I Can Copy And Evolve Talents

Chapter 1482: What Pyrrhus Hears

The new Echo settled into the Soul Forge like a block of deep-sea ice.

Northern sat at the heavy ironwood desk in the high study of the Tempest Spire with his hands steepled under his chin. He closed his eyes and felt his way through the tiers of his inner world until he found the new addition. The Pale Keel. A Calamity-danger Leviathan as long as three warships, lying perfectly still in the soul-space.

’Thirty-three.’

He could still feel the cold salt spray on the Rian clone’s face. He could still feel the weight of Captain Ysolde’s slate in the corner of his eye, and the grim pleasure of watching the Imperial war machine run at full stretch.

The clone was doing its job. The deep sea was a butcher’s yard, and the Sixth Legion was feeding the Archduke of Ryugan fragments without ever knowing it. But Northern had not made thirty-odd bodies just to hunt monsters.

The war at sea was only half the board.

Northern let the link with the Rian clone fade to a dull hum at the back of his mind. He turned away from the freezing northern ocean and reached for a different thread.

It was a very thin, very dark thread, buried deep in the heart of the Reimgard Empire.

It was Puppeteer’s Malice.

Northern didn’t use the weave to control. He didn’t pull the strings to force a movement or plant a thought. He simply let his awareness slide down the invisible tether he had planted long ago, until it settled in behind the ears of Count Pyrrhus of the Blue Orchid.

The change came without a seam.

One moment, Northern was listening to the wind howling against the granite ramparts of the Tempest Spire. The next, he was listening to the soft clatter of silver goblets and the crackle of a roaring hearth.

He didn’t open his eyes. He only listened.

Through Pyrrhus’s ears, the room laid itself out piece by piece. It was a large space, hung so heavily with velvet that nothing in it echoed. The air smelled faintly of spiced wine and expensive lamp oil.

"The supply lines are already straining," a sharp, aristocratic voice said. The tone was cautious, the cadence that of a senior military aide. "The Winterward took four full cohorts. They emptied the granaries in the second ring just to provision the fleet for a six-month crossing."

"Then tax the southern lords," a second voice replied.

The sound rumbled through Pyrrhus’s skull, deep and unbothered. Northern knew it at once. It was Prince Regulus, the Battle Master.

"They’ve been sitting on their hands while the East bleeds," Regulus continued, and a heavy chair scraped across stone as he spoke. "Tell the Exchequer to double the grain tithe below Hollin’s Ford. If they complain, tell them I’ll come down there and collect it myself."

"Yes, Your Highness," the aide said quickly. "But the real issue isn’t the grain. It’s the destination. The admiralty is questioning the logistical sense of a six-month deployment to a frozen wasteland when the Eastern front is losing three miles of coastline a week."

Northern listened to Pyrrhus pour wine. It struck the silver goblet with a thin, bright ring.

Through the weave, Northern could feel the Count’s nerves strung tight beneath the stillness. Pyrrhus was standing motionless at the edge of the room, playing the servant nobody sees, and clinging to his place in the Fifth Prince’s household now that Rigel was gone. He had no idea that someone else was listening through his ears.

"The admiralty doesn’t see the whole board," Regulus said. His voice dropped, losing some of its usual boom. "The East is a meat grinder. Father knows that. He’s letting them bleed to keep the other nations looking the wrong way."

"Looking away from what, exactly?" the aide asked, lowering his voice to match.

"From the real prize," Regulus answered.

In the Tempest Spire, Northern leaned forward slightly.

"The Northern Expedition isn’t about claiming territory," Regulus continued, and his goblet clinked down on the table. "You can’t farm a glacier. You can’t tax a blizzard. The Sixth Legion isn’t there to plant a flag."

"Then why send our best vanguard cohort, sir?"

For a long moment, Regulus said nothing.

"The sealed orders," Regulus said quietly. "Ysolde won’t open them until they reach the ice. But I saw the drafts before the High Priest locked them in the ledger chest."

Northern heard the aide shift in his chair. "The church’s ledger?"

"El Fach has been tracking them for three hundred years," Regulus said, his voice hard. "The survivors of the purge. The ones who ran north when the First Emperor took the throne. The Beija."

Northern’s jaw tightened.

"The orders are specific," Regulus continued, with no idea of the ghost listening through his servant’s ears. "Eradicate the adults. Burn the villages. But the children... the ones with the silver striations in their eyes. The pure bloodlines."

"What about the children, Your Highness?" the aide asked, barely above a whisper.

"They are not to be harmed," Regulus said flatly. "They are to be taken alive. Intact. Put in irons and brought back to Reimhold on the flagship."

In the high study of the Tempest Spire, Northern opened his eyes.

The firelight in the hearth threw long shadows across his face and burned small and steady in his eyes.

So that was it.

The Northern Expedition was not a war, and it was not only a purge. The Emperor did not want the Asgardian bloodlines gone. He wanted them for himself.

"Father does not spare things," Rehema had warned him, standing in this very room. "He collects them."

Northern closed his eyes again and let the sounds of the capital wash back over him.

"Bring them back?" the aide was saying, real confusion bleeding into his polished tone. "But the Church has preached for centuries that the northern blood is cursed. That it’s a heresy against the Constellations. Why would the Emperor want a boatload of heretic children brought into the Crown City?"

Regulus laughed. It wasn’t his usual roaring laugh. It was low and ugly, and it scraped against the velvet walls.

"Because Father doesn’t care about the Constellations," Regulus said. "He cares about power. He wants the eyes. He wants to breed the silver striations back into the royal line. He’s going to use the Sixth Legion to round them up like stray cattle."

Through the weave, Northern felt Pyrrhus flinch. The silver pitcher tipped in the Count’s hands.

"Careful, Pyrrhus," Regulus snapped, a fighter’s instincts catching the tiny slip at once. "You’re spilling the wine."

"My apologies, Your Highness," Pyrrhus stammered. "The... the pitcher is heavy."

"Then use two hands," Regulus said dismissively, already turning back to the aide. "Tell the quartermasters to prepare the holding cells beneath the Luminance Spire. The Emperor wants the cages ready before the winter breaks."

"Yes, Your Highness."

Northern cut the thread.

The velvet room in the capital vanished. The smell of spiced wine gave way to the sharp smell of cold granite and the storm that never quite left the Spire. The wind came howling back into Northern’s ears, loud and very real.

Northern sat back in his heavy wooden chair, staring into the dark.

Somewhere on the northern sea, Rian the Mercenary, the clone Northern had sent to guard Nyssira and bleed the Empire, was standing on that same flagship and sailing straight toward the harvest.

Northern looked down at his own hands.

He was a Paragon. He held the Soul Forge. He had just even gained the Echo of a Leviathan from under the Empire’s nose. And none of it had told him what his father was actually doing.

He had thought the board was a war of attrition. He had thought he could bleed the Empire slowly, breaking its supply lines and its morale while he built his own nation on the Dark Continent.

He was wrong.

The Emperor wasn’t playing a game of attrition. He was playing a game of acquisition.

’Collect.’

The word hung in the empty stone study. Slowly, one corner of Northern’s mouth lifted.

’Alright, Father. Let’s see how you like it when someone collects from you.’