Chapter 225: Humanity's Flame

  Once upon a time, there existed an empire more glorious than all that had ever existed at any point in the history of humanity. Led by a guild called “The Guild of Gentlemen,” all of North and South Bastia were united under one banner and with one common purpose. It was a period of human excellence and human achievement: it was a time of rapid advancement, progress, and self-determination for their entire species.

  These days, it was barely more than a memory.

  Sir Wexzel Ultdern, the first-in-command of this fading empire and the current caretaker of his severely diminished guild, refused to call himself a king as King Morrison had done. He refused to allow ego to cripple his people any further, for in his arrogance, King Morrison had caused far more damage to them than Peter Brayspark V, the man he’d literally stabbed in the back and usurped—wrongly and perhaps evilly.

  Nevertheless, everyone had put their trust in this usurper king, Wexzel included. And now? Now, thanks to his over-inflated ego, the Guild of Gentlemen had been driven into a corner. They had made enemies of every other human guild, and those who were already their enemy hated them even more fiercely now.

  We killed over a million people with that weapon, and we were still driven out of Shadowfall Coast.

  To be clear, Tomb of Fire, the last light of their dying flame, was by no means an insignificant region. The grand, glamorous city at its heart contained the one and only Diamond Paradise, which, even after such a brutal war, remained the number-one tourist destination in all of Galterra. Despite the bevy of sanctions and other forms of economic retaliation levied against them by the other ruling guilds, Tomb of Fire continued to be the second-richest and second-financially-strongest region on the continent.

  But things were still overall bad. And Wexzel had inherited the misfortune of needing to make them better.

  “Sir Ultdern, strike teams are moving into position at the border,” said Sir Renzalon, the elderly, bearded tactician who also happened to be the second-oldest member of the guild. Like Wexzel, he was over a hundred years old, and his years gave him wisdom: important wisdom that King Morrison and his command structure had lacked.

  Sir Renzalon was now the ninth-ranking member of the Guild of Gentlemen, with Sir Nedge Cullroth, the previous 9th, having promoted all the way up to 4th due mostly to his performance in battle during the war. Even still, this had not been something Wexzel had done with an easy heart. Sir Cullroth was a vicious, disgusting beast who raped and tortured his enemies and fought with total dishonor. For this reason, Wexzel had shuffled the ranks somewhat so that Sir Gaelan Malakor had become the new 2nd in command.

  This decision had not been without controversy, however, and in fact, it had been the most controversial thing that Wexzel had done since finding himself in command of the Guild of Gentlemen.

  Although Sir Malakor was unquestionably the strongest and most deserving warrior in the Guild of Gentlemen to hold such a rank, his defeat in one-on-one combat against Sir Zachys Calador had severely tarnished his reputation among the guild. It was not an understatement to say that he had become a pariah of sorts, openly scorned and despised. Thus, it had created a stir when Wexzel had made him second-in-command. But this was a decision he stood by, as in his opinion, Sir Malakor’s reputation had been unfairly besmirched.

  For starters, everyone knew that Sir Calador was a freak of nature. The boy was not normal by any means. Losing against him in combat and surviving the ordeal should be lauded, not shamed. But even putting that aside, it was incontrovertibly the case that everyone else in the guild would have fared worse against the boy, himself included. Sir Calador was a monster with no rival, and a threat with no equal.

  And thus, morally, the only right thing to do was promote Sir Malakor, whose empathy and honor would serve as a counterweight to the vile savage known as Sir Cullroth, someone so profanely indecent that he made notoriously awful people like Sir Varsh Gellor of the Royal Roses look like an angel.

  We need someone like him to keep a tight grip on Sir Cullroth. That man is a veritable monster.

  Sensing himself becoming distracted, Wexzel gestured with his hand, and a woman came over to refill the coffee in his cup. Right now, Wexzel sat together with numerous high-ranking members of the guild and a host of new level-1 strategic advisors who were personally hand-picked by him and Sir Renzalon. Given their previous failures, he had ordered those who’d safely extracted from Shadowfall Coast to enter retirement in order to pave the way for a new command structure with a whole different set of people.

  Currently, they were on the 97th floor of a skyscraper that shot a plume of muti-colored fire out of its roof and served as the beacon of humanity. The room they were in was dimly lit with a large viewing screen displaying real-time data and along with several maps showing deployments and known or suspected hostile troop movements.

  “Are there any updates, Sir Renzalon?” he asked.

  “No,” the man replied, his thick grey beard ruffling from the air leaving his mouth. “The bounty hunter has had nothing new to report other than reiterating his suggestion that we wait for some future date to recover the heir.”

  “Do you think waiting would be prudent?”

  “No. I think it makes little difference. And the people are restless.”

  “I agree. The operation proceeds.”

