CHAPTER 165: THE DRAGON’S IRE

The journey back to Portentia was a slow, weary march. They were all drained, physically and magically. The victory at the Sunken Temple felt less like a triumph and more like they had barely survived a natural disaster of their own making.

Nox was quiet, his mind replaying the Administrator’s message. ’A third Royal Flag. A dragon.’ He knew it was a breadcrumb, a deliberate nudge from the game’s puppet masters to push the narrative forward. But it was a breadcrumb he couldn’t ignore. The power of a Royal Flag was too great a prize to leave on the table.

They arrived back at their city to find it in a state of quiet, tense readiness. Vexia had received their report via a magical sending and had prepared for the inevitable fallout. The walls were manned, the soldiers were armed, and the air was thick with anticipation.

"Olympus will not let this insult stand," Vexia stated as they gathered in the throne room. "Zeus will retaliate. It is only a matter of when and how."

"Let him come," Elisa grunted, polishing a massive, slightly-melted axe she’d ’liberated’ from Hephaestus’s forge. "I’ve got a new toy I’m itching to try out."

"His retaliation will not be a direct assault," Nox said, his voice cutting through the bravado. "He’s a king. He doesn’t get his own hands dirty if he doesn’t have to. He’ll send someone else. Another champion. Or something worse."

He looked at the holographic map. "He’ll try to break us, to wear us down. He’ll send his monsters, his plagues, his heroes. He’ll try to turn our own people against us."

As if on cue, a frantic scout burst into the room. "My king! A ship! A Greek trireme has appeared in the harbor! It flies the banner of Olympus!"

They all rushed to the balcony. In the harbor, a single, elegant ship with a massive bronze prow and a single, billowing white sail had dropped anchor. It was not a warship; it was too small, too ornate.

A lone figure stood on its deck. A woman, dressed in a simple, white chiton, her face a mask of serene, unnerving beauty.

"Hera," Vexia breathed, her voice a mix of awe and dread. "The Queen of the Gods."

Hera did not shout. She did not issue a challenge. Her voice, clear and powerful, simply washed over the entire city, a wave of divine authority.

"People of Portentia," she began. "Your ’king’ has defied the will of Olympus. He has slain a hero and brought the wrath of my husband down upon you all. This is a war you cannot win. Your city will burn. Your fields will turn to salt. You will all perish, slowly and painfully."

The players on the walls began to murmur, fear spreading through their ranks like a virus.

"But," Hera continued, her voice softening, becoming a siren song of false hope, "it does not have to be this way. Lord Zeus is merciful. He offers you a choice. Deliver the head of the usurper, Nox, to my ship. Do this, and your city will be spared. You will be welcomed into the fold of Olympus as valued subjects. Refuse, and your annihilation will begin at sunset."

She did not wait for an answer. She just stood on the deck of her ship, a silent, beautiful statue of impending doom.

The plaza below erupted into chaos.

"She’s right! We can’t fight the gods!"

"He’s brought this on us! His stupid pride!"

"We should give him to them! It’s our only chance!"

The loyalty that Nox had forged in the fire of battle was beginning to crack under the weight of divine fear.

"Traitors," Elisa snarled, her hand tightening on her warhammer. "I’ll crush their skulls."

"That will only make it worse," Serian said, her face pale. "You cannot force loyalty on those who have lost hope."

Nox just stood there, watching the chaos unfold. He looked at the fear in his people’s eyes, at the doubt, at the simmering rebellion.

’This is his real attack,’ he thought. ’Not with an army. With words. He’s not trying to break our walls. He’s trying to break our will.’

He turned and walked back into the throne room, away from the balcony.

"Where are you going?!" Mela demanded. "Your kingdom is about to tear itself apart!"

"I’m going to give them what they want," Nox said, his voice quiet.

He walked to the center of the throne room. He dismissed his armor, leaving him in his simple, black clothes. He looked at his companions.

"You guys trust me, right?"

They all just stared at him, confused.

"Do you trust me?" he asked again, his gaze intense.

"Yes," Serian said without hesitation.

Elisa just grunted a "Yeah."

Vexia and Mela gave slow, cautious nods.

"Good," Nox said. He took his scepter, Regulus, and handed it to Serian. "No matter what happens, no matter what it looks like, don’t interfere."

He turned and walked back out onto the balcony, unarmed, unarmored, and alone.

He looked down at the terrified, angry crowd in the plaza. "You want my head?" he called out, his voice echoing in the sudden silence. "You want to trade my life for your safety?"

He walked to the edge of the balcony. "Fine."

And then he jumped.

