Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

It was a dark night, deep, heavy, and still.

And it was on that one, beneath a sky cloaked in silence, that the old dynasty of Herculia came to its end, not with the clash of steel or the roar of loyal men making a final stand, not with the splendor of sacrifice or the desperate dignity of doomed ruleship.

No songs would be sung about bravery. No last speeches would be carved into marble and stone.

Instead, the last true patriarch of the Herculeian royal house stood bound to a weathered pole, wrists chafed raw by ropes, neck cinched with a collar of iron, a length of chain tethering him like a mutt beside a tent he no longer had the right to enter.

A dog beside the fire of his conqueror.

Once, he had been a man of immense presence. Broad of shoulder and commanding in voice, his bearing had filled courts with gravity. His beard, now matted and grey with dust and spit, had once been trimmed in ceremonial oil and woven with golden thread during state parades.

His robes had billowed with imported silk and his rings were once kissed by lords.

Now, he wore only a thin, coarse tunic torn at the shoulder, his royal seal discarded somewhere by his captors during the march to submission.

Perhaps he had once dreamed of dying on a pyre lit by his loyalists, or falling sword in hand on the battlements of his ancestral seat. Perhaps he had imagined his downfall would come in tragedy, not shame.

But shame it was.

And of course, the reward for that was isolation.

There was a time when such treatment of royalty would have drawn sharp gasps and even sharper words from the assembled nobility, both from Herculia and their conquerors in Yarzat.

After all, if a ruler could be leashed like a beast, what protection was there for the lesser blood? What precedent was being written with this man's degradation?

And yet, no protest rose.

The Yarzats lords remained silent, their eyes cool and detached. Many of them had reason enough for scorn; Lechlian had, for years, worked in shadows to lure them away from their prince's cause, promising coin, land, and titles if they would betray their oaths.

They had not forgotten his schemes and the wars that came cause of it.

Now, they merely observed his humiliation with the same interest one might give a disobedient servant finally whipped into obedience.

As for the Herculeian nobles, they had already buried whatever loyalty they might have had.

They had watched as their liege fell to his knees, whimpering before the enemy, pressing his lips to the conqueror's ring with a desperate plea for his life. They had seen it. Heard it. Felt the sting of secondhand disgrace.

And so, none raised their voice. None dared align themselves with such a man, not out of fear of punishment, but out of disgust. Who would defend a creature who had so willingly abandoned the very pride that once made him their sovereign?

And so he was left to rot, alone and bound in rope.

No one wept for him.

No one pitied him.

Thus ended the House of Herculia.

Not with a roar.

But with a whimper, and a chain.

Suddenly, the flap of the tent rustled open once more, just as it had several times before that evening.

Lechlian barely stirred. He had learned not to flinch at every gust of air or the shuffle of bootsteps, assuming it would be another servant bringing food he could barely stomach, dropped at his feet without a word.

But this time, the figure entering was no servant.

This time, it was blood.

"Evening, Father," came a familiar voice, bright and almost jovial, that made Lechlian's skin crawl worse than if he had been burnt.

"A pleasure to see you...alive."

Lechlian didn't need to raise his head to recognize it. He would have known that voice even if his ears had been stuffed with wax and mud.

His youngest. His snake.His biggest curse and failure.

The boy , no, the young man, now, was taller than when last they'd met, half a year ago.

But everything else had changed.

He was more confident, upright, and precise.

And yet, on his lips still rested that boyish grin, wide and toothy, more mocking now than playful. It was that grin, more than the chains or the cold, that twisted the knife in Lechlian's gut.

Thalien held a silver platter with a flourish, the scent of seasoned meat, buttered potatoes, and steamed carrots wafting through the air—cruelly rich to a man who had tasted nothing but broth and grit for days.

"I was generous enough to convince the steward to let me bring you your final supper before the judgment," Thalien said sweetly, kneeling just enough to let the aroma linger close to his father's face. He inhaled deeply and gave a pleased hum. "Mmh... Yarzat cuisine. Surprisingly delicate, really. Turns out they're not just savages in armor; they are good not only in war but also at finding the pleasures of life.

Truly, my kind of people."

He straightened again, paused,

''Want to have a taste?'' He did not wait to receive an answer when he overturned the plate.

The food landed in the dirt with a wet thump.

Following that Thalien stepped forward and ground the heel of his polished boot into the meat.

So much for his dinner

"When I leave," he said, voice still light, "you can either starve or eat from the dirt like the beast you've become. Honestly, I don't care either way."

He crouched then, close enough that his father could see the glint in his eyes.

"Who would've imagined this would be how we'd see each other again?" he said, his lips hanging up in a way that his father had never seen. "Did you? Hm?"

