The nobleman laughed, a genuine sound this time. "With what currency, precisely? Your jewelry?"
"Guards," the Nobleman called out.
"How much per contract?" Lucid asked
Two guards approached, their expressions shifting from boredom to interest within moments.
"Five gold pieces per contract," one offered.
"Seven," the other countered.
The nobleman's face darkened. "Stand down. This is absurd."
But Lucid had already the ring. The guards accepted the payment and stepped back, crossing their arms in defiance of their employer's authority.
"You cannot do this," the nobleman hissed.
"I just did," Lucid replied.
He observed the assembled masses, expecting gratitude, anticipating relief. Instead, he noticed the merchant girl standing at the periphery of the crowd, her expression collapsed into something profoundly sorrowful. She wasn't looking at him with appreciation. She was observing him with the gaze of someone witnessing inevitable futility.
He didn't approach her. He didn't attempt to comfort or explain. Something within him understood, in that moment, the futility of the gesture.
'This will happen again tomorrow,' he realized with grim clarity. 'And the next day. And the day after that. This isn't a problem that heroics can solve. This is the mechanism itself.'
For the first time since arriving in this scattered realm, Lucid grasped something fundamental. It wasn't power that governed societies. True most strongest power wasn't an enlightened status or faith from people as a ruler. It was value. Margin. The infinitesimal calculations that transformed human existence into numerical abstractions. It was the very architecture that converted flesh into currency, ambition into exploitation, hope into collateral.
The wheels of society turned not on righteousness but on this mechanism. And nothing he possessed could stop it without addressing the system entirely.
The nobleman called for additional guards. They arrived, more numerous this time, their expressions less amenable to bribery.
One struck Lucid across the face. Another drove him toward an adjacent alley. He stumbled, his feet losing purchase on the cobblestones, and found himself sprawled in the shadowed passage between structures.
For a moment, silence enveloped him.
Then a figure materialized above his prone form. The merchant girl, her silhouette framed against the distant light.
"So I ask you again," she spoke, her voice carrying that peculiar quality he could never quite define. "Would you have done it? Sacrificed the very kingdom that turned their eyes away, for the fleeting comfort of these strangers?"
Lucid blinked, attempting to formulate a response.
But she had already dissolved into the darkness, leaving only the question suspended in the air where she had stood.
He pushed himself up slowly from the cold stone floor, his body moving with deliberate care. The impact hadn't hurt. If anything, he could have driven his fist through the guard and punched that nobleman's face into paste. But he hadn't.
He understood now the futility of it all.
'Mercyros governs this place,' he thought, settling back against the wall. 'But why here? Why in this southern part of Vex? What about Tyriana? The market there functions without such intervention. Commerce flows without this kind of collapse. So why does this town require a Monolith to prevent complete disorder? Why is the situation here so desperate?'
He looked upward through the narrow opening above. The sky was beautiful for a moment, brilliant blue, but suspended within it were fragments of the void itself. Debris hung like clouds at great altitude, a constant reminder of what pressed down upon this realm.
He stood and walked toward the far end of the alley. She was there. The merchant girl. He could only watch as she moved away, disappearing into the crowd that filled the street beyond.
He followed her out into the busy thoroughfare. Nothing attacked him. The atmosphere felt heavy and wrong in a way that made his body tense, expecting violence that never came. His senses remained alert but found no target.
He needed clarity. He walked toward the shore where he had first arrived, seeking the calm he remembered from that moment. The sand welcomed him, cool and familiar. He sat there, closing his eyes, letting the cold breeze settle his racing thoughts.
He was lost.
A seagull circled above his head. The sky without sunlight was strange, casting everything in perpetual gray. He enjoyed the quiet for a brief moment, the peace of simple existence.
Then something vibrated in his pocket.
The sensation shocked him. It sparked something within his chest, a longing for home so acute it made him desperate. He reached for his right pocket, hoping with irrational intensity that it was his phone.
Instead, his fingers found the pendant. A red stone set in silver, hanging from a thin chain. Karmen had given it to him. The only communication device he possessed in this place. The only tool that connected him to anyone with authority.
