Author: Tower Curator

 

“He isn’t responding.”

“Did something happen?”

“The dark elves are still out.”

“They’re fine… I think,” Hale said, leaning over the two unconscious elves. Neither were injured in any way that she could think to check. Because of some of Zullie’s experiments, their bodies weren’t exactly usual. Having sat in for some experiments, including Project Liminal, Hale was somewhat well-versed in abnormal magical effects. Because of that, she could see only one thing that might be a problem. “Both appear to have used an excess of magic over a short amount of time. Because of the link we have with Arkk, that normally wouldn’t be a problem. They should have recovered by now.”

The muscles in Kia and Claire’s faces were tense, as if in a constant, painful grimace. They were still using magic, even now. Or rather, they were trying to use magic. But they didn’t have much to use. That left them strained and… broken.

Hale stood, enjoying the strength in her new muscles. She had been thinking about asking Zullie if there were any of her projects suitable for someone like her. After seeing this, perhaps that wasn’t the best idea. Her new legs and arms were her. She would get tired if she exercised too much but that wasn’t any different to how it had been before. This power the dark elves had was more like a leech, always active, always draining.

“I think I can fix it,” Hale continued, stepping clear of the two dark elves to an empty space in the command room. “I just need to infuse their bodies with some more magic.”

“You’re going to drain glowstones to get them on their feet?” Zullie said, frowning as she stepped closer. “It won’t last long.”

“It’ll be temporary,” Hale agreed, bending down to start drawing out an infusion circle. Basically the reverse of the ritual used to fill glowstones in the Underworld. “Hopefully we can get them talking long enough for them to tell us what happened.”

Hale tugged off one of her gloves. Tensing all the muscles in her hand made a long, thin claw pierce through the tip of her finger. With that, she quickly started etching the ritual circle directly into the stone floor. The lesser servants could fix the damage later.

Unfortunately, she had to pause as large orcish boots stomped into place directly in front of her. “You’re going to use up glowstones right before a battle?” Rekk’ar growled.

“She’s not wrong,” Olatt’an said, stepping around the large table. “If something happened to Arkk and the only ones who know what happened are unconscious, getting them talking is vital. Our fighting tactics hinge on Arkk’s abilities.”

Rekk’ar showed off his tusks. He looked like he was about to say something, but hesitated. He stepped aside, allowing Hale to continue. “We fought for years without him or his powers.”

“Were we against slavers or forest monsters, I would agree,” Olatt’an said with a nod of his head. “But we are fighting an avatar and an army. While the hope was that the avatar would stay protecting his army while we extract our team, we cannot guarantee the avatar will stay there. It is best to have all our cards up our sleeves. Expending one or two glowstones still leaves us with enough to enact plenty of siege magic.”

Hale tuned them out as she started working again, only to have to stop when Zullie stepped forward, blocking the spot she had been working on. “Is finding Arkk not an emergency?” Hale barked out, starting to get upset. Looking up and finding Zullie not even facing remotely toward her only made her more upset.

The eyeless witch was turned toward the orcs, standing with her hands on her hips. “Now, now. Hale has the right idea but she isn’t experienced enough to realize we can perform this experi… this operation without any glowstones needed.”

Hale let out a loud huff.

Turning in place, Zullie pulled out an extensible metal rod. The kind used to draw out ritual circles in dirt or other soft ground. She tapped it to the ground and swept it in a circle. It wasn’t sharp enough to gouge the ground, but it did leave a faint mark. Even without eyes, she managed to sketch out the ritual circle almost perfectly.

Hale stared at it for a moment before realizing exactly what Zullie meant by not needing glowstones.

“You’re going to use the fortress to funnel magic into them? It will only be a trickle. That isn’t much—”

“They aren’t a bombardment array. It doesn’t need an instant burst of magic, but low-sustained and constant magic. Just a little bit to ease their strain,” Zullie said. “The fortress is perfect for that. In fact, it should be doing that anyway… I suspect their link to Arkk, and thus the fortress, has been severed, resulting in their current state.”

“Ah… Ah! Of course. That makes sense. But can’t we just rehire them to fix that?”

“Need them to be conscious.”

“Right,” Hale said. While she thought she had learned quite a bit from Zullie about magic, she was fully cognizant that Zullie knew much more about the fortress and its mechanics than she did. So she quickly got to work, using her claw to finish the ritual circle according to Zullie’s patterns.

As soon as that was done, she and Zullie moved Kia into place. She was more likely to be the talkative one of the two, so her first. It was a bit of a cumbersome affair, moving her, but it couldn’t be helped. Project Liminal caused… changes to their bodies. Those afterimages could be deadly if touched improperly. Even now, disconnected from the fortress, they were still leaving them behind. Though they seemed inert, Hale could feel them flaying away at her hands. Active use of the Flesh Weaving spell counteracted that.

Hale wasn’t sure how Zullie avoided being torn to pieces. She didn’t have tough, draconic skin nor had she uttered the Flesh Weaving spell to repair her body as she moved. She simply touched Kia without regard for danger.

Zullie was strange. Stranger after having lost her eyes.

Hale paid her no mind. She had a patient in need of help. With Kia in the center of the ritual circle, Hale planted a hand on the trigger point of the circle. A tiny pulse of magic was all it took to activate it.

The entire tower shuddered as the ritual circle lit up with a bright blue light. Hale tensed, gripping her claws into the ground even as she wished she had gone ahead and figured out how to give herself wings like Priscilla. But the shudder was a one-time thing. The Walking Fortress stabilized and went still once again.

Kia wasn’t still. Her afterimage lurched forward, gasping, followed swiftly by the actual dark elf. Kia’s eyes darted around. Afterimages of her head and arms swirled around her as if she were trying to protect herself from a sudden attack. One of those afterimage hands lashed out toward Hale, making her scramble back from the reality-flaying hand.

Zullie stepped forward, swatting away the ghostly arm with her bare hand. “Calm down,” she said, leaning forward without any fear. “Where’s Arkk?”

Kia’s eyes, wide and fearful, latched onto Zullie as if the witch were a rope thrown down an oubliette. She stared a moment before her hands grasped either side of her head, rubbing at her temples. “Two of them,” she said slowly, her words echoing in her afterimages. “There were two Arkks.”

“Of course, I’m worried about him. That doesn’t mean we can sit back,” Ilya strode forward, moving alongside Alma. “Leave Arkk to the others. We have our people to save.”

Arkk, whatever he was doing, wouldn’t want everyone to drop the rescue operations and focus on him. He had been gathering crews to head out without him. There was no need to hold them back.

“I’m taking command for now,” Ilya said.

The beret on Alma’s head twitched. “Is that the wisest course of action given the situation?”

Ilya paused and half-turned, glaring at Alma with such intensity that it almost felt like her eyes were glowing just like Arkk’s. “You’re suggesting we leave them? They’re still alive.”

Alma shied away, her ears flattening against her head on their own. “N-No. Of course not. I would never… I meant you being in charge. Is that wise?”

Alma hadn’t thought it was possible but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, Ilya’s glare intensified tenfold. The tall elf fully turned, her face set in stone. “Alma,” she said slowly. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

“Nothing,” the werecat squeaked, feeling more like a weremouse. “Nothing at all.”

Ilya stared a moment longer before turning away without another word.

Alma shook her head and took a breath, trying to throw off that intense pressure. She had always thought Ilya was something of a pushover, but this did remind her that, during the incident that got her hired on in the first place, Ilya had been the one to suggest outright killing her instead of torturing her. She had almost forgotten. Intentionally. For as poorly as her service to Company Al-Mir had started, she rather liked her duties these days. She felt a managerial role fit her perfectly. Company Al-Mir didn’t treat her poorly—or anyone, for that matter. Even Luthor was starting to regain some of his confidence.

But they had effectively kidnapped her, threatened her, and forced her into her contract. She tried to forget that bit.

It wasn’t that Alma doubted Ilya’s ability to get things done or to command some troops—Ilya had done some of that before Alma joined up, before the war started, and before she got injured at the Duke’s party. Alma’s main objection to her being here was Arkk. He wanted to keep Ilya safe. And if something happened to the elf on Alma’s watch…

Alma shuddered to think what might happen.

Ilya ahead of her threw open the doors to the ready-room. Inside, a handpicked group of Shieldbreakers, battlecasters, orcs with shadowy armor, and gorgon stood at the ready. A few donned looks of confusion at seeing Ilya in the lead, but nobody was too alarmed. It was well known that Ilya and Vezta were effectively the next level of Company Al-Mir’s hierarchy beyond Arkk. Olatt’an, Rekk’ar, and the research team were just below that.

Alma was somewhere under the rest of the advisory group. She wasn’t exactly sure what she had done to earn such a lofty position—apart from learning about a plot to overthrow the Duke, that was. She supposed it was either keep her close to keep an eye on her or throw her off in some corner of the dungeons to keep her quiet. Alma certainly wasn’t going to complain. Not that it mattered anymore.

The Duke was dead.

As for the rescue teams, they probably assumed nothing was amiss.

“Arkk is unavailable for this mission,” Ilya started. “As are the Project Liminal dark elves. Priscilla and Leda will be flying overhead, working with a bombardment strike team to draw the enemy’s attention. We will be on extraction duty. Any questions?”

The gorgon with the iridescent black scales and mechanical end to her tail slithered a step forward. “Iss Arkk—”

“Unavailable,” Ilya interrupted. “Any other questions?”

That was one way to shut down questions. Probably one of the more alarming ways. Not how Alma would have handled it.

Ilya simply looked over the group as if she honestly expected more questions after her interruption. Finding none, she turned and pinned a hastily drawn map to the wall. “We have three groups trapped behind enemy lines. Two underground, still in the tunnels, and one group above ground,” she said, updating the briefing from earlier “The latter will be the more difficult, so team leaders?”

Zharja, already slithered forward, stayed where she was as a battlecaster and one of the elven archers moved to join her.

Ilya looked over the three, then shifted her eyes over their shoulders, examining their particular groups. All three were mixed in their makeup, but Zharja’s had Lyssa and the majority of the Shieldbreakers while the archer had the majority of the ranged combatants. The battlecaster had a fairly healthy mix of melee and magic.

“Zharja and Lyssa,” Ilya settled on. “Your teams will be with me, responsible for the above-ground unit. Vector—” She looked to the battlecaster. “—will be in charge of recovering unit two. Maya will recover unit three. Here is how we’ll be doing this…”

Joanne clasped a hand over her mouth, trying not to hiss at the stabbing pain she felt in her side. It hadn’t been so bad earlier—or perhaps the adrenaline covering the pain faded away—but now, up here?

With her other hand, Joanne clung to the branch of the tree. A thin yet strong thread of spider silk helped her stay in place, supporting most of her weight. Even without being injured, she still would have been uncomfortable. With injuries?

Pain was all in the mind. Just the only way her body had of relaying that it was injured. As she already knew that, it didn’t mean anything. Or so she told herself over and over again while trying to keep her mouth sealed shut.

Below her, bright glowstone lights scoured the forest floor. A dozen armored men searched for any sign of interlopers. Injured and broken, Joanne and Kevin quickly realized they weren’t going to outpace the soldiers. Aside from the trail made while dragging her away from the explosion, which really could have been anything, she had no idea how they knew anyone was on the surface, let alone intact after that blast. But there they were.

Searching.

They were focused on the ground. If any one of them looked up, if she coughed or wheezed or just made the wrong rustling noise with her armor, that would be it. She didn’t know if they would try to capture her or if they would just kill her immediately with arrows or magic, but either way, it wouldn’t be good for her.

Lifting her gaze, Joanne looked over at another tree. Even with all the glowstones moving around below, she could barely see the silhouette of Keven. The arachnoid clung to the tree like he had been born to climb and managed to keep himself almost completely in shadow no matter where the lights were below. If he were on his own, he would have easily escaped. Even now, Joanne was sure he could have slipped away if he wanted. Yet there he was, watching and waiting and making sure she was still safe.

It irked. He shouldn’t be here. Just like she shouldn’t have bothered trying to save him. She could have gotten further down the tunnel if she ran when she ordered the others to, past the point of collapse, and made it back with Viv and the others.

In her foolishness, she had stayed behind. And now, he was staying behind.

Joanne couldn’t help but think that they would both end up paying the price.

Luck, that fickle wheel, chose the moment that thought crossed her mind to play its latest trick on her. The spider thread letting her hang from the tree even despite her injuries slipped. It didn’t break. It didn’t send her tumbling to the ground down below. But it slipped, scraping away some old, loose bark from the side of the tree. A small chunk fell, knocking into one branch and then another before finally landing in the underbrush, rustling the leaves.

The closest guard whirled. He didn’t hesitate for a single second before jamming his pike into the bush. So much for taking prisoners, Joanne thought with glum realization. That, in turn, got the attention of the rest of the search party.

