Barbarian's Adventure in a Fantasy World-Chapter 353: Peace, and After (1)

Two weeks earlier. The Tower Master stood before the gate of the Imperial capital. The moment he had delivered word to Ketal, he had turned his steps toward the Empire.

“It has been a long time. It is as large as ever.”

Wonder edged his voice. The wall that guarded the capital rose so high it seemed to touch the clouds. Old wards had been scribed into every stone and knotted through every seam. Even he would have found no easy path through. That same wall encircled the entire capital, sealing it like a clasped fist. The inner city lay perfectly hidden, so much so that the place could have been mistaken for a prison.

After a short tour of the ramparts with an appraising eye, the Tower Master approached the gate. A guard stepped forward and asked in a low voice, “Name and purpose.”

“It is I, you whelp.”

“The Tower Master,” the guard replied without a blink.

Even with the Tower Master standing in front of him, the man showed no particular emotion. He spoke as if this were a routine errand. “What business brings you?”

“I am here to see His Imperial Majesty.”

“I will convey your words inside. Please wait.”

The guard passed through the gate and vanished. The master of the greatest tower, the teacher of every mage on the continent in all but title, stood like a traveling merchant awaiting leave to enter. He did not complain. Every visit to the Empire had required this ritual.

In time, the guard returned. “You may enter.”

“Thorough as always,” the Tower Master muttered.

Escorted by the guard, he crossed the threshold and stepped into the capital. The veiled heart of the Empire opened before his eyes. It was quiet. Streets ran spotless, corners held no dust, and even the air seemed pressed flat and polished. The Tower Master let the words slip out.

“There is never a trace of humanity in this place. Cold to the core.”

As he walked, a question rose, and he put it to the guard.

“Where are the people?”

No one lined the avenues. On past visits, the capital had been sparse, but never empty. Today, at midday, not even a passing shadow touched the paving stones.

It was strange, yet the guard’s answer came as a stone. “It is not something the Tower Master needs to concern himself with.”

“You have always been a strange breed,” the Tower Master said, and let it rest. If they had not moved when Hell touched the Mortal Realm, it was no surprise they kept their streets empty.

With more checks than he cared to count, he entered the imperial citadel and at last gained a private audience.

“It has been some time,” the Tower Master said.

“You have come, Tower Master,” the Emperor replied.

He sat upon his throne with the tranquil composure of a painted figure, his gaze cast downward in quiet authority. He looked far too young to rule an empire of such breadth—but that had always been the case. In the Tower Master’s memory, the Emperor’s face had not changed in decades, not even by a single line.

“You have swallowed some elixir of unaging, have you?” the Tower Master said. “You never grow old.”

“What is your purpose?” the Emperor asked him.

“My purpose?” the Tower Master repeated. He snorted, as if offended more by the calm than the question. “You know the world outside. Hell set foot on the Mortal Realm. The Demon King’s seal broke. This plane nearly collapsed.”

Through all of it, the Empire had not stirred.

“Why did you not take any action?” the Tower Master asked the Emperor.

His voice filled the hall and returned to him. Kingdoms had fallen while waiting for a hand from the Empire. Had the Empire moved, the losses would have been less.

“Do not think to answer me with silence again,” the Tower Master said. “This time I will have your reasons.”

He did not soften his stare. The Emperor regarded him a breath and spoke.

“Why would the Empire have needed to take action?”

“What...?” The Tower Master had not prepared himself for that answer. It stunned him into stillness.

“The Demon King descended,” he said. “If fortune had turned, Hell would have ruled the Mortal Realm. The gods would have been cast out. We would have worn chains forever. And you ask why you should move. Are you serious?”

Anger bled into his voice. The Emperor’s expression did not change.

“In the end, what happened outside was a struggle for hegemony between gods and demons,” the Emperor said. “Whichever side won, why should it concern me?”

The Tower Master faltered. The thought was crooked enough to catch the mind.

“From the beginning, we serve neither gods nor demons,” the Emperor went on. It made no difference to him which flag flew. “We serve another.”

“What did you say...?”

“We serve our great Abomination. The Empire was made for them. Our purpose has been to revive them, to call them to descend upon the Mortal Realm again. None of you understood.”

His voice turned languid, almost dreamy.

“But something else intruded. The being that won swallowed us through the channel that binds us. Our devotion to our great Abomination was fouled. It is a sad story. Or no. Perhaps it does not matter. It is happy in its way.”

The Emperor whispered to himself, though no trace of human tone remained in his voice. The sound had twisted into something hollow and wrong, and the words seemed to slip past meaning altogether, spilling from a mouth that no longer knew how to speak.

“What are you saying?” the Tower Master demanded.

“The conclusion is this,” the Emperor said, smiling.

It was a bent smile, not meant for a human face. In that instant, the Tower Master understood that the person before him was no longer a person.

“We were never the Mortal Realm’s allies to begin with.”

The Tower Master moved without deciding to move. Magic rose around him like a shield. However, It was too slow. The palace changed first. What had hidden itself in the shape of matter sloughed that shape away.

“You...,” the Tower Master said.

A voice rose, vast and terrible, its very sound steeped in wrongness. To hear it was to feel something inside the mind fracture, as though thought itself were being stripped apart.

This cannot be right, the Tower Master thought.

He had felt this presence once before—within Ketal. The thing Ketal had wrestled with, the Abomination, had carried a sound much like this one, a resonance that seemed to hollow out the air around it.

Something from the Demon Realm had swallowed the Empire whole. Yet the presence he faced now was more foreign, more bizarre than the Abomination inside Ketal. It spoke like silk sliding over a blade.

