Chapter 468 - Prologue II - The Statesman and the Spy

  Marquis Ephesus paced back and forth in a windowless room as he evaluated the st few days’ events. His lower body was free of its usual constraints, exposed to the world in its true, silvery-grey form. His usual false shell sat colpsed into a pile by the door. He had missed the hook when he first tried to hang it, and he couldn’t be bothered to correct its posture.

  His upper half was, likewise, completely unrestrained. His head was vaguely ovur and he more or less held the shape of a humanoid, but that was more a habit than it was his nature. Completely locked off from the outside world and accessible to his spawn alone, his underground bunker was the only pce where he was allowed to rex.

  Still, even in the midst of repose, he kept his back ramrod straight. His face surely would have been stern had he still had one, but in its globur form, it was completely unreadable.

  It had been a full week since Olethra’s demise had turned everything on its head. Cadria’s political climate warped overnight; ministers and aristocrats were stuck desperately scrambling to adapt to the changing tide. Most had their pns and expectations completely blown out of orbit. Half their bookkeepers had gone from proficient to outright incompetent the moment the people began spending left, right, and center. So much money changed hands, courtesy of all the impromptu celebrations, that most municipal governments had completely lost track of who owed what and why.

  One might have suspected that the individual implicated by the system-wide announcement would further complicate the situation. After all, Cire’s vulnerability was still fresh in the nation’s mind—the army had only just marched on Kryddar to seek retribution in her name—but any discrepancies and misaligned tales were soon completely dismissed. With no official government statement to crify the nature of the cims, the people expined the inconsistencies away with theories of their own. Some suggested that the Kryddarians had exploited a top-secret weakness, while others argued that they had only gotten the upper hand by way of treachery and happenstance. Whatever the case, everyone assumed that the princess would cim one of the seven slots as her own, leaving only three to be contested.

  Ephesus, however, knew better. He was one of the few privy to the knowledge that Cire would never take their side. And though he had once stood in stark opposition to her participation, he had since become a silent but devoted proponent. Even if it meant revealing to the world that she was an enemy of the state.

  Her ability to best a god assured her right to face his master. Hell, in his mind, it was precisely her duty to do so, just as it was the false goat’s to stand as the battle’s witness.

  He couldn’t wait for their bdes to cross—for father and daughter to csh in what would surely be one of the greatest battles that the realm had ever seen. He had been desperate to scrutinize the duel from the very moment that he had revived Number Fourteen again. With his paradigm shifted and all hints of impediment purged from his mind, one might have suspected that he had little reason to pace and ponder, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

  Cire was hardly the only headache that he had to deal with; he had been stricken by a much more pressing concern for the better part of the st month.

  He wanted to voice his candidacy.

  Number Fourteen’s northerly expedition had left Ephesus with a long list of boons. With all of her experience endowed upon his soul—all of the experience that Olethra had delivered straight to her doorstep—he had become an aspect. And his children, the extensions of his body and mind, had followed in replicating the change.

  Of course, the fourth ascension alone was hardly sufficient for him to match his master. There was still a veritable world between them.

  Virillius had wrenched his right to ascension from the system, forcing it into obedience with his absolute power. Ephesus, however, had only unlocked his with Olethra’s permission, despite having never cleared a trial. The difference between them was clear from that alone. At most, in his master’s eyes, he had gone from a flea to a mosquito.

  He had always known that it didn’t matter how much he ascended. He would never measure up to Virillius, but his ck of strength was hardly the only or even the primary reason for his hesitation. He might have been nothing before the one true king, but he was still an aspect—one of the nation’s foremost elites.

  Were he to step up to the stage and reveal his authority over parallel existence, he would surely become a great deterrent for those who sought to harm his nation. The cause was noble, and the effect would surely prove resounding, but so too would it blow his cover. He would no longer be able to lurk in the shadows and dedicate himself to a life behind the scenes.

  It didn’t matter if his agents continued their work as usual. There would be enough scrutiny upon him to uncover their tracks and render them inert. At best, if he disbanded his agency immediately, he would be able to put together another in a few hundred years time.

  At the end of the day, it came down to a proposition of value, on whether a silent, invisible protector was worth more than a powerful deterrent.

  And at least for the marquis, the answer was up in the air.

  Logic dictated that there was no purpose in revealing his hand, and any other Cadrian in his shoes would have likely agreed. After all, his countrymen understood that Virillius was strength incarnate.

