CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  fessions of a Baron

  In his mind’s eye, Bram recalled the ‘Bluebell Blossom Festival’ celebrated every spring in the Hilltop Kingdom of Yamadai, and how the azure flowers of a thousand bluebells would bloom all at ond then wilt in a matter of a few short days. In that time, endless delicate petals would fall from their branches and dance across the air in the arms of a calm spring breeze.

  That’s what he envisioned now, though instead of the soft blue-violet petals of a bluebell blossom, the sky was filled with the crimsoals formed from the sorcery Rowan cast. These crimsoals didn’t sway to the tune of a calm spring breeze but dao the beat of a raging storm. One whose eye Bram and Rowan stood in the middle of. All around them, a chorus of screams ehe dying, the dead, and the howling winds. Ohe storm stilled, the crimsoals wilted, returning to the drops of blood they’d been formed from, causing red rain to crash onto the skyship’s deck.

  In the silehat came after, Bram was wito a gruesome sight; a hundred dead bodies lying lifeless on the ground with their flesh torn apart as if by a thousand tiny bdes.

  ALERT! You were uo fully grasp the iion and prowess of the ability [Sword of Life 3rd Breath: Red Blossoms]! Replication has failed.Despite its failure, ‘Replication’ still exacted its toll on Bram. He fell to his knees and puked blood onto a deck that was already covered in the blood of others.

  “Too much?” asked a teasing voice.

  “Excessive, but…” Bram wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “…It was them or us.”

  He rose to his feet on shaky legs.

  “I’ll learn it one day…your Sword of Life.”

  “I’m certain you will, but perhaps we’ll start with the first breath ime.”

  Bram took a sed to catch his breath before surveying his surroundings more.

  GRATULATIONS! You have tributed to the decimation of House von Galen’s forces. Your [Martial] Lifestyle has earned [100] EXP.It was the first time the lifestyle he’d chosen to supplement his status had received anything from the Loom, but Bram couldn’t celebrate this new achievement.

  “More nameless faces to add to my ledger…”

  His eyes narrowed at the sight of so much blood ah, though he reized the need for this sort of ending. Still, the thought of a hundred Lotharians dying because of his choices didn’t sit well with the prince’s sce, and his stomach ed because of it.

  Trying his best to look at the bright side, Bram said, “At least you spared the skyship…We use it.”

  “I assumed you would want it.”

  Rowan fshed him a smile that was still impish, but less manic than the one she’d had before she massacred a hundred soldiers. More importantly, her dark look had diminished enough to suggest she’d released ae amount of pressure that came with stepping further toward the dark side of one’s alig.

  “This skyship isn’t the only one I’ve spared.”

  Rowan’s gaze drifted to the passage leading toward the lower deck, drawing Bram’s attention to the sandy-haired rat fleeing doweps.

  “There he is.”

  Bram wondered why the other skyship hadn’t fired on them yet. Surely, the soldiers manning it had seen the red hurrie that had engulfed this ohey would have used spygsses to check the state of the de the aftermath and discovered the numerous dead lining its floor. Yet instead of aiming their ons on a brigantine overtaken by an enemy, the sed skyship was turning in their dire. Possibly to attempt a rescue of their lord who’d escaped below deck.

  “They’ll be too te.”

  Bram walked across the deck, pig up a few swords along the way. He kept the one broadsword that hadn’t been chipped at by Rowan’s crimsoals—the same ohe curly-haired knight used against him—and then made his way down into the skyship’s bowels.

  “You won’t use Dusk?” Rowan asked as she followed behind him.

  “I don’t have the strength to wield it now,” Bram replied.

  They found the rat hiding ihe gundeck, the very area of the skyship Bram was most eager to visit first. He’d hidden behind the on at the far end of the low-ceilinged room. The same one he’d mao aim at the door despite how heavy it looked.

  “Sorcery is such a cheat—”

  ‘Krak-ka-boom!’

  A shell crashed into the wall a foot or two to the side of Bram’s head. To his credit, the prince chose not to dodge or flee. In those brief seds before the on was fired, Bram had calcuted the as nozzle ointed and deduced that the shot would miss him. Of course, the type of ammo and its entment would have decided whether Bram met an untimely end or not. Fortunately, he’d seen enough ons in his sister Camil’s skyships to know the telltale markings that determihe sort of elemental entment a on possessed. It’s how he khat the offending on had a water entment whose ammunition would ck elemental forless aimed at a body of water, a fact Bram had expined earlier in the day tet.

