The Hundred Reigns 238: The Land of the Warlords (18)

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Lauriane had transformed Nodens’ cathedral into a command center. 

She welcomed them inside, having modified the place and turned it into a room not unlike an airship’s bridge. Holographic crystal balls connected to pipes ferrying miasma from across the fortress floated on mechanical panels overseen by her personal staff. Simon wondered if his sister had already set this up before he even took a bullet to the head. 

He was uncertain of everything now. 

“Simon, Anna,” she said warily. She could see the expressions on their faces as Dassein brought the royal couple into the room. “I didn’t expect your visit.”

“I tried to inform you through my messenger imps, but they wouldn’t answer,” Simon replied. The slight hint of guilt in his sister’s gaze confirmed his worst suspicions. “We were… worried.”

“They say we are following an unauthorized flight path, sister,” Dassein said. “Is that true?”

“I received no order against our current route,” Lauriane replied, matching Simon’s gaze. “You gave me full authority over Operation Meteor, Simon. I simply acted as I thought was best.”

“Was creating an anti-elf virus part of the operation as well?” Anna asked sharply. 

“No, that was a personal side-project.” Lauriane cleared her throat. “Don’t worry, Anna, we’ve developed a vaccine to go along with it. Lady Firewand and our elves will be fully inoculated.”

Our elves. There was something eerily disturbing about the way she phrased it, as if any life outside of their loyalists had no value. Had she simply overreacted to his near-death experience out of grief? Or had the signs always been there, and he simply refused to see them?  

“Did you sedate my messenger imps?” Simon asked, hoping—nay, praying—for a reasonable and sensible explanation for all of this.

Lauriane straightened up, a look of guilt flashing on her face. “I would have woken them up had there been an emergency.”

Which was a nice way of admitting that, yes, she did. Simon’s heart turned cold in his chest, his hands tightening into fists. How could the one person he had always thought would be on his side no matter what, the only member of his family whom he shared a bond of mutual affection with, act like this?

“Why?” Simon’s voice broke at the betrayal. First Eole, now Lauriane? “You’re the only one of my siblings I trusted without reservation. Why did you seek to deceive me? Because you feared I would stop you?”

“I didn’t want you to sully your hands, Simon,” Lauriane defended herself, a hint of emotion breaking through her tone. She did sound sincerely guilty. “This burden will be mine alone to bear.”

“The burden of what, destroying the world?” There was ice in Anna’s voice. “Lauriane, do you realize what you’re doing?”

“Yes, I’m protecting our family from those who will stop at nothing to tear us apart.” Lauriane straightened up, her spine made of steel. “We’ve tried to make peace with these people, and they would rather let us die during the Doom. Why should we owe them any mercy? We will end this war before any Paladin, elven hit squad, or Musan colossus reaches our shores.”

Dassein’s eyes widened in horror as the truth finally hit him. “Wait, sister, are you planning to drop this entire archipelago on our enemies?” 

“We can’t protect our family with half-measures, Dassein,” Lauriane replied with a kind determination that eerily reminded Simon of Louis. “We will launch the three smaller islands at Lore, Muse, and Illusea, followed by dispersal of the anti-elf viral agent in their airspace. If all that fails to secure the Oracle’s surrender, then we will launch the miasma-empowered Boreas into the ocean between Muse and Illusea. The impact will create a tidal wave of immense proportions that will wipe away both countries.”

“And the Worldtree along with it!” Dassein shouted, while both Simon and Anna had been shocked into silence. The mere fact that a natural follower like the Rider would protest so vocally at such a plan spoke volumes about its insanity. “It won’t just hurt Illusea, Lauriane! The resulting ecological collapse—”

“Will be a temporary setback, and a quick solution to the elven problem.”

She’s possessed. She has to be under some kind of mental influence. Simon simply couldn’t believe what his sister was saying otherwise. Or else she doesn’t fully understand the consequences behind this plan. 

“Lauriane, the Worldtree regulates Brimir’s cycle of souls,” Simon reminded her. “Its destruction will tear life apart, destabilize the Worldsoul, and cause an undead plague. It’ll be as great a disaster as the Zodiac Parade.”

