B2 - Ch 22: Chemical Weapons (Patreon)

Bringla was bustling when we got there. The spring flowers had long since died, and the war meetings had long since concluded. I said my goodbyes to friends, gave instructions to my workers, and put Leon in charge of Sundell in Rema’s absence. Now, I was in a city of gold that was running on technology and future dreams.

Immortals saluted me as I walked past, creating an electric stir. Infantry dismantled and reassembled their Barrett M107s, M16s, and Desert Eagles. Others loaded crates of .50 caliber rounds or secured the Browning M2 on the deck of steel ships that bobbed with the waves against the harbor.

“Status report,” I said to a brigadier general wearing the green uniform that I had instituted. The days of peacocking one’s position would end this year.

“We'll be ready to set out by nightfall,” Brigadier General Gramm answered. The soldiers liked the man for his well-rounded, likable smile that inspired confidence. I liked him for the sharp look in his eyes. “But I’m sure the soldiers would appreciate another week.”

“Wouldn’t we all?” I replied, watching soldiers bustling with their last-minute preparations. Ideally, they would all be fully prepared. However, the greatest killer in warfare isn’t soldiers—it’s the seasons. The conquest of Antigua would be measured in years, not weeks. That pits us against too many killers. “Is there anything critical to report?”

“No, it’s suspicious.”

“It is.” I watched the solemn waves of the Heliana Strait crash against my three dozen warships, with twenty already in the ocean awaiting departure. The rest were being loaded on the docks. “It almost makes me wish they had attacked us.”

If they had, we’d know about their weapons. But they hadn’t, so we didn’t.

Brigadier General Gramm nodded solemnly. “Do you think there might’ve been a leak? That they’re confident?” 

I shook my head. “In warfare, there’s always leaks. But in this case…” I looked to the ocean with a grave expression, “it doesn’t matter.”

King Bouchard would need to have a large navy to stop my warships, and they wouldn’t be prepared for our technology. If he knew what was coming, he would’ve done anything he could to sink as many as possible before our departure.

As for my siege weapons, even I didn’t understand the horror to come. The truth was dissociated, detached in the same way it must’ve been for J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project’s scientists, who understood the destructive might of the atomic bomb but couldn’t grasp the gravity of their creation until it hit Hiroshima.

We would all learn the true nature of chemical weapons together, but only I understood what would happen. Only I would stand behind this, and even with my (now photographic) memory that promised me the merciful forgiveness of fading, I would never forget it. It would be scarred into my memory as if I carved it into a tree with a pocket knife to forever remember. I was certain of it.

Steadying my resolve with a deep breath, I asked, “Is there anything else?”

“No, that’s all.”

“Then prepare your brigade to mobilize and spread the word.”

“Sir!” Brigadier General Gramm saluted, striding away and leaving me to my thoughts. It was a solemn moment. Soon, thousands would die—millions more if I didn’t act decisively.

There’s only one chance to do this. I watched the crashing waves that looked more ominous now than ever before. If I don’t, there will only be the torment of regret.

My weapons wouldn’t stay hidden. The minute that a soldier dropped a Barrett M107, the Antiguans would—through magic or other technology—reverse engineer or emulate it. Spies would infiltrate my chemical and gunpowder plants. Warfare would change. Evolve. Spread.

I only had one chance to show Solstice the wrath of God—the one depicted in the Holy Bible of the Christian faith—and make them submit without excessive bloodshed. That time was now. If I didn’t, I would just falter and let millions die in protracted wars that could kill more than the hell that awaited us in the future.

Still, it was easier said than done, not just because of the horror of my actions but because someone else was notorious for what I was about to do—

—the person I’d be fighting at the end of the century.

Thea walked up to me and caressed me, placing her hand on my chest, followed by her ears. “It’s not too late to turn back.”

“Do you want to turn back?”

She purred as I rubbed her ears. “I go where you go.”

Gripping my arms around her, I whispered, “Then let’s go. Once we obtain control of Antigua, we’ll have a long, prosperous golden era before the final war.”

"Promise?" 

"I promise."

