Lire

  On the sixth autumn since Axion of Velrgo's birth, his father took him deep into the forest and left him there with nothing but a single knife.

  Quite a horrible thing to do to one's son. But looking back, Axion came to appreciate what his father had done. A sharp dagger was more than most brats his age got when harvests were cking and the year's taxes were heavy. If Axion had been blessed with other parents and they were pced in the same situation, he would have likely been sold off as a sve. Or worse, butchered and served up on the dinner table.

  His father, at least, had given Axion a chance.

  A chance to survive. A chance to make something of himself. A chance to grasp his own fate.

  Even in the early stages of his childhood, Axion was quite obviously stronger than the other children. Sharper, too. And hungrier as well, but that was beside the point. His father saw Axion and found the boy worthy enough to gamble on. There were other children in that family who were basically dead weight—too young to work the fields or too weak to even match what the six-year-old Axion could do. Yet his father had chosen to leave Axion in that forest because he knew that Axion would survive.

  At least, that was how Axion liked to interpret it.

  He couldn't ask his father about it because Axion's entire vilge had been wiped out shortly after he was thrown away, sin to the st man by a roving band of brigands that the local lord should have exterminated before the vilge ever got attacked in the first pce.

  It was an unfortunate turn of events, really, but it wasn't all that uncommon in the harsh nds of Argonia. Lords fought each other so much that professional mercenary bands were quite common, even offering their services to merchant caravans afraid of wild monster attacks on the road. Unfortunately, when work dried up, those same mercenary bands turned to banditry.

  But again, such is life in Argonia. It was just one of those things a person learned to live with.

  Thankfully, things worked out for Axion in the end. It was an odd twist of fate when he survived long enough in that forest to get discovered by a particurly kind group of mercenaries who then took him in and treated him as their own. Ironic, when he ter found out how his vilge and family died.

  The years leading up to now were tough and full of hardships, but Axion prevailed and came out stronger for it, didn't he? He even garnered the attention of someone from one of the Imperial Cns, becoming a prince—though an adopted one.

  More than that, he was now poised to become the hegemon of his own little kingdom. So truly, things had a way of working out in the end.

  Axion didn't know what triggered it, but he sometimes thought back to the events of his childhood. But even though he never liked that period of his life, he did not hate being reminded of his roots.

  Because the past made it clear how different he was now.

  “Magic is hard…” He muttered to himself as he watched the chained rings around his fingers—a Wizard’s Cw, he believed it was called.

  It was a sorcerous implement that was much more convenient for his style of combat than a wand. Axion was gd he had been fortunate enough to loot it from some poor sap at the start of the invasion.

  ‘I suppose it is accurate to call sorcery a talent as well.’

  The knowledge required to cast spells was all in his head already, but casting the spells faster than a snail’s crawl was a lot harder than he gave it credit for. Even though he’d spent three years studying in the Spirit Tower before the Sage King was murdered, he still couldn’t quite get the hang of it.

  Moving his body around was a lot simpler. And easier to boot.

  Still, he wouldn’t give up on the opportunity. With Arkhan essentially gone and the remnants of the Tower under the kingdom’s control, the chance to take up the wand had grown increasingly scarce. And besides, sorcery could do several things that his body could not.

  It would be a waste to relinquish this great boon. He would ravenously devour everything he could from the art and make it his own.

  Two familiar presences entered his command tent, and Axion looked up to see a red-haired pair. Brother and sister, these two. He still fondly remembered picking them up in the first week of the invasion.

  Sharing a bed with these siblings was the only vice Axion allowed himself to have.

  There was just something about redheads that got Axion going. Perhaps it was the vibrant color of their hair or simply because they were rare in Argonia, where various shades of blonde or brown were the norm. His own hair was blonde too, and most of the men and women he associated with had the same.

  Red spshed some excitement into things. It caught the eye.

  “A pleasant morning, you two,” Axion beckoned them inside with a smile. “You could have continued sleeping. I’m sure you were both tired from st night.”

