The capital of the great and mighty kingdom of Krell was known as the Oaken Fortress. The name came to be back when there were more wars and less stability to the land. The throne upon which the king sat was the position of commander, king, and god.

These days, the kingdom’s capital was better known for its famous peach wine than for any military might. Yet the people clung to a prideful memory.

The great history of the kingdom was perhaps why the place was full of superstitious anticipation toward the lost royal family. Reality became myth, and somewhere along the way, when the walls of the fortress crumbled and were assimilated into housing structures that spread across the capital and teased at the edges of nature, people felt nostalgic for a history that was largely misremembered.

A peasant who lived at the dregs of society and had to beg each day to survive might long for the days of kings, believing in the legends that things were better back then.

A noble who had never faced true turmoil might believe that their prestige would be increased by a monarch to rule above them on their rightful throne, a romantic notion without any substance in reality.

It wasn’t a universal consensus. It was just a general air that things were somehow better in the times before memory. An adorably naive notion, like a ripe fruit ready to be plucked.

For the right mind, that nostalgia offered an opportunity like none other. Clinging to a magical solution weakened people’s minds, and the way they wrapped their hearts around hopes and dreams and wishes was, really, adorable.

And quite convenient to exploit. Those who longed for something more and felt disenfranchised by their current lot in life were so willing to believe wholeheartedly that there was a magical solution for their problems.

Arthur Galvhan had no real power. He was a mere assistant to the prime minister, who governed the affairs of the kingdom in the absence of a king. The irony of a monarchy without a monarch clearly added to the citizens’ unrest and their desire to return to a nonexistent normalcy.

Arthur’s single claim to power was more symbolic in nature than anything else. Holy magic was revered, but it lacked utility. Holy magic was largely an aesthetic tool that created meaningless orbs of light that could barely light up the dark. A fire would be far more useful, and the light orb required mental strength to maintain. However, the warm glow was comforting in a way that fire was not. It created the illusion of safety, even when no such safety existed.

Those who longed for a ruler, people like Arthur who thought of royalty as akin to godliness, were highly susceptible to legends.

It was funny how none of them seemed to remember that the people had chased away the royal family in the first place.

Arthur wasn’t power hungry. Or, at least, he wouldn’t define himself as power hungry. In his own mind, he was neither ambitious nor cruel. He had the self-righteous confidence of a hero in the body of a man who looked about as intimidating as a bunny rabbit.

Comparing Arthur to a bunny was surprisingly apt. It was one of those comparisons that, once made, one couldn’t help but see it in his every action. His large, curious eyes and his unassuming smile could always draw others in, and he was just the tiniest bit skittish, as though fearful of becoming prey.

What most people never considered in the comparison was the cruelty of rabbits. But, well, most people didn’t notice the dark side of the twitchy-nosed, bouncy little critters.

Daniel, Arthur’s clerk, was one of few people in existence who saw Arthur for what he was. Daniel had the bookish tendency to hunch over his work while quietly observing the chaos that Arthur cheerfully sewed into society.

Stirred up by an inner fire and bouncing onward toward senseless goals.

It was a bit fascinating in its own way, although Daniel could see there was no future in it.

When Arthur’s plans drew to a close, blood would spill through the streets, and there wouldn’t be anyone left to appreciate the genius behind it all. Daniel didn’t have any special ability to see the future, but he was capable of following events toward their logical conclusion.

Sometimes Daniel thought that he ought to warn Arthur.

He wanted to tell the man where the path he danced on would inevitably lead. But he was stopped whenever he saw the madness in Arthur’s eyes. The twisted, relentless determination that defined the man gleamed, and Daniel knew that no words would ever reach him. As nothing more than a nameless clerk among many, Daniel didn’t have the power or will to fight the inevitable. All he could do was draft the policies requested of him: claiming the property of dead nobility for government use, funding more tax breaks for the Church of Holy Grace, and rejecting the proposals to send palace resources to the dangerous areas of town. The nonsense numbed Daniel’s brain to a crawl, but he could notice certain patterns.

Still, he didn’t get paid enough to save the world. And Daniel wasn’t passionate enough to care that much about saving it either.

He was just an average person without power and no superior intellect who had quite accidentally read the writing on the wall.

If Arthur was a bunny, perhaps Daniel was a bug. Scuttling through life without any ability to effect change even to his own fate and lacking in the ambition to do so. Anticipating forever the boot that would crush him underfoot.

