Chapter 47: The King of Fae

The last of the Lune’s green fire guttered in the snow, flames dying like whispers swallowed by the wind.

An unnatural frost-blue light came from the mists, illuminating the grounds with a chilling glow. Axel could not help but shiver. His breath steamed in the dark. Every hair on his arms bristled beneath his worn Fae armour. 

He could feel it — the world growing still with every passing second. The wind no longer dared howl in the presence of a God-King.

The eight-legged midnight steed of mourning steel stepped forth, its dread rider cloaked in blackened bone and armoured plates etched with hoarfrost runes. The blood-drenched greatsword in the King’s hand hummed softly, as if delighted at the slaughter before.

The Tyrant was massive. All-encompassing. Axel’s vision narrowed as the King approached, until the Monarch’s presence was all he could perceive.

He stopped ten paces from the soldier, and silence claimed the valley.

“Demon.” The King’s words were resonant, echoing from every direction. The mist spoke for him, as the winds once did for Ymir. “Pest who arrived in my garden. Marked for death, yet you somehow evaded your fate and brought ruin to my subjects. The lieutenants I have sent to kill you have failed. My very Firstborn is dead. You have caused me more irritation in a single day than most of my enemies have in their entire lifetimes.”

Axel said nothing. Just stared, hand on the haft of his golden halberd.

The King tilted his head, curious — like how one might study an insect before squashing it under their boot.

“You did so alone. Unaware. Unattuned. Yet here you stand before me, having forced my hand to give you my undivided attention for the slaughter you have made.”

Axel’s voice was rough but steady. “Wouldn’t be the first time I made more trouble than I am worth. I have a reputation to maintain.”

The King’s voice remained dry, disinterested. “You are mere dust. Mortal. Breakable.”

Against his better judgment, Axel’s mouth twisted into a grinning snarl. “And you are making the mistake of underestimating me, as all your idiot subordinates did. But go ahead. Let down your guard and give me the chance to slit your throat. It’s been a long day, I could use another corpse to laugh at.”

A long silence.

Then, the King chuckled — a low, hollow sound, dry as wind scraping bone. 

“I am, above all else, a practical creature,” the King rasped. “I cannot say that I welcome this disruption. The war in the worlds beyond continues, without my guidance. I would have these proceedings concluded as succinctly as I deem so.”

“So why… are we still talking?” Axel's teeth were chattering, his voice a near-hysterical giggle, gnashing for violence. The cold had seeped into his bones. His feral madness demanded death, either his or the King’s.

The King cocked his head. “I have need of new lieutenants.”

Axel chuckled, then laughed wildly. 

Pushed against his back, Lune stiffened.

“I had bid the System for a fresh race to slaughter — for new entrants of the Great Game to populate my gardens such that my subjects could feast and Ascend,” the King breathed. “Yet those in power insulted me by sending but a single prey… But I see now the value of what they gave. It is an auspicious omen… For a Demon like yourself to fall into my lands.

“You slew my people without hesitation. Those who came to protect them from your wraith, you mutilated and devoured their souls. You murdered my son.” The King leaned forward. The cold grew even greater. “It is reason enough to execute you. It is cause for me to hunt the last of your species to extinction or enslavement.”

Axel did not waver. He met the helm of the King — a skull-silver mask of some dead forest god — and said nothing.

“If you wish to make a plea for… clemency,” the King rasped. “I would allow it.”

Axel paused to think. Then, he shook his head. 

“What, you think I would feel bad for killing your people when they tried to gut me first? Nah. I think I’m just going to take that pretty hat of yours and use it as a shit-pot, you deer fucker.”

The surrounding knights did not move, but a fearful energy settled upon them. Lune similarly choked, not to hold back a laugh, but to bite back a sob of fear.

The pressure in the ravine doubled, then redoubled again. All of it fell upon Axel.

