The Hundred Reigns 237: The Land of the Warlords (17)

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Simon was about to declare an emergency family meeting the moment they returned to shore, only to find everyone else was already awake. 

His worry over Anna’s nightmare turned into alarm when not only did Euphemia reveal that she had shared the same vision, but that Norbelle had teleported all the way from Cocagne to confirm she experienced it too. Every Visionary or prophet in the family had seen the exact same thing: they saw fire raining from the sky and causing the earth to scream beneath the living’s feet. 

“Could you see the cause of this disaster?” Maublanc asked Euphemia. 

“No,” she replied with a grim tone. The vision had left her shaken. “This is a warning from the Light itself. The Doom come again.”

“But you didn’t see the black comet,” Simon noted. That was the most disturbing part to him, besides the newness of it all. Whatever incoming global disaster they had prophesied was apparently unrelated to the Zodiac Parade; and from the reactions of all their seers, far more urgent. “Could it be the elves? A last resort to defeat us now that we’ve pushed them into a corner—”

“No,” Norbelle cut in, her three eyes staring at him unblinkingly with uncanny seriousness for someone like her. “It’s you, Simon. You will cause this somehow.”

Simon perked up, a chill traveling down his spine. “How do you know this?”

“Because all we see are the ripples in the river, not the rock that starts it all,” Norbelle replied. “That only happens with the Overlord.”

“She’s… right,” Euphemia said, squinting at Simon. “I could see Gargauth’s dragons ravaging the land, but not that brute himself due to his Anathemic Secrecy. We inferred it from other circumstantial evidence.”

Simon frowned as he considered their information. He could only think of one project of his that would involve destruction raining from the sky. “Could it be connected to Operation Meteor?”

“Operation Meteor?” Anna asked with a scowl.

“A secret plan to use some of the Kish Sanctuary’s floating islands as projectiles to bombard Illusea.” 

Half of the family who didn’t know about the plan stared at him in horror, with Thalas speaking for them all, “You planned to bombard the Worldtree, and you didn’t tell us about it?”

“It was a secret weapon, Thalas. The fewer the people involved, the less the chances that word got out.” 

“This…” Anna looked away, her skin paler than chalk. “What we saw… the Worldtree and the manatrees screaming…”

“But it was only meant to be a limited bombardment, if we used it at all,” Simon protested. “We planned to only use a handful of the smaller islands so as to avoid damaging the Worldtree! Lauriane wasn’t even sure it would even break past Illusea’s defenses.”

“That would have been the case if we limited ourselves to our original selection,” Louis replied without a care in the world. “But we’ve begun weaponizing the larger ones for quite some time now.”

Louis Magnos never raised his voice, to the point the most terrible words a man could utter came across as banalities when coming out of his mouth. It took a moment for the true horror of his sentence to sink into Simon’s heart. 

“What?” was the only thing his mind could formulate. 

Louis seemed almost puzzled by the question. “You were shot into a coma for a month, brother, and the kish attempted to revolt. What reasons did we have left not to prepare the larger islands?” 

Simon’s blood turned to water. “But it’s only been a month. You can’t have possibly prepared something as large as Boreas for bombardment.”

“Lady Lauriane informed us she had secured the dryad’s cooperation on the project before I was taken off it,” Lady Isabelle said. She rubbed her arms and looked anxious. “I… I thought Your Majesty was informed…”

“This is insane…” Thalas muttered in disbelief. 

“Simon trusted Uncle Paimon and I to lead the war effort in his absence,” Louis pointed out. “It was within my purview as Marshal to approve the project.”

Euphemia glared at her husband, who avoided her gaze. “You knew,” she said, her tone colder than ice. “You knew about this madness, and you allowed it?”

“It makes tactical sense to bombard Lore and Muse, since we have little hope of holding those territories in the long-term and it would be more effective than airship raids,” Maublanc explained with an accountant’s dispassionate appraisal of human life. “If we destroy those two nations—”

“We will kill millions,” Euphemia snapped angrily while Anna listened in shocked silence. 

