Chapter 96: The Golden Puppet (Part 3) — A True King
The sky over the Durmount border was the color of a fresh bruise—purples and deep, sickly blues clashing against the orange rot of the setting sun. But Leornars didn't see the beauty of the horizon. His world had narrowed to a single, vibrant hue: Red.
He stood precariously on the spine of the wyvern, the beast's leathery wings beating a heavy, rhythmic pulse that echoed the drumming in his ears. His hands were slick. The blood was starting to dry, tugging at the fine hairs on his skin, creating a map of iron and death that stained his royal sleeves.
A sound bubbled up from his diaphragm—a dry, rattling wheeze that transformed into a jagged, manic giggle. Then, like a dam bursting, a full-blown hysterical laugh tore through the air, drowning out the whistling wind.
He began to move. It wasn't a walk; it was a macabre, stumbling dance.
Clap. Tap. Slide. His boots drummed against the wyvern's obsidian scales in a mocking staccato. He spun, his arms wide as if trying to embrace the very air he was polluting with his presence.
"Again and again and again and again!" Leornars screamed at the clouds. He spun on one heel at the very edge of the wyvern's back, defying gravity with the grace of a madman. "When does the script change, Althelia?! When do the actors get to go home? Is blood the only ink we have to write history? Is murder the only door that leads to peace?!"
He stopped mid-spin, his head tilting at an angle so sharp it looked as if his neck might snap. His eyes were wide, the pupils blown into pinpricks of shivering light.
"Hey, Althelia... answer me this. In all your infinite calculations, in all your cold logic... tell me: what makes a 'good' king?"
"Wrong!" Leornars barked, the word turning into a snarl that showed his teeth. "Utterly, statistically wrong! A throne isn't a seat of power, Althelia—it's a fancy chair! Wood, steel, gold... it's all garbage! It's heavy, cold, and dead!"
He began to dance again, his movements becoming more erratic, his claps louder.
"A real king is a sacrifice! He is the fool who throws his own soul into the furnace so his people can stay warm for one more night. It's the vision, Althelia! The ambition to see a world where children don't know the smell of burning villages! It's the respect—the terrifying, beautiful weight of a million lives resting on your shoulders. That is what makes a KING!"
"Then let them watch us!" Leornars laughed, his voice cracking with a terrifying joy. "Let them fear us! We were born to kneel in the dirt, but we learned how to bite. I've got chains in my bloodstream, Althelia. I've got the hands of gods at my throat. They fed us lies for generations and called it 'hope.' They built walls out of our fear and soaked their prayers in our blood!"
He stopped dancing and looked at his hands, his expression suddenly turning cold, the mania replaced by a chilling clarity.
"If this world only understands the language of force, then I will speak to it in the dialect of extinction. If they want a monster to fear, I'll give them one. I am the White Plague, after all. A plague doesn't negotiate. It simply... ends things."
"Wait—" Leornars started, but his voice died in his throat.
His body suddenly jerked, his muscles locking in place. The madness, the fire, the dancing—it all vanished in a heartbeat. His face became a terrifying, blank void. As his consciousness was forcibly shoved into the depths of his core, his body slipped from the wyvern's back.
He didn't fall.
He drifted.
His crimson eyes began to glow, the red bleeding away into a cold, synthetic, ethereal pink. The air around him hummed with a different frequency—no longer the chaotic mana of a dying man, but the precise, humming energy of a machine.
She looked down at the blood-stained hands she now inhabited. Deep within the subconscious layers she was currently suppressing, an echo of his last coherent thought remained trapped: 'If I have to lose my mind so that no more parents have to receive their children in a body bag, then sanity is a small price to pay.'
Althelia processed the sentiment in 0.002 seconds. To her, it was an inefficient use of emotional energy. But she would honor the directive.
She descended through the clouds like a falling star, her descent silent and predatory.
On the blood-soaked plains below, the high-tier undead waited in the shadow of the mountains. Zhyelena stood with her arms crossed, her eyes fixed on the sky. Beside her, Bellian stood like a statue of dread.
As the figure of their King descended, they both flinched. The aura wasn't right. It wasn't the roaring, suffocating heat of Leornars's rage. It was... silent. Like the vacuum of space.
