Chapter Text
The Tower of Parliament had always been a symbol for all the world to see. Built at the height of Arcadia’s wealth and power, it stood testament to the plentiful, rich bounty of her lands, the unshakable loyalty of her people, and the infallible, benevolent leadership of her ruling family. The Tower also served as the crux of her government; it was here that the King and his family lived, along with his cabinet and advisors.
Perhaps it seemed a bit foolish to some to keep the most important people in the kingdom all in one place. But, why wouldn’t they? With a base of thick, unbreakable obsidian and a body of smooth, pitless gold that rose high above the surrounding city, the tower was long believed to be the epitome of strength and security. It was impenetrable. It was indestructible. It was a beacon of safety and peace.
Until it fell.
Deep down, they all knew the day was coming. The day when battle would be waged, when war would come to the shores of Arcadia, when the time would come for them to raise arms and fight for the Tower. They would have to be fools to deny it; after all, they had lived in peace for so long, experienced so much prosperity while entirely unfettered by other countries, that they all knew, subconsciously, that it had to end soon.
His Majesty Michael Burns (“Please, call me Burnie, I hate all that ‘Majesty’ crap.”) knew this better than any. He had been preparing silently, secretly, raising an army that was small in number but great in skill. The soldiers were handpicked by his War Advisor and trained by the greatest assassins, swordsmen, archers, thieves, and spies. No form of subterfuge was considered too radical, too underhanded to learn.
He was well prepared for any attack from any front except the home front. Even his best-laid plans, his most in-depth strategies, never once addressed the possibility of the attack coming from within Arcadia.
Gustavo Sorola, mercenary, insurgent, and self-proclaimed future Overlord, wanted what King Burnie had. He wanted the Tower and all the perks that came with it. It wouldn’t have been a problem for Arcadia if Gus weren’t born with the coin and natural ability to begin a silent, concentrated revolution.
But rich and affluent he was, and that wealth and influence afforded him equally rich and affluent friends. With these advantages, it was a simple matter for Gus to use his ample fortune to slot his friends into the cabinet of King Burnie. From there, it was a relatively simple matter for them to gain the trust of the kind-hearted ruler, who thought so highly of the honesty and nobility of his people.
It was a slow, tedious process, of course, but Gus was patient when he had a goal in mind. When the day finally came that Burnie’s highly specialized brigade was fully trained, Gus put his plan into motion. Under cover of darkness, he stole into the Tower with the very soldiers trained to protect the royal family. Floor by floor, they worked their way towards the top, silently killing every guard, politician, and advisor not allied with their cause.
When one soldier, quicker than the others, tried to sound the alarm, Gus himself cut the man down, a smile on his mouth as the man’s blood wet his hands. “Keep sharp,” he murmured to those around him, “we wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”
Hours passed and the silent slaughter continued. Very few were spared, and those only because they possessed the few secrets of the kingdom that Sorola hadn’t managed to uncover.
While his small but efficient detail cut down the guards and political officials below, Gus scaled the Tower, deftly avoiding guard patrols or soundlessly murdering those unlucky enough to see him—always by simply snapping their necks, not yet with guns or knives. He made sure to hide their bodies out of sight of both cameras and other patrols; he would not have all his hard work go to waste because of an errant limb or sloppy cover-up.
As he reached the topmost floor, though, his luck finally ran out. The lights snapped on just as Gus cleared the hallway outside the King’s quarters. Down the hall, by the door, the two guards on duty spotted him the moment the alarm blared throughout the building.
There was a beat of silence, a momentary calm in the impending storm as the guards, completely flabbergasted, stared at the intruder in obvious confusion.
Gus took this golden moment to fire the first shot. The guard on the left went down, limp as a rag doll, his final breath catching on the blood gushing down his throat from his ruined jugular. Startled, the guard on the right jumped aside at just the right moment to avoid a bullet to the skull.
