Tower of Genesis: Duality

Vincenzo walked, his steps silent on the cobblestone road that branched into a dark, isolated alleyway to his left. He turned in that direction, cloak billowing behind him, his hood masking the defining features that identified him as other, as the Blue Prince of von Grimmwald.

The alley itself was a masterpiece of suspension. No people, no visible movement. Only the faint, amber glow of the oil lamp clamped to the wall beside a rustic, oak door signified life. Leaves rustled from the whisper of the wind crawling on the floor. Above, the night sky, starless and a deep, rich navy blue, loomed, a cosmic and mute judge overlooking him.

Reaching the door, Vincenzo pushed it open, the warmth of a hearth fire washing over him like a comforting blanket. He took in the scene in a single sweep: the tavern wenches weaving through the maze of tables, drinks held precariously on their trays; patrons who had a high, ruddy flush on their cheeks from the alcohol in their tankard and the tavern keeper at the counter, cleaning a mug.

But he also saw more.

The way a tavern wench, her golden locks a soft curtain that fell over her face, lingered near a man with a heavy, gold banded ring on his left index. Her fingers, after delivering the man’s drink, brushed against his knuckles in implicit invitation. He saw how the drunk patron slouching on his stool had a hand slack near his sword hilt, concealed under the drape of his cloak. Then, his eye landing on the tavern keeper, Vincenzo saw the way the keeper was still cleaning the mug, its surface pristine and polished. The man himself had subtly leaned closer to the low conversation close to the counter.

He strode towards a table in the corner, cloak rustling as Vincenzo took a seat, arms on the wood, back to the wall, his single black eye with its blue pupil absorbing the full, uninterrupted view of the tavern. He did not lower his hood; it would be counterproductive to the purpose of his presence in this space.

Instead, he waited.

And he watched.

His thoughts wandered, unbidden, to Halcyon. His older brother. Loud, direct, with a penchant for being the greatest nuisance he had ever known. Tonight, the cold burn of simmering annoyance seemed to flare brighter. Last time...

Halcyon had won.

The acknowledgement felt like swallowing chalk. Vincenzo’s hands clenched into fists on the table before he forced himself to relax. The last succession war, despite every measure he had made to ensure nothing stood in his way, had failed. It had failed. His eye tightened in the corner as he recalled everything. The branches of his networks cut from the root. The informants, turncoats against his regime, who had later disappeared. His people, the very ones he nurtured, left him with a silence that had beaten his own stillness, a cold, dictatorial system that had collapsed into a ghost of itself.

It was impressive, in a way. He had never felt so thoroughly, systematically beaten to the point he couldn't recover. Which made him all the more angry for it. For more than just the simple, astronomical failure of his loss, but for this.

Here, again, he thought bitterly. The thirty-sixth regression. Another attempt at fighting for the throne.

Vincenzo’s eyes fixed on the oak door, waiting. He was a patient man. Patience solved many things, even if it had failed him once. It would not fail him this time. His table remained clear and empty, a buffer of silence that deterred any approaching staff with a simple, sharp look. He was already planning the next campaign, the pawns he will remove from the board and the tools he'd add to his arsenal.

This turn, I will succeed.

The smell of warm bread and spices filled the air. In the capital city of the von Grimmwald Empire, festival ribbons dominated the posts and streaked across the skies. Stalls filled the edges of the road, brimming with goods that glittered under the golden glow of the morning sun, the vendors advertising their wares with hollering voices over the general chatter. Crowds flooded the streets, some with baskets and carts, some merely browsing with keen or inexperienced eyes. The occasional carriage passed at a snail's pace, people moving in waves to let it through, horses whinnying with the coachman's impatience.

Moving through the throng like a very loud ghost, Halcyon, dressed in a simple, light ensemble that did little to mask his regal presence, strolled through the streets like he owned the ground beneath him. It was probably true. His robes, soft as silk and lined with gold embroidery, wrapped around him like a comforter and shield, negating any skin contact.

It added to the radiant, acidic intensity he exuded, causing people nearby to subconsciously give him a wider berth and even more space when they looked upon the familiar, scornful face that was the Red Prince of von Grimmwald. He ignored them, his eyes set on the stands, the vendors who visibly froze up and stretched their mouths in a too-wide smile that grated his nerves. He scowled, turning his head away sharply from the falsehood that leeched his once-amiable mood into something sour.