“—we can end the war, cow tributaries into obedience, and focus our resources to fight the Zodiac Parade,” Maublanc concluded with frightening rationality. “It would be the most optimal way to preserve Endymion’s population, Euphemia. My only real issue with the plan is the very real risk of harming the Worldtree should we target Illusea directly. I calculated that the damage we would inflict may outweigh any expected benefit, and I anticipate Illusea would likely agree to a ceasefire once deprived of its allies.”

Euphemia listened in silence for a moment, while Anna clenched her fists. “Father…”

“There was no plan to actually use this weapon in the short or medium term without you or Your Majesty’s approval, Anna,” Maublanc tried to reassure her. “We simply thought we should keep the option open. Just in case the war turned against us.”

“I see why my previous husband always trusted you to do his dirty work.” Bitterness and disappointment were written all over Euphemia’s face when she finally spoke up. “You cannot find a spine when it matters most.”

Maublanc had the decency to remain silent after that rebuke. 

Simon himself struggled to make sense of this madness. There was no way Lady Junon would agree to turn the largest inhabited Sanctuary islands into bombs, but Lauriane had means of ‘pacifying’ her like she did with the Goetia Research Facility’s dryad. His sister was also still part of his Party and thus under Anathemic Secrecy. If she did do something that caused the Sanctuary to fall onto Illusea and accidentally destroy the Worldtree, then seers would only see the results of her action rather than the cause.

Moreover, if every Visionary in Endymion had seen the coming disaster, then so should the Oracle. Alcyone was out there with knowledge of the Sanctuary too. It was only a matter of time until Illusea put two and two together. 

For all Simon knew, an elven attack on the Sanctuary would be the exact event kickstarting this disaster. Prophecies had a nasty tendency to become self-fulfilling.

“Fetch our swiftest airship,” Simon ordered. “Thalas, Anna, Norbelle, Lady Barbatos, with me. Maublanc, Euphemia, Louis, you’ll stay here to watch over the empire in our absence in case our foes try anything.”

Louis immediately saw the writing on the wall. “Are we being grounded, brother?”

“Yes, you are,” Simon replied bluntly. He wasn’t foolish enough to bring him in particular to the Sanctuary after all the messes he had caused there. “You better pray that your rash actions didn’t condemn all of Brimir.”

His words amused Louis, though he didn’t contest the order. “Forgive me, Simon, but I’m not the faithful type.” 

He wanted this, the bastard. He had always planned to find an opening to go overboard with Operation Meteor, and Simon’s brief coma provided the perfect opportunity to do so. A pity Simon was in no position to punish him for it in the middle of a war, but there would be a reckoning in time. 

“I will keep an eye on him,” Euphemia promised Simon before departure. “Do what you must.”

“Have you learned to trust me at last, stepmother?”

“Only the Overlord can challenge the Light’s visions.” Euphemia scowled. “For once, I hope you do.”

—----------

The Asterion-powered Malevolence took off for the Sanctuary at full speed, with an Azulbolla-riding Norbelle hot on its tail. 

Finding the floating archipelago was incredibly difficult due to its barrier, but the imperial army had mimicked the Performances used by the kish to send messages through the wind. Learning that its flight path had been diverted above the northern sea was a cause for alarm on its own. That shouldn’t be happening outside of a planned bombardment. 

What bothered Simon the most was that none of his messenger imps had contacted him about Lauriane’s changes to the Sanctuary. He knew he had only woken up recently, but one should have at least gotten out of the barrier to report to him. 

Something was deeply off.

He wasn’t the only one who could feel it. One could cut the tension on the deck with a knife. Thalas’ axe hadn’t left his hand the whole time, Isabelle Barbatos had been quiet during the entire flight, and Anna stared at the sky with a grim expression. 

“It shouldn’t be long, hopefully,” Simon promised Anna. “We’ll put an end to whatever’s happening there.”

Anna nodded, though worry was written all over her face. “Simon, you said this Operation Meteor was meant for dissuasion only?” 

“Yes,” Simon replied before correcting himself. “I planned a very limited test run to intimidate Illusea into leaving us alone. To show them I would do worse if the Oracle didn’t cease her campaign against Endymion.” 

“And hypothetically, if they had called your bluff…” Anna met his gaze. “What would you have done then?”

