Galukar had quickly exhausted his throne room’s pillars in his fury, smashing apart each one with a single wrathful blow as his temper withered away and his fears grew sharper and more numerous. He’d thrown the rubble, watching stone smash into walls like sling bullets and splatter debris across the hall. He’d stamped his feet, and sent cracks the length of infantry lines snaking out to every corner. He’d screamed, and watched the windows shatter from the pneumatic power of his lungs.

  He had tortured the world in every way his transcendental strength could manage, but none of it had brought back his daughter. Felicia was still missing.

  She was not hiding in any of her usual retreats, nor had a more thorough search of the palace yielded any other spots which might have obfuscated the girl. So far as any of Galukar’s spies, advisors or guards could tell she had simply vanished.

  Galukar had been an inch from sending each and every one of them to the gallows for their incompetence before Shaiar talked him out of it, soothing him as she always did. It wasn’t lost on him, why. Their sons were watching his fury with fearful eyes, and that almost started Galukar’s rage all over again.

  First he’d lost a daughter, and now fate seemed to threaten him with a dozen more by showing his young warrior-heirs as no more than snivelling cowards. Bad enough none had been deemed worthy of the Godblade-

  But he had other concerns, and one was great enough to swallow every other thought in his head after mere moments. His damned daughter was missing, and the whole world seemed intent on conspiring to keep from returning her to him. Galukar had to fight the urge to go and seize his trusty blade from the vaults. A war would distract him; and if he could use it to search the lands of a nation most likely to have seized his daughter, so much the better.

  For one moment, Galukar wished only to scream again. He stopped himself. Shaiar was still by his side, concerned and touching one arm in cold comfort. His sons stood less than ten yards away. None of their ears would withstand the extent of his lungs’ capacity, and Galukar would not deafen a dozen family members for lack of one.

  Hours passed, and his rage, confusion and fear grew ever stronger. Solutions continued being suggested, tried, failed. Galukar found new things to unleash his fury on. Soon enough he was rending iron in his impotent, helpless anger. It was only after hours more than he finally received word of a hopeful variety.

  “Your grace, there has been an update regarding Felicia. Your skyship- it returned mere minutes ago, and upon the deck we found-”

  Galukar was sprinting for the vessel like a stone cast from the greatest of Abaritan’s trebuchets, his footfalls cracking the smoothe stone of his castle’s floors with each stride. In under a minute he was before the vehicle, confirming the report with his own eyes. It did not weaken his anger.

  Felicia was, in fact, beside the vehicle. Grinning. Always among the older of his children, she was taller than any of her brothers or sisters and had yet to heed the lessons regarding her habit of showing teeth and tongue with too-wide smiles or laughter. She looked like Galukar, a shade, though he saw no resemblance now.

  “Where have you been?” Galukar snarled, the words escaping him in a scraping grinding assault. If his daughter noticed the fury, she was content to not even mention it. Felicia just grinned back up at her father with pride.

  Pride, for convincing an entire nation its heir had been stolen.

  “I have returned, father!” The girl declared, speaking as if hers was the presence of some High Queen, and not an eleven year-old girl with too much headstrong independence for her own good. “My voyage on the skyship has been a success!”

  “Your voyage.” He echoed, not confused as much as enraged. Felicia continued, seeming to grow hesitant, finally realising her father’s rage.

  “Yes. I…I snuck onboard before it left, I wanted to study it while it was in flight and learn how to repair it. When I grow up, I want to repair all your machines Father, and I want to build new ones for you- like this skyship!”

  Galukar closed his eyes tight, muttering a curse. This old obsession again.

  “You stowed away.”

  The captain was beside them now, speaking himself with the fearful tempo of a man who feared death. He damned well should have.

  “Apologies my King, we were already a day into the journey before any of us knew she was on the ship. But…Princess Felicia has more than a passing skill with mechanics, she’d make a good engineer if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  Galukar jerked his head up, affixing the man with a stare which left him withering into nonverbal trembles and hesitation. He held the glare for a long moment before turning it, finally, back upon Felicia.

  She met it unblinkingly, as she always did.

  “How many times.” Galukar began. “Do you need to be told that your place is not as an engineer, Felicia?”

  His daughter glared back now.

  “It should be!” She snapped. “I’m a good one, the captain himself said so- all the crew agree. I can help Arbite by-”

  “YOU CAN HELP ARBITE BY DOING YOUR DUTY AS A PRINCESS.” Galukar roared. “By letting us find you a good husband, by producing some heirs for him and showing him our line’s fertility, by carrying Arbite’s legacy across into other kingdoms and helping to bargain with your hand.”