It could have been a rabbit or a fox. All they had to do was shrug their shoulders and walk away.

Don’t look up. Don’t look up…

Joanne didn’t know if it was luck, strategy, or just Arkk, but just as one of the soldiers started tilting his head back, a blast of icy wind swept through the forest. A cascade of sleet and snow rained down a dozen paces back, back where the explosion had just gone off.

There, high in the moonless night, barely visible between the branches of the evergreen tree, a dragonoid’s scaled wings caught the starlight, glinting as she swooped around to come in for a second strafing run.

The guards down below scrambled and shouted, fully alert. They were looking up, but not at her. Their eyes were on Priscilla. In mere seconds, they were rushing out from below, heading back the way they came.

Joanne sagged, her relief threatening her grip on the tree. She let out a breath that she couldn’t guess at how long she had been holding. For the first time since that dragonoid appeared and got herself hired, Joanne was glad to see her. Looking up, she met Kevin’s gaze. Inhuman though it was, she still saw the flood of relief in his multitude of eyes.

Her relief combined with a sudden surge of adrenaline. Joanne let out a small, soft laugh at making it through.

Only to feel a sharp, piercing pain directly in her gut. Joanne looked down to find an arrow punctured through her mail.

One of the guards, trailing just behind the others, started shouting even as he drew a second arrow from his quiver.

 

 

“Hey? You still alive?”

Consciousness returned to Joanne like a mallet to the back of the head. She let out a hiss, reaching back as she lifted her head from the dirt floor. Her fingers felt an unpleasant wetness. Blood, most assuredly. Strangely enough, she didn’t feel any real wound. There was no stinging sensation that she recognized as cuts in her skin.

Or else the stinging was simply drowned out by the sheer ache that coursed through the entire rest of her body.

“You were banged up. Lucky I learned a little of that Flesh Weaving spell. Doubt I did a very good job though.”

Joanne lifted her head enough to see eight glossy black eyes staring down at her. The arachnoid. Kevin. The hard chitinous armor he naturally had looked worse for the wear. It was cracked in places. One of his many forearms was missing entirely along with the stump haphazardly sealed up. Probably with the Flesh Weaving spell.

Seeing his face brought a rush of memories back to Joanne. The sabotage mission, the explosive pots, the wind in the tunnel, and…

Joanne groaned, pressing a hand to her temple. She had a splitting headache. But she couldn’t just lie down. Planting a hand on a nearby tree, she used it to help get herself back to her feet. Her balance was unsteady and the world spun around her, but she forced through the dizzy sensation with pure willpower and…

Tree?

Joanne looked around with narrowed eyes, trying to force the world to stop spinning.

They weren’t in the tunnel anymore?

Looking back behind her, she found a long trail through a forest’s underbrush, though she couldn’t see much of it in the dark. Bits of dirt and grass clung to her mail armor, stuck in the little gaps. Kevin must have dragged her here.

“The others?” she ground out, wincing at the volume of her own voice. “Lyre, Opal, Viv?”

Kevin shook his head. “Not with us. The tunnel collapsed just ahead of where you and I dove for cover. I don’t know if they’re buried or managed to outrun the collapse.”

Joanne clenched her teeth. She had lost enough Claymores. Them too? Not if she could help it. Turning, she faced the trail her dragged body had left behind. “Situation?” she asked. It was a struggle to not rush back to dig them out with her bare hands.

Getting herself killed wouldn’t save them.

“The blast took out the roof of the tunnel over our heads, thankfully. Or we might have been buried as well.” Kevin paused, eyes flicking around the forest. Joanne had no idea how well arachnoids could see in the dark. The moon wasn’t out tonight. She could barely see his silhouette now that they were a few paces apart. “I don’t think the Eternal Empire was expecting the explosion. They seemed to be in disarray. I managed to carry you out before they could surround us.”

“How far away?”

“Not very,” Kevin said, stepping forward. He pointed one of his arms off to the side of the trail in the brush. “Those lights over there are their glowstones.”

The world was still spinning, but not as violently. Turning to look didn’t make Joanne want to throw up, at least. That was a good sign.

The mass of twinkling lights through the forest was not. They were a whole lot closer than she had expected from how casually they were speaking. Both Joanne and Kevin were whispering—her, mostly because her head was aching to the point where any louder and she might just crack—but even that suddenly felt too loud.

One thing was certain, if that was the site of the explosion, she wouldn’t be getting back to dig through the debris without alerting every guard in the area.

“So?” Kevin said. “Orders?”

Joanne crouched down, suppressing the urge to groan as she didn’t wish to make more noise than necessary anymore. “I don’t know if I should be giving orders. My head isn’t exactly on straight. We’re out in the middle of nowhere, in enemy territory, injured, with no support, and no equipment.”

“If we try to trek back to Elmshadow, we’ll likely be caught,” Kevin said. “The whole reason we were going through those tunnels was to avoid forward defenders and scouts.”

“Can we get back inside the tunnel system somehow?” There weren’t supposed to be other entrances into the system. But… “Have the other teams blown their explosives? Or were they caught as well?”

“Unknown.”

Joanne swore under her breath. She turned her head upward, trying to figure out what time it was. The explosives were supposed to have gone off all at once, or close enough to it, based on a signal given by Arkk. But with the problem with her team, would he still go through with the others? It would be just the distraction she needed to try to get back to the blast area and dig through to the tunnel. Assuming there was anything left of it.

Assuming they could dig through to the tunnel. Who knew how much dirt was in the way. Or whether they could dig without collapsing more of the tunnel.

If Lyre and the others had made it far enough and had collapsed the tunnel using the ritual marks, they might have been able to find an entrance further down the line.

Joanne was certain Arkk already knew about the situation, but delved deep into herself, found the link from the contact, and pulled on it. Nothing happened save for a faint tug back from the other side. Unfortunately, the link wasn’t exactly great for communication. He was aware. Knowing Arkk, he would try to help as best he could.

But watching those lights search around the blast area, Joanne doubted his help would come soon enough. They would have to help themselves first.

She had an injured arachnoid and herself, also injured. He had a short sword. Her sword seemed to have gone missing, either in the blast or while being dragged over, but she did have a smaller mail breaker in her boot and a small dagger sheathed at the small of her back.

Evestani or the Eternal Empire or whoever that was would find them soon enough. If not for the darkness hiding the trail where Kevin had dragged her, they probably would have found them already. There was a whole army behind them and scouts and defensive forces between them and safety. No way to easily access the tunnels.

Their situation was, in a single word, shit.

“Our first objective is getting away,” Joanne said. “Without getting caught and without running into any scouts. Once we have some space around us, we can figure out a plan forward from there. Sound good?”

“Lead the way. I’ll watch our backs.”

Joanne nodded her head. Taking one breath and focusing, she forced away the last of the dizziness.

Arkk had better figure out something soon. A dragonoid sounded good right about now.

“Priscilla! Kia! Claire! Emergency situation. I need you three ready to move now.”

All three stood bleary-eyed with that disoriented look people got when unexpectedly teleported. Unfortunately, Arkk didn’t have time to let them acclimatize. He was mentally teleporting others around, moving key personnel into their stations, and readying everyone for immediate combat. The scrying team was on full alert, soldiers were teleported to the armory, and Elmshadow’s defensive rituals were staffed by Lelith and her team—more of a precaution given the incident had occurred close to Woodly Rhyme, but it was good training if nothing else.

If something did happen closer to home, better to be prepared than caught out.

“Olatt’an will go over the details,” Arkk continued, then frowned as he looked at Leda. The small fairy hovered near Priscilla, looking as uncertain as ever. “I’m sorry, but I’ll need you to guide Priscilla again.”

Priscilla stepped in front of Leda, disorientation gone as she raised an anger-filled fist. “You want me to carry around dead weight while I’m trying to fight an avatar?”

“The avatar is confirmed to be in Woodly Rhymes Burg, protecting the majority of his army with that golden magic. You won’t be fighting him. You’ll be on search and rescue outside the burg—for which you’ll need a guide. As I said, Olatt’an will brief you. Now get to it!” Arkk snapped, teleporting all four of them a few paces away to where Olatt’an stood at the table.

Just to be sure that they—Priscilla mostly—wouldn’t turn around and argue with him, Arkk teleported himself down a floor before bringing the next group to him.

While Priscilla, Kia, and Claire were currently his heaviest hitters, there were a few other specialists in his employ that he would welcome contributions from toward the current emergency.

Lyssa, the full werecat, still had a manacle on one of her wrists. But the weaponized chain attached to it wasn’t just a bladed chain anymore. Zullie had worked her magic, turning it into something that could shatter anything Lyssa saw as a barrier. That included magical shields as well as walls, armor, and mundane, metal shields.

It was almost as effective as the shadowy scythes and yet could be made into any shape. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t work as armor, so they had regular gear instead of the nigh-indestructible shadow armor, and it took a great deal of effort to produce while requiring a specific mentality to shatter shields. Only Lyssa and a small squad who had started calling themselves the Shieldbreakers possessed weapons with the barrier-rending enchantment. Expanding the squad was a task in progress, but it required specialized mental training because the enchantment worked off the user’s perception.

Zharja, Kahn, and Jann slithered up alongside Lyssa and her Shieldbreakers. They were mostly unaugmented, save for the mechanical end to Zharja’s tail that Agnete had constructed. It had a large stinger on the end and internal cavities to hold the caustic venom that gorgon naturally produced. Besides that, all three had glowstones embedded into the chest of their many-segmented armor. The glowstones weren’t high enough quality for use in rituals but could hold enough magic to let them use their petrifying gaze far more rapidly, though they wouldn’t last forever.

Richter Porter, Abbess Hannah, a Protector who had taken a liking to the abbess—much to her chagrin—and the battlecaster Vector represented the majority of the men who had deserted the Duke’s Grand Guard. The entire force wouldn’t fit into the small room, so these three would carry orders back to their men.

There were others present. Two freshly hired twin dryads, both with reddish blonde hair and bark-like skin, a quartet of elves plus one dark elf, a slime monster that Arkk still wasn’t quite sure how it got hired, and a recent hire. A syren. A beastman similar to a harpy with scales instead of feathers. They could cruise through water as easily as the skies and could sing songs that would hypnotize anyone who heard them. They tended to sink ships at sea and then plunder whatever loot they could carry away from the wreck. Most demihumans and even other beastmen treated them with suspicion and wariness, somewhat akin to gorgon…

And yet Arkk now had two working for him. Igvile and Primvila heard rumors that he had gorgon and dragonoids and other monsters and wanted to see for themselves what all the fuss was about.

“I apologize for the sudden meeting,” Arkk said as Alma stepped up alongside him.

The half-werecat had a calm face but reached up to adjust her beret in a way that Arkk recognized as a nervous tick she often had. Luthor, the chameleon of the scrying team, stepped up alongside her, looking far more nervous. Once again, he wasn’t going to be doing the briefing himself.

“An emergency situation has arisen that requires an immediate response. Alma will be providing details while Luthor can answer any questions about current battlefield conditions.”

One of the Shieldbreaker beastmen called out, “Atta boy, Luthor!” leading the already nervous chameleon to shuffle and wave an arm.

“Silence,” Alma snapped out, stepping forward with her eyes narrowed. She flicked her gaze to Arkk, to which he nodded his head, before drawing in a breath. “The situation is as follows…”

Arkk didn’t stick around to hear the rest of it. If there were any problems, a tug over the link would have him back in an instant. He had his own task to see to.

A freshly risen horde of undead goblins stood ready to receive his command. They were a bit more animated than the undead army he had previously used against Evestani. The goblins bounced around, hardly able to sit still, and even nipped and bit at their neighbors. They weren’t alive in the same sense that the denizens of the Necropolis were alive, but they were certainly more independent. A result of some of the books Yoho had provided in their dealings.

Arkk hadn’t wanted to use them here and now. They were going to be a secret weapon, burrowing out of the ground directly underneath the Evestani army when they finally assaulted Elmshadow again. But they were undead he had created specifically to protect those still living.

They needed direction. More precise control than the previous army, which had just been told to attack everything they saw.

They had a brief march ahead of them. Sending three hundred goblins through a teleportation ritual was a good way to drain him right when he needed his magic the most.

With a force of magic, a visualization of their destination and how to get there, and one word, “Go,” they were off. They scampered, hopped, and climbed over one another as they rushed through the tunnels beneath Elmshadow. Arkk would catch up later via teleportation ritual. Until then…

“Using them already? I thought they were to remain secret.”

Arkk jolted, turning to find Ilya sauntering toward him. Her silver hair flowed in a way that implied wind but, down in the tunnel, there was nothing that strong.

“What are you doing down…” Arkk trailed off, confused for a moment before he realized. “You aren’t Ilya.”

There was no link between him and the person in front of him. The real Ilya was up in Elmshadow’s tower, readying the defense just in case Evestani chose now to attack.

