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Commerce Emperor Chapter 24: Crimes and Punishment
🕑 Added 2023-09-19 07:30:34 +0000 UTCPrevious Chapter
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I inhaled gaseous anger and exhaled fresh air.
My hand reached for the runestones within my purse and seized one filled with wind essence. I raised my weapon and unleashed the power within, allowing a mighty gust to pour out of cracked crystals. My tempest blew Sebastian’s berserk gas away from our troops and onto the Regent’s camp.
I had saved our soldiers from a terrible fate, but Sebastian’s actions spread confusion among the nearby guards. He exploited the opportunity to cut down a man-at-arms with a swift stroke of his sword. The disguised Soraseo lunged at him before he could escape the encirclement, her blade clashing with his. Sebastian fought with desperate fury, his blows a flurry of quick slashes, but Soraseo parried them all. She pushed him back among the men with a quick counterattack.
“Take him alive!” I shouted to the soldiers, my voice drowned out by the noise of blowing horns, desperate shouts, and the thundering steps of the golems. “Maintain formation!”
I was wasting my breath. What Archfrost’s armies lacked in numbers compared to the likes of the Everbright Empire, they made up for in discipline and martial excellence. Two knights quickly grabbed one of Sebastian’s arms and slammed him head-first into the mud. A third swiftly stomped the squire’s hand with his armored feet, forcing him to drop his weapon.
“Break his fingers,” I ordered while drawing my own rapier. Though I disliked it, I proceeded to stab Sebastian in the knees while my soldiers obeyed my order. A muffled scream of pain, surprise, and anger followed, alongside a sickening cracking sound and a fine drizzle of blood feeding the grass below. Sebastian Leclerc wouldn’t run away. In fact, I doubted he would walk straight or wield a weapon ever again. Soraseo watched the scene without a word, her weapon ready to strike at the first sign of a demonic transformation.
We had faced too many foes with unnatural resilience to take risks with this one.
My relief was short-lived. While the enemy soldiers closest to our position had fallen into a murderous frenzy after inhaling the berserk gas, attacking each other as much as our own advancing infantry, the two golems did not slow down in the slightest. Their metal legs trampled their own fortifications. Their greatswords cut down knights to ribbons, and their ballista arms pointed at us.
Or more precisely, at the disguised Soraseo.
She seemed to realize the problem at the same time I did. “I will take care of them,” she said, her voice still sounding like that of Roland. “You take the traitor.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. My heart pounded louder than the drum as I watched her run on foot towards the giant machines, jumping over a trench blade in hand. The closest golem fired an iron projectile before she could hit the ground. Soraseo twisted in midair like a dancer executing a well-rehearsed move, the attack missing by an inch and landing on uneven ground instead.
Normal soldiers would have frozen in shock at such a display of grace. Golems didn’t have enough mental faculties for surprise, let alone admiration. The one closest to Soraseo just swung its sword in a sweeping motion that shattered spikes and men alike. My friend dodged like the wind and retaliated by striking the machine’s heel. She might as well have grazed a stone statue with a butter knife. Her sword grazed the machine’s steel plates without inflicting any visible damage.
I admit that seeing these machines in action filled me with admiration and revulsion in equal measures. Creating a golem was considered the pinnacle of witchcrafting, and more often than not one of its greatest sins. To infuse stone and steel with the will and power to move, a witchcrafter needed more than mere essence. They needed souls. The bigger the golem, the more trapped spirits that were required. I’d heard Irem managed to create automatons without that ghastly requirement at the cost of limited autonomy.
Marika’s husband showed no such concern for ethics. He had been willing to murder his own son after all. Now that the golems had come closer, my essence sight picked up the truth in all of its nauseating details.
Their creator hadn’t just trapped souls inside these machines, no. To ensure they would obey orders, he shackled them with pain, drowned their will in a sea of curses, and wove controlling mechanisms within the joints. I could hear them screaming from here.
Another answered their call for help.