  The woman, Gianna was her name if she didn't lie about it, bowed meekly in response—an act that showed just how unaccustomed she was to the movement, which made sense because Arkhanians were mongrels raised to think that the common people’s opinion actually had value when weighed against the will of the strong.

  “Someone came to the tent again, Your Highness,” she squeaked out in Arkhanian. “There was a message for you.”

  “Ah, yes. I thought that might happen…” Axion nodded in understanding.

  The tent where he slept was different from the tent where he did administrative work. But as a countermeasure to knight-assassins, he changed the location of the tter every few days. That was why some messengers ended up getting lost in the camp, not knowing where to go to deliver the message they bore.

  Everybody knew where his private tent was, however. So a lot of the messages ended up accumuting there if his adjutants didn’t get a hold of the messengers first.

  It was all very intentional, because if even his own subordinates were confused by the arrangements, wouldn’t his enemies be the same? Also, Axion had a bit of a mischievous heart, and it was a guilty pleasure to occasionally see some green boy wander about in the camp wondering where the hell Axion was.

  “Did you bring it with you?” Axion cocked a brow.

  Gianna nodded vigorously and elbowed her brother. “Jino, hurry up.”

  The brother, who was actually two years younger than the sister but still an adult already, walked up holding a scroll of parchment. Even from afar, Axion could recognize the wax seal on it.

  Jino sheepishly walked up to Axion’s desk and presented the document to him.

  Axion gently took it, making sure to brush against the other man’s hand when he did. He watched with a barely hidden smirk as Jino concealed a shiver. It was a much milder reaction than when they first started, which showed that Jino had opened up to him a bit more.

  Though he supposed the fact that Jino preferred men over women even before they met helped with that. Axion rather disliked the Argonian ways of wantonly raping sves. Wasn’t half of the fun seeing the other side enthusiastically seek pleasure with you?

  The sister, at least, warmed up to Axion rather quickly despite still being perpetually nervous.

  “Thank you, you two.” Axion gestured for them to leave. “You may return to our tent. And don’t wander. Others aren’t as… kind as I am.”

  The two bowed, but before they could leave, Axion remembered something and called out to them.

  “I forgot to mention it,” he said. “But I’ll be hearing back from my men soon. If talks with this… Samsara, that has sprouted up in pce of the republic, then you’ll be freed and sent back to your people soon.”

  Gianna and Jino both visibly beamed at that, for even though Axion treated them well, they were still sves. And the more you caged something, the more it longed for freedom. A common sentiment to have, and Axion didn’t fault them for it.

  It would be unpleasant to let such good bed friends go, but one of the ways he coaxed their favor was by promising their eventual freedom. And Axion was nothing, if not a man of his word. Even dogs did not lie, so wouldn’t he prove himself worse than a dog by lying or being dishonest?

  Lying stained the soul, he believed. And he preferred his to be as clean as he could manage when death finally cimed him.

  And besides, once these two were re-integrated with the Arkhanians being herded by the Aizen Kingdom, maybe people would hear of how kindly Axion treated his captives. Or how he was comparatively better than the other princes. Of course, it was also possible for Gianna and Jino to take their secret retions with Axion to the grave. But even then, Axion would have pnted a seed of goodwill somewhere in Samsara—a seed that may or may not bloom.

  Bloom or not, an opportunity had value in and of itself. A chance was all it took, sometimes, for something weak and insignificant to become something great. Was his own story not one of opportunities and chances?

  Axion didn’t know if his actions would lead to advantages or disadvantages. But he enjoyed the thrill of finding out nonetheless.

  Mere moments after Gianna and Jino left, a Lagoda phased through the tent’s partition bearing yet another scroll. This one, Axion mused, was not a messenger but a courier.

  Axion snatched the scroll out of the wraith’s hands and shooed it away. “Begone, foul thing.”

  The Lagoda bowed low, allowing the gesture to end its presence as it sank into the floor.

  If they weren’t so utterly disgusting to look at, Axion would have liked them more. They were so very useful after all. But they were utterly disgusting to look at, so he wanted them all out of his sight unless they absolutely had to be there.

