Chương 64: Off With Their Head

POV: The Assistant, Nyx - Moments Before the Terrorizing Discussion Milo had left, and I lay sprawled across the bed, staring up at the ceiling while my mind kept dragging me back through the last few minutes, replaying them whether I wanted it to or not.

"You talk like you've known me a long time."

"I haven't. But it feels like I have." That stupid answer had done something to me, or rather, undone something; some knot I'd spent weeks patiently tying shut loosened because of those few words, and that made me do stupid things too. It gave me hope, the idiot kind, the kind I know better than to touch. For one moment I actually let myself believe he was still in there. Somewhere. Which is why I asked.

"Have you ever heard the name Arbor Amoris?"

"... No? I don't think so." Of course not. Why would he? He doesn't know the first thing about me, why would he know some silly tree that doesn't even grow in this world?

"Should I know that name?" No. You shouldn't. And even if you did, if by some impossible chance you did, it would mean something gone wrong, not something gone right. It would mean the worst had happened. And still. Still. I sat there clinging to it anyway, thinking that if he knew, if he remembered, then maybe the two of us could just fall into ruin together again. Pathetic. Voices carried in from the other side of the door. Familiar ones. Milo and Evelisse, no doubt.

The clichéd little couple, forever finding something to murmur about. Those two never seem to run out of things to say to each other. Fine. Let them swoon. Let the heroine do her heroine thing; she can bring the clever ideas to the table, and I'll do things like what I did today against the wyvern. I'll assist. Stand at the edge and keep them alive while they gaze at each other. That's a role. It's a fine role. I really do need to move on. Milo's business is none of mine. None of it. Not anymore....

The door was open. Just a crack. Just enough to see out, if a person happened to be looking. Toward the two lovestruck fools at the table. Evelisse was telling him something, serious-faced, though her eyes kept skittering around like she couldn't quite hold still. I caught most of it, the terrorizing, of course. Spread the fear by getting word out that the Hero's Party had failed to bring down the Dark Lord, that its members were being held hostage. Not bad, actually.

I couldn't see Milo's face from here, only the back of him, nodding along every so often, putting on his best serious, attentive expression, I'd bet, while only understanding about a third of what she was saying. He was never a clever one. Not even when he was with m— No. No. Stupid, stupid brain. Stop it. And then, somehow, without deciding to, I was already through the door and standing in the room, and neither of them so much as glanced over.

They just kept talking, deep in some plan I found I'd stopped caring about halfway through. They didn't need me here. If anything, I was intruding on whatever this was, whatever soft, warm thing the two of them were building across that table. Several seconds passed. Neither of them noticed me at all. The last thing I caught was something about hauling the goons to Astrea to prove to everyone that the Hero had lost. Milo didn't look up. He kept his eyes on the other girl.

Didn't take them off her, not for one second, like there was nothing else in the room worth looking at. The irritation rose up my throat before I could stop it, the kind I know I've got no right to feel, the kind I keep telling myself to bury. Stop. Turn around. Go back into the room before either of them sees you. Easy. A few quiet steps and none of this ever happened and—"I say we cut their heads off and bring those." POV: The Dark Lord, Milo Miles"Using Arkhay? What do you mean?" I wasn't doubting Lunessa.

One look at her and anyone could tell she was clever. I just needed it spelled out plainly enough for my shallow brain to follow, at least the important parts. We'd been talking about spreading fear through Astrea, and Lunessa had answered with Arkhay, and I couldn't draw a line between the two on my own. She probably would've explained it regardless. I'd asked before I realized that. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Think about who can actually get into Astrea," Lunessa said.

"If Milo goes, the Church attacks him. If Evelisse goes, same thing. Mel and I could still slip in, but doing so might void the one advantage we might have left, that we haven't been branded traitors yet. Assuming we haven't already, which we might have, in which case going anywhere near Astrea is a poor idea to begin with." She tilted her head toward Nyx.

"And Nyx, looking the way she does, draws suspicion the moment she walks through a gate." Nyx could shapeshift, actually. She'd done it once, back in the first village, turned herself into the village chief, or so she'd told me. I had never actually seen it, but it seemed that I should keep this to myself first until Lunessa finished explaining.

"So that's why I'd rather use Arkhay." Lunessa gestured at the backpacks slumped on the rug.

"We already have everything we need to clear the town's debt. Once the mayor verifies the materials, Arkhay becomes a safe zone for us."

"You want to spread the fear in Arkhay instead of Astrea?" Evelisse asked.

"Not really, since if we want the folks over at Arkhay to help us, they might need to know about this plan to some extent. What I actually want is for the news to reach Astrea through Arkhay. Arkhay as the proxy."

"And how does that work?" Nyx said.

"We would need to work on the details with the mayor, but broadly?" Lunessa's mouth curved.

"We manufacture a threat against Arkhay."

"A fake threat?" I said, and then wondered, again, why I kept blurting out questions that were about to be answered anyway. She nodded.

"Once Arkhay's our safe zone, the mayor sends someone to Astrea. That someone reports that Arkhay is being threatened by the Dark Lord."

