Valkyrie's Shadow

Epilogue

30th Day, Lower Fire Month, 1 CE

Alright, so…yeah, no, I got nothing.

Liam twirled an empty potion vial between his fingers as he watched a swarm of fiery fanatics chase a group of screaming armsmen down the city street. He had gone from a starving orphan from the streets of Fassett town to a professional agent of the Sorcerous Kingdom’s intelligence division – he had even started learning magic – but the world was still a far stranger place than he thought.

“There! I found more of them over here!”

“Burn, you Demons!”

Most Demons he knew were immune or at least resistant to fire, but anyone who tried to fight the wave of fiery fanatics was burned anyway. Not that he believed that the members of the Noble retinues were Demons as the Faceless Once’s followers seemed to – it was just that the ‘fire’ enveloping the Faceless One’s followers didn’t appear to be fire at all.

Only those who attacked them were damaged by it. Any who were damaged by the flames looked like they had been burned, but the flames neither spread to other people nor anything flammable nearby, including the undoubtedly flammable clothing they wore. The same was the case for the fire on the fanatics themselves.

In terms of damage, the severity of the flames did not appear to be related to the amount of damage inflicted by the attacker. Punching one of the crazed citizens appeared to result in the exact same retaliatory outcome as if one ran them through with a spear. The amount of damage inflicted by the flames had a limit, but it was fatal for the vast majority of people he had observed thus far. Certainly, no one who survived the ordeal wished to experience it again.

He watched the scene below him unfold for a while longer as he tried to digest what it was all about and where it might lead. Was it the ‘Sorcerer King’s wisdom’? Probably not. It only proved that crazy people, if left unchecked, led to crazy things. This was especially the case since it seemed that the world wasn’t particularly picky about who ended up with crazy powers.

What actually bothered him the most about it all was the fact that the Faceless One had come out of nowhere and overturned everything he had worked to achieve. That was apparently part of the plan, but he only found out about it after the Shadow Demon popped up when the Faceless One attacked him, handed him a Message scroll, and told him to call for an extraction.

And that’s another problem…

Because the Shadow Demon had appeared as it did, Liam likely had few friends in Hoburns – at least once word spread of what had happened. He supposed that it was somewhat convenient, as all he had to do now was grab his stuff and leave. Rather than worried, people would be relieved about his disappearance.

Reaching into his bandolier, Liam pulled out the Message scroll. It disappeared in a flash of azure flame that went unnoticed by the people below.

『Kali.』

『Hiiiieeee!!!!』

『…』

Several seconds went by in the wake of the Frost Dragon’s startled cry.

『Kali? It’s me, Liam.』

『…there must be a way for you to make contact without scaring me witless. You made me drop my dolphin!』

『What’s a dolphin?』

『A dolphin is a dolphin.』

It was hard to get descriptions of things out of Kali’ciel. As with the other Frost Dragons. Things just were, and they viewed those who weren’t aware of that as wretched souls indeed.

『I need you to pick me up outside of Hoburns. How far from the city are you?』

『Hmm…just under a hundred kilometres off of Roble’s northern coast. It’s much less nerve-wracking out here now that all the Sea Dragons are gone. Would you like me to come over right away?』

『Yeah. My job’s done here.』

『Alright.』

He had about two hours before the Frost Dragon arrived, which was ample time to pick up his things. Liam made his way over the rooftops of the northern quarter, unimpeded by the escalating chaos in the streets below. His eyes narrowed at the odour of smoke hanging in the air as he approached the western quarter. It didn’t take long for him to come across the source.

“Everything must burn!” A man declared to a crowd of fanatics, “House Restelo is in league with Jaldabaoth, which means that the western quarter is nothing but a den of evil! We must cleanse it with the purifying flames of justice!”

“Shouldn’t we check for food and supplies first?” A woman asked.

“You fool!” The man answered, “We must not give into weakness. I for one, have no wish to partake of the fruits of evil!”

“Yeah!”

“I bet they use blood for their dough instead of water. Eating their bread might turn us into Devils!”

“Burn it all! Nothing can be allowed to stand!”

The crowd dispersed to carry out their convictions. Doors and shutters slammed shut as the western quarter’s residents barred their homes against the zealous mob. That didn’t help them, however, nor did it deter the mob from its objective.

