The Holy Vault had always been one of the Glars’ best kept secrets.
Located in the central keep’s basent, the chamber was older than the rest of the castle. The knights had built it since the days when they first found the Sacred Source and raised Prosse stone by stone to protect these two areas. The secret of what it contained was known only to the order’s Knight-Commander and his designated successor, though rumors said that it housed an inheritance that stretched all the way back to the order’s roots as Valentine’s royal guard. Its heavy stone double doors and crown-shaped enchanted lock had resisted both the test of ti and the fly invaders’ attempts to break through it.
This detail bothered Victoire. Only the Knight-Commander could open the vault, or so her trainers taught her, and Lord Raymond had spent days under the Lunarian’s control. Why didn’t he help the evil god break inside?
She could only think of one explanation.
“It was a lie,” Victoire guessed once she and Lord Raymond faced the vault’s doors. Neither wielded torches, nor needed one. Lord Wepwawet’s newest sorcery empowered both their weapons with light bright enough to clear the darkness on their own. “The Knight-Commander cannot open the vault by themselves.”
“Yes,” Lord Raymond confird. “In fact, only you may open it now.”
“But why?” Victoire squinted at her forr superior. He had insisted on bringing her here alone, not allowing Kale or any surviving Glars to descend into the basent with them. “What aren’t you telling , Lord Raymond?”
Her old ntor stared at the magical lock for a mont before answering. “What I am about to tell you must remain between us. Loose tongues are the death of secrecy.”
Victoire knew Lord Wepwawet could hear and see anything happening in these halls, but she kept that detail to herself. While she trusted her god to at least do the right thing, her old ntor required ti to reach the sa conclusion.
“Do you rember what I told you about your origins?” Lord Raymond asked. “That your parents left you with us to raise you as a knight because they could not take care of you?”
Victoire frowned. She was long over that story. “I rember.”
“We lied,” Lord Raymond replied bluntly. “I knew your parents very well. We simply covered up your parentage.”
Now that ca as a surprise. “What?”
“Do you recall my squire, Alain, or that young scholar, Celestine?” Lord Raymond asked. Victoire nodded sharply, knowing that they had both perished during the flys’ takeover of Prosse. “They were both your distant cousins, among others. The heirs of Valentine.”
“The heirs of…” The more she heard, the less Victoire understood. “What are you talking about?”
“This is a secret known only to the Glars’ leadership,” Lord Raymod explained. “Our order’s original purpose was to protect the royal family of Valentine, and we held true to this vow.”
“Until the king’s heirs all perished during the exile, whether killed by assassins or natural causes,” Victoire reminded him. “The order settled Prosse once the last heir was dead.”
“That is correct. King Lefou’s trueborn children all died during our exile.” Lord Raymond took a deep breath. “But they left us plenty of bastards.”
Victoire’s eyes widened in shock as a terrifying prospect ford in her mind. “Bastards?”
Lord Raymond nodded sharply. “My predecessors had sacrificed too much during their exile to simply give up when all of the king’s trueborn heirs perished, so they created a different plan: the Glars would bolster our forces, secretly collect all of the royal family’s bastards, and then raise one of them as Valentine’s newest monarch once we retook our country. That is why we originally founded Prosse. We would raise a new kingdom to retake the old.”
Victoire finally put two and two together. “You’re kidding.”
“I am not, Victoire. Though your ancestors were born on the wrong side of the sheet, royal blood does flow in your veins.” Lord Raymond t her gaze. “Why do you think that dragon kept trying to kidnap you, specifically?”
Victoire’s jaw dropped, and then the vault began to tremble all of a sudden. A bellowing sound echoed through the roof above with the strength of an earthquake.
“What is that?” Lord Raymond asked.
“A god’s laughter,” Victoire replied, her jaw tightening so hard it hurt. Soone will pay for this! “I can’t be a princess! That is ridiculous!”
“You’re not, but you descend from one,” Lord Raymond replied. “My predecessor obscured your and many other children’s parentage with the hope of selecting one of you to take the throne once we had rebuilt our army. Alain was deed our best candidate, since your affinity for werelings and… unconventional ideas… put you at the bottom of the list.”
“That is insanity,” Victoire protested. “There was no chance a few thousand Glars could retake a country with an army a hundred tis our size!”
“I know,” Lord Raymond conceded. “The more ti passed, the less the prospect of retaking Valentine appeared feasible. Its people had grown to like their republic and the monarchy had lost all popular support. The original plan was long dead by the ti I took command.”
“Then why keep it a secret?” Victoire’s mind struggled to accept this, this, this utter insanity! “Why keep our parentage from and the others?”
“Because of this.” Lord Raymond waved a hand at the locked doors. “Only individuals with Valentinian royal blood in their veins can open this vault. This is how we intended to prove our chosen monarch’s parentage to the people. Another of these chambers is buried beneath the kingdom’s forr capital, and its content puts this one to sha. We feared that ill-intentioned individuals would seek to capture you or the others to steal the royal treasures we were honorbound to protect.”