  ‘Come to think of it, Aizen seems to have a special word for them. Espers, if I remember.’

  Axion did not know what the word meant in English, but he knew what “Lagoda” meant. In some forgotten nguage, it meant The Restless. Which was apt, because these spectral creatures served night and day, without a single wink of sleep.

  Aizen seemed to also have a name for Gagors, otherwise known as Abominations. “Homunculus” the kingdom called them. Or Homunculi in plural, which made no sense because he thought Aizenians just put the letter S at the end of a word to make it mean that there are more of them. It was, however, interesting how Aizen created an entirely unique word instead of just calling Lagodas or Gagors for what they were—ghosts and monstrosities.

  ‘These disgusting things should all just be called Abominations, in my opinion. But I suppose a young upstart like me isn’t allowed to rename things older than I am.’

  Once the disgusting thing was gone, Axion stowed the scroll into his spatial storage ring. He didn’t need to open it to know what it was. Rather, opening it would waste the freshly crafted artifact, summoning a horde of very angry espers that would likely attack his own troops instead.

  Axion thought back to his meeting with the knight who had infiltrated so deeply into his coalition’s camp. While he had nothing but praise for the Aizenian’s bravery, Axion was a bit frustrated at how easily the knight had dealt with one of Axion’s trump cards.

  And all it had taken was the death of a particurly troublesome spirit beast. It wasn’t even a permanent death either, because as far as Axion knew, spirit beasts revived after a while. As long as their anchor to this world was still alive, that is—which it definitely was, annoyingly enough.

  Axion could prepare more of the Lagodas Tawagarias, so he didn’t have any losses either, but the fact that the knight also survived his true trump card rankled him greatly. His throwing arm still felt sore from that, yet the knight likely had full use of their arm back by now.

  ‘Are all knights like that? I thought the veterans were overblowing them, but now I’m starting to think they undersold the fearsomeness of knights instead.’

  Truly, the Empire was great. But the Kingdom was not to be underestimated in the slightest.

  Not that Axion ever did. He was barely two decades old. It would be the height of stupidity to disdain a supposedly small nation that had spent the st three millennia in conflict with Argonia and came out unharmed—or rather, they were thriving.

  There was nothing to underestimate. Because every aspect of the enemy he looked at was worthy of acknowledgment.

  That made them even worthier of being vanquished, however. Though Axion wasn’t sure if he would be alive to see it happen. But what did it matter if he wasn’t?

  Axion had died, on that day when his father left him in the forest with nothing but a knife. And something stronger rose up from the depths to take his pce. Everything past that point was just extra. A gift.

  And he would use this gift to make his mark upon creation. He would make this world remember his name. Axion would never again be the abandoned child, forgotten and left to rot.

  “Oh, dear.” Axion realized that he was grinning a bit too widely, so he massaged his cheeks and schooled his expression before looking back down at his desk. His attention was drawn to the letter delivered to him by the siblings he’d been sleeping with for months.

  Opening it revealed more of the same, causing him to sigh. Many princes and princesses had been granted a chance to prove themselves in the blood grounds born from Arkhan’s sacrifice. So many that Axion didn’t know exactly how many there were.

  Regardless, he was just one of them. And the boring prince who’d sent him a letter was the same.

  ‘These people are supposed to be my peers…’

  Axion did not feel afraid to admit that he looked down on his fellow imperial royalty. He had grown up at the edge of a bde, living with a band of moderately competent mercenaries who didn’t know if they would see tomorrow. So Axion had grown to recognize when someone was worth associating with or not.

  And very few of the imperial royalty ever qualified in his eyes. Oh, they had ambition. And having been educated from early childhood, it was impossible for them not to be decently competent.

  But they just didn’t have that hunger. Or the desperation that Axion was looking for in a long-term ally. That special something within them that was compelling enough to feel like their entire body was burning for something more.

  That said, there was still some worth in associating with them to a certain degree. Axion had a lot of teachers throughout his life. And while not all of them were brilliant, every single one had taught him a lesson. There would always be something to take from someone, no matter how cking they were.

