A plan was hatched in the ruins of a dying city-state.
Its death wasn't from moral decay, but born of the conquest. A boy, among a few others, was one of its last witnesses. Where each went decided not by fate, but by the call of the world that pulled on them.
The boy had gained many things from that city-state: a brown overcoat, knowledge owed to him, his parents' resting place, and a curiosity of the mysteries of the wider world.
He had been warned of to not follow the vengeful path he swore on the defilement of his parents' graves.
Towering flames had borne witness to his cries.
A few weeks later, the same boy was atop the main keep of the capital of the ever-expanding kingdom.
Very same one that had burned the home he built after years of wandering this continent. It was a gentle home, sweet one. Unlike the air that wafted the newly crafted roof of the keep.
This was Rigac's Palace of the Monarch.
Destruction of the main keep's top floor distracted everyone from their battles. All looking up at the sky scraping tower.
While the Monarch Gweren dueled Cheal. The wanderer whose losses couldn't be counted waited not for the moment to strike. He did not care if Cheal died at his hands today.
He suspected Cheal to be a mightier threat than the Monarch, but his reason to murder the Monarch had evidence to back it. His instincts about Cheal only told of the possible lethality.
Keeping the sling rotating, he slid the spear back by thousands of lo-league. A sharp memory of what a lo-league meant played in his mind. One that had the explanation by Master Rhai, "A lo-league is equal to a hair's breadth. Simple as that." His lexicon on what other units he could use was limited, but he identified the lo-league better.
And his chance of missing his target this close was less than a lo-league.
Monarch Gweren performed a sweeping parry to Cheal's downward slash. Jeopardizing his angle, while Gweren went for Cheal's neck.
Gweren's frustration ever increasing with each bind, parry, and slash Cheal delivered. Both blind to a readying warrior on the missing door frame of the refurbished throne hall.
The sweeping parry snapping Cheal's downward slash led him to reposition. He ducked to the left, while his sword redirected to do a snap upper cut.
Cheal's longsword was on the shorter end of the longsword category, but he used it well. His current snap uppercut aimed not at Gweren's head, but at his elbows. Gweren pushed away, disengaging from the fight.
But did Cheal want that? No, he thrusted forward from his disadvantageous position doing a full split. He needed the Monarch Gweren to stay in the circle of threads. And for that, he was using everything in his power to keep reminding the Monarch to stay inside than step outside.
Whether through instincts or by pure decision making, Monarch Gweren chose to close the distance on Cheal. His target and the threat posed by him was directed down, and Monarch Gweren involuntarily chose to remain inside the circle of threads.
Taking advantage of that, Cheal expanded another thread through the circle of threads through the stuck daggers. These were no ordinary daggers either, and that controlled why Monarch Gweren couldn't disengage from Cheal using his starlight magic.
The circle of threads woven from the embedded daggers brought the horrifying law of Cleaving's waters and atmosphere to life, creating a small sphere around the circle where a horrendous will of Kikren danced "Remembrance is forbidden."
This law interfered with the Monarch's magic, a consequence that Cheal learned through the way his scapegoat party was treated by the starlight during last night. "How about it?" Cheal stood up pressuring the bind from below, "Tell me whose subset is actions magic?"
Monarch Gweren focused on the bind that Cheal had created with his low snap cut, bringing it up as he stood back. The longsword that Gweren used had lost chunks off it through Cheal's meticulous swordsmanship.
"Will. Explain after." Gweren gritted through his teeth, providing an instinctive answer and coating it.
Gweren and Cheal were at the current moment focused in on the other. The boy in the brown overcoat who had been keeping up with the fight, tapped the side of the spear's new cut head with his left hand thrice. And proceeded to shoot the spear at Gweren with the follow up of the rock in his sling.
The spear's head with the coin embedded started becoming colder and colder, the cold spread towards the enhancing mix vial behind the coin. Cracking it a bit, the mix was touched by the cold. This was the action of ice on the spear as a whole.
