TVisTV Book 3: Chapter 46 (RAW) (Patreon)

Chapter 46 - Birth of the Hero

“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.”

- Joseph Campbell.

“What’s that you’ve got there, Desdemona?” Seraphina asked, eyes flicking to the wrapped item the de Savant girl had tugged from her saddlebags and slipped into a satchel. “It’s not for the King, is it. Trying to curry favor.”

“Oh, nothing of the sort, Seraphina.” Desdemona’s smile was all bright teeth and false sunlight, as if the world hadn’t been bleeding for weeks. “Your mother said I should just bring…”

She did not get the chance to explain.

Sir Gantly arrived like a man walking under water. The King’s Steward had been worn down to the grain, his fine clothes hanging loose, his cheeks hollowed, his eyes rimmed red as if sleep had become a rumor. Time and the recent ugliness had not been kind to him. They rarely were.

“Lady de Sariens,” he said, and even the title sounded scraped thin. He gestured—an exhausted sweep that tried to be courtly and failed. “His Majesty is expecting you. This way, if you please.”

The blonde girl would have enjoyed, once, seeing one of her detractors reduced to this: a court peacock molting into something pitiful. Today she felt nothing but a dull pressure behind her eyes. She let him help her down from the horse, because refusing would have made a scene and because scenes were the soils of unwanted rumor.

The contrast was almost laughable. A girl in armor, hard-edged and martial, accepting the hand of a foppish court man whose wrists looked too delicate to hold a sword. Yet Seraphina carried herself with a poise that would have shamed half the ladies who pranced through these halls. She tucked her plumed helm beneath her arm; goblin-hair plumes, long and coarse, fell nearly to her knees.

Flanked by her men and Desdemona, she followed Sir Gantly into the palace, letting him fill the air with small, useless talk because that was what small men do when they are afraid. Seraphina heard the worry under it anyway, threaded through his words like wire under silk.

Inside, the palace showed its age and its indifference. Glory lingered here like old perfume, faint and souring. Tapestries had faded to ghosts of color. Paintings hung a fraction askew with neglect. Flowers sagged in their vases, petals bruised, water gone cloudy. The King had new priorities now, and beauty was not among them. Neither was the memory of a sister long dead.

Heavy oak doors waited ahead, carved with fanciful scenes from Aranthian folklore. Tablaeu of monsters and heroes frozen in stiff poses. To Seraphina’s eye the work was crude, earnest in the way children were earnest. The figures lacked depth, lacked weight. The monsters looked like toys pretending to be terrible.

The doors opened.

No fanfare. No trumpet-blast of a herald. The great hall was simply there, crowded with hangers-on and scavengers dressed as courtiers: men and women starving for lands, for titles, for a reason to exist in a world that had started turning oh so very wrong.

And then there was the King himself.

Elidion looked fragile under the weight of years, skin pulled tight, the bones of his face too sharp. A touch more grey sat at his temples. But there was something else in him now—an unhealthy vigor, fever-bright, as if some unnatural heat burned behind his eyes. It was not the usual religious zealotry that gripped the old as they faded into twilight. Nor was it was it the ordinary madness. It felt like a plague with a crown on its head. A tribulation had come, putting on a man’s skin.

“Lady de Sariens,” the King said, voice heavy with the lazy authority of the throne. “You have come to dissolve your betrothal with my son. Your timing, as always, is most auspicious.”

His tongue slid across his lips without thought. He looked at Seraphina the way a chef looked at meat fresh bought from the market: assessing, hungry, deciding where to best cook it.

This time she did not kneel. Protocol demanded it. Yet, no one in the room expected it and no one dared mention its absence.

“Your father, my cousin, has been most disobedient in his interpretations of our royal authority,” Elidion went on. “Not to mention, there have been rumors of your improper behavior that would make your candidacy as a royal bride… moot.”

Forced snickers fluttered from the peacock cluster near the dais. Seraphina turned her gaze on one of them. Just one. His smile died in his throat. His face drained pale and he looked away fast, suddenly fascinated by the floor. She had to clamp down on the childish urge to grin. To crow for this smallest of victories. A woman was decided by the caliber of her enemies, and she decided that he was most certainly not one of them.