An annoyed click of her tongue came from the false Ilya as she planted her hands on her hips. Now that he was watching her move more, Arkk noticed more and more wrong. The way she put her weight on her left hip, the back of her hand against her waist instead of the palm of her hand, even the posture wasn’t right. Not since her injury at the Duke’s party.

And her fingernails were black for some odd reason.

“Found out that quick?” she said, mouth in a tight frown. “Even the boy prince takes a minute and he knows about me.”

Mentioning the Prince set off the tolling of the alarm in the back of Arkk’s mind. In the blink of an eye, he teleported Kia and Claire on either side of the fake Ilya.

Except, she wasn’t Ilya anymore. Arkk found himself staring into his own glowing red eyes.

The shock cost him.

The fake version of himself raised an arm and shouted, “Seize the impostor!”

That momentary disorientation from teleporting was likely the only thing that saved Arkk. The afterimages of the dark elves turned away from the Arkk they had appeared next to and to him. He felt the rising tension of the link about to snap. Arkk teleported them back, straight to the top of the tower.

The link shattered just as they reappeared. He couldn’t see them anymore directly, not with the link gone, but he could see everything in his territory. Both Kia and Claire collapsed right in the middle of the command room. Why had they collapsed? He had seen the link break before and it hadn’t done that. Was it because of Project Liminal? Their bodies could require more magic than they could produce on their own. Without the link, they…

Were they alive? Arkk couldn’t tell anymore. Olatt’an and Leda rushed over to see if they could help, but…

“Annoying abilities you have.”

But he couldn’t concentrate on that now.

Arkk narrowed his eyes at the… demon? Was that what he was looking at?

He needed to escape and—

The moment the thought of escape crossed his mind, the demon was upon him, tackling him to the ground. Arkk tried to teleport, but the false Arkk clamped his hands around Arkk’s wrists. The teleport failed with a shudder. It was blocked. The same thing happened when fighting Vrox and the ice marble fell to the ground, trapping everyone in a sheet of ice.

The grip was too strong. Arkk didn’t think he weighed that much or was that strong, but the false version of himself pinned him to the floor with ease.

“Leaving so soon?” the false Arkk asked with a cruel smile. “I don’t think so. I’ve been watching, waiting for a good opportunity… Looks like this is it!”

Arkk clenched his teeth together, running over his options. He had magic. He could still teleport other things. He could bring someone else down here, but that might lead to their link breaking as well.

But he would probably only get one chance.

 

 

 

Joanne moved through a series of tunnels with some of her fellow former Claymores. Working with people she had known for years made operations like today’s go smoother and easier. Not that working with Arkk’s other units was particularly difficult. She had thought it would be.

As a human who had been in a human-majority organization, their tactics and training were designed for humans. Although demihumans, such as orcs, were relatively similar to humans, their favored tactics often differed. Orcs, with their large builds, thicker skin, and ability to effectively use heavier weapons and armor, could charge straight into a battle that would see a human torn to pieces in an instant. Then there were beastmen. Beastmen tactics varied greatly depending on the exact species, ranging from aerial attacks from harpies to the slower, burrowing abilities molemen could execute. Humans—most demihumans—weren’t compatible with those kinds of tactics at all.

And monsters like gorgon? Joanne had no idea where Arkk dug them up or how he convinced them to work for him—she had never once heard of gorgon willingly working for a human unless they were blindfolded and in chains—but she couldn’t deny that they were welcome supports in hectic battles.

Whether through good intuition or pure luck, Arkk had a knack for getting all those differing tactics working together effectively. Sometimes, that knack came through in the form of splitting up, as they were today, and other times, they mixed together to cover each other’s weaknesses.

When Joanne had signed up for Arkk’s recruitment drive back at Cliff, she had only distantly heard of Company Al-Mir. They had gotten into a few minor scrapes across Mystakeen. More importantly, they were paying out the ass. A full four times what the Order of the Claymores had been paying even their senior members. She had figured their leader to be some rich scion of some minor noble or other, wanting to pretend to be a knight. Someone with more wealth than sense. For that price, she had been more than willing to play along.

She hadn’t expected a magic fortress or portal to another world. She hadn’t expected a literal creature from before the Calamity to be the effective second in command—and then a dragonoid almost as old showed up. She had not expected a war to break out immediately after signing on. She definitely had not expected to get involved in that war.

But most of all, she hadn’t expected so few casualties in that war. When Arkk had started up his memorial wall listing all of the deceased members of Company Al-Mir, Joanne had thought it would end up a depressing reminder of the grim future, harming morale just by existing.

If anything, it was the opposite. Even with names going on the wall on a semi-regular basis, the fact that there were so few names just spoke to how insanely overpowered—and, she was willing to admit, overly cautious—Arkk was.

The Order of the Claymores wouldn’t have been able to put up one of those walls without destroying morale. In fact, the Claymores couldn’t do that. Not anymore.

She had heard from some former Claymores that came to Company Al-Mir after the fact; The Claymores and several other smaller mercenary companies ended up forming a coalition to help repel the invaders. That coalition had been all but destroyed in a series of retreating skirmishes.

There wasn’t an Order of the Claymores left. Only a handful survived and none of the leadership. Most had come to Company Al-Mir. A few others migrated to the First Legion or the Society of the Burning Shadow, but…

“Hey. Jo? You alright there?”

Joanne sucked in a breath, shooting a glare at Lyre. The vanguard carried a heavy shield and sturdy pike—the former being made from the strange shadow material that made up most of the orc armaments these days. The visor of his helm was up, letting her see his worried face.

“You looked distracted,” he said with a kindly smile.

Joanne pressed her lips together. Lyre had been one of those who had come from the destroyed Claymores. An old friend that she had left behind in pursuit of gold.

Could she have saved more if she had stuck around? Or would she have ended up in the ground?

Deciding against voicing her thoughts and bringing up the past, Joanne focused on now. “Just thinking over the plan again.”

“What’s there to think about? It’s a simple plan. Get in, drop off the alchemical explosives, and get out. Just like we did at Gleeful Burg.”

“Four people died at Gleeful.” That had been the incident that made Arkk build that memorial wall in the first place. “I don’t intend to let us follow suit.”

Lyre shook his head, almost rolling his eyes. “It’ll be even easier than what we did at Gleeful Burg. We don’t have to sneak around a city this time. What could go wrong?”

Joanne almost socked him straight in the face for that. Almost. Clenching her fist, she managed to restrain herself to just a long groan. One echoed by Opal and Viv as they pulled the cart of explosives behind them.

“What? What’d I say?”

This time, Joanne did reach up. She slammed down his visor a little more forcefully than was strictly necessary. “Just keep ready,” she hissed, eying their surroundings.

There wasn’t much to look at. They were traveling through a tunnel. Not one of the fortress tunnels with their patterned tiles and well-lit glowstones. The walls and floor were bare-faced earth and stone. The only light they had were a few dimly lit glowstones hanging from the lanterns on their belts.

Their squad of five was otherwise alone.

Tempting fate was just asking for trouble. Especially now that she knew that gods of luck and fate were more than just superstition. With a name like The Fickle Wheel, Joanne bet that even minor tempting could have great consequences. Or no consequences at all. That was assuming its name could be taken literally.

Joanne wondered if there was some kind of prayer or ritual she could perform to try to counteract bad luck. Every company had its superstitions and little rituals. Sometimes it was as simple as polishing a pin before setting off. Other companies had large and grandiose affairs that involved Abbey personnel, feasts, or loud group chants. Company Al-Mir had nothing like that. At least nothing uniform, some people brought along traditions from wherever they came from. Joanne always thought they were silly. She hadn’t believed in that kind of stuff.

But…

The Order of the Claymores shined their swords with fresh oil before every outing, then held their swords out over a fire filled with sprigs of whatever herbs they could source at their locale and smoked the swords. Joanne hadn’t believed, but she had participated if only to make a group effort.

That clearly hadn’t worked in the war. If it worked at all. It wasn’t like they could stop right now and hold their swords out over an open fire.

The Society of the Burning Shadow, a smaller mercenary company, allegedly had lucky scarves that had been passed down through the company’s members for a hundred years. They wore those whenever they donned their armor. First Legion was more a group of bounty hunters than a mercenary company, but even they had a fairly well-known chant they used before starting something dangerous. Joanne felt that was more to hype themselves up than anything else.

They couldn’t get scarves out in the field, but chanting?

Possible, but maybe not the best idea. Joanne didn’t know how deep these tunnels were or where exactly they were. All she knew was that they delved beneath the supposedly invisible constructions that the Eternal Empire was working on.

Those were the targets of today’s operations.

If the tunnels were too shallow, starting up a song and chant with the crew here could jeopardize everything. Everything being their lives more than their task.

Joanne sighed. Maybe good luck just wasn’t something they could harness on a whim.

With the tunnel bare and lacking in proper flooring, the cart of explosives had to be pulled slowly and carefully. Even still, the occasional bump would jostle the clay pots. They made a fairly steady rattling noise.

A divot in the floor caught the wheel of the cart, making the jars clank together.

Everyone froze. For a long moment, no one moved. No one even breathed.

Slowly, Joanne let out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding. The jars weren’t that volatile. If they were, transporting them like this would have been impossible. A loud noise like that still made her nervous. “Careful,” she hissed. “Watch where you’re going.”

Opal carefully pulled the cart forward while Viv moved around the side to make sure the wheel wasn’t stuck. “Really wish those undead would do this,” the latter grumbled. “Don’t like being around them but, if I have to, might as well put them to good use.”

The corners of Joanne’s mouth twitched into a frown. “Arkk’s undead are too clumsy. They can swing a sword but setting explosives? They’re more likely to blow themselves up.” Not that she disagreed. They could have at least dragged the explosives out here. “As for the other undead… they’re apparently more like people than what you or I think of as undead.”

“Still…”

“We have our job and we’ll do it,” Joanne said, her tone of voice rendering all arguments invalid. “Let’s just try to be a little more careful. Don’t want to look bad in comparison to a bunch of skeletons, do we?”

Lyre let out a laugh that wasn’t entirely genuine. “He might decide we’re more useful as skeletons.”

“Ugh,” Opal shuddered. “Don’t even joke. I heard Gunther, that former First Legionnaire, has been thinking about leaving because of them.”

“It’s because he’s First Legion,” Viv said in a hushed, almost conspiratorial tone. “A few years back, First Legion was just about destroyed by some necromancer out in the boonies. They took on the job willingly, but it was more than they could handle. People who bunk near Gunther say he’s been waking up lately screaming about zombies or something.”

“Quiet,” Joanne said.

She hadn’t heard about that. She supposed it made sense though. First Legion usually went after smaller targets. They probably figured a lone necromancer wouldn’t have been much trouble. But necromancers could be tricky. It was always difficult to tell just how many servants they could raise. All they needed was a graveyard to be something unfeasible to take down.

“Lyre. How much further?” Joanne asked.

The large man paused a moment to fish a small black stone from his pouch. Joanne wasn’t sure how it worked. It was some magical device Arkk—or one of those nutjobs he called ‘researchers’—developed. He had been trying to work some artifice and create more crystal balls. These were the failures, apparently. Useful ones, which was the best kind of failure.

Using a regular crystal ball, one could mark a location that these black stones would home in on. Lyre tapped a finger on the crystal ball, unleashing a small spark of magic. The black stone emitted a bright blue glow, looking more like a glowstone now.

“Oh, almost there,” he said as he kept walking.

Except, as he walked, the bright glow started to fade away.

“No,” he paused, turned back, and started walking toward the cart. “Wait… I think we’ve gone too far.”

Another chorus of groans echoed throughout the tunnel.

“Calm down, calm down. It isn’t far,” he said as he hustled back past the cart. He stared at the orb the entire time, watching as its glow turned brighter and brighter. “Maybe fifty paces back!” he called after a minute of walking.

He had gone so far that Joanne couldn’t see much of him besides the glowing ball he carried. With a shake of her head, both angry at him for being so lax and herself for not checking in earlier, she headed over to Opal and Viv.

“Not enough room to turn the cart around,” Viv said with a sigh. “We’ll have to push it backward.”

“Is that a problem?”

“Not really. It might be more prone to tipping if we hit a bad bump since we’ll be putting force on the wrong side.”

“A bump like the one we just hit a moment ago?”

Viv didn’t say anything. An absence of an answer was an answer too.

“Right,” Joanne said. “Wait a moment.”

Around the back of the cart, seated next to the clay jars with his six hands lightly pressed to their tops to keep them steady, was the sole member of their five-man group who hadn’t been with the Order of the Claymores. He was an arachnoid, a spider-like beastman. If Joanne were being honest, the way he looked over to her with eight full eyes unnerved her just as much as the undead. Doubly so because his diet seemed to consist of raw blood. Was he some kind of vampire arachnoid? Or were they all like that?

From what little he had said, he had seen one of the Protectors, saw some kind of kinship in it, and decided to join up.

