Finis Regni
The Bat
High in the darkened clouds aboard the airship, far above Kapua to avoid the ballistae, Lord Avery sat wrapped in a thick fur coat, accompanied only by Angelo and a crewman. The rest had disembarked on their mission. Below them, several parts of Kapua burned, including the castle. Yet it was not the work of the Bat, whose amphorae of naphtha remained untouched.
“I am going to miss them,” Lord Avery murmured, looking at the starry skies.
Angelo, likewise wrapped in fur, sat nearby while his trainee crewman handled the helm. He had been listening to the exchange between Lord Avery and King Nico through his magic. Sighing heavily, he said, “They should escape as planned.”
“Can you blame them?” Avery asked his mage, who could only avert his eyes.
Both knew the men wanted to make sure the King died. While the Mountain Clans were the true cause of all that had gone wrong, the King, as their ally, was no less a threat. His warlords, his kingdoms full of Centurians, Nicopolans, and Tarracans, would all be a poison in their lives. They had already suffered greatly from the fallout of the Nicopola conflict, with raiders striking their borders at every turn.
The men wanted revenge.
They wanted to ensure their families and their descendants could live in peace.
“We cannot afford to lose brothers like them,” Angelo said bitterly. He knew that even if they survived, they could not be exchanged. Spies might be traded, but not captured assassins. Their doom would be all but certain.
While it was a voluntary suicide mission, their loss was still painful. They had known those men. Shared meals and laughter. Many were bright candidates for officer or command. And all of them were Nicopolans.
Contrary to what the outsider had claimed, most of Dawn’s population was of Nicopolan blood. Only Lord Avery and his close kin were not native, and even they appeared Nicopolan and had taken in much of its culture and Imperium traditions.
They ate different food and kept different meals, but that did not make them different.
“So what now, My Lord?” Angelo finally asked.
“Use your optics and see if the ballistae on the castle’s roofs and towers are standing down.”
“You truly mean to evacuate them?”
“We'll see...”
“A king does not kill another king,” Angelo muttered, recalling the words as he rose to take the helm from his trainee. “How absurd.”
“Fear not. Nothing has changed,” Lord Avery said firmly. “Take us wide and set a long, straight course to the castle. Bring us down to the tallest tower.”
***
Kapua
The lady had come to Kapua to seduce a King whose face and manner she already knew from streams of reports carried by their smugglers. She was the Clan’s foremost head of spies, dealing with agents and secrets moving in and out of the western mountains.
Her mission in Kapua was twofold: to gain access to King Nico and to remain at his side. To bear him an heir would have been the highest triumph she could achieve.
She was one of the Clan’s finest. For the elders to send her meant they were desperate for results.
And desperate they were. The Mountain Clans’ brash young leader, Roderic, had failed in his grand ambition to seize Three Hills. The Black Lord, the greatest scourge the smugglers had faced in generations, had proved indomitable. Worse still, the western reaches of the mountains were besieged by the Gray Legion. Not even their timely raids before harvest could convince the Legion to pull back. Its men, and their commander Iron Skull Servius, were as stubborn as the reports claimed.
Cold wind blew past her as she stood at the top of the tower. Its circular battlement was wide enough for a dozen people to stand. There, the men were busy erecting the wooden scaffold Lord Avery had once used to reach the airship, which had been taken down after his escape.
The sound of hammering and muttered voices, along with the King’s light conversation with his retinue on the floor below, made it feel almost like a peaceful nighttime excursion. Yet the smoke and the red glow of fire against the night at the foot of the castle, and the panicked troops and passersby below fighting the blaze in desperation, were all too sobering.
Despite the fire and turmoil, men bearing reports crossed back and forth almost without pause, sharing every sliver of good news, if only to keep fear at bay.
Among the reports, one brought rare relief. The kitchen staff had managed to break through a window and its iron grating, allowing servants and maids to escape. But the route had since been blocked by burning debris.
As the fire and smoke reached even the tower, she caught sight of a shape far off. Vast and black, it bled into the night, hard to mark with the eye. It moved as though it slipped between stars and clouds, appearing without warning on the horizon.
It was the first time she had seen the leviathan of the sky. The one her Clansmen had come to dread.
