Crowned in Black: Ch. 14

Suri was already waiting for me in her quarters. She'd taken her armor and shirt off, sitting bare-breasted on the edge of the bed with her knees pressed together. Her fierce golden eyes met mine steadily, calmly, and I felt a surge of love for this woman even as my gaze was magnetically drawn to her throat.

"This sucks," I croaked. My mouth was dry. "I didn't want you to come back to me like-"

"It's alright lover. Come here." She opened her arms to me.

I gripped one of the posters of the bed first, fighting - and failing against - the waves of hunger that made my veins ache. One cheek ticced as I stumbled onto her lap, straddling her, buried my face in the crook of her neck and shoulder. The metallic fangs pierced Suri's skin effortlessly, and she made a sweet, breathy sound: half pain, half pleasure.

"It's okay." Her voice was strained as her hands lifted, stroking over my head and down my back. "I got you."

The taste of her blood made all the hair on my body lift. It made other things lift, too. As she coaxed me to relax, I growled, rocking us back and pushing her onto her back, my jaws still locked on her throat. Suri didn't resist. She clung to me with her legs, and to my surprise, began to work my belt with her hands.

Something about the way she felt under me finally let the truth sink in. Suri was really into this. She really was okay with what I'd become. More than okay. Something about what I was doing turned her on, hard. I wasn't in control of any of it, too focused on the sweet iron heat flooding my mouth, but I didn't resist as she pulled me in between her thighs and pressed one of my hands to her breast. She was so willing, so eager, so GOOD. The smell of the cathedral, the despair of Lovi's dungeons, the rage I felt at Lucien, myself, Archemi... it faded away as our bodies met, and Suri began to breathe the same word in my ear. 'YES', over and over, as she stroked my hair and pulled me into her, pushing her neck up against my teeth.

It was dark by the time we finished. I sprawled to the side, exhausted but sated. My skin hummed, my mind was clear and still. Beside me, Suri put pressure on the side of her throat with a rag, drinking a brilliant green potion to bump up her HP. It felt like I should be worried, but it was hard to think through the afterglow.

"Suri..." I started, trying to roll over to her. "Are you...?"

"I’m fine." She uncorked a second potion, and passed it to me. It was bright yellow: a stamina potion. "Drink this, and go back to Ignas if you want. I know we got a lot to catch up on, but I have GOT to get some sleep."

I tipped the potion to my lips, then paused. "Wait. Did you just use me for my fangs?"

"And your dick, yeah." She groaned, luxuriating back against the sheets. "Fuck, I needed that."

I cracked up laughing, sputtering around a mouthful of lemony-tasting potion.

"You're supposed to drink it, not snort it." Suri's eyebrow lifted.

"You're fired," I said. "You're straight up fired."

"Sorry, I'm the Vulvazaela now, or whatever the fuck they call a Countess in Vlachia." Suri covered her eyes with a forearm and waved airily, like she was brushing away a fly. "Can't fire the Venezuela."

"Can too. But I won't." Not for the first time, I had the impulsive desire to ask this woman to marry me... but Vash had given me some pretty sage advice about not trying to pin Suri down. I leaned in and caught her lips with mine, lingering a moment, then rolled up and heaved off the bed. Most of my tattered gear was still equipped. "I should probably switch out for something clean. Have to put on pants to see the king."

Suri chuckled. "I remember that line. Fuck... that time we were staying in Vulkan Keep, still hunting Kanzo's shiny silver arse in Taltos. Feels like forever ago."

"Ugh, right?" I unequipped my damaged and dirtied Stormrider Armor, and switched it out for a plain old tunic, belt and breeches in my House colors. No protection, but they didn't stink of blood. "When I'm done... mind if I come back here?"

“No. I’ll leave your side of the bed open," Suri murmured.