While the rock had been set up with the action of fire and water, both from the beginning. A harder setup to maintain in a spinning rotation but one that worked with his trusted rope.
The rope of the sling had a better heat resistance than any rock formed from the action of earth. Thus, three actions combined of earth, fire and water launched as a trail behind the spear.
Cheal's maniacal laughter echoed over the keep, "Look! Look!"
While the boy answered, his voice a gravel from all the deaths he had delivered in the inner castle, "This is for Cleaving!"
The spear's tip blazed with a mist of ice ever expanding, the boy had not used his rings to adjust the intensity as taught in that dead city-state.
The trail picked up by a blazing rock spewing and spinning faster than sound. Water gushed behind it precisely taking it faster than the spear.
Gweren didn't even have a moment. The rock was an arm's length away from him, while the spear was targeted at his chest. Cheal pressed on him from forward upwards.
Choosing to hug the boy and take the blade, Gweren avoided the spear but the rock hit his shoulder with a bang.
Boom.
The sound so loud that it shook the keep and a floor somewhere below fell. Cheal smiled apologetically, "I may have damaged some places."
The wanderer had intentionally left that floor empty and had intentionally left nothing above that particular floor of the keep.
Gweren's chest pierced through his right ribcage, and his left shoulder mangled with rock shards that were melting his left arm entirely.
Cheal pulled on the sword, letting it rip out from Gweren's ribs. He still needed the Monarch inside the circle. "No, no! Stay, stay. Can't have you healing yourself now, can we?" His face and arms showed the true skill that Monarch Gweren held, he had not missed anytime landing cuts perfectly that should have debilitated a man. How was Cheal holding himself up? The wanderer couldn't tell.
A few things were clear. Cheal's attack punctured one of Monarch Gweren's lungs, while the rock melted his left arm away.
Whether the arm melted via burning rock or the superheated steam from it, the arm and its surrounding armour melted.
Cheal took in large gasps as he fell down next to Gweren, kneeling. One looking at the city of Rigac, while Cheal watched the mountains behind it.
None were aware of the place where the spear landed. Gweren struggled to stay alive, gasping sharply. His exhales had blood, while inhaling blood seeped through his chainmail.
One step echoed in the silence that followed the rock's violent explosion. And another behind it.
The battle below that had dulled to a lull began anew, the explosion resounding a fervor among each parties. None knew who had delivered it. But all assumed it was theirs.
Cheal's and Gweren's heads turned to the steps in the destroyed hall. The wanderer walked forward raising the longsword for a downward slash, "Why did you take the people from twenty to forty in years from every city you conquered?"
Blood dripped from Gweren's lips, his answer rattled his bones more than his teeth. "To create a new throne to stop the Kikren." The downward slash of the wanderer stopped right in the middle of its swing.
He asked next, "Then, why order a decree for the burning of streams?"
"To force the Kikren out of the water to hunt for more….huh, huh…to force Cleaving become what it was."
The words spoken by Gweren rubbed against the smokey flavor that had taken root on the wanderer's tongue. He had walked in smoke filled corridors for far too long.
He did understand it from certain perspectives he had seen. The restlessness in the city of Cleaving, the web of rumours and control in the city of Ashtrim, and the towns the wanderer had destroyed before coming upon the city of Ashtrim.
All had shown effects that connected itself to the dangerous ever-present law of Cleaving.
He dropped the longsword. The wanderer had the few answers he needed to know of, but he was not done delivering what began his journey.
The wanderer pointed at the spear with his right hand, at the throne of Kingdom of Riga. The one which bore the spear he had thrown, the action of ice spreading across the throne as well as the hall's floor.
Action of ice enhanced by the enhancing mix crept everywhere solidifying the throne, the walls, floor, the rubble, some of the air around it, and it kept spreading all towards the circle which held the Monarch and Cheal.