Chapter 42: DD2 Chapter 036 – Mistakes

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He’d been wrong. So very wrong.

The scale of his mistakes was hard to truly comprehend, but as Gabriel looked out over the heads of the crowd and at all that he had wrought, he felt nothing but shame. He could still remember standing atop a hill much like this one in his youth. There he had stared out into the distance, surrounded by his father’s knights while Traylra burned. He had watched helplessly while a dragon taller than the magnificent city’s impenetrable walls had risen above the fortifications and destroyed all who dared to oppose it. Gabriel had sworn then, that he would never make the same mistakes as his father; that he wouldn’t over-reach, that he would fulfil his duty as a Terythian nobleman, and protect his people from the myriad of horrors that stalked Creation.

He had been young then, little more than a child in the grand scheme of things, but looking back over the past few months, he could see that he had broken the promise he had once made to himself. Ever since Galen’s death, he had made mistake after mistake, compounding successive failures that lead to the catastrophe that had befallen his city. Antagonising the adventurer community, persecuting the poor, racking up debts to the Bank of Tolis, and declaring war on the dragon who had killed his son. He should have known better. Everyone had warned him to slow down, that he could’ve had it all if he was just patient, but with the image of his son’s rotting face so clear in his mind, patience had seemed like another inexcusable failure.

Maybe if he’d listened to the priests things might have been different. They had told him not to look, but he had wanted—needed—to see his son one last time. With hindsight, that was probably his first mistake. Galen had been killed in summer, and by the time his body had been recovered and mages had placed preservation wards upon it, scavengers and the heat had taken their toll. Pulling back the stained cloth to stare at the bloated and seeping face of his once-handsome son was something he never should have done. But seeing the severed hand, that had been found perfectly pristine beside him, had given Gabriel a false sense of confidence.

Witnessing Rhelea burn in the distance was much alike watching Traylra fall to the dragon. The seasons were different, and Rhelea was not nearly as grand, but the ash on the wind tasted exactly the same. Both times Traylan men had too much confidence—confidence that the Dragonspines could be tamed, and then that the dragon’s warnings were nothing more than desperate lies. 

He idly wondered that if he had been just a little less secure, that maybe the horrors of the day could have been averted.

Gabriel shivered beneath his winter coat. The pain in his shoulder had already receded to a dull ache from where a tentacled creature had torn through his mail and nearly cost him the arm. Those things had been unanticipated. He’d heard the rumblings echo through Rhelea, of angels coming to Creation to change Astresia for the better. That the end of days priests had been preaching about for centuries was finally fast approaching, heralded in by a surge in aberrant monster activity, but he had never given the rumours credence. Creation was, for all of its wonders, predictably mundane. Monsters behaved in set patterns, beholden to ancient migrations and even older breeding grounds. Things rarely if ever changed, and every dire new occurrence ultimately turned out to be just another predictable pattern to be documented by humanity, the veritable masters of Creation.

When Gabriel had heard the dragon’s warnings, he had discounted them for the ridiculous fear mongering they had initially sounded like. Just another old creature of power brought low by the ingenuity of man and proclaiming a dire prophecy to try and save its scaly skin. However, when the mana had swelled in the air above him, and that thing had stepped out into Creation, he had realised that the dragon’s execution was not a moment of his dynasties triumph over destiny, but the unfolding of its latest doom. Whatever it was that had been summoned before him, was far worse than the dragon. As far as he could tell, the beast named ‘Typh’ had remarkably human motivations to kill. 

The Monster, as it was being called, seemed to end human lives for its own sake, and the horrifying spawn that it created didn’t even release experience upon their destruction. They were individually strong, if not very smart, and were produced at a rate that no one could keep up with. Just getting out of the market square had cost him far too many good men, and upon fighting his way clear of the city even more had fallen. Gabriel suspected that if the Alchemic Knights hadn’t fled the fight, he wouldn’t have escaped Rhelea at all.

Which was another important question he didn’t have the answer to. What could possibly have persuaded the country’s staunchest champions to defect for a monster? Gabriel could just about wrap his head around the idea that the priesthood may have some philosophical reasons to revere the Monster in the square as divine, but by the time the alchemists were done with them the Alchemic Guard barely had personalities, let alone religious ideals.

