Chapter 95: The Final Act Begins (With a Second-Rate Antagonist)

With Aria gone and three knights coming into view at the far end of the room, Freya’s thoughts turned over, and as always she realised she was taking things far too much to heart, far too pessimistically, and in a completely hypocritical way.

If Aria weren’t rank SSS, would this have happened at all? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it simply added weight to the scale, and maybe the unknown I represent added just as much weight to hers.

And perhaps on top of that she was getting it completely wrong, because why had she jumped to the conclusion that Aria knew nothing about her existence?

She had told her a few times that she might be a God, and the word might implied that she didn’t know herself, which meant she was an unknown on that point, but when she had said Freya would grow stronger than her, that hadn’t been an unknown at all, and just now she had said her System was an unknown to her, so Freya had immediately concluded that her existence must be one too.

But what’s the point? Why tie myself in knots over this? I’ll just ask her once all of this is done. I definitely need to grow up when it comes to controlling my emotions.

On top of which, she wasn’t about to ruin her final act, the one she had spent weeks on, a whole month if you counted the preparations beforehand, over assumptions that were almost certainly wrong and thoroughly immature.

She breathed in.

Again.

And once more.

One thing at a time, Freya, like always.

At that moment the barred door of the cell scraped violently across the floor, one soldier staying outside while two others came in and grabbed one of her arms each, roughly.

It didn’t hurt her, of course, given her physical rank sat somewhere around B-, but she knew what it meant. It was time to put the mask back on.

She shuddered under their grip, shoulders drawing in, her breath catching, her whole body folding in on itself.

"Ow... wh-what’s happening?"

"Quiet, witch!" one of the guards shouted, before striking her with the back of his iron-gauntleted hand.

Freya’s head snapped to the side, and since he was a knight after all, a mark bloomed across her face while a thin line of blood ran from her mouth.

For the space of a single instant, a murderous look crossed her face, before being replaced straight away by that of a woman in distress.

"S-Sorry... I’m sorry... I’m..."

They hauled her up without answering and pushed her ahead of them into the corridor, where the third man was already waiting, and the tears kept running down her battered face as he led her out of the building.

The daylight hit her all at once, and the noise with it.

"THERE SHE IS!"

"SHE’S THERE, SHE’S THERE!"

"RELEASE THE SAINTESS!"

The soldiers had formed a corridor from the prison door, shoulder to shoulder, and behind them the crowd pressed in along the whole length of the street, spilling over doorsteps and overturned stalls.

She was dragged between the two lines, her feet scraping the cobblestones, her head down, and it was her hearing that told her the rest.

"BACK! GET BACK, I SAID!"

"NEVER! HOW COULD WE TURN OUR BACKS ON HER?"

Something struck an armour plate to her left with a hard, flat sound, and a knight shouted an order that nobody followed.

A hand came out of the mass and caught the fabric of her sleeve before a guard shoved it away with the flat of his shield.

"GAÏRA IS WATCHING! SHE IS WATCHING ALL OF YOU!"

A man was slammed against the wall of a shopfront and beaten in the stomach until he slid to the ground, and the crowd closed over him without anyone stopping.

The air smelled of sweat, of hot iron, and of smoke from a fire burning further down a street she couldn’t see.

Then all at once she saw a path opening ahead of her, leading to a platform.

Planks thrown together in haste, still pale in places, with a block set at the centre and a masked man standing beside it, both hands crossed over the pommel of a sword whose point rested on the wood.

Her feet scraped the steps as she was carried half off the ground by the two soldiers.

She was then thrown down onto the platform, falling to her knees, her hair hanging in front of her face, and she lifted her head to see what surrounded her.

Thousands of people were packed in and screaming, while hundreds of soldiers stood in a barrier around the platform, pushing the crowd back whenever it surged, sometimes violently.

One man made it over the line and was sent back with a pommel to the gut, a woman was shouting a name nobody could hear, someone went down and didn’t get up.

At the upper windows people crowded three and four to an opening, children sat on their fathers’ shoulders, and on the rooftops others stood right at the edge of the tiles.

It was a scene made entirely of chaos, of violence and of savagery.

So this is what I built. This is the set for my final act... it’s beautiful!

On the outside, though, Freya kept up her frightened side, her weak side, her face still marked, the blood still there, which helped all the more.

She let her shoulders shake and her breathing come in broken gasps, and while her eyes swept the front rows searching for the faces she had placed there herself, she sobbed loudly enough to be heard all the way to the barriers.

Then a voice came from behind her.

"So here is the witch."

She turned her head and saw, seated in a lavish chair that must have been carried out here for the occasion, a heavyset man who reeked of wealth. Baron Frarken.