  If not their strengths, then Axion would look upon their failings and learn from them.

  Besides, having a loose alliance with his peers paid unexpected dividends sometimes. Like how this letter detailed information that Axion would have had difficulty acquiring himself.

  ‘So Samsara once again triumphed, huh? That was quite a massive horde of Gagors. And they were the new types as well.’

  While the aquatic ones were mostly fine after repairs, Axion was surprised at how the entire flock of the flying types was wiped out but caused retively minor damage. According to the report, Samsara’s side responded quite adeptly to all the threats. If that wasn’t enough, there were mysterious winged women that the attackers weren’t aware of.

  Axion had known about the dark-winged women, though he’d refrained from leaking that information because it would have revealed him as the intercessor.

  ‘Well, it didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped. But it worked out anyway.’

  He didn’t want to admit it, but the previous campaign had bled him quite a bit. And his losses were retively minor compared to the others in his coalition.

  Most of the casualties had been peasant levies, and those all belonged to the noble lords who’d insisted on joining the campaign. But through cunning pcements, he’d avoided rge losses to his legionary corps. And miraculously, only a dozen of his Imperial Vanguards died. Ten times that number was wounded, but it was nothing a short stint with a Sormon Priest wouldn’t fix—and a few were already being sent for right this moment.

  The supplies he’d lost, on the other hand, were staggering.

  Storing things inside Gagors had been his idea, and most of the things inside there had belonged to him because all the other princes thought doing such a thing was unsanitary—even though he had already told them that he had shamans y protective wards over the supplies.

  Oh, how their qualms had melted when their own supplies got blown to smithereens. Axion’s opinion of them fell even more for it, but what else could he do but share? He could not risk mutiny just because he wanted to stingily hold on to what was rightfully his.

  And then he had to abandon what remained when they had to flee—which he could bme nobody for because the knights really had forced everyone’s hand at that point.

  Axion did not have unlimited support from the mothernd, and neither did any of the other imperials in Arkhan. Now he had to call on favors back home just to sustain and re-equip his army. The imperial settlers who came a bit ter would be fine, because they were sent here with their own supplies.

  But his budding nation would die in the cradle if he couldn’t source more food for it.

  With all that said, Axion couldn’t allow himself to be the only one to suffer from Samsara’s competence. That was why he leaked information he knew from the Lagodas lurking around Lageton.

  As he had expected, the other imperial coalition, drunk off their successes, attacked the Samsaran forces on their way back from whatever they were doing out west. Axion made plenty of allies since becoming a prince, but he’d also ruffled quite a few feathers.

  That’s why there was a coven of wretches that didn’t like him very much. Fortunately, they weren’t in his coalition and belonged to a different one instead. They must have heard of Axion’s defeat and foolishly thought they could exert their superiority by vanquishing the foe that had routed him—unaware that the Samsaran forces were a lot more robust than what had attacked Axion’s coalition.

  And as he had pnned, the other alliance of imperials ran headfirst into the wall named Samsara, making a mess of themselves. They had even lost the majority of their special Gagors—which, unlike legionaries, couldn’t just be replenished by going to an imperial recruitment camp.

  Axion chuckled to himself as he read the letter’s recounting of the council that followed after the attack’s failure. The coalition fell apart then and there, with everybody just pointing fingers and trying to pce the bme on someone else. Even though they were all collectively at fault.

  Still, even though it was satisfying to see his imbecilic peers fail, Axion couldn’t forget how he had his face ripped out by Samsara’s actions too. It would be foolish to think that the enemy of his enemies was his friend. Samsara would tear him apart at the first opportunity, and he had to permanently keep this in mind.

  ‘Goodness, what a troublesome foe. How in the world do I even deal with them…?’

  Impatience was starting to muddle his thoughts, so Axion decided to take a break. Nothing good ever came out of a mind overwhelmed. He would come back to this at a ter time.

  He stood up and walked over to a nearby rack, where his armor was hung. Slowly, he donned it—but not all of it, because anything that would hurt him could easily go through most armor anyway. But enough to make him look the part of a warrior prince. Image was important to maintain, he found. And Axion had cultivated a militant reputation that he considered quite useful.

