The Broken Banner: A Grimdark Power Progression Fantasy (Queen of Conquest Book 2), page 1
The Broken
Banner
QUEEN OF CONQUEST
BOOK TWO
Fudge Esquire
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights of any copyright holder, no part of this work may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published, or stored in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, digitization, or otherwise, or used to train, develop or improve any artificial intelligence system or machine learning model, without prior written permission of the author and/or Podium Publishing, as applicable, except as permitted under applicable law. In accordance with Article 4(3) of the Digital Single Market Directive 2019/790, the author and/or Podium Publishing, as applicable, expressly reserve this work from the text and data mining exception.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2026 by Fudge Esquire
Cover design by Anna Christenson
ISBN: 979-8-89539-735-0
Published in 2026 by Podium Publishing
www.podiumentertainment.com
Contents
Prologue: Flames of Rebirth
Chapter One: Monster Cores
Chapter Two: Duke Alistar
Chapter Three: Return to Ruins
Chapter Four: Resurrection of the Soul
Chapter Five: Forceful Branding
Chapter Six: Interrogation
Chapter Seven: A Queen’s Teachings
Chapter Eight: Magic and Energy
Chapter Nine: Holy Kingdom
Chapter Ten: Discrimination
Chapter Eleven: It’s a Trap!
Chapter Twelve: Stalemate
Chapter Thirteen: First Interlude of Marquess Benedict Sharma
Chapter Fourteen: First Interlude of Duke Collin Alistar
Chapter Fifteen: Dash’Ora
Chapter Sixteen: Similar, Yet Different
Chapter Seventeen: Plan of Action
Chapter Eighteen: An Eye for an Eye
Chapter Nineteen: The Father, the Daughter, and the Holy Kingdom
Chapter Twenty: The Plan
Chapter Twenty-One: Accidentally Eviscerated
Chapter Twenty-Two: Daughter of Lunari
Chapter Twenty-Three: Saintess
Chapter Twenty-Four: Bell Tower
Chapter Twenty-Five: The U’rgesh
Chapter Twenty-Six: Speech of the False Saintess
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Responsibility of Power
Chapter Twenty-Eight: First Interlude of Lady Brianna Ballenci, Part 1
Chapter Twenty-Nine: First Interlude of Lady Brianna Ballenci, Part 2
Chapter Thirty: First Interlude of House Goldenheart’s Informant
Chapter Thirty-One: Triple Agent
Chapter Thirty-Two: A Fallen Baron’s Murderous Son
Chapter Thirty-Three: Core Oath
Chapter Thirty-Four: Memories and the Truth
Chapter Thirty-Five: I Am, Forever, Queen of Aedronir
Chapter Thirty-Six: Goodbye, Sealrite
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Windwalker
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Beast Islands and Monster Meat
Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Horde
Chapter Forty: Skinwalker
Chapter Forty-One: The First Eldritch
Chapter Forty-Two: Do You Need a Hand?
Chapter Forty-Three: Hidden Darkness
Chapter Forty-Four: Elyndor
Chapter Forty-Five: The Silver Keep
About the Author
Prologue
Flames of Rebirth
Pain was all she felt for minutes. Hours. Time was lost to her, something beyond her reach and comprehension. A constant reliving of her bones breaking and shifting nearly drove her mad while muscles splitting and tearing in her body’s struggle to drag her back from the brink of death. She’d forgotten everything during those moments. She’d forgotten who she was. What she was. Why she was.
Then, with a resounding BOOM that reverberated even in her formless mind, her eyes snapped open with a gasp from the depths of her soul. The world swam around her in a myriad of colors and sounds that collided and clashed, beating against her mind’s effort to find purchase once more in reality.
The air around her grew thick with the sporadic charge of electricity just as the first rays of dawn pierced the radiant, shattered windows of Sealrite’s luxurious banquet hall. Only the chirping of a bird broke through the silence and melancholy of the garden of corpses that surrounded her still limp body, all scattered and dead on the cold, unforgiving marble floor.
As she struggled, a small, otherworldly power pulsed bright blue within her stomach. Weakly at first, but the more she struggled against the pull of death, the more powerful the pulse became. Her body suddenly convulsed like the ripple of a still pond, the only sign of life among the death around her.
From her chest—no, from her very heart—a radiant burst of blue light exploded outward, wrapping around her as it spread through her veins with the fury of molten lava. Her cold, pale skin turned rapidly black under the heat, charring and hardening. After a moment, the burnt skin started to crack.
A second, slightly louder BOOM erupted from her body, splitting the obsidian marble floor as the black remnants of her old skin peeled away, turning to fine ash quickly swept up in a rising vortex of wind. The wind shifted smoothly to a tempest of fire, and the ash and burnt half corpse of the Red Cardinal disappeared into the flames without even a whisper.
In an explosion of light and energy that rocked the entire banquet hall with a force that towered over any previous sound she’d made, the vortex dissipated with the same caress of existence that had summoned it. The flames lessened, and Mirabelle stood in the center of the scorched earth, her flesh anew and her mind reformed. Remaining flames and electricity danced across her smooth pale skin in remembrance and mourning of who she had just been, flickering and flaring before settling into a gentle, iridescent glow. She was, at last, reborn.