“How can you say that when this very place proves that this theory is wrong?” Lauriane waved her hand at the cathedral. “The Sanctuary’s dryad was long disconnected from the manatree network, as was the Stone Muse. Both could sustain different ecosystems on their own without the Mana Goddess’ guidance.”

“One is a demon-infested hellhole, and the other a place so fragile that Thalas was stronger than their god!” Simon countered. “I have seen what happens when the manatree network is disturbed in my visions! Even assuming they can eventually recover, the earth will splinter and continents will fall apart! The death toll will be unimaginable!" 

“Maybe,” Lauriane conceded, “but in the end, you’ll be safe. There will be no Oracle, White Unicorn, or false goddess to oppose us.”

“You’re talking about committing mass genocide!” Simon angrily shouted back. What madness had gotten into her? Louis must have filled her head with his diseased ideas when Simon was in a coma. “And even excluding the bombardment, you’re talking about using a biological weapon to wipe out an entire Tribe!”

“You used one against Muse yourself, Simon.” Lauriane’s gaze turned icy. “Our current virus was developed using samples from your Edict.”

There were words that could utterly destroy a man, and those ones hurt more than the Musan Sniper’s holy bullet. The sentence made Simon flinch and waver. 

Lauriane immediately followed through with another justification. “You must understand all these people will never stop hounding us. House Magnos will only prosper once all of its enemies are dead. Yes, a few innocent lives will be lost—”

“Millions of lives!” Anna snapped. 

“—but you and everyone I care about will be safe. That is all that matters to me.” Lauriane met her younger sibling’s eyes. “This is all for you, Simon.”

“Don’t use me as your excuse,” Simon replied, his hands shaking. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

“They shot you in the face, Simon!”

A short silence settled over the room after that outburst. Lauriane Magnos never shouted, or showed grief. 

“When Hector was slain, do you know what father told me? That his death happened because our enemies didn’t fear me enough.” Lauriane’s expression and resolve turned to steel. “You nearly died, Simon, and I will never, ever, fail in my duties again. I will not apologize for it, I will not relent, and I will never show mercy to our enemies.”

Was that why Balzam had allowed Hector to die? To better twist his daughter’s grief into fanatical hatred of their family’s enemies? How could their father’s shadow still twist everything he had touched in life?

Simon pondered what to say as he stared at Lauriane. He could see the grief that motivated her actions, the pain and fear that had festered in her heart. She didn’t know death was a mere inconvenience to him at this point. From her point of view, she had nearly lost her little brother to the enemy and simply took steps to ensure it never happened again. 

But did it excuse everything?

Simon was finally starting to see the ugly side of his sister; the aspect of her he had overlooked—nay, willfully blinded himself to—out of love for the only family member who had ever supported him unconditionally. This was the Lauriane who had chosen to side with a madman like Louis and support the War Party. 

Lives outside those she cared about personally didn’t matter to her. She felt a sense duty to the empire and had enough morality to at least make a token effort at trying to settle for more peaceful solutions… but she was so devoid of empathy for anyone outside her loved ones that things like genocide had become as acceptable a solution to her problems as sending a strongly-worded letter. 

Just like Simon himself. 

She was right: what was the difference between her elven plague and the one he had unleashed against Muse? One could even argue the former was more moral in that it targeted only a specific population and had a pre-made cure, when the latter was utterly indiscriminate. He too had considered an all-out war of annihilation as an acceptable solution to his problems, while finding pretty justifications for his cruelty. Destruction and domination had simply become second nature to him, an acceptable tool in his arsenal. 

Should he… should he let the bombardment happen? The process was already underway, and he would get exp from it. He could just do it once, just once, see what happened and reap the experience to ensure he never had to do it again…

“You don’t have to bear that burden, Simon,” Lauriane said. “I will pull the trigger. Your hands will be clean.”

They won’t. That was a gentle lie Simon couldn’t believe in, and the look Anna sent him made it ring all the more hollow. It won’t be just one time.

Just this one reign. Simon used to tell himself that when he was sacrificing people to the Stone Muse, working with the likes of the Cobweb, or destroying cities for Vouivre, yet here he was, giving orders dwarfing those timelines in malevolence and scale. Just this one reign.