Cortaner, himself more steel than flesh, emerged from the trenches with burning hands and steady determination. He leaped off the ground with speed and agility beguiling his heavy body. I caught a whiff of wind essence surging from his iron boots and carrying him up. He landed on the second golem’s head, the one Soraseo hadn’t engaged yet, his mighty hands grabbing the golem’s helmet. The machine raised its sword to intercept him, but our Inquisitor proved faster. His gauntlets ripped off the golem’s head in a fearsome display of inhuman strength. Gears and iron wires flew in all directions while the head rolled off the metal shoulders and fell onto the ground.
It didn’t stop the machine, no. I suspected the head was more cosmetic than anything. But the display of heroic strength more than inspired our soldiers in the face of danger.
“Archfrost!” Men shouted, from both our camp and that of the enemies. More and more warriors picked up the cry. “Archfrost! Archfrost!”
A war horn echoed and the battlefield took life on all sides. Captains on warhorses barked orders to knights and pikemen. Bowmen fired arrows from the enemy camp and received a volley of crossbow bolts in return. Standard bearers raised their flags, encouraging armed infantrymen and soldiers to advance in good order. Our troops came bolting in behind us, advancing behind walls of shields and pikes. Marika was still in the trenches, building bridges from nothing to help our soldiers storm the enemy camp. The war drums became so close their beats drowned the clatter of bashed shields and clashing weapons. Trumpets answered them, though I couldn’t tell if they were our own or the enemy’s.
I felt ill at ease when I witnessed this tide of blood and metal crash on enemy fortifications. Whereas Soraseo navigated the chaos like a fish in a river, I struggled to keep pace with the actions unfolding before my eyes. It was the Knot of Wrath's attack on Snowdrift all over again, except a hundred times worse. Some men reveled in war and its glories, but I couldn't see anything appealing in this bloody, senseless chaos.
I’m the Merchant, I thought as a hail of ten arrows fell just short of my feet. The enemy archers struggled to aim correctly in the dark. My job is to prevent this kind of disaster, not participate in it.
I'd do my duty as a hero, but the quicker we ended this civil war the better. Letting it start at all felt halfway like a defeat to me.
“That wasn’t Roland,” the captive Sebastian rasped at my side. Two knights held him on his bleeding feet, his broken hands bound behind his back. “The real one wouldn’t keep such a cool head. And you, Lord Robin… I saw you inhale the gas and yet you show no symptoms. Antidote?”
“It took Colmar two nights to invent one and three of mine to fill our soldiers’ drinks with it,” I replied. While I dearly wanted to assist my allies against these creatures, I had another job to fulfill: securing our invaluable prisoner. “Let’s take him off the field and back to the reserve.”
Back to the real Roland.
My escort quickly bound our prisoner’s hands and feet with ropes while I searched him. It didn’t take me long to find a familiar, ghoulish golden coin hidden beneath Sebastian’s breastplate.
“If you were a demon, you would have transformed by now,” I said. It made sense he wasn’t one. Demons were relatively easy for us heroes to detect. “Who gave you this coin? You were under surveillance for days, so how did you get it?”
“You still don’t understand, Lord Robin,” the squire said with a crooked smile. “Nobody gives us the Devil Coins. They find their way to those who need them on their own.”
“It won’t find its way to you again,” I replied before putting the cursed coin in my purse. I climbed back onto Mudkeep’s back and gestured at two knights from my escort. “You, with me. The others will cover us.”
“Since I am still alive, I assume you figured out the truth and mean to interrogate me,” Sebastian said with incredible composure as my soldiers hauled him on Mudkeep’s back like a bag of meat. I had played enough card games to recognize a cheater waiting to reveal the ace up his sleeve. He was convinced we couldn’t hope to keep him for long. “You haven’t answered my query, Lord Robin. When did you start to suspect me?”
I shrugged as I gave my horse a light push. “When your blood test came back as a paternity one.”
I galloped with my escort away from the frontline and towards the Volvoga River. I was no owl, so I struggled to see much of the action in the darkness. From the looks of it, Marika had created a pathway through the enemy fortifications which led directly into their camp. Our cavalry was starting to storm it.
However, both golems continued to rampage through our troops. Soraseo had wisely lured one away from our troops so she could handle it without risking anyone else dying in the crossfire. The second one had tossed Cortaner against wooden spikes, shattering the latter, and then swiftly moving on towards Marika’s breach. Neither our heavy lancers’ spears nor crossbow bolts dented its steely armor.