“The Bane of Corinthia,” she muttered to herself, her voice lost to the night wind.
They had brought one down, yet Avery still had a pair, if not more. Steadying herself, the lady moved past the men gathered on the battlement and descended toward the stairway hatch. Below, she saw the King seated on a folded canvas chair as if on a hunt; lanterns hung around him.
There was a strange calm. Several stories beneath them, the fire undoubtedly blazed, and everyone fought desperately with their lives on the line, choking and gasping as wood turned to cinder and smoke. Their wetted linen and canvas on poles could only do so much against dry timber and heavy drapings that burned stronger than they could strike.
Yet in here, the people acted as if nothing was wrong. It was not bravery. It was as if their nerves had already frayed.
Lord of Dawn’s trap had been so thorough that they could not even reach the cisterns or wells to fight the fire. They were trapped, with nothing left to do but wait for the promise of help or take the leap from the wall.
The lady did not speak to draw attention. Her arrival alone drew many eyes. Her tattered cloak, slashed in several places, revealed flashes of red dress beneath. Together with her red lips, sultry voice, and intoxicating scent, it was too much for some, even in the midst of a crisis.
“Your Majesty.” She curtsied before him under the gaze of young and old alike. Their faces remained polite, but their eyes could not hide the trace of lust.
“I see an airship approaching,” she finally reported.
They exchanged glances, and many pressed to the windows to catch a glimpse, yet none could find it. Two of the Royal Guard hurried upstairs for a clearer view.
“Did you see anything?” the guard leader asked.
“No, it is too dark,” they replied.
It was only expected, as they were not mages and had no gemstone to grant night sight, or it had yet to be awakened.
The King seemed amused by their confusion, taking it as proof of the lady’s identity as a mage. “Tell us, from what direction? Is it only one flying vessel?”
“If you will follow me upstairs, Your Majesty,” she offered.
The King rose and followed her to the top, flanked by his guards, advisor, and retinue, who muttered and jostled, for the space could not hold them all.
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“There, My King,” the lady said, pointing toward the approaching airship.
The King gave only a quiet “Ah,” and nodded. He could not see it, only guessed its height by the line of her gesture. “Is it close already?”
“Halfway to the gate from here.”
“Tell me, do you see the Lord of Dawn aboard it?” he asked.
“It seems so, but I cannot be certain,” she replied.
He nodded again, already distracted by other concerns, and turned to murmur instructions to his Royal Guard.
She remained still, watching amid the darkness, as the wind rose and smoke drifted upward, carrying the harsh stench of burning timber and scorched cloth.
The King soon completed his preparations. She assumed it would be a fine wine to honor their savior, an irony so bitter it nearly made her laugh.
It was her first great success to bed a King, and in the same night, he would be taken hostage. Her own fate, too, seemed sealed. She shuddered at the thought of that old fox rescuing her. But doubt crept in. How many could the airship truly carry? Would he save any beyond the King and his chosen few?
She was about to speak, for the airship had begun its final approach, when a sudden glow flared from the opposite tower.
Her eyes widened. From its brightness, she knew it to be a sizeable gemstone of light, likely mounted on a silver dish reflector, the kind the Imperium once used to fight beastmen at night. “Your Majesty,” she blurted in complete shock.
But the King only gazed at the sky, as though nothing were amiss.
A cold chill ran through her spine.
The bright light swept across the sky, circling, and after several passes, it found its mark: a vast blot moving near the tower. At once, uproar broke from the other battlements. She stared in horror as two massive bolts were loosed into the night.
Her mouth fell open. She turned to the King in protest. “My King!”
But he had a thin, proud grin upon his lips. And that grin froze her to the marrow. She had fatally misjudged King Nico. His charm and approachable nature had masked a terrible malice behind that veneer of the perfect king.
“You'll kill us all!” she screamed, giving voice to the pale-faced advisors and retinue, whose faces had filled with disbelief, dread, and despair.
...
The Bat
Under Angelo’s guidance, the airship drew toward the tower, just as he had done many times before. He fought the gusting night wind, rising from the fire below, while his night sight confirmed that the wooden scaffold had been raised, meaning they could evacuate the King and whoever Lord Avery wished to save.
