Chapter 33 - Throne Room (and 34 and DO chapter)

Chapter 33 - Throne Room

The Falconians in the audience chamber looked at each other uncomfortably.  With no place to sit, they were all forced to stand like underlings until I dismissed them.  I was flexing my powers as Mayor and they couldn’t do much about that, but my power wasn’t absolute.  While I needed their help, I was done giving up my dignity to get it.

Many of the tales of the Mayor and his power began from this room, but there were also stories of the long discussions between him and his companions.  I needed partners, not slaves. I needed these people to work with me because they wanted to, not because I forced them.

The Duchess strode forward as did the Princess. It wasn’t hard to see that they both represented factions of the Falconian Royalty. The Princess was at least leaning my direction and stood for the group of adventurers who understood the conflict was coming and I was there best chance. The Duchess stood for the group that also understood that conflict was coming, but they believed they needed a firmer hand on the till and that hand was hers.

The undecideds were standing behind Lorraine’s cousin, Angela. She was a paladin who resembled my captain General, but without the adoring fan girl look. As a Paladin of Justice, she was attempting to remain neutral.

“Oh, this should be fun,” said Shart grabbing a bucket of mental popcorn as I started filtering through everyone.

Using my Perception skill, I did a headcount mentally and cut out the weaker adventurers that wouldn’t be useful in the battle to come.  I hated to do it, but this was for all the marbles, and I needed to focus on the people who could materially affect the battle.  There were not as many in this group as I feared, but the forty seven Falconians that I cut out represented the old and the young who had come to Windfall for their own reasons.  I hoped the older ones would have useful skills or abilities, and even a lower-level cleric was better than none, but ultimately their support of me was secondary in this battle.

The other three groups consisted of the remaining one hundred and fifty-seven Falconians.  They were arrayed in their adventuring best, magical armors and weapons abound.  Several had familiars, others had floating orbs that reacted to danger.  A few of them had incorporated Science based equipment from the Progenitor or from the Dalton girls.  As a whole, they looked like an end game raid right out of your favorite MMO.

Hopefully it will be enough.

In total, there was the group of thirty-two behind Julia that supported the Mayor, the group of forty-five behind the Duchess that supported her and the eighty undecideds who couldn’t figure out who to support who were looking to Angela for direction.

“Mother turned them into fence sitters,” said Bashara through my link to Badgelor.  I scanned the room and spotted her in the middle of the section I’d dismissed. She smiled back.  “My, you are quite a bit more observant than I remembered.”

“It is something you pick up,” I thought back, unhappy that she was on Badgelor’s line but I wasn’t able to clear her off. Which Bashara knew.

“That is clever,” said Shart, highlighting the connection. I’d never had found it. “I thought I cleared her out, but she attached a decoy link, and I’m not sure the new link I found isn’t another decoy.”

“Later,” I thought to Shart before switching over to Bashara, “So what did your mother do?”

“She fomented the civil wars, and spent countless years ensuring that most of the Falconians will do anything but commit to an action,” replied Bashara. “She set them up to fall to the Dark Overlord when he rose again.”

I spent a moment and found the splice where she locked into my mind and applied a mental firewall to ensure she couldn’t get any deeper than the essence connections.  “Are you here to manipulate them?”

“Would you like me to?” said Bashara. “The people in this room are pretty well shielded, but I could sway a few to your cause.”

“I’m trying to avoid overt mental manipulation; can you ensure that people’s minds are free of it?” I asked.

“Mental Magic is commonplace in Falconian politics, everyone here is going to be using magic to subtly influence the room.  I’ll do my best to stop it if you’d like?”

“Oh, counting on her for assistance,” chuckled Shart.

“I hate politics,” I replied considering my options. I activated Arcane Sight and scanned the room.  There were far too many point sources to actually counterspell each individually, and I couldn’t push my anti-magic barrier out far enough to be useful.  Further, not all the mental manipulation was magical in nature.  Quite a few things hitting my Mental Fortress were stamina based.