I gave her one last kiss, right on the middle of her chest, and padded out. Suri occupied the Duchess Suite of the residential tower, not far from my own. I didn't bother returning to my chambers yet: instead, I made my way downstairs, back to the hospital. Karalti was nowhere to be seen, and when I tuned into her, I felt her flying toward her favorite hot spring to bathe, hunt, and decompress. Ebisa had vanished. Mehkhet had returned to haunt the library like... well... a ghost. Gar and Rin were now both in Litvy with the salvaged Warsinger. Istvan, Vash, and Vilmos were waiting outside the entry to the hospital, smoking and talking. A brief check of my menus showed me that I’d missed two whole-ass milestones while I was wrapped up in getting Ignas to safety:

[Bounty Accomplished: The Warsingers. 20,000 olbia has been added to the Myszno Treasury. You gain 5000 EXP!]

[Quest update: The Hidden Hand. You have gained 4000 EXP!]

[You are Level 36! Suri is Level 37!]

Huh. I’d gone up two levels, and barely even noticed. In any case, that was for Future Hector to deal with. I swiped the notifications away as I joined the group outside the clinic. "How is he? Any updates?"

"Masha's still working on His Majesty, Your Grace. That's a good thing." Istvan thumped his fist over his heart and drew his heels together. "No one is permitted inside, per the Masterhealer's orders.

"Right." I wasn't about to argue with Masha. "Any word from the capitol?"

Istvan nodded, and his face drew into grim lines. "Yes. Though we ought to discuss it in private, and somewhere you may be seated. There is a lot to catch up on, about both Myszno and Vlachia as a whole."

"Sure." I made a grabby-grabby motion at Vash's pipe. The monk wordlessly passed it to me, and I took a toke off it, holding the smoke for a few seconds before passing it back. "Let's go to the gatehouse lounge. I don't feel like sitting in the damn Great Hall."

"Master Vash and I will keep vigil here," Vilmos replied. "And... Your Grace, thank you for rescuing His Majesty. Ignas is a good king, the last of his line. I shudder to think what chaos this country would experience were he to have perished."

"He's not out of the woods yet. I still haven't gotten my 'quest completed' notification for the rescue mission." I checked the Hidden Hand quest, and saw that it had updated with Sohvi's rescue – but not Ignas’s. My heart sunk. "Where's the princess? Is she okay?"

"I assigned her private quarters with a maidservant and guards outside the door." Vilmos' burly face crinkled into concerned lines. "She is traumatized almost beyond speech. Her mother, her kingdom, even her beloved featherlight… all lost."

Featherlight? I thought back to the one other time I'd seen Sohvi and her mother, back in the parliament house of Taltos. The princess had been carrying a very well-behaved, very pretty little feathered dinosaur. "Oh man."

"That's not all she lost." Vash sneered in disgust. "I have met some disgusting men in my time, Dog, but this Lucien... there is no redeeming such a man. He needs to be put down, like the rabid beast he is."

"Question for you." I looked to him curiously. "What makes Lucien different from Jacob?"

Vash quirked a brow. He looked tired and stoned, face drawn from fatigue, but his eyes were still sharp enough. "Abuse of others is the venting of internal pain, dog. When there is no insight into the self, no willingness to overcome the root cause of one’s foul behavior, there is no redemption. Jacob is gaining this insight. He has started to let himself feel his pain - not only the pain that led him into degeneracy, but the pain of his crimes against Suri and the others. He has privately admitted to me that he feels deep shame for what he did, and that if Suri were to find some way to kill him, that he would accept his fate. He still struggles to believe in the reality of this world, but... progress is being made."

I couldn't disguise my surprise. "Huh."

"This Lucien feels no such thing. Nor does the giant, Nicolas." Vash drew on his pipe, and ruefully shook his head. "They are blind to themselves and to the needs and rights of others. You can hear it in Lucien's voice. There is no light left in this man. No mercy. Any pity he might have is reserved only for himself, and even then. No... that one, he needs to die, and his soul taken into the deepest dark to be purified before it rejoins the Age of Man. And Nicolas? There is something even more deeply wrong with that one. A madness that cannot be cured."

"Yeah." I let that digest for a few moments. "Well, Vash, you're the best judge of character I know. If you say that about Jacob, I'll believe you. We'll do our best to give him a chance. You still up to go and treat some plague victims once Istvan has debriefed me?"

"It will have to be after you meet with your satraps," Istvan said, before Vash could reply. "One of the pieces of news I have concerns them."

