“Magus!” the regent shouted, his attention breaking for the briefest glance toward the giant Imperator. That doubt, that cry for help, was all Cyrus needed. He dropped low and swept his leg, kicking Gordian’s feet out from under him. Cyrus assaulted him immediately, his knees driving down into the regent’s shoulders. His swords simultaneously chopped, and were halted mere inches above Gordian’s throat by the long sacrificial dagger. Metal rattled against metal. Cyrus pressed his knees harder, pinning the other man to the sand despite his newly granted paragon strength. The two were close, so close. Cyrus’s skull mask was mere inches away from Gordian’s sweat-coated forehead.

Their eyes met, and time slowed to a crawl around them. Even amid the chaos, bathed in torchlight, awash in screams of the dying and the manic cries of battle, it felt like the two were alone somewhere quiet. Somewhere private, and close, in a forgotten memory of Cyrus’s past. Back when he walked the halls of the castle, keenly aware his parents were gone and the building would never be his.

Harder and harder, the edge of Gordian’s dagger cracking, the metal groaning, whereas Cyrus’s held strong. They gazed into each other’s eyes, Cyrus seeing the darkest years of his life, Gordian seeing nothing but hatred he didn’t understand.

Until he did.

“Cyrus?”

At last, Cyrus had everything he wanted. He pulled his swords back, spun them around, and stabbed straight down. The ends of both easily bypassed Gordian’s stunned defense, ripping twin gashes into his neck. From like another world, a panicked woman screamed in protest. Gordian convulsed, his mouth unable to form words. He died, still with that look of confusion on his face. Cyrus stood, cloak falling across his body, hood fluttering low over his face. He lifted it so it would not block his crown, for he wanted the moonlight to reflect off it as he stood upon the Solemn Sands. Just one more cut to finish the deed, a crown of blood carved across the Usurper King’s forehead. It was the only crown he deserved.

A lull had fallen over the battle as the rest of Thorda’s elite retreated toward the beach and the remaining imperial soldiers stood aghast. Cyrus relished every second. Their fear, their doubt, it fueled him like fresh coals upon a fire.

“The Usurper King is dead!” he shouted. “What good are your sacrifices? What purpose is your slaughter, when death still comes for you?”

Still silence. They recognized the Vagrant, he realized. The weeks spent spreading rumors, his nightly excursions, the marks he cut across his victims’ foreheads… they knew him now. It wasn’t solely Thanet’s faithful that believed. His enemies did, too, and it was everything he could have imagined and more.

“Thanet will never belong to you,” he bellowed to them. “Not her heart, not her soul.”