Master of the Loop

Chapter 182

Whispers in Motion

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!! Why are you doing this to me?!!” Sylas glanced to the side, a strange expression on his face. It has been a while since the sound of the blood-curling screaming didn’t stop his heart for a moment. 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.

“Somewhat,” M replied, looking at Sylas with an odd expression. “Occasionally, I’d hear it coming from the bedroom. Please Mistress do this or don’t do that.”

“Ah. Kinda pegged him for a pegger.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Go on.”

“If you don’t say--”

“I’m telling you! I don’t know, I really don’t!” the Baron cried out soulfully. “I--there’s, there’s a secret cabinet in my office. T-there’s a mirror there, a copper mirror, and from time to time, some, some information appears there.”

“Who tells you?” Sylas quizzed. The word ‘mirror’ triggered a distant memory from within him.

“Tells me? What? No, nobody tells me anything! A bunch of letters appear on the mirror! Wait--who are you?! Are--are you... are you the one they warned me about?!” Could it be the mountainfolk? Sylas wondered inwardly. Hmm, that chick departed with us, but I didn’t see her make any strange movements.

“What are your orders?” Sylas continued to question.

“I asked you a question, you mongrel! If you don’t--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 someone as pathetic as the man in front of him.

“Aaah! I’ll answer! I’ll answer! My--my orders... my orders were to k-k-kill the Prince!”

“That’s all?”

“I swear! I swear that is all!”

“...” Sylas turned silent, stroking his chin. The conflict in the Capital is bleeding out, ain’t it?

It wasn’t terribly difficult to see that there were forces at play that were trying to push each other out of the game. While the Queen carefully positioned pawns to act as effective goal posts for Valen’s journey, others tried damned and hard to prevent the growth of the southward force.

In truth, Sylas didn’t care. He cared neither for those standing in his way, or even those helping along. While the help was welcome, he couldn’t 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 become to keep an eye out on them.

Then again, these men 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 men 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 came 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 time had stretched into centuries, but for the rest of the world... it hadn’t been that long. Not even a full, proper winter. And yet he went from someone who shivers and shakes at the sight of a ghoul... to something that’s not quite human. To something 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 who’ve known him for less than an hour--he’d come to realize that... this was who he had become--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 time 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 time his heart stopped and the land of darkness briefly graced him before he was woken, a part of him was ripped out, transfixed into something else.

Time had morphed him, as time morphs all things. Some days, he’d 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 merely going through its motions? He didn’t know.

Strange, for a man immortal, how tender and fallible his memories 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 wouldn’t be long before he dies, though it hardly seemed to bother either of the men in the dungeon.

“... the Queen. Did you ever meet 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 she’s hardly tall.”

“Really?” Sylas mumbled. “After all this time, I think I have her figured out.”

“...”

“She’s devoted,” he continued. “Zealously so, it seems. Whether to a man or to a cause... I don’t know. Perhaps, to her, they’re one and the same. 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.”

“... she’s a murderer,” M said. “It’s not all that well hidden.”

“Oh, I’m sure she is. Murderer, torturer, betrayer... she’s possibly thousands of heinous things, all she could be one: a distraction.”

“A distraction?”

“I’ve 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 don’t 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.”

“Wasn’t 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 home. And, on his journey, he found pawns and knights and bishops and rooks to come along, men and women who, by sheer happenstance, retired in places conveniently en-route.”

“...”

“I wish, before all this is over, I’ll 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 someone so convinced of something she’s willing to sacrifice her name for all of the history.”

“... if you wish to talk to the Queen,” M said after a momentary silence. “She’s 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 time we come?”

“As far as I know. She’s scheduled to be there through the entire Winter Festival.”

“Winter Festival?”

“Annual ball that Viscount Var hosts in name of his dead daughter.”

“... interesting,” Sylas mumbled, stroking his chin. “She didn’t account for us making the journey through the winter, it seems. I’m looking forward to seeing her expression.”

“Uh...”

“I’m as blind to the geography of this place as I am to your attempt to kill me.”

“Khm...”

“Surely, you’ll 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.”