So here you are. The puppet.

The man who had disappointed her so thoroughly by turning out to be nothing but the shadow of the figure she had imagined, reacting in the worst possible way to every single one of her provocations.

The man she had hoped would be worthy of standing as the final antagonist of her play, the man who had manipulated Aldric while believing himself so clever, and who had been manipulated all along by his own moneyed-noble ego.

Pathetic. So very pathetic. You really aren’t fit to be the final villain of this scene, Frarken. At best you’re a second-rate antagonist.

A smile spread across the baron’s face at the sight of the terrified woman kneeling in front of him.

He then rose and snapped his fingers, and a man in mage’s robes cast a spell that Freya recognised as wind, so that when the baron spoke, his voice carried by the magic, it rose above the shouting, above everything.

"People. My people."

He spread his arms and waited, in no hurry, until the noise dropped by a degree.

"You, to whom I have given so much. You, whose fathers lived on my lands, ate my grain, slept under the watch of my men. You, who belong to me, as this city belongs to me, as every stone beneath your feet belongs to me."

He came down a step, hands behind his back, and walked along the edge of the platform.

"And this is how you thank me. By rising up. By throwing barricades across my streets. By taking as your symbol this woman, this thing, this heresy."

Freya turned her head toward the left, where a priest in white robes was speaking with a high-ranking knight, one hand held out toward the platform.

"Listen to me! The Pope of the Church of Life is on his way to see for himself, you must wait for his arrival before judging her, you have no right to—"

The knight shoved him back with a hand to the chest, and the priest went over backwards, tripping on his own robes and sprawling across the ground a few paces away.

"Get lost! The baron wants nothing to do with you!"

Two of the faithful rushed to help the old man up, his white robes now covered in dust, while the knight had already turned his back on them.

Freya followed the whole thing without moving her head, and for the second time that day she had trouble keeping her mask in place.

He’s stupid enough to have a priest shoved to the ground in front of everyone? In front of the Church of Life itself?

Does he not understand that even if all of this went exactly the way he wants, he’d still be running straight to his own ruin?

"But I am a magnanimous lord."

He laid a hand over his chest.

"I love my people. And I forgive my people, for my people are weak. A child who errs is not to blame. Only the one who led them astray is."

He pointed a finger toward Freya without so much as turning his head to look at her.

"And so I shall punish only the cause of all this. This impious woman. This usurper who stole the name of Gaïra to turn my own subjects against me."

He gave a signal, and a soldier struck Freya in the side with the flat of his boot.

She went with the blow, rolled across the planks and stayed down, one hand at her ribs, wracked with sobbing, while her body felt absolutely nothing at all.

A roar went up from the crowd, and the line of soldiers gave a step before stiffening again.

"Look at her! Look at her and see what she truly is! Not a saint, not a chosen one. A peasant weeping in the dirt. Is this the face of a messenger of the gods? Is this what you are burning my streets for?"

He carried on that way, his voice climbing higher, every sentence more loaded with contempt than the last, speaking of the place that blood assigned to each man at birth, and of what someone like him was expected to endure from those who were nothing.

Then a tomato crossed the square and burst against his shoulder.

The baron stopped mid-word, looked down at the red running along his embroidered sleeve, and stood there for a moment without understanding.

"DEMON!"

A stone followed immediately after and caught him at the temple.

He staggered a step sideways while four soldiers closed around him, raising a hand to his head, and he looked at his fingers.

There was blood on them.

His blood.

"That is..." His voice came out weak at first, then rose all at once. "That is MY blood. You have spilled MY blood!"

He shoved aside the soldier trying to shield him and came back to the edge of the platform, his face red, a vein standing out along his neck, one finger levelled at the crowd.

"ME! You raised your hand against ME! Against your lord!"

He was already searching the mass, moving from one face to the next, his mouth twisted, unable to find whoever had thrown the stone.

Then his gaze stopped on a man in the front row, an ordinary man in a workman’s tunic, who was looking back at him and smiling.

"HIM! THAT MAN!" the baron screamed, pointing at him, his voice cracking. "Kill— kill me that bastard! Kill him in front of them! Let them all see what it costs!"

The nearest soldier turned, shouldered aside the two people in front of him and drew, the blade coming out of its scabbard with a scrape of metal.

He raised it in both hands above the man, who still didn’t move.

CLING—

Another sword caught his own mid-swing, and the shock travelled up through his arms with such force that his feet came off the cobblestones.

He landed back on the ground, the sword torn out of his grip and skittering away, and he stayed sitting there, staring at the person standing in front of him.

Seeing who it was, Freya couldn’t help but smile on the inside.

What a spectacular entrance! You’ve certainly earned the leading role in this final act!