Herald Of Ruin (2)

Azadine loosed an arrow at Aldis and moved on reflex.

His body moved before his heart did.

‘My light, my star, my everything.’

Even if he knew that the thing wearing her body was not Aldis, but merely an apostle’s advance scout reading the memories left in that flesh to comprehend this world…

She was still dazzlingly beautiful.

Even so, Azadine unleashed his attacks without hesitation.

Its movements were, indeed, far duller than the real Aldis’s.

An arrow struck Aldis’s chest, and the Azure Executioner hewed off her arm.

Pivoting around her, Azadine swept her legs; both calves were severed below the knees. Yet she did not fall.

If the Azure Executioner cut you, the wound should have gaped wide and bled torrents—but Aldis bled not a single drop.

Instead, black mist spilled from her wounds. The severed limbs were rejoined by that black haze, which held the body together.

“Ahahahaha. Azadine, Azadine.”

The thing possessing Aldis’s corpse crooked a finger.

“Don’t rush. I still need time. I am parsing the memories and knowledge etched into this body; won’t you wait just a little?”

It spoke in Aldis’s voice, but it was surely an apostle. A being of the Nether had taken her body and was trying to understand the living world through her flesh.

An avatar of an apostle. In Aldis’s shape, that apostle had descended into this world.

“Good. So you still need time?”

Azadine drew back and stepped up onto the Quartz Throne.

He meant to feed in the grimoire Arael had given him—the one woven from copies of the Heavenly Kings’ Grimoire—to sever the throne from the Nether’s power.

But an unforeseen interference came then. An arrow flew—not from the avatar—but at Azadine: Hathir had snatched an arrow from the floor and shot it.

For the clan’s leader, it was a feeble shot—likely because Hathir’s body had not fully recovered.

-You shoot at me now? Are you mad?

Azadine meant to snatch the flimsy arrow and jeer—but…

“Ugh.”

His own body was not right either.

His hand slipped catching the arrow, and he landed on his backside. Luckily the arrow had lost much of its force in his grip and failed to pierce his armor.

A Messenger’s arrow normally carried such power that, even now, catching it bare-handed would punch through leather like water-soaked paper. The fact it didn’t meant both Hathir and Azadine were in terrible shape.

“What are you doing, Hathir?!”

“We must leave this apostle to the Hubris folk and their king to handle. If you wish to live, leave, Azadine! Do not use that suspicious grimoire of Arael’s!”

Hathir yearned for more Nether apostles to manifest and slaughter the Hubris people.

He had cut the apostles with Ararat, true—but only as a measure to save himself, not to thwart them.

This man truly wished to loose the apostles, to artificially open the Age of Jupiter, and to see the Hubris populace die.

“You idiot! With someone like you as clan head, of course we ended up like this!”

“Idiot?”

Hathir was genuinely shocked by Azadine’s words.

Among the Messenger Clan—the Aragasa—hierarchy ran deep.

Hathir and Azadine ignored it because they were mortal enemies, but ordinarily, their ranks were so far apart that Azadine should not even have been able to step on Hathir’s shadow.

Besides, Acre was in fact one of Hathir’s offspring.

Time and again, to blend in “divine blood,” Hathir had taken Aragasa women and sired children. Acre was one of those; and Azadine, Acre’s son, was thus to Hathir but a distant descendant.

For someone with such a gulf in status—and who would have been a descendant if born “properly”—to insult him, of course Hathir’s eyes would go red.

Worse, to be called incompetent or dull was the most sensitive insult imaginable to a merit-obsessed Aragasa.

Azadine had been scorned not only as a traitor’s son, but because he was the weakest of the clan—his ineptitude weighed more heavily.

Consider how another of Acre’s children, Arael, was respected—so went their thinking. Hathir was no exception.

Competence and incompetence were the Aragasa’s obsession—and now the clan’s weakest, lowest-born Azadine was calling the clan head incompetent and stupid to his face.

“Right! We trained as Messengers, but you—born the Emperor’s child—were leader from the start! You were never vetted and never properly trained! You’re no field Messenger! That’s why you make blunders that are strategically and tactically foolish!”

Azadine had noticed that Hathir lacked operational training as a Messenger.

Swordplay, martial skill, archery, and magic—these were nobles’ and royals’ “cultured arts.” By contrast, the ability to adapt and execute missions in varied conditions was, strictly speaking, a servant’s skill.

A crown prince learned sword and magic; he had no need to cultivate operational craft.