With Valencia being a weak, neutral territory and Eudoria being the staging ground of the final war, we’d collect all our pieces after this war. If we managed to win over Antigua, there could be a couple of centuries of uninterrupted modernization—

—if I did things right.

"I promise," I echoed, speaking to myself, making a vow that no matter the decisions I made, no matter how dark or necessary, they would be for the genuine benefit of the future.

2

King Bouchard felt ants crawling under his flesh as he overlooked the Heliana Straight. The weather was overcast, threatening a savage cry that rocked the sea and soaked the land. Why am I so uneasy?

He stood on a wall made of concrete, lined with siege cannons and soldiers bearing rifles. They were far superior to the muskets his general introduced to Solstice, but they were still basic. They paled in comparison to Piercing Arrow, where mages infuse mana directly into an arrow with their fingers. All the archers in Servene’s army could shoot it, so it seemed irrelevant. Still, the rifles could give average people ample power at a moment’s notice. It had always been enough. But would it be now? 

King Bouchard overlooked the overcast skies and dead ocean from three hundred feet in the air, feeling a sense of dread. Below him was Servene’s Great Harbor, the most successful in the world. The smaller walls surrounding it were one hundred and fifty feet high. Both dwarfed the ones described by his allies who went to Sundell. 

So why? What was that feeling of anxiety seeping into his bones?

Servene stood for centuries since their emperor appeared, building the small port city into a Goliath entity during a century-long campaign that conquered Cyrvena, Forge, and part of Juntao before he boarded warships for Novena and never returned. Still, while the empire had largely crumbled, Servene remained a dominant force that dominated the territories south of the Maelvine Mountains. Since then, they controlled the bread basket and, through commerce and weaponry, had started reclaiming parts of Forge again.

While the empire had fragmented, Servene remained undefeated; uncontested; undisputed. It was an impregnable treasure that stood to survive the next millennia and beyond. So why?

A flash streaked across the sky, blinding the troops. Then came the crack of thunder, booming like a released titan. The icy tears of rain followed, exploding like bombs on his soldier’s metal helms, wrapping each in a haze of mist.

3

Marvis stood before a line of troops on the outer edge of Traumweber, a southern city that protected the border of the Threnosia Forest, long fought over by countries in Forge and Cyrvena. It had been a day since receiving words of King Everwood’s departure, which meant that he should be arriving in the late afternoon or nightfall at the latest.

His soldiers were as weathered as their soaked boots and dented armor. Ever since King Bouchard declared that those who wanted grain would need to kiss the ring, those in King Reckog’s allied forces suffered inflation and collapsing standards of living. Now, for the last three months, they were regularly facing—and losing—battles against Queen Boudica, the leader of the Vervain Citadel to the southwest of Servene, bordering the Threnosia Forest.

Warfare was grim. It was hard. Exhausting. Grueling. It pushed the limits of what people could endure. And for the Traumweber and Stellavine forces tasked with taking the forest, they were pushed to the breaking point.

That’s why Marvis found himself directly involved.

Riding his thunderstag across the line of troops, Marvis caught the gaze of each, an amplification circle glowing on his hand. Once he had every soldier’s gaze glued to his scowl, he spoke:

“I’m not one of petty war speeches. I think they’re bullshit.”

The soldiers smiled wryly. Harangues built soldiers’ morale and gave hope; that’s what they needed most.

“Don’t give me that shit,” Marvis snapped. “Do you need permission to destroy some crazy woman and seize your glory? Grow up.”

A few soldiers chuckled through the confusion, rekindling the embers of morale that the soldiers thought was long since dead.

“Sure, you can respect her. Boudica is strong. If she weren’t, you wouldn’t look like washed rats right now. It’s a fact. She’s sly, cunning, and brutal,” Marvis said with a deadpan expression. “Now kill her.”

Soldiers shared smirks with one another. Then, one man around eighteen with long wild hair and tattoos on his arm released a wild scream, and the other soldiers filed in.

Marvis snorted. “It’s incredible that it takes a degenerate to raise your spirits. Perhaps I’ll have to promote him as a jester.”

Soldiers laughed, clasping around the embarrassed teen.

“Now, let’s go. I’m moving with you today, so you don’t have any bullshit excuses for not winning.”

