The Last [Mage] King - Chapter 32: - Fury and Frost (Patreon)

The city of Tsaryovohrad was the gem of Bessmertnyy’s south. Which meant that it was inferior to the north in every way. The church’s presence was fainter here, it was clear in the lack of ambition in the buildings, and the lack of colour too. What filled its place were the old customs, faiths that ran through the land long before Elion the First began his conquest.

Still, it was outside, which meant it was great, and seeing the buildings, the people and the streets all from the high vantage point that came from sitting on Captain Morozova’s shoulder was a much greater experience than being locked away in Bezdna palace.

“Our enemies are a danger to the Republic. The mission is to eliminate them. If you do not eliminate them, they will eliminate you,” Morozova said, all stern-like for the nth time now. “Are you listening?”

“Yes, yes! It’s a mission, it’s a real life freaking mission! Of course I’m listening,” Exia giggled.

Morozova sighed, not sharing in his excitement at all. When he spoke though, his voice was tender and soft. “Lad, don’t be surprised if you can’t bring yourself to snuff another man’s lights out when the cards are on the table. I remember my first time—I remember the first time I had a man at my mercy—barrel to his head, finger on the trigger. He was an enemy, would have killed me if the roles were reversed, I knew. But I just couldn’t… and there’s no shame in that—no shame in that at all.”

“Nah, I think you’re actually just really weak. Killing is super easy, Father did loads of it.” Exia smiled.

Morozova’s mood darkened for some reason. “Some of those people he did it to were my comrades.”

“Well, sucks for them,” Exia snorted.

Morozova shifted his weight, the world tilted, Exia yelped and landed painfully on the hard dirt ground. “Fuck!” he groaned. “What the fuck was that for?!”

“We’re here,” Morozova said, not even looking at him as Exia climbed up to his feet. Up ahead was a palace, styled very much like Bezdna’s in architecture, except it was more humble and less impressive in every way. Dvoryaninovo palace was supposedly a vacation home for the Vanfosters who visited Tsaryovohrad, though Exia had never been. It was meant to resemble the ancestral home, but smaller, uglier and shittier. It seemed whoever lived there now was trying very hard, and failing even harder, to make up for its inadequacies with colourful banners, statues, fountains and more. 

“We’re here to meet Twin Consul, General Leonid Dragomirov. He is Volkov’s equal, and co-ruler of the Republic.” Morozova stressed the usurper’s titles not only as if Exia didn’t already know them, but like he was supposed to care about them. “Given that we are going to be functioning within his city, courtesy demands that we inform him personally of our presence and our intentions.”

Exia rolled his eyes.

“Behave yourself,” Morozova said sharply. “You’re not in Bezdna, you’re not in Lyubov, the rules are different here. Do you understand?”

“Whatever.”

Morozova grit his teeth, inhaled and kept on walking forwards.

Their walk took them through the palace, past guards who nothing short of glared at Exia, and finally to the throne room, which like perhaps everything else in this building and city was incredibly unimpressive. It was a palace fit for a hermit King, drab tiles, shoddy pillars—it was simultaneously awful to look at and incredibly hilarious to set eyes upon.

Volkov had converted Bezdna’s throne room to an office, and even that was less of a crime than this.

Like he’d seen in the exterior, there was an assortment of valuable decorations just littering the place. As if to scream the regality of their place into existence. The only thing it screamed was insecurity.

Six Mages stood to the next to the throne, three to either side and all in the red and greens of the Republic but styled in ways Exia knew purely due to Volkov’s anallly retentive lessons were far removed from standard dresscode.

The throne itself was an obscenely large thing, almost comically so in fact, and sat in it was a man with peasant-brown hair styled long and flowing like the Kings of Bessmertnyy. His eyes were blue like Exia’s and wrapped around him were articles of red and gold so bright that any more of them might blind Exia.

This…this was the great Consul? Volkov’s peer? Volkov’s equal? It was with great effort that Exia did not fall to his knees, belly laughing at the clown sitting in front of him.

