Vol.5 Ch.14.2 – Wilhelm II

I was thankful for the durability enchantment on Helios Edge, otherwise the repeated impacts with Wilhelm's crystal sword would have long since dulled the blade. The little bastard was good, I had to give him that.

Even with whatever the Holy Maiden had done to him he was neither as fast nor as strong as I was but he was much stronger than a normal human of his stature should have been and he was resourceful besides. Like Anna and Richard Wilhelm used a fighting style known as court fencing, a style I was slowly coming to hate. Court fencing focused on harassing the opponent with fast attacks to score shallow cuts only to then finish things off with devastating thrusting attacks. That was already irritating enough to face but Wilhelm was quite apt in augmenting that style with the powers the Holy Maiden had given him.

This meant that his harassing attacks included reed-thin beams of Darklight, which were far more dangerous than a shallow cut from a sword, and tentacle portals so small they were barely visible and only allowed a single tentacle through but that one tentacle was often enough. Whenever I had lined up a proper blow a tentacle would yank my hand away or hold a foot in place. They were never strong enough to deter me for long but they were just enough to stop me from landing any devastating hits.

I adapted to this quickly, however, and started using throwing knives whenever he backed off, distracting him long enough that he didn't have time for those tricks. And that's when he hit me with his next nasty surprise, even if it was one I should have seen coming.

Every person in the royal family had been trained by Qi specialists from the Southern realm because that was the only way for them to unlock the powers of their bloodline. I knew that. But what I hadn't anticipated was that whoever had trained Wilhelm had also taught him how to use proper Qi techniques. His lunging attacks were clearly backed by Qi Dashes and whenever I gave him even a moment to gather strength for a strike they hit with the kind of impact I only knew from Qi Bursts.

As I said, I should have seen it coming, given that he'd used what I had suspected to be a flash step back in the Crystal Crown's dungeon, but it still caught me off guard when he first used it.

“You're quite impressive,” he told me after we'd been fighting for several minutes. “It's a shame that you've taken up with the blasted Olympians.”

I gritted my teeth. I wasn't on the Olympians' side. They were simply the enemy of my enemy.

He lunged at me, taking advantage of my momentary distraction. I only just had enough time to get out of the way of the attack, twisting with the blow and shoving my open palm against his hands clasped around the blade, shoving him off balance.

“What I don't understand,” I said as I scrambled away while he righted himself, “is why you tried to kill Anna. You don't seem to hate her.”

“I don't,” he said, his eyes flicking over to her. “In fact, I didn't try to kill her. That sword would have pierced her lungs if you hadn't saved her. Painful, debilitating, but not lethal. She would have ended up in the infirmary for months, long enough for The Mother Of Them All to lay waste to the capital, at which point I could have taken her with me to safety and nursed her back to health.”

I felt sick to my stomach at the mere idea. If things had happened like that Anna might have ended up in the care of the one who had tried to assassinate her, thinking he was just trying to help her.

“You're sick,” I said, sending a Qi Projection at him but he evidently knew enough about Qi to dodge away from a slash that shouldn't have hit him. “You'd try to pretend to be her savior after doing that to her?”

“I don't pretend to be anyone's savior,” he said, sending out a beam of Darklight that I threw myself away from only to hear a goblin shriek in pain as it was hit instead of me. “The Holy Maiden is the savior, one this world desperately needs. I am merely her loyal servant.”

“A fanatic, you mean,” I said, rushing forward and locking swords with him again. “Do you have any idea how many people your little stunt in the capital would have killed if we hadn't stopped it?”

“Approximately two million would have died before people would have realized that they could survive by just accepting the Dark Mother as their goddess,” he said, his voice completely calm despite the outrageous words. “A small price, I would say.”

“You're sick,” I said again, shoving against him.

In response he summoned a small dagger of alexandrite and tried to shove it into my side. I danced away from his weapons and threw a knife at him to give me space.

“Have you considered just how many people have died under the tyranny of the Olympians?” he asked as he got back into a ready stance, now wielding the sword and the dagger. “Their rabid witch hunt against followers of the Titans was only the beginning. The ancient records show us that before the Trismegistian line took control of this area the gods ruled with an iron fist. And even now. It's not just the constant struggle between Dark Lords and Chosen Ones that claims thousands of lives every years, it's also petty bullshit like Demeter sending famines because people didn't worship her properly or Poseidon sending fish away from fishermen because they didn't give enough tributes. Which is to say nothing of the way Zeus' bastard offspring behaves. No group of people commits crimes the way they do. Rape, murder, theft, everything. They believe they can get away with everything because they fucking can. Because if you dare persecute them Zeus comes down and demands they be let loose.”

Well, shit. He was absolutely right about that. He was talking about issues I had been complaining about for a decade. I hadn't known the thing about Zeus' bastard offspring but after seeing that cult up close it didn't really surprise me. But even so.

“And that gives you the right to overrun half the capital with monsters?” I demanded. “Most of the people that live there don't even worship the fucking Olympians. Even the shit you guys pulled here. Do you think the corpses your fucking goblins are nibbling on are all Olympians? Don't make me laugh.”

“Of course they're not all Olympians,” he said contemptuously. “Clerics and performers. Lickspittles and enablers, one and all. If people stopped worshiping the Olympians then the problem would go away on its own. It doesn't matter if a cleric is a good person. If they worship someone like Demeter or Zeus they're part of the problem.”

“That almost makes it sound like gods die if they run out of worshipers,” I said.

“That's because they do,” he said. “Well, not quite. If a god were to run out of worshipers they would become mortal again. That's what this is. Keeping all of the Olympians tied up in their little shrines is only a temporary solution. If they stop showing up when called, if they stop performing miracles, if they stop lording their superiority over everyone, they will eventually run out of worshipers and then we'll finally be rid of them. Be honest, did people actually miss the Olympians in the last few months?”

