The Last [Mage] King - Chapter 35: - No One Stops Bleeding (Patreon)

Exia looked at the boy in the mirror.

He was an unassuming thing, lean, tall, short hair, blue eyes, dressed in dark blue noble threading and drenched in blood and guts. His eyes were empty, hollow, stained red by the vitae of the man he had taken from this world.

The once-man was a corpse now, scattered around the room like pieces of a puzzle, only the smear of red across the walls and ceiling to clue one in as to where they were. A leg, a palm, a head, a finger, a tongue, an eyeball. The counterpart of the last was actually between his neck and collar.

Exia reached with a sticky wet glove and trapped it between two fingers. He pulled the organ out and stared down at it. It stared back up at him. Just as emptily.

Heavy footsteps tore Exia’s gaze away and towards the door. Morozova stood there, eyes wide, mouth wider. His gaze ran across the room like he was looking upon a battlefield worth of casualties.

“I killed him,” Exia told the man. His voice was weak, soft, but certain, so, so certain. “It was easy. You said it might not be…but it was so, so easy. And I enjoyed it.” 

The Captain said nothing, and that was when the doubt started to creep in and the tears began to fall, one by one, each one colder than the last. “Is…Is something wrong with me Captain?” Exia moved  towards him, boots squelching with each step.

The Captain flinched backwards, turned and near-scrambled away and down the stairs. Below him, Exia heard the retching sound of the man emptying the contents of his meal through his mouth.

But save from the sounds of the Captain’s revulsion, Exia was alone.

###

“What do you think you’re doing?” Sasha roared, trying and failing to assert any measure of control over a situation that was already spiralling out of it. She was not the one with the gun, however, that was Captain Vetrova. So she was the one with all the power here.

As if to prove it, she did not even look at Sasha. Her eyes were affixed viciously onto the King Exia Vanfoster. There was a hate there, the kind that she had seen in a good few people who had set eyes upon the symbol of the nation’s royal past. But this was different, more personal, more raw, more true.

“Captain—” the king began, and Sasha knew it was her he was speaking to, “—I’m going to need you to do exactly as she says.” There was no mischief in his eyes, and that worried her. Whatever was going on, it was firmly out of the King’s control as well. But there was no fear in him either—at least not that she could see—just anguish. Sasha did not know what to make of that, but she imagined it wasn’t very good.

“I was there. You didn’t know…but I was…” Captain Vetrova hissed, hands trembling but guns somehow remaining impossibly still. “He was just a man, who wanted a better Bessmertnyy, who wanted to make the lies of prosperity that Volkov and Dragomirov sold into truth. “But you killed him. And I felt it all. Because I always feel it all. I felt when he begged, I felt his terror when you wrapped those blue tendrils around his limbs and tore apart my father like he was just a slab of meat. First the fingers, toes, then the wrist and ankles, then chunk after chunk of his arms and legs, over, and over, and over again even as he squealed and begged, and begged, and begged for you to please stop. I felt his panic the moment he knew he was going to die, his regrets, his desperation, his terror. I felt the horror at the knowledge that his little girl—his pride, his joy—was holed up in a box, trembling, forced to watch her father die. And when he was gone from this world, nothing but a corpse, I smelt your joy in the air as you kept tearing what remained—eyes, tongue, ears—anything your magic could wrap itself around.”

Sasha had no words, it appeared the Captain had used all of them and left her with absolutely nothing. She would be a fool to claim her claims were untruths, a fool to even humour the idea that the King did not have the capacity for such acts in him. In fact the image of King Exia Vanfoster surrounded by horses and soaked in gore—already forever seared into Sasha’s memory—were now lit up in the back of her mind. What she was describing were the actions of the King in their purest form.

Sasha met the King’s eyes and saw no doubt in them either. Instead there was what seemed to be a cold resolution, a criminal pleading guilty when charged with something only they had the obscenity to do. 

“And now, I look at you, the man who ruined my life, dressed in beautiful silks and stones that could buy a village…” Captain Vetrova continued, tears streaming from her eyes now, snot pouring from her nose. “And all I see is sadness…” She spat her words with no sympathy but raw accusation. “You’re always radiating it, bleeding it, always in torment and anguish, you wear flawless smiles but I can smell their prosthetics within them. I can hear you always—always in the back of mind, it’s like the wailing of a dying animal constantly in the back of my brain!” Vetrova roared and she looked a tortured tired thing when she did. The gun was shaking, rattling. ”And a part of me wants to go…serves you right, that’s what you deserve to feel, that’s how you deserve to be. But all I can think is…it’s not fair. You don’t get to take everything from me and still feel how I feel. You don’t get to have everything I never did and wallow in despair. It’s not right, it’s not right, it’s not—” her voice cracked, her words bled into incoherence and she did nothing but pour hot tears onto the snow. 

