The Undying Emperor [Grand Conquest Fantasy]

Panic did not grip the clergy upon Acheliah's absence. The first day it wasn't even noted, as she was known to stay at the palace or see to business in the heart of the sea, but when three days had elapsed without her return investigations began. At first it was simply private inquiries through the palace, but neither the princess nor the staff had been given an explanation. Then they pursued a more direct means of contacting her.

Among the citizens of Vassermark were individuals with stigmata useful for remote communication, just as the Cyclops had found among the people of Aillesterra. Rather than putting them to economic or military use, however, they were brought into the private employ of the temples, either so that Acheliah could more easily contact the other emissaries, or so the humans could contact her. The arrangement was tenuous, as pressure was brought down upon the parents of the blessed child, then their education was curated by the temples, but the priestesses were not inhumane, regardless of what later trials claimed.

It was when Acheliah truly could not be contacted that panic flowed through the cardinals like ants overrunning a granary. A sealed conclave was called and a summons was sent to all the bishops that could be reached as they sought to bring together their prowess. Had they been given time, it is likely they would have been able to continue their operations without her. Acheliah served primarily as a moral anchor to the religion, and a connection between the temples and the crown. While she was often useful for the identification of aberrant stigmata, that was ancillary to the core functions of the temples. Those very libraries which Austin Feugard wished to plunder contained half a millennia of teachings on everything they could desire, as well as the formal method of corroborating facts into truths.

This recall created a momentary weakening of the king's power. Troops he should have been able to call upon to help keep the peace refused to leave the cathedral. Then rumors spread, and it takes little imagination to guess the origin of, that the king had lost the favor of Sapphira. People began to believe that he was, in fact, a worshipper of the sun god as his mother had been.

And then word reached the city that an army flying the flags of Acheliah marched north to the capital. Lucius took a careful pace, neither tarrying nor exhausting the troops he brought from the south. He had to wait long enough to know implicitly the outcome of Acheliah's confrontation with myself, but also minimize the time that he had no direct influence on the palace.

Among the advance soldiers under Leomund's command was a group of designated assassins. They wore no armor and passed among the farm folk as travellers and vagrants, intercepting the various messengers riding for his army. The attacks were sometimes noticed, but the confusion of the rebellion masked the allegiance of the assassins. As he drew within sight of the gates, and the stone guardians, he collected the messages intended for him, both from the king and from the rebellion. Neither side was given a response. Thus, the city was drawn tighter and tighter until one side felt compelled to play a gambit.

The Feugard boy walked into the palace.

No formal charges had been brought against him, so there was nothing to bar him access to the castle. His status as a duke allowed him to pass through the inner gates before the king was able to order his arrest. While I could detail the dramatic confrontation between Feugard and Arandall, and I assure you that the boy did not win in a fair fight as some historians would suggest, the needs of this text dictate that the narrative run in parallel. While the highest nobility of the land were shouting political platitudes at one another, three men and a former angel charged through servant halls to the highest floor of the palace keep. They had previously stolen the uniforms of the royal guard, off corpses the revolution had made, and so were able to come upon the first real guardsman and catch them unawares.

Infiltrating completely was an impossible task, as the girth of the man Paul would have drawn far too much attention, but the masquerade meant that the doors to the residential wing were merely shut rather than barred. I think Golden had something to prove about his own martial prowess, or he harbored quite the grudge for Acheliah's treatment of him. During his time skulking in the capital, he had performed more than a few assassinations, which suited his appetites well, and reclaimed one of the many spells he had bargained off in the desert. It was not a particularly extravagant thing to bestow upon a blade of steel the light of a bird, but it savaged the guards regardless. Even when it did not slit their throats, it opened their brows and blinded them with bloodshed. Only a great master can survive the assault of three men when he cannot see, even if the only remarkable trait of those men is what I would describe as craven bravado.