Victoire’s hand gripped her spear when she fully grasped the implications. “Alain and the others are all dead.”
“Yes,” Lord Raymond confird with deep sorrow. He had been very close to his old squire. “As far as I can tell, you are the last living heir of Valentine. The flies… ate all the others without realizing their importance.”
She was the only person alive who could open this vault, if what Lord Raymond had told her was the truth. Victoire still struggled to accept it. She walked up to the doors and pressed her hand against the golden, crown-shaped lock.
Victoire imdiately sensed warmth radiating from the ancient tal. Her divinely-enhanced senses picked up on the flow of mana traveling from her fingers to the doorway, like a sentry checking for a seal of passage.
Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
She heard a click, followed by the noise of grinding gears as the lock shifted. The doors opened to reveal a cavernous vault of ancient stone. tal braziers magically lit up along its walls with blue, ghostly flas to illuminate the path ahead.
So it was true… the vault recognized , Victoire thought with a heavy breath. She wasn’t sure how to take this revelation. “Who were my parents, Lord Raymond?”
“Your mother was a woman called Destra, and a great-great grandchild of King Lefou himself. Your father was a Glars knight called Joseph. I’m afraid both are long dead, though we kept detailed records of them.”
“I would like to consult them,” Victoire said. While she had long moved on from growing up without parents, learning more about them would at least provide her proper closure. “What next?”
“The treasures within are your birthright, and yours to dispose of as you see fit,” Lord Raymond replied. “I have little knowledge of what you will find in this vault. Much of its contents could only be used by the royal family.”
“I will check it myself then.” Victoire cleared her throat. “Could you give a mont of privacy? I… I need to ponder what you’ve told .”
“Understandable. I remain at your disposal whenever you wish to consult our records.” Lord Raymond walked back up to the stairs with a final word of encouragent. “Good luck.”
Victoire heard his footsteps echo into the distance until the basent turned silent. She didn’t remain alone with her thoughts for long, though. Lord Wepwawet’s spiritual projection manifested at her side in the blink of an eye, looking fit to gag.
“Aahaha!” he laughed while holding his sides. “Ahaha!”
“Oh, shut up!” Victoire snapped at her god, forgetting all decorum. “This isn’t funny!”
“It is though!” Wepwawet replied in between fits of laughter. “I told you there was no better royalty hunters in the world than dragons, Your Majest–”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence!” Victoire blushed in embarrassnt. Why did the dragon even pick her over Celestine, unless… unless she slept with Kale, as Victoire always suspected! “I hate it!”
“What, being a princess?” Her god finally managed to calm down, though he continued to smirk at her. “Most mortals would be happy to find out they were secretly royalty.”
“I’m not!” Victoire growled in annoyance. “I hate the idea that I ca so far because of a magical birthright rather than my hard-earned skills.”
“Oh, that?” Wepwawet shrugged. “Don’t worry then. You stand here today because of your own rits, not your birth.”
Victoire scoffed in disbelief. “Would you have chosen as your Champion had I been born a peasant?”
“Duh, of course I would have,” her god replied nonchalantly, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world. “Do you think Grudu wore a crown once? Or that Mistouffe descends from an ancient line of Saturn Cats?”
“That word ans nothing to ,” Victoire pointed out with a frown.
“Point is, one’s origins have zero impact on a mortal’s potential to beco a Champion. A prince is no more entitled to that honor than a farm boy. Only their will, strength of character, and deeds matter.” Wepwawet t her gaze. “We gods only care about kings for political reasons, usually because we want to put a specific mortal in charge or to reassure people that things will remain stable. I didn’t know about your origins until today, and they never factored in my choice.”
Victoire stared at him, searching for any hint of deceit. She had grown a sixth sense when it ca to seeing through her god’s lies or self-aggrandizent, but he sounded utterly sincere this ti. This reassured her sowhat.
“You swear you’re being truthful?” she asked him, a bit quieter than she would have liked. “That you’re not saying that to make feel better?”
Her god gave her a bemused look. “Victoire, you fought a wyrm head-on when most would have fled, and you left the order that raised you in the na of what you knew was right. That’s real strength. That’s why you were chosen.”
“Thank you, I appreciate that.” Victoire couldn’t help but crack a smile. “You can be a good and wise god when you want to be.”
“H-Hey, what’s that supposed to an?” Lord Wepwawet protested. “Are you implying I am unwise?”
“Anyway,” Victoire said, changing the subject before it veered into uncomfortable territory. “Anything interesting I should pick in this vault?”
“We will resu this conversation, Victoire,” her god warned. “Otherwise, I sense a few potential Artifacts worth picking up and…” Lord Wepwawet frowned at the vault. “What the…”
“What?” Victoire asked.