  It was a reputation worth maintaining even though he thought that his mind was much sharper than his body. But as, perhaps he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was? He supposed only the results of the future would give answers to the doubts in his mind.

  Once he was presentable, he walked out of the tent and into his sprawling army camp.

  Though he had been given territory as an imperial prince, the city he now had as a demesne happened to have been roughed up during the act of conquering it. The irony was that Axion’s army had personally been the one to take it, and in the process, reduce it to this state.

  If he had known he would be getting this particur one, he would have ordered his forces to be extra careful. But how could he have known at the time that the campaign would stop halfway? There were fewer conquered territories to split up among the coalition, so he wasn’t spoiled for options.

  In hindsight, there had been a particurly rge group of battlemages here when his army came, so he didn’t have any other option than to be rough. Sorcerers weren’t going to stop raining hell down on you just because you refrained from using siege engines or throwing giant monsters into their walls.

  Axion could have chosen some other city, one that wasn’t in a state of disrepair, but this city was the most adequate pce to serve as the center of his operations, both geographically and strategically. So he and his army could only live in tents until the city—or some of the manses, at least—could be repaired enough to adequately house him.

  The Argonian settlers he brought over from the mothernd, however, had already found abandoned vilges to take over, so they had no problems.

  As he strolled the well-beaten paths between rows upon rows of crimson tents, Axion was respectfully greeted by his men when he passed them by. It was a pleasant consequence of his sound leadership in the most recent campaign, though he would no doubt lose much of this support if they knew he’d sent an envoy seeking an alliance with Aizen’s dog—otherwise known as the nation of Samsara.

  Though faint, he could hear grunting and the cshing of steel, so it seemed his men were dutifully training. Good. He didn’t agonize over what they would eat daily, just for them to loiter about. If he was going to tear his hair out looking for pces to source their footwear, at least let them wear the ones they were wearing out first.

  There was gunfire too, he noted. Which physically pained him because he knew just how few bullets they had left. But what was he supposed to do? He’d just taken every legionary he could from the recruitment camps—even those who hadn’t been fully trained, and those who needed to be drilled.

  Whenever he thought about it, Axion couldn’t help but clench his teeth.

  His irritation, however, was not pointed at Samsara or Aizen for blowing up the coalition’s supplies. They were enemies, after all. What else were they supposed to do but antagonize Axion? That was their job, and he couldn’t fault them for doing it well.

  What pissed him off was the incompetence of his own allies. For all the care he’d taken to safeguard his own supplies, he had failed to account for his peers’ own ck of vigince. Yet they came to him when their soldiers were hungry. The lords too, had begged him to share, even though Axion never wanted them to come in the first pce.

  Really, if his allies were as competent as Aizen, Axion would be poised to take over the world by now. But it wasn’t meant to be, for he had already sworn himself to this empire. And Axion did not have a single craven bone in his body. A dead man like him had no use for fear either, so he would not defect just like that.

  As he stopped to examine a particurly topless legionary’s muscur and very sweaty back, Axion’s attention was pulled toward a set of three ragged men heading straight for him. They were dirty from travel and sweaty from their time outside the cooling wards around the camp. But he recognized them anyway.

  ‘Ah, right on time. My not-so-trusted envoys have finally returned.’

  Axion observed them carefully, noting their dry lips, thinning cheeks, the redness of their eyes’ whites, and all sorts of other things about them. From all of this, he could tell that Aizen—or rather, the Hierarchy of Samsara—hadn’t treated the envoys he’d sent well at all. In fact, they had likely been mistreated.

  That told Axion many things, even before words were exchanged.

  For one thing, it proved that Axion wasn’t facing some unfeeling collective of pragmatism. Why else would his envoys be mistreated? Obviously, Samsara’s leader didn’t like Axion very much. Or Argonia in general.

  And that meant that Axion was facing a man. A human being, capable of bleeding and hating and all sorts of other emotions. The pettiness of it all meant that Axion had gotten under the foreign prince’s skin.

