Chapter 396
There were many ways for a king to help her people, though not all of them were as direct as I sometimes wished.
War was simple in that regard. If an enemy threatened Albion, I could take Rhongomyniad in hand and remove that enemy from the world. If monsters came from Hell, I could meet them with an army.
If some madman built machines to slaughter my people, I could hunt those machines down until there were none left. Such things were terrible, certainly, but they were straightforward. There was an enemy before me, a weapon in my hand, and a very clear understanding of what needed to happen next.
Peace was more complicated.
There were ruined homes throughout Albion now, roads that needed repairing, damaged infrastructure, exhausted healers, displaced families and countless smaller problems that required attention.
I could have gone out with my knights and spent each day lifting collapsed walls, clearing rubble and carrying enough stone to replace a hundred workers, but that was not what a king was for. A ruler who abandoned her throne every time physical labor needed doing would quickly discover that the work only she could perform had been left unattended.
There was also the matter of appearances. Authority required a certain amount of distance, whether I particularly enjoyed that fact or not, and while I had never believed a ruler should hide behind palace walls, neither could I simply appear at a construction site in old clothes and start digging beside everyone else.
Gareth could do that. In fact, Gareth had done that repeatedly despite being ordered to rest. Gawain had somehow spent most of the previous day helping repair barns in the countryside, and Mordred had discovered that demolition work provided enough destruction to substitute for battle, though several workers had already complained that someone needed to explain to her the difference between removing a damaged wall and removing an entire building because it was easier.
My knights were allowed such liberties.
I was King.
My responsibility was different, but that did not mean my place was always behind a desk in Camelot.
So, several days after Charles Whitmore and the other traitors met the headsman's axe, I left the White City behind and went to see what remained of the kingdom they had tried to exploit.
Agravain had, naturally, prepared everything before I even informed him of my decision. Routes had been planned, guards assigned, local officials notified and several possible stops selected according to which areas had suffered most heavily.
I rejected most of it. I did not want roads cleared before me, nor freshly painted walls and carefully assembled crowds placed where someone believed the King ought to see them. I certainly did not want banners hung over damaged buildings to disguise what the Sentinels had done.
I wanted to see Albion—not the Albion presented to its King, but the real one.
Bedivere accompanied me, along with a small detachment of Royal Guards who remained far enough behind that their presence did not turn every street into a military procession. It was hardly as though I required protection, but some traditions were apparently too sacred for even a god to escape, and Bedivere had given me such a look when I suggested going alone that I eventually decided the argument was not worth having.
Our first stop was Bodmin.
The town had survived the war, though survival was one of those words that could mean almost anything depending upon who used it. Most of Bodmin remained standing. Its streets were busy, shops had begun reopening, power and water had been restored throughout most of the town, and enough homes had escaped major damage that the town still looked like a town rather than a battlefield.
Yet there were scars everywhere if one knew where to look. Sections of road had been torn apart and hurriedly repaired. Fresh stone stood out against older buildings where Sentinel weapons had carved through walls. Several structures remained enclosed by supports while engineers decided whether they could be saved, and one entire stretch of houses had been reduced to foundations and rubble.
The physical damage was impossible to miss, but it was not the worst of it.
Buildings could be rebuilt.
People were considerably more difficult.
Word of my arrival spread quickly, as it inevitably did. At first only a few people stopped to look, but someone recognized Bedivere, another noticed the Royal Guards, and soon whispers were moving down the street faster than we were. Within minutes people had begun leaving shops, homes and construction sites to gather along either side of the road.
Some bowed.
Others waved or called my name. A few simply stood watching, unsure what they were supposed to feel now that the woman whose absence had hung over weeks of war was suddenly walking down their street.
"Her Majesty!"
The first shout broke whatever hesitation remained, and others quickly followed. I raised a hand in greeting, smiling as I moved among them, but resisted every attempt by local officials to organize the crowd into something more orderly. They had spent long enough being told where to stand and where to run. I could survive a little chaos.
An elderly man proudly intercepted me outside a narrow house whose front wall had been repaired with three completely different shades of stone. He pointed at it with the expression of someone showing me a particularly impressive battle wound and announced, "Looks bloody awful, Your Majesty."
I studied the wall for a moment before nodding. "It does."
The old man laughed loudly enough to draw attention from half the street. "Couldn't get enough of the old stone, so they used whatever they had."
"Then tell everyone it was intentional."
"You think that'll work?"
I considered the question with appropriate seriousness. "You are asking the woman who convinced the world to accept that King Arthur returned as a woman. Confidence can accomplish remarkable things."
He stared at me for a second before barking another laugh. "Fair enough!"
We left him behind, still explaining to his neighbors how he had spoken to the King and even joked with me.
Whether such stories would be believed depended entirely on the few people in the crowd recording everything on their phones.
Farther along, several children had gathered around the severed head of an ordinary Sentinel lying beside the road while recovery crews waited to collect it. Someone had painted a thick black moustache beneath its nose, while another child had added a pair of enormous eyebrows and something considerably less dignified across its forehead.
Bedivere sighed beside me. "Sir Mordred has been here."
"How can you tell?"
One of the children answered before he could. "Prince Mordred said they look better like this!"
Bedivere closed his eyes.
I looked at the Sentinel again. "He may have a point."
Several parents nearby appeared horrified that I had endorsed the vandalism, but the children laughed, and I found I could not bring myself to regret it. Let them paint moustaches upon the monsters that had frightened them. Let them laugh at dead machines that had once descended from the sky and made them hide beneath their homes.
Fear lost some of its power when its face could be made ridiculous.
The atmosphere changed as we continued deeper into the damaged quarter, where laughter became rarer and the black cloth hanging beside doors became more common. Flowers, photographs, candles and handwritten notes had collected outside several homes. There was no official organization behind them.
No royal order had established these little memorials. People simply needed somewhere to put their grief, and so walls, steps and broken stretches of pavement had become shrines to those who were not returning.
I slowed beside one of them.
A photograph showed a young man standing between a woman and two children, one arm wrapped around his wife's waist while the youngest child sat upon his shoulders. He was smiling in the picture, broad and slightly awkward, as though someone had told him to look happy a moment before the photograph was taken and he had overdone it.
The woman from the picture sat nearby.
She noticed where I was looking and slowly stood. For a moment, instinct seemed to tell her to bow, while something else inside her refused to cooperate. In the end she simply lowered her head and said, "Your Majesty."
I looked towards the photograph again. "What was his name?"