Flames rose into the night sky as workshops, warehouses, and apartments were set ablaze. Liam clenched his fists as he stopped to watch one of the residents try to escape the growing inferno that was his home.

“Oh, no, you don’t!”

Two men caught him as he dashed out of his door, coughing and hacking.

“What…what are you doing?!”

“Back to hell with you, Demon!”

The man kicked and screamed as he was thrown back through the burning doorframe. After that, the mob started using furniture, crates, and large pieces of debris to block any doors and windows they came across.

“There! Coming out the alley!”

“Catch her! Don’t let those Imps escape!”

What the hell is wrong with these people?!

A woman panicked and thrashed as a group of fanatics caught her coming out of an alley. Her two children didn’t make it far before they were caught, too. The woman released a heart-rending shriek as she watched her son, and then her daughter, get thrown into a burning window.

“If you want to be with your hellspawn so much, then be our guest!”

The woman went into the window after her children. A pair of youths can forward with planks and hammers to nail the shutters shut.

Liam rushed across the rooftops, sickened by the seemingly endless parade of atrocious scenes playing out wherever he went. The people of the western quarter were no longer seen as fellow citizens by the mob: they were simply Fiends in Human skin that needed to be purged.

He leapt across an alley, his boots scraping to a stop over the roof tiles as he recognised some familiar scenery. Raquel’s shop wasn’t far away, and the fires were only starting to lick the walls of the buildings nearby.

I can at least help her escape. She’s strong enough to have some sort of flight magic…

Two steps later, the block exploded. Liam was hurled into the air as the Alchemist’s workshop behind Raquel’s place erupted into a cataclysmic conflagration that tore apart the surroundings. Pieces of debris and people flew into the sky, accompanied by the triumphant chorus of the Faceless One’s followers.

“Justice prevails!”

“Justice prevails!”

When he came to, Liam found himself amidst a field of debris strewn over the rooftops of the Water Gardens. Going by the moon’s position in the sky, not more than an hour had passed. In that time, however, the landscape of the capital had changed. He quaffed another healing potion and examined the city’s situation.

The western quarter was a sea of flames and its fires had spread to the neighbouring districts. Below him, the residents of the Water Gardens rushed about, some of them carrying valuables out of the buildings while others drew water from the canals in a frantic effort to stave off the advancing inferno. That effort, however, was stymied by the growing number of zealots entering the area.

“What are you doing, you idiots?!” A tall, well-dressed man shouted at the interlopers, “We need to put out the blaze!”

“House Restelo and its demonic allies must be purged!” A woman shouted back, “Righteous fire will cleanse the land and justice will reign in the north!”

“Are you people insane?! This is–”

Armed men and women emerged from the mob. It appeared that they had gained access to the city’s armouries or perhaps stripped the equipment off of their fallen victims. The man trying to reason with them was chased away by a set of spearmen and the mob dispersed into the Water Gardens. They decried the sins being promoted in the entertainment district as they vandalised the local establishments.

“Turn from the ways of weakness!”

“Only through strength may you achieve true justice!”

“Strike down the strongholds of sin!”

Liam suspected that the Faceless One’s followers would discover the existence of many such ‘strongholds’ through their violent methods, as the inability of the civilians to defend themselves against the frenzied mob would irrefutably ‘prove’ that they were weak and thus sinners. He wasn’t in any position to stop them, however, and their relentless pursuit of ‘justice’ beyond the western quarter gave rise to worries that drove him over the rooftops as he sought a safe route out of the city.

The southern gatehouse was occupied, but he found the walls bereft of sentries, providing him with a quick detour around the burning western quarter. His worries came to life as the curve of the wall eventually revealed House Restelo’s labour camp. It looked like the Faceless One’s zealots had reached them, and the neatly ordered tents of the labour camp were sprouting orange and yellow like rows of fiery flowers.

Liam climbed down the curtain wall before he reached Rimun Gate, cutting across the field to the rear of the labour camp. The uncontrolled fires in the lower tiers hadn’t reached the areas on the other side of the administrative centre yet, though groups of fanatics were roaming about with torches to ensure that didn’t remain the case for long.

He crept around the perimeter of the camp while trying to make sense of what was going on. There was no sign of the Knights or their armsmen anywhere. Fanatics went up and down the spacious lanes in groups of two and three, stopping to set each cluster of tents alight. He wasn’t sure if they were out of range of the Faceless One or the effect had simply run its course, but they were no longer clad in their telltale silver flames.

