Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

”You... cough... what?!” Leonidas wheezed, pounding his tree-trunk-sized fist against his own chest to clear his airway. He stared at the six-year-old girl sitting casually at the wrought-iron table, munching on a fruit tart. ”A bad bug? Grandpas with monocles? Kaelus, what in the blazing hells is she talking about?!”

Duke Kaelus von Nacht did not immediately answer. He slowly picked up a pristine linen napkin and dabbed a drop of spilled wine from the polished surface of the table.

He leaned back in his chair, crossing one long leg over the other, radiating an aura of unbothered superiority.

”She is speaking plain Imperial Common, Leonidas,” Kaelus drawled, his voice a low, smooth baritone dripping with condescension. ”Though I suppose the nuanced syntax might be difficult for a man who communicates primarily by shouting at molten rock.”

Leonidas slammed both hands onto the table, shaking the porcelain teacups. ”Kaelus! I am excavating the Ashen Forest! My surveyors have spent three months charting the bedrock! If there is a threat down there, I need detailed specifics, not toddler metaphors about bugs!”

Seraphina swallowed her bite of pastry and wiped her mouth. She looked at Kaelus, offering a small, helpless shrug.

”You tell him, Papa,” Seraphina chirped. ”I don’t know the big words. The grandpas just said they dug a hole a long time ago, found something super creepy that made the miners go bam bam... and whoosh... crazy, and covered it up with a forest so nobody would find it. But Uncle Leo is digging exactly where they hid the creepy thing!”

Kaelus nodded, resting his chin on his steepled fingers. He looked at Leonidas, the mocking sneer fading into the cold mask of the Northern Reaper.

”Allow me to translate, since your bloodline clearly failed to maintain adequate historical archives,” Kaelus began, his violet eyes locking onto the Fire Archduke. ”Seraphina is not merely a child I ’picked up’. She is a Supreme Dark Core anomaly. Her metaphysical perception allows her unfiltered communion with the spiritual plane.”

Leonidas blinked.

The absurdity of the statement caused his brain to stall. ”She... she speaks to ghosts? Wait. You brought a necromancer into my house?!”

”I brought a Sovereign into your house,” Kaelus corrected sharply, the temperature in the room dropping by ten degrees. ”And you should be on your knees thanking her. While I was in your war room, your ancestral spirits, specifically Lord Ignis the Elder, the Third Archduke of Valen, manifested in that place to warn her.”

”Grandfather Ignis?” Leonidas gasped, the color draining slightly from his ruddy, bearded face.

”Indeed,” Kaelus continued, savoring every single syllable of his rival’s shock. ”It appears your ancestors breached a subterranean cavern beneath the Ashen Forest centuries ago. A cavern housing a sealed, ancient anomaly of corruption. They collapsed the mine and wiped the location from the registries to protect the Duchy. And you, in your blundering industrial wisdom, are currently drilling a massive hole directly into the roof of its prison.”

The silence in the solarium was absolute, save for the gentle trickling of a nearby marble fountain.

Leonidas stared at Kaelus ,then he stared at Seraphina, and then he looked at the pink ember-puppy currently snoozing on Seraphina’s lap, drooling slightly onto her navy dress.

The realization of exactly what Kaelus had acquired hit the Fire Archduke with the force of a runaway siege engine.

’He went to a provincial orphanage,’ Leonidas’s mind scrambled, the unfairness of the universe crashing down upon him. ’He walked into a dirt-poor, mundane orphanage... and walked out with a Supreme Dark Archmage. A child who can instantly subjugate apex fire spirits, casually chat with my dead grandfather to uncover lost, world-ending historical secrets. And he got her... for free?!’

Leonidas Valen, a man who commanded legions of heavily armored fire mages and rode actual, fire-breathing drakes into battle, experienced a complete emotional breakdown.

His scarred face crumpled, lower lips trembling.

”It’s not fair,” Leonidas whimpered, his voice cracking into a pathetic, high-pitched squeak.

He didn’t draw a sword or summon fire.

He turned around, dropped to his knees on the sun-warmed stone tiles, and buried his face directly into the flowing silk skirts of his wife, Duchess Lysandra.

”Lysa!” Leonidas wailed loudly, wrapping his muscular arms around her waist, sobbing like an overgrown toddler who had just dropped his ice cream cone in the dirt. ”Lysa, it’s completely unfair! I spend three million gold coins a year on the finest intelligence network in the South! I employ a hundred seers and crystal-gazers just to predict the weather!”

”There, there, my brave lion,” Lysandra sighed softly, looking accustomed to this behavior. She gently patted his wild, fiery red hair, her amber eyes sparkling with fond amusement.

”And he just found her!” Leonidas sobbed into her skirts, his broad shoulders shaking with melodramatic grief. ”The brooding, miserable, emotionally stunted block of ice goes to a random village, glares at a nun, and gets handed a walking, talking demigod who saves my Duchy from an ancient apocalypse before lunch! She tamed Ignis! Ignis liked her more than me! Why does the universe reward his terrible personality?!”

Across the table, Kaelus von Nacht was leaning back in his chair, a look of unbearable, incredibly toxic smugness plastered across his flawless face.

He picked up his wine glass, taking a slow, victorious sip, completely basking in the tears of his rival.

Seraphina sat frozen in her chair, a half-eaten fruit tart hovering near her mouth.

Her six-year-old body was currently experiencing a wave of second-hand embarrassment so intense it was physically painful.

’He’s crying,’ Seraphina thought, staring blankly at the weeping warlord. ’The Supreme Commander of the Southern Legions is literally sobbing into his wife’s lap because his rival got a better gacha pull in the adoption system. These men are absolute children. The entire political structure of this Empire is run by dramatic toddlers with weapons of mass destruction!’

”Don’t Cry, Leonidas,” Kaelus sneered, his voice dripping with condescension.