The Soul Engine Ch. 7 (Original Fantasy) (Patreon)

A/N: In which Mikael finally learns some more important information. Like where he even is. And who the fuck 'Lord Zadicus' is.

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Still staring down at Dame Thayla’s bowed head, Mikael hesitates for only a moment longer before turning and setting his sword and dagger on the table nearby. Then, quickly to make sure she doesn’t change her mind and try to stab HIM now that he’s disarmed himself, Mikael takes Thayla’s blade from her outstretched hands.

As his fingers curl around the handle and it rests evenly in his palm, Mikael’s immediate reaction is that it feels… good. Tak’s sword hadn’t been bad necessarily and the dagger Mikael had taken from the thug’s friend wasn’t that shoddy either. Their weapons were nothing like the utter shit he’d been given back in the arena.

However, Thayla’s sword… it’s a true masterwork compared to the thugs’ weaponry. Forged in the Citadel of the Rose itself… Mikael didn’t know what the fuck that meant to be honest. There was a vague sense of familiarity from the foreign side of his mind, but the memories didn’t exactly work like that. They weren’t too focused on names or locations, but on the feelings of battle and the training needed to wield weapons for the sole purpose of killing.

Even still, all of the killers in his head, be they soldiers or brigands, warriors of murderers… they all agreed that this was a damn good sword. As Mikael hefts it up and down in his hand for a few moments, the Dame lowers her head even further and pulls her white locks out of the way so that her neck is fully exposed to him.

… But honestly, Mikael has no intentions of killing her. Oh sure, some of him is demanding that he repay her for what she did to him. His instincts scream to end the threat. But he knows better than to trust THOSE instincts. And as mentioned before, this is not something that all of the killers shoved into his head are actually in agreement on.

Still holding Thayla’s sword aloft, Mikael looks over to Avina and asks the question he’s been wanting to ask for a while now.

“Who exactly IS Lord Zadicus?”

Thayla’s head twitches in surprise at hearing him speak rather than swing her blade. Avina, meanwhile, lets out a low sigh.

“Zadicus Quinn is the Lord of the City… this city specifically. You’re in a city called Alether, Mikael. Zadicus is Lord of Alether, by the decision of the Council of Lords… the ruling body of the Kingdom of Ocreatha, where Alether is located.”

He appreciates her clarifying all of that, even as he tries his best to commit those names to memory. He’s in a city called Alether in a kingdom called Ocreatha. The… foreign nature of those names, places he’s never heard of before, only serve to drive home the fact that he’s truly been summoned to another world. As… as a hero? But in a way that abused the Hero Summoning Ritual, apparently.

“What is he to you, specifically?”

Avina’s lips curl into a frown at that, and she crosses her arms over her chest again as she huffs.

“He would call himself my benefactor, but in actuality he’s my creditor. He’s been paying my way for quite a few years now, but never for free or out of the kindness of his heart. He’s funding my research… but seeing as I had nothing to show for it before you, all he’s done is drag me further and further into debt. I owe him a lot of money, as Tak and his friends revealed.”

For a moment, Mikael is quiet. Maybe it’s cowardice but he doesn’t want to ask his next question. He’s pretty sure he already knows the answer too. Though, it’s always possible that it wasn’t really him, but one of his servants. Either way, he knows he just needs to suck it up and ask so its confirmed.

“This… Zadicus Quinn. Long brown hair? Black robes with a pointed hood? Scar under his left eye?”

At that description, Dame Thayla’s head finally fully comes up as she stares at him. Avina, meanwhile, has a look of pity in her eyes… a grimace twisting her freckled features as she nods.

“That’s him.”

Of course. Of fucking course. To be fair, all of the evidence for it to be him had already been there. It still surprised Mikael to find out that some City Lord was going around personally fucking with people’s heads, however. Then again, Zadicus Quinn wasn’t just fucking with any random strangers’ heads, now was he? No, he was fucking with Summoned Heroes’ heads… whatever the fuck that really meant.

Clenching his jaw, Mikael nods to Avina in turn.

“He was the first person I saw after waking up in this world. In a cell. He… he did something to my mind.”

Mikael holds Thayla’s sword in one hand, drooped down to point at the floor as he brings up the other to claw at the space next to his head.

“He scooped out my memories. He tore my life in two and then shoved a bunch of shit about killing and fighting into my head in its place. Now I can’t go five seconds without having to fight off the impulse to hurt people. He turned me into a goddamn monster.”

