Chapter Text
The cleanup effort is, predictably, almost as bad as the elf reincarnation incident.
Conrad does his best to stabilize what remains of the royal palace, and throws out every healing spell in his arsenal for his knights. Damnatio is forced to rest as Doc Owen tends to his injuries, as Asta beams at him for the feat that they have accomplished.
In his younger days, he would have been more enthusiastic over this victory. Back when things were simpler as a Magic Knight.
Now, as he looks at Damnatio and the pile of corpses strewn amongst the rubble, he is aware that the entire monarchy has effectively collapsed in a single day. Alongside the throbbing pain of his lost right eye, he cannot tell what is the main cause of the new headache forming in his mind.
A cool hand on his skin rouses him. It is refreshing, compared to the unnatural warmth which bled through his entire being, having absorbed and taken in the overflowing raw magic that surpassed Elsdocia's ability to absorb and contain it.
"Conrad." Julius's voice calls to him, as he looks at his partner.
The Wizard King moves sluggishly, being physically and mentally drained by everything that had transpired thus far. Night had fallen an hour back, and Conrad had insisted the healers tend to everyone else, whilst many of the Magic Knights were sorting through the corpses of those that Cerys had slain.
The trace of ash magic follows his partner, something he senses first before a flash of red hair appears from his new blindspot. "Ouch, you look like you've seen better days," Zora comments, and Conrad huffs.
Even thinking of a witty response felt draining.
"No shit. I lost an eye in that fight." The Imperial Sword was also lost, shattered into shards of crystal that had been bound in cloth and stored inside his inventory.
Julius kneels down before him.
Conrad looks at the blond, whose violet eyes look back, heavy with concern.
"...It might not be lost just yet. You used Chronostasis on the wound, right?" Julius points at his eye. Conrad nods. His love's gaze shifts, lighting up with the possibility of healing such a wound.
He responds with a murmur. "You think it's possible to heal it?"
Julius nods. "With Chronoanastasis. Which…is a difficult spell, but I'm here to guide you through it." Cool hands clasp around his own, as Julius moulds and shapes his hand to lightly cover his blinded eye with the palm of his own hand.
The blond notes that Conrad was truly running on the last dregs of his energy, letting him do whatever he pleased, only quietly listening and obeying his words.
"You need to undo Chronostasis, and breathe."
Conrad does so, feeling the pain of the injury come back as a fearsome wave, something jabbing itself into his eye, as he flinches against the instinctive response to open and blink his injured eye.
Julius leans close, reminding him gently to take in a deep breath. He focuses on what he needs to do to heal himself.
"Envision what your eye once was, your sight, everything down to the last instant you remember seeing." He remembers seeing the tip of Cerys's blade, just as it pierces his eye.
"Pool time magic within your eye, and will it to bring you back to that instant. Just like unspooling a ball of yarn."
Conrad coaxes mana and time magic into a visualisation of what Julius had hinted at, feeling the other's hand over his own, as he casts a new spell.
Time Magic: Chrono Anastasis
When he gently pries his hand off of what used to be a bleeding socket, he blinks, and finds himself looking at Julius, who beams at him with a massive smile.
"You did it! On your first try too!" His advisor pulls him into a hug, one that Conrad gladly accepts as he runs a free hand through Julius's hair. He takes in the scent of his advisor, leaning against the nape of his lover's neck, closing his eyes and he takes everything in.
They had won. Julius was safe, as was the kingdom once more.
The Wizard King allows himself to indulge in the brief moment of rest, before he needs to return to work. Julius, whose injuries had been healed by William on the way over, smiles at him, relieved that everything had turned out as well as it did.
The kingdom would heal, in time, as it always did.
That, Conrad knows for certain, especially with his Magic Knights at the helm.
Julius softly rests a hand on Conrad's shoulder, feeling the other lean against him beneath the light of the moon that shone down on the rubble below.
At the very least, he had emerged relatively unscathed from this fight.
