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Chapter 1752: The Truth
Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

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  1. Offline
    Despawning
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    Blossom is the bestest girl
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  2. Offline
    Despawning
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    1763 Proposal

    "Now then... If the honorable lords of the Beastman Confederation have screamed enough for one day, I believe we have a lot to discuss."

    Skarn's snarl hadn't died and Rajah's claws were still out, but Quinlan had already moved past the pair of them, the crimson fire behind his visor sweeping the field in a slow, measured arc.

    The dwarves sat in clusters under guard, their war chief's laughter long since swallowed by the tension that had replaced it.

    Their king was not even among the prisoners but frozen in the Villain's ice as a motionless memento of their defeat.

    Their main army was shattered. Whatever holdouts remained in their mountain halls or scattered across the alliance, lords and garrisons who wouldn't open their gates upon receiving the news, that was cleanup, not war.

    He wouldn't even need to show up, just send his souls or allies.

    The elves were worse.

    Rows upon rows of elven soldiers stared at him with wide eyes.

    How couldn't they, when he'd just given them a massive lore drop about Luminara, calling her the Primordial Nurturer and declaring that she had a mother's gentle heart.

    Thus, for all intents and purposes...

    'Elvardia is already mine.’

    His attention drifted to the beastkin ranks, and the calculus shifted.

    The soldiers who had marched alongside his forces looked back at him with flat ears, lowered tails, and the careful stillness of people who had watched the man they fought for spend the last three minutes championing the elves and threatening their leaders.

    Fear lived in those ranks, and beneath it, a question none of them were asking out loud.

    He'd promised them. Standing on the flat ground with bodies still warm, he had looked every soldier in the face and sworn he'd repay the debt their blood had bought.

    Dogkin, wolfkin, tigerkin, bearkin: they'd bled and died so his women could live.

    Quinlan couldn't care less if Skarn and Rajah hated his guts until the sun burned out, but those soldiers did not deserve his mockery or hostility, as far as he was concerned.

    He returned his eyes to the beastkin lords.

    "Reparations will be paid."

    Skarn's snarl cut short. Rajah's amber eyes narrowed.

    "The dwarves will send architects and engineers to rebuild every settlement that was destroyed during the conflict, and the full cost of materials, logistics, and labor will be split between the dwarves and the elves."

    He looked at Alexios.

    "The two races will also withdraw from Ravenshade's occupied territories and extend the same rebuilding terms to the Vraven Kingdom."

    Alexios stroked his beard once, his expression giving away nothing.

    "In exchange," Quinlan continued, his tone flattening into a decree that had already been stamped, "all nations will release the slaves of other races they've taken. Prisoners of war, victims of border raids, spoils of invasion. Every last one."

    He let the words settle, then added,

    "That is what I propose."

    Alexios kept stroking his beard, his flat gaze fixed on Quinlan, and said absolutely nothing.

    The silence lasted exactly as long as it took for Skarn's composure to break.

    "This is NOWHERE NEAR ENOUGH!"

    The wolfkin lord's roar cracked across the field, his grey eyes blazing.

    "You want us to turn our armies around for concessions that would happen sometime in the future instead of taking what we're owed right now?!"

    Rajah took a step forward. "Our dead number in the millions and you think we'll settle for houses?!"

    “Rebuilding destroyed settlements will not right all the wrongs they've done to us," Gorruk announced, his massive arms folded.

    Quinlan listened without a word, letting each of them finish before turning to the elven ranks

    Confusion sat on their faces, and under it, indignation.

    Pay to rebuild settlements for filthy beasts who had been trying to conquer them for millennia? Some of the officers looked like they'd swallowed something rotten, and others glanced at one another for a consensus that hadn't formed.

    Behind him, Myrasyn's aura carried a faint tremor that told him everything he needed to know without turning around.

    His eyes settled on Gorruk.

    "That's exactly the thing." The words came unhurried and uncombative. "You will never right the wrongs."

    In the beastkin ranks, soldiers shifted with visible displeasure, and Gorruk studied Quinlan with the quiet focus of someone reassessing a problem he'd thought he already solved.

    The other lords bristled, but Quinlan didn't give them a chance to snarl at him again.

    "I've looked into the history of this continent, and I've arrived at a single conclusion." His visor swept the circle, lingering on no one.

    Then, with a quiet voice that somehow carried far and wide enough to encompass all those who were present, he declared:

    "No one is innocent."

    He turned to the beastkin first.

    "Your people raid their neighbors and eat their flesh while they scream. What's worse, I've seen what the lionkin do with my own eyes, creating breeding ranches of your neighbor's citizens, farming them like cattle. I'm told it's a lionkin exclusive activity, but they were your allies for the longest time and you did nothing to stop them, embracing their culture as part of the Beastman Confederation."

    He paused for a moment, then asked, "How could your enemies not demand blood?"

    Skarn's growl deepened, but Quinlan was already looking at the dwarven prisoners.

    "Dwarven siege technology has caused more suffering than any plague in recorded history. Devastating engines and alchemical warfare are used without a shred of hesitation, bypassing the hundreds if not thousands of years your enemies spend on growing their personal strength, and you don't mind using them on population centers either. How could your enemies not demand blood?"

    The dwarven war chief's expression went rigid.

    Quinlan's eyes moved to the elven ranks.

    "Elves have controlled nearly all of the forests on the continent, and you enforce that control by shooting anything with a pulse that crosses your border. You use your supernatural affinity for nature and sharpshooting to terrorize others. Furthermore, your ancestors are the best at keeping history and knowledge, yet you never share any secrets with others. How could your enemies not demand blood?"