As officers in the Army of Windfall, my allies had some degree of mental protection but I resolved to expand that office in the Barracks to grant even more defense in the future.

“Don’t screw me,” I thought.

“I’m doing this for Badgelor,” thought Bashara.  “And me, to be honest.  I want him dead, Jim.”

“That’s the objective,” I thought back.

“Then don’t screw this up, I gather you have already figured out that if you declare yourself king then half of these people leave.  You could exert some control, but they have had long experience in getting around royal decrees.”

“I need them if I’m going to pull this off,” I thought, examining the faces that were curious instead of hostile.

“Good, now settle down and don’t let the Duchess roll over you,” said Bashara.  “She isn’t your friend, she will try to use you. I’m not either for all that matters. Be careful.”

The room was setting itself into a rhythm of prods by all sides trying to figure out who they could manipulate to their benefit.  It was tiresome, but I didn’t have much of a choice.

The Duchess stepped forward to begin a speech.

“I don’t believe I gave you permission to speak,” I said as she opened her mouth.  I still had Brass Lungs as a perk and my voice carried over anyone’s instantly if I chose to let it.  “Angela may speak.”

Lance tried to protest for his mother, he really did, but in this place I had power and the power to dictate who spoke was a useful one.  He was shushed by the Duchess with a look.

“Where is the Duke,” asked Fenris quietly.

“Touring the wall,” I replied just as quietly, checking the map.  He left for the Western Gate fortress at least three hours ago according to my logs, and I gave the best possible speed to get to the castle at about forty more minutes.  Plus, they’d have to get through the Dashing Dandies that Lorraine was putting in front of the castle, which should buy me at least ten more minutes.

I shut down the Portal.  I didn’t mention that I could open the portal right up at the Western Gate Fortress, but the implication was clear. The Duchess didn’t have a massive tell, but I could still read the annoyance.

She reminded me of my Mother in Law.

Fenris chuckled, “Well timed.”

“Thanks,” I replied as Angela walked to the small stone circle directly in front of the throne and looked up at me.  As she prepared herself, I could see the Falconians spreading out, aligning themselves.  The undecided was in the middle, of course, with the anti-Jim faction on the right and the pro-Jim factor on the left.  I briefly wondered if the left and the right in congress was based on the direction from the speaker or the audience.

Guess I should have watched more C-Span.

Angela cleared her throat and addressed me like a lawyer addressing a judge, in a television show.  In real life when someone gave a speech they tended to stick to a podium, check out their notes, read off a teleprompter.  On television, actors tended to want to be more mobile.  They’d walk all over the place, talk to the crowd.  You know, those trade secrets one learned at a place like Julliard.

In any case, Falcon was to a large part based on the notion that there was an invisible camera following you around at all times.  That must be tiring, I thought trying to imagine what it would have been like to have everyone watching your every thought all the time and a narrator telling everyone what you did.

Jim sat proudly in his throne, while carefully surveying the crowd for signs of weakness.  He quietly tried to not fart or burp while smarter, more capable people explained basic things to him like the Dum Dum he was.

“Shart,” I growled.

The extremely handsome narrator, who is a triple threat, laughed at the stupid Dum Dum.  Ha Ha.

Snorting, I wished my narrator was at least good looking, like Alan Silver on Mad Men.  That guy was the whole package, unlike Shart.  Shart sounded like Alan Silver if was doing a high pitched, nasally demon voice.

Hey.

Meanwhile I was attentively watching Angela as she started talking.

“Honorable mayor,” she began facing me before whipping around to look at the crowd, “And my peers.”  There were some murmurs at that, but nothing serious, this felt like a standard greeting and she continued.

“We are gathered here today to determine the validity of the claim of the mayor that the Dark Overlord has returned and the next age of destruction will begin soon.”

