Something more terrifying than Medorosa Canta awaited Lucius, just beyond the city walls.

Girded with quick stitches and a wrap of bandages beneath his armor, Lucius staggered to the fissure of rubble that had been the wall around Rackvidd. Sammy had barely put him into one piece and gotten his armor on him, and Lucius pushed himself to the fray once more. In one hand, he carried his sword. In the other, the flag of the Black Keep.

Rather than roaring mountain men ready to cut his head off, Lord Raymi stepped out to greet him with a far more dangerous tongue. “The duelist, if my eyes didn’t deceive me. Was that Erdro Karekale you cut down?” He spoke loud, but without his stigmata. The de facto ruler of Rackvidd had taken his helm off, displaying his face for all to see, and faced Lucius with a certain tightness in his eyes. A study of disbelief.

Lucius threw the standard down at Raymi’s feet. Fist to chest, the salute struck himself almost off-balance. “M’lord, aye. I’ve cut down their commander. Their ground forces have no leader to them. They will rout soon.”

Raymi inclined his head. He stood upon ruins with the strength of a conqueror, rather than the conquered victim. No weight of fear pressed down his shoulders. “Who are you, soldier?”

Lucius straightened his back, matching the almost regal air that Lord Raymi projected. How I wish I could have been there to see, to scrutinize and inspect. I had spent such agony trying to unteach from him what that circus troupe had poisoned him with so long ago. But, as the reader knows, I was occupied with certain explosions. Without my oversight, he said, “Lucius von Solhart, Sir. The gods have blessed me with a second life and I am here to put it to good use.”

“After the disaster that happened at Puerto Faro, I understand. Dozens dead, perhaps a hundred. Trade connections lost, civilians butchered, merchants crying about debts and contracts. All manner of destruction sprung from that city, which you were in charge of. It even came so far as to tear down the walls of Rackvidd.”

“Yes, sir. But, it is a disaster I am here to put an end to.”

Lord Raymi held the silence, as it were between the two of them during a panicked storm of assaulting the city, or looting and pillaging being put down street by street till the roads ran red with Giordanan blood. Lucius’ wounds seeped with his own blood, more with every pulse of his heart. The gaze quickened it, drove anxiety into him. Lord Raymi knew the true Lucius von Solhart, the feckless failure of a Vassish nobleman. A man only in charge of an insignificant garrison, whom no one thought could be under threat much less fall, by virtue of his birth.

That was not the man standing before Lord Raymi. True, they were of the same age, in the same armor, in charge of the same army, but this was a falsehood at last put to the test. The soldiers had lost their doubts in the desert, withered away inside them like the water from the scrub plants between the dunes. Day by day he had driven into them by his actions what role he had, and the name of the man with that role was Lucius von Solhart.

Lord Raymi was under hardly a fraction of the illusion. All he knew was that the only forces capable of coming to his aid were those of Solhart’s garrison. That their retreat across the Giordanan coast would have led them to Rackvidd in such a sorry state as he saw them in. But he saw them victorious. He saw that my pupil had done something useful. He had slain Erdro Karakale, dealing a blow to the rebel cause that would echo for years.

Far more important than his identity, my pupil had proved to Lord Raymi that he was valuable to him, something the original Lucius von Solhart had never been capable of.

This was the crux of our deception, to win over a true vouch safe. To delude, willingly even, a man able to bring my pupil into the royal court where mere presence meant power and authority, for all the dangers within King Arandall’s orbit nonetheless. Nearly a decade of preparation stood at stake as he faced the lord of Rackvidd, and in his mind it rested entirely on his present acting skills, exhausted as he was.(1)

Lord Raymi nodded and swept his arm around the rubble. “This has been a costly disaster.”

“The lord of the Black Keep had a powerful stigmata. Part of the coastal road was collapsed along the cliff, and will need to be rebuilt if land travel is to resume between here and Giordana.”

“It could have been stopped in the cradle, if this Medorosa Canta had been defeated in Puerto Faro.”

Lucius learned once more than rehearsing lines didn’t not necessarily make them easier to say. “That was my failing. My forces had been spread throughout the city, and fell prey to the riots before ranks could be formed up once more. The scale of the insurrection was…” he spread his arm back, out to the field of corpses. Vultures and corvids had begun to circle, black shadows in the sky and cast too upon the ground.

Very few bodies had the blue capes of Vassish soldiers.

Lord Raymi nodded and nodded, and gave his judgment. “If this is your mess, then bring me Medorosa’s head. You’ll need his blood to clean off this failure.”

A rope down the pit, of which to grab hold of and haul himself up one mighty pull after the next. Lucius seized it and brought his sword to his heart. “Yes, Sir,” he barked out.

Raymi gestured to one of his subordinates. He began the banal details of assimilating the raucous mob of survivors from Puerto Faro and forming an escape chute to force out the Cynizia from the city, ready to snap shut like a steel valve to slaughter the remnants. He sought out information first and foremost, and found a city guard able to bring Lucius to the fray, to the manhunt for Medorosa.

My pupil stepped into Rackvidd, one stroke of his blade from truly being Lucius von Solhart. He marched over corpses and smelled the ash, both of which would be common for him ever more.

“The navy will have that flotsam armada swept up beofre long. I think, Lord Solhart, you’re in a bit of a race with the naval captain,” his guide said, taking him in the cleft between battle lines, through to the heart of Rackvidd.

“How so?”

“Well, normally, you’d want to be the one to swing the last blow, eh?” the guard said. He was young, but a year older than Lucius which let his arrogance leak through. “The one who swings last is the one who ended the battle, but really, it’s the other way around like this. Whoever swings last is the one who dragged their feet and didn’t get to it fast enough. The lazy one, as it were.”

“You say that as though the Cynizia stand no chance.”

The guard laughed. “Of course they don’t. They don’t even understand what they’ve picked a fight with. We have proper warships. Aged wood from the north, where the trees get actual water. These shabby buckets they call ships can’t even weather a storm. One good ramming and they’ll sink.”

The intricacies of naval combat were a bit lost on this poor man. Cannons had not yet made it shipside however, so he was not too far off in his estimation. A mere few years later however, and the entire concept of ramming would be laughable.(2) Lucius merely said, “So long as the harbor chain holds strong. The last thing we need is more people running around, setting fire to things. Where are we going?”

With little knowledge of the condition at sea, the guard said, “To the palace. That’s where that snake Medorosa has been fleeing.” He leaned in to whisper, “They say he can possess the bodies of those he kills.”

“That would certainly explain a few things,” Lucius grumbled back, ignoring the pain of healing as they stepped out on the main road and he at last saw the palace proper, along with the swarm of blue cloaked guards closing in to it. Medorosa was nearly there, to the seat of perceived power, as though he alone could conquer the city merely by taking that throne. Perhaps someone had told him too many legends about the gods, of magic and enchantments bestowed by the divine beasts. Rackvidd was merely a mortal place, and the power came from the people throughout, not the symbols within.

But, of course, he was not the only one forcing Medorosa into the corner of his own desire. After long days, he and Aisha would finally meet one another once more. Far above, circling with the scavengers, the divine beast Golden could barely contain his bloody glee.

Naturally, I had contingency plans, should Raymi see through the ruse. Lucius was not privy to those, lest his facade falter in some false sense of complacency. Lucius did not, at this time, disappoint. Aside of course from a good game of Trireme. Though quite a few people tried to simulate cannon fire in the game, overwhelmingly people merely chose to describe it as forward facing canons rather than ramming