“You wretch…”

Riled by Azadine’s taunts, Hathir overreached—drawing the bow and casting a spell. Knowing it would not work on Azadine, he still invoked Imperial magic to attack.

He was not doing it out of stupidity. The Emperor’s Lightning was blinding; he meant to rob Azadine’s sight with that glare and rain arrows into the opening.

He was also curious—would Imperial magic still fail now?

The Emperor’s Voice, that artificial spirit, could project his being across all Hubris—but did not ordinarily intervene. Having intervened directly to aid Azadine, it must have paid a heavy price in its own existence.

Perhaps the Emperor’s magic would finally land?

But again the Emperor’s Voice shielded Azadine from it.

Sightless, Azadine was immune to glare; even amidst that blazing radiance he coolly evaded the attacks aimed at him.

“When we agreed to seize the thrones, it was because we wanted to rule the Hubris folk—not to see them dead and the apostles roaming a ruined world! Your madness sparked a revolt and shrank our already-small numbers!”

“Then we’ll shrink the Hubris numbers further!”

“If you kill that many, you will be planting and weaving ropes in a hut with your own hands. Your Highness the Crown Prince will be good at such chores, I’m sure.”

“……”

Hathir knew he was forcing it.

Each of Azadine’s points struck bone.

Because his station was too high—because he always held power—he had forgotten that he needed to persuade from the bottom up. He had rammed through his plan, and this ruin was the result.

“Admit it! The moment Arael rebelled, your plan failed! If not for Aldis and Kazas—who loved you enough to cover for you—it would have ended as the closet prince’s delusion….”

Azadine halted mid-harangue. Saying Kazas and Aldis’s names himself brought a surge up from his gut.

“Why did they… choose you…?”

To Azadine, Hathir was unworthy of love.

He had obeyed only his goal—one near to delusion—and spared no thought for Kazas or Aldis; yet they gladly gave their lives for him, even putting him before Azadine himself.

No matter how much Azadine loved them, to them Hathir weighed more.

“Damn it!”

Azadine finished assembling the bundle of Grimoire copies Arael had given him—the reconfigured magical core.

“No!”

Hathir tried to stop him, but the distance was too great and his arrows were spent.

Shaking off Hathir’s interference, Azadine jammed the grimoire into the Quartz Throne.

The throne began to shine. From quartz once choked with murky miasma, a pure white radiance pushed back the darkness.

“Aaaargh!”

Aldis, become an apostle’s avatar, writhed in agony.

Nor was she alone. The apostles prowling the palace howled in pain; the keening made bellies cramp and eardrums throb.

Azadine could not withstand the shock and dropped to a knee.

The Heavenly Kings’ core Arael had set to the throne was being drawn back in, and the throne’s function returned.

But the Light of the Crown was far too meager. To banish the summoned apostles and purify the world, the light was sorely insufficient.

They said the true king’s sitting would bring a light that defended the world…

‘If I sit now, I’ll be done for.’

The palace, already wrecked by quakes, shuddered and collapsed again. Cracks split the ceiling; the sky showed through.

Azadine had bled too much; his body was in tatters. And by ramming the Grimoire copies into the throne, he had burned through the white mana left inside him—he was utterly spent.

Sit now?

If the throne accepted him, it was a problem; if it rejected him, it was also peril. He had to flee—fast—

Then—

—THUD!—

An arrow buried in Azadine’s right arm.

Strictly, it had been aimed at his heart; he had reflexively caught it with his arm.

Unlike Hathir’s feeble shot, this was a truly powerful Messenger’s arrow.

“Gah!”

Sion Ethar entered the palace with his retainers.

“Azadine!”

And Mediam watched it happen—bound by ropes, helpless, hauled in by handmaids—only to see Azadine drenched in blood.

So much blood? His left arm and right arm were both mangled.

Without Shati’s spell—and the King’s Healing Aldis had laid on him—he would already have died.

“Who would’ve thought things would go this well.”

“……”

Hathir scowled as Sion Ethar and his people entered.

When Hathir had been whole, Sion had been a loyal vassal—a young elder of the Senate, an heir of one of the Five Families, humble and mild, a pleasant child. And, of course, one of Hathir’s descendants.

But the Sion Ethar of now radiated a vicious killing aura.

“Arael? Is she dealt with?”

Hathir had to force himself to keep his dignity addressing Sion.

He himself was in wretched shape. From the fight with Azadine alone he had taken wounds that should have killed him; his mana and vigor were spent—he was little more than a husk—yet he asked sternly.

“Heh.”

Sion Ethar let out a hollow laugh.