Discordant Note | TBATE

Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!

Arthur Leywin

I stared impassively at the corrupted mana beast, my hands locked behind my back. Its cage rattled and shook as it tried in vain to lunge at the crowds. The hot summer breeze brushed past the mantle adorning my shoulder, letting it blow in the heat.

At my side, Trodius Flamesworth—the leading commander at the Wall—looked just as poised as I. But while I carried the airs of a Lance and King, Flamesworth seemed to look down on everything from above with a scrutinizing gaze.

And beside him, King Grey watched with something empty as steel.

"And that should do it," Gideon said sharply as he made some final adjustments to the weapons the nonmages were holding. "Ready when you are, uh… King Leywin," he said a bit nervously.

I made a show of turning slowly, observing my surroundings and the people around me. A few hundred men and women from the Wall had all gathered in this courtyard at my command. Cooks and merchants and adventurers and bakers all watched with nervous anticipation. The countless different colors of hair absorbed light from the cloudy sky far above.

"Every single one of you here knows a bit of what war is," I started, sweeping my water-blue gaze across the crowd. Wherever my eyes settled, people averted their eyes slightly, the weight of my presence made manifest in my words. "No doubt many of you have lost loved ones in this conflict. Those that have been blessed to not suffer such tragedy know those who weren't so lucky."

I paused, savoring the tension of the crowd for a moment. I listened to their rising breaths and shuffling feet.

"The first time I spoke with all of you, I gave you a promise. A promise of retribution and protection both. And over this past month, I have worked to see that promise kept. Every day, strike teams have ventured beyond the bastion of the Wall, attacking teleportation gates and disrupting Alacryan camps under my direction. And we have seen success. No longer are the attacks on our countrymen so prevalent. No longer must we cower and hide in our homes, fearful to even sew our crops or work our leather!"

More than a few cheers rose at that. They died quickly as the air I projected belied their sudden victory cries.

"But while these dangers have lessened, they have not ceased. The Alacryans–those wretched invaders who seek the blood of our countrymen–claim that they are here for liberation. But still, the claws of beasts and the weeping of orphaned children fill our city's streets."

The crowd went silent, drawn into melancholy. I allowed my head to lower, sharing a moment of grim silence with them.

"But today is where that changes for good," I said, looking back up as I flexed my mana slightly. "Because today is not a day for Lances or strike teams or the Trailblazers, though they would certainly enjoy what we are about to unveil. Today is a day for every single one of you."

I waved my hand to the side in a wide, flourishing motion, gesturing to the line of soldiers right behind me. A dozen men and women stood arrayed in distinct black uniforms behind me, their hands tight on the stocks of their weapons. Sweat beaded slightly down their fingers, but they had practiced for this moment.

"Let us all show you how you are going to fight back against these beasts," I whispered, my eyes tracing over the men. "Ready!" I barked.

As practiced, the soldiers readied their weapons, settling into position. They aimed the long barrels of their muskets upward, their grips firm.

"Load!"

The soldiers pulled out small bullets from their pouches, alongside charges of Gideon's unique gunpowder-combustium concoction. They poured the contents into a small pan, before swiftly loading the bullets into the chamber.

"Aim!"

My fists clenched behind my back as I gritted my teeth, watching as those rifles lowered into position. Each promised death to the B-class mana beast as it snarled and thrashed within its cage.

Deep in my mind, I remembered my past life. The automatic weapons as those barrels aimed down at me. The muscle memory twitched in my body as I remembered the patterns needed to evade and distract the aim of trained gunmen.

"Fire," I hissed.

The world erupted with a dozen claps of thunder, and then silence.

The mana beast didn't even have a chance to lament its end. A dozen golf ball-sized holes opened along its normally impervious hide in splatters of blood and fur. It fell limp quickly.

Smoke misted up from the tips of the rifle barrels. Gunpowder wafted her familiar, stark breath across my nose in a taunting, teasing way. King Grey suddenly seemed to demand my attention, an inexplicable and inexorable pull drawing my eyes toward his.

I breathed in the scent of death, welcoming it like an old friend as I met the ghost of my past. Then I turned, looking back at the shocked crowd. Near me, Trodius Flamesworth's hand clenched and his eyes flashed with surprise as the mana beast died.

"These weapons will allow our nonmages to kill even mana beasts with ease!" I said triumphantly. "Those of you at home will no longer need to fear the creatures of the night as they stalk by your door."

