Final Confessions of a Goblin Emperor 6

Chapter 5
When I was a boy I always loved to play with dominos. Well, love is a strong word, I more enjoyed playing with dominos. That’s how the next week felt. It was just like a bunch of dominos. The day after Cinla’s assassination the Elves declared war on the Dwarves. Pharaoh Lol-Tet drew up his army and navy and made ready for war with poise and dignity. But he did so hesitantly; he waited for almost a full day to send out the order, according to the local news print. This led many in the academic community to doubt the Dwarven government’s involvement in the assassination, though King Thespasian, Cinla’s son, maintained that the dwarves had been found with strict orders to kill the whole royal family, signed by the Pharaoh himself, somebody was lying. Knowing what I know now, one realizes it was obviously Thespasian, but you can’t blame him, he wasn’t responsible. He believed every word he was saying, that was his crime, too much trust. The Orcs declared war on the Elves shortly thereafter, Caliph Hikmir directing the Imperial Cavalry himself. The Elves returned the favor, feeling supremely imperiled with their south-eastern border in jeopardy. To compound that, the Trolls landed an army on the southern borders of the Human Colonies, the Humans weren’t about to take that lying down, so they declared war on the Orcs, Trolls and Dwarves. This last move was the most disconcerting at the time, because the other nations had had been the ones to declare war, not all at one time, it made some believe that the Human government had also had some bid in all of it. Open editorials accused Emperor Karkinias the Thirty Third of conspiring in the assassination.
Two days later he was found dead in the bath tub, a Trollish musket ball having blown off the side of his face.
I remember the spirit at the Kiemandra College polarizing like night and day. Some were scared shitless, cowering, refusing to go to classes, these were mostly the middle ranking noblemen, afraid of losing power and resource in the invasions. Others like Ichtamandor Shattersword were thrilled and began a campaign of vast and terrible patriotism that imposed swags, flags and colored drags all over the school. Imagine a wash of black, purple and scarlet wool rippling in the one hundred and two degree summer days. Still there were a select few, including myself, who refused to say anything about it all, just listening to the news and then shuffling along with our lives, pathetic in retrospect, but at the time I was happy.
That was actually one of the greatest times of learning in my life. I had access to the single greatest magical library in the world, and I flourished in its presence. Yathrina, Feiy, Lita Kespus and Iruna Silvertower would practice with me using the advanced techniques from the library for five to eleven hours every day. I didn’t like Iruna and Lita along, they gave me the chills, but they were civil enough, and civility is rewarded with civility. Anyway, the practice was invaluable, priceless even. I was soon capable of some of the highest level spells readily available. I could scry at the level of a Grand-Master, I could levitate a full foot off the ground, I could clairvoyantly detect objects that were as far as a mile away, and my greatest pride, I could finally control the elements in a way that allowed me to wield them in battle. I thought I was king of the world, in reality my fire was lukewarm, I could barely heat water, and the gales that I fancied I could conjure were nothing more than gentle breezes. But it was something, for my scholarship didn’t cover combat magic, only domestic, my acceptance into a major guild was now assured. Yathrina surpassed me as a Seer, but she had always been talented in the field. Feiy, surprisingly took to weather with a fury, her winds were much stronger than mine, and one time she even managed to make a cloud yield a few dozen drops of rain. Iruna became a master transmuter, and was capable of changing her own form in minor ways, hair color, ears, eyes, nose, all sorts of other things. Lita, who I describe last for a reason, delved into the most terrible of all the fields. That woman rapped herself around the school of necromancy. She wouldn’t eat for long quaffs of time, yet she retained a full robust figure. She would skip sleep for days on end, she didn’t go to the bathroom but once every other day. Her body was a tireless, unbreakable powerhouse, but if something is to be said, it wasn’t true strength. She was constantly edgy, she was seldom fully lucid, from a mental stand point, and she lost a lot of her ability to channel the elements, which she replaced with the necromantic ability to force elements, that is, to make them yield energy, instead of it flowing naturally, like channeling. I thought her obsession merely odd, in time I would learn how dark her mind really was. She was on the path to true evil, like everyone who tries to escape death.

Those first few weeks of war were among the most terrible, there are better books which will recall the exact figures of the armies, the precise dates and locations of everything, but I’ll establish a few facts for the sake of having them, that will ensure that even the most unversed of readers will have a background and be capable of understanding elements of this narration.
