Floor 33 – Chapter 2: The Queen's Gambit
It felt strange to Jet that, despite having escaped from prison less than an hour ago, the town of Victoria felt no more on edge than it would have normally been. He'd seen firsthand what the NPC guards could be like if they suspected a player of breaking the somewhat nebulous rules that Sword Art Online was bound by, yet the guards here simply tipped their hats to the young queen and her seeming cohort without any kind of concern.
Either news hadn't reached here yet, or it was simply ignored, and he wasn't sure which it was. Whichever it was though, Ronie seemed to be very popular amongst the population, more so than he would have expected of a young queen accused and probably assumed to be guilty of a crime that somehow carried more weight than murder in these days…
He had to remind himself that history really was a different place to the world they grew up in, sometimes, and this was one of those times.
"Is it just me, or do the people seem to care for her a lot more than the King?" He asked Koharu, hoping she'd have some kind of astute observation.
"Yeah, they do, don't they?" She replied. "Still, it's nice to know she's not completely hated. She seems pretty happy out here too…"
"Well, we should be on our way. If we wait too long, no doubt the King will have gotten news of our escape, and the peace shall be shattered here, again."
"Again?" Koharu asked the question on both of their minds.
"I suppose you could say this town is my home, more so than the Kingdom itself. My family lived here, until the King took power, and ordered its sacking."
"Why though?"
"Let me guess, it wasn't so bloodless the way he took power, was it?"
"Not quite. His rise to power was peaceful, as far as rebellions go. No, that wasn't the problem – my parents were the problem, and they had supported the previous king. There had been… murmurs of revolt at his seizure, and so… the King did his best to ensure that could not happen." Ronie explained, and Koharu pulled her into another hug, already aware of where this answer was going. "I escaped and went into the care of my uncle. The rest of my family, they were not so fortunate."
He thought about what she was telling them – King William had essentially wiped a town off the map to satiate his own paranoia, and once that was done, he had allowed the sole surviving daughter of a family he knew hated him to be taken into court and gaslit into accepting the politics, the backstabbing and callous disregard for life that court life bought with it.
He couldn't help but offer her a hug too – the poor girl really couldn't catch a break, could she? It was almost like the world had conspired to break her spirit, to turn her into a ticking timebomb of rage and emotions… and yet, she seemed so kind?
Maybe it was a little bit of cynicism mixed into his own life experiences, but that level of trauma was not conducive to keeping your kindness in the long term…
/-/
The palace at Hampton was… well, there was no other way of saying it, but it was gaudy in the extreme.
It resembled some of the cars he had seen around the more… effluent areas of Bristol, in that it had been modified in the most hideous ways possible, and seemed to be there to make one particular statement, and only one:
"Bow down to me, for I am superior to you plebs."
He winced just looking at the castle, and he watched as Koharu had a similarly visceral reaction to the gold-plated testament to the human ego…
"He didn't seriously have the place gold plated… did he?" She asked, hopeful she was wrong.
Sadly, Ronie didn't do much to allay those concerns, instead making them worse… "It is rather worse than that. The gold used was obtained from the pillaging of the monasteries across the Kingdom." Koharu looked understandably horrified, and he really hoped that Cardinal hadn't spent more time reading up on Tudor history, else he'd be expecting more brutal murders in the pipeline…
Luckily, there were no heads lining the streets yet, but that just suggested it was still early days in the King's rule probably.
"Still, he can pay for those acts when we find him. All of his kind can pay for them." Ronie stated darkly, and for a split second, he wondered what she meant by that. More importantly though… he had a slight doubt appear as to whether they were actually doing the right thing here.
/-/
The inside of the palace was no less gaudy, and almost made Jet long for the relative taste of modern monarchies, in comparison. If the outside had been intended to send a message to the plebs, that being that he was their God-given ruler, then the inside was done out in such a way to send a message to the wealthier members of the court – "know your place, and know that if I can afford this décor, I can afford an army to crush you completely".
As a child, he had always wondered what it would be like to have lived through the Tudor era, and inside this ersatz Tudor-era setting, he had found his answer…
That being that it was probably a completely miserable existence with existential threat after existential threat around every corner. Almost like living in South Bristol, he had to admit, though probably with better plumbing…
The fact that Ronie seemed to be far more anxious now hadn't escaped either of their attentions though. "You okay?"
"I will be fine. I am just concerned as to what happens next, and what shall happen if this fails…"
"We won't fail." Koharu gave her a smile. "Will we, Jet?"