"The threat being," she went on, "that the Dark Lord will raze Arkhay unless the kingdom makes the Hero's defeat public. Astrea holds a public address admitting the Hero has fallen, brings in the Capital Press to spread it wide. And if the Hero still hasn't returned to Astrea by then? Better. It makes the whole thing land harder." I was following about two-thirds of it, which for me was a personal best.

"And if Astrea just refuses?" Nyx asked.

"Then Astrea shows its true face." Lunessa spread her hands.

"A kingdom that cares more about its image than its people. That it has been hiding the truth from them, and they would let a town be destroyed than admit its Hero lost." She let that sit a second.

"We won't actually destroy Arkhay, of course, but if it comes to a refusal, we simply shift the angle. Now the story is: Arkhay pleaded with Astrea for help and was turned away, and now begs the Dark Lord for mercy instead to avoid destruction; the Dark Lord would agree, but the price is that Arkhay's own press runs the story of how Astrea buried the truth to protect its reputation." Either way, the kingdom lost. Publicize the defeat, and fear spreads. Refuse, and they're exposed.

I was starting to see why nobody wanted to be on the other side of a negotiating table from this woman.

"Then why not lead with that?" Nyx pressed.

"Or just have Milo show his face in some other big town, a safer one? A living Dark Lord standing there is proof enough that the Hero failed." Lunessa considered it a moment.

"It's a fair thought, but Arkhay's press has limited reach. Other towns might not run the story at all since they might be considered lacking in credibility, especially when it's under the 'being threatened by the Dark Lord' narrative. Astrea won't let the information in, because that would make its own refusal pointless, and it can always counter with the Capital Press, which the masses trust far more than some regional broadsheet." She shook her head.

"As for parading Milo around in the Dark Lord's robes, it might have some impact, but not much, unless he actually destroys something, which is what we are trying to avoid." She continued, "Towns too far from here may not even know there is a new Dark Lord yet. Show them his face and it means nothing, because they've never heard there's a Hero who lost to him in the first place. You can't frighten people with a defeat they don't know happened." She wasn't finished.

"Worst case, though, we can just repeat the pattern. Same play, town by town, pressure each one into pushing Astrea to let the Capital Press run it. And every time Astrea refuses, another local press picks the story up instead. Slower, yes. But now Astrea's losing something worse than the secret: it's losing the trust of every town it turned away. The Church's ugliness and its desperation, out in the open, and that kind of distrust, spreading through the kingdoms, that might feed the fear more than any of it."

She sat back.

"But all of that's the hard road. It requires manpower and much more effort on our end. It's far more efficient to simply let Arkhay carry the message to the kingdom." There were a few more discussions to settle. Nyx kept circling back to her version of having me appear in some of the bigger towns, cause real destruction, then threaten them directly to let Astrea know about it and, ideally, push the kingdom into publicizing the news faster.

A hybrid, essentially: Lunessa's bloodless plan with some actual destruction. Naturally, Lunessa turned to Evelisse for her thoughts. Evelisse thought it over for a long moment, then preferred her sister's proposal. Nyx sighed in frustration but decided to let it drop. I brought up Nyx's shapeshifting skill while we were at it, and she didn't deny it.

Lunessa seized on it right away; if none of us could get into Arkhay cleanly, Nyx could take some unremarkable form, walk in, deliver the rare materials to the mayor herself, and once he'd verified them, the gates would open for the rest of us. From there it was details. To make the story convincing, our Arkhay proxy would need to carry something to Astrea that proved the two party members had been in our hands.

Lunessa added another layer to the threat, too—if Astrea refused to publicize the loss, the Dark Lord might simply kill the hostages. Which cut both ways: publicizing the news might also be what got them returned alive. That ought to give the kingdom the push it needed. Which was how I ended up back in Nyx's room with her, hunting for something to take. Their weapons were more trouble than they were worth, too bulky, and there'd be a hundred near-identical ones out there anyway.

Lunessa had suggested something personal instead. A family ring, a crest, anything that could be traced to them specifically. Nyx rifled through the pair of them and came up with a ring off the mage's finger and a crest tucked on the shield guy. The two of them looked worse than the last time I'd seen them. Paler, and their breathing was shallow. I was genuinely starting to worry they might not wake up at all if we left them like this much longer.

"We should give them some water, at least," I said. Nyx's solution to this was to slap them both awake. The shield-bearer's eyes flew open.

"Wh— you!" He scrambled back against the wall, arms up.

"Please—no more shocks, I'm begging you—" Beside him the mage barely surfaced, eyelids fluttering, mumbling something that I couldn't make sense of; I hope it's not some incancation to kill or put a curse on me. I looked at Nyx. What exactly had she done to these two?

"Quiet, you sniveling lump," Nyx said.

"We need you to cooperate."

"C-cooperate?" The shield-bearer's voice climbed.

"Cooperate with what? What are you going to do to us?" Nyx smiled at him.

"We're going to cut your head off." I was fairly sure that had been a joke, but the poor man didn't wait around to find out. He was unconscious again before she'd finished the sentence.