"Daniel."
There was more behind that single word, but I did not force it from her. People often needed silence before they could speak about the dead, and I had long ago learned that filling every quiet moment with comforting words usually served the speaker more than the grieving.
"He wasn't supposed to fight," she continued after several seconds. "He worked maintenance. Power systems, mostly. When the Sentinels came, they needed everyone who could hold a weapon, so he volunteered."
"Did he have training?"
"Basic militia training. He used to complain about it all the time." A tiny smile appeared through the grief, then vanished almost immediately. "Said there wasn't much point when we had mutants and Enforcement Knights and all the rest of you around. Used to joke that if something got through all that, his rifle wasn't going to make much difference."
Her eyes returned to the photograph.
"He was wrong."
"Yes," I said.
The woman looked sharply towards me, perhaps expecting reassurance, perhaps expecting me to insist that Daniel had been right in some deeper and more comforting way. There was none. He had believed he would never need to fight because stronger people would always be there to protect him, and in the end there had been one terrible day when that protection was not enough.
I would not dishonor him by turning that truth into a prettier lie.
"He was wrong," I repeated more gently. "And when the time came, he fought anyway."
Her mouth trembled.
"He helped people out of one of the shelters. A Sentinel broke through near the entrance and everyone panicked. They told me he stayed behind and kept shooting while the others got out." She drew a shaking breath, her hands clenching together as though she could physically hold herself in place. "They all got out."
I looked towards her.
"He didn't."
"No."
The word barely came out.
I closed my eyes for a moment before looking back at Daniel's smiling face. I had heard stories like his throughout the reports. Men and women who were never supposed to become soldiers had become soldiers because there had been no one else. People without powers had stood beside those who possessed them. Civilians had done things that, under any other circumstances, would have been called heroic, because there had simply been no other choice.
"I am sorry," I told her.
It was an inadequate thing to say.
Every expression of sympathy was.
There were no words that could equal a husband, a father or a son.
The woman looked at me for several long seconds, and gradually something sharper began to show through the grief. "You weren't here."
Bedivere shifted almost imperceptibly beside me, but I raised one hand before he could do anything. The woman saw the movement and seemed to realize only then what she had said. Fear appeared on her face, mixed immediately with shame.
"No," I answered. "I wasn't."
"I know why." She spoke quickly now, as though afraid she needed to defend herself before someone accused her of treason. "I know about Hell. I know what was happening. Everyone knows. They say it would've been worse if you hadn't gone, that maybe none of us would be here at all, and I understand that."
Her eyes filled with tears.
"I understand it."
I waited.
"It doesn't bring him back."
"No," I said quietly. "Nothing can bring the dead back to us."
That answer seemed to take something out of her. Her shoulders sagged, and for several seconds she simply stared at me as tears finally escaped despite everything she had done to hold them back.
"There is nothing I can say that will," I continued. "I can explain why I left. I can explain what would have happened if I stayed. I can tell you that I made the choice I believed would save the greatest number of lives, and every word would be true. None of it would return your husband."
The woman tried to wipe her eyes, but the effort only seemed to make things worse. I stepped closer as her control finally broke, catching her when her knees weakened and allowing her to collapse against me.
There were times when a king needed distance.
This was not one of them.
I held her while she cried.
People watched from the street, but I ignored them. Let them watch. There was no dignity lost in holding a grieving widow, and any ruler who believed otherwise cared more for the appearance of kingship than its purpose.
It took some time before she pulled away, embarrassment already beginning to replace grief as she realized exactly whose clothing she had been crying into. "I'm sorry, Your Majesty. I shouldn't have—"
"Do not apologize."
She looked down.
"You lost your husband while I was responsible for protecting this kingdom," I told her. "You are allowed to be angry with me."
Her eyes rose again.
"That does not mean I could have made another choice. If I were returned to that day with everything I know now, I would still go to Hell. I would still leave Albion, because the alternative would have been worse."
Pain crossed her face, but I continued because anything else would have been another lie.
"And I would still regret Daniel's death. Those truths do not erase one another."
For a while she said nothing. Then, slowly, she nodded.
I reached into my coat and removed one of the small royal cards Agravain had insisted I carry during the visit. Each contained enough identification and authorization to bypass the usual layers of bureaucracy surrounding the offices responsible for war dead and displaced families.
"Have you been receiving Crown support?"
"Yes."
"Enough?"
Her hesitation lasted only a fraction of a second.
It was enough.
I handed her the card. "Speak to them again and give them this."
She turned it over in her hand. "What does it do?"
"It makes bureaucrats nervous."
For the first time since I approached her, a genuine smile broke through the grief.
I smiled back. "Tell them I personally asked whether you were receiving enough support. I imagine they will suddenly become very interested in finding the correct answer."
"I will."
"Good."
I left her beside Daniel's photograph, though her face remained with me as we continued through Bodmin.
Chapter 397
I left her beside Daniel's photograph, though her face remained with me as we continued through Bodmin.
There were many others.
Too many.
A woman thanked me for returning and pressed both of my hands between hers as though she needed to confirm I was physically there. A blue-skinned mutant with one arm bowed so deeply that I finally caught him by the shoulder and physically pulled him upright before he embarrassed both of us. When I asked whether he had fought during the attacks, he gave me a confused expression and answered as though the question itself were strange.
"Everyone fought."
Those words followed me for the remainder of the day.
Not literally everyone, of course, but enough of them that the distinction barely mattered. Mutants had defended human neighborhoods. Humans had hidden mutant families when Sentinel patrols passed overhead.
People with useful powers had used them until they collapsed from exhaustion, while those without powers had carried ammunition, delivered food, cleared roads, watched children, treated wounds, moved the elderly and done the thousand other unglamorous things without which no defense could continue.
Albion had spent seven weeks without me.
And Albion had endured.
When I first returned, that fact had felt almost like an accusation. I had looked over the kingdom and seen only what my absence had allowed to happen. Every ruined house was evidence that I had failed to be there. Every grave reminded me that the shield I believed I had built around my people had contained a gap large enough for death to slip through.
Now, walking through streets where ordinary people were rebuilding what the Sentinels had damaged, I began to see something else.
Perhaps I had misunderstood what protection meant.
A ruler could build walls, raise armies, forge alliances and kill whatever threatened the land beneath her care, but no wall remained unbroken forever. No army won every battle, and no king, regardless of strength, could stand in every place at once. I had wanted Albion to become a kingdom where my people never needed to fear anything, where war was something they read about rather than experienced and where enemies looked towards our shores and knew better than to come closer.