"Nah, the plan's foolproof…"
"We have a plan?" Both girls asked, clearly surprised by that turn of events. "That's new." Koharu joked.
"A guy has to have some secrets, right?" He laughed. "Nah, I'll challenge the king to a duel in front of his court. That should get his attention…"
"The king is a battle-hardened soldier, Sir Jet. That will not be as easy as you think it may be…"
"Yeah, well, he's never met me." Jet stated confidently. "Cut from the cloth of a flag that bears the name "Battle born"."
"How long did it take you to think of that one?" Koharu smirked. "In all seriousness though, are you sure you can take him in a one-on-one duel?"
"I reckon so, yes." He did his best to answer confidently.
"Even though you know nothing about him." Koharu pointed out.
"I know he's a tyrant, and that he's bad news for a lot of people. That's enough for me to act here…"
"This is a bad idea, and it's going to blow up in our faces." Koharu answered.
"I agree with Lady Koharu here. When I said we should face him, I did rather more assume that was with an army on the field of battle… not in an honourable duel. But if we have come this far, then only a coward would turn back now."
"Jet, I know things have been rough since Strea died, but since then, your decision making hasn't been… well, it's been kind of terrible." Koharu admitted, clearly relieved to get that off her chest.
"What are you saying? You don't trust me anymore?"
"No!" She exclaimed. "I trust you, but you need to take a step back sometimes, and think about what you're doing! Like this, you know as well as I do that this is a bad plan!"
"I don't see anyone coming up with a better one, do you?"
"We had an entire town of people who could help back there, but no, you have to be the hero here. You have to face him on the field of battle because no one else can do it, and you know what? You're turning into your sister!"
"What?" He looked at her in confusion.
"Refusing to ask for help, doubling down when you know something is a bad idea… all of those aren't you." She almost pleaded with him to stop what he was doing. "Just… let me message everyone, and we can do this as a group. Remember what happened last time one of us tried to do a quest on our own?"
He thought back to the Twenty-Seventh Floor, to everything that went down there, and grimaced. Even if his ego refused, the voice of sense in his mind told him that everything she'd said was right, and that-
"Sir Jet, Lady Koharu, I believe it may be a now or never situation. We do not have time to wait for assistance, even though we may need it. The King is in there, and he readies his wrath on another town for their perceived disloyalty. If we act now, lives may be saved…"
He looked at Koharu and noticed her expression was more serious than normal. Far from being worried, he'd have almost said she looked angry at him… "It's your decision." She told him, though he did not need to be a mind reader to know that she wasn't delegating it to him because she trusted him, but rather that he was in the doghouse with her.
It all came down to his own attitude – which was more important to him, being seen to do the right thing by others, or doing the right thing by the people he cared for. Koharu was right, they could do with the reinforcements if things went south, and if he was honest, he was under no delusions that they wouldn't. The way this quest was set up seemed to be just that kind of quest, one designed to test a person's attitude…
"So, what will it be, Sir Jet? The lives of others or your own safety?" Ronie asked, and Koharu's expression seemed to fluctuate for a split second, as if she had just realised something.
"Jet, listen to me and let me message everyone." She pleaded with him for a split second, before both of them were taken aback by a knife held to Koharu's throat. "Ronie…"
"Ronie?" He asked. "What the hell are you doing?!"
"I will not let my opportunity to take what is rightfully mine slip away!" She told him angrily. "So, you will defeat the king, or I shall make sure you regret challenging me when I take the throne."
"Why do this? We're helping you!"
"You were both about to betray me, were you not? To leave me to face justice as you fled!"
"No!" Koharu exclaimed. "We just wanted to even the odds more. Surely that's the furthest thing from betrayal?"
"Don't bother trying to reason with her, Ko." His tone became darker. "She's no better than he is."
"Just a thought, but perhaps don't anger her when she has a dagger to my neck?" Koharu asked him, though it was more of a telling off.
"I am no monster, Sir Jet, but I must do what is right for this kingdom. If that makes me a monster in your eyes, then so be it. As she said, it is your decision now, Knight of Lyusula… I would advise you to make the right decision."
"I don't get much of a choice now, do I?" He answered, anger boiling beneath the surface. "Make my odds a bit fairer, but lose the person I'd sacrifice everything, or go in half-cocked, and risk everything…"
If he didn't hate the idea of monarchies before all of this, he found himself reckoning that he would afterwards…
Calming his nerves briefly, he looked back to Koharu. Despite the situation she was in, she was handling it rather better than he'd have imagined, with barely a trace of terror on her face. Perhaps she knew that Ronie wouldn't do it – the girl wasn't a killer, but she was desperate… and desperate people did stupid things.
