Chapter 1758: Convergence
Chapter 1758: Convergence
"All right." His voice cut through the grief cleanly but not unkindly. "Time to get to work. We have a lot to do."
He raised one hand, fingers spread, and pushed down.
The colosseum obeyed.
Stone sank in a slow, even descent, the tiers lowering in one vast exhale that carried the spectators toward the ground, and as the seats disappeared beneath them, gentle currents of wind pressed upward against their legs and backs, nudging them to standing before the stone could slide out from under them.
Most of them stood but some didn’t.
The dogkin in the beastkin ranks stayed where she was, her knees drawn up and her hand still pressed over her mouth, and the wind pushed against her back and got nothing.
The soldiers with their faces in their hands didn’t feel it at all.
The stone beneath them didn’t force it.
While the rest of the field leveled, the ground under the ones who couldn’t stand lingered a beat longer, small islands of earth holding them at seated height while the world flattened around them, staying patiently until the people beside them noticed.
A soldier knelt beside the dogkin and gripped her shoulder.
An elf reached down and offered her hand to the woman still weeping into hers.
Across the field, in thousands of places at once, the ones who were standing turned back for the ones who weren’t, pulling them to their feet with arms and words that the wind couldn’t replace, and the stone sank away beneath each of them only once someone else was holding them up.
Myrasyn felt the seat vanish beneath her and the wind take its place in the same breath, a warm updraft that guided her to her feet so gently she didn’t register the transition until she was already standing on flat ground with her hand still fanning her.
She looked down at where her seat had been, then up at the man who had seated a hundred thousand people and brought them back to their feet without letting a single one stumble.
She smiled.
This was the man she kneeled to and entrusted her entire race to.
She never felt more sure of her decision than in this very moment.
...
The factions that had been stacked in the stands found themselves standing in the rough shape of where they’d been sitting, clustered by allegiance with open ground between them.
Officers began shouting. Formations tightened. The post-battle camp that had been suspended for the spectacle reasserted itself in minutes as leaders issued orders to their own people and the colosseum’s last edges sank into the earth.
And soon, one by one, the leaders themselves began moving.
Alexios was already on the ground close to him, and Elisabeth moved to stand beside her father and walk the last few steps toward their destination together with him.
Myrasyn stepped forth from the elven cluster with Isveth at her shoulder.
The beastkin lords stirred from their section, Rajah and Skarn and Gorruk moving as one wall of ancient predatory authority while Vargis looked reserved.
From the Consortium, Maelstrom puffed his chest out and began taking unsteady steps.
All of them were converging on the same point, exactly where he was standing.
But before any of them reached him, Ayame did.
She crossed the last few paces of frost between them, and Quinlan turned to find her looking up at him with red-rimmed eyes and a smile that hadn’t fully decided what it wanted to be yet.
"That was a good speech, Quin. Color me thoroughly impressed."
It came out small and warm, meant for him and no one else, and she pressed her forehead against his chest and stayed there for three quiet heartbeats while the field reorganized around them.
"I can speak properly when I want to... You know that..." Quinlan grumbled under his breath, dissatisfied with the utter nonsense he was hearing.
But at the same time, his palm came up and rested on the back of her head, stroking lush black hair with impossible tenderness.
"Do I~?" she giggled slyly, leaning into his touch.
Behind her, Black Fang stood with her arms folded and her violet eyes fixed on the approaching leaders.
Quinlan’s gaze found her over Ayame’s hair, and the look he sent carried everything it needed.
Black Fang didn’t even acknowledge it, because as far as she was concerned, she hadn’t done anything worth the look.
Then Ayame pulled back, wiped her eyes once with the heel of her palm, and the composure settled over her like armor sliding into place.
By the time she turned to stand at his right, the girl who had pressed her face into his chest was gone, and the second-in-command of the Primordial Villain’s forces stood where she’d been, spine straight, fingers resting on her katana, watching them with steady blue eyes.
Quinlan let himself enjoy the sight for a moment.
His samurai on one side, his assassin on the other, and his healer working behind him with golden hands keeping a certain duchess alive.
Not bad for a day that featured a continental ambush.
Across the field, the rest of his girls had already spread out without being told.
Serika was arriving at a cluster of soldiers, her ponytail whipping as she pointed, and Vex had drifted toward the prisoner lines with the kind of casual menace that made guards straighten their spines and captives lower their eyes.
Aurora was crouched beside a row of wounded with her staff planted in the dirt and vials passing between her hands faster than the soldiers could drink them.
Blossom bounced after her with an armful of bandages and a sunny expression that had no business existing on this field.
Quinlan exhaled through his nose. Watching his girls work was a sight he could never get bored of.
Then the aura reached him.
Not quite hostility nor fear...
’The hunger of victors.’
Elvardia and its allies fell today.
It was time to reap the benefits of their victory, and they all knew it.
Alexios was the closest.
The King of Vraven was already crossing the open ground with Elisabeth a step behind, and the princess’s stare hit Quinlan before her father’s did, a look of such open contempt that it could have curdled milk at thirty paces.
"Honoring the dead. You." Her voice carried the kind of disgust that only the truly righteous could manufacture on short notice. "I have never heard greater hypocrisy in my entire life."
No one reacted to her seething words, focused on the man walking toward them.
Ayame’s hand tightened on her katana. She stared at the king who had signed the decree that sealed her fate and sent her into chains.
But she let the grip go after a long breath and Quinlan’s eyes locked onto the king’s over the last few paces.
For the first time since they’d met, neither Quinlan nor Alexios spoke instantly.
For once, there was no bantering between the two, no shouting, no physical attacks.
The man who ruled the human kingdom and the man who had just reshaped the continent’s power looked at each other, and both of them understood that they had a lot to discuss.