There were too many unanswered questions, and the only person who seemed to have any answers fell far short of meeting the definition for a person.

The campgrounds he now found himself in was a welcome, much needed respite from the chaos of the city, and if the rumours were true, then the dragon he had tried to execute was responsible for it all. That irked Gabriel and then some. The scaled monster that hid behind the face of a beautiful woman had turned out to not only be right about everything, but was also far more prepared than he was for the disaster he now found thrust upon him. He was the Lord of this land, the people were supposed to rally behind him and his banner, yet desertions amongst his surviving soldiers were sky-high. He couldn’t even leave his tent without his sworn knights surrounding him for fear of being assaulted by his own citizens who viewed his mere presence as an attack on their senses.

If Galen was still alive things would be different. His son, for all his faults, was the future of the Traylan dynasty. Brilliant in so many ways, and while not quite a prodigy, he wasn’t that far from it. Had he inherited Rhelea, he would have been a good Lord, a better one than Gabriel ever would be. Had his son been given just a few more years to grow then he was sure he would have triumphed over Arilla Foundling, the Dragonrider.

Gabriel felt his rage burn brighter at the mere thought of her name. An orphan of all people had been the end of his son. Sure, she was slightly more remarkable than the average gutter rat. She had led an army of monsters to destroy his castle with the aid of the very same dragon Gabriel had later held captive. And if the rumours were true, she had killed the horrors in droves, playing a pivotal role in evacuating Rhelea’s western districts. 

The majority of the refugees who now filled the campgrounds had originated from the Crafters Village where poor tradesmen intermingled with even poorer labourers. Each one of them seemed to have a personal account of how the red-headed young warrior had either saved them, or someone dear to them. Then there was the convoy of children she had saved, twice! If that tale was to be believed. Adventurers who now answered to her orders, as well as the dragons. Everything that had gone right, in the clusterfuck of a disaster that had seen his city fall in a day, could be attributed to Arilla Foundling or the dragon. 

It made him sick that his son’s murderer walked freely throughout the camp, increasingly revered by all as rumours flew, and her ‘greatness’ took on a life of its own. The woman was fast becoming some kind of folk hero to the common people, and it was enough to make him sick with anger—perhaps even jealousy if he was being honest with himself. 

How she was seen was a far cry from how Gabriel and the other nobles were viewed. His flight from Rhelea had been a panicked, frantic thing, and it hadn’t earned him any goodwill from the common folk he had ridden past. Although if the rumours were true in regards to the other nobles’ escapes, then half the unlanded nobility who once resided in the centre of the city seemed to have used their high-level mounts to trample their way through packed crowds of fleeing civilians, an understandable, albeit unpalatable turn of events.   

There was a way to turn this around, but why should he even try? What did he have to look forward to now? Even if Rhelea could somehow be saved, it would take decades for the Traylan reputation to recover amongst the people. They would riot again, Gabriel knew that. He’d lost far too many soldiers, far too quickly for them to fear him anytime soon. He was in serious danger of actually having his family’s territory stripped away from him by the provincial governor in Nauronos. No doubt there was a worthy noble scion desperate for his land waiting in the rafters, who would be all too keen to point out Gabriel’s numerous mistakes to the Nauron patriarch. 

If that happened, Gabriel would certainly miss a repayment to his creditors, a frightening thought considering the methods Tolisian bankers would resort to in order to get their pound of flesh. His political instincts warned him that he would have to quickly marry again, and marry well. It was the only thing left that could save him, but Gabriel had no desire to take on a bride, especially not one young enough to bear him the children he would need to secure his legacy. He was over a hundred and twenty years old, and the thought of taking on another wife less than a third of his age was actually repulsive.

Even with Galen’s proclivity to sire bastards, the boy's marriage prospects hadn’t suffered. The unlanded nobility who resided in Rhelea were all desperate to get rid of that unwanted qualifier, and had more than enough wealth to stabilise the Traylan line prior to the city’s fall. Eager brides from the noble dynasties outside of his territory would’ve had both the connections and the wealth to do similar, and looking the other way while his son had his way with some poor scullery maid was just a part of a noble marriage. It was hardly ideal, but he was aware of far worse practices that went on in Helion, except none of it mattered, because Galen was dead, and Gabriel knew that he would never remarry.

