Chapter 166: Sir Quacks-a-lot!

The final destination loomed on the horizon: The Royal Capital.

The heart of the Empire.

The epicenter of all political maneuvering, assassination plots, and high-society venom.

They were no longer touring. They were marching to war.

Duke Kaelus von Nacht stood by the open carriage door. He wore his darkest, most imposing formal attire, a long coat of midnight-blue velvet layered over black mythril chainmail, a high collar framing his pale, flawless face.

Requiem hung heavy at his hip.

His violet eyes swept the courtyard, radiating a cold, untouchable, arrogant authority that commanded absolute silence.

Standing opposite him were Archduke Leonidas and Duchess Lysandra.

"Well, Kaelus," Leonidas sighed, his usual boisterous energy subdued, his arm wrapped tightly around his wife’s waist. "I suppose this is it. You are about to march into the snake pit, and I can’t do anything about it."

"The Capital is not a pit, Leonidas," Kaelus sneered softly, adjusting his leather gloves. "It is a garden. And I am simply going to prune the weeds. Ensure you send the mythril shipments on schedule, or I will return and freeze your remaining ribs."

Leonidas laughed, a sharp, barking sound. "You wouldn’t dare, you miserable icicle. Give the Emperor my regards. Or better yet, punch him in his shiny jaw for me."

While the Archdukes exchanged their uniquely aggressive version of fond farewells, Seraphina stood a few feet away, holding the pink ember-puppy tightly in her arms.

She was looking at the boy standing nervously by the courtyard fountain.

Cassian was back in his rigid, perfect Paladin posture. His hands were clasped behind his back, his icy-blue eyes fixed firmly on the ground.

He looked miserable.

Seraphina waddled over to him, the heavy skirts of her travel gown swishing against the cobblestones.

"Hi, Cassian," Seraphina said softly.

Cassian flinched, snapping his head up. A faint, treacherous blush immediately dusted his cheeks.

He looked around frantically, ensuring none of the Vanguard or the Archdukes were paying close attention.

He quickly reached into the folds of his pristine white tunic.

With a rapid, jerky motion, he shoved something into Seraphina’s hand.

"Here," Cassian muttered, his voice tight, his face burning bright red. He immediately looked away, staring at a crack in the stone wall as if it were fascinating. "I... I procured this from the kitchens this morning before prayer. It is highly irregular. Do not tell the High Priest."

Seraphina looked down at her hand.

Wrapped in a crisp, white linen napkin was a perfectly baked, sugar-dusted cream puff.

Seraphina’s heart swelled with adoration. The stiff, devout little Ice Prince had risked his holy standing to smuggle her a pastry for the road.

"Thank you, Cassian," Seraphina smiled brilliantly, carefully tucking the napkin into the deep pocket of her gown. "I will eat it when Papa Duke is brooding. It will cheer me up!"

Cassian swallowed hard, finally looking down at her. The icy-blue eyes were soft, filled with a genuine, boyish sadness.

"Be safe in the Capital, Lady Seraphina," Cassian whispered. "The nobles there... they do not fight with swords. They fight with words and poison. Keep your guard up."

"I will," Seraphina promised firmly. She reached out, patting his arm. "And you be safe here. Don’t let the priests make you too boring. I will see you again."

Cassian nodded slowly. "May the Light guide your path."

"Seraphina."

Kaelus’s deep, vibrating baritone cut across the courtyard. It was not a request; it was the absolute command of the Sovereign of the Vanguard.

It was time.

Seraphina turned, offering one last, bright wave to Duchess Lysandra, who blew her a kiss, and Uncle Leo, who offered a thumbs-up.

She marched toward the carriage.

Kaelus reached down, his large, black-gloved hands spanning her waist, lifting her effortlessly from the volcanic stone.

He didn’t hand her off; he held her securely against his chestplate for a brief second, his violet eyes flashing down to hers, an unspoken promise of protection passing between them.

He set her into the dim, plush interior of the carriage and stepped up after her, gripping the heavy iron handle of the door.

Kaelus looked out over the Obsidian Gate one final time. He met Leonidas’s eyes. A silent, profound understanding passed between the two warlords.

The Southern flank was secure. The anomaly was dead. The true enemy lay ahead.

