Chương 80: Book 2 Chapter 2 - Trial

Three suns hung directly overhead, and their combined rays illuminated Quantis Park. The park sat at the heart of the city, with bustling walking trails, a fountain dominating the center of the plains, and glassy ponds reflecting the rat-ducks silhouette swimming in their waters. At its center rose an elevated platform equipped with a massive projector screen—lighting up daily for free movie nights, so the people of the city could wind down and relax for the day. Today, no one was relaxing.

Mikael stood at the front of the stage with Edward beside him, and below them, packed into rows of chairs, sat a thousand people of every occupation and Awakened, varying in ranks the city offered. Two colossal figures flanked Edward where he knelt at center stage, armored head to toe in white plate marked with a yellow cross across the chest. Their spears crossed behind his cuffed hands in a mirrored X, the steel wrapped in a faint yellow glow. Nothing stood inside the armor suits.

They were just hollow shells, upright and waiting.

"I want to thank everyone who came out today, after hearing the announcement that went out across the city!" Mikael's voice rolled over the park, amplified until it reached the last row of chairs. The crowd's murmuring dimmed to a hush as the leader of the Astarchs spoke.

"Today is a day of reckoning. A day to deliver justice, and to keep this city safe from anyone who would dare threaten its peace." He lifted a hand toward the screen behind him.

"I ask that you turn your attention here." A projector shimmered into existence out of thin air, hovering several feet away from the screen. A beat passed. Then its reel turned, and a cone of light burst forward, projecting the footage so clearly that not even the afternoon glare could obscure it. The image that appeared was a rundown house, still and silent. It held for a few seconds before a figure stepped into the frame. Edward.

The angle looked as though the camera sat in a window of the house next door, catching him in profile. He wore his usual suit, creeping toward the house until he leaned in close to peer through a crack in the window. Lucius stepped outside. And on the screen, Edward ordered him to stab himself, again and again, each blow carefully missing anything vital. One piece was missing. The moment Edward confronted Lucius for what he'd done, where he laid out the man's crimes before giving the order—gone.

Cut cleanly from the footage.

"Wait!" Edward's voice cracked as it tore out of him.

"That's not… they cut that part out!" No one was listening. The crowd only gasped, recoiling as the Edward on-screen commanded Lucius to cut into himself until at last he gave the final order. Lucius drove the dagger home. A ripple of gasps rolled through the park, chair to chair. The on-screen Edward tucked Lucius's body away into his ring, and the footage slowly faded to black.

"I apologize if that footage disturbed anybody," Mikael said, letting his voice settle into something almost sorrowful.

"But you needed to see the kind of filth that's been living among us." He shook his head slowly.

"To think I trusted this man. I invited him to stand as one of the leaders of this world, to help guide it forward. And all the while, he was only waiting. Waiting for the chance to use his authority to take a life, for nothing more than his own pleasure. He thought his position would protect him." Mikael's eyes found Edward, kneeling in cuffs.

"But I promise you all, I will see this through until he receives the punishment his crimes deserve."

"No, you have it all wrong!" Edward's voice cracked as it tore free, desperation punctuating the plea.

"Mikael assigned me to kill him! This whole thing is a setup!" Mikael staggered back a step and pressed a palm flat against his chest.

"Me? Why on earth would I order you to commit something so abhorrent? To murder such an honorable man?" Edward's eyes snapped wide, locking onto Mikael's face.

"Honorable? Lucius wasn't a man of honor. He was trafficking children!" Mikael let the gasp roll out of him, long and theatrical, and the crowd echoed it the same, their breath catching in unison.

"He wasn't selling children. He was bringing them into his orphanage!" Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

"Yesterday, when you decided to go on your little power trip and kill an innocent person, the children Lucius was speaking with were orphans looking for shelter in that abandoned house. Is that how you operate, King? Assume the worst of people and strike before you think?" Edward shook his head hard, the memory of that night dragging itself back to the surface. Framed through Mikael's lens, the story almost held together. It almost made sense.

But there was one thing Mikael couldn't rewrite, couldn't twist: the testimony of the children who had been in real danger that night.

"Stop lying, Mikael." The words came out low.

"If you want to paint me as some kind of monster, then bring out the witnesses from that night. Let them speak."

