Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Side Story

A heart-wrenching clamor cut through the atmosphere, marking barely the beginning of the contention.

“Enemy of the revolution!”

“Fire! Charge!”

Under the slogan of “enemy of the revolution,” an endless wave of insurgent combatants intercepted Dale’s advance.

Barriers of pikes and firearms lined up in formation, while armored warriors with mystical protections progressively joined the defense.

Being a stronghold on the confines with the Empire, the contingents of the rebellion concentrated massively, flooding the terrain with their troops.

Despite the magnitude, Dale did not show the slightest perturbation.

“I still find no sense in this revolt.”

“Open fire! Execute the traitor of the revolution!”

Bang! Bang!

The dark smoke coming from the flintlock muskets clouded the environment, but the panorama remained unalterable.

Crack!

A solid barrier of frost emerged abruptly from the ground beneath Dale, containing the impact of the gunpowder while he opened his arms.

Shatter!

The frozen structure pulverized into a thousand pieces, projecting like shrapnel in all directions. The armor and organization of the sublevated contingent proved useless against such an onslaught.

Laments multiplied and the pavement was stained red.

“What element so glorious and unblemished does this movement possess for them to adore it with such fervor?” Dale inquired, truly intrigued.

After posing the question, he prosecuted his march with a firm step, transiting in the midst of the wounded insurgents who writhed on the ground.

“Liberty, equality, fraternity…!”

Right there, one of the dying combatants attempted to defend his cause. Dale emitted a slight ironic chuckle upon hearing him.

“Is that what you intend to call a revolution?”

“Our goal is… to dissolve the tyranny of the sovereign and the aristocracy… so that there is an absolute parity among us…”.

The militia fighter’s speech choked on the vital fluid that gushed from his lips, sealing his last words in this world.

Dale raised his sight to evaluate the surroundings.

The main access to the fortress remained closed, the bridge structure was raised, and the defenders stationed on the parapets aimed projectiles and firearms toward his position.

“Neither liberty, nor equality, nor fraternity,” Dale sentenced with absolute contempt.

—

The plaza of Troie, a vital fortification for the insurgents on the border demarcation with the Empire, constituted an enclave of supreme value that they did not intend to cede under any circumstance.

Therefore, the volume and skill of the army stationed at said point exceeded common standards.

The notion that a solitary combatant could decimate a hundred opponents belonged to the terrain of myths. At least, that was the established logic.

Nonetheless, when the vanguard guard stationed on the outskirts of the city was pulverized by a solitary individual, unleashing the desperate resistance of the urban center and its garrison, the skirmish mutated swiftly into an absolute conflagration.

The subject extended his extremity and the remains of the fallen of the revolution began to reanimate.

That army of corpses, which should have remained immobile, crossed the waters of the fortified moat and began the ascent up the exterior walls.

A storm of gunpowder, stony projectiles, and incandescent alloys fell, but the advance resulted imperturbable.

No matter the damages suffered, the exposed fractures, or the destroyed tissues, the walking specters did not slacken their pace. Even when their bodies dissolved in the boiling metal, they persisted in their march.

To the defenders guarding Troie, that represented a fright indecipherable to the human mind.

Panic and bewilderment propagated swiftly, but the situation did not vary.

It was not a matter of complex invocations that demanded an exhaustive ritual to take life. It was enough to infuse them with a motile spark to force them to march.

With that, it was sufficient.

They reached the top of the walls, devoured the marksmen stationed in the heights, and integrated them into the ranks of the spectral host, annihilating anyone who interposed.

The adversaries of the sovereign.

The withered entities crowned the defenses and unleashed an implacable butchery, nullifying the effectiveness of swords and firearms.

Unless their extremities were reduced to unusable fragments, these creatures never interrupted their mission nor sought repose.

“What… what kind of nightmare is this?”.

“In what way is an individual capable of manifesting necromancy in such disproportional proportions…?”

Chuckles filled with disillusionment resonated in the surroundings, reflecting a total skepticism.

The knowledge of necromancy, the mystical discipline oriented to resurrecting the deceased, had not become extinct in the contemporary era.

Nonetheless, the existence of a dark mystic capable of reanimating a single deceased person already constituted a rarity in this plane.

At least, so it was commonly considered.

However, when this subject returned mobility to countless remains through a lazy gesture, he broke the schemes of current comprehension.

Even Yufi, upon contemplating how the former combatants rose to massacre their own allies, could not avoid emitting a gasp of consternation.

In contrast, Dale maintained an attitude of total indifference.

In the midst of that dantesque scenario where the limit between existence and the void was erased, and where shrieks imperated, he continued his advance without being shaken.

The main bridge remained suspended at a great height, and the deep water moat that safeguarded the city did not represent any obstacle for him.

Crunch, crunch.

With each step imprinted by Dale, the ground solidified into frost under his soles.

As he gained ground, a new frozen platform materialized in the air.

Step after step.

Dale transited along that ramp of frost, without any soul daring to close his path or present him battle.

Upon noticing the maneuver, Yufi hastened her pace to follow him through the “ice staircase.”

Despite moving over a frozen surface, her footwear experienced no slippage whatsoever. She ignored that the surface resistance of the ice had been meticulously manipulated to guarantee her stability.

Dale structured a frozen path suspended in the atmosphere, which connected directly with the battlements of the fortification, a territory where no one anymore possessed the will to face him.

That was the outcome.

The entities under the yoke of Dale culminated the elimination of the insurgents on the walls and subsequently became static, plunged into a sepulchral silence.