  Wexzel was no fool. He understood exactly what he was risking and exactly what his guild stood to gain. He was fully aware that, even if this operation went perfectly, they would, at best, be achieving a symbolic victory. But it was a victory that the people needed.

  The anger, the hatred—it was beyond comprehension. The humiliation his people had endured went so far beyond what was mentally tolerable. Whereas the rest of the world was slowly moving on, including even those in Giant’s Fall, the people of Tomb of Fire were ravenous. They were desperate for some display of backbone—some sign that the Guild of Gentlemen was still the fire of humanity.

  And they were about to get it.

  Because while they may have lost Shadowfall Coast and every other region they once controlled aside from their ancestral home here in Tomb of Fire—the long-standing heart of their guild—the Guild of Gentlemen were not quite as weak as it may have appeared, and this operation was not nearly as “suicidal” as some might think. Yes, on a superficial level, their power had greatly diminished, and this was indisputable. But beyond the surface, things were a bit more complex.

  Although the war had resulted in their defeat, it had not come at an equal cost to all involved parties, and as a point of fact, the damage that had been done to their guild, though extensive, paled in comparison to the damage the Royal Roses and the Lords of Justice had sustained; indeed, Shadowfall Coast had extracted a massive price from the victorious powers.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  In the case of the Royal Roses, a nuclear bomb had destroyed the smaller of the two cities in Giant’s Fall—Ogre’s Axe—and the war had annihilated their entire naval fleet as well as their fighter jets. They had also sustained immense damage to personnel and leveled guild members. Initially, it had looked like the Piercing Thorn, their capital vessel, would survive the war. But reports indicated that it had sunk within two weeks after emergency efforts to repair it had failed. It was, to be certain, an incalculable setback for the Royal Roses.

  And yet, the Lords of Justice had made out even worse.

  Wexzel shifted uneasily in his seat, becoming agitated as he reflected on the way that High-Lord Alex Oren had single-handedly slaughtered more than thirty of his guild members, including some of his closest friends and allies. It was a nightmare that Wexzel relived every time he closed his eyes. Yet, putting that aside, the rest of the Lords of Justice had suffered a blow so catastrophic that it was a wonder the guild had not imploded. More than a quarter of the guild’s leveled members had ended up dying in Shadowfall Coast, along with three-quarters of their level-1 troops. There was no spinning that.

  Alex, he thought, biting down on his lip hard enough to taste blood. One day, you’ll suffer for all the harm you’ve done to humanity! Not just to my guild, but to your own, as well!

  Given that the Duchess Fiona Darkmae’s Children of Order were isolationist by nature, and that the Defenders of Peace were a small and ineffective guild, the commonly held belief was that, now, eight months after the conclusion of the war, Abram Gespon’s mostly unscathed People of Virtue were left as the strongest guild in North Bastia.

  But this was wrong—and deep down, the guilds knew that this was wrong, too, though they would not dare let such a truth leak to the public.

  In actuality, from the day the war ended until now, the Guild of Gentlemen had spent every waking hour rebuilding its ranks, leveling up new recruits on the estates still under their control, and studying every last piece of footage or documentation related to the war in order to improve upon their tactics. As a result, they now had the most fortified region in the world—and not just here in the primary city, but in all of Tomb of Fire.

  Even the smaller towns in the farmlands south of Whispery Woods had been outfitted with the crafting recipe Peter V had rediscovered that negated the use of Elvish runic magic via highly impenetrable barriers. They had also built anti-aircraft cannons in the event Vim Alazar was able to reconstruct his destroyed fighter jets, and the southern coast was now armed with so many anti-ship guns that even attempting to bombard them from the sea would result in a near-instantaneous obliteration for any attacking force.

  Furthermore, Wexzel had commissioned numerous studies on the efficacy of their combat tactics, and all studies unanimously reported the same finding: that the single-greatest strength they’d had during the war was their ability to utilize “traps” against leveled attackers, including even the Elves.

  So, what did all this mean? What did all this amount to? Put simply, it was now Wexzel’s earnest, genuine belief that, even in the event of a blatant, open provocation against the rest of North Bastia, no retaliation could or would befall their people, as the various ruling guilds of North Bastia were now either too weak or too ineffective to pose any serious threat to the Guild of Gentlemen’s sacred, capital region of Tomb of Fire, which had always been their most important region since the day it had been pried free from the ironclad grip of Elvadin more than a thousand years ago.

  If the other guilds could have taken Tomb of Fire from us, they would’ve already done it while we were at our weakest.

  All of this formed the basis of why Wexzel did not view this as a “suicidal” operation. For Wexzel not only believed his foes incapable of mounting a counterattack, but he also hoped they would try. Truly, he did! By all means, may the Gods please inspire the enemies of humanity to attempt to take this region as they had done to Shadowfall Coast! That would be a gift from the heavens, for any attempt to do so would result in overwhelming defeat for the attackers and a further rebalancing of power in their favor.