“Objection,” stated Lance, seizing the floor.  He strode out like a puma, and my thoughts on pumas were clear.  “We are here to determine the veracity of the claims of this so-called mayor.”

“The preponderance of evidence indicates that the Mayor has returned,” said Angela.  “We all saw the notification.”

“Yet he wears no crown,” stated the Duchess.  “Did he lose it?”

“I haven’t decided if I’m going to wear it yet,” I replied.

Lance snorted, “Well then, you aren’t the Mayor.”

“I disagree, feel free to correct me,” I stated cooly.

“What?” asked Lance.

“Pool’s open, water’s fine,” I replied.  There was a slight hush as multiple people examined me closely.  I was showing up as a 15th level wizard and by their estimation that wasn’t much of a challenge.  The Duchess looked cautious.  She knew I was stronger than I let on, but still didn’t really have a grasp of what the gap between the two of us was.  Of course, I had far more hit points than a few levels in wizard could account for, and I’d like to think Dalton and Fenris looked imposing behind me.

Also SueLeeta had the crossbow and was watching the room from a nice little sniper’s nest.

“You think I’m going to fight you, what do you think the Mayor does?” asked Lance.

“Fights things,” I replied.  “There is a bunch of clap trap and nonsense, of course, but at the end of the day the Mayor doesn’t exist to wear crowns, or lead nations.  He exists to kill the Dark Overlord.  Can you do that?”

I stared directly at the Duchess.

She recognized the challenge, “It has been done before.”

“Not successfully,” said Princess Julia just loudly enough to be heard.

“We have improved, niece,” spat the Duchess, causing the room to still.  “We will be able to stand against the Dark Overlord by ourselves.”

Hushed whispers filled the room.  It was easy to hate the Duchess, she opposed me.  But she wasn’t some sort of Dark Overlord sympathizer.  She would die fighting the tyrant, just not with me leading her.

“Niece?” I thought.  Normally I’d hope for an answer from Shart or Badgelor, but this time Bashara came to my rescue, which was good because Shart found politics boring and Badgelor was unconscious.

“It is an honorific of a sort, it means member of the family who is decidedly below me in rank.  The Princess Julia with the Walker Orb would be a cousin. As she now lacks that Orb, she’s considered of lower rank. If the Duchess is calling Julia a niece, she means that Julia’s social rank is considerably lower than hers.”

“Julia is about her level,” I said.

“Your level, beyond a point, doesn’t mean much in this situation.  And the Duchess has a Treasure of Rule compared to that orichalcum rod Julia is carrying, it wouldn’t be a fair contest,” said Bashara.

I watched the interplay a for a moment, “What’s your plan?”

The Duchess raised her eyebrow, not expecting me to allow that.  She stood, causing Lance to retreat instantly.  “As no one has fought with the Dark Overlord in centuries, we will rely on the ancient battle lore of my house to defeat him.  There were many points where the Dark Overlord nearly defeated Grebthar and victory was only achieve through the help of members of the Royal Family.  We have improved since then.  We will manage it.”

“Those battles were won though the aid of the Companions, Not just members of the Royal Family,” said Angela carefully.

“Yes, niece,” replied the Duchess patiently, “That is one of the things we have improved. The current process is to bring all adventurers into the Royal House, certainly you would agree any member of the companions would have joined?”

Angela nodded, accepting the point. The Royal family was quite comprehensive about gathering up adventurers or disappearing them.

“I’ve only fought him three times,” I said.  “He’s quite powerful, are you planning on using Plasma?”  I held up my hand and caused a small ball of BioPlamsa to appear.  It flickered, glowing bolts of lightning flashing out in all directions.  Holding plasma was a trick and I managed to keep all of them from touching myself, though it was more challenging than I’d like to admit.

The Duchess reevaluated me on the spot, but also gestured towards Lance and another cocky looking woman, who of course was named Julia.  Both held out their hands and generated plasma orbs.  “If that is what it takes.”