The pendant pulsed with ghostly red light.
He shook it around clumsily, uncertain how to use it or what would activate it. This was the first time he had received anything functional since arriving here. The only other time he had used it was when he called Karmen.
He tapped the sides.
Nothing.
He pressed the stone.
Nothing.
Panic rose in his throat. He stood abruptly and struck the pendant against the ground with force. Sound echoed upward in all directions.
It lay on the sand, inert.
'Perfect. I've destroyed my only means of communication.'
Then a voice emerged from the pendant, oddly familiar and filled with something that sparked hate deep within his chest. The voice resonated in the air around him, clear and precise.
"Hello Lucid. It is I, Elara."
Silence followed the words.
Her. The one who had orchestrated these events, or at least taken advantage of them. The one responsible for Mary's fate. For Brian's suffering. For Garfield's end.
He gritted his teeth so hard he thought they might crack.
"Your Majesty," he managed to say, his voice steady despite the rage burning through him.
A slight, uncharacteristic giggle emerged from the pendant. It was innocent, strangely comforting, as if all of this was merely a joke to her.
"How are you faring?" she asked.
"Quite well," Lucid replied.
Silence stretched across the line.
"Why lie to me, Lucid?" Her tone shifted, became sharper. "You can trust me. Am I not one of the few you can trust?"
"The truth is, your situation is anything but manageable. I take it the cultists are growing rampant and that the absence of my funds has put you in considerable difficulty as my sponsored agent."
Lucid paused. How much did she know?
He smiled. Anything about Mercyros went unmentioned. She didn't know about that.
"I have just received information that part of Port Vexis burned," she continued.
"Which is why I'm contacting you."
"Well, not exactly. I could care less about that town," she said flatly.
"Then why are you contacting me?" Lucid asked.
Her laughter was soft. "Priests and priestesses of the Luminari Covenant have been converting followers into the teachings of our beloved Mother Fate. Yet one could say religion is the oldest way to convert people."
"Get to the point."
"Ater's influence might soon reach Port Vexis. I urge you to finish this up as soon as possible. Before matters escalate."
Lucid laughed. The sound was bitter, sharp, nothing like the queen's melodic giggle.
"Oh really?"
The audacity. Her urging him to finish something as fast as possible, as if he were a servant who had been taking too long with a simple errand. But then again, he had accepted her terms. It was not something he had been forced into. It was something he had taken of his own accord. He did not have any particularly ill feelings toward the mission itself.
Toward her as a person, however, was a different matter.
He despised her. He longed to rip her apart, to make her suffer, to imagine all kinds of horrible fates for the woman who held his leash. But he said none of that. He kept his voice level.
"You will send the paladins of yours?"
"Perhaps."
A long silence stretched between them.
"It will be done by the end of this week. Until then, do not interfere with me," he stated.
"Your Highness," he spat the last words like an insult.
"Good. I have wired a transfer from the royal capital. It should reach you within the day."
Her voice remained serene, almost tender, like a mother chiding a child who had broken a vase.
"Pray, do understand that I rather enjoyed that little spectacle of yours. The way you danced with forces beyond mortal reckoning, the way you bled and healed and bled again. It was... captivating."
A pause. He could imagine her smiling, that cold, beautiful smile that never reached her eyes.
"I have eyes throughout the scattered realms, Lucid. I observe what my subjects do when they believe themselves unobserved. And I must confess, I do not approve when my subjects presume to interfere with the domains of divine beings. Such matters are far beyond their station."
Her tone did not change. It was for a lack of a better word still sweet. Still warm. Still utterly terrifying.
"Consider yourself fortunate. Twice over, in fact. Attacking a Monolith is not merely a transgression against the Luminari Covenant. It is a sin. And under the laws of Vex, a sin of that magnitude carries but a single sentence."
She let the word hang in the air.
"You have avoided two executions now, Lucid. Do not presume there will be a third."
Her voice softened further, almost affectionate.
"I do so hate to lose such a useful subject. Do try to survive, won't you?"
He hung up.
He laid back on the sand in the same position as before and closed his eyes.