But once you had done an atrocity once, it became easier to do it again, and again, and again until what was once the last option became the first. That was the true trap of the Overlord Class: the lie that you could gain the power to do good through evil acts without being changed by it. 

Thalas was right. In the end, the Class insidiously reshaped its user in its image. 

That was what Mardok had counted on when he and his successors selected Simon as their heir; that even someone with the potential to become the Paladin could be corrupted into a monster. Their monster. 

“No.” The word escaped his mouth again and again, a prayer growing firmer with each utterance. “No, no, no, I can’t let them win…” Even the cold fingers on his throat weren’t enough to change his mind. “I can’t let them have their way.”

“They?” Anna asked with a frown. 

“Cancel the bombardment,” Simon ordered Lauriane, ignoring the question. “Now.”

His sister scowled. “Simon, don’t look at me like that—”

“This is an order from your Overlord, Lauriane.”  

Now it was her turn to flinch at his tone. She wasn’t speaking to her little brother anymore, but her angry superior. 

“It’s… it might be too late,” Lauriane argued. “I’ve already set the course, and steering the archipelago away might cause it to dislocate. The barrier holding it all together is growing unstable due to the dryad’s continued attempts at freeing herself. I was about to order a general evacuation when you showed up.” 

“Try it anyway!” Anna ordered with an empress’ authority. “You control this place, you can force it to turn around!”

“I could use my Ragnarok to alter the islands’ course,” Dassein suggested. “Our airships could then steer them away.”

Simon wasn’t sure anything short of a Tier X spell would inflict enough damage to redirect the islands, and the risk that it would detonate the manaliths was great. He couldn’t summon his Dungeon either since it was being used to sustain the Edict in Muse—he couldn’t lift it unless the country surrendered—and the only other option he could think of would condemn Junon to a fate far worse than death, not to mention everyone in the Sanctuary. 

He was considering possibilities when an alarm noise resonated through the command center. Lauriane immediately pressed a button and caused a man’s face to appear on a crystal ball. “What’s going on, soldier?”

“A small airship fleet has entered our airspace, Your Highness,” the figure on the other side answered. “The flagship matches the description of Chrom Cruak’s flying pyramid, and they have dragons with them.”

Lauriane frowned. “Muse has found us.”

“Not just Muse,” Anna guessed with a dark scowl. “All of them.”

Simon nodded sharply. It was more likely than not that the Oracle had hastily put together a coalition the moment she received her visions about the Worldtree’s destruction. They must have likely planned to attack the Sanctuary eventually, but decided to strike immediately before they were fully ready out of fear of being wiped out. 

“Send them a message telling them we’re cancelling the bombardment and agreeing to a sharing of the archipelago’s sovereignty," Simon ordered. “Ask for a ceasefire.”

“Your Majesty, they’ve already opened fire on our troops, and our defenses returned the gesture!” the messenger protested. “I don’t think they’ll listen!”

Simon cursed. Of course they wouldn’t listen, not after the Visionary visions. His words would fall on deaf ears. 

Should he abandon the Sanctuary? It might once have been the best solution, but he couldn’t trust the likes of Vouivre or the Cobweb with it, since they wouldn’t hesitate to turn the islands around and throw them at Endymion or enslave the kish. The Oracle had already shown willingness to devastate Valne to destroy Frightwall or stall the imperial advance too. Sacrificing the archipelago wouldn’t seem like such a big price.

There was no easy solution to this problem. 

“Send a distress message to Louis and the others,” Lauriane ordered the messenger before turning to her family. “We can’t let them reach this command center. Damaging the chain will release the shackles on the local dryad and the Stone Muse’s child alike. At best, the Sanctuary will break apart as the barrier grows unstable. At worst, the miasma fruit will finish infecting its host and turn into a new Darkwood. I have no idea what the outcome will be if this happens.”

“Lauriane, Anna, you stay there and find a way—any way—to stop the bombardment while Dassein and I handle this,” Simon ordered as he moved to the door. “Lady Barbatos will help. Order the troops to retreat to Boreas.”

“Simon—” Lauriane began, but he didn’t let her finish.

“Just… don’t, Lauriane.” Simon had too much on his shoulders right now to think straight. “Just don’t.” 