I nodded, then activated Counter spell and shut down both spells.  Plasma was dangerous.  Lance realized what I was doing and let the spell fail looking non-pulsed.  Plasma Julia’s cocky expression vanished as she briefly struggled to keep the spell active and I squashed her, so there was that.

“Then Badgelor and I fought the Dark Overlord, it didn’t go too poorly but we clearly didn’t win,” I said.  “Julia was there.  Do you want to give them a play by play.”

“I’ve already heard it, and if I was there with my rod the story would have gone differently,” stated the Duchess.

“You would have done less damage,” I said flatly.

The Duchess’ benign expression cracked as she glared at me, “And how do you know that?”

“Because after I broke Excalibur, he told me that the Treasures of Rule were built in such a way as to never be able to harm him,” I said. “I used Mjolnir and Excalibur in a tendem attack. Excalibur broke.”

I wasn’t sure what bothered the royal family more, my casual pronunciation of the unpronounceable hammer’s true name or breaking the unbreakable sword. That was a double whammy.  The Falconian’s power was built around the treasures of rule.  The idea that they were worthless in the coming battle was galling.

“You lie, that sword cannot be broken,” said Lance, unwilling to even consider the second point.

I gestured next to the throne and caused Tony’s Anvil to appear, “No, I used Excalibur and Mojinir to attempt to slay the Dark Overlord on this Anvil.  The sword shattered when I struck it with the hammer.”

Sir Dalton drew Excalibur II and drove it into the stone before him.  All the Falconians recognized the hilt, and my gasp of horror.

“That’s new stonework,” I muttered.

“That can't possibly be Excalibur,” said Lance, as Dalton released the sword and it slid down through the rock until it was stopped by the hilt.  I groaned.  No one cared about the flooring in my new house.

“Who are you, how did you do that, and why,” asked Angela staring at the reforged weapon.

“I’m the Mayor, I’m the Mayor and I’m the Mayor,” I replied.  Angela’s control faltered for a moment as her hand unconsciously went towards the blade before Dalton pulled the sword from the stone and sheathed it.

“That was on you, you set the bar too low,” said Princess Julia.

“You are a crafter,” said the Duchess.  “Do you think being a powerful crafter justifies your ambitions?”

“Not with that attitude,” I replied dryly.

“We should be trying to find the real Mayor, Grebthar,” spat Lance.  There was a chorus of ascent from everyone, scratch that almost everyone.  There were a very small handful of adventurers here that didn’t respond to that barb, including the Duchess.

Julia explained it to me, a few members of the Royal Line heard that Grebthar betrayed them a very long time ago.  The problem was that this bit of information was not widely distributed, and the early Falconian nobility had pivoted into hardcore Grebthar worship very quickly.  While I could have expected Princess Julia, and a few other members of the very high nobility to know that truth, the rest of the family was in the dark.

And while I wasn’t sure if gods like Grebthar heard prayers, those devout ignoramuses did vastly limit the kinds of plans I was willing to discuss around them.  I wasn’t quite sure how to drop that particular bombshell.  It was the functional equivalent of learning that the Mesiah had fallen to the Devil, the most common refrain wouldn’t be doubt.  It would be denial.

This was going to be something that needed to be very carefully approached from the realm of logic and evidence. With strong backing, and a rational argument I could hope to eventually sway these people to realize what happened though it was going to take weeks.

“Grebthar wears the Dark Overlord’s collar,” said Sir Dalton.

Or we could do that.

There was a collective gasp, which again not everyone made.  Lance in particular looked annoyed that fact was dropped for a brief instant before he started acting like a normal person who’s learned that their God’s mind was taken.

“That’s not possible,” said Angela, turning to face me.  “Grebthar cannot be the Dark Overlord.”

“He is, he is quite vocal about it,” I said.

“Does Tomen know,” asked Angela.

“Tomen is dead, the Sphinx killed him,” said the Princess, causing a wave of shock to flow over the room.