“And the King would listen to such baseless rumors?” Seraphina said. Her voice stayed even, but it took work. “Name the source. I will challenge them here and now.”

Elidion’s smile sharpened almost to a point. A deadly hunter’s smile, pleased to see prey run straight into the snare.

“Why, there has been evidence, not rumor,” he drawled. “You were alone, many times, unchaperoned with certain gentlemen. These things are known to happen. It would not be the first time a young woman in the bloom of youth has fallen to temptation. Ever has the fairer sex had a prediliction for such things… you are your mother’s daughter after all.”

Heat climbed Seraphina’s throat and bloomed in her cheeks, hot and humiliating. The twin barbs were almost too much. For a heartbeat she saw herself crossing the hall and splitting him open where he sat, crown and skull together. Destiny be damned. Consequences be damned. The very fabric of this quasi-medieval Kingdom be damned.

She swallowed the impulse whole. Her eyes turned flinty, green hardening to fresh cut emerald. To deny him out loud would be to give his filth a shape. It would make the accusation real enough for the room to savor.

“Of course,” Elidion continued, and there was a soft relish in it, “there is one way to test whether these rumors are just that. A simple thing you would have had to undergo regardless, given the lack of trust between our families. One can never be sure these days.” He leaned slightly forward. “A purity test.”

The words fell into the hall like a stone into a deep well.

“In fact, I demand it,” he said. “And I fully intend to witness it.”

Silence took the room. Heavy, oppressive, the kind of quiet that came before violence or prayer. Seraphina felt her pulse slam behind her eyes.

He dares. He truly dares, were her immediate thoughts.

For a moment vengeance bloomed bright and apocalyptic in her mind, sweet and bright as poison.

Then the doors opened again behind her.

Her entourage shifted, fuming. Frest and Gravens looked ready to draw steel in the King’s presence and damn the consequences. Prince Velens entered with impeccable timing, slipping into the hall as if he had been waiting for the exact moment the knife went in.

And then, as if the world was determined to make the trap even more perfect, Este Lize arrived—the so-called Living Saint—wearing a victor’s smug little smile. Sir Gallant escorted her, his armor white and gold, polished to a perfect sheen. He looked less like a man and more like a statue of war given permission to kill.

When it rained, it poured. Seraphina felt the walls close in, the air grow tight and heavy. Yet, she held herself still. Control was the only thing she could keep. It was a thing that she had learned from a young age. The one thing that you must control in the craziest of circumstances was always, always yourself.

Not everyone shared her restraint born from a different life.

Desdemona was a creature of passion, a thing made of moon, spark, and storm. She stepped forward before Seraphina could stop her, indignation flashing across her face.

“Your Majesty! This is an outrage,” Desdemona said, voice sharp enough to cut. “Such tests are barbaric and have not been used in Aranthia since your grandfather’s time. I have been with Lady de Sariens, and she may be many things, but a floozy she is not.”

It was meant as defense. As always, Desdemona’s loyalty came with teeth facing the wrong way. She had almost called Seraphina everything but a floozy, and the court had heard all of it. The young girl was surprised that the whole court had not erupted in laughter.

Elidion’s mouth curled a touch.

“And since we shall soon have this nasty business out of the way,” he sneered, “there is a proper royal wedding to announce. My son will instead be wed to a woman who could only be called pure.” His gaze slid to Este Lize like a man displaying a prize. “A true saint.”

A forced applause stuttered through the hall, thin and ugly. Forced.

“I demand trial by combat,” Seraphina said quietly.

The words carried anyway, branching through the room, a promise of blood written in steel. She meant it to bite. She meant it to remind him of old rules, old rights. In her mind it sounded like thunder. It hit the King’s madness and pride and broke like a wave on stone.

Elidion laughed, booming and harsh, a sound that made courtiers flinch and shrink. Then his eyes narrowed.

“You think me a fool, little girl…” he began, and a wracking cough seized him, stealing breath, stealing some of the menace. He wiped at his mouth and smiled again, fever-bright. “A fool, yes. No. No, we will not grant you that. You are not a man. Not a lord of this realm. Anaselena’s daughter would never honor such a sacrosanct thing. You have no honor to besmirch or defend.”

Este Lize watched from the corner of Seraphina’s eye, smiling like a knife. Her pale hands tightened on her mage’s staff. Unlike Seraphina, she chose that moment to sink to her knees with a quick, if not practiced, deference.

