Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1606  Pressured

The council chamber smelled like old parchment and older fear.

Aelindra stood at the head of the table with her gauntleted hands clasped behind her back and her chin lifted at the angle sheʼd been practicing in mirrors since she was a girl. Twelve elven councillors sat along the curved bench.

Lady Fenris Ashroot spoke up.

”My lady. The throne has been empty for too long.”

Her jaw tightened. ”I am aware.”

”An elven race without a seated queen is a body without a heartbeat. In these trying times, we need our queen more than ever.”

”I know.”

”Then...”

Aelindra exhaled through her nose.

”You know whatʼs going on. Stop pretending otherwise.”

”We are aware that she refuses.” Lady Vaelrethʼs voice cut in from the second bench, dry as old bone. ”The question is why she still has the capacity to refuse. Myrasyn is a mage, one that has never known real pain in her life. She should have broken in the first minute.”

”I said, I am aware!” Aelindra snapped. Her boot came down hard against the stone. ”Sheʼs being difficult. Thatʼs all.”

Lady Maerwynn leaned back on her bench, her fingers steepled.

”There is another matter the captain should know before she returns to that cell. We can no longer count on the dwarves.”

Aelindraʼs eyes flicked to her.

”King Ragnar is unraveling. He has been screaming in his war room for hours, and his own officers are afraid to enter without an escort. He hears voices that no one else hears. His messengers are fleeing the chamber rather than delivering reports. And there is worse. The Vraven army is pushing on the conquered cities. They have millions of soldiers, and they smell weakness. Our forces on the southern front are the only thing keeping those territories from being retaken inside a week. We cannot pull a single legion off that line. Not one.”

Lady Fenris lifted a folded dispatch from beside her. ”There is one mercy in this. The villain has spent the morning reducing dwarven fortresses to craters. Brakkenvein. Ironhold. Greyhollow. Kharn Moldur. Not a single elven settlement on the list. If I had to guess, it is because King Ragnar was the man who put a hammer to the back of his skull, and the villainʼs grudges are personal.”

”Fortunate,” Vaelreth murmured. ”But we, too, betrayed him. Itʼs only a matter of time. Weʼre only safe for now.”

”For now, indeed.” Fenris set the dispatch down. ”Fortune is not a strategy. The man who melted the Greymount this morning can turn his eyes on us at any hour, and when he does, our forests will burn. The moment he does attack us, the elven race will need a queen sitting on the throne who gives the people the determination they need to fight that cruel war.”

Aelindra gritted her teeth, turned on her heel, and went to have another conversation with her sister.

...

The Drowned Kingʼs footsteps left a wet trail down the obsidian corridor.

He had given up trying to stop it centuries ago. Saltwater oozed from the joints of his rusted plate with every step, pooling in the grooves between the floor tiles. The corridor branched ahead. He took the left fork without slowing.

He was furious.

The Elvardian Council had pulled out of the Vraven engagement at exactly the moment the line had needed reinforcing. And the Covenant who had spent thousands of years preparing for this exact war had been forced to retreat together with them, suffering great losses.

He had burned through reserves it had taken him a century to accumulate. For nothing.

He needed her.

Lady Weaver, often referred to as the Blind Grave Oracle by those who are unaware.

She had been ancient when his bones were still wearing skin. She had watched empires rise and corrode at her own unhurried pace.

Lady Weaver had stayed in her workshop, always. For her to leave, the Covenant had to be in grave danger, or facing a decision that needed her consent.

Now was one such time.

The Drowned King turned the final corner and stopped at the iron-bound door at the end of the corridor.

He knocked once. Nothing answered. He stood there for ten whole minutes out of respect before reaching for the handle.

Then he pushed the door open.

The workshop beyond was exactly what one would expect from a being who had been refining her craft since the world was younger. The walls were lined with shelves. The shelves held jars, and the jars contained things. Many things.

A central worktable sprawled across the roomʼs middle, cluttered with instruments whose purposes he could half-recognize and whose ages he could not begin to guess. Tomes were stacked in towers along the walls.

The room was beautiful in the way that very old, very cruel things sometimes were.

It was also empty.

The Drowned Kingʼs gaze swept the chamber once, and then a second time, slower. No Lady Weaver anywhere.

He approached the desk.

A folded sheet of parchment sat in the center of the worktable, weighted down by a small obsidian paperweight carved in the shape of a closed eye.

ʼIt is with neither anger nor regret, but with a clarity that I write to inform you of my departure from the Covenant.

When we bound ourselves to a common purpose, the agreement was that no decision of consequence would be made without my explicit approval. That arrangement has served us well across the centuries. It has held through hunts by the Goddessʼs hypocrites, schism, and the slow erosion of every surface governance we have outlived. I had thought it inviolable.

Then came the matter of the Primordial Villain.

A creature whose nature touches the same wellspring our craft has fed from since before the Sundering. I would have counseled patience. I would have counseled study. I would, at the very least, have counseled that the three of you put the question to me before throwing the weight of our Covenant behind the betrayal of him. You did none of these things. You made the decision among yourselves, in a chamber I was not invited to, and you informed me of the result as one informs a servant of a change in the household.

I am the Weaver of Corruption, not your servant. I will not remain in a coalition that has decided my voice is a courtesy rather than a requirement.

You have my respect, which I extend to you now as I have always extended it. But you no longer have my craft. You no longer have my counsel. You no longer have my presence at your table.

Should you wish to find me, I would advise against the attempt for I will attack you.

With the regard you have earned and no more.

Weaver of Corruption.ʼ

The Drowned King stared.

He read it again. His helm tilted a fraction lower over the parchment, as if proximity might change the words, and when it did not, he read it a third time.

”...the bitch ran!”

...

The experience notifications had become a constant chorus in his mind, a music of devastation.

[Ding!]

[Your Elite Soul, Eve, has slain an enemy! You have gained 60,000 XP!]

[Ding!]

[Your Elite Soul, Veyrin…]

[Ding!]