“He-he’s up here! Top fl—“ the officer started, talking into the communicator on his shoulder. However, the words died on the soldier’s lips as the siren went silent. He got a last, momentary glimpse at Gus’s triumphant smile before the hallway was once more swallowed up by darkness.
He never got the chance to scream.
“Maybe it was just a… I don’t know, a glitch in the system?”
Burnie was sitting up in bed, his worried gaze on the door as his wife and Queen tried to reassure him.
“Even if it was a glitch, someone should have come in to explain,” the King murmured.
“You just aren’t going to let this go, are you?” Helena asked. She pursed her lips when Burnie stared steadfastly at the door. Finally, sighing sharply, she pushed back the covers and said, “I’ll go check on the children, then. Call down to the guard station, babe. You do have a point in that an update should come much more quickly. I love you, but you’re overreacting.”
Burnie turned a wry grin at her and said, “See if you say that when my overreactions save your life, sweetheart. I love you, too. Go check on the kids, I don’t want them alone right now.” He pushed back the covers as well, standing and stretching as Helena gave him an affectionate but irritated look and left the room. As he reached for his robe, there was a polite knock on the door.
“Oh, good, I was just about to call down for an update. Please, come in and explain why a supposedly infallible system woke up the whole damned Tower with a—wait… You’re not Matt.”
Gus smiled as he strolled in, his semi automatic rifle resting jauntily on his shoulder. Burnie felt all the air leave the room.
“The alarm—“
“Works just fine. That was no mistake—well, not on your behalf, at least. A bit of an oversight on mine, but it was taken care of as quickly as I could have hoped.”
“Who are you? Where is Matt? The guards—“
“They’re dead. All of them. Well, I’m only assuming Matt is dead, but it’s a pretty safe assumption. My name, Your Highness,” and oh, so much disdain was injected into those two words, “is Gustavo Raul Sorola. I’ve come for your kingdom.”
Burnie was taken aback. He stared at the other man, his mouth agape. “You… But you’re from Arcadia, aren’t you?”
“Born and raised. Here’s the thing, I don’t even have a sob story about how the kingdom screwed over my family, how I ended up orphaned because of poor living conditions, how my father has been out of work for years, blah blah blah.” Gus shrugged and the gun on his shoulder bounced. Burnie winced. “I grew up rich. I have literally never known want or illness. I’ve always gotten whatever I want. This is no exception.”
Burnie swallowed heavily. “The guards—“
“—are all dead.” The King took a step back, hit the edge of the bed, and sat heavily.
“I have a—“
“—a small battalion of highly trained mercenaries, yeah, I know. What you didn’t know is that you’ve actually been training them for me. Your War Advisor has been in my pocket since day one. So thanks, Highness; you alone are responsible for the success of this little coup d’état.”
Burnie was speechless then, which was precisely how Gus wanted it. “I see you finally understand the gravity of your situation. Here’s what’s going to happen now. You’re going to divulge the secrets of the kingdom that no one else knows for me, and I’m going to consider allowing your family to live.”
“C-consider? I need more reassurance than that if—“
It was really just bad luck that Helena chose that moment to walk back into the room. She didn’t notice Gus, walked right past him as she joked that the kids didn’t even seem to have moved during the alarm, and why do you have that look on your fa—
She was dead before her body hit the floor.
The King gave an anguished wail and dove for her corpse, but Gus had a falchion at his neck in the blink of an eye.
“You have children.” It wasn’t a question.
Burnie sat up slowly, his eyes darting from the intruder’s face to his children’s door. “They’re… they’re just children. Only seven and nine, they don’t know anything about this kingdom or its secrets—“
“I don’t care.” Gus was still wearing that infuriating, unfettered smile. “I’ll kill them anyway. Now, I believe you were about to impart some top-secret knowledge?”
So the King told him everything.
In the end, Gus still made him watch his children die.
The next day dawned bright and clear. The people of Elysium, Arcadia’s capitol city, carried on about their mornings as usual, unaware that anything at all was amiss. At 9:30 am, the announcement spread that the King would make an important address in the town square at noon.
