Chapter 110: Father and Son
Midnight, Upper District, Duolis Residence.
The vast, elegant, and deeply solemn complex of limestone manors had completely fallen into absolute silence, save for the occasional soft, rhythmic rustling of silver plate armor tracing the perimeter as the private house guards executed their night watch.
Deep within the rear wing of the primary estate, inside the Duke's private study, a solitary, dim oil lamp cast a small, flickering amber glow across the quiet room. The light illuminated the features of a father and son sitting anchored to the opposing ends of a massive, dark mahogany desk.
"Carlyle... your hand was recorded under zero administrative obligation to write your name into that register," Duke Duolis spoke slowly, his voice no longer commanding the un-yielding, monumental power that had resonated across the palace halls during the grand state banquet. Instead, his delivery un-veiled a deep-seated, systemic exhaustion that seemed to vibrate from the absolute center of his marrow.
"My office preserves the capacity to dispatch alternative blades to handle the execution of this gamble. Both Lagrun and Fichel command a vastly superior tier of battlefield experience than your youth, and our house ledger concurrently encompasses the contract of Sir Maxwell—my seals signed a pact with that specific champion winters past explicitly to liquidate hurdles of this exact classification."
"Negative, Father," Carlyle replied, his head lowering slightly as he executed a slow, resolute shake of his silver hair. "Our vanguard preserves absolute zero choices across this layout. Whether your thoughts turn to the elite heroes our house has nurtured from their cradles or those contracted Night Fighters like Maxwell, those blades can effortlessly function as blunt instruments to bleed the sand, yet their minds can never be permitted to lead the tactical navigation of this operation."
"The Sovereign Flame Sigil hand-delivered to your custody by the seals of Archbishop Pilak maintains its structural activation for strictly a three-moon window across the calendar. This defines the final, absolute opportunity our house commands to reverse the alignment of the court. By what calculus could our lineage entrust the steering of such a volatile card to the hands of un-vouched outsiders?"
"This specific watch may constitute the terminal opportunity available to my own standing, but the variable does not dictate the trajectory of your future," Duolis countered, his hand cutting through the air to reject the claim.
"This conflict defines merely an internal proxy skirmish separating the rival ministries of the ascendant New Faction. Even if the scales tip against my banner and this gamble registers a total failure, the absolute absolute baseline layout on my ledger will be the loss of my executive appointments as the Guardian of the North and Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Legion lines, alongside the temporary freezing of our leverage to compete for higher ministerial power across the capital ring. Since His Majesty the Lord Consort Radagon explicitly intends to deploy my verified military contributions as a structural counter-weight to stabilize the equilibrium dividing the two primary court factions, the Duoris Family will never be easily liquidated from the peerage. Regardless of how fanatically those short-sighted modern nobles release their resentment against my name across the assemblies, that calculation remains absolute."
"Consequently, the political rot fracturing my perimeter will not easily extend its reach to touch your station—most particularly when evaluating the close childhood companion-bonds linking your youth to the personage of Prince Godrick, Carlyle. Desist from driving your boots into this filthy, swirling vortex before your years have matured. So long as your mind successfully finalizes its graduation from the Royal Private School, regardless of how utterly my own banner is broken across the sand, our house will permanently preserve a clear window to execute a grand restoration rise through the strength of your hands."
Having finalized the argument, the nearly fifty-winter-old Duke Duolis fixed a piercing, hyper-intense stare onto his solitary legitimate heir, looking exactly like an old commander hoping against hope that this youth—who possessed a character vastly more stubborn than his own spirit had broadcasted during his earliest seasons—would choose to execute a retreat. Yet, Carlyle's jaw remained set, his head delivering a final, un-bending shake against the collar of his silk tunic.
"Father, your vanguard has been entirely consumed by the administrative burdens of the border campaigns across these past seasons, and consequently, your intellect lacks a complete, un-veiled dataset regarding the true nature of His Highness, Prince Godrick," the youth sighed softly, his eyes steady. "On the public stage, His Highness presents the illusion of an arrogant, overbearing, and domineering royal heir; yet beneath that theater, his inner mind scores as exceptionally shrewd, profoundly suspicious, and preternaturally gifted at weighing the immediate transactional pros and cons of every entity crossing his orbit. While there undeniably manifests a minor fraction of genuine childhood affection linking our names from our days within the nursery wards, the value his calculations assign to my person tracks strictly back to the monumental military leverage your command can hand-deliver to support his claim."
