Steel and Mana

Chapter 340 – The Siege (4)

The moment Kiva realized he had lost control of his body and that his magic was surged forth by his Master's invisible hand gripping him, he suddenly felt no more fear. What remained was only cold resignation.

His fingers trembled once, but he could feel the runes of Pascal’s magic emerging within him, through his mind, dictating his every movement, forcing his power to synchronize with the Herald's core, inducing a double-explosion, fueling their imminent destruction. The ship groaned once beneath him, the shipslaves screaming in protest but then silenced at once, being burnt out as Pascal's command discarded them, initiating the ship's final seconds.

He was going to die.

And for what?

As the destructive sequence continued, Kiva stood stunned, a tide of memories coming back to him all of a sudden. They were moments he had not thought about for long—far too long. Three hundred years, in fact, even if he spent most of that time asleep.

He barely remembered the home he was taken from. A tiny farming village somewhere up north, close to the Frontier. For a moment, he remembered a smell... It always had been thick with the scent of pine and wet earth. It was the kind of place where time seemed to be slower, where there was... peace. He could still hear the laughter of his siblings. Or he guessed it was his siblings; it was... fuzzy. He wasn't sure. Then there was his Mother, who hummed as she worked on something. He suddenly could feel her touch, her hands calloused but still gentle.

"When was this...?" He asked himself, but he didn't know, and his memories just kept flashing forward.

The Imperial forces had come at dawn, armored figures surrounding a robed man bearing the insignia not of the local nobles but that of the throne. They had not asked. They had not explained anything. They simply grabbed him and took him, their voices praising his potential only once.

"Potential..." Kiva muttered, remembering that one day he suddenly dreamt of rain... and by the time he woke up, a blue formation was above his bed, soaking him.

He remembered how the man's eyes were gleaming with a strange light as he looked at him. But he was too young to understand that he would never be able to come back home. He could remember being led away, confused, and looking back at his Mother. He couldn't recall her features, but her face was wet with tears, her voice breaking as she called his name.

“Kiva! Kiva!”

He never saw her again.

His new home was the Imperial Palace, a fortress. A prison for others. He was put there with other, seemingly promising children. Not many... only six, as he learned after being taught to count. They beat knowledge into him many times, literally. They honed him, formed him to their liking, and stripped away any weakness he showed. He learned to endure pain, to suppress his fears, to kill the boy he had been, replacing those feelings with discipline and duty. With utter loyalty to the Empire.

But he was not alone.

There were three others chosen from the six originals. One of them had the name Otto. He was wild, aggressive... brash. But Kiva quickly learned he was a blunt instrument, something to use to break down others. Then, there was Barth, the cautious one. He was always the one who, before acting, wanted to see it from all the angles he could find. Slow as a turtle. And... Lucca. He was usually quiet but also probably the smartest. Although Kiva knew his own role was to follow orders and, without questions, do anything he was ordered to, Lucca was never controlled like that. He was simply told his task, and then he was let to deal with it as he saw fit. He always envied him. Still, they had been a family of sorts, becoming brothers under Pascal’s grand designs for the Empire.

And then... a new face. A beautiful woman... Morningstar.

She had not been like the other teacher Kiva had known since arriving at the Imperial City. She had not needed to fight. Morningstar... She was a healer of unmatched brilliance; her presence alone could mend the wounds the soldiers on the battlefield carried. Not just in the body... no, she could deal with both seen and unseen injuries, soothing the mind and chasing away the doubts in their tumultuous minds.

Her magic was gentle, like a mother's touch. She had been Pascal’s most trusted aide, his right-hand woman. Maybe even more. There had been whispers the four had always picked up on, rumors that were never more than that. Only rumors. Still, the four did think that the two were indeed lovers. It remained unacknowledged. But, as far as Kiva was concerned, it was real.

Kiva had envied her, once. Not for her closeness to his Master but for the way she seemed to be different. She could and would argue with Pascal, the Emperor... their Master. She even managed to refuse his orders multiple times without any punishment, especially when it turned out she was right in the end.

"The throne never tolerates it for long..." Kiva suddenly scoffed as his memories kept resurfacing.

None of Morningstar's powers and position mattered when Pascal revealed his true ambition to his disciples.

The fact he had reconstructed the Emperor of Magic's failed spell. The magic that killed him: Immortality. He would become a God-emperor to rule forever. He would become Ishillia, the only empire in this world.

And for that, he needed Morningstar. Not just as he had her now, but her... everything.

