* ??? POV *
"Oh I miss her already." I thought, while looking at a picture of Latina
An Unlady-like snort echoed from beside him that nearly caused him to wonder if it was a woman that just did that.
"You keep pampering her like this and she won't grow, we won't get any grandchildren at this rate." My wife said
"They have barely even received any decent training, they're wasting their potential." She sighed
I frowned, wondering why she had to be so negative every time. "Why can't you live like royalty more?"
"Why do we even need to train her when we have the money to buy powerful artifacts for her that most can only dream of?" I asked, genuinely curious.
The face she made when she looked at me would have caused me to look away in shame if we were the only ones here.
"Arthur." She began
"Are you genuinely serious? How does that make sense to you?"
"We are royalty, we should live like it." I argued
She continued looking at me for about ten seconds before she sighed and looked away while shaking her head.
"Nevermind." She uttered
"Lets just continue the discussion, the reason why we called this meeting in the first place."
"As I'm sure everyone should already know by now, the elves have declared war on our kingdom. We have the advantage in numbers and better magic equipment, however the quality of their soldiers is higher than ours."
"While this may seem in our favour, it's really not." She continued
"Our magic equipment, while better than the elves', isn't that great and the elves have contracted spirits on their sides."
"What I propose we do is summon another hero, specifically one that we can control since all we did with the last one was abuse him until he took his own life." She said while subtly narrowing her eyes at me.
I immediately agreed with her idea of summoning a new hero, hoping to pacify her.
The other nobles in the room also immediately agreed with her, noticing her annoyed mood and they were not stupid enough to get on her bad side.
Realising this, she rolled her eyes and muttered something inaudible underneath her breath. The court mage went to ask a question, then stopped, wondering if it was wise with the mood the queen was in right now.
My wife realised this and gave him a firm nod, causing him to sigh with relief.
"My queen, the gods allowed us a single chance to borrow their power, how are we going to summon a new hero if we already used up that chance by summoning the previous hero?" He asked
"Good question." She started
"I'm assuming everyone here knows about the fallen titan that our ancestors found five hundred years ago?"
Everyone replied positively, but then the court mage asked, " My queen are you saying…you experimented on the fallen titan and found some way to harness its divine power!?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying." She smirked
The silence that followed hit harder than even the revelation itself, as if the very air had forgotten how to breathe.
Then it broke
Whispers and murmurs began to spread across the entire meeting room as the nobles instantly started conversing with each other about what this meant.
I myself had already known about the experiments my wife had done on the creature so it wasn't exactly shocking, what was shocking however was the fact that she had apparently found some way to literally harness its power and use it to summon a new hero.
"W-Why wasnt I aware of this?" The court mage forced out
The queen's brow raised as she looked at the court mage, "No offence to you Rylin, but you weren't ready for that. And besides, I wanted disposable people whose deaths wouldn't affect me much."
Suddenly a random noble interjected, "My queen, I don't mean to be rude but don't you think summoning a hero with that kind of power is a waste?"
"How so?" She asked
Seemingly filled with new energy, the noble continued, "If we can harness such power, shouldn't we use it to improve our kingdom and our soldiers, or better yet, find some way to use that power for ourselves."
The face he made while saying this would have made even some goblins jealous.
"I have thought about that yes, however it is impossible. From our experiments we have identified a new source of power that is completely identical to the energy the gods use to summon a new hero whenever we pray to them."
"The bad news is that while we have identified this incredibly powerful energy, we have no way of doing anything with it other than storing it."
"We have tried placing that energy into some willing participants but it didn't really go so well, we even tried putting the energy into our artifacts….the artifacts just explode."
"So right now, the only thing we can do, is store the energy, bring it to the church and place that energy near the statue of the gods. And then using that energy, we can summon a new hero."
"Maybe we ca-"
Before I could finish my sentence, two things happened. The necklaces on both my and wife's neck suddenly crumbled to pieces and my ring glowed with a small red light.
A deafening silence suddenly descended upon the meeting room as everyone didn't so much as move.
My wife and I looked at each other in fear and horror, wondering if somebody had just cast an illusion spell on us.
My hands started trembling, my throat was now suddenly dry and my head started to spin. Everyone was looking at me worriedly and trying to communicate something to me, but I couldn't hear anything. It felt like I was on my deathbed, about to die ... .only in this case I had no children at my death bed, the necklaces breaking means ... .my children….my Latina, had died.
And then I fainted.
* ??? POV end *
* Elatina Seryane POV *
The fear I felt when I saw my necklace crumble to pieces nearly caused me to choke on my own spit. I didnt even realise when my husband had fainted, it was my court mage's worried shouting that had caused me to realise.
My child was killed….
I sat on my throne frozen in shock and fear for a while before I remembered something. My husband's ring had glowed in a red light…..that was when my fear intensified.
'Why was Latina in hell!??" I thought
The ring had a feature that would alert us when our daughter was gravely injured in any known dimension, and a red light meant she was in hell when she died.
'But that's impossible.' I thought in confusion
'We have banned any type of practice in demonology and demonic magic, and everything related to hell.'
'And latina is a Ice mage, she doesnt know a thing about dimensional magic."
And then it hit me, she must have asked one of those fucking cultists
"FUCK!" I shouted without even realising
"What is wrong with this girl?" I softly said, nearly causing my tears to spill over
I sat there for about five minutes before I made up my mind. I quickly got up from my throne and made my way over to the unconscious body of my husband and took the ring from his finger and placed it on my finger.
"Rylin." I coldly said
He stammered and stuttered for a while before he managed to answer, " Y-Yes, my queen?"
"Gather the strongest force of mages you can, I want them ready in two days maximum."
"Yes my queen." He responded
"Everyone else ready your clans for battle, and call the General here, she will be needed."
The same noble that had suggested using the titan's power for our own benefit went to say something, before a single look from me caused him to immediately shut up and run out of the room.
'The ring should have recorded the exact location she died, her father is paranoid like that. We are most likely dealing with either a single Lesser demon, a group of intelligent infant demons, or a single infant demon that strongly inherited the bloodline of one of the princes of hell.'
I looked at the ring and then bit my other finger, on my other hand where the ring wasn't on. I lifted my bleeding finger and lined it up with my ring finger and allowed the blood to drop on it.
The red glow intensified and coordinates started appearing in my mind and I sighed in relief.
'Thankfully, it's just the first layer of hell that should be manageable…..It doesn't matter if we can't find the exact demon who did it, we are going to go there and we are going to kill every single demon we see.'
I noticed my husband finally awaking out of the corner of my eye and rushed over to him.
The first thing he did when he awoke was check his neck to see if his necklace was still there ... .he nearly fainted again when he realised he wasn't dreaming and our child had truly died.
"My love…what are we gonna do now." He said with tears in his eyes
"Don't worry my love, we will avenge her ... .and if we can't, I'll make sure to destroy as many of them as I can."
"Wait." Arthur suddenly realised
"You're going to hell!? No no no no, you can't do that…..y-you will die." he said, the tears coming back in his eyes.
"I won't die, and I'm needed just in case it's a Lesser demon that killed our Latina, I won't be able to kill it by myself ... .stall it maybe, but with myself and the army I plan on bringing we might have a chance of killing it for good."
He stuttered for a while, seemingly trying to find some words before he sighed and got up and then took off another of his rings.
"Here, take this." He offered
"I wont let you die, ill let you borrow my staff since yours was destroyed and ill enchant your robes myself….I really wouldn't mind coming with you but I know that's impossible with the situation with our kingdom and the elves. " He finished this off with a quick kiss on my lips that caused a slight smile to crawl its way up my face.