Chapter 51: DD2 Chapter 045 – Aftershocks

Arilla’s breath frosted in the morning air as she stumbled through the snow. Her sword felt heavy in her hands, while her grip was slick with a mixture of sweat and rapidly cooling blood. 

It was the morning after the battle, and if nothing changed in the next few minutes it was liable to be her last.

Lord Traylan’s sword flickered towards her, and she moved her own vertically to block it. Metal rang out against metal, and even with [Slayer’s Blade] consuming her stamina at a record-breaking pace, the force from the blow threatened to rip the zweihander from her hands. Reeling, Arilla staggered backwards along the edge of the shoreline, desperately trying to parry the lightning-fast strikes that followed. More often than not she failed, earning herself thin gashes and shallow stabs from the tip of the noble’s sword.

Numbness spread from her wounds, more injuries to add to the long list of minor cuts she could no longer feel. Her bones rattled with every checked blow while Arilla’s HP trickled ever lower, prompting her class to growl in thwarted frustration at the prey it could not touch. With a roar, the Noble Slayer lunged forwards, a spray of earth and snow erupting into the air behind her. With her class’s predatory cries thundering in her chest, Arilla catapulted forwards towards her foe. The distance between them closed rapidly, and she readied her heavy sword to strike Lord Traylan down. But the old noble merely looked bored when he turned to the side, and slapped her out of the air with the flat of his narrow blade.

Arilla bounced hard off the snow-covered stone, tumbling head over heels along the ground until she ended up splashing through the freezing shallows. The cracked flagstones of the lakebed were hard beneath her back, and cold water flowed through the neat slits in her clothing to chill her already numb wounds even more.

As inconceivable as it had once seemed, she was losing.

And victory wasn’t even close.

Ignoring the growing dread that reached up to wrap around her heart, Arilla lurched to her feet, displacing the water above—only for Lord Traylan to appear before her. His coiffed salt and pepper hair wasn’t even mussed. This annoyed her far more than his immaculately presented clothing, or his total dominance in the fight. If it wasn’t for her blood dripping from his naked blade, then he could easily have been mistaken for a nobleman about to attend a ball. She hadn’t managed to touch him once, and silent in his contempt for her, he wasn’t above making a show of his obvious superiority. 

Despite her limited experience with the sword, Arilla was good enough to know that the old noble was dragging out their duel when he could have easily ended things several times over.

He was toying with her, and she hated that she couldn’t stop him.

Lord Traylan backhanded her, and while she may have received harder blows before, his was enough to send her sprawling back into the water.

Still reeling from the almost casual slap, the noble’s sword came down to pierce through the elbow of her swordhand, pinning her to the submerged street below. His boot soon found her neck and she quickly joined the cracked paving slabs beneath the surface of the lake.

Arilla struggled and strained, but Lord Traylan was unyielding. The old noble, like so many others, had experienced a sudden and significant level gain with the death of the Monster. He had crossed from high-bronze into iron rank, and opened up a gulf in power between them that she simply could not cross. He seemed younger, although in reality his decline had only slowed, but he was certainly stronger now than he had been during the assault on Rhelea.

Too strong for her to beat.

More pressingly, he was too strong for her to remove the calf-skin boot from her neck.

Arilla’s lungs felt like they were about to burst. The icy water that surrounded her face begged to be let in, while the noble beyond the surface watched and waited for her to drown in less than a foot of water.

Eventually, she relented. Cold spread through her chest, and she experienced an instant of blissful relief before the irresistible pressure to inhale was replaced by her lungs spasming as they rebelled at the fluid that now filled them.

Lord Traylan stared into her eyes through the water, his face distorted by the ripples on the surface. Darkness grew along the edges of her vision, and she felt the familiar siren’s call of looming unconsciousness.

“I’m not sure I can help you out of this one, Arilla…” Rolf trailed off, her own personal ghost whispering into her ears for what might be the last time.

And then the sword was roughly pulled from her numb elbow, the boot removed from her neck, and when she leapt to her feet, the noble staring at her spoke.

“I yield.”

All at once, Arilla’s adrenaline vanished and she fell to her knees. She retched, loudly emptying her sodden lungs with a long bout of drawn out coughing, while Lord Traylan waited patiently for her to finish.