Still kneeling before him, the Dame inhales sharply, prompting Mikael to look down at her again with a frown. She looks as stricken as ever… but there’s also an outrage now. Outrage on his behalf if he’s not mistaken.

“What do you know of this ‘Lord’ Zadicus? What’s your relationship with him?”

Biting her lower lip, Thayla shakes her head.

“I… we are barely acquainted, admittedly. I am not from these parts, Sir Hero. I hail from the Zuverian Empire, which is neighbors with the Kingdom of Ocreatha. As such, I do not technically have much authority here in the city. So, when I arrived to begin my investigation, I sought common ground with the Lord of the City, hoping to find him amenable to my cause.”

Mikael takes this in but can’t help asking a question in a dry tone.

“And was he?”

Obviously, he already knew the overarching answer to his query. They all knew how Thayla’s ‘cause’ had turned out for all parties involved. But Mikael isn’t exactly feeling charitable to the woman who stabbed him in the heart. Not at the moment.

Averting her gaze, Thayla pauses briefly before answering him.

“He was… standoffish and short with me. I thought that he simply didn’t find my cause to be worth his time, and that he was just another greedy man who was more interested in money than seeing justice done. I realize now that he was simply presenting the façade he wanted me to see. By keeping me at arm’s length but offering me some ‘assistance’… he blinded me to his true nature.”

Avina scoffs and pipes up at that.

“Well, you’re not entirely wrong. Zadicus is a greedy bastard more interested in money than seeing anything remotely approaching justice done. He’s never been all that concerned about ‘justice’.”

Avina’s tone is bitter, even as Mikael and Thayla both glance her way for a moment before Thayla looks at him, her eyes wide with horror on his behalf.

“Sir Hero… not only was your summoning a crime that Zadicus must answer for, but so was the manipulation of your memories. It should never have happened. He must be held to account for his actions.”

That sounded nice, but at the same time… something in Mikael’s gut told him it wouldn’t be that simple. And the next words out of Avina’s mouth only confirm that gut feeling. Mikael’s Soul Mechanic scoffs again, shaking her head when they give her their attention once more.

“By whom? A single Knight of the Rose? Zadicus has been doing this for years and years now. Both the memory bullshit and the Hero Summoning are pillars of his entire business model. He wouldn’t have become Lord of the City in the first place without it.”

Avina pauses for a moment, as of trying to figure out how much she should be revealing. But in the end, she just tosses her hands up as if to say ‘fuck it’.

“Before he was Lord of the City, Zadicus Quinn was the Master of the Arena. Not nearly as prestigious of a title, but still quite a lucrative business. Building up arenas all over the city, he became beloved by the people, entertaining them all with the blood sport. However, the real coup was when he managed to convince the previous Lord of the City to… help him out a little bit.”

Mikael furrows his brow.

“Help him out a little bit?”

Nodding, Avina continues.

“Zadicus managed to push out all of the other Arena Masters by advertising more and more of his fights as ‘to the death’. With stakes that high, everyone wanted to see what would happen, so he made coin hand over fist. But his greatest strength was also his greatest weakness. How do you sustain a business that requires your product to constantly die for you?”

Tilting his head to the side, Mikael considers that question for a moment before answering honestly.

“You don’t?”

Avina just smirks and shakes her head.

“Wrong. You get more product. That’s what Zadicus did. He convinced the previous Lord of the City to start turning over Alether’s criminals. It helped that the nearby silver mines had just begun to run out at the time. Before, if you were caught breaking the law in Alether, you would usually wind up being sent to do your time in the mines. But with the mines winding down, being sent there was becoming pointless and costing the city more money than it was worth. So what did Zadicus do? He offered an alternative.”

Mikael was following along now. Thayla, it seemed, was a little behind though still. From her kneeling position, the Dame asks what’s clearly most relevant to her.

“… Where does the Hero Summoning come in though?”

He’s pretty sure he knows, but he lets Avina answer all the same, just in case he’s wrong.

“Simple, really. Even with all the criminals in the world to pad his arenas and make the blood sport as bloody as ever, it wasn’t enough. Zadicus wanted to keep expanding. So he did. By summoning heroes, claiming they were criminals, and throwing them into the arenas to die. Of course, he needed them to actually seem like criminals, or at least like fighters rather than people from other worlds. Which is where the memory manipulation comes in. By siphoning some off the top from the criminals who are going to die anyways, he can turn any ‘hero’ he summons into an instant warrior and then send them off to die in the pits.”