  Axion knew that he could use that fact. It was an opportunity. Whether it would lead to a good or bad result was still up in the air, however. But Axion still acknowledged the opening for what it was.

  Indifference was hard to work with. But an enemy that hated him? An enemy that resorted to petty actions just to get one over on him?

  ‘I can work with this…’

  In fact, simply by sending these particur envoys, Axion had tested Samsara. None of the men he’d sent were very loyal to Axion or even the empire itself. As long as Samsara offered them good conditions, they would have sang every song they knew and revealed every secret they could.

  Yet Axion’s enemy hadn’t taken that chance.

  Because they hated him. Or they hated Argonians in general. Maybe both?

  And he was quite sure this wasn’t just some eborate ploy to trick him into thinking that the envoys weren’t offered an olive branch. He was certain. Because when he pulled the envoys over to talk back in his command tent, they were all visibly disgruntled by how they were treated overall.

  They weren’t siding with the kingdom. Axion trusted his eyes a lot when it came to these things, having seen bravery and treachery in spades back when he still lived with mercenaries. He knew what a coward looked like.

  The point was that this already proved that his opponents were being shortsighted, blinded by worthless emotions like hate and dislike. It was impractical, and Axion thought less of Samsara’s leader for it.

  Of course, that didn’t mean he would look down on their capabilities or the sheer might of their forces.

  ‘It’s as expected…’

  After the envoys finished their report, Axion dismissed them and kindly allowed them to get some rest. If he hadn’t been expecting them to return with subpar results, he would have been more upset at the results they presented him.

  Yet, the conclusion of the negotiations was so unfavorable to his side that he almost had the envoys skewered like roasted pigs even though Axion had already mastered his anger. Truly, competence was hard to find.

  Axion calmed himself and tried to glean more information from what he’d just been told. Clearly, even though Samsara wasn’t ruled by an emotionless pragmatist, they had some disgustingly good negotiators. Because the envoys he’d sent weren’t that incompetent. Yet they still told him their gains with pride—which made them all look like imbeciles in Axion’s eyes, because they had just been robbed, but they thought they had been the robbers.

  Still, Axion could work with it. He’d been in more unfavorable situations than this one.

  It wasn’t a lie that a lot of Arkhanians were mysteriously whisked off somehow, but the imperial princes as a whole still collectively gathered plenty of Arkhanian sves. Naturally, Axion didn’t have authority over all of them. But with a bit of negotiation, he could obtain the sves accumuted by the other imperials in exchange for some favors.

  Favors that he would conveniently not have to pay when Samsara kills whoever he owed those favors to.

  ‘The logistics of transporting the Arkhanian sves are going to be the biggest problem…’

  Samsara had added a very annoying stipution in the deal that stated that only the sves that actually made it to Samsara's territory would be counted in the agreed-upon number—which was a lot more than Axion expected, but as, what else could he do when his envoys were outmatched in negotiations?

  There were some other annoying conditions, such as their health being maintained and all sorts of other things.

  Axion massaged the bridge of his nose in frustration. He would have gone to negotiate personally if he hadn't been absolutely certain he would be killed before talks even began. The results truly were a bit too irritating, though. And he was quite sure that he’d tempered his expectations a bit lower too.

  In any case, it was hard to think of a way to transport the Arkhanian sves without outing himself as a prince who conspired with foreign powers.

  He didn’t mind revealing it eventually. But it was still too early.

  His authority still hadn’t solidified yet. Time was needed to build a foundation of trust. When that was done, he could do just about anything and still maintain control of his forces because they would believe that he was simply using the foreigners rather than being an unpatriotic asshole.

  He would, of course, follow his end of the deal. Honesty was one of his virtues.

  But of course, being honest didn’t mean volunteering every thought that crossed his mind to whoever would listen. Silence was also a virtue, after all. The deal with Samsara was very clear-cut and had no room for funny business, though. Arkhanian sves in exchange for imperial princes. That was it.

  Nice and simple.

