Jackal Among Snakes

Chapter 644: Conspiring to Steal Valor

“How were you actually born?” Anneliese asked the horseman on his steed of shadows as they walked through the lifeless Shadowlands.

Other than some mutterings between the ancient heroes—some of whom had become fast friends, after putting aside their desire to genocide the other—Anneliese’s incessant questions to their escort Shadowlander was the only sound permeating this endless dreary place. She was asking questions that Argrave himself wanted the answers to as they charted their course and remade this realm without further intervention.

“I don’t know how I was born,” the rider responded, trudging his steed across the mesas.

He created bridges of shadows to span the gaps between the separate grassy plateaus, allowing everyone present to walk freely toward where the so-called Manumitter awaited. It was there where Argrave would undoubtedly be used as a cudgel against Traugott, to be discarded when the time was right. Though he listened to the exchanges between Anneliese and the black knight, he also formulated ideas for how they could emerge from this all on top.

“You simply came to be, as you are now?” Anneliese pressed.

“No. We are all born as the creatures that you fought against—the lowest of the low. They are the detritus that is expelled upon your world when the Hopeful makes his millennial bargain with the Hopeless. Within our hierarchy, we fight ever upward. When a lesser defeats his better, they are promoted. This brutality maintains the iron will needed to resist the hunger, should the darkness ever fade away.”

They had already established that the Hopeless was Gerechtigkeit, yet this talk of bargains brought Argrave pause.

Anneliese asked the question in Argrave’s head. “Gerechtigkeit—the Hopeless—makes a bargain with your leader?”

“Yes. In exchange for releasing some of this millennia’s detritus—those who could not advance to a higher status in the one thousand years—the Hopeless gives the Hopeful the power to reassert his authority and bring new life into our abyssal realm. We possess a cycle, too. Ours is one where only the greatest rise upward, perpetually. This is all in preparation for the Final Fight, where we will do battle with the hounds of hunger and banish them from our bodies. We need only the best of the best when that day finally comes.”

Argrave agreed with an earlier statement: this was brutal. All of those people that they’d slain here were competing amongst each other to rise higher. Those that didn’t win the struggle were released upon Argrave’s world, where they were exposed to their hunger. Argrave had felt the hounds of hunger. It was only with the Fruit of Being allowing him to ward it away that he’d been able to suppress them. That, and his absurd mind.

Anneliese sounded fascinated as she inquired, “But where does this new life come from?”

“Only the Hopeful and his lieutenants are privy to that information.” A bridge of darkness stemmed out from the rider’s feet, and their party began to cross a valley.

“You’re being awfully forthcoming about that information,” the Rose’s founder, Bhaltair, commented.

“Any information could help you. You’re already dead. Your point of entry will be watched by the Hopeful himself, stopping any escape,” he answered simply. “And you released me.”

Argrave studied him. “You can feel gratitude?”

The rider stopped. Argrave did, too, half a step after. By the time Argrave was going to ask what was wrong, the rider resumed his route. “I must return to the shadows. I need updates on where the Manumitter hides. Continue to progress where I run to, and expect my return shortly.”

so they wouldn’t be ambushed. Argrave, meanwhile, wondered if their

imagine you heard what he said?” Argrave

said quite a

no disrespect to Argrave’s power—none of us could do a

consoled. “And if you’ll remember, that thing staggered away from me in terror after I

never faded,” Emperor Balzat countered, completely ignorant of the joke Argrave was making—it was hard to show sarcasm in one’s voice when everyone was forced to use a monotonous voice not so dissimilar

attempting to

hell does manumit even

Chu emperor said. From what Argrave knew, he had outlawed such a thing in his

this narrative on Amazon, report the

continued. “Giventhat Traugott is manumitting some of the Shadowlanders here, and he’s enough of a threat that that the tyrannical Hopeful would give us freedom in this empire he so zealously guards… there may be opportunity here amongst those freedom fighters

as vehemently as he could—he sounded neutral even in anger. “I’m not working alongside that damned snake. The moment that I lay eyes on his smug face, I’m using [Apollyon], and I’m ending his damnable life. He’s not

going to kill him, I’m afraid, long before you even

was taken aback by her competitive confidence

built a foundational movement that’s enough of a threat to the Hopeful’s

grunted in displeasure, but he couldn’t deny the good sense of the suggestion. The alternative was fighting the Hopeful and all of his lieutenants in open combat. The idea was

act with discretion,” Argrave agreed. “But I don’t retract what I said. Traugott’s existence is too much

“Our escort is taking his time, is he

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basked in the shadows and the abyss, reveling in the sense of nothingness that it gave him after his time enduring the harrowing hunger of the changed realm that Argrave had created. It took immense willpower to not become a mindless beast before the hounds of hunger, as those that were lesser than him so often became. That which Argrave and Anneliese created subjected him

was not loyal due to the bonds of servitude alone. Protection from the hunger was immensely important to him. Before the hounds, he felt lesser—a shell of himself. It took immense willpower not to devolve into a slobbering beast, like those he commanded. Yet… even still, he couldn’t deny something that the

and smell. It brought with it other aspects of life that the rider had so long ago forgotten. Yet… this sense of forgetfulness… it said so much, yet too little.

of these strange sentiments only reinforced what he knew—the Manumitter, Argrave… both needed to die, right alongside the company they kept. This heresy had to be purged with a steady hand, and the Shadowlands had to become black

interfere with the purity of his servitude. Such things as gratitude were fostered by malignant presences that undermined the Hopeful’s Grand

because he had to—because he wanted to. Without a

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at the sleeping adopted princess. Elenore stroked Sophia’s hair gently, then pulled up the covers of her blanket and left her there. Then, she

be a good mother,” he told