As the soldiers released battle cries, Marvis turned to the west with narrowed eyes. If you don’t show…. He chuckled in amusement as if it were the funniest thing in the world. Then he turned to the forest. I don’t rely upon children. If he shows, all the better. This day would’ve come anyway.

The image of Queen Boudica’s flowing red hair scorched his mind, burning out all other thoughts. Memories of them making passionate love flashed next, followed by a montage of arguments, battles, and arguable betrayals that cut deep to the bone. It’s been long enough.

4

It was approaching dusk when King Bouchard looked over the walls of Syrvene’s port again. The rain thundered like drums, cloaking the world in natural cataracts as an eerie fog creeping in from the east, swallowing the ocean as it moved toward Servene. There hadn’t been a messenger from the Royal Blockade tasked with intercepting King Everwood as he crossed the Heliana Strait in hours, and the paranoia and fog were eating into his soul. 

Soldiers stood to watch over sandbags, shivering beside drum fires as new recruits shielded them with umbrellas. They, too, were exhausted as they stared into that endless, milky fog. Their eyes were bloodshot with anticipation and terror and fear. Fear of the unknown—and that which was known.

No one knew much about King Everwood. At first, he was like a fairytale king returning to drive out wickedness, filling their homes with cheap pots, grain, and delights that they had never known. His city, most had heard, never saw the night, and people wore strange and wonderous gowns and makeup that made women beautiful. As for the men, they became immortals. No, the women, too. If the rumors were true, it was a land where the aristocracy didn’t control everything, and normal men and women could become wealthy without discrimination. That’s what they heard.

But fairytales were just that—fairytales—and leaders never changed. One set of implausibly exaggerated accusations of villainy later, and they were dragged into a war against the man.

Now, they hated King Everwood, if only because they had to be there in the icy rain that night, shivering in shifts, stressed for their lives and families. Yet they never forgot those fairytales. The talk of cities that swallowed the night, beautiful people, and soldiers that never aged. Because if that wonderous king truly existed—he was coming for their lives, coming from that eerie fog using weapons from myths or legends or worse—the future.

King Bouchard shared those thoughts, pondering about how unnatural the fog was. It was dense and thick like those in fall, but never the summer. Never the summer. Where is it coming from? he thought, peering deeper and deeper within it within a trance. The wind…. It’s moving south.

It was eerie to see that fog approaching them against the winds and shattering rain. The only explanation was…. No, it couldn’t be. Even with King Everwood’s fabled Immortal Army, which reports dictated had over a thousand sage-level soldiers of unknown magic prowess, there was no way that mages were expending their mana—ungodly amounts of mana—boiling the salty water and blowing it to shore. That was absurd—as absurd as wizards casting a blinding blizzard through the blistering heat of the Gal'thrak Desert in Desiderata. 

Yet…. King Everwood’s technology seemed endless, his allies infinite. Perhaps he even obtained the power of Edikus, the archwizard that controlled the skies and sea. The wizard that killed his emperor. Perhaps—

No. King Bouchard shook his head and swallowed hard. This is just paranoia…. And yet he couldn’t look away from that ocean and that creeping mist that seemed to get denser. Servene is strong. Servene—

Suddenly, a siren sounded below, and soldiers in the harbor started yelling.

King Bouchard’s heart knocked. The world was in chaos. Soldiers in disarray.

“From the fog!” he heard a soldier yell. “Coming from the fog!”

Whirling back to the sea, he saw a smudge in the white. His heart pounded as it approached, growing ever larger. When the anticipation threatened to swallow him, he saw the outline of a massive ship cutting sharp lines into the mist, and he would’ve sworn he heard the ocean groan. 

“How did they make it past the blockade?” King Bouchard muttered in disbelief. He turned to the soldiers to the right of him. “Get a status report now!”

Soldiers flew down the stairs, moving with haste. There was yelling between different chains of command. Shuffling of armor clacking against stone. The sound of the hellish rain. And yet—looking into that fog—the city felt silent. Too silent.

“Wait… is that?” He watched the ship coming into view. “That’s—“

“King Bouchard!”

King Bouchard jumped backward from the shock and looked at the soldier shaking near him. “What?! Speak!”

