Chapter 182
Whispers in Motion
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!! Why are you doing this to ?!! Sylas glanced to the side, a strange expression on his face. It has been a while since the sound of the blood-curling screaming didnt stop his heart for a mont. On the floor of the brick-taped, damp, and barely-lit dungeon, the man who called himself simply M was currently in the process of liberating the Baron from his family jewels. No, no, no, please, please stop! Anything but that, please! Please, please, please...
Ever heard him beg like that before? Sylas asked.
Sowhat, M replied, looking at Sylas with an odd expression. Occasionally, Id hear it coming from the bedroom. Please Mistress do this or dont do that.
Ah. Kinda pegged him for a pegger.
What?
Nothing. Go on.
If you dont say--
Im telling you! I dont know, I really dont! the Baron cried out soulfully. I--theres, theres a secret cabinet in my office. T-theres a mirror there, a copper mirror, and from ti to ti, so, so information appears there.
Who tells you? Sylas quizzed. The word mirror triggered a distant mory from within him.
Tells ? What? No, nobody tells anything! A bunch of letters appear on the mirror! Wait--who are you?! Are--are you... are you the one they warned about?! Could it be the mountainfolk? Sylas wondered inwardly. Hmm, that chick departed with us, but I didnt see her make any strange movents.
What are your orders? Sylas continued to question.
I asked you a question, you mongrel! If you dont--AAAAHHHH!!! Ouch, even Sylas felt the pain--the dagger poked and prodded well enough to shave one off. Oh my God! It hurts, it hurts, oh my God, it hurts--
Answer his question or the other one goes too, M quickly said. He was willing to burn down the entire Barony if need be, let alone torture and kill soone as pathetic as the man in front of him.
Aaah! Ill answer! Ill answer! My--my orders... my orders were to k-k-kill the Prince!
Thats all?
I swear! I swear that is all!
... Sylas turned silent, stroking his chin. The conflict in the Capital is bleeding out, aint it?
It wasnt terribly difficult to see that there were forces at play that were trying to push each other out of the ga. While the Queen carefully positioned pawns to act as effective goal posts for Valens journey, others tried damned and hard to prevent the growth of the southward force.
In truth, Sylas didnt care. He cared neither for those standing in his way, or even those helping along. While the help was welco, he couldnt truly trust any of these people--not like he could trust Ryne or Derrek or Valen, anyway. The more of them there were, the harder it would beco to keep an eye out on them.
Then again, these n were likely positioned here because neither the Queen nor the King perfectly predicted how Sylas would behave. He was likely supposed to depart south before the Cold Snap happened, and likely before the Shadow took root in the village. As such, he would have needed n like Av and M to even stand a remote chance of success.
He alone, however, was enough. He was an unmatched army; unless the King himself and those like him ca out to fight, nobody could stop him. And yet... he found that such a thought terrified him. Even the fact that he could conjure it up, that his brain was so transfixed that it would push it forward... was mortifying.
Perhaps to him the ti had stretched into centuries, but for the rest of the world... it hadnt been that long. Not even a full, proper winter. And yet he went from soone who shivers and shakes at the sight of a ghoul... to sothing thats not quite human. To sothing that can imagine a thought unstoppable army and believe it with every fiber of its being.
What he found the strangest, however, is that... nobody asked any questions. Not Valen. Not Derrek. Not Ryne. It was as though they accepted every change like it was always a part of him. For however much he had suffered, and he suffered plenty, that vast stretch was only his, like the letters of a dream that never was.
For the rest of the world, he stood a forged madman, cold in mind and heart, tempered by the battles that never were. Looking at the Baron and M, and how they looked at him--people whove known him for less than an hour--hed co to realize that... this was who he had beco--and who he was always supposed to be. Just not... this version of himself.
He was always an immortal, both when he would nearly weep at the sight of a sword stabbing flesh, and now. Death, however, he saw differently. He stopped fearing it a long, long ti ago, but its effects began to creep up on him, like the invisible hands of corruption that he never realized were there. No death was free, he realized. Every ti his heart stopped and the land of darkness briefly graced him before he was woken, a part of him was ripped out, transfixed into sothing else.
Ti had morphed him, as ti morphs all things. So days, hed look into the mirror and wonder what he used to look like. Not physically--nothing has changed there. But the look in his eyes--was it always that hollow? Was it always that cold? That inhuman? As though it belonged to a creature that had no stake in this reality and was rely going through its motions? He didnt know.
Strange, for a man immortal, how tender and fallible his mories were. Sighing, he realized that the Baron had passed out--in part due to shock, no doubt, but mostly because he was bleeding out. It wouldnt be long before he dies, though it hardly seed to bother either of the n in the dungeon.
... the Queen. Did you ever et her? Sylas asked abruptly.
The Queen? Uh, no. Never in person, at least. Seen her from afar once or twice, M replied.
What do you make of her?
... not much, he said. Just that few seem capable of standing eye-to-eye with her. And shes hardly tall.
Really? Sylas mumbled. After all this ti, I think I have her figured out.
...
Shes devoted, he continued. Zealously so, it seems. Whether to a man or to a cause... I dont know. Perhaps, to her, theyre one and the sa. The Kingdom and the Gods seem to believe she loathes everything not her own--and yet... I see a poem in it all. Poetry you hardly ever see. Not on such scale, anyway.
... shes a murderer, M said. Its not all that well hidden.
Oh, Im sure she is. Murderer, torturer, betrayer... shes possibly thousands of heinous things, all she could be one: a distraction.
A distraction?
Ive long suspected that there are tongs of fate at play here. Serendipity and cosmic coincidence are well and good, but the machinations of this scale? Nah. They dont occur without a hand of god behind them. Like most, I figured the King was forced to banish the poor ol Prince to keep the boy safe, at least. Far off in the winds of the north, but alive.
Wasnt he? M quizzed, seeming genuinely curious.
No, Sylas replied. The day Valen left for north marked the beginning of this story.
What story?
His ascension. Everything is prepared for it--distraught nobles who feel the Queen is in the middle of a power-grab while their King quivers like a coward. All the Princes and Princesses are either dead or corrupt. What used to be a flaccid balance of power is now completely gone. Like a bomb a second away from exploding. And boom. In goes the Prince. A young, forsaken lad who made the pilgrimage from the north, burnin with desire to fix his ho. And, on his journey, he found pawns and knights and bishops and rooks to co along, n and won who, by sheer happenstance, retired in places conveniently en-route.
...
I wish, before all this is over, Ill have a chance to sit down with the woman and talk. More and more, I grow suspicious that she concocted the entire plan. I just... want to see the eyes of soone so convinced of sothing shes willing to sacrifice her na for all of the history.
... if you wish to talk to the Queen, M said after a montary silence. Shes two counties over, currently visiting Viscount Var and his wife.
Hoh? Sylas eyes lit up with deep want. How far away?
Maybe six-seven days with horses? M replied. With little rest.
Will she still be there by the ti we co?
As far as I know. Shes scheduled to be there through the entire Winter Festival.
Winter Festival?
Annual ball that Viscount Var hosts in na of his dead daughter.
... interesting, Sylas mumbled, stroking his chin. She didnt account for us making the journey through the winter, it seems. Im looking forward to seeing her expression.
Uh...
Im as blind to the geography of this place as I am to your attempt to kill .
Khm...
Surely, youll lead the way?
Of course, M replied, smiling hastily. Would you like to rest first, or...?
Rest is for the dead, Sylas replied. Lead the way.
As you wish.
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