Then she blinked, her red eyes peering into the figure leaning against the far wall, hiding from the early dawn light under a fallen arch. No longer were her eyes gray and dull, robbed of all life and joy. They shone once more with the fierce intensity of a thousand suns as she swallowed a deep, shuddering breath and enjoyed the rise and fall of her chest. Of the constant, familiar rhythm of life restored.
But something was different.
“About time,” Idola muttered, stepping out of the shadows. Mirabelle narrowed her still flaming eyes at the Blue Cardinal, a pink fog spilling out around her feet. “I’ve been waiting for you for ages.”
“Who are you?” Mirabelle asked, flexing her hands as she worked to remember. She remembered his name. Knew that he was Idola, the Blue Cardinal of the Church of Light. And she was … who was she? She was Mirabelle. Mirabelle who? “Why can’t I remember anything?” Her voice came out almost panicked, and her head split with pain as she pushed for memories just beyond her grasp, as if a thick smog clouded what belonged to her.
Idola quirked an eyebrow. “You don’t remember me?”
“You are Idola, the Blue Cardinal,” the reborn woman stated, still struggling for purchase on her reality. “I … I am Mirabelle.”
Idola gave a grim laugh, shaking his head in confusion. “What in the hells is going on? You’ve never lost your memory before.” He looked thoughtful for a moment as he squinted at her. “Why don’t you ask the System to fill in the blanks?”
Mirabelle tilted her head. “The System?”
“By the hells, what do you remember?”
“I … I remember I am Mirabelle.”
Idola swore. “That’s it?” She nodded, and he swore again. “You are not just Mirabelle. You are the Red Cardinal. An Administrator of the System. Try calling upon it. It should at least answer your call.”
“How do I do that?”
Idola muttered something with enough vehemence she could tell he was cursing despite not understanding the foreign sounds. “Try saying ‘Main System, heed my call.’ ”
Mirabelle repeated Idola’s recommended phrase. Nothing happened. She tried a second time.
Still nothing.
When she went to repeat his words for a third time, some nagging feeling in her stomach urged her to drop the first word. “System, heed my call.”
A wall of pitch-black jumped into her vision, overlaying where Idola stood and blocking him from her view. Mirabelle jumped back from it in shock, a small yelp escaping to freedom from between her lips.
“Ah, finally. I thought you’d been purged for a second. Thank the Goddess,” Idola said through a dry laugh. By the sound of his voice though, Mirabelle wasn’t sure how thankful he actually was.
[System announcement: Welcome, Mirabelle of the Phoenix, to the Desire System.]
“What does it say?” Idola asked, removing the blue hood that had covered his face. Blue eyes stared at her with wide curiosity under a bush of shoulder-length shaggy blue hair.
Mirabelle hesitated before giving him an answer. He looked almost agitated; on guard like a feline prepared to spring. But was that caution directed at her? If it was, why? She had done nothing to him.
Or had she and she couldn’t remember?
She swallowed, deciding to tell him. He seemed to have answers about who she was. If she told him, he might help her out.
“It is welcoming me,” she said.
“What exactly does it say?” Idola pressed. “It shouldn’t be welcoming you. You’ve been a System Admin for nearly a decade.”
“It says ‘Welcome to the Desire System,’ ” Mirabelle half responded, that same nagging feeling warning her against revealing the title of Phoenix to another who would live to tell the tale.
The black screen and red font blinked into the darkness, leaving her only with Idola’s perplexed face and drawn eyebrows. “The Desire System?”
“Do you know what that is, Idola?”
The blue-robed boy she somehow knew to be in his late twenties flinched as she called his name. He turned on her with a snarl. “Do not call me that. I am the Blue Cardinal. You will respect the title.”
Something blue glinted in his eyes, cutting off his next words and her response. His eyes widened, eyebrows shooting up toward the ceiling. His eyes traced something in front of him. The further he read, the more his lips curved down. As he finished, his jaw clenched, and he raised an arm to wave the message away.
“You’ve turned traitor, Red Cardinal? Why? After all this time?” He hissed, lips curled. “Have you been allied with an enemy System this entire time?”
His accusation stung Mirabelle. A sharp pain poked her at the word traitor, and she had the sudden urge to argue. To claim her innocence.
But was she innocent? She did not know.
Massive twin blades suddenly materialized in Idola’s hands as an iridescent power surged around him with what Mirabelle could only describe as excitement. “Now I have to kill you,” he said, seemingly unable to decide between the smiles and frowns that continually contorted his expression.
Mirabelle blanched and took a step back, instinctively and desperately reaching for that source of power she’d been reborn with. The bundle of flames flared at her call, and the source near her gut filled her with an irresistible desire to fight. To triumph over this unknown enemy threatening her.
She had just returned, and this man, whom she barely remembered, was attempting to send her back into that pain-filled Nothingness?