Althelia landed softly, her boots making no sound on the gravel. She stood tall, her eyes glowing with that strange, artificial pink light.
"Undead Servants of the King," Althelia said, her voice a monotone chime that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. "I have finished calculating the presidential outcomes and tactical maneuvers required to dismantle the Durmount Kingdom from the inside out."
Zhyier, the Sealing Undead, stepped out from the shadows of a nearby crag. His daggers were already in his hands, spinning with a nervous, lethal energy. He stopped ten feet away, his nostrils flaring.
"Lord Leornars?" Zhyier's voice was a low growl. "Something is wrong. Your scent... it's gone. You smell like cold iron and empty air."
"Zhyier. The Sealing Undead," Althelia addressed him without moving her head, her gaze fixed on the horizon. "Your role is critical. You are to weave a grand-scale 'Silence and Seal' barrier over the nobility's establishments. Your directive: Do not let a single member of the ruling class escape the purge. Their blood is required for the transition of power."
Zhyier didn't move. He lowered his center of gravity, the tips of his blades glowing with a dark, sealing light. "Who are you? And what have you done with the one I swore my soul to? If you're a ghost wearing his skin, I'll seal you into a grain of sand."
"I am Althelia. His inbuilt assistant," she replied calmly. "Lord Leornars is currently submerged in his own mindscape. His ego was beginning to fragment under the weight of his perceived sins. I have placed him in a 'Stasis Field' within his own consciousness to prevent total ego-dissolution. He will be 'offline' for approximately twenty minutes while I stabilize his neural pathways."
Zhyelena stepped forward, her hand resting on the hilt of her sword, her eyes searching the blank face of her King. "Twenty minutes? And in that time, you expect us to follow a machine?"
"I am the Voice of the Throne," Althelia countered. "I possess every tactical memory, every spell, and every ambition Lord Leornars has ever held. I am simply the most efficient version of him. Do you wish to win this war, or do you wish to indulge in sentimentalities?"
The tension in the air was thick enough to choke a living man. Zhyelena looked at Bellian, then back at the "Puppet King." She sensed the truth in the cold mana—the King was still there, but he was locked behind a door he couldn't open.
"Fine," Zhyelena sighed. "What are our orders, Althelia?"
"Simply do as I say. We begin with the capital's supply lines."
While his body moved like a puppet under Althelia's cold guidance, Leornars was falling.
He was sinking through a sea of thick, viscous ink. There was no sound here, only the weight of the dark. Faces drifted past him—pale, distorted masks of the people he had killed since the fall of Luiphonia. He saw the soldiers from Ziwah, their eyes hollowed out by fear. He saw the innocents caught in the crossfire of his "necessary" wars.
They didn't scream. They just watched him fall.
Is this my soul? he wondered. A graveyard of everyone I've stepped on to reach the throne?
Suddenly, the falling stopped. His boots hit solid ground with a soft thud.
The ink vanished, replaced by a sky of eternal twilight. He was standing in a field that stretched to the edge of the universe. It was an ocean of Red Spider Lilies—the flowers of death and rebirth. Millions of them swayed in a wind he couldn't feel, their thin, curling petals looking like fingers reaching for his ankles.
He knelt, his fingers brushing the stems. He plucked one, holding it up to the pale light.
"Rebirth and death," he whispered. "The world thinks it dictates when a flower withers. The world thinks it owns the garden."
He looked at the flower, then crushed it in his fist.
"If I fall today, I don't want history to call me brave. I don't want statues of a 'hero.' I want them to call me proof. Proof that fear can be broken if you're willing to go far enough. If freedom is meant to be a chain that breaks us, then I'll shatter all of creation. I'll break the world before I let it break one more child."
He stood up, the lilies around him turning from red to a brilliant, defiant gold.
"Althelia... let me back in. I'm not done being a monster yet."
Miles away, Stacian was leading a scouting party when her entire world shifted.
The "tether"—that invisible, humming cord of light that connected her soul to Leornars—went silent. It didn't snap, but it became cold, like a wire of ice.
"Lord Leornars?!"