The soldier felt his genetically enhanced heart failing. His nose was bleeding, an oozing trail of frozen blood. Axel had his teeth clenched so tightly he thought they were going to break. His vision was darkened as the liquid in his eyes froze.

Still, Axel did not look away. This pressure was nothing. He had seen the face of his Reaper, and it was far more terrifying to behold.

Axel would not fall.

Then, as suddenly as the pressure came, it abated. Not completely — but enough for Axel to draw a desperate breath.

“Bold.” The King nodded approvingly. Axel could hear the smile behind the helm. “You do not lack for madness — a quality I can appreciate. And you are correct: it would be foolish of me to blame you for the killing of my kind, especially when they were sent to slay you first. The System cares not for such matters. This is the Great Game, and it is… impersonal.”

The King raised his greatsword. “I clear you of all wrongdoing against my kind. I allow you your theft of my property. I forgive you for the butchering of my son.”

There was a surprised — almost flabbergasted — rustle amidst the knights, one that even their martial discipline and fear of their King could not hide.

Even Axel’s mask of madness slipped, allowing a look of disbelief to show on his face.

“But…” The King’s grip on his greatsword tightened. “Your freeing of the Great General… That, I cannot forgive.”

Ah. There it is.

The Killing Rope.

“The chains I have placed on the last Giant were not merely a means of enslavement,” the King darkly explained. “Over time, the magic bound within him was meant to be siphoned into the runes. The magecraft of the Giants and their control over the winds have eluded me for centuries. I had been preparing his body as a catalyst for my ascension… And you have ruined that.”

A step of movement. Suddenly, Axel’s vision darkened. The King and his steed were before him. 

The greatsword was placed on his neck, kissing his throat.

“You have denied me my rightful power. The satisfaction of taking your life is an ill-suited compensation for such a loss. But I have said before: I am a practical creature. Though I have indeed suffered greatly, I may yet reap an opportunity from this travesty.”

“Join me, Demon, and I shall spare your life. Bend your knee, and accept the joy of the Wild Hunt into your heart,” the King demanded. “I shall have you accept directly into my cavalry — an honour the Fae have not granted any outside species in my history as Tyrant. Do so, and know power unending. The bounty of this world and the ones beyond will be yours to plunder.”

The blade was freezing his neck. Even so, Axel forced himself to speak. “What about Lune?”

The King’s disapproval was like a hammer. Axel’s knees almost fell, but he forced himself to remain standing, his teeth cracking under the force of his clenched jaw.

“... She has disobeyed me for the final time. Blessed beyond her womb-bearing peers, she nonetheless wastes the privilege I afforded her beyond her place in the brood pens. If she cannot serve as an Heiress, then she is better off turned into a breeding serf for my knights.” 

The King tilted his head. “Though, if you find her fetching, I do not mind lending her to you. As a pair, you might create fine offspring for my future forces. This would be, of course, after she has adequately served as an example — to deter any would-be thoughts of foolishness from my women and their place within my gardens.”

The situation was unwinnable. Ymir was dead, or at least out of action. Axel could not see a way where he might win against the Fae Tyrant, even if he brought every last scrap of power he had left to bear.

He could not drag this much longer, either. His eyes had been desperately tracking his UI, but the timer sealed his fate.

[Remaining time until Zone Quarantine lift: 9 Minutes, 27 Seconds.]

The King would not allow him to delay that long.

Left with few options — and with Lune’s grim fate on his shoulders — Axel took a shuddering breath.

Reaper, if you can hear me, look upon me now.

“Give me your daughter. Make her mine and no others. Do so, and I will give you my killing hand,” Axel declared.

The soldier could feel Lune’s stillness behind him. The King’s glare intensified.

“You dare believe you are in a position to bargain?” The Tyrant’s voice was iron. “You insult me once more.”

“Call it a down payment for my loyalty,” Axel rasped, forcing my dying lungs to work. He could no longer feel his fingers or neck; the black frost of the King’s greatsword on his neck was covering his form. “A warlord like yourself should know the value of a willing weapon. Swear to my terms, or just cut off my head and be done with today, carrying with you only losses to present to your foes.”