Once Galen’s bastards came of age, whatever tattered pieces of a legacy he’d managed to salvage from this catastrophe would be torn apart by his illegitimate grandchildren. Each one of whom would be little more than a transparent figurehead for his rivals' greedy intentions.

The old man sighed with grief for all that he had lost. He had come to this hill seeking solitude, and while he had mused, a crowd had formed around him. His people—tenuous loyalty or not—had gathered nearby, apparently to listen to some bards play a song, and too exhausted to resist, the Lord of Rhelea allowed himself to actually listen to the music that filled the night’s air. 

The moment he let himself listen, the notes hit him like a wave, washing over his soul and tugging hard on his grief. The intensity of the effect very nearly took his breath away, and like so many of the people gathered around him, the music made his knees go weak while his eyes began to water. The energy in the air rose dramatically with every passing second, thrumming with a nascent power that set his teeth tingling as a song, so very much like a spell, was born above the camp. It was so unlike how the mana in the market square had been; where that mass had been stagnant and sluggish, like a bloated behemoth of unwieldy power, this moved. It ebbed and flowed along the lines of a beautiful pattern, pulsating in time with the beat of the song that sounded out over the waiting crowd.

It was a melody unlike anything he had ever heard before, something that immediately put the great orchestras in Helion to shame. It was a song of profound loss and pain, hardly the sort of thing that he cared to listen to, but once it had his ear he couldn’t dream of doing anything but giving it his full attention.

He felt the tears flow, the ones he had never let himself shed for fear of being unable to ever stop. His father Gaius, who had been so distant, always chasing after his lovers rather than making time for his son. His wife Roslin, who had given him one perfect child despite her advanced years and passed on far too soon as a result. Galen, his city, his dreams and ambitions. To the sound of a hundred bards working in concert, the Lord of Rhelea wept openly in front of his people, while each and every one of them did the same.

The power in the air created by all of those classers working together was palpable. He felt the grief that he had been holding onto for a century, tight in the very depths of his soul, get ripped out of him with the utmost grace of a perfect note finding his expectant ear. His personal loss, just like everyone else's, was held up for all to see, while his emotions were wrung out like a sponge. He felt the shared pain of the audience’s grief; dead husbands he never had, missing wives he didn’t know, lost children that weren’t his, along with the guilt of a thousand different crimes, and that special kind of hatred that you reserve only for yourself. 

Minutes, or perhaps lifetimes passed and when it was finally over Gabriel felt lighter. Any thoughts of high-born propriety were long gone, as every single soul in the huge crowd drawn in by the bards had been left equally exposed. The specifics of any one person's loss had blended into the potent atmosphere of shared pain, where it became ephemeral and indistinct. Everyone had suffered under the throes of the bards’ song; they had cried together, shed the burdens that weighed them down, and for those handful of precious minutes everyone had been equal. 

The old man sighed, but this time a softer sound of relief passed through his lips.

Gabriel didn’t know what had just been done to him. He wasn’t sure if it was a violation or a balm, but in that moment he was more grateful to be standing on the hill than he could put into words.

“I’ve always loved bard songs.”

Gabriel’s head turned as five swords slid out of their sheathes. The dry rasp of polished steel on shaped wood filled the lull between this song and the next, and his retinue of knights all pointed their blades at a young woman he had never met.

She couldn’t have been more than twenty, although he knew if the reports were to be believed she was even younger than that, a total absurdity given her level. The warrior was already higher ranked than most people in Rhelea would be at the end of their lives, yet hers was just getting started. The woman had to have been power-levelled by the dragon, there was no other explanation that made sense, yet as she stared down the blades of Gabriel’s knights she showed not the slightest hint of fear.  

The Dragonrider was alone, vulnerable, and Gabriel knew that without her dragon to protect her, he would never get a better chance to kill the woman. She was armed, but unarmoured, dressed in casual linens that would not have looked out of place on a common labourer. He supposed that she was attractive in a conventional sense, but what unsettled the man of over a century was the steel in her gaze.

Arilla Foundling wasn’t afraid of him, and he knew that it wasn’t bluster or arrogance. If he ordered his men, iron-ranked one and all, to kill her, he wasn’t certain that they’d win—more insanity to round out the day.