  Though they cked the fourth ascension, Cadria’s most elite were powerful warriors in their own right. The designation of aspect meant nothing before the combined might of the royal guard’s veterans. Hell, the two most famous among them could handle an aspect by themselves. Durham was savage and swift as the heavens’ fury and Allegra could weave death itself with her freeform spells. They would have been the perfect pair of ncer and caster could they be bothered to work together.

  It wasn’t just them. The springbde of House Evander, the marquis of the Decimus march, the sword who slew the coast, the legendary vault hunter, Demonbane Krisuphus, Barthana the three-hoofed, and so on and so forth. Any eleven of the hundred-odd true champions could fight an aspect to a draw, for each was worth as much as a lesser nation’s army.

  The theory had been proven in Ferdinand’s time. In his training, he demonstrated that he won easily against eight, sweated when pressed by nine, and only narrowly scraped out his wins against ten. Though his ascensions were tuned purely for combat, he was overwhelmed when faced with eleven. A few hundred levels was hardly sufficient to overcome the sweat, blood, and tears that had given birth to the elites’ polished skills.

  And yet, Virillius treated them like children.

  Even if they rushed him, all once hundred at once, he would emerge victorious with one hand behind his back and his breath still perfectly even.

  He was so unfathomably powerful that he stood upon the stage meant only for the truly divine.

  That was why they called him the god-king.

  It was a conclusion that no foreigner could truly understand. Having never seen one fight for themselves, they foolishly assumed that all aspects were roughly equal, even though that had never been true for any of the ascensions before it.

  To a foreign party, Virillius was just one man—hardly a reason to shiver in abject horror.

  Hence, the need for numbers.

  If Ephesus announced to the world that he had ascended again, he would serve as the perfect means to deter their enemies’ assault, even after the world came to learn that Cire was not their ally. Their enemies would simply see two weapons of mass destruction without understanding that one was world-ending, while the other struggled to find more than a street’s worth of death.

  The marquis sighed as he sank back into his chair.

  He couldn’t decide on the best way forward.

  He wanted to keep thinking and weighing his costs and benefits, but he soon blew off any further analysis. There was no point. He would always find a counter to every argument he made and wind up in an endless cycle. That was how he had wound up pacing back and forth underground in the first pce.

  There was a much better, a much more Cadrian way to make his decision.

  He would head to the colosseum and bet the day away.

  If he came out with more money in his pocket, then he would stick to his course and remain in the shadows. But if he ended the day in the red, then he would throw his name in the hat and fight for his nation’s honour.

  For it was only by facing risk head on that he could test the crity of his judgement.

  ___

  The often raccoon-shaped cervitaur known as Constantius Augustus scratched his chest and yawned as he wandered through the winter castle. It had mostly emptied itself out once Griselda took her leave. Most of the animate servants—the people who lived beyond the mountains—had returned to their homes following the moon’s departure. Such was the nature of the contract that bound them to Aurora. They would provide service when she needed to put on airs, while she would maintain the conditions that made it so hard to reach them. After all, no barrier was quite as impenetrable as one made by the goddess of the frozen wilds.

  Her shields took many forms, many of which were used in the castle’s partitioning. Not all of them were quite as obvious as the glowing blue force fields that separated the private quarters—there existed a plethora of more subtle defenses, such as zones that cleared one’s mind, hallways that led back to their entrances, and floors trapped in solid ice.

  And yet, Constantius proceeded unhindered. The brain-draining distortions gave him no pause, he walked straight through the infinite halls, and phased straight through the yers of frost. Had any of the northern brigade’s members borne witness, they surely would have cimed that he was intruding, making use of his sinister powers to break through the poor goddess’ defenses. But such accusations couldn’t have fallen further from the truth.

  He saw no defenses.

  Because he had the goddess’ express permission.

  So trusted was the moose that he was allowed to go wherever he pleased without any hint of restriction. He was even allowed to use the mirror and peer into the past if he so desired. Though far from one of her servants, he was allowed to proceed with all of the authority of a close aide.

  If he truly served her, he likely would have been just that. But in reality, their retionship was far closer to that of partners. He was a tool that allowed her to act upon the mortal realm without rousing suspicion or otherwise sullying her name. Assassinations, infestations, attacks on other churches. Everything she wanted, he did. As repayment, she would entertain the requests he’d outlined when they signed the contract. She would step on the stage and do as needed, and she would shelter those he sent her way, just as she had for those who escaped to Elysium.