“I-It’s the Abalane….”

“The Abalane? Why didn’t they just send a fucking messenger?!” King Bouchard screamed.

“Your Majesty….”

Looking at the soldier for the first time, he saw that the young man was deathly pale. “What is it?”

“It’s…. They’re dead. The crew is dead.”

“Dead, how?!” King Bouchard snapped. “Speak clearly.”

“S-Sickness. That’s the only explanation. Their skin…. T-Their skin….”

“What about their fucking skin?!”

“It-It’s blistered, dripping yellow, and red. It’s like they died rotting….”

“Who drove sailed the ship back?”

“Captain Girard, Your Majesty. He was the only one to survive.”

“Then why isn’t he the person talking to me?!”

“B-Because….”

King Bouchard strode past the panicked soldier, determined to see the captain. While he looked impassive, unchanging in the face of horror, disease, or spectacle, that was just a front. His insides were coals, gaining warmth in the neverending stream of oxygen stoking it. Being a king is how he coped, so cope he did, striding down the impregnable walls with a racing heart to see the situation for himself. This is bullshit. My soldiers can’t get sick!

5

My fleet had slowed to a crawl over the last five minutes, and now it had almost stopped. By now, King Bouchard’s soldiers had gotten the “gift” I sent him. Now, we were in the fog that we were making with persistent fire and the wind runes on ships, and Thea and Rema were beside me. Rema was using a bubble barrier to shield me from the rain and another as a table I was lying on. 

In my hand: a Barrett m107, pointed sighed in on the deck of the Abalane, now on the Servene docks a quarter mile away.

The entire shore was encased in fog. However, Zenith was at the bow of my ship, creating a hole in the mist that allowed me a small window to the ship I planned as King Bouchard’s burial ground.

Decisive victory. Instant victory. King Everwood came, King Bouchard died, Servene fell. Absolute. Undisputable. Complete. 

That was my strategy. If it didn’t work, this war could take years and cost countless lives. Most importantly, it would learn the true terror of chemical weaponry. 

A lot was riding on a single shot.

“Ryker, he’s scaling the wall,” Thea said, peering through the eyes of seagulls flying above Servene’s harbor.

My heart knocked, demanding to be answered. But I couldn’t see King Bouchard. There was a 150-foot wall around the harbor city and a 300-foot wall around the main city. So when he exited the first wall to join his freezing soldiers, huddling for warmth in the rain, I would be blind except for Thea’s voice to tell me. 

Still, I was as confident in his showing as I was in Thea’s skill. Any minute now, King Bouchard’s paranoia and need for control would lead him out of the second wall. I was certain of it.

6

King Bouchard moved down ten flights of stone steps, each sturdy and immovable. He liked stone over concrete. It looked and felt like it would exist for millennia, even if he knew it wouldn’t. Some things were more psychological than practical, so he created concrete-plated stone walls. Compromise.

“This is nonsense,” he whispered, “Sickness? It’s impossible.”

It was. He knew that. Yet he had watched the haunting speed in which the ship moved back from the port through the fog. It was hypnotic. Terrorizing. 

Then there was the report the soldier had yelled as he walked away:

“Stay away, Your Majesty! Captain Girard is blind and blistered, screaming. He’s got the sickness! He looks like death itself!”

Sickness. Impossible. Weapons? Maybe. Weapons….

An icy chill crawled down his spine as he approached the door of the outer wall. One exit and he’d be met by guards, bringing him to the waterfront where the promise of horror had been claimed.

Then he could be facing King Everwood’s weapons. Weapons that could kill a king from a distance as if their soul reinforcement meant nothing. Weapons from another planet. Weapons as advanced as the engines and electricity and water systems that King Bouchard had heard about.

I wish I hadn’t imprisoned Maximillian, he thought as he stood before the door. He’d be useful now. He was nothing if not useful.

Swallowing hard, he reached the door and hesitated.

7

“Sir!” Soldiers yelled, running up to as King Bouchard entered Harbor City. “I advise against it! The sickness—”

“It’s not a sickness!” King Bouchard snarled. Dangerous? Sure. Sickness? Absolutely not. Perhaps that was the reason he decided to exit and see the ship. The absurdity was so great he felt compelled to disprove it. He was angry. Scared. Desiring control. “Now, do your duty and surround me.”