"As he said. Don't want to risk giving the lords and ladies of the land Thornlung plague," Vash chuckled, and passed me the pipe again. "Here, Dog: one for the road. You look like you crawled out of the oceans, eh?"

I was mildly stoned by the time Istvan and I reached my favorite room in the castle: the gatehouse parlor, a place intended to receive guests. It looked like a small luxury bar, done up in golds and honey-yellows, deep browns and charcoal, with a small, well-stocked bar and big bay windows that overlooked the courtyard and Gar's airship.

"Is Cutthroat still nesting in the Strelitzia?" I asked Istvan, circling to the bar to fix myself a tall, stiff Moscow Mule, and an alcohol-less one for my Steward.

"Yes," he sighed. "And the only reason Captain Gar isn't charging about the place, drunk off his gourd and threatening people with his pistol about it is because Rin dragged him to Litvy with her."

"Nine eggs," I said, shaking my head. "Nine little Cutthroats. I can't believe we didn't see Payu getting to her."

"It must have been during the parachute test." Istvan took went to perch elegantly on one of the dark leather armchairs with his drink – a ginger and lime soda, no alcohol. "The stablemaster said matings between hookwings can be very quick."

"Good old Payu must cum like a gatling gun. I swear we only looked away from them for a couple minutes."

"The prospect of nine more Cutthroats is, unfortunately, the least of the problems we face to the realm," Istvan sighed.

I took a big pull off my drink, and plopped down onto a barstool. "Hit me."

"The first news isn't terrible. Your satraps and the tribal leaders of the Yanik, Tuun and Churvi universally agreed to attend the council, and all of them arrived over yesterday and today. They have quartered, watered and fed, and anticipate you will summon them to a meeting when you're available."

"Awesome. What's the bad news?"

"We may have another war on our hands. The worst sort of war: the kind that pits countryman against countryman." Istvan regarded me with serious dark-green eyes. "You have a great deal of renown and unnamed friends in the king's court, Hector, but there are dark stirrings in Taltos. Janos arrested and executed Commander Vasoly and several others for aiding you during the regent’s address.”

I rubbed my eyes and the bridge of my nose. “Fuck. Who’s in charge now?”

“We don’t know.” Istvan paused to clear his throat. “The entire 4th Fleet deserted the Black Army on-masse and disappeared, along with over two hundred Knights of the Red Star.”

My hand paused over my eyes. I looked up at him. “You’re kidding me. That’s-“

“A quarter of the standing royal forces,” Istvan confirmed. “Around twenty-five thousand men. Janos is down half of his army from the losses in Revala: there was nothing he could do to stop them. The Black Army are mercenaries, in the sense that they are in the employ of the king… and they have decided that they serve Ignas only.”

My grief for the Commander and the others who’d given their lives so I could be free was now tempered with a sense of wonder. “Could they be on their way here?”

Istvan shook his head. “There’s no way to know until they arrive. But you have a great deal of respect among that fleet for your command of them in Myszno. And now that we have His Majesty here…”

“Yeah. Well… we can hope they know that we’ll protect them,” I said. “What else?”

“Janos has flipped the story of your accusations on its head with the skill of a life-long politician, and there is serious talk in Taltos of declaring Myszno a rogue territory and you a traitor to the crown," Istvan sighed. “According to my sources, he hasn’t been able to make headway so far. Renown takes time to erode, but every day he is Regent, the more doubt he can sow.”

"Can Janos even do that? Strip my title and declare Myszno a rogue state? Ignas isn't dead."

"No, but he is currently unable to rule, and until such a time as he walks back into Vulkan Keep and pulls the crown off Janos' brow, the Lord of Czongrad is functionally the Volod." Istvan's brows furrowed. "Voivodes are appointed on the condition that they serve the Volod with absolute fealty. You are, in many ways, a small king in your own right, especially because the Voivode has the authority to summon an army within their own territory. Vlachia has had rebellious Voivodes try to raise large armies and leave Vlachia in the past."

"Operative word being 'try'," I said.

Istvan nodded. "Correct. The Rebellion of Sathbar was the most serious of such incidents, just to the north of us. It was the reason the Black Army was created. The rebellion was put down by the might of the Crown's airships."

