When Heroes Die

“Three. Look to the mirror to see the face of your own worst enemy. Remember to choose your words with care, no matter who you speak to or where the road takes you. It always hurts more to claim the life of a villain crafted by your own two hands, than to claim the life of a villain forged by another.”

— ‘Two Hundred heroic Axioms’, author unknown

Flicker.

The world blurred, then I was standing somewhere else.

Light spilled out from me and lit up a dim chamber.

The faint smell of wood smoke hit my nostrils first.

The floor was uneven. None of the baked bricks matched in either size or colouration.

Not that I could see much of it.

The chamber was packed with people.

The feeble stone supporting pillars interspersed throughout the room leaned over in a way that I imagined architecture would be designed if the building had been planned by a committee of drunk spiders.

I need to get back. Which string do I tug? I can’t tell where any of them go.

The crowd stood on the floor several steps below. All of them had noticed my arrival and started to turn and stare at me.

Rubble was flying away from my point of arrival in slow motion.

What?

I took a step back and looked at where I had appeared.

I had materialized inside a what would have been a marble statue.

A kraken swallowed my sinking heart.

On top of all of my other problems, did I just deface an important museum piece?

I was moving fast enough that I had the time to judge what the statue would have looked like had I not just shattered it. It would have towered over me, with an intricate, wide brimmed marble dress and a crown adorning the head. I could only see the statue’s back — the carving was faced towards the audience — but I could see enough to judge the skill of the craftsmanship.

It almost looked alive.

I risked a glance over my shoulder.

There was a stone stele. Words were carved into the surface. I couldn’t read what they said, but I took a moment to engrave the general shape of them into my memory. That way, I could hopefully find out where I had been later.

All are free, or none. Ye of this land, suffer no compromise in this.

The eyes of the audience widened in slow motion. Their facial expressions were complicated. Some were apoplectic. Some had tears leaking down their eyes. No two faces looked the same.

I wasn’t surprised.

The atmosphere of the room felt almost frenzied.

Great. Did I just start some major conflict? Was that a statue of a saint, or monarch of theirs? Couldn’t I have arrived anywhere else? Did these people really need my intervention? I didn’t ask for this. Forget it, Taylor. Focus on what matters. Either way, I’m not sticking around. Not my lair, not my dragons.

I didn’t like resorting to using this method of transportation. I’d come up with it through experimentation some time past, but had dismissed it after discovering its limitations. It had so many flaws that made it almost unusable. I could only move myself, for one. I also hadn’t figured out how to transport myself anywhere reliable without using Persevere yet.

It was possible for me to rely on the Angels of Compassion to guide me to where they thought I needed to be. It wasn’t an effective way to travel. Their opinion on the most important place for me to be and my own weren’t entirely aligned. I was not certain how they decided where I should be, but… it wasn’t one that helped me teleport to a targeted location.

Trying to navigate on my own was about as bad.

The strings were starting to fade.

It’s doubtful I’ll find the right thread in time. I have to take the risk.

A ghost vanished.

Flicker.

I was back in the Chamber of Assembly.

It happened so fast, Cordelia mused.

One moment, the Aspirant, and the Saint of Swords had been arguing and less than a heartbeat later both Prince Arnaud and Princess Leonor were missing their heads. Cordelia’s soles had only levitated half her body hight off the ground before Taylor had vanished as well.

The situation had only devolved in the time that had passed since.

Laurence de Montfort had taken two steps and backhanded Prince Manfred Reitzenberg, whose head bounced off his own throne. She then took a step to the left, and the Prince of Lyonis was dead not a moment later.

Gespard, Julienne, Etienne, Ariel.

It is ironic, she thought bitterly, that it is neither Praes nor the Dead King, nor even the Ratlings to the north who prove to be the greatest threat to our nation’s integrity. Instead, it is the heroes that our people hold so dear that are cutting away at the very heart of our institutions.

Cordelia started to climb to her feet. She was a Hasenbach, but had been raised by her mother on the ancestral words of the rulers of Hannoven.

And Yet We Stand.

Cordelia Hasenbach would not face death lying down.