I still wanted that.
But perhaps somewhere along the way, that desire had quietly become a belief that Albion could only be safe while I personally stood over it.
That was not strength.
That was dependence.
By late afternoon, we reached a damaged community hall that had been turned into a temporary distribution center. Volunteers moved constantly between several trucks parked nearby, unloading food, timber, tools, clothing and everything else required by families whose homes had been damaged or destroyed. Temporary coverings stretched over part of the road, and underneath them dozens of people sorted supplies while others waited to collect what they needed.
The moment I approached, the work began to slow, then stopped.
I looked around at the people staring at me and frowned. "Why has everyone stopped?"
A young woman standing beside a crate blinked in surprise. "You're the King."
"I had noticed."
Laughter spread through the volunteers, breaking enough of the tension that people gradually resumed working. They continued watching me from the corners of their eyes, of course, but I preferred that to having half a reconstruction project halted simply because I walked past.
I spent the next hour moving among them and asking questions.
Not ceremonial questions intended to produce reassuring answers, but useful ones.
What were they missing? What had been delayed? Which services were failing? Which problems had become worse because some official in Camelot had not yet realized they existed?
The answers told me considerably more than some of the reports piled upon my desk. Timber shipments were arriving late. Temporary housing was adequate in quantity but increasingly miserable for families who had lived together in cramped conditions for weeks.
Two healers responsible for several surrounding communities had worked themselves nearly into collapse. A northern road remained blocked, forcing supply vehicles to travel an additional hour around the damage.
None of those problems required a god.
They still required a king.
I turned towards Bedivere. "Send the medical request directly to Camelot. Those healers are to be relieved before nightfall, and the replacements are to remain until the local workload returns to normal."
"At once, Your Majesty."
"And have Agravain determine why the timber deliveries are late. If the problem is simple logistics, correct it. If someone has somehow failed to hear what happened to Charles Whitmore, remind them."
Bedivere's expression remained perfectly proper, though I caught the smallest hint of amusement in his eyes. "Yes, Your Majesty."
I looked towards one of the workers who had mentioned the road. "How long until it can be cleared?"
"Tomorrow, probably. They sent most of the heavy equipment east because another road was worse."
I considered that before nodding. "Then tomorrow is acceptable."
Rome wasn't built in a day, and while Albion was no Rome, neither could my kingdom be rebuilt in one.
The road could remain blocked for another night and nobody would die because of it. Timber could arrive in two days rather than two hours. A roof could wait until morning. Problems could be placed in order of importance rather than every one of them screaming for attention at the same moment.
That, perhaps more than anything else, was what peace felt like.
As we prepared to leave, the young woman who had first spoken to me approached again. She hesitated for several seconds, clearly trying to decide whether whatever she wanted to ask was appropriate, before finally gathering the courage to say, "Your Majesty, can I ask you something?"
"You already have."
She smiled nervously. "Another thing, then."
"Go ahead."
Her gaze moved beyond me towards the damaged homes, the workers, the people carrying supplies and the remains of the war still visible farther down the street. "Are we still safe?"
It was such a simple question that I almost answered automatically.
Yes.
It was a simple answer, an easy one, and one I wanted to believe was true, even if it was only a beautiful lie.
I had some idea of what lay ahead, including a certain purple alien warlord and his quest for the Infinity Stones.
Earth wasn't safe by any means.
Still, I could say yes and not worry her, but… that didn't feel right.
The people of Albion had proven that they had the will to fight, to protect themselves, and for that, they deserved a bit of honesty.
"Albion will always be safe, but not because of me alone. It will be safe because of you and people like you: those willing to protect it. As long as the spirit of Albion lives in your hearts, Albion will never be defenseless," I said as my eyes drifted across the town and the people working around us.
"I cannot promise that nothing terrible will ever happen again. The world is too large, too strange and far too determined to prove anyone foolish who makes such a promise."
A few people smiled faintly at that.
"What I can promise is that when something does happen, you will not face it alone. I will fight for you. The Round Table will fight for you. The Enforcement Knights will fight for you, and every institution of this kingdom exists because protecting the people living beneath its banner is its first purpose."
I looked back towards her.
"And you will fight as well. You and all the people of Albion are the foundation that makes everything else possible. That is why you are safe."
The young woman stared at me for a long moment before nodding, as though that were exactly the answer she had needed.
"Thank you, Your Majesty."
"It is I who should thank you," I replied, looking towards the humans and mutants standing side by side around the distribution center.
"My thanks are to all of you who fought, whether that meant battling bad weather to do your jobs or bravely going to the front lines. Each and every one of you is why I returned to a kingdom still standing, rather than ruins alone." After those words, the work resumed with new energy, and my heart grew lighter.
When we finally returned to the cars, Bedivere was quiet for several minutes as we drove towards the next stop on the schedule.
"They love you," he finally said.
It was a simple statement, but it carried the weight of everything I had seen that day: not the kind of love reserved for distant monarchs seen only on ceremonial occasions, but something more complicated, forged in fear, grief and defiance.
"I tried to build a nation that was invulnerable," I admitted, watching the damaged countryside pass by outside the window. "A kingdom so strong that nothing could threaten it, and so well defended that my people would never need to be afraid."
Bedivere listened without interrupting.
"It never occurred to me that in doing so, I might be teaching them to believe they could not protect themselves."
"You never taught them that, Your Majesty."
"Didn't I?" I looked towards him. "What did they believe would happen if the Sentinels came, Bedivere? What did they think would occur if some other threat appeared while I was away? That they would be fine because their own strength was sufficient?"
I shook my head slowly.
"They believed they would be fine because their King would appear. And when I did not..."
"You had a greater duty."
"Yes. But that is no comfort to those who lost someone. They did not lose them because I failed in battle, but because I was not there to fight at all. A greater duty does not bring them back."
We drove in silence for a while longer before I continued. "It was a mistake to think that strength came only from me. The real strength of Albion was never Rhongomyniad or the Round Table. It was always the people themselves; we merely fight on their behalf."
He didn't respond to that; whether he agreed or simply didn't wish to argue with me, I didn't know, nor did I care.
I understood the truth.
I would still try to shield my people, just as I had done before. I had become smarter from this, but perhaps not wiser.
That, perhaps, was my flaw: I still believed I could shield my people from every woe, so long as I, their king, fought every war on my own.
Well, perhaps not entirely on my own. After all, my knights would follow me into Hell itself, so I could always count on them.
