Romulus was silent for several moments after the Revenant-King spoke.
Darian King.
That was not a coincidence. The implied threat of the creature’s words wasn’t lost on Romulus, but he first needed answers to something more pressing.
“What do you mean, prepared to die? And how do you know my name?” he asked while his heart raced.
“You think your Eidos can fool me, boy?” the undead asked with an ethereal tone of cold amusement. “I have lived for over a thousand winters within this place, which is both my home and my tomb. For all that you have learned, you are still a boy, woefully unprepared for the burdens you will face. Be it your personal vicissitudes, your family’s legacy, or ruling the Midnight Court.”
“Wait, what?” Romulus asked as his blood ran cold. “My family’s—?”
“This world is a game to you, Traveler,” the Autarch interrupted, “but that is your mistake. For all that you and your kind may believe this Realm to be little more than an idle amusement, it is far more. You walk within a world that has existed for longer than you can plausibly fathom. Eternus is currently a minor curiosity for your kind, but it will soon have far greater ramifications. The only true question is whether you are ready for the Revelation that is to come.”
“I don’t understand,” Romulus said while his grip on Lightsbane tightened until his knuckles whitened.
“I know,” the creature assured him coldly. “You will, in time.”
Romulus stared in confusion while his heart thundered and the Revenant-King rose from the throne, the black warplate upon his skeletal body flaring with cold fire.
“Hold—Just, just wait a minute, you still haven’t told me—!”
“To rule over Death, Darian King, you must know Death,” the Autarch informed him imperiously while stepping down onto the dais. “I have waited far, far too long to be stalled by your quibbles. There will be time for that later,” the spectre said firmly, and the force of its words and presence caused Romulus’ jaw to click shut.
Lightsbane pulsed reassuringly at his side, and its encouragement allowed him to relax marginally, despite his apparent danger. His runeblade had warned him of things that would threaten him in the past, yet now, it seemed wholly at ease.
That meant something. It was like the sword was asking him for patience.
“First, we must proceed with the reason for your coming here,” the Revenant-King continued.
It lifted its left gauntlet and opened its fingers, conjuring a flash of blue fire that resolved itself into an ornate book with black metal for its cover, bound shut by chains of silver. “The Dark Lady’s Liber Nox. You were sent for this, were you not?”
Romulus frowned at the undead creature, but nodded once.
“It is the task of Her Autarch to safeguard and keep this tome, and disseminate its knowledge to Her faithful,” the spectre explained in its echoing whisper. “A Divinarch’s Autarch is their Champion and their most celebrated Chosen. Even the High Priestess of Her faith will answer to Her Autarch, for their word is Her word.”
“I assumed as much,” Romulus said while trying to steady his heartbeat.
“My duty as Her last Autarch has had me here, bound to this place for centuries beyond count. You bear Her Mark, but are you truly prepared to do what you must for Her return? Are you prepared to unleash a tidal wave of terror and darkness, and paint the continent in blood for Her sake?”
Romulus stared at the creature in silent contemplation.
“I…” Romulus began, and then frowned and fell silent again.
The Revenant-King was unsettling. That was simply the truth. The creature knew his name, knew things about his family—he hadn’t forgotten about or glossed over those details. Something very fucking weird was going on, but that didn’t mean the rest of what was happening stopped either. He could hyperfixate on those details, to which he would likely receive answers in due course regardless, or he could deal with what was directly before him.
In the moment, the alarm he felt at his name being known to the Revenant-King was mildly ameliorated by the fact that he knew that Eternus Online had taken his personal information and that Lightsbane was trying to put him at ease. The former meant that it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that the developers had worked his name into the ‘encounter’ to make it more menacing, which he knew some horror games had done to players in the past during the early days of VRMMO games.
The latter point was more of a matter of personal comfort. Lightsbane was his soulbound weapon, and from everything he understood in his admittedly limited experience, it would be bound to aid and protect him, much like Alfred was in real life. To that end, there was a measure of reassurance inherent to the sword’s desire for him to be at ease. That might have been a foolish rationale, but he chose to stick with it.
As to the creature’s question, that was the main sticking point of the entire situation. Lilith had told him what he could expect, with savage detail, and he’d known he wasn’t signing up for some Batman-esque anti-hero stuff with fundamentally noble goals. He was aligning himself to a Goddess of Sin and Death. There was no realistic way to countermand the fact that he had entirely thrown himself in with the presumptive villain Power of Eternus Online.
There was one thing, though, that gave him some proverbial wiggle room.
Agency.
Finally, he came to his answer.
“I don’t know if I accept your premise,” he began while his left hand tapped against Lightsbane’s hilt. “I spoke to the Dark Lady myself, and she made me some concrete promises. One of them was that I could do things my way. I know that doesn’t change the fact that people will come for me, nor the fact I’ll be forced to fight—but that doesn’t mean I need to go on some sort of murderous crusade.”
Romulus closed his eyes, his forefinger and thumb rubbing at them as he tried to order his thoughts and ignore the anxiety bubbling in his gut. [Indomitable] helped, but it couldn’t wholly ameliorate the immensity of the situation.
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“You’re speaking about this from a very biased viewpoint. Sure, I understand that there are certain immutable facts about what it means to accept Lilith’s power, but a ‘tidal wave of terror and death’? ‘Paint the continent in blood’? That’s so…” he trailed off and sighed again. “Look, no offense or anything, but you can’t really be that much of a cliche, right? You’re the fucking Revenant-King,” he said while facing the wraith with as much courage as he could muster. “You cannot be this one-dimensional.”
The creature tilted its head at his words, but seemed to be waiting for him to continue.
Romulus did so, and quietly thanked Lilith that the creature was listening.