Suddenly, he caught a streak of silver. Another. “Fuck! My Lord, hold on!”
He seized the controls and wrenched them hard, but at that range and height, it was too late.
To his horror, the first bolt nearly tore through the gondola, scraping past before punching into the balloon envelope. The second struck a heartbeat later, driving straight into the hot air compartment. Behind him, a crewman toppled from his seat, crying out in panic, “We took a hit! We took a hit!”
The hiss of venting air through silk told the rest. Two gaping wounds now bled their lift into the night.
“My Lord!” Angelo called, scrambling to force the fuel mixture to full rich and wrenching the burner open to its maximum.
“I am fine!” Lord Avery replied, while the lone crewman behind him, pale and clenched, fumbled with the rattan poles and sticky resin to plug the breach. But in that darkness, even with the hiss, the wound was near impossible to find.
“I am aborting the approach,” Angelo shouted, seeing the ballistae below being reloaded as he fought to keep the bat level.
“No, keep her steady,” Lord Avery ordered, against all reason.
“They did not intend to surrender,” Angelo snapped from his seat, his voice shaking with fury.
“Nor do I intend to capture him,” Lord Avery said, calm as stone, a grin pulling at his lips, fire alive in his eyes.
It was only then that Angelo understood.
He dragged a breath through his teeth. “Aye. Steady as she goes.”
Lord Avery peered once more through his optics while Angelo fought the airship with a frenzy, wrestling with the loss of buoyancy, the wild surge of gas from the burner, and the heaving night wind. He had to hold her level, nose lifting, or their line would fail and they would bleed too much speed.
Amid the chaos, Lord Avery calmly fixed his aim. The burning castle cast enough light across his lenses for him to see. He adjusted the screws and levers, waiting through the shuddering frame. When the lines aligned, he unleashed four amphorae of naphtha toward the tower. The projectiles sailed in a cruel arc toward the highest point of the keep.
“We of Dawn send our regards,” Lord Avery said, clenching his teeth as Angelo cast everything he had to propel the airship away from danger.
...
Kapua Castle
The four naphtha amphorae, filled with the latest combustible mixture, flew toward the tower. The wide white light from the opposite battlement caught them mid-flight, glinting off the clay bodies, and a ripple of horror broke through the men as they rushed for the stairs.
“My King!” the lady cried. Despair raked through the gathered advisors and retainers. To think the King himself had sealed their fate.
Amid the cries around him, King Nico let out a measured chuckle. “So, you are just as cruel, Avery.”
Without thought, the lady lunged the few steps between them and dragged him to the floor. The Royal Guard stood frozen, too slow to intervene, as she raised her ethereal shield with desperate strength.
The first amphora struck.
With terrifying precision, the first and second smashed into the level below, and a breath later, the remaining two shattered upon the summit. A roar of flame erupted. Blinding red and searing orange engulfed the tower in an instant.
Fiery heat slammed into them like a battering ram. Men burst into flame where they stood. Hair curled and shriveled, wool and linen caught alight, and eyebrows vanished as skin burned. Those still alive, blind and choking on fire, stumbled, trying to scream. Advisor, royal guard, retainer, common worker, Centurian or Nicopolan, it made no difference. In agony, they staggered and plunged from the parapet, their burning bodies tumbling toward the stones below.
The scaffold burned like a pyre. Dead men still moved upon it, half-alive, thrashing in a molten tangle of cloth and flesh fused by the flames.
There was no escape. In the space of a few breaths, all sound faded but the crackling of fire, drawn higher by the wind that fed it.
“My Lord!” the lady cried, pain biting into her as the heat singed the ends of her hair and cloak. The strength of her twin gemstones flickered, faltering.
“So you are a mage,” the King said, lying on the scorching stone, his voice unnaturally calm.
The lady clenched her teeth against the pain and heat. Even the stones burned now, and though she forced her ethereal shield to its limit, the flames and the heat were beyond belief.
“My King,” she gasped, “why?”
He reached up, brushing a strand of her hair that clung to her sweat-soaked face. “I will never let myself be taken.”
She could only stare at him through the blistering haze. “I cannot save you. My strength is fading.”