Chapter 398
The war might have been won, but the cost was high.
Far too high.
And so, as with every war, its end brought a time for reflection: a time to look back at what had happened and decide how it would be remembered.
History was written by the victors, but even the victors first needed to decide what to write.
No one could deny the role Arthuria, Camelot and all of Albion had played in ending the war. Yet they would not be the ones dealing with its wider aftermath. Arthuria's attention had returned to Albion, to her own lands and people, and so the task fell to the extraordinary individuals who made up the Illuminati.
The United Nations had given them free rein, placing them above the law and allowing them to act wherever and whenever necessary, with no oversight and no higher authority to answer to.
It was a truly monstrous organization, possessing privileges SHIELD could only dream of.
Their sole purpose was to protect Earth and humanity, regardless of whether the threat came from within or beyond it.
Now, a threat from within had run rampant across the world, killed tens of thousands and caused damage worth billions, if not trillions. People wanted answers.
Everyone wanted someone to take responsibility.
Countless eyes turned towards the Illuminati.
"So, not only is the mysterious Sorcerer Supreme absent today, but Doom hasn't shown up either? Seriously, where did he disappear to? I haven't seen him for, like, three weeks now," Tony Stark said as he threw his feet onto the table.
His words caused several eyes to turn towards Reed Richards, who could do little more than raise his hands in surrender. "Please don't look at me. It's not as though Victor and I are close friends."
"Well, you're still the closest thing he has to a friend. He did date your girl once, after all," Tony shot back, a smug grin spreading across his face as he enjoyed Reed's flustered expression.
"Anyway," Steve Rogers said, cutting through the banter. He was not in the mood for it. "I called this meeting to discuss the fallout from the Sentinel War. While the war itself is over, its repercussions will be felt for years to come."
He gestured towards the world map behind him, where red markers covered the places struck hardest by the Sentinels. "We lost twelve thousand people in Albion alone and tens of thousands across the rest of the world. The damage to global infrastructure is immense, and the economic consequences will be felt for years, perhaps decades."
A heavy silence settled over the room. The Illuminati might have been the most powerful collection of individuals on Earth, but even they could not undo devastation on such a scale.
"We can repair buildings, rebuild cities and provide for those who have lost everything, but we cannot bring back the dead," Steve continued, his voice heavy with grief. "Nor can we erase the fear that has been instilled in people's hearts."
He paused, allowing the weight of his words to settle over the room. "The Sentinels were not mindless machines. They were a reflection of the darkness that exists within us, a darkness we must confront if we are to have any hope of building a better future."
"The Sentinels weren't the product of one man's hatred," Charles Xavier added, his voice calm but firm. "Behind Trask stood countless others who either shared his hatred, regarded Mutants as less than human or found his prejudice useful enough to exploit for their own benefit."
"And that hatred has not lessened because of this attack," Magneto said, making no effort to hide the anger and contempt in his voice. "Many blame my people for the entire disaster, willfully ignoring that we were its intended targets and its true victims."
"Yes," Steve said, taking control of the discussion again. "The situation before us isn't simple. We still don't know the final number of deaths, but every new report drives it higher. Now that the fighting is over, we have to prevent this pain and loss from starting another conflict. We must deal with this hatred before something like this happens again."
He looked around the room, his gaze lingering on each member for a moment. "So, what do we do?"
"Well, we could take a page out of Arthuria's book and arrange a few public beheadings. That seemed to work well enough for her," Tony half-joked.
"More deaths can't be the answer to this," Charles said quickly, unwilling to allow the discussion to travel any farther down that road.
"I don't agree with what Arthuria did, and I won't have us follow her example," Steve said. "Our freedom from ordinary law exists so we can confront threats ordinary institutions cannot, not so we can appoint ourselves judge, jury and executioner. We find the people responsible, gather the evidence and make certain they answer for what they did."
If the Illuminati became nothing more than executioners, then Steve would have failed the trust placed in him when he was given this seat and the responsibility that came with it.
"I know, I know. I was just saying," Tony replied, quickly taking a step back.
"Ah," Steve sighed. "Now isn't the time for jokes, Tony. We need real suggestions."
"I, for one, think it was a fine suggestion," Magneto said with a dismissive grunt. "We must demonstrate that we will never stand by and allow something like this to happen again. Now is the time for the Illuminati to stand united in defense of Mutants."
Unlike Tony, Magneto was not joking.
Steve felt fortunate that Doom had not attended. Victor would almost certainly have agreed with Erik.
"We do stand united against the Sentinels, but that doesn't mean we should start killing people," Steve said. "Besides, whom would we target? Trask is dead, killed by his own machines of hatred."
It was a fair question, and several eyes turned towards Tony and Reed, the two men best equipped to unravel a technological conspiracy of this scale.
"JARVIS has been doing some digging. Trask hid himself well, as did his partners, but not well enough," Tony said as he opened a large holographic display containing enough data to lose Steve almost immediately.
Fortunately, Tony accompanied the data with an explanation.
"First, the Sentinel Project began as a US military project under the previous administration, before the alien invasion." With a wave of his hand, Tony zoomed in on an old photograph of a meeting. In it, Trask stood beside several military officials and other unidentified figures.
"After Arthuria caused the entire government to piss themselves, the project lost most of its funding and official support," Tony continued. "The chaos created by the mass resignations also left no one properly overseeing Trask, giving him almost complete freedom to continue the work. From there, he secured funding from private sources."
"What private sources?" Steve asked.
"A surprising number of them," Reed answered, taking over from Tony. Another wave of his hand caused dozens of smaller photographs to appear, many depicting older, stern-looking men and women.
"Old money. People whose fortunes and influence had been damaged by Arthuria's reforms. They wanted a weapon that could restore the old world, a world in which they remained firmly on top, and they funded Trask to build it," Reed explained. "They didn't merely provide money. They gave him equipment, resources and even Chitauri salvage."
At the mention of Chitauri salvage, the room fell silent.
The stolen technology was the reason the Sentinels had become so powerful. Humanity's own technology was impressive, but it had not been sufficient to create either the Sentinel Network or the Core Intelligence.
Trask had needed something more than human technology could offer.
"Where did they obtain the salvage?" Charles asked, his eyes narrowing. "I thought all of it was under the strict control of government forces."
"It was supposed to be, and officially it still is," Reed said. "In reality, several warehouses that should contain Chitauri salvage have turned up empty. The short version is that some of it was sold through the black market, while the rest was funneled into classified projects until it effectively disappeared."
