The Last [Mage] King - Chapter 31: - Rage Without Teeth (Patreon)

“He can’t just do that!” Exia roared.“Yes he can,” Navtej replied, solemn as a cold wind.

They were in Nav’s room. Now an empty room. Much of its content would be donated, others stored away, but the most important and essential to Navtej were in the small suitcase by his feet.

Volkov was sending him to the military, off to go join the war, off to be another pawn in the man’s endless machinations. 

Nav held his composure well—he kept his head held up high and set unshaking eyes on Exia. But nothing, not even a mind as sharp as Navtej Volkov’s could hide how much the boy despised the path he was now set upon. To Kill was antithesis to everything Nav stood for, to do so not for justice, for rightness, but for a banner and a nation was a mockery of his existence.

And Volkov was going to make him do it anyway.

“There has to be something we can d—”

“—No I don’t think there is, Exi,” Navtej interrupted him, almost laughing as he did—as if he found the idea of two teenaged boys standing up to the great General Volkov funny.

Exia found nothing funny. “We can—we could—we—Fuck!” He found his accursed brain short of ideas, not when it came to hurting people, not when it came to serving his own ends, but the moment he needed it to help someone that was not himself it was suddenly wanting. “Just give me a second, just let me think, alright?!”

But Nav wasn’t even looking at him, instead he was looking behind him—above him.

“Your Grace!” A voice called out, the voice of Lieutenant Rybakov—idiot must have finally figured out that Exia snuck out of his room. “You’re not supposed to be here!”

Exia didn’t turn to him, he didn’t have the time for that. He just locked his eyes on Navtej. “Listen Nav—listen! I’ll figure something out, I’ll—” Rybakov wrapped thick arms around Exia and hauled him off his feet. “Let go of me, you oaf!”

But the soldier didn’t.

Exia tried slamming the back of his head into the bastard’s nose—breaking it—but the man was deft in blocking his attacks. Rybakov was one of the oldest of Volkov’s palace guards, and over the years they had all become rather skilled in fending off attacks from their King however strong he had started to grow from the muscular gifts of puberty.

Exia could see Nav’s form retreat as the idiot carried him out of the room. He’d never seen the boy so…small. Not when they’d first met, not when he’d threatened him with a blade. It was as if Nav truly would have preferred death over this fate. 

“Goodbye, Exi.” Navtej wore a broken smile.

“I’ll fix it Nav, I’ll figure something out and I’ll fix it!” Exia yelled, promised.

But Nav didn’t believe him, and in truth, Exia did not believe himself. Because it was a lie.

Rybakov hauled him through the palace as he kicked and screamed and roared. The soldier entered Exia’s room, tossed him on the bed, and by the time Exia could rush to his feet, the man was out and the door was locked.

Exia walked over to the glass wall at the side of his room; there, he saw Nav’s carriage leaving, heard the soft beating of hooves retreating away from him, and could only watch as the image of the vehicle trotted further and further away from him—first out of the estate, and then into Lyubov.

Three years, he’d known him for three years, and now that was all over. Now Navtej Volkov was gone. And there was nothing he could do about it.

There was a clicking behind Exia and the door slid open, General Volkov stepped in—short brown hair, handlebar mustache and his cane held firmly in his hand. Exia had thought the hatred he had for that man would be a perpetually raging inferno till the day he saw the usurper in the dirt, but over the years, and much to his surprise, it had actually calmed.

It was not that Exia had forgiven him, or even begun to have reservations about ending the worm's life. No. It was just that he did not feel that hissing rage within that a younger him had just at the sight of this monster. He had once thought it a bad thing, a sign of some weakness, but no…it wasn’t. He was going to kill Volkov; he just now had the luxury of being calm about it, of thinking it all through, of masking his rage where it once radiated wildly out of him in every direction.

Today was not one of the days he had such a luxury.

“What the shit do you think you’re doing?!” Exia growled at the monster. “Sending Nav to the military? To do what? He can’t hurt a person, he can barely bring himself to hurt a fly! You can’t just fucking do that!”

Volkov’s reply came as calmly as ever, as reserved as ever. “I believe I am well within my rights to decide what happens to my son, Your Highness.” He spoke like Volkov always did: not to you but at you, like only your words mattered and not the person actually saying them.

It made Exia livid, it made him mad—mad with fury, with anger, mad with every twisted little thing that festered under his guts in his darkest days. He grabbed a chair, and slammed it against a wall, grabbed a lamp, a table, anything that he could and met them violently against one surface or the other.

He heard himself scream, but it did not sound like his voice, it was sharp and harsh, like a bird of prey’s talons dragged through chalkboard slate.

He was trembling when he was done, panting, body vibrating, heart racing. 

Volkov was Volkov—unmoved and at most disapproving of the mess Exia had made of his room.

“All you do, is take!” he hissed at him and he heard his voice break. He felt the tears in his eyes but had long since stopped caring about them. “You take, and you take, and you take, and the one thing—the one fucking thing you gave me after ridding me of everything that I had ever known…you just…you just up and take that too.”

He was crumbling in front of the man—yet the boulders that once made up Exia shattered and fell, only to break harmlessly against the immovable force that was General Volkov. No reaction. No recognition. Only a flicker of vague disapproval.

