They turned back toward the castle.

The crowd parted as they walked, still murmuring and still watching. Some of them were crying, tears of joy, or just the emotion of losing your homes... and now seeing the cause and throwing rotten tomatoes and many other pieces of garbage at him.

It was like a dream come true.

Some of them were still holding the vegetables they hadn’t thrown. A child waved at Darion. He nodded at the child and kept moving.

Aldric walked between the knights, his head down, his hands still bound. The tomato pulp had dried on his chest. The cabbage leaf stuck to his shoulder.

Darion walked ahead of him, thinking.

The people of Percvale had been happy, really happy.

Throwing rotten tomatoes and pieces of garbages at a King of a kingdom that was supposedly stronger than them just sounded impossible.

They had chanted his name. They had cheered. They had thrown garbage at a king and laughed while doing it.

He had given them that.

He thought about what he had become.

Two months ago he was Julian, a young boy man from Earth with an unremarkable life and a truck that had ended it.

Then as the hated son of an Emperor, a Bastard and now he was Darion, Baron of Percvale, q Necromancer. He had burned a village. He had overseen the fall of a kingdom’s battle force. He had captured a king. He had stripped that king naked and watched him break on a stone floor while a wolf stood over him.

He had crossed a line today.

Not the first line. Probably not the last. But a line nonetheless.

He could feel it sitting in his chest, the knowledge that he had done something the old version of himself would have called monstrous.

He looked at Aldric.

The former king was walking without resistance, his eyes fixed on the ground ahead of him. He looked smaller than he had that morning. The clothes didn’t fit. The posture had collapsed. Whatever dignity he had carried into the room was gone now, left behind on that stone floor with his shredded robes.

---

Aldric looked up as they passed through the castle gate.

He had not seen Percvale properly on the way in. The carriage had been dark. The cloth over his mouth had made it hard to see. But now he was walking through it, and he was seeing it.

The knights who stood at the gate were not the starving, hollow-cheeked men he had expected. They were disciplined and well-fed. Their armor was repaired. Their weapons were ready. They looked at him with cold eyes and did not flinch.

The courtyard was organized. Supplies stacked against the walls. Knights moving with purpose. A woman carrying bandages toward the barracks. A man sharpening a sword on a whetstone.

This was not a dying barony.

This was a territory that was recovering.

Aldric had thought Percvale was pathetic. He had said as much to his advisors. A dying place, a revolving door of ineffective Barons, a debt that nobody would ever pay. He had sent two hundred knights because he thought the job would be easy.

He had been wrong.

The knights who had fought his men had not fought like starving men.

And he didn’t know that Darion was a Necromancer. He didn’t know that the ’boy’ could be this brave, smart and vicious.

How he had been handled in the hall, he wasn’t sure he had ever been frustrated that way before.

He had underestimated this territory, this Baron, and everything about what Percvale had become.

And it had cost him everything.

---

They reached the castle.

Darion turned to Maret, who was standing in the doorway with her arms crossed, watching Aldric, her expression neutral.

She had sure seen a lot of unusual and weird things since the arrival of Darion as Baron and wasn’t too surprised anymore.

Though it was kind of surprising that King Aldric, leader of Valdenmoor, was standing here, a lot of frustration on his face. Upon him was tomatoes and many other garbages.

"Pack some food," Darion said. "For Aldric. And for the knights who will take him back."

Maret nodded. She disappeared into the kitchen without a word.

Darion looked at the two knights he had already chosen for the journey. Both of them were senior, experienced and capable of handling themselves if something went wrong on the road.

"You take him back to Valdenmoor," Darion said. "When you reach the outskirts, stop the carriage. Untie the horses from it. Leave the carriage there. Ride the horses back here."

The senior knight nodded. "And the prisoner?"

"Leave him with the carriage. He can walk the rest of the way."

The knight’s mouth twitched. Almost a smile. "Understood."

Maret returned with a pack of food. Bread, dried meat and a small skin of water. Nothing fancy. Enough for a day’s journey.

Darion took it and handed it to Aldric.

The king of Valdenmoor looked at the pack. Then at Darion. Then he took it without saying anything.

"Safe journey," Darion told him.

They walked him to the carriage. The same carriage that had brought him here. The horses were already hitched. The knights climbed onto the driver’s bench. Aldric was helped inside, his hands still bound, his face still pale.

Darion stood at the gate and watched them go.

The carriage rolled through the streets of Percvale, past the burned houses, past the people who stopped to watch it pass. No one threw anything this time. They just watched.

When the carriage reached the outskirts of Valdenmoor, the knights did exactly as Darion had instructed.

They stopped. They climbed down. They untied the horses from the carriage. They rode back.

Simple as that. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Aldric sat inside the carriage, alone and listened to the sound of hooves fading into the distance.

The knights were already riding back to Percvale at full speed.

"Last person to Percvale have to shave his hairs off and be hairless for a three months!"

"Hahahaha!"

Thoom!