A cacophonous cheer arose from the silence. A few calls for Dicathen as the common folk celebrated this rise. I watched a cook bellow vengefully as they thrust a meaty fist in the air.

But there were a few different cheers. Some for King Arthur Leywin and the new union.

I made my exit, then, striding past the people and leading Gideon and Trodius back toward the Wall itself, letting the familiar praise and adoration wash over me as I kept my head high.

These new manalock muskets–a unique mix of flintlock, percussion, and mana based upon Gideon's improvement on my design–would change the face of warfare in Dicathen forever. I suspected any beast below B-class could be killed by a bullet with relative ease, and any mage below the yellow core stage wouldn't even be able to react to the speed of metal.

"War is going to change," I muttered darkly as I strode into a nearby meeting room. "This is where everything shifts for this world. Everything."

Gideon scoffed, scratching at his greasy hair. "Say it for yourself, wonderboy," he snapped, withdrawing a pen and paper. "The ignition charges went off, sure! But the aim of those buffoons wasn't worth skittershit!"

I fixed the old artificer with a stare at his address. He paused, scratching nervously at his face with the back of his pen as he recognized his mistake. "Not wonderboy anymore, eh?" he said nervously at the intensity of my gaze. "Wonderking, then?" he said, his eyes darting away.

I exhaled through my nose. Gideon was not the kind of person to respect any sort of authority. I might have worked with him extensively on this project, but he still wasn't used to my new position. Probably wouldn't ever be. "Regardless, the weapon proved effective," I said truthfully. "And soon, they will be ready for implementation in our assault teams and soldiery across Sapin. The Beast Hordes will be easier to put down, especially with how centralized everyone has become in the cities."

The regular assaults on the Beast Glades had been a monumental success after the first initial foray. With the discovery that the control of the corrupted beasts was centralized on those dark crystal artifacts, it became commonplace to take several mages with beast bonds on every assault so that they could sniff out the mages with crystals.

No longer was it a mad fight of a squad against Alacryans and beasts. With a few targets, the operations became essentially assassination missions.

Lance Phantasm had reaped her due in the past month more than any other. And finally, the massacres had slowed down to a trickle. Every now and then beasts still appeared, but they were less and less frequent.

"You have full authorization in the development of weapons, Gideon Bastius. Focus on the creation of cannons and mobile artillery alongside improving the musket design. You will be granted whatever resources you need in this pursuit, so long as you can justify it to me."

Gideon smacked his lips, visibly salivating at my words. "Wonderking, indeed," he muttered, his eyes lighting up with stars. "You've got it. You'll see more explosions. We'll rip these Alacryans to shreds."

A maddened smile split his face as he sauntered toward the exit, muttering something. I heard him talking about Emily there for a time, too.

When we'd started this war, I hadn't truly understood how little of a chance Dicathen stood against our enemy. But as I slowly grew to understand, I realized it was my duty to give my people a way to fight back against the monsters that held our continent by the throat.

Agrona broke rules in warfare. His soldiers mowed down civilians as his corrupted beasts committed massacres that made our entire continent weep in sorrow.

When you cross lines, when you escalate in war, I thought, exhaling as the weight of what I planned to do sank in, There is nothing that stops your foes doing the same.

There were… other things I could give Gideon. The last resort, the lines I truly feared to cross. Chemical formula.

The sort that would make dwarves fear the dark of their own tunnels.

I won't cross those lines, I reasserted to myself. I won't cross them.

But I was finally alone with the man I really wanted to speak to. Alone with him except for the spirit of King Grey.

"Permission to speak, King Arthur," Trodius requested at my side. His voice was cool and crisp. He looked in every picture the perfect Dicathian noble. He even bowed his head slightly as protocol demanded.

I turned to the dark-haired nobleman, observing him impassively for a few moments. If the man were someone less refined and honed in the political sense, I might have waited longer so as to unnerve him. "Granted, Lord Flamesworth."

He straightened slightly, his eyes flashing as he adjusted his cravat. The sigil of the Flamesworth House burned prominently. "From my intel, the Alacryans gained knowledge of the steamship from the failed expedition of the Dicatheous. If we were to introduce such weapons to our people, then it only stands to reason that they will be taken as well. If it makes destruction and killing so simple, the casualties will be immense."

I smiled slightly at Trodius' question. He was good at the game. One of the best I'd met since I'd become King of the United Forces of Dicathen. It almost appeared as if he cared about the commoners that we led into battle.