“I didn’t come here to fight,” the warrior said, her hands raised to the sides placatingly.

“Then why did you come? Surely you must have known how this would go between us?” Gabriel asked, finding his mouth dry with discomfort.

“The bards…” Arilla said wistfully. “As soon as I heard that they were gathering here, I knew that I had to come. Unlike Typh, I don’t think of their class as a wasted opportunity.” 

“You speak of the dragon like it’s a person,” he said with distaste.

“Of course I do. After all that I’ve seen, sometimes I suspect she’s more human than a lot of us.”

“She eats people.”

“And you butchered the people you were supposed to protect, just to flush me out.”

The accusation stung because it was true. His initial instinct was to deny it, but the recent song had given him a clarity that made it impossible for him to deny. Maybe if he gave himself the time he’d come up with rationalisations to justify his behaviour, but right now his emotions were too raw.

He chose not to answer her rebuttal, for there were no words that could make what he had done right. He had felt the crowd's grief, and while the specifics of their pain escaped him, he knew that he was responsible for so much of their loss. He had armed men with steel, given them warrior classes and his noble authority. When he had instructed them to give him order, whilst at the same time passing laws that he knew would breed discontent, he had known from the start that violence was the only possible outcome.

If anyone had dared to ask him why he did it, he would have answered in a heartbeat that it was to find the woman now standing before him. Gabriel would have sacrificed everything he had to see her dead, and while he had lost his city, his honour and his reputation, the murderer still lived. The noble stared into her cool hazel eyes and felt the fires of his rage answer him, less out of control perhaps, but no less intense for the catharsis of his tears. 

“You killed my son,” Gabriel spat.

“I did. I even enjoyed it, even if I ended up regretting everyone else I had to kill to get to him,” she admitted. “But I’m not here to gloat—”

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“Then why are you here?!” he snapped. “Why shouldn’t I order my men to kill you for what you’ve done.”

“Besides the fact that the crowd will tear you apart before you can walk ten paces?” she stated with a confidence that he found sickening, and a quick glance to their unflinching audience all but confirmed the veracity of her threat. “How about this… Creation as we know it is ending. I know you don’t particularly care for the little people—otherwise you would never have done what you did—but I think having seen all this, having experienced Rhelea fall, you can imagine what Terythia will look like when Monsters like the one in the square step into every fortified settlement humanity has ever built.”

“It's the wards… That’s what the dragon said,” he said, noting how the horror that quickly dawned on him did nothing to soften his resolve to kill the woman before him.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “At least, the wards that focus mana for faster passive levelling are speeding up the inevitable. We can take back Rhelea without you, but afterwards we need to make sure this never happens again, and getting Terythia to abandon focusing wards will be hard enough with just one inquisitor on our side, we’ll need the Lord of Rhelea to stand a chance of being heard.”

“The other houses will never go for it. The more noble families you convince to give up the wards will only make the prospect of holding onto secret focusing chambers even more appealing. And getting foreign nations to abandon that advantage? It would take generations, and even then… I don’t think it's possible” he said, shaking his head. “But you’ve told me why you need me. And maybe the crowd wont react well to my men carving you up, but my line is as dead as my son. And that’s your fault. Do you really think a nice song and the fate of Astreasia hanging in the balance can make up for a fathers loss?”

“Honestly, I had hoped,” Arilla shrugged, “but if that’s not enough, I can offer you wealth.”

“You want to buy my grief? Send me away with a handful of gold like the adventurers whose loyalty you’ve bought? It would be funny if it wasn’t so insulting.”

“Not a handful of gold, far more than that.” she said, eyes alight. “I’m the Dragonrider, the woman I love is a Sovereign Dragon who claims the loyalty of thousands of creatures who you would call monsters. Did you already forget about the ratlings that so easily destroyed your hold? Peace is cheaper than war, Traylan, give us time and we can force enough gold down your throat to secure your line, rebuild your city, or send you off to an Epherian pleasure palace to live out the rest of your days. I don’t care what you do with it, just please, help us save the country and we’ll save Creation without you.”

“You love the dragon? I know it looks pretty, but knowing what it is, that’s disgusting.”

“It’s none of your business. Now do we have a deal?”