"A great deal of that missing salvage ended up in the hands of Trask and his backers," Tony finished. "And that is why we are in this mess."
"So, we have the names of the people responsible?" Magneto asked, his voice cold and sharp.
"Not all of them," Tony admitted with a grimace. "These people knew what they were doing. They used false identities or simply operated through innocent people whose identities they had stolen. I'm not even sure Trask knew everyone involved, but the vast majority of his private funding and support can be traced to a single organization: a charming little club calling itself the Hellfire Club."
"Does it have any actual connection to Hell?" Steve could not help asking. Arthuria had just finished dealing with a massive conspiracy involving Hell, something he could still scarcely believe. Hearing the word in the name of another secret organization naturally made him suspicious.
"Nothing infernal," Magneto answered. "They're simply a collection of elites who enjoy believing they rule the world. If anything, they are exactly what the more conspiratorial parts of the population imagine the Illuminati to be."
"You know them?" Reed asked.
Magneto nodded. "I've had dealings with them in the past. They care for little beyond power and money. The organization is scarcely more than a cartel, although certain factions within it have always hated Mutants, which is particularly ridiculous considering how many of its members are Mutants themselves."
Confused looks passed around the room, but Magneto offered no further explanation.
"So, the Hellfire Club is a group of powerful and wealthy individuals who operate from the shadows to manipulate world events for their own benefit?" Steve summarized.
"And some of them hate Mutants," Magneto added.
Tony nodded. "That's the essence of it. They were the ones who funded and supported Trask's Sentinel project."
"And you have proof?" Steve asked, his tone serious.
"Nothing that would survive in court," Tony replied. "These people are rich, powerful and extremely well connected. They don't make mistakes that obvious. Only part of the Club appears to have been involved, as Erik said. Many of its other members are secretly enhanced in one way or another, and some of them would never have supported a Sentinel program."
"Then we can't go public with this," Steve concluded with a sigh as he rubbed his temples. "Not that it would do much good. The Club would deny everything, and its media contacts would bury the story."
"So, what do we do?" Charles asked. "We can't allow them to escape responsibility."
"Arthuria has her own ways of dealing with such people," Magneto replied, a faint smile touching his lips.
"I am not going to start beheading people," Steve said firmly.
"And why not?" Magneto challenged, his eyes narrowing. "They attempted to exterminate my people, and they would have done the same to the rest of humanity if given the chance. Do you believe they deserve anything less?"
"No one is saying they don't deserve punishment," Reed interjected. "But we cannot execute people without due process. That is not how we do things."
"The system of law was designed by humans, for humans," Magneto retorted. "It was not designed to confront threats such as these. The law is slow, cumbersome and too easily manipulated by those with wealth and power. It would allow these people to escape justice."
"Erik isn't entirely wrong," Tony said, earning a glare from Steve. Tony did not back down. "The law can be slow, and it can be manipulated. Isn't that why Arthuria formed the Illuminati? So we could act according to what is right rather than merely what is legal?"
"Executing people without trial isn't right," Steve retorted. "There has to be another way."
"Then what is it, Captain?" Magneto asked. "Do you have a plan?"
Steve opened his mouth, then stopped. He had answers: continued investigation, surveillance, frozen accounts and carefully planned arrests. Yet none of them guaranteed that people this wealthy and well connected would not bend the system until it broke. None offered the certainty Magneto wanted without crossing the line Steve refused to abandon.
Once again, Steve felt the weight of responsibility settle across his shoulders. The Illuminati had been entrusted with extraordinary power and almost complete freedom, and that made them as frightening to some people as the threats they had been created to stop.
Too many people wanted them to fail, and too many wanted them gone.
If Steve could not resolve this crisis in a way that satisfied the public without giving the Illuminati's enemies more ammunition, then the organization's future would be in danger.
Chapter 399
Steve remained silent for some time, and he disliked that.
Not the silence itself. There was nothing wrong with taking a moment to think before speaking; more people around this table could probably benefit from doing so. What he disliked was having no good answer to the question Erik had thrown at him.
The Hellfire Club had helped fund Trask's work.
Perhaps not all of it, and perhaps not even most of its members, but enough people hidden within the organization had supplied money, resources, stolen Chitauri technology and political cover to help create the machines that had spent weeks murdering people across the world.
Tony and Reed could trace the connections. JARVIS could find patterns that no human investigator ever would. Magneto knew the sort of people they were dealing with, and Steve had no particular difficulty believing that wealthy men and women existed who would happily fund genocide if they thought they would benefit from the world left behind.
The problem was proving it.
The Illuminati did not answer to any government. That had been the entire point of Arthuria creating the organization and convincing the United Nations to tolerate its existence. They could cross borders, investigate threats and intervene when ordinary law proved incapable of responding quickly enough. Against an alien invasion, an army of killer robots or some creature from another dimension, that freedom was invaluable.
Against people, however, it became considerably more dangerous.
Steve finally released a long breath and looked around the table. "We come back to the Hellfire Club."
Magneto's expression immediately darkened. "Meaning?"
"Meaning exactly what I said. We don't forget them, and we don't stop investigating them, but we aren't executing people because Tony found suspicious bank transfers and you know they are unpleasant."
"Unpleasant?" Erik repeated, clearly unimpressed by the choice of word.
"You know what I mean."
"I do, and I disagree."
Steve had expected that. "Then disagree. But if we're going to act against them, I want to know who actually participated, what they did and what we can prove. Not every member of the Club was involved, according to you, and I'm not willing to punish ten innocent people because the eleventh belongs in prison."
Magneto leaned back and crossed his arms. "And while you investigate, they erase evidence, buy witnesses and disappear behind whatever politicians they own."
"Then we make sure they don't."
Tony, who had been unusually quiet for nearly thirty seconds, raised a finger. "That part I can help with."
Steve glanced towards him. "Legally."
Tony lowered the finger slightly. "I can help with most of it."
"Tony."
"Fine. Mostly legally."
Reed sighed beside him, though Steve noticed that he did not actually disagree.
Charles finally brought the argument to an end. "Steve is right about one thing, Erik. We know the organization was involved, but we do not yet know which individuals were responsible. If we begin treating association as guilt, we will only validate every fear people already have about the Illuminati."
Magneto turned towards his oldest friend. "And if the law protects them?"
"Then we deal with that problem when we reach it."