"These conflicts really need to just stop," Conrad murmurs, as Julius glances over at his partner. He wished he could say that this was the last major challenge to the peace and prosperity of the Clover Kingdom, but he knew otherwise. The end of one challenge would beckon the start of another.
"I know, you've done so much, you've more than earned yourself an early retirement."
Julius does not tell Conrad about what he had learnt from wielding Elsdocia.
"I'll wait for one of the Captains to become Wizard King first. Until then, I've got to hold onto the title and handle all these duties still." Conrad's lips tilt upwards into a smirk, though his maroon eyes shift and look down at the wound on his left hand.
He heals it with a normal healing spell.
-
"Hey, hey, didja' hear? Someone went ahead and wrecked the Clover Kingdom again!" Vanica tosses the report down onto Zenon's desk. Her younger brother reaches for it, wary of any tricks that she might have jammed between its pages.
A normal report greets him, thankfully, instead of a spray of blood magic from one of her pranks when she grew bored. He skims through the words written across the page, even though his own informants had long since kept him updated on the goings of the kingdom.
Not only had they lost a great number of their nobles, but so had the Imperial Sword been destroyed in a fight against a reincarnated predecessor. Zenon finds it strange that their own past Wizard Kings and Queens would seek the destruction of their own kingdom, but it was simply proof that their current leaders were too weak to even keep their own people under control.
A strong leader would never have allowed something like that to happen.
Furthermore, there was more proof that Julius, their brother, had lost most of his power. The current Wizard King had to also have exhausted most of his magic, leaving them vulnerable for the taking.
"We should totally go in and grab the sacrifices we need while they're down!"
There's the sound of wood tearing from its hinges, before a black hole envelopes the door to his office. His door is compressed into a black hole, engulfed by the crushing weight of gravity, as Zenon sighs.
"Are you two planning without me again?" Dante sneers, as he steps into the office.
Their eldest brother rolls his eyes, as he steps into the room and joins his other two younger siblings.
"We're just wondering if we can speed things up! It's been boring to wait around, but you keep saying things will be disrupted if we push the ritual date forward!"
"It is unwise to go against the directives of the Qlipoth Advent Ritual. Even those were rules that were decided by the laws of this world."
Vanica instinctively reaches out to remove her eyepatch, allowing Megicula free access. At some point, both Devil and Devil host must have gotten used to interacting. "Must it really take seven days, though? That's like really long…"
"A perfect conclusion requires time and patience, Vanica. Though, there are means to accelerate the growth of the Ritual. The knowledge would likely reside within the Heart Kingdom's historical records, whereby the First Advent that occurred centuries back was remembered by the world."
The eldest brother takes another step forward, intrigued. "It has happened once before?"
"Naturally. Us Devils have always attempted to reach the human world. Unfortunately, the eldest Devil back then had been Astaroth. Only they were present for the First Advent and knew how it took place."
Intriguing. How intriguing. This implied that all the other existing devils came after, and that neither Megicula, Lucifero or Beelzebub had been present.
"Okay, so we need to capture the two keys, the Heart Queen and…any more people?" Vanica sits on her brother's desk, swinging her legs against the wood beneath.
She perks up excitedly. "Oh, how about our brother? Astaroth and the Wizard King must be weakened now, and he can't defend himself." Zenon recalls their last encounter with their eldest sibling.
Julius Zogratis bore a strength that could not be defined in pure strength alone. It came with it an unyielding resilience, and at the same time, an equal willingness to damn them all to an eternity of unending death, himself included.
"It would not be good to be far too ambitious this time around. Capturing the two keys and the Heart Queen is still the priority."
"Oh come on, you won't even consider the little Allen look alike? The magicless boy?"
Vanica leans close, close enough for her fringe to brush against Zenon's forehead.
Of all times, she had to mention it now, in front of Dante.
Dante however, merely scoffs. "A magicless boy sounds useless. Even if he does bear resemblance to your…dead friend." Zenon nods in agreement. That boy had nothing to contribute to this. No, the boy claimed that he had something called…anti-magic.
"Wait…the boy had something called anti-magic."
