Chapter 1939: Yes

Aurora reached the altar with her eyes wet, and said, to the only man she had ever loved, "It’s really happening..."

"It was always just a matter of time," Quinlan smiled.

Lucille came with her daughter.

Mavena walked her mother down the aisle with a flat expression and a grip that would have held a horse. Despite being the only one in the harem who had been married before, Lucille looked just as stiff as the others.

"Hold me before I faint," she whispered to Mavena.

"Mom... You should already be-"

"I just signed some papers back then to save my life. This is very different!"

Kaelira came in the fourteenth dress.

There had been thirteen before it, and nobody in the square would ever know. White silk, cut close, no train. Her teammates Liora and Shallan walked her, one on each arm, a friend to each side. The Runeweaver Titan went scarlet to the ears at the first step but did not stop walking.

Jasmine came last, because it was her square. She had asked for it instead of drawing from the hat.

Gina Argentis walked her daughter down it, squealing under her breath the entire way, and the Tyrant of Commerce wore a long column of pale gold with her seal embroidered at the sternum.

Her eyes flickered once, blue to gold and back, as she passed the Obsidian Circle Members with their licenses.

Just like that, all the otherworldly, beautiful brides stood in a line at the foot of an altar.

The Dawn Breaker raised her lit hand over all of them.

"Quinlan Elysiar," called the Arch Priestess. "Before the Goddess, and before the four races of this realm assembled, do you take these women as your wives, to keep and to honor for as long as the Goddess grants you days?"

He looked down the line, every face, and it took a while.

"I do."

"And you, each in your turn, standing before the same Goddess and the same realm: do you take this man as your husband?"

"Yes," said Ayame, eyes fondly on Quinlan.

"Yes!" Vex wasted no time responding, pentagram eyes flaring.

"Yes~" Kitsara purred, tails up.

"Yes!!!" Blossom shouted.

"Yes!" Serika’s hair flared.

"Yes," said Sera, delicate hands on her chest.

"Yes..." cried Aurora, wiping her tears.

"Yes~" Lucille sang.

"...Yes," said Kaelira, and for once, she gazed deep into Quinlan’s eyes while speaking.

"Yes," finished the Tyrant of Commerce.

Feng held out the box, and Quinlan put Kaelira’s rings on ten hands.

Each metal had been chosen for the hand it went onto. Each band woke as it settled, the script the two of them had written into it lighting once under the skin and going quiet.

Kaelira watched every single one go on, and by the time he reached her own, she had both hands over her mouth.

Then he turned to the empty air beside the altar.

A seam of pale light opened at the flick of his pointer finger, and through it hung a sky full of stars.

Nyxara was already standing at the edge of his soul realm, on her side of the threshold, where he always opened the gate. The Primordial Demon of Lust could not leave that place.

But the man who had knelt to her only yesterday stepped into the seam to the waist, took her hand, and slid an orichalcum ring onto it.

Her arm trembled the entire time he held it.

"Nyxara," he said, low, for her alone. "Do you take me?"

She looked at the ring on her hand, then at him, and this time the demoness answered on the first asking.

"I do, my Ruin."

Quinlan left the seam open.

"Then, in the sight of the Goddess, you may kiss your brides," decreed the Dawn Breaker.

He kissed them, one at a time, down the line.

Ayame tiptoed. But that wasn’t enough to close the gap, so she pulled his head down to hers and held it there a beat past the kiss, with nothing in her face but tenderness.

Vex bit him. Kitsara used her tongue with far too much enthusiasm in front of ten thousand people and her father.

Blossom’s went on too long.

"Too long, sweetheart," Natalie whispered from the front row.

"Ah!! Blossom can’t think straight when Master is kissing her!!" the dogkin cried, and through immense willpower pulled back.

Then she went back for a quick kiss before using both hands to hide her lips, chiding herself.

Serika laughed at the adorable sight and got tears on his collar.

Sera made hers a real spectacle, moving with practiced motions of perfect elven grace.

Aurora closed her eyes and held onto his lapels.

Lucille kissed him slow, in front of every witness she had ever wanted.