“There are other ways to spread Lilith’s Faith,” he explained while keeping his gaze locked on the undead. “Where I come from, we learned a long time ago that fear might be a useful tool, but it also tends to blow up pretty fucking spectacularly. If I have to rebuild Lilith’s following, I think changing the perspective that the Pantheon built for her Faith and Magic would be a great start. Death is a natural part of the cycle, and Sin is a part of who we are as people. I think there’s something to be said for that. She’s the Goddess, or Divinarch, I guess, of Order as well—right?”
“Correct,” the Revenant-King answered in an unreadable tone.
“Then why not build something? I’m not against blood for the—well, blood for the Dark Lady,” he said while catching himself, “but I’m not about to go full murderhobo blindly. I studied history. I studied sociology. I have some education about this stuff.”
“And what will you do, Romulus, if you are faced with a foe that cannot see reason? Will you attempt to parley regardless, even at the cost of your own reputation and pride? Will you retreat in the face of stubborn refusal to heed your words?”
Romulus felt his fear fade almost entirely, and he shook his head.
“No. I meant what I said. I know what I signed up for. I have no interest in becoming a crazy warlord, but if someone really refuses to see reason and they stand in my way? Well, I’m speaking without experience when I say this, but I have no intention of becoming another Valerian. I’ll become the Augustus she needs, not the Nero her enemies expect.”
The Revenant-King was silent for a long moment, then inclined his head.
“She chose better than I believed,” he said in his echoing voice. “You grasp the failings that led to our downfall better than if I had tried to impress them upon you. In my living lifetime, I, too, reached those same conclusions. To surpass what came before, we must build, not mindlessly destroy. The Dark Lady chose her new Autarch well.”
Romulus almost sagged at the creature’s words, and let out a mirthless laugh.
“When I woke up this morning, I didn’t think I’d be having an existential crisis about becoming a nascent conqueror.”
“The calling is never easy,” the Revenant-King said, placing his blade tip-down against the marble floor. “But it calls us regardless. The Dark Lady gave you the choice, and you still must make it. Freeing Her was the first step, and bonding with your new runeblade was the second.”
Romulus looked down at Lightsbane, which pulsed happily.
“Yours was the first Essence that blade ever reaped, allowing it to act as a secondary safety net. So long as that sword exists, you cannot be permanently killed,” the Revenant-King explained in a grave tone, as if to impress the importance of the topic on Romulus. “It will grow as you grow and be an anchor point for your resurrection should you fall in battle.”
Romulus looked down at the weapon in silence and felt a pulse of resolve from it.
“The third and final step is to take the Liber Nox and embrace Death. Claim your place as Her Autarch, and all the burdens, glories, and horrors that come with it.”
The Revenant-King lifted the tome, and Romulus felt his gaze drawn to it.
“I cannot tell you it will be either easy or fair,” the undead continued coldly. “The path before you is terrible, even compared to the path I walked in my own life. I at least lived in a world that knew of Her glory. This one does not. You will face resistance, hatred, and fear at every turn. You will be reviled. You will be seen as a living apocalypse.”
“I’ll be expected to kill everyone in my path…”
“You will be expected to become a King,” the Autarch corrected imperiously. “Death is not an Evil, no matter what the arbitrary alignments of the Pantheon decree it to be. It is necessary. It is natural. The truly selfish cannot master power over Death, for to understand Death, one must first understand mortality. To understand mortality means to love mortality, and all the beauty it enables and creates.”
Romulus blinked at that and looked back toward the undead monarch fully.
“You and I, Romulus, are not so weak as to flee from Death like the lesser servants of the Dark Lady wish to. They wield the Dark Mana out of fear of their demise, but they are fundamentally cowards no matter the power they accrue. We, Her Chosen, are not so easily shaken. We are indomitable.”
Romulus thought he saw a shadow of a grin in the flaming skull. That seemed like an intentional reference, though he couldn’t be sure.
“You will unleash a tidal wave of blood,” the Autarch continued, “but so too will the shadow of your power be a shelter for those that can find succour nowhere else. You will build, Romulus, not just because you wish to—but because Death should be approached with joy, and without a nation that accepts and understands that, this world truly is lost.”
Romulus relaxed further as he listened, feeling his lingering doubts slowly fade.
“The Dark Faith is about strength, boy—strength of body, mind, and spirit. The strong dictate the path, but the strength of one facet alone is not enough. You must embrace your Sins, and be their master, not their servant. Build the Empire you want to see through your own power. Only the Dark Lady can offer you that freedom, and only you can choose to embrace it.”
Romulus stepped forward as he listened, and his heart rate increased, though it was out of anticipation this time. “So with enough power, I can dictate the way everything goes? That’s what you’re saying? I can make it my vision entirely, just like Lilith promised?”
“The privilege of power, Romulus, is being able to wield it however you see fit.”
A final kernel of hesitation stirred then, and Romulus gave it voice.
“What if I’m not strong enough?”
The Revenant-King’s skull cracked into an almost warm laugh.
“You will never know if you never try.”
At that moment, Romulus felt something click.
Hadn’t he wanted an adventure like no other?
His resolve firmed and settled into place immutably.
“Have you ever regretted becoming her Autarch?” he asked the wraith.
“Not for a single moment of my existence,” The Revenant-King replied stoically.
Romulus approached the remaining distance immediately thereafter, coming to a halt before the spectre. The brighter light within the fire skull’s eye sockets watched him unblinkingly. Romulus felt himself smile, and turned to look at the Liber Nox. All his life, he’d been told what to do, how to do it, and why. He’d never chosen for himself, not really. Not until he won the coffin. Not until he’d freed Lilith.
Whatever came next, it was his choice.
“Alea iacta est,” Romulus said with quiet reverence. The die is cast.
He reached out and took the Liber Nox in his hands.
Light erupted around him the moment he did, and the world turned white.