The War Room

"Pardon me, Sir Foster, your breakfast. Madam Regina, would you like a refill?" The hero looked over to see the Bartender carrying a tray of breakfast tarts, along with a plate of lesser phoenix eggs over easy, wild boar sausage, and some buttered rye toast. A teapot and cup trailed behind him, carried on a phantom breeze, and drifted to rest on the table as he set down the tray. A bottle of wine appeared in his hand as he offered to refill her glass.

"No, thank you Giz'limiir. I'll just have a cup of what Foster's having before he gives me shit for getting drunk so early in the morning." She smiled at the half-demon bartender as she flawlessly pronounced his exotic name. Most of the staff here were non-humans. The Ether kingdom was highly prejudiced against all species other than humans and angels—so much so that they barely qualified as citizens and were often enslaved. Public hate for demons and half-demons was particularly bad as of late, thanks to the war.

Giz'limiir, being a half-demon (or, more specifically, a half-devil, a sub-species of demons), had red-tinted skin. It was subtle, considering he had some human in him—the color of his skin more like that of a bad sunburn rather than the bright crimson full-blooded devils were known for. There were black nubs on his forehead where a devil's horns would be, and he had the typical serrated, elongated canines of the devils.

Like thin, elongated shark teeth, those incisors poked out of his mouth as he smiled at Regina. He then willed the enchantments of the room to make another teacup appear on the table and filled it alongside Fosters. Leaving the teapot, he bowed again and returned to the bar to polish the crystal glasses once more—spade-tipped tail swaying like a cat's as he went.

Foster grabbed his plate and pulled it to his lap. He loaded a sausage and an egg onto a slice of toast, then took a bite out of it like an open-faced sandwich, groaning in pleasure as the first bite of high-quality food since his departure hit his tongue. The golden, runny yoke spilled over his hand and onto the plate.

Still chewing, he responded to Regina, "Aye don' fink unor ish ash ded ash ou wan oh buhwive."

"Ugh, you are disgusting. Finish chewing, you pig." Her scowl was back and that one vein on her forehead was throbbing in displeasure.

He swallowed his food and continued, "I said, 'I don't think honor is as dead as you want to believe.'" Foster took a sip of tea and continued, "You're just used to seeing the worst of humanity because you actively seek it out within the church. If honor and integrity were truly gone from the world, then how could we have possibly built this place?" He gestured to the room around them. She had played a considerable part in the success of the War Room. Zyph and spirits, this place was her idea, to begin with. A place with no titles and no expectations. A place for the weary to rest their heads, a home for friends, and a base of operations for the ambitious. This place had its own code, adhered to by both the staff and the members unwaveringly to preserve what little goodness they all had left in them. This place existed because there were still just and honorable people—not despite the lack of them.

She gave him an uncomfortable look. She clearly knew he was right on some level, but she didn't seem ready to put her hopes back into the hearts of man. She settled for a change of topic. "So, Mr. Hero, what are you doing here? How close did you get to the Demon Lord this time?"

"I have plans to meet up with Monica after morning court is over. We finally got the bastard this time around. I actually just came from throwing his head at the king's feet." Even Foster wasn't so calloused towards life that he'd disrespect the average corpse by beheading it and presenting it as a trophy, but the late demon lord was no average corpse. The Ether Kingdom was a mixed regime, an oligarchy that a monarch, the Ether royal family, spearheaded. The Demon Lord's Domain was a fascist meritocracy with high social mobility—the more intelligent and skilled in magic an individual was, the higher that person could rise. It wasn't that bad a system in Foster's eyes, but it had one glaring flaw—there were no power checks. Sebastian Ether straddled the line between tyranny and benevolence, and the various factions at work within the kingdom's politics kept him from staying too far from either side, regardless of his wishes. Had there been no power checks, Foster almost definitely would have gotten an execution order for his initial request back in the throne room. However, that did not happen—that could not happen because Foster was the hero, a non-hereditary noble title equivalent in rank to a duke, and had just accomplished what was, at least publicly, the goal of the current administration. Executing the hero for treason would completely destroy that facade, making the people furious and the nobles panic. In other words, it would've caused a civil war. The Demon Lord's Domain was not like that—the demons obeyed power absolutely. The former demon lord was incredibly powerful for a young immortal, approaching a level of power near Foster himself. Foster felt the urgency to kill the demon lord precisely because of his alarming growth rate, though his pride would never allow him to admit that. Regardless, the system of governance there allowed a powerful man who was possessed by greed to overreach and threaten the lives of the entire continent.