Kaelira shut her eyes, went scarlet to the shoulders, and did not surrender a centimeter.

Jasmine rose onto her toes to give his hand better purchase on her waist.

"You’re modest for once, hmm?" she purred, referring to how Quinlan had a tendency to grab a handful of her buttocks while kissing her in public.

"Just this once," Quinlan winked.

Then he went back to the seam, took Nyxara by the waist through the pale light, and kissed her on her side of the threshold. She held his face, and the brand on her abdomen burned a brilliant pink through her silk.

"By the grace of the Goddess and the office she laid upon me, I, Elisabeth Valorian, Dawn Breaker, proclaim you husband and wives, from this day forward, in her light."

The square broke.

Dwarves roared from the far side and beat their chests until their braids came loose. The elves along the aisle were weeping in two neat lines, Isveth on her knees at the head of them.

Emily, held upright between Anna and Beatrice, had given up entirely. Gideon Lorien had found his voice and was using it to sob.

His women stood in a row at the front of it all, ringed, kissed, and crying, holding onto each other, and for once, none of them had anything clever to say.

Quinlan let it run.

He stood under the white canopy with ten wives in a row and an eleventh watching from a door into the stars, and let ten thousand people be as loud as they liked for as long as they liked.

Then he raised one hand, and the square went still to the last cub.

"Not long ago, the elves knelt to me. Then the humans, then the dwarves, and yesterday the beastkin. The Continent of Iskaris is now united under a single banner, for the first time in its history."

He looked at Jasmine when he said the next part, and the Tyrant of Commerce had gone very still.

"I never gave our nation a name, because it wasn’t yet time. Now it is."

He turned back to the square.

"This land is the Empire of Iskaris. Its capital is Miri Town. Its laws are the ones its governor writes."

"And these women," he said, and his voice dropped, "are its empresses."

The roar this time built, and kept building, ten thousand voices finding one name to throw at the sky.

In the middle of it the governor of Miri Town stood with both hands over her seal and her eyes gone gold, mouthing the words to herself.

The Empire of Iskaris.

Quinlan looked up.

The last of his daughter’s blessing was running out over the white canopy, minutes of it now, and the window that had opened for him at the beastkin fire had told him plainly what he could do with it.

The Suppression stood until the sovereign willed it broken.

Quinlan willed it.

Overhead, the sky showed its wall.

Nobody on Iskaris had ever seen it. It had been there since before any of their grandparents’ grandparents, invisible.

Now it stood over the whole continent in plain sight: a vast pane laid across the sky from horizon to horizon, catching the noon light with a dull, greasy sheen.

Millions of faces turned at once, all over the continent.

"What is that?!"

"The Restriction. That’s the Heavenly Restriction, that’s-"

"It’s real. It’s really up there!"

"At long last..." Against her pillar, Black Fang had lifted her gaze to the wall that had forcibly stopped her progression, her eyes swirling with pure, unfiltered mania.

Her swirling eyes lit up as she whispered:

"Begone."

The crack started directly above Miri Town.

It ran outward from that point in every direction, a white line racing across the pane faster than any eye could follow, branching as it went, until the whole sky over Iskaris was a web of fractures with the Villain’s square at its center.

*KRRRRK-*

Then it came down like glass.

Millions of people flinched under a sky falling in pieces, shards the size of provinces turning over as they fell, thinning to clear and gone before they ever reached the canopy. Beyond them, where the wall had been, was nothing but open blue.

They were free.

The vast world of Thalorind lay open to the denizens of Iskaris, birds in a gilded cage no longer.

"Now then," the Primordial Villain said to the open sky, with ten empresses holding onto him.

"It’s time to explore."

...

Author: The novel’s 13th arc, ’Consolidation of Power’ is over. This point also marks the proper end of the Iskaris Saga.

When I sat down more than two years ago, bored out of my mind, never would I have thought that the little passion project I started writing would change my life so profoundly. I’m forever grateful for all the support you’ve shown over the novel’s many Chapters.

Now, it’s time to look outward, to the great unknown that is the world of Thalorind.

The Primordial Villain’s journey is only just getting started.

PS: I might need some time off to plan out what’s to come. We’ll see.