>>5724087You lower your kopesh and, moving slowly, return it to its place in the loop on your hip. The old human champion regards you with confusion.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“You are protector of my Princccess,” you say. “My Queen, Ekaterine. Youa re defender of her cccity, of her sscionsss… Yess?”
He says nothing, regarding you with grave suspicion… but listening.
“Oncce more,” you reiterate, “I am not your enemy… Or do not have to be, at leassst. I do not WISH to be.”
“We are enemies,” he asserts, though his voice wavers. “We ARE enemies. By BIRTH. By BLOOD. By the will of the gods… Yorus AND mine, serpent.”
“Our racesss can share thisss world,” you reply, just as certain in yoru own convictions—no, moreso. “I know it. I BELIEVE it.”
He looks at you as if you’d just said that the earth orbited the sun or moon, or that the skyw a purple. You extend a hand, offering not a sword to the gut or a flesh-rendeing spell… But offering him his holy symbol, still red with your blood, hilt first.
“Do not forccce me to kill you, old man. Let me make You a believer, too.”
>18Despite himself—his every teaching and bone-deep instinct—the human takes the blade from you, looking from it to your carefully-neutral expression and back again.
“I.. I will not serve the Dark Gods,” he says, almost pleading. “You cannot make me.”
“But?” you prompt, sending it coming.
“But,” he continues, “if what you say is true…”
“It is.”
He glowers at your interruption, then sighs.
“I’ve been bested,” he admits. “I am no young fool who cannot recognize when he is beaten. And if you have beaten me… broken my sword… Then it is the will of heaven, though I do not understand it. I yield.”
“Good,” you say with a nod.
But a question arises: what now?
You do about the Holy Order of Hawksong?
>Banish the paladins from Hawksong>Demand an oath of allegiance>Abolish the paladins and slay any who refuse to renounce their oaths>Write-inAnd what is your next move beyond the matter of the holy knights?
>Confront Rufos, and cow him back into submission>Find Ekaterine and your men, and leave this place>Enact a coup—Rufos must step down, and Ekaterine be made Queen—with you as PrinceConsort, of course >Reveal your true nature and raze the palace to the ground—it is time to begin the conquest of Hawksong in earnest>Hold up—you have questions, before you decide [like what?]>Write-in