Chapter 1762: Cold Realization
Chapter 1762: Cold Realization
It was the only answer his body had for a force that every instinct he possessed was begging him to submit to, and he held it by raw will, grey eyes locked on the crimson glow without blinking.
Beside him, Rajah stood with his claws fully extended, amber eyes flat and burning, every muscle locked.
Then Skarn spoke through his teeth.
"Silver was a traitor from the start." The words came out half-snarl. The wolfkin’s eyes burned with a fury that had nothing to do with the man standing in front of him. "He fed intelligence to Elvardia from the inside, sold our war plans to the very enemy we marched here to destroy, and you stand there holding us accountable for the actions of a defector?!"
"We fought on the same side as your forces!" Rajah snarled, his composure cracking for the first time as the tigerkin lord took a step forward despite the pressure bearing down on him. "Silver’s foxkin attacked us all! He was no more a representative of the Beastman Confederation than the dirt beneath your boots!"
Skarn’s growl deepened, and the wolfkin lord’s fists shook at his sides as he forced himself to meet the burning visor head-on.
"The Confederation did not sanction any of those attacks. You have no idea of the tragedy our people suffered at the hands of the traitor!" His voice rose with every word, giving way to the predator who had been insulted. "You want to void a thousand-year blood oath because of this?!"
"We disowned Silver the moment his treachery came to light. His crimes are his own, not ours." Gorruk’s voice boomed from next to Skarn and Rajah, the bearkin lord stepping forward with his massive arms folded across his chest.
Unlike the other two, the bearkin didn’t have to crane his neck to look at the furious primordial, being more than twice his height.
Skarn drove the final point home, his eyes never leaving the glow.
"The oath was sworn between you and the Beastman Confederation." His voice had dropped to a low rasp, shaking with barely leashed fury. "Silver stopped being part of the Confederation before the oath was sworn."
The silence that followed was absolute.
Quinlan’s burning gaze dragged from Skarn to Rajah, the fire behind his visor climbing, the wrath rolling off him in waves thick enough to make the frost groan.
Then he laughed.
It started low, a rumble behind the helmet that could have been the armor’s hissing, but it kept climbing until it became unhinged.
Open, genuine, shaking his armored shoulders, flickering the crimson glow.
It was so profoundly wrong against the fury he’d been radiating that Skarn’s claws extended and Rajah bared his teeth on pure instinct.
"Your argument," Quinlan managed between breaths, "is that while he might have been present as one of your representatives, he wasn’t a real representative because he had already betrayed you before the oath was sworn but you didn’t know about it yet so it doesn’t count?"
The laughter didn’t stop. If anything, it deepened, darker, more mocking, savoring every syllable of their argument like a fine wine.
"In what court," he asked, the amusement finally tapering into flat menace, "would that hold up?"
His burning gaze drifted sideways.
Alexios had been watching the exchange with his expression unreadable, but sensing Quinlan’s attention on him, a wry grin split his weathered face.
"Goddess knows my nation isn’t the dreamland I worked hard to make it," Alexios said, and the grin sharpened. "But that argument wouldn’t survive a single afternoon in any court."
"Stay out of this, human!" Rajah snarled at Alexios, whipping toward him with blazing anger.
The wry old man vanished from one second to the next as if it was an illusion.
His posture went still and an unhinged grin materialized on his face as the casual authority fell away like a coat shrugged off. What stood beneath it was the strongest living human on the continent.
"I must apologize," Alexios spoke up gently. "Did you just say something to me, little kitten? My hearing must be worsening in my old age, because I could have sworn you used a tone with me that you truly shouldn’t have."
Stormlord stepped forward behind him. Alexios’s bodyguard said nothing, drew nothing, but the hand that came to rest on his warhammer and the position he took at his liege’s shoulder carried a promise that needed no words.
In the tigerkin ranks, amber-striped soldiers prowled closer, responding to their lord’s snarl with the synchronized aggression of a pride that had scented a challenge.
The rumble in Rajah’s chest climbed toward a roar, his body tensing to strike at the man who had just called him a kitten in front of every soldier he commanded.
But Alexios’s grin only widened, and the manic edge behind it said he was hoping the tigerkin would try.
"I’ve been quiet thus far," Alexios continued, his flat gaze sweeping from Rajah to Gorruk and back. "But don’t mistake my silence for a lack of grievances. Your people have caused a great deal of human suffering, and I have a very long memory."
Fractures spread through the circle.
Beastkin against elf, beastkin against primordial, beastkin against human.
The tension between the factions pulled taut enough to snap.
"Uh..." Maelstrom was sweating as if he’d done ten days of non-stop cardio. He involuntarily took a step back, then another.
But while Alexios and tigerkin ally went at it, Skarn wasn’t listening at all.
His stare was locked on the helmet, every muscle in his body coiled to lunge.
One second. He was one second from tearing into the armored creature.
Then a massive hand closed around his shoulder from behind and held him in place.
"What do you want?!"
"Don’t." Gorruk’s voice boomed. "Look at him."
Skarn snarled, trying to shrug free, but Gorruk’s hand didn’t budge.
"He’s been saying a lot of things, but..." Gorruk’s focus narrowed on the armored figure standing across from them. "He’s been honoring his end of the pact throughout the whole ordeal as if he knew it was still in effect."
Skarn went still.
"If you attack him now," Gorruk continued, his voice dropping lower, "we’re the ones who break it irrevocably."
Gorruk’s gaze settled on Quinlan.
"Isn’t that right?"
Quinlan tilted his helmeted head.
He said nothing.
Silence was worse than any confirmation could have been, because it told Skarn everything he needed to know.
The fury had been real, every degree of it, the wrath and the cracking frost and the foxkin pissing themselves at his feet, all genuine.
But underneath the rage, underneath the malice in his voice and the fire behind the metal, the Primordial Villain had been threading a needle so fine that Skarn hadn’t even seen it.
He had been getting baited for minutes straight to break the pact without a shred of a doubt.
"YOU!" A roar tore from Skarn’s throat.
He had rejected magical bindings because he trusted his own senses above all else.
He had built the oath’s framework because he believed no creature alive could deceive him at close range. And the Primordial Villain had just maneuvered him into nearly destroying his own work.
His grey eyes burned into the visor with pure, wounded pride.
"You..." The word shook with barely contained violence. "You planned this from the start."
The visor stared back at him, twin infernos swimming behind the metal, and offered him nothing.
Quinlan didn’t deny or confirm. In fact, he didn’t even acknowledge the accusation at all.
Instead, the wrath that had been pressing down on every person within earshot pulled back, retracting into the armor as cleanly as a blade returning to its sheath.
When the Primordial Villain spoke again, his voice returned to its calm, confident cadence.
"Now then... If the honorable lords of the Beastman Confederation have screamed enough for one day, I believe we have a lot to discuss."