She didn’t have a problem with him. The unease was more like a visceral reaction in the back of her mind. The way his chelicerae moved about over his mouth when she approached didn’t help.

“We’re pushing the cart backward a bit,” she said, completely professional. She wasn’t about to treat a comrade in arms poorly because of some instinct in the back of her mind. “So be ready for that. And let’s keep an eye out for any uneven spots in the tunnel, alright?”

A chittering noise that made the back of her neck tingle came from the arachnoid. “Understood.” Those eight flat black eyes angled on his face before his head turned, shifting to the ground below.

Suppressing a shudder, Joanne planted her hands on the side of the cart. “Right. I’ll help guide it. Ready?”

“Ready!” Opal called out.

The cart slowly started moving again. Joanne made sure to lean her weight against it to push it slightly off to one side, avoiding the divot that they had fallen into earlier. She called out a warning as well to make sure Viv and Opal didn’t catch their foot on it. At half the speed as it was being pulled, it took a few minutes, but they eventually caught up to Lyre. And without incident too.

The orb in Lyre’s hand emitted a bright white light now. Almost all traces of blue were gone. That meant they were right at the spot Arkk wanted them to be.

Joanne looked up at the ceiling of the tunnel. It was no different than any other patch. Yet, somewhere above them, the Eternal Empire was busy constructing some kind of ancient weapon of war. Something dangerous enough that it had Arkk nervous, even if he didn’t know exactly what it was.

And there were several of them. Joanne’s team was hardly the only one out in these tunnels.

Which was fine with Joanne. If Evestani and the Eternal Empire didn’t want to fight fairly, why should they do the same? Blow their secret weapon to the skies. And blast their army to pieces while they were at it. Several others were en route to Woodly Rhyme directly to try to take out the army.

Arkk had doubts about it working, unfortunately. During their trek through Mystakeen, Evestani had been able to detect more than half the traps they had laid in advance. The avatar could protect too much at once.

But hopefully not everything.

“Alright,” Joanne said. “I presume we have some time to rest. Arkk will tug on the link when it is time to set the explosives.”

These had extended timers on the ritual activation built into the lids. Once turned, they would have fifteen minutes to get as far down the tunnel as they could go. From his earlier experiments planting explosives in front of the Evestani march, he had learned that the explosion would prefer to travel through the tunnel instead of going up into the target overhead. This was why he had built small runic arrays into the walls that would collapse parts of the tunnel, which Joanne and her crew would activate on their way back. The blast would spread through the intact portion of the tunnel—going fully underneath their target—before being forced upward.

Hopefully.

Arkk said he tested his work multiple times. It had worked nine times out of ten, the first time being the one failure. A flaw which he had fixed in the latter nine tests.

At this point, Joanne could only hope he was right.

“Say,” Opal said, walking back around the cart. “Do you suppose…”

She trailed off, pausing with a frown.

There was a whistling coming from further down the tunnel. It was supposed to be a dead end at some point. But a whistle like that came from the wind.

Wind wasn’t supposed to exist in these tunnels.

“Did they find the tunnel?” Joanne hissed, now tense. This was the worst possible time for something to go wrong. They were as deep into enemy territory as they were going to get. And they had pots of volatile explosives just sitting here.

The wind picked up. In an instant, what had been a slight breeze barely able to move her hair turned into a whipping gale that shook the cart. The clay pots rattled together despite Kevin’s best attempts to keep them steady. He had his chitinous arms wrapped around and between them. It wasn’t enough.

“If those pots crack, we’re dead,” she swore. Her eyes flicked from the cart to the end of the tunnel where the wind was coming from. Could they move them to the ground? Spread them apart so they couldn’t hit each other? Joanne wasn’t sure it would matter before long. The wind was still picking up. Even the cart was starting to shake. Looking over the worried faces of Opal, Viv, Lyre, and even Kevin, she made a decision. “Go! Run!”

There was a moment of hesitation as they looked at each other. Just a moment. Opal, Viv, and Lyre—her Claymores—followed orders.

Kevin didn’t. Perched at the back of the cart with his arms still wrapped around the pots, he chittered. “If I let go, the pots will clang together more violently.”

Joanne had to raise her voice. The wind was roaring now. “The whole cart is going to upend if you don’t. We need to run now before it gets worse.”

She gripped the front tuft of coarse hair that covered his chest. He was lithe and light which made lifting him as easy as lifting a sack of potatoes. He had the good sense to let go of the pots before he knocked them over. Joanne slung him over her shoulder and booked it, running from the clattering and clanging noise as fast as she could move.

The nearest array that would collapse the tunnel was supposed to be five minutes of hasty walking away. Lyre had more orbs that would direct him to them. She doubted he had the wherewithal to pull them out now.

And it wouldn’t matter much even if he did. A minute at full sprint and Joanne still heard the tell-tale sound of shattering pottery.

Joanne threw herself and Kevin to the ground even as she felt the rush of wind explode toward her. Hands clasped over the back of her head, face pressed firmly into the dirt, she could only hope that if she were to die here, it would be quick and painless.

 

 

Noise and machines, sparks and fire, pistons and gears.

The Anvil of All Worlds was, as always, in motion. It was a world of sound. A world of lights. A world of endless work. It never stopped. There was a sun in this world—though the thick layer of smog completely obscured the sky, the world itself still brightened in the morning and darkened in the evenings. Yet the machines never stopped. Even lesser servants paused their work and enveloped themselves in a starlight cocoon for brief minutes of rest every few weeks. Nothing here did. Metal didn’t tire.

Amid the crushing macerators and conveyors to building-sized furnaces, a lesser servant slung a sloppy tendril over a gap between catwalks. Oily tar oozed along the bridge, moving mass to the other side little bits at a time to keep the tendril from snapping under the weight. As the grotesque ballet of ever-shifting sludge continued, one of the sparking serpents crossed high overhead.

The lesser servant stilled, still looped between the catwalks, trying its best to look like nothing more than a puddle of pollution and oil. The harsh industrial lights gave it the needed iridescent look, though anything intelligent would have noticed a blob of oil failing to fall through the catwalk’s grated gaps.

Keeping itself from falling through was something of a struggle. If the gaps were wider, it would have been impossible, but it could form mouths filled with sharp teeth on its undersides. As long as it was careful, it could use those teeth as platforms to balance the rest of itself above the catwalk. It did leave a trail of small gouges, but nothing had noticed the trail yet.

The serpent also failed to notice the lesser servant. It drifted on high in the air, undulating languid and without apparent alarm.

Once sure that the serpent wasn’t going to loop back around, the lesser servant finished pulling itself across the gap. The last trail of its tendril sucked into the main mass with a slurping noise that was drowned out by a whirring blade cutting chunks of metal apart.

It continued along, carefully balancing on its sharp teeth. It didn’t know where it was going. The master directed it from afar, sending nudges through the Stars, commanding it over the endless factory. It could only hope the master knew what it was doing. It had a purpose to fulfill. If the master fumbled or if it failed to execute the master’s commands correctly and ended up returned to the Stars, it wouldn’t be able to fulfill that purpose.

It didn’t know what that purpose was just yet. Nudges through the Stars weren’t enough to know the end goal. Yet the master must have an end goal. Unless that end goal involved its death, it couldn’t do anything to risk that purpose.

The latest nudge pushed it toward the conveyor belt leading away from the large furnace. That was good. The furnace heat boiled away the outer layer of its oily skin if it got too close. The air here did help against that—it was thick and foggy and left a protective residue over everything, including its outer layer—but it didn’t help to the point of being able to get too close.

One of the mechanical eyes swung past on a gantry. The off-yellow light crossed directly over the lesser servant, making it freeze once again, but swept past without pause as it started inspecting the macerator.

At the end of the catwalk, a railing prevented anyone on it from accidentally stepping onto the conveyor. Tall metal barrels of liquified glowstone cruised along the belt, moving from one part of the impossible factory to the next. It wasn’t the fastest conveyor belt around, but it wasn’t the slowest either.

The lesser servant oozed between the gaps in the railing, unhindered. It clung to the edge and waited for the right moment. If it tried the slow oozing way it had used to cross the catwalk gap, it would end up stretched to the snapping point. Instead, it had to wait and watch the barrels.

One went past now, now, now, now—

It jumped, pushing off the railing. One barrel zoomed past underneath. The leap carried it along the route of the conveyor belt, matching the momentum enough that its tendrils snapping down to latch onto the barrel didn’t sheer it to pieces.

Squirming around, it quickly maneuvered just behind the barrel, using it as a shield to block the rushing wind. As the factory tore past, it settled in to wait. It wouldn’t be getting off the conveyor belt anytime soon.

Arkk peeled his hand off the crystal ball, taking a short breath. Scrying into the Anvil drained him a whole lot more than scrying around Mystakeen. It wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle, but it was notable.

But he had some time to rest for the moment. The lesser servant would take at least an hour to reach its next destination. He would check in half that time, just to make sure it wasn’t in danger of overshooting its stop, but that was mostly a precaution.

Portals in the Anvil were far and distant apart, just as they were in the Underworld and here in the regular world. But, unlike the Underworld, the Anvil had ways of moving rapidly around its land. Not as rapidly as the teleportation rituals, but enough.

They had finally found another portal. This one wasn’t under constant observation.

That meant they had opportunities.

“Are you sure Agnete got your message?”

“She saw it,” Arkk said with certainty as he looked over to Zullie. The witch sat on top of one of the workstation tables where a littering of crystalline shards sat around her.

The crystalline shards came from the highlands portal structure, carefully removed under Zullie’s direction so as to not impact its functionality. They had tested it by connecting to the Silence after shaving off portions.

“Are you sure this is going to work?” Arkk asked, frowning down at the assembly she was making.

Using magic that Arkk couldn’t begin to identify or explain, Zullie was slowly shaping the crystalline fragments into an archway of their own. Deep violet light clung to her fingers as she moved them over the fragments. In that violet light’s wake, the crystal shards were sealed back together as one single structure.

It was much smaller than a proper portal. A full-sized carriage could go through those. This could fit a gremlin upright or a human if they crawled. Dakka might be able to fit through if she stripped out of her armor and even regular clothes. Most orcs would probably get stuck at the shoulders. Lithe and far narrower than orcs, elves could fit through.

Zullie frowned, huffing indignantly. “Have I ever steered you wrong?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

She pursed her lips. “No,” she said. “But I’m not steering you wrong now. I can see how the portals work. I can do this. They are planar magic on a level far, far beyond anything I ever saw before coming here but they are just planar magic. I’ve been investigating this magic for longer than I’ve known you.”

“Alright,” Arkk said. “We probably only have one chance at this—”

“I’m aware.”

“Are you sure you don’t want Savren here? Or even Hale?”

Zullie dismissively waved a hand before plucking another shard of the archway off the desk. “We all have our specialties. This is mine. They would only be bumbling around, distracting me.”

“If you’re sure.”

“Arkk. You’re distracting me. Go busy yourself with your skeletons or… anything else.”

“I’m surprised you aren’t more interested in the skeletons. You sure abandoned any research involving the Necropolis awfully quick.”

Zullie shrugged. A little spark of light jumped from her finger to the crystalline archway, fusing the shard to it. “Just because it’s taboo doesn’t mean I’m all that fascinated with necromancy. I enjoyed learning it, but it is hardly my passion.” She paused, looking up toward the ceiling. “Besides,” she said slowly. “They kind of creep me out.”

“They… creep you out?”

“They’re too… real? Yeah. Something like that.”

Arkk squinted, not quite understanding what she was getting at.

Despite being blind, she noticed his confusion. “Necromancy, the kind I learned and the kind I taught you, is like… We animate a dead body instead of a pile of sticks because of various magical principles tying the deceased form to motion and life. But it isn’t all that different from grabbing a few sticks and waving them around like a puppet. They are puppets. Nothing more. Just puppets made from bones.

“Those undead from the Necropolis? They’re like people.” Zullie frowned, picking up another shard. “No. Not like people. They are people. I don’t like the implications. Honestly, the whole experience soured the idea of necromancy for me.”

“I spoke with some of them about the necromancy we’ve been using. None of them seem to mind. In fact, Yoho taught me a better way to raise undead. Mindless still but far more… limber and mobile. Much more effective warriors.”

Zullie pointed the shard at Arkk—except she missed the angle by several degrees—and scowled. “That only makes the situation more disturbing. Why don’t they care that we’re puppeting around dead bodies? Those puppets could have been raised into people like them. It’s weird.”

That was a fair point. Arkk supposed he hadn’t given it much thought. Maybe there was something wrong with the bodies he had brought back. Maybe they were too old to have been raised back into people or… something else. Yoho had looked over the small army of goblin undead he had risen without a hint of disapproval.

Maybe Yoho just didn’t like goblins.

“Anyway,” Zullie said, fusing another shard to the full structure. “Get out. You’re still distracting me.”

