Chapter 113: The Damsel called Leornars final part
The indigo silk of Leornars's kimono fluttered in the salt-heavy wind as he paced across the main deck of the Rigs. To the swarming slave traders, he looked like a misplaced noblewoman, a silver-haired "damsel" lost in a den of wolves. But as they rushed forward, blades bared and greed in their eyes, Leornars didn't even break his stride.
He casually waved a slender, pale hand.
"Rise," he murmured.
The shadows beneath his feet didn't just lengthen; they boiled. From the pitch-black pools, the Death Knights emerged in a cacophony of grinding iron and baleful crimson light. Fully plated in abyssal armor, they stood like monolithic executioners.
At the head of the dark tide were Bellian and Zhyelena.
Bellian didn't wait for a command. He vanished in a blur of heavy kinetic force, reappearing in the center of the mine-works. His massive greatsword hummed with the weight of a collapsing star. With a guttural roar, he swung the blade in a wide, horizontal arc.
"[Plutonic Gap]!"
A discharge of absolute black energy erupted from the edge of his blade. It wasn't an explosion; it was an erasure. The space occupied by a dozen slave traders simply ceased to be, their atoms dismantled instantly into nothingness. Bellian didn't even pause to watch the dust settle, already charging toward the next line of defense like a juggernaut of gravity.
Above them, Zhyelena moved with the terrifying grace of a predator. She walked through the air, her boots clicking on invisible platforms as she "marked" her targets with flickers of her void-blue eyes. In a sudden burst of speed, she vanished, reappearing behind a row of archers. A single, surgical flash of her daggers followed, and five throats opened in perfect unison.
Seeing a fresh wave of reinforcements pouring from the lower barracks, Zhyelena tilted her head and extended a hand.
"[Subjugation]."
The effect was instantaneous. The frantic shouts of the slave traders turned into gurgles of primal betrayal. Their eyes clouded over with a dull, crimson haze as they turned their blades upon one another. The deck became a charnel house of fratricide, men gutting their own brothers in a desperate, magical frenzy.
Leornars and Stacian walked through the center of the carnage as if they were strolling through a palace garden. Stacian even went so far as to cover her mouth, letting out a long, bored yawn.
"Honestly," she muttered, "the quality of the help in this city is just depressing."
A massive brute of a man, easily twice Leornars's width, stepped into their path. He brandished a heavy, double-headed axe, his face twisted in a mask of panicked bravado. He began swinging the weapon randomly, the heavy iron whistling through the air in clumsy arcs.
"Careful now," Stacian said, her voice dripping with mock concern. "You might actually hurt someone if you keep that up."
As the axe swung toward her, Stacian didn't draw a weapon. She simply pivoted on one heel and delivered a sharp, casual kick to the flat of the blade. The force redirected the weapon entirely; the axe flew from the brute's hands, lurching across the deck and burying itself deeply in the chest of a nearby slaver.
"See?" Stacian added with a dry smirk. "I told you."
The brute froze, staring at his empty hands in shock. He turned back toward the "lady" in indigo, his mouth opening to scream, only to find a hand already clamped firmly over his face.
Leornars stared into the man's eyes through the gaps in his fingers. His cyan gaze was as cold as the void between stars.
"[Decay]."
The word was a soft, final exhale.
Starting from the point where Leornars's palm touched skin, the man began to gray. His flesh withered into parched leather, his bones turned to brittle ash, and his very life force was unraveled in a matter of seconds. As Leornars pulled his hand away, the man collapsed—not as a body, but as a pile of rotting dust that the sea wind immediately scattered.
"You deal with the upper floors," Leornars said, wiping his hand on a silk kerchief without looking back. "I'll handle the lower pits. I can smell the dampness of the cells from here."
"Understood," Stacian replied, her playful demeanor sharpening into the focus of a commander. "Don't take too long. I'd like to be home before the tea gets cold."
Leornars didn't respond. He had already vanished into the stairwell, a silver-haired ghost descending into the dark to reclaim what was stolen.
The lower decks of the Rigs were a hellscape of damp salt and the iron scent of old blood. Here, the "merchandise" wasn't kept in cages, but in lightless pits carved directly into the cliffside. The air was so thin it felt like a physical weight, but as Leornars walked, the darkness retreated. The indigo silk of his kimono—now scorched and blood-stained—seemed to glow with an ethereal, cyan light.
He reached the deepest cell. The door was made of mana-treated lead, designed to suppress even the strongest spirit.
Leornars didn't reach for a key. He simply placed a palm against the metal.
"Disintegrate."
The lead turned to grey dust, blowing away in the draft. Inside, huddled in the corner of a freezing, flooded stone room, were two figures. Their skin was the translucent pale of Moon-Elves, their silver hair matted and dull. Between them, they shielded a smaller boy, whose fox ears—identical to Lyra's—were trembling.
The father looked up, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and sudden, blinding hope. He saw a man of impossible beauty and terrifying power standing in a doorway that shouldn't have been open.
"Are you... the Harbinger's end?" the man whispered, his voice a dry rasp.
Leornars didn't answer with words. He reached out, his mana flaring gently—not as a weapon, but as a warm, golden tide that dried their clothes and mended the fractures in their spirits.
"Lyra is waiting," Leornars said, his voice a calm anchor in the dark. "Let's go home."
