The Regressor and The Rising Storm- 02

The study smelled of ink and despair. 

Count Alden Varkaine sat hunched at his desk, a mountain of ledgers teetering precariously beside a lone candle. Its guttering flame cast shadows across the hollows of his face, deepening the lines carved by too many winters, too many failed harvests. He did not look up when Kairus entered, though his quill paused mid-sentence—a stutter in the rhythm of scratching parchment. 

"You missed the testing." 

Kairus shut the door. "I don't care about the testing." 

That made his father look up. 

Alden Varkaine had been a broad man once, shoulders squared beneath the weight of their sigil's promise—A Wolf Does Not Bend. Now, his frame seemed to sag into itself, swallowed by a fur-lined robe two sizes too large. His eyes, pale as frosted river stones, narrowed. 

"Since when," he said slowly, "do you not care about embarrassing this house?" 

The words were a whetstone, honed by decades of disappointment. Kairus remembered flinching from that tone, once. Now, he met his father's gaze. "I want to learn the way of the sword." 

A log collapsed in the hearth, spraying embers. Somewhere in the keep, a shutter banged in the wind. 

"Why?" Alden's voice was dangerously soft. 

Because I've seen our people starve. Because Ser Garrick's blade will be at your throat when the Vasco dogs come. Because I need to be more than a boy playing at ledgers. 

"Because it's time," Kairus said. 

Alden snorted. "Time? You've spent years sneering at the training yard. Now, on the day your sister might bring us honor, you—" 

"Honor won't fill our granaries." 

The quill snapped in Alden's fist. "Mind your tongue, boy." 

"Or what?" Kairus stepped forward, palms flat on the desk. The wood was cold, gritty with ash. "You'll lock me in my room? Cut my allowance? Look around, Father. We have nothing left to take." 

Alden surged to his feet, sending ledgers cascading to the floor. "You think I don't know that?" His roar shook dust from the rafters. 

"The Verris levy crippled us. The last harvest rotted in the fields. Winter comes, and our people will die because their count—because I—failed them!" 

"Now we have to ask them for a Loan, if we even want to get our county through this winter!"

Spittle flecked his beard. For a heartbeat, Kairus saw the man he'd been before—the lord who'd hoisted him onto his first horse, whose laughter could shake snow from pine boughs. Then the moment passed. Alden sagged back into his chair, a hand pressed to his chest. 

"Get out," he whispered. 

Kairus did not move. "Give me thirty miners. Two weeks in the Varkaine foothills." 

A bark of laughter. "To do what? Dig graves for our future?" 

"To dig our way out of this." 

Alden stared at him. "The mountains are barren Kair. We've mined them dry." 

A sudden burst of memory flushed into is mind, Kairus, age twenty-three, standing in a smuggler's den. A Vasco captain boasting over ale: "Varkaine's a cursed name. But damn, their mountains? Valatium veins thick as a man's arm. Pity the old count was too blind to see it." 

"The western ridge," Kairus said. "Thirty men. That's all I ask." 

"And if I refuse?" 

"You won't." He gestured to the ledgers. "You're out of options." 

For a long moment, the only sound was the fire's death rattle. Then Alden with great sigh reached into his desk and flung a rusted key onto the wood. "Take Garrick. If you're determined to beggar us further, I'll have witnesses." 

The door creaked open. Ser Garrick stood framed in the threshold, his armor scuffed but serviceable, his face a slab of granite. "My lord?" 

Alden did not look up. "Keep him alive. And try to keep the idiocy contained." 

As Kairus turned to leave, golden text flickered at the edge of his vision: 

[Sub-Quest Accepted: "Mine the Unseen Valatium"] 

[Reward: County Stability +10%]

[ : All Stats +10 ] 

Ser Garrick fell into step beside him. "A word, young lord." 

"Save it."