Arkk decided not to argue this time. He stepped over to the door, looking back one more time as Zullie, without uttering any incantation, picked another shard from the pile and zapped it to the small archway.

He wasn’t sure if she had noticed what she was doing. He wasn’t sure if he should comment on it.

Shaking his head, Arkk turned to the door and left.

There were no parts of the Anvil of All Worlds that could be considered desolate. Not a single patch of land had gone untouched. Over the last few weeks, the lesser servant had slipped around, sneaking through pipes and over tall buildings. Not once had it come across natural ground. There wasn’t a single stone, not one tree, not even a blade of grass poking out between metal tiles.

If the world had ever been anything but the factory, there was no evidence for it.

Except, that wasn’t quite true. Raw ore, stone, even trees all entered the factory, carried on massive locomotives in bulk. They split off, carried throughout the factory by conveyor belts and mechanical arms to be turned into parts and products. They had to come from somewhere.

It wasn’t the lesser servant’s problem. At no point did the lesser servant care about the properties of this world. It would never have considered the idea of where the raw material came from if not for the nudges in the Stars from the master wondering the same thing.

But the master was more concerned with other things at the moment.

The lesser servant crossed over a long stretch of empty pathway. One of the few places in the entire Anvil that wasn’t in motion. It felt… vulnerable. If a gantry swung past with one of those mechanical eyes, there would be nowhere to hide. It could try to burrow away—its teeth could easily chew through the metal tiles—but previous experiments conducted by the master showed that the mechanical eyes were particularly alarmed when they discovered any damage to the factory. Even a small hole bored through a panel that wouldn’t ever cause structural problems or interfere with operations brought down a yellow-light alarm.

When the yellow lights began spinning, hordes of mechanical men emerged from buildings and over catwalks, rushing to repair whatever damage the eyes discovered. That would only draw more attention here.

At best, the lesser servant could spread itself thin, hoping to be seen as nothing more than a puddle of spilled oil.

It could see its destination now. A tall crystalline archway, covered with runes and markings. Unlike the one it had come through, this section of the Anvil was sparsely populated. A transit route with a great many conveyors and locomotives but few actual machines and even fewer of the creatures that lived in this realm.

The archway was inactive. No liquid-like membrane was stretched over its center. That was what the master expected.

But it couldn’t get started right away. Instead, the nudges from the Stars directed it to hide, pressed up into an amorphous blob right at the base of the archway’s leg. There it waited, and waited, and waited…

It waited until an off-yellow light crossed overhead as one of the eyes swung past on its gantry. The mechanical eye continued on its gantry’s tracks without pause, not noticing anything amiss.

The eye certainly would have raised the alarm if the servant had already started. Now, it had time to work. The nudges in the Stars told it that the gantry here only crossed over once a day or so, leaving plenty of time.

Its task was an unusual one. The typical duties of a lesser servant were to dig and build. The magic that linked the creatures to the fortress would convert everything they consumed to its equivalent value in gold, deposited in the treasury. When the time came to construct, it did the opposite, taking gold and converting it into reinforced stone, tiles, and whatever else was needed.

Here and now, its task was to take apart the crystalline archway and carry it elsewhere in the Anvil. It couldn’t consume the archway. It had to carefully use its sharp teeth to peel it apart into shards.

A daunting task, but a possible task.

The lesser servant got to work.

“So, problem. How is Agnete going to assemble the portal on her side?”

Zullie paused her work, turning her head toward Arkk. She didn’t answer right away, instead lifting her glasses up ever so slightly, resettling them on her nose. Slowly, she looked back down to the few remaining crystalline shards on the desk.

“Zullie?”

“Uh… Why don’t we take a few of these down to the forge and see if we can figure out another way to merge them together.”

Arkk pressed his lips into a tight frown. Zullie got too hyperfocused on things to have noticed the problem herself. This was his fault. He should have thought of the problem earlier.

“We better hurry,” he said.

They wouldn’t have much time once discovered.

 

 

Arkk lightly tapped the tips of his fingers against the crystal ball, readjusting its perspective.

From certain angles, at certain times of day when the light hit just right, he could almost see through the haze of mist that covered the Evestani army. It wasn’t clear. The effect worked only for a few minutes before the sun’s position changed too much. But it gave him a glimpse into the army’s actions.

Usually, one of the scrying teams was in charge of the brief period of observation. They would note down the position of the army, any significant changes from the day before, and whether or not it looked like the army was ready to move. Since arriving at Woodly Rhymes, they hadn’t done much of anything. Which was alarming in its own special way.

But now…

“See?” Lexa bounced up, jabbing her finger at the crystal ball. “There it is!”

Arkk squinted, frowning.

The area the crystal ball was focused on was a short distance outside Woodly Rhymes Burg, beyond the walls. Roughly where the fields of crops should have been. The fog protecting Evestani from scrying was thinner that far away, letting him see…

Nothing. There weren’t any soldiers, no encampment. Not even a pile of supplies thrown under a tarp.

Arkk raised a questioning eyebrow in Lexa’s direction. “Is this some kind of gremlin thing I’m too human to perceive?”

Said gremlin rolled her eyes, huffing indignantly. “Look at the way the fog is moving. It is flowing, right? But it isn’t flowing here,” she said, jabbing her finger at the crystal ball again. “It is flowing around it.”

Now that she said it, the fog did look like it was avoiding a large section of the fields. “We know the Eternal Empire uses a different method of hiding their stuff,” Arkk said, thinking back to the large aeronautical ship that they had discovered. “Is it something of theirs?”

“Something, yeah,” Lexa grumbled, running her fingers through her red hair. “I think they’re still building it.”

“While it is invisible?”

“They obviously have a way to see it. I couldn’t, not even when I got close, but people were moving around without trouble, carrying loads in hand carts and on their backs. Lots of…” She paused with a frown, shuddered, then shook her head. “They had egg things. Big round eggs, all slimy and red. Big enough to fit me inside. They didn’t give me a good feeling.”

“Uh… huh…”

“At a certain point, they just vanished. I didn’t want to accidentally bump into someone and reveal myself, so I didn’t thoroughly investigate, but… This is bad, right?”

“Is it? We already knew they had one of those things. If this is another airship they’re building… with eggs… that’s just one more. I already had plans for dealing with them—”

“It isn’t just the one.” Lexa swatted Arkk’s hand away from the crystal ball, taking control for herself. The viewpoint shuddered and jerked, giving Arkk a brief feeling of vertigo before Lexa stabilized it. She zoomed the view across the land, pausing a short distance away from the construction project.

Now that he knew what to look for, Arkk immediately spotted the odd curling of the fog as it traveled over something invisible. This one was even larger than the last. Either it was more complete or it was a different design. Arkk didn’t get a chance to try to compare the two before Lexa readjusted the view.

There was another one.

And another one.

And one more.

Even that wasn’t the end. Arkk counted up nine different construction spots before the sun’s angle made the misty fog glare too harshly against the crystal ball. She still tried to show off one more, but if there were signs of the curling fog, they were too faint to see.

With a frustrated grumble, Lexa pulled her hand off the crystal ball.

“How many?” Arkk asked.

“The report I found in the central camp said fifteen, but I was only able to find twelve out there being worked on. I don’t know where the other three are. Maybe they finished already. Maybe they haven’t started them.”

Arkk pursed his lips. Fifteen was a fair few more than the two or three he had been expecting. Especially when his grand plan for getting rid of them was basically to throw Priscilla at them and hope for the best with some siege magic for backup. Maybe give her a few alchemical bombs to drop on them in case her ice wasn’t enough. But fifteen? Perhaps in addition to the few Arkk knew they had…

“Get the crystal ball back to the scrying team,” Arkk said, handing it over.

“Where are you going?”

“Clearly, I need to do some digging and figure out what these things are. Maybe see if I can’t find weaknesses.”

Crystal ball held aloft in one hand, Lexa planted the other on her hip. “And just how do you plan on doing that?”

“I have my ways,” Arkk said, evasively. He did a quick mental check, making sure the Vezta was here at Elmshadow and not in Fortress Al-Mir.

“Need me to sneak in again?”

“No! No, thank you, Lexa.”

“But—”

“I appreciate you going above and beyond,” Arkk said, leaning down to be more on her level. “I really do. But I would rather you stay safe. You can’t take vengeance on the avatar if you get caught and killed before.”

Lexa scrunched up her face. She wasn’t happy. But Arkk didn’t particularly care if she was happy or not. He wasn’t going to let her get herself killed out of some need to avenge those kids the avatar had killed. It wasn’t her fault they had died. She had done her best. All the blame was at the feet of the avatar.

“I’ll be back soon. Keep watch on them—from a distance—in accordance with the regular shifts I’ve assigned. We’ll figure out what to do when I’ve returned.”

“But—”

“Lexa. I understand. I really do. But I will assign someone else to observation if I think you can’t handle it.”

“I can handle anything.”

“Good,” Arkk said, leaning back. “Then handle simple scouting and nothing more. You did good, even if you disobeyed orders. So today, get some rest. I can have Ivan take your place today.”

“Ivan? The slime? Can it even move fast enough to run away if something happens?”

“Ivan can sink into the ground and hide.”

“Into the ground… Where did you even find that thing?”

Arkk opened his mouth, but hesitated. “I’m… not sure. I think he showed up around the time Cray did? The dryad.”

“And where did you find her?”

“Plenty of people have come to me wanting to help fight off the invaders. I have hardly kept track of where they all have come from. Ilya has done plenty of hiring without my knowing and—”

“Yes, but a dryad and an ooze? Not exactly common demihumans. Oozes are more often considered monsters—or pests—than beings too.”

“Now, don’t be rude. Ivan has been… helpful.”

Lexa raised an eyebrow. “With what?”

“Moving around, spying on things without being noticed. How do you think we kept such close track of our efforts against Evestani during their march across Mystakeen?”

“Crystal ball,” Lexa said, hefting the ball.

“In part, but there were plenty of operations that took place while Evestani was using their fog magics.” Arkk smiled at the frown Lexa gave him. “Relax. Ivan can handle it tonight. I need to go though.” He started to turn away but paused. At this point, he worried she would run off. If he gave her another assignment to busy herself with… “If you want a job to do that would help me greatly…”

“Yes?”

“Find Vezta and keep an eye on her. It is okay if she notices you—in fact, probably better to just approach her openly—just keep her here. Don’t let her come to Fortress Al-Mir. Or, if you can’t come up with an excuse why she should stay, pull on the link to give me a warning.”

Lexa adopted a look of genuine surprise. “Spy on Vezta? Why?” she asked, dropping her voice to a whisper. “I thought you trusted her more than anyone else… except the elf.”

“I do,” Arkk insisted. “It’s just… I don’t imagine she would be very happy to learn what I’m going to be doing in the next little while.”

“And what, exactly, is that?”

Arkk just shrugged, smiling again. This time, his smile was wan and flat. “The less people who know, the better. Sorry. I can’t say more.”

Lexa crossed her arms, keeping the crystal ball upright, as she frowned heavily. “Maybe I should be spying on you.”

“You could try, but it might be hard for you to follow me.”

“And why is—”

Arkk moved himself out of the meeting room, reappearing straight in the ritual room. He stepped on the teleportation ritual circle and, a few hops later, stepped out inside Fortress Al-Mir. Another ritual circle-less movement and he was inside the temple. A hefty lock engaged as soon as he was inside, ensuring nobody would be able to disturb him.

Not that very many people came by the temple. Only Vezta on occasion when she wanted to kneel in front of Xel’atriss, Lock and Key’s statue. And Priscilla had been stopping by recently as well. Even though she was upset the Permafrost’s statue was that of a dragon, she still came by to pay her respects.

Or beg forgiveness. Arkk had deliberately avoided looking in on her while she was present.

Regardless, Arkk was alone for the time being. He pulled a chair from his office, planting it in front of one of the statues. After a moment of thought, he went ahead and pulled his whole desk over.

Taking a seat at the desk, Arkk opened a drawer and rummaged through. He pulled out a notebook, then a pen and inkwell. On the underside of one of the drawers, there was a small compartment. John the carpenter had helped him cobble it together. It lacked any way of accessing it normally, at least without destroying part of the desk or drawer. Being his property, he could reach in and teleport items to and from the compartment just as he could teleport the entire desk.

Security wasn’t the most important thing. If it was, he would have simply sealed off one of the myriad chambers in Fortress Al-Mir.

Arkk teleported a pair of silver candlesticks and white candles from the compartment. He set them atop the desk on either corner furthest from his chair. After muttering the incantation for a small fire spell, a bright orange flame ignited just above his fingertips. Something strange happened when he brought the flame close to the candle wicks.

The flame jumped to the wick. Rather than burn the usual orange, a few little sparks jumped from the candle before the flame turned a silvery white. Arkk lit the other candle in the same manner, flicked his hand back and forth to extinguish the flame spell, then leaned back in his seat with his hands folded neatly on the desk.