Any lesser politician might have missed the true reason he asked this question. I did not like Trodius Flamesworth. He was a poor father to Jasmine Flamesworth, my childhood mentor. He was opportunistic and cunning. But in war, one made sacrifices.

"A good question, Lord Flamesworth," I said. And it was a good question. One I'd asked myself over and over and over in my sleep. King Grey's eyes mirrored that very question. "But I want to ask you something else in return. How many people do you think live on the enemy continent?"

Trodius met my gaze with one of cool serenity. "I cannot begin to guess, Your Majesty," he said simply, offering platitudes with a silver tongue. "But I would venture that they are not that much greater than ours."

"Estimates gathered from the captive Retainer Uto put numbers at a conservative estimate of five times," I said with ease, watching Trodius like a hawk. "And that is simply the difference between our populations."

Alacrya's technology surpassed ours by leagues. And that meant better food production. Better population control. Better urbanization. Better everything. Like the industrialized nations of my previous life, their population exploded beyond the natural confines of feudalism and monarchy.

The dark-haired man nodded slowly, taking this in stride. He wasn't surprised just yet. "Dicathen has always fought at a disadvantage, Your Majesty. This is nothing new."

"Indeed," I said simply. "But what do you think the number of mages in Alacrya is?"

Trodius finally seemed to sense the direction I was taking this conversation. His gaze sharpened as he focused on me more deeply. Not hostile, but gauging. Measuring. "I am ignorant of this knowledge, King Arthur," he said slowly, ready for the jaws to close in.

"This is knowledge kept secret deep within the Council," I said honestly. "I would not expect you to know it. As you know, the rate of mage to nonmage in Dicathen is somewhere around one to a hundred. But in Alacrya?"

I let the words drift from my tongue like flesh falling from a corpse. This time, I did maintain my silence for a time. I wanted to give the man time to really think. And from the bead of sweat I saw suddenly drip down the side of his neck–barely perceptible–I knew his expectations had plummeted.

"Those numbers are one in five."

Trodius' nostrils flared, his eyes widening slightly. "That is impossible," he said abruptly. "To have so many–"

"Would mean the enemy has a battletrained mage for every person on this continent," I interrupted simply, turning toward a few scattered papers. I walked toward them calmly, picking them up and sifting through them. I withdrew a light sketch of one of the muskets. "That they have one hundred times as many mages as us, each hardened by warfare, and they haven't even fielded their greatest warriors yet? That is what it would mean. Those bastards talk a lot about the purity of their blood and how great it is. And being experimented on by a mad god for millennia does appear to have some… benefits."

I raised the blueprint of a simple flintlock to the firelight, tracing the lines of the intricate design. It was utilitarian, in a way. Trodius remained silent, understanding that it was time for his silence in the face of someone greater.

I had been systematically purging much of the old regime of Dicathian nobles during my short tenure. I focused on those whose record of incompetence and failure drained Dicathen's resources further and bled our abilities into the dirt. Many Houses that survived from their close ties to the Glayders or Eraliths alone were subsequently demoted or pushed into meaningless positions.

With the Lances bound to me and an asura at my back, there was little they could do to resist the initial push against their idiocy. I'd seized assets and pooled their resources as I elevated those I knew to be competent to better positions. Blaine and Priscilla had argued for a short time regarding my acts, and Alduin had mutely accepted my actions as the defeated man he'd become.

The Dicathian bureaucracy was in the process of wartime restructuring: something I had plenty of practice in from my previous life. But I also could not maintain my grip on power without a solid base of allies.

"These simple weapons—on their first prototypes—allow nonmages to fell B-class mana beasts with a simple pull of a trigger. I'd wager they'd prove similarly effective on the majority of the enemy mages, too," I muttered quietly, conjuring a tongue of flame over my finger. It hopped eagerly onto the parchment. "And already we've replaced many of the dwarven metalworkers at the Wall with steam hammers and similarly powerful technology. Anything—anybody—can be replaced."

I looked back toward the nobleman, who for once looked genuinely ruffled. His brow was furrowed, and his eyes narrowed as the implications of all this ran through him like slow poison "My point in all this, Lord Flamesworth, is that Dicathen is going to be undergoing some very real changes in regards to how we fight. How we live." I tilted my head, letting the light reflect off my crown. "How we rule."

Times were changing. I needed competence. And if the nobles of Dicathen wanted to keep their power, they needed to exude it. Trodius could join me in this change, or he could be swept away.

The nobleman bowed deeply, understanding my message. "You are wise, King Arthur." It appeared to me he actually believed it too. "You have given me much to think about."