Despite his mindset, he wasn’t a complete fool. King Everwood had technology that killed kings from afar, and he couldn’t see how close they were in the thick fog swallowing Servene in the dead of summer. So he surrounded himself with tall soldiers, making their way to a ship, determined to see Captain Girard with his own eyes.

It was easier said than done. The rain—it became unbearable. It played tricks on the mind, drowning out sound so completely that he couldn’t hear the salutes of his freezing soldiers, half drunk on brandy as they posted up with bows and an arsenal of tracer spells that exploded. 

The pounding rain swallowed everything, even the sound of his heart, or perhaps matching it. And whenever he heard a clank on a metal drum or the sound of thunder, he jolted, afraid of the King Killer’s distant boom.

However—no boom ever came. 

The trip proved as uneventful, as dry and wet as he expected. He wanted to think it was a victory, but when he started to hear the haunting wailings cutting through the sound-dampening rain, his perspective—changed.

"Hold still! We need to wipe it off!”

“Don’t touch me! For fuck’s sake, don’t touch me!” 

King Bouchard heard Captain Girard and immediately commanded his soldiers to circle the area. Then he approached, seeing healing mages trying to heal the captain, but the man was thrusting his hand out wildly. “Why isn’t magic healing him?!” King Bouchard demanded. 

The soldiers froze and then kneeled. “Your Majesty!”

“Don’t kneel, you fools! Answer me!”

“I-It’s something on his skin! L-Liutanant got some on his hands, and then they turned red and hot and then started blistering. It’s healing, but it keeps eating his skin again. Eating…. Always—”

“Where are the other bodies?”

“T-They’re on the ship.”

“Why are they on the ship?!”

“B-Because—“

King Bouchard’s stress took over as he looked at the ghost ship in terror, and he felt a desire for control, a desire to prove without a doubt that whatever this was, it wasn’t a sickness. It was an obsession. “Take me there!”

“D-Don’t! King Bouchard. The water. The water is yellow, and when we touched the body…. It felt normal, but then people’s hands, people’s hands….”

The Lieutenant looked down and saw that his hands were turning red. “W-Wait. No! Heal me now. Please, heal—“

“Shut up, you buffoon!” King Bouchard yelled. “Look around you! Everyone’s faces are red and biting because it’s cold. It’s raining, for fuck’s sake!”

He pushed past his soldiers against all reason and strode onto the ship, ignoring the yellow water that could be puss—or anything else. He was determined—absolutely determined—that he would—

King Bouchard froze when he saw the bodies. “Gods….” He whispered, seeing the bodies on the ship. 

Whatever cursed Captain Girard was suffering from had barely touched him. The bodies—nightmares, each of them. They were bright red, blistered on every section of skin. They weren’t black like the plague or charred like burns. It looked like they were boiled alive in their own puss. “What is this?!” King Bouchard screamed, demanding an answer from the soldiers on the deck. “What happened here?!”

No answer came, so he looked at his soldiers. They were silent, standing against the railing, staring at their shakey, blistered hands in a state of shock.

King Bouchard looked at them in a haze and then back at the bodies. “Someone, tell me!” he yelled. “What happened here?!”

8

I sighted in on the king, waiting, tuning, matching my shot to the rhythmic rocking of the ship King Bouchard was on, caused by the chopping, predictable waves. Once he was in the crosshairs, I put my finger on the trigger and took a deep breath.

9

King Bouchard felt a primal surge of fear far greater than he had ever experienced before. It seized his body, and the hairs on the back of his neck bristled like stubble, frozen in the breeze. Instinctively, he turned to the fog to assess where King Everwood was.

Suddenly, the fog twisted and morphed in slow motion like a cyclone ripped across from it horizontally, creating a vortex to another realm. There was no boom. No crack of lightning. No—

Stepping back, his foot stepped on a corpse’s arm, raising him a foot in the air for a split second. Then he heard a loud clank and a heavy force slam into him, sending him spiraling across the deck. 