    Myrasyn's fanning stopped behind him.

    "And humans” His visor turned to Alexios. "Are the single biggest slavers among the races. Dwarves are enslaved to reap their masters' immense fortunes, treated as nothing more than worthy investments. Elves are enslaved for their natural beauty, treated as sexual objects. Beastkin are enslaved for their physical traits, used and abused until their bodies break down. How could your enemies not demand blood?"

    Alexios's hand paused mid-stroke on his beard.

    "Yes," Quinlan said, turning back to the beastkin, "Elvardia allied with the undead. They did unspeakable things to your people. But that's the latest entry in a ledger that has been open since before any of your nations had names."

    "Before this, you raided their settlements. Before that, they burned yours. Before that, you ate their scouts alive on the border, and before that, they put arrows through your pups."

    He looked between Skarn, Rajah, Myrasyn, and Alexios. "When was the last time all of you were actually at peace with each other?"

    Nobody answered.

    "I looked. Couldn't find a single date."

    He then looked over his shoulder, eyes finding a certain green-eyed woman. "Perhaps your royal archives know better?"

    Myrasyn looked away almost instantly.

    As Quinlan had just claimed, elves were the most meticulous record keepers on the continent, their histories stretching back further than any other race's written word And even she couldn't name a year.

    Seeing he wasn't going to receive an answer, Quinlan moved on.

    "So no, Gorruk, Lord of the Bearkin. This isn't enough to right the wrongs. But it's what leads to moving on from the endless killing.”

    "MOVING ON?!" Skarn and Rajah's voices collided.

    "The way to 'move on' from the killing," Skarn snarled, his stare fixed on the elven queen who still wouldn't meet anyone's gaze, "is to end it. Elvardia is broken. The dwarves are running around like headless chickens without a king! There has never been a better chance to wipe them out, and you want us to take promises and go home?!"

    "Exterminate the root," Rajah growled, "and the weed never returns."

    "Haaah..." All warmth in Quinlan's aura died at once as he exhaled with exhaustion. "I spoke with courtesy toward all parties out of respect for the people you represent."

    The openness he had maintained through the speech collapsed inward, replaced by a pressure that landed on the circle like a physical weight.

    "But don't get the wrong idea. My 'proposal is not up for debate." The fire behind the metal climbed. "You will accept it, or else."

    "The Vraven Kingdom is willing to entertain the proposal."
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    1. Offline
      Despawning
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      1764 Huh?

      Alexios's voice arrived from the side, unhurried, carrying nothing that resembled obedience.

      It was a calculated choice of words, and everyone present heard it.

      Quinlan said everyone had to accept his proposal, but Alexios was only willing to entertain it.

      The king hadn't bowed to the Primordial Villain's decree, hadn't flinched at his threat, hadn't even acknowledged the "or else" that was still hanging in the air.

      He was simply considering the offer on its own merits.

      Even after everything, Alexios refused to bend the knee to the anomaly that had turned his 1000th year into such a chaotic one.

      "However" The king's hand left his beard. His posture shifted.

      The wry old man vanished, and the king who had fought five elders at once stood in his place.
      "Should the beastkin lords not be willing to do the same, the Vraven Kingdom will take it as an endorsement of the farming of humans like cattle."

      A chuckle rolled out of him, dark and low.

      "You've been throwing quite the pity party, crying about how devastated your lands are." His flat gaze swept the beastkin lords with what they all recognized on sheer instinct.

      A predator mocking his prey after realizing the gap in strength between them.

      Then his head tilted, and madness crept into his expression, old and unhinged.

      "Well... Vraven isn't in a bad spot. Especially if the elves and dwarves will do as the Villain said."

      Myrasyn's ears twitched, and a grin spread across the elven queen's face as she quickly announced: "We will! We will pull out of Ravenshade by the end of the day!"

      Hearing those words, Alexios's menace climbed.

      The grin that split his weathered face was the kind that made soldiers check if the exits were still open, a psychotic old bastard who had spent the entire exchange stroking his beard and had apparently decided he was done pretending to be reasonable.

      "Well then..." His voice dropped, intimate and terrible. "I might as well end my rule on a single positive note and eradicate you savages who treat humans as food."

      The snarling that erupted from the beastkin lords could have been heard across the field, Skarn's howl and Rajah's roar crashing into each other while Gorruk's rumble shook the frost beneath their feet.

      But in the ranks behind them, the reaction was different.

      Soldiers who had been standing with weapons and claws ready exchanged glances.

      They had fought today. They had bled. But the man who honored their dead had also promised something else, something that hit closer than rebuilding or even not dying today.

      He'd said the slaves would be freed.

      A dogkin soldier pressed her fist to her mouth.

      Her brother had been taken in a border raid three years ago and based on the investigation she conducted on the scene, he didn't die there but was taken away.

      A wolfkin beside her lowered his head, eyes shut, and the name that crossed his lips was barely a breath.

      Across the beastkin ranks, soldiers broke in quiet, scattered places.

      Hope.

      Skarn heard it. Rajah heard it.

      The wolfkin lord's snarl deepened to a guttural rumble as he turned back to Quinlan, and the fury in his gaze had gained a new edge, because the Primordial Villain hadn't just threatened his authority.

      He'd reached past the lords and spoken directly to their soldiers' hearts, and the whimpering behind him was proof that it had worked.