  ‘Ba-dump.’

  With adrenaline giving a hop to his step, Bram crossed the distaween himself and his enemy at a speed that was too fast to track for one who cked experien bat. Indeed, Baron Archibald seemed so flustered by Bram’s bum rush that he didn’t even attempt to reload his on or cast a spell to defend himself. At least not in time.

  “W-Wait—”

  He raised his arm in a gesture of surreoo te for Bram arrived at that moment and cut off the Baron’s hand at the wrist. Blood spttered onto the prince’s face while Baron Archibald screamed.

  “I s-surrender!” The baron fell onto the floor butt-first while clutg at the stump that had lost its hand. “I-I surrender!”

  A half-sed ter, Bram’s broadsword would have slit the baron’s neck. As it happehe priopped his attack at a point where the bde just brushed against his flesh.

  Baron Archibald gulped. “S-Surrender…”

  Seeing the arrogant Baron Archibald von Galen looking at him with such fear in his eyes caused butterflies to dan Bram’s stomach.

  “Fancy meeting you here, Baron.”

  In truth, the prince wouldn’t have gohrough with decapitating Baron Archibald. The sying of a noble, even a lowly baron, was sidered a taboo among the nobility of the Atn Imperium. Even in wartime, a captured noble would be treated with the respect deserving of their high station and remain under house arrest until a suitable ransom aid to their capturer. In the event of a death, the offending noble would warrant a hefty fine and a harsh reprimand from the Sn’s Court. In short, keeping Baron Archibald alive mearouble for Bram.

  “Y-Your H-Highness…” Despite the pain in Baron Archibald’s expression, his eyes were darti and right as if searg for a path to escape. “W-Why did you a-attack my ship…?”

  “You attacked me first.”

  “I-I would n-never—”

  “Your ships fired on me and my panions.”

  “Your panions…?”

  Baron Archibald’s eyes narrowed slightly.

  “Th-those weargs belong to y-you…?!”

  There was just the barest hint of a sneer in the baron’s voice.

  Bram expected the reaany of the Imperium’s nobles loathed the half-bloods scattered across the ti and treated them with s and ridicule like how they treated their ill-fated prince.

  “They do.”

  This was a lie, of course. The Fmetail Tribe had yet to form an official alliah him, though Bram wouldn’t call them his belongings even if they were already allied.

  “ould you bother with filthy—”

  ‘Thunk!’

  The broadsword’s bde slid into the wooden pween the baron’s legs, causing the grown man to yelp in fright like a child.

  Normally, Baron Archibald wouldn’t have been so easily intimidated by such simple scare tactics. However, the pain from his lost hand bined with memories of the terrifying se he’d witnessed above deck along with the more muscur Bram t over him have made the arrogant baron fet the nobility that made him lord of aire city.

  “The better question, Baron, is why you’re here skulking ihe Red Forest, and not in Bastille stirring up more of the tral nobles against me or back behind your walls in Volkshall where you belong… Why have you e to the Red Ruin?”

  Hearing the uncharted dungeon’s name caused the baron’s eyes to widen, though he said nothing in reply.

  “Who told you about this pce that not even the dungeon schors of the capital’s Grand Archive have a record of?”

  A duhat once beloo the gods held ma treasures beyond the spoils from Loveless’ husk which Bram po cim after he’d finished his business with the Fmetail Tribe. Such a dungeon would’ve already been teeming with explorers if it were known to the world. But as it happened, even Bram, with his signifit resources and high ambitions, hadn’t uncovered the secret of the Red Ruin until he’d stumbled onto it. So how could a lowly baron, a man who found success by kowtowing to others, discover a secret at least two of the gods wao keep hidden?

  In his mind, Bram recalled another question that him…who impnted a shard of the Midnight Stoo Loveless’ core…?

  “Who told you about the Red Ruin?”

  Once more, Baron Archibald’s eyes darted left and right, though they would find no escape.

  “I d-don’t uand what—”

  “They’re not ing.”

  fusion flitted across Baron Archibald’s face.

  ‘Boom!’

  ‘Boom!’

  ‘Boom!’

  Half the ons on the skyship’s port side fired, and the stene powder filled the gundeck.

  “I finally got these traptions to work,” said Rowan.