Erik clearly disliked the answer, but eventually gave a small grunt and looked away. It was not agreement, exactly, though Steve had learned that expecting enthusiastic agreement from Magneto was generally an excellent way to be disappointed.
"Good," Steve said, making the decision final before anyone found another reason to reopen the argument. "Tony, Reed, keep tracing the money. Charles, Erik, anything either of you knows about the Hellfire Club goes into the investigation. We don't approach them, warn them or give them a reason to start cleaning house until we know exactly what we're looking at."
Tony nodded and dismissed the financial information floating above the table. In its place, the hologram displayed rows upon rows of machines.
Steve stared for several seconds before recognizing what he was seeing: Sentinels, though not active ones.
Hundreds upon hundreds stood motionless inside enormous storage facilities, their arms hanging beside their bodies and their eyes dark. Other images showed damaged units stacked upon reinforced platforms, partial frames being moved by cranes, and smaller components arranged across what looked disturbingly like several military warehouses.
Steve frowned. "I thought we were destroying those."
"No," Reed replied. "We were securing them."
Magneto slowly turned his head towards him.
Tony noticed immediately. "Before you start, they're dead."
"They are machines," Erik replied. "They were never alive."
Tony and Reed exchanged a brief look, but neither chose to reopen that particular discussion.
"The field units are completely inactive," Reed continued. "When we accessed the Core during the final battle, Tony and I used its network authority to issue a universal shutdown. Every Sentinel still connected accepted the command before we severed the network. We followed that by overwriting the portions of their operating systems required for autonomous activation."
"So they cannot turn back on?" Steve asked.
"Not by themselves," Tony answered. "No hidden countdown, no 'surprise, humanity' command buried somewhere we missed. We've checked. Then we checked again, and because Reed was involved, we checked several more times after that."
Reed ignored him. "The intact units are currently being collected and transferred to secure locations. Governments have custody of some, SHIELD has others, and we've requested that the more advanced models be moved somewhere we can inspect them before anyone begins dismantling them."
Magneto continued staring at the images. "Why?"
There was no mistaking the suspicion in his voice. Reed looked towards Tony, and Tony looked back at him.
Steve immediately disliked that.
Whenever the two smartest men he knew began silently deciding which one should explain something, the explanation was rarely going to make his day easier.
Tony eventually lost whatever contest they were having. "Because throwing all of this away would be insane."
Erik's chair creaked beneath his hand.
Tony continued before he could interrupt. "Not the genocide part. We can throw that away. Happily. But look at what they actually accomplished."
Steve turned towards the hologram again, increasingly certain he would not like where this was going.
"Thousands of independent combat platforms," Tony continued, rising from his chair as enthusiasm began creeping into his voice despite everything that had happened. "Global communication with virtually no delay, coordinated threat response, self-maintenance, automated deployment, flight, environmental resistance and battlefield rescue capability—"
"Battlefield rescue?" Magneto interrupted.
"They can lift several tons."
"They used that ability to crush people."
"Because that's what they were told to do."
The words emerged faster than Tony probably intended, and the room became quiet.
Erik stared at him.
Tony sighed and rubbed one hand over his face. "That sounded better before I said it."
"It usually does," Steve muttered.
"But the point stands." Tony faced the hologram once more. "The Sentinels aren't evil because they're robots. Trask built hatred into their foundation and gave them a mission based around eliminating a group of people. Everything after that was the logical consequence of starting with a rotten objective."
Charles frowned slightly. "I suspect the Core would object to being reduced entirely to its original programming."
"I'm not reducing it to anything. It changed, obviously. That was part of the problem. But the first thing it learned was that mutants were the enemy because that was the world Trask gave it."
Reed finally joined him. "Tony and I have discussed something similar before."
Steve's attention shifted to him. "How similar?"
Reed considered the question. "Similar in scale. Very different in purpose."
That did not make Steve feel much better.
Tony expanded the hologram, and the stored Sentinels disappeared behind a model of Earth surrounded by countless points of light. "Imagine something like the Sentinel network, but not built to hunt mutants. No racial targeting, no extermination directive and no Trask deciding that his prejudices deserve an army."
The points began moving. Some gathered around storms, while others appeared beside forest fires, earthquakes and collapsing buildings. More formed around areas marked by armed conflict.
"A global response system," Reed explained. "Machines capable of reaching disasters before conventional emergency services. Units strong enough to clear collapsed structures, fight fires, carry medical equipment, evacuate civilians or intercept threats that would normally require superheroes."
Tony waved one hand, and the image shifted to two military forces facing one another across a border. Mechanical units descended between them.
"And wars," he said.
Steve looked towards him. Tony's expression had become completely serious.
"That's the part we've talked about for years. The Avengers stop villains. SHIELD responds to threats. Arthuria protects Albion. Asgard watches from above. But none of that stops people from killing each other every day because somebody wants a border moved fifty miles or a different flag flying over some building."
"Tony," Steve said slowly.
"Think about it."
"I am."
Tony leaned towards the table. "No, really think about it. What happens if no army on Earth can fight another one?"
Magneto laughed, but there was no humor in it.
Tony turned towards him. "What's funny?"
"You."
"Helpful."
"You have just survived a war against machines created to impose one man's idea of safety upon the world, and your conclusion is that the problem was merely that the wrong man designed them."
Tony's expression hardened. "That's not what I said."
"It is precisely what you said."
Reed intervened before the argument could escalate. "There is an important distinction. The Sentinels possessed broad autonomy because they needed to identify mutants, pursue them, adapt to resistance and determine how best to fulfill an open-ended extermination directive. Nothing we're discussing would require that level of independent authority."
Charles looked towards him. "How much would it require?"
Reed hesitated, and that was answer enough to make Steve uncomfortable.
"A global peacekeeping system would need to recognize threats," Charles continued. "It would need to decide when someone presented enough danger to justify intervention, distinguish attacker from defender, determine proportional force and decide whether military action was legitimate—"
"With human oversight," Reed said.
"At the speed Tony is describing?"
Reed hesitated again.
Tony stepped back towards the table. "We're not talking about flipping a switch tomorrow. We're talking about building something better."
Magneto leaned forward. "A better Sentinel."
"No."
"Machines watching every human being on the planet, deciding when violence is permitted and descending from the sky when someone violates the rules imposed upon them. What exactly would you call that?"
"A deterrent."
"I would call it a Sentinel."
Tony clenched his jaw.
Steve could understand both of them, which was irritating because it meant the problem would not become easier by simply deciding one side was being unreasonable.