      "You..." Skarn's growl shook with barely leashed violence.

      Skarn's stare swept Quinlan's forces, searching for ammunition, and found it standing thirty paces to the left.

      Blossom was bouncing on her heels beside Aurora, her blonde ears perked and her fluffy tail swishing as she watched the negotiations with the cheerful attention of someone following a particularly engaging street performance.

      The dog collar around her neck caught the light every time she moved, and when Aurora murmured something to her, the dogkin's response carried on the wind with perfect clarity:

      "Master is amazing!"

      Skarn pointed at her.

      "You demand we free our slaves while that girl wears a collar and calls you Master in front of the entire continent?"

      The wolfkin lord's voice dripped with the satisfaction of a wolf who had just found the kill shot. "I will not entertain a single word of your proposal until you free-"

      "Huh?"

      For one heartbeat Blossom stood frozen, her blue eyes wide and locked on the wolfkin lord.

      In that single second of stillness every person who knew Blossom held their breath because they had never seen that expression on her face before.

      Then she erupted like a furious volcano, screaming gutturally from the depths of her soul.

      "BLOSSOM WILL RIP YOUR THROAT OUT!"

      The shriek tore across the flat ground with extreme violence.

      Her claw gauntlets materialized on her fists, wicked curved metal extending past her knuckles.

      "BLOSSOM'S COLLAR IS BLOSSOM'S!"

      The air around her body flickered as the Void Stalker's power surged unbidden, her outline blurring and snapping back like reality itself couldn't decide if she was still standing there or already at Skarn's neck.

      "MASTER GAVE IT TO BLOSSOM AND BLOSSOM WILL KILL ANYONE WHO TRIES TO TAKE IT!"

      Skarn's ears twitched.

      Behind him, in the dogkin section of the beastkin ranks, a low rumble started in the front row, barely audible beneath the screaming but growing.

      Blossom took a step forward and the sigil on her womb blazed through her clothes, the Bloodfather's mark burning hot enough to cast red light across her stomach.

      Lightning crackled up her gauntlets and arced between her claws in jagged white lines, the channel Quinlan's bond had grafted into her blood answering the fury pouring out of her with raw, indiscriminate power.

      "BLOSSOM SWORE AN OATH!"

      Another step.

      The void flickered harder, her body phasing for a fraction of a second, and when she snapped back into visibility her pupils had spread to fill her irises.

      "BLOSSOM CHOSE MASTER! BLOSSOM CHOSE THIS LIFE! AND SOME MANGY WOLF WHO CAN'T STOP MOANING LIKE A BITCH IN HEAT ABOUT HIS INSECURITIES THINKS HE CAN TELL BLOSSOM TO GIVE IT UP?!"

      Skarn flinched.

      His weight shifted backward, a fraction of a step he caught before it became a full retreat, and the satisfaction that had been on his face when he'd pointed at the collar was gone.

      The dogkin growl behind him had spread to the second row, then the third, rising with every word she screamed.

      The sound coming out of Blossom's throat wasn't mere anger, he could easily take that.

      This... This was the howl of a creature whose entire world had been threatened, and every predatory instinct in Skarn's body recognized it for what it was.

      She wasn't finished just yet.

      "BLOSSOM WOULD DIE BEFORE BLOSSOM LETS GO OF MASTER!"

      The lightning on her claws climbed past her wrists and up her forearms, her blonde hair rising as static charge built around her in a visible halo.

      She stomped hard, caving the ground in and creating a blazing fissure beneath.

      "BLOSSOM WOULD KILL THE ENTIRE WORLD BEFORE BLOSSOM LETS ANYONE TAKE HER COLLAR!"

      Skarn's jaw locked.

      The growling behind him had become a continuous wall of sound, tens of thousands of dogkin voices drowning out his own soldiers, and the wolfkin lord's grey eyes darted sideways for the first time since the negotiations began as the full scope of his blunder landed.

      He hadn't just insulted a weird woman but spat on the most sacred bond in dogkin culture in front of every dogkin soldier on the field, and they were letting him know.

      Blossom's chest heaved.

      Her tail had gone rigid, bristled to twice its size, and the void around her pulsed with each ragged breath, darkness bleeding from her outline like smoke from a fire that hadn't decided how big it wanted to get.

      *Is that understood?" she growled, voice dropping dangerously low.

      Vargis, lord of the dogkin, stood to the side of the other beastkin lords with a grin so wide it split his face in half.

      The old dogkin lord nodded along with every word Blossom screamed, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes bright with a fierce approval that said the girl had just done something his entire tribe would sing about for years to come.

      Quinlan watched his amazing lover shout the wolf's head off with an outrage not even he himself had seen before.

      "That's my girl

      He let Blossom have every second of it, until she calmed and the lightning on her claws sputtered then died.

      The growls quieted in tandem and the field settled into a silence that felt like the ground after a storm, still wet, still charged, waiting to see if there would be another.

      Then Elisabeth spoke up, looking Quinlan right in the eyes with a nasty glare.

      "Before any agreement is reached," the Arch Priestess announced, her stare fixed on the armored figure at the center, "you must release the dead you've stolen, Necromancer."
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  3. Offline
    Despawning
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    1761 Blood Oath

    "The bloodshed stops here."

    The crimson gaze behind the visor found Rajah first, then Skarn, and held.

    Every predatory instinct in Rajah's body screamed at him to lunge, to close the distance and tear through the armored throat before whatever stood behind it could grow any further.