Bashara stepped out, dropping her hide in plain sight before saying, “The Sphinx is dead, she died after being betrayed by the Dark Overlord.”  Her timing was perfect.  The distraction broke up the horrible news of Tomen’s death, with something harder to quantify.

Everyone here knew Bashara, for a variety of reasons. She was a reasonably famous arceologist in her own right, but those in the know knew who she worked for. The fact that she’d clearly aligned with me was of course something that had to be factored into plans.

That news, on the other hand, caused a different reaction than I expected.  The Falconians largely thought the Sphinx was made up, a conspiracy about a high-level adventurer who was using their resources to manipulate the world like some sort of shadow government seemed far fetched.  Of course, in the Sphinx’s case it was totally true.

From what I’d gathered, most people thought that the Sphinx was just cover for a group of higher-level killers for hire. Certainly, the group was potent and useful but they were hardly some world spanning organization trying to resurrect the Dark Overlord.

But the reactions I saw were interesting.  Most of the room was full of shock and horror about the revelations, but a few people looked relieved.  A few more were looking at each other.  I noted all of them.  Lance was openly staring at Bashara.

“Lady Bashara is that true?” asked the Duchess.

“The Sphinx placed a curse upon me, I am even now the Mayor is helping me clear out all the damage but I may have done things, offered things, those promises can no longer be kept,” said Bashara.  “The Sphinx was betrayed, her life’s goal destroyed.  Anyone foolish enough to help her will find no further support from that arena.”

The Duchess suddenly spun around, looking at everyone but stopping at her son.  Lance tried to meet her eyes, then faltered.  She knew, but then again Falconian politics involved more than a bit of casual assassination when the other side got intransigent.  This was a rabbit hole I was never going to be happy with.

“Our God has turned, and some of our family may have taken aid from an enemy,” said Princess Julia.  “We shall overcome.  The Mayor is with us, it will be enough.  The Mayor has always been enough before.”

The Duchess tried to speak, truly she did, but the expression of utter disappointment towards Lance overwhelmed her.  She finally lowered her head, inhaled and pushed him out of her mind.

“What is the status of your other Gods?” I asked, curious.

Princess Julia looked up at me, as did pretty much everyone else. I knew their gods were based at least partially on a certain group of superheroes, but that was 800 years ago. Their version of Tony was the god of crafting, and he was all about patents and maintaining monopolies. Steve was a banker.

After 800 years, I wasn’t sure any of them were in fighting shape, but any help would be useful.

“They are in the High Temple,” said Princess Julia a bit too reflexively.

“Another god is coming here; can we just bring them out to fight?” I asked. I was a cleric of Logan. I never actually heard him talk to me, which apparently Grebthar could do. You’d figure that as Mayor, Logan would have wanted to talk to me at some point.

The Duchess sighed, “The Gods are locked in the High Temple. They cannot leave, ever. Grebthar bound them there when the former god of lightning joined the Dark Overlord in his quest to conquer Ordinal.”

“You imprisoned them,” I said.

“Grebthar imprisoned them, They are not our allies,” said the Duchess. “They would not help us in this conflict. They cannot hear us or take our prayers. Their fury at being cut off from Ordinal is overwhelming.”

“Seriously?” I asked Shart.

“The human crafted aspects of divine power?” said Shart. “They are supposed to regulate stuff related to their divine portfolio but it turns out that the system can handle most of that through automated features. I would have busted them out if they were useful.”

“The gods were replaced through automation,” I groaned.

“Basically, everyone thinks it is for the boring jobs but it can replace a CEO as easily as a worker,” said Shart. “You can still tap into them for divine power, but they don’t have a say in the matter.”

“It is just us then?” I asked and the room got very silent.

“Can you defeat the Dark Overlord?” asked Angela. She was still processing the fact that her nation’s god was overcome.  Her statement came out far less powerfully than it should have.  She needed confidence right now, someone to say with authority they could kill that bastard.  Of course, that brought up the other problem which was I had no idea of how to defeat the Dark Overlord.