He should know, he'd found himself backed into that corner more than a few times in his life.
"Well then, for Queen and Country, huh?" He'd always hated that phrase – it felt too… overly patriotic, the type of thing someone completely blind to their country's faults would say to comfort themselves that they were doing the right thing – but now, it felt oddly accurate; after all, he was only doing this out of compulsion.
First his hero complex, and now the risk to Koharu's life.
/-/
His Knight of the Wind persona was heavily based on the Doctor, that much was obvious to anyone who spent a few seconds around him whilst he put that act on – a man who could turn the tide of battle with just his words and convince an enemy to give themselves and their madcap plans up… but make them regret not taking that choice if they didn't.
That was the Knight of the Wind to him.
What he wasn't, however, was a revolutionary, pressganged into fighting for a teenaged queen lost amongst her own self-loathing and conditioned into believing that backstabbing and treachery were just parts of life…
No, this would be himself speaking for this one, he decided as he walked into the chamber with Koharu and Ronie in tow.
The room had fallen silent as he threw the door open in a way that most would have said was nothing but pure theatre – and he agreed, but theatrics was what he was going for here. Court life was one of those things that was nothing but trouble in his experience, and he could see why Ronie, a sweet and kind girl by any other metrics, had become what she currently was, if that was what she was exposed to in her formative years.
He wasn't sure anyone else would have turned out any better, really.
"King William, I presume?" He asked of the fat man in the gaudy chair, knowingly not offering the expected formalities; a greater insult than any words could be in these days.
"What treachery is this!" The King answered, screaming at the top of his voice.
"We're here to depose you." Ronie answered from the back. "My love." She added, though even he could detect the sarcasm thick enough to cut in that.
"So, my whore of a wife has seduced you too." The King sneered, and Jet found himself grimacing briefly, before he remembered what he was here to do. He didn't need to win the court over, just show that he had just as an acidic wit as he had normally… "No matter. Knave, state what you wish…"
"By the ancient laws of combat, subject to the jurisprudence of the Kingdoms of Lyusula and Queensbury, I challenge you to a duel… sir!" He overpronounced the sir in that, just to show he little respect he had for the monarch. As for the rule, whether those were actually a thing or not, he had no idea, but they certainly sounded imposing if nothing else…
"Well, court, if this insignificant adulterer wishes to fight for his right to bed my wife…" He couldn't help but feel a rising bit of sick in his throat at that. Even ignoring that Ronie was currently forcing them to do this, she was still a kid in his eyes!
"Solid pass on that one. Two reasons: one, I'm not a nonce, unlike you, and two, I'm in a very happy relationship… also unlike you, actually." He channelled his inner Blackadder on that one, and in his eyes, he'd done quite a good job of it…
The screaming from the courtiers seemed to suggest so, anyway.
The King on the other hand, appeared to have gone bright red with apoplexy, standing up from his throne… much to his surprise. "I shall grant you the death you so clearly seek, knave. Name thyself so the court may know your loyalties!"
"I'm Jet, Twelfth Viscount of Winterbourne, Pagoda Knight of the Kingdom of Lyusula; the Knight of the Wind and one of the knights who fought the Fallen Elves and bought about an end to a war that had raged on for generations!" He smiled, the edge in it becoming more apparent as he continued. "And my loyalty is to those who need it most, not tyrants like you!" He worded that in such a way that he hoped Ronie would take the hint that whatever he did here was purely because she had them at such a disadvantage that he could see no way to overcome it…
The court had fallen silent as he issued that challenge, but now, murmuring began to rise to the surface, and even some clapping…
From Ronie.
Had he not got to keep up the act, he would have held his hand to his face in embarrassment at that one. From the side, he heard Koharu try to temper their hostage taker's enthusiasm slightly, telling her that maybe the clapping could wait until after he'd won their duel…
"Oh, now that is interesting, is it not?" The King held a hand to his beard, rubbing it intently. "A Pagoda Knight too? They really must give out knighthoods to anyone these days, mustn't they?"
"I dunno, your Highness, how many of these lot did you give knighthoods to, because they were too spineless to revolt against you?" He pointed out. "How many of them that are now revolting because they think you're a fat oaf in a godawful chair?"
There was an obvious joke about how it was nothing new that they were revolting to be made, but he was attempting to taunt the king into fighting him, not act as the court jester.