Lechlian's mouth remained shut tight, his teeth clenched like rusted gates. He breathed through his nose, the exhale wheezing through cracked lips. The silence stretched. He did not want to give him the satisfaction of an answer

"I certainly didn't," Thalien continued, undeterred. "And yet, look at us! Lechlian, Prince of Herculia, the boar of the highlands... bound like a thief, stinking and speechless."

He stood and spread his arms mockingly while covering his nose with his index and thumb.

"And me , clean, respected, well-fed, standing beneath banners not of my birth, but of my choosing."

A bitter laugh croaked up from Lechlian's throat, dry and hoarse.

"'Respected,' you say," he rasped at last. "Respected by who? That low-born butcher you now call liege? What do you think he sees when he looks at you, boy? Not a man. Not an heir. A tool. A turncoat to his own blood.''

"Air, air, air, air," Thalien said, each word punctuated with a lazy shake of his head, his gaze drifting as if chasing the sound. "All that comes out of your mouth is air. Still—" his grin widened, "—these truly are my kind of people. It was a mistake for me to have been born from your loins..."

Lechlian's eyes narrowed; he hated seeing the turncloak gloat in glee. "You think a man like that gives loyalty to traitors? The moment you lose your usefulness, you'll be cast aside, tossed into the gutter like the filth you've chosen to become."

Thalien's smile faltered, thinning at the edges… but it did not disappear.

"Oh, dear dada," he said softly, "always so proud. Even when sitting in filth, half-starved, stinking of piss, you still talk like a prince. Still trying to command me, as if you're not the one in chains.

You may call me a snake and yourself a lion, though I would oppose the second.

The difference is , that I can slither away wherever and whenever I want, can you even shift your weight not to soil your pants while taking a piss"

He took a step back and dusted his hands as if to rid himself of Lechlian's presence.

"Perhaps you're right," he added, tone turning casual. "Maybe I will be discarded someday. But I'll tell you what, when that day comes, I'll have lived free. I'll have built something from my own merit, not the crumbling name of a fallen house. You, on the other hand... you'll rot as you are now, with nothing."

Thalien paced slowly, deliberately, like a man savoring each step of his victory.

"Well, normally," he said lightly, hands clasped behind his back, "I would just point to your current situation.

How you're bound to a pole like a mad dog while I, well... am not." He smiled, but only for a moment. "But I think I'll take the higher road. Words will do, as some are more sharp than steel."

He came to a stop directly before his father and dropped his voice to a murmur

"It was I who surrendered your capital—yes, even when we still had food, still had walls, still had steel.

We could have held out longer, but I sure as fucking hell made sure we didn't. I felt more pleasure seeing the Falcon of Yarzat fly above the court than any fucking woman I laid with.

But that was not enough, I wanted more.

And once I was welcomed into Prince Alpheo's confidence…" His smile vanished. The air seemed to harden with him. "I used every breath, every waking hour, to make sure you would lose."

He began to circle his father like a vulture with the carcass of a lion.

"I was the one who gave Alpheo the plans to peel away your lords. I whispered names, secrets, fears. I knew who'd break with a threat and who with gold. I convinced your other son—your proud one, the diligent one, your heir—to abandon you. To....'' he had a long pause as if savoring the words he would next utter ''.... open the gates of the castle with his own hands."

He stopped behind Lechlian and leaned forward, voice coiling like a knife sliding into flesh.

"I was the one who told him to take the crown from your bald, trembling skull and place it on one more worthy. You should've seen him. How steady his hands were. How quiet. How beautiful it all was, when all pieces came together.

I am trembling with pleasure at the thought alone."

Thalien stepped around again to face him, watching his father's expression twist—shock, fury, disbelief bleeding into one another. He savored it. It was finer than wine, finer than any feast, finer than any pleasure he had to bed men and women.

"I begged Alpheo to let me witness that moment," Thalien went on, voice soft with mock reverence. "To see the crowning jewel of my work. And do you know what? He let me. I stood in the chamber, Father. I stood and watched them place that circlet on a brow of steel while yours wept in the dirt."

He closed his eyes and smiled to himself as though reliving a memory too perfect for words.

"How blessed I am to have lived to see it. How blessed to have the mind to shape it. And how blessed to have found a man who recognized that I was not just the runt of your litter... but the only one worth anything.

It was me all along, Father.

You will die a pathetic death with the knowledge that your downfall was through the hands of your rat."

He opened his eyes and spread his arms.

"But now, here we are. I, unchained, walking free like a hawk in the open sky. And you…" he gestured lazily to the chains and the filth, "a dog waiting for the butcher's knife."

For a long moment, there was silence.

Then Lechlian spat to the ground at his son's feet.

His voice came low and raspy, but there was venom enough to make it cut.

"What would your mother think of what you've become?"

That stopped Thalien cold.

The glint in his eye faltered. His gaze dropped. For the first time, the mocking certainty seemed to waver.

"My mother..." he said, voice quieter.

There was a long pause.

"My mother," he repeated as if to steel himself , "was a fucking whore."