She was too slow.

Before she was even halfway to her feet, the force of nature had turned its attention her way.

The Aspirant appeared between her and Laurence once more. There were several incandescent flashes. Cordelia dared not blink. Laurence took a step to her left. Suddenly she was beside the Prince of Bayeux. Her winkled face was red, splotchy. It appeared that she was truly exerting herself.

One of Taylor’s blasts curved. Laurence dodged, but the attack still took her through the arm.

“The Principate can’t survive another war so soon!” Taylor shouted.

The words were spoken so fast, that Cordelia almost missed them entirely.

“It’s not supposed to,” the Saint of Swords replied.

The Prince of Brus had risen to his feet and was moving towards Cordelia. The rest of the Highest Assembly were heading towards the shattered door. Prince Frederic approached Cordelia at full sprint. Compared to the other two combatants, he appeared not to move at all.

“Consider the cost of this!”

The world shimmered. Translucent golden spheres started to manifest around all the Princes and Princesses. Another flare of Light forced Cordelia to squint. Laurence moved to the side, evading three lances, a cone of Light and a spear from below. Laurence swung her remaining arm. The sphere around the Prince of Bayeux shattered. The man perished not long after.

Space within the Highest Assembly almost appeared to distort. Distances no longer made any sense. Chairs connected to windows and the remains of the rooftop to the floor.

“The price would be cheap even if it were ten times higher.”

Taylor closed in on her opponent even as a spray of blood stained the floor.

Princess Luisa’s body started to fall towards the ground.

The spheres continued to rise. Laurence swung her arm upwards, then started to sprint into the air.

Thousands of individual walls of Light appeared between Laurence and her next target. They did little to slow her down, but the effort of breaking them seemed to sap at her strength. They also unleashed soul rending shrieks when struck by the back of the Regicide’s palm.

Neither of the combatants let up in their efforts. Taylor continued trying to delay the Saint of Swords. She attempted both conflict and diplomacy. The latter continued to ignore the Aspirant, except when she interposed herself in front of Laurence’s victims.

Their arena shifted from the ground to the sky. Cordelia felt the ball around her move as Taylor started to direct the spheres outwards. Cordelia suspected that she was attempting to create as much distance between each of them as possible in an effort to delay the Saint of Swords.

The Princess of Tenerife perished. So too did l’assermentées for Lange and Aequitan.

Taylor is cautious of being struck by Laurence, Cordelia noted.

The Saint of Swords was flagging as the fight dragged on. More of Taylor’s blows landed against her opponent. Laurence had amassed a collection of holes across her broken body.

A particularly unfortunate strike forced Taylor to retreat once again.

The surviving members of the Highest Assembly fell down onto the Chamber of Assembly floor a second time. She landed in a pool of blood and slid to the side. Something snapped. Her nails chipped against the marble floor. A dull throb pulsed through her leg as she rose to her feet.

She bore through the pain, ignored the flakes of snow that were melting into the blue of her dress or the blood that soaked her right flank, and examined what remained of the room.

This is intolerable.

We are better than this.

Less than ten of their number remained. The Chamber which had been constructed by First Prince Clothor Merovins had been ruined. The oak trusses of the rooftop were gone, the chamber floor was cluttered with scorch marks and shattered wreckage. Holes had been bored through the walls.

If I need to live forever to shield the integrity of the Highest Assembly from these idiots, then that is what I will do.

Flicker.

I appeared in a circular chamber that was partially exposed to the elements. An empty cot lay to one side. There were logs stacked into a neat pile in a raised pit in the middle of the room. A strong, bracing, salty breeze struck my nostrils. The ocean was visible far below through narrow gaps in the weathered grey walls. There was a rumble. Dark clouds blotted out the sky overhead.

The wind howled.

The crash of waves against the rocks below sent spray splashing against the walls of the lighthouse.

I don’t have time for whatever this is. I need to return to the Chamber of Assembly. Sorry, whoever you are and whatever problems you might have.

I was about to spend Persevere once more, when out of the corner of my eye something ominous caught my attention.

