All 21.1 - Not An Adventurer, But A King

It was night in Inversheil. Stars twinkled in the clear night sky, overhead of the city nestled in the jungles of Eshbol. Inside the main temple, in a large, lavish room on the eastern side of the central pyramid, near the very peak, paced Pierce. He was wearing rather outlandish and yet obviously expensive robes, and he had managed to convince someone to give him something to cover his torso. The loose drape of fabric was certainly not a shirt by any stretch, but it was still something.
“Percy, yer givin’ me a headache. Give it a rest or something, will ya?” Sienna declared, flicking a piece of fruit in the air and catching it in her mouth. She lounged on a wide, open windowsill; there was no glass, and a pleasant warm breeze blew in. “Ye’ve been doin’ that for hours.”
Spinning on his heel, he turned and flopped over into a pillowy chair nearby. “What do I do?”
“Oy, and you’ve been askin’ that for days,” she replied. “Give that a rest too.”
“Eeech, I can’t, not until...something, I don’t know.” He looked drawn, worried and ill-at-ease.
“Poor pretty little Percy Webber can’t control things, and it’s got him in a pickle,” Sienna said, her mocking tone mostly good-natured. “Apparently, ye ain’t gonna stop complaining. So,” she flicked up another piece of fruit, “what’s, exactly, your problem?”
“Everything’s the problem!”
“Well, ya, you’d think that. And the people runnin’ in and out givin’ you new problems ain’t helpin’ any. So, since we’ve got ourselves a minute here, let’s find out what’s actually the problem,‘cause we’re sittin’ in fancy clothes in fancy rooms with fancy food, so it sure as shit ain’t everything that’s wrong.”
Rolling his eyes a bit, he begrudgingly accepted her point “...Fine. Alright.” Pierce took a deep breath. He sat silent for a moment, before stating, “The problem is, that I am a king.”
“How’s that a problem?” Sienna raised an eyebrow.
“That is very much a problem!” he said, his panicked tone returning.
“Well, I ain’t the fancy-pants smart one here, with all their schools and pens,” she said, part defensive and part sarcastic. “Spell it out, ‘cause I ain’t seein’ the problem.”
“The problem is...everything! It’s just...everything,” he sighed the final word as his gaze fell towards the floor. When eventually he looked up again, Sienna was glaring at him impatiently to continue. “Fine, ok...kings have responsibility,” he offered.
“So?”
“A lot of responsibility!”
“Yeah. So? Didn’t yer mommy and daddy raise you all responsible-like? Weren’t you all about runnin’ some business? Keepin’ people and dates and numbers all running round right? Sounds pretty damn responsible.”
“That’s not the same at…”
“Bullshit,” she interrupted him. “It’s the same thing. Bein’ responsible’s just about knowing what you gotta do and makin’ sure it gets done, innit? You sayin’ you can’t figure out when somethin’ needs doin’? Or that you can’t make sure it gets done?”
“I…” Sienna’s comment seemed to unseat him a bit, and he considered it before replying, “I have no idea how this country runs, heaven forbid I screw the entire thing up, and it’s moot anyways, since I can’t stay, and a king has to be present.”
“Why couldn’t ya stay? Nothin’s makin’ you go,” she replied, still snacking.
Pierce looked at her like she was mad, “There is a plane-destroying menace threatening existence! I can’t give up on that, not until the All are destroyed! I won’t give up on that.” He said the final sentence almost to himself, with a lately-uncharacteristic sense of firmness.
A sly grin spread across Sienna’s face, “Well, look at you, bein’ all responsible.” Pierce turned to look at her, a retort on his lips, but whatever he was going to say was abandoned, replaced with a dismissive sigh. She continued, “So, the All are the important thing, right? So you gotta get that done first. It don’t really matter what the fuzzfolks do here, if the life-suckin’ monsters ain’t stopped. Wouldn’t matter if you were the greatest or the shittiest king ever, if everyone’s dead.”
