Displaced

Chapter 9

Iorweth Morgan had never wanted to be King of Kutrad. He had grown up watching his mother, the last ruler, slowly break down from the never-ending parade of aggravations and arguments, and now he could feel the same thing happening to him. He often found himself envying rulers like the Emperor of the Ubran Empire. All he had to do was decree something and everybody around would get in line. Such was not the case in Kutrad, a country founded by a collection of rich clans who decided to break away from their southern neighbor, Eterium. Unlike most other places, power in Kutrad was still largely in the hands of those houses. Sure, he, as King, had far more power than a single house and could enforce his will upon any one of them, but such actions carried a price. Should most of the nobility decide to work together and oppose him, there was little doubt in his mind that there was no chance of victory in the war that would follow.

That was why being the king of Kutrad was wearing him out — every single day was an exhausting exercise in political intrigue and petty rivalries, all with the goal of keeping the nobles divided and distracted so that he could actually work towards the betterment of his country. A concession here, a demerit there (but not too harsh of one or they'd start complaining)... It was as if he were dealing with spoiled children. Sometimes, he literally was.

Iorweth was good at his role, as much as he didn't like it. Years of watching his parents had taught him well, and his own experience had only added to that. He'd learned many important strategies as a child simply by paying attention to what they did to resolve crisis after crisis. They'd dealt with trade disputes, diplomatic disasters, and anything else that the world could throw at a ruler other than an actual full-blown war — or so he had believed. They'd never had to deal with something like this.

The first report had come in just six days ago, and he'd been unable to believe it. An entire city, wiped out? The very idea seemed impossible. To do such a thing would require a massive army, and even then you'd have to take that army through the entire nation before reaching Zrukhora. Even so, he'd sent a team with a Many to Zrukhora to investigate. What he witnessed when they'd arrived two days later still boggled his mind. The city was gone. He had assumed, should the report actually prove factual, that he'd see shells of burned-out buildings and the like in the Many's projection. Instead, he simply saw a hole. No castle stood in the distance, no strong stone walls surrounding piles of smoking rubble, nothing. Just a hole in the earth where the third-largest metropolis in his country had stood just a week before.

Just under fifty thousand people had survived, as far as his men could tell. The entire country was reeling in shock at the death of over three hundred and fifty thousand souls. With that many deaths, pretty much every citizen in the nation knew at least one person who had passed away, leaving all of Kutrad in a state of mourning.

It seemed that some unknown creature of great power was the source of this disaster, as hard as it was to believe. His teams had found no actual traces of the beast, as not even its skeleton remained after the explosion, but nearly every single story from the survivors had been consistent even down to details like size and color, so he had no choice but to accept it as fact. Where the creature had come from was unknown, and that disturbed him. The idea that there might be others disturbed him even more.

The prospect of another creature was a chilling thought, but such an idea still existed in the realm of hypothetical threats, rather than confirmed ones. The confirmed threats were what really worried him. Zrukhora had been incredibly vital to the country's economic viability, as well as its future. With the city gone, the country would be perceived as weak and vulnerable. The other nations would begin to throw their weight around in negotiations soon, knowing that they had more leverage and could squeeze Kutrad for better terms. On one hand, he thanked the spirits that Kutrad was a peninsula, meaning it only shared a border with a single other nation. On the other hand, that nation was the Republic of Eterium, economic capital of the continent. Their markets were perpetually hungry for more resources, always looking for ways to get more and more.