And he waited, staring up at the statue of the Holy Light.

Vezta would probably be… unhappy were she to find out that he had been in contact with the avatar of one of the traitor gods. He didn’t exactly like hiding it from her. He had a feeling there would be a price to pay when she inevitably found out. Yelling and broken trust at the least.

If she knew about it now, she would try to stop him. Probably not physically, but she could be convincing when she wanted to be. Arkk had already run over possibilities in his head of this being a trap or intentionally lead him to act in certain ways. But he felt it was important to explore every avenue he had available to him.

Whatever information he got, he could bring up in a meeting as having come from one of his sources. Al-Mir had grown large enough that none of his advisors knew everything that was going on and that included Vezta. There was always someone like Lexa or Edvin out on miscellaneous orders that the others didn’t know about. So getting advice on information without tainting that advice by revealing the actual source of the information allowed him the highest degree of flexibility.

Arkk drummed his fingers on his desk, watching as the candles burned down.

If he got any information at all.

The candles were as long as his arm but burned surprisingly quickly. It had been five minutes and they were already half gone. He had been told that, if he ever wished to speak again, he simply needed to burn the specially prepared candles in front of the statue. Now, however, he was wondering if he had done something wrong.

Did the candles need to be on the ground? Arrayed in a particular way? Closer to the statue?

Just as Arkk was about to stand and rearrange the candlesticks, the statue of the Holy Light shifted from the heroic, upward-facing pose to looking directly at Arkk. The suddenness of it made him jump in place.

A light, feminine laughter came from the masculine statue. It didn’t move when it laughed, giving it an uncanny air. Nor did it move when it started to speak. “Well, well, well. I wasn’t sure if you would try to contact me again. Good day, Mister Arkk.”

Arkk pressed his lips together, taking a moment to settle himself back in his seat. “Avatar.”

“Lyra, please.”

“Lyra,” Arkk said with a small frown. It wouldn’t be good to upset this person. “I was wondering if you were going to respond at all.”

“Now, now. I do have other matters to attend to. You are quite lucky you caught me now. I have a task to see to in a few minutes.” The statue shifted, moving to a new position without going through the intervening motions. It leaned back, arms crossed, almost like it was resting against a wall. Except, on the pedestal, there was just empty space at its back. “Did you consider more what we spoke of last time?”

“I considered it, yes.”

“And?”

“Still undecided.”

A disappointed frown appeared on the statue’s face. “Pity.”

For all that the Holy Light’s avatar appeared to have a disagreement and dispute with the other two traitor gods—or at least their avatars—Arkk could not find a good reason to allow her physical access into his temple chamber or access to operational portals. Perhaps he was paranoid, but Vezta had said that the temple room could act as a direct link to the gods. He had seen some of that for himself—mostly in the form of the Laughing Prince giving him a keystone that linked to the Necropolis—and had no reason to doubt its ability.

So giving an avatar of a potentially hostile god direct access to that god… Not a good idea.

“But,” Arkk said, continuing. “I did have a few questions that I thought you might be able to answer. Ones that might help me make my decision.”

“Oh? And what benefit is there for me in answering your questions?” The statue’s eyebrow moved upward, an odd effect given that the eyebrow was made from shimmering light. “You won’t even agree to a simple request of mine.”

“Aside from helping clarify a few things for me? Perhaps you should view it as building a rapport? A way to help convince me of your intentions.”

The statue sighed. Which, coming from the majestic form of the Holy Light, seemed somehow… mundane. A demystification of the godly being, even if he knew he was only speaking with the avatar of the god. “I suppose educating others at any cost is within my dominion as avatar of the god of knowledge and enlightenment. I should be a little more lighthearted. Perhaps you might be willing to perform another task for me instead? Something of lesser consequence?”

Arkk shifted in his seat. “Perhaps. I would have to know what it is first.”

“And I would need to know what you wish to ask. So let us dispense with the bartering and get straight with the questions, shall we?”

Nodding his head, Arkk pulled a map from his desk of the area around Elmshadow. “The Eternal Empire is building something. A lot of somethings. They are invisible to both the naked eye and scrying, though their presence can be seen using the scrying-obscuring fog that Evestani utilizes. Large red egg-like objects have been seen moving to the construction site. I was wondering if you knew anything about that.”

“Oh? She is doing that, is she?”

“You know of it?”

The statue closed its eyes, cutting off a portion of light in the room. “You are aware of the three gods remaining after the Calamity.”

“I am,” Arkk said.

“In the first years, we worked together to maintain order throughout the land. We were going to end wars, bring peace, yadda-yadda. I’m sure you can guess at our idealism.” The eyes opened again, narrowing. “But there were disagreements regarding the whys and wherefores. Said disagreements eventually devolved into conflicts. Conflicts between avatars are nothing to be scoffed at. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that we reshaped the world in as many definitions as you could come up with for the word.”

“You mentioned that when we last spoke. The Golden Order took particular offense to you and started a bunch of wars.” That much was obviously the truth. Arkk had done his best to verify what the avatar had told him during their previous meeting. It wasn’t hard to find evidence of animosity between the Golden Order and the Abbey of the Light dating back centuries.

“The only reason evidence of the Light still exists is thanks to the Almighty Glory and her. The Eternal Empress. I doubt she even remembers her own name, but she has pride. And her pride would not allow our alliance to come apart so easily. With both myself and the Greedy Gold in shambles from our wars, we couldn’t exactly say no to the Eternal Empress and her proposed truce. The actual truce is long and dreadfully boring, but boiling away the flowery language, all disagreements were to be conducted without direct avatar intervention. No powers of gods nor anything derived from them were to engage in any amount of conflict.

“Naturally, we both ignored it when we thought we could get away with it,” the avatar said with a laugh. “It was fairly simple for me. A god of knowledge isn’t prone to conflict in the first place. I could easily whisper words of prophecy into the right ears, steering things in the ways they needed to go. And with only us three signing the treaty, I was free to seek out those like your dear Agnete, utilizing their power to maintain safety both within and without my borders.”

The statue flickered forward, looming over Arkk’s desk. “You are not protected by that truce.”

Arkk flinched back at the sudden position of the statue. It hadn’t left the pedestal. It couldn’t, as far as he could tell. But that didn’t stop it from being utterly imposing. Still, he kept his calm. “That much is obvious enough. The Golden Order’s avatar and I have directly fought one another on multiple occasions.”

“Yes, but now it seems as if the Almighty Glory has decided to act as well. The Almighty Glory theoretically rules over the realms of pride, might, power, and war—I’m not sure of the accuracy of that, and those red eggs are a large reason why I doubt it. Nevertheless, the ancient Empress is slow to act but once she moves… she might be something akin to an unstoppable force. But don’t take her for a blunt hammer, swinging wildly. She has as much guile as she does strength.

“If the Eternal Empire is constructing those war machines that were sealed away following the truce, you had best prepare yourself well.”

“That’s what I’ve come to you for,” Arkk said. “How do I prepare? What are they? Capabilities, limitations, weaknesses?”

The statue hummed, shifting back to a neutral stance. “Mister Arkk. I shall ask one more time… I would like for you to return Purifier Agnete to me.”

“Out of the question,” Arkk said instantly. Even if Agnete wasn’t trapped in another plane, he would have answered the same.

“Then, I am afraid we have nothing else to discuss today. Good day, Mister Arkk.”

“Wait!” Arkk said.

The statue of the Holy Light shifted back to its usual heroic pose, staring up and over the temple room. It didn’t move again, not even after the candles burned completely out.

 

 

“Another project ready for testing,” Zullie said. “Project Capsule. I think this one might stand a good chance at eliminating the threat of those golden rays.”

“Good,” Arkk said. “What do you need? Volunteers or material?”

“Volunteers. They should expect discomfort, but nothing quite as life-altering as what those dark elves went through.”

Arkk pursed his lips. He had asked Zullie to try to stick to projects that didn’t require people. First of all, it was surprisingly difficult to find volunteers. Even with Kia and Claire openly demonstrating their altered abilities, there had been almost nobody willing to step forward and go through the same process. It didn’t exactly help that Kia—not so much Claire—was honest when people came to ask her how she felt about it.

Project Liminal split their consciousness across several realities, whatever that meant. It left the two of them a little unstable. It was apparently difficult to tell what things were real and what things weren’t real. There were a few anchor points. Arkk was always real. Or, at least, no alternate reality Arkk had ever appeared before them. There was also some sense of loss like they didn’t quite belong anymore.

Neither were particularly bothered but neither dark elf had been particularly normal to begin with.

“Did you test this new project on a chicken?” Arkk asked, not sure what answer he wanted to hear.

“Oh yes. Right over there,” Zullie said, pointing to a far corner of the laboratory.

The whole room was a mess. Books and tomes were scattered across every surface. Large ritual circles had been drawn out across the floor so densely that avoiding them was almost impossible. Someone had dragged down some alchemy equipment—one bottle over a flame was in the process of boiling over. And, off in the corner, there was a little black ball covered in star-like lights that was surrounded by chicken feathers.

There was, however, no chicken.

“Zullie… if you’re going to turn my men into balls of stars—”

“The chicken is inside. I can see it, it’s alive and well for the moment.”

“You can see it?” Arkk asked, looking through the witch’s rectangular glasses where her eyes weren’t.

“Sense it. Whatever,” Zullie said with a disaffected shrug. “The point is that the chicken is just failing to control its powers just like the chickens for all the other projects… Frankly, it is amazing that they can use magic at all. I assume it is due to them being created through the magic of the fortress. Or maybe they count as contracted to you. I’m not sure. Have too many other things to investigate.”

“Have you considered…” Arkk trailed off, slowly smiling as a thought occurred to him. “Can Savren do any kind of mind-link with the chickens? Test the project on the chicken but use a proper person to control the power?”

“We considered that,” Zullie said, wiping the smile off Arkk’s face. “Unfortunately, mind control breaks apart when the subject undergoes the project’s process.”

“Oh… Just this project or all projects?”

“All we’ve tried,” Zullie said. “Sorry. You wanted an army of mind-controlled super-powered chickens, didn’t you?”

“I wanted an army of chickens, yes,” Arkk said not bothering to hide the sarcasm. “I’ll ask around. Have a detailed side-effects report ready by morning.”

“Already got it,” Zullie said as she walked over to one of the desks. She started fumbling about with a small stack of papers, blindly moving her hands across the desktop. Her elbow knocked into a stack of books, sending them all to the ground. “Drat.”

Arkk shook his head slowly. “Here. Let me help.”

The streets of Elmshadow were bustling with activity. The vast majority of people present were soldiers, especially now that the King’s army had arrived. However, a moderate amount of citizens and villagers remained within its walls.

Some, mostly elderly, had failed to escape before Evestani took over the city. Once Evestani’s soldiers were in charge, they were unable to leave. Evestani hadn’t killed them but they hadn’t exactly made life easy either. With all food stores requisitioned by the army, the native citizens had to scrape by with whatever they could manage.

The magical farms inside the tower were about the only thing properly feeding them at this point. Luckily, with spring having come, it was possible to start growing crops once more. Unfortunately, the elderly didn’t make the best farmhands at the best of times. Half-starved and worn-down elderly were even worse.

Others had returned to Evestani. Former locals who had heard it had been recaptured. They could do some work. A few craftsmen put together fresh carts and a group of former stable hands managed to round up scattered livestock—sheep and cows mostly—that had been set loose just before Evestani captured the city. Finding them all was impossible. Plenty of animals had probably perished in the winter, more were just lost in the wilderness. But some had come back.

Unfortunately, that only meant that now there were more mouths to feed. Both the additional people as well as the returned animals.

Alma stared out at the eastern side of the city, scratching at her pointed ears hidden underneath her cap, wondering how exactly all that led to this.

Two dozen skeletons danced about the fields. Literally danced. They cheered and sang and slammed their hoes into the ground. They scattered seeds, tilled in manure, and all around joyfully turned the hard and laborious work of farming into something akin to a waltz. Their bony feet tapped rhythmically against the soil, creating a symphony of clinks and clatters that harmonized with their jubilant melodies. Even the sun itself joined in on the fun, casting playful shadows through their ribcages, making them appear as if they were glowing with the gift of the Light itself.

It was surreal. Of all the things Alma had seen since being forced into Company Al-Mir, not even the giant walking fortress could quite compare to the absurdity of the situation in front of her.

She was supposed to be supervising them at the moment. As part of Arkk’s… exchange with the people of the Necropolis, he was to instruct them on how to grow crops. It had been hundreds of years since anyone in the Necropolis had grown anything at all, after all. They needed a refresher.

Supposedly.

In Alma’s very private opinion, she thought they were all getting ahead of themselves. She had sat in on the meetings. She knew the situation. The First and Last Primeval Lord wanted to bring the living back to the Necropolis so they could… grow their population or whatever. Just like the old days.