The week I’d spent building weapons had turned out some very good examples of the craft and earned me a massive pile of skill points.  I’d built weapon upgrades, enhanced runes, crafted a large assortment of new tools and equipment with the literal anvil of the god of creation.   What I had not been successful at was actually building something that could shatter  a divine crystal.  Or even hurt the crystal significantly.

Divine crystal was impossibly tough, and while I could chip at it I wasn’t sure Grebthar was going to give me too many chances.

“Of course,” I said authoritatively.

“He’s lying,” said a Priestess with multiple lie detection perks.  “He has no idea if that is even possible.”  She was sitting with the anti-Jim faction of course.

“He’s only a level fifteen wizard,” supplied another, and the room got chilly.  I might have a ton of hit points, stamina for days and an incredible pool of Mana but level 15 was level 15 and these adventurers knew what that meant.

I was losing them, so on to plan b.

Reaching behind my head, I found the clasp for my Amulet of Non-detection.  Despite the handful of upgrades I’d performed on it, the amulet still looked like a piece of goblin trash.  I had it since my very earliest days on Ordinal, but the time for it was over.

I released it, letting it flop to the floor in front of me in a thoroughly undramatic fashion as I lowered the protections on my character sheet.  “I was hoping for more of a Rock Lee moment, check me again.”

“The Saint of Overly Dramatic Entrances?”  The cleric gripped her staff tightly and let her eyes glow golden for a moment.  “He is a level 15 wizard.”

“Keep going.”

She looked puzzled, and kept boring into my character sheet.  Due to my long experience with Shart I knew when I was being felt up.  She had her eyeballs all over my most sensitive spots.  “Wait, he’s also a level 15 monk?  And  level 16 warrior.  By Grebthar, his total level is 91?!”

“That’s impossible,” spat a hulking Paladin named Cole, also in the anti-Jim faction.  “He’s lying.”

“Is that what you believe?” I said calmly.

Lance jerked away from his mother, finally recovering his resolve, “Of course, that’s not possible!  There is no way you are the real mayor.”

“Then what do you plan on doing about it?” I asked.

Lance stopped at that.  Whatever his plan was, it didn’t go this far this quickly.  He was probably trying to undercut me so the Duchess could deliver the final blow or some such.  The Duchess wasn’t focused anymore, in her place was a woman in the middle of a rather acute existential crisis.

“In any case, I don't have time to waste on more of this tripe,” I said, pulling out the crown and twirling it very slowly around my finger like a hula hoop.  It glowed faintly and I could see naked hunger in some of their eyes as the fabled crown was shown at last.  One of the Falconians wasn’t patient enough and she flashed forward fast enough that the Sphinx would have been slightly impressed.

Of course, I started operating at sixty times regular speed as soon as I pulled out the crown.  I just watched her leisurely approach and snatched her wrist as she was about to grab the crown.

She jerked against my hand, but it didn’t move at all.  My grip on her was like cauldron steel and after a tenth of a second of struggle she realized how truly screwed she was.

“Apologize,” I said calmly to the now wide eyed, horrified woman.  She was a Julia, of course.

“Sorry Daddy, I’ve been naughty,” she stammered, and several people chuckled uncomfortably.  Stupid curious puppy.  I shoved her back hard enough that she slid on the ground for several logs before stopping.  I was stronger now, or it was easier for me to use my power lift when moving a thing.  Fellow adventurers were durable enough that wasn’t a problem, but I was going to have to be more careful if I dealt with a commoner.

Professional.

“I already attuned the crown,” I said, dropping it on my head, in the throne room of the castle of windfall and waited for the prompt.  And waited.

“Should I be getting a prompt here?” I asked Shart.

“Probably,” said the demon, bored out of his mind due to the human nonsense.  I focused my patience on him.  The demon groaned, “Fine, I’ll look.”