Did Marika’s husband put a directive in his creations’ heads to target his ex-wife? I could only pray Marika could hold on. She was talented and heavily protected, but these giants of steel packed as much power as demons.
Against my better judgment, I intended to return as soon as I delivered Sebastian into safe hands. I would summon siege engines within firing range of the camp. A good catapult shot might prove powerful enough to take down the golems.
“Paternity?” Sebastian’s smile faded away. “Ah, I see how it is. She took more from her mother, but she has my eyes. They all have my eyes.”
“I had Colmar compare your blood to that of Alaire, expecting you to be half-siblings. So imagine my surprise when the test identified you as her father instead.” I looked over my shoulder and glared at my captive. “You look pretty young for someone way over thirty, Sebastian Leclerc.”
“Thirty?” The number seemed to amuse him again. “Oh, Lord Robin, I’m older than this country.”
Which made the fact he had been developing a relationship with Roland since the latter was a teenager all the more repugnant. I feared what my friend’s reaction to the truth would be, but he deserved to know. He needed to see it with his own eyes.
“If you are so old, then I assume that Minister Leclerc is just another of your bastards? A decoy meant to attract suspicion while you act unnoticed?” I asked without receiving an answer. “What I cannot confirm yet is how you managed to craft this disguise of youth. My power cannot grant back lost years.”
“Surely someone as cunning as you must have considered other alternatives,” my captive replied. “One cannot regain time lost, but one can trade a face, a body, youth… If you look sixteen, does it matter how old you are on the inside?”
“What matters is that you’ve lost,” I replied as we galloped past knights moving in the other direction. The battle was moving away behind us, yet I smelled a foul stench of blood and rot coming from the river. What was the meaning of this?
“Lost?” Sebastian stifled a laugh. “Were you not a gambler once? Don’t you know the proverb? ‘It matters not who plays. The house always wins.’ It does not matter to us who wins this battle, so long as it happens.”
“No massacre will happen today,” I countered. “Your troops will be routed and reinforcements will return home.”
My prisoner chuckled. “Don’t you feel it in the air?”
I clenched my teeth. I did feel it, yes. The hatred. The invisible, corrupted essence choking the air. The same feeling of unease and filth that filled the Gilded Wolf’s arena right before it erupted into a Blight. I felt it in the air, in the smell of blood, in the smoke rising from the warfires.
“The land of Archfrost is soaked with innocent blood,” Sebastian gloated. “The wars and plagues have filled the graves. The wind carries howls of hatred. The very ground bears stirring curses. The Berserk Flame burns with malice, heralding its master’s return.”
So many tragedies had befallen Archfrost over the last century, and Belgoroth had regained enough strength that the slightest act of slaughter was enough to trigger a Blight.
Moreover, I heard the sound of clanging weapons coming from the river. The flow of soldiers was meant to travel only one way, with the reserve forces crossing Marika’s bridge to join the vanguard and the host’s core on the other shore. Yet I heard fighting coming from the Volgova River.
That’s impossible, I thought as we approached the riverbank. The enemy reinforcements are days away and our scouts would have noticed skirmishers.
Then I heard croaks. Frog croaks louder than drums.
Beastmen.
The Volgova River came into sight at last under the moonlight. A crescent of Archfrostian pikemen had formed on the riverbank, an impenetrable hedgehog of spears facing the water. Archers and bowmen had taken position on the other bank, firing arrows into the water and the creatures rising from the Volgova.
I had heard of the Waterkin, the beastmen of rivers and shallow waters, but it was my first time seeing them in action. Bulbous eyes glared from atop toad-like heads emerging to the surface. Sores and warts covered green skin thick enough to stop most arrows. A few of them wore turtle shells and crude armor made of reptilian hides, but all of them carried iron swords, clubs, and other weapons. They were smaller than men, four to five feet tall at best. What they lacked in height, they made up for in bulk. Strong muscular hind legs let them jump out of the water in a flash and crash into my allies’ defenses, their long sticky tongues slithering out of their mouth whenever a spike impaled them through the chest. They croaked and charged without any formation whatsoever, trusting surprise and ferocity to carry the day.