  Felicia actually flinched, now, finally showing the respect due to her father. It was too little, too late. Galukar started for the skyship, temper flaring again.

  “I see what my mistake was.” He snapped. “I’ve been too lenient with you, tolerated your oddities for too long. Well no longer.”

  “Father, what are you doing!?” Felicia asked, a note of fear to her voice.

  “What I must.” He snapped, then struck the vessel with all of his strength. The wooden hull, proof against siege weaponry, came apart into a spray of splinters and chips as a section of it the size of Galukar’s own body was smashed inwards. He punched again, destroying more, and more. Dozens of blows raining upon the precious construct of magic, each one leaving it that small part less complete.

  Felicia screamed and cried, but Galukar ignored her. Advisors protested and roared, but he ignored them too. Some things were more important than war or commerce. Within a few minutes, the corruptive vessel was nothing but a mangled pile of raw material. No more capable of flight than a boulder.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Perhaps he would find some use for it as kindling. Galukar turned back to the captain and his daughter.

  “You, sir, are out of a job.” Galukar snarled, eyes now fltitting to Felicia. Hers were red and puffy with tears, fury burning on her face. “And you…You need to start behaving properly, and stop being so damned troublesome. You are a Princess of Arbite Felicia, not an engineer and not a magus like that freak Mortascia’s daughter. Start acting like it.”

  ***

  His eyes opened, and the first thing to strike Galukar, the first of all his innumerable sensations, was the density of physical agony.

  It was everywhere, and everything. An acid pumping through his veins, a bolt of lightning dancing across his nerves. It scoured every other sensation from him as easily as sunlight did the flickering lumosity of candlefire, rendering all the other informational pangs of his body an irrelevance next to its bottomless mass.

  Galukar gasped, and cried out. Then choked on his own sounds, lungs convulsing with their own torture, before finally falling into a weak, pitiable mewl. It was something. It meant he still lived, it showed he drew breath, it sent another wave through him to provide assurance that he still remained intact enough for feeling and thought, motion and deeds.

  But it was torture, nonetheless.

  “The King!” A voice rang out, high in pitch, exclaiming its shock and hope with that single sky-grazing note. It stung his ears, among the few body parts not already quivering with pain. “He’s awake!”

  Galukar heard scuffling feet as the message was carried off, and shifted where he lay. The movement gave him another shot of agony, but this one was blunter. Or else less surprising. He had chance and cognisance to examine his sensation and make a more articulated summary of his damages.

  The back. That was where most of it lay, the skin opposite his ribs and down to his lower spine. It was raw and wet, where the Demon had clawed his viscera apart like it was that of a common man. He could smell the wounds, taste them. There was a dark corruption to them that only a Demonic touch could induce.

  It was of no concern. Already, Galukar could feel it dying. Fighting a losing war with the divine magics of the Godblade that infused his body, the magic was being systematically purged from his anatomy like rot burned out of a mundane wound with flame. That it was still there at all, he thought, was testament to the entity’s power. And perhaps explanation for his current condition.

  Groaning, he sat up. More aches, more stabs, duller still than the last. Galukar was wounded, but not crippled and certainly not dying. Once the last of his slain enemy’s power was purged from him, he would begin to heal at his usual rate. Within a week he would be killing as well as ever.

  But a lot could go wrong in a week, and he didn’t know how much time he’d lost already.

  “You’re awake.”

  Galukar looked up, recognising the voice but not placing it until he laid eyes on its owner. Sphera, the Necromancer. She looked different. Worn down. Her youth seemed to have been destroyed by whatever span had passed in his unconsciousness, fatigue and stress etching deep lines across her smoothe face where once there had been none.

  “How long was I asleep?” He asked, fearing the answer now more than before. She sighed.

  “Eighteen days. The army is in retreat, and has been for a while. You killed the Demon, and the enemy was too dishevelled by its destruction to chase us at first. But we got no more than a day’s march on them. Even with our magi sabotaging the roads at our backs, they were able to threaten us with pursuit before we’d galvanised. That kept us on the move long enough for them to try and slip around. We’ve been giving chase, and are just barely shy of catching them now.”

  It was a damned lot to take in, Galukar had to admit, but it barely registered to him. One concern was stronger than any other.

  “Where is my sword?”

  The Godblade. As much as he hated to say it, as harsh a truth as it was, that weapon was worth more than any man. Any thousand. It was the very future of the world. In Galukar’s hands it had done nothing but evil, but in another’s…

  In another’s, one day, it might well bring true peace. And if nothing else, it was the hope of that that left him worried for it.

