The Aeterna Empire

Chapter 11 - Protector's Patron

By the gilded door, Izthark roped his arms together and leaned back against the strong frame. Outside the hustling of servants could be indistinctly heard preparing the feast for an honored guest. My fiance was undoubtedly exchanging her clothes after throwing herself into the dirt just for a hug. Outside the castle, an army of Soran stood, once with a promise of salvation, but now with the oppressive reality that no matter how fast I was, how hard I tried, I was simply late. Outside was noisy, but here, it was suppressed as a tomb between myself, the duke, and my neutral bodyguard.

I looked into the eyes of a man I once felt sheltered by. A man who had been my warden by a treaty but blood father in dreams. A man who saw past the racial stereotypes that defined our bloods and saw in me the absence of something he could share with me as he had his daughter. I looked into a man who had betrayed me and only one thing came to mind to ask of him.

"How long?"

"Right after the king fell."

Of course. Of course, he had given in at the first opportunity. I had learned to expect the worst of one leader. I shouldn't have lowered my guard to expect anything more from another.

I took a step towards him, agitated. "That was all it required? You allow this warmonger to pave his dream on the pugnent blood and charred flesh of villages and soldiers from one side of Dyson to the other?! You would doom my people as well as yours to a ruined Dyson!"

He sidesteps me, circling me, "And what better is it to sacrifice lives ordering them to strike their heads on a steel wall? Am I to doom the exact people I seek to preserve? To order them to die rather than survive, until all that is left is me, my pride, and a dusty throne to an empty castle?"

I shift and confront him directly, "Yes! Because that is what a king demands of his soldiers!"

The Duke looked at me with something that hurt. It hurt more than the disdain of my father and the trickery of my brother. Pain. Not suffering of his own, but the empathetic pain of comprehending me and feeling that pain on my behalf as if I didn't have enough.

He pitied me.

Carefully shaking his head, he said, "It's not worth it."

I gritted my teeth. I wanted to say something impolite but held back until my jaw ached from the effort. Instead, I said, "You lack conviction. A war cannot be won without death. A king must be willing to sacrifice a great many soldiers on the altar,"

He interrupted me, raising a finger, and reminding me of something, "Otherwise don't even draw your weapon. Do you recall that lesson? Do not draw a weapon to kill unless you are willing to die. Do not misjudge me; I am willing to die, to allow many to die, but I am unwilling to lose my daughter. Do not ask me to. I made my choice. Conceivably not as a Duke should, but as a father." He shook his head and walked past me, showing the conversation was over. "You should leave while you still can."

It seemed there would be no arguing with him. He wouldn't budge, yet I even so had one question for him. I twisted and set a hand to his shoulder as he passed. I asked, "Why are the Soran really here?"

He merely rotated his head towards me slightly, "Do you need to ask? The old world died the day the Aeterna lifted his hand and chained the sun. The winds of change have swept from the west and already the storm has overtaken us. Weather it in the eye or discover yourself laying amongst your ruins."

He gently brushed my hand off and left. Izthark held the door open politely and secured it again as the man departed, leaving just the two of us. He stood by silently, observing, but for me, I stood in a chamber of noise as I heard the crashing of glass all around me. Within the sound of silence was the fracturing of reality. My mind burned and my fingers tickled from the cut of the shards as I struggled to hold it together. My hands shook and teeth clattered in the warmth and I clenched them together to still them.