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.”

cautious so they wouldn’t be ambushed. Argrave, meanwhile, wondered if their escort meant what he said, or if Argrave’s question of gratitude had scared away the man for some reason. He dismissed the

you heard what

said quite a bit,”

no disrespect to Argrave’s power—none of us could do a damn thing, after all—but even that monstrous

“And if you’ll remember, that thing staggered away from

Balzat countered, completely ignorant of the joke Argrave was making—it was hard to show sarcasm in

whatever reason, is attempting

manumit even mean?” Aurore

what Argrave knew, he had outlawed such a thing in his empire—it made sense that he

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and he’s enough of a threat that that the tyrannical Hopeful would give us freedom in this empire he so

eyes on his smug face, I’m using [Apollyon], and I’m ending

wrong,” Anneliese disagreed. “I’m going to kill him, I’m afraid, long before you

her

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

the Hopeful and all of his

agreed. “But I don’t retract what I said. Traugott’s existence is too much of a threat to let him walk

in agreement, then looked ahead. “Our escort is taking

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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

hounds, he felt lesser—a shell of himself. It took immense willpower not to devolve into a slobbering beast, like those he

more than light, more than sight and sound and smell. It brought with it other aspects of life that the rider had so long ago forgotten. Yet… this

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 once again. No other outcome could be tolerated. Dreams of liberation were just that—fanciful conjurations by those

let trifling sentiments interfere with the purity of his servitude. Such things as gratitude were fostered by

he wanted to.

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

a good