"Vlachia relies too much on their damn airships." I grimaced, and took a deep drink. The sweet, spicy tang of ginger and lime cleared the taste of blood from my mouth, and I had the sudden urge for a cigarette to go with it. Which was weird, because I didn't smoke cigarettes. "Ororgael knew that, and that's why he won."

"Aye." Istvan sighed. "Anyway, the fact you're planning to reinvigorate Myszno's army and create a standing, highly trained defense force is all the evidence he needs that your accusations were a pretext for succession, and the Crown still has the 3rd Fleet, plus the armies they can raise from other provinces the old-fashioned way. I think you're right, and that overreliance on the airships and the Black Army itself is a strategic blunder on the part of the Crown, but Myszno is in no way equipped to deal with them if Janos decides to turn our nation's army against us."

"What's the alternative? Lie down and roll over?" I shook my head. "There's no negotiating with fanatics, and anyone who's part of Ororgael's cult is in it because they think their soul is on the line. Violetta and Ororgael have been convincing people that the Caul of Souls rips apart the souls of the dead and permanently destroys them. The way Janos is acting tells me that he believes them. He wore the pin at court to flatter his boss."

Istvan made a sound of agreement. "Indeed. Well, if I must fall fighting for my homeland against the capitol, so be it. It will be a hero's death."

"No dying allowed." I glared at him over the edge of my glass. "You're a military man. Tell me what an effective counter to big fleets of airships is."

"The Warsingers, if only we could get them to work. Anti-aircraft weaponry, such as rail-mounted precision mortars," Istvan replied. "Quazi riders. But in truth, the only true deterrence against airships are other airships, or dragons. The reason Ilia has stood for so long against the likes of Gilheim - when they were an empire - and the Princeling Nations of the peninsula is because of their dragons. King Grigori Skyr was the only man to figure out how to tame and train them into an army, and his knights laid waste to every invader."

"I know how he did it. And it was gross." I made a face, turning to gaze out the window. The sunlight broke the world into a million dazzling colors and made my eyes throb, but I forced myself to keep gazing forward. "He used something called the Diamond Pact to enslave them. It's a geas that binds the dragons of the Order to the will of the current Knight-Commander, which in this instance, is Lucien."

"It must be a fell magic indeed if it can control spirits as powerful as those of dragons." Istvan followed my line of sight, as if expecting to see something himself.

I paused for a few minutes, thinking over what he'd told me. "Now we have Ignas - assuming he makes it - we can head Janos off if we announce that he's been rescued. But we need to plan for the worst: if Janos thinks he can storm over us with the Royal Airforce, we have to make sure he can't. And that means we need the dragons."

Istvan arched both eyebrows.

Thinking, I brought up one of the main story quests that Karalti and I had accepted:

Main Quest: Darkness Shines on Light Places (2/4)

During your time at the Eyrie, the bastion of the dragon knights of St. Grigori, you discovered a dark secret at the heart of the order. The dragons and knights are bound by some kind of magical enslavement, a geas stretching back hundreds, or maybe even thousands of years. It binds the dragons and their bonded riders to the will of the current Knight-Commander.

Your Queen dragon, Karalti, has gained access to the Path of Royalty - but to free the dragons of Ilia, Karalti's status as a queen is not enough. You must get to the root of the problem, the geas itself. The answers lie in the fallen Aesari city of Cham Garai. Now that you possess Lahati's blessing and the Pearl of Glorious Dawn, the way will be open to you - but are you strong enough to face what lies within?

This is a special quest (Mark of Matir)

This is a sequential quest (2 of 4)

Difficulty: Level 40-45

Rewards: 6500 EXP, Fame/Infamy, Unknown unique rewards.

As I listened and drank and relaxed, a couple things about the quest description stood out to me. The first and biggest one was the assertion that the solution could be found in Cham Garai. If I was remembering my history right, Cham Garai was a floating city that had come down when humans, Mercurions and Meewfolk - led by the 5th Triad of Grigori Skyr, Lirenian the Diamond Queen, Sachara Ha'Shazir inside of Withering Rose, and the Mercurion artificers Zarya and Phaedra - had saved the Caul of Souls and caused the downfall of the Aesari Empire about a thousand years before. Cham Garai had smashed into a boggy, swampy valley in Ilia with such force that it had merged into the earth.