“Why?” she croaked.

“Because at this particular moment I don’t feel like killing you. Although it is important to me that you know you lost,” he stated calmly.

“But I’ll get Rhelea. Your legacy, it will fall to me,” she explained in her confusion.

“You’re welcome to it. Look around, Dragonrider. This isn’t my city, not anymore,” Lord Traylan stated, gesturing to their surroundings with an open hand.

Rhelea was a ruin. The sinkhole that had formed in the market square had grown to consume almost a third of the city before it finally stopped. The remaining structures were left with a noticeable slant towards the former city centre which had caused numerous buildings that survived the battle to collapse soon after from the abrupt shift to their foundations. 

Already reports were filtering through that the wells were all tainted. The blackpowder that had detonated throughout the tunnels beneath the Rhelea when combined with the ichor from the slain horrors made it undrinkable. Although drinking water was less of an issue now that the river Pollum had broken its banks. The wide river that once ran through the city now filled the sinkhole, flooding the sunken centre and fundamentally changing the shape of Rhelea. The two branches of the ancient Old Roads that ran through the city like an ‘X’ now hung suspended over the surface water, seemingly unperturbed by the lack of soil beneath them. 

Early estimates suggested that Rhelea’s population had been cut in half. Of the hundred thousand who had once lived within its walls, just over fifty thousand remained. Although, when you considered that the slums had always been ignored by official counts, the death toll was probably far higher.

How many of those casualties were a result of the Monster, and how many died when Typh’s plan collapsed much of the city, Arilla would never know. That unanswerable question irked her to no end.

“All this just to kill one of them,” she said listlessly.

“Considering the level gain we’ve all experienced, there are many out there who would consider this a worthwhile trade,” Lord Traylan commented. “But you’re focusing on the wrong thing. You’re going to need to fix that if you want to last as Rhelea’s new master. The city can be rebuilt. The lake will actually help in the long term with trade and food issues, although the Old Roads presence will make building a waterfront interesting…”

“But that is besides the point,” he continued. “Look at the people, our audience. This is not the Rhelea I know, nor is it one that I care to be shackled to. A safe haven for nonhumans? A foreign garrison of monstrous beasts? Your dragon intends to make this city hers, and that is not something I can tolerate, not when I have been gifted this new lease on life.”

“What are you saying?” Arilla asked, slowly rising to her feet while her eyes scanned the large crowd that had gathered to watch them.

“I’m saying that as of this moment, I abdicate my position as governor of Rhelea in favour of my adopted daughter. I leave the city, its surrounding territories, my remaining knights, and debts to you, Arilla Traylan. May you live long and rule your people well,” the former Lord declared loud enough for their audience to hear.

“Well fuck,” the new Lord Traylan answered, while the old turned and unceremoniously walked away.

The large crowd of people—mostly veterans from the battle—clapped awkwardly having witnessed her loss and subsequent ascension. The sound of applause from so many different types of hands was odd, but nothing was quite so peculiar as watching an earth sprite slam its rocky fists together while everyone around it scattered, intent on shielding their ears from the loud impacts that echoed across the surface of the wide lake.

This was all hers now, her duty, her problem, so she had better get used to the new residents that now called it home.

She exhaled, and felt the dull throb of her wounds start to ache, now that the effects of the former Lord Traylan’s skills were wearing off. The Noble Slayer needed a healer, but an intrusive thought wormed its way into her head that she now needed a loan more. 

Arilla wasn’t sure how much had already been paid to Typh, but she was fairly sure that she had just inherited the vast majority of a fifteen thousand talent debt to her lover and sometimes liege.

She tried not to, but she couldn’t help herself. Arilla sat back down in the freezing cold water and laughed.

Gods, she was fucked.

***

Rhelea would never be the same, Arilla didn’t need to read the reports littering her table to know that. Fortunately, while the destruction had wiped out the affluent heart of the city, the majority of its less impressive residential and industrial districts were more or less untouched. While disputes regarding the true owners of the remaining properties were just getting started, the survivors from Rhelea’s fall finally had proper shelter. Weathering out the remainder of the winter had suddenly gotten much easier, and with the forges mostly intact, repairs to the city could begin almost immediately.