He just waited for this whole farce to be over with.

“Twin Consul, General Dragomirov,” Morozova began. “We thank you for granting us this audience. I am Captain Morozova of the Republic and beside me is my ward, the King Exia Vanfoster. We will be looking into conspirators against the state that lurk within the underworld of your city. We hope that you might grant us permission to move freely.”

Consul Dragomirov said nothing. He just looked down at the pair like they were rats beneath his feet—the cunt—then raised a hand and extended a finger outward.

Wordlessly, Morozova walked over, fell on a knee and kissed the Consul’s ring. He stepped back and then gestured merely with his eyes at Exia. It took a moment for him to realize the Captain was telling him to do the same. Oh?

He, the King of Bessmertnyy, was to kiss the ring of some—some gauded up pretender. It would have been funny were it not so insulting. He should have sneered and spat in his face, but he imagined Morozova and eventually Volkov would take issue with that particular course of action.

So Exia grit his teeth, clenched his knuckles, walked over, and lowered his head to kiss the idiot’s ring. His lips didn’t meet the stone however, because the man’s hand had moved, and it moved like lightning. Dragomirov’s fist crashed into Exia’s guts like a hammer, finding his liver and instantly relieving him of control over his gut.

The world spun, he fell to the ground, his mouth retching, puking and pissing himself where he knelt. Hot tears wet the edges of his eyes as a dull pain throbbed through his entire being. 

With a tilt of his head he met Morozova’s gaze and the Captain met his. But the Captain did nothing to help. He just watched as Exia knelt in agony.

His eyes then rose up to the man responsible. Consul Leonid Dragomirov’s face was split into a bladed grin, eyes alight with the cruel fascination of a feline looking down at its prey. “It seems the King can’t keep down his food. Perhaps you should feed him better in that castle of yours.”

Exia was hot with fury. He wanted to rip this maggot’s eyes out, and shit into the sockets, he wanted to find his children and eat them in front him while he stared helplessly at the cannibalization.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t. Not now. Not yet.

Dragomirov knew as much—there was nothing Exia could do to a man of his power, of his status. But the expression that Dragomirov wore now was not satisfaction; it had twisted from cruel glee into a hot hissing malice. “Captain—” he began, eyes still locked on Exia “—get done with your business and get out of 

my city. Lest I finish what Volkov could not.”

Exia felt the powerful arms of Morozova lift him up to his feet and then they were walking out of the Consul’s throne room.

###

“I don’t believe it, because it’s bullshit,” Sasha told the King. 

The Monarch had the guts to look offended. “When have I ever lied to you, Captain.”

“Constantly!”

King Exia nodded. “Fair point, but I have promised to turn over a new leaf, and from now on will only tell you truths.”

“Then tell me one.”

“I just did!”

Sasha rolled her eyes. “No. Your Grace. Crafting a story about how the fucking Consul Dragomirov punched you the belly as a child is not a truth.”

King Exia huffed. “You’re impossible.”

Sasha scoffed, barely being able to believe what she just heard. “I’m the impossible one.”

“Yes,” he said, chin raised high, eyes snobbily looking downwards.

Sasha tried not to laugh, but the puff of breath that escaped her was visible in the cold air. They had been walking in the snow for a fair bit of time now. Zimovskaya was behind them and its woods were just ahead.

This was their final mission. And after it Sasha would have to lock the King away. It felt wrong—that wasn’t new, part of her had been feeling it was wrong for a long time anyways. What troubled her now was that it might actually be wrong.

Sasha’s eyes followed the King as he kicked at the snow with each step, eyes wide, as if fascinated by its trajectory alone. It was a similar expression to the one he wore when he was with the traveller family; it was a similar expression he wore to many other little things as well—benign things—like how kicked snow fell through the air.

Sasha had dismissed it all as him simply being an immature bastard. And he was, King Exia most certainly was. But part of her now wondered if some of it came from the fascination the most mundane things in the world held when one spent most of their lives locked away in a cage—no matter how large and luxurious that cage may be.