“I have no complaints,” he murmured. “You should jump. I have heard mages can survive a fall from the roof with no broken bones.”
“I will not abandon you,” she answered, her voice breaking.
He gave a faint chuckle. “You cannot survive while holding me.” His tone carried no fear, only a weary kindness. “I lived a good life. I was a nobody, yet I became a king for nearly a hundred days. I am satisfied.”
Despite her anger at him for sealing their doom, she found herself struck by a painful sympathy for this man she had only met tonight. Whether it was the Lover’s Elixir or something truer, she could not tell. Yet it was enough to drive her to pour the last of her strength into the shield, holding back the clawing fire. But she was no true mage, and her control over the ethereal barrier was crude, wasteful, incomplete. In mere seconds, the power of her twin gemstones faded, and the pocket of air she held around them grew scalding hot.
Her attempt to survive the fire was over.
Heat tore through their skin. Linen and silk began to catch alight.
Then, with a sudden, startling force, the King rose and seized her by the arms.
“My King?” she gasped, stunned by his strength amid the blaze. Only then did she sense it. He bore a gemstone, likely hidden in his rings or chains, a finest relic that she had never noticed while it lay dormant.
The King wrapped his arms around her in what she believed was protection. Too weakened to resist, she could only watch as he hauled her toward the edge.
“No!” she cried, realizing too late what he intended.
With the last act he would ever give her, he swung her outward, casting her toward the gardens below, where he hoped the trees might break her fall.
“Farewell,” he said, as she slipped from his grasp and the fire swallowed him whole.
“My King!” she screamed as she fell. The night wind tore past her, thick with smoke and acrid ash. The world surged upward. In that final plunge, with her head still crowded by unspoken words and unfinished thoughts, there was no time to brace. Branches struck first, snapping beneath her with sickening cracks, numbing her limbs before the ground could finish her. She felt only the sharp pain of shattered bone, and then the stillness of darkness at the end.
Above, on the burning tower, even with the prime gemstone he had taken from the wars in Nicopola, King Nico lacked the art to save himself. The stone could numb pain, mend flesh, sharpen sight in darkness, and lend strength, but he could not call forth the ethereal shield.
And so he burned.
It was not the swift death that had claimed his retinue, for the fiercest flames had already passed. Not wishing to die crawling or screaming, he forced his scorched body to move. Through mounting agony, he pushed himself down the blackened steps, where the fire had devoured all.
With a rattle deep in his ash-clogged lungs and a smirk of defiance, he stepped into the heart of the blaze.
There was no hesitation.
King Nico did not believe the creed of Centurian supremacy would die with him. If anything, he believed his death would spark a resurgence of his people.
The Imperium had long rejected the blood of his people, despite their superiority over the other human tribes. From the first days upon this verdant continent, the Centurians had been favored by the Progenitors. They were the elite of all society until the rise of the Ageless Emperor. The Third Emperor had feared and hated them so deeply that he moved the capital from Centuria to Tiberia, seeking to break their dominion. Thus began his people's fall from grace into mediocrity.
As his eyes and flesh burned, his mind fixed only on what he had gained, his part in his people's return to power.
He believed that one day, another half-Centurian boy would rise to reclaim what was rightful and rule over all humans, as nature intended.
Thus, as his flesh burned and his gemstone ceased, no longer recognizing him as living, he laughed and denied his enemies' triumph. He cast himself into the tower’s hollow, through the spiral stair’s open well, leaving no corpse to claim. His body would be lost, buried within the ruin of his own castle.
Over the burning tower where the King had fallen, Lord Avery watched from his wounded sky leviathan. He claimed no superiority over other men. It was Nicopolan-born that had fought, bled, and died under his banner, besting all the Centurians had sent against them.
The loss of Kapua and the fiery end of those who held it had left him not only wiser but humbled.
With the sober clarity of age, he did not reach for wine or triumph. Instead, Lord Avery turned his eyes toward the city gate, where a mass of people fought and pressed, desperate to flee the city.
The fight for Kapua was nearly over. A king had paid the ultimate price for his ambition, now burned and charred. Yet even for the victor, triumph was all but fleeting.
***
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