His lips pressed into a thin line as he watched them operate. As with the western quarter, the arsonists didn’t care that they were destroying valuable resources even though they had suffered from months of deprivation. The highly superstitious and irrational worldview of Roble’s people was long known to Liam, but, now, it had given rise to a collective madness that arbitrarily divided the world into good and evil.

Once he figured out the pattern of the fanatics’ movements, he snuck into the camp to get to his home. Hopefully, it hadn’t been burned down yet. It looked like House Restelo had evacuated the camp before their arrival, so the Faceless One’s followers weren’t pressed to destroy everything as quickly as possible.

A girl’s screams filtered through the night air. Liam’s pace quickened as he realised they were getting louder with every step. The screams led Liam straight to his home, where a circle of zealots had formed in the living space between his tents.

“Get off! You’re hurting me!”

“It’s all your fault, you damned Succubus! You asked for this!”

“Please, stop!”

Upon hearing Nat’s sobs, Liam found himself directly behind the closest fanatic. The young man convulsed and fell as Liam’s blade buried itself in the back of his skull. Beside him, another man collapsed as his spine was severed by Liam’s offhand strike. A third man turned in surprise. He went down with a gurgle, his throat slashed open.

Liam stormed forward, planting the toe of his boot squarely into the ribs of the man forcing himself onto Nat. He felt the man’s ribs shatter before he sent him crashing into the burning workshop table.

“Wha–”

He flicked his hand to the side, planting a knife into the voice’s open mouth. The last two men died as they gaped stupidly at Liam’s sudden appearance.

In a span of seven seconds, seven men lay slain around him. Liam scanned the surroundings before turning to Nat. Her leatherworker’s apron had been cast to the side, sending her tools spilling out of its pockets. The maroon dress that she so often wore had been torn open down the middle and hung loosely off of her shoulders. Liam went over to retrieve the apron.

“Liam?” Nat’s voice was a fearful whisper.

“Yeah,” Liam replied.

“Oh, Liam! Thank the gods…”

Nat tried to rise to her feet. Her legs wobbled briefly before she fell back down. Shuddering sobs wracked her slender frame.

“I’m so sorry, Liam,” she sniffed. “They set it all on fire! The workshop; our home – I couldn’t protect anything! I couldn’t–”

A hiccough interrupted her sobs. Liam knelt in front of her, holding out the work apron.

“Put this on,” he told her. “I’ll help you get away.”

“But–”

“It doesn’t matter. You can’t stay here.”

Nat accepted the apron with trembling hands. She fumbled with the strings while Liam went to pick up her tools. The fires consuming his tents had progressed to the point where salvage was impossible.

“Where did the Knights go?” He asked.

“They…they left,” Nat answered. “They said something was going on in the city. Something about it being overrun by Demons.”

“They left you behind?” Liam frowned.

“No. I stayed behind.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Nat sniffed. “It’s all here. Everything we built together. But…”

Nat broke down. She hid her face in her hands as she bawled.

“I’m a terrible wife, Liam! I couldn’t do anything to protect our home! Those men even–”

Liam grabbed Nat by the wrist and pulled her to her feet. She stumbled forward, stopping with her hands against Liam’s chest.

“We need to move,” he told her. “I need to keep my hands free just in case people try to attack us, so I can’t hold onto you or anything. Do you understand?”

Nat backed away with a silent nod. She ran her fingers through her dishevelled hair and scrubbed her tear-stained cheeks. Liam led her through the burning camp, exiting through the small field where the Knights pastured their mounts. Once they moved a safe distance away from the labour camp, Liam stopped to examine their surroundings. It was well past midnight, but the other camps could be clearly seen due to the advance of the ‘cleansing flames’ radiating from the city.

Instead of trying to get by all the camps along the highway, Liam decided to go southeast through a succession of copses and windbreaks leading to the hills. Eventually, they arrived at a ravine that would eventually join with the road south to Canta.

“If you follow this stream uphill,” Liam told Nat, “you’ll eventually reach a paved road. If you follow it south to the sea, you’ll arrive at Canta.”

He gestured up the ravine, but an uncomprehending stare was Nat’s only response.

“That crazy mob won’t come this far without preparing supplies,” Liam said. “If you’re lucky, you’ll even meet up with the Nobles fleeing south.”