    Beside him Skarn stood coiled and rigid with his grey eyes locked on the helmet's burning glow.
    But neither struck.

    "You swore a blood oath!" Skarn's voice came low and guttural, a growl aimed at the face in front of him. "Have you forgotten?!"

    "A blood oath, huh..."

    Quinlan remembered perfectly. An ominous chamber. Five apex lords staring him down. And the words he spoke that day.

    I swear on the blood I have shed, the lives I have taken, and the throne I will one day claim. For the next thousand years, I shall not make a move against the Beastman Confederation, nor shall I orchestrate its fall through hidden hands. So long as your people do not raise their claws and fangs against me or mine... my warpath shall not cross yours. This, I vow, by my blood. By my soul. May all that I hold dear be evaporated into dust should I fail to uphold my oath.

    He remembered all of it, and he also remembered Skarn's grey eyes fixed on his across that chamber with all senses straining to find a lie and finding none.

    "It was a mistake to let a human-" Rajah started.

    A chuckle rolled through the helmet, low and unhurried, resonating through the living metal, and it silenced Rajah mid-word.

    "A human..”

    Quintan repeated the word with dark, savoring amusement, the glow behind his visor brightening as his helmeted head tilted in a slow are across the tigerkin lord.

    He didn't bother correcting the misconception.
    But the sound of that chuckle sat in the chest of every beastkin within earshot, because the predator in each of them had registered what Rajah had just gotten wrong.

    This... thing before them was no human at all.

    "You can think whatever you want of me, tigerkin, but I suggest you take one fact to heart."

    Rajah's scowl deepened at the casual way he was addressed, a low vibration building in his chest.

    The amusement died in Quinlan's tone as if it had never existed, gone from one moment to the next as he decreed:

    "Luminara, the First Elf, is my cherished mother."

    In the elven ranks, every ear went rigid.

    "I'm the Primordial Villain. I'm called as such because that is who I am."

    His voice shifted, and genuine feeling bled through.

    "Yet my mother's heart is so gentle that she is known as the Primordial Nurturer."

    The elven ranks broke in a synchronized gasp.

    "Primordial Nurturer?!"

    "That's Lady Luminara's title?!"

    "How beautiful..."

    Thousands of voices crashed into each other as soldiers who had spent their entire lives worshipping the First Elf heard her son describe her nature for the first time.

    Officers who had held perfect composure through the entire spectacle pressed their hands to their chests, and Isveth's knees buckled behind Quinlan.

    The Holy Son, the man whose very existence was sacred to them, had just spoken about his mother with a tenderness that made the wrath surrounding him feel like a shield built to protect something precious.

    "To her, family is everything," Quinlan continued, his voice carrying across the stunned silence that followed the elven eruption. "She lives and dies for her children."

    His tone hardened.

    "The children whose children stood before me, kneeled, and proclaimed their undying loyalty."

    Overbearing hostility began pouring off his armor, aimed at the two lords before him.

    "And you dare threaten them with slavery? You dare think I'll stand idly by and do nothing about it?"

    Myrasyn's eyes were wider than ever before, unable to believe the words she was hearing. "Quinlan..."

    Skarn managed to collect his composure just enough to respond, but before he could snarl again, Quinlan's twin infernal eyes locked onto the wolfkin.

    "As for the pact..." A beat of silence. "What about it, wolfkin?"

    Skarn's eyes went wide.

    He had built the oath's framework with his own hands, had rejected binding artifacts and demanded blood and eye contact instead, trusting his senses to detect deception.

    The boy who stood before him that day had spoken those words without a flicker of falsehood, and Skarn was sure of it.

    But the man who swore that oath was looking at him now like the cage he'd built was made of paper.

    "A member of the Beastman Confederation ambushed me and my forces." It felt as if the man was looking straight into his soul as he added, "On multiple occasions."

    "What?!" Skarn and Rajah's heads snapped toward the foxkin at the same time.

    The foxkin sat on the ground in clusters, disarmed and surrounded, prisoners without a lord.

    Silver's banner had been torn down after Kitsara took his head, and what remained of his forces were soldiers without a cause, huddled among the people their dead leader had betrayed.

    Quinlan's tone deepened, turning entirely unnatural, inhuman in its extreme violence.

    "And that's not all."

    The words boomed across the flat ground and up through the ranks, and the malice behind them hit the foxkin prisoners before the echo finished carrying.

    "After all..."

    Soldiers who had fought under Silver's command slammed their faces into the frost.

    A foxin officer who had led hundreds pressed his forehead to the ground with his arms locked over his skull, and the keen that tore from his throat died as suddenly as it started.

    Three rows deep, bladders released without their owners' permission, dark stains spreading beneath them on the frost.

    "A member of the Beastman Confederation's leadership tried to kidnap and rape my wife."

    The words left Quinlan's helmet in a voice that barely qualified as spoken language and felt more like a primal force asserting itself over those who dared question him.

    The frost beneath his feet cracked outward in thin, branching lines as the red eyes behind the visor swam with fire bright enough to paint Skarn and Rajah's faces in light.

    Wife.

    Skarn and Rajah's gazes cut to the dogkin ranks, where Kitsara stood beside her brother. She gave them a small wave.

    "That'd be me, and yes... Silver, leader of the foxkin tribe, member of the Confederation's leadership at the time the pact was sworn, tried to take me from my chosen mate by force..."

    She spoke those words with such feminine fragility that it made the contrast with their content all the more devastating.

