s worries over their food supply are as much an attack as a beast lashing out with its claws. That he cannot judge how thin to split them or how far they must go — that is purposeful.
Furious, Renard pitches the logbook at the opposite wall of the tent. Pages flutter pathetically from the spine.
“—Sir Renard!?" Verdan yelps.
“I must kill that snake!" Renard screams.
“—Sir Renard, no! That’s our stuff!" Verdan yells, sprinting over to restrain Renard, who reaches into his bag for something more tangible to destroy. But to restrain Renard’s powerful biceps, for a more slender man as Verdan, is like trying to pin a bucking stallion. Snap! A wooden measuring stick shatters apart.
“I-is everything all right in he—Sir Renard?" Fidel’s voice cuts in like a smooth light through the anger, the boy himself standing at the flap of the tent, dumbfounded.
A tremble of human concern is in Fidel’s voice that has not been there for a week. Abruptly self-conscious, with absolute shame flushing his face, Renard drops the shattered remains of the measuring stick, and finds himself without words.
“…I finished looking over the boat. It seems fine, if anyone wants to check it over." Fidel continues, entering the tent, that glimmer of emotion dulling into what has become a typical disconcern. “Are we having dinner around now or putting that off? We’re kind of early."
Renard’s teeth quietly clench. There it is, that careless attitude. And yet, strewn in a small pile of broken tools, like a toddler caught in a playroom among discarded toys, Renard cannot say he deserves any better, or that more attention given to this embarrassment would be pleasurable. Verdan daintily withdraws and smiles up to Fidel.
“Actually! For tonight, I think you should try splitting the rations!" Verdan says.
“Alright?" Frowning but agreeable, Fidel goes to retrieve the book from Renard’s pack — then double-takes with mild alarm at seeing it crumpled on the other side of the tent. Concern again flickers over his face as he picks it up. “…u-um, what happened?"
Stupid lies jump to Renard’s tongue. Wiping his hand over his burning red face, Renard gets to his feet and marches out the tent with a grumble, “…tend to the boat…". Neither of his fellows stop him, though their gazes stick on his back until the flap of the tent flutters closed.
The campground is tiny. Though pleasantly grassy and peaceful aside the gentle flow of the river, it is hardly any more than a mountain pass, and wandering off would be unwise. There is not anywhere to go to sit with, and cool down from his thoughts, except the field around tent.
Renard sighs, massaging his forehead. The boat lies upturned pulled in from shore; though Renard goes over, he cannot find the stomach to actually tend it.
Rather than just void, he can see now, forward of the river in the black starless sky, the face of the enemy.
And though the anger and hatred seething through his blood is soothing, it also leaves a cloying knot tightening thicker and thicker in his insides. Curse it all! As it has always been in regard to Nix, even this intense hatred, of knowing he is being antagonised by a yellow beast so craven its very shadow inspires contempt, cannot stabilise him into any peace of mind. There is no dignity, there is no purpose in it. Forward of the river and in that black sky — the courage to pursue and strangle this beast, with the single-minded fervour of a piranha on a fishing line, is simply murderous hatred.
He cannot say whether this is better or worse, even, than the despondency that has ruled him this last week. If he could, he would slit the throat of the very air itself.
Renard chokes back another sigh and scowls askance at the mountain wall. The muffled voices of Verdan and Fidel roll from inside the tent. He has surely not been outside long enough to have tended the boat — but every second spent waiting, doing nothing but seething at air for the vain idea his mood might get better, and that he may so avoid explaining himself, grates over his soul like tines of a pitchfork for how overwhelmingly pathetic it is.
Irritated more at his own inaction than he can be scared of Fidel or Verdan, Renard storms back into the tent.
“—saying that it’s an option," Fidel says.
“I think you’re just curious how something like that would taste! But old Verdan, he’ll eat the same porridge four months going ‘till his belly starts screaming. That’s when it’s okay to start dabbling the exotics. Unless?" Verdan presses his hands to his cheeks. “Sir Lord Lord Sir Renard! I take it back. Fidel is awful at this! He wants us to eat a season’s rations in a day — but then we’ll be fat as partridges and our boat will sink in the river!"
Renard grunts a grim chuckle.
“It’s not like that. It’s just hard," Fidel protests, as Renard kneels in to peer over the boy’s shoulder.
The mess from the broken tools has already been cleaned, Renard absently notes. He glances to Verdan, who smiles and shrugs with easy guilt, and gratitude washes over Renard immediately.
Rough equations litter the page. It seems Fidel encountered the same issues as Renard — desiring to split rations conservatively, but struggling to find the appropriate line between ‘conservative’ and ‘malnourishing’. Renard pats him on the back — Fidel’s eyes widen as if such affection is confusing — and gives each member of the group two pods of Ordish ambrosia and a third of a whole ration block.
It’s generous, nutritious, tastes like hard tack, and does not require much thought. That lousy snake can shove it. At least for today they’ll have a good lunch.
“It’s not bad," Fidel splits the membrane of the ambrosia pod, then squeezes it to lap up the sweetish granules inside lick by lick. “But it’s so thin and the taste fades too quickly to enjoy. How could someone live off this? The Ordish, I mean — it’s just powder."
Renard knows little of Ordanz but that it is a harsh, frozen land marked by frequent, and severe, famine. Mild irritation tickles at his chest. In such dire circumstances, of course the Ordish would cling to whatever edibles they have, and in their tenacity endure to build their great machines. Does Fidel not understand this?
“Oh, badly. Oh, they’re sure sick of it. Southerners come snuffling every year to scout the farmlands Verdan’s neighbours all left, and a bit of Verdanheim’s too. Sometimes they’re even quick enough to get in before Nix shifts on them!" Verdan exclaims between bites of his ration bar. “Ooh, it’s sure annoying. They’re awful, awful neighbours."
“What makes that so, Verdan?" Renard lightly challenges. “Be the fields anyways vacant, is much there danger in letting the Ordish grow wheat?" Even if Verdan finds it a threat to his territory, he could at least indenture them for the season, tithe them, and let them take most of the grain home.
“Oh, nononono. Oh, it’s terrible. It’s such a box of problems you open when you let the Ordish know you’ll give them food! Hattechim, Qumar, Yuselti, Dakmar, Lusselheim… you should know these names like Verdanheim, because these are all our old once-neighbours. Not a speck of them now, not a speck of them for hundreds of years! They all let in the Ordish, and the Ordish gobbled them up!"
“Nonsense."
“They did!" Verdan insists. “Inside two decades the Ordish servants stole too much, ruined the fields, or killed all their masters. It happened like that in Hattechim, they ask the servant, why Laurie? Your Lord has always been good to you. But the Ordish-man, he doesn’t know. Then in Lusselheim, ‘I become master! Everybody gets food!’, then whips the serfs until they kill him dead. But it’s the cleverer ones, the ones who sniff coins, oh those could eat the whole West. Verdanheim does strong work on the border!"
Though an inherent distaste for the notion that a whole demographic of people could be predisposed to this… wickedness, as Verdan is framing it, lingers on Renard’s tongue, it is in remembering that the family of Fidel, whose air has grown sombre as he chews on his bar, was ruined by such a single ‘coin-sniffing’ Ordishman, that he cannot help but quietly wonder if there is credence in Verdan’s words.
Which is not to say that Westerners are without fault, or produce no traitors and dastards — but there is a weird uniformity across every testimony of the Ordish he’s heard present in the West and an apparently senseless ruination of anyone who would show them goodwill. But, again, to even begin to make a judgement like that…
“Even the cute little families, who sneak in with hoes on their backs. Half will till the earth backwards to grow only mud, the other half run to Verdanheim begging for slaves to push the mud for them. Oh, the Ordish, bizarre in every way: I have seen them rip their new-sprouting seeds out of the dirt and eat a whole field in a day! I have seen the parents take the hoes and beat the children to service the field with only their hands. I have even seen them eat their own children — seen an Ordishwoman become pregnant to have children to eat. And they look innocent, the whole way."
“Atrocities," Renard spits, despite himself. Guilt wavers in his stomach the second he says it, but he cannot deny the clench in his gut at hearing of such abomination.
Renard glares down at the ambrosia pod in his grip, as though the thing were corrupt by its Ordishness. But the ones who would partake of take these meagre victuals would not be the ones ‘eating their children’. The offence sweeps away into an odd respect and affection for the things.
“They don’t understand," Verdan hums. “It’s horrible, sad, horribly sad."
A shadow of disdain flickers across Fidel’s features. “How would you not cast these monsters straight under your blades?"
“If they’re in my jurisdiction, perhaps. But are these like ghouls, menaces even in an empty field? …No, but very strange men, and by their own devices their kingdoms destroy themselves. Some come to Verdanheim with such meekness — ‘please Lord, will you help us? Will you give us hoes, and fields, and seeds, so we can work well?’ — but there is the difficulty of it! What does Verdan get that Verdan gives you these things? They say, ‘Lord, I don’t understand. With these things, we will work well.’ Nope! Nope, nope nope, no good."
Though hard to place why, the Ordish half of this exchange does discomfort Renard deeply.
“They have to go home, or they go to the wild… hunting and eating the critters, or turn crafty and go sniffing for gold. Verdan doesn’t know after that." He leans back, squinting, as his tone grows faintly more serious. “That’s why they would ever come to Nix… all the way through every depth, to go hunting for ghoul meat."
An odd silence stretches as Fidel glances to Renard, as if his opinion here were greatly important.
“—Fairer a cause than the fancy for which you came," Renard grumbles, with a hard bite of his bar. He points to Verdan for Fidel. “That man came here to pick flowers."
“Flowers?" Fidel asks.
“Ook! That’s a sharp plural. Sir Renard makes it sound like I’m making a bouquet. Ooh, but if I could get one… then if I could get two… then if I could get three…"
“These must be remarkable flowers," Fidel notes blandly.
“Mmhm. They’re like little wishes. They’re so pretty, and bright like rubies, that if I put one to my chest, I could make myself king of the world!"
“—Enough chattering about the cursed flowers, Verdan!" Renard snaps.
Verdan raises his palms. The lack of seriousness feels like reproach: you’re the one who brought it up…
Two little volcanoes in Renard’s cheeks redden and burn from the inside. But did those clever words not admit a seriousness in this topic! For what is Verdan even here?
“…Senseless," the words proceed out Renard’s throat like boulders flowing in landslide. “You and you prance about after fanciful things while I alone remember what danger faces us, with venom spitting at my front where I must hold my blade, for propped at my back is two clowns. Will either of you regard with seriousness the gravity of where we stand, and of what I do? Or shall you prattle about magic and miracles when I, with muscles and metal, am casting ghouls off your throat?"
“That snake will get you in two seconds," Verdan says.
“Ho? And what am I but the strongest amongst us?"
“Yes yes, of the body, but where it strikes is the heart."
Renard’s hands tremble not so much with fury, but with powerlessness, of knowing Verdan is right. You’re a very weak person, Verdan judges. A very small, very very very very very weak little person…
If that is what Verdan is thinking, it is not showing on his face. He returns to his food disconcernedly, as if he had said nothing outrageous, though his eye does trail on Renard: Well?
Renard bites his lip and looks to the ground.
“Miracles…" Fidel muses.
“Come off it, Fidel," Renard mutters.
“I was just thinking," Fidel continues. A spark of warmth, and wonder, and sincerity in his voice hooks Renard’s gaze up from off the ground — and in the boy’s wide-eyed amazement, he looks more human than he has in a week. “If something like that… was real, it could probably fix all the damage that has happened back in Lacren."
Usually these moments are like sunbeams, flickering through gaps in cottony cloud, cruel for how they hint at hope and swallow it just as quickly. Renard’s only mercy is that they come so infrequently, he has not yet abandoned the very occurrence of sunlight as a trick.
Because, this moment is different.
There is no abrupt drop of demeanour. There is no deadening of heart. The warmth and the awe and the wonder lingers, as Fidel stares up at the roof of the tent, the eye in his mind focused on a vision inestimably far from here. As though carried on a current, Renard’s own mind follows Fidel to the same place: where the grim clouds do break, and the sun bursts through with a spotless blue sky as halo, shining as a summer day over the mended, healed, verdant yellow valley of Sebilles.
The earth is stable, the water tower is flowing, the castle is not cleaved in twain—
The people go happy to their routines, the buffalo snort in their trails, the wheat stretches skyward—
And that’s all.
It is such a plain wish! Nothing in it is different from how Lacren was. What of soul rot, what of the snake, what even of personal hungers, for rubies or gold or a kingdom or for anything far more fantastical? All disregarded. For, ‘I wish things to be as they were,’ is the whole of it, the whole long of short of this simple, innocent, and for that reason pure wish, as someone who would desire just this could do so only with a heart full solely with love for their country.
It is so overwhelmingly massive, yet so infinitesimally humble, that when Renard breaks out of the vision, he does so shaken and breathless. Verdan watches on silently, fingers fanned over his mouth like the claws of a beast, with a gaze squinted and harsh and not wholly satisfied. But for the bitter criticisms caged on his tongue, begrudgingly, he is unable to disapprove.
With a dreamy stare and a gaze fixed on that vision, even down in Nix, a flame is lit like a torchlight.
After sleeping and breaking camp, the group resumes down the river.
Weeks pass, adventuring through more treacherous lands. The trappings of peace and normality found in such places as the lake, or the meadow, fade totally as the group breaches further into the depths, replaced with such horrid environments as molten fields, plains of ice, the innards and pelts of great filthy beasts, thick voids of leashed ‘natives’, ghoul hives, dead strangling vines, all infested with spacial rifts that make stepping off the river treacherous.
The air, too, grows clammy, thick with the humidity of rot. Half their food is poisoned, their tent turns into a stomach, their boat has attacked them — it is only through prodigious use of witchbane they wrangle even their most basic supplies back into obedience, and even then, they forfeit most of it.
All of it suggests they are reaching nearer the core of this place, and nearer the den of the viper. But there is trembling doubt within Renard that knows, they could very well travel a thousand leagues, they could very well face horrors unimaginable — and there would still be a thousand of a thousand more steps to travel, and a thousand of a thousand deeper horrors even worse. It is the kind of place where, the longer you go, the more you realise how shallow you stand.
It is the kind of effect that would have utterly broken his spirit had Renard not come to see the serpent always in front of him, mocking, vicious, insidious, and cowardly. And the brainless rage of always seeing that detestable enemy, too, would have surely burned him from inside out into ashes, were he not able to channel that drive into the gentler vision of Fidel.
Which is not to say, there is a particular zeal in his heart when he imagines, he came all this way with a blade in his hand just to heal Lacren.
It is rather the knowing that someone close to him has such a desire, and naturally feeling eager to see that desire succeed. Perhaps they will reach a method for that success as they proceed on their course — and, perhaps they will not — but it feels more realistic that the positive hopes of Fidel would be acknowledged, and rewarded, than Renard’s ambitions on this venture.
When facing terrible ghouls, when the way is twisted, when the dark is thick, when the food is dwindling, when the silence is deadening, when every comfort is stripped away, there always remains that anchoring thought: I must succeed, and press forward, that Fidel can succeed, and press forward.
Speaking of Fidel, his demeanour has shifted. In peaceful moments, on the boat or idle at camp, his attitude has become one predominantly of dreamy, but positive, aspiration, as he is clearly fantasising almost constantly on that vision of a healed Lacren. Even outside those moments, he is no longer so carelessly nonchalant (though a foundation of it still wafts through), and especially no longer so fascinated with the environment of Nix or the changes to his own body. Indeed, Renard has not caught him removing the witchbane from his leg-brace even once since learning of Verdan’s ‘flowers’, and actually has only seen him cringe or tense at his own leg as if disgusted or scared — a painful to witness, but relievingly normal response.
In fact, there is nothing Fidel seems to like about Nix anymore. As they have ventured deeper, and the air has grown more thick with rot, and the darkness more viscous and tangible as they walk, even the corrupt part of him has grown plainly uncomfortable. ‘Wait, this is for things a whole lot worse than me. What am I doing here?’, with just enough human compassion to know that striving to grow and acclimatize, and become such a thing that could subsist here, would be in no way desirable. That prospect, this place, this growing darkness — all it evokes is oppressive fear, that has left the boy weeping on the floor of their tent more than once.