"Oh, I'm already one step ahead of you." Mikael's mouth curled as he swept a hand toward the front row. Edward's stomach dropped. He whipped his head toward where Mikael was pointing—and there they were. The children. The same three who had been sheltering in that abandoned house the night before.

"I know it isn't easy to relive what happened that night, as gruesome as it was," Mikael said, his tone tender.

"But would you share your story with everyone here? Tell them how you came to know Lucius." The three of them rose together at his request. Two looked no older than eight. The third, standing between them, looked to be in his early teens.

"Yes… I do that, sir." The boy in the middle spoke first, his voice carrying further than his size suggested it should.

"My name is Eustace. Before we came to Quantis City, we live in DustHaven. Our parents died on day of downpour." He said it plainly, his face stoic.

"We survived because we playing in mines."

"That why we orphans. We travel here because our parents' dream build life in big city. Opportunity." The two children beside him tightened their grip on his arms, pressing closer.

"It no been easy. We live in that house. Lucius came that night. Offered to bring us his orphanage." Eustace paused.

"I no trust him at first. My mother say no trust stranger when something too good."

"Then, he told about other kids there. How happy they were, three hot meals everyday, even hot water. We never had back home. I want to go. My friends want to go. He told us wait inside, he go out to meet someone."

"I was curious. I looked through window to see who he meet." Eustace's gaze slid to the stage, and his voice thinned cold.

"It was him! He wasn't friend!" He raised his arm and stabbed a finger at Edward.

"His eyes turned purple. He told Lucius to stab himself." A tremor slipped into the boy's voice, the first crack in his composure.

"Nobody stabs themselves. He use black magic!"

"We were afraid of witch. We ran as far as we could. That's when we meet Lucius real friends." Eustace turned toward the row of women seated beside them.

"They brought us to orphanage. Everything Lucius said was real!" Four women sat in a neat row, each dressed in a white vest stamped with the emblem of an empty bird's nest. The woman at the end rose first. She looked no younger than sixty, and she cleared her throat before she spoke.

"Hello. My name is Maria. I represent Home, an orphanage on the outskirts of this city, and these are my fellow caretakers." She swept a hand toward the three women beside her.

"Lucius kept a routine every evening: walking the neighborhood, looking for stray children like Eustace and his friends. He was never gone longer than an hour. When he didn't come home that night, we grew worried and sent out a search party."

"As you saw in the footage, we never found him." Her voice dropped, grim and heavy.

"What we did find was this trio, hiding in one of the abandoned houses." She dipped her chin toward the three children.

"You fucking monster!" The woman beside Maria interrupted and shot to her feet, her finger trembling as she leveled it at Edward.

"What did Lucius ever do to you? He was a loving husband. A father to our child. What could a Kaiser possibly gain from killing a defenseless man, using those disgusting powers of yours? I hope you die the same way he did!" Edward flinched under the force. None of this added up. Were these actors planted here by Mikael, playing out a story for an orphanage that didn't even exist? Or did it exist and hide something far worse behind its doors? And Lucius. Was he really the man Mikael claimed?

Was the report he received genuine? Had Mikael sent him to kill an innocent man just to build this trap?

"No, it's a setup, I swear it!" Edward's voice tore loose.

"What could I possibly gain from killing a man I've never met? What's my motive supposed to be? This is all—""Silence." Mikael's voice cut through the air. The word closed around Edward's throat and strangled the rest of his sentence into a dry rasp. Edward didn't hesitate. He struck back the only way left to him. If he wanted the chance to speak again, he had to fight for it now, before that silence sealed shut for good and stayed that way until the guillotine came down on his neck. Allow me to speak.

Edward drove the command straight into Mikael's mind. The nullstone cuffs bit into his wrists, choking his power down. With them diminishing his strength, this was the only order he had the strength to give. Forcing Mikael's hands to move, forcing the cuffs open—that was far beyond him now. Mikael slowly turned his head toward Edward. His mouth fell open, as if he was about to undo his vocal command. Then it snapped shut again, and a small, satisfied smirk curled across his face instead.

"And that isn't all the witnesses we've brought today." Mikael's voice shifted back into its theatrical register as he turned to the crowd, sweeping an arm toward the side of the stage. Two men climbed the stairs in hooded robes, each gripping a figure by the arm and guiding them up onto the stage. As they reached the top of the stairs, their faces finally came into view. Edward's wife. And his daughter.