I nodded slowly, about to dismiss the man. Then I turned my head to the side as I sensed a familiar presence approaching from afar at a rapid pace.

I slowly walked toward the exit of our meeting room, stepping back out beneath the Wall under its dark, dark shadow. I stared up into the cloudy sky, my pupils searching as they darted back and forth along the gray.

And finally, I spotted it. A few miles up, a black blot of ink in that endless gray was approaching quickly.

Am I going to rise to meet you, Sylv? I thought as the massive dragon inched closer and closer.

"That isn't necessary," my draconic bond replied, her emotions coming across with a somber tinge. "We should speak on the ground. I have news from my scouting about the fires and decimated beast hordes along Sapin, and rumors of a rogue hero slaying the corrupted monsters. But Tessia… She's with me. She met up with me on my scouting, and she received the news she was waiting for."

The emotions I felt from my bond were shadowed and mournful, and I felt my heart clench painfully in my chest. I closed my eyes, even as that dark blot became more and more prominent in the sky.

They haven't made any progress on curing the corruption, have they?

Silence was my only answer.

My mind flashed back to Virion's comatose state. The way his skin seemed too hollow and his pulse too low. Those old eyes of his, which had once danced with such light, now were closed for what seemed would be an eternity.

Tess had held out hope that our forays into the Beast Glades and discovery of the crystal contraptions that controlled the monsters would allow us to work toward healing her grandfather, but now…

People finally began to look up toward the sky at the flapping of thunderous wingbeats. Gasps of awe and fear rose as Sylvie plummeted like a comet of darkness, approaching the wall like a comet of unutterable power and majesty. Her dark scales—each the size of my palm—reflected the light as she surged downward like a thunderstorm.

Then she flared her feathered wings wide, a wall of wind erupting around us as people scrabbled for cover. The ground shook as her four powerful limbs hit the ground. People knelt and whispered in awe as she flared her wings, steam misting from her massive maw.

A figure slid from Sylvie's neck, falling to the ground with the grace of a spring breeze. Tess appeared like the perfect Lance with her white uniform and serene eyes, but I could see through it.

Sylvie let the people watch her for a time, each of them basking in awe. She audibly rumbled for a moment, before flashing with yellow light. My bond shifted forms with ease, folding in on herself as she became a young woman.

Those who hadn't knelt before did so now. Behind me, Trodius Flamesworth shuddered as Sylvie's amber eyes passed over him contemptuously.

Tess and Sylv approached me in tandem, my two anchors appearing perfect to the outside eyes. No doubt the morale of all would rise at the presence of an asura and Lance. Their spirits would be bolstered even further in the wake of my show of gunpowder.

But I could see the tense anxiety in Tess' shoulders. I could feel the sorrow in my bond's emotions.

Trodius Flamesworth slowly knelt as Sylvie and Tess approached, cowed by her status as a true asura. Her eyes judged him coolly before returning to me.

"King Arthur," she said, stepping forward as she bowed her head. She stood at my right side. "I have news to report about my scouting."

Trodius exhaled through his teeth where he knelt. Sylv was playing her part well. An asura showing deference to me as leader of the Forces of Dicathen lent me credence and authority.

"Very well," I said impassively, feeling a twinge of interest and worry both. I sent a subtle message to my childhood friend as she withheld her emotions. "Follow me."

My eyes flicked to Trodius as I turned, looking back whence we came. "Consider my earlier words, Lord Flamesworth," I said honestly. "I'll be sure to talk to you again."

I strode back to the earlier meeting room, Tess and Sylv in tow. I took silent reprieve in the absence of King Grey at the edges of my vision as the two of them banished his ghost for the time being. I felt my shoulders unconsciously loosening and my posture becoming more fluid and natural.

When we finally entered the room, I clenched and unclenched my hands. I turned, looking toward Tess first. "Tess, I heard a bit from Sylv. I'm sorr–"

My childhood friend simply hugged me tightly, shutting her eyes. Her slim and pale arms clenched around me in a desperate cry for support.

I returned her hug, pushing away my hesitance as I ran my hands through her gunmetal gray hair. I tried to convey my silent understanding and mirrored sorrow as she buried her face into my shoulder.

Sylv slowly walked over, running a sympathetic arm along Tess' back.

"They still can't do it," she said weakly. "All the emitters… they've made no progress in healing Grandpa at all. Even with the new information we got, they told me that they have no idea if it's even possible."