He simply didn’t have the heart to talk to her right now. 

Lauriane looked away, probably in remorse or shame, while Anna’s goodbye was more succinct. “Come back alive, please.”

“Is there any doubt?” Simon scoffed. “I’m the Overlord. In the end, I’ll always win.”

No matter how many tries it took. 

—-------

The anti-Overlord alliance had come in force.

They had too few airships capable of crossing the Sanctuary’s barrier—they hadn’t managed to build more than four in spite of receiving Alcyone’s intel—but they weren’t short on aerial forces. Thousands of Lore’s pegasi knights carried soldiers into the sky, alongside griffin riders, colorful eidolons unknown to Simon, elementals, a small army of Illusea-made winged golems, and dragons. 

Only one of them, Vouivre herself, was made of flesh, however. The draconic eidolon that Simon’s soldiers fought in Frightwall was here, but the bulk of their forces were mechanical imitations of gleaming metal, complex cogs, and spinning gears. Simon vaguely recalled seeing one of those machines in Cocagne, yet it was the first time he could see dozens of them gathered in one place. Many of them carried elven archers and spellcasters into battle. 

Even Voltobauta’s flying ghost ship was present, carrying undead shrouded in mist to support his allies. Chrom Cruak’s flying pyramid loomed at the center of the enemy fleet, the same way Frightwall had served as a mobile base for Simon’s own imperial fleet. Its terraced surfaces were covered in manalith reserves used to fuel the mighty elven archmages’ spells. Simon wondered if that coward of an Oracle had dared to take the field among them.

Either way, the battle was well underway in the sky by the time he departed the Forbidden Keep on his dracozombie mount’s back. Dassein had lent Thalas his manticore while he rode atop Casval, and Norbelle stood on top of Azulbolla’s head with her arms crossed, doing her best to look fabulous. The Phoenix burned at her side, ready to defend their conquered territory. The Malevolence followed after them with its retainer crew and a cadre of harpy collaborators as an escort. 

Lauriane had long fortified the islands after the kish revolt and a large chunk of Endymion’s airship fleet defended the Sanctuary. They exchanged fire with the invaders across the horizon, spells surging from all sides, wyvern riders and pegasi knights clashing spears and swords among the clouds. 

Simon immediately barked orders. “Dassein, take down Vouivre! Thalas, Norbelle, escort the Malevolence and cast that pyramid down from the sky! I will take care of the rabble!”

He didn’t wait for them to answer him and didn’t expect them to; at this point, they all knew better than to disobey him. Empowered by buffs cast by his allies and his own Soul Sacrifice, Simon entered the fray at lightning speed, shrouding himself in a Nightveil to become a terrible incarnation of dread and darkness upon the battlefield. 

The group split up to tackle different objectives, with Simon rushing closer to Zephyr, where most of the Lorean-side of the enemy forces had gathered to rescue the captive kish. They would be easier to deal with than the Musan machines and the elves.

A flock of pegasi knights assaulted him the moment he reached the soaring island’s shores. Simon activated his Dreadful Aura at the sight of them, but he didn’t use the Terror effect for once, since he knew many Paladin Vassals among them would be immune to the ailment.

He instead activated its Berserk feature to drive the enemy and their mounts to bloodthirst. The great, gleaming charge of soldiers collapsed into a rout as their own beasts frothed with rage, tossing them overboard into the void below or tearing each other apart. Simon slew the survivors with a single well-placed Darkflare that reduced all to nothingness. 

As he suspected, the most dangerous enemy attempted to assassinate him the moment he showed himself. 

Alcyone teleported right behind him and attempted to stab him, but Simon simply pushed her off his mount with a well-placed Chaos Wave. She reappeared not too far from his location, riding a pegasus and with murder on her mind.

“Overlord Magnos, I assume?” Alcyone’s mana sword replica gleamed in the sun as she teleported the rest of her Party to her location, each of them riding a flying mount. “Glad to finally put a stupid face on the bounty poster.”

“Same,” Simon replied as he found himself facing Alphonse’s party and Ser Richard, mace in hand. “Same, Alcyone.”

He guessed this was what the Fablan people called ‘karma.’

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