“He’s not the Mayor,” said Lance confidently.

I glanced up at my title and Fenris shook his head, before speaking.  “Perhaps he’s a bit too drunk to read?”

The Falconians stiffened at that, sure they were a bunch of day drinkers but they had it under control.  Honest.

“You may have the title of Mayor,” said the Duchess finally, “But to be the King of Falcon, and the true Mayor, you’ll need to have approval of at least fifty percent of the entire Falconian Royal family.”

That was in the Administrator menu.  I dug through the various interfaces until I found the Falconian Union of Crown and Kingdom.  My support to be their king was pushing the low twenty percent mark, and I affixed my support to the UI.  “I thought just wearing the crown would be sufficient.”

“In Grebthar’s day, it would have been, but we have instituted some controls based on when Grebthar was not king,” said Angela carefully.  “You will need to campaign and a vote will need to be held.  This might take a while.”

“The Dark Overlord will be here shortly.  Perhaps there is a faster way?” I said bluntly.

“Sadly no,” smiled Lance.  “You’ll find that the Falconian constitution is quite strict.”

This was an added wrinkle I couldn’t afford.  I needed to have this group whipped into fighting shape before Grebthar came here.  I didn’t even really want to manipulate them like Bashara suggested earlier, I’d actually do the full election cycle if I had the time but we were about to go to war.  I needed them to be on my side to fight Charles and I didn’t want to browbeat them into submission.

I thought it would be so much easier, there has to be something I could do.

The longer this ran, the more likely I was to get caught out in a bad position.  I really wasn’t concerned about becoming King, eventually.  The issue was that the Falconian Royal family was playing politics while waiting for the upcoming battle.  They were trained through generations to treat war like some sort of political game, which left them horribly unprepared for an actual war.

And they didn’t even know.

They were a bunch of house cats.  They thought themselves rulers of their world, and they were capable enough, but the only reason they were so successful was that they were in a safe environment.  In an actual war all of these political maneuvers were going to get them killed.

“Shart can you pull up the Falconian constitution?” I asked.

“What do you think I’m doing, there are so many stupid conditional statements on the Kingship of Falcon that I might go insane, you meat sacks suck.”

“Did they amend it for a popular vote?” I asked.

“Blah blah blah, human rights, blah blah blah, right to privacy, blah blah blah, voting.  So far it is just uninteresting nonsense,” said the demon as he blasted through the document at his even higher speed.  “Here, they added that ‘no King of Falcon who has not completed the trials may be selected as King without at least 50% support from the adventurers of Falcon.’”

“Trials?” I asked out loud.  Lance snorted, as did most of the anti-Jim faction.

“Those are an ancient custom,” said Princess Julia, perking up. She got side eyes from many of the Falconians present, who probably thought she keyed me into the idea. As my support numbers increased slightly, I wasn’t going to correct them.

Julia continued, “As it was said in the Book of Grebthar, Grebthar Strikes Back, Chapter Fifteen though Sixteen, The Trials of the Lion, Oh ye Thunderous Cats, Part One and Two, Grebthar, mighty in his arm, fast in his leg, quick in mind, cleverness in perception. Lo, not an adventurer was the equal to Grebthar, and those who challenged him did fail. Grebthar was successful, and thus became the King.”

“The trials of Lion-O, from Thundercats?” I asked.

“He speaks of the ancients,” someone whispered and my support jumped three percent.

“Ou-yay uys-gay are-yay ecking-fay orons-may,” I groaned, causing my support to shoot up another point, for I could speak ancient and must have said something quite profound.  “Fine, let's do the trials then.”

“The trials will require you to go against the best members of the Royal house in their strongest areas,” said Lance with a snort.  “How much time do you need to prepare?”

I glared at him, “I’ll do whatever is necessary to become strong enough to defeat…”

Chapter 34 – What is a Tyrant to do?