It was a surprising relief to read that her home would recover in time if given the chance. Although Arilla wasn’t sure how much of one it would get. It hadn’t even been a full day since their victory, let alone her duel, and already the lesser nobles were up in arms about her new title. Questions about her legitimacy and that of the deal which saw Typh’s army moving inside the ruined city’s limits were abound. More than a few bards had been caught taking coin to spread salacious rumours to undermine her rule, and despite Typh’s spies’ best efforts, it was only a matter of time before those whispered comments took on a life of their own.

Her rule. That was going to take some getting used to.

The muttering seemed to be quieter amongst those who had fought against the horrors, but for the many more who had either been rescued or simply sat out of the conflict, all they saw were more monsters and even longer lists of the dead. Her people needed something to unite them now that the immediate threat had passed, and the idea that more Monsters could come was not one that they fully comprehended. Humanity’s longstanding hatred for their new nonhuman neighbours could all too easily become the uniting force that would push them back towards unnecessary violence.

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Arilla sat back slumped in her chair, already exhausted just thinking about it—although maybe her fatigue had something to do with her recent stab wounds. 

The wide table in front of her was littered in grim reports so fresh that the ink wasn’t even dry. Her temporary house by the lakeside, which she shared with Typh, was failing to live up to its scenic views of the new waterfront. Rather than experiencing the peace and tranquillity she had naively seen in it, the building had swiftly descended into a madhouse filled with hurrying scribes and soldiers who came to petition her or Typh with urgent news and important requests. 

Liberally wrapped in bandages, she had to acknowledge that there was very little she could actually do. Without a fresh source of coin, she was incredibly dependent on her dragon partner to fund any and all decisions that couldn’t be accomplished with goodwill alone. Personally she didn’t mind this, especially given it was her first day as a Lord, but she could easily see how the subservience would grate on a man like the former Lord of Rhelea.

“What next?” Arilla asked.

“You know what's next,” Typh replied from her seat next to her, her one leg peeking out from the bottom of her golden dress.

“I don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to like it, but you still have to do it,” the dragon smiled.

“What do I even say to them?”

“Tell them the truth, like we practised. They have a right to know, and they need to hear it.”

Arilla groaned, but she knew that Typh was right. As much as she wanted to stall for time, the days of being anything less than proactive were long behind them both. Typh was the Lord Sovereign, some weird nonhuman mixture of a general and a king rolled into one. Someone that she and the leaders of the other species had sworn to obey. Although if she was remembering correctly, now that the Monster’s threat had passed they were due renegotiations as to the exact nature of their relationship going forwards. 

Now that Arilla was Lord of the ruined city it was her job to advocate on behalf of the Kingdom of Terythia, something she was horrendously ill-prepared for. The old Lord Traylan was right, Typh appeared to have no intentions of letting her newly acquired territory go. Whether that was her draconic possessiveness or forward thinking, Arilla didn’t know, but it didn’t really matter at this point as Rhelea’s recovery was utterly dependent on the dragon’s good will.

She rose from her chair, pausing to bend down and kiss Typh deeply. The Noble Slayer pulled back and offered Typh a weak smile before striding out of their house to face her adoring crowd. 

Almost immediately Arilla was confronted with a sea of expectant faces gathered around the banks of the lake. It struck her then just what it meant to actually be responsible for so many people. In the past when she had risked her life for theirs, it had been a choice, but forever more it would be her duty instead. There was a weight to that, and she felt like she understood Typh’s initial reluctance to stay and fight a little better for the revelation.

So many eyes were watching her. The gathered crowd was just a tiny fraction of the fifty thousand she was now responsible for, but she knew that the words she chose would find a way to reach them all. 

The people—her people—were scared. More than half of them had been killed over a period of a week with no notice and only garbled explanations as to why. It had been so fast that riders requesting aid from neighbouring cities were still weeks away from reaching their destinations.

Slowly, with mounting trepidation Arilla approached her marker. Two crossed lines in the dirt in front of a runic array that would have made her nervous a month ago. The magic involved was so utterly inconsequential by comparison to the rituals she had seen since. 

The warrior cleared her throat, wincing as the sound of it was projected out to the people gathered around the edge of the lake. Her mistake caused their faces to falter just a little bit as some of their hope drained away.