He landed in the center of the plaza with a heavy thud, the impact cracking the stones beneath his feet. He was surrounded by his own people, their faces a mixture of fear, hatred, and confusion.

"Here I am," he said, spreading his arms wide. "No armor. No weapons. If you want the gods’ mercy, all you have to do is take it."

The crowd was silent. No one moved.

"What are you waiting for?" Nox taunted, his voice a low, dangerous growl. "Are you soldiers? Or are you cowards, so terrified of a storm that you’d kill your own king just for the promise of a quiet death?"

A man in the front of the crowd, the same man who had charged Elisa, stepped forward, a rusty sword in his hand. "You’ve doomed us all!" he screamed, his voice breaking with fear.

He charged.

Nox didn’t move. He didn’t flinch. He just watched the man come, his eyes cold and empty.

The sword swung.

And stopped, an inch from Nox’s neck.

The man was frozen, his arm trembling, his face a mask of conflicted agony. He couldn’t do it.

"I am your king," Nox said, his voice a quiet whisper that only the man could hear. "I am the one who gave you weapons. I am the one who gave you victory. I am the one who gave you hope when you had none."

He looked past the man, at the rest of the silent, watching crowd. "The gods offer you mercy," he said, his voice rising again. "They offer you a quick death as a slave. I offer you something else. I offer you a chance to be free. To be the masters of your own fate. I offer you a chance to fight."

He looked up at the sky, at the heavens where the gods watched. "I offer you a chance to tell them to go to hell."

He turned his back on the man with the sword. He turned his back on the entire crowd. He started to walk back toward the courthouse, his back completely exposed.

It was the ultimate act of faith. Or the ultimate act of foolishness.

The plaza was silent for a long, tense moment. The man with the sword let it fall from his nerveless fingers, the clatter of the blade on the stone the only sound.

Then, one by one, the players in the crowd began to kneel.

It started with one, then a dozen, then a hundred. Until the entire plaza was filled with kneeling soldiers, their heads bowed not in fear, but in a new, unshakeable loyalty.

On the balcony, Serian was crying, tears of pure, unadulterated pride streaming down her face. Elisa was just shaking her head, a slow, impressed grin on her face. "Damn," she whispered. "The kid’s got style."

On the ship in the harbor, Hera watched the scene unfold. The serene, beautiful mask on her face finally cracked, replaced by a look of pure, divine fury.

"Fools," she hissed. "You have chosen your own destruction."

She raised her hand, and the sky began to darken. The God-War was about to get very, very personal.

---

The sky above Portentia did not just darken; it curdled. The sun was blotted out by a storm of bruised-purple clouds that swirled with an unnatural speed. A cold, biting wind swept through the city, carrying the scent of ozone and divine rage.

On the courthouse balcony, Vexia’s hands flew across her holographic interface. "It is a Class-4 Divine Manifestation! She is channeling a significant portion of her power directly into the atmosphere! The city’s wards will not hold against a sustained assault!"

Nox, who had just reached the top of the courthouse steps, turned to face the harbor. He looked at the lone, elegant ship and the furious goddess standing on its deck.

’So, the talking is over.’

He held out his hand. "Regulus."

Serian, her eyes still shining with unshed tears, handed him the scepter. The moment his fingers closed around the cool obsidian, he felt the familiar, absolute power of his authority settle back over him.

The first bolt of lightning struck. It was not a natural fork of electricity; it was a solid pillar of golden, divine fire that slammed into the magical barrier over the plaza. The ward, a construct of Vexia’s most powerful runes, flared violently and then shattered, the sound a high-pitched scream of dying magic.

The kneeling players in the plaza cried out in terror as the raw, oppressive power of the goddess washed over them.

"So much for the shield," Elisa grunted, her knuckles white on the haft of her warhammer.

"Her power is too great," Mela said, her voice a grim whisper. "We cannot fight her."

"We don’t have to fight her," Nox said. "We just have to fight her army."

As he spoke, the sea around Hera’s ship began to churn. The water erupted, and from the depths rose a legion of mythological beasts. The serpentine forms of Hydras, their multiple heads roaring. The massive, hulking shapes of Cyclopes, their single eyes glowing with a dull, malevolent light. And on the backs of giant, winged sea-turtles, legions of armored hoplites, their bronze armor and spears gleaming in the stormlight.

An army of legends, summoned from the depths of the sea by a queen’s wrath.

"Well," Elisa said, her fear gone, replaced by a wild, bloodthirsty excitement. "This just got a lot more interesting."

"Vexia, get the wards back up!" Nox commanded. "I don’t care how you do it, just buy us some time! Elisa, Mela, you’re with me! We’re going to meet them at the water’s edge! Serian, you have command of the plaza! Hold this ground, no matter what!"