“You will do. Become the stone of my foundation,” the Emperor said.

“You foul—”

The Tower Master threw magic over himself like a cloak. The warped palace fell upon him.

***

Ketal propped his chin on the table and looked as if boredom had weight.

“When does the Tower Master mean to come back?” he muttered.

Two weeks had passed since the lich had departed for the Empire. He had said a week would suffice, yet no word had returned.

Milayna, seated at his side, spoke in her unhurried way. “Perhaps His Imperial Majesty has detained him. The Emperor is famous for being capricious. Now that the war is over, they may be having a long and heavy conversation.”

Ketal had returned to the Kingdom of Denian with Arkemis. Milayna had received him with a smile bright enough to throw light into the hall. They had spoken through everything that had happened, and now he was resting at her family’s manor.

“Even so, this is taking longer than expected,” Ketal said. “I wanted to see the Empire.”

He made a frustrated sound in his throat. The Empire, the greatest power on the continent, kept itself wrapped in shrouds. He wanted to see what lay under them, but the Tower Master had not returned, so there was nothing to do but sit and wait. He turned to Milayna.

“Is there no way for you to get us into the Empire?”

“Impossible,” she answered at once. “Not even a king of a realm, not even a Saintess of a great church, receives leave by right. Those who enter the capital are people like the Tower Master, Heroes at the height of their class, or the rare Transcendents whom the Emperor has granted permission.”

“It truly is a place under a veil,” Ketal said.

Everything was hidden. Milayna lowered her voice, as if afraid that the air itself might carry it away.

“Everything in the Empire is concealed. Those who know anything can be counted on one hand.”

“How is that possible? If one rules a domain wide enough to be called an empire, people are bound to cross borders. No matter how tight the control, you cannot blind every road,” Ketal said.

“In general, that is true. But the Empire is different. All of its strength is bound inside the capital.”

To the Empire, everything beyond the capital was treated little better than a colony. It demanded tribute but offered neither aid nor supply in return. Ketal’s eyebrows rose at the thought, a faint trace of disbelief passing through his expression.

“You rule that much land with one city,” he said. “Is that possible?”

“They have the strength to do it.”

In truth, there had been a kingdom that, like Ketal, believed the Empire could not possibly govern such vast lands. They had decided the Empire could not police the breadth of its territory, withheld tribute, and gathered their army, including two Transcendents, certain that the Empire would either fail to respond or fail to break them.

However, a week later, that kingdom ceased to exist.

“No one knows the method,” Milayna said. “The royal city vanished without a foundation left. It happened in a single day.”

After that, no one refused the Empire’s orders. Ketal touched his chin and considered it with interest. “So they are very strong.”

“Even the Tower Master does not ignore the Empire’s decrees,” Milayna said. “Some whisper there are many Heroes within the capital. That sounds unlikely, but I cannot say it is impossible.”

Her voice denied the rumor, yet her eyes did not. The Empire had that kind of weight.

“If they are that strong, why didn’t they do anything in the war with Hell?” Ketal asked her.

“I cannot say.”

It was the question everyone asked. He pressed a little further.

“Is it their habit to remain still?”

“They rarely act, but this time I thought they would. It was a crisis for the entire Mortal Realm.” Milayna’s voice carried the thought that any sane person would have had. She did not let suspicion take root. “They must have had a purpose of their own. Perhaps they were handling the demons moving in secret.”

It sounded reasonable. The Empire was a thing of the Mortal Realm. If this realm fell, the Empire would stagger. It was hard to imagine they truly watched without lifting a finger. Most people believed the Empire had answered in some way that could not be seen.

“Perhaps,” Ketal said. A curious light settled in his eyes.

***

Two more days flowed by. Still, the Tower Master did not return. Ketal waited because he had no other choice.

Then, a familiar face found him in the manor’s reception hall.

“Elene,” Ketal said. “It has been a while.”

“It has,” she said.

She had hair the color of coin-gold and eyes the blue of a deep sea. When Ketal first met her, she was just a princess, but now she was a queen, whose flesh had been replaced with Nano. It had been a long time since they last met. She looked a little tired, but otherwise unchanged.

“How have you been?” Ketal asked her with a genuine smile.

“Much has happened,” she said quietly. “They placed the blame upon me. A rebellion rose in my name. Yet even so, I remain the queen.”

Her face did not shift. Her outer form had not altered, but the weather inside her had moved far from where it had been.

“You have worked hard.”

“Not as hard as you,” she said with a wry curve of the lips. Whatever her burden had been, it did not weigh the same as facing the Demon King.

“What brings you to me?” Ketal asked her.

“I have something to report,” Elene said.

She lifted her arm. Ketal watched, and after a moment, he understood what he was seeing.

“You are shaking.”

The tremble was so fine the eye barely caught it. Even so, her arm was not still.

“My body is made of a being from the Demon Realm, the thing you call Nano. It obeys my control completely. That has not been a problem.”

She lowered her arm.

“However, for about three weeks now, the Nano that compose my body have begun to tremble, as if responding to something. It feels almost like... joy, or perhaps something closer to liberation.”

“Liberation, you say,” Ketal repeated.

The word touched an old thought. In the same instant, the System window unfolded in front of his eyes, familiar and foreign all at once.

[Quest# 791]

[Respond to the Quest.]

[Respond to the Quest. Respond to the Quest. Respond to the Quest. Respond to the Quest.]

[Warning: if you do not respond, the world you wish for will collapse.]