Crownless Tyrant-Chapter 32: Eyes of Verdict

Viridius was collecting the dead.

Alistair stepped forward from the edge of the crater, overlooking Viridius from above.

The readings came back slightly off, as they always would from now on, and he quietly adjusted for them.

Viridius moved through the wreckage that Due’s detonation had left behind.

He was carefully picking through the remnants of soldiers, setting each piece down with both hands.

A helmet was placed upright. A sword lay flat instead of being left buried in rubble. A piece of armor was removed from the debris and set aside, as if it still belonged to someone.

His right eye was closed. It had been closed since Alistair first spotted him.

However, the closed eye was not resting. Alistair could feel it on his scan.

Whatever Viridius’s Characteristic was doing behind that eyelid, it registered as something actively running at low intensity, pulsing steadily without being directed at anything in particular.

Alistair furrowed his brows.

He knew Alistair was watching. Alistair was certain of that.

Finally, their gazes met. Viridius looked at Alistair from below, one of his eyes closed.

They both maintained this position silently for a minute; both of their gazes had said many different things. Eventually, Alistair climbed down from the high ground.

He walked into the crater without rushing.

The ground here was wrong, split and reshaped by the obligations Due had detonated.

Rock faces jutted at angles that hadn’t existed before dawn.

His boots crunched on gravel that had been solid stone hours ago.

Viridius finished placing the last piece of armor. Then he straightened his back, turned, and looked at Alistair directly.

Black Rune Armor, with green trims. Alistair had heard of it but never seen it in person.

It is the rarest equipment on the continent, thousands of times rarer than Rune Weapons.

The surface of it shifted slightly with each breath Viridius took, like something alive underneath the metal.

’So this is Therasia’s strongest.’

"Two Sovereign Debts in a single morning," said Viridius, his voice level. "Sargus was denied, but Valve activated. That’s a statement from the Duke, whether he intended it as one or not."

Alistair said nothing. He kept his scan on the closed eye.

"Your partner’s trap killed three hundred soldiers and reshaped the terrain of a region that has been contested for decades," Viridius continued. "Your own Domain Mode scattered a defensive formation that took Therasia six years to construct. And you accomplished both of these things while operating a faction of two active combatants."

He paused briefly.

"The Record will be generous about this. They always are with things that make good reading."

"Is that why you’re here?" asked Alistair.

"I’m here because the soldiers in this crater served under me before they were reassigned to this campaign," Viridius replied. "I came to collect what’s left of them."

Alistair looked at the carefully arranged helmets, swords, and armor pieces behind him. Viridius had been thorough.

"You could have done that after I left," said Alistair.

"I could have," Viridius agreed.

He didn’t explain why he hadn’t. The silence between them settled, and Alistair felt the Equalizer running, slightly off, returning readings he had to manually fix.

The exhaustion from the morning was deeper than it had been even twenty minutes ago. Domain Mode’s cost was still arriving.

Then Viridius opened his right eye.

Alistair felt it instantly.

The Equalizer registered something reading him in return, an assessment coming from a direction that wasn’t physical. It wasn’t an attack.

In some ways, it was worse than an attack, because what it did was accurate.

’Verdict.’

Viridius’s open eye saw things as they actually were. Not as they appeared, not as they presented themselves to casual observation.

As they were, without defense, without the adjustments that make a person’s true state invisible.

Alistair felt the permanent miscalibration become visible.

The morning’s full cost, everything he had spent since the start of this campaign, every fight, every Domain Mode activation, every hour of accumulated damage.

Viridius saw all of it in the time it took to blink.

Then he closed his eyes.

Alistair was unsettled. He wouldn’t have admitted it, but the feeling was there regardless.

"You’re running on less than you’re showing," Viridius said. He said it plainly, without satisfaction or cruelty. "The Domain Mode damaged your Characteristic. You’ll compensate for it, and you’ll do it well enough that most people won’t notice."

He looked at Alistair evenly.