The glint that appears in Dante's gaze makes Zenon furrow his brow.
"Something so exotic, we must have it."
-
While only the royal palace had been levelled, many of the houses and facilities under reconstruction from the previous disaster had been untouched, which meant that rebuilding infrastructure was not one of their main priorities.
However, the death toll of this incident had nearly been as high as during the elf reincarnation incident. Most of the deaths stemmed from the royal families and all of their relatives, those of high nobility and entire bloodlines wiped out during the Witch Hunt. Commoners and peasants had been spared this time around, because they had been the ones involved in the so-called revolution.
A meeting with the remaining royals who held a high enough authority had barely filled up a meeting room inside the Golden Dawn headquarters. Presented with the list of the names of the dead, Conrad is more concerned for the one of the last two surviving members of the Kira household.
Damnatio had been staring at his copy of the list of fallen families for an awfully long time.
"...what will this mean for us?" Mimosa is the first to speak up, bags around her eyes from the sleepless nights spent trying to heal all those whom she had hurt unintentionally, whilst under Cerys's influence.
Leopold looks equally despondent, his gaze drawn to the remnants of a charred building outside the window.
Mereoleona, Fuegoleon, Nozel, Nebra, Solid, Noelle are all silent. Finesse Calmreich looks at her last blood relative with concern, even as the weight of this new reality sinks upon herself at the same time.
Even in this situation, the fearsome lioness did not know what to say, for this was a situation she could not fight. Their father was dead, alongside any aunts, cousins who had been present within the palace during the raid.
That said, some of their relatives who had been away had managed to survive, having hidden away or were protected by some who had not fallen completely under Cerys's spell. The same could be said for the Silvas, of which held onto hidden defensive estates scattered across the Kingdom.
The family which sustained the most losses was the House of Kira.
Given that Augustus had been king then, most of the Kira members were present in the royal palace as part of their entitlement of being from the same family.
"...With Augustus dead, what remains of the nobility will require a new king." That is the first words that Damnatio says during the entire meeting.
A new ruler? Conrad is uncertain if that was a wise decision.
The power the monarchy held had been cleanly dismembered by a single individual. As much as he had spent the previous night thinking about it, Cerys had indeed created a massive vacuum in the power held within the leaders of the kingdom. By killing off the current king, and all other suitable replacements, the Witch Hunts had greatly weakened any other competing households that would dare to fill the position.
Nozel's gaze shifts between his younger siblings and the judge.
"None of us are equipped nor available to take up the role of a ruler so quickly. Not with the threat of the Dark Triad hanging over the horizon."
Mereoleona slams a fist on the table. "We don't have time to be discussing things like this, not when the Dark Triad can attack at any moment. All these foolish polictics…does it really matter whether or not we have a true king to crown at the moment? The people will defer to the Wizard King regardless, because that weakling Augustus was only a puppet."
The Crimson Lionness was brutal in her assessment still, though her words were harsher than what Conrad would have expected at the moment. Even she too had been affected by the loss of her family members.
Damnatio raises his head and glares at her.
"A puppet ruler was enough to placate the nobility and satisfy them to stop them from acting out in their own interests. At the very least, we require an interim ruler, to rally together what remains of the nobility and ensure that they do not decide to seize the vacant throne right now."
Finesse raises her hands tentatively. "Would-Would this not be a good time to simply reshape the entire way the kingdom is ruled? The monarchy has lost many key figures, and many of the nobles are likely in hiding and unwilling to step up, especially when many are grieving and struggling to manage the affairs of their own households. Perhaps a few opportunistics houses might try and grapple for the throne, but if we take that option out of their hands, instead, allowing a democracy to take root instead, it would prevent the unworthy from gaining power."
Everyone in the room turns to look at her. No one expected such a soft spoken, sickly woman like her to suggest such a bold idea.