Avina shrugs, trying to feign nonchalance but with an undercurrent of anger over the situation present throughout both her posture and her tone.

“That’s how he became the wealthiest man in Alether. And from there, it was all too easy for him to make the right connections on the Council of Lords to be made Lord of the City. Ever since he became City Lord a few years ago, he’s been expanding his operations.”

Then, a savage smirk spreads across the freckled Soul Mechanic’s face.

“Of course… he usually gets a chance to retrieve the memories after his Summoned Heroes are dead. Which he didn’t get the chance to do this time because I saw a window of opportunity I couldn’t pass up. As I said before, no one else has had what I needed to make the Soul Engine work. So when I got the opportunity to grab your body… I took it. Needless to say, Zadicus is going to be upset about that whenever he finally finds out.”

While a part of Avina is clearly worried about him finding out, a larger part is even more clearly satisfied to have stuck it to the man. It’s obvious that Mikael’s Soul Mechanic doesn’t like the Lord of the City very much. That’s more than fair in Mikael’s opinion, because quite frankly, he doesn’t like Zadicus Quinn very much either.

“He’ll be even more upset to discover that Mikael is alive again. After all, as a Summoned Hero, Mikael is evidence of all of Lord Quinn’s crimes. We need to get him out of the city. If we can get him to the Citadel, if we can reach other knights of the Order of the Rose… we might still have a chance to bring Zadicus to justice for his crimes.”

Mikael blinks as Thayla suddenly rises from her knee, having apparently decided he wasn’t intending on killing her. Which… fair, he wasn’t. Still, he’s a little surprised by her impassioned plea. And he’s left wondering whether she’s right and if it would work or not. Only, Avina doesn’t seem to put much stock in Thayla’s words. His Soul Mechanic scoffs and crosses her arms over her chest again.

“Really? That’s your big plan?”

Thayla flushes red at that and scowls at Avina.

“Look, I’m well aware that as a single Knight of the Rose, my authority here in this city and the Kingdom of Ocreatha is incredibly low. However… that doesn’t change the fact that if I brought proof to the Order, they would most definitely act! The political pressure from the Citadel alone would be enough to make the Council of Lords give in, but I’m confident that the Emperor would also back the Citadel up on this!”

Politics. And not just politics, but fantasy politics in a brand new world that Mikael is just barely starting to understand. Needless to say, a lot of what Thayla just said goes right over his head. Thankfully, it doesn’t go over Avina’s.

“That’s not the problem. Even if everything you just said was true… what would happen to Mikael in such a scenario? What would happen to me? How is the Order of the Rose going to react to a Summoned Hero who was brought back from the dead and has an esoteric device stuffed into his chest in the place of his heart? Best case scenario, they lock me away and put Mikael down while everything else you just said still happens. Worst case scenario, they strike all three of us down on the spot rather than giving us the time of day.”

It's quite obvious from Avina’s tone that she’s not interested in even the best case scenario. And it’s equally obvious from how Thayla falls silent that nothing Avina has just said is necessarily wrong. Indeed, the Dame’s silence is quite damning as Mikael stands there, looking between the two of them.

… In the end, it’s obvious he doesn’t have all the information he needs. Specifically, he needs to know more about HIS current status. Not just as one of the recently resurrected, but also what it means to even be a Summoned Hero in the first place.

“Right… let’s table that for now. I’ll wrap my head around the politics later. What I want to know more about is all this Summoned Hero nonsense. I was brought here from another world. I know that for a fact. But… what the hell is a hero even supposed to be? What do they do? Why is a ritual to summon people from another world being abused by someone like Zadicus in the first place?”

He needs to know. Obviously. Though the look of hero worship and excitement on Thayla’s pretty face as she brightens up from his questions DOES give Mikael pause.

… Why did it suddenly feel like he was a celebrity facing down a super fan or something?

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A/N: Thayla has a stay of execution for the moment. Mikael needs answers and better two people to tell him what he needs to know rather than one.

Ah but what's this? Thayla seems a little TOO excited to tell Mikael all about what it means to be a Summoned Hero...

This week's chapters are very talk-y, exposition-y, and world building-y. Hopefully they're still enjoyable as I reveal information that both the reader and Mikael need to know, while also letting Avina and Thalya's characters/personalities show some more~

As always, please let me know what you guys think!