A week after declaring war on the Dwarves the Gnomish navy mobilized and in another week touched down on the far shore of the Dwarven Continent. They smashed through the small and unprepared Dwarven navy, but the Gnomish army was little match for the vast and ferocious Dwarven host they had to face. During this assault Queen Theyton died in a hail of cannon fire that decimated her whole regiment.
Two days later the Orcs crossed the Niolit River on the far border of the Elven territories. The Elves repelled them almost immediately, but they sustained heavy losses. Within a fortnight the Orcs had rallied and returned to the border, this time taking a victory and sacking Reezom, a major Elven river port. From there the Orcs continued to take ground for three days, called the Hundred Mile Push. The Elves were panicking; if they sustained a few more losses like they had at Reezom they would lose the war. They dispatched their army in hopes that their last loss had been a fluke and were proven wrong. While I studied at the Kiemandra College I minored in history and military functions, I am therefore certified to say that the losses at Reezom, Neepar and Draz-Lazunt were not to be blamed on the inability of the Elven Army, but by the weakness of its commanders. It had been six-hundred years since the last war that had taken place between the great countries of the Old World. None of the Elven commanders knew what they were doing, they had been given their posts because they had been born into wealthy, powerful families. The Elves were stuck with a bunch of losing commanders, the Orcs pushed another nine-hundred miles over the next month and a half, they were coming in range of Darepzeer fast. Kiemandra College was chosen as a bastion for the Elves’ Second Army, it looked like it was going to be a loss and surrender, of course the noblemen fled the scene. Dukes and Duchesses couldn’t be captured, it would cost so much to ransom them back. We were left behind, the scholarship students were left to help the army as porters, which we did gladly, but we knew we’d be captured with the soldiers. If you could know the horror of knowing that fate was unchangeable and that you couldn’t be saved you would know why I am the way I am today. The point was, we were doomed, and we would be put to death or sold as slaves. There wasn’t a single slave on the battle front you know, they had all been taken back with their fleeing masters, but we were still there, oh, the irony that is life.
It seems the middle class, and the soldiers, we can’t exclude them, always take the fall when governments fuck up. The lower classes scurry back to their ghettos and their beer and their cigarettes, and when the invasion’s over they meet their new masters with open arms and then conspire to topple them, as they did with their previous government. Those vice-ridden, tattooed bands of factory working scum aren’t worth the breath they draw, but we allow it to them because the ranks of the clergy preach pity on the ignorant, and this message of love for the worthless is propelled further by high society liberals, singing their lungs out about decency, wisdom and respect. Anyone who would defend filth is filth. The upper classes are even worse than the poor, a posse simpering aristocrats, fancying their own splendor. They square themselves on their loads of money, condescending to the middle born to nourish them and shield them, that pack of indecent lawyers, politicians, professors and clergymen. They flutter off to ski and make merry in the snow during summer, and in winter they sit at the side of white sanded beaches by their fires burning with exotic woods. Those (Lord Brashfall here uttered a word so foul and magical that if it were recorded would set this paper ablaze) ignore the plight of the average when it suits them, and if they’re bored they run off to help us, starting charities and giving free hugs down by the riverside. Oh, when things are well they’ll turn their cheeks, and when it goes badly they’ll use their money and position to protect themselves, even if a handful of good farm boys have to die to protect their pretentious, pathetic, pompous, cherry scented ass-holes. I hate them, just as I hate the poor, there is one right in this world, and that is pure, primal talent. Those too weak to acknowledge that are unworthy of life. Artists who depict the struggle of the middle class as glorious or cheery are just as bad. They’ve never struggled with the inadequacy of their nature or this world. Art is shit, artists are shit. They know nothing of truth, nothing of real love. Let me show you the mother sobbing over the grave of her son, shattered by cannon fire, a matchbox his coffin, and tell me what painting, what cartoon or pencil sketch, what pastel can depict the glory and horror of that scene. There is glory in it if the boy sacrificed willingly, or out of love, but no rendering will ever give it justice. Paintings may be beautiful, but they can never be true. I hate artists, they are fools who make their own world, and can’t accept this one. While we’re on the topic of things I hate, comedians are a strong second. I abhor them especially. There is nothing funny about this world, a globe where little girls are raped in the alleys behind their houses, where wives are beaten by their husbands, where homosexuals are bludgeoned to death at night by people who are good church goers during the day. Where blacks are kept enslaved, and put down, even though they are as much men as whites. This is a place of religious intolerance and hypocritical killing. Anyone who can laugh at a joke about the little good there is in the world should be executed. Laugh about the slaughter, the fires, the pestilence, the destruction of nations, genocide and concentration camps, because that is the Heaven’s sense of humor. Next time you see a dead baby make sure to laugh, because heaven is too.