He didn’t wait for their acknowledgements. He leaped from the balcony, his void wings erupting from his back, and shot toward the harbor. Elisa and Mela were right behind him, their own forms blurs of motion as they raced through the city streets.

They reached the docks just as the first wave of monsters was wading ashore. A Cyclops, twenty feet tall, raised a massive, rough-hewn club to smash a warehouse.

"I’ve got the big one!" Elisa roared, and charged. She met the Cyclops’s club with her own warhammer, and the impact was a thunderclap that shook the entire harbor.

Mela was a ghost, weaving between the lumbering beasts, her poisoned needles finding the soft spots in the monsters’ hides, the gaps in their armor.

Nox flew high above the chaos. He saw Hera, still standing on the deck of her ship, her arms outstretched as she directed her monstrous army.

’She’s the source,’ he thought. ’Take her out, and the whole army falls.’

He folded his wings and dove, a black comet aimed for the heart of the enemy fleet.

Hera saw him coming. A serene, cruel smile touched her lips. She did not raise a shield or cast a spell. She just waited.

As Nox plummeted toward her, a new figure rose from the sea beside the ship. It was a man, or the shape of one, forged from the sea itself. A massive, thirty-foot-tall water elemental, its form a churning, shifting vortex of saltwater and foam. Its face was a calm, implacable mask, and in its hand, it held a massive trident forged from pure, solidified water pressure.

It was Poseidon, or at least a simulacrum of him, a god of the sea summoned to serve his queen.

The water-god raised its trident and a solid wall of water, a hundred feet high, erupted from the ocean, a liquid shield to block Nox’s path.

Nox just grinned. He didn’t try to go through it or around it. He just held his scepter forward.

’Liona,’ he commanded. ’Boil it.’

The purple gem on Regulus pulsed, and a beam of pure, incandescent void energy, laced with the fiery, chaotic power of his Infernal Monarch armor, shot out.

The beam hit the wall of water.

The result was instantaneous and cataclysmic. The divine water didn’t just turn to steam; it flash-boiled, a massive, explosive cloud of superheated vapor that enveloped the entire harbor. The sound was a deafening roar, a continuous, high-pitched scream of a god’s power being turned against itself.

Hera cried out, her serene expression finally breaking as she was engulfed in the scalding steam.

The water-god simulacrum let out a silent roar of agony as its very form was torn apart by the steam explosion.

When the cloud of steam cleared a moment later, Hera’s elegant ship was a wreck, its sail burned away, its wood scorched and splintering. The goddess herself was on her knees, her perfect skin marred by angry red burns, her chiton singed and tattered.

The army of monsters, their connection to their summoner severed, wavered, their movements becoming confused and sluggish.

Nox landed on the deck of the ruined ship, his armor smoking slightly from the intense heat. He stood over the fallen queen, his scepter held loosely in his hand.

"It’s over," he said.

Hera just looked up at him, her eyes, once full of a divine, arrogant fire, now filled with a shocked, burning hatred. "This... this is not over, mortal. You have made an enemy of the heavens themselves. My husband will see you torn apart."

"I’m counting on it," Nox said. He raised his scepter. "But you won’t be around to see it."

He didn’t kill her. That would be too simple. Too merciful.

He just pointed the gem of Regulus at her forehead. "Monarch’s Edict," he whispered.

He didn’t issue a grand command. He didn’t try to turn her into his slave. He just gave her a single, simple, and utterly humiliating order.

"Go home."

Hera’s eyes went wide as the absolute, undeniable authority of the Monarch’s Edict washed over her. She tried to resist, to fight against the command, but her will, for all her divine power, was not as strong as his.

She screamed in pure, frustrated fury as her own magic, now bound by his Edict, began to teleport her away.

"You will pay for this!" she shrieked, her form dissolving into a swirl of golden light. "You will pay!"

Then she was gone.

Nox stood on the deck of the ruined ship, the silent, confused army of monsters in the harbor below him. He looked back at his city, where his own army was now cutting through the leaderless beasts with a brutal efficiency.

He had faced the Queen of the Gods. And he had won.

But he knew this was just the beginning. Zeus would not send another champion. He would not send another army.

Next time, he would come himself.

And as Nox looked out at the vast, war-torn world, a new, cold resolve settled in his heart.

’Let him come,’ he thought. ’I’ll be waiting.’

The God-War was far from over. But the Void Monarch had just proven that he was not just a player in the game. He was a force that could challenge the gods themselves. And the heavens were beginning to learn the meaning of fear.