Arilla was not an experienced public speaker, neither did she consider herself to be a poet or a wordsmith, yet like it or not, these were her people. 

She took a breath and spoke.

“Astresia as we know it is ending.”

“Yesterday we sacrificed the heart of Rhelea and so many lives to put down a Monster so terrible that it united us with our greatest enemies. People—not monsters—who have hated us for our ancestors' crimes from far before the birth of our nation.” 

“For too long we have suffered in ignorance. Fighting the people who should have been our allies without ever even acknowledging them as anything more than beasts. So many of you are still coming to terms with this truth, and I understand that it is not an easy adjustment to make. Great harm has been done on both sides, but the time for recriminations is long past.”

“The Monster that was spawned in Rhelea’s square is dead, but it was ushered into Creation by traitors who called it an Angel. It was members of the church who brought it here, those who worship another one of its kind in old Epheria. These traitors want to spread the destruction we’ve experienced to every city on Creation, intent on replicating what happened here because they believe that the Angels will save us.”

“This will happen again unless we stop it. War is coming to Creation, not one between kingdoms and dynasties, but between the creatures that live by the system and the Monsters intent on destroying it. The enemy is strong, the strongest humanity has ever faced, but it is not hopeless because of you.”

“You are citizens of Rhelea, you are classers one and all. There are more master smiths here in this crowd than there are anywhere else on the entire continent, more engineers, labourers, farmers, tailors, miners, and you are all free.” 

“The nobles in their castles, with their oathsworn knights, have kept our numbers low so that they can maintain control, but in doing so they have made us weak. When the Monsters come again in Helion, Musama, Thytos, Nauranos… they will win. And they will win because we weren’t there. Because the noble lords who have ruled Terythia for a thousand years will send a hundred knights and tens of thousands of the recently classed to fight for them. Men and women so new to their skills they’ll be lucky to have more than five levels before they are sent to the grinder.”

“Unless we are there.”

“You don’t know me, but maybe you’ve heard the stories. Of how I was chosen by the Sovereign Dragon who united us as one. How I pulled hundreds of children out from the depths of Rhelea’s catacombs, and then again from within the walls when the city fell. How I marched at the front when we took back our home, facing the same horrors that so many of you have fought. I have shed so much blood for you, because I am you, just another orphan to grow up on Rhelea’s streets. Now that I’m its Lord, I’m asking for your help, because you are all free and I will never force you to do anything.”

“If you want to stay and try to rebuild your lives in Rhelea I won’t stop you; depths take me I won’t even tax you. If you want to take your loved ones somewhere safe, I—I know of a place where you’ll all be granted work, homes and safety—as much as anywhere is safe now. But, if you want to fight, if you want vengeance for what we have lost, then I don’t care if you’re tagged as an entertainer or a knight, come with me.”

“We have more classers here than anywhere else in Astresia, more raw stats between us than any other army. With the class stones we have and the resources we can create with our skills, we are the greatest force in the nation. If we march on Helion, taking class stones to every village we pass along the way, we can demand the changes that will prevent this from ever happening again.”

“And if they don’t listen to us… we’ll make them. We can drag Terythia kicking and screaming into a new age without the unclassed, so that when the Monsters come for us again, we’ll be ready for them!”

Arilla felt spent. The words had taken a lot more out of her than she’d thought they would. There was a long pause, and every moment that passed put greater strain on her ailing nerves, until someone clapped. The applause was quickly taken up, along with stomping feet and whooping howls and by the time it was deafening she couldn’t help but smile. The Lord of Rhelea raised her arms to the side and basked in the adulation of the crowd that seemed eager if anything to change Creation for the better.

Slowly, Typh came to her, hobbling out of their house on a thin cane.

“That wasn’t what we practised. I thought you were going to reassure them that everything was alright. To cement your place as another loyal little noble devoted to the crown. Assuage their fears, that sort of thing, not…” the dragon trailed off.

“Not threaten treason?” the warrior suggested.

“Yes. I didn’t think you’d do that.”

Arilla grinned. 

“It’s only treason if they try to stop me. Besides, I prefer the term revolution.”

Typh laughed, and it was a beautiful thing.

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