    Her words only made it worse. Quinlan's wrath spiked at the reminder, rolling off his armor so raw and so personal that the ground beneath him groaned.

    Many of the beastkin looked at him with incredulity.

    Silver was dead.

    The debt was settled and the corpse was cold, yet Quinlan's fury hadn't dimmed by a single degree because the mere thought of what that man had tried sent it spiking fresh.

    The menace bleeding from Quinlan was rising with every passing moment, and the beastkin lords felt it loudest, apex senses screaming a warning that dwarfed everything they had registered when the boy was level thirty.

    This was something that had outgrown the cage they'd built for it, radiating a pressure that didn't belong to any race or class or level on this continent.

    But Skarn didn't kneel.

    "You..." A growl tore from his chest, low and continuous, building until his grey fur bristled along his forearms and his lips peeled back from teeth that could shear through plate.
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      1762 Cold Realization

      It was the only answer his body had for a force that every instinct he possessed was begging him to submit to, and he held it by raw will, grey eyes locked on the crimson glow without blinking.

      Beside him, Rajah stood with his claws fully extended, amber eyes flat and burning, every muscle locked.

      Then Skarn spoke through his teeth.

      "Silver was a traitor from the start." The words came out half-snarl.

      The wolfkin's eyes burned with a fury that had nothing to do with the man standing in front of him. "He fed intelligence to Elvardia from the inside, sold our war plans to the very enemy we marched here to destroy, and you stand there holding us accountable for the actions of a defector?!"

      "We fought on the same side as your forces!" Rajah snarled, his composure cracking for the first time as the tigerkin lord took a step forward despite the pressure bearing down on him. "Silver's foxkin attacked us all! He was no more a representative of the Beastman Confederation than the dirt beneath your boots!"

      Skarn's growl deepened, and the wolfkin lord's fists shook at his sides as he forced himself to meet the burning visor head-on.

      "The Confederation did not sanction any of those attacks. You have no idea of the tragedy our people suffered at the hands of the traitor!" His voice rose with every word, giving way to the predator who had been insulted. "You want to void a thousand-year blood oath because of this?!"

      "We disowned Silver the moment his treachery came to light. His crimes are his own, not ours." Gorruk's voice boomed from next to Skarn and Rajah, the bearkin lord stepping forward with his massive arms folded across his chest.

      Unlike the other two, the bearkin didn't have to crane his neck to look at the furious primordial, being more than twice his height.

      Skar drove the final point home, his eyes never leaving the glow.

      "The oath was sworn between you and the Beastman Confederation."

      His voice had dropped to a low rasp, shaking with barely leashed fury. "Silver stopped being part of the Confederation before the oath was sworn."

      The silence that followed was absolute.

      Quinlan's burning gaze dragged from Skarn to Rajah, the fire behind his visor climbing, the wrath rolling off him in waves thick enough to make the frost groan.

      Then he laughed.

      It started low, a rumble behind the helmet that could have been the armor's hissing, but it kept climbing until it became unhinged.

      Open, genuine, shaking his armored shoulders, flickering the crimson glow.

      It was so profoundly wrong against the fury he'd been radiating that Skarn's claws extended and Rajah bared his teeth on pure instinct.

      "Your argument," Quinlan managed between breaths, "is that while he might have been present as one of your representatives, he wasn't a real representative because he had already betrayed you before the oath was sworn but you didn't know about it yet so it doesn't count?"

      The laughter didn't stop. If anything, it deepened, darker, more mocking, savoring every syllable of their argument like a fine wine.

      "In what court," he asked, the amusement finally tapering into flat menace, "would that hold up?"

      His burning gaze drifted sideways.

      Alexios had been watching the exchange with his expression unreadable, but sensing Quinlan's attention on him, a wry grin split his weathered face.

      "Goddess knows my nation isn't the dreamland I worked hard to make it," Alexios said, and the grin sharpened. "But that argument wouldn't survive a single afternoon in any court."

      "Stay out of this, human!" Rajah snarled at Alexios, whipping toward him with blazing anger.

      The wry old man vanished from one second to the next as if it was an illusion.

      His posture went still and an unhinged grin materialized on his face as the casual authority fell away like a coat shrugged off. What stood beneath it was the strongest living human on the continent.

      "I must apologize," Alexios spoke up gently. "Did you just say something to me, little kitten? My hearing must be worsening in my old age, because I could have sworn you used a tone with me that you truly shouldn't have."

      Stormlord stepped forward behind him. Alexios's bodyguard said nothing, drew nothing, but the hand that came to rest on his warhammer and the position he took at his liege's shoulder carried a promise that needed no words.

      In the tigerkin ranks, amber-striped soldiers prowled closer, responding to their lord's snarl with the synchronized aggression of a pride that had scented a challenge.

      The rumble in Rajah's chest climbed toward a roar, his body tensing to strike at the man who had just called him a kitten in front of every soldier he commanded.

      But Alexios's grin only widened, and the manic edge behind it said he was hoping the tigerkin would try.

      "I've been quiet thus far," Alexios continued, his flat gaze sweeping from Rajah to Gorruk and back. "But don't mistake my silence for a lack of grievances. Your people have caused a great deal of human suffering, and I have a very long memory."

      Fractures spread through the circle.

      Beastkin against elf, beastkin against primordial, beastkin against human.

      The tension between the factions pulled taut enough to snap.

      "Uh..." Maelstrom was sweating as if he'd done ten days of non-stop cardio. He involuntarily took a step back, then another.