They weren’t alone either. Marika’s bridge had collapsed to pieces, leaving the bulk of our reserve force on the other side of the river and hundreds of our troops were drowning in the river with their horses. They must have been crossing the bridge when the Waterkin pulled it under. The luckiest among them struggled to reach the safety of the shores. The others were dragged to a watery grave by the frogs.
Two knights dueled among its remains and floating corpses, dancing and slashing and thrusting. The first was Roland, who was still wearing Soraseo’s armor. He somehow ran on the water—on the water—so fast that he didn’t sink below the surface, his feet sending splashes and waves rippling whenever he took a step. He had traded Soraseo’s sword for a spear cackling with lightning essence and red with beastkin blood.
The other knight was a monster as tall as the golems, a demon exuding a menacing aura. The creature superficially resembled something humanoid clad in tarnished black armor covered in iron barbs, with a baleful burning sword in its right hand and a flail in its left. Its metal boots walked on the water's surface, but unlike Roland they didn’t make a splash when they moved; in fact, they didn’t disturb the water at all. The monster would have seemed almost banal besides its size, if it still had a head between its shoulders; instead of resting on its neck, the oversized human head remained attached to the flail, screaming and cursing whenever it missed Roland.
I immediately recognized the face as Baron Dolganov’s, Ser Hudgan’s father.
The man had sold his soul and become a demon.
I thought he would command the camp, but I guessed beastmen needed hands-on coordination. The Volgova River was usually devoid of them, since the Archfrostians killed them on sight, so this tribe probably traveled all the way from the far north. No way they would fight under a normal human’s command.
I was quickly considering my options when I felt the weight of Dolganov’s malice aimed at me. He had sensed my presence somehow and swiftly abandoned his duel with Roland to rush in my direction. His feet crossed the river without disturbing the water, and arrows from our soldiers harmlessly bounced off his armor. Roland immediately chased after him while swiftly cutting down any beastman trying to drag him into the water.
“Curses, he’s coming at us!” I shouted to my soldiers while drawing my sword for battle. “Prepare for impact–”
I heard a dreadful noise behind me. I looked over my shoulder and found crooked fingers pointing at me, all of them wreathed in corrupted essence.
One of the knights escorting me acted quicker. His hand dragged Sebastian off my horse and threw him to the ground. A burst of sick purple energy erupted from the squire’s hands and surged into the sky rather than striking me in the back. Sebastian’s face aged up visibly, his mask of youth cracking to reveal wrinkles underneath. He was drawing power from his own soul and lifeforce.
Had he been waiting for me to get away from the other heroes to attack? Or did he seize his chance to escape upon seeing his demonic ally? Whatever the case, the distraction allowed Delganov to reach the shore before we could mobilize. The demon swung his flail at the pikeman wall, his oversized head driving a wedge across our troops. A dozen went down and screaming beastmen soon rushed into the opening. Dolganov went bursting into the gap, charging straight at me.
It was a miracle that Mudkeep didn’t throw me off her back in fear. I held on to her reins with one hand and raised my rapier in the other. A beastman reached me first with a scream and a spiked club. I pierced its eye and impaled his skull, killing it in one blow.
At this point, the whole situation devolved into a melee. Our soldiers’ formation collapsed under the weight of Dolganov’s charge, the men were forced to drop their pikes and switch to short swords in order to fight the beastmen in close combat. My escort’s warhorses charged and trampled our foes before they could reach me. I tried not to lose sight of Sebastian, who was trying to rot away his bindings with his youth-draining spell. I spurred my horse to go after him, narrowly avoiding a spear thrown at me from the left. I thrust my rapier into another beastman’s head and put another down with a sweeping down-cut, all while closing in on Sebastian.
But then Dolganov’s flail hit the ground between my quarry and me.
Dirt and grass went flying everywhere around us. Mudkeep was a well-trained horse, but still just a horse. She threw me off her back in her fear and surprise. Were it not for the surge of power and agility coming from my mark, I might have broken my neck upon hitting the ground. Instead, I managed to land on my feet like a cat, facing a fifteen-foot tall demon with my horse running away in panic.