They completely ignored the terrified laments of the civilians taking shelter in the lower part of the city.

Dale executed another movement with his extremity and the host of fallen collapsed in unison, resembling puppets whose strings had been severed.

“…!”

“Miss Yufi.”

At that instant, Dale broke the silence. Immersed in a dread difficult to assimilate, Yufi lowered her head immediately.

“What was the motive for which you answered ‘revolution’ before my question?”.

Facing such an interpellation, Yufi experienced a verbal paralysis.

“I… simply…”.

“Were you seeking to show yourself considerate toward my person?”.

“… Y-yes.”

“I appreciate your deference.”

Nonetheless, she was conscious of the reality. That being did not require Yufi’s attentions. In any case, it was she who benefited from his unconditional safeguard.

Despite everything, she harbored the yearning to manifest certain empathy toward him, however insignificant the attempt resulted.

“The revolutionary movement or the monarch.”

At that point, the warrior resumed his word.

“My choice would be ‘the emperor’.”

“Is it because you keep fidelity to the regent of this Empire, Mr. Dale…?”

Faced with the doubt raised by Yufi, the individual denied with a subtle movement of his head.

“I do not make allusion to the sovereign of this current domain.”

“If it is so, to what ruler do you refer?”.

“To the regent of an ancestral dynasty, whose trace has vanished in the pages of time.”

Yufi found herself unable to assimilate the background of said declaration instantly. However, the story shared by Marquis Rosenheim rushed to her memory.

The Great Magical Empire and the figure of the Black Gold Emperor, who governed with absolute authority.

“Aquel monarch voluntarily assumed the stigma of evil to guarantee the common welfare, becoming without hesitation a redeemer who absorbed the totality of the hardships of the human species.”

The man explained.

“A redeemer who absorbed the totality of the hardships of the human species…?”

Yufi felt a turn in her heart before the immensity of that affirmation.

Nonetheless, the solemnity with which the subject expressed himself discarded the possibility of it being a simple fable.

“However, he omitted to foresee that carrying with the afflictions of others would transform, inevitably, into a condemnation for a third party.”

“…”

“That was my reality, and that of that infant as well.”

Yufi did not manage to completely decipher Dale’s message. Despite this, she perceived a vague understanding of the situation.

“The action of tolerating the torment and offering oneself in sacrifice for the neighbor constituted, for certain individuals, merely the prelude to an unprecedented suffering.”

A supreme unilateral delivery.

In the end, that unbalanced immolation only sowed the seeds of a new misfortune.

In the same way in which Dale’s history under the identity of the Black Gold Emperor had constituted a staging of villainy before the world, Lize had followed an identical pattern.

Each one reincided in the same astray.

“Personal delivery does not represent a fact so sublime as it is usually idealized. It keeps similarity with the revolutionary proclamation that those men vociferate.”

Martyring oneself with the purpose of mitigating the agony of the loved being, in a contradictory way, only multiplies the existing pain.

Exactly the same as the insurrection, which swears to build an ideal environment.

At the vertex of said paradox, Dale ended up in this place.

Despite the renunciation effected by Lize in his favor, he transited through periods considerably more bitter than usual.

It is very probable that Lize had never deduced it. Just as it occurred to Dale in his moment.

The pride of immolating oneself unilaterally for the object of affection constituted, at the end of the day, a manifestation of pure egoism.

Lize persisted in that ignorance until her last moments.

Just as Dale had erred in past epochs.

The renunciation that Dale executed in benefit of Lize, for the welfare of the terrestrial plane and for the beings he esteemed, represented for his being a torture without paragon.

In the present, he managed to understand it with clarity.

“Everything derived from… my own foolishness.”

Dale manifested, sketching a grimace loaded with disillusionment.

Concluded his speech, his shoulders evidenced a subtle tremor.

Yupi found herself devoid of vocabulary. She lacked the tools to dimension such heavy grief. In what way could an entity endowed with such a colossal omnipotence see itself so fractured and submerged in desolation?

Was there the possibility that, even ostenting the power to bend the entire orb, there existed elements foreign to his domain?

The disjunctive between the sovereign or the sublevated.

The question emerged again in Yupi’s intellect, but on this occasion she harbored no more hesitations.

Neither the insurrection nor the figure of the monarch would ever represent the legitimate solution to the evils of the earthly plane.

The metallic tinkling of a bell announced the ingress of the subject into the establishment, instating a dense mutism, as if all acoustic vibration had become extinct from the environment.

The individual accompanied by the minor crossed the installations, showing total indifference toward the perceptions of third parties. The diners, upon noticing his identity, vacated their locations in a hurried manner, beating a retreat as if facing an apparition from the beyond.

The regent of the local limited himself to contemplating the newcomer with his face altered by fright.

A mystic with the demonstrated capacity to dissolve the totality of the insurgent contingent cantoned in the city through a simple corporal action.

No one who attempted to oppose would manage to conserve existence.

Nonetheless, showing submission before his figure would imply a sure execution by part of the revolutionary hosts in the face of the future.

Despite the risk, the commerce constituted his only source of sustenance.

“There is no motive for fear.”

Divining the mental crossroads of the merchant, Dale introduced his extremity into the folds of his garment and extracted an object.

A leather container.

It emitted a metallic sound upon being deposited. In the instant in which the manager inspected the interior, he retreated prey to commotion.

The container was found crammed with pieces of precious metal.

“Through these funds I take possession of your establishment and of the totality of the existences.”

The subject dictated, leaving the administrator without any argument to manifest objection.