      But while Alexios and tigerkin ally went at it, Skarn wasn't listening at all.

      His stare was locked on the helmet, every muscle in his body coiled to lunge.

      One second. He was one second from tearing into the armored creature.

      Then a massive hand closed around his shoulder from behind and held him in place.

      "What do you want?!"

      "Don't." Gorruk's voice boomed. "Look at him."

      Skarn snarled, trying to shrug free, but Gorruk's hand didn't budge.

      "He's been saying a lot of things, but.." Gorruk's focus narrowed on the armored figure standing across from them. "He's been honoring his end of the pact throughout the whole ordeal as if he knew it was still in effect."

      Skarn went still.

      "If you attack him now," Gorruk continued, his voice dropping lower, "we're the ones who break it irrevocably."

      Gorruk's gaze settled on Quinlan.

      "Isn't that right?"

      Quinlan tilted his helmeted head.

      He said nothing.

      Silence was worse than any confirmation could have been, because it told Skarn everything he needed to know.

      The fury had been real, every degree of it, the wrath and the cracking frost and the foxkin pissing themselves at his feet, all genuine.

      But underneath the rage, underneath the malice in his voice and the fire behind the metal, the Primordial Villain had been threading a needle so fine that Skarn hadn't even seen it.

      He had been getting baited for minutes straight to break the pact without a shred of a doubt.

      "YOU!" A roar tore from Skarn's throat.
      He had rejected magical bindings because he trusted his own senses above all else.

      He had built the oath's framework because he believed no creature alive could deceive him at close range. And the Primordial Villain had just maneuvered him into nearly destroying his own work.

      His grey eyes burned into the visor with pure, wounded pride.

      "You..." The word shook with barely contained violence. "You planned this from the start."

      The visor stared back at him, twin infernos swimming behind the metal, and offered him nothing.

      Quinlan didn't deny or confirm. In fact, he didn't even acknowledge the accusation at all.

      Instead, the wrath that had been pressing down on every person within earshot pulled back, retracting into the armor as cleanly as a blade returning to its sheath.

      When the Primordial Villain spoke again, his voice returned to its calm, confident cadence.

      "Now then... If the honorable lords of the Beastman Confederation have screamed enough for one day, I believe we have a lot to discuss."
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  4. Offline
    Despawning
    + 1 ⋅ 0 -
    1759 What Duke?

    Quinlan held the King of Vraven's gaze across the frost for what felt like an eternity.

    The two men measured each other, both having a great deal to say.

    Then Alexios's gaze moved to Ayame, and for a moment the king looked older than the centuries behind him.

    "We have a lot to discuss. His voice carried only to the three of them. “In private."

    Quinlan didn't respond.

    His attention moved to Ayame, to the hand resting on her katana and the composure she'd rebuilt mere seconds ago.

    If she wanted to demand answers from the man who signed her into chains right here, in front of nearly every faction on the continent, he was ready to let her even if it would cost him as far as politics went.

    Ayame's grip tightened on the hilt for a breath that stretched long enough for Alexios to notice.

    Then she gave the king a short nod.

    Non-allies were listening. Whatever Alexios had to say, giving it away for free would be foolish.
    Quinlan's smile returned as his gaze found the king's.

    Alexios accepted the nod with a slight inclination of his head toward Ayame.

    Then his tone shifted as his eyes found Quinlan again. "I noticed a certain presence during the fighting."

    His eyes were as flat as they could be.

    "Care to explain why my duke was standing next to your criminal friends on a foreign battlefield?"

    Quinlan blinked at the question, pausing for a moment, then sighed.

    "Have you finally gone senile, old man?"

    Far beneath where they stood, a different conversation took place.

    "When will this crazy f#cker let us out? This is beyond disgraceful!" Alastair fumed, hissing as quietly as he could.

    "..Would you rather explain to the king what we're doing here?" Sareth Greenvale asked, clutching her knees to her chest in the dark.

    “…”

    Duke Alastair Greenvale, vassal directly to the man standing in front of Quinlan right now, was squatting a hundred feet below with every notable officer and soldier he'd brought to this war.

    Not long ago, Quinlan had enslaved the duke and effectively turned Greenvale into his puppet territory.

    He'd forced the man to march his elite soldiers to this battlefield alongside Consortium criminals, fighting a war against Elvardia that had absolutely nothing to do with his duties, and if Alexios confirmed what he suspected, the consequences would be immediate.

    Which was precisely why Quinlan had carved a pocket beneath the arena while simultaneously raising the colosseum around everyone else.

    Greenvale was a chess piece he was forced to risk because of the situation the Elvardians put him in with their ambush, but he wasn't about to let the king confirm his suspicions that easily.

    "Oh, your duke. I get who you're talking about, old friend." He glanced over his shoulder and pointed at Kaede's unconscious form, where Seraphiel's golden hands were still working. "She's being healed."

    A vein throbbed at Alexios's temple. "You know what I meant."

    "I might be a genius," Quinlan blinked innocently, "but I can't read minds. Yet."

    "Alastair Greenvale. The king's patience was a thin, fraying thing. "You shameless bastard."

    He didn't say it out loud because of the ears that could overhear it, but the accusation was crystal clear.

    ‘You enslaved my duke, forced him to march his soldiers here alongside criminals, and expected no one to notice?'

    "You really are off your meds. Where's Felicity?" Quinlan sighed again, pretending to look around. "Someone needs to put gramps back to bed. He's hallucinating again."

    "Quinlan Elysiar."

    A shameless shrug welcomed the king's growl.