“I need to check sothing,” her god replied as his spirit floated forward. Victoire followed him into the vault with her hand clutching her glowing spear.
The Holy Vault was a bit smaller than she expected, being a little over seventy feet in length. The wall to the left showcased a mosaic showing key milestones of the Glars Order’s history—from its founding to its exile and the discovery of the Sacred Source—while a statue of an austere king whom she assud to be either Lefou or his son overseeing the right one. Multiple closed chests lined up the chamber, and dusty weapons stood on display.
One of them imdiately caught her interest: a long spear of blue-colored tal, whose curved tip resembled a red-orange tooth longer and sharper than a sword. Gilded inscriptions Victoire didn’t recognize glowed on the shaft. The weapon breathed mana.
Her god whistled at the sight. “Now that’s a magical spear! Enchanted alloy and a dragontooth for a tip!”
“You had at dragontooth,” Victoire replied upon seizing the weapon. She sensed the magic coursing through the shaft the mont she touched it. “Permission to kill Insupportable with it?”
Lord Wepwawet strongly considered it before deciding against it. “No, that would sadden Bernard and he did help liberate this city.”
That didn’t even begin to make up for all the trouble the dragon caused her in the past, but Victoire didn’t argue the point. She waved the old spear around and found it lighter than her current one. “This weapon feels stronger than your gift, Lord Wepwawet.”
“It is.” Her god waved his hand at the spear and flas imdiately surged from its tip. “Moreover, only an individual with Valentinian royal blood can use it. It will return to your hand once thrown, cut through most armor, and produce flas in a pinch.”
“Sounds like a clear-cut improvent then.” Victoire scowled, her gaze lingering on her old spear. She couldn’t argue that the sight of it filled her with conflicting feelings. “This weapon though… it holds a special place in my heart. You trusted with it above all others.”
Lord Wepwawet seed sowhat touched. “I appreciate the sentint, Victoire, but don’t hesitate to switch. I would rather see you perform at your best than hold yourself back, or worse, dying because you didn’t use your best equipnt.”
Dead. Victoire recalled all the people she had known in Prosse and who had now perished, devoured by Beelzebub’s minions. “If… if I may ask… Do you know what happens to us mortals after death?”
“Yes, I do.” Wepwawet crossed his arms, his expression filled with uncertainty. “My teachers said I should fit that in my personal branding, but…”
“I don’t want a sweet lie,” Victoire replied. She always feared there was no afterlife anyway, so any answer would fit. “I just want to know whether I’ll see so people again.”
“Yes and no?” Lord Wepwawet hesitated a mont before providing her more details. “The truth is, it depends. A god always has a special connection to their Champions’ souls, so if you and the others die, I’ll be able to keep your spirits from passing on. This will allow to revive you one day with the right Miracles.”
Victoire scoffed. “Even marriage is until death do us part.”
“Hey, I was a god in charge of protecting souls on the way to their afterlives, thank you very much!” Lord Wepwawet protested. “I’ll let your soul pass on if that’s what you truly want!”
Victoire’s heart skipped a beat. “So there is an afterlife?”
“Not yet,” her god replied, though he quickly cleared her confusion. “Unless we gods create one, souls return to the mana from which they were first created. They change, forget their past life, and then reincarnate endlessly.”
“But you could create an afterlife,” Victoire insisted. “Why haven’t you?”
“Because it requires a ton of mana. So much, in fact, that it usually takes multiple deities working together to create one.” Lord Wepwawet scratched the back of his head. “It is, like, a very big and very late class project.”
Hearing that her god considered how to deal with her immortal soul to be a ‘class project’ of all things imdiately left Victoire in a sour mood. A question found its way to the tip of her tongue. “Can gods die?”
“Not really?” Lord Wepwawet replied, confirming her suspicions. “It can take us a long ti to reform if we’re roughed up badly enough, however.”
Victoire’s scowl thickened further. “That’s why this looks like a ga to you,” she muttered under her breath. “You’re not actually risking anything yourself.”
Her god scowled back. “That’s not what I ant, Victoire.”
“No, but that’s how you feel.” She shook her head. Her spear felt heavier all of a sudden. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t do anything about it. You’re too big, and we’re all too small.”
An uncomfortable silence fell upon the vault after that, with neither god nor Champion uttering a word; if there were any words left to be said. Lord Wepwawet looked away from Victoire with an embarrassed expression on his face. His gaze lingered on a glass bottle on display among the other treasures, within which a thick, viscous yellow liquid swirled. Its texture reminded Victoire of honey.
“Is this what caught your attention earlier?” Victoire asked. She was eager to change the subject. “So kind of alchemical weapon?”
“No, Victoire.” Her god squinted at the liquid. “That is a Champion.”
User Comments
0 comments from readers