“The Dark Overlord,” someone screamed as Charles passed by them.  He was making it a point to kill everyone, and now they were begging as soon as they saw him.  So very predictable.

This was sadly the better alternative.  Walking around as Grebthar made everyone swarm him and Charles was done with that.  Right now he was preparing to destroy Ordinal and for that he needed an army a bit larger than the four beings he raised from the dead.

Well, the two women were kind of merged together so he wasn’t sure if they should count as one or not.  It wasn’t quite like a top and bottom situation, he’d melted one’s spine and blew off the other’s head.

And her arms and legs but he’d found and reattached those, at least those were probably her legs.

No, his problem was that 4 and a half zombies was not going to seriously threaten Windfall because he’d build an impenetrable wall around the whole thing, like an idiot.  He’d need a bit more than a few zombies, plus he did not want to have to lead the battle personally.  Jim was going to be there, and Charles wanted to kill him good and proper before he got along to the plan.

Intellectually, Charles knew he needed to clear off anyone who might try to stop his plans.  He couldn’t be everywhere at once, but he didn’t trust anyone.  The problem with being the Dark Overlord is that everyone thought that you were going to Windfall castle. They were wrong, but only he knew that.

And I’m not sharing.

Charles brought up the town menu now that he was the ruler here.   Sadly, there were still thousands of people here, mostly hiding after the single unit of militia spontaneously exploded.  He needed an army of thousands, but he doubted any of them would willingly fight under his banner.  Plus, of course, he hated them and wanted them all to die.

“Whelp, looks like it is war crimes time,” grinned Charles searching for the barrier controls, which were of course destroyed.  Like his dungeon.  By Jim.

Jim sucks.

‘You got that inner voice,’ thought Charles who wasn’t the least bit affected by being stuck in a dark collapsed cave for weeks while shadow spawn sucked away his mana.   That was glorious time because it left him free to think of all the ways to kill Jim.  Fortunately, Grebthar knew barrier spells, heck he’d even used a few to protect the people before he’d figured out how the ancient barriers worked.

The first time he’d done it, he realized that a barrier with the safety mechanism disengaged would be capable of killing off a whole town of people, so he’d made absolutely sure to get those just right.

Not this time, Charles held up his hands and began focusing on the spell.  He could feel his fingers warm up, then burn with the amount of mana he poured through them as the spell began to take shape until finally it cast, and he relaxed.

Everyone had a Trait, but some traits were better than others.  Leia’s trait had evolved into giving her an enhanced Force Point that could be used on any skill or ability.  Tri-Blade’s trait was his ability to always land a hit with his blade, but neither of them was remotely as powerful as Grebthar’s trait.

· Endless Spring:  You do not need to pay upkeep costs on any spell you cast.

With this trait, Grebthar had spells still active that he’d cast hundreds of years ago. It wasn’t all powerful, but it was about as close as you could reasonably manage.

The barrier exploded out, covering the entire city and some of the surrounding lands.  Back in Windfall that required a tap to the Shadow Source located under the town, and even that wasn’t as big as this barrier.

Or as powerful.

There were weaknesses involved in a cast barrier that didn’t exist in the artifact generated one, but those were irrelevant here.  No one was strong enough to counterspell it and who bothered to learn how to counterspell barriers?  Am I right?  Besides, the Dark Overlord didn’t need to worry about anything.

· You may engage the barrier’s protection mode, all unauthorized beings will take between 1 and 30 points of damage at an interval of 1 second to 1 minute.

The protection mode would cause a painful burn on whomever it affected.  He could turn the barrier to 30 points of damage a second, ending all of these people’s miserable lives in less than ten seconds, but what was the fun in that?  The barrier was sealed off so no one could escape, unless they were a high-level caster.  He’d even pushed the dome underground so that hiding in the ruins wouldn’t be safe, not that much of the ruins under Fillidelphia were intact.

Grebthar set the barrier to one point of damage every minute and decided to go visit the grave of another old friend.