A horrifying scream entered his ear. King Bouchard didn’t know whose it was before pain overwhelmed his shock, and he realized it was his own. He tried to push his face off the deck but realized that his arm wasn’t responsive. Lifting up with his left, he saw that the metal surrounding his collarbone had a small hole in it that didn’t match the pain he felt in his back.

“King Bouchard!” his guard screamed, surrounding him. “Protect the—“

The man speaking suddenly jerked forward and fell onto King Bouchard’s body, making the king scream in pain and drop again.

“Get him off of him!”

Soldiers relived the pressure, but by the time they did, a new type of pain had taken hold of him. King Bouchard’s gasp filled his mouth with the yellow liquid from the deck, and his whole mouth felt like it was peeling. “W-What is—Gah!” He screamed out in pain louder than the captain behind him. 

“Get him out of here!” a Royal Guard screamed. Then their body dropped with a thud. Another person tried, but they dropped too. 

“Quickly! Move!”

Suddenly, King Bouchard felt himself lift in the air, dragged away by fearful soldiers moving for the bridge connecting the ship to the dock.

10

I watched in anger as King Bouchard was hauled off the ship. “Fire, you fools!” I screamed to the snipers beside me. 

However, they were already firing. Soldiers were dropping like flies, but there was a massive armored meat shield surrounding King Bouchard as he exited the ship. It was as admirable as it was frustrating.

In the midst of the chaos, siege cannons shot through the fog at us randomly, painting streaks through the mist as they moved toward our warships. 

A lucky strike hit the hull of a nearby vessel, rattling the concentration of the soldiers. It was a chance shot, but enough of those could end the war.

“I didn’t want to do this….” I gritted my teeth with a twisted heart. I had seen what sulfur mustard did to soldiers for the first time a couple of hours ago, and I didn’t want to see it happen to thousands, but the time had come.

“THEA!” I yelled decisively. “DO IT!”

“Got it!” Thea’s body turned still as horrifying shrieks pierced the skies above the raining, frozen clouds, weeping the tears of tragedy upon Servene.

11

“What the fuck is that?!” A soldier yelled in the rain. His eyes were bloodshot from hours staring into the fog that day, his adrenaline long spent after seeing the ghost ship hit the shore. He was on the outer wall, shooting siege cannons blindly in the mist, but he and the others had stopped when they heard a terrifying screech from the heavens.

“Wyverns!”

“That’s not a wyvern!”

“Then what the fuck is it!”

“Who cares, shoot!”

Black streaks cut across the sky, each the size of a small dragon. They were obsidian, blending into the shadows with an illusionary force. While their eyes weren’t visible, the mind played tricks, making them seem red and demonic as they swooped down to Harbor City.

Suddenly, the soldiers acted, shattering the airwaves as they met the birds with a hailstorm of bullets and arrows and magic. Streaks of color contrasted against the gray skies as they pelted the beasts. However, the horrifying creatures didn’t shy away, getting stabbed by projectiles as they dropped crates on the south side of the city, creating an explosion of yellow gas before taking to the air again, leaving as soon as they appeared.

“What the….” The soldier watched in a daze as they disappeared. “Was that all?”

The city stood still, encased in harrowing rain as everyone waited, feeling an icy breeze licking their skin from the front as they stared into the south. 

Did they drop soldiers?

Other technology?

Corpses of sick enemies like siege tactics?

Speculation spread like wildfire until a light breeze came, bringing their answer in the most bone-chilling way imaginable.

It started a collective groan of uncertainty coming from the distance as if thunder warning of a story yet to come. Then the storm came, fast and hard, with a shrill that rattled the soldiers to the north and made them quake. The screams. There were so many screams. It was like the entire city and its inhabitants were bathed in scalding water, and no one even had the capacity to yell what was wrong or why it was affecting them.

Then came the smell. It was pungent but not necessarily bad, sharp and yet aromatic. “Is that mustard?” the soldier muttered, looking down into the city, watching the area turn to chaos. It smelled like mustard, the kind that he enjoyed on his sandwiches. However, it was pervasive and engrossing in the way cicadas were to the north, in the Junto region, and reeked of sulfur as if his lingering suspicion they were bathed in hot water was true but in the form of a hot spring. 

