Chapter 12: The King's Malice
The backlash from the failed Paragon summoning did more than shatter monoliths. It shattered King Valerius's last veneer of control. The public narrative of a wise king summoning saviors curdled overnight into whispers of a desperate tyrant gambling with reality itself. The wounded, the families of the dead, the merchants who lost property—their fear turned to sullen, simmering anger.
Valerius's response was not contrition. It was escalation.
From the Labyrinth, Kael watched through the Heart-Hoard as the sickly yellow of tyranny in the capital deepened into a venomous, pulsating crimson. Valerius declared a State of Peril, suspending noble councils and granting sweeping powers to the Silver Hawks. His new decrees were broadcast by mage-horn across every town:
1. The Technomancer Edict: All unlicensed artifice, alchemy, and "unnatural mechanics" were hereby banned. A government bureau, the "Office of Purity," was established, staffed by fanatics and hawk officers, empowered to raid workshops, confiscate property, and arrest "tainted" craftsmen.
2. The Rift Conscription: All able-bodied men and women between 16 and 50 living within fifty miles of an active rift were to be drafted into "Mitigation Brigades." These were not military units; they were sacrificial labor gangs sent to contain rifts with sheer manpower and crude magic, suffering horrific casualties.
3. The Tithe of Blood: To fund "national recovery," a new tax was levied: one-tenth of all magical reagents, enchanted items, and rare metals were to be surrendered to the Crown. Refusal meant imprisonment, the charges of "hoarding resources in a time of crisis."
It was a campaign of organized predation. Valerius, unable to access the wealth of the Heart-Hoard, was strip-mining his own people and their future to feed his war machine and his crumbling legitimacy. The gray patches of drained land on Kael's model spread. The red scars of exploitation multiplied.
Kael knew he couldn't fight this with a single, spectacular sabotage. This was a systemic disease. He needed to provide an alternative. A counter-narrative, and counter-measures.
His first move was through Althea. The Cartographer, now fully committed as his informant out of both self-preservation and scholarly zeal, provided detailed maps of the conscription camps and Office of Purity patrol routes. Kael couldn't raise an army, but he could build tools of liberation.
In the Foundry Vault, he designed and produced three new devices en masse:
· Purity-Breakers: Small, handheld EMP-like devices that could permanently fry the magical seals and simple enchantments used by the Office of Purity on confiscated goods and prison doors. They were simple to use—just press and activate.
· Rift-Bafflers: Portable versions of his harmonic resonator, scaled down to a backpack unit. They couldn't close a rift, but they could stabilize its edges for several hours, creating a safe perimeter and drastically reducing casualties for the conscripted laborers.
· Whisper-Nets: Communication arrays disguised as common rocks or trees that could create a localized, encrypted network, allowing oppressed communities to coordinate warnings and share information outside the King's control.
He didn't deliver these himself. He used Iris and a newly created swarm of smaller, insect-like Courier-Drones to make anonymous deliveries. A crate of Purity-Breakers would appear in the basement of a sympathetic blacksmith in a targeted town. A Rift-Baffler, with simple instructions carved on its casing, would be found by a desperate foreman at a conscription site. The Whisper-Nets seeded themselves in forest groves near villages.
He was not a general leading troops. He was a source. A rumor of aid from the "Metal Druid" or the "Ghost in the Root" spread among the common people. Acts of quiet defiance multiplied. A conscript camp would mysteriously find their rift calmed. A Purity Office raid would find its magical locks inert and its confiscated wagon missing. Whispers of the true story of the Lionhelm massacre began to circulate on the encrypted networks.
Valerius raged. He knew it was Kael's work, but the attacks were faceless, untraceable, targeting his control systems, not his person. It was guerrilla warfare waged with wrenches and tuning forks.
The King's second move was to weaponize the remaining Heroes. With Chloe broken and Talia dead, he focused on Leo and Arawn. He gave Leo a new mandate: not just to hunt Kael, but to out-create him. "Build something to counter his tricks! You are from a more advanced world! Prove it!"