"You know, now I think about it..." On impulse, I brought up my map of Archemi, then with a couple other gestures, I overlaid two other maps over it. The first one was the map of the Chorus Vaults, the resting places of all the Warsingers who’d served against the Drachan. Sure enough, a symbol came up over Cham Garai. It was the sigil of Hanging Star, one of the older Warsingers. The second map was the one that showed the locations of the Dragon Gates, the stasis chambers of the Nine. Once again, Solnetsi's tomb was superimposed over Cham Garai, right over the Star Vault. "Huh."

"What is it?" Istvan leaned forward, curious.

"I know it doesn't seem related to any of this, but hear me out," I said. "I have a quest that tells me the secret of the Diamond Pact 'lies in Cham Garai'. It's a fallen Aesari city that landed in Ilia about a thousand years ago... which means there was no way that Cham Garai and the Star Vault were part of it, because Hanging Star was one of the earlier Warsingers to be built. It was used to fight the Drachan directly, so that machine, its vault, and the Dragon Gate it was buried with are at least four thousand years old."

"Alright." Istvan's expression turned puzzled, but he continued to listen.

"So that means the Dragon Gate of Glorious Dawn and the Vault were there first, and Cham Garai either accidentally - or deliberately - crashed into it." I zoomed the map in. My map of the region was fairly detailed, because I'd spent time in Fort Palewing, then crawled part of Cham Garai and the Eyrie as well. With a birds-eye view of the place, the shattercone from the impact of the city was still very visible in the region. "So - and this is just like, a theory - what if the Aesari deliberately steered their city to that location as it fell, as one last ditch effort to destroy the Dragon Gate of Solnetsi? And what if they partly succeeded?"

"I... honestly don't know the implications of that," Istvan said carefully.

"Well, for one thing, it could be why the Caul of Souls is failing as hard as it is in the Sixth Cycle." I looked through the HUD at him. "For another, if the impact somehow breached the Dragon Gate, it might have given Grigori Skyr access to the power of a sleeping goddess, kind of like how the Demon was able to draw on Matir's power because he had the Star of Endless Night and the Thunderstones. Grigori was the fifth Paragon; he had the Spear of Nine Spears, fully equipped with all nine keystones. So why did he pick Cham Garai to build the Eyrie? And how were those keystones scattered to the winds?"

Istvan blinked a few times. "Are you saying that the last Paragon used your spear to create this Diamond Pact?"

"I'm thinking that our old friend Grigori did something really naughty with the Spear and got his ass handed to him. And I think that whatever happened to the Spear after that is how it got into such bad shape, and explains why the Keystones are all over the damn place." I leaned back against the bar. "So, you weren't here for this, but back when Suri and I recovered the Ruby of Boundless Strength, we discovered that it had a recording on it. It's a piece of ruby mana, not an actual ruby, and ruby mana can hold memories and programs on it."

"Go on."

"The recording on the Ruby showed a funeral procession through the desert," I continued, "and because Withering Rose was there, we assumed the funeral was for Sachara. But now we know more about the Warsingers. If Withering Rose was walking with the procession, Sachara had to be inside. Grigori was her lover, one of them. She was escorting HIS funeral train. I’m thinking that something bad happened to him, you know? That he was murdered, maybe, and someone tried to take the Spear. Maybe the weapon broke by itself, and teleported the stones to random places. Maybe whoever took it deliberately disassembled it so others couldn’t do what he’d done. Regardless, there’s something fucky with the whole thing."

"Yes. And any of that bodes ill for reversing this geas." Istvan rubbed his hand over his mouth, then looked up at me sharply. "Your Grace, you can't seriously be considering going INTO Ilia to destroy this geas and try to gain the dragons?"

"That's exactly what I'm going to do." I drained my cup and set it down, then slid off the barstool and grinned at him. "And I'm about to call that meeting with my satraps to explain how."