Warning: this story didn't properly began yet, Arquin isn't the protagonist!
I was already drafted here against my own will. Well that is not entirely true, but declining an invitation from "The Order" would be equivalent to spitting right in their face so I technically did not have a choice.
The Order is a council consisting of all rulers in the world that all discuss between each other how the world below them should act. At least that is how it is supposed to work, in reality there is a pretty strict hiearchy where the weak nations bend their votes and ideals to the stronger ones. There are 13 different chairs, which are more similar to miniature thrones, each seats one ruler. It was an unwritten rule that the further you were sitting from the entrance the more powerful your kingdom was. All the way back was sitting a man with his face now completely turned to me, a newcomer. Despite his rather old appearance, his pale eyes were piercing every inch of my body like he was throwing sharp knives… no, entire swords at me. I sat down near the entrance as I was new and the kingdom, if you could even call it that, that I was in command of was very weak because of a recent war conflict.
When I finally sat down Gars, the man all the way back, made a nonchalant gesture and others fell into silence, then he spoke. "Aqruin Defoe, you are the new ruler of the kingdom of Dras, am I correct?" Even though he knew who I am and held more power than anyone in the room he still went with the formalities of introducing me as a new member of the council which was surprising even for me. I answered like I was intimidated by him "Y-yes lord Gars, it's my pleasure to be honoured with the privilege of even being here" I'm pretty sure he did not saw entirely through me but he definitely noticed I wasn't acting in honesty. I was meanwhile waging who would be a good asset for me out of the very wide sortiment of rulers ( which unsurprisingly was really difficult since all of them had unimaginable wealth and status behind them, and to make the matter even more difficult I did not posses those same qualities ). Out of all the highest risk but also the highest return was obviously that old man Gars, while he was fairly leaning into idea of peace, his nation of Grammas still possesses one of the strongest armed forced in the world for the purpose od "keeping the peace", that was pretty ironic in my opinion. But I mustn't get distracted by him, just keep up the act of little scared Arquin Defoe locked up with people unimaginably smarter and more powerful than him. Which was of course not true, if they were really that smart they would've looked more into the collapse of my country rather than simple "previous king was incapable of ruling and I ended up with a wrecked bankrupt country and dead royal family". Well … to give some credit due, that old man calling himself "The King" was incapable ruler and the royal family is dead, they just didn't die the way the public thinks, I killed them after all.
I still remember how these fools reacted once I became the king:
"Welcome Arquin to The Order. We have heard about the situation of your newly inherited country and offer help. For the loyalty of your kingdom to |Kingdom| we guarantee both military support to end the conflicts in your land and also loans to resolve the crushing debt.
Best regards
- |Ruler|
All of them were almost identical, all without as much as a pinch of emotion. All hoping to get even more power. Their greediness displayed shamelessly on their faces as each of them looked at me.
Of course I declined, the last thing that I would need was having one of these power hungry privileged idiots watching me.
I quickly scanned over the room. Finally I made my mind, there are 16 individuals in this room besides me. One of them is the old man Gars, he is out of the question for now, any sort of relationship with him would result in his and only his profit.
That makes 15 candidates, I can already remove 7 of them since their countries are mostly hostile to other countries which makes cooperation nearly impossible
That leaves 8 candidates, 4 of them are too far away from Dras to be of any real strategic value
Good, I narrowed them down to 4 possible candidates. Elan 5th of the Wasoppert family leading the kingdom of Fosërċen, relatively strong country that specialises in Magical equipment, but that could be a double edged sword, their biggest buyer is the kingdom of Reines, a relatively small military state, it is also a vassal state of Grams ( it basically serves more as his army instead of a vassal nation ) but it is worth the risk
Good. I should focus on her first, if all fails I still have 3 more contenders. Well now I have what I needed, I just need to sit through the rest of the meeting.
"And now the main topic we hopefully all came here for" Gars's voice basically thundered through the chamber. Even I shook a little, I did not expect thar.
"As you may or may not know from our earlier meetings I specifically prohibited any of you or your inferiors to contact Req! Now I would have normally believed that all of you, in the best interest of your own, would respect the decision I made, however I have a very strong suspicion that this agreement was broken." He sounded way more agitated than his words showed. Who is this Req? Since Gars didn't say his last name it is likely he is of common birth. Why would someone like Gars be concerned about him, yet alone about him living in peace?