[Nicholas Anstalionah.]
The twins tore across the courtyard in a blur, laughter like blades.
Around us, Sansir's legion stood motionless, knights all blindfolded, each bearing the sigil of the kingdom.
Each hand on sword and rope as if in readiness for anything.
Mirabel had slipped away to visit Nicole and make sure she was ready to come out.
Sansir and Veronica kept the rest of it tidy; I suspected they did far more than anyone noticed.
For a while I let myself be content, letting the ordinary smallness of joy fill me. Then my skin began to crawl.
It was not a sensation tied to hearing or sight.
It was larger: a pressure that bloomed out from the marrow of the world.
Something reached toward us, a thing that tasted of old storms and older hunger.
My senses had been sharpened by what I'd survived, but this, this encased the entire kingdom like a shadow around a flame.
So I stopped it.
Not merely time. Not merely motion. I stopped meaning itself.
I reached out and folded the world into a bubble of perfect stasis.
Seconds frozen mid-breath, wind stalled in leaves, fires hesitant over coals.
Threads of fate, the infons that braid prophecy and consequence, thinned to silence.
Causality held its breath.
Every arrow in every quiver, every whisper of a coming betrayal, every future that reached for us, all paused, waiting.
I had named it an ultimate ability before, but naming is cheap compared to using it.
Alter, my power to warp reality, married Scriptor, my power over words and law, and together they made this cage.
I had grown tired of being surprised.
For a moment, there was a perfection to stasis.
The play of children hung like a painting, a blade frozen above a throat, a knight's breath a single suspended bead.
Even Mirabel, save for me, could not move in that hush.
Not because she lacked will, but because infons themselves were halted; she had no measure, no reference, no flow to step along.
And still it came.
A shadow the size of a continent breached the edge of my bubble, folding down into shape.
It resolved into scales blue as drowned sky and wings that could blot out mountain ranges.
Tears, oceans of them, leaked from the creature's eyes as it descended.
Then the shape fell, and in a violent blink became human.
Long cascades of blue hair, skin like hammered silver, eyes fathomless and ocean-deep, silver armor ringing like coins.
She dropped before me, small in frame against the magnitude of her power.
Up close, her face was almost ordinary; the contradiction made her more terrifying.
She leaned in and whispered into my ear, voice flat and terrible. "This won't stop me."
The bubble shuddered. I let it go.
Time and fate reweaved; breath returned to lungs.
Mirabel was there in an instant, blade to the woman's throat before the woman could take another step.
Around us, everything else resumed, children shrieking, the knights blinking, ropes slapping leather.
Only inside the radius of my control had stasis been absolute.
Outside it, normality resumed with no sign of what had almost been stolen.
Mirabel's sword tip pressed in, cold against skin. "What are you?" she demanded, teeth bared.
The woman, the dragon, drew herself up with a slow, disdainful bow. Her voice carried the weight of thunder and seawater.
"I am a princess. My name is Steeva. You and your kingdom are enemy number one."
Mirabel lunged; Steeva laughed and leapt.
The motion was a blur and the air snapped as a limb separated from her, arm gone, blue scales torn, blood that shone between scales like quicksilver.
She blinked, amused, and transformed mid-flight into a dragon again, wings beating the air into storms.
"In one week," she sang, voice overlapping beast and woman, "you and your kingdom will fall." Then she was gone, a comet of blue across the horizon.
Mirabel did not let her go clean. In a breath, she leapt and crushed the dragon's chestplate with a single, brutal hand.
The force of it shattered some unseen mechanism; the woman had no choice but to return to human form, tumbling down, winded and mortal for a heartbeat.
She turned to me, blade sheathed and shoulders heaving, and said with the flatness of someone recalling dinner plans.
"Never do that trick again. I only just figured out how to move."
I let out the breath I hadn't known I'd been holding.
Time smoothed itself back to ordinary speed; the children resumed their mad chase; a roast somewhere in the kitchens finished browning.
Mirabel wiped a smear of blood from her palm.
And with a softness that did not fit the violence of moments before, she added, "By the way, the food's done."
I laughed then, because there was nothing else to do. Outside the laugh, my mind kept counting the cost.
I had stopped the world, halted fate and prophecy, and yet a being woven from higher orders of existence had still reached me.
She had access to flows I thought mine to command.
If Steeva could cut through a bubble that arrested concepts, then the scales of what I faced had just tilted.
We had a week.
And in that week, I would not be surprised again.
[Nicholas had a goal, or rather, an ideology, one that had shifted over the course of the Holy, or perhaps more truthfully, the Unholy War.]
Yes. I no longer believed in nothing. I no longer thought the path ahead was destined only for failure.
[Nicholas had reopened this world to its possibilities, all of them. That had been his one unwavering goal.]
I grinned happily. "I'll go get it."
She nodded and began walking over to the children. I took that moment to make my way inside.
[Nicholas was growing ever closer to his fated reunion with battle, and though prepared, he remained anxious.]
Camelot would help when the time came. For now, I needed to begin my own preparations.
When I entered the kitchen, I found a wide array of dishes already displayed, with maids tending to them, keeping everything hot with fire magic.
As I walked past, they quietly bowed. It reminded me of a time when most servants in this place had feared me.
Now their eyes carried no fear, only awe.
My conviction had been found, and this was a feeling I would allow myself to bask in.
[Nicholas had gained a new title, one that mirrored his current fate.]
I grit my teeth in anticipation as I gathered the plates. Yet what came next was… unexpected.
[Title Obtained: The King of Something.]
I walked down the halls enamored with this new title. Most others I had earned were insults.
Endless Fool, that one made it so most lies spoken around me were instantly negated and turned into truth.
But as a result, the lies never ended. Normal people simply could not lie to me anymore.
It also made me endless. But I already was. Or rather, I should have been.
This new title, however, granted something far different. Something far greater.
It made it so that as long as there were people in my kingdom, my kingdom would never fall.
Never falter. Not under the weight of war, nor under the ruin of tragedy.
It was the ultimate ability for a king.
A promise woven into reality itself. So long as I remained within the bounds of my kingdom, my kingdom would stand saved.
When I stepped back outside, I saw Mirabel instructing Miraculum in shaping light magic.
Cassio watched in awe from the side, her eyes wide and sparkling.
I smiled and set the plates down around me on the steps.
"This really is something."