  “We have it.” The Necromancer assured him. Galukar exhaled.

  “Where?”

  The Godblade was sealed in lead, stone, iron and ice. Galukar approved. Nothing less than that measure- however improvised it clearly was- could have done justice to the level of security inherently demanded by so precious a weapon. What left him questioning, however, was the fearful regard it received when finally back in his hand.

  “It was hot.” The Necromancer explained, still eying it wearily. “When it fell out of that Demon. Hotter than I knew things could get.”

  “Fire is hot.” Galukar snorted, rather irked by so brazen a display of cowardice. The Necromancer seemed more irked still by his response.

  “Not like this. It was glowing. Like iron from the forge, but blue instead of orange. And brighter. So bright we had a man go blind from staring too long.”

  Galukar swallowed. That was something.

  “How did you move it?” He asked, after a moment. “It cooled down?”

  “We cooled it down.” She replied. “First we couldn’t even go near, the men we sent out got blisters just from reaching out to within a foot of it. We had to leave, then, anyway. So while the army was organised into a march, I had Magi douse it with water and high speed winds. By the time we could go it was cool enough that a length of iron hooked around it from afar was able to hold and drag it behind us. We’d tried the same trick before cooling it, in case you’re wondering. The chain melted on contact.”

  Galukar swallowed again, eying his weapon. There wasn’t a blemish on it. Ancient iron seemed not even to recall that it had ever been resting within a Demon’s bowels at all. Damaged, perhaps, at a cursory glance, but no more so than it had been when he’d first laid eyes on it. Just chips and chinks born from untold millennia of history.

  If anything in the world could destroy the Godblade, Galukar had never heard of it. Apparently the death throes of a Demon was not a sufficient test to prove the limits of his relic.

  Better to die than let such a thing fall into the enemy’s grasp, he reminded himself. Better to die a thousand deaths.

  “What are your plans now?” He asked. “Or rather, what were they before my awakening.”

  He saw a flicker of irritation in the Necromancer’s face, and recognised it easily enough. Galukar had seized command from others many times before, and grown accustomed to the inevitable protests that came with it. They’d never bothered him in the past, and they didn’t bother him now. Some things just needed doing.

  “We’re readying for a re-engagement with the enemy.” She said, sounding oddly…Blunt. As if she’d carefully hollowed herself of concern or anxiety. Galukar recognised that, too. And he approved. It was the mark of a disciplined mind, even in one as dark as her.

  Disciplined did not mean well-aimed, however. Galukar frowned.

  “You can’t be serious.” He noted. “We had a chance to hold them, once. We had the perfect ground possible and an army at full strength. Even that was doomed the moment they unveiled Demons among their ranks, to try and force an engagement now would be suicide.”

  There was fire in the Necromancer’s eyes, however. Fire and steel. Enough to remain strong in the face of Galukar’s disagreement.

  “We have no choice, the entire strategy we’ve formed relies on an enemy slower and weaker than we’ve left them.”

  Galukar recognised that look, he’d seen it before. Seen it recently. It was the very same one that burned in Arion Falls’ eyes.

  “Girl, there are things in your life beyond throwing it away in service to something else.” He replied, finding his own voice reduced to a shaky whisper.

  “Strength is the greatest virtue and weakness the greatest sin.” She replied, mechanically. Galukar recognised the words well, they were Shaiagrazni’s. “If I can further Master Shaiagrazni’s plans then I will, whatever it takes.”

  He eyed her, finding his heart growing heavy.

  “Yes, I suppose you will.” Galukar sighed.

  To lose a child was torture unlike any other that existed. Galukar ought to have known, he’d lost many over the years. All of his sons, through violence, and more than one daughter through marriage or alienation. He doubted it was anything comparable to lose an apprentice, but that duty of care and culpability remained. If the sting was even one tenth of one hundredth of one thousandth so sharp…

  He hit the Necromancer, almost before he even knew he was moving. Galukar was careful to hold back- he always was. He held back against Knights, and he held back just a shade more against the Fleshcrafted skull of Shaiagrazni’s apprentice.

  But not that much. She still left the ground, shot back, thudded hard against a thick wooden beam and brought half a tent down by smashing through it, landing in a dazed heap and providing no further argument against Galukar. She’d been right, in a strange way. They really did need to delay that army. But she would be of little help compared to what she might contribute by returning to her Master anyway.

  And it had been rather satisfying to strike her again.