Victor of Tucson

Book 9: Chapter 21: A Meeting With the Queen

Victor sat, sipping a cup of spiced coffee, heavy with cream, looking out over his balcony as he contemplated the changes Qi Pot’s heart had wrought in him. The heart had been potent, though nothing more than Obert’s. It had been different, though; Victor had felt Qi Pot’s strange, hot, shadowy Energy coursing through his pathways. He’d felt it trying to do something, but it hadn’t taken; either his body had resisted it, or the heart hadn’t been potent enough. Whatever the case, Victor hadn’t gained any new feats, affinities, bloodline alterations, or anything of that sort. However, he’d earned a rank to his Core and advanced to level seventy-two.

He hadn’t been too surprised by the level; he felt he’d been close to seventy-one before killing Qi Pot, so the additional Energy infusion from the heart had pushed him over the edge to the next. With a sip of hot, cinnamon-flavored coffee, he sighed and looked at his status sheet:

Status

Name:

Victor Sandoval

Race:

Quinametzin Bloodline - Epic 2

Class:

Berserker of Unstoppable Momentum - Legendary

72

Breath Core:

Elder Class - Improved 6

Core:

Spirit Class - Epic 3

Breath Core Affinity:

Magma - 9

Breath Core Energy:

2500/2500

Energy Affinity:

Fear 9.4, Rage 9.1, Glory 8.6, Inspiration 7.4, Unattuned 3.1

Energy:

36871/36871

Strength:

508

Vitality:

673 (740)

Dexterity:

208

Agility:

231

Intelligence:

172

Will:

673

Points Available:

0

Titles & Feats:

Titanic Rage, Ancestral Bond, Flame-Touched, Greater Titanic Constitution, Titanic Presence, Desperate Grace, Challenger, Elder Magic, Born of Terror, Battlefield Awareness, Battlefield Presence, Aura of Command, Epic Quinametzin, Mountain's Resilience, Behemoth's Regeneration, Blood Supremacy, Furious Battle Momentum

For the first time, will wasn’t his highest attribute. His vitality had caught up to it, and with the bonus from his wyrm-scale vest, it had cleanly outstripped it. When he added his Sovereign Will boost, his vitality nearly hit one thousand. He knew from talking to his friends and loved ones that such a number was unheard of on Fanwath. However, he supposed there were some folks on Sojourn and Ruhn with stats that were that high. “Well, I’m not done yet.” Victor chuckled.

Looking at his status sheet again, he frowned at his Breath Core rank. He needed to work on that, and it seemed like he might have to do old-fashioned, slow, and steady cultivation. Maybe if he could kill some more wyrms or other creatures with Breath Cores and eat their hearts, he’d see a boost, but so far, that hadn’t been on the menu. He had the egg to eat, which, apparently, had come from a wyrm, and was eager to see what would come of it, but first, he had his meeting with Queen Kynna to attend.

He sighed, tossed the remainder of his coffee over the balcony railing, and went inside to finish getting ready. Ten minutes later, Bryn guided him through the palace toward the expansive royal gardens on the back acreage. The palace grounds took up several square miles, and the queen’s gardens were supposedly quite something. Victor hadn’t yet checked them out.

“Does it feel different, milord?”

“What’s that?”

“Being a grand and fine duke, sir.” Bryn looked at him sideways, and Victor saw a glint of humor in her eyes.

“Very clever.”

“I notice you aren’t wearing your uniform, milord.”

Victor snorted. “Nah, too shiny for me. I’ll wear it only upon royal decree.”

Bryn chuckled. “Such a rebellious champion, er, excuse me, duke.”

“All right, all right, that’s enough of that shit.” Victor watched her walk for a moment, then added, “You’ve got quite a spring in your step today. Did you get some good news?”

“Actually, I did, sir! I’ve been informed by Captain Wash that I’ll be accompanying you as you travel to your new duchy.”

Victor’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh? Hah! No one told me. Well, I’m glad to have you, Bryn. You’re sure that’s what you want? I’ll probably be there most of the time. Don’t you have family—”

“I’m happy, milord. I find my duty as your guard and guide quite entertaining.”

Victor nodded. “Good.”

They passed through a resort-like rear patio complete with pools, fountains, and rose hedges—all yellow. Then they walked through a tall archway in a red-brick wall, and Victor had to pause to take in the many sweet smells and the gorgeous hedgerows. They were comprised of flowering shrubs laid out in a meandering pattern down a gentle slope toward a lush, green copse of woods in the distance. He could see the queen’s entourage about halfway down the hill. “Looks like we’re heading the right way.”

