1 Being King is Complicated (Part One)

Afonso was tired. He will face a long and difficult war, and although he has won it, he has barely been able to rest since then. He knew that as always the so-called peace was nothing more than calm before a storm even more violent than the last. As King of Albaran, he had learned that it never lasted. There would always be another war.

You will spend the entire time of your reign defending yourself and defending your homeland and your faith counting hordes and hordes of Northern Demons coming from across the sea, straight from the Nefarious Continent. Almost a century earlier, they had arrived in Leviathan fleets, attacking the coastline of the Albaran Continent and erecting enclosures around their villages and citadels, their daring incursions - and more brutal and bloody - with each passing year. When Afonso was still a boy, invaders from the Southern Continent had established bridgeheads across Albaran, capturing West Anglia and Mirian, the two largest kingdoms in the territory. Southern power spread far after that, and so quickly that in three years, only Albania remained standing. The last free and sovereign Empire in all the lands of the Continent of Albaran. Afonso's kingdom.

At the time, he was not yet a king, nor did he have any desire to be one, but he would soon be crowned. The Northern Demons wasted no time and attacked Albania. Afonso's king and his older brother managed, for a brief period, to repel the invaders. But after that, defeat after defeat, and when the king met death shortly after his army was sent to Lucios, the crown passed to Alfonso, his only heir. And so it was that, on his twenty-second birthday, Afonso became the only remaining king of Albaran and, most likely, his last.

For a brief period of time, Afonso considered resignation, and for good reason: the Northern Demons were known for their brutality and lack of mercy. Other Kings of Albaran, who did not flee or refused to capitulate, were tortured to death when their walls inevitably collapsed. The southern king at the head of the invading force, an ungodly brute called Belial, advanced deeper into the heart of Afonso's beloved Albania, plundering, killing men and raping women in the cities and villages he encountered on his way. Afonso's army was forced to retreat further west of Sunita, where the isolation of its swamps gave him time to regroup. Summoning men from neighboring counties, he ordered them to build a fortress in which they could meet and plan attacks. Tired of running and hiding, Afonso finally started to fight his enemies.

He defeated the Demons of the North at the Battle of Galileo, taking them to his fortress and setting up a siege until he forced the barbarians to capitulate from hunger. It was a decisive victory, but the Demons of the North were still many and were too spread out to be definitively expelled from the territory. Tired of bloody battles and more dead men than he could count, Afonso offered the armistice to his hateful enemy, Belial: if the Demons of the North, or Nortumbe agreed to put down their weapons, they would be given lands in the east. The Albaran territory that they already occupied would be formally recognized as Nortumbias, a kingdom in which Belial and his people could - and hopefully so - live in peace.

And so it was agreed. And so the Kingdom of Albania was saved.

Throughout his reign, Afonso's subjects, grateful to have spared them the horrors of the Demonic occupation, began to call him Afonso the Great. This was a title that he did not particularly like, as there was no greatness within him. He had studied the life and campaigns of another "Great", Asmodeus Eternos - Emperor of Alberan, who had been driven by a firm conviction of his greatness, so deeply rooted that he believed he was destined to conquer the whole world. And so it was; in the age of Alfonso, Asmodeus had defeated the vast red terracotta army, at the time considered as invincible, and advanced to reign in one of the greatest empires the world has ever seen, ruling all the Jade islands of Buda, from the Dead Sea to the heights Hill peaks that were located south of the Southern Continent. Afonso, far from it, could barely maintain his little kingdom.

Asmodeus Eternos also earned fame for never losing a single battle, while Afonso will lose many. Too much.

He wouldn't miss another one, he told himself. In the years following the Southern agreement, Afonso refused to be more complacent. He went to Bruma, a city plundered and ruined during the demonic invasions, and resurrected it, strengthening it against future attacks. Afonso's royal palace in Libra was similarly fortified, as were the villages and citadel around Albania, until every man is a woman within its borders of his reign could be assured that the horrors of years past would never again visited them.

Everyone except Afonso. Albania was as safe as he could guarantee, and yet he did not sleep easily. Every messenger is a scout brought new accounts of Southern naval activity, recent rumors of a new invasion. And Belial, long ill, according to rumors, was now on the verge of death.

Although King Sulista was a barbarian, Afonso began to respect him - more importantly, to trust him. In the years since the armistice, Belial will always stick to the peace-keeping agreement. But it was known that many ambitious and undaunted men of war among the Southerners of Nortumbias waited to take over Belial after his eventual death. Men who will not respect the treaty that their predecessor had honored. And the only thing Afonso feared more than a large-scale Southern invasion by the sea was a Southern uprising from Albaran's own borders.

And there he was, from his throne in Libra, as quiet as he had never been before. He will send a message to his military commanders across the Kingdom to keep a close watch. In the end, it would take a few days for the message to reach Nortumbia; for all that Afonso knew, Belial may have been perished by illness. Even at that moment, when he will wait on his throne, the Southern forces could be meeting under the command of a new king and preparing for an attack. But he had done everything he could. Now all that was left was to wait and worry.

"Your Majesty?"

Afonso looked at the servant before him; he was so absorbed in his own thoughts that he will not hear the boy approach.

"Which is?"

"The archbishop requests your presence in the courtyard," said the servant. "It says that there is something that Your Majesty needs to see urgently."

Afonso grunted. Magnus, the archbishop of Albania, was the last man he wanted to see that day, or any other day.

Although Afonso appreciated the Zilan faith, he did not appreciate it in the same way as the man who was the leader of his Church. The archbishop had been inherited along with the rest of Alfonso's kingdom, and there was something about the man that disturbed him from the beginning. If Afonso's reign had been one of peace, he probably would have arranged for the replacement of the prelate, but he had been too busy with the war against the Southerners to engage in a battle against the Church. However, in the past few months, he had bitterly regretted having made that decision before, but never with such intensity at that moment. What Magnus had to show him would certainly make his appetite bitter for the rest of the week and send him to bed with terrible nightmares, nightmares that made him witness beings that were beyond human comprehension, beings that roamed freely before the Great Magic War that put an end to these abominations of bone and meat. As if sleeping was no longer difficult in the last few months.

Afonso reluctantly shook his head at the servant.

"Tell him that I will be there soon"

The servant made a great bow and then hurriedly left. Afonso sat still for a long time before walking to the patio. Whatever new horror Magnus had in store for him, he was in no hurry and had no intention of going to see her.