I left the narration off speaking about how frightened the middle class students were. The army wasn’t much better than we were, they knew what was coming and made ready. They’d be captured and ransomed back in ten man blocks like the army at Neepar had been, the hundred who failed to be ransomed, whose families wouldn’t or couldn’t put up the money, had been stripped naked and made to run the commander’s carriages until they dropped dead. The few that survived were used for target practice for the common soldiers. Orcs have a taste for Elven blood that is insatiable. In all, there was nothing but despair.
At least until Emperor Karkinias arrived.
I remember the day that great man, well, more a boy, came to our campus. We had lost about three quarters of the student body by then. Among the nobility only Yathrina, Ichtamandor Shattersword and Nymphonae Armoredeye, my charge, remained. There were about three hundred of us commoners. We had seen the Imperial Flag on the horizon as he brought in three regiments, and we ran to the gates of the college to salute him. That lad came into a frenzied crowd of boys and girls that looked ready to face hell for him. We needed a savior at that point, even if it would have been death himself. I was sixteen at the time, a good age for young men to be, old enough not to be young, old enough to have the brilliance and steadfastness of the young mind, but also youthful enough to still be recklessly brave. He was a fifteen year old boy, with curly, black hair and big brown eyes. He carried himself with a supremely confident military air, he had a swagger to his step that made him so tall and masculine that one had to respect him. He was the definition of power. He was a military genius, having aced every martial and soldiery class that his tutors could offer him by age thirteen, which gave him two years to practice his hand to hand combat techniques and his skill with lances, sword, musket and even how to fire a canon. He was such a man as shall never be seen again, or at least not for a good long while. Whatever land his parents floated through now, they must have been proud. He was the perfect soldier and commander.
The next night his boyfriend arrived.
Thespasian and Karkinias is a topic historians are almost entirely mute on, few ever acknowledges that it happened. There is the occasional off color joke, or weak allusion in a tome or two, but most people just keep mum on the subject. I’ve often wondered why this is. Do they not want to defame the two historically? They were both renowned at the time for their affairs, both receiving public reprimands from the Pontiff of Karkinthrax himself. Is it simply embarrassment perhaps? Many people act out of a sense of shame, I often have, that’s the reason I sacked Karkinthrax and Darepzeer all those years ago. No, it was neither of those, I think most contemporary historians, being raised in the rigid conservative politics of a post-war society don’t want to concede that two of their greatest heroes were homosexuals, and let me say, Thespasian was not the classy kind that you’re unsure about. He was loud and he was proud of his preferences. He wore women’s make-up and made certain that everybody called him Thespasian, not Tezporian, his given Elven name. He wanted to be accessible to his people, who by and large spoke the common, human language of the day. Elven would come into vogue when his sister took the throne, but in his time, Human was the language to speak. There was one person in the world who was allowed to call him Tezporian, and that was Karkinias. To even call what those two had love would be an injustice. It was something deeper, a world changing bond of such depth and beauty. Thespasian was the submissive in the relationship, obviously. He too was a genius, though not of the battle field. He was arguably the greatest Elven composer and instrumentalist in three-hundred years. The Elven court hadn’t heard such music since the days of Izmar and Deeroz all those ages ago. He was famous for especially for the complexity of his music, the pinnacle of which was his harpsichord chorus. Anyone who has never heard a harpsichord chorus is missing something in their lives. Eleven parts, all harpsichords, or currently the piano, which I hope will go out of style, to a part, and eleven movements. Eleven is a sacred number to the Elven people, maybe because it rhymes? That’s one of those things that I’ve never bothered to ask about. The point remains, he himself was a brilliant concert harpsichord player, an organist, an award winning flautist, a trombone, saxophone and trumpet master, and he could play the violin, mandolin, sitar and cello. He could play so many other instruments as well, though not as beautifully as those aforementioned. He had a comportment of music about him, everything either in crescendo or decrescendo, rising and falling in measures. He was an odd sort of man, but he held his people’s hearts captive with his beautiful airs and arias. Thespasian held other hearts captive, not least of whose was Karkinias’. That boy was so hopelessly devoted to Thespasian, even though the elf was two years his senior. Karkinias was unmistakably the man in that relationship. He was taller and much more muscular, but there was more to it than that. It was a thing of mindset as well. He was so protective of his little Elven lover. In one famous scene a particular minister was savagely critiquing Thespasian in front of a dozen ministers and dukes on being late to a war council, even though his agriculture counsel had run late. Karkinias walked forward, smiled, and proceeded to beat the man to unconsciousness with a wall clock and then angrily spat at him, saying, “Make time for your king.” That was during my days in court, I was so conveniently standing there when it happened. That’s how I like to remember those two, as they were, in love, young, happy, not lifeless and bleeding.