“Yes, sir. I was told she’d be in the garden.”

Victor nodded and followed Bryn through the maze-like hedges, and when he came to the broad central path, lined with weird, fantastical marble sculptures and flower-filled planters, the queen turned toward the two of them and waved. “Might as well wait here, Bryn. She’ll want privacy.”

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“Aye, milord, her retainers are moving off.” It was true—Queen Kynna’s cadre of eight “Queen’s Guards” and her ladies-in-waiting were separating themselves from the monarch. The ladies moved off in clusters of two and three, murmuring and giggling. The guards took up a star-shaped pattern a reasonable distance from the queen, leaving her alone as Victor approached.

“Hello, Duke Sandoval.” She smiled, performing an almost mocking curtsey, lifting her silky, pale-blue skirts.

Victor bowed. “My Queen.”

She held a finger to her crown and tapped her nail against it, producing her weird, blue, static Energy bubble around them. “For our privacy.”

Victor nodded, folding his arms over his chest and inhaling deeply. “At least it doesn’t block the smells. This garden is something else.”

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it? My favorite part is the grove.” She nodded down the slope toward the trees at the base of the hill. “There are special tree gardens and living sculptures in there. My great-grandmother had a powerful affinity for plants.” While Victor followed her gaze, the queen seemed to gather herself, building the impetus to broach the topic of their meeting. “Do you feel I’ve tried to entrap you?”

“In a way, I guess so. I was irritated at first. I mean, I still am. I didn’t come here looking to manage an estate or to have people follow me.” Victor held up a hand to forestall her objections. “I know it’s an honor. I know you’ve given me a piece of coveted property. I also know why you did it. I mean, it doesn’t take a genius. You hope I’ll grow fond of the place and the people there. You hope that I’ll feel a connection to them, and, being so connected, you hope that I’ll understand the risks of a succession war better.”

She nodded, her high, crystal crown glittering with a dazzling reflection of the morning sun. “It’s more than that, though, Victor. I do want you to understand the risks, but I also want you to share in them. Now that you’re a titled noble, should you lose in a duel—”

“My lands and people will be at the mercy of the winning King. I get it. Right now, it doesn’t mean much, but I suppose your plan is to have me spend time at Iron Mountain, growing to care about the folks there, huh?”

“Am I so transparent?” She smiled and waved a hand. “Don’t answer that. I’ve had a long, heart-to-heart discussion with Thorn, my most trusted advisor, as you’ve no doubt guessed. I believe I have come up with a compromise for you and Dar to consider.” Victor nodded, perhaps a little absently. He’d seen people moving around on the next tier of the garden, further down the hillside. Were they Kynna’s retainers?

“Thorn brought up a grudge my father had with the ruling family of the kingdom of Ardent. They lie to the east, removed by nearly a thousand miles and two other, smaller kingdoms. Thorn believes we could make a believable argument for pursuing vengeance against Ardent. In order to challenge them, per the rules of the Empire, we’d need to share a border.”

Victor nodded. He hadn’t seen the movement again and decided it might have been a songbird or something. “Which gives you an excuse to attack the two kingdoms separating you, I guess?”

“That’s right. I believe—” Kynna gasped, squeezing her eyes tight as she reached up to grasp her head in both hands.

“Are you all right—” She fell toward Victor, and he caught her in his arms, and that’s when he felt it, too—a potent, draining vortex, sucking the Energy out of his Core. As the blue, static Energy shield faded around them, Victor looked inward and saw that his rage-attuned Energy was being drawn out of him. It was unpleasant and left him feeling weaker, but it was only his rage. His other attunements roiled and swelled with power. He looked around, saw Kynna’s guards jogging toward them, and shouted, “Something’s wrong!”

Kynna was a dead weight in his arms, completely unconscious. Victor held her close, turning in a circle, and that’s when the shrubs exploded as a dozen crackling magenta portals spun into existence, out of which dozens of soldiers poured. Victor saw figures wielding large weapons and wearing heavy armor and, along with them, just as many lithe fighters in sleek leather or silky garb. They immediately began to channel Energy as they clashed with Kynna’s guards.