My childhood friend didn't cry. She'd exhausted all her tears for this war long ago. As a Lance and Princess, she'd grown strong and powerful. But still, I knew this was a devastating blow.

We'd hoped that the new information we'd discovered about the corrupted beasts would help us to heal Virion of the corruption that kept him comatose. Tess in particular had held out hope for the past few weeks of some sort of breakthrough, but it appeared that even the best emitters in Dicathen continued to be stumped.

"There's still a chance, Tess," I said, trying to comfort her as I held her tight. "They haven't been looking at the toxin long. There's always a chance for a breakthrough."

Tess sighed sadly, but didn't respond. Her hands only clenched around my back, her face buried in the hard planes of my chest as she drew strength from my posture.

"I looked at the strain of corruption," Sylv said quietly. "My aetheric path revolves around healing and protection, so I thought I might be able to assist. The corruption reacts negatively to my soulfire arts, but I was able to learn something new. The strain that is infecting Virion Eralith isn't the same as those of the other mana beasts. It's more… concentrated. Controlled. Any nudge of the taint risks doing irreparable damage."

I exhaled, feeling my mood plummet. I'd been hoping for Virion's recovery, too. It wasn't possible for things to revert to the way they were before his collapse. I'd changed too much and centralized too much authority and power around myself for that. But his input and steadying advice would be a true godsend in helping me balance Grey and Arthur.

And Gramps… he'd raised me nearly as much as my own parents. Seeing his scarecrow of a body in the sickroom of Zestier made something in me wither.

"There might be a way," Tess said, pushing away from me and looking up with imploring eyes of turquoise. "A way to heal Grandpa."

Sylv opened her mouth, then closed it as she looked at my childhood friend consideringly. She seemed to catch onto whatever she meant before I did.

"What do you mean, Tess?" I asked, brushing a lock of her hair back into place as she stared up at me with resolution.

"Spellsong," she said with conviction. Conviction that made the blood in my veins freeze. "Toren Daen can heal Grandpa. He did the same for my mana core, cleansing me of corruption. And he healed me again, deep in Zestier with his strange phoenix arts. He can do this."

I worked my jaw, exchanging a complicated look with Sylvie. I let Tess' words sink in, but I immediately knew of their impossibility. "Tess," I said sadly, "Spellsong might have healed you, but he won't heal your grandfather."

She narrowed her eyes, looking at me with a mote of sizzling defiance from where she still nestled in my arms. "He would," Tess asserted instead. "I felt it in his magic, Art. We both know it's possible for him to do so. He's shown that he's on our side, hasn't he? He healed me. He healed you. And he told us about the Legacy and Agrona's plans! He'll absolutely help us if we ask him, won't he?"

I separated from Tess, pushing away as I moved back to the table. I ground my teeth as I let myself think. "He isn't on our side exactly, Tess. He—and Scythe Seris Vritra, too—are against Agrona, of that we can be certain. But that doesn't align them with us." I looked back at her, my gaze solemn. "The Sehz-Clarian front at our southern border still supplants Dicathian influence and sends probing strikes every week. Make no mistake, they still intend to see us conquered."

I recalled the time Gramps had told me of his meeting with Seris Vritra where he negotiated Toren Daen's removal from the active warfront. The disguised and cloaked words of the Scythe implied much of her motivations. Enough for me to truly create a picture of what she intended.

Rebellion against Agrona, most likely. But rebellion from within, not without. That meant she still intended to see Dicathen conquered and brought to heel. That was something I could not allow.

"Then play to what Seris Vritra wants!" Tess said, moving forward and grabbing my arm tightly. "We've been pressing into Viessa Vritra's positions on the eastern front of the Beast Glades, haven't we? And you told me how the two are hostile toward each other. It doesn't need to be under the conditions of total surrender, either!"

"Tessia is right," Sylv finally said, approaching as she laid a hand on the table, too. "The healing of Virion Eralith would still be considered a major act, but not nearly as much now that you are the commander of Dicathen. It's worth a try, Arthur."

I tapped my finger along the hardwood table slowly, Grey's analytical thinking suffusing my mind. But also Arthur's.

"The two fronts of the war push for opposing methods of subjugation," I grunted, staring at a haphazardly drawn map of Dicathen on the messy table in front of me. It wasn't hard to notice the rumors seeded throughout Dicathen of the differences between the two Alacryan fronts, no doubt pressed by Seris Vritra. One a welcoming angel, the other a conniving demon. "They're hostile to each other, even if they're on the same side."