Noelle stutters, "-but…is that truly workable in such a short period of time? The idea does have merit, but…changing an entire ruling system within such a short span of time seems like it would make the people more panicked and confused…"
Transitioning towards a democracy was very much something Conrad had wanted to achieve for the most part of his time in service as a Wizard King, but had been unable to do so due to the different duties and how politically challenging the idea was. Now though, with many nobles and royals dead, the idea was becoming feasible. Looking at those around the table, he could catch a glimpse of who was uncomfortable with the idea, namely Nozel, Nebra, and Kirsch, though Damnatio remained coldly distanced from where he was seated.
Conrad doubts that he would approve.
"The idea only has merit if it is not executed so hastily. Doing so would cast doubt on our actions, and on whether a coup had been planned by us, even if we were not the instigators." The judge interjects, as Damnatio looks at everyone.
Conrad drums his fingers on the desk. He understood what the judge meant. If they were to implement their new system so quickly, it could be taken by the people as an attempt on their part to take over and reshape the kingdom following the tragedy that had just happened. They would be seen as opportunistic as well.
"We cannot change so quickly, even if that is a more ideal way to rule the kingdom in the future." Nozel admits.
Mereoleona leans against her chair. She had half a mind to rest her feet on the table, with how indecisive things were. Her brother had been suspiciously silent for the time being.
"I agree. We should have an interim ruler first, before it becomes apparent that the current system cannot sustain itself, not with the death and losses of so many key figures." Fuegoleon's gaze is cast in a darkened shadow, but even he agrees.
They needed to decide. Conrad starts the voting with a question. "Who is in favour of having an interim ruler?"
For: Nozel, Fuegoleon, Nebra, Kirsch, Damnatio, Noelle, Solid
Against: Leopold, Mimosa, Finesse, Mereleona.
Conrad knows that his vote would not matter, for the answer was clear.
"We will have to nominate an interim ruler."
Solid poses a statement. "Aren't there only two choices? None of the Magic Knights should be placed on the throne because of what will follow. That leaves only cousin Damnatio and Finesse."
She smiles, looking at her cousin.
"I am not fit for the throne, which leaves only one candidate."
-
Conrad sighs, as he feels a hand card through his hair.
Julius watches him, as both of them lie on their shared bed, an exhausting day of events having been handled once more. The healers had said that his partner was healed and cleared of his injuries, having managed to leave this battle relatively unscathed despite everything that had happened.
The blond does not tell him about the injuries he had sustained at Nozel's hand, knowing that the Silva had not intended it if he were in the right mind.
Right now, Julius can tell that Conrad was exhausted.
Tired out by the constant conflict that had continued ever since the past year had begun. From the conflict with the Eye of the Midnight Sun, to the elves, Lilith and Namaah, and now, the Wizard Kings and Queens, Julius wishes he can tell him that he would get a good rest soon.
"...I'll have to get a new teleportation key for you." Conrad nuzzles his neck, as Julius lightly chuckles.
"Is that what it was called?" His wrist felt bare, no longer wearing the artefact that Conrad had gifted him a long time ago. It had been spent, in that instance where he had used it to escape Nozel and Damnatio, only to bring him straight to Conrad's side. Even if he had been in the midst of battle.
Conrad lets out a low hum of affirmation. "I'll have it adjusted to send you to a safehouse. In hindsight, having it send you to my side was not the best option." But it had been where Conrad was certain Julius would be safe, especially if he needed medical attention. However, his fight with Cerys had proven otherwise.
The warmth that Conrad radiates is addictive. "It still worked out in the end, didn't it?" Julius basks in the heat generated by his lover, even as he thinks of how he managed to get his hands on Elsdocia, and use it to disrupt the spell which had entranced the entire kingdom and drawn out their worst sides possible.
Crimson eyes rest on him, as Conrad regards how Julius had managed to play such a crucial role in tipping the scales of the fight, despite not being able to use his magic at all.
"...By the way, using Elsdocia did not hurt you, right?"
Julius merely smiles, as he measures the weariness, that tender affection in the eyes of his partner.
"You already don't have long left to live. Why not spend the last five years you have with your partner?"
"I'm fine. They allowed me to borrow on their strength, at least for one last time."
This is a decision he will live with.