Leo, his ego wounded by the ritual failure and Kael's evident superior finesse with local physics, threw himself into the task. Using the kingdom's stripped resources, he established a Technological Development Wing within the Silver Hawks. His creations were powerful but lacked Kael's elegance. He produced Seeker-Swarms that hunted magical signatures (which often targeted innocent enchanters), Kinetic Hammers—shoulder-mounted cannons that leveled buildings to kill one target, and Pain-Field Generators for crowd control. They were tools of oppression, blunt and brutal.
Arawn was given a simpler task: be the public face of terror. With a company of the most brutal Hawks, he was sent on a "pacification tour" of towns rumored to be using the "heretical devices." His methods were simple: public executions of suspected sympathizers, the burning of workshops, and the promise that the Metal Druid's "cowardly gifts" would only bring more suffering.
Kael observed Arawn's progress on the model, a blot of violent orange moving across the land. He couldn't be everywhere. He had to make an example.
He chose the town of Farhaven, a farming community where a Whisper-Net had been discovered and destroyed by Arawn's men. The barbarian hero was holding a "trial" in the town square, planning to hang the blacksmith who had been found with a Purity-Breaker.
Kael didn't send Iris. He went himself.
He descended from a high pass at dusk, not in stealth, but in announcement. Aegis Prime gleamed in the dying light, the Fulcrum Mark II a bright star on his back. He didn't walk; he used his gravitic core to descend in slow, deliberate bounds, landing in the center of the square with a thud that cracked the cobblestones, just as Arawn was putting the noose around the blacksmith's neck.
The crowd gasped. The Silver Hawks tensed. Arawn turned, a savage grin splitting his face. "The ghost shows itself! I was hoping for a fight!"
"Then you are easily satisfied," Kael's vocoder boomed. He didn't draw a weapon. "This man's crime is fixing a broken lock. Your crime is murder in the name of a liar."
Arawn roared and charged, his new, Hawk-issue powered gauntlets amplifying his already monstrous strength. He swung a fist that could shatter stone.
Kael didn't dodge. He raised his own hand and activated a localized Gravitic Shear field.
Arawn's punch entered the field and was wrenched violently to the side, his own momentum throwing him off balance. Kael stepped inside his guard, moving with the fluid precision of his augmented physique. His palm, clad in cerametal, struck Arawn's chest not with force, but with a Kinetic Null-Pulse.
The pulse didn't bruise flesh; it targeted the magical power core of the gauntlets and the reinforcement runes in Arawn's armor. There was a series of sharp cracks and fizzling pops. The gauntlets died, dark and heavy. Arawn's armor lost its enchantment, becoming mere metal.
The barbarian hero stumbled back, bewildered, looking at his dead fists. "Witchcraft!"
"Engineering," Kael corrected. He looked at the Hawk captain. "Take your… hero, and leave this town. Tell Valerius his thugs are not welcome where I can see them."
The Hawks, seeing their most powerful asset neutralized in two moves, hesitated. But their training held. They raised weapons.
Kael sighed. "Very well."
He tapped a command on his wrist. From the rooftops around the square, a dozen small ports opened. His hidden Sentinel-Mites, fist-sized drones he'd deployed upon arrival, launched. They didn't attack the men. They targeted their weapons. Precise micro-EMP bursts and monofilament cutters severed bowstrings, jammed crossbow mechanisms, and melted sword hilts. In five seconds, the Hawk squad was disarmed, holding useless metal.
The display of total, non-lethal dominance was more terrifying than any slaughter. They broke, dragging a furious, cursing Arawn with them.
Kael cut down the blacksmith. "They will be back, with more. But now you have time. There is a path west, through the Bramblewood. It is difficult, but safe. Guides will meet you there." He handed the man a small beacon. "This will show the way. Go. All of you who wish to."
He didn't stay for thanks. He activated his Wayfarer and vanished in a twist of light, leaving a town in stunned silence, then a flurry of desperate preparation.
The message was sent. The Metal Druid was not just a supplier. He was a protector. And he could break the King's toys without breaking a sweat.
Back in the Labyrinth, Kael reviewed the data. His intervention had saved a town, but it had also forced Valerius's hand. The King would no longer see him as a nuisance, but as a rival sovereign. The war was now open.
And on the model, a new, worrying development pulsed. In the far west, where the land gave way to the Trackless Sea, a new rift had opened. But this one's signature was different. It wasn't chaotic. It was… deliberate. And it was not growing. It was stable. And something was slowly, patiently, building on the other side.