“Waybright,” Delganov’s severed head said, his lips moving without any neck or associated muscles. The giant he had become stepped in front of Sebastian, not to protect him, but to irk me. “I have been looking for you. I thought you would stay at the rear like the coward you are.”
“If you didn’t have your head in the clouds, you would have seen me lead from the front,” I replied, wielding my rapier with one hand and grabbing runestones with the other. A taunt should distract him. “How’s your son?”
“Crawling into a hole somewhere, I suppose. You’ve turned him into a spineless freak unfit to be anything more than a squire.” The demon knight raised his blazing sword. “Your blood will wash away the humilia–”
I threw a volley of runestones at Dolganov before he could finish. They exploded against his armor in a deafening blast of yellow flames and burning anger. The headless knight stumbled back and nearly collapsed onto his ally, his breastplate’s metal melting under the heat.
What extreme irony. Those pebbles contained the berserk magic Marika and I spent nights purging from Snowdrift.
Exploiting his brief lack of focus, I charged between Dolganov’s legs and went after Sebastian. Unfortunately, the false squire had managed to free himself from his bonds by now. Crippled though he might be, he still managed to raise his hand at me and fire a black orb of darkness in my direction.
I was forced to dodge by leaping to the side, which gave Dolganov just enough time to recover his bearings. He vertically swung his head-flail with a roar of fury. I dived to the ground, the chain missing me by an inch, the giant head splattering beastmen and humans into fine paste. I heard thunder and dying croaks in the distance as Roland fought his way through the melee.
The demon followed up by lowering his sword at me. I rolled on the grass and mud to avoid the falling wave of steel and fire. I managed to stab the demon’s metal heel with my essence-strengthened rapier as I bolted back to my feet. My weapon proved no more effective than a needle.
“Lord Robin!” a knight shouted my name. My two escorts showed more bravery than sense and charged at Dolganov on horseback, hoping to flank him. Sebastian blasted one with an orb of shadow, killing the horse and causing the beast to collapse under its rider. The other knight smashed a spear into the demon’s leg. The sheer momentum of his horse’s charge let his weapon punch through Dolganov’s armor, the shaft going all the way through the knee. The headless knight nearly stumbled and backhanded his attacker with enough strength to tear him in half.
A thunderbolt then hit the demon in the chest and brought him down to earth.
Roland had thrown his lightning spear across the battlefield like a javelin and aimed straight at Dolganov’s heart; if he had any. The weapon erupted with a surge of electricity on impact and steel rang to steel. A bright flash illuminated the night.
Dolganov’s massive body collapsed to the side with terrible noise. Shattered pieces of his breastplate fell away from him and left a smoking hole in his chest.
“Are you well, my friend?” Roland asked me upon rushing to my side, breaking character and revealing his true identity. “What is the situation on the front–”
He noticed Sebastian before I could answer.
The squire had gained twenty years since I carried him away from the enemy camp. His black hair had grayed slightly and wrinkles had formed on his pallid skin. Yet his identity remained unmistakable. Roland’s eyes widened behind his helmet as he recognized his squire.
So did Sebastian, for he fired a shadowy orb at his liege.
Roland could have easily dodged had anyone else tried to attack him. As it was, he simply froze in shock and disbelief. I barely managed to yank him out of the projectile’s way at the last second, the orb flying backward into the bloody night. Roland’s eyes went wide. His mind clearly struggled to process the attempt on his life.
At this point, our soldiers had reformed a line to contain the beastmen along the river. Dolganov was down on the shore, with no one standing between Roland, Sebastian, and myself. This part of the battle was as good as won.
Yet… the vile stench of blood in the air only grew thicker. Was a Blight threatening to spawn?
“Was it all a lie?” Roland asked softly, quietly. “From the start?”
Sebastian met his liege’s gaze for a moment, then let out the most heartless of sounds.
A mocking laugh.
“Who could ever hope to love a failure like you, Roland?” Sebastian taunted his prince, his grin cold and vicious. “Except for your throne and class, of which you are both equally unworthy.”
Roland’s hands tightened into fists. My blood ran cold. I hesitated to punch Sebastian into unconsciousness, but part of me knew our prince needed to hear the truth from his squire’s voice to accept it.