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They were a bloody crew by the time they reached the chambers of the royal consort. Louie and Paul had managed to take their blows upon their armor, but the smallest of their trio, Jon, had practically lost his wits from a hammer blow across his head. The gash itself had been crudely clotted with an apothecary's unguent, but he was hardly more than a spare pair of eyes. Thankfully, the final door was poorly guarded. The knight who should have been protecting the royal consort had been attending to the king instead. It was a young woman from Miss Lynnfield's order that stood guardian and her loyalty proved compromised.

Rather than draw her sword, she lifted her visor with a grin, declaring, "The day has finally come!"

A few lies slithered from Golden's mouth and the lock to Frederika Ashe's door was undone. The queen-to-be greeted them imperially. She was dressed in leather and linen, fit to dance upon a martial stage or ride a horse into the night. "Betrayal at every turn, is it?" she asked, eyes hard upon the guard.

Golden shoved the fool aside. "Good to see you are ready to move, but don't you have something more inconspicuous to wear? You're going to draw every eye in the city if you think you can escape looking like that."

She raised her voice. "I am Frederika vi Ashe, lady of Jarnmark and sworn to be queen of this kingdom. I refuse to meet the mob's idea of justice."

Louie grumbled. "I told you we should have brought Aria."

"She would have just gotten herself killed," Golden said, his eyes scanning the room for wardrobes and armoires.

"Name yourselves," Frederika ordered.

"Golden, the left hand man of Lucius von Solhart," the former angel said, grinning as the revelation disarmed her for a moment.

She raised her chin. "And I'm supposed to know you're not lying how exactly?"

"You don't, but surely you've heard that he is marching on the city at this very moment? Your choices are to either meet your fate at the hands of the rebellion and hang from a parapet, or to take your chances with us. If you choose wisely, I hope you have a better way to disguise yourself however. And choose quickly. We also have to grab the princess while we're here."

"Hold on, you're some branch of the rebellion?" the guard asked.

Paul pulled off her helmet. "This is a disguise, isn't it?" the man asked, tossing the helmet to Golden, who in turn tossed it at Frederika's feet. Louie hastened to the idea, yanking the guard's blade from her belt before she realized her own predicament. "No harm, miss, but we need your armor."

"If you are friends of Lucius," Frederika said, her voice weakening. "Then tell me what role he has in this madness? I have pleaded with the king near every day for mercy toward him. Have I been protecting a villain?"

Golden turned his back to the men as they deprived the guard of her armor and shut her screams with a fabric gag. "Whether he is a hero or a villain is not for him to decide, it will depend entirely on if Acheliah returns. She promised him anything he wished, so long as he served her, did you know that? He asked for you, and now he's bringing an army to make sure of it. Your choice hasn't changed. Stay and end up Feugard's prisoner, or flee with us. We can tarry no longer."

By the next morning, the guard was declared a casualty of the revolution, and her testimony was never heard. The five of them ran through the halls with Frederika at the front. They had to mount the spiral steps to the highest and most secure room of the palace where Kassandra's trollkin guard stood before them. No fight ensued, and it is not clear who would have won the fight. Ultimately, Acheliah's own precautions were used against her.

The day the angel had abused Golden, she had carved into his chest a command, much the same as she gave to Lucius but far more enforceable. Golden had to bare his chest and show it to the trollkin, prove that he was more than duty bound to protect the princess. If he failed to do so, his heart would be ripped in half.

Little could be done to disguise the trollkin, but the princess was switched into a maid's attire and together they descended through an escape tunnel. Down through the core of the tower they descended by rusted ladder rungs until they were beneath the palace. From there, they entered the ancient architecture of flood tunnels, one of the near-forgotten creations of Sapphira's temples. Many of the originally intended escape points were no longer accessible, so there was no ship waiting in the harbor to ferry them away, but before they could proceed inland, beneath the feet of the marble guardians, they returned to the city to fetch Aria.

The poor girl had been forced to bar her doors and windows and hide without even the light of a candle for hours as people began to run through the streets proclaiming the day of the revolution at hand. The manor would have eventually become prey to looters, but there had been one patient man aware of who was inside. Louie, Paul, and Jon went above, while Golden stayed with the prizes of the night below, so it was they that found Lyam, the Steel Blade, keeping a blade to Aria's throat.