Chapter 1914: Aldoria’s Labyrinth

"By royal proclamation!"

The crier had held the center of Aldoria’s market square since dawn, and his voice was audibly paying for it. "King Alexios has passed the crown to his chosen heir! Long live Her Majesty, Queen Felicity Primrose Amabelle Valorian, sovereign of Vraven!"

"And by the Queen’s own free word! Vraven kneels to the Primordial Villain! The kingdom, the crown, and every soul within now stand under his protection!"

Criers like him had been shouting the same words in every city of the kingdom since dawn.

Aldoria had already argued the news to death, and moved on to the practical questions, like how they’d put food on the table today. So the market simply flowed around the man and let him work.

The labyrinth gate of Aldoria opened at dawn, and the queue of adventurers formed by sunrise. Guardsman Hadric stood his post beside it the way he had stood it every day since the bounty sheets: sweating under his armor, flinching at every flash of light in the market square.

His three fellow gate knights found this endlessly entertaining.

"Oy, Hadric." The nearest one dug two bronze coins out of his pouch and held them up beside Hadric’s helmet.

*Clink. Clink.*

"Stop that."

*Clink.*

"I’m warning you-"

"The Primordial Villain is coming for youuu~" the knight sang. "Conqueror of the elves. Liege lord of all Vraven. Surely his next great campaign is the gate knight who jingled forty bronze at him."

Down the wall, the other two were already wheezing.

Every knight on this rotation knew the story, because Hadric had told it white-faced to anyone who would listen.

Less than a year ago, a nobody with a shabby spear and a single silver to his name had paid the fee at this gate; Hadric had clinked the coins in his palm and smirked at the farmer behind his visor.

Then the bounty sheets started circulating. The rumors started circulating.

And Hadric became sure that the filthy peasant he mocked was the Villain himself, at the very start of his rise.

Nobody believed him. Or rather, the part where he’d come back for revenge.

"He rules half the continent, man," the second knight managed between wheezes. "He has elven queens and shrine maidens pouring his wine. I wouldn’t be surprised if he added both Elf Queen Myrasyn and Princess- I mean Queen Felicity to his harem."

"Yeah, dude!" another laughed. "He is not coming back to take revenge."

The air over the market square split open.

A warp gate spun wide between the vendor stalls, taller than a man, and the morning crowd of Aldoria went quiet in a spreading ring around it, because there was exactly one man on the continent who tore doors into the air like that.

Iris Ravenclaw stepped out of his gate with an elf over her shoulder.

She stopped two paces from the gate and stared at the scene in front of her: a queue, a stone doorway, a sign listing an entrance fee.

The line ran long: farmhands with pitchforks and patched boots come to trade field work for a better life, a pair of teenage girls sharing one rusted sword between them, a boy nervously re-counting his coppers.

All of that hope for a better tomorrow was currently busy gawking at the hole in the world and the two women who had stepped out of it.

"Why are we at a labyrinth?" Iris said flatly, to nobody.

"Second question," Seraphiel offered from her shoulder, golden hair hanging toward the cobbles. "Why am I still being carried? Put me down already."

"You can focus on healing fully like this."

"I’m starting to understand why Ayame keeps butting heads with you, young miss!"

"..."

"Fine!" The elf abandoned dignity, and her hands found the splinted arm hanging free at Iris’s side. Golden light sank into it. "Then you hold still, because I have questions for this arm."

The light took. Iris’s red eyes were on the crowd, the crowd’s eyes were on her, and her face committed to nothing at all.

"Unbelievable," Sera declared at rising volume. "All night this arm spat my healing out like poison. All night! And now it drinks every drop like fruit juice! Look at it knitting!"

The splint’s straps loosened on their own, the whole thing clattered to the cobbles, and the arm underneath flexed whole.

"So..." The Dawnbringer’s voice went from wounded to sharp. "Your class holds your wounds hostage, doesn’t it? Pain is your fuel, so no healing mid-battle, and none right after either."

"First you overcome the worst yourself, sleep it out, and only then does my light get permission. That’s the rule, isn’t it-"

Iris’s good hand released the elf’s waist and arrived over her mouth instead.

"Mmph?!"

"You’re too loud. At this rate I’m trading a broken arm for a splitting headache."

"Mmmmmmmmmmm!!!"

A certain bombshell of an elven healer wasn’t quite happy at this very moment.

The elf came off Iris’s shoulder and onto her own feet, mouth finally free.

Then Quinlan Elysiar walked out of his own gate in casual black, and the street stopped pretending it wasn’t watching.

"It’s him," someone whispered by the potion stall. "Goddess above, it’s actually him."

"The Villain! The Primordial Villain is in Aldoria!"

"Why is he here?!"

Quinlan took in the gawking street, the fleeing pigeons, the hundred held breaths, and shrugged.

[Synchra] flared a brilliant red and rippled up his body, casual black flowing into dark battle-plate, crimson light bleeding through every seam. His eyes lit a terrible red, and the air over his shoulders warmed like a forge drawing breath.

The market of Aldoria received the sight of the Primordial Villain in full regalia, and lost its collective mind.

"Aaaah! He’s come to conquer Aldoria!"

"We’re already conquered, you idiot! Run anyway!"

A cabbage vendor fainted backward into his own produce. A carter threw himself off his bench and offered the entire cart to nobody in particular, horse included. Two veterans in the queue dropped flat on the cobbles, arms over their helmets.

"Take the cart! Take the whole cart!"

By the potion stall, a boy hid his coppers behind his back.

Quinlan watched all of it with deep, genuine enjoyment, then finally addressed the hysterical crowd.

"There’s a line," he announced reasonably. "I’m merely waiting my turn."

Nobody heard a word of it. The screaming continued, a door slammed somewhere, then another, then an entire street of doors.

"...Okay." He sighed and started forward.

The queue came apart at his first step, labyrinth explorers and farmhands scattering out of his path, diving behind stalls, pressing themselves flat against the shopfronts.

When the dust settled, exactly one obstacle remained between the Primordial Villain and the labyrinth gate.

Two girls. One rusted sword, held between them in four shaking hands, its tip wobbling through an area the size of a barrel.

He stopped in front of them and said nothing at all.

"W-w-we..." The taller one had planted herself half a step in front of the smaller one, which would have been more impressive if her knees weren’t knocking together audibly. "We hope to one day... to be like the Scarlet Lilies! Sir! My lord! Your Villainy!"