Her voice cracked the air. Without a word to her subordinates, she leapt into the sky. Her cyan eyes flared with such intensity they looked like twin stars.
"ALL OF CREATION: RELOCATE AND REVOKE ACCESS TO THEE! LANDS, AIR, AND WATERS!"
She channeled every ounce of her mana into a single, desperate search. "ULTIMATE SKILL: LOGILIA SCAN!"
A massive, shimmering green dome of light exploded outward from her, rippling across the mountains and forests like a physical wave. It scanned every blade of grass, every heartbeat, searching for the warmth of her King.
She found him at the border. But the signature was wrong—it was mechanical, precise, and devoid of the "heat" she loved.
She moved like a lightning strike.
One moment she was on the horizon; the next, she appeared directly behind the pink-eyed figure of Leornars. Her hand erupted in a terrifying, obsidian flame—the "Abyssal Fire" that could consume even the soul. She slammed her hand onto his shoulder, her fingers digging into the fabric of his cloak.
"Who are you?" Stacian's voice was a guttural growl, raw with grief and murderous intent. "Why are you wearing his face? Give me my King back, or I'll burn this entire reality until even the abyss doesn't remember your name!"
Althelia didn't flinch. She didn't even turn around. "I am Althelia. The King's personal inbuilt assistant. Lord Leornars is currently unconscious as his mental state stabilizes. You may direct your inquiries to me."
Stacian froze. The dark flames on her hand flickered but didn't die. "The voice... I've heard him talking to you. In the middle of the night, when he thinks he's alone. You're the one inside his head."
"I am his logic," Althelia replied. "I am currently managing his biological and magical functions to prevent a total collapse of the Avangard power structure."
Stacian slowly let go of his shoulder, her hand trembling. "Is he... is he in pain?"
"He is dreaming," Althelia said. "But the dream is necessary. Now, I require your assistance. Gather the normal knights of Avangard. I have already summoned the undead, but for the optics of this conquest, a human face is required for the history books. We cannot rule through terror alone; we must rule through the appearance of order."
"I've already sent word," Stacian said, her eyes never leaving his face. "They'll be here in minutes. But Althelia... if you hurt him, I don't care if you're part of his soul. I will tear you out."
"Your loyalty is noted," Althelia said. "And it is... efficient."
Suddenly, the body of the King began to stagger. The ethereal pink glow in his eyes shattered like glass, and for a terrifying second, his eyes went completely black. Then, the deep, haunting crimson returned—but this time, it was wet with tears.
Leornars gasped, his lungs burning as if he'd just surfaced from miles underwater. He clutched his chest, his knees buckling.
"Lord Leornars!" Stacian caught him before he hit the dirt. She pulled him into her lap, her own tears finally breaking free. "You're back... you're back!"
Leornars blinked, the image of the Spider Lilies still burned into his retinas. He looked up and saw Stacian. Her cyan eyes were the only things that made sense in a world of blood and machines.
"Hey there..." he whispered, his voice cracked and hollow. He reached up, his hand shaking as he wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. "Don't cry, Stacian. I told you... I'm the White Plague. Plagues don't die just because the world wants them to."
"I thought you left me," she sobbed, clutching him against her armor so tightly he could hear her heart racing. "I thought I was all alone again! I felt the tether go cold, and I thought... I thought you'd finally broken."
Leornars pulled himself up, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in the crook of her neck. He breathed in the scent of her—the scent of home, of safety, of a reason to keep his sanity.
"Don't ever think that," he murmured. "I'm not going anywhere. Not until the world is safe for you. Even if I have to burn my own soul to keep the fire going... I'm right here. I'm always right here."
Zhyier and Zhyelena watched from a distance, the tension slowly bleeding out of the air. The King was back. But as he stood up, leaning on Stacian for support, they saw it in his eyes.
He wasn't the same man who had started the dance on the wyvern. He was something harder. Something colder.
He was a True King. And Durmount was about to find out exactly what that meant.
"Althelia," Leornars whispered in the privacy of his own mind.
"Don't let me dance like that again. Next time... just let me finish the job."
Leornars looked at his knights, then at his undead, and finally at the distant spires of the Durmount capital.
"Let's go," he said. "We have a kingdom to save. And a world to offend."