Today as well, Daniel watched as Arthur left the office with an oblivious smile and a skip to his step. For a man who was well into his forties, Arthur had a youthfulness to him that came out in little ways. It was part of his appeal.

Daniel was sure that such childish behavior would be scorned in a man like him but Arthur had the charisma to pull it off.

Daniel watched him go quietly before turning his attention back to the document in front of him.

Arthur Galvhan was surely going to kill them all. Or get all of them killed.

The inevitability of it offered neither comfort nor despair to Daniel. His quill moved smoothly along the parchment as he methodically fulfilled his duties as a clerk.

Daniel didn’t feel any responsibility in assisting this descent. He was just a cog in the clock, easily replaced. Even if he quit his job and became destitute out of some moralistic desire to avoid culpability, he would simply be replaced. Doubtlessly with someone more capable.

He wondered faintly what the world would be like after they were all gone. Would there be someone to replace him at this very desk, or would the cascade of death ensure this room became nothing but silence?

Would bugs make a home where his quill once rested, or would nothing at all survive?

Perhaps it was morbid, but Daniel didn’t mind that future very much.

It sounded quiet. Peaceful.

He adjusted his glasses as he looked toward the single window in the room that allowed sunlight to caress the world inside. He wondered what the homicidal bunny was up to today before deciding that he was better off not knowing.

Arthur Galvhan never asked Daniel to do anything that was overtly immoral. Even the parchments he was currently poring over were innocent enough on the surface. That was probably why no one noticed the inherent menace. Daniel merely connected all the innocent little puzzle pieces until a larger and horrifying image became apparent. It wasn’t something that Daniel wanted to notice. Especially since he had no way of making use of the information, no timeline to work with, just the general knowledge about what the future held.

He treasured whatever ignorance he could cling to about Arthur.

While Arthur’s atrocities would remain unknown by anyone else for the time being, there was another individual under that very same sun whose supposed crimes were exposed for all the world to see.

★★★

Stumbling as he was shoved out of the tavern and into the gutter, the drunkard muttered a bitter and slurred insult at the bastard responsible. Not that his comments did any good—the man who’d thrown him out had already slammed the door and returned to the inside of the tavern.

Ny slumped against the garbage and glared up at the sky.

It wasn’t a good day.

Well, it was rarely a good day in his shitty life but today was particularly bad. Mostly because his hand was empty. He’d much rather be holding a bottle of some kind, ideally to take another drink or, in the case it was empty, to smash against a wall until someone provided him with another drink.

Sobriety was an unpleasant prospect that he didn’t much like to consider. Of course, it liked to crawl into his senses with or without his consent and frequently forced him to submit to its awful machinations.

If there was a particular reason to drink, it was probably to numb his own thoughts. The trouble was that his thoughts weren’t easily numbed, and it didn’t take long for them to recover when he wasn’t actively burying them behind a fog of poison. Perhaps the habitual act of drinking helped him to bury those thoughts more than the poison itself, but one way or another, moments like this allowed far too much unpleasant clarity to return to him.

“Wass… stupid…” he slurred darkly at the afternoon sky. It felt wrong for the sky to be so bright. A perfect baby blue with fluffy white clouds and gentle rays of sunlight rudely implied that today was good.

What a lie. The sky lied, and the mortals below all believed that lie.

The sky ought to have been dark and stormy, a reflection of the thoughts buried in his heart.

The weather was perfect on that day as well.

He needed a drink.

Ny groaned as he attempted to pour enough strength into his limbs so that he could stand up and stumble off. Maybe he could find somewhere with alcohol and bring his thoughts back to the oblivion in which they belonged.

Unfortunately, no matter how he tried to force the matter, his body was spent. Too much alcohol, too much fighting, and not enough sleep or food.

“Damwit…” he slurred miserably. His head fell back against the trash as he closed his eyes and tried to forget the world.

He’d never been good at that. His memory simply proved too good and the world was simply impossible to discard.

On days like these, he couldn’t help but hope for the ultimate oblivion of never waking up again. Or, even better, never existing to begin with. It was tempting. If he had any strength left to move, he might just pursue that exact course of action.

Living was a pain in the ass.

“…Are you dead?”

Ny looked up muzzily at the figure above him, who was prodding him with a foot. He wondered when he’d opened his eyes but dismissed it as the alcohol finally taking him to the great beyond before this asshole interrupted.