“Yes, I understand that but…”
“Ain’t no buts, Percy!” she cut him off again. “Sodding hell, you still doin’ that? You can’t ever look at one thing, can ya? Ya gotta be thinkin’ bout every bleedin’ detail, and everything’s ruined if you don’t got everythin’ perfect. Ever since you were a kid.” Pierce sighed, not arguing. “First things first. Kill the All. Ain’t no problem with that. The fuzzfolks had everythin’ runnin’ peachy keen before you got here, they can keep it up a while longer.”
“But what if…” Sienna whipped a mango at the summoner, hitting him squarely in the shoulder and preempting his argument. “Ow!”
“No buts. Now, let’s say that we kill the All, planes’re safe, and you don’t get your ass handed to you in the meantime. Then you figure the rest of it out. They don’t seem to be short people wantin’ to explain shit, and last I checked, you liked all that fancy bootlickin’ and politickin’ and document writing responsible crap. You find out what needs doin’, and you do it.”
“I can’t just stay here though, I have Mila, and my daughters, and a job, and my family…”
Sienna cut him off again, “First off, sod your family. I don’t give a rat’s ass about ‘em, and neither should you. Controlling, self-absorbed pricks, the lot of ‘em. Second, I ain’t met this wife of yours, but it seems mighty cruel o’ someone to pick between stuff like that. Maybe she’d come with you; who doesn’t want to be a queen? S’bit hot here, but it ain’t bad. Job's a job, do it if you can, give it to someone else if you can't. But really, we both know this shit means nothin’. What’s the one magic you’ve got in spades?” He looked at her a bit blankly, so she continued, “Teleportin’, dummy. You bloody poof yourself here, there and everywhere. You could bleedin’ well live in your city house and come here on afternoons! You could probably live in another flippin’ country entirely. By the time we’re done with the All, you’ll have your ruddy magic circles across the globe, poofing your lazy ass from one continent to another and back before anyone even knows you left. It ain’t about stayin’ anywhere. So, remind me again: what’s yer problem?”
“It’s...there’s so many...and everything could…” Pierce stammered. “What if someone interprets something I do wrong, and a war starts? I don’t even speak their language, and I certainly don’t know anything about their culture or practices. I’m not even their race! What if there’s some sort of civil war because I’m not around at the right time, or say the wrong thing, or they find some sort of religious argument or something? What if somehow I ruin their entire economy? What if…”
“What what what what what,” Sienna rolled her eyes and talked over him, silencing him once more. She swung her legs over to the side and stood up. “You gonna tell me you can’t learn to speak like them?”
Pierce’s discomfort was still apparent, “Well, no…”
She started walking over towards him, “You gonna tell me you can’t learn how they run their show?”
“I...not quickly, but…”
“You gonna tell me that you honestly couldn’t run a country like a business, with all your little pieces in all your little orders, all runnin’ the way you want?”
“That could take years of…”
“Ain’t a race, Perce.” She stopped, standing over him. “You whine whenever you don’t got every little thing goin’ to yer plans, and you can’t ever see the forest fer the trees. I musta got the good parts of that when we split, ‘cause I can see the bigger picture. You can piss and moan about the details, but I already see how this is gonna turn out.”
Pierce looked up at her with a look of questioning, and disbelief. “How?”
A grin spread across her face as she asked, “I asked you what the problem was, and what you said was the answer.”
He blinked in confusion, “I...yes, I answered you…?”
“Tch,” she rolled her eyes at his lack of understanding, “What did you say, at the very beginning?”
“That...there’s too much responsibility?”
“Before that.”
He thought carefully, then replied, “I said the problem is that I’m a king.”
Grinning again, she leaned in, “For a guy who screams he ain’t an adventurer, that he ain’t this or that, you ain’t never once said you ain’t the Dragon King.” This made Pierce pause, at a loss. “The problem is you’re a king? The answer is, you’re a king. You’re just messed up on the details, like ya always are.” She stood up straight and walked towards the door. “You’ll get ‘em in order. You always did. I’m goin’ out,” she added, and without any further comment, she left the room. Pierce sat, a bit stunned, for a while. Eventually, he stood up and went towards the window, looking out over the city. His expression was calmer than maybe it had been in a long time.
Category:Advent of the All