"But I’ll notice. And the people the Echelon sends to evaluate you will notice."

Alistair clicked his tongue. "Is that a threat?"

"It’s a fact," said Viridius. "What comes next between your faction and Therasia won’t be decided by one morning. It’ll be decided by whether you can sustain what you’ve started. I’m telling you that the instrument you’re relying on is damaged."

He paused for a moment before adding, "That’s professional respect. Take it or leave it."

Alistair stared at him, and Viridius stared back.

Hearing this, Alistair’s eyes narrowed slightly. He drew his Rune Sword.

"Since we’re being professional," said Alistair, "you should know I’m not leaving this crater without understanding how I match against Therasia’s strongest."

Viridius looked at the sword, then back at Alistair’s face.

"Edgeform mastery," Viridius said calmly. "Shatterpoint, Class A. And the Characteristic you just felt."

He drew his own weapon, a longsword with a green tint to the metal that matched his armor.

"You’re welcome to find out."

Instantly, the fight began without a signal.

Viridius moved first. His Edgeform was beyond anything Alistair had encountered this morning, beyond what Valve’s mastery had been, beyond what Sargus’s aggression had suggested was possible with the discipline.

Each strike arrived where it needed to, with the force it needed, at the exact moment it was most difficult to answer.

Alistair blocked the first.

Equalizer forced constant correction, each reading coming back slightly wrong before he could respond.

The half-second that correction cost him was the half-second Viridius used to press forward.

Alistair’s grip tightened as he pushed back.

The Shatterpoint added another layer entirely.

Points of concentrated pressure detonated at contact, not on Alistair’s body but on his weapon, on his armor, on the ground beneath his feet.

Each detonation was small and precise, targeted at the structural integrity of whatever it touched.

Alistair took a step back, grunting, then forced himself forward again.

’He’s not wasting anything.’

However, Equalizer matched Viridius’s output despite the miscalibration.

The raw power was equivalent, even if the precision was compromised.

Following that, Alistair pressed where Viridius’s discipline created openings, finding the gaps between Edgeform mastery and Shatterpoint deployment, those fractions of seconds where both disciplines cannot operate at their peak simultaneously.

He swung his Rune Sword toward Viridius’s exposed side.

Viridius redirected the strike with the flat of his longsword and brought the Shatterpoint pressure directly into Alistair’s forearm guard.

The armor cracked. Alistair pulled back, then struck again from a lower angle.

Viridius blocked it cleanly.

’He’s reading Equalizer. He knows where the delay is.’

Alistair adjusted his stance and attacked three times in quick succession.

The first was blocked. The second forced Viridius to shift his footing.

The third landed on the green Rune Armor and accomplished nothing.

Fortunately, Equalizer held. Unfortunately, the miscalibration meant holding was all it could manage against someone of this level.

They both recognized it at the same time, that moment in a fight where continuing would cost more than it would reveal. Neither of them was winning.

Viridius stepped back first. One slow step backwards.

Seeing this, Alistair let him go as he was already exhausted.

"This is all you could do?"

Viridius looked at him for another moment.

Then he sheathed his weapon and walked out of the crater on the far side without looking back.

Alistair stood in the crater alone.

The grey world stretched in every direction, the Equalizer’s scan running its slightly wrong circuit over everything around him. It wasn’t even noon.

He sheathed his Rune Sword and turned toward the territory.

Elara was at the edge.

She stood there watching him, and Alistair couldn’t quite read the expression on her face.

She had seen some of this morning from wherever she’d been positioned, further back than she was told to be.

Seeing this, Alistair slowed his pace slightly.

She looked at him for a long moment, then turned and walked back into the territory ahead of him without saying a word.

Alistair followed her.

Far away, at the retreating formation’s edge, a figure paused.

Alistair caught it on his scan before it disappeared from range.

Valve had turned back once and looked in the direction of the territory where Alistair had been standing.

Then he kept walking, and the scan eventually lost him.