The fact that the King hadn't ordered him beheaded there and then said that he was exactly where he wanted him, angry and ready to fight him on the field of battles outside the castle…
"Very well, I shall separate this fool's head from his body myself!" Good, this was going to plan for once. "Let us adjourn to the field of battle, and we shall settle this matter…"
/-/
About half an hour had passed, and the court had moved to the fields outside the palace. Normally, he imagined these would've been used for holding events, but he supposed this was also an event…
It wasn't every day a mad Englishman challenged the King to a duel to the death, after all. That was usually the job of the Scots, after all.
"Sir Jet." Ronie gave him a curtsey as she came over to them. "The King is not a fast man, but what he lacks in agility, he makes up for in strength."
He understood what she was saying – fighting him with force was out as an option, but circling the man and chipping him down was a viable option in his mind.
"God bless you, brave knight. Should you win here, this kingdom is free of his tyranny!" Only to be replaced by hers instead, he thought to himself.
"Hey, what I said earlier? I didn't mean it like that, I was just frustrated and-"
"You're right though. We're only in this situation because I rushed into it and didn't think things through. When this is over, I promise I'll work on that…"
"Good." Koharu smiled at him, as if they weren't in a situation that, should things go south, would almost certainly end with all of them being tortured before they died horrible and agonisingly slow deaths… "Now, Sir Jet, Knight of the Wind… go and kick his butt!"
"Yes, ma'am!" He gave her an enthusiastic salute, and walked out onto the field to a realisation…
This must have been how footballers felt: a hostile crowd ready to rip their limbs off for even a slight mistake; though he imagined the England team only assumed that, whereas this was rather more literal.
"This knave wishes to die like a dog, so I shall grant him his wish!"
"Are we going to stand here, or are we going to fight?" He asked, getting quite bored of the visceral threats now. At first, they were terrifying, but after almost an hour of them, it was clear they were pretty idle…
Much like the King if those varicose veins were anything to go by.
"The Knave will shut his mouth whilst the King speaks!"
"The Knave will do no such thing." He told him, rolling his eyes. "Now get on with it already. Too much stalling and the crowd'll think you a coward…"
"How dare the Knave call me a coward!" He shouted at him, earning another roll of the eyes. "I shall-"
Channelling a slightly different Doctor this time, he slipped into his native accent briefly as he interrupted the King's ranting… "Rip my lungs out and play them as instruments? Take my knob and use it as a doorhandle? Drown me in unlimited rice pudding? Give it a rest already, and just fight me, you damn coward!"
"Very well – let the duel… commence!" Jet drew his sword and prepared himself. Any attack was likely to be fierce, and likely to need him to dodge rather than defend, if Ronie was right… though he did realise how dumb trusting her was, given… well, all of this!
Regardless, the King did exactly as he'd expected – he charged straight for him, blade at the ready – and he worked out a way to evade the attack, and counter it.
One skill he'd never really made all that much use of was the Martial Arts skill; it simply hadn't come in handy for any kind of attacks… but it had some pretty nifty dodges.
"Rragh!" He shouted, pushing himself away from the attack path.
Dodges like the one he just pulled off, dodging to one side, and pushing himself into a spinning slash as the King passed by him.
"Stay still!"
"Only if you do!"
The King's armour was by far and above the biggest issue he was having in landing effective blows on the man – he could make the gap big enough to launch into harassment strikes on him, but anything more required a much bigger gap than he could effectively make using Caeldfwlch.
There was still a fair chance he could wear the King down, and force a surrender that way, but that would require time and more than a degree of luck. He could take two or three direct hits from him, he reckoned, but that simply meant that the King only had to get lucky three times to take him out of the fight.
Another problem he had discovered was that Caledfwlch was simply too big of a blade to jab through the armour's small gaps, meaning he was restricted to mostly slashes, attacks that weren't particularly effective against the metal plating.
No wonder Ronie had been concerned about this plan initially – he wasn't so much a skilled fighter, as he was a bloody wall of metal armour with a fat git inside it!
"Concede, Knave!"
"Nah, I'm just dandy, tah!" He bantered as he evaded another charge. "Give up yet yourself?"
"I am not the one fighting a losing battle here…"
It was in that moment that a random thought popped into his mind, and it was one that he later told Koharu that he didn't even understand himself. The King was a hulking mass of metal, and his helmet severely limited his visibility to a single slit in the helmet; one that his sword couldn't pierce due to the dimensions of the blade… but something small, needle like and cylindrical might just do it to blind the man, even if it was only temporarily.
Something like, say, an umbrella?
