ORACLE [BNHA fantasy au]

Chapter 9 - King

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King Toshinori Yagi knew change brewed on the horizon.

He sensed it long before the letters arrived by raven, by carriage, by crier, by sea, or by fire magic. Something wicked stirred beyond the stretch of the King's powers, but what, and by whose hand, he did not know.

So he gathered information.

With his gamut of contacts from his time as a knight - as Sir All Might - people from all over The Land of the Rising Sun sent him secrets already, but with this new disturbance, the flood of mail easily quadrupled in density. Every letter, every message, every rumor made its way to the King's ears, where he consolidated every scrap of information into a notebook, scrambling to piece together the dearth of whispers into something useful.

A handful of messages stood out as more important than the others.

One, a letter from his mentor, Sir Gran Torino, at the hidden monastery edging the desert and the forest. A boy, selected as the best among the trainees, rode toward the castle, named Sir Tailman.

"Couldn't have picked a better name, old man?" Toshinori chuckled to himself, turning to the next most important letter.

Another, from his protegee, Izuku Midoriya, relaying that he'd been unsuccessful in his capture or assassination of Himiko Toga. Izuku wrote, "An eye for an eye doesn't seem right, sir. When the opportunity presented itself, I couldn't follow through... she could still change for the better. I have faith." The king already knew this from the papers, and had expected as much from Izuku; the task had been a test... and Izuku had passed.

The third and most important letter - an all black envelope addressed with shimmering silver ink, sealed with white wax, and stamped with his former right hand man's symbol of an eye, irised with gears - sat on the King's desk, staring at him like an omen of death. King Toshinori's heart simultaneously rose and fell at the sight, knowing his friend was gone... but intrigued nonetheless.

With a sharpened letter opener, Toshinori cut the message open, pulling the creamy, smooth paper from the depths of the envelope. He smiled at the sight of his dear goddaughter's handwriting, much more elegant and steady than the last time he'd seen it (in his birthday card the year previous). Satomi relayed her dream to her godfather, explaining the inevitable battle to take place. At the end of the parchment, she noted that she'd be leaving home in a few short days, set to arrive at the castle to help prepare in two weeks with her bodyguard at her side, a knight named Sir Lemillion.

King Toshinori leaned back in his chair, tilting his head back to lie atop the headrest. His eyes drifted closed, just for a moment, and he took a steadying breath. His notebook sat within reach, crammed full of bits of rumors... only for Satomi's single letter to blow it all out of the water. He chided himself, realizing that he should have just reached out to her in the first place, or at least waited for her to contact him.

She was the Oracle, after all.

If she was anything like her father, the late Sir Nighteye, then she knew the state of the world before anyone else... and Toshinori thanked the heavens that she still counted him in her inner circle.

With shaking fingers, he plucked up a phoenix feather quill, selected some of his nicest personalized parchment, and wrote a simple response to his goddaughter.

When finished, he sealed the letter with a stamp of his signet ring into golden wax, marking it with a golden sun. From there, he stood, muscles aching and bones creaking as he crossed to the fireplace roaring in the corner of his chilly office. Rain spattered the paned glass windows, exacerbating his inflamed joints and failing health.

Flicking his wrist, Toshinori called for his enchanted sword: the legendary blade, Excalibur. It glided through the air, grip easily sinking into the king's palm without him looking. A warm, familiar magic flooded him at its touch, a hint of all eight alignments humming in his veins once more with a shimmering energy, like coffee and sugar and adrenaline and the death-defying high of life.

He sighed at the addicting feeling, adjusting his grip on the pommel. No one knew the secret of the sword, knew that King Toshinori's alignments waxed and waned with the sword's presence.

Not even Izuku Midoriya... the future owner of Excalibur.

And the future king of the Land.

King Toshinori aimed Excalibur at the fireplace and traced a sigil over the flames, ignoring his bulked up muscles. They wouldn't last. The fire roared for a moment, twisting and warping and shifting from crimson to azure. He glanced at the letter in his palm, at his wax seal.

"Safe travels, Satomi," he muttered.

And he threw the letter into the cerulean flames.

His fireplace turned vermilion once more.

Message delivered.