"While the sovereign position of His Highness Prince Godwyn remains completely un-shakable across the high court, the younger Prince Miquella has already begun to demonstrate a comparable, law-breaking tier of intellectual and spiritual talent. Concurrently, with several other exceptionally gifted demigod heirs clearing their cradles across the parallel dynasties, Prince Godrick has permanently harbored a deep, freezing anxiety regarding the future security of his royal altitude. Under those precise parameters, by what logic would his strategy abandon a veteran Guardian of the North who commands the capacity to anchor an entire regional host to back his line, strictly for the sake of preserving a sentimental memory with a schoolmate?"
Duolis went momentarily still, his breathing catching within his chest before his voice emerged in a low, dangerous rumble. "Your deduction implies... the exact watch our banner logs a defeat across this arena, his hand will instantaneously execute a political pivot to side with the house of Osarion?"
Carlyle nodded his head, his features flat. "If the dust settles to verify our ruin, the archives of the court record zero doubt regarding that alignment."
"Short-sighted, petty princeling!" Duolis hissed beneath his breath, a dark, volcanic curse slipping through his teeth. "Even if the Marquis of Osarion resolves to extend a temporary diplomatic friendship to flatter his ear, how reliable can those opportunistic alliances gathered for the sake of short-term material dividends ever score when matched against the un-broken loyalty of our house? If the tides of this realm truly fracture to detonate an open war dividing the demigod bloodlines, a cowardly sycophant like Osarion wouldn't dare to lunge his steel into the melee even if the throne granted his lineage ten independent lives to squander!"
He rubbed his temples with a frantic, annoyed friction, pausing for a long watch to regulate his pulse before continuing. "Yet... the calculation matches the baseline data. My own mind should have mathematically never anchored a single drop of expectation to his name from the opening watch. Ever since his mouth released those incredibly inappropriate, un-optimized remarks across the public assemblies, offending the high lords of the conservative Old Party and triggering the total loss of his executive command over the Crucible Knight detachments, his destiny was permanently written down as a failure."
Carlyle offered a bitter, fleeting smile, choosing to desist from tracking his father's critique of the royal bloodline. Instead, he smoothly re-aligned the conversation to un-roll a precise analytical breakdown of the board. "The moment our house forfeits the administrative reins governing the northern frontier, the conservative lords of the Old Party—who have historically loathed our name across the ministries—will inevitably deploy the full measure of their leverage to exploit our misfortune. Parallel to that pressure, the modern nobles of the New Faction largely calculate that Father's long-term maneuvering across the ice plains has severely compromised their private commercial interests; they will mathematically rally their banners around the standard of Marquis Osarion to launch a coordinated purge against our remaining seats. Even if His Majesty the Lord Consort Radagon retains the personal intention to rely upon Father's sword, his single scepter will find it exceptionally difficult to withstand the overwhelming, synchronized momentum generated by this combined onslaught of both court parties. Our lineage will be ruthlessly cleared from the core decision-making circles of the dynasty. Under those conditions, our house will transition from dropping a solitary square on the board to losing our entire baseline asset existence."
Duolis rose from his leather chair, his heavy boots tracking a slow, silent path across the rugs to stand before the tall glass window. He fixed his un-blinking gaze onto the pitch-black, ink-like winter night enveloping the sprawling lower capital wards below. A rare, profoundly melancholic shadow wove across his majestic and solemn features, a heavy sigh escaping his throat. "The conservative lords harbor a deep hatred for my name simply because my sword emerged from the ranks of the Western Expeditionary Army—my boots did not clear the mud as a direct comrade-in-arms who fought alongside the First King, Godfrey, during the Unification campaigns. Concurrently, the modern ministers despise my ledger because, within their narrow calculations, my administration has squandered an infinite reservoir of public coin and legion provisions that legally belonged to their treasuries, strictly to harvest a handful of personal military decorations across the snow. Why can their blinkered intellects not decode the reality proving my heart never desired to lunge its weight into their archaic, un-ending theological disputes regarding the interpretation of the Golden Order? My hand records absolute zero care regarding their meaningless, empty courtly titles!"
"Across these three winters of field command, my own eyes have parsed the map with absolute clarity: the northern frontier does not share the isolated variables of Mt. Gelmir, nor does it compress the minor parameters characterizing the Weeping Peninsula. The barbarian uprisings fracturing those ice plains do not define a trivial, localized spark of unrest; they comprise a monumental, un-quenchable flame of generational vengeance that refuses to be extinguished by common treaties. If our vanguard relaxes its vigilance by a solitary fraction of a watch, that fire will detonate a continent-wide catastrophe that will burn the entire Golden Dynasty down to absolute ash!"