Suddenly, the smell of something sweet and sugary punched through the spice-sweat atmosphere.

Halcyon froze. His hair fell over in soft waves over his eyes at the sudden cessation of movement. A woman behind him nearly crashed against him, to which he subtly recoiled and glared at her retreat. He snapped his attention to the source of the familiar scent, tasting the phantom, sugary apricot and cherry on his tongue. He swallowed hard.

Pivoting, he approached the stall, studying the array of sweets and confectionary, a rare staple in the empire, eyes sharpening at the catalogue. They lingered on the tarts. A pang of something mournful, the ache of old memories, bloomed in his chest. The smile of a brother, hands sticky from jam, accepting the food Halcyon secretly pilfered from the chef and bought from the foreign merchants when they travelled through the city. His own warm, familiar joy at sharing the treats.

He remembered the weather. Hot sunny, peaceful. How the flowers seemed to lean into the purity of the moment. How they hid from the Captain of the Guard and got caught stealing from the pantry. How they—

Halcyon slammed the train of thought shut like it was a forbidden door that had cracked open and revealed one too many secrets. He locked it tight behind mental walls labelled 'The Past — Open It Never' and threw away the key.

Those days were gone.

As were the several, thousand days before them, he thought quietly. The first time had been a cognitive dissonance so bizarre and outrageous, he had spent the week turning his bedroom into a raging, splintered battlefield until the royal physician had chemically calmed him.

Regression.

There was no other word for it. Halcyon remembered. The pain, the agony of failure and bitter defeat when the crown descended on Vincenzo's head like it belonged there. He remembered the abrupt, heart-stopping moment when, upon opening his eyes from an oblivion-induced sleep, that he had returned to the moment the succession war began. He remembered the countless cycles that followed them.

And he knew Vincenzo did as well.

The sweets seemed to mock him with that knowledge. Last time, on the thirty-fifth run, he had won. Halcyon's hands closed into white-knuckled fists. This time, he would ensure it stayed that way.

Or so help him God for whatever came to that bastard of a brother.

Inside the antechamber, the air was thick with the brittle tension of a lit powder keg and the fear-sweat radiating from several men who had a sliver of sense to distance themselves as far away as possible from the heavy, grand oak doors leading into the master study. The last, poor man who had entered did not come out; it was a silence so profound and total, it amplified the sheer, absolute dread in the room.

It was a terrible, terrible day to be alive.

Then, the doors slowly slid open on smooth, oiled hinges to form a single gap where the previous man tumbled out. He was unharmed, but terrified, a dark, dampened stain on his trousers and the acrid scent of piss a sign of his emotional, and psychological, damage. He whimpered, fleeing the scene at a speed that felt impossible for a man of his wiry stature, yet utterly understandable due to the dense, thick atmosphere that rolled out from the slit.

Every man in the antechamber froze like rats caught in the light. They stiffened, unable to move, to stammer, to plea for a mercy that would never be granted to them. They knew why; the reason for all this oppressive, crushing sense of foreboding was not singular failure, but a collective, astronomical blunder that cost more than just lives.

It cost the game.

None of them wanted to be next on the end of that suppressed rage.

Inside the master study, Vincenzo was a picture of focused, wrathful rage. He wore his formals—tailored, aristocratic clothing that only emphasised the scale of his authority and the consequence he would enforce like a guillotine upon those buffoons. He was seated at his desk like the grim reaper awaiting his next victim, fingers steepled atop his desk, the picture of lethal stillness, not repose. His forbearance had been a tight leash when the report landed at his desk.

Now that leash was thin and fraying.

He glared at the crack between the doors with a predatory focus that could burn a whole on the wall opposite, mind running a private, looping reel that summarised the report's events. Illicit cargo housing crates of salt running through a familiar, forgotten trade route in the underground city. An ambush. A traitor. The envoy scattered or dead. Every crate had been stolen, shattered or used in some strange, heretical witchcraft that had every hunter on that road in minutes.

It was a complete and total failure.

That failure tasted like ash in his mouth. Salt was a fortune. A deal breaker that could have solidified the fragile alliance between him and the Northern Marches, whose winter famine was an opportunity to expand his territory. The wheat had been delivered, the cattle, even water. That salt would have had the Marshal eating out of his hand. The operation had collapsed. Just like that.