Last came the sensation. It came abruptly, carried in by a gentle breeze. Suddenly, the soldier found the smell unbearable, and then it touched his eyes, and they got irritated. The same was true of his skin. It was just his hands and face, but the rest was covered by a thick peacoat to deal with the rain. “Wh-What is this?” the soldier asked in confusion. In the midst of the screaming, yelling, and perplexity, he did what all people do when they have allergies—he rubbed his eyes.

Then he blacked out. That’s the only way that he could explain it. There was suddenly a gap from that moment to his consciousness returning that he could hear himself screaming. His eyes felt like they were boiling. Just feeling that threw anxiety on pain, and for a moment, all he could think of was how he wanted to die and end the suffering. He raised his eyes to the sky to let them wash away, but that made things worse. He fumbled around blindly for something to wash them off, only to remember, too late, that he was on the wall. Tripping over the siege cannon he was operating not a moment before, he lost his balance and swung over, plunging to the ground below.

12

King Bouchard thought that, after centuries of battle, conquest, and killing, he had experienced the worst the world had to offer—he was wrong.

As he crawled across the ground, he could hear the shrieks of thousands who were experiencing the same eternal torment that he was, begging for the others to kill them. Even the people who were valiantly putting duty first, shielding King Bouchard with their backs and very lives only a moment before, were now crawling next to him, screaming in pain.

Boom. A thunderclap went off in the distance, and one of his men abruptly stopped screeching in his ear.

Boom. Another clap, this one ending the suffering of Relam, his personal bodyguard. 

A third. Fourth. Fifth. Each boom silenced another person around him until he was crawling in relative silence, clawing against the rain-soaked ground for anything. 

At that moment, as it was clear that the people protecting him with their bodies had already finished their duty, he wanted to snarl, level accusations of demonhood, or call into question King Everwood’s intentions. However, whether by the excruciating pain or the caustic screams that blared like sirens, he couldn’t put his thoughts into complex sentences. However, he managed to develop one question as his body crashed into a stall in the market, a fish seller’s stall, judging by the pungent smell, barring his motion forward, forcing him to stop, his back to the fog that injured him and killed his entire guard. 

How?

That one word encapsulated the absurdity of it all. There wasn’t the roar of cannon fire crashing around him, or the whirling of arrows, or the flashes of grand and devastating magics. Neither was there the clash of swords, the battle cries of charges, or the shrieks of avian mounts as they flew into the fray. There was only screaming and misery so great that the thought of fighting was as absurd as a soldier trying to fight back once clutched in the jaws of a wyvern.

How? How did he create weapons so devastating that it rewrote the nature of warfare itself? To spit in the face of millennia-long traditions? Topple an impregnable city in hours?

That one question solidified the most horrifying aspect of King Everwood—

—no one knew. No one truly knew. If they did, his allies wouldn’t have dared let him on their continent. It was irrational. Insane.

“Clueless,” King Bouchard laughed, choking with a raw throat as he pushed up against the harbor-side fish market stall that prevented him from fleeing. His body healed fast, and he’d be healed from this hellish nightmare within the hour, but there wasn’t time for that. His collarbone had shattered, he had lost a lot of blood, and he was in agonizing pain. He needed a miracle—and he didn’t believe in miracles. So, instead, he pushed himself up to look into the fog, that strange and deadly fog that had killed him so effortlessly. “They’re all so clueless,” he croaked, forcing his eyes open. His vision was hazy, but he could now see the milky whiteness. When he did, he laughed, a real laugh overlooking the water. There, in the midst of the icy fog, he could finally see the true weight of his enemy.

Sharp gray contours cut across the sky, each twice the size of his prized battleships that he sent out as naval blockades. They were colossal, moving eerily toward the harbor covered deep in the fog.

There weren’t only a few. No. There were three dozen of these ships, eclipsing the horizon from the deep mist that seemed to spell doom and ruin in their wake. 

“Reckog, you have no idea what type of monster you invited to Antigua,” King Bouchard chuckled. “But, well, you’re lucky you hate tea.” A split second later, something hit his skull, and darkness clouded his swollen, blistered eyes.