Peering out as far as I could see — which was far considering how high up I was — sails stretched from one side of the horizon to the other. They were too far away for me to make out any further details.

What is this? An invasion fleet, or is this ordinary sea travel? Do I have time to fly closer and inspect them? See if I can find a flag? Probably not. I’ve already burned through what must have been three seconds, and it already feels like I’ve spent too long here.

The strands continued to fade from my perception. They had gone from shining webs to dim trails of smoke, silhouetted against an evening sky.

I glanced behind me once again.

The fire was not lit.

My eyes rose even further. They rose, then peered through the gap at the opposite end of the tower.

I could barely make out a long bridge that extended towards a harbour on the coast through the oily, dense fog. The city on the other side looked as if it hadn’t even woken up. I doubted it was true, but few roofs extended beyond the blanket of mist.

A small collection of fishing ships was nestled safely within the harbour. Nothing that I would qualify as an ocean worthy vessel.

Foam lathered itself across a rocky shore.

There wasn’t another lighthouse in sight.

There wasn’t even a lit torch to help people navigate closer.

I didn’t have the faintest idea of where I was. Maybe Ashur, or the City of Bought and Sold. There were other locations it could have been, but I dismissed most of them immediately. This place did not have the right style of architecture for Dormer or Praes.

No, I don’t think this is Mercantis. Probably Ashur then.

My attention returned towards the unlit fireplace.

Seconds could count. It doesn’t matter if they are invaders, or friendly fleets. Both the people inside the city and the people at sea need an alert.

I focused, channelled the Light towards the pit.

The logs caught light.

There, that needs to be enough.

The third ghost vanished.

Flicker.

The world became a wash of colours.

I was in the Highest Assembly once again.

All it took was a vote for us to make the floors of our most venerable sanctum into nothing more than a charnel yard.

Frederic Goethal staggered, then righted himself in the brief window as his feet touched the floor.

He spared a glance for his other companions in misfortune.

Cordelia Hasenbach did her best to rise. She had fallen to the ground on his left. She looked proud, regal, even caked in gore.

All pretty things are lies.

Should he head towards the exit? No, Frederic Goethal would not make of himself a hypocrite.

A crown is not a privilege, it is a duty. Were those not the words that you chastised me with once, Cordelia Hasenbach? I did my duty, defending what little remains of our nation after two decades of bloodshed. Now, I venture into the lands well beyond it. With this act, all debts between us are paid in full.

The Prince of Brus started to limp towards her.

He was cautious as he navigated the Assembly floor. He took each step with care. One foot before the next. Pools of blood had spread onto the marble. He knew that were his attention to lapse, he would find himself licking viscera off the cold stone surface.

Frederic Goethal came to a halt. He surveyed the Chamber of Assembly, glancing past the broken shards of a blade and towards whoever remained.

Boots on stone could be heard clamouring in the distance. The guard approached the Chamber of Assembly, not that he believed they would do much good.

His eyes fell upon the Saint of Swords.

With once white robes painted in meaty shades of crimson, Laurence de Montfort looked more monster than woman. She moved towards another prince with unearthly grace.

So few of them remained among the living.

So many of them now numbered among the dead.

Prince Alejandro of Orense let out an anguished wail as the Saint of Swords severed his soul from his corpse.

Mathilda, Cordelia, Clotilde, and I. In the span of mere moments, Laurence de Montfort reduced us from twenty-three down to four. Others lived on only through their absence. Mayhaps, that honourless hero was correct in her assertions, even if the solution she settled upon was without a doubt erroneous.

“Laurence de Montfort, I challenge you to a duel,” he declared.

Frederic Goethal was certain that he would die should she accept the offer, but there is a slim possibility that he could anchor the Chamber of Assembly until the Aspirant returned from wherever it was she had fled to. She might make a mockery of all that Procer was, but she was all that stood between the remnants of the Highest Assembly and the final tug of the noose.

Procer cannot survive another civil war right on the back of the last one.