“How may I serve you, Your Majesty?” she murmured, delicate, silver hair catching the high-window light as if the world itself wanted to frame her.

Elidion’s laughter softened into something genuine. Pleased and most certain. The old man steepled his fingers and leaned forward on his throne, as if savoring the moment before the final push.

The next words would decide the price that this day would demand. The future of the Kingdom of Aranthia teetered on the brink.

“Take her,” he commanded again, and this time his tone made clear he would not be denied.

“This is madness!” Seraphina shouted, control slipping at last as her voice rose to just before a shriek.

Elidion lifted one brow. “No, my dear. This is royal authority. Your parents sent you into the lion’s den as a sacrifice. An offering for a new peace.”

Immediately, hands went to weapons. Armor creaked and steel whispered. Her men moved on their martial instincts.

They were not fast enough.

Sir Gravens was good—trained since he could barely walk, trained until war lived in his bones and blood as was the way of a warrior house. But nothing had prepared him for Sir Gallant.

Gallant moved like an old story told by liars. Too fast, too clean and too sure by far. Blessed with power that was almost divine, power that belonged to heroes carved into monuments of the old temples of the classical age. Gravens might have grown into that kind of man in time.

But, that day was not this day.

Gravens got his sword half out and threw himself forward, not to parry but to block, to interpose his body between Seraphina and the thrown lightning that was Gallant’s blade. The strike should have split Seraphina in two.

It hit Gravens half-drawn sword instead.

The impact rang through the hall like a bell struck too hard. Gravens crashed to his knees. An armored kick slammed into his breastplate and sent him skidding across stone. His sword clattered away, useless and distant.

Silence swallowed the room.

Then Gallant spoke, as casually as a man discussing the weather.

“If you will allow me, Your Majesty,” he declared with a feral intent, “I will ensure they are subdued.” His gaze flicked over Seraphina’s people with cool contempt. “However, perhaps not all in one piece.”

The King nodded, granting assent like a man granting permission to breathe.

“And, Your Majesty, I will—” Este Lize began, eager to add her own little cruelty.

It almost became her end.

Seraphina had not been idle in the seconds Gravens bought with pain. Neither had Desdemona or Frest.

Frest raised his heavy crossbow—his signature weapon—not at the peerless knight, but at the King himself. A straight line. A simple solution. At the same time Desdemona dropped low, stance turning almost bestial, the air around her seeming to crackle with animal rage.

Seraphina launched herself forward with Dash, her estoc trailing like a streak of silver. The zweihander on her back was too large to draw in time. She drove into Gallant with all the strength that had made men step aside and swallow their fear.

She expected to shatter his guard. Gallant met her like she was nothing, turning he strike as if it were smoke.

He parried with contempt, sword singing sparks into the air. Next, a powerful high strike meant to open him that could split a tree in two was caught in a perfect hanging guard. A brutal kick to his knee, enough to crack steel, was simply stepped aside.

And then the unthinkable: his armored backhand crashed against the side of her helm.

Pain flashed white. Stars burst across her vision. It punched through her unnatural resilience and left her swaying for a heartbeat, blood roaring in her ears.

She did not fall. She stayed on her feet, unbowed, though the point of her sword drifted off point.

“I bet you feel strong,” she half-spat, voice rough with fury, “hitting a girl.”

Seraphina’s thoughts were only to buy time as she dealt with this new paradigm of dealing with something that was stronger than her, and perhaps her mother. Her green eyes burned. For a moment she tasted the temptation of Cornelia, felt the cataclysm waiting behind such a simple command. Unleashing it her here would turn the hall into caustic ash and ruin.

And there were people in this room who might be her subjects one day, if she survived long enough to claim what was owed. Right now, there was a solid case for her actions. This was self-defense against an arbitrary, unjust order from a despot. A tyrant with a crown that had been handed to him by her own father.

But justice, her justice, only mattered if she lived.

Then fate played its next hand. Frest found his opening and lifted the crossbow higher, his fingers moving lazily toward the trigger.

And in that thin moment between moments, the thing sleeping inside Velens stirred.

For a few seconds, the prince would soon become the Hero he was always been meant to be.