“Please…” Exia tried with a soft tired whisper. “I just…I just don’t want to be alone again. In this massive prison. In this hell. Please…”

Against all odds, that got a response from the General. “You won’t be alone, Your Grace. Neither will you be in Bezdna Palace. Starting tomorrow, Captain Morozova will be taking you on your first assignment.”

###

“Run…” Yegor gurgled. The blood filling up his lungs made it hard for him to speak—harder for him to breathe. The gash across his side made it impossible for him to live. He could only lay there, sat against a tree and urging Pelageya to avoid the same fate. “Run…” her Lieutenant gurgled once more, and Pelageya did.

She lifted her heavy feet as quickly as they could carry her through the snow and raced through forest mists

Around her was not the sound of nature, but the sound of dying men—her men. It was supposed to be mercenaries—perhaps a large group, perhaps a particularly aggressive group—but it was supposed to be mercenaries. 

It was not.

It was something else, racing through the mist as a towering shadow, leaping from tree to tree, as a blur and painting the snow red with the liquid life of dead men.

She could feel their anguish, taste it in the air, feel it sink into her gut and twist and churn in ways that made her nearly puke. It was a smell, iron. It was a sensation, wet heat. It was a feeling of fear and a sound of screeching and a sight of black fog looming at the edges of Pelageya’s vision. 

But the adrenaline kept her running, it kept her moving. She didn’t want to die like this. She had to live, she had to live, she had to live. The death rattle and ending fear of so many others infused her, leaving her more desperate to survive than even her own instincts would have.

And she did. Only because the Fae was far too busy killing her friends to notice her.

Pelageya snapped out of it. 

It was a memory. It was in the past. She was safe now. It didn’t matter how helpless recounting the events made her feel, it needed to be done to paint the threat’s importance to Mayor Pukhov.

If Mayor Arkady Pukhov recognised how much strain recollecting the event put on the head of his townguard, he didn’t necessarily seem to care. He seemed troubled certainly—Pelageya could smell that all well and good—but sat in his comfortable office chair and with an elbow rested on the oak desk, the Mayor of Zimovskaya’s concern was much different than Pelageya’s. “Fairies, you say?” he asked, skeptical.

“Fae, correct.” She nodded.

“That sounds hard to believe. Perhaps it was a group of mercenaries, and the corpses were picked at by bears, and your people are simply too inept to put a stop to it.” he replied, lying and lying badly at that. The deceit was watery and rotten. It was the same he’d used when she’d first brought the issues of killings in the woods to his attention, and it was the same he was using now that he was being confronted with the fact that several members of the townguard had been ripped apart like wet meat and scattered around the forest. He shook his head. “You’re being hysterical, Vetrova.”

Pelageya grit her teeth and chose rage, not because she’d lost control, not because it was such an overwhelming emotion that it had to be let out instantaneously, but because she knew Mayor Pukhov, and knew that he was a man that bent under sudden pressure. “It was a Fae, you know it was a Fae, I know it was a Fae. You’re lying to me and the more you lie, the more people get hurt,” she growled.

Palegeya saw the man practically retreat into himself at the confrontation, eyes becoming smaller, body shrinking. Like she had predicted, the Mayor did bend. But the bastard did not break. “My primary concern is with stopping panic amongst the citizenry. We can handle mercenaries and bears so it is mercenary and bears. Zimovskaya is a small town, what Mages we would have had are at the front lines of the war. We have no way of dealing with Fae and if you are going to continue spreading your theories, then you are hereby relieved from your position as Captain of the townguard.”

She’d seen it coming, but that didn’t make it sting any less. She was now badgeless, powerless and doomed to watch her people get ripped apart by a death that crawled out of the heavens—Well whatever. It wasn’t like her badge or power would have allowed her to do anything about this in the first place; Pukhov would have circumvented any attempt to look into this further. At least now she knew why he’d been lying to her. Not that she agreed, not that she would ever agree with such idiocy, but at least now she knew the source of it all. And understood of course. She always understood. 

The door swung open and Pelageya turned to see two people enter. One was a woman, with features that came from far beyond the republic—red hair, freckled skin and green eyes. It was the other who caught her attention however, a man, tall, even by upper class standards, dyed black hair, cold blue eyes and a playful grin along his features.

“I am Captain Sasha Osin,” the woman said, showing her rank. By the stripes on her uniform, Pelageya saw that she was a Mage—rare among females. But so is a woman Captain of the townguard, and that’s what I am—well, was. “This is the King Exia Vanfoster,” she gestured to the man and he waved boyishly at them both. “We are here due to the reports of Fae attacks in the area.”

Pelageya turned just in time to see the colour drain from the Mayor’s eyes. He was up on his feet within moments, nodding his head fervently. “I…I see. And how did you hear about this?”

The Captain either seemed not to notice or care about his demeanor. “We received word from the Captain of the townguard. A Miss Pelageya Vetrova if I’m remembering correctly.”

Pukhov half rounded on her at that, and caught himself mid way. “Did you now—I see,” he forced a smile, though it was a trembling thing. The Mayor pat her on the shoulder. “That’s my Captain,” he shook her affably. “Always taking the initiative.”

Pelageya barely noticed any of it. She noticed less as they kept on talking. Her eyes, mind and soul were affixed solely on the blue eyed man—the King. 

She was going to kill him.