Victor saw Bryn and a couple of other royal guards surrounded by at least ten attackers and wanted to run to help, but he was stuck with Kynna; a dozen of the strange soldiers had already broken past Kynna’s other guards and were charging him. Alarm bells clanged from the palace, and he hoped help was on the way as he shifted Kynna, planning to set her on the ground so he could summon a weapon.

Victor wasn’t often caught unawares, but one of the attackers was absurdly nimble and quick, and he felt a stab in his shoulder as a knife drove through his clothes. He took a stumbling step, finding combat with no rage in his Core strange and foreign. He felt like he was outside himself, that his body was slow and clumsy. He’d been admiring the garden, talking to Kynna, and now—Another blow, this time from a mace, caught him above the ear, and Victor felt the stab of split skin and the concussion of his skull being rattled. He stumbled to a knee, hunkering over Kynna, trying to shield her from a flurry of attacks.

As more attackers swarmed him with stabs, slashes, and thudding blows, he tried to recover his wits and remember what he should do. A voice—his own—roared in his mind, “Channel Energy into your armor, fool!” but something was making him dull and slow. Something was still pulling at his rage-attuned Energy. Then, as a rapier gashed his forehead, sheeting blood into his eyes, he saw it—a pulsing, throbbing, purple-glowing rod impaled in the ground a dozen yards away where a hedge used to be.

“A trap,” he grunted, then, as Kynna and he received more stabs and Energy-infused attacks, he bunched his legs and leaped out of there. The Titanic Leap was his most clumsy ever, but it was enough—he soared some twenty feet into the air, then nearly five times that far ahead, just past where Bryn and the other guards were being overwhelmed. Victor crashed onto the cobble path and fell, sliding on his knees in his efforts to keep Kynna from tumbling free of his arms.

Victor immediately felt his head clear, and his fury began to stoke. As his eyes blazed with molten fire, he surged to his feet, still holding Kynna, and turned to glare at the dozens of attackers. The Queen’s Guard were formidable combatants, and they were putting up a desperate defense to keep the attackers who badly outnumbered them at bay. Victor could see Energy spells of all sorts—fireballs, glowing shields, ghostly, translucent weapons, and even showers of mystical bolts.

He caught a glimpse of Bryn, utterly surrounded, bleeding, her weapon gone from her hand, but a large shield held before her as she stood back-to-back with a Queen’s Guard. She’d tell him to leave. She’d tell him to take the queen and run. Wouldn’t she? Shouldn’t he?

Victor looked at Kynna and saw her face was bloody from a broad, bone-deep gash on her brow and that arrows and stab wounds covered her body. Was she even alive? Her crown had been knocked off, and her hands hung limp, but in that second of hesitation, while he contemplated the “right” thing to do, he heard Bryn cry out, and he knew she and the queen's guardians would soon be killed. He glanced up the hill but didn’t see any help mobilizing. What was going on? A coup?

A huge warrior, wielding a massive, two-handed mace with a spiked ball on the end, waded into the fight where Bryn and the Queen’s Guard held something like fifteen attackers at bay. Victor wasn’t sure how, but it had to do with some enormous surge of Energy the Queen’s Guard had unleashed—a rippling curtain of weird, pink clouds that seemed to obscure spine-tipped tentacles. They grasped and stabbed at the attackers, pulling them off, and for a moment, Bryn was clear, and her desperate, dark-gray eyes locked onto his.

“Fuck this,” Victor growled, and he reached into his repertoire of spells and cast one he’d let languish for far too long—Guard Ally. A shield of brilliant golden, glory-attuned Energy surrounded Bryn, and suddenly, Victor felt the jostling of the enemies around her. He felt the stabs of spears and the slashes of swords, the burning of fireballs, the jolts of lightning. He felt everything intended for her, only doubly so.

Grunting with the effort, he lowered Kynna to the ground, and then, as cuts and burns and gaping wounds appeared on his body, then rapidly healed, he stepped over Kynna’s insensate form and summoned Lifedrinker to his hands. She thudded onto the pavers before him, her heavy axe-head driving them into the soft earth as he grasped her handle. Victor, buffeted by more and more blows, felt his mind slipping away, lost in the torrent of rage that slid into its own special pathway created by his Furious Battle Momentum.

Before he lost himself, he channeled Energy into his armor, and his disguise of soft, bloodstained clothes was replaced by the fierce, black, and red shell of his wyrm-scale and lava king hide armor. The blows intended for Bryn continued to rain down on him, but now they were mostly rebuffed. Still, Victor’s rage had clouded his vision red, and he’d had enough. He cast Iron Berserk, knowing his epic-tier Core could substitute any of his affinities for rage to keep it going.

