Unruly Summon Chapter 31: Expulsion (Patreon)

"Failures, your majesty?" asked Wendy, looking equal parts confused and nervous.

"Indeed. Was it not your careless use of Magus Visus in front of Thomas that led to him learning it, and thus discovering things you were ordered to keep hidden? And was it not your carelessness, Christine, that permitted him to use Magus Visus right in front of you, undiscovered? Had you not made such mistakes, would Thomas not be battling demons right now? My family would still be whole, and the kingdom would not have suffered such an ignoble defeat."

"The heck?!" I complained. "You're seriously going to accuse them of failing to lie to me in front of me?"

"Please remain silent," requested Christine. "He is not wrong. What restitution may we offer, my king?"

"Everything," snapped back the king. "I strip you of your positions, your titles and your nobility. No longer do you have a place in the castle."

"B... But..." stammered Wendy. "What of our duties protecting and teaching Thomas?"

"You may still carry them out. Or rather, you must. I turn you both over to his custody. From now on, he owns you. I would love for you to share the fate of my sister, but alas, we don't have the time to spare for your acclimatisation right now. I'll be sure to arrange it for after harvest."

Christine instantly paled. "... Thomas lives in the castle," she pointed out in a rather strained voice.

"Not anymore. My father promised him more appropriate accommodation, and I am happy to follow through. From today until such a time as the gods see fit to return him to his own world, he has use of a residence in the upper district. His maid is there already, preparing the place, although given your early return, it's unlikely she's done cleaning. Certainly your personal belongings won't be delivered until tomorrow. My apologies, but you'll need to make do. I'm sure it will still be more comfortable than sleeping outdoors."

At Christine's request, I held my tongue, but the gross injustice of his behaviour made me want to scream. He was punishing them for failing to mislead me into killing demons? He blamed them for Stephanie, Edward and Victoria?

... Maybe, but the way he kept glancing back at me made it obvious that wasn't the point. He blamed me as much as them. Christine and Wendy had, from a certain viewpoint, failed in their tasks. He was within his rights to punish them. Meanwhile, I had brought hope to the continent by providing a method of cleaning up miasma. He was duty bound to reward me. And so he gave me a house. A reward on the face of it, but in practice, he got to kick me out of the castle, avoiding ever needing to deal with me again. It stripped me of my protection, not to mention Mary's. It meant the castle would no longer be responsible for my food. I very much doubted that fresh robes or hot water would continue to appear from nowhere. We no longer had access to training supplies or mana potions. What looked like a reward from the outside was actually an enormous inconvenience to us.

On top of that, he gave me people, treating them as property, gleefully informing them of a future in which their minds would be torn apart and overwritten. Again, an outside observer would view it as rewarding me, but he knew full well I didn't think that way.

He was hurting the pair of them to punish me.

"Now, get out of my sight. I'm sure one of my aides knows the address and can provide details of the salary Thomas will receive. I never want to see any of you three again."

"Yes, your majesty," said Christine, doing a remarkable job of keeping her voice level.

Wendy didn't even try, keeping her mouth firmly shut.

"I wonder what your sister would think about you throwing away your position like this, after her efforts to get you into the academy?" called the king as we walked away.

Christine suddenly wasn't there.

A loud clang sounded behind me, and I spun to see Christine in front of the throne, sword drawn, swinging at the new king. He was laughing, a pair of knights in front of him, who had intercepted Christine's attack, trapping her sword between their own. I hadn't seen them in the room thus far, so they must have been hiding somewhere, and the speed with which they'd moved to defend the king showed a talent that almost certainly exceeded Christine's.

"Aww, did I touch a nerve?" needled the king.

"Christine!" shouted Wendy. "Don't let him provoke you!"

"I acknowledge my failure, and will accept my punishment for it, but you will not insult my sister," growled Christine, ignoring Wendy. Her arm shook, obviously trying to force her sword downwards with all of her strength, but the knights didn't move an inch.

"I don't believe I did. I merely asked what she would think."

"Christine!" repeated Wendy.

Christine hesitated a moment more, but then released her pressure, blurring back to her position next to us.

"Let's get out of here," she said, while the new king continued chuckling, pleased with his petty revenge.

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"I have to say, that was an abrupt end to our campaign. I might even describe it as anticlimactic."

Fang Zorzomon looked up from the report he was reading, happy for the distraction. The carriage he was riding in didn't have the best suspension, and trying to read the hastily scrawled text was making him travel-sick. "You say that as if it's a bad thing," he responded.

"No, it's not a bad thing," sighed Thazremath. "I'm just a little surprised. If their king was prepared to off himself, why didn't he do so ages ago?"