  “When do the bounty hunters plan to make their move?” he asked.

  “In another hour or two, once people begin to disperse and the party quiets down,” Sir Renzalon said. “That should make things easier for them to slip in, grab the boy, and get to the border.”

  Sir Renzalon nodded at a young, fresh-faced level-1 youth around twenty-two years of age wearing the new, redesigned brown-and-black military uniform, the front breast pocket of which contained an image of flames. The young man stood up, bowed, and shone a laser pointer on the map. “As you can see,” he began. “Den of Ziragoth is south enough in Whispery Woods that, as long as the bounty hunters are able to get a head-start, they should have no problem reaching the border with Tomb of Fire in time for us to intercept on our own territory, where we have the advantage. The best time to do this is a few hours from now when the guests and residents begin heading home. It won’t be completely quiet, but it will be quiet enough to avoid any fighting within the town itself.”

  One of the military advisors coughed into his fist as though to draw attention to himself, and then he asked, “Why are we relying solely on these bounty hunters? Shouldn’t we send some of our own assets to assist?”

  “No,” Sir Renzalon said, speaking firmly. “We have the overwhelming advantage when fighting within our own borders. But if things go wrong, the Elves will crush our forces, and right now, we cannot afford to risk such senseless losses. If the Elves clash with us, it must be on our own territory, where we will be able to defeat or repel them.”

  As Wexzel contemplated the situation, an idea came to mind, one that would elevate the level of risk but maximize the reward, at least from the perspective of the citizens of Tomb of Fire, whose anger was barely being contained and who were on the verge of rioting as things stood.

  “Tell Vazzal Shelen to have his team accelerate their timetable,” he said. “I want them to go after the boy immediately. During the celebration, in fact. Preferably within the next fifteen minutes if he can manage it.”

  At this, all ten ranking members of his guild and twenty strategic advisors released a gasp. “W-what?” many erupted simultaneously.

  “That would risk provoking an even larger response from the Guild of Elvadin!” Lady Geodala said. The pale, naturally silver-haired woman looked at Wexzel as though he were insane. “Queen Vayra might take that as an act of full-on war.”

  All of them seemed to balk at this idea—all but Sir Renzalon, whose eyes briefly lit up as he nodded. As usual, the two of them were on the same page. But for the sake of the others, Wexzel was more than happy to clarify his thinking.

  “It doesn’t matter if she does or doesn’t,” Wexzel said. “No matter how we go about this, Queen Flywen Vayra is going to respond with rage. Executing this operation now or in two hours won’t change her reaction. But it will send a message to the world that we are not lying down and will not leave our heir in the hands of Elves. The unrest this has caused is difficult to understate.”

  “That…is true,” Lady Geodala admitted. Then she snarled. “The fact that Peter VI has been taken by Elves…it is a level of humiliation I cannot bear.”

  “No one can,” Wexzel replied. “I cannot either.”

  And he meant those words, too. It went beyond disgusting. And while Wexzel had always been aghast and appalled at King Alistair Morrison’s decision to execute the boy, Wexzel had to admit that it would still have been better for him to die than to be openly displayed in the media like some kind of trophy. The Elves…the Gods only knew how much they were enjoying having him as their little human pet. A child of royal blood. A symbol of such importance. Turned into a prize for the Elves to taunt them with. To mock them.

  It enrages me!

  “Today, we are getting back our heir. And we will deprogram whatever brainwashing they’ve put in his head. May the Gods hold me to my vows: I swear he will take his father’s place as King Brayspark VI. We are getting our blood back!” At this, his council released a loud cheer. “Contact Vazzal Shelen. Tell him to move now. Double or triple his payment if you must. It’s time the Guild of Gentlemen reminded the world that humanity still exists!”

  *******

  Vazzal swore. "This just became much more difficult. But I still think we can pull this off."

  "In fifteen minutes, boss?" asked Shawnim Dole, his right-hand man.

  "Yeah. We'll just have to be that much quicker. Do we still have eyes on the target?"

  "No, but his last sighting was only around five minutes ago."

  Vazzal, sitting up slightly while gazing through the tall stalks of grass, lifted his hand and made a forward gesture with his palm. Upon this, the sound of rustling emanated from behind him as two of his men proceeded in the direction of the town.

  "Only communicate over the Comm line if you catch sight of him. As soon as we know where he is, we'll lure him as far away as we can get him and then grab him and run for our lives. Shawnim, do some recon at the party. See if the children are mixed in with the crowd."

  "Got it."

  Vazzal readied himself. This was going to be so much harder than it had to be.