So it was decided. The four of them—Kiva, Otto, Barth, and Lucca—had been chosen to be his aids, his executioners. They had planned it for years. They had set the ritual that would drain Morningstar of her unparalleled vitality, and she would become the last piece in Pascal’s puzzle for eternal life. Kiva remembered that he was once ordered by Barth to convince Lucca that the empire’s survival needed to depend on Pascal’s vision. To this day, he doesn't know how he succeeded... but Lucca never backed out of the plan. Probably, he knew he couldn't. And right now, Kiva understood why... Deep down, he had known it was a lie. Something Kiva didn't understand right until now.

"It's too late..." He sighed, just as Lucca did when the trap was sprung.

Morningstar had trusted them. The most insidious part of Pascal's design was that Morningstar herself was helping them develop it. Not knowing it was for her. Or maybe she did. She just played her own version, gambling on using Pascal. But he never knew for real,

“You bastard,” she had spat when the ritual trapped her, and Pascal was beginning to siphon her magic away.

There was a kind of anger in her voice, but thinking back, that anger was devoid of shock.

And then, in a final act of defiance, she had unraveled her own essence in the middle of it all, severing the magic at its source. Pascal had almost died. But, the connection between him and his four disciples saved them all. Still, for months, he raged. Years of planning were undone in a single heartbeat, bringing a curse upon him instead of the infinite years he was supposed to. It shackled him straight to the failed formation, bound to the Imperial City... probably forever.

After a few years of deliberation, Pascal sealed them away deep within Ishillia, erasing all knowledge of the four. They would sleep until the time was right, until Pascal's body could recover, until he had devised another way for their return and to build their Eternal Empire once more.

"Three hundred years..."

Three hundred years of waiting, preparing, and resurfacing for this? To be forcefully sacrificed? Even if he was conditioned to follow orders, Kiva understood the truth he had spent centuries ignoring.

"None of it mattered..." He muttered.

Pascal had already lost everything three hundred years ago. He had simply refused to accept it. Today was the culmination of centuries passing by without coming to an acceptance. It was an elongated funeral procedure. It was born from his hysterical denial, stretched across centuries. They had never been here to win. They were simply recalled because he was unable to deal with the problems alone. Not to enact his plans... There were no plans, no matter what Pascal said. His words were only lies.

"We were never here to win..."

And now, he would die for a damned lie. He killed, he massacred, he did inhumane things for the plans. For the Eternal Empire. For his Master.

"What a fool... I am." He exhaled slowly, feeling the last of his will slip away. He accepted it. This was his death, his failure, his reward. For the first time in his life, though, he felt peace.

And then.

A rumble. Then, the ship stopped.

The magic... stopped.@@novelbin@@

No... it was gone. The magic, Pascal's intervention, it was... canceled.

Moments from detonation, the surging energy in the core simply vanished, along with his own destruction. His knees then buckled, and he collapsed to the deck, gasping, fingers digging into the cold metal beneath him. Something was breaking off in him—a grip, releasing. He lifted his gaze, his vision blurring, and turned his head toward the sky.

What had happened?

What had just saved him?

As he convulsed there, his mind raced with a bitter clarity. He thought of Morningstar, of the way they betrayed her. Of how his Master constantly manipulated everyone. Then... his only friends, from who only had Lucca now. Then...

"Mom..."

All of a sudden, he laughed. It sounded hollow, a broken noise that traveled alone in the now empty ship, descending downwards, ready to crash into the earth.

"Betrayers will be betrayed... And even that betrayal will be betrayed, huh?"

If anything, before the impact, he couldn't help but think that it was karma. The Gods' justice manifesting. Pascal had betrayed Morningstar, and in doing so, he had betrayed them all. And now, at the end of all things, the cycle had come full circle because something stopped Pascal from having a win in this lost war.

"Good..."

Kiva muttered as he closed his eyes. He had been a fool, a pawn in a game he never understood; he only did what he was told. An excuse that he would never use. Still, at last, he saw the board in his last moment for what it was.

"Master, I'm done playing. I quit." He chuckled, and then everything went dark as the Herald crashed into the earth, and his body was launched against the ceiling, knocking him out... maybe forever.

...
....
.....

"Nice work!" Kustov shouted, repeating the same thing I was thinking of.

We watched as the Ishillian warship, the last of theirs, was about to explode, only to be canceled by our intervention. Now, it was nothing but a paperweight crashing down from the sky.

"Secure it," I ordered the ground troops nearest to the crash site. "The mage could still be alive; capture him alive if possible!"

"Isn't that... dangerous?" Kustov asked, looking at me.

"Could be. It could not be. We will see." I muttered, watching the fire raging in our backlines. "The intact parts continue bombarding the city. I want a full report in an hour of how many we lost!"

"Yes, My Sovereign." Echoed Oleg's voice through the radio as he was down below, commanding the troops.

"Also..." I looked at Kustov while speaking, "Send out the planes. It is time we reply to his move with ours."