Perhaps she was overthinking it, perhaps she was just being dumb, but what she knew was that she had to tell this man that he would be going back to his cage soon, and he would have no more snow to kick.

“You made it,” Captain Vetrova said. She had her back rested against one of the trees, her gaze squarely on Sasha. The Captain of the guard was perhaps in her early thirties, a strong woman with even stronger features—face and jaw carved with such solidity as to give her an almost masculine visage. She had black hair and blue eyes, and could have been mistaken for a noble were her hair any darker.

“You thought we wouldn’t?” Sasha asked. “We already made the trek all the way to your town.” It had not taken long upon discussing with the Mayor to realise that—like most men in positions of power—he was an idiot. It was in fact Captain Vetrova who knew actually valuable information that could help them get to the bottom of this, so it was going to be with Captain Vetrova that they would work.

“Well, I didn’t think the Republic cared all that much about a random town to send both a Mage Captain and the King of Bessmertnyy to investigate,” Captain Vetrova said.

“The Republic cares about all its citizens, and its regions, no matter how big or small,” Sasha reassured her.

The woman didn’t look moved by Sasha’s words, but she certainly was by those of the King Exia. He started with a laugh. “Yes, certainly, and that we’re here has nothing to do with the fact that there is a direct route for an Angel to follow from Zimovskaya straight to the city of Gromchevsk.”

The woman for the first time during this conversation set her eyes on the King and affixed him with a strange glare.

Before things could escalate, Sasha stepped in. “Your grace, go look over there for clues,” she said, pointing in the quickest direction her arm could move to.

The King looked upset, but thankfully didn’t protest. “Fine, fine. I’ll go torture a tiny animal or something.” With his head hung low, he slunk off into the woods.

Wordlessly, the Captain’s eyes followed Exia’s back as he left. Sasha couldn’t really blame her. She was being faced with the King of her nation and was forced to confront the fact that he was a cunt. Been there, done that.

“Sorry about that,” Sasha said quickly. She was well used to apologizing for the King’s behaviour at this point; she wondered if she’d have a script ready by the time she’d done this for a decade more. “He’s a bit of a cock.”

Captain Vetrova set her eyes on Sasha for a long moment, and only when Sasha was about to break the uncomfortable silence with a word did her eyes narrow with speech. “You love him.”

“I…I…what?” Sasha’s eyes widened, her tongue turned to lead, her cheeks burned like an inferno. She laughed, nerves fraying. “No…No—no I don’t. I—I might sometimes—sometimes—think about fucking him—which I would never actually do because of several professional boundaries that would be crossing, but that’s about it.”

The woman shook her head, still staring at Sasha, now in a way that made her feel exposed. Vivisected where she stood. “I did not mean romantically. I mean you care about him, but you’re scared he’s lying to you. That he doesn’t care about you. Because once you started to believe he did, and he broke your trust. And though he’s expressed remorse, you’re thinking, if I could be fooled so easily once, what’s there to stop him from doing it again?”

Sasha swallowed at the woman’s claims, and it was a hard thing. Her heart was racing, her guts burning. She felt half sick. When her words finally came out, they were edged in a way she hadn’t meant them to be. “I would like to change the topic now.” She didn’t wait for the woman’s reply, she just slid her gloves on and marched straight into the forest.

Much of the walk was thankfully silent—Captain Vetrova said nothing more and Sasha was certainly in no mood to strike up a conversation with the freakish woman.

She focused on the mission, looking for signs of a Fae, and banishing any intrusive thoughts that threatened to distract her with a soldier’s ease. 

An hour went by before the silence was broken. 

“I’m sorry,” Captain Vetrova said. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just that, I can read people, and I get carried away sometimes.”

Sasha was doing her best not to listen, and she searched for an exit from the conversation. Thankfully, she found one.

That exit was a bear. A big one at that, and with a massive chunk ripped out of its side in one clean carve, like a hot knife slicing straight through butter. The corpse could not have been more than a few hours old, which meant the Fae was still here, and still killing.