Love is the one thing time just can’t staunch, no matter how the world changes. Even death seems so weak and pale besides what those two had. I know that right now, somewhere in the vastness of existence, that some god or goddess saw their love and took mercy on them. I know they’re together. But yet again I digress from my narration. When those two arrived at the front things started to turn around. The soldiers retook their confidence, fortifications were dug, and plans were laid. When the Orcish camels came in sight they were facing an army under capable command. On that day I would get my first taste of battle.

I served as a sort of liaison between the school and the army. We commoners served as porters and secretaries to the higher officers while they were there, and we were well respected. On the eve of the first skirmish General Lororz of the Second Elven Army had me take a message to the office of the Emperor, which was directing all troop movements on the front. I obliged gladly, most of the other scholarship students looked to me as a sort of leader. I carried the note as swiftly as my feet could carry me to the Emperor’s tower in the south wing. I was so thoroughly checked and double checked by the guards that they might as well had sex with me. I stood at the door when I arrived, snooping a little, everyone does, it is human nature. I heard the two inside, Thespasian and Karkinias that is, and what I heard was perhaps a little too intimate to be listening in on.
“I don’t understand why you don’t want to take me; I always do it to you,” I heard the Emperor say.
“I just wouldn’t feel right, I like being on the bottom, it’s where I feel I belong,” returned Thespasian hotly.
“I just feel like I’m always taking and you’re always sacrificing, I know I’m not your first, and probably not your best… is that it? Am I not good enough? Is my body not attractive to you?”
“Now you’re just being stupid, I love you, you know that, you’re the most beautiful person in the world to me. I like where I’m at, that’s all. You worry too much my love. Beside look at you, who couldn’t want you?”
“Forgive me Tezporian, I know you love me, and I love you. Do you feel in the mood for a little frolic my love?”
I decided it would be best to deliver the message then and there, before I would have to wait until they finished the deed.
“Magnificent Lordships,” I stammered stepping through the doors, “papers from General Loroz, he inquires as to the readiness of the fortifications on the eastern banks.”
Thespasian was bare-chested. He was thin and magnificently white with a trail of music-note tattoos running from his navel up around his right nipple in a loop and down his back. He didn’t seem even slightly taken aback by my presence. Karkinias was seated at a desk on the far side of the room, a bowl of incense wafted up and around him, shrouding him in grey smoke and scent. Thespasian grabbed the note hastily.
“I recommend…” he read quietly trailing off into his own mind, “he recommends a lot!”
“He’s had years of experience Tez, let me see,” returned Karkin, not even looking up from his charts.
Karkinias took the note and read, jotting figures and models down wildly on a piece of paper. Thespasian grew bored of watching the Emperor work and then set eyes on me, an amused look filling his face.
“Tell me your name,” he said as he slid into the Emperor’s lap.
“Enath, Enath Jorus Brashfall, your Majesty,” I replied stiffly.
“Enath… an interesting name, what do you do Enath?”
“I am a novice sorcerer here at Kiemandra College. I specialize in the field of transmutative magic. Next year I will be eligible into acceptance into one of the sorcerer’s guilds.”
“So you’re sixteen then, what guild do you wish to join?”
“I’m considering guild Ruda Aztar in Darepzeer, though I wonder at my acceptance, it is one of the more dangerous guilds.”
“That it is,” responded Karkinias looking up, “but I think perhaps Tezporian here may be able to help, he has a personal relationship with the Head Mistress.”