Even Verdan has changed. The morale-boosting quips and jokes and cheerleading have steadily been swallowed by silence, and the optimistic camaraderie that was so annoying but so heartening before has cooled into a subtle, and likely not wholly intentional, resentment. He still claps and crows and says, ‘good job Renard!’, but does so with that dry enthusiasm that can only leave Renard wondering if Verdan hates him, but certain that Verdan is, at the very least, angry with him.
It is a couple days after the poisoning of their food — (“No worries! Ooh, so we’re getting so close!" he chirped in the moment) — that Verdan finally pulls Renard aside and instructs him, with no misdirections or pussyfooting, that Renard must use a wish from the flowers.
Though a topic Renard has been braced to confront for several weeks, he still cannot help but grit his teeth at hearing it, before releasing that tension with a sigh.
Truthfully, Verdan has been angling for this. Some part of Renard has always recognised it, from the moment Verdan first mentioned the flowers. Don’t try to face the serpent head-on. Use a wish, or a miracle, from Camille, to fight it. So has Renard always heard Verdan’s implicit desire. But there are serious objections boiling deep in Renard’s heart that he cannot dare to let surface, or admit before Verdan, even at this moment.
“Why must it be I, Verdan?" Saying even this feels so pathetic. “You are here, as much."
“Well, I am beginning to doubt my prospects of how far I might go!" Verdan snaps. “I know what I’d ask, the boy knows what he’d ask, but what about you, Sir Renard? If it came down to you, what would you do about all of this?"
Kill the snake, of course. But there unease wavers in the pit of his gut. Killing the snake is something he would have to do with his blades. To do it through a wish, or a flower… to let his desires flow straight from the root of his heart to the world. Is there anything he could desire with so much conviction that wouldn’t be, in the end, a mistake?
Verdan’s pendant hums like strained glass, loud and constant enough at this level to be a constant noise filling any gully of silence.
“It’s rather frustrating!" Verdan chirps, absentmindedly cupping his hand over his pendant. “To think we get so far, just to rebuild one little kingdom. You can have a thousand Lacrens, Sir Renard. Your children will make them for you. But some misty fantasy of a little boy looking backwards…!" Verdan hisses, teeth grit and inhumanly sharp. His hand goes to his temple as if nauseous, and his glare to Renard is ferocious. “You know, if I killed that boy, I bet that would shape you up quick!"
A prince may not die by one cup of poison — but by two cups, or three, or four, even the most sterling guts of iron will strain.
“I would break your legs and leave you to die, Verdan." But even as Renard speaks these words, his heart screams with misgivings.
Verdan grins precariously, as if ready to challenge that statement, but tempers himself with a harsh sigh and looks away. His pendant sings — again, he cups it. When it seems he might end the talk, he closes his eyes as if emboldening himself, and again speaks. “What do you want? What do you really, reaaaally want?"
What bursts out of Renard’s mouth is the truth: “I do not know."
Verdan closes his eyes, claps his hands together, and smiles pointedly. “That’s ridiculous." His levity drains. “How could you not know? Well, Sir Renard, if that’s all the case, maybe we should stay put for a while until you decide. How would you fix things? And not just piggybacking off of that boy!"
Piggybacking off “that boy" is how I have come to this distance at all. “Are my choices anything so dire?" Deeming this conversation done, Renard shoulders past Verdan to return to the riverside, where Fidel has brought up their boat and supplies.
“Please, surely they are," Verdan murmurs behind him.
Renard glances behind him, seeing Verdan has not moved, and spares a weak smile. Though cold hatred and resentment teem off of the man like steam from boiling water, he smooths his expression down to agreeableness, sighs at himself, and nods to follow Renard. Vague impatience and irritation yet waft around him like a smell, as he settles in to break food and take watch in the crippling silence, but even he, when he gazes into the dark, looks a little misty-faced too.
It’s all fear.
The degradation of the group’s morale, Verdan’s growing urgency, and Fidel’s weeping, are all products of the tyranny of fear. As much as the darkness is becoming solid, and the air is becoming thick, the further that they go, fear itself is becoming a force as physical and as encompassing as the bitter winter cold. There is not any specific sensation of the flesh or the nerves, however, that corresponds to this fear, but rather a sensation of the heart: for, like the cold, the fear saps the warmth of the heart into itself and kills it, leaving behind only a hollow husk, and dregs, frantic to cling to their casing but too weak to counter the tide.
This exquisite fear is also closing its grip on Renard.
Certainly, the hopeful dreams of Fidel have stabilised Renard now for weeks. It has always been in his nature, and in a very deep part of his nature, to strive through any odds and any impossibility to see the greatest hopes of those who trust him fulfilled. And Fidel surely does still have great hope. But now it is only great hope in Renard. Gone is that air of a glorious future painted directly in front of his eyes; rather he has become like a dirty stray kitten in the alley. As the ground loses its roughness and planes of earth twist upon each other discordantly, in towers that are pits, in chutes that are fields, as even the ghouls turn to slop, as the natives crow and pester, Fidel’s eyes widen: ‘God, get us out of this…’. The one he looks to with these wide pleading eyes is Renard.
Renard is a far thing from God. For when Fidel is unable to hold to his positive hope, so also is Renard. The gumption to jut out his jaw and grin with an audacious flourish, and step forth into these troubles with facile confidence as his armour shining like fool’s gold, already left him when they entered Nix. But now, having taken every threat seriously, addressed them seriously, and surpassed them seriously, although uncertainly, he finds himself losing the spirit to believe he can conquer what’s before them at all.
Verdan’s pendant has been shrieking so horribly, even in Kingslayer’s proximity, it has become hard to sleep. When he does sleep, there are only nightmares. The rations are thin; even if he eats well now, he can only think of tomorrow, where there will be only crumbs. Masses of roiling shadows bulging with the silhouettes of people thrash about the dome of the black sky like a gale, each one nefarious, curious, jeering, and hungry. Verdan is quiet and despondent. Fidel is desperate and shivering.
Enemies, threats, attacks, things Renard can and does hate — but when he wakes that ‘morning’, and sees the blank bright trapezoids jutting onto and through each other, upon and within the hold of which they have rested, for this is all there is, there is no energy even in hatred.
Anger is conceived, lit, withers, and dies, as a flame set upon a wet candle-wick.
From the inside out, it is like being stamped into a fossil. Because when Renard wakes that morning, the most sincere desire of his heart is to do a thing he has not once in his life done before: stop.
As though it would be its own form of victory, to keep their own terms of surrender…
As though they may lay here, and be eroded like rocks…
That Renard instead stands, and takes to hand the oars, and settles himself in to row the boat, despite the absolute lack of emotional impetus powering him to do anything, is an incredible demonstration of willpower. Verdan is slow to follow, as though proceeding is a thing of poor taste. Fidel, trembling like a lost fawn, almost does not board at all.
This shall be the end, Renard decides, as his body falls into the repetitive, meditative, and now habitual motion of rowing.
Forward, and back, and forward, and back, in cycles, over and over…
So monotonous and so unbreaking; where they cease today shall be where they stop. This shall be the end.
But in cycles, simply cycles, this motion has taken its own, growing, momentum…
This shall be the end: is this not what he thought upon waking this very day? Is this not what he thought when he took the oar? And yet why, when espousing surrender, is he failing these benchmarks of failure. Why is this progress up the river so constant, and by being constant, so great? This shall be the end! Declare it as a prayer, and the more the reverse becomes true. This shall be the end! I will throw overboard all our rations, drown Verdan and Fidel in the river, break apart that stupid amulet myself, and snap my own Kingslayer over my knee, so that it may be made sure like an oath, This shall be the end!
And yet doing any one of those things sounds so cumbersome.
A strange chortle chokes in Renard’s throat. Backwards to go forwards; fail failure to succeed; do not dare to think and do not strive for much; but do adopt the joke and the misery; state proudly, We stop here! To guarantee you will go forward tomorrow.
So it is, knowing that the shore he touches today shall be the end, that Renard paddles for longer, not by greater fervour but by greater consistency, than he has any other day of this journey. A niggling pride grins quietly in his breast, under the mechanical, rote blankness of the rowing motion. To minimise one’s own self exposes the shin of the riddle.
Kingslayer jerks in its scabbard, jolting Renard like a static bolt. Snapped out of the meditation, he glances down and sees that the wood of the boat has joined around his ankle, not like a grasping tendril, but in the way that flesh swaddles over a bone. Intuition tells that, in his meditation, he had, as is Nix’s way, begun to become part of the boat, and would have merged with it had he continued. Only the intervention of Kingslayer has spared him from this fate.
And moreover, Kingslayer is, very minutely, humming in its scabbard.
Furious, Renard paddles against the water as if trying to beat the river to death. Though the burst of energy is dramatic and volcanic in its explosiveness, and though his ankle does separate effortlessly from the wood, with water splashing everywhere, their actual progress cuts to that of a drowning dog, flailing, and only carried more than an inch forward by sheer lucky chance. The impotency of his efforts only inflames Renard to push harder, more frantically—
“Stop spending your energy. You’ll kill us with this rain," Verdan chides.
—With one last, heavy slap of the oars against the river as protest, he gives up on the effort.
The gentle current of the river is pushing the boat slowly back downstream. With a smoky grunt, aware that Verdan’s criticism has aggravated him too severely to reclaim that mindless rhythm in any short fashion, he pushes an oar against the riverbed and heaves the boat onto shore. Are you pleased, Verdan! I will press myself further tomorrow, He thinks, but knows instantly this is the wrong mindset.
Verdan and Fidel disembark. Renard, with a sigh, tries to fix his head as he drags the boat up. Let his soul and thoughts recede quietly: the misery of this depth hits then like a sweeping black wave, and the futility of surrender seeps in to the vacant corners. Indeed… why bother even to unload their packs, to cut the rations, to bring up the boat, why bother to do anything but sit, and why bother to sit when he could lie…
There is no point going forward; surely, this shall be the end.
Sparing only a wisp of a smile in his heart for having reclaimed the paradox, he turns and looks up.
And feels even those wisps of brightness freeze into lead, as it sinks with finality: This is the end.
Where they have landed is a plane of void, distinguishable from the empty black only by the jagged triangle shapes that colour some of the floor. While deeply discomforting, such scenery is not out of place within Nix. Such, it is not the thing that clouds Renard’s gut with such dread.
No, the dreadful thing is in the air, above them.
For this plane of void upon which they stand drops like a cliff into nothing, and the river flows off this edge — upwards, where it splits into a thousand different streams that all splay out and interweave with each other. So intricately they flow and twist, that for the eye to follow where one stream ends and another begins is impossible, for the mass is as incestuous as tangled yarn, and as large as a whole city.
The group’s navigation thus far has trusted that following the current upstream would guide them to the core of Nix. This, while deep, is not the core of Nix, and even Renard can distinguish that many of these streams form loops. Simply following the current upwards will not work, but only get them lost in cycles as the stream they follow blends into another, into another, into another, and back down to the start — for if the distortions of space can now affect the river, there is no way to trust its direction.
And beyond that, there are distant branches like waterfalls that pass through sceneries they have seen before. Even if they did not trap themselves in a maze of looping currents, intuition talks that they could take a poor turn and be dumped many weeks or months back on the path, and into quite perilous environs. And then are branches that seem to blend into the whole one second, then break away like serpents to instead pour into nothing…
Renard, lip trembling, falls to his knees.
With a cynical laugh, Verdan dumps their luggage and seats himself beside it, hands twined over his knees. He smiles bitterly. His amulet shrieks. Rummaging through the bags, he withdraws a handful of what remains of their rations — just crumbs — and playfully flicks it out of his palm as if sprinkling confetti. He seems to concede: Well, that’s it then.
Tears sting Renard’s cheeks. Gritting his teeth, he draws Kingslayer — which is still humming minutely. The thickness of the corruption has become so severe that it’s starting to affect even it… and when he listens properly, under the banshee-like shrieking of Verdan’s amulet, portions of Fidel’s leg brace are shuddering too. Renard could use these vibrations as guidemarks on the twisting river of whether he has drawn closer to the core… but no, plainly he can’t. If Kingslayer breaks, he will die. Plunging himself along the course that most stresses it could be a trap as much as any other.
Fidel looks to Renard with a bland innocence, as if the man collapsed on the earth before him is not mere seconds from bawling, but a superman who will doubtlessly carry the group over this obstacle as he has every obstacle before. It is like a sheep looking to a shepherd. The faith here is not inspiring; simply nobody knows what to do.
Plans of how to move forward crash and fade in his mind as quickly as waves on a beach. The passion fades too swiftly for any scheme to become solid; flaws spring up in every idea too risky to ignore; even the mindless release of shouting at, and blaming Verdan for sending them upon rivers withers fruitlessly before it takes form. Renard must do something… he must do something… but when even the passive option of coiling and withering to sleep, that he might flee the decision least for some hours, demands too great a commitment of will, how can anything more active have hope?
A tide shifts in Renard’s mind.
As if it were the most obvious thing, the thought occurs that now may be the time he must draw Kingslayer, kill Verdan, kill Fidel, and then maybe kill himself.
Nix has always been insidious about inserting such thoughts into men’s heads, but now it feels queerly sensible that this would be how to proceed. How, or why, he can’t answer, and nor is this thought coupled with any compassionate sentiment of granting the two a merciful death, but like other questionable ideas Renard has acted upon in his life, this one settles as something he will just have to do, sooner or later.
But what a drag…
The amount of certain passion underlying these murderous sentiments is paradoxically barring Renard from enacting them at present. Once the revelation has faded a little, and he is lying on the floor with all the vitality of a carcass, ribs bare to the earth and mouth buzzing with flies, that is when the strength will come like the tide of the ocean dragging sand across its bed, to take his arm with blade in hand and drive it in to these other two people.
He will achieve his aims more fully, then, by the less that he does.
Frustratingly, realising this in itself makes Renard impassioned to try and ‘do less’, which means he is fighting against the empty flow. Even knowing this is true, the impulse of proactivity runs deep in Renard. With a frustrated huff inside his throat, he tries to strip his mind back, that his eyes might glaze over with the boredom of nothing, and he will achieve the frustrating mission of simply ‘waiting’.
From the darkness of the sky then descends a mass of shadowy figures — the natives — who spiral down in a thin tendril like a forming twister, long and narrow. The shades coalesce together into the form of one single shade, not greater in size or stature from the many that dove into it, but greatly thicker in the sheer blackness of its form. Like a spigot turned off, no other shades descend; those with the inclination to fall may perhaps be consummate in this one shade, but also it seems that only a prescribed amount could ‘fit’ through the now closed ‘hole’ in the sky in the first place.
The shade, standing a few meters off from Renard and his group, extends its hands like a beggar, beckoning Renard.
Renard’s brows scrunch despite himself. The last time such a shade beckoned him, it was a lure into a trap by which he would freefall into a void through a hole in the floor.
As though it heard his thoughts, the shade worriedly shakes its head and strokes its hands over the floor, as if illustrating its solidity. It steps carefully forward once, then twice, then a third step — and stops there, as if conscious not to encroach any further on the group’s space. Space then twinges strangely to return the shade where it was, without it actually moving or receding in its presence. Burbling that could be voices, but is too fuzzy to make out, runs faintly through the back of Renard’s mind.
The shade, with the manner of a meek servant, again beckons.
It must be trying to take the group… or maybe just Renard, somewhere. The way it stands alone in the blank field of painted shapes, while all its fellows roil far away like stormclouds against the invisible dome of this plain’s ‘heaven’, impresses to Renard the thought that it must be somehow permitted to visit them, or special. To follow this one’s guidance… it doesn’t feel like the worst idea.
With a final, reflexive hesitation, Renard glances back to the river.
And there, carried softly upon the water, is a single, shining, bright, red flower.
Renard jolts to his feet to the river.
The shade at his back screeches in a multitude of wrathful and aggrieved voices, shattering apart into hundreds of weaker shades that all surge in on the group with clawed hands. But, radiating from the flower that glides serenely on the face of the river, is a crimson halo, like the halo of light from the sun, that is felt by the heart rather than seen with the eyes. The rays of this halo, pulsing in and out like the tides of a heartbeat, and yet only ever spearing out further and further and further, strike against the surging shadows as if they have all crashed into a wall, and then, like the closing of a door, disintegrates every one of them.
The glory extends even further. The roiling storm of shadows in the sky too screams, with rage, fear, castigation — a great portion of the host sloshes out of sight to flee, but just as many snap and beat at the bottom of the sky-dome in a mindless, murderous, and ultimately suicidal rage, as the effusing spears of light from the flower abolish all the ones who stayed, too.
Darkness is cast out by very proximity to this flower. The air itself brightens as the oppressive humidity of the depth eases away into crispness — breath comes easier, and too Renard’s thoughts resolve into vital, and positive clarity, that the moribund trend towards surrender, and dreadful ideas of murdering his fellows, are (horrifically, as he can now see them,) stripped away and rejuvenated into sanity.
Renard chokes on his own spit as he skids to a stop at the riverbank. The heat is overwhelming — to look directly at it might blind him — as these thoughts flit through his mind, he sees the flower has already drifted further down the river, toward where Fidel stands, with his hand dipped ready in the water.
As the flower approaches him, its petals tremble like leaves in a storm. With unreal calm, Fidel withdraws his hand.
“It’s not for us," he says, and the flower continues on its way down the river, uninterrupted.
A vicious smile cracks out of Verdan as he covers his face with his palms, laughing. It is not a cruel laugh, nor one of resignation to failure, though it is manic and grim, and signs a resignation to the harsher fate: continuing.
For, looking up the river, a trail of shimmering red light wafts over the water like a scent, which marks where the flower has been, and more importantly, where it has come from. To yell at Fidel for releasing that chance would be foolish, as though they are not being afforded a wish, a godly finger is still pointing them along on this journey. For the scent-trail of light follows clearly up one of the thousand forking branches of the river.
Without hesitation or thought, Renard flips the grounded boat onto the river to disembark the second his passengers board. Reinvigorated by the flower’s mere presence, both of them do so. With a decisive heave of the paddles, the boat sails steadily on.
Teeth grit, Renard’s gaze fixes over his shoulder hunting the trail of the flower. Even among the convoluted city of rivers, it is not hard to find or follow, for the crimson light does not actually run into the labyrinth at all. It skirts just close enough to its mouth to suggest that it joins like the others to whole, when it does not, and instead forks shortly into a small, straight stream that terminates in blackness.
As many of the streams ‘exuding’ from the central mass do. Renard chuckles in his throat. So even that appearance, of the many shoots effusing from the whole, is a vicious deception from the snake. The shifting nature of the false forks, which conspicuously point outward then rejoin the maze, is entirely, merely to cloak that there is one right way, and to erode a witness’s trust that this right way will remain in its clear and apparent orientation.
Which, it will.
Swallowing the cold lump of doubt in his throat, and the dread of the water aborting into nothing, Renard forces himself to believe in the guidance of the red glow, and paddles up the last stretch, before its mild light can fade.
The dropoff into nothingness stands before them now. Renard hesitates — not for the thought that they would sail off the edge and fall, but for fear of knowing there will be no coming back once he crosses that threshold, with no apprehension of what could lay beyond but something even more dark, deep, strange, or sinister.
“If we drop off the edge, I’ll tell Camille at the pearly gates that he’s one dedicated prankster!" Verdan laughs with jocularity that has been absent for weeks. Fidel looks forward into the black with a sharp air of resolution and purpose, recovered too after weeks of absence.
Perhaps, then, that Renard is so afraid speaks of a return to his true character, too.
His hands quiver on the paddles. His guts are freezing, shivering like a man collapsed in the tundra. But, looking over where they paddled from, these blank distorted planes of colour, affirms like an edict that there is no staying here. With a light breath to steady himself, he clenches his lips, adjusts his grip on the paddles, and rows the final stroke.
Night swallows the world.
The darkness, utter darkness, is all Renard registers before a tempest of winds batters him like the lashes of a whip. Renard gasps — and cannot breathe, for the ferocity of the whirling gale, each buffet as disorienting and cruel and purposeful as the lunging of a great black beast, is so great that his throat cannot catch it.
As if biting, and eating, and sucking up the flesh of that beast, Renard forces the air down his gullet. It is like swallowing gelatin, on every effortful suck of breath, sliding thick down his windpipe, but it does keep him conscious.
A metallic scream and ‘ping!’ then sound out from beside him, as three witchbane segments of Fidel’s leg brace shoot like shrapnel into black. Then is a sick shlorping and glorping, of the calf unlacing into a sinuous, interwoven mass of slick tentacles, with such a speed and smoothness it is like the appendage is saying: ‘Finally!’.
Renard’s gaze remains frozen on the eels, blossoming out like a flower, as Fidel quickly grabs him and presses himself to Renard’s side. Congealed sweat rolls down Renard’s forehead as though he were a wet toad in the tropics. Fidel’s brace is screaming — but the corruption isn’t spreading further up his thigh, as what witchbane remains is strong enough to, for now, suitably ward off the rot-pressure.
Renard still automatically reaches for Kingslayer to apply it to Fidel’s calf. As the blade slides out of its scabbard, movement slow by the cloying air, Renard is shocked to realise that the whole sword is humming in his palms, and not minutely.
But if Kingslayer is strained — Renard looks to Verdan.
Verdan is wincing a smile with his hand cupped over his witchbane pendant. Could it already be broken, hidden under his fist? Verdan gives a wry grin and carefully splays out his fingers. A run of foul-smelling ochre liquid oozes as a single droplet out of his cheek, and his brow, and his hand. The pendant is not broken, but its surface is covered in fractures, and it is screaming such a shrill note it is almost inaudible, like the screech of a murdered woman frozen at its highest pitch.
Verdan closes his fist again to shield the amulet. Renard yanks him to his side as well, and the light oozing of fluid from his skin peters out.
These immediate worries dealt with, Renard hucks a deep, slimy breath and braces for oncoming attackers.
But nothing comes.
The ferocious winds still batter the boat, but it is strangely not jostling at all.
They are in a place of total, utter blackness. Though there is absolutely no source of light, the forms of himself, his companions, the boat, and the river, all stand out visibly against the darkness, as though the very fact they exist demands them to be seen against the contrasting black. The suggestion of a riverbed rises in Renard’s mind, but one is not actually there. It is a bizarre kind of discordance, as though he is seeing not with his eyes but his soul, the scaffold of a creation not clothed with a solid skin of grass and mud, but left bare and hollow that it instead became host to tangible evil, which has compressed itself into the scaffold and filled it up to the brim.
It is even worse than if this darkness were simply a void. It is like the suggestion of form has allowed the darkness to fold in and over itself to compound its own virulence, the way an unwound intestine is longer than the man it resides inside. But when he does look with only his eyes, it truly is only a void.
The river twists through the blackness like a streak of paint. A subtle red glow still wafts over the water, more faded and fading the further out from the boat that it is, a signifier that this is the path from which the guiding flower drifted. To deviate from the river will send them plummeting into bottomless void. Renard once again takes the paddles, and rows.
The bottom of the boat crunches against the riverbed.
Renard curses. The water here is extremely shallow. They will not be able to proceed in the boat; they will have to walk… but if they reach a place where the river deepens again, it would be better to have it, and the scant little supplies left in it, than to swim.
With a light splashing of crystalline water over his ankles, Renard hops out of the boat. The water is frigid, rattling him from the butt to the crown of his spine upon contact, though on his left side, where is sheathed Kingslayer, it is a little more temperate. Recognizing that the iciness must be a corrupted effect, he draws his blade and dips in the water — the water warms, and the blade shudders horribly.
Pursing his lips, Renard draws Kingslayer slightly out of the water and faces Verdan and Fidel, to guide them also out of the boat.
From this vantage, what is behind them is visible. It is simply the line of the river and then a black throat of nothing. Furious winds still beat at Renard as if reaming through his flesh, and apparently at Verdan and Fidel for how they alight as if bracing against the force, but again, there is no observable jostling to the boat or to anything else. Sensibly, beyond that throat must be the region from which they just came. But certainty wobbles in the back of Renard’s mind, that were he to try to return through the portal, he would find it was only one-way.
This black pit is hard to look away from. Anxiety claws like rats in his chest, and though he knows there must be the boat, and the river, and his companions in his periphery, they are becoming harder to see. It is like staring into the sun… both constricting his vision from the outside, and expanding it out from the middle as a suctioning effusion of darkness.
Splashes peal as his companions alight. “Ah," one of them moans at the cold.
Renard shakes off the pit and turns to Fidel, who is hobbling to balance on only one foot. Propping him up by the shoulder, Renard turns to the front.
The vision of the river, and the whole scene before him, fades quietly out into black.
Renard freezes in quiet alarm. Even though he can hear water splashing, and knows Fidel is right beside him, in this oppressive void of darkness, it does not feel like he is anywhere near his fellows at all. If he ventures forward, he is not sure where he’d go, but surely it would be a place very deep and very different from everyone else…
A dim red light fades into view. The now weak glow of the departed flower shimmers in like a landmark, that the water of the river resolves into sight beneath it, then his companions, and the scene returns to normal as it was before his vision was sucked into that pit. Though this blinding darkness was only a passing trouble, incredible relief washes over Renard. He clears his throat to speak.
“Don’t look behind us," Verdan announces first.
“How did you know, Verdan?"
But in his periphery, Verdan only grins while thumbing his pendant.
Deeming it unproductive, Renard shakes off his questions and grips the edge of the boat. Even with Verdan helping (though unenthusiastically), and even though Renard is strong, to drag the boat through this chilly water while shouldering Fidel and balancing Kingslayer is an extremely arduous task. They do not make it more than a few steps before Renard catches up to Verdan’s realisation that bringing the boat is probably fruitless. But the thought of the water deepening perilously, and them not having it, is too mortifying for Renard to stop.
He yanks the boat forward with a surge of furious strength. Its belly crunches against the riverbed, and it wedges with a ‘thunk’ in a narrow neck of the river.
Cursing, Renard reverses to climb backward over the boat and try pushing it. A suctioning force tickles at his back like slime the moment he does, and, though weak enough to easily resist, clings to him faintly even when he leans forward again. There must be a way to finangle his approach so that he…
“There’s plenty more boats back home in the shed," Verdan snaps. “Time to put our floaties to pasture."
Reprimanded, Renard flinches. But to be so criticised inflames the principle of the matter: “Should the waters open to sea, would you curse me then?" The cloying thickness of the air forces him to gobble down chunks of breath between every pause.
“It looks like it stays shallow, milord. For now, at least," Fidel interjects too, though not without a lilt of strong doubt. The water might be clear enough to make such an inference, but for things that look safe to stay consistent is not a trustworthy premise in Nix.
Fidel surely knows this. For his frustration, Renard’s companions have come to a consensus to proceed on foot regardless of what could come next.
Swallowing his reluctance, Renard alights from the boat and again props Fidel on his shoulder. That light but cloying slime of darkness sucks yet at his back as he proceeds forward, and it occurs to Renard that the wall of the dark throat behind them must be staying equidistant. It is not so much the feeling that it is following them, but rather the sense that, were he to walk ten steps, then look behind him, it would remain always looming at a fixed distance of ten steps. It it like it is anchored on a string to his position rather than existing of itself in the space.
Which is an invasive and unsettling prospect, but the panic that truly strikes him now is the recognition that proceeding any further means assuredly abandoning the boat. If they commit to just walking, the darkness will swallow it and they will not get it back, but if they do not commit—
A shudder rises out of his core so overwhelming that Fidel, on his shoulder, stumbles. Renard whips thoughtlessly around to run back to the boat—and freezes himself halfway, instead only facing a dispassionate Verdan.
For if Renard does not look, he can imagine the boat is still there. If he does not look, he can imagine it will always be there…
“Hk," he chokes, his face reddening as his knees buckle. He buries his face in his palms, not to hide his coming tears from his companions, but to have a blanket of warmth that could hide him away from the dark.
After it all! He is truly… truly, always, that stupid timid country boy who had no business holding a sword, and nothing but a cheap substitute, in a hollow shell of armour, of the man who could have conquered this darkness.
“Milord," Fidel calls.
He wrenches his hands off his face. Timid or not, phony or not, he cannot also drag down Verdan or Fidel… but the image persists in his mind of the boat, of Isen in his own shoes striding forth, yet this is the place where it matters most that he should not need to be Isen… and in the end…
Verdan watches with a quiet, cold glare. Fine! Castigate him too. Perhaps it was as much as Renard deserved, for dragging the two of them down here. But a surge of petulant anger flares as soon as he thinks that thought: you hate what I have done, well I will not let you have cause to, for watch me, I will charge forth!
Distracted, Verdan’s gaze soon softens with reconsideration.
“It’s good that you’re scared," he says. “Something that’s already dead can’t be afraid of dying."
Renard’s brow knits. It sounds like a riddle — but something about these words does resonate comfortingly, and sympathetically, enough for Renard to calm. Though he cannot explain how or why, the tempest striking at and through him, for that moment, eases.
Perhaps it is okay that he came here, after all.
Renard again shoulders Fidel, adjusts Kingslayer’s position over the water, and shores himself as encouragingly as he can manage. The pit of darkness before them, though sliced apart by the pristine light of the river, is exactly as oppressive as the maw behind them. To look into it is horrifying. With nervous sweat on his brow, and gaze averted down to the water, Renard begins the march forth.
The gentle sloshing of the river carries through the dark. If there is any vestige of tranquillity, and any sign of safety, that has been permanent here in Nix, then it would have to be the river, despite its lingering cold.
It surely leads to somewhere. It surely, surely does.
To push through this leaden air, so harsh and so heavy, is exhausting. The winds that rip still rip relentlessly, and the claws of it slice through the clothes and past the skin to fill the blood with black fumes, of misery, and weakness, and hopelessness, if such intangible things could be seen and weighed as a growing mound of grit upon a scales. It is like trudging through a sandstorm of evil, that would skin a man and shred his guts, and indeed, slowly, feels to be doing so, but what it assaults is his soul, and not his flesh.
There is no real escaping it. There is simply pushing through, one tiny step by the next.
The slimy weight of corruption, this humidity that is so thick, too permeates through his body. It is like he is sweating sludge inside his flesh, all of sickening, exhausting, and tangibly weighing him down. More than once the prospect of settling to sleep flits through his mind. All that stops him from doing so is the sight of his own feet, and the thought of, ‘well, I can take one more step…’, repeated, ultimately, what must be a thousand times over.
“Verdan," Renard calls, instantly regretful of spending the energy.
“Mm," Verdan hums from somewhere behind him.
“Keep pace," Renard says. It feels a foolish reminder when spoken without specific concerns. Be it only by a small span of footsteps, but Verdan is not pressed up to Kingslayer as himself and Fidel are, and so may not be getting the full benefits of its protection. If so, then the water, which is already chilly enough that Renard’s feet have gone numb, may be even colder and be exacting an even worse exhaustion for Verdan.
Slosh. Slosh. Slosh. Even though Renard slows his own pace, Verdan’s footfalls come so laggard that there is no way he will catch up, unless Renard stops.
Every second not moving is another second that the ripping wind and oozing sludge and hypothermic chill gain ground. To pause does not make one less tired. It just makes one closer to death.
I will shoulder him, too, Renard pledges. His pace for this moment slows even more as he adjusts his hold on Kingslayer, looping the sword around Fidel’s torso to keep a hand free for Verdan. Fidel’s body is warm, though he shudders with fear, and that is not true only of him. Kingslayer’s vibrating remains unshakeably constant. The crimson light that once wafted over the river, by now, has faded completely.
Slosh.
Slosh.
Verdan must be near now! Gritting his teeth in a surge of defiant resolve, Renard shoots his arm out behind him and gropes through the dark to yank Verdan forward. He reaches here, reaches there, but grasps only air, only air—
A short impact upon Renard’s back then shoves him forward. Unprepared for it, he, eyes bulging, stumbles several steps along before recapturing his footing, only barely not tripping into the water as Fidel shoots his good leg out with a yelp.
Verdan, that idiot! Renard curses, but collects his stride.
Slosh.
That idiot! Tears sting like hot needles. Renard does not need to look behind him to know that Verdan is weakening. But even for the growing infrequency of Verdan’s footfalls, and the fading heat of his very presence, and even though a fire rips inside Renard that screams for him to turn back and help him, Renard cannot slow his pace, and cannot turn himself away from procession down the river.
Though they have for weeks now travelled together, Verdan and Renard still do not really know each other. Before this venture, Renard could not say his impression of Verdan was positive — in fact, were he removed from such a dire environment, he would have, until this moment, still hesitated to say much of him that was positive.
But nobody should ever be left behind in such darkness. Nobody! It’s the principle of it!
The stinging tears overflow into burning trails on his cheeks, pain gushing straight out from his heart to the world.
‘Don’t slow down for me.’ How on earth is he supposed to not, Verdan, you brigand! Every sturdy step forward lands like a scalpel in his heart!
And yet, indeed, he can only listen, and cannot slow down.
Do you not have a family, a home, and a kingdom? For the people who love you! Fight! Can you not fight for them? But Verdan has already fought, more than most people ever will.
Fidel, holding a thin breath, freezes in his grip with the realisation they are not turning back for Verdan. For several long, excruciating seconds, the only sound from behind them as they trudge onwards is silence.
Then, a light: slosh…
Hope kindles in Renard’s heart. Yes, just keep going! He pleads, but just as soon as he thinks it, and lands the next step in his stride, the persistent screeching of Verdan’s amulet, which has been holding a single note so shrill it is like a woman suspended in the single moment that a knife plunges into her chest, abruptly shrieks even higher, as that knife, brutally, is ripped out.
For there peals a screeching from out of the darkness, a ‘tlink’ and then a loud ‘ping!’. Like the bursting of heated glass, Verdan’s pendant breaks — and not a second after the fact, there follows, the sound of sick sluicing, of the shedding of pounds of rotten sodden meat that drops off its own bones and splapps to the water, and the sound, distinctly, of a body thudding down.
After that is only the light tinkling of water. As though someone were pissing.
Renard’s throat and chest and eyes strain too tight for the tears to even escape. The trails that do dribble through do so painfully, squeezing against eyeballs like stone and pressing against a throat like a boulder. Renard readjusts his grip on Kingslayer and gulps a slimy breath.
With a mind mute but for the shrilling of stressed steel, and the memory of that shove to his back, Renard holds Fidel tighter, and does not look behind.
The darkness only thickens.
It would be convenient to say that he is fulfilling Verdan’s wishes. Or Orpheus’ wishes. The Queen’s wishes. Pleione’s, or even the Iron King’s — that the hearts of all these people, from different backgrounds and different creeds, but who all found a unity in their belief in Renard, and in their belief thought he could make the most important dream, and the most impossible dream, come true, are being venerated.
But what it truly feels like is that all he has done, in the end, is proceed down a stairway of corpses.
Of which he will be the last.
If before the humidity was cloying, now it is septic. If the winds before were harsh, now they are a hurricane. His feet are numb slabs of meat that he must lug, step by step, with weak boggy muscles, and for the delirious lightness of his mind, perch for these thoughts of failure, his head saws heavy on his neck like an iron ball on a string. Every breath must be wrestled in with strength Renard is finding, more and more, that he doesn’t have, and when his heart kicks in panicked protest of a missed breath, each time, it does so more, and more feebly, that it can be smoothly ignored.
Beyond that all is the claustrophobia: the feeling that the darkness is pressing in, and in, tighter, solid as the walls of a cave, yet utterly intangible, narrowing.
Though his vision tells him the river proceeds onwards as it always has, in the eye of his soul, there is all but a couple feet, then a curtain of impenetrable nothing.
There is no real question that Renard will die shortly. It is a strange division like he has been peeled in halves. His body, choking and sputtering, rattles with fear so profound his entire skin is an earthquake. Yet he has the detachment to be thinking of other things utterly, like the body of him is just a figure he can move like a pawn on a chessboard.
He will betray everyone with his failure. Hopes and aspirations he laid were no pedestal for the heart but a damning chain, and not things he really believed in, but quick bandages for a hurt pride. Indeed, that panic he felt, and those scathing words of virtue that shot from his heart like a geyser so long ago, at that inaugural party toward Orpheus, that started this mess: what were those but a keen, reflexive parry? He is not really much different from a thousand other men whose pious ambitions took them to die.
And what will become of his bones, will he wither to mist in this storm? Please, let it be, that he will never again have to wake, and that any who would find him, would find only the shards of a skeleton, that the only takeaway of his life and only thing to be said would be, here, this is a dead thing.
For, at the end of all this, the only one who will ‘survive’… in a sense, may be Fidel.
Renard refocuses minutely. Fidel is less held than cupped now in his arms, his body dangling in quivering coils. Vestiges of humanity peek sickeningly through a silhouette that is otherwise a near wholly inhuman tangle of… flesh. His leg-brace has shattered; the only thing preventing his complete transformation into a… thing… is proximity to Kingslayer so extreme that, given how violently the blade is shuddering, it is a miracle it has not sliced open his ‘torso’.
Is that the silver lining to this thundercloud? That Renard will fall, and then… Fidel will remember something of good, and slither out into the dark as a worm, and live happy, like that? That Renard took this boy from his home, and that so many people would die, so that he could… be a happy little worm…
Tears sheen and fall from his tired eyes. It his not his trembling hand that holds Kingslayer, but Kingslayer’s quaking that makes his hand tremble. Renard adjusts his hold on Fidel, coiled over his arms, to stop himself from accidentally cutting him — not that it would make a huge difference.
If it could all be so dismal, if it could all have been hopeless, if it could have been an endless string of misery and failure… then maybe, yes, he could have found solace at the thought of Fidel squirming into the dark.
But it wasn’t, was it?
The image of Colette, a child swaddled in her arms, beams into his mind with an intensity that is scalding. It’s not an image that makes him happy. It doesn’t give him strength. No, skulking around in this dark, half flirting with misery, such brightness is merely blinding and painful for the light it shines on his own stupidity. For it was Renard who knew that happiness existed, but chose not to have it. It was him that ultimately, trended back towards anger, and hatred, and pain, and revenge, and hideousness, as has always been his inclination since youth, no matter how much love or virtue or passion he tried to fashion as the wooden boards of his foundation, where others stood by birth on towering, sunlit, marble pedestals.
Even in this darkness, even at his most bitter, he cannot find it in him to hope or believe for even a moment that Colette has died. The stark brightness of her life in this vision against the suffocating, sweaty press of the night, burns, with the resignation that Renard is both exactly where he deserves to be, and the inner frustration that he ought to have seen and known better.
That he did know better. But that he was not good enough for that knowledge to matter.
Frankly, Fidel is disgusting now. Renard may as well let him go, or kill him to kill the implicit insult that a worm’s ‘happiness’ is towards real joy.
But Renard cannot, and instead only holds him tighter, for the prospect of dying alone is too terrifying.
And frankly, Renard could collapse now. His soul is weathered to shreds and his body is sick, heavy, aching, and freezing.
But Renard cannot, for the prospect of stopping at anything short of his actual limit is infuriating.
The darkness and the silence observe like a hall of black-robed judges. Fidel squelches. The water sloshes around his ankles.
Renard suddenly thinks, I don’t want to be a ghoul.
Kingslayer shrieks. It is the same murderous keening as Verdan’s amulet before it burst, and like Verdan, Renard will die the instant this happens. The sword ratchets back and forth in his grip like a weasel being strangled in his fist, though every muscle of every limb in him is also, trembling the same.
I don’t want anyone to be a ghoul. Renard squeezes his eyes closed, under the rain of sweat from his brow, and hugs Fidel so close it has to be crushing him. Any step, any second, will be the last, and in the end Renard cannot boldly face death in the eye, but only cry to himself. I don’t want to be a ghoul.
The darkness is so suffocating.
And on the next step—
Renard falls — through the dark, through the river, though the empty void, but through the air, through wispy clouds, through the boughs of a tree…
Renard squints, tumbling, against the clean, clear wind whipping around him. The slimy layers of sweat and humidity peel off his skin like discarded kisses. Colour has returned to the sky through which he is falling, the sweet pale blue of a robin’s egg, interspersed with fluffy white clouds, a sight so beautifully and mercifully familiar that it feels like plunging into a parallel world. Is he falling through the sky back down to the surface of Lacren?
A healed, shining Lacren… is this what going to heaven is like?
But no, Renard gasps, this isn’t Lacren. Below the layer of clear blue sky, his dive breaches into a twilight, spangled with the light of distant, colourful stars. This is not the barren void-night of Nix that has been so cold and oppressive; this is the night as an onyx, shimmering with a thousand subtle hues in her silken gown, that watches over the earth’s little mischiefs as would a mother with a full bosom smile. The beautiful night he would see in the summer, if Renard could call it anything.
Renard holds Fidel closer; bones have returned to his form. Crimson light flashes in his periphery; leaves brush over Renard’s cheeks; a figure with a cheshire grin is reclined on its belly in the golden branches, but is gone like a phantom when Renard looks. When he looks away, he is not falling still through a tree, but yet the open sky pale with morning and dazzling with the nebular night.
There is an island below, upon a large lake. Upon that island is a white cottage, brimmed with colourful gardens, and a large tree in its front yard. Looking from above, there is nothing strange about the scene. Yet when he lands upon the grass, in the field outside the lake, the impact is so soft it is like he has fallen into bed.
His whole body flops into that softness. He winches himself onto his back.
He pauses to breathe, staring up at the sky.
Fidel, beside him, rises onto his knees. His human form has returned, but he does not seem perturbed or surprised by this. No, that he would be human again is natural.
Renard exhales a long breath and lets his arm flop over his eyes.
The atmosphere of this place, with the clear water and bright verdure and fresh summery air, is unremittingly peaceful. Gentle cascades of waterfalls tinkle like windchimes, and the whisper of rustling leaves tickles his ear. After the gruelling weeks… months, of fighting and delving and pushing and rowing and straining through the murk and the perversion of Nix, and the exhausting rigorousness of everything he has done even just on this day, the tranquil invitation to lie here and know he is secure is incredible.
For there is an aura in the air of easy sanctity, that all that would be here would be kept healthy and fruitful. He would not say he is rested, for the languor of physical fatigue still drags like an aftertaste, but he does feel so replenished, that even if he did wish to collapse into sleep, he wouldn’t be able to, as he simply isn’t tired.
It cannot be a memory, but an instinct in Renard’s soul recognises this place with nostalgia. They have landed in a fragment of paradise, in the way that paradise is meant to be.
He’s never been here before. Why does it feel like coming home?
Renard presses these rising sentiments of curiosity, and daring, and hope, behind his jaw as he glances up to Fidel. An unspoken acknowledgement passes between them that indeed, they both know where they are.
He spares one last pause, then heaves himself onto his feet. Unfortunately, for how bitter it is to defy this peaceful atmosphere, they do have horrible business.
For something is watching them from the island across the lake, sitting aside the tree in the front yard.
It is the serpent.
Renard’s heart sheaths itself and his mouth flattens.
He fetches Kingslayer off the grass. More than ever before, his soul kicks with revulsion at even touching the thing. The sanctity of this place underscores what an abomination this black, night-gowned claw of murder is for even existing, and suddenly Renard understands Anelle’s aversion to even looking at it. It is deeply foul and unnatural. But a thing even more unnatural and even more foul has, unfortunately, made Kingslayer a necessity.
It is not yet hostile, but it is not happy. So Renard judges of their quarry from their position across the lake. Here on the riverbank, calm, holy air still eases peace for Renard, but it is the tense peace of a lull on the battlefield, to be broken the very instant either party steps forth.
Renard’s gaze scans over the lake. There must be some means of passage, even if he must fashion a raft...
The tree in the cottage garden then rustles in a breeze. A crimson flower sheds from its boughs.
Three sets of eyes all hold a breath.
The flower lands upon the lake, and drifts on the current...
Towards Renard and Fidel…
It will turn away towards a river, Renard insists to himself, the current so sweeps it. Do not hope too high.
But it does not turn away, and breaches the sweep of the current, to trundle on still towards them.
Me? Will it be me? Renard’s heart then thrums with a fire that casts golden sparks. Could it be me?
But it is not him. The flower anchors in a ditch of mud between Fidel’s feet. Just as much as his own heart falls when Fidel bends to retrieve the wish, Renard glimpses how the serpent, too, deflates with resignation.
Even though it’s a sensible thing to be disappointed about, any commonality with the snake is a bitter one.
“Fidel," Renard says.
“—Sire, I’m not sure how to say this," Fidel says. The flower cupped in his hands radiates a sunlike glow of warmth and power, but lays in his palms as delicate and patient as a young chick. “I’m… not sure how to use it."
“—Then hold on to it, boy."
Fidel nods, and cups his hand like a lid. As though it is small, and he must keep it safe.
Renard rips his gaze away to search again for a bridge to the island – the serpent heaves a sigh visible even from here, and a path of large stones rises out of the water.
As Renard leaps from stone to stone, resentment rolls in the back of his throat. If Fidel is to get the wish, he wishes to burst out laughing, then already Renard’s way of battle is damned. So of course wishes would go to Fidel. Even though Fidel is wavering on how to use it, favour comes still by rightness not of will or cause but of soul and sentiment. Irony! Fidel was so sure before, but now Renard is the one who knows what he wants. And isn’t that the damned problem!
Anything Fidel could wish for would be infuriatingly lukewarm. The devious hope engendered in Renard’s heart, then, is that Fidel would throw away his own wish, and find cause, second by second, to wish for Renard’s interests instead.
You must wish for soul rot to end, boy. You must wish for that!
...But even thinking this, Renard’s heart wavers, that if he had received the flower, of whether he would have managed to wish for that himself.
The shame of harbouring such lowly passions burns in his neck. The only consolation he can give himself is that at least he is honest, to himself, of how much he loathes this dark penchant, though simply stewing in it will do little.
His feet land on the neatly trimmed grass of the cottage’s front yard. The eaves are tiled with fish-scale patterns. Tulips thrive in beds by the porch. For the residence of a deity, this is a shockingly homely place. Likely a grandma would live here with her cats, far more than anyone powerful.
(Yet too, when Renard had power, where he wished to stay was Meurille,)
And across the yard is the tree. And at the base of the tree is that serpent, Arsene. The creature appears young and not-quite-human, whose silver face bursts out of the dark like a dead moon, as pale scales across his skin glint iridescent rainbows under fallow starlight.
What a petty, jealous wretch, Renard thinks, fist locking on sickening Kingslayer, to have destroyed everything good of this sacred place, but for the sliver it could keep for itself.
This is the brigand that stole humanity’s future.
This is the poisoner that would corrupt every man’s soul.
This is the abomination that murdered their architect.
And Renard squints, for all he can think upon seeing this thing, oh so wicked, and so powerful, and so legendary, is simply:
So pathetic.
The serpent rises, away from the tree, to reluctantly receive Renard.
This is the same entity they encountered in Ashurst. The same one who called Renard ‘stupid’.
This time, it is not a projection, but a solid form laced in no illusions. Thus, its influence here should be magnitudes greater than it was before – but as it approaches, nothing changes. Kingslayer does not even twitch. This creature has absolutely zero aura.
Inherently, that is alarming. Something that can conceal its danger is exponentially harder to judge. But its averageness is akin to that prodromal rift in Ashurst; or rather that rift was akin to it.
It is hard to even regard the creature. Plainly, it is there, standing full in front of him, but the space its silhouette occupies is like a blind spot imposed on the yard. Every instinct would prefer to consider something else, simply because everything else here is... more.
Renard wrenches his mouth into a frown and clears his throat to speak.
“How come I know you?" Arsene blurts first.
“Whh—?" Renard sputters. “You—vermin, do you not remember? I am the one who you... tormented in Ashurst!"
“So? And all of you are supposed to be dead," it titters.
That—children’s mockery! But then—if so—
Renard steels his throat. “Yet, beast, we are not."
“Shut up!" it snaps, pupils constricting like a hissing cat’s, and arms flaring out like the hood of a cobra. To collapse its pride took barely a tap.
“It’s not my fault you breed like bugs... and keep going to places you’re not supposed to..." Arsene murmurs to itself consolingly.
It’s not a confident creature. Such a flaw sounds like a weakness, and is, but one that makes it dangerously volatile. And shockingly... uncomfortably, a little relatable.
Fidel passes the final stone to join Renard in the yard. He recognizes Arsene as much as Renard did, and falls quiet in the same way.
Arsene cools, crosses his arms, and stares at Fidel appraisingly. Renard’s guts churn in the silence.
“I don’t know what Leah wants with you," Arsene finally sighs. “But there has to be some reason he let you come so far." There is a soothing sinuousness in the creature’s soft voice, and the light lisp on its ‘s’es. “...It’s probably to send you back to the surface. It would be really stupid to waste a gift from him on that."
“That’s... true," Fidel murmurs, and thumbs the flower in his palms.
“He’s being so generous. He’s giving you two miracles." Arsene squeezes his eyes shut, tears trailing down his cheeks. “And that you even got here... he probably gave you a thousand."
The sentiment in these words is jarringly discordant. The creature is simultaneously enraptured with a love so extreme that standing near to it is blinding, and seething with a jealousy so violent that the serpent’s failure to already lash out at them marks the thousand-and-first miracle.
“Speak of miracles, but I will tell, lost have we good men in this horror hole," Renard announces. “Where then was your kind, loving master? What spiteful death have you to envy? Nay, say I, not one miracle but our own feet is what brought us down to here."
“You couldn’t have," the enemy spits, “you couldn’t have. You’re lying," murmured with weak wilted conviction.
How much doubt must this beast must have. Its own words have discouraged it: perhaps it truly is possible that this pair bested Nix by their own effort, something Renard’s well-muscled frame and Kingslayer on his hip seem to attest in the serpent’s mind.
And may Verdan forgive him for this, but his positioning must be careful.
Yes, that’s exactly it, creature. And this flower is our reward! So crow, and surely…
“Wait," says Fidel.
“Fidel," Renard hisses.
“Wait," Fidel repeats. “Serpent... Arsene."
The creature shrugs an acknowledgement.
“Why aren’t you attacking us?"
It is, Fidel. It’s just subtle, Renard thinks in frustration.
“Do I need to?" it jabs petulantly, like a child. “Don’t things like you ever get satisfied? Or did you come here… even to here, just to rub it in more?"
“Rub what we but your own acts? Hae, creature, I see, rankled are you greatly by the perseverance of the human spirit, through all your little traps and your poisons. Indeed, I will tell, on the surface, we are quite happy and thriving as though you had done nothing at all! You have made nought for us but frontiers on which we whet our souls and abilities. Now exquisitely honed is our excellence, that it has met your master’s approval, merely by we doing as we would," Renard laughs, strolling to circle around Fidel to the opposite side of Arsene. “Find some cheer, you miserable thing — for if it is our glory that rankles you, our visits assure you will be rankled a thousand years more."
Arsene falls too furiously mute to even tremble.
“—You’re making all this up! What about your friends who died? You just talked about them, how come you already forgot?" he shouts. “If you can say all that… you don’t have glory! Leah didn’t give anything to you! You’re too stupid! It went all to him!"
He points in rage at Fidel, with the flower.
“That boy is my squire, beast. He retrieves for me the things I cannot be troubled to pick up."
“You dummy," Arsene gawks, as if wanting to skin Renard’s face, then his own. “You gave it all up, and you can’t even tell. You’re too stupid to know that you’re stupid. I bet the world is actually awful and you just can’t see it because people like you like being awful and you always get away with it. That’s all. You’re such a human," the word drips like a curse.
Arsene straightens himself and crosses his arms. “Someday you’ll figure that out," he brags. “Someday you all will when nothing gets better. Because he’ll wish for something stupid, too. He’s been wishing for stupid things. I wish you all were dead." Guilt strikes the monster as swiftly as it voices these words. Its demeanour again cools and its gaze shifts inquisitively to Fidel.
Something is binding the monster to keep it from combat. No… it is merely satisfied now that it is superior to people. That is a level of connection, though false, by which it seems more willing to expose itself. If it can then be goaded to come closer, Renard may be able to land a ferocious, and decisive, first hit.
“I don’t think we need to fight," Fidel says.
Arsene nods coolly. Finally. You get it, its dry expression says.
“I understand… correctly, that you can place us back on the surface?"
Arsene nods again, rolling its eyes. Duh.
Stop giving it charity, Fidel! Renard screams inside himself, but struggles to voice. Stop treating this thing like it’s harmless!
“With the wish?" Fidel checks.
“Yes," says Arsene perfunctorily, then frowns with a complex regret.
“Sire," Fidel looks to Renard. “We… then, we should have the means to end all of this. I think… I think that we’ve won."
No! No,
—Is your heart sure, Fidel? The words jump to Renard’s tongue but stick in his strained neck, a powerful cringe tightening all of Renard’s body. No, no, no! His heart stomps a furious tantrum inside a ribcage like a dark cave, as iron weights like cannonballs drag it deeply and deeply far down. No!
Fidel, you idiot, you idiot! Why are you trusting the words of a snake? Certainly the Demiurge’s servant may follow the letter of its oaths, but plainly not the spirit of them, if its own master is dead at its hands. Do you not understand that this thing hates you? Are you not hearing how it wishes you dead, or do you ignore it because it is not waving about a sword?
Curse it, there are a thousand ways to slip a dagger into this deal. Admittedly, Renard cannot think of them, but opening a window for the serpent will doubtless invite something sinister.
But no, no, no, it’s not that Fidel is stupid...
...it’s even worse, that he’s...
...hopeful.
Renard’s innards all graunch as if caught in a rusty plough. In speaking with Arsene, it feels like Fidel does understand the weight of the wish he must make. But equally, in speaking with Arsene, it has affirmed to Renard that just ending soul rot would not be enough.
There is something even deeper that is churning in his guts.
Something whose name he cannot pinpoint, but that has been with him for a long time. It is... dark... and vile, but earnest with aspiration...
...
But what if Fidel is right to be hopeful?
If he casts the wish to end soul rot, and like a new season’s gust, the air clears with no further riposte. The abomination and poison is simply dissolved from the world. New babes are born, names are celebrated, and he may retire, to a healed Lacren (though this is not truth), or to the embrace of Colette in her manor.
Peace in itself is not objectionable... nor is to rebuild Lacren, to mend the mess he has sown. Making messes, mending messes, by hope, being forgiven for messes... his life always is like this.
Why does that prospect feel so—so— like he is going to puke?
Is he that much of filth?
Burning wells beneath his eyes boil with sobs too violent to spill. I don’t want anyone to ever be a ghoul any more!
“Serpent!" Renard barks.
Arsene jolts his gaze away from Fidel’s cupped hands.
“Draw your blade. What have I come here for but to contest this?"
“You don’t know what a dummy you are," Arsene mutters to himself, and instead looks to Fidel.
“Nay, keenly I know my stupidity as keenly I know the edge of my blade. For what is one little man, against a creature so mighty it could murder the father of all men?" Anger seeps into his voice that he did not expect.
“You didn’t even know him," Arsene again averts his gaze.
“Both of you, stop," says Fidel.
“Hae, we did not. And does it comfort you! That we would be all ingrates, orphans, and fools, when it was you who seeded the resentment, that any one of us could ever think we were abandoned?" Kingslayer groans, slowly, out of its scabbard.
“But you were already like that. You agreed to all this." Though disaffected on the surface, Arsene’s voice is rising decibel by minute decibel. “I didn’t do anything that he didn’t want. Of course you’d be so annoying, to talk like you know anything…"
Renard’s heart stumbles. It feels true that God could’ve stopped things before they got to this point, but equally…
“Well beast, I tell you one certainty!" His belligerence towards something so passive — he must look like a red-faced raving idiot. “That I have only lived because your God took favour on me, of all wretches!" Renard’s guts clench. He cannot even be sure that what he is saying is true. “And cast me a thousand times against the monsters you wish to make of us — and a thousand times, I prevailed!"
“Leah prevailed. You didn’t do anything."
“Deaf thing, that is what I say! So draw your blade, ingrate: and let it be measured in iron and in blood, of whom it really is your master stands to favour."
Arsene’s serpentine pupils narrow into dagger-thin lines. It remains passive — it remains impassive — but under a face as still as a dead, silent lake, what is roiling in the air around the serpent is hatred. Renard’s jibes and challenges have hit their mark on some level. But even then, it will not fight him. It will not face him to even concede a fight to him.
For it is an honourless thing.
And it is the way of honourless things, that for another’s voice to be heard, they must become even more honourless.
Arsene squeezes his arms, its gaze locked on to the ground. Its mind slots and works in cogs, the thoughts churning in the air transparent as congealing water: I’m so done with this. I don’t need to deal with you. There is no doubt in Renard’s mind, by an instinct honed over years of facing such duplicitous beasts, and a strong basic sense of subtle aggressions, of what it is about to do.
Arsene will, in the next second, kick him back to the surface — and that will be the end of this venture.
Urgency and panic pulse bonfires through Renard’s heart. Kingslayer drawn, he twists quick as a mongoose—
—and plunges the night-black blade of Kingslayer into the tree towering right behind him, laced in its shining red flowers, that is the corpse of the Demiurge Camille.
A sonic boom rips through the garden. Quick as a bullet shot from a sling, a tremendous force slams into the air only inches from Renard’s head. His ears pop — the shockwave tousles his hair — and in that long, frozen second, there is the snake, seething mindless as a ghoul. It has shot across the yard with the force of a firework, its palm extended to strike, that would have mashed Renard’s skull, through his armour, instantly into pulp.
Had the blow hit, that is.
The moment passes. Arsene skims forward by yards then floats gently down to land on the grass, in defiance of his own inertia, and plainly wracked with confusion.
That had not been a warning strike or an intentional miss. Renard adjusts his footing and his grip on Kingslayer. No window to counterstrike that. Arsene badly overshot out of range.
Black and purple lightning crackles out of the cut on the tree. The gash is like a groaning maw on the bark, and though it may only be a ghost of Renard’s mind, there, trapped in the whorls of the wood, is a face screaming in agony.
Sap gushes out of the wound as torrentially as the early spring rains. Its colour is not red or clear, as Renard somehow expected it to be, but black and thick as burbling pitch. The perverting reversals of Kingslayer have affected even the body of God. A complex sentiment squirms in Renard of simultaneous pride and incredible shame, for this is a wound for which he would be severely judged — Arsene seeing sheds all confusion, and murderous again shoots for Renard.
And again, misses by inches. The tailwind of Arsene’s passage batters like a cyclone, so inhumanly fast is his velocity, indeed as quick as a snake. But Renard catches his footing and smoothly casts off the pressure as if landing a step in a waltz — while Arsene stumbles with confusion to catch himself, again.
And surges in, again.
And misses, again. Again and again and again, batterings of wind strike Renard, but by minuscule adjustments, paper-thin parallels, they do not become anything worse. Sweat beads on Renard’s forehead. The batterings could make him go deaf. Then it comes, in one single instant, the opening to strike.
Renard grabs Arsene’s departing bandanna, steadies his aim quicker than thinking—
“Auh," gasps Arsene.
—and plunges Kingslayer into its back.
There is strangely little texture to the innards of this beast. It is like he has punctured an inflated burlap doll. The blade smoothly crests out of the beast’s spine as Renard releases his hold, and Arsene’s original momentum carries him again to a skimmed stop. Half-kneeling, he peers over his shoulder, at the injury on his own back — a brilliant cloud of glittering gold and pearl and sapphire and emerald nebulae seep out of the wound like a cirrus sweeping over the sky, and bloom into a cumulus the same way that blood blooms in water, wafting out into the air.
That would be a fatal injury on a human. Arsene is plainly more durable than that. Frankly, the creature does not even look hurt, just rattled.
All the same, adrenaline rushes into Renard’s head sweeter than treacle. He licks his lips. A furious grin splits his face. Sure as anything, the beast can bleed.
Camille and his pet, before Kingslayer, both of these liars do bleed—!
Arsene bristles. His pupils constrict. He jumps magnificently into the sky to close the gap and instead brawl Renard, seeing that his approach as yet has not worked, but this approach works even worse. He lands — and Renard lands, one slash across the snake’s gut, one across his face, and with a final twirl, a heavy blow to the flank that knocks Arsene to the ground, bleeding worse.
“How are you hitting me!" Arsene screams.
Renard answers. “You’re as practised as dirt."
It is that simple.
Arsene’s a terrible fighter.
His strikes are fast and his body is strong, far more than any human. But exactly because of these natural advantages, he has not honed even a pebble’s worth of technique. Every one of his attacks is as readable as a child’s first picture book. In most cases, the sheer difference in power between him and a human would render Arsene’s incompetence irrelevant. But present someone too skilled, and Arsene cannot adapt, or even notice how they are adapting.
Fitting. It is not disappointing, or underwhelming, quite, since Renard indeed is sweating, but more than anything it is bitterly fitting. A creature that kills with its poison is useless once cornered into a real fight…
It is hardly believable that the world was ruined by this.
Grimacing with anger, Arsene pushes himself off the dirt. The cuts are so severe that the flow of nebulae are cloaking his form, and his mud-stained, grass-stained limbs for the first time struggle to support him. An arm spasms — its body is crumbling. Renard adjusts Kingslayer. Less so like a flash, and more like a cart rolling downhill, when the beast surges in this time it pauses at the end of its vector to hook around Renard’s back. It is the first inkling of strategy the beast has suggested, but it is telegraphed, the movement is ungainly, injuries slow its pace, and the blink-quick pause of its readjustment is still an opening so effortless to seize for Renard that it is more like an invitation.
As soon as Arsene charges in, Kingslayer is already there. He sticks himself through the gut, like a chunk of pork jumping on to a skewer.
With a smooth flick of the arm, Renard casts off the beast to the ground, the blade simultaneously curving a deep slice through its belly.
“Hkguh," Arsene chokes as it impacts the grass.
Blooms of nebulae rise and spread as unceasingly as dark smoke from a wildfire. The volume of the brilliant, dark paint smearing over the sky must be greater than the depth of the creature’s whole form.
It strains to pick itself up — but its arms give. The thing’s body is as brutalised as a paper doll, left with a child with scissors.
“No way," Arsene mutters. Renard’s shadow, and the shadow of Kingslayer, fall over the creature. Its shout is that craven disbelief and panic of so-thought gods: “No way!"
Way, beast.
Shulk.
“I am Renard Cox."
Kingslayer sheaths itself in the creature’s neck. Its back arches, its hands scrabble for air, but it is pinned to the dirt.
“You were a waste of an adversary."
A curl of the blade — and off pops the head. It gruesomely rolls like an egg over the grass, locked forever in a mask of utter astonishment, before the curtain of bleeding stars and space obscures the grisly sight.
As if still alive, its arms reach frantically upwards in search of that head, but these limbs too seize and collapse. Between the flowing ribbons of the black fog, its body soon slumps still.
So it is done.
The beast is dead.
Sweat drips off Renard’s chin and his nose, but even then, he is not that exerted.
Poignant thrills of victory usually come to him in these sacred moments after a sincere battle. This time, as the coiling blooms of nebulae dissipate into the air, and that tattered body is revealed bare on the ground, pathetic as a rag, no such triumphant surge comes. What lingers is merely that feeling of dissatisfaction, and frustration, that even with the foremost enemy of mankind dead, Renard still needs to do more.
He squints through his sweat, silent as a cliff.
If combat is a conversation, and blades are Renard’s first tongue, then this was the most worthless opponent he’s ever had. Not a single spark of his passion was acknowledged, much less reciprocated. But even worse, the serpent’s incompetence forbade it from cultivating such pathos of its own, that it could stand for, fight for, and say with a chest full of pride, ‘this my belief, for which I will challenge you’. Even were it a wicked belief, it would be something to grasp and rebuke. Instead the sheer passionlessness, and cluelessness, and… emptiness underlaying every twitch of that creature have evoked nothing in Renard but disgust.
There is nothing lovely about casting one’s convictions against a brick wall.
If there was something to prove, a truth, a principle, anything, then it was not and would never be conceded to by Arsene.
Renard grunts and hoists Kingslayer to shred the corpse more, as if pointless butchery will sate this unfulfilled itch. Fifty mortifying realisations slam into Renard the second the tip kisses the creature—Renard’s eyes bulge—If Arsene is dead they have no free ride back to the surface! And the tree is still… in a state, and he may have just forced circumstances that will waste Fidel’s wish, and, perhaps they will find some solution inside the Demiurge’s house—but Lord’s graces, why did Renard always have to be such a scatterbrained idio—
An incredible impact slams the pit of Renard’s back, ferocious as a log shot from a carriage.
The force of it sends him somersaulting into the air; his back crashes flat against a wall. Winded, he wheezes a gasp.
“Sire!" Fidel shrieks somewhere afar.
The serpent flashes in front of him. Kingslayer flashes up to defend — too slow. Fists as heavy as rocks rain blows upon his cheeks, his brow, his jaw, like a hailstorm, all the bones in his face shrieking and cracking under the assault — at the end of this it is unlikely he would even look like himself anymore. Arsene grabs him by the shoulders and shoots down to the earth.
Boom.
The force of a hammer drop lands wholly in Renard’s shoulders. Even as his back rattles in an earthquake of pain, he cannot focus upon it, too busy gasping at a sharp jab to the gut from the knee of the creature now straddled atop him. Arsene — Arsene!
As the creature winds up a slow ferocious punch to cave in Renard’s forehead, Renard regains his wits just enough to jab Kingslayer up — into the beast’s breastbone — and skewer the creature’s angle minutely. The deadly punch goes wide. Arsene hisses in fury and grabs Renard’s neck to headbutt him — squirming, Renard wrestles his arm over Arsene’s neck instead and with great effort rolls himself on top, the creature pinned and writhing on its belly below him.
Renard punches the back of its head. His knuckles crack against its thick skull. These are not good quarters for Kingslayer. But breaking his hand against this thing is hardly intelligent either—he adjusts his grip on his sword—and falls inches to the ground as the mass below him vanishes for Arsene has blinked away. He turns, lunges. Yes, Arsene is behind him, but stands out of range of the strike.
Arsene raises his hand — Renard shoots to the sky, slams against a wall — Arsene lowers his hand — Renard shoots to the ground, crushed against the earth — and Arsene plunges his hand out straight. Renard shoots backwards and backwards and backwards through air, parallel to the ground and yet endlessly falling as if he has stumbled off the edge of a canyon.
He slams against a wall, with exactly the force as if he had fallen down into a canyon.
But there is no time to breathe. Arsene lunges forward, as he did originally, to swoop upon him before he can recover. Even after that battering, Renard is still greater than such a crude technique. He again catches Arsene on the tip of his blade, sticks him, keeps him just an arm out of range.
Arsene hisses in frustration, starry darkness trailing out of its back. Switching tracks, he grabs Renard’s arm as if to coil around it, mouth open wide to bite down. Two wicked, curved fangs in its maw catch the moonlight.
Renard frantically bashes his arm against the earth and squeezes his free hand around the creature’s maw. With its head wrenched back, it cannot bite, and the drips of oily black venom trail harmlessly out the corner of its mouth. It sneers, it cringes, it struggles, once again pinned without knowing how beneath Renard’s great muscles. Wild kicks buck at the air from beneath him. The monster rips away plates of his armour, for that’s all it can reach.
The tenor of this melee has changed. These are not the stupid unconsidered reflexes of the first bout. It looks dirtier, but it is thinking. Renard’s previous victory has wounded the creature’s pride, and now it is fighting for that.
Good. But it won’t be enough.
Renard wrenches up the beast and tosses it to the ground. It blinks onto its feet to catch itself, then in a breathtaking display of failure to adapt, blinks behind Renard once again. More than wise to this manoeuvre, Renard is already there with Kingslayer’s wicked point poised — and this time, so is Fidel.
Fidel stands ready behind the beast and yanks hard on its jacket. Unprepared for an attack from this angle, it slips and topples like a tree.
“Not fair."
No sooner does it voice these words than does Kingslayer sink into its breast. It seizes, clouds of night darkness boiling out of its mouth like the froth of a whirlpool, seeping too out of its torso, and finally effusing in a great, fat glut when one smooth chop severs its body in twain.
Its eyes roll back. In the smoke, the body falls familiarly limp, and dead.
The taste of iron wells in Renard’s mouth. He wipes his jaw; a bloody smudge comes off the brutalised flesh. Sweat and blood mix together in rivulets coursing down his body, every span of bone and muscle in him hurt and throbbing. Dented pieces of armour dig uncomfortably into his flesh, threatening circulation. He is in rough shape. He does not doubt his fundamental superiority as a fighter, but the beast did get a drop on him.
There are now two ruined corpses of Arsene strewn across the yard, each definitely dead. Renard adjusts Kingslayer in ready position. There is some mechanism by which the creature can return immediately into fighting shape after being killed. This is not just a challenge of strength or strategy now. It is an endurance battle, which will proceed until the creature loses its spirit, or until the crux behind this tenacity is discovered and stopped.
Or, until Renard is killed.
Renard breathes heavy. Fidel, check the house. There may be a clue there, and if worst comes, use the wish — so Renard thinks to order, when a voice cuts into his head.
‘Fine, then.’ It is the serpent’s voice, at a much higher fidelity than its usual mild whispers. It is as clear and striking as pristine water cascading down a fall.
Renard tightens his grip on Kingslayer. Holds a breath, braces for it to appear.
‘He’s not watching. He’s not even here,’ Chills rattle down Renard’s spine from the dripping, and growing, spite. ‘He won’t care… it won’t matter to him if I let myself be ugly.’
The environment shifts with the same subtle stickiness as when passing through Nix’s portals. Though the garden and house and the tree and the lake all remain present, the sky widens, and the earth widens, as if it were all projected on the inside of a ball, that had widened. Grids of white squares on gray flicker in and out over the expanded space. It becomes suddenly hard to judge distance; things seem simultaneously far and near; the garden is simultaneously humble and resplendent; the cottage is also a castle; the tree in the yard is both a shrieking bush and a golden behemoth whose boughs stretch too high for Renard to ponder.
And Renard’s gut drops in dread, as he cranes his head back.
For then, does the serpent appear.
The beast descends from the sky like a long, slow pour of tar. White coils, shimmering faintly iridescent, spill and loop over each other with seductively smooth sinuousness, so bountiful that they soon roll off the island and into the lake. Bulges of the creature’s long form peek in and out of the water, always running in motion as if ever, ever, unfurling. Its head is curled like a taipan’s, but its posture is raised like a cobra’s. Running down the back of its neck is a patch of feathers, rather than scales, seemingly ornamental.
Its slit, silver, serpentine eyes brim with quiet contempt and intelligence.
Revealed is why Arsene is called ‘snake’ and ‘serpent’. Though most commonly encountered in a humanoid guise, its actual nature and appearance is exactly the one suggested by those words easily mistaken for insulting epithets, and not simply facts. Arsene is a snake.
And it is massive. The very motion of this creature’s length in the water is roiling the lake like an angry sea, and the sheer displacement its mass inflicted should have drowned the whole island. It is only the bizarre distortions of space that have contained the furious ocean. If this thing slithered on land, it would open canyons. If it struck at a mountain, it would tear away its peak. It holds its head higher than the spires of a castle, but it is simultaneously impossible to judge its exact size and length, for it always seems to be shifting, beyond the succinct and instinctual term of, ‘leviathan’.
Renard hucks a breath and steadies Kingslayer. How—
Renard’s body is torn in twain and strewn about the grass. His innards lay bare to the sky and his blood gushes messily onto the ground. It is a very strange vantage. The damage done to him so quickly, and so utterly, and yet without any warning or pain, makes it hard to even conceive what has happened— it feels less like he has been attacked than simply, degenerated into a… slug… thing… on account of being so slick with blood and so unable to lift himself.
Kingslayer remains in his grip, in his right hand, not that it does him good. Suddenly realising the direness of his state, Renard jolts to move — and cannot do more than flail. A long reel of lonely intestine links his legs to his torso, but other than that… he is dead! This is not a livable injury!
The serpent towering above him flicks its black tongue. Though it has no eyelids, it regards him as if squinting with hatred. It juts its head.
An incredible force like the weight of a water tower stamps Renard to the dirt. Renard wheezes. He cannot lift his limbs, or his head, or even expand his chest to breathe — he is being crushed as totally and thoroughly as a bug smushed under a thumb. With his exposed vital organs also crushed by this force, he should be totally dead. He cannot explain why he can feel the weight and the pressure of the insane squeeze, but still is not in pain.
Is it toying with him?
And what about Kingslayer! Renard tries to steady his grip on its hilt, but his fingers only squirm at air. Effects like these are the ones the blade is supposed to ward. Why is it doing nothing!?
Cheek pressed to the earth, grass poking into his eye, when he opens his mouth to yell, all that comes out is that agonal groan of a choking man: “aaaaaaggg,"
The pressure then twists. The weight compounds to unthinkable levels: “AAAAAAAAAAGH!"
“Stop!" yells Fidel, running out between Renard and the snake. “Stop! We can’t beat you… and we shouldn’t have tried in the first place. …When we knew from the start who you were." He raises the flower in his hands like an offering before God. “But this can stop here, and we can do this right… unless you’re really determined to have corpses to clean littered over your lawn."
‘Shouldn’t have tried in the first place’ — what on earth are you saying, Fidel! And corpses? Renard’s not out yet!
The pressure lightly lifts as the serpent falls silent and still. Its black tongue flicks in and out.
‘Is that what you want?’ It asks, gaze fixated on the flower.
Sweat beads on Fidel’s forehead. “It’s more a request, that I’m asking to you."
Thoom. The air splits apart in an explosion as the serpent flicks its tail. Though no part of this motion actually contacts Fidel, his body crunches and shoots across the yard as if directly slammed, and he hurtles like a cannon shot. He crashes into an invisible pane as solid as a brick wall, and all his bones scrunch and crack as his broken body smears down, like a slimy pile of trash, to the base of the bleeding tree.
Fidel!
Renard clutches Kingslayer’s hilt and bolts off of the ground. Like a resonant bell at the end of its peal, by a surge of passion and willpower, his body stabilises back into shape as though he had not been mutilated at all. If he sprints quickly enough, he may land a blow on the beast, while it is still distract—
The creature’s tail slides across the ground; an earthquake strikes, Renard stumbles to the next step of his sprint, and just as he grins at his quick adjustment, the flank of the beast bare before him, a wave of repulsive force peals out from the world like an expanding sun, and knocks Renard back to the edge of the island. A whirlwind of scenes follows, as he is cast into the water, dragged through cliff-faces to the sky, scattered over burning sands, impaled, crushed, brought before the beast’s face…
Renard extends Kingslayer out as far as he can.
And to punctuate the chaos, Renard is again slammed to the ground. He gasps at the impact. Kingslayer tumbles out of his grip. But an audacious grin splits his face as he peeks up to see—
—no line of night stars seeping out of the beast’s breast. What should have been a vital blow is instead just nothing. Kingslayer did not even graze it on the way down. Inside his skin, all of Renard trembles. Wait, wait…
The serpent reels back as if shocked. Even though he did not hit, the very fact he tried… a long, pregnant second holds, steeped in affronted disgust.
Sweat and blood teem from Renard’s face. Every breath heaves through his whole body, his vision both blotted with black and seared white with vertigo, but fixated sure on the snake. He again takes Kingslayer. His legs collapse from under him when he tries to stand, so he must drag himself on his breast on the dirt. The beast’s weak point… it is probably that nape with those feathers…
‘I hate you so much.’ The beast’s voice weaves in his mind. ‘He always gives you everything, but you’re never satisfied. Even now, and even here… you’re always reaching, and reaching, and reaching for more things to take.’
Its mouth opens wide in a hiss.
‘There’s barely anything left that you haven’t messed up! Why can’t you let there be even one place where it’s okay to hate you? Because you’re gross, and you’re selfish, and you’re dumb and you’re super disgusting. You’re not so great or important that you’re going to make anyone happy. All you actually do is make everything worse and everyone sad, just by showing up, because you’re like a bunch of big icky worms!’
A snake calling man like a worm — funny. Renard would laugh, if his head weren’t so heavy and his throat weren’t raw with harsh breath. Stroke by laborious stroke, he lugs his body forth in a clumsy army crawl.
‘I don’t wish you were dead!’ Its neck feathers fan out in distress. ‘I wish you never existed! I wish he never thought of you!’
The thing is just raving to the moon now. It is not even looking at Renard.
Good… let it have its tantrum, and let Renard draw close…
And yet…
…
Though he must be going forward, it only feels like he is growing more distant from the scene…
‘I bet he gave you ten thousand miracles!’ Arsene shrieks as if crying. ‘I bet he’s giving you hundreds, even now! Even though you hurt him! Even though you’re mean and greedy and useless…’
Panic jolts Renard. No, no, no! The image of the snake, thumping its coils petulantly against the ground, plays out on a horizon at size smaller than Renard’s fingernail — and though he can feel the tremors kicking beneath him, the scene is yet only shrinking further away like he is slowly sliding off a cliff. No! Scrambling for purchase, sheer willpower again forces Renard through the distortion, and the gap closes a mile.
The garden immediately slips away again as if falling. Renard redoubles, scrambling, flailing, vigorous with all the will he can muster. He may be paddling like a drowning man, but there must be hope for the shore.
‘…I bet to him, you’re like a precious doll…’ The serpent’s mad shrieking falls still. ‘…because he’s so wonderful, he’d love even something like you.’
As if breaking out of a tunnel of wind, Renard heaves himself one final stroke forward. The turbulence of the spacial distortion ends, and there he is, bloodsoaked, belly-down, bleeding, upon on the island and gazing up before the towering white serpent. Though its size has not shifted, the creature does not feel as colossal as it has been. Perhaps because it is no longer fighting.
Its coils smoothly recede from the water and come up onto land. The raging ocean settles again into a smooth lake, pristine as glass. In the way that serpents do, it curls loosely upon itself, its manner contemplative as its tongue flickers out. It watches Renard.
Renard, who grips a handful of grass and wrenches himself mindlessly forward, panting, face red as a furnace, Kingslayer dragging in his other hand.
But the creature is unconcerned. Though an obscure thing to tell, if serpents can have dreams, this one is surely engrossed in one now. As plain as the vision of the healed Sebilles, a mist closes over its mind as thick as the one that formerly bolstered Fidel. And indeed, following the serpent’s gaze, there the boy lays slumped at the base of the tree. His mouth is agog, his eyes are glazed, and his body is utterly broken by a concussion that has killed him or rendered him dumb. Dark muck gushing from the tree cakes him like mud, such that even if the blow did not kill him, the suffocation assuredly would. It encases him like resin, to mummify him as a statue permanently locked in a visage of terror and dying.
The flower lays uselessly on the ground, aside his limp fingers.
Arsene coils back in slow dawning horror.
‘He wouldn’t make me have to get along with you if I didn’t want to,’ it frantically says as if assuring itself. Its tail slams the ground, splitting Renard in half from his nose to his gut, but its focus remains distracted on Fidel. ‘So how come you had to be such terrible emissaries? You came here talking about crazy nonsense and you were so obnoxious and you weren’t nice at all and you hurt Leah and tried to beat me up and... why did you do that! Why are you so stupid that you had to make me so mad?’