The Saint of Swords froze, then spun towards him. She was spry for a woman who was down one arm and riddled with holes, but Frederic could read the fatigue in her pallor. Face pale and eyes clouded, he would hazard that the sum of her life had already been spent down to the very last coin.

“Kid, this is a battle, not a duel,” she snorted. “What’s more, neither of us carry blades.”

“We could call for the guard. They are certain to have swords.”

“Are you a fool? You think I’m gonna twiddle my thumbs and wait while I bleed out?”

I’ve been a fool for the full span of my years.

“It would be an honourable way to have my life cut short.”

“There is no honour when fighting Evil. Only bitter tears and bleeding.”

Laurence de Montfort took one step towards him.

“I dream of banners fluttering in the wind,” Frederick whispered softly. “Of men marching north and waging war against the darkness that resides there.”

“Maybe you could have lived if things had played out another way, but the votes were cast. Yours was no exception. All of you need to die for this place to finally be cleaned.”

The distance between them halved.

Frederic’s heart thumped, his fingers twitched. He tried to raise his palms in defence. His reactions were too slow.

The space between them halved once again.

There was a flash, then a blade of Light sprouted through her chest from behind.

Laurence de Montfort gasped.

“Make the best of my sacrifice, kid,” she gurgled.

The weary figure of the Aspirant was visible behind the corpse. She stood stiff with her right hand clenched around a dagger made of light, her left grasping at air, and said nothing. A harsh corona of light spooled out from her.

There was a wild, angry look buried deep within her eyes.

It is not a person that I gaze upon, but a wounded animal that until now had been hidden away deep in its lair. It is prepared to maul us all now that it has been dragged out of the safety of its own home. What does it say about you, Cordelia Hasenbach, that you turned the woman who refused to allow two armies to clash into this angry monster?

“D-d-don’t let them b-build up the same house again over w-what’s left of my corpse.”

Laurence de Montfort’s last words spilled out as barely the faintest of whispers.

Her eyes glazed over, then she fell to the floor.

The Saint of Swords was dead.

The Prince of Brus focused once more on the other terror in the room.

There was a fragility to the Aspirant, despite how intimidating she appeared to be.

“Well?” she addressed Cordelia Hasenbach in a defeated tone. “Have anything else to throw at me? I warned you what would happen. Going to blame me for not being fast enough, or for not saving enough people?”

Frederic Goethal looked back and forth between the First Prince and the Hero. The former was an impassive mask, the latter a face stained with anguished lines.

A face that mirrored the pain he felt.

I dislike the shape of this.

The entire of Procer may fall apart should these two women come to blows.

How can I salvage my home from this wreck?

Am I even able to?

My sense of the strings tying me to other locations at last slipped away.

Laurence de Montfort’s corpse collapsed to the ground in front of me.

She fell more to fatigue than to anything else.

I felt both angry and drained. More drained than ever before. It was as if I was a ball of emotions at the bottom of the ocean, pressed down upon from above.

Killing someone that I’d liked as a person felt so much worse than killing anyone else.

The Chamber of Assembly was a picture of ruin.

Twenty-one corpses littered the floor.

Nineteen princes or their representatives, a horse, and that of my friend.

At least the Master of Orders and the scribes survived.

“The fault for this travesty lies with the Chosen alone,” Cordelia declared from the other side of Frederic Goethal.

Funny wording, that. It can imply that it’s my fault, or that it’s Laurence’s. I just had to kill my friend because you weren’t prepared to put aside your national pride. Already plotting, and their bodies haven’t even cooled. Show some tact, Cordelia.

I glared at her.

Her blue dress was stained red with blood and gore. She tried to affect a regal air.

“F-” Frederick Goethal tried to speak, but I talked over him. His handsome face became flustered at the interruption.

“No,” I disagreed. “It lies with you. You could’ve passed the motion, then rescinded it later. Claimed it was passed under coercion. I wouldn’t have even fought you on it.”

“Your proposed solution is not an acceptable one. Doing as much would weaken the very foundation of the Principate.”

“Then you could have helped me. You were one of the first people I showed it to, Cordelia. It wasn’t as if you didn’t have the time. You could have amended any faults that you found. Instead, you chose to scheme around me.”