Falling back for a split second, he quickly swapped his sword out for an umbrella, much to the confusion of the crowd and his opponent, before biting his thumb at the King. It turned out Shakespeare was indeed good for something, and that something was insults…
"Ha! The Knave has lost if he must fall upon an umbrella!" The King taunted to the crowd, and he gave a look that was somewhere between "not just yet" and "this is when I'm at my best!". "Yield, and I shall make your death expedient!"
"Nope. I'm not through with this yet!" The two charged at each other, and Jet readied the umbrella to aim for the King's weak point – his eyes. The seconds it took for the King to be atop him felt like an eternity to him, but to his thankfulness, they faded fast once he'd jabbed the umbrella through the vision slit… "But you might be."
"You slimy bastard!" The King cried, clutching the hole over his eyes, and giving him free reign to walk up behind him with Caeldfwlch in hand again.
With the sword at the King's throat, he made his only demand. "Yield."
"I yield." The King surrendered, and he pulled the blade slightly further away from the King's neck.
"Now tell them." He twisted the metaphorical knife in. "Tell them who's in charge of this kingdom now."
"I yield before Sir Jet! The Kingdom is his by right!" Wait, no, that wasn't what he meant! "He has bested me in combat, with God as his witness, and shows himself to be the rightful ruler of this kingdom!"
In retrospect, he really should've stated he was here in a capacity of Ronie's champion, not in his own capacity, because he was pretty sure he was now actually King.
"Uhh right then, not quite my plan, but I can work with it." He muttered to himself, thankfully drowned out by the applauding crowd. Who'd have thought launching a coup would be so well received? "As King of this wonderful Kingdom…" A kingdom that he no idea of the name of, which was a fantastic start as king, he reckoned! "I hereby renounce my claim of rulership, and hand over to Queen Ronie. You have all been fantastic citizens for the twenty-three seconds I was in charge, tah!"
"To the Queen!" The crowd cheered, as if they hadn't just witnessed the entire dynasty of a monarch in the time it took to check the time…
If he'd thought court life was a fickle thing, then the court of public opinion was even worse! Still, he would be in the history books now as the shortest reigning monarch in history!
"So, King Jet…" Koharu teased him as she curtseyed to him.
"Oh, don't start that…" He laughed along and made a note of the story to tell it later. If nothing else, it would be an interesting evening later, trying to explain to everyone how they had gone from being thrown into a jail cell, to overthrowing a tyrant in the space of an afternoon! "Still, I reckon she's got it in hand now."
"Don't want to stay around for the coronation?"
"Less time I spend here, the happier I'll be." He admitted.
"Reckon the kingdom's in good hands?" Koharu asked, and he could tell she had reservations about that. Having the monarch hold a dagger to your throat probably does raise questions about their suitability to govern a kingdom, he supposed…
"Can't be in any worse, can it?" He answered. "But still, she's a kid. Think how easy it was for us to do that, and what she said earlier about making them all pay…"
"I didn't like the sound of that." Koharu said. "Sounded a little too… you know?"
"Genocide-y?" He asked.
"Not quite that bad, but you're not wrong. She's got unlimited power now, and she's surrounded by complete cowards who won't tell her she's wrong. That can't possibly end well…"
As the discussion about what to do next continued, a dull ping went off in the background – the noise of the quest log updating - and they checked to see what the update said:
The Circle of Hatred
Queen Ronie has taken power in a bloodless coup, but how long will it stay that way?
"I forgot how much I hate how cryptic that thing can be." Jet sighed. "Guess we're not leaving yet, are we?"
"I'll go and get the girls." Koharu told him. "Can you keep digging around to see what you find about any plots against her?"
"At least that'll be one person in her court that has a spine." And a chin, based off some of them. He knew inbreeding was a thing back in these days, but the fact that only about five of the fifty members of the court had chins (and five fingers on each hand) was just a bit ridiculous…
Still, that wasn't the mystery they were here to solve – no, that was who was plotting to kill the Queen?
And how on earth had they had time to do that, given Ronie had been queen for all of five minutes!?
{Author's Comments}
The one day I actually finish a chapter... and FFN is completely and utterly broken.
Again.
The joys of a website that's older than I am, I suppose... so apologies for the delayed update on this.
Anyway, I've set up a Discord for any of the An Englishman fics, so if you're enjoying this story, and want to give me some feedback, the link is here: https: double slash discord dot gg / GywVUKKFed. Reviews are always welcome too, along with following and favouriting the story if you want to keep updated of any new chapters.
Signing off,
Midland 2541