BECAUSE YOU WOULD NOT HAVE LISTENED.
BECAUSE EVERY STEP OF THE WAY, YOU WERE BEGGING FOR OUR FAILURE. BECAUSE BY YOUR OWN ADMISSION, YOU HATE THAT WE EXIST.
YOU CURSED US THAT NOT A ONE OF US WOULD KNOW THE HEAVEN MADE FOR US BY YOUR MASTER, BUT WANTED US TO BE DRIBBLING MONSTERS LIKE YOU!
THAT IS WHY I DO NOT CURRY TO YOU! DO YOU NOW REGRET TRYING TO TRICK FIDEL FROM HIS WISH? WELL BEAST, YOU THREW HIM AWAY, AND I AM NOT SPOTLESS LIKE HIM!
If his tongue could be his blade, he would stab it into that beast’s belly right now!
Handful by handful, Renard drags himself forward, his body stitching back together. The grass and earth below him bubbles and congeals from a pastoral garden to the sludge of a bog, but this is not a purposeful attack. Steeped in its own misery, everything around the snake melts and rots. The sky darkens. Shingles fall from the cottage, its facade cut through with borer. The snake looks about, here, there, panicked for some place to run.
But even this last fragment of Eden has been corrupted. Not even the serpent’s own home can avoid such degeneration, once the nightmare in its mind seeps even to this sanctum. And it is so natural a fall that it is not even karmic. All the horror wrought by this creature its an effusion of its own nature; these effects on the physical are as corresponding mirrors to the effects of its thoughts, which are saturated beyond what is breathable with overwhelming fear and self-hatred. It the opposite of the sun, this dense black core that sucks in the light, but then reflects it back out, dimmer.
Its gaze locks on the doorway to the cottage, the door itself leaning ajar off its hinges. The serpent tenses up as if to dive inside through the portal — as it would do what it did before with all of Nix, and flee from its own hurricane by hiding in the eye.
Wretch! Not as Renard breathes!
Just as the serpent’s great body slithers to dash away, Renard heaves the final heave — and plunges Kingslayer into its flank.
The blade connects, the flesh perforates, a dull and familiar ‘shulk’ rattles up Renard’s shoulder.
Exhaustion sweeps over Renard, but even as he slumps against those white scales, his grin is one of victory.
To such a powerful creature, such a blow must be only a pinprick.
Even so, it slows, and stills. The sludge consuming the yard stabilises beneath Renard’s knees. Though incomparable to what this place was before, a momentary sanctity closes again on this nightmare, asserting that even in the core of Nix, even amid the thickest of evil, even through the deadliest of errors, something can be hallowed.
And in that moment, all strength gushes out of Renard like a river breaking its bank. Torrential in that flowing rapid is the rage of those Pilamines, the pain of the Iron King, old scars on Renard’s heart that only now are being vindicated, for they rage over the snake like the waves of a tsunami. His muscles peter out like a riverbed. The rush of success is dizzying. Even as his sweaty brow pastes slimily against the serpent’s flank, for he has not even the energy to raise his head, the grin does not leave his face.
Total satisfaction.
It beams from his core out of his skin like the rays of the sun. In the sickly languor of peace and contentment, as a cat sprawls in a puddle of light, all tension washes out of his body. Indeed, he would like to fall slack and just lay here — indefinitely.
And yes, this is not his limit. Without doubt, he could struggle and butcher this enemy more.
But there is no point.
He has done what he wanted. He’s won.
The stable ground beneath him disappears as the serpent slithers away, dredging muck over its scales. Renard’s cheek lands softly in the sludge. Drawn as an echo of the snake’s winding motion, a string of nebulae stream into the air from the tiny wound on its belly, delicate and beautiful. Renard’s jaw softens into a gentle smile. Even if this creature tries to forget, it will truthfully always remember.
That there is no depth from which exaltation is impossible. When huddled at the base of that tree, or coiled up on its bed, by the sheer fact his determination prevailed, by the sheer fact he was able to touch Arsene, it will always, best always, be forced to remember.
For the first time since its forging, Renard releases his grip on Kingslayer. Already half-buried in mud, it hardly needs to fall. Yet in the absence of the weight of that dark iron, dragging always on his hand or his hip for so many years, the breeze of liberation does come with bittersweetness. Is he committing a sin against this old blade, that jitters in his mind so anxiously at the prospect of parting?
No, for it is hardly an untested whelp, but a magnificent veteran quite sheathed in a glory of its own. It will doubtless come into the possession of a new man to wield it, and to that man it will doubtless be a curse. But as it has been with Renard, that curse will be one that lifts the man far into consequence, and far above where he ever could have reached on his own merits.
Renard releases a sigh. Kingslayer’s jitters too, settle, into a nod of resolution, that it is indeed ready for more than Renard. The squelching of muck and sludge peals under the trailing coils of the snake. His back relaxes; his purpose will be punctuated here by his point’s finality. Knowing what he has seeded, a pit of pride glows in his chest, its warmth a comforting blanket for what will be a long sleep.
Crowned over a soft smile, Renard’s eyelids droop—
So refined the showing of spectacle
And yet still so barbaric the notion that a cut in the soul impressed through the flesh
Could eclipse me in the heart of my votary
—those eyelids snap open.
Panic possesses Renard from out of his gut; he scrambles to grasp the solid iron of a blade, but only air—
You hear me quite fluently.
rollick your self in my introduction: en garde
Renard braces — still an instant too slow to receive the impact that comes barrelling in, fast as a slung bullet, forceful as a whole planet. He tumbles feet over head and feet over head whirling like a sparrow caught in a storm, no bearings possible except the abrupt jolt of clawed hands gripping his ankles. With this point as the fulcrum, he is spun once, twice, like the sweeping blades of a windmill. And released, to shoot into the sky with the same insane momentum of an arrow loosed from a bow.
Hung so impossibly high in the blue yonder, five hooks dig in to his back, scoop him around in a wide circle, and pitch him straight back down to the ground.
He crashes onto the earth tummy-first. “Bkuh," Renard wheezes.
Yet again this should not be survivable; yet again he is being toyed with. But he cannot be as bitter as he would normally be at that prospect. Though similarly superhuman, these were not the clumsy aggressions like those of the monster Arsene. The nature of who and what just attacked him is elucidatingly clear.
Renard, aching on his stomach, wrenches his neck up to look. An impression strikes him immediately.
Something is extremely wrong.
He is no longer in a sludgy marsh, but a field of healthy grass that sways endlessly beneath a blue sky. Aside from himself, the only things present are a small tree laden with red fruits — and, standing before that tree, the silhouette of a figure.
This silhouette’s form is crimson red like molten steel in a forge. Equally like molten steel, it is both firm, and malleable, for though its core appears biased toward a particular human shape, its edges are persistently smearing into the air like trails of a dying fire. Details, the suggestions of flesh and of clothing, flicker in and out over the surface of the steel, but break apart and melt away as the foundations beneath melt, shift, and struggle to refuse. A memory from Ashurst of the trailing jelly-man flits into Renard’s mind; that and this phenomenon feel alike in kind.
It is like a porcelain teacup has been dropped, and its shattered fragments hastily glued back together with clay that is still melting and warm.
And yet the sheer uncompromising excellence and power that radiates out from this echo of a willowy man, poised yet for combat, is so absolute that Renard is glad to already be on his knees, for he must be looking at the core of the most beautiful thing in the world.
Incredible awe and incredible concern simultaneously shoot through Renard. Is his instability a corruption by Nix?
—No time to think, for the Creator between his pinched fingers draws a line in the air. Sparks and fire crackle boisterously from the traced line and solidify into a sword, the most wondrous that Renard has seen or could even conceive.
It is wreathed in furious, passionate flames. From its channel drips a blood as pristine as water, which sanctifies the grass upon which it falls. Blooming flowers explode from its guard and perpetuate down its length so profusely that they should not fit, and yet they do, in a thousand different kinds of beauty all harmoniously aligned like a tended garden, but as wild and as bloodthirsty as any plot of pure brutal nature, that celebrates in the killing of one thing for the flourishing of another. Its body is the same molten crimson as the body of the figure, but, peering into it, firm like the facets of a crystal, inside which are reflected the firmaments of unwritten universes.
Outmatched beyond outmatched, Renard’s head slumps down to his hands.
But the tip of that miraculous blade is still pointed at him, and the echo of the Demiurge still stands straight-backed in the combat poise of a master duellist, waiting.
Under the pressure of that disdainful gaze, an indignant smoke does coil. How on earth is Renard meant to face something like that! And what kind of smug sadist would even fancy a fight with such an overwhelming disparity of power, as if there were any valour to prove by smudging Renard into the dirt. And yet, how satisfying it would be… for Renard to charge in with nothing but his fists, and batter that arrogant smile off the very face of a god, who thought himself so immaculate and so superior as to treat his own creations like worthless ants to step upon at his leisure!
But no, no, such an impetuous track is obviously wrong. If he had a blade, if he had Kingslayer… there are some fights that are not about any man destroying any other, but about understanding, and about exhibiting principles in a manner unmatched. The memory of the Pilamine knight flickers through his mind. Such battles are ones that sanctify the act of fighting itself with any meaning, and if this could be the nature of a duel with God, absolutely, Renard would reciprocate. But his frantic hands run over only grass. He has no weapon to answer with, and to answer a duel of swords with pugilism is so…
“Ah," Renard realises. Hand shielding his reddening brow, tears prick in his eyes.
A bitter, pained laugh chokes out of his throat.
He would have to ask God to give him a sword.
But if you would challenge the very powers that elevate you, you have already lost.
Sages nesting in screeds of philosophy are famished for even a tittle
Of the wisdom that excellent warriors know as a matter of course
A satisfied grin flashes over the Demiurge, who dismisses his blade with a wave of his hand, but Renard is too distracted in his thoughts to consider this much.
Though the stature of God is not all that large, especially compared to a burly man like Renard, even if he were standing, and not flatfaced on the dirt, the presence of this entity would make him feel as he does feel now: like a trembling child. If Renard is being completely honest, he does not want to fight Him at all. If anything, if it were possible, Renard would wish to be on His side…
…but is that truly possible? If God appears before him here, is the Serpent’s accusation not right, that He was present through all of Nix?
And if he was present in all of Nix, and Renard plunged so deep by his favour, then why wait until now to…
To what? Congratulate Renard? Condemn him?
And yet so swiftly does that vulpine perspicacity
Bumble over its own feet to the hounds
By the inanity of its own cunning irritating irksome infuriating
the conundrum, moreso for myself than for you
Of thin shields shining as pyrite,
to an edge with the lustre of gold
Urgent ambitions to the aureate,
To be as kin to the idols you adore
Arduous fealty to righteousness,
To consequence so ironically self-righteous
Am I to weigh that heart on a scale?
Does a rock gilded not grow more heavy?
You quite know that your wish is alchemy.
Renard trembles on his hands. Defeated.
Is feeling defeated at hearing such words not then a concession, that after asserting no wish to wrestle this entity, he immediately did so? Then he truly is like a rock wrapped up in gold foil. And he truly does… truly does wish…
Yes, very well, so you know me. Then you also should know that I could never bring my efforts to… a truly satisfactory end.
Why select me for tasks I could not do?
Why not Verdan, or the Queen, or Isen? Why should these good people die so that Renard could go to the depths of hell to be mocked?
Ask you,
To a miner in the caves,
“Why use not a trowel, but a pick?"
To a sailor on the raft,
“Why use not a rope, but an oar?’
To a painter over his easel,
“Why use not a saw, but a brush?"
Even a court jester would be abhorred for that buffoonery
Though you err not as clown but as picador,
flourishing fatuous jibes as keen barbs to the bull
Confused, are you, to my motives?
I wrote my covenants clear in the north.
Pray, do you, for distinction?
You abound in more accolades than can be forgot.
Yet so pointed grow you against me,
That proudly you would accost me
For tendering your success? Exaltation? Edification?
Camaraderie? Comfort? Charges? Cradle?
You so adore a tragic legacy,
You would carve into my body the myth of a man’s death in the mud?
For a champion indeed of steel Outrageous the glory you rob, from myself
Is a man without love of romance and your own trophies that jangle, now hollowed as tin
A comic, without any comedy
Catastrophe, without any ‘eu’ The gladiator who seats himself umpire predestines,
whole in error, himself to win
You will see, I have condemned you not once
THAT IS BESIDE THE POINT! What FLORID CODSWALLOP is assaulting his ears!?
Renard slams his fist to the grass.
Is THAT the error, that Renard was too stupid to think to read scriptures? Ridiculous!
WHY SHOULD RENARD GET TO LIVE OVER SO MANY MORE DESERVING PEOPLE? Are you making an omelet! Are you just ‘breaking eggs!’
I stand below the nest of a cuckoo that shrieks, ‘I will not be a cuckoo!’ As casualties rain on my head
Do I reach out my hand? The valour of this knightly facade turns the hailstorm grasping instead for you,
so sincerely is the hope ought to heroes
Do I offer my own miracles? Even to your own student, you know well I do
But that would not lasso you in, nor jostle a speck of his loyalty
Now the wages of your striving are consummate
Now reaped are the tender elect
Now you are the one that is left
I can place upon you expectations you cannot betray,
Guarantee your name celebrated sans fault,
And certify you as exactly the legend you promise, until so soaked would you be in virtue
That you too may call yourself deserving.
For these names of saints you sling at me
Are not ones inclined with your ambition
were I to forge them into your mold,
Know that I would myself be a murderer.
You presume me some reprobate
Sitting unimpressed humorlessly jealous too exacting to please
I tell you I am in fact the opposite;
Your wife will say, ‘only you do what you do’
While you see the mirror of your deeds;
I will say, ‘only you are who you are’
For this is the root of the river
And my love is twice that of her
Again, Renard can only tremble. And again, Renard can only feel defeated. For how outrageous the Demiurge’s words are, nothing about them seems false, and little to no purchase is given for Renard to blame him for anything.
All Renard can conclude, then, is that the problem is himself. Tears squeeze hard from his eyes. How can someone claiming to love him say in the same breath that it’s Renard’s fault things fell below standard? How could he ever hope to be good enough if he could strive all his life for a pinnacle and still only get it wrong? How could any virtue he could soak himself in change him if this couldn’t? It’s just more rolls of gold foil. He already knows it doesn’t work.
Why even open it as an option?
To get revenge for something? Because this is the way things ‘have’ to be?
Or is he offering something too astounding for Renard’s dumb brain to get?
Conflicting thoughts and sentiments so spin in frenzy. Hope: that the Demiurge will adore and adopt him as a representative, exalted in His glory and power, that he could be an unfailing instrument for His righteous ends. Doubt: that Renard could be truly eligible for anything so grand, or suitable for such legitimacy. And before all, regret and fear: that the Demiurge knows Renard stopped fighting short of his limit, will not allow him this bookend, and is telling him it is not enough.
There have been many moments in Renard’s life where he felt like death was acceptable. Often, even desirable. When the person you are is so profoundly detestable, and so guilty of such ridiculous crimes that amass like the bricks of a gaol, the only way to escape the dungeon in which your acts case you is to change so drastically that you no longer make such mistakes. In the sense that Pleione may say, liberation is to kill the person you were, that you may become someone new.
For Renard, it does not feel that he ever truly changed. He did shift in some ways. He did become older, perhaps a little wiser and a little more mature. He had the incredible fortune of meeting merciful people like Pleione and Colette to lean upon. But it does not feel like he ever stopped being a wretched and deceitful moron, whose natural inclinations when dealing with problems were always ones that just made things worse.
Atonement is not something achieved in death, but in life; Renard’s persistent second chances have taught him this. But it is also a word of which Renard has grown rather sick.
If he can come so far and do so much, and even win against Arsene (for surely the Demiurge knows how he wins?), but still be told that, because of the nature of his heart, he is falling short—
Frankly, by that point, he would be better off just being dead.