The Surface of the Serpent's Maw
When Leornars emerged back onto the main platform, carrying the boy while the parents followed on trembling legs, the carnage was over. The Rigs were silent, save for the rhythmic thud of Bellian's boots as he checked for survivors.
Stacian was waiting by the bridge, her lavender kimono pristine despite the chaos she had navigated on the upper floors. Behind her, hundreds of freed slaves were beginning to realize the sun was actually rising.
"The transport circles are ready, My Lord," Stacian said, her eyes softening as she saw the family Leornars had retrieved. She stepped forward, offering a gentle hand to Lyra's mother. "The nightmare is over. Avangard is only a heartbeat away."
Leornars looked at the sky. The first rays of dawn were cutting through the sea mist, turning the "Serpent's Maw" into a shimmering field of gold. He raised his hand, and the massive obsidian pikes that anchored the Rigs began to crumble.
"Bellian. Zhyelena," Leornars commanded. "Sink this place. Leave not one splinter of this cruelty for the tide to find."
"By your will," they echoed.
As the teleportation circle ignited, a pillar of white light engulfed the group. In the final second before they vanished, the Rigs collapsed into the sea with a roar that sounded like a final, satisfied sigh.
The Reunion at the Citadel
The gardens of Avangard were blooming with pale lilies and blue-fire roses. Lyra stood by the fountain, her tail twitching with an anxiety that felt like fire in her veins. She had been standing there since the moon was high, refusing to sleep, refusing to move.
Then, the air in the center of the garden buckled.
The white light of the teleportation circle flared, and then faded. Stacian stepped out first, followed by the towering forms of the Knights. And then, there was Leornars.
He stepped aside, revealing the three figures behind him.
The world stopped. Lyra's breath hitched. For a moment, she didn't move, as if she feared that touching the image would make it shatter like a dream.
"Mama...?" she whispered.
The woman in the tattered rags let out a sob that broke the morning silence. "Lyra! My little bird!"
Lyra didn't run; she lunged. She collided with her parents with such force they all collapsed onto the soft grass together. The sounds of weeping and hushed, desperate reassurances filled the garden. The little brother buried his face in Lyra's neck, his small hands clutching her fur as if he would never let go.
Stacian stood by the fountain, wiping a stray tear from her cheek with her sleeve. She looked at the scene, then turned to Leornars.
The King was standing a few feet away, his arms crossed over his indigo kimono. He looked exhausted, the cyan light in his eyes dimmed to a soft glow. He wasn't smiling—he rarely did—but there was a profound, quiet stillness in his posture. The "Damsel" was gone; the "Plague King" was at rest.
"You did good, Leornars," Stacian whispered.
Leornars looked at the family huddled on the grass, then up at the towering spires of his kingdom. The weight of the Crimson Crown felt a little lighter in the morning sun.
"I am the King of Avangard," he said, his voice a low, steady baritone. "And in my kingdom, the sun doesn't just rise. It stays."
He turned and began to walk toward the palace, his geta clicking softly on the stone.
"Make sure they are fed, Stacian. And get me out of this kimono. I'm tired of being a Damsel."
Stacian laughed, the sound echoing through the lilies. "As you wish, My Lord! But you have to admit... you looked great in indigo."
Leornars didn't look back.
The silence of the carriage was a heavy thing, broken only by the rhythmic creak of the wheels on the road back to Avangard. Leornars sat in the dim light, the indigo silk of his kimono still smelling of sea salt and ozone.
"I suppose that was a perfect ending to that liability, wasn't it, Leornars?" Althelia's voice chimed within his mind, her tone carrying a hint of satisfaction.
Leornars didn't look up. He watched the shadows dance across the velvet seats. "Perfect?" he repeated softly. "That's a fun word, Althelia. A weird one, too."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because the word perfect is a claim of superiority," Leornars said, his voice calm yet carrying the edge of a whetstone. "And superiority isn't my style. Nothing is perfect. To claim it is to admit you've stopped looking."
Althelia paused, her presence flickering in his consciousness. "Nothing is perfect? What about the gods? They are the very embodiment of perfection—the architects of the laws we live by."
Leornars let out a short, mirthless huff. "If they are so perfect, why did they create a world defined by inequality? If their design is flawless, why does the sun shine on the rich while the poor drown in the mud? A perfect creator would have no need for a 'minority' to suffer for the 'majority' to thrive. No, Althelia. They aren't perfect. They're just powerful."
"I see your point," Althelia conceded, "but that doesn't change how the world sees you. Your people... they see you as a perfect king. A flawless ruler who can part the seas."
"Then they are mistaken," Leornars replied. He leaned his head back against the carriage wall, his cyan eyes closing. "I'm not a perfect king. I'm just trying to be a better person than the men who usually wear crowns. I am better because I am trying—not because I am the 'best'."
"Is there a difference?"
"A massive one. The term Best is a form of verbal superiority. To those in the minority, to those at the bottom, 'The Best' is just another form of verbal slavery—it's a ceiling they can never reach. I choose to be better because better is a process. It's a road. Best is a dead end."
Althelia remained quiet for a long moment, processing the weight of his logic. "I think I understand now."
"You have to," Leornars added with a weary sigh. "If I were a perfect king, there would be no crime in Avangard. But even now, as we speak, a pickpocket is stealing a coin in the square, and a courtier is skimming from the treasury. My nation isn't the best; it's just better than the ones next to it. And that's enough for now."