TBATE: Let The Truth Be Known {Completed}

Chapter 42: Artifice and Avarice

MYRE INDRATH

The heads of our most promising remain on the floor of the audience chamber. Kezess stands solemnly before walking over to the head of Warrick, my great nephew. He caresses the cheek with his right hand before addressing the audience.

"I'll not stand for this. My fellow asura, hear me and hear me well. We will level the continents of Dicathen and Alacrya for this treachery. Foul lessers punch up the ladder of power and assume themselves above the ones that gave them everything. Our own lie dead here in the seat of our government. Each race has been slighted and undermined by these lessers who seek our demise.

"I look to each of you and ask you this, will you stand with me?"

Kezess stands and extends an invitational hand. His posture would lead you to believe he's completely calm, but I can see his overwhelming anger bubbling up from the light tapping of his right foot.

"I refuse," a sole voice calls out. Standing from the second row, a tall and imposing man meets Kezess' gaze. "I won't send my young to die at the hands of lessers. It's because of your mistake that we're in this predicament."

The whole crowd gasps at the bold declaration. For the first time in centuries, Kezess has been openly opposed.

"However do you mean, Lord Thyestes?" Kezess beckons as he drops his hand to his side. The eerie silence's only solace is the slight buzzing of bugs which remains omnipresent.

"I mean that this war and those asura heads at your feet are your faults. It's exactly as I said," Lord Thyestes claims. "It's because of your pride that you slew the Djinn and because of your pride that the Asclepius clan is gone. It's because of your pride that you couldn't look us all in the eyes and admit your faults with how you dealt with the Djinn or Agrona. Whenever someone finds out, you refuse to let them live. So I'll ask you here, Kezess. Will you silence me too? Here in front of everyone?"

Whispers begin to emanate through the hall as Kezess' hand balls into a white-knuckled fist. "Perhaps I shall. It seems you're trying to undermine my rule just as Agrona and Arthur Leywin are."

"It's not undermining if you're a tyrant," a second voice from the crowd stands as Lord Avignis and his fiery hair and eyes lock onto Kezess. "It's because of you that Mordain is gone and that over a hundred of my kin cannot rest in peace. You hold their feathers in your personal collection as a trophy of your triumph. It's preposterous and a blatant slight against the rest of the asuras."

"It's because of your father that you sit on that throne now, Lord Indrath. You are not the leader he was whatsoever. You're callous, vengeful, and tyrannical. It's because of your own actions that not just three, but four of the Eight Great Clans stand against you," a third voice, this time from Lord Eccleiah.

"We won't send our sons or daughters to die to sate your ego, Kezess. Agrona was never wrong in calling you out for the genocide of the Djinn just as we aren't wrong for refusing your proposal to slaughter every Vritra and lesser," a fourth and final voice, this time Lord Grandus as he emerges from directly behind Lord Thyestes.

"What is this preposterous narrative? My fault? It's because others refused to bend the knee that we stand here. I'll not allow you to beli-" Kezess begins before I finally have to step in.

The man is enraged, barely holding in his seething anger and only partially restraining himself from allowing the fullest extent of his intent to leak from his body.

"Kezess! Stop this! You know they're right. Accept defeat and perhaps you can still save face. Twelve heads lay at your feet but your words threaten to put more there. Those would be no less your fault than the Asclepius or Djinn," I reprimand. He only looks back at me with two violet eyes of betrayal.