Kaelus pulled the door shut.

CLACK.

The heavy latches engaged. The magical insulation arrays activated, cutting off the volcano’s humid, sulfurous air and plunging the cabin into cool, quiet, heavily warded isolation.

Outside, Sir Lucas raised his broadsword high into the morning air.

"VANGUARD! FORMATION!" Lucas roared, his voice echoing like thunder. "WE MARCH FOR THE SPIRE!"

With a synchronized, earth-shaking rumble, the fifty heavy warhorses surged forward.

The mythril carriage groaned, wheels grinding against the obsidian road, pulling away from the fiery fortress and turning its armored bulk toward the North-East.

Inside the cabin, Seraphina scrambled onto the velvet bench, pulling the smuggled cream puff from her pocket. She looked across the carriage at Kaelus.

The Archduke of the North was already unrolling a massive map of the Imperial Capital.

The soft, doting father from the patisserie was gone.

The terrifying, calculating, utterly ruthless political predator had returned.

His violet eyes were narrowed, glowing with a cold, strategic light, anticipating every trap, every assassin, and every lie that awaited them in the golden palace.

Seraphina took a massive bite of the cream puff, her cheeks bulging happily.

Let the nobles scheme. Let the Emperor plot. Let the high-society vipers bare their fangs.

They had absolutely no idea what was coming for them. The Reaper of the North was arriving, and he was bringing his very own, exclusively packed, cute little monster!

***

The journey from the suffocating caldera of the Obsidian Gate to the opulent plains of the Imperial Capital was expected to take precisely eighteen days.

This was not a forced military march; this was a highly visible, heavily armored diplomatic convoy, moving with the slow, terrifying, unyielding momentum of a glacier.

Inside the heavily warded, climate-controlled interior of the mythril carriage, the atmosphere had settled into a comfortable, rhythmic, incredibly domestic monotony.

Duke Kaelus von Nacht sat at his mahogany writing desk, surrounded by the usual, towering mountains of bureaucratic parchment. However, his quill had not touched ink for nearly twenty minutes.

The Archduke of the North was currently engaged in the most perplexing, baffling observation of his entire military career.

He was watching his daughter play with paper ducks.

To the untrained, mundane eye, Seraphina von Nacht was simply a six-year-old child sitting cross-legged on a plush velvet rug, surrounded by dozens of folded origami animals, happily mumbling to herself.

But Kaelus, the Supreme Commander of the Vanguard, a man who read battlefields the way a scholar read a book, was beginning to notice a deeply unsettling, specific pattern in her ’playtime.’

Seraphina had not merely scattered her toys across the floorboards. She had established a complex, multi-tiered, topographically accurate siege.

Using the heavy, velvet cushions of the carriage benches, she had created a central, elevated fortress.

Guarding this fortress was the massive, stuffed dire-bear Sir Boris had given her, acting as the primary defensive titan.

But the true mastery lay in the ducks.

Seraphina had folded over sixty paper waterfowl, utilizing different colors of parchment to designate distinct military units.

The ducks folded from the silver-threaded Imperial tax ledgers were grouped into tight, interlocking phalanx formations, holding the front line.

The ducks folded from Duke Voran’s confiscated iron tariffs were positioned on the high ground of a discarded boot-box, clearly acting as long-range artillery support.

And then there were the frogs.

She had folded a dozen paper frogs from the green diplomatic missives of the Verdant Reach, and she was currently maneuvering them through the ’valley’ of the rug in a classic, textbook pincer movement, attempting to flank the dire-bear’s left side.

"Sir Quacks-a-lot, hold the line," Seraphina muttered under her breath, moving a particularly jagged, fiercely folded silver duck to the forefront of the phalanx. "The green hoppers are attempting a stealth insertion. Deploy the balsa-wood barricade."

She reached out and placed her rounded, incredibly non-lethal balsa-wood training sword horizontally across the carpet, effectively creating a physical chokepoint that forced the paper frogs into a narrow kill-zone.

Kaelus stared at the arrangement. He blinked slowly.

’That... that is a flawless execution of the Iron-Valley Bottleneck strategy,’

Kaelus’s brain misfired, grinding its gears in utter disbelief.