“…Liam, what are you talking about? You’re making it sound as if you’re not coming.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re leaving me?” Nat’s lip quivered, “I…I was right, wasn’t I? I’m a terrible wife.”

“You’re not,” Liam replied. “I just have to go. You’re better off without me.”

“No!” Nat cried, “I won’t leave you!”

The corner of Liam’s eyelid twitched at her frantic insistence. His time was growing short.

“I made sure that you have everything you need,” Liam said. “I know you’re worried about how other people see you because you’re a girl, but they can’t ignore your skills and knowledge as a Leatherworker. You can pretty much have anything you want with what you can do now.”

“No,” Nat shook her head. “If you leave, I can’t have what I want!”

“…you’re not making any sense.”

Had he neglected something necessary for success in the Holy Kingdom? He was sure that he hadn’t.

“I want you, Liam!” Nat told him.

“Me?” Liam’s face screwed up in confusion.

Nat released an exasperated sigh.

“I love you, you dummy!”

That wasn’t supposed to happen. He made extra sure that he hadn’t done anything to lead her on.

“Love?” A feminine voice came from above, “Can you eat that?”

With a flap of her leathery wings, Kali’ciel alighted beside Liam. Nat went stiff at the sudden appearance of the Frost Dragon. Dragonfear could be convenient, in various ways.

“Hey Kali,” Liam said. “Did you fly into any trouble on the way here?”

“None whatsoever.”

“Great. We should get back – I have a long report to write.”

“Alright,” Kali replied, “could you give me a moment, though?”

“Sure. Why?”

Kali’ciel swivelled her head to regard Nat with her shimmering turquoise eyes.

“You made me drop my dolphin, so I’m still hungry,” the Frost Dragon’s maw opened to reveal her long, serrated teeth. “And Lady Shalltear’s instructions were to leave no witnesses.”

Alright, so…yeah, no, I got nothing.

Saye idly tapped the fingerboard of her lute as she watched a sea of towering flames dance under the clear night sky. She had long known that people could be pretty stupid, but, evidently, she had underestimated the depths of stupidity. Stupidity wasn’t a thing that simply added up: it was contagious and multiplied without limit.

Following the confrontation in the northern plaza, Neia Baraja’s followers spread throughout the city to deliver ‘justice’ to their hated oppressors. They swarmed through the streets, driving their enemies before them while picking up more and more followers as they went.

Anyone who wasn’t with them was against them. A Demon, even. Inspired by the flames that deterred their enemies from harming them, they put any ‘evil’ they encountered to the torch. Rich or poor; men, women, or children; it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was justice.

When she had first come to the Holy Kingdom, she was filled with enthusiasm about guiding the heretics of the maritime nation back to the Faith of the Six. In hindsight, it was a better idea to filter out all of the idiots first. No one in the Sorcerous Kingdom would be very happy about having to deal with the type of people that Roble gave rise to.

A storm of sparks flew into the air as a nearby rooftop collapsed. Saye relocated to a safer vantage as she wondered about all of the fuel and provisions going up in smoke. It hurt the violent uprising in the long term, but, at the same time, not having those supplies wouldn’t put them in mortal peril.

So long as Neia’s forces seized the northern harvest and secured their holdings, they could manage through the winter with a little bit of suffering. In fact, a healthy dose of hardship would go a long way toward having the Path of Justice’s followers invest themselves in their struggle. If starvation threatened to wipe them out, the Sorcerous Kingdom could always increase the volume of its food aid.

Assuming that Neia doesn’t send her people off on some suicidal offensive…

Hopefully, she wouldn’t. Winter was coming and, while most of the Holy Kingdom never got so cold that armies could freeze in their tracks, it still brought with it stormy seas and generally nasty weather. Rationally speaking, both Neia’s forces and the southern Holy Kingdom would forgo an immediate campaign in favour of preparing for a spring conflict.

Just in case, Saye had strongly advised Neia to run to Lloyds and organise supplies and reinforcements, presumably because the Nobles might recover from their shock, rally their forces, and mount a broad counteroffensive. Her newfound ability to turn her followers into flaming crazies wouldn’t last forever – probably – and it certainly couldn’t cover the entire city, never mind the entire country. Neia was ever-impressionable, so she left the city shortly after the north plaza was clear. Meeting with her officers from the Sorcerer King Adventurer Corps would almost certainly rein in her impulsive and thoughtless tendencies.