    "It must've been my foxy playing tricks on you."

    ".." Alexios's eyes cut to the dogkin ranks.

    In the beastkin sections, the foxkin in question had her brother's prosthetic arm in both hands and was turning it back and forth with the critical eye of someone who'd personally watched it being forged.

    *Knock knock.*

    She rapped her knuckles against the elbow joint, and the clean ring of metal carried. "Quinnie and the self-repressed girlie did a truly impressive job with these!" She beamed up at Darius, white ears perked.

    "That they did!" The dogkin prince flexed the arm, rolled the shoulder through its full arc, and grinned wide enough to split his face. "That elf lass poured her heart into these. She deserves some proper love for that kind of work, has the brother bedded her yet?"

    Kitsara's ears folded with an exaggerated air of refinement. "I might have a loose mouth but even I won't discuss my friend's intimate life behind her back."

    On the flat ground, Quinlan watched the exchange with open pride.

    "Isn't she amazing?"

    Alexios's expression was so dry it could have started a fire. "So you're telling me that girl produced thousands of Greenvale soldiers from her tails, maintained their formation while impersonating Alastair; fought alongside your women in her own skin, and killed Silver. All at once."

    'Why is this bastard so attentive? He was fighting five elders!'

    Quinlan cursed inwardly, but the grin didn't waver.

    "Not even that old fox could manage something like that." Alexios watched him with the patience of a man who had been catching lies for a thousand years.

    "Have you considered that Yoruha never went all out? Speaking of..."

    Quinlan tilted his head. "Where did she end up, anyway?"

    "Stop diverting the topic, you bastard."

    Quinlan ignored the old man's yapping and realized he genuinely didn't know.

    The last he'd seen of Yoruha, she'd torn through Kaede's dimensional tear into whatever waited on the other side, and hadn't reported back since.

    "Where is my mother?"

    Elisabeth's demanding voice sounded from behind Alexios.

    Ayame answered before Quinlan could be bothered to.

    "Somewhere nearby." Her voice carried a smile that was all composure and no warmth. "Why don't you go find her?"

    Elisabeth's gaze shifted to the petite samurai, and the surprise was evident in it.

    "You-"

    "You've called my partner a hypocrite, spat on his address to the fallen, and haven't stopped sneering at him since you got to know him." Ayame's hand rested on her katana, and her blue eyes held the princess's without blinking. "All that is to say, yes. I do dare address you without respect, Arch Priestess."

    It was the first time in her life that Ayame had spoken to a devotee of the Goddess's faith without a shred of deference, and the ease with which the words left her told Quinian everything he needed to know about what she'd taken from today.

    She knew now what kind of deity Elisabeth worshipped and what kind of justice that church dealt in, and whatever respect the samurai girl might once have shown had long since been buried.

    Elisabeth's mouth opened and closed without sound.

    The Goddess was the highest power on the continent, worshipped as omnipotent and omnipresent by every nation.

    Nobody spoke of her faithful the way this girl just had, because nobody who valued their life spat on the Goddess's devotees and walked away from it.

    Yet here she stood, faced with a lunatic who wore his heresy like a badge of honor and an entire household perfectly happy to join him in it, and for a moment Elisabeth genuinely didn't know what to do with that.

    Quinlan watched his samurai put a follower of the bratty Goddess in her place and made no effort whatsoever to hide how much he enjoyed it.

    Unsteady footsteps reached them from the side.
    Maelstrom crossed the last stretch of flat ground with his chest puffed out and his legs not quite cooperating beneath him, and the look on the syndicate general's face was one that no living member of the Vesper Consortium had ever worn before.

    For hundreds of thousands of years, the Consortium had existed in shadow.

    Their leaders met in underground halls and abandoned warehouses, their names spoken in whispers and warrants.

    Every generation of Consortium leadership had dreamed of the day one of their own would stand before a monarch as an equal, not as a prisoner being marched to execution. Maelstrom was about to live that dream on shaking legs.

    "Vesper Phenom Devil." He addressed Quinian by rank first, placing the younger man where the Consortium's hierarchy said he belonged, far beneath his own station. Then he turned to Alexios, straightened his back, and delivered the words he'd been rehearsing in his head since he started walking over.

    "King Alexios Valorian." The formality was immaculate. The grin splitting his face underneath it was not. "On behalf of the Vesper Consortium, I greet the crown of Vraven as an ally on this field."
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    1. Offline
      Despawning
      + 1 ⋅ 0 -
      1760 Demanding Blood

      It was the single most important sentence the Consortium had ever spoken to a sitting monarch.

      Neither man he'd addressed so much as glanced at him.

      Quinlan and Alexios were still locked on each other.

      Maelstrom's grin wavered.

      Myrasyn arrived next, stepping from the elven cluster with Isveth at her shoulder and a serene smile on her lips.

      She didn't take a position to the side. She didn't claim neutral ground between the factions.

      The Queen of all elves walked past Alexios without a word, crossed the open space, and stopped behind Quinlan, smiling at Black Fang for a moment before looking forward.

      Alexios saw it.

      The flat composure hed maintained through the entire exchange cracked by a fraction, and the look that crossed his face when an elven queen positioned herself behind the Primordial Villain as though she served at his pleasure told the story of a continent's power balance tilting in real time.

      Then the beastkin lords arrived, and there was nothing gradual about it.

      Rajah, Skarn, and Gorruk approached shoulder to shoulder.

