Chapter 125: The Third Way (1/2)
“It will take me less than ten minutes to destroy you, Wotan!” Vainqueur Knightsbane declared, expanding his wings threateningly.
“It seems you have forgotten how our last physical encounters ended,” the stormlord replied, barely restraining himself. “You would have died in that crater, had your servant not rescued you at the last minute. Although I welcome the opportunity to settle our score, I am here to honor my word first.”
“Your word?” the dragon asked, surprised when no thunderbolt followed. King Wotan never talked for long, and always fought until the bitter end. So why was he staying his hand this time? “What is your fairy’s word worth?”
“An oath once given, I never betray,” King Wotan replied, one of his winged allies landing on his shoulder like a crow. “Although I did not make a vow myself, your 'chief minion' agreed to release the soul of my Valkyrie Sigrun if I vowed to talk peacefully for ten minutes. Nine now, I should say.”
What rubbish was this? Manling Victor would never act behind his friend’s back.
Vainqueur briefly wondered if this was a fairy trick, but he couldn’t see any benefit. If anything, the fomor had wasted a potential surprise attack.
Intelligence check successful.
Unless… maybe the trick was on Manling Victor’s part, so they could defeat the fairies more easily. He had always been crafty.
“Minion!” Vainqueur roared. “MINION! GET BACK HERE!”
Answering his call, Manling Victor teleported right before his dragon master.
And what a scene it was. His minion had abandoned his clothes to revel in his dragon nakedness, with blood dripped profusely from two holes in his neck. He smelled of bats and wild breeding.
“EXCALIBUR!” he shouted with a blissful face, crawling on all fours with both tails—the long dragon one, and the tiny manling one—raised.
Silence fell upon the gathering, as the manling’s face turned from bliss to shame.
“[Emergency Teleport]!” Friend Victor shouted, touching his hands and waist. “Damn it, my items!”
“Oh, my…” one of the valkyries muttered, a few of the flying princess looking at Manling Victor’s lower parts with fascination. Vainqueur also noticed Untasty Allison’s eyes peek out of the giant mushroom where she had hidden herself.
“I see that your thrall has taken levels in [Berserker],” King Wotan mused. “Excellent strategy.”
“[Golden Pantaloons]!” Manling Victor cast a spell, golden trousers of solid magic appearing to protect his little tail. “Your Majesty, please issue a warning first next time!”
“Minion, I am naked too and you do not see me make a scene about it,” Vainqueur replied with great wisdom.
His friend opened his mouth, closed it, then looked at his dragon master with a newfound curiosity. “Your Majesty is naked,” he muttered. “Your Majesty was naked all along.”
“Minion, I have always been naked power,” Vainqueur replied.
“Yes, I knew, but I didn’t understand.”
“Minion, we dragons have no shame in flaunting our natural beauty to everyone. It is you manlings who need to hide their insecurities below clothes.”
“Seven minutes,” Wotan spoke up, waving his spear as he started losing patience. “Speak, or fight.”
“Minion,” Vainqueur told his chief of staff. “The fairy pretends that you made a deal with him; to release one of his false princesses for a moment of his time.”
“Technically, I only talked to the Valkyrie, but…” Manling Victor rose up on his feet, looking at Wotan, and then at Vainqueur himself. “Does Your Majesty trust me on this?”
“Friend Victor, by now you should know the answer to this question. You are my most valued companion, and I trust you unconditionally.”
If he had an idea, then Vainqueur would support it; or at least give it the benefit of the doubt.
“Thank you,” Manling Victor bowed, before turning to the fomor. “Lord Wotan, I have asked that you please talk to us before we fight, because I believe we don’t need to fight at all.”
The statement surprised Vainqueur almost as much as Wotan. Did he expect the fomor to become a minion? If so, he was mistaken.
“You attacked us to prevent a war,” the chief of staff argued. “Because you believed that Your Majesty here was the greatest threat to your race.”
“He is,” Wotan replied.
“I am!” Vainqueur boasted.
“No, he isn’t!” Manling Victor shouted, much to both titans’ surprise. “The greatest threat to the fomors, are the fomors themselves!”
King Wotan remained entirely silent, his lone eye looming over Manling Victor. Vainqueur readied himself to pounce on the fomor, should he make any threatening move towards his manling.
“You fomors are the ones who keep waging pointless, costly wars on humans, on dragons, on everyone who doesn’t belong to your so-called ‘master race’,” Manling Victor said. “Certainly, nations of our world often bicker, but sentient species have managed to live in peace for centuries. Why not fomors too?”
“A lion does not make peace with sheep,” King Wotan replied. “This is the law of nature.”
“You are wrong. Lions need to kill to eat. You fomors don’t. You don’t need to kill or attack other races to survive. You don’t need to kill at all! Thing is, the only thing that sustains this cycle of destruction, is your sociopathic ego!” King Wotan’s face remained a mask of ice. “Do you want proof? One of your kindred is renting a goddamn room in Murmurin as we speak!”
“What?” Vainqueur glared at his minion, incensed that a fairy had made his lair near his own.
“Jack is the living proof that our species don’t have to kill each other,” Manling Victor continued. “Maybe the Soulcrests were born of great evil, but they granted your kind souls. They granted Fomors the capacity to change, to learn, to care; we have seen that in the volcano.”
The Valkyrie on Wotan’s shoulder shifted uncomfortably, while the others moved to shield their master. Vainqueur couldn’t help but see a mirror of his own minions in them.
“All I ask, King Wotan, is that you meditate on your old ways, and ponder if they have done your race any good.”
“The New Folk conquered the lands that belonged to my kindred,” King Wotan spoke. “They keep doing so.”
“Because you keep trying to recover lost glory, instead of accepting that the world has changed,” Manling Victor replied. “You can make treaties with the other races and kingdoms. Divide the world fairly. Or you can keep this eternal war going and see your kingdoms shrink century after century.”
“The Mell Clan will never stop,” King Wotan said. “You may be right, wise manling, that our species could coexist, but the fairy queen will never listen. She will kill or be killed.”
“Then do away with that psychopath,” Manling Victor said. “We’ve seen how you acted in the volcano. You cared. You cared about someone less strong, less mighty than yourself. We have killed many of them; do you want to lose more?”
The valkyries readied their spears in challenge, but Wotan raised a hand to stop them. “I swore an oath,” he pointed out.
“You promised to bring His Majesty’s head to the fairy queen,” Manling Victor said, “Never to separate it from his body first. I say you honor your word to the letter.”
While he would never suspect his friend of treason, Vainqueur had to think twice about his sentence.
Intelligence check successful!
“Oh, brilliant minion!” Vainqueur caught on. “He is bound to bring me to this false wyrm abomination, so I can destroy her!”
King Wotan’s lone eye narrowed. “This violates the spirit of my oath.”
“But respects the letter, and allows you to walk away from all this. With luck, we can even destroy Odieuse before the Conclave, and this pointless war will end before it begins.”