  ‘Should I just stuff them inside Gagors? I’d need a lot to fit a million…’

  Axion’s silly little envoys had been robbed blind, so he had to exchange ten million Arkhanians for each imperial prince. It was still worth it, in his eyes, but his vexation still hadn’t cooled.

  With the increased prices, he couldn’t use the bde named Samsara against his enemies wantonly. He would have to save it for a particurly troublesome adversary.

  Fortunately, not everything went poorly.

  Samsara had agreed to exchange supplies for Arkhanians.

  And that was significant. Highly significant. To the extent that he was poised to win the imperial struggle just by securing the deal. Honestly, the thing with killing other princes was just a distraction. Aizen had luckily focused on that part of the deal, even though Axion valued the supply trade agreement much more.

  And didn’t it work? They had still negotiated to increase the number of sves Axion had to relinquish in exchange for supplies, but it wasn’t ten times the proposed amount, like with the assassination agreement.

  Whoever negotiated on Samsara’s behalf was sharp, but they cked proper knowledge of Axion’s weaknesses. Which also indirectly revealed that they didn’t have spies on him. Finding out the abysmal state of his armories and pantries would have been easy, because there wasn’t enough in them to warrant a heavy guard detail.

  Axion loved it when he got tidbits of information from unexpected sources like this. It was like one of those wooden block puzzles that his birth father used to make for him, back when selling wood carvings for a living could still feed their family.

  Everything was connected to everything else. And even if you only intend to move one part, a bunch of other parts move whether you like it or not. It would be up to you to solve it all despite that fact.

  ‘That certainly improved my mood.’

  Axion allowed a grin to grace his lips as he flexed his fingers, idly admiring the chained rings on them. Picking up his quill and a fresh sheet of parchment, Axion began to pen a letter. Once he was done, he folded it up and sealed it with his own personal seal—a knife stabbing into an eye.

  He did this repeatedly, a tower of letters slowly being built on his desk. Each one was addressed to a different person. Sometimes, a prince. Sometimes a princess. And sometimes, a sve trader.

  Axion hadn’t traded any of the sves he’d acquired in his campaign, but the number barely even reached five million. It would not be enough, so he would ask others for their stock. They likely wouldn’t think much of the Arkhanian sves he would ask of them. Especially since said sves didn’t know Argonian yet, and so had very limited uses beyond hard bor.

  The chances were high that they would assume he would simply turn all of them into Lagodas, even if it would be extremely inefficient to do so.

  Lagodas certainly looked like ghosts but they weren’t actually the defiled souls of the dead. That said, they still needed people as… materials. So maybe it didn’t make a difference to some people. It definitely didn’t make a difference to the people being sacrificed, that was for sure

  Yet one couldn’t just take any random person and get a Half-Ascendant Lagoda out of them.

  One had to pick the old ones, since they were the best materials. Because even if they spend decades of their lives milling about, doing nothing of note, and being nobody of note, the accomplishment of living a long life had a certain weight to it.

  A single sixty-year-old could produce a fully-fledged mortal Lagoda. On the other hand, he would need to sacrifice more than a dozen teenagers for one at half the strength.

  It simply wasn’t practical. And even if that was his pn, all the old Arkhanians either perished in the initial heatwave after the Sage King’s death. Or they were already turned into Lagodas.

  No, they would not see the trade as a loss even if it bolstered Axion’s forces. As long as they got something they deemed worth the trouble. Lagodas, for all their usefulness, weren’t effective forces to use against other imperial factions. They’d just get sucked into a sealing scroll, like the one he’d used against that nameless knight.

  On the other hand, they had already proved insufficient to use against Aizen—who didn’t field any cannon fodder that Lagodas were extremely effective against. The knights themselves could also take out weaker Lagodas without any effort at all.

  Basically, it was useless to have more Lagodas than what one needed for scouting or as messengers. Against the enemies they were facing right now, they were a waste when used as combat resources. Axion knew that other princes whispered about how foolish he was for gathering so many of them, even now.

  But all of that was set up for this moment. And it worked, didn’t it?