“I had to stifle my laugh at each step of this despicable masquerade, and I expect your wife to do the same,” Sebastian continued. “We both hoped for the same thing, to rule Archfrost through you.”
Only Roland’s eyes were visible through Soraseo’s helmet. I saw no suppressed tears, no sorrow. Only emptiness and crushing despair. He prayed that I was wrong, I thought grimly. That at least one person would alleviate his loneliness without ulterior motives.
Betrayal hurt so much because it could only come from those we trust.
“I’m sorry, Roland,” I apologized to him. He didn’t seem to hear me. “You’re better than him.”
“He is a weakling, a spoiled brat sired by an equally incompetent father,” Sebastian replied.
“Shut up,” I replied, taking a step forward to silence him… only to stop when I heard a sound coming from Dolganov.
The demon knight’s hand was stirring.
“A bastard dog so desperate as to spread his ass to the first person willing to give him a shred of affection. But then again…” Sebastian’s smile turned crueler. “You like your weapons big, except the one that matters.”
I turned my head to warn Roland of Dolganov’s survival, only to freeze upon meeting Roland’s gaze. A terrible anger had filled the emptiness. His eyes burned with the same murderous fury as Florence and Belgoroth’s servants.
“Your sword, Robin,” the prince ordered with a calm, steady voice. "Give me your sword."
I didn’t comply. Instead, I stood in his way. “Roland, we need him alive–”
Roland shoved me aside so violently that my metal breastplate bent slightly under the pressure of his monstrous strength. I fell to my back while Roland stepped forward towards Sebastian; only stopping to pick up a half-broken spear lying on the ground. Sebastian raised his broken hand, once again channeling darkness through it.
“You killed her,” Roland said coldly.
I watched as the essence in Sebastian’s hand fizzled out.
“She loved you, and you killed her,” Roland continued, his class guiding his words to do the most damage. As he'd warned me in Snowdrift, the Knight's power knew intuitively how to use words as weapons, even when its wielder wouldn't understand why they would hurt. “You could have saved her, and you did nothing. She burned to death calling out your name. You failed to save her, and you will fail to avenge her.”
Sebastian let out a snarl and fired an orb. Roland easily deflected it with a swing of his spear, and then brought down his weapon onto his squire’s shoulder. The blade punched through armor and flesh alike, pinning his former lover to the ground.
I lurched to my feet while Dolganov struggled to rise up. My eyes wandered from him to Roland, whose left hand was glowing. I saw a golden light pouring from under his gauntlet when he twisted the spear inside Sebastian’s shoulder, relishing in the traitor’s pain and suffering. The Knight’s mark was acting up.
Mine burned against my skin, the same way it had when I tried to purchase a soul. A dire warning.
My first order of business should have been to keep Dolganov down for the count, but all my instincts screamed at me that a greater danger approached. I noticed flashes of skulls in the wind, corpses stirring in the bloody grass and the cold river, and that bloody smell now growing foul enough to make me nauseous.
Roland ripped his spear from Sebastian’s shoulder and raised it above his heart. The bloodied squire whispered something, a final plea.
“I yield.”
Roland froze for a brief instant, his spear raised above his helpless foe. Sebastian had used all his vitality to fuel his spell, leaving him frail and withered. He could hardly raise a hand, let alone defend himself. He was beaten… and yet he was smiling.
I saw it clear as day. The Knots’ true plan for Roland was as cruel as it was brilliant. Why Sebastian had let himself be brought back to the prince he had so thoroughly betrayed.
I saw a furious Knight raising his bloodied spear to strike down an unarmed, yielding opponent begging for mercy; his mind clouded by betrayal, his mouth frothing with his fallen predecessor’s anger. His mark burned brightly to warn him away from a sin it would not, could not tolerate. It had seen where that path led a long time ago.
For the Knight fights for justice and chivalry. The class embodies the ideal warrior, who draws their blade only to defend the dignity of the weak and fights only to win. To torture a helpless man, even a foe, and then strike him down while he begged for mercy went against all that the Knight represented.
