Chapter 1680: Treachery
All nine tails fanned outward, and seven colossal kitsune burst into existence across the sky, each one three meters at the shoulder and sprinting at full speed.
The eighth tail curled around Celeste, and a phantom fox swallowed the foxkin maid whole, wrapping her in an illusion so complete that even the golden hair and eight tails vanished inside a kitsune indistinguishable from the rest.
Eight identical foxes charged the tear through open air.
Dwarven halberds swung through images that scattered like smoke and reassembled behind the men who’d committed to the swing.
Then an elven commander’s eyes narrowed.
"That one! Focus fire!" she shouted, pointing at the one who swallowed Celeste.
Every archer in range pivoted toward the eighth fox, and the volley that followed was concentrated enough to black out the sky above it.
The phantom absorbed the barrage and shuddered, golden light flickering through the cracks in its illusion as the shape of a foxkin maid surfaced through the collapsing shell, and every soldier on the ground surged toward it with weapons raised.
But at the same time, two tiny little flies buzzed through the tear.
On the other side, formations stretched to the tree line in every direction, so vast the back ranks dissolved into the canopy. The army that had already poured through the tear was a fraction of what waited here.
The two flies shimmered and Yoruha reformed in a ripple of midnight fur while all her tails snapped back to her.
Yoruha’s tongue ran slow across her upper lip.
"Celeste," she said, violet eyes sweeping the archer lines with the unhurried pleasure of a predator surveying a feast. "Do you see those narrow waists? Aim for those."
A second vein surfaced on Celeste’s forehead and joined the first in furious tandem.
Did she mean to prioritize killing them over the bulky dwarves and undead, or slim down until she was that narrow waisted too...?
"Yes, my lady."
The ancient fox and the eight-tailed maid descended on the Elvardian staging ground.
...
Across the continent, in a war tent that smelled of old maps and oiled steel, Felicity was laughing.
The third princess of the Vraven Kingdom sat across the table from her father with a half-eaten bread roll in one hand and crumbs on her chin, and the story she’d been telling about Feng’s latest mishap had drawn a sound from Alexios Valorian.
Then [Master’s Link] pulsed.
Quinlan’s voice entered her head, and the laughter died in her chest.
<Felicity...>
Her hand dropped. The bread roll hit the table and rolled off the edge.
Alexios saw it instantly. The shift in his daughter’s face, the girlishness falling away like a mask coming off. He had seen that look on soldiers receiving word of fallen friends.
"What is wrong?"
She looked up at her father, and her eyes were wet.
"Father, Quinlan is asking you to protect the girls."
The tent went silent.
Alexios stared at his daughter for a long moment. The name Quinlan Elysiar had not been spoken in his presence without the word ’kill’ following it for the better part of a year.
"What did you just say?"
"Father..." Her hands were shaking against the edge of the table, and tears spilled down both cheeks. "I’ll do anything you want. I’ll never go back to them if that’s what it takes, I’ll even marry a fat and ugly slob a dozen times my age if it’ll help the crown, but please, please go help them! I’m still too weak to make a difference alone..."
Alexios Valorian raised an eyebrow.
The Warrior King sat in his chair and looked at his youngest daughter, who was begging him to save the women belonging to the man he had been trying to kill for far too long now.
The man who had enslaved his subjects, toppled his allies, burned through his plans, and was marching against the crown next to his Elvardian and undead allies less than a week ago.
But he was also the man who had held his daughter for months and never touched her.
Quinlan had told him that he would protect Felicity as if she were his own daughter, and he had.
Not a hair on her head had been touched.
Even after enslaving her, holding her very existence in his palm, he never used the situation against Alexios.
The words of the promise surfaced from months ago, and they sat in his chest with great weight.
"If this is a trap..." he growled, low and rough.
"It’s not a trap!" she snapped.
Alexios looked at her. At the tears, at the shaking hands, at the earnestness pouring from his daughter’s face with a conviction he had only ever seen in soldiers willing to die for the person they were defending.
Then Felicity added, "The undead and the Elvardian Council ambushed him because Kaede portaled them over, and my friends are in grave danger!"
"She did what?"
Alexios snapped to his feet.