Simon remained quiet for a moment, and Anna gave him a wary look that reminded him of the one Euphemia reserved for her second—and probably soon-to-be ex—husband. It was unbearable. “The Oracle didn’t give me any choice. She just won’t stop hounding us.”

“I… I understand being the Overlord means making tough decisions, but…” Anna gathered her breath. “Some of the Remembrances I unlocked from Saint Pharis… they involved Mardok.” She looked away in unease. “He did unspeakable things to her to break her faith.”

“You don’t have to say it, Anna.” Simon had heard enough of what Mardok put Pharis through from the source itself.

“There was someone with him when he tormented her.” Anna rubbed her arms as if struggling with a sudden chill. “Some three-eyed corpse in a cloak.” 

“You saw Elios Magnos, the Dark Lich?” Simon knew that as well from his and Voltobauta’s interrogation of Pharis’ ghost in a previous reign, but he hadn’t expected Anna to see the Librarian too. 

“I recall that… that thing’s words. ‘Why is Your Majesty spending so much time on this unworthy successor?’ and Mardok answered, ‘The brighter the star, the harder it falls.’” Anna gathered her breath. “I don’t know why, but… looking at you makes me think of that.”

And indeed, those words rattled Simon to his core. The Oracle’s words came back to haunt him; how he had been destined to become a Paladin, and how the Overlord Class had robbed him of that future. 

Why did the Crimson Throne pick him of all people? Why did his predecessors, if they decided their successor through a majority vote? Because he had killed Balzam the most? His father might have voted to keep the Class in the family, and Gargauth would have voted against anybody, so Mardok must have been the tiebreaker. 

Why would he choose Simon? As a favor to his old accomplice, Elios Magnos? Or to prove a point? To see if the Overlord could corrupt its once greatest foe into a tyrant? 

Thalas frowned at him. “You think you’re still you, after everything.”  

This was getting on his nerves. “I’m not possessed, Thalas.”

“No. It would be so easy if you were.” Thalas stared at his axe with a pensive expression. “My Berserker Class feeds on rage. I think that’s why Father gave it to me.”

“Are you blaming your Class for your own insecurities, Thalas?”

To his surprise, his brother had somehow become mature enough to shake his head. “It didn’t make me angry at you, but it rewarded me for it. It liked my fury. It turned it into pleasure with each level-up, until hating you became as natural as breathing. The harder it became to get the rush, the more I craved it. Our Classes train us, Simon. They train us to like what they want, until it becomes what we want.”

Simon scowled behind his helmet. His brother’s words echoed his own experience with level-ups a bit too much. 

Devastating cities under Vouivre’s leadership used to disgust and frighten me, but now I’ve laid waste to Valne and Muse without much remorse. Part of Simon believed he was righteous in this, that it was different because they had declared war on him first, that doing terrible things in the present was worth the power to eventually do good in the future, yet his actions had slain countless innocents as collateral victims. Can you bloody your hands so much that even time-travel can’t wash it all away? 

The question remained on his mind as they crossed the Sanctuary’s border to find it despoiled. 

Simon would never forget the day he first found this hidden paradise. He recalled the beauty of its islands, the verdant vegetation, the incredible sight of the kish and other wonderful creatures soaring through the sky without a care in the world.

The imperial army had since turned it into an open quarry. 

There was no other way to describe what the archipelago had transformed into. The once-green and bountiful surface of its islands was now cloaked in alchemical fumes, toxic smoke, and miasma produced by laboratories and open mines set up by imperial soldiers. They mined the local manaliths with reckless abandon, heedless or uncaring of the risk of destabilizing the Sanctuary.

The winged creatures once soaring in the sky were mostly gone, replaced by armed harpies and warbeasts. Simon only had to take a look at the surface of Zephyr to tell where most had gone. Massive birdcage pens now stood where the kish villages used to be, their people imprisoned there under the watch of imperial soldiers. Simon couldn’t see Eole among them, but he knew she had to be there. 

“I told them to leave the bigger islands alone,” Simon muttered to himself. He felt sick merely staring at the birdcages, especially after they outlawed shifter slavery in name and deed. “I ordered them to stick to the smaller ones and leave the kish be.”

