The world was an avalanche of sensation. A storm of color, movement, sound, all converging toward me, around me, through me. The crowd was endless. A sea of faces, each one blurred in the flickering torches. All turned toward me, mouths open in shouts, cries, songs. The sheer weight of their voices pressed against my skin like a tangible thing, wrapping around me like armor—or a shroud.

  It had been so long since the city had seen its Griidlords return glowing with the fortune of Flows that dwelt within a Locked Orb. Though we had arrived after nightfall, the throngs had fizzed from every corner to meet us, like the foam of an ale poured too roughly. A guard on the wall must have seen the Glow through the haze of our Footfield. How quickly they had gathered to greet us.

  Now we stood on top of carriages, solemnly yet exultantly being paraded before the maddened masses.

  The scent of sweat was thick in the air. It mingled with the smoke of the torches, the incipient cooking aromas of vendors who sensed the eruption of a spontaneous party. Flowers filled the air like flocks of little birds, petals ripping loose in the breeze, catching in my hair, on my armor. One landed on my gaping lip, the taste of crushed roses and dust mixing with the dryness in my throat.

  Banners whipped in the wind, vast stretches of fabric snapping overhead like the wings of great beasts. I saw my own colors among them, a shocking thing—to realize that I had a House, that I had colors of my own. The banners whipped and snapped, wreathed in the light of the torches that were the only light in the outer sector.

  I should have reveled in the moment. This was what I had wanted, wasn’t it? The approval of the masses? Their satisfaction? Their hope? Their validation?

  But my thoughts could not be ripped away from her words. Rosegold’s maddened, unearthly shrieks still rang in my mind.

  I should have felt victorious. I should have been lifted by this tide, carried by their adulation. But beneath the roar, beneath the flickering light and the swirling petals, there was something else. A quiet. A hollow space where I expected joy to bloom. It was empty still.

  How long had it been since a Locked Orb had been captured by the city? Was this not enough for me? Would I not be happy until I had brought the people a Griid-Crown? Worse still, the thought came—would even that be enough?

  Or was it something else…

  She had screamed at me, terrified and hateful. BUTCHER! BLOOD PRINCE! BETRAYER!

  She had been mad. Her mind was beyond recovery or reason. And yet still, her words haunted me. There had been the sense of the mystic about her. It unnerved me.

  BRINGER OF THE INFERNO!

  WORSE THAN THRAX…

  My thoughts were shattered suddenly by the hand on my shoulder, the solemn voice that somehow seemed louder than the crowd that deafened me.

  It was Baltazar’s voice. “I always had faith in you, Tiberius. I backed you all the way because I could see this in you, even when you couldn’t see it in yourself. Listen to them.”

  The wheels turned slowly as the drivers toyed their way past the throngs, guards everywhere keeping the crowd from piling out and blocking our path. I could see Tara and Magneblade on the cart before us. Tara was the one glowing with Flows. But the eyes of the people seemed to look past her. The weight of their gazes seemed to press down on me.

  I did listen to them. I could hear the chant of “Blood Butcher.” Without order or synchronicity, the chant came in broken bursts and snatched snippets of voices. But I could hear it all the same. Here and there, though, I could have sworn I heard “Blood Prince” too. I shivered. She had called me the Blood Prince.

  Baltazar said, “We’re rich now, you realize that. Fine, we mightn’t have the resources of the grandest cities, but Boston is used to putting up with less. There are other cities with more Flows, but those Flows are spent as fast as they are earned. Their people are accustomed to the Order—they expect the Order. The people here will pinch themselves if we can put tractors in the fields for a few weeks a year. We have a fortune of options now.”

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  I hesitated. “But the Flows are for the people… what else would we use them for?”

  I turned and looked at his face. Baltazar was like a statue come to life. His flesh seemed to be stone animated. Every expression and gesture was a perfect expression of the solidity of his character. Even now, he stared into the distance, as though he were posing for a sculptor. Only his eyes seemed to be stone that had yet to become truly animate. Those eyes were hard and fixed.