      The pressure that entered the space when they stopped walking could have buckled stone.
      Vargis trailed a pace behind them, reserved and watchful, the only beastkin lord who hadn't spent the entire spectacle measuring Quilan's threat level.

      Four factions stood on flat ground that used to be an arena.

      Alexios and Elisabeth held the crown's and the church's corner.

      Maelstrom stood alone with his back straight and his grin cracked, the Consortium's dream personified in a man nobody was looking at.

      Quinian held the center with Ayame at his right and Black Fang at his and behind him the Elven Queen and her Shrine Maiden had planted themselves like a declaration written in bodies instead of ink.

      The beastkin lords completed the circle, four predators who had marched here for their own reasons and owed nothing to anyone standing across from them.

      The silence that settled was heavier than any blow thrown today.

      Then Maelstrom noticed he was the only leader standing alone.

      "Hey, Black Fang." His voice came out tighter than he intended. "Get over here. You represent the Consortium as well."

      She didn't even acknowledge the general's existence.

      "..." Maelstrom's forehead began sweating as he scoffed.

      To think that the Venomborne Terror still considered herself one of them while she refused to even communicate with the syndicate for months was a level of delusion not many thought possible.

      Skarn broke the silence first.

      "The war is not over" The wolfkin lord's voice cut across the circle, flat and final.

      His grey eyes swept the group and settled on the elven queen standing behind the Primordial Villain. "Elvardia allied with the undead and armed the lionkin, causing a lot of harm to the Beastman Confederation. We came here to make things right, and we intend to finish what we started."

      Rajah's amber eyes hadn't left Myrasyn since she'd taken her position behind Quinian. "The Beastman Confederation demands formal surrender from both elves and dwarves. Reparations for every life we lost in both your meddling in our affairs and in this war."

      Centuries of war lived in that demand.

      The beastkin and the Elvardians had bled each other since before kingdoms had names, and every generation inherited the debt whether they wanted it or not.

      The beastkin hadn't marched to this field for Quinian's sake but because Elvardia was their enemy, and the chance to break them had been worth everything.

      "Your people bled,” Skarn continued, his grey eyes fully on Myrasyn. "Ours bled more. The reckoning is overdue."

      "If you refuse to surrender and make things right, we'll continue the war until you do," Gorruk announced.

      Although the bearkin had been silent thus far, it was clear on whose side he stood.

      The bearkin tribe had lost far too much thanks to the Elvardians’ sneaky meddling with the lionkin.

      "Absolutely not," Myrasyn decreed, stepping out from behind Quinlan.

      The warmth and the serene smile were gone.

      The queen who had been fanning herself and clutching Isveth during the spectacle stood with her back straight and her green eyes authoritative.

      "Over my dead body will I allow you to set one more foot on elven soil. This is as far as you go. You will turn around and-"

      "We will not go anywhere but forward, straight to your capital!" Skarn and Rajah snarled, showing their sharp teeth. "We will raid your treasuries, we will enslave your people, and we will ensure no elf or dwarf will ever have the resources to do what you have done!"

      The air between them compressed.

      Two apex predators whose ancestors had hunted elves since the first war between their races stared down an elven queen whose ancestors had defended against beastkin raids since time immemorial, and the silence that fell between the three of them was the oldest kind on the continent.

      Behind Skarn, his wolfkin heard the snarl in their lord's voice and moved without needing an order. Formations tightened and the front line of grey-furred warriors shifted forward with the sunchronized aggression of a pack responding to its alpha's furv.

      Rajah's tigerkin mirrored them from the adjacent block, amber-striped soldiers growling with the menace of predators who had never once questioned whether they were at the top of the food chain.

      In the elven ranks, the response to seeing their queen be threatened with such guttural screaming was immediate.

      "Take aim!"

      "Protect the Queen!"

      "We'll settle this once and for all!"

      Elven officers barked commands, and bowstrings drew taut across rows of archers who had been standing at rest seconds ago.

      Two armies were squaring up on flat ground that had no walls left to separate them, about to start a second battle on this field.

      Then a hand came to rest on Myrasyn's head.

      The touch was so gentle and so out of place against the tension tearing through the air that the elven queen's body froze before her mind caught up.

      Her long ears twitched at the contact, flattening once before springing back up.

      "Q-Quinlan?!" The gasp that left her was small and completely unbefitting a majestic queen squaring off with ancient enemies.

      Myrasyn looked up, and seeing the cold menace on his face, she fell silent, watching.

      Quinlan stepped past the expressive elf.

      The aura hit the circle before his voice did, the sheer pressure of what the Primordial Villain carried when he stopped holding it in check pressing outward until every breath in range came a fraction harder than the last.

      Skarn's body went rigid.

      Every instinct the wolfkin lord possessed fired at once, the same instincts that had screamed at him to kill this man when he was barely level thirty now howling the same warning ten times louder, and the thousand-year pact that bound them both was the only thing keeping his hand at his side.

      Quinlan took three calm, agonizingly slow steps toward the snarling beastkin lords before stopping so close to the pair that they had to angle their necks to look into his eyes.

      With a deep, authoritative voice he decreed, "The elves are under my protection."

      Myrasyn's eyes went wide.

      [Synchra] flared in a ripple of living metal, and his infamous helmet sealed over his face with a hiss of crimson fire.

      Domineering red eyes burned through the visor, bright enough to cast light on the frost beneath him.

      When the Primordial Villain spoke again, his voice carried the weight of a creature far older than the man wearing the armor.

      "The bloodshed stops here."
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