A gust of chill wind blew in from the north, stoking the flames to even greater heights. At this point, the inferno that had started in the western quarter had spread throughout the entire city. It had even jumped over the inner wall to sweep through the Prime Estates.

“Ah, there you are.”

Saye froze for a moment at the sound of the familiar voice. She dusted off her garments and straightened her hair before turning around to offer a respectful curtsey.

“Good evening, Lord Demiurge. I know I sent the Hanzo to deliver a request for consultation, but I never expected Your Excellency to come in person.”

“Given the night’s events,” Lord Demiurge said, “I’m glad that I did.”

She rose from her curtsey and looked up at the Minister of Foreign Affairs. His lips were turned up in their usual ghost of a smile and his segmented tail waved lightly from side to side. There was no telling what was going through his mind.

“Did you have the time to take a look at the Hanzo’s findings, Your Excellency?”

“I did. That was excellent thinking on your part, my dear. I daresay that they were several dozen times more valuable than the entire Holy Kingdom.”

“But didn’t you say the Holy Kingdom was an invaluable source of experimental data?”

“Indeed,” the Archdevil admitted. “But experiments, sadly, always run their course. While a few things here and there may offer us some surprises, I have enough data now that I can infer how things will generally play out. What the Hanzo procured before sinking the trade fleet has revealed an entire world of exciting new possibilities.”

Long before the founding of the Sorcerous Kingdom, Lord Demiurge had already turned the Holy Kingdom of Roble into a country-sized laboratory. After the war, that laboratory had been partitioned, each section running an experiment that sought to answer a set of questions relevant to the Sorcerous Kingdom’s interests. Dozens of agents from Ijaniya had been dispatched throughout the country to collect data, though Saye hadn’t noticed any of them during her travels.

The first and largest section was the southern Holy Kingdom, which acted as a collection of ‘control samples’ to compare to what would be going on in the north. In short, they painted a picture of how the Nobles from both factions ran things in mostly normal circumstances. In the ruined north lay the primary focus of the experiments, where they tested Roble’s society on all levels as they tackled the challenge of reconstruction and recovery. No method or philosophy was discouraged and, with the help of ‘Caspond’, moral lines were made fuzzy and even invisible in the staunchly religious country to see how far their pursuit of prosperity would take them.

While the changes imposed on the Holy Kingdom produced a myriad of effects, Lord Demiurge was mainly interested in how the people of the country ‘progressed’ under different conditions. Broadly speaking, he wanted to know how competition, regulation, and will factored into the growth of individuals.

In the east, the royalists ruled with an iron fist, creating conditions that theoretically encouraged the citizens under them to perform better to escape their suffering. The conservatives in the west administered with a lighter hand, generally acting to provide a framework for the people to fill out. Neia Baraja’s followers were sprinkled across the north, seeded with the drive to become ‘stronger’ in the ways that they understood.

Saye couldn’t be sure who the actual ‘winner’ was in Lord Demiurge’s estimation, but the results seemed clear to her. The royalists may have been able to extract ridiculous amounts of wealth from the population in a handful of months, but it wasn’t a strategy that could work for the long term. Not only were the people squeezed for their wealth, but, after they were wrung for the last few drops and a fiendish effort to convert their mental and physical health into goods and services ensued after that.

Not even the Nobles of Re-Estize were that atrocious. Then again, they hadn’t been introduced to a system that dehumanised everyone by turning them into distant abstractions. She could see that same system easily gripping other countries and plunging them into madness if their leaders weren’t careful.

She turned back around and surveyed the crowning achievement of that madness. It wasn’t every day that one saw an entire metropolis on fire.

“So,” Saye asked, “is this the end of Phase Two?”

“It is,” Lord Demiurge answered.

“I’m sorry if things with the Path of Justice went too far,” she looked down at the clay tiles of the rooftop. “I wanted to ask you about it, but it spun out of control super fast. Phase Three calls for a war between the north and the south, but…”

Saye felt Lord Demiurge step forward to stand behind her shoulder. The Archdevil placed a hand lightly on her head.

“This is fine,” he said.

The rooftop shuddered as another building came crashing down, throwing up a colossal pillar of swirling cinders that obscured the stars above. All things considered, it had been a silly worry.

“This is fine,” Saye agreed.

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