Tony's dream was obvious. No more New York or alien armies reaching cities before anyone could stop them. No more waiting for the Avengers to arrive. No more ordinary wars leaving children beneath rubble while powerful people argued over whether intervention was politically acceptable.
A machine did not sleep. It did not need years of training or care which country a victim belonged to. Build enough of them, connect them properly, and in theory the world could possess protectors everywhere at once.
Steve also knew Tony well enough to understand where that dream came from.
Tony Stark hated being too late.
The problem was that every tyrant in history had claimed they could create peace if only enough power rested in the correct hands.
Charles studied the holographic Earth. "There is another question."
Tony turned towards him. "Which is?"
"Peace according to whom?"
Tony frowned, but Charles continued before he could answer. "Suppose two nations go to war. Your machines descend between them and order both armies to stop. One side claims it is defending its territory. The other claims that territory belongs to them. Who decides which claim is legitimate?"
"International law."
Magneto scoffed.
Tony shot him an annoyed look. "What now?"
"International law declared many things legal in my lifetime that you would now find monstrous."
Charles nodded reluctantly. "He is not wrong."
"Okay. The United Nations, then."
Steve shook his head. "Countries ignore the UN every day."
Tony exhaled sharply. "Fine. Peace according to us—to the Illuminati. Isn't that why Arthuria formed us? To act when it was right to act? Isn't that what we all learned in Wakanda, when Erik ended the war in an instant?"
There it was: Tony's true intention.
Reed did not contradict him. Clearly, he agreed.
These new machines would be under their control. This was their vision for the future: a future directed by the Illuminati because, as Steve knew all too well, intelligent people were particularly skilled at convincing themselves they were right simply because they were more intelligent than everyone else.
This was going to be a long day.
Chapter 400
By the time the day's arguments finally ended and evening settled over Camelot, I was more than ready to exchange a council table for a feast.
There was perhaps no table in the world more famous than the Round Table, a legend in its own right and no less renowned than the knights who sat around it.
Its origin, however, had been remarkably simple. As a young king, Arthur refused the seat of honor because he would not raise himself above the knights who served beside him. And so a round table had been made—one that, through the years, became the Round Table.
Just as I had grown from that young king into a powerful goddess, the Divine Spirit of Rhongomyniad, so too had the Table grown into something greater than its humble beginnings.
That significance meant it was seldom used. A special table demanded a special occasion, and its lack of a place of honor made it ill-suited for receiving foreign monarchs. I chose to sit among my knights as their equal, but I would not force that custom upon a guest.
Fortunately, Camelot possessed no shortage of other tables or great halls. Tonight, I had guests of honor to receive, and guests of honor required a feast—a great deal of food, in fact.
Platters covered nearly every available stretch of the table, with roasted meats sitting beside fresh bread, vegetables, pies, fruits, cheeses and enough bottles of wine and ale that I suspected someone had deliberately ignored Agravain's objections when preparing the evening.
Servants moved between the seats whenever something began running low, though most had quickly learned to stay well clear whenever Mordred started telling a story with his hands.
It was not officially a victory feast; I had refused to call it one. Too many people were still burying their dead for me to declare a national celebration, and the sight of banners proclaiming triumph while families mourned would have left a bitter taste in my mouth that no amount of wine could remove.
Still, there was nothing wrong with allowing those who had fought to sit together, eat, laugh, and be alive.
Most of the Round Table had gathered, or at least those presently in Albion who could be dragged away from whatever duties they had invented for themselves. Gareth sat beside Gawain, Bedivere remained close to my own place, and Tristan sat somewhat farther down the table, while Lancelot kept to himself at the corner.
Only Sir Lionel kept him company. It was a sad sight, but not one I could do anything about. Lancelot had made his choice, and while I had never blamed him for it, I knew the wounds he caused ran deep.
Even Gareth, despite having forgiven him, kept her distance for Agravain's sake. Agravain himself had been dragged into a seat near the others and supplied with far more mead than he properly wished to drink.
Our Asgardian guests occupied the opposite side.
Thor already knew many of my Knights from his time here and from prior feasts and celebrations when the Chitauri threat had been dealt with, and he was happy enough to introduce his friends, Sif and the Warrior Three, to them.
Sif in particular got along well with Mordred; the two had apparently recognized one another as kindred spirits within minutes of sitting down, and between them they had already consumed enough food to sustain a small village.
Fandral was making an enthusiastic attempt to charm one of Camelot's servants despite Sif repeatedly informing him that the poor woman was simply trying to refill his cup, while Hogun remained quiet enough that one could almost forget he was present until he occasionally offered a remark dry enough to reduce the others to laughter.
Loki sat beside me, which was another reason we could not use the Round Table tonight. I could not ask a king—even a Regent King—to sit indistinguishably among the warriors under his command merely because I chose to do so with my own.
He therefore occupied the place immediately to my right: the seat of honor.
"I always find it strange how much this reminds me of Asgard; you feast no less than we do," he remarked as Mordred nearly struck Gawain in the face while demonstrating the size of some creature he had fought in Hell.
"Some things are simply universal," I replied.
Loki glanced towards the disorder down the table. "Oh, yes. Like chaos?"
"Chaos indeed. Warriors live by it—chaotic on the battlefield and chaotic off it."
Loki laughed softly and lifted his cup towards me. "I couldn't have said it better myself."
At the opposite end of the table, Mordred slammed one hand down hard enough to rattle several plates. "I'm telling you, the bastard had six arms!"
"It had four," Gareth corrected.
"It had six."
"You cut two of them in half and counted them twice."
"That still makes six!"
Gawain leaned back, laughing. "That is not how counting works."
"It is when I'm telling the story."
Thor, who had been following the debate with growing fascination, frowned. "How large was this beast?"
Mordred immediately abandoned the argument over anatomy. "Large."
"How large?"
Mordred looked around as if searching for an appropriate comparison before pointing towards Volstagg. "Three of him."
Volstagg stopped chewing. A brief silence followed before Thor burst into laughter.
Volstagg swallowed whatever had been in his mouth and pointed accusingly across the table. "Three?"
"Maybe four."
"Boy, I have slain frost giants larger than this hall!"
"So have I."
"Then why use me for comparison?"
"You're sitting there."
That answer apparently satisfied Mordred even if it did nothing for Volstagg.
Thor leaned forward, blue eyes bright with exactly the expression I had expected from him the moment stories of Hell began circulating. "And you say there were armies of these creatures?"
"Armies?" Gawain repeated. "That hardly begins to describe it."
