"You're healing well… Combat is definitely still out of the question, but if you're careful, you can do small infusions and spells."
Foster felt for the Zyph in his soul, using a drop to manifest a shard of glass in his palm, no bigger than his thumb.
"If you feel any pain while casting, stop what you're doing immediately and let me know."
"You've got it, Doc."
Regina stood and headed for the door. When she got there, her hand hovered just above the handle. The angle didn't offer much of a view, but Foster still saw the corner of her mouth pinch down in a frown.
"You know, Foster… The world will move on without you if you let it."
"What do you mean?"
Regina shook her head, her blonde tresses slowly dragging themselves across her lower back. She did not answer as she grabbed the knob, twisted it, and left the room.
Foster looked out the artificial window and saw the Wyverns hunting in the valley. Then, he looked at his comrades in the painting, their faces twisted in hope and death. The room suddenly felt too big. Much too big for just one person. The overwhelming need to do something, do anything, gripped him by the throat. Maybe he'd go hunt down August in his desert palace, and they could spar. Or maybe he could take Monica out for a walk around the city—their identities hidden behind illusions. Randall must need help organizing peace negotiations with the demons.
A moment had him dressed and ready to greet the day. Two had him standing on a warp anchor leading to his room in the palace. Three, and long strides carried him towards the private wings of the royal family.
Some servants and nobles who recognized him stopped and bowed when he passed. More people were out and about than usual. Odd. Foster knew almost everyone who frequented the palace with any form of regularity, but there were more nobles he did not recognize than those he did. The servants were directing the foot traffic towards the throne room as well.
Curious, Foster followed the crowd. At some point, the halls became so packed that Foster had to push his way through the many nobles.
A particularly plump and gaudy man bumped into Foster with all his considerable weight. If Foster had been a lesser man, he likely would've fallen and then gotten squished by the golden pig in human clothes.
He rounded on the man, the last thread of Foster's patients nearly snapped, but a voice pulled his attention elsewhere.
"Sir Foster!"
Baba Anai, the old crone, beckoned him with one withered hand, the skin pulled taught over the bones and tendons of her fingers.
Pushing, shouldering, glaring his way through the crowd, Foster soon towered over the old shaman. "Baba? What is going on here? I don't even recognize half of these people… Most of them don't seem to recognize me either."
"They do not recognize you because you skipped the parade held in your honor. These are all the nobles who came to see it."
Foster looked around. Taller than most, he could see a sea of heads filling the hall. Heads of all different colored hair bobbed and shuffled as they followed the flow of traffic downstream toward the epicenter of the palace. Together they looked like one large, mindless organism—or perhaps a herd of domesticated beasts shepherded from one grazing field to the next.
A feeble hand lightly clutched his wrist, "This way, Sir Foster, we can take the servant's passages to the throne room."
"Baba, what is this all about? Why are they here? And why are they headed to the throne room?"
Baba Anai dragged Foster through a door and into a narrow passage populated exclusively by servants and palace staff.
"Have you not heard? The King announced his intentions to continue the war on the demons this morning… His Majesty called all the nobles in the capital to attend some sort of ceremony in a public broadcast."
Was this what Regina was referring to? This crowd of anybody who was somebody called to the palace to move on without him? Foster never wanted fame in the first place—still didn't want it.
Foster ran his tongue over the front of his teeth. Famous or not, if Sebastian wished to besmirch his legacy and throw dirt upon his name, then he would not go down without a fight.
Foster began to walk purposefully, following the crone to the throne room. When she noticed a shift in his demeanor, she dropped his wrist.
"Do you know anything about what ceremony will be done?"
"I'm sorry, Sir Foster, I'm afraid I do not. All I know is that the Pope is somehow involved."
What the hell was Regina not telling him?
"Let's hurry, Baba. I don't like this… I don't like it one bit."
Together, the hero and the crone set off through the tunnels of the servant's passages, dodging the workers as they went about their day. As they approached the throne room, Foster felt the presence of a large crowd, even with his currently dulled Zyph senses. They slipped in with barely any notice, the service halls cleverly hidden from sight behind the raised dias upon which the many thrones sat. The last time he entered this room, Foster threw a severed head at the king.
Foster felt his irritation spike, looking at the back of the raised opulent chair. This time, however, he didn't have a head he could throw.
But Foster was never one to say never.
Staying out of sight and making their way around to the front of the dias, Foster and Anai took up a position against the wall near the front of the massive receiving chamber next to other palace servants. From what he could see, Sebastian stood in front of the throne, speaking to the Pope in hushed whispers.
The pope, an ancient fossil of a man, placated Sebastian while the grizzled man with fading lavender hair spoke sternly. They continued like that for several minutes when suddenly, change overtook the crowd. The King and the Pope turned to look, finding the sea of people parting for a petite woman with wheat blonde hair dressed in the cream-colored habit typical of women of the cloth.
Regina bounced through the crowd, a deceptively calculating smile plastered over her lips, and her brows pinched in slight and innocent confusion. Foster watched the muscles in Sebastian's jaw feather under his fading lavender beard while the Pope had no reaction at all, simply looked her way before continuing to speak to Sebastian. When she arrived at the dias, she didn't hesitate to march right up the steps and stand before the two seasoned politicians. She performed a perfect shallow curtsy, and they nodded to her in turn, playing at civility for the onlookers. Formalities out of the way, she seemed to subject them to a barrage of subtext and barbed words with her smiling lips. Judging from the number of winces Foster counted from the older men, she landed most of her strikes.
What a scary woman.
Regina then subtly caught Foster's eye and sent him a telepathic message. Regina's voice echoed in Foster's head as a stray thought pushed from her brain to his, "You might want to join me up here, this involves you too."
Great. Just splendid. Foster channeled his ambivalence—the arrogant aloofness and subtle aura of menace Ether knew him for.
"This will be where we part ways, Baba. It seems I am needed up on the royal platform."
Anai patted his forearm, "Spirits of the desert guide you, Sir Foster."
Pushing off the wall, the Hero swaggered towards the thrones, taking the stairs up the platform by twos and threes, recklessness and power lacing every step.