That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what you’re doing.

I almost laughed at the realization. She was just another in a long line of untrustworthy schemers, wasn’t she? She might have lofty goals, but when it came to deciding between holding power and helping others, the former would always come first.

“The responsibility for the contents of the proposal you presented towards the Highest Assembly lies squarely at your feet.”

“That’s nice,” I waved my hand at her dismissively. “I’m sure you can come up with many excuses, but everyone present,” I stopped and pointed the glowing blade in my hand at the remaining Princes, “knows the real reason you did nothing. You saw it as an opportunity, a chance to undermine the House of Light.”

“Your argument has ventured into the realm of pure speculation and in the absence of proper evidence has no foundation in reality.”

I read your offhand criticisms of the House of Light written as commentary within your solutions to my problems back in Brus. You’re not fooling anyone with that lie, Cordelia.

“Nobody here believes you.”

“Your proposal to allow the Chosen the right to judge, try, or execute members of the Highest Assembly was turned down only mere moments ago. If you wish to level an accusation against any members of the Highest Assembly, then you may follow the correct procedures.”

“You don’t see people as people, you see them as tools, Cordelia Hasenbach. You took the ideas I brought forward and dismissed any that couldn’t fit your existing vision, then kept all the rest. Then one day the tool showed political aspirations and well, we can’t have that, can we? So you decided to let me sink instead of shoring up the gaps in my idea, never mind the fact that I came to you for help beforehand.”

“I warned you before the motion was presented that none would vote in support of it.”

“And you did little else. You didn’t propose amendments. You didn’t suggest ways to fix it. I went to people with the right skills for help, and none of them were willing to give my ideas the time of day. So I stopped and thought and decided to try anyhow. After all, isn’t it better to try and fail then not try at all? I was even prepared to accept failure, so long as I tried in the first place. No, the reason this played out the way it did is because it was politically convenient to you.”

“For-” Cordelia Hasenbach ignored the Prince of Brus as well.

“You are allowing rampant paranoia to shape your own perceptions. Alienating the House of Light would serve as a poor beginning to my reign as First Prince.”

“Ah, but you weren’t going to alienate us, were you? Simply allow the Aspirant to present a motion before the Highest Assembly that you knew that nobody would accept, then submit your own solution later. Your influence waxes, ours wanes. Then you’ve probably got some other plan to remove our power and claim our lands as well. If Laurence de Montfort hadn’t stuck her blade into the room, then your plot probably would have proceeded as planned.”

That’s not just it, either.

The clanking of metal boots heralded the arrival of the guards outside the chamber. They took one look inside, paled.

“The session has not yet ended,” Cordelia Hasenbach declared, glancing their way. “We are finishing the closing statements.”

The guards withdrew from the room.

“Just because I’m not politically clever doesn’t mean that I’m stupid, Cordelia. I tried to do things your way. I looked up your laws, drafted a proposal, showed it to the people who I thought could offer advice and listened when it was given. There was a lot I probably could’ve done better, I acknowledge as much, but not for a lack of trying. You were one of the first people I showed it to, and you let things play out.”

“It does not take much in the way of political acumen to determine that a proposal allowing Chosen the right to determine high justice undermines legal institutions, grants heroes immunity from accountability and makes a mockery of our culture will fail to pass. Furthermore, the assertion of the inherent righteousness of the Chosen assigns them a degree of moral absolutism which has no foundation in reality.”

“Don’t deflect or change the topic. This isn’t about the contents of the proposal. This is about the fact that it made it this far to begin with.”

“Rampant distrust of your own allies only makes for fair-weather friends.”

“That distrust is earned,” I hissed. “It’s earned because things like this keep happening to me. You don’t need control over everything, Cordelia. You could have argued with me about this in some hidden room and convinced me of some other plan.”

“I am not the one who attempted to set herself up as a reigning monarch over the Principate of Procer.”

“You’re doing exactly that. You do it with proposals, and schemes, and clever manipulations, but you do it all the same.”

“I have not set myself up as a tyrant. All the actions I have taken on behalf of defending the Principate have been through entirely legal means.”