At that thought, in that meadow, the earth quakes and the sky darkens. Rather than centred on a physical avatar, the Demiurge’s presence has been pervasive like the very freshness of the air, but abruptly even that blinks away. Hatred and despair from Nix flood into vacancy. Substance drains from the grass as it turns transparent like glass, in the same way as those unfinished scaffolds, and Renard notices that the skinny tree’s trunk is marred with a deep gash.
Renard laughs and sobs at the sight. That is what it is! He thinks, He must hate me because I cut his tree!
Below his chin, the scene of the serpent in the garden-turned-swamp comes into view. The place is still a mess, the sky below is dark, the great miracle tree is gushing filth, Fidel is a fossil in gunk, and from this aerial vantage, he sees his own fallen body. His ashen face with mouth agog is half sunken in sludge.
It’s not a very noble look, Renard’s scrunched gut has to admit.
Correct I will a misapprehension
You and my servant both share on my supposed affiliation affinity affection for that plant
as a seed withers in barren soil,
And as a headstone is not raised by the corpse,
The erection of that arbour was not my contrivance
As a utensil, it extends gorgeously
As a monument, it is without parallel
But of its nature, it is only wood
Its presence pleases my purposes
For it is an affirmation to you and a comfort to him
Renard glances over his shoulder. The Demiurge has returned, seated on air, not as a melting spectre but in unremarkable flesh and blood. Though his air is that of comfortable confidence, his fingers are curled elegantly over his mouth like a worried mother, and his gaze bares a complex sentiment of concern and commiseration and pity, as he too observes the scene unfolding below.
Renard rips his gaze away, rattled. Crimson echoes of the Demiurge’s silhouette burn over his vision like trails of fire in the night.
Below, the serpent comes to a stop, looming over Renard’s crumpled body. A message weaves clearly into Renard’s watching mind, though the speaker’s smooth voice is muffled near into silence.
‘You just make me so mad.’
And Renard’s body in the swamp twists — it burbles, it splits, under the focused gaze of the snake. Planes of flesh and muscle melt into tangles of string. Hauntingly, human features, even his contorted face, remain as the body knits into a lattice of orificed wormlike tubes and dark rotten splurge. A putrid smile buckles like a broken bone onto the smooth plane of his ‘face’, his ‘throat’ bulges out in laughter like the fleshy gizzard of a turkey. A sickening feeler of rot tickles his gut from the inside, even through the insulating barrier of the looking-glass.
That vile snake won’t just let him die. It’s going to desecrate him and corrupt him into some kind of organ for Nix!
Renard thumps his fists on the grass of the meadow, gasping, sweat teeming down his brow. He has to stop this! He has to get in there, and do something, he has to…!
…But, really, what can he do?
Nothing… by his own ability, in such a circumstance, he would be capable of little to noth—
—Ridiculous! There has to be something, even the thinnest whisker of a chance by which he could prevail. He has already proven he can nick the beast’s hide, by little more than his own determination! So what is this trembling voice? How could he stand to recede?
But the sheer discrepancy of power between himself and the snake… it’s simply so large…
The lattice of his body, dragging like a sheet of dough, is lifted by one point into the air. The line of space he occupies plunges out in an infinite vector; geometric blocks choke and spasm out of him like the vomit of an evil kaleidoscope. Though still only in the garden, his being has been spread like a string across a thousand pockets of Nix, in such a way as to form a ley line. Renard knows, for the scent of every one of those pockets, and of the stream of transitional space between them, seeps into his consciousness deliciously. He knows what is happening at any point along that line. He may too travel instantly to any linked pocket, simply by focusing his attention upon it; for he would then flow to that spot.
Simultaneously, in flows a hunger. In his gullet his tongue is a hard pipe four hundred feet long, and every tastebud on it burns dry with a thirst, a manic lust for pure bloody murder!
Yes, that’s right! Any interloper stupid enough to think they have a claim to HIS turf, better know they have another thing coming! They think THEY’LL be the champions who unlatch the world from Nix? These untested upstarts, wanting to upstage HIM? Renard will piss on their corpse! And the more humiliating their slaughter, the better! These weak little shits, doddering greenhorn ducklings, well they shouldn’t even be here, those who can barely lift a blade — those ones he’ll stomp with such ruthlessness it would make anyone wonder what the point of them was. And the stronger ones, the nobler ones, the ones who could maybe be dangerous, Renard with keen goading and mockery will strip them down virtue by virtue, strength by strength, until they are feebler than a quadruple amputee, and only once they have realised they have lost every chance, that their virtues did not matter, and their spirit of confidence is shattered, will Renard deign to laugh in their face and slice open their throat and finally teach them they are dying.
Then he will frolic in the jets of their arteries, piss in the puddles of their blood, and tapdance merrily on their bodies until they meet oblivion. And it’ll be so wonderful!
Renard chokes his mind out of the vision, grasping his heaving chest. The rot is spreading down his core like the roots of a tree, proliferating at a wicked pace. He has only maintained even a fleck of sanity because he is guarded here, in the meadow, from its true brunt. Had he attempted to contest it with will, he would already be dead. There is only one escape. And it’s obvious.
He can take the Demiurge’s offer, or he can be corrupted by Nix.
And curse him. Curse his wretched heart for even flirting, that it would prove something grand to die here.
Even though he is observing not Renard, but the garden, the Demiurge’s waiting presence is as solid as eyes upon his back. That Renard will say ‘yes’ is an inevitability, as sure as the sweep of the tides. Even Renard knows so.
Yet he cannot shake the spiteful sensation, that his soul is scissored between two deities playing a game. And yes, he may be inserting himself — though how could he not, given Arsene’s strike against man — and is this the Demiurge’s riposte? He should have the power to conduct it himself! Why Renard? Why Renard? What’s good about Renard? But of course Renard, for isn’t he great?
And curse his wretched heart for envisioning, that he could break out of this checkmate with the strength of a god himself, and laugh both at the Snake and the Demiurge! To so freely win by being himself, as though that is not how he got in to every one of these traps to begin with.
Why must he be such an egotist that he thinks his ends would be better than God’s?
Renard grunts, clutches blades of grass tightly as his anchor, every pulse of his rotting heart as sickening as the blow of a sledgehammer.
One thread of resistance does remain. One question towards the Almighty’s motives, for Renard and for all the world.
Why not Fidel?
Why not choose Fidel?
He is dead. But the glorification of you would be the glorification of him,
Where the glorification of him would be the misery of you.
I assure,
Often are you like wind, that bolsters the flight of an eagle
And I assure,
Never will you buck off a saint, nor serve the hand of the wicked
Your adoration for honour would make you unable.
Certainly, I will break the thing you are now
That your heart more brightly may rise to the fore
In the agreement that you will live to please me,
And one day, accept dazzling rewards.
Again, the response feels too perfect to counter. The more his mind scrambles for a parry, the more deeply submerged he is in deep water, struggling against tides that will swallow his tired soul down.
But is there not still a fundamental problem…
That the serpent is only able, to be so wicked because the Demiurge wills it…
…
…maybe, much in the same way, that Renard’s own shenanigans are only barely permitted…
There must be a limit. The magnitude of horror between himself and Arsene is incomparable. It isn’t comparable. It can’t be comparable…
An impact strikes through Renard’s sternum like a pounded nail. Renard gasps. His mind refocuses on the serpent’s foul ministrations; for the creature has taken the tendril of his corrupt form and anchored it to the stretched space. More impacts pelt him as the serpent takes another wriggling tendril of Renard’s flesh, extends it over a thousand more spacial pockets, and again hammers that into place. And again, and again, splaying the web of him across Nix like a thousand-armed starfish…
But,
‘Ugh, this is weird. How come you’re so sticky?’
The process is not going smoothly. The invisible nails are not holding Renard’s flesh stable; seconds after being hammered in place, his body melts and flops like clay out of the binding. Though still tendrils drifting in the same rough region the serpent assigned them to, they can, of themselves, move, and perhaps even coalesce back into each other given enough time to cross paths.
It’s like the serpent is trying to hold on to silk, that keeps spilling out of its hands.
This thing is so useless, eye-rolling irritation flashes through Renard at Arsene. But after that, the dim prospect that, if Arsene is struggling to handle him, he may still be able to reform, and challenge the beast…
…and bred of that thought, exhaustion. And then what? Why deceive himself? Why bother? As he already said, this war should already be over.
For the Demiurge to be in error, Arsene’s evil must be so vile that there is no comparison to make between it and the faults of Renard.
But for Renard’s win to be true, Renard and Arsene must be alike enough that even a beast so wretched could be inspired by Renard to start looking up.
So if Renard wins, then Camille is right, and logically Renard ought to stop… dawdling…
He barely has the strength to clench his teeth.
Why is he so scared?
Do I point you into a valley
Whose river is safe to follow?
Even if it is not, you must yearn only to trust
An incisive memory surges out of a sunken sarcophagus, a spear straight to the softest corner of his heart. It ravages, it rips, it bleeds — Oh, God! His father tried to kill him!
Renard screams, but his voice is so weak. He sobs, but his body can barely shudder it is so frail.
HIS FATHER TRIED TO KILL HIM!! BECAUSE HE HATED RENARD, BECAUSE RENARD WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH, BECAUSE HE WAS A BAD SON, HE WASN’T EVEN A REAL SON. THE ONLY THING HE COULD’VE DONE THAT WOULD’VE PLEASED HIS FATHER WAS IF HE DIED. IT DIDN’T MATTER WHAT ELSE HE DID. IT DIDN’T MATTER!
Certainly Renard with age made more of himself than just a farmboy yearning for approval from his dad. But God! God!
More dull impacts of nails flurry into his chest. He grunts and he spits, but barely feels the pain.
Because that is all he is, isn’t it!
‘I see. It’s that sword.’
Froth rattles out of Renard’s mouth as he seizes. He cannot move, he cannot think, and every wisp of strength is wilting as though his soul were being sucked into mist. His face is a film of tears, blood, snot, and sweat. It is not even the snake that is causing this. It is just the aftermath of touching an abscess he has let fester for all his life. His weepy mewling is too muffled to even be called sobbing. He is so utterly powerless he hasn’t even the vigour to cry properly.
There is no question he’s dying.
Kingslayer, somewhere, rises into the air.
A jet of sludgy black vomit pulses out of his lips. As his eyes roll up in their sockets, he only thinks:
Let the accolade I confer eclipse all ethic—but love.
And let the armour laid on the mantle,
Come to its days—and shatter.
I have been a pest — God take me.
Many things happen at once.
—Two blades of fire settle themselves gently on Renard’s shoulders. They are searing, but do not burn. These are the fingers of the Demiurge, which rap over Renard’s epaulettes with a whimsical flourish. What is he doing? Those whimsical hands then slam together to crush his neck, their clawed grip ferocious, righteous and furious, unflinchingly strong even as Renard chokes and screams.
Inside his flesh, his skeleton cracks apart into chunks. Clumps of bone stab against the twisting meat of muscle and organs, skin dissolves into vapour, his face is gone, he cannot struggle but pulse — Renard cannot even envision what he must be beyond a clod of viscera.
AT LEAST ARSENE WAS UPFRONT ABOUT IT! DASTARD!, he spitefully screams, but no hand and no voice remains to answer.
Laced in a golden inferno, he falls. Though the grass, through the earth, through the meadow…
—A bell weakly chimes a single note through the snake’s garden. Though barely heard, the air and plants all gasp breath, as if invigorated by the sound. The cloying humidity of the rot dissipates under the tickle of a fresh breeze, and the sludge choking the earth retreats another inch as drowning flowers straighten their stems. And the greatest of them all, the flowering tree of miracles, that immaculate headstone for the corpse buried underneath — that one is not unaffected.
The knot of anguish grimacing on its bark releases with a relieved sigh. Black sludge gushing from the cut on its trunk thins into amniotic water, flecked with crimson light that glimmers like the flecks of an opal. The mixture floods upon Fidel, scouring away the encasing muck, streaming into open cuts, and washing him perfectly clean.
His fingers twitch. The boy gasps. His eyes snap open, awake but disoriented.
Between sleeping and waking, visions wisp yet through his mind: the flag of Lacren, Sebilles restored to peace, Meurille’s citizens saved, and an overwhelming desire to protect this land he knows is his home. Through his growing sobriety, a memory vague as smoke lingers, of the face of a crimson angel so gloriously beautiful and so ruthlessly murderous it must be the very face of God, grinning with shark’s teeth a grin of approval.
The camellia flower that fell for him too pulses warm beside his hand. Gasping again with shock and recognition, he flinches to pick it up — for inside his body, there is sickness… but no nausea, rather only the strange refreshment of a man coming out of a fever. All his inner flesh tingles as if digesting a meal. Experience insists that such abnormalities signal dreadful degenerations, but the longer that this goes, the more he only feels revitalised, healthy.
His very bloodstream flows as fresh as a woodland zephyr. Sputtering, he raises his hands — the digits are not deformed, but in his bleary awakening (for surely, surely, this must be illusion), the already mild colour of his skin is lost, that he is paler than fishes, paler than an Easterner, paler even than ghosts of the snowcaps…
As the serpent rages on, Fidel trembles in shock. The wash of red liquid cascading upon him peters dry as resin clots the wound of the tree.
Wet and shivering as a child out of the womb, not an inch of that boy is not blessed, shimmering and soaked as he is in the crimson blood of camellias.
—Arsene raises Kingslayer high into the air. This stupid black stick is why things’ve been funny, and if that stupid lunk of a human, huddled up all in his stupid tin cans, didn’t have it to wave around, he totally wouldn’t have even looked at Arsene without dying! And he went on about honour or whatever when he was actually cheating the whole time. It’s always just so stupid. You can’t expect any more from these pests… and they just never get it that they should leave Arsene alone. He’s pretty sure he told someone that not too long ago. 35 years? Humans have such tiny worm-brains and die so fast they can’t even remember stuff from 65 years ago. They’re going to keep forgetting and keep barging in like this blockhead…
And keep hurting Leah! They keep hurting Leah! These — these, monsters, they just never stop. He’s already DEAD and they COME HERE to hurt him. It’s ridiculous!
And so what if Arsene’s making things bad for them? They deserve it, because they’re huge jerks! They always make things bad for others too! Like Arsene! They made things so bad for Arsene! He’s allowed. Leah lets him. Even if he doesn’t really like it, Leah lets him…
Dwelling on it’s better kept until after he’s not getting poked by the MEAN CHEATER LUNK. Oh yeah, and what Arsene will do to him, it’ll be sooooo nasty! If anybody does get here again, it’ll be because they killed him first! And Arsene will tell them that! That they killed a human. And he’ll laugh at them! ‘How did you get through that guy? He was soooo annoying and gross, wasn’t he?’. But really, it’d be better if nobody came at all. And he didn’t have to think about them at all…
…
It really is annoying, that this empty human ‘Renard Cox’ actually got under his skin this much.
Whatever. That can be over now.
Kingslayer shudders in turbulent air as the pressure of rot squeezes in. A ‘chnk’ peals out of the metal as violent white fractures pip out of its skin, as the breaking of an eggshell, and deepens into an ugly, authoritative: Craccck. The two halves of Kingslayer fall away, severed at the blade. This tested sword is now the same as a hundred other knick-knacks, shoved in a crate in what was Sebilles’ tower, dead and useless — and so, would it be, is its protection, for the final uncorrupted fragment it held of the soul of Renard Cox...
Kingslayer like a dead skin falls away, and wreathed in gold, suspended in the air, a second sword is revealed.
It hangs in the sky for a moment, then like a stone too drops…
And in that moment, many things happen at once. A peal of a bell sings out. Fidel Asphodel gasps back to life. The serpent’s tantrum freezes, as the familiar tenor of the note strikes its ears.
And hurried footsteps crunch across the yard’s rejuvenated grass, utterly forgetting Renard. Far away, like a prayer, a child’s voice calls, “Leah!?"
—And that is the last that Renard registers, laying on the grass paralysed in metal, before darkness swallows his consciousness.
FIN.
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.