Mirabelle returned the snarl with a growl of her own, massive red and blue flames roaring to life around her. “Not if I kill you first.”
[System message: Desire System Administrator 001 registered. You have been completely purged of the Main System. The Flames of Rebirth ability granted by the Main System has henceforth been revoked with the purge.]
[System quest: Defeat the Administrator of the Main System.]
[Reward: Flames of Rebirth]
Blue and red tempests of power cascaded throughout the banquet hall like a raging waterfall. Their energies collided, and the space around them trembled. The already weakened stone walls of the building broke and splintered under the pressure of their repeated clashing.
But Mirabelle wasn’t worried. The more they fought, the more power and knowledge of combat returned to her.
The pink fog continued to leak from her during the fight, reaching ever toward Idola with the promise of pleasure and relaxation. The Blue Cardinal fought against her with the fluidity and strength of a river, bursts of water and ice flung at her from a myriad of directions, but they all melted within the vicinity of her burning flames.
“How are you so strong outside the influence of the Main System?” Idola grunted, covering a layer of burnt, boiling flesh on his stomach with a blanket of ice.
Mirabelle surged forward like an arrow of pure fire as she shouted an answer to his last question. She didn’t know how she knew what to say, but the words rolled off her tongue as if they were by design. She needed to say them, and she knew Idola wouldn’t be around to repeat them. “I am the Phoenix.”
Chapter One
Monster Cores
Smoke and death were heavy in the ashen ruins of Sealrite as I knelt beside the tenth beast since Duke Alistar’s forces had finished killing all the released monsters in the city. Even hours later, the air was still thick with the smog of dead and dying fires, and the city was polluted by the screams of the military and the mournful sobs of the bereaved.
I wasn’t sure what the death count was, but I’d passed a handful of pyres stacked to the brim with the disfigured bodies of the night’s victims. The plan had been to release monsters into the city to distract the city guards; it had not been to kill hundreds of people. The loss of life was unfortunate—not because of guilt or that the people of Sealrite were entitled to live, but because the massacre would no doubt delay my plan to resume the slave Arena’s functions under my command for weeks, if not months. While many in the city would likely enjoy the distraction of entertainment, there was too much work to be done in rebuilding the city for average citizens to attend such an event en masse.
The sheath of my newly obtained dagger, which I’d snagged off a fallen soldier, clicked as I lifted it with my thumb and withdrew the sharp blade. Beads of sweat rolled down the back of my neck as I plunged the dagger into the monster corpse in front of me, aiming just left of where I figured its stomach should be. Honestly, I’d never seen most of the monsters released in Sealrite, so my knowledge of their anatomy was effectively zero. Still, most of the beasts I’d dissected earlier contained a Core in the lower areas of their midsection, so the guess was as good as any.
The monster was an ugly yellow and purple, with a single massive eye taking up most of its head. Its body was just two fat legs connected to a sphere where its eye was. It was reminiscent, in a way, of a cyclops I’d encountered back in my previous world—minus the body.
I grunted as I sawed a deep line from the top of the creature’s head sphere to where its legs split, purple trails of blood flowing freely in the wake of my steel.
“That is so gross,” Nida said, lips pursed in a look of disgust. Most of the Paragons had left for their own ventures less than an hour after Duke Alistar’s forces had purged the city of danger, but Ethan, Nasq, and Nida, and a smattering of the others had chosen to remain with me for the time being.
After Duke Alistar and his knights had poured down like rain into the city, I’d only had a brief chance to speak with him before he’d been called away to deal with some of the more powerful monsters. Though he had left me under the charge of one of his knights, the knight had so far simply followed me around in silence.
While I wasn’t fond of being escorted around by anyone, much less the knight of a noble, I needed the Duke’s favor for the next steps of my plan. Plus, most of the freed slaves who had chosen to stay by my side were currently putting up tents in a grassy area near the slave Colosseum. It was a bit of an odd place to remain, but it seemed as if most of them were only familiar with the Colosseum, making it a comfortable place for them. In a way.
“It would be a lot quicker if you would help,” I grunted, yanking my dagger out of the hardened carcass. “Gods, that skin is tough.”
Nida shrugged. “It looks like a three-star monster, so I’m not surprised.”
“A what?” I asked, walking over to where the body of a man was half-buried under a slab of rubble and cleaning the purple blood off my dagger with his shirt.
“You know, a three-star. Mid-tier.” At my confused expression, the Tigerkin sighed. “My queen—my lady, there seem to be some interesting gaps in your knowledge.”
“Just explain,” I said dismissively with a wave of my hand and sheathed my blade. It was a lot harder to find a Monster’s Core when it had been killed long enough ago for all its heart energy to fade. I plunged my hand into the parted flesh and fished around for the hard sphere Core. If I were at a higher level, I could have potentially sensed the Core from the heart energy remaining inside it.
Nida sighed again, this time more dramatically, as she leaned against a large stack of wood from the fallen wall of what I guessed was some type of inn or tavern. “It’s how the hunter’s guild classifies monsters. One star is the weakest. Five stars are the strongest. So three-star monsters are middling.”