That gave me pause. Nobody had. Except for clerics like the one we'd met at the Temple of Zeus nobody had even noticed that there had been a problem at all. I had specifically made fun of the fact that the Olympians were so irrelevant that their imprisonment hadn't even been noticed and that the kingdom ran perfectly fine without them.

“So people didn't,” Wilhelm said when I didn't answer. “They're relics of a bygone age, utterly irrelevant for the average person. Or at least they would be...” He smacked my sword away. “... if they finally stopped...” He jumped back and charged a Qi Burst. “... ruining people's lives!”

He rushed towards me, his crystal blades wreathed in the white energy of his Qi and I only just managed to roll out of the way of the attack. But he didn't give me room to breathe. Between his ferocious onslaught and his words I could barely muster up an offense of my own. The little shit was completely right. The Olympians were scum. Maybe not all of them. Hestia, Hephaestus and, yes, Athena, were proof that not the entire bunch was rotten but there were more bad actors in the group than good ones. They were horrible people, mad with their own substantial power, safe in the knowledge that no retribution would ever stick because they were immortal and vengeful bastards to a one because they had infinite time to hold onto their petty grudges.

They were horrible and not worth saving. And yet.

“So they shouldn't be allowed to choose who lives and who dies?” I asked, charging at Wilhelm and locking blades with him before he could go for another Qi technique.

“Are you finally seeing reason?” he asked, dropping his crystal dagger so he could hold onto his sword with both hands to avoid me pushing him back.

“Oh I've been agreeing with you all along,” I said, kicking his stomach and causing him to fly through the air. He flew until he reached the circle of his monsters and two goat-orcs grabbed him under the arms and righted him again before giving him a none-too-subtle shove back into the fray. “The Olympians shouldn't be allowed to choose who lives or who dies.” I grabbed Helios Edge with both hands and pointed it at him in a ready stance, the blade parallel to the ground. “But neither should your vile Outsider brood.”

He charged at me again but this time I was ready for it. The Qi Burst I'd been holding sent Helios Edge through a vertical upward arc and a massive plume of fire blasted out, washing over him just as he was about to strike me, Helios Edge catching his blade at the same time as I heard his flesh begin to sizzle.

He shrieked and scrambled back from me, rolling on the ground to put the flames out, his billowing brown cloak doing its best to smother the flames. As we'd started our duel I had noticed that underneath the brown cloak he wore the same armor I was. It made sense. It was a perfectly reasonable piece of armor for most situations and it had come from the royal palace's treasury so it only stood to reason that he would have had access to it as well. However, as I had been wearing it for months now I knew perfectly well that one thing it absolutely wasn't was flame-retardant. It didn't really catch fire but it did nothing to insulate its wearer from the heat, either.

I could have probably finished him off then and there, sending a lance of fire at him while he was busy putting out the flames, but I was still not seeing the portal glowing in any way.

I had said it, hadn't I? If Melinoe was a traitor this would be the best possible moment for her to betray us. She wouldn't even need to stab us in the back. All she had to do was fuck off instead of opening the portal and we would be screwed.

Right now Wilhelm and I were dueling but eventually he would realize that he had an army he could sic after us once he started losing and this force was large enough that things might go awry without the Heroes.

“So...” he croaked out as he slowly rose. His exposed skin was blackened but healing rapidly, flakes of burnt skin falling off to reveal pristine new skin underneath. “You do not care for these parasites calling themselves gods and you don't care about the Dark Mother, either. Then who do you serve? Who controls you? Whose ideals do you fight for?”

He was still busy recuperating and not yet ready to charge at me again so I took my time answering him. In all the fighting we'd gotten turned around so many times that behind Wilhelm I could now see my girls.

Alisha, Selene, Anna, Athena... Strange. Melinoe not being there made sense. She was either working on the portal or had betrayed us. But Yume wasn't there, either. She had cast an invisibility spell on Melinoe but it wasn't the kind of spell that needed constant maintenance so there was no reason for her not to be there as well. Or was there?

I shook it off and focused on those of my girls I could see. Standing around them were the Olympians. Hestia, Hephaestus and Aphrodite were closest, Hermes and Poseidon standing a bit farther back. The Olympians were looking a bit more thoughtful than before, Poseidon especially. Apparently I hadn't been the only one Wilhelm's words had affected. Some looked more upset, some more ashamed, but none of them had been left cold by his words. My girls, on the other hand, were tense on my behalf. In Alisha's, Selene's and Anna's eyes I saw their unwavering faith in me and Athena was caught between that same expression of trust and the same queasiness I saw on the faces of the Olympians.

Standing there watching our duel was the sum total of everything I'd ever accomplished. The women I loved and the gods I'd spurned. And the little twerp in front of me wanted to know who I fought for?

“The only ideals I fight for are my own,” I told him. “I do not serve anyone and the women I love wouldn't have me any other way.”

“Even Anna...” he muttered. “Just who are you?”

“I am Felix Tailor,” I told him. “The Godsforsaken.”

And into the dead silence of my declaration Melinoe's voice echoed: “Connection established.”

I turned around to see a light blue haze falling away from the portal. It had looked completely inert just a moment ago but now I could clearly see that it was indeed fully functional. I saw Yume sitting next to the portal, the last remnants of her aura dissipating. She'd used an illusion to hide the portal activating until it was done. Next to the portal stood Melinoe, waving at me as she poked one final rune and a moment later a heavy leather boot poked through the portal and Starfall Albrecht took his first step onto Olympus.