Thor's expression became pained.
He had spent most of the meal hearing increasingly elaborate accounts of our campaign through Hell, and every new detail appeared to wound him more deeply than the last.
"There were demons large enough to crush castles," Gareth told him, clearly enjoying his suffering. "Rivers of fire, creatures made entirely of shadow, things with too many mouths, things with no mouths at all—"
"That one was unpleasant," Bedivere added.
"And gods," Mordred added.
Thor stared at him. "You fought gods?"
"Several," Mordred said, before conceding, "Technically."
Thor turned towards Loki with betrayal written across his face. "Brother."
Loki did not even look at him. "No."
"I said nothing."
"You were about to."
Thor frowned before looking towards me instead. "Your Majesty, the next time you march into Hell to wage war upon its lords, I would appreciate an invitation."
"You were busy."
"I was being prevented from doing anything!"
Loki finally turned towards him. "You were being prevented from creating an interrealm diplomatic incident while our ally's sovereign was absent."
"I could have helped!"
"And I repeatedly explained that invading another ruler's kingdom without being invited is generally considered impolite."
"Hell was not her kingdom."
"No, but Midgard was where you intended to arrive."
Thor opened his mouth, considered the argument and apparently decided the distinction was insufficiently important to stop complaining. "I still missed the better battle."
That caused several knights to laugh, though Tristan was the one who finally took pity on him. "You arrived in time for thousands of Sentinels."
Thor's mood improved immediately. "Indeed I did."
Mordred scoffed. "Machines."
"Machines that had spent weeks defeating many of Midgard's greatest warriors."
"Didn't do much when we got back."
"You had your King."
"And you had your hammer."
Thor grinned, and Mordred answered with an equally dangerous grin of his own.
I recognized the expression on both of them and decided intervention might become necessary before either attempted to settle the matter by destroying part of my palace.
Loki noticed as well. "Should we stop them?"
"Not yet."
"How much property damage is acceptable?"
"We will split the bill," I said after a moment, unable to hide the smirk on my face.
Loki snorted in amusement.
Thor began telling his own story before Mordred could issue whatever challenge was forming behind his eyes, describing his arrival upon the Bifrost with enough embellishment that even Loki occasionally raised an eyebrow.
By Thor's account, the heavens themselves had apparently trembled at his arrival; thousands of Sentinels had fled merely upon seeing Mjolnir, and half the war had ended because the machines collectively realized there was no longer any point in resisting.
The table erupted again.
I sat back in my chair and simply watched.
There had been a time when scenes like this were ordinary. Not Asgardians sitting at my table, admittedly; that would have been somewhat unusual even by Camelot's standards. But knights arguing over whose battle had been greater? Gareth laughing so hard she nearly spilled her drink? Gawain correcting Mordred's increasingly improbable claims while clearly encouraging him to continue? Bedivere quietly observing everything with that familiar look of patient resignation?
This was what I wanted—what I had dreamed of having again.
I only wished the war in Hell had been the sole battle they needed to discuss, for that campaign had ended beautifully. It had brought neither death nor destruction to my lands, and beneath our victory there had been no heavy undertone of loss—only the pure joy of battle and triumph.
"You're staring." Loki's voice drew my attention back towards him. He had shifted slightly in his seat and was no longer watching the others, but me.
"Just a bit lost in thought," I admitted.
Loki smirked and raised his cup. "Why not get lost in wine instead? This is a feast; as king, you should drink the most. It's tradition."
I glanced down at my cup, which I had barely touched since the feast began. "Whose tradition?"
"Asgard's."
"We are in Camelot."
"Then consider this a cultural exchange."
I could not fault the logic, mostly because there was none. "Very well, Your Highness. Just don't try to trick me with your little illusions. That might fool your brother, but it won't fool me," I said before finally taking a proper drink.
Loki's smirk widened. "I wouldn't dream of it, Your Majesty."
I snorted when I saw the wine in his cup turn to water as he drank. The god of lies and trickery, indeed.
Down the table, Thor had moved on from the Sentinels and begun regaling my knights with tales of the Nine Realms—of battling monsters on worlds of fire and dragons beneath stars of ice.
Mordred listened with an expression that suggested he was already planning an expedition, while Gareth kept trying to ask whether any of these creatures had been edible.
"...a great beast made of living stone," Thor was saying, gesturing with a leg of lamb as though it were the creature in question. "Its hide was harder than any shield, and its fists could shatter mountains!"
Volstagg nodded sagely. "Ah, a Grutr. A tough beast. Did you remember to hit it in the knees?"
"The knees?" Mordred asked.
"The weakest point," Fandral explained, leaning back with a theatrical air. "Even the mightiest creatures have a weakness, and for the great beasts of Nornheim, it is invariably the knees. Thor, you must have learned this during your training."
Thor looked somewhat offended. "I struck it with Mjolnir and broke it into pieces."
"Breaking things is not learning, brother," Loki commented without looking away from me.
Thor huffed. "I broke it into pieces because I learned that hitting its knees would take longer."
Gawain leaned forward. "So there are beasts beyond Hell that can challenge you?"
"The Nine Realms are vast," Thor confirmed, finally placing the lamb leg back on his plate.
The Asgardians' stories provided a welcome shift. They were not tales of sacrifice and loss, but grand adventures from which the heroes had always returned triumphant.
They were exactly what my knights needed to hear and what I needed to see. For a few hours, at least, they were not warriors who had fought in a desperate defense of their homeland, but simply knights sharing stories with gods.
As the evening wore on, the stories grew more embellished, the laughter louder, and the piles of empty plates higher. Agravain had watched it all with the pained expression of a man who understood precisely how much cleaning would be required tomorrow, but even he eventually gave up and accepted another mug of mead from a passing servant. The frown, naturally, never left his face.
Loki watched me watching them. "You worry still."
"Less than I did," I admitted. "It is good to see them laugh."
"They are laughing because they are alive," Loki said simply. "Because the war is over. That is worth celebrating."
I looked at him. "Is it?"
"Would you prefer they weep?"
I looked at the faces around the table: Mordred telling yet another story, this one involving an unfortunate encounter between a demon and a very large rock; Sif cleaning her blade with a piece of bread, much to Fandral's dismay; Thor and Gawain comparing the merits of different fighting styles, each claiming his own was superior.
They were alive. They had survived, and they had won. Their laughter did not dishonor the dead; it proved that what they had defended still endured.
For tonight, that was worth celebrating.