“It is legal to allow the plans made by unskilled politicians that were drafted in an effort to save your own nation to proceed so that you have an excuse to weaken their authority,” I agreed. “It doesn’t make it less of an ugly thing to do.”

“It is your proposal and not your allegations into my motives that we are here to examine.”

“You know, I’m tired of you saying that.” I held up the blade in my hand. “The way I see it, you gave up those rights when this happened,” I argued, gesturing towards the corpses. “This isn’t the Highest Assembly any more, it’s a battlefield. Your pretty rules have long since gone out the hole in the ceiling.”

And between the two of us I have far more experience on a battlefield, Cordelia.

“Your failure to acknowledge our present circumstances does little to bolster the weight of your argument. Even battlefields have rules of engagement.”

“You seized power by marching an army down south and forced people to vote for you.”

“It was a civil war.”

“I’m not even denying that, but if your country’s version of electing a leader is putting whoever has the most capable army in charge of the nation, then you have no grounds to judge me for bringing a motion before the Highest Assembly. Only one of us actually attempted diplomacy.”

“War is what happens when diplomacy fails. My armies adhered to all Proceran terms of engagement, and it was the Chosen — not the princes — who violated the sanctity of the Highest Assembly.”

She keeps bringing up the fact that she sticks to the law, as if that really matters when she’s using the law to hurt people.

“You don’t get it. You can do plenty of evil without ever stepping across the law. Being good means holding to the spirit, not the letter of the law. It means doing what is right because it is right, not just seeing the law as a means to an end.”

“If you hold the law in such contempt, then why did you bring your proposal before us?”

“It was an attempt to fix what is broken. To make the laws better serve the people under them. I’m not saying that all laws are bad. If I was, I wouldn’t have started by trying to fix them. I’m saying that the current system doesn’t work.”

“Was it not you who claimed that I dream of securing a future for my nation?” she raised an eyebrow at me.

Don’t kill her.

It was hard. I was angry. There were so many unnecessary deaths that could have been avoided if she had been willing to work with me instead of against me.

“Twenty people lie dead because you weren’t willing to bend your neck.”

“Forgi-” the Prince of Brus tried to interject once more.

“And all but one of them died performing their duty.”

I glanced at the remaining people in the room. Princess Clotilde looked queasy, Princess Mathilda’s face was an impassive mask.

Nobody else dared to speak.

“Duty. Duty. Duty.” I spat the word out. “Does duty keep you warm at night? Does duty matter more than the many lives that will be lost as a consequence of this?”

“Their lives were forfeit regardless of whether the motion you presented before the Highest Assembly passed or failed. Better that their sacrifice achieved something of worth, than for it to go to waste.”

I let out a strangled laugh.

“Forgive-” The Prince of Brus’s face had started to go red.

“That implies there were only two possible outcomes, which is a lie.”

“The only path on which they lived was the one where Laurence de Montfort chose not to draw her blade.”

“That is because of the flaws of your own culture — which can and should be challenged — not out of any necessity.”

“This disaster should have served as enough of a lesson to convince you of the foolishness of attempting rapid cultural reforms.”

I’m so tired of this. It’s only the presence of the Angels that’s preventing me from killing you.

My shoulders loosened and my anger uncoiled. Out of everyone in the room, why should she have survived? She wasn’t a better person than any of the others, she was only better at playing the same rotten game as them.

Fuck it. I’m tired of keeping this to myself. Bottling in how I feel about people who deserve to be six feet under.

“I am only one short step away from killing you, Cordelia Hasenbach.”

I knew it was the wrong thing to say before I even said it, but at the moment it did make me feel better. I needed everything I could latch onto to help me keep my restraint, even if it looked bad on the formal record.

Frederic Goethal blanched of colour.

“Not only would you would prove yourself to be a hypocrite once more — should you choose to do so — but everyone would rise against you.” Cordelia warned.

I doubt that, Cordelia. I doubt that very much.

Her face was an impassive mask.