Except it wouldn’t work out. Not right away, anyway. She didn’t understand the mechanics behind it all, but she did pay attention to the effects. The Necropolis was like the Underworld and was suffering from an overabundance of magic. So much so that it was harming living creatures, including and especially crops. Even if a bunch of people went over there, they wouldn’t be able to grow anything unless the magic levels lowered.

That did nothing to stop the Merry Company of Cheerful Cadavers from coming here to learn. Or, relearn, in some cases. A few of them were old enough to have been… alive? Undead? Whatever. They were old enough to have farmed before.

Alma, as someone who had worked a dozen odd jobs in the past, was now in charge of them. She had some farming experience herself, having sold herself to villages in need of an extra set of helping hands practically every spring.

But she couldn’t keep up. Mentally. Obviously, the physical labor of farming, even with performed as jubilantly as it was, wasn’t particularly fast work. It was just… staring out at the dancing skeletons, Alma wasn’t sure what to think of it all.

The villagers of Elmshadow were supposed to be out here as well. She wondered if the undead had even noticed that their presence frightened all of them off.

“They ain’t acting like any boneheads I’ve seen.”

Alma cocked an eyebrow, turning to her side to find a wrinkled old man leaning heavily on a cane. Almost all the villagers had been frightened off.

“You’ve seen skeletons farm before?”

“Farm? Nah.” He scratched some of the scruff on his chin. “Used to be part of the Sellswords of Camal. Dealt with an uppity necromancy once near sixty years ago? Was it really that long ago?” With a sigh, the old man stared off for a moment, eyes going hazy. He shook his head.

“Sir?”

With his arms going limp, he dragged his feet as he moved a few steps forward. He let out a few false moans and groans before coughing lightly. “They moved like you’d expect. Slow, sluggish, uncoordinated. Even the necromancer’s elite guard were just bags of bones. Couldn’t hold a candle to a proper soldier. The only thing they had going for them was tenacity.”

Alma suddenly felt intensely uncomfortable. Also not an unfamiliar feeling since she had been forced into Company Al-Mir. “Sorry if this drudged up some bad memories,” she said quickly. “I’ll speak with my boss about… I don’t know, something.” They couldn’t get rid of them. And the labor was needed if Elmshadow wanted to be self-sufficient again. But…

“Bad memories?” The old man laughed. The laugh fell into a hazy coughing fit before it could finish. “You kidding me? Beating down that necromancer and his boneheads were some of the best fights I had. Best in terms of me crushing my enemies and them doing nothing to me. I’d rather pick up my hammer and smash some skulls in again than fight with those Lightless Evestani.”

“Ah. Well, please don’t. They’re not here to fight. I know they look spooky but—”

“Relax, kitten,” the old man said, making Alma reach up to make sure her hat was still in place over her ears. “I can hardly lift my old hammer.”

Alma’s ears were fully hidden. She scowled at the old man, wondering how he knew. “That’s not… They’re here to help.”

“Obviously. I may be old, but I have working eyes.”

“I don’t mean to accuse. It’s just I’m in charge of them. Both keeping them on track and making sure they stay safe.” Alma let out an exasperated sigh. “It’s like a diplomacy job that I’m not prepared for but if anything happens to them… I don’t even know what might happen.”

The old man snorted. “Better keep your eye on Priest Harrin. He’s been grumbling about them since they first showed up. Think he’s going to try to rush out and bless them back into their graves one of these days.”

Alma closed her eyes, rubbing her temples. Yet another thing to worry about.

“Say, they don’t have throats. How do they sing?”

“How should I know?” Alma snapped. “Do I look like a skeleton to you? Go ask them.”

“They talk?”

Alma didn’t know why he sounded so surprised. “They sing, don’t they?” she asked.

The old man hummed, looking down at the working and dancing skeletons with a different look in his eyes. Alma didn’t care as long as he wasn’t going to try to hurt them. She had a more pressing matter to attend to. “Where can I find this priest?”

“Where else? Picking up the bricks of his broken church.”

That didn’t narrow things down. Evestani had demolished or at least defaced every Abbey-owned church in the burg, of which there were at least three. “Which one?”

“All of them?” the old man said with a shrug. “You think they’d answer my questions?”

“What, the skeletons? Definitely. Honestly, they talk too much. The most unnerving thing about them isn’t that they’re skeletons, it’s how friendly they are. Sing a song to them and they might crown you king of their little troupe.” Alma sighed. “Now I need to find someone to watch them while I go talk to this priest…”

Luckily, there were guards posted everywhere, even on the eastern side of the burg. Arkk was taking no chances with security. Taking one more look at the old man, deciding he wasn’t a threat, Alma said, “I’ll be back in a bit,” before hurrying off to find the closest group of Al-Mir guards.

“I don’t get it,” Lexa hissed, lowering a spyglass. “What are they waiting for?”

Nobody who lived in Woodly Rhyme Burg would recognize it in its current state. Before the war, it had been like any other burg. A town just a bit larger than a village. Large enough to afford a wall around most of it, a keep for the local lord of the land, and a paltry garrison for the handful of soldiers charged with maintaining peace in the territory. It had hardly been anything special, lacking defining characteristics like Stone Hearth Burg’s quarry or Silver City’s mines.

It certainly didn’t lack character any longer. Evestani and the Eternal Empire were turning the entire place into a fortification of their own. The once toppled walls now stood taller than ever. Lexa had no idea where they were getting the material from. To the best of her knowledge—after having asked the scrying team—there were no nearby quarries.

It had to be the Eternal Empire. The army, nearly twenty-thousand strong, somehow lacked supply lines. They hadn’t used them during their march and they didn’t use them now. So either they were like Arkk and could expend wealth to simply generate supplies or they had some alternate way of getting what they needed. Possibly that flying vessel.

Lexa was betting on the latter for the simple fact that nothing around Woodly Rhyme looked at all like Fortress Al-Mir, the highlands fortress, or the ruins of the fortress in Darkwood Burg. The new constructions lacked the glowstones in the walls, the uniform tiles over every surface, and the magical fortifications to the brickwork. Everything had been built by manual human labor rather than that of the slime-like servants Arkk possessed or the shadowy servants that Leda’s tower utilized. Everything was normal.

Except for the way they got their bricks.

The real puzzler was what they were doing at all. It had been two weeks since they arrived. During Evestani’s first charge through Mystakeen, they hadn’t stopped for longer than a few days at any one place, with the sole exception of Gleeful Burg when Arkk destroyed their food supplies. That had been a massive reason why they had gotten as far as they had.

Now, they were stopped and were showing no signs of preparation for forward advancement. Though, admittedly, that obscuring fog they used covered most of the burg. But it was clear that they were entrenching rather than advancing.

It wasn’t like Lexa didn’t understand. If she were in charge, she wouldn’t want to assault Arkk at Elmshadow either. The place was even more fortified than Fortress Al-Mir. But Evestani and the Eternal Empire wouldn’t have come this far without a plan, right?

Unless their plan was just to camp here forever to try to push Evestani borders forward into Mystakeen. That could be the case, though if what she had heard while snooping around Arkk lately was true, Evestani was in for a bit of a surprise when the Prince revealed his hand.

But that seemed too… easy.

Lexa didn’t like it.

Arkk had told her in no uncertain terms that she was not to approach, but just watching the walls from afar wasn’t getting her any information. The trees around weren’t the kind tall enough to get her to any real vantage point. In fact, almost every tree even remotely close to Woodly Rhyme’s walls had been chopped down. Trees were the one resource she knew Evestani’s source for.

Lexa pulled her shadowy cloak around her a little tighter. She tugged the hood over her face, making sure she was fully concealed. Even with the cloth in front of her eyes, she could see out.

She could get in. She could figure out what they were doing and what they were planning. As long as she stuck to the shadows, nobody would ever know she was around. The only threat was the avatar.

Lexa bit her lip. The avatar. That bastard. Just thinking about him got her blood thumping.

The current theory was that the avatar wasn’t present. It was likely that tattooed children were inside Woodly Rhyme, ready to receive the avatar when needed. However, nobody had seen the actual avatar. Scrying was partially obstructed by the fog and none of the scouts like her had gotten inside, so the information could be inaccurate. But immediately after arriving, the avatar had spent practically every day coming out to the walls and just glaring off into the distance. That had stopped at the start of this week.

He was out recruiting, preparing, or was otherwise engaged. Supposedly.

It was a risk. She could get in and out with a wealth of knowledge. Or she could get caught by the avatar.

Closing her eyes, Lexa muttered a few spells under her breath. Every spell she had relied on throughout her life. Every little spell to help people gloss over her, to help her move a little quieter and a little faster, and to help her keep calm even in stressful situations.

Spells finished, Lexa opened her eyes and scanned over the burg’s wall. Highlighted through one of her spells, she could see the perfect handholds that would let her scale up over on one side, well away from any lights or guards.

Taking a breath, hyping herself up, Lexa took off in a stealthy dash.

 

 

“You don’t look like you’re all that happy, Mags. Wasn’t this what you wanted?”

The sun hung low in the sky, casting long shadows over the rolling hills and the sprawling encampments of the two armies. The air was thick with the scent of earth and sweat, mingling with the distant clamor of soldiers preparing for the day’s drills. Joanne along with other former members of the Claymores led groups around a marked-out track, Lyssa the werecat was in charge of a small subset of Arkk’s command-oriented forces who were learning tactics and strategy from the guest army, Al-Mir’s engineers poured over traditional siege weaponry that Cedric’s army had brought. Cedric’s army outnumbered Arkk’s by more than ten to one, leaving most of the guest army to fend for themselves. Some lifted large stones and rocks to train themselves, others were arranging into large shield walls, scattering, and then reforming in repeated drills, and cavalry soldiers were working with their horses.

Arkk stood at the edge of the makeshift training ground, his eyes scanning the rows of soldiers as they spared and practiced formations. Mags, the ostensible leader of Cedric’s army, leaned against a small wooden railing beside him. Cedric’s adjutant sighed as he looked out over the soldiers.

“You ever get an idea in your head?” Mags asked, lightly drumming his fingers against the railing. “That little spark of finally, I’ve figured out what I need to do?”

“I… suppose so?”

“So you get the idea, right?” Mags tapped his finger to his head. He moved his hands out in front of him, wiggling his fingers in the air as if he were directing people around. “And you start figuring out how to bring that idea to reality. You need to get some equipment, talk to some people, maneuver things around. It takes weeks, maybe longer. Day in and day out, working on little things here and there. And you start doing all that and it is a lot of work but you keep up the effort because you know the payoff is going to be worth it in the end.”

Arkk jolted as Mags brought his hands together, making a loud thunderclap. A few of the nearby training soldiers even paused to look in their direction.

“Then something happens. Something outside your control. And it all falls to pieces.” Mags let his arms drop to his sides as he slumped against the railing once more. “All that effort gone to waste. That’s about what I’m feeling right now.”

“Ah… Well, I’m sorry your boss ruined your plans to stage an uprising,” Arkk said, his tone flat.

“Oh, no need to apologize. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Right,” Arkk said, shaking his head.

He wondered if Cedric knew that his chief adjutant had been the one egging on the soldiers dissatisfied with being sidelined. When Arkk had first told Mags of his meeting with Cedric, the adjutant had gone on an angry rant about Cedric always dragging him down and keeping him from his fun. He wanted to be the one in charge. When he first arrived, he even wanted the fortress handed over to him. Now, he was just depressed.

Arkk had sent a missive to the Prince informing him of that fact. He could only hope that the Prince would see to removing the man from his position.

“Maybe next time?” Arkk offered.

“Maybe. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing right now,” Mags said in a dejected tone of voice. He looked up at Arkk, then shifted his eyes to look over Arkk’s shoulder. A grin slowly spread across his face. “If there is anything to cheer me up, it’ll be that,” he said.

Turning, Arkk spotted a full three squads of orcs, fully armored in the shadow gear. They carried long scythes, these ones made of wood for training purposes. The real ones were too deadly.

Taking his eyes off the Black Knights, Arkk noted a certain air falling over the training grounds. It was like a ripple spreading out from those closest, who spotted the orcs first. Everyone stopped what they were doing, setting down weights and slowing their jogs. It didn’t surprise Arkk. Word had spread of Dakka’s unarmed victory over four of the army’s best. Everyone would obviously love to get a look at the shadow-armored knights that boasted such strength.

“Looking forward to your own men getting beat down again?” Arkk asked. The group training would begin shortly. This time, rather than unarmed and alone, the Black Knights would be fighting as a team against a team of opponents with wooden training weapons.

Finding out just how many soldiers the average Black Knight could handle at once would be another good reason to have done this.

“You have no idea,” Mags said, practically squirming with glee. “There are few things I love more than watching cocky men get their pride beaten out of them.”

“Even if they’re your men?”