When I violated the rules of my class, I received a warning because I attempted the wrong trade out of ignorance. But from the pained expression on Roland’s face and the way he struggled to hold his own spear as his mark burned beneath his glove, he had to understand he was going against his class’ will.
He was simply too angry to care.
When Roland brought down his weapon, I knew what would follow. His victim’s blood would fall onto the mark and stain it red. The Knight would revel in the wrathful murder and bask in the corruption of this emerging Blight. The curse that the Knots had methodically cultivated in Archfrost would find a vessel in which to incarnate. I would witness a new demon’s baptism.
At best, the mark would kill Roland on the spot rather than let itself be corrupted; at worst, it would fail, and we would have two Belgoroths to deal with.
So I ran, shouting, “Roland, enemy behind you!”
Even in his angry daze, my warning startled Roland enough for him to look over his shoulder. He saw no one. No one but me rushed at him. I ignored the wounded Dolganov rising again behind, the clash of our soldiers holding the river, and even the explosions echoing in the distance from the enemy camp.
I tackled Roland to the ground before he could land the final blow.
“What are you doing?!” he snarled as we tumbled in the bloody grass away from Sebastian.
“Saving your life!” I shouted back while trying to hold him the best I could. I might as well be wrestling with a bear. I somehow managed to make him lose his hold on his spear at least. “And your soul!”
“Let me go!” Roland was still angry, but at least he had temporarily forgotten about Sebastian. Instead, he pushed me off him and sent my purse falling off my belt.
A golden coin escaped it.
My eyes widened in astonishment as it bounced away from us. It shouldn’t have gotten that far, not on such uneven ground. But it did. It was as if an invisible hand guided the Devil Coin into another.
Sebastian’s.
My mark burned so hot I thought it would melt my hand.
“So much for that plan…” I heard him rasp with anger, his gray eyes glaring at me. He raised his prize in his bloody palm. “Lady Daltia, Devil of Greed and Golden Strategist! I’ve come to bargain!”
The Devil Coin glowed brighter than the sun and painted the world with gold.
A tide of color overwhelmed the battlefield and silenced its cacophony. The blowing wind, the clashing of swords and shields, the croaks, and the howls… all were snuffed out like candlelight and replaced with oppressive silence.
The very world had become stiff and still. The land and sky now shared a golden hue, clouds of smoke and blades of grass alike frozen halfway through their movements. Roland had turned into a statue of gold, his paralyzed hands struggling to shove me back. His soldiers, the beastmen, even Dolganov shared his fate. All had become petrified statues trapped in a cocoon of glittering wealth.
The march of time had come to an abrupt stop. I was alone in a silent world.
Almost alone.
Sebastian was still bleeding to death, holding onto his cursed coin as he looked up into the sky. A great bright light was falling upon him from above. I looked up at its source, my mark burning against my skin.
The Goddess Herself descended from the heavens.
Or at least, that was how that woman first appeared to me. Her ethereal beauty left me short of breath. Her unblemished skin seemed carved from white marble, her fair face perfectly chiseled by an expert artist. She looked young, yet with the wisdom and maturity of a divine figure. Desirable, yet unattainable. Humanly familiar, yet heavenly distant.
Her long floating hair was woven from silver threads and held by a gilded crown mimicking feathers. It didn’t shine half as bright as the four wings of solid gold spouting from her back and carrying her down to earth. Her regal, silken dress floated as if blown by an invisible wind. Every single part of her attire screamed wealth; but a true goddess would have nothing to prove, would she? As beautiful as this figure was, she was simply a counterfeit trying to copy and usurp the real deal.
The golden skull-faced coin mark on her left hand, so similar to mine, only further unveiled the deception.
The figure descended towards Sebastian like the true Goddess once descended upon Pangeal, a long gilded scroll unfurling in her hands. Yet her golden eyes paid little attention to Sebastian, who had summoned her in the first place. The Devil of Greed smiled mischievously at me; her expression felt ungodly familiar, even though I couldn’t recognize her visage.
“Hello Robin,” she said with a sweet singing voice carrying a thousand promises. “Do you want to make a deal?”
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A/N: here's a picture of the Devil of Greed made with Midjourney; some luciferian energy ;)