If any of the citizens were concerned, they hid their unease well. After all, the country of Arcadia had been devoid of so much as a drought for centuries—likely the King was announcing the expectation of another child or some other joyous occasion.
What waited for them in the courtyard at noon changed all that.
A strange man with a large gun and an even larger grin stood behind the King, the muzzle of a revolver pressed to his lower back. Both of them were covered in blood.
“Please do not panic,” was the first thing Burnie said, holding up his hands as if he could physically suppress the tension. A woman near the back shrieked. A soldier, clad all in black, materialized from the shadows near her. A single gunshot was heard.
No one else made a sound after that. Crying children were hurriedly shushed, the parents looking around in terror, fearful that their family would be next.
“I… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, my people… my friends and loyal subjects.” Burnie sounded empty, lost, and that was perhaps the most terrifying part of the entire spectacle. “Our safety has been compromised. The Tower has been taken. Last night this man and his rebel army—“
The sound of the gun cocking was loud in the relative silence in the square, easily drowning out Burnie’s voice. The King paused, his eyes flicking back over his shoulder.
“Now, now. It was hardly a rebel army, Majesty, trained as they were on your training grounds. But that’s beside the point, isn’t it? This is no time to wax poetic. Say what needs to be set and let the people go about their day.”
The King took a steadying breath. “I am deeply, indescribably sorry to do this. I… hereby forfeit my title—“
The rest of his sentence was drowned out by the disbelieving cries of the public. Burnie tried frantically for a few moments to quiet them again, but unfortunately Gustavo Raul Sorola was entirely too close to achieving his goal to worry with patience.
The crack of a gunshot reverberated through the square, and the people within fell quiet much more quickly when the body of their former Lord and King fell, lifeless, to the ground, a pool of red spreading around his body and spilling onto the cobblestone below the dais. Several men and women began weeping, their hands to their mouths to stifle their cries. Gus raised a hand to hold off the soldiers. He knew there would be tears—the people didn’t yet know what a benefit this change of power would be. They were understandably confused. He could afford them some small comfort, and if weeping was it, so be it.
Gus looked around at the crowd, taking note of any looks of defiance or impending rebellion. There were none. He nodded to himself, smiled gently, and said, “My name is Gustavo Raul Sorola. I am, henceforth, your King. You may call me Majesty or Overlord. If any of you would like to raise an issue about this, please, come find me. We’ll have a nice little chat.” His smile turned harsh, sharp like a razor, deadly as a shark. “Now, if there are no questions—“ he looked around. There weren’t. “—you are all dismissed. Someone remove this corpse.”
And that was it. Any who made noise about their distaste for or distrust of Overlord Gus went immediately missing. The general populace learned quickly that it was safer, easier to just stay silent.
Life in Elysium stayed largely the same after the first few weeks. Gus knew it was strategically imperative to keep the citizens nearest him content, so the capitol city wanted for nothing.
Beyond the protective embrace of the mountains, though, Arcadia began to suffer. Disease ran rampant as medicines and antidotes became gradually more scarce. Crops suffered as irrigation systems failed, as machinery broke down and never received replacement parts. The entire country outside the capitol fell into poverty while taxes skyrocketed and the price of crops and livestock fell.
All those who went to Elysium to protest or plead were never seen again.
So Arcadia’s people suffered under forced silence. Those in the capitol grew to resent those on the outside, those who never had to fear for themselves or their loved ones when Gus went on a “harvest” to reaffirm his authority. Those in the outlying cities grew to hate the ones in the capitol who knew nothing of starvation or destitution or disease.
But no one dared to hate Gus.
Thirty-two years came and went in this manner, each year bringing more illness, more death, more poverty. Thirty-two years of quiet suffering, of hard winters, of dwindling harvests, of lost children and orphaned babies. Thirty-two years before a group of seven renegades—angry for their people, their towns, their families and friends, themselves—finally said enough was enough.
It is with these seven renegades that our true story begins.