"You did what?!" she spat her tea all over him before she yelled, grinning ear to ear. The church's power struggle practically hinged on how soon the Demon Lord could be killed. Foster wasn't as invested in church politics as Regina was. Still, as far as he could tell, the pope was clinging to power by prolonging the conflict and amassing wealth, asking for local donations in rural cities and towns in exchange for the protection of a Holy Knight. Around the time of the First Queen's death, the pope convinced the king to pull his troops from the crusade until the conflict reached Ether's borders. He claimed 'helping the barbaric Lycanthropic tribes would be no better than siding with the demons' and ordered the return of what little Holy Knights he had dispatched to the front lines. At the time, Regina was young and had no power in the church, leaving her with no say in the matter. Before everything went to the nine hells, the original six founders of the War Room led the war against the Demon Lord publicly from different angles, with the hero—Foster himself—at the center of it all.

But the Queen died, and everything changed. The king showed his true colors and threw his support behind the corrupt ways of the pope. The Demon Lord was no longer anyone's problem—anyone except for the hero. Foster was to carry out several clandestine operations, with his Black Griffon Knight order, into Demon Lord territory to take his head behind the eyes of the public. The reasons for this were quite simple—the king hated how much Foster, a former slave, influenced the palace and hated how Foster's mere presence undermined Sebastian's authority. This morning wasn't the first time Foster had implied the king was unfit for the throne—it was just the first time he'd said it directly to his face in a room full of people.

Foster grimaced. Regina looked like she was about to jump up and kiss him, but something about the look on Foster's face froze her in place. "I thought you said it would take you at least another few years to get through the castle's defenses. How did you manage it?"

Regina really was too sharp for her own good sometimes, "I was really hoping you wouldn't ask that," Foster took his time collecting his thoughts and took a few more bites of food. "It was never a question of me getting through the castle defenses—it was about getting the Black Griffons in with minimal casualties. I've been so tired—so Zyph-damned tired of pointless trek after pointless trek into Demon Lord territory without doing anything other than killing some grunts.

"I finally snapped. I told Aurora to keep the Knightage hidden outside the castle while I went in and finished the job. I was so confident I'd made the right choice in just ending it, and boy, we paid the price for it. While I was toying with the Demon Lord, he had sent three Elder Demons after the knights outside. They killed forty-six of the most powerful knights in the kingdom before Aurora managed to cut them all down. My Black Griffons are—were trained to withstand cursed speech. But only someone with a Zyph body can completely resist it from three powerful elder demons. I walked out the front gate, drunk on my victory, just in time to see Aurora in her Zyph body as she cut the last one in half from twenty yards away with a void blade. I couldn't even attempt a resurrection ritual with nothing but ashes left of most of their souls. Only Aurora made it out relatively unscathed, but the other two survivors—Darren and Greenway—have permanent damage to their souls and will likely never cast a spell again." Foster clenched his teeth. Why had he shared that with her? He hadn't told anyone that, not even Monica. 

Regina seemed to fight to find the right words for almost a full minute, her hard eyes pinning him to the chair. Suddenly, she seemed to come to a decision, and she was unyielding, "That is truly unfortunate, Foster. If you are looking for pity, crawl into Monica's bed and tell her your sob story. It is war, Foster. People die. You took too long, and lives were lost. Guess what? How many people would have died if the war raged for another year? What about five? All the razed villages—the raped corpses and burnt bodies of children. Forty-six men and women who lived and died by the sword willingly sacrificed their lives to stop the deaths of thousands. They, and you, saved countless lives in the way a soldier—in the way a hero is meant to. You ended the war."