Wortenia Senki (LN) - Volume 22 - Chapter Ep

Epilogue

It had been two weeks since Queen Radine had announced her reforms. Two horses galloped at night. The ones holding the horses’ reins were small, hooded figures with attire that made their gender vague.

They rode south. Clouds hung in the sky with the occasional nighttime drizzle falling over them. This weather didn’t favor travelers, but it was perfect for people trying to remain unseen.

Given the plate armor they wore under their cloaks, these two riders must have had a reason to be out and about. The bank of the great River Thebes came into view as they rode.

“Your Majesty, we should let our horses rest,” said one of the riders, a woman, to the other as she disembarked.

The other rider, who was Lupis, also got off the saddle.

“We’ve been riding for so long. Are you tired, Your Majesty?” asked the rider, who turned out to be Meltina. She gathered twigs from the area to start a campfire.

But Lupis didn’t answer.

“Your Majesty?” called out Meltina fearfully. Still no good...

In Meltina’s eyes, Lupis looked like a dead woman. Although Lupis was very much alive and not a zombie, of course, she was listless to a critical degree. Her eyes stared blankly into the air and hardly responded to Meltina’s voice. Lupis would eat when presented with food or sleep when shown a bedroll, but she lacked the will to do anything.

Lupis’s fear of that man had ground her heart into dust.

Ryoma Mikoshiba!

Meltina clenched her fist in anger as she recited the name of the hateful devil who had toppled Pireas and reduced Lupis from the queen to a wandering vagrant. Her heart burned with anger and bloodlust for him. She also had an intense thirst for revenge for the death of Mikhail, who’d been a colleague and almost like a brother to her for many years. Ryoma Mikoshiba was the cause of all those troubles, and she wanted nothing more than to cut his head from his shoulders and release all her hatred by spitting on him.

But I don’t have the power to do that anymore.

Radine Rhoadserians had become the new queen of Rhoadseria, and the nobles were scrambling to earn her favor. With the backing of the mighty Mikoshiba barony army, the Kingdom of Rhoadseria came to accept Radine’s reign. If Meltina and Lupis wanted to stop that from happening, they should have changed course and hurried back to the capital.

But I have no troops to do that.

The twenty knights Meltina took with them during their escape from the capital had gradually been whittled down by their pursuers or got separated from them in the confusion. By now, the only person still following Queen Lupis’s orders was Meltina.

Even if Lupis were to return to the capital with Meltina, she could not do anything. Those in the kingdom would hold them accountable for their loss in the war and sentence the two to the guillotine. The alternative punishment was putting them under house arrest for the remainder of their days in a secluded home in the countryside.

No, I can’t accept that... She’s the rightful ruler of this land.

Mikhail entrusted Meltina with their queen’s life, and Meltina would do everything to return Lupis to the throne in Pireas.

But who can I rely on for help?

They had shaken off their pursuers, but there was no telling how long that would last. Both needed to find asylum somewhere, but she had difficulty thinking where and who could help them.

Usually I’d go to one of the Rhoadserian noble houses for help.

That choice didn’t seem applicable now. The Mikoshiba barony army would crush any noble house that accepted custody of Lupis.

And now Viscount Gelhart is under arrest and has had his nobles’ faction destroyed.

The nobles’ faction was once the greatest political faction in the kingdom, even eclipsing the royal family. Currently, the new regime had arrested most of the noble houses and pressed charges for years of corruption and lèse-majesté; they would likely be sentenced to execution at a later date.

Thus, Rhoadseria would discard its harmful traditions and become a new country.

Lupis and Meltina saw what they had worked for come to pass. Yet Meltina regretted that these events had come about by the mountain of evidence Count Zeleph had gathered.

We should have made up our minds back then.

She remembered the meeting where Count Bergstone complained about suppressing unrest in the kingdom. Queen Lupis fainted from shock when they reported the peasant uprising, leading to the meeting ending early. It was reasonable to assume that the documents Count Bergstone would have displayed at the time were the same ones Count Zeleph now submitted as evidence.

That thought made it clear they held the trump card but fumbled the timing to use it. While Meltina knew there was no point crying over spilled milk, she couldn’t help but have regrets.

Still, what do we do next?

The women’s only remaining option, if there were no nobles they could rely on within the country, was to go abroad. But the only active rival Rhoadseria had was the O’ltormean Empire.

Myest, Xarooda and Helnesgoula all hold tight trade relations with that man, mused Meltina. We could seek asylum in O’ltormea, but that would require passing through Xarooda. And if we can’t do that, we’ll have to pass through the southern kingdoms.

They were headed south now for lack of a better choice, yet the fact remained Meltina had no plan to speak of.

There’s the Church of Meneos left, I suppose.

The Church had dispatched Cardinal Roland to assist in the northern subjugation, though he had headed south after negotiating with Ryoma. Regrouping with his forces was a possibility.

Maybe turning to them for help is the way to go, she pondered fleetingly. Unfortunately, that idea would never materialize.

A powerful impact suddenly hit Meltina’s right eye. It was when she felt the tears and blood run down her cheek that Meltina fully registered the intense pain. Gripping her eye in agony, she got up and forced Lupis to her feet.

“Your Majesty, we’re under attack!” yelled Meltina.

She swung her sword about, knocking down the rod shurikens flung at them. In the process, the shurikens injured her more and more.

“Meltina!” screamed Lupis, seeing the gruesome state her subordinate was in.

They’re poisoned... No, I’m... I’m going numb...

The attackers were hellbent on not letting them survive because they’d laced the shurikens with poison that gradually sapped her strength. Even so, Meltina had the resolve to fight to her dying breath.

“Your Majesty! Hurry, get on the horse!” shrieked Meltina through her muddled senses.

Once Lupis got on the horse, Meltina poked the horse’s behind with her sword to spur it forward. And then, Meltina’s body spasmed as her consciousness sunk into eternal darkness.

♱

The horse’s loud neighing and breaths echoed through the Thebes riverside. Lupis rode fast to shake off her pursuers, though the horse was on the verge of exhaustion. All the lethargy she felt earlier was gone as Meltina’s devotion somehow brought Lupis to her senses.

Did I give them the slip? Lupis looked back repeatedly to confirm if they still chased her.

Dreadfully, her pursuers were much more tenacious than she was. Another flurry of shurikens tore through the night.

No... I didn’t...

Her regret came far too late. The same poison that claimed Meltina was now eating away at Lupis’s body. She felt her limbs go numb, and her grip on the horse’s reins loosened. Soon, her body fell from the saddle and hit the ground with a painful thud.

The impact of the fall knocked all the air out of Lupis, and her vision dimmed. Even in the face of her encroaching demise, Lupis’s instincts pushed her to run away from her assailants in a desperate struggle to stave off death.

Eventually, her body vanished into the river’s flow.

Lupis Rhoadserians’s story should have ended there, but the Goddess of Fate took pity on her. A man stood downstream from where she had fallen, chanting a verbal thaumaturgy spell. After he’d confirmed something, the man pulled out Lupis’s limp, unconscious body from the river.

“What a bother. This poison complicates things. Hopefully, she can still survive,” whispered Akitake Sudou as he held a hand over Lupis’s forehead, cracking an ironic smile.