  I shivered again.

  He said, “Three more.”

  I said, “What?”

  He turned his head back to me. Again, I was struck suddenly by the hardness of his eyes. I couldn’t shake my intense awareness of their rigidity.

  He said, “Three more wins, Tiberius. If you win three more times, we will hold the Griid-Crown. Then our options become truly limitless.”

  I felt my jaw clench and my lips spread into a smile that aborted its way into becoming a grimace. I wanted it too, and that smile wanted to be born. But so many emotions flooded me. The pressure and improbability of reaching such a lofty height so quickly. The sudden, unnerving fixation I had on the coldness of the Lord Supreme’s eyes. The words of Rosegold as they rebounded again and again within the confines of my skull.

  And I thought of Enki. Of the last thing it had said to me. I could have let her hurt you. You hurt me when you turned on her, turned on me. You’ll need to understand you can’t bite the hand that feeds you.

  I suddenly felt drunk and confused. My head swam. My life had hurtled to this moment so quickly. There had been no respite. There had never been a real moment to gather myself. There had been nights snatched in Castle Oakcrest. There had been moments.

  How long ago had I been the hopeless sop, unable to walk in my suit? It seemed like days ago. I could remember when my greatest aspiration had been to just survive another round of the Choosing. Later—but still so fresh and recent—I remembered losing and losing, wondering if we would ever possess an Orb, let alone the cherished prize we carried this night. How had things come so far, so fast?

  I felt my knees grow weak. My heart hammered in my chest. My head swam, a pulse of dizziness swelling in my skull.

  I had left so much undone, unattended.

  When had I last checked on the progress Cassius was making with Doge? An entire town under my possession—a town of people, children, lives and livelihoods—all my responsibility, and yet I barely thought of it from day to day...

  The book of John the Dispeller, even now concealed within the contours of my armor, screamed for me to unlock its secrets.

  Montagnion was out there, waiting to contact me. He had an agenda that ran against the beast that lived in my head. But he was so like Danefer—what could I gain by pursuing any contact with a madman of such power and wisdom?

  Another—Morningstar—had promised a rendezvous in a place where Enki couldn’t see. Why was I drawn to that meeting? Would he still see me as a friend after our encounters on the field? I had killed his Axe. I thought of the loss of Chowwick and wondered if I could ever look on the killer of a friend as anything but an enemy… even in the fucked-up reality of ritualized violence.

  A cascade of further thoughts poured over me. Leona—what had befallen her in her banishment? Father’s secret vault beyond the outskirts of Doge. The powers that drove the conspiracy that had worked so hard to prevent me from taking the suit, that worked so hard to prevent Baltazar’s meteoric ascension. The fragments of memories that still came to me—of Mother, of the flowers, of a childhood running on dirt streets.

  And before me, immediately before me, stretched a path laden with glory and bereft of rest—of the chance to address the slightest of the multitude of ungathered chords. The chance to win again. A chance to score another Locked Orb. A chance at the Griid-Crown. A chance to validate the faith these people had put in me.

  A chance to become the Blood Prince…

  A chance to be worse than Thrax…

  And haunting me, over all of it, the last words Enki had spoken to me:

  You’ll need to understand you can’t bite the hand that feeds you. But I don’t want to wipe you off the face of the earth. You’re no good to me shredded into leaky pieces. Not this time anyway. No, I’ll show you your mistake another time.

  The sound of the crowd washed over me in waves. As it had in the arena when I craved the suit, as it did now as I wore it. The sound was a blur of thousands of voices, collectively louder than the thoughts in my head.

  But they weren’t louder than those last words Enki had left me with.

  But there will be a reckoning.

  I Was Reincarnated Into Dice, and Now the Hero Won’t Stop Throwing Me | Royal Road - this is funny, unique, nicely written. Another chance (in my opinion) to be early in on what could be an ascending story. Plus the author is really lovely and deserves support and success!