Vincenzo's focused, furious attention landed on no one and everyone at once inside the antechamber, appraising reactions, the curdling, gut-wrenching terror of his presence a door away. He was homing in on his next target, the last man a forgotten, useless thing that provided nothing but poor excuses and the promise of six months cleaning the privies and sewage until his hands were raw.

That single eye, with its blue, studded ring pupil, landed unerringly on a figure that looked less like the idiots shitting themselves on his couch. Vincenzo's mind flicked through a hundred dossiers he had obsessively memorised until they landed on not necessarily a face, but a name.

{{user}}.

He flicked his wrist towards the guard standing inside his study, commanding. The guard immediately moved inside the antechamber, finding {{user}}. His voice, clear and cutting through the air, held no room for disobedience, eyes on {{obj}}.

"You. Enter the master study. Now."

"You dare disrupt me?"

The voice that spoke those cold, contemptuous words belonged to a man seated at the head of a long table, his posture a deliberate lean back against the high chair, chin on his knuckles. His expression was pinched with a disdain so visceral and physical the temperature seemed to cool a few degrees, making breaths mist in the air.

That voice belonged to none other than Halcyon von Grimmwald.

He was not smiling. In fact, his face was a frozen rictus of offended, immense annoyance. The source of his ire was a baron who assumed a seat at his table was worthy for his right to speak. He had gravely miscalculated, now paying the price by facing the full, unequivocal wrath of a prince interrupted. The man, a Baron Joshua Richmond, was as pale as a sheet, trembling so badly his wine glass shook in his hand, the drink sloshing like a mini storm.

"M-my apologies, Your Highness," he stammered, his voice high-pitched, petrified thing that threatened to collapse into sobs of fear-wretched terror. "I didn't mean to interrupt; I assumed—"

"You assumed to propose an increase in tax over the common peasants to inflate your coffers," supplied coldly, unimpressed. His black-and-red eyed stare drilled burning holes into Joshua. "You assumed." He repeated flatly, brooking no invitation to be rudely cut off. The man looked even more, impossibly paler, a cold sweat beading from his skin, stifling and uncomfortable. He shifted under the scrutiny and brutal, correct assessment of his unspoken intentions.

Baron Joshua Richmond, cowed, wisely said nothing, giving a short nod, eyes pinned to the space between his feet. The other men seated at the table did not soothe him, nor look his way. He was already invisible and irrelevant.

Halcyon, undeterred, returned his full attention to the collective, the heavy pressure lifting a fraction. "The shipment," he began. "An illegal transport of several pounds of salt heading for the Northern Marches." He paused. "Explain." The command was for everyone.

Seated to his left, Duke Mikhail Ashgrave, cleared his throat. "Yes, Your Highness." His voice was the clear, commanding presence of someone high in the hierarchy without overshadowing the volatile royal beside him. "Our scouts have reported a mass, discreet movement in a tunnel that is directly connected to the sewers of the Northern Marches. Approximately three hundred and fifty pounds of salt is being guarded by a fully armed, mercenary envoy." A ripple of surprise, shock and concern emanated from the other nobles. Salt? An expensive resource the empire had. Pounds of it? The thought was illogical, dangerous.

Vincenzo.

It was a conclusion silently agreed upon among the vast majority of them. No other man would pull off a stunt like that. It screamed of opportunity, of a trap. Halcyon's irritation had transmuted into something akin to rapt attention, localised to the duke. If they could seize that salt, better yet, use it for their own gain, the loss to the Blue Prince would be enormous. A loss of political territory that could push the Red Hawks leagues ahead. If it was heading for the Northern Marches...

It clicked. The winter famine. Food that needed preserving. Halcyon smiled thinly.

"We will take those caravans," he concluded. "Three groups. One to ambush the mercenaries, one to secure the crates, one to pick off any deserters and ensure I have as much of that salt in my possession." He leaned back in his seat, no longer slouching. The plan was not a suggestion; it was an order.

Halcyon's eyes scanning over the faces, skipping over Baron Richmond without a thought, landing on someone he had almost forgotten. His smile sharpened, curving into the expression of a man who saw fodder, or a potential tool to lead the ambush. {{user}}.

"You."

.