"Play them off each other," Sylvie said quietly, following my train of thought. "Engage with one, while disrupting the other. Fester their cooperation with rot."

"If we want Spellsong to heal Virion, we need to offer something enticing enough to warrant it," I said slowly. I turned my eyes to Tess, whose face lit up with brilliant hope. "Tess, what is your true opinion of Mawar?"

The captured Retainer had been helpful in locating the camps of Alacryans across the Beast Glades. While I'd tortured Uto for information, Tessia had taken to simply… talking to the captive. While Mawar didn't outright say anything damning, my childhood friend had remarkable success in weaving around and through her naivete to extract information that the Retainer didn't even know she'd been giving away.

Tess shifted slightly, her eyes softening. "She is… a girl too young for war," she replied. "She's startlingly naive, though you'd expect her to be more mature for her station."

I chuckled lightly. "Are you sure you're talking about the Retainer?"

Tess scoffed, punching me lightly in the arm. "Shut up, Art," she said quietly. "But she's desperate for recognition from her mother. I don't think she held any true loyalty to Viessa Vritra, but I get the impression that Viessa was possessive of her in a way."

I nodded slowly, a plan already forming in my mind. To play Seris and Viessa Vritra off each other while also extracting what I needed.

"I'll send an envoy of Dicathen to Vildorial soon," I said, tapping my fingers against the table. "Seris Vritra has engaged with treaties and deals with us before, and considering she used Spellsong as a bartering chip last time, it sets a precedent that will compel her slightly to at least hear us out."

And even if this went nowhere and all I received were empty words and false promises, the act of opening negotiations of any sort would slow the assaults from the southern front, giving our troops room to breathe and recuperate. I could use that time to teach them the basics of firearms and weaponry as I focused on the eastern front more directly. And the Lances—whose limiters had finally been removed—would have the chance to grow in strength once more with ease.

This could be the break we needed to finally clear out the Beast Glades and cement our attention on a single front. And once we pressed Seris Vritra and the others from Darv, I could focus more on the battlefield of the sea where we were most disadvantaged.

Tess untensed slightly, looking up at me with strangely cautious eyes. "You'll actually try, Arthur?" she asked, seeming uncertain. "I… I know it isn't the most sound strategic move. I don't want to sound like a little–"

I laid a hand on Tess' shoulder, cutting her off. "It's… okay, Tess," I said quietly. "Sometimes, what we want aligns nicely with what we need. It's okay for you to be a little selfish sometimes."

Tess shifted closer. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I can be a little selfish." She stood on her tippy toes, kissing me suddenly. The act still left me feeling slightly unsure, but this time… This time, I didn't feel the stabbing knives of guilt so deeply.

For once, I allowed myself to kiss Tess back a little bit more. She yelped a bit in surprise as my beard brushed her pale skin. When I pulled back, her ears were drooping in their usual way and a flush was apparent on her cheeks.

She coughed anxiously as I stared down at her warmly. "Well, yes, um… I do have duties. And uh… Things that Lances have to do."

I felt my smile rise a bit more as I stared at the flustered elf. "You're free to act on those, Lance Silverthorn," I said teasingly. "Your king will always let you do as you wish."

Her face burned starkly as she pounded a clenched fist against my chest, but it had no heat in it. "Even if you're a king now, you're still an idiot," she said, before turning around and marching from the room with a posture a bit too mechanical.

I watched her go fondly, feeling my resolutions burn softly in my chest.

"You're figuring it out," Sylv said quietly as she walked closer to me. "How to do this. Be who you want to be, even if you struggle."

"It's not easy," I admitted. King Grey always judged me. Always reminded me of what I could become if I let my anchors go. "But I'm on my way. I'm fighting for it."

That brought my mind to another topic. Taci waited at the castle still, always insistent on another brutalist spar that left half my bones broken. But it wasn't done entirely out of spite any longer. More that the young asura just didn't know anything besides brutality.

But he hadn't been raging anymore. Just quietly arrogant every time he landed a blow.

I'd also need to talk to Ellie again. I'd have to tell her about my secret, so she could understand why I'd become King.

"I do still need to tell you about my scouting mission," Sylv said seriously, the happier atmosphere drifting away. "I know you thought the rumors of a rogue hero attacking the remnant hordes across the countryside to be false, but contrary to your expectations, it appears there is some real truth to those words."

I focused on my bond again as she began to talk, adopting the mantle of Grey again as he was needed. I slotted Arthur away for the time being, but he was still there.

And always would be, so long as I had those I needed to protect.