Sasha humoured and then quickly dismissed the idea of putting on her gloves before she could put a bullet in first the King and her. Vetrova, even in the heightened state she was in, was still a trained marksman. A trained marksman with a fucking automatic pistol.

This confrontation, it seemed, would end like it had started. With the Captain holding all the power. 

Sasha held her breath, waited for the inevitable sound of thunder roaring through the air. Instead, it was the whisper of the Captain’s voice that pierced through the silence. “Why aren’t you a monster?” she asked, with anguish, rage, anger and bitterness coating her every word. The King did not answer, but he did not avert his gaze from hers either, and Captain Vetrova did not ask again. She dropped her expensive gun into the snow, turned around and wordlessly walked away.

###

G.K.  

Golden Loom Residence  

Sector 9, Admin Quarter  

Whitevale  

Northern Dominion  

Box 23 — Frost Date 2227

Winterdrop Central Relay  

Ts13, Linehouse 4  

Z.V. Territory  

Northern Dominion

FINDINGS 

To Blue

As per our prior understanding, I have reviewed the activities of the wild thing.

There is strong indication that Mr. V. has been in frequent contact with L.D.,” in Tsaryovohrad. Their communications suggest alignment not with the Organization, but with aims of their own.

The situation warrants further observation. I recommend discretion until we are certain of the full extent of their intentions.

—

G.K.

###

Sasha could not find the King. 

This was certainly not the first time, but it was most certainly one of the more troubling ones. 

He had said nothing on their way back to the town, had left to go take a leak and now that night had fallen and Sasha needed to take him home, he was nowhere to be found.

She had searched the town while trying to spread as little panic as possible, and he was not anywhere she had thought to check—not in bars and not in whorehouses. Now, she was walking back to her room, not with anger, or frustration, but with surprise, and it was the recognition of that emotion that truly lit a fire within her soul.

Surprise. Why was she surprised? It wasn’t like any of this was out of character for the King; it wasn’t like he hadn’t gone through what almost seemed like extensive lengths to prove that he was in fact who he was. It was her who projected change, it was her who imagined hope, a silver lining, and then when reality met her delusions, she had the nerve to be fucking surprised.

Sasha wanted something to punch, and found that the most deserving thing was herself.  Fucking drooling idiot you are, Sash, I hope you—

Her thoughts halted at the sight of a long haired man with blue eyes and dark silks sat on a bench. The snow dotted his mane like stars in the night sky, trapped gently between his fingers was a letter.

“Your Grace?” Sasha asked as she stepped towards him, almost disbelieving.

The King Exia gently set his eyes up at her. He smiled, and the expression was as true as it was sad. 

“Captain.”

“W-what are you doing?” she asked, still unsure, still guarded, still ready for the rug to be pulled out from underneath her at any moment.

He raised a hand and gently placed the letter in her palm. “A Message from Governor Kudrin.”

Sasha read it. It was a vaguely coded message. By the addresses it seemed to be a correspondence between warehouses, and while by the content it could be understood to be a report about Navtej Volkov and Twin Consul Leonid Dragomirov colluding against the Republic, it contained enough vagueness to allow for plausible deniability in most official judgements. Regardless, it was most certainly a claim, and a great one at that.

“I was considering leaving to investigate the Navtej situation,” the King told her, eyes ahead. “Tsaryovohrad isn’t too far from here, I figured I could hop on a train and be lopping off heads by tomorrow.” The King sighed. “I decided against it of course, as is evident by my being here and not on my way there.” The King turned to meet her eyes now, and it was with a soft grin that he spoke. “You can take me home now, Captain.”

Sasha resisted the urge to step back from him that that lit within her. “You knew?”

“I couldn’t not,” he said, turning his eyes back ahead, to the small shops and buildings of the tiny town they had somehow found themselves in the middle of. “I can never, not. That, I suppose, is one of Zcigmagus’ many ways of torturing me. It could be worse, and it would still be deserved.” the King leaned back into the bench and sighed.

Sasha sat down next to him, back against the wood. He placed his gloves on her lap, she placed them in her pockets, and they sat there with no words exchanged between the two. But an understanding that needed none to convey. They were to go to Lyubov, where she would drop him off in Bezdna palace and they would forget all they had seen and heard about a conspiracy including the Twin Consul’s son and his equal. Because that was what being a soldier meant—following orders, sticking to the objective and asking only the right questions.

But that was not why she became a soldier.

“We’re going to Tsaryovohrad,” Sasha said. And go to Tsaryovohrad they would.