"Why should my shield accept a war of attrition where the material gains score as completely disproportionate to the catastrophic expenditure of life and gold, strictly to find my name written down as some damned legendary general across the chronicles? It is because our realm has entirely run out of superior strategic options! The ancient War against the Giants consumed nearly half of the Golden Dynasty's most elite, veteran legions. Even Her Majesty the Queen was conformed to personally lead the frontal charge across the peaks strictly to barely secure a victory against those terrifyingly colossal opponents. Across this current watch, the regional turmoil through the North is escalating at an exponential velocity, with the shadow remnants of those fallen, ancient kingdoms actively stirring the ashes from behind the curtain. The heretical Flame Cultists who historically patrolled the perimeter of the Ice Plains have become increasingly arrogant, lawless, and greedy—our intelligence reports indicate a high probability that one of their sovereign archbishops has executed a highly confidential, treasonous alliance linking their temples directly with the surviving Giants. Under those precise, horrifying conditions, what value do the localized commercial resources or the paper military strength of the Northern Legion truly hold? Even if the entire collective mass of the Golden Dynasty is conformed to empty its treasuries to reinforce the wall, our vanguard absolutely cannot stand idly by to watch the restoration of the Giant Royal Court!"
Gazing at the solitary, heavily burdened silhouette of his father framed against the dark window glass, Carlyle suddenly processed a profound, striking realization—the figure standing fronting his line was no longer the pristine, un-broken monument of strength his childhood memory archived.
The endless, grueling cycles of military command required to systematically suppress the border rebellions had violently compromised his father's biological health. Most specifically, across those three winters commanding the North, the man had manually led a minor handful of personal scouts into the tracking blizzards of the deep ice plains un-counted times strictly to chart the geographic passes with his own eyes. He had been conformed to swallow his immense ancestral pride, descending to cultivate personal alliances with the volatile Flame Bishops simply to purchase their temporary logistics and build that un-yielding defensive wall.
The surface-dwelling crowd across the capital praised his father as a legendary general of the realm, while the armchair strategists of the ministries mocked his command as clumsy, un-optimized, and foolish, claiming his defensive loops were entirely counter-productive to the treasury. But evaluating the board through Carlyle's eyes, the old man looked exactly like a diligent, down-to-earth, and thoroughly exhausted roofer—an operator who recorded zero care regarding which faction held the supreme seals or who won the verbal arguments across the high capital courts. He simply spent his remaining watches using his own flesh to locate the leaks rotting the eaves of the empire, before manually patching the holes with whatever materials his fingers could harvest from the mud.
That defined the absolute entirety of his existence.
"At the absolute baseline of the ledger... Archbishop Pilak commands a perfect comprehension of the burdens driving your shield, correct?" Carlyle spoke softly, his voice hand-delivering a quiet, reassuring warmth to break the melancholy.
"Pilak..." Duolis murmured, a slow breath clearing his lungs as his memory replayed the austere, flesh-starved visage of the northern ascetic. "An absolute certainty. Consequently... he endured as the solitary genuine friend my mantle secured across those freezing wastes—and his temple alone possessed the resolve to reinforce my hand to win this terminal shadow gamble."
"Father... transfer the custody of the Sovereign Flame Sigil into my gauntlet. Across the sand of this upcoming hunt, my steel will personally secure the victory to balance your account." Carlyle stood straight, every line formatting his physical posture turning as rigid and un-yielding as absolute iron.
Duolis pivoted his chassis away from the glass, his heavy gaze locking onto the eyes of his only son. He isolated within those young pupils an un-breaking, monumental will—an expression that perfectly mirrored the exact watch he himself had resolutely abandoned his family's multi-generational commercial estates in his youth, strictly to enlist as a common soldier within the border legions.
Following a long, heavy internal audit of the variables, the Duke finally reached his fingers inside the inner lining of his travel doublet. He extracted an exquisitely carved, un-ornamented wooden case, transferring its weight directly into Carlyle's waiting palm. His voice emerged in a low, gravelly command.
"My office will systematically prepare the most optimized, highly lethal attendants to reinforce your flanks across the sand. Ground this command deep within your calculations, boy: regardless of whether the terminal tally reads as a victory or a total ruin... your shield is conformed to guarantee the absolute safety of your own life readouts."
"Consider the parameter locked, Father."
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