"He was a clever and pragmatic man. He did what he believed to be best for his kingdom, and he always has done. Two days ago, offering his head would not have helped his kingdom's situation. If anything, it would only add to the instability. However, now that they've confirmed the power of their hero, his successor has a clear path to solving the food crisis, so it was safe to trade himself for an end to the war."

"Clever? The man was a fool!"

"No, he simply lacked information. At every single step, his knowledge was lacking. He did not discover the crimes of his nobles before we did. Then he made the decision to cover up those crimes, believing that we would not go as far as war to avenge ourselves. Had he had earlier knowledge of this Miraculum spell the hero is capable of, he would have surrendered much earlier, before we discovered the knowledge for ourselves and increased our demands."

"I'd still say thinking we wouldn't take steps to enforce the ban on taboo magic shows he's pretty dull."

"Really? Then maybe these will change your mind."

Zorzomon tossed a pair of documents at his adjutant, who quickly scanned the titles.

"The report from Toby confirming the presence of a hero, and the past few days of intelligence from our scrying division about Ricousian's troop movements? What do they have to do with each other?"

"We have a long carriage ride. Read them for yourself."

"I already have. Toby listed the names and estimated abilities of everyone in the party, stated with very high confidence that the platoon dispatched to support his operation vastly outmatched them, and strongly recommended an operation to extract the hero and his human handlers from the rest of the group. And the troop movements are just that. Reports of troops moving around. Nothing interesting about them."

"Yes there was. The movement of several platoons west from Fort Terrusarn."

"Okay, yes, that was a little odd, but they could have been on a training exercise, or on their way to defeat a monster that the local slayers couldn't take care of. Heck, it could have just been a misdirection. It's hardly the first time they've made inexplicable troop movements."

"Yes, that's all true. It could have been nothing more than a coincidence."

"But obviously you think it wasn't."

"Had I not denied Toby's request to retrieve the hero, what route would they have taken to bring him back to us?"

"North, swinging west to avoid Odimere, past... Fort Terrusarn..."

"Now you're getting it."

"They'd have been perfectly placed to intercept our infiltration squad... So they sent their hero out with such a weak guard hoping we'd kidnap him, purely so that they could rescue him again later?!"

"That's my theory, yes. There's no way they didn't know our spies picked up that first cast of Miraculum, or that we'd see the slayer's guild notice and put two and two together. This is just conjecture, but I believe at that point, King Edward didn't actually believe it was possible to reclaim land with Miraculum. It's certainly true that the first cast didn't reduce miasma contamination around the capital. Perhaps he thought it needed a target more specific than 'the land', or that the area of effect would be unfeasibly small. So instead of trusting in the spell's success, he put the job in, and made the subsequent offer of conditional surrender, to make us think it was effective. He turned the hero into bait, and if we'd taken it... Toby recommended capturing the two handlers that were with him alive, and perhaps the one called Wendy would have let herself be captured, but the one called Christine would not. She would have fought to the death, and the hero would have resented us for it. It was the last gambit of King Edward. An attempt to turn the hero against us and then rescue him before we could show him any evidence of the humans' crimes. And if by strange chance the land reclamation worked, well... he won either way."

"... He's dead. That's not winning. That's the opposite of winning."

"If you believe that, then you have mistaken his goal. I consider today his victory, even if I did take a small consolation prize. I don't know whether the monster hordes were part of Edward's plan or if they were attracted by Miraculum, but either way, they allowed us to 'prove' that we were friendly towards the hero. We weren't able to obtain him for ourselves, but we were able to sow the first seeds of trust."

"Then presumably you have some plan for what to do next, too? Seeds or not, the humans still have him. He's not going to get up and leave on his own, and taking him by force would breach the peace agreement. We'd risk the elves and dwarves siding with the humans."

"You might be surprised. If you consider Edward to be stupid, I dread to imagine what you'll think of his son."

Zorzomon dug around in the piles of paper, and handed Thazremath a third report.

"A dossier on Prince George?" read Thazremath. "Well, King George now, I suppose."

He spent the next ten minutes skimming the text before handing it back with a shake of his head. "So that's why you demanded Victoria's corpse, but not the others involved in the cover-up. Just how many moves ahead are you planning?"

"Hey, it's not just me. Fang I may be, but I'm not the ruler of Ti'zharr. But yes. With luck, the new King George is going to do something that we will both agree is stupid, and thanks to Toby's report, we were able to assign the perfect person to take advantage."

Thazremath considered the situation for a few minutes more.

"I am never, ever, going in for promotion," he declared.