The Princess of Wrath

Chapter 15 - Part V: Remnants of Salvation and a Demon in Pain

As the dawn of the new day approached, the citizens of all the imperial cities of the continent woke up unaware that Empress Elfriede Ithryl had just ceded all her powers to Roland Casimir, the new Supreme Chancellor of the Ithrylian Empire.

The collective ignorance was to be short-lived, followed by an unprecedented shock across the geopolitical spectrum; a before and after in that wonderful time of prosperity and reason. Confusion and doubt on the part of the population... Hostility and curiosity on the part of independent nations... But all with a single certainty, which was the pre-fabricated reason why the Empress had abdicated her power: her psychological inability to rule due to the deaths of both her youngest son and her daughter, the now infamous Princess Asura.

The lie that Asura had taken her own life after having murdered her own brother was going to feed the minds of the ignorant, so that with the passage of time they would forget her cursed name and her face, drowning in pain for knowing that there was no longer any members of the Ithryl family who could succeed the Empress.

There were only two people alive who were not part of the conspiracy and who knew the truth... The remnants of the group that had given their all to save Princess Asura from her ominous fate.

***

The first remnant was the gunslinger, Aurum Black.

Hundreds of miles southwest of Entrana, on the dense jungle outskirts of the city of New Crywolf, he was sitting a few feet from the edge of one of the hundreds of glades in the Forest of Titans, surrounded by the heat of a small campfire and in company of loneliness.

Ignoring the spotlight in the dark, he was relatively hidden between two of the massive, protruding roots of one of the countless ancient trees of that forest: a wooden giant over six hundred meters tall and a trunk of a diameter of up to a hundred fifty. A roof of endless branches and leaves covered a large area of ​​the floor from starlight and the moisture that abounded there created a thick but invisible fog in the dark.

Enjoying the silence of the night but attentive to the howling of the beasts in the distance, the gunslinger was eating a strip of dried meat and drinking liquor from a small metal flask, without completely removing the handkerchief that hid his mouth and nose. He had left his hat by his feet, allowing his wild black mane to flow freely in the wind, but his two pistols were closer to his thighs, ready to help him with any unforeseen problems. One of the two, Antares, glowed with deadly beauty in the firelight.

Since he had left Entrana, the fate of Princess Asura had struck his thoughts... That plain girl who had been the symbol of the future of the Empire one day, and a cruel murderer in the next.

"A toast to you, Princess," he thought, lifting his flask in the direction of the roof of branches and the night sky. "And another for your girlfriend."

Aurum chuckled as he internally admitted that he was a little envious, remembering how incredibly beautiful and majestic that blonde knightess was. Undoubtedly the Princess had been very fortunate to have a person like Diana Belmont in her life, willing to leave everything for her and help her escape the clutches of the Imperial forces.

He did not care if Asura was guilty or innocent; an uncontrollable monster or a victim of an evil conspiracy... Aurum did not care how or why, as long as his pockets were filled with sen, just as the mercenary's creed dictated.

He could not wait to see young Stanislaus Belmont again and, one way or another, get the rest of the money for his services. Much less now that there was a reward for capturing him, as indicated by the poster that peeked out from under his hat and stained with damp earth and dried blood: