"Argh — ahhhhhh!"
Together with the startled cry, the great flap of the war-tent was slammed open from within by a sweeping shadow.
The rusted dagger that the youth had yet to thrust forward slipped from his hand, and half his body crashed down into the mud before the tent.
His gilded robe billowing, two heavy swords crossed at his back, one hand clenched into a fist and the other kneading his neck and shoulder, Anhadī III stepped out through the gaping entrance.
"How could that frail body of yours hope to slay Us?"
Unlike the contempt in his words, his tone was strikingly flat.
It was as though this carefully prepared assassination meant nothing more to him than a trifle.
"Cough..." Despair. A despair-inducing strength.
It had been nothing more than an ordinary counterpunch.
The youth, sprawled on the ground, felt every organ inside him shake. Blood welled ceaselessly from his mouth, mingling with the mud and dyeing the earth red.
"Why?! Just why?!"
With the last of his strength, the youth cried out. Tears slid down from his bloodshot eyes, and his limbs thrashed in the mud, yet he could not rise.
"So — have you any other doubts?"
Anhadī III walked unhurriedly up to the youth and looked down upon the audacious boy.
"Why did you destroy everything..."
If he could only leave a single wound on this man — yet the man stood before him entirely unscathed, gazing down at him.
Under the weight of that crushing disappointment, the youth's once-impassioned voice grew thin and weak.
"You ask why? Do you even know who We are?"
"..." The youth gave no response.
"Then We shall answer you. We are the King. All that stands here now is Ours — which is to say, it is the decree of the King."
Anhadī III bent down, hoisted the youth from the mud with one hand, and met those eyes — a mixture of tears, blood, mud, hatred, and despair — speaking with grave conviction.
"No reason is required. Everything We do is Our kingly way, and it is enough that the lot of you accept it with joy."
His matter-of-fact bearing was at once heroic and arrogant.
The youth's sight and senses had already begun to blur, and yet within him a fire burned, holding him from slipping away.
"If you require a reason, then very well — We shall tell you."
"So long as those false kings and false nations remain, war shall not end. We will lay waste to all of them, for We have the power, and We take pleasure in it."
"Does that reason content you?"
The youth parted his lips to say something, but Anhadī gave him no chance.
"There will be no next time."
With that, Anhadī tossed the youth aside as carelessly as one might flick away a pebble, leaving him entirely unconscious.
At that same moment, the wind whistled through the sky; black robes flapped and rustled, and an aged voice spoke through the sound.
"You are still the same as ever... Though had you been otherwise, you would never have wrested the throne from 'their' hands."
The black-robed old man descended from the air, staff in hand, and looked down at the half-dead assassin at his feet. At a single glance, Wilhelm could tell — this boy was almost certainly a private killer put up to the deed by the remnants of the Moss Kingdom's nobility.
"Why not kill him?"
The King before him had never shown mercy to an enemy.
"Hmph. This land is now territory We have taken, and its people are now Our people. Off the battlefield, there is no meaning in slaughtering the weak."
To Anhadī III's mind, such a half-baked, joke of an assassination could rouse neither his anger nor his interest.
"Mm..." Wilhelm nodded.
Setting aside his brutal appetite for war, Anhadī III did possess the bearing and the strength befitting the lord of a nation.
"That other matter — have you finished with it? To Our mind, there was no need for it at all."
"To this old one's mind, it was necessary."
"Hmph. Only an old man like you would dare contradict Us. We did not expect that, this time, you would stand in support of Us."
Hearing Anhadī III's words, Wilhelm fell silent and offered no reply.
As the man whose station had been second only to the late King — and who had once led the faction opposing Anhadī III's accession — to indulge Anhadī in slaying his own colleagues placed Wilhelm in a most peculiar position now.
"Your private reasons are nothing to Us. So long as you fulfill your duty of supporting Us, that is sufficient."
As he spoke, a thread of killing intent suddenly slipped through Anhadī III's expression.
"But should you dare to obstruct Our path, We will not hesitate to draw Our sword and slay you."
Wilhelm did not flinch in the slightest; he merely shook his head with a wry smile.
"Rest assured — this old one will fight at your side until the very last moment this time."
Having given his word, Wilhelm reached behind himself and pounded his back; a string of crackling pops sounded from his old bones.
"Well then, shall this old one go and 'release' him first?"
He meant the killer lying on the ground. To Wilhelm, tracing the masterminds through this assassin was a fairly simple stratagem.
Wilhelm lifted the would-be killer up with his thick staff, and just as he took his first step, he heard Anhadī III suddenly remark behind him, "Were you ambushed on the road?" — and his foot nearly stumbled.
"Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"
Seeing Wilhelm react in such a manner, Anhadī III broke into a rare, hearty laugh, his voice ringing through the surrounding area.
"Ran into some unexpected trouble."
The old man glanced at the small tear in his black robe and the wound it concealed, then settled himself back into his usual composure.
"You handled it?"
"No... The situation was somewhat unfavorable to this old one, so I did not squander my strength on it."
His laughter died away, and Anhadī III's tone took on a note of surprise.
"Oh? Foes who can stand against you — apart from those monsters that no longer exist — should be few indeed."
"At that moment there was more than one source of trouble. This old one is old now... and grew careless. Of course, all of that is merely this old one's excuse."
With that, Wilhelm did not linger; in an instant he invoked his magic and rose into the air. Anhadī III, still curious to ask for the rest of the tale, was left with nothing but a trail of dust.
"Heh — that old fellow."
He shook his head; he still could not work out how Wilhelm could possibly have come out on the losing end of a clash.
That old thing's magical prowess had, with advancing years, only continued to grow rather than wane.
Even he himself had no idea how deep Wilhelm's reserves ran; were the two of them truly to face off, without drawing his blade his chances of victory might well be slim.
After a moment's contemplation, the will to battle surged through the King.
A single corner of the Northern lands — Ohaly was still far too small...
Stake everything; let it spread — a new war, a new kingly way.
Anhadī III drew aside the tattered curtain of the war-tent, revealing the vast map laid out within.
—
Beneath the boundless blue heavens stretched a winding dirt road wrapped in green grass. At this moment a tiny speck of black, set between the blue and the green, made its slow way along that road.
Nanoda held up a leather map, searching for the route to the magic city of Vasastre.
"Hmm... Aaron said the route Yuna took to set out was this one... and after this... go to the right?"
A black-and-white butterfly drifted past her, and faint breezes came drifting in. Nanoda freed one hand to catch the hood of her black robe, which was nearly blown loose by the wind.
On that slightly chilly breeze, Nanoda caught a familiar scent.
____
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