The chair was launched backward as if shot from a trebuchet, and his hand found the golden longsword at his hip.
"Get your sister and Stormlord."
Felicity nodded once, hard, and was running before the word left his mouth.
A [Warp Gate] split the air right next to Alexios, aimed perfectly.
Alexios stood alone for a breath, watching the portal that was clearly manifested through his enslaved daughter’s vision.
"You bastard..." the Warrior King grumbled as he stepped through.
The battlefield opened around him in smoke and noise and blood.
Undead hit him before his second step, two rotting husks hurling themselves at the portal’s exit with the mindless violence of things that existed only to be spent, and the golden longsword left its sheath and took both their heads in a single stroke that didn’t slow the Warrior King’s stride.
The chaos was worse than Felicity’s tears had prepared him for.
His eyes found the girl before they found anything else.
Thirty paces to his left, Feng was fighting back-to-back with a pink-haired woman whose shield arm shook with every impact it absorbed.
Lyra’s [Bastion Stance] had locked her boots into the earth, but the dwarven infantry was hammering her guard relentlessly. Every blow sent fractures through her footing, and three undead had circled past her flank to close on Feng from the side she couldn’t cover.
Feng’s sword redirected the first one’s lunge, but the second caught her hard enough to send her sliding across the dirt, and the third was already closing on her throat when the golden longsword came down through its skull from above and split it at the waist.
Alexios stepped over the remains without breaking stride and his blade swept left in a horizontal arc that carved through two dwarven shields and the arms behind them, and the force of the strike sent the front rank stumbling sideways into the second and opened a gap around Lyra wide enough for the tanker to breathe for the first time in a long while.
He reached down toward Feng, who was still on the ground with blood running from her nose, and pulled her to her feet.
"Uhh..." Feng’s eyes went wide. She knew exactly who was holding her arm. The enemy who had been trying to kill her and her friends for months.
The almighty king of Vraven.
"Thanks?"
"You took good care of my daughter."
"...You’re welcome?" A thousand question marks could be observed on the oriental teen’s face, but Alexios did not have the time.
He released her arm, turned, and his gaze swept the far side of the battlefield until it found the deep indigo and white of Fujimori ceremonial robes standing among the Elvardian formation, shoulder to shoulder with Aelindra’s silver-green plate and the rotting ranks of the Covenant’s undead.
His eyes went dark.
So it was true.
"Elders of the Fujimori clan."
Recognition settled across Chizuru’s weathered face, followed by a resignation so thin it would have been invisible to anyone who hadn’t spent a millennium reading the faces of people who lied to him for a living.
Her spine stayed straight, and her hands stayed still at her sides. The other elders behind her went motionless with the studied calm of warriors who had prepared for this exact moment.
"King Alexios." Chizuru’s voice carried the same warm timbre it had at the feast, threaded with weariness. "This was not the meeting we envisioned."
"No, I imagine it wasn’t."
He stepped forward and raised the longsword, still dark with the blood of the soldiers he’d cut through to reach this spot.
The blade caught every scrap of light on the field and blazed gold beneath the stains, and the Warrior King held it high the way he had when he stripped Greenvale, the way every Valorian king before him had raised the sword of judgment when the crown demanded blood.
"You came to this continent with nothing, and the Valorian throne gave you land, title, and a future worthy of the honor you claimed to carry."
The sword swung down and pointed at Chizuru, the light painting the old woman’s face in sharp silhouettes.
"Now I find you standing among the Elvardian Council and rotting hordes. You give me no choice."
Chizuru held his gaze without flinching. Whatever conviction held her together, she kept it behind a composure so absolute it gave him nothing to read.
Alexios planted his feet on the broken earth, and his voice found the cold and absolute cadence of a sovereign passing sentence.
"By my divine right as the sovereign ruler of the Vraven Kingdom, guardian of its lands and people, I, Alexios Valorian, denounce the leadership of the Fujimori clan as traitors to the crown. For the crimes of high treason and conspiracy with foreign powers hostile to my throne, I sentence every leader of the Fujimori clan to death."
The blade rose to full height, blazing.
"May the Goddess have mercy on your souls, for I won’t."
Alexios Valorian exploded forward.