Boreas had changed the most though. Its great manatree was now covered in black tendrils infecting its bark and roots. A familiar, faint cloud of miasma now hovered over its branches, bathing the land in its toxins. The Forbidden Keep ominously floated right above Boreas, a massive chain binding it to Junon’s tree. 

“What is that?” Anna covered her mouth at the sight. “What happened to that manatree? It looks… it looks sick.”

Simon could wager a guess: Lauriane had planted the Muse’s fruit on Lady Junon’s island. The miasmic tree’s seed had infested its cousin like a parasite, likely granting it influence over the dryad and the Sanctuary’s movements. 

Worse, his Dark Visionary sight picked up on the veins of miasma coursing through Boreas. It had infected many of Boreas’ manaliths and caused a familiar resonance. 

“Miasma and mana empower each other when used together.” Simon’s hands gripped his seat’s armrests. “Lady Barbatos, how would it affect the expected impact?”

The more Isabelle pondered his question, the paler she became. “It would potentially double the expected power,” she finally concluded, a dark scowl on her face. “Enough to wipe out an entire continent, or cause massive tidal waves.” 

Including Illusea, or all of Muse. 

Surely Lauriane wasn’t planning to drop the entire Sanctuary on one of them as revenge for what happened to him? Simon knew she could be ruthless when it came to defending their family, but this… this was madness.  

Simon attempted to contact his messenger imps now that he had crossed the barrier, only to find their minds muddled and muffled. Were they sleeping on the job, or… sedated? 

The doubt continued to gnaw at Simon’s heart as Dassein—who had adopted Casval as his current mount—and the wyvern rider corps arrived to escort the group to the Forbidden Keep. The fortress had been modified so its entrance could also serve as an airship deck, allowing the Malevolence to make landfall and Norbelle to simply hop off her own ride. 

Simon walked out of the airship with the rest of the royal family, but ordered a handful of his branded retainers to stay on the airship just in case they had to take off in a hurry. His instincts told him he better be careful for some reason. 

“Your Majesty, everyone,” Dassein said with a deep bow once he welcomed them at the keep’s entrance. “We didn’t expect your visit. To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“You’ve begun to move along an unauthorized flight path, Dassein,” Simon said sharply. “Explain yourself.”

“What?” Dassein didn’t have a deceitful bone in his body, so Simon took his surprise as genuine. “I was not aware… you should take it up with Lauriane, she’s the one controlling the islands.”

“This chain must help control the local dryad,” Norbelle guessed after assessing the binding connecting the keep to the manatree below. “Oh, Lauriane. You were always the most ruthless of us when properly motivated.”

Anna scowled. “Where are the elves?”

“The elves?” Dassein repeated with a frown. 

“I’m told elves inhabited the manatree’s flying island,” Anna said. “Where are they?”

“Inside the Keep,” Dassein replied. “Lauriane said she needed them to develop a new weapon against Illusea.”

A chill traveled down Simon’s spine as he walked into the Keep, ignoring Dassein’s protests and everyone else. He had spent enough time in the fortress to know where the dungeons and Nodens’ old labs were located. As he suspected, Lauriane had repurposed them into her own laboratory. 

The ghastliest kind.

Simon pushed aside the guards—who didn’t dare stop their Overlord—to find the cells full of captive and sickened elves. Imperial scientists were busy injecting subjects strapped to tables with a black substance held in glass canisters. A handful of elven corpses lay on other tables, their skin covered in dark patches and their eyes devoid of life. 

Anaximander was among their numbers. 

The sight of his friend’s corpse laying on an operation table, his last moments of agony forever written on his face, left Simon spooked into silence for a second. He had taught him so much and had been a dear companion in a past reign, valiantly giving his life to defeat Nodens, and he had died a lab rat’s death even though he had nothing to do with the Oracle’s plots.

All to better refine a weapon to wipe out his own kind. 

“What is this?” Dassein muttered to himself in horror while others covered their mouths or looked on grimly. He had never dared to visit this place. 

“Death, Dassein.” Simon glanced at the black substance kept in the canisters. “Death in a bottle.”

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