  It was to visit one such individual that Constantius walked through the castle. On his stubby legs, the trip took nearly an hour, but he didn’t mind. He had spent the journey staring out the windows and taking in the mountain air.

  A single whiff of it sufficed to remind him of the 279 years he’d spent learning under Zottsgarb. The giant, misshapen chicken was a surprisingly good teacher. In fact, he was so good that he had managed to transform the otherwise inept Constantius into a half-decent fighter.

  While Virillius had spent the st thousand years sitting at a desk and training his troops in his offtime, Constantius had dedicated it to progression. He killed whatever he could and tamed whatever he couldn’t. When he wasn’t studying, he was fighting tooth and nail, clearing not only the continent’s most difficult dungeons, but even the treacherous Langgbjerns, for it was only then that he acquired the strength he needed to stand in his brother’s path. He still wasn't quite as powerful as he would have liked, but he was confident that he could survive for at least five seconds in a direct confrontation—just enough time to throw Virillius off-kilter with a few choice words.

  Considering the effort invested, the difference in their power levels was simply absurd. Constantius was certain that he was at least a few hundred levels higher, but it didn’t matter. The discrepancy stemmed from a simple difference in talent.

  No matter how hard Constantius tried, no matter how much he struggled, he would never win in a strict one-on-one.

  That was why he had become a tamer in the first pce. If one life could st for five seconds, then he only needed a few thousand to st for an hour and a few million to st him a month. With so much of the continent’s wildlife at the tips of his fingers, and his familiar count ever expanding, he could easily st a century if needed.

  Powerful as he was, Virillius couldn’t keep fighting forever. At some point, the younger moose would grow tired of killing him, and it was precisely by exhausting him that Constantius would emerge victorious.

  Such were the thoughts running through the moose’s mind as he paid his brother’s wife a visit.

  He didn’t bother knocking on the door. Seeing that it was already ajar, he kicked it open and meandered his way inside. The less-than-princely act earned him a pair of gres from the dy’s guards, even though everyone involved knew that it was pointless. Constantius wasn’t about to change his ways just because someone else found fault with his behaviour.

  “Good morning,” said Violet.

  The legless, serpentine woman sat by the windowsill with a cup of tea in one hand and a book open in the other. It was hardly the best pce for a mia to hunker down in the winter. The goddess’ castle was made to resemble something built with traditional techniques, which in turn meant that it had taken many of the traditional fws as features. The most damning was its drafty nature. Aurora didn’t think of it as a problem. As the goddess of the frozen wilds, she was impervious to the cold. The winter winds were but gentle breezes, breaths of fresh air present only for her enjoyment.

  But as a humanoid danger noodle, Violet had no such fondness for the biting cold. It seeped into her scales and slowed everything from her metabolism to the function of her mind.

  “I thought the next delivery wasn’t for another three days,” she said.

  The delivery in question was his part of the deal. One of Violet’s terms was that she was provided with sufficient and timely entertainment. To that end, Constnatius visited once a month to deliver a heap of books and materials. And for the most part, that was the extent of their interaction.

  “Not this time,” said Constantius. “I was just thinking we should sit down for a bit of a chat.”

  “What a coincidence. I was just thinking that we shouldn’t,” said Violet.

  “Well, that’s too fucking bad.”

  Constantius crossed his arms and leaned against a shelf by the door, a sigh on his lips as usual. The response was exactly what he had expected. Despite their all too simir interests, Constantius and Violet had never quite gotten along.

  But of course they hadn’t.

  Constantius had positioned himself as her beloved’s most hated, and she was a longtime victim of his plots and shenanigans. It was a wonder how he had ever convinced her to buy into his scheme.

  “Look, I’m not any happier about this shit than you are, but it’s looking like we’re heading into the final stretch. You’re gonna need to make the call.” The second part of their agreement. “Are we waiting or going ahead?”

  A frown on her lips, Violet slid a feather into the book and pced it on the windowsill. Looking beyond it, she gazed into the courtyard and watched as her daughter sat cross-legged in the snow. Her eyes closed, the halfbreed was churning her magic and divinity, slowly bringing it under control through her diligent practice.

  “Let’s press forward.” Violet gripped her cup hard enough for her fingers to whiten. “Vel has already discovered our ploy. We can’t afford to wait much longer.”