  Bram gnced over his shoulder.

  The trickster had her face close to the nose of a on while iing the intricate patterns of entments engraved on its iron surface.

  “To harhe elements in such a war-like mahis age of sorcery is filled with iing ies.” Her face turned ptive. “Not as iing as the ies of Earth, but still quite the eye widener.”

  “Rowan,” Bram called.

  She looked up. “Yes?”

  “Did you hit them?”

  “’t you hear the screams?”

  They weren’t close enough for him to hear them, but he trusted her supernatural hearing. Then…

  ‘Boom!’

  ‘Boom!’

  ‘Boom!’

  Even Bram was surprised by this sed round of on fire, which wasn’t part of the pn.

  “Rowan…”

  Bram could hear them now—the screams and shouts of soldiers caught with their breeches down. Their brigantine must have drawn close enough for him to hear, “We’re losing altitude, Captain!” and ‘She’s sinking fast!” which led to the obvious, “Abandon ship!” the one phrase the prince hoped not to hear.

  “…Were you aiming to sink their ship?”

  “It doesn’t hurt to be thh.”

  Bram sighed. “There goes my pn to cim both skyships for reat uaking.”

  “You should know better than to be greedy,” she scolded him lightly. “You’ve seen what greed does to those foolish enough to be taken in by her sway.”

  Her teasing gaze flitted toward Baron Archibald whose face was in such a state of shock that it almost seemed ical.

  “I believe the baron’s ready to fess his sins.”

  Rowan’s annou drew Bram’s attention away from the porthole that had given him an excellent view of the nearby skyship whose deck burned while it desded rapidly toward the ground.

  “Your ce to be rescued is gone, Baron…” the prince reiterated. “Answer my questions and you may get to keep your other hand.”

  The baron flinched. He didn’t think Bram was bluffing. He was, but Baron Archibald didn’t o know that.

  “V-Vite Kleist introduced h-him to me a month ago,” the baron began in a shaky voice, “a D-Damas who cimed to know of an uncharted d-dungeon with a goddess’ treasure locked i-i.”

  There were many reveals to unpa his fession, but the ohat caused Bram’s heart to skip a beat was, “Damas…”

  It wasn’t unon for a Damas to arrive in Lotharin since Damasca was quite close to its eastern border, but for oo show up in the Red Forest at the same time as all this chaos ensued, it seemed too much of a ce.

  “Describe them…”

  “An old man with a weathered face, and gray hair—”

  “—Styled in a warrior’s dreadlocks,” Bram finished.

  “Y-Yes…” Baron Archibald’s pallor seemed to worsen. “H-How did you know…?”

  “Don’t most Damass style their hair this way?” To Bram’s ears, it seemed he was trying to vince himself more than the baron. “I need more… What was he like — his voice, his manner, his—”

  “Did he carry a staff?” Rowan interrupted.

  The sight of her suddenly standio Bram caused Baron Archibald to flinch. Fear, not unlike what Bram saw on Loveless’ face when she realized who Rowan truly was, noeared on the baron’s face.

  “Y-you’re not really from House W-Wolfe…are you?”

  “I doubt my answer would be a dead man.” Rowan’s foot tapped impatiently against the wooden pnk. “Well, did this Damas carry a staff or not?”

  Baron Archibald gulped. Holy, it looked to Bram like he was having trouble breathing.

  “Y-Yes…I believe so.”

  “Describe it.”

  The baron spoke of a wooden staff resembling a tree branch with a green crystal woven into its tip. It was unmistakably the same one Kazem Bashar used like a e.

  Hearing this made Bram recall his versation with Master Mina after they’d left Loveless’ ir.

  “I apologize, Yhness,” Master Mina had replied. “I have few recolles of my time under her possession. What little I recall…I would rather not think about it.”

  She’d turned away from him, the guilt clear in her expression, and Bram thought not to press her further. At least not yet. Still, from the ck of guile in her expression, Bram—and Rowan curred ter—had deduced that Master Mina hadn’t known about the Midnight Shard embedded in Loveless’ core. Indeed, she hadn’t seemed affected by its dark elemental energy like Bram and Rowan were.

  “We thought the Stargazers bmeless, but what if they weren’t?” Bram’s brow furrowed. “What if there were those among them who had different iions from their purpose of seeking out the nymph…?”