For the first time on Ruhn, Victor took on his proper, titanic aspect. He surged from ten to more than twenty feet in height. Lifedrinker was no longer an unwieldy burden as his strength soared and his massive bones stabilized his form. He lifted her high, and as she sang with furious blood lust, bursting into molten flames, he roared. As the blows aimed at Bryn pounded into him, he focused on the giant warrior with the two-handed mace and cast Energy Charge, fueling it with fear-attuned Energy.

In a cloud of black smoke and shadows, he ripped the garden path to shreds and then slammed into the warrior, sending him flying, bouncing, and careening off other warriors. His head caught the edge of a stone bench, and Victor saw his skull come apart, and then he was wading into the fools surrounding his friend. Lifedrinker split bodies in twain, like a cleaver quartering chickens. No armor stood before her. No bones or spells of shielding could stop her smoldering, depthless obsidian edge from rending the bodies of Victor’s foes.

As blood and viscera sprayed, he roared and laughed. His Iron Berserk didn’t add to his madness, and the blows had stopped falling on Bryn, so his Furious Battle Momentum had not yet driven him beyond reason. With a bit of sanity still providing clarity, Victor looked over the ten corpses near his feet and roared at the Queen’s Guard and Bryn, “Protect the queen!” and then he charged another pack of attackers.

The Queen’s Guard he rescued fell back, knowing well her duty to the monarch. Victor’s great body filled the gap as he wove into the attackers, cleaving and hacking with the precision of a master. Lifedrinker felt light in his hands, but her blade was like a razor-edged wrecking ball. Hundreds of attacks hit him, but the assassins were like children fighting a madman in heavy armor. For every five stabs or cuts or spell-blasts, Victor demolished another attacker. His strength was at levels he’d never experienced as his Furious Battle Momentum began to stack with his Iron Berserk.

Lifedrinker’s great, wedged blade caught an armored warrior on the shoulder plate, split through it, cleaved through his arm, then his torso, and then his other arm at the elbow. His top half was thrown to the side by the swing, but his legs stood there before Victor kicked them aside and focused on the last group of attackers still battling a desperate pair of Queen’s Guards. He strode forward, too mad to use his Energy Charge, and on his third stride, Lifedrinker whooshed through the air and split three of the assassins to pieces. In a shower of blood, Victor bore down and screamed his fury.

The roar was enough to stun the remaining fighters. Even the Queen’s Guards were awestruck, stumbling back as Victor fell on the last of the attackers, feeding his blood-hungry axe as he slaughtered them. Before long, he stood over the last of the black-clad assailants, their guts and blood steaming in the cool air, his chest heaving, his throat gurgling with a low, maniacal laugh. The surviving guards, including Bryn, still glowing with a shimmering shell of Victor’s Glory-attuned Energy, rushed the Queen up the path toward the palace.

Enough of Victor’s mentality was intact, that he knew he didn’t need to chase them. He’d hardly taken a wound as he slaughtered the assassins, so his Furious Battle Momentum wasn’t built up enough to overcome his prodigious will. Instead, he stood in the gore-strewn garden, massive axe in his hands, staring at the ruined corpses of his foes.

As his blood slowly cooled, bit by bit, he began to take note of the strange rods, now tipped over and inert. He sent Lifedrinker into storage with a quick, “We’ll talk soon, chica,” and then he walked over and picked up one of the rods. His frown deepened when he saw the pale green ribbon around the device. He’d seen ribbons like that, hadn’t he? With a great effort of will, he pulled the rest of his rage back to his Core and canceled his iron berserk.

His head cooler and clearer, he stared at the ribbon and searched his memory—the queen’s ladies. He’d seen several of them wearing ribbons like that. Victor glanced up the hill and saw the Queen’s Guard ushering Kynna into the palace—she was walking. Victor looked around the battlefield again, moving to collect the other rods; there were nine, and they each bore the pale green ribbon.

He studied the ruined corpses of his foes and the handful of dead Queen’s Guard. Where were the queen’s ladies? Not a single one was dead on the field, and none had escaped with the queen. Had they disappeared before the ambush? Could they all be traitorous? It seemed so improbable, but he couldn’t think of another explanation. Someone had planted the rods, and somehow, all the ladies had slipped away before the ambush. Scowling, Victor sent the rods into his storage container and then started toward the palace. That’s when the Energy hit him.