“My darling sister!” screeched Thespasian, throwing his hands in the air, “she would accept you, nobility isn’t an object with her, neither are funds, she’s a firm believer in talent. Do you have talent, Enath?”
“If the Celestine wills I do, Glorious One.”
“She’ll love you, she’s religious up the lady hole,” he hissed back.
“Forgiveness requested my lordship, but do you too not attend the church of the Celestial Lord?”
“For public functions yes, but I haven’t been to a real service in five years, and I intend to keep it that way.”
“May I ask why, magnificence?”
“Can you not figure it out?” He said and he pressed his mouth against Karkinias’s. They kissed a few moments longer. Surprisingly I didn’t blush, I wasn’t even remotely affected.
“Enath?” he implored when he noticed I was standing unwavering, waiting for the completed letter for General Loroz, “does this not make you uncomfortable? Doesn’t this offend your gentle middle class sensibilities? Doesn’t it sting you, where you feel your religion?”
“Lordship, I am… oriented in the way you are. Love has nothing to do with religion anyhow. I’ve always figured that God intended us to be happy, why would he condemn someone for the way he made them?”
“That’s a beautiful thought,” the flamboyant king slung black gleefully, “what were we talking about earlier? Sorcery! That’s it! Are you very good Enath?”
“Well, you’d have to be the judge of that, do you know anything of the art, magnificence?”
“What little I can pick up from my court sorcerers. Can you form illusions, they say that’s quite difficult.”
Difficult? I remember thinking; I could make anything in an illusionary state, second years weren’t supposed to even be capable of doing basic illusions, but I may have filched a book from the library, I can’t remember. I decided to go for effect, not grandeur. I wove my hands in an air centered-pattern, my eyes closed. I gauged when to open them by the gasp.
“You’re… you’re… I can’t. Father!” Thespasian was retching on the floor.
A smile crossed my lips. My eyes unfurled, and the illusion vanished.
“That was a filthy thing to do!” boomed Karkinias from across the room running to Thespasian, the elf had collapsed into a sobbing heap on the floor.
“Forgiveness, lordship, I did not consider the consequences,” I rasped trying to play coy.
“None the less, that was a wicked trick, take your letter and get out of my sight, before my mercy takes to apparition, or your head finds itself strange to your shoulders,” the Emperor’s voice was nothing but a hard whisper, drilling the air around me.
“Yes lordship,” and I ran out of the room.

After delivering the note I returned to the grand hall, which had been turned into the students’ base camp. After the time I had just gone through I wasn’t in the mood for talking. Of course, not wanting to talk was reason enough for Yathrina to want to talk. She dragged her bloated body over and plopped down right next to me with an audible thud, she had gotten bigger since the Orc Army came in to range; I think she was eating to console herself.
“It’s almost exciting, isn’t it,” she twittered nervously, grabbing my hand.
“Yathrina, not now,” I rasped back harshly.
“You think I don’t know what happened in the tower? I’m a damn good Diviner, you know that. You shouldn’t show off, things like that wouldn’t happen.”
“What do you know; you’re just a spoiled officer’s girl. I’m the son of sixth generation pig farmers, I’ve never had anything to be proud of, the whole world’s looking down its nose at me. What was I supposed to do if the King of the Elves asks me to show him something, you’re going to show off!”
“Enath, you try so hard to impress other people. The only person you have yet to impress is yourself. You stomp through life with anger and vengeance in your heart, and what good does it avail you? You hate wealth, you hate beauty, you hate music and light, you hate priests, you hate sweets, you hate feasts, you hate silks, you hate incense, you hate lacquers, you hate beers and wines and fine porcelain, you cringe when velvet brushes your skin, you spit at every maiden with silver in her teeth. You change the nature of elements every day, yet you’re frightened by poufy lap-dogs … What is there in life that you love?”
“I love fairness, and square, portioned meals. I may hate priests, but I love The Celestine. Wealth is weakness, and light is cruel, focused only on beauty and luck, when night falls we’re all the same. Vengeance sounds pleasant. In fact, I think vengeance is my priest and my feast from this point on. Vengeance is all the world deserves, for what it’s done to me.”