  He didn’t particurly prefer using Lagodas. And he, in fact, despised the foul creatures. But they would camoufge the true reason why he was gathering so many sves. His image as someone who used Lagodas was so ingrained in their minds that they wouldn't even consider that he was actually exchanging them for supplies and foreign assassins.

  It was this misconception that would provide him with an opportunity to rise above his peers.

  Axion hummed to himself as he continued penning letters to the hapless fools that he temporarily called his allies. They were utterly unaware that the next emperor was being decided at this moment.

  Not in some chaotic battlefield, but in a humbly decorated tent on a pleasant afternoon.

  “Come to me,” Axion called out when he finished, looking up to see one of the Lagodas rise up from the ground. “More. Nine more.”

  Following his words, nine more wraiths phased through the ground and floated in front of him, their ghastly bodies unmoving. Only their ragged robes moved, unduting ominously despite the ck of wind.

  Truly, he didn’t like looking at these things. They were incredibly unpleasant. Too often did they remind him of the phantoms that haunted his dreams when he was a child.

  “Deliver these letters,” Axion said as he separated the stack of letters into ten, their destinations roughly close to each other. “Go on. Begone.”

  Each Lagodas obediently picked up a stack and left the tent quickly, as if his displeased gaze burned them.

  And with that, Axion felt as if his work for the day was over. From the orange light seen through the gaps of his tent, he knew that it was nearing dusk now. So perhaps he would share a light dinner with the red-headed siblings before sharing some intimacy afterward. It wouldn’t be long before he would have to part with them, so Axion should enjoy it while it sted.

  But before that, he took a moment to lean back into his chair and bask in the afterglow of the small victories he won today. Unlike most, rge and showy triumphs brought him no satisfaction. It was the quiet wins, the ones that nobody else but him could truly see, that somehow felt special.

  Because so rarely was true victory ever achieved in one fell swoop.

  It was one extinguished candle at a time. Until darkness consumed everything in creation.

  ‘I’m doing it, Father. Am I making you proud?’

  Axion did not know his father’s st moments. But he still remembered the man who raised him.

  They had been poor wood carvers, decrepit and barely scraping by. But they weren’t just that, according to his father. Once, they belonged to a bloodline great and ancient warriors, who carved legends into flesh instead of sculpting wood.

  And even though they were no longer this, even though their ways were lost to the cruelty of time and imperial expansion. The words spoken by their people, however, lived on. Even death could not erase them, for they were passed down without fail. From brother to sister, mother to son, father to their daughter, the words had lived. Until one day, Axion of Velrgo heard them too.

  ‘Seek excellence in all things. Until your legends are the ones we carve into our flesh.’

  Even when spoken within his mind, Axion felt it. There, on his arm, blood was drawn as words appeared. They continued, endlessly, snaking up his elbow and no doubt bloodying the rest of his body as well. He could not understand the writing, even after all this time. But just looking at them told him stories.

  Of how he had died in that forest, when he was only six years old but already tired of weakness.

  Of how he found a wounded hunter in that forest. But instead of helping, he had murdered the old man for a crossbow and a quiver of javelins.

  Of the years he spent with nothing but a knife clutched to his chest and stolen weapons beside him as he slept under the stars, lonely and so very afraid.

  There was more. Oh, there was a lot more. Because he did not reach this point in his life peacefully. But Axion stroked the red writing on his hand and watched as all of it vanished, as if none of it was ever there. As if the hot blood had never flowed from the letters that recorded the turning points of his life.

  He had never confirmed if it was something only he saw. Or if his skin was mutited every time he thought of those words. Because he didn’t trust anybody else in this world.

  Axion Stran Argonia stood from his desk and walked out of the command tent.

  Seek excellence in all things, his father had told him. Until your legends are the ones we carve into our flesh.

  And he would not forget those words, for as long as he lived.

  So he would keep going.

  He would keep on going until his deeds were legend and his life was made myth. He would keep on going, and he would not stop until someone stopped him. And if he died along the way, then so be it.

  The world would remember him by the scars he would carve into it.

  AnnouncementChapter Word Count: 6902Last Edited: April 06, 2025