Silence once more. Axel did not speak another word, even as pain claimed his body. His organs were failing; the frost was reaching his heart.

Just when Axel thought he would be finally returning to the Reaper’s embrace, the King lifted the sword off his neck.

“You will swear undying fealty,” the King growled, his anger evident. “You will place my goals above yours. You will kill my enemies with the same fervour you have killed my kin today. Do anything less… And I will have you watch as that wretch is subjected to every defilement imaginable until the day she expires in distant years.”

“... Done,” Axel nodded.

“You do not know what you are agreeing to,” Lune weakly whispered. She could barely move. Terror and ice had gripped her completely.

“It is either service or death. You know what I would choose,” Axel neutrally replied.

Lune said nothing, but he felt her tenseness relax a fraction.

If Axel could still smile, he would.

A nearby spectral knight came up beside the King, reverently carrying with him an ornate blade resting in a velvet case. He bowed low before his Tyrant, arms outstretched, presenting the offering.

“This is a binding dagger. It will make our Pact one of lasting promise, though it can only be used once.” The King snatched the blade from the knight, his mood evidently poor. “It is yet another tool sacrificed. I am generous beyond my peers, but know that failure to perform will come with consequences beyond even a lesser Tyrant’s imagination. Now… kneel, and present to me your oath.”

Axel bowed. Shakily, he dropped to one knee. “What words would you have me say?”

“There is no need to make this complicated. Swear your soul to me. In exchange, you shall have my daughter for as long as I deem your performance acceptable.”

Axel grimaced. Even he knew how horribly skewed that ambiguous statement was in the King’s favour. “I swear.”

The King raised the blade and, to Axel’s surprise, stabbed it into his own wrist. It was not a deep cut — just enough to draw blood — but the dagger glowed red as it lapped at the fetid bile that leaked from the wound.

The King tossed the bloodied dagger to Axel’s feet. “Open the veins of your wrist. Show me the colour of your blood, and the worth of your loyalty.”

Axel picked up the blade. He braced himself.

Now or never. 

“I, Axel Roukin, leader of the 76th White-Haired Demons,” he murmured, lifting the dagger. “I, who was named Harbinger by those I watch over, give you… my undying…”

Axel looked up. He stared into the King’s blazing eyes.

“Loyalty,” he hissed.

With every ounce of his maddened heart, with every death he had ever sown…

Axel brought his dreaded ruin once more unto the Zone.

[Trait Conditions met.]

[Reaper’s Tithe Activated]

[The Pale Eye of Death falls upon you…]

The greatsword moved, lightning fast. But the blade froze right as it stabbed into Axel’s chest, a hairbreadth from his heart.

Axel spat frozen blood. His body was freezing up. But the dark paralysis he had counted on had worked.

For that single second, an unnatural, foreign terror had seized the soul of every spectral knight in the valley, including their King.

Axel pulled himself off the blade and roared with all his might. “Ymir, now!”

There was that millisecond of silence that felt like an eternity. Axel’s racing mind despaired as he thought his final gamble had failed.

Then, from behind the heavy mists, a bestial roar of hate and rage answered him.

The badly wounded, but still alive, form of Great General Ymir came tumbling towards them.

Axel had bet on Ymir’s survival. The Tyrant had already lamented his lack of underlings. If he had a way of ensuring Axel’s loyalty despite the soldier’s clear reluctance, he might have had a way to force Ymir into compliance as well.

But that meant he had to leave the Giant alive. And since Ymir knew of Axel’s trick with Reaper’s Tithe…

The Sky Titan might have been awaiting his chance to strike.

Axel did not wait for the Giant’s arrival. He already had his halberd summoned in hand, swinging for the King’s exposed neck.

Then, the notification came in.

[Reaperbound failed]

And all hell broke loose.