"Dumbass guards! Dumbass Constables!" Insopr Gluaze shouted to his court.
"Now! Feast your eyes on the cowardly traitors who would assassinate him!" The Display uncaringly replied.
'I can't believe one of my affairs actually produced a bastard.' He though. 'My wife is going to kill me, but I have no choice but to legitimize him, everyone saw him do the royal casting.'
The King of Gluaze wiped his mouth off and told his guard to record him.
"People of Gluaze! I have been deceived! My son Yomo was stolen from me! It is quite clear that my youngest son, Bock, is not my own. At birth, he replaced my real son and has enjoyed the privileges as such. Because he had no hand in this, he will be spared. However, there is still a guilty party."
Insopr Gluaze held his hand out and conjured a portal. After a moment a woman was thrown through.
"This is the dishonest midwife who exchanged the boys. She will be executed for her crimes."
The king flattened his palm and blue energy formed a blade, when he brought his hand down, the midwife's head rolled.
"With that out of the way, I welcome Yomo to my court, and anyone who disapproves will meet a fate similar to her's."
The guard cut the feed and Insopr sat back down on his throne.
"The crown weighs heavily upon me." He sighed
A group of servants carried the body away.
'I'm sorry about this, I had to blame you for the good of the country.' The king prayed for her.
--------
I gasped for breath, the Eneru overload had more of an effect than I thought, draining both mind and body. James stopped the golem that had been carrying me and started perceiving the flow.
"Larry! He's Tangled! You gotta fix him!" He shouted as he called over the golem that carried Larry.
When Larry's golem arrived, Larry hopped off and put his hands on my chest.
"The good news is that you only expended the Constable's Eneru for that last spell, the bad news is that your Eneru is trapped under the Constable's leftovers. Let's just..." Larry started to make motions with his left hand like he was untying a knot and little by little I felt better. "There!"
Then, suddenly all the symptoms of Eneru exhaustion disappeared.
"There, he should be sorted." Larry finally succumbed to Eneru exhaustion, prompting the golem to pick him up.
Then it dawned on me.
"I just... killed some people. Didn't I?"
"Yes, you will have to get used to it, the world out here is as harsh as it is deadly." James replied coldly.
"But I-" I buried my face in my hands. "I feel nothing, no sorrow for the dead. Yet somehow I still feel like crying." I threw up on the forest floor.
"Ingen..." Larry's fatherly voice trailed off, he had nothing better to say.
"It's fine" I choked on vomit for a second. "I'll sort this out."
I extended my wings and took off in the direction of Gond, if my plan worked, then I should be welcomed as a hero. If it failed, I would die in a few days anyway.
********
I landed in front of my house, it had been burned down days ago, but the rubble remained. I wiped away the soot and sat on the stone steps.
"What happened to me? Spirit, why are you so silent?"
'Because you don't need me right now, nor do I have the skill to help you in the first place.'
'I think having a friend to lean on would be a LITTLE helpful! Especially when we know everything about each other.'
'It's because I know nothing about you that I didn't interfere. You are strong Ingen, and if I stand in the way, you will just get angrier.' and with that, Spirit cut the link.
Thunk!
Dad landed next to me harshly.
"Ouch! Still getting that part down." Dad said while brushing himself off.
"Hi, dad." My voice shook.
"Hey kid, heard you're having trouble with our latest mission." He sat down and leaned me against his shoulder.
"Yeah, of course, I am, I killed five people, they didn't have to die, I could have left them captured like I left the teachers. Plus I didn't even feel sad because of their deaths, I'm just wallowing in self-pity." I sobbed.
"Don't sell yourself, short kid, if they didn't die, Yomo wouldn't be recognized as the king. By killing them, you got rid of the king's recording devices, so he doesn't know that we were the aggressors."
"Really, it wasn't a waste? I helped?" I asked, sniffling through my tears.
"Really. You did." Dad felt like a boulder and sounded just as strong.
I hugged him. I looked horribly pathetic, a near-adult clinging to his father for comfort, but that's not what I was thinking about.
"Hey, kiddo." Dad made me look at him.
"Yeah?"
"I've got something for you."
Dad got up and cleared away the stairs to our cellar.
When I stepped inside, it was clear of debris, leaving an empty room.
"Why did you bring me down here? It's empty." I asked without a second thought
"That's what you think."
Dad pushed on a brick in the wall and a second set of stairs opened up.
'Double basement!' I thought.
"I shoulda never doubted you," I said.
We walked down the second flight of stairs. Inside was a stack of technical drawings and a crystal sphere.
"Go on, give it some Eneru."
I put my hand on the crystal sphere, infusing it with my Eneru. It did just as I expected, the Eneru left me and stayed in the sphere.
"You did it!" I shouted with barely contained excitement.
"Yeah, and it's all because of your invention, the Icebox. I had been theorizing a way to charge a sphere with Eneru, but you managed to trap Eneru for a while in the Icebox itself. It made me realize that Eneru isn't like other energies. It is easily trapped but doesn't stick like electricity."
I zoomed in on the crystal, revealing a complex pattern with rays of my Eneru bouncing around in it.
"I have four blueprints that I could apply this to, then I have two arrays I've compiled to use an item like this," I said, all previous sorrow forgotten.