Gabriel looked at the Dragonrider, the woman who had cost him everything that mattered, and saw that she was serious. Untold wealth for help saving the country he was honorbound to give his life for. It was sad in a way, he strongly suspected that she was right, that maybe everything was in danger of crashing down, and that working with her was perhaps the only way to save it, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Things would be different if Galen was alive, but he wasn’t, and his murderer stood before him asking for his help without even having the decency to beg for his forgiveness.

“No,” Gabriel said, smiling wide for perhaps the first time in weeks. He saw the resignation in her shoulders, the slump in her shoulders and knew that he had cut her far deeper than he could with any blade.

“Terythia will fall,” Arilla stated.

“I believe you, but I will never help my son's killer.”

“You’d condemn Creation to suffer the same fate as Rhelea out of spite?”

“I think I would, yes,” he said, feeling an almost euphoric state of calm.

“You bastard!”

The voice didn’t come from Arilla and when he looked around to find its source, he realised that it could have come from any one of a hundred different people. He had allowed himself to forget that he was in the midst of a crowd, perhaps one large enough to be measured in the thousands. Everywhere he looked he saw tired, expectant faces, the same ones he knew would try to kill him if he dared to harm their red-haired savior. They wanted him to save their country, even after they had rebelled against his rule, even after they openly celebrated his son's killer as some kind of folk hero.

Well fuck them!

As soon as he thought it, his resolve weakened. If he had been asked a day before if a commoner's pain could compare to his he would have spat out an angry denial. But the song had stripped away that bit of entitled self-delusion. His pain hurt just as deep as anyone else's, and looking at the red-rimmed eyes of the people watching him—at Arilla’s eyes—he knew that their pain was just as real as his. 

Could he really condemn every human soul to feel his level of wretched grief?

He could stop it all, if he could just forgive her.

“I…” Gabriel trailed off. “I’ll save Terythia, then Astresia. But only after you’ve died by my hand,” Gabriel declared.

“I won’t just lie down and let you kill me,” Arilla responded. “Can’t we just set aside our grievances for the greater good?”

“Never… but I’ll—I’ll help you retake Rhelea. I’ll even corral the other nobles for you… If you agree to duel me afterwards,” he offered, knowing that despite her rapid level gain, she was still more than thirty levels his junior. She couldn’t possibly beat him, but an upjumped child offered every advantage by her monstrous lover wouldn’t know the meaning of defeat, of hardship or pain. The Dragonrider would accept, because she was too young to realise that heroes didn’t exist.

 

“And if I win?” she asked, taking the bait.

“You won't.”

“Humour me, Traylan, let's say I win this duel, how does that help me save Terythia?”

“I’ll give you Rhelea.”

“What?!” she spat out incredulously.

“I’ll have Barnabas draw something up if it gets you to agree. The entire Terythian noble class are expecting me to name an adventurer as my heir, having it be you won’t raise any eyebrows,” he explained.

“You’d give me Rhelea?”

“No, you’re going to lose. But if by some miracle you win, then yes, Rhelea and its surrounding territory will be yours. I wouldn’t get too excited, my title is nothing but a poison pill. Galen left a lot of bastards, and your adoption without a backing dynasty will never be viewed as truly legitimate. The Nauron dynasty would see your very existence as an insult. Every one of Galen’s bastards will be a viable pretender to your reign, puppeteered by enemies you can’t identify let alone face. You’ll inherit my debts, and they are substantial. Every highborn family will see an orphan raised to high nobility as an existential threat to the natural order of things, and that’s before they find out you’re fucking a dragon.”

“I don’t want to be a noble.”

“I know you don’t, and that’s what makes it so perfect. You’ll say yes, because if you lose, once I’ve mounted your head on a pike, I’ll save Terythia for you. And if by some freak occurrence you do manage to kill me, my title will get you in the same room as the King of Terythia. Regardless of how doomed your reign is, he’ll have to listen to you when you proclaim your dire warning about the wards.”

“Will he listen?”

“Probably not, but it's the best offer you’re ever going to get from me, Dragonrider.”

“I… I accept,” she said, finally looking defeated. 

“Of course you do,” Gabriel smiled, feeling his heart lift as the music once again began to swell around him. 

When the Lord of Rhelea turned his head away from his reluctant heir, to once again look over at his city in the distance, he could have sworn that the ash on the wind tasted of vengeance.

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