  “Ravi told us that all the Stargazers were ated for,” Rowan reminded him. “If there were those among them with darker aims, then they were rewarded with horrible deaths.”

  “Not all of them died…” The cogs in Bram’s mind began to turn. “The young sorcerers were turned into thralls, so they aren’t likely to be part of a spiracy. As for Master Mina—”

  “She was the sacrifice meant to give Loveless form,” Rowan finished Bram’s thought. “It’s not likely that she would have allowed herself to be taken had she knowruth of what would happen to her…”

  “You and I already ruled her out…leaving only oher survivor in the expedition,” Bram tinued, “the same diviner who’d first interpreted their ’s visions…ahem oh to the Red Ruin.”

  Was it possible? he wondered. Could the elderly Damas who’d helped us on our quest be the real culprit behind this i?

  Such disparaging thoughts whirled through Bram’s mind, causing ao fill his chest.

  But to what end…?

  A hand touched his shoulder.

  “There are still many things we o know before we uand. Until then, assume nothing.”

  “Yes, you’re right.”

  “I usually am.”

  They heard the unmistakable sound of someone shuffling around, and both gazes soward Baron Archibald who was attempting to crawl away.

  “There’s o run—”

  Bram leaped forward and struck Baron Archibald’s back with a well-pced ‘Drop Kick’ he’d once learned from his Lotharialing instructor.

  “—Baron!”

  The forceful blow to his spine caused the baron to tumble forward and smack his head against the wooden wheel of a nearby on.

  Baron Archibald groaned, but Bram, who had quickly risen to his feet, didn’t care that he might have hit him too hard. Truthfully, he found it cathartic to bludgeon one of the two men who’d been disparaging him in front of other nobles so savagely these st two months.

  “Apologies, Baron, but we’re not done.”

  The prince didn’t think himself cruel, but watg the baron who’d been a thorn in his side since he’d bee Governor of Lotharin looking so pathetic lightened his mood…and this realization shamed him…but only a little.

  I wish I hadn’t left my lute with Alkaid. I have the perfect song for this moment.

  Feeling refreshed, Bram, with a gentler hand, began to turn the baron over so that he could see his fad that’s wheiced that something had goerribly wrong. For just as the priurned him over, Baron Archibald’s whole body began to vulse.

  “Phoebus’ cock…”

  Bram had noticed the baron’s worsening pallor earlier, but now his face was turning a nasty shade of blue.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Baron Archibald couldn’t answer. He tio shake, his limbs twitg in awkward angles as if some unseen hand ulling orings of a fallen marioe.

  “Rowan!”

  “I’m here.”

  The trickster k by the baron’s head and ied his dition.

  “These symptoms…”

  After a quispe, Rowan reached into Baron Archibald’s mouth and checked his tongue.

  “I k.” A dark look fshed on her face. “He’s been cursed.”

  A strange mark was engraved on the baron’s tongue, one of a snake ed around a four-point star. From its sickly greenish glow, Bram didn’t doubt that this was a killing curse.

  “‘Tis a Curse of Words…possibly awakening soon after he’d told us of the Damas.”

  “ you do anything?”

  “Though all such curses share simir roots, eae is different and tailor-fit for the one who’d been cursed… Even I would need more uanding of its specifiditions to break its power.”

  Bloodshot eyes stared up at the tere watg him die.

  “Your blood—”

  “ot help him… Curses do not cause physical wounds.”

  Baron Archibald’s hand—now marked with veins as blue as ice—reached up to grab Bram’s colr, but he was shaking so much that he grasped the air instead.

  “He’s barely told us anything?!”

  “Which makes this a crueler curse… ‘Tis as if they had every iion of ensuring his silence.”

  “They…?” A dle fme lit up inside of Bram’s head. “Vite Henry introduced him to the Damas…”

  It was barely a clue, but one he could tto, and it was all he had now. In the seds, Baron Archibald’s vulsions worsehen his body expanded, stretg past the limits of nature’s iion, growing to a grotesque mass of skin and tissue threatening to burst.

  “Bloody hell,” Bram cursed. “I think he’s—”

  It happened so fast that he barely had time to ch his jaw. Rowan’s arms ed around him. In a fsh, she and Bram arrived at the entrance of the gundeck. They’d barely stepped through its door when it happened.

  ‘Boom!’

  The mass exploded—blood and guts scattered in all dires—and Baron Archibald was no more.

  GD_Cruz