“You’ve seen too many plays. You’re a philosophical poser. You think that because you read about horror, because you see portrayals of massacre, of hatred, of cruelty that you can judge the world by those illusionary standards? A year and a half ago you were a pig farmer who went to school three days out of the week, and I’ll bet you that you were happy every day. Then, some perverse baron has you working in his house, you start delving into an art that you didn’t understand, you get seduced by his homosexual son. You would have been better off a pig farmer, at least you would have been happy. Now you’re just a being of hate and greed, clenching every copper that rolls his way. You condemn those that sponsor you to go to this school, if you hate wealth so much then why don’t you forswear this scholarship, pig farmer?”
I lashed out at her with my hand, hard. She reeled back from the slap and proceeded to hurl a sheet of scalding steam in my direction. I easily deflected it and proceeded to conjure a fire blast that threw her from her feet. From there it was easy for me to manipulate my air energies to smash the hall’s chairs onto her.
“Enath!” shrieked Feiy running into the hall, “Stop it, you’ll kill her.”
She was on the verge of tears as she rushed to pick poor Yathrina up off the floor.
“Who are you anymore?” Feiy asked through clenched teeth as Grayllin shuffled forward to take Yathrina to a bed.
“I am who I’ve always been, and more,” I retorted glibly.
“Well, then I’ve made a poor choice in friends.”
I had nothing to say

Three hours later the Orcs’ artillery battery opened fire on the school. Most of the students hunkered down in the great hall, though Feiy, Lita, Yathrina, Iruna and I went to the outer battlement to see if we could help. There was an icy silence among us.
“Sorcerers!” spat the commander when we told them who we were, “why in the hell do I need you to make the broomsticks dance and the clouds change their course. Go do something useful and hide.”
We shuffled away sullenly feeling dejected. We set our course back for the great hall when, serendipity, we caught sight of a lone figure scaling Thespasian’s tower. A tall red turban crowned his head and he glittered with gold, an assassin of the Order of the Rose, an esoteric society that served the Caliph of Ze-Tral i-Main, Zethrallimain for those not familiar with the Orcish pronunciation of their homeland.
“Hey, you!” shouted Iruna in a fury. The assassin whipped around and saw who was addressing him and began to climb faster. I wove my hands in a fire centered pattern, feeling heat build up in my body. Being a novice I had always let the energy release when I felt uncomfortable, I don’t know what made me change my mind about technique in that instance but I let my energies build a few seconds longer and then let fly. The fire flew brilliantly through the air, struck the assassin and charred completely through him. I knew I had just done something extraordinary, little did I know how extraordinary it really was. Lethal fire usually takes twelve years to train and implement, I had done it in four.
Three more of the Order of the Rose assassins came charging out of the shadows at us. Feiy proved to be near my equal, bringing a furious blast of rime against the three of them, leaving their skin frost-charred and black. The assassins caught on however after that and began to whisper protective incantations which would allow our energies to diffuse into their auras. Lita, proving to be a wise necromancer managed to release her own, death-based energies into their auras. From there it’s a pretty simple perception, what happens if you allow death to diffuse into you aura? She wasn’t powerful enough to kill them, but simply render them unconscious. Iruna, in an act so cold blooded that my mind was changed a little for it, killed them all by conjuring spittle into the back of their throats to drown them, it’s amazing what sick things a broken mind like hers could dream up. In the distance we heard a rallying cheer, accompanied by reed horns, the Elves were taking ground!
We proved useless for the rest of the battle, which was fine by me, I was glad to be down and out of the fighting. I hadn’t realized how fast my heart was going, or how draining the extensive use of deadly magic. We all went back to our dining hall and passed out in our own cots.
We awoke the next day to a victorious army. Confetti rained from our parapets, horns blasted as loudly as possible in an effort to outdo each other, Elven Reed Horns against Human Brass Horns. Drums rolled like thunder. All the men had their dress uniforms on. Thespasian was mounted on top of a purple and black painted elephant. His smile illuminated the whole assembly. He was their hero. Karkinias smiled up at him from his war horse, waving his sword gallantly. Those two were the salvation of our nations; we had just not realized how true that was.

The five of us were called before the two monarchs an hour and a half after the grand parade was over. To be given a direct audience with both rulers in a formal setting was almost unprecedented, it was the highest honor any of us five commoners had ever received in our lives.