“Procer is a nation of morally bankrupt schemers. You’ve proven multiple times that people mean nothing to you. You do nothing to address emerging threats, rely heavily on political manipulation to the point it eliminates the possibility of uniting as a people, are blind to your own failures and are resistant to change in the face of catastrophe. Even your claim of being a bastion of good is just a thin layer of paint smeared over a steaming pile of manure.” I smiled an ugly smile at Cordelia. “Do you want to know why I have not?”

“You have not because we are the most powerful Good aligned surface nation on Calernia and you cannot afford to alienate us,” she replied.

“You’re wrong. I haven’t, because it’s the right thing to do. I haven’t, because there are Angels reminding me that we can do better than this. I haven’t, despite the fact that there is a story from my old home that tells the tale of two villains — a snake and a spider — feuding with each other. The snake has a pet prophet,” I looked at Cordelia meaningfully, “but the spider still wins at the end.”

“It should have been evident from my frank dismissal of your initial proposal that the matter should have been tabled and another should have been recruited to further your political ambitions.”

“Maybe you’re right. Perhaps I should have.”

“Then why did you bring this disaster of a proposal into the Highest Assembly?”

“The only people who were willing to work with me were the ones under my command. Many of them just don’t offer advice that challenges my perspective, or the advice they offer me is bad. They’ll try to make my idea work, not offer alternatives. That leaves us here. With me being told that my solution isn’t good enough, but no counterproposal being suggested.”

“It would be wiser for you to leave a system that you do not understand alone, than make changes to it while blind to the consequences.”

“I’d rather try and fail, then leave things as they are. All of you are willing to just let things fall apart. You look around at your nation and go, ‘well, it’s always been that way, so best we don’t change anything.’ Not me. I’ve quite literally lived through the apocalypse before, and I’m not about to start letting one happen again.”

“The many proposals that I drafted for your own review — some of which have already been submitted to the Highest Assembly — stand in stark opposition to your accusations of stasis.”

“I thought as much as first, but I’d bet the only proposals you have passed are those that help you consolidate your own hold on power.”

“I passed a motion to curtail Praesi efforts to undermine our economy through the use of third party funding, as well as a ban on trade of certain goods with Callow. Neither of which have increased my popularity with the other nobles or have anything to do with my own political position, and instead help stabilize Procer itself.”

“But the idea of holding the nobility accountable is repugnant to you.”

“The idea of one day having to appeal to a child without any political schooling when determining how to govern this nation is repugnant to all of us. Systems take time to change and should not bend to your whims merely because you were handed down power from the Gods.”

“You don’t get it, do you? Even the idea of doing good is foreign to you.”

“To be good is to uphold one's duties and responsibilities, to not flinch in the face of the enemy, to stand in defence of one’s people when Evil encroaches on the borders.”

“All you’ve done is proven my point. People no longer matter when you define good that way, only outcomes do. We aren’t tools to be used, Cordelia. Our value isn’t determined by what we can do for you, or how much you can trade us in for.”

“You are blind to what a nation is. You ignore our collective identity in favour of pursuing this idiocy.”

Red mist rose in the corners of my eyes.

Why can’t she see that the collective identity of the Principate is poison?

“Better that the nation dies than the people do.”

Cordelia raised her bloodied palm and pointed her index finger towards me.

I felt something then. The brush of an ephemeral presence, almost. The imagined sound of dark laughter echoing throughout the shattered room. The illusory touch of a knife sliding down the back of my neck. The last gurgle of corpse, before their final breath runs out.

Why doesn’t this surprise me, Cordelia? This seems fitting, doesn’t it? You, a villain, after everything else. Just like all the other nobles cowed beneath your boot.

“FORGIVE ME FOR INTERRUPTING!” Frederic Goethal shouted out, his cheeks red and flustered.

Both of us turned and looked at him.

My attention returned to Cordelia once more.

The shadow flickered, then faded away.

Did she just… refuse the Name?

“I only need one lifetime to ensure that this folly never sees the light of day,” she declared, her chin raised defiantly.

I blinked.

Only if you live long enough to do that, Cordelia.

I’m not convinced that you deserve to.