We were ushered into that same tower room I had been in before, both of the rulers bedecked in royal garb. Thespasian wore the ancient Amethyst Crown, which hadn’t been in use since the last Arzella family king. That was something the others, not so versed in history didn’t pick up. It was a symbol that Thespasian respected the ancient pagan kings and not the subverted, religious extremist line of Kiemandras. Social sciences aren’t as disjointed and nonsensical as some would have you believe.
“It is my understanding that a group of junior mages managed to bring down a handful of assassins aiming for myself and King Thespasian,” boomed the Emperor rapturously as we kneeled before his portable throne, “I have a witness who says that you five are responsible, well what are we to do about that?”
A servant shuffled forward with five carved mahogany boxes, gilt with silver.
“I think, that for such astounding service by civilians that you’ll receive the Karkin Star.”
I smirked a little, knowing he couldn’t see my face, the Karkin Star was the highest civilian honor that the Empire awarded.
“I must ask what inspires men and women like yourselves to throw themselves into the fray of battle for no apparent reason other than convenience? Would anyone care to regale me?” The speaker was Thespasian, and he was not so nearly as impressive as Karkinias.
“Lordship,” soothed Feiy beautifully, dropping to a full kneel before the throne, “might I speak?”
“A title doesn’t keep men silent, fear does. Say what you will, I listen,” arrogance is an ugly gem, and Thespasian wore a knob of it the size of a child’s fist.
“Greed lordship.”
“Greed for what my dear?” he returned glibly. He bent his face into his purple velvet color condescendingly and luxuriantly, almost as if assuring himself of his own power.
“Your good favor, I have dreamed for the past year of being married, and I wonder that if you could, since I do hold your favor if you might…”
“If I would arrange a marriage for you.”
“You are too wise my lord, and too kind.”
“There is a glaring error, kindness is a commodity I don’t trade in. Fairness is,” He was annoyingly proverbial that evening, “I can give you an arranged marriage, but you must determine whether or not it is a happy one.” He leered in a way that betrayed a mixture of irony and amusement.
“The rest of you will receive cash rewards,” interrupted Karkinias, clearly uncomfortable and rather bored, “the Elven throne certainly isn’t wanting of funds. Please dismiss yourselves, peasants, I have many more awards to dispense.”
We got up to leave a little dejectedly, kill thirteen men, get a pat on the back, what a world.
“Not you, Lord Brashfall,” thundered Karkinias as we were nearly out of the room, “we didn’t get to finish chatting the other night.”
It was a hard turn around, and an even harder walk back.
They said nothing at first when I kneeled before the two thrones. They were frightening, almost gigantic from where I was at. It was in that moment that I realized the shear, crushing glory of existence itself. If these two men, both impressive, but not miraculous, could strike fear into me like I was some dumb pack animal, then why couldn’t I do the same in others. Why couldn’t any man aspire to anything and achieve anything? It was in that scant stretch of time, a few dozen steps only, that I stopped being simply Enath Brashfall, but the ideal associated with Enath Brashfall, the essence, the very fire that is Enath Brashfall. Now I’m really running on.
“My lord,” I intoned, frightened, but brave enough to speak first, fortune favors the bold, “what would you have of me?”
“If I may,” mumbled Thespasian to Karkin, his lips coming obscenely close to his ear.
“Go ahead Tez,” mumbled the Emperor back.
“Lord Brashfall, the other night you showed me that you possess skills beyond your years in your art form and a cruel wisdom that cuts deep to the core.”
“Flattering your lordship, truly.”
“I would like to inquire a little more forcefully as to where you intend to continue your education, and I would also encourage Ruda Aztar forcefully.”
“For what reasons my lord?” I asked back to eagerly, I recognized the mistake too late however.
“Impertinence is not courage,” he drilled back catching me unguarded, “I could use a man like you in the Elven court and on the battle fields. Few sorcerers ever advance past being able to levitate thing back and forth or heating water. You, a sixteen year old boy helped bring down five of the finest assassins in the Orcish army. Surprise was and numbers were vastly helpful to you, but talent is still necessary. Despite a smart mouth you’re unbearably talented from what I collect. Just keep in mind that my throne and its ministers will be in contact with you in the next year I beg you to consider a post as a minister. You are dismissed.”
I was winded, astounded, stupefied, but mostly I was empowered. From that day on, I wouldn’t be a brooding peasant sorcerer, but a scholar and future minister to the Elven Throne. The world was mine; I had only to take it.