“No matter who wins, someone’s pride is going home in tatters. Whose doesn’t matter.”

Arkk hummed, frowning at the rotund man. The adjutant, Arkk was swiftly coming to understand, was not a pleasant person by any stretch of the word. He didn’t know what Prince Cedric saw in the man to make him worth keeping around. Perhaps he had a brilliant tactical mind or just had been a childhood friend of some kind.

Arkk found him creepy. If it were up to him, Mags would have been on the first carriage back to Cliff. As it was, he didn’t have much choice but to put up with the man.

“You think your men have come up with any strategies to beat mine?”

“I’m sure those who faced your orc the first time around went around telling exaggerated tales to try to save face,” Mags said. His words made him sound as if he wasn’t quite sure but his tone was confident. He probably knew exactly what the men who fought Dakka had told everyone else. “Maybe they’ll be overly prepared, taking those exaggerations in mind.”

Arkk hummed again, a simple note of acknowledgment if not agreement. He was not quite so sure of the outcome. The Black Knight armor made them exceedingly resistant to any threats that might crop up in regular combat. At the same time, they would be outnumbered and were lacking their usual weapons. Armor alone wasn’t enough to win a battle.

But this was just training. Winning wasn’t the objective. Learning was.

However it ended up, Arkk figured he would hear about it later. Whether that be through complaints or cheers. For now, he pushed off the railing.

“You aren’t sticking around to watch?” Mags asked. He sounded disappointed.

“There is far too much to do. I only stopped by to make sure no real fights had broken out. I’ll check in a few more times throughout the day.” Turning, he started walking, giving Mags a lazy wave over his shoulder before teleporting straight to the base of the Elmshadow tower once he was out of sight.

Given that nobody wanted to traverse a million stairs every day, the tower was mostly deserted. With the reconstruction effort inside Elmshadow’s walls, there was room for everyone in his employ around the city proper, though they were mostly concentrated at the site of the former keep and garrison since that was closest to the tower. It was all claimed territory under his control, allowing him free actions within, but he had been avoiding using his abilities too openly outside the tower if only to provide some semblance of privacy to his employees.

Priscilla stood stooped, glaring downward with her iced-over eyes. Hale stood opposite, giving the dragonoid an equally fierce glare. Leda floated between them, palms out while frantically looking around for any sign of help. Unfortunately, even the base of the tower was mostly deserted today with those drills going on.

The few people walking around took one look at an angry dragonoid and decided that being anywhere else was by far the healthiest action they could take.

Arkk stayed back for a moment, watching with a frown as he wondered just what Hale and Priscilla might be arguing over.

It had been a few weeks since Hale requested relocation to Leda’s tower, temporarily, to try to heal some lingering injuries Priscilla had suffered at the hands of the avatar during the battle of Elmshadow.

The formerly little girl had certainly had a growth spurt in that time. She was still small, but no longer childlike. Priscilla was a bit shorter than Arkk—not including her wings—and Hale was now almost the same height. As Arkk stared, he couldn’t help but feel as if there was something else off about Hale. He couldn’t quite place what that something was. It didn’t help that she wore a thick long coat made from dark green scales that concealed her whole body. Matching gloves hid her hands. Only her face was visible.

If not for her hair still being pulled off into the twin side-tails, Arkk might not have recognized her on sight.

Hale shouted something at Priscilla and the dragonoid snapped back. Arkk sighed and decided to intervene before his best healer turned Priscilla into a molten blob of flesh.

“—didn’t tell me it would be constantly cold. Why is it constantly cold? I thought the ice was just a you thing.”

“You should feel blessed, you ungrateful little human—”

“Alright now,” Arkk said, teleporting each of them an extra step away from each other. “Is there a problem?”

Priscilla turned a snarl toward Arkk. Being fairly used to that, he didn’t even blink. She wasn’t seriously threatening him anyway. The link didn’t even come close to straining.

Hale looked away, almost like she was embarrassed. With a shiver, she pulled her coat tighter around herself. “It’s nothing. I’ll figure out how to fix it.”

“Fix? Fix what?”

“Nothing,” Hale said again, turning even further away.

Arkk raised an eyebrow. When Hale refused to speak any further, he turned to the other two.

Leda’s eyes, blazing red much like Arkk’s own, shifted back and forth as she averted her gaze. The little fairy looked from Hale to Priscilla and back again before the tension in her shoulders dropped. Her hover dipped down, making her appear even shorter than she was.

Priscilla just gave a derisive snort. Having spent whatever anger she had, she returned to the dismissive air she so often kept up. The dragonoid’s icy eyes stared off at nothing in particular.

Frowning to himself, Arkk wondered how hard he should press. None of the three were injured or otherwise hurt. He could tell that much. With everything going on here, he hadn’t paid all that much attention to what had been going on out at Leda’s tower.

Although both of them agreed to Hale heading out there to heal Priscilla, it was clear things hadn’t gone as perfectly as they had hoped. As long as both were in one piece, he supposed he didn’t need to press too hard if nobody wanted to talk about it. It would probably be best if they were separated for the time being.

“Hale. You’re going to be stationed here in Elmshadow for the foreseeable future. We’re likely to need your skills. Any issue with that?”

“Oh thank goodness…”

Arkk switched which of his eyebrows were raised, glancing back over the trio, before continuing. “I have a small group of casters that I would like you to train on the Flesh Weaving spell. Two of them might be skeletons.”

That got Hale’s attention. While Priscilla had stopped by Fortress Al-Mir every now and again, including after they connected the portal to the Necropolis, Hale was completely out of the loop. She stared up at him, eyes wide. Not frightened. Curious.

That was a good sign. “Denizens of the Necropolis,” Arkk said. “They aren’t here to fight with us but a few did agree to help heal. I think they only agreed because they thought it would be funny for skeletons to learn Flesh Weaving,” he added as a mumbled aside. “So, you’re going to teach it to them. And then…”

Arkk trailed off, staring at Hale. He narrowed his eyes as he looked directly at her eyes. They were a piercing, almost luminous blue-white. “You… used to have green eyes.”

Hale’s blue eyes widened further, this time in fear. She quickly turned her head away from him. Not quick enough. Her pupils, rounded but not quite circular, slid together to form thin slits.

“Hale,” Arkk said. “What have you done?”

The young woman balled her gloved hands. After a brief hesitation, she looked back and glared, this time in defiance. “I improved myself. Any issue with that?” she spat out. Her arms were trembling now. Despite her aggressive tone, Arkk knew Hale well enough to see the worry that aggression hid.

Arkk stepped back, raising his arms in a peaceful gesture. He wondered if it reflected poorly on him that his first thoughts were about how much Ilya was going to murder him and not whether or not Hale was alright.

He looked over her again, taking note of her increased height and more powerful stance. With her lips slightly parted, he could see teeth sharpened and elongated. Not enough to cause problems with speech or closing her mouth. It was like a lesser version of Priscilla’s teeth.

Turning, he found Priscilla grinning like a madwoman, like she had been waiting for this moment for a while now.

“Don’t look at me,” Priscilla said without losing a sliver of that grin. “She came to me for help. This was all her idea.”

“I’m fine. I’m better than fine. I can almost arm wrestle Priscilla—”

“Almost? You wish.” Priscilla jumped at Hale, arms out to tackle her to the ground. Arkk just teleported both of them away from each other before they could connect.

“Hale,” Arkk said, ignoring the dragonoid. “I honestly don’t know how to react to this. I’ll probably need to think it over. But I need to know, are you actually okay?”

Hale drew herself up, which only served to make her even a little taller than Arkk thought she was. Roughly equal with Priscilla. “I’m good,” she said, looking him in the eyes. “A bit cold, admittedly. I didn’t expect that. But I think I can get rid of it.”

“Ungrateful—”

“You,” Arkk said, tone far less kind as he pointed a finger at Priscilla, “I’ll have some words for later. I expect impulsive, brash, and stupid decisions from a child—”

“Hey!”

“—but I expect better from you.”

“Really?” Priscilla sneered. “You expect me to care if some human wants to chop her body to pieces and put it all back together?”

Arkk turned a questioning glance back at Hale.

“It wasn’t like that,” she quickly said.

Priscilla snorted. “You wanted me to cut off your arms and legs.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Hale repeated with a bit more desperation in her tone.

Arkk sighed. Closing his eyes, he teleported both of them away. Priscilla went down to the dungeons for a little time-out. Hale got sent to the top of the tower in one of the private quarters.

He would deal with them later.

Arms crossed, he looked at the fretting fairy.

“I…” She squeaked, paused, and tried to collect herself. “I didn’t know until I walked in on them working. I almost threw up,” she admitted, looking a little ill.

Arkk sighed again. “Believe it or not, I called you here to inform you of a little change in plans. Our good Prince has some ambitions, you see, and I’d like to help him fulfill his dreams. You’re going to help me help him.”

“The demon summoning Prince? That Prince?”

“That Prince.”

“But—”

“The Prince is utilizing Hawkwood in his efforts, so that is who we’ll assist the most. Nothing to worry about, Leda. Come,” Arkk said, leaving no room for argument.

 

 

“Prince Cedric,” Arkk said.

The private meeting room within the former Duke’s manor possessed the same air of opulence and finery that it had under the Duke’s rule. Heavy velvet drapes, a deep shade of burgundy, were drawn tightly over tall, arched windows. Slivers of moonlight slipped through the gaps only to be washed out by the bright glowstone lamps hanging from the ceiling.

It was far too fancy of a place for either Katja or the Prince, which probably meant that nobody had bothered redecorating since the Duke’s death.

A long, polished oak table sat directly beneath the central chandelier. On one side of the table, Arkk took a chair, trying not to fiddle with the lapel of one of his nicer suits. Both Kia and Claire stood just behind him, flanking either side of the chair. He certainly had not been about to meet the Prince without their backup. Although Zullie had a few other possible responses to a demon, the dark elves who had undergone Project Liminal remained the best bet. All they had to do was touch the demon and it should be shunted out of this plane.

Opposite Arkk, the current Lord of the Land sat with an air of authority. Although clad in a much nicer suit than Arkk’s, it was a subtle garment. Nobody would have mistaken the Duke with all those gold and silver rings, colorful and flamboyant suits, and the slicked-back hair that had become the preferred style among the wealthy of Mystakeen under the Duke’s rule. Prince Cedric was dressed well, but without any of the gaudiness.

Lady Katja, dressed up somewhere between the former Duke and the current Prince, sat on one side of the long table.

Arkk found himself somewhat cross with Katja for outing Edvin like that. His job of spying on both her and the Prince was going to be much more difficult now that the Prince knew he worked for Arkk. Perhaps it was time to reassign him elsewhere.

“I can’t say I expected a meeting with you,” Arkk said honestly. When Edvin tugged on the link, Arkk feared something unfortunate had happened. Perhaps a demon summoning or another attack from Eternal Empire warships.

“You are most adept at dodging attempts at meeting with you,” Prince Cedric said.

“There’s a war going on. It has kept me rather busy.”

“How many engagements have your forces had since retaking Elmshadow?”

“Open battles? None,” Arkk said. “But that doesn’t mean I’ve been resting upon my laurels. There is much to be done.”

“Such as rejecting an army.”

Arkk dipped his head.

Between them, a decanter of aged wine and a small array of crystal goblets stood as a silent offering of hospitality. Nobody had touched their drinks yet.

Prince Cedric pulled his hands together, resting them on the table in front of him. “Help me understand you, Arkk of Al-Mir. What is it you hope to gain from the current situation?”

“Gain? Some semblance of peace, I hope,” Arkk said, taking one of the crystal goblets. “An end to this war.”

“Do you intend to end it in favor of Evestani?”

It took a force of willpower to keep from spewing the wine across the table. “Certainly not. After all the troubles I’ve caused them, you think I could flip sides and keep my head?”

“Then the soldiers you rejected—”

“Absolutely won’t help,” Arkk said with a sigh. “I hate to be the one to inform you, Prince Cedric, but this war will not end through any level of conventional warfare. I doubt this war will ever end unless we kill the Heart of Gold’s avatar.”

“An entity your reports claim you have defeated on multiple occasions.”

“Defeat in this case does not mean kill. He possesses children—my researchers indicate a child is more easily manipulated than an adult. No matter how many times we defeat him, he’ll keep coming back.”

Prince Cedric didn’t look surprised at the news. It probably wasn’t news to him, even though Arkk hadn’t exactly gone around telling people the full story. Better to flaunt what victories they had than let people know they were up against a nigh-unkillable implacable man possessing the bodies of innocent children.

“You have a plan, I presume?” Prince Cedric asked.

“I do.”

“Care to enlighten me?”

Arkk carefully set the goblet of wine on the table as he shook his head. “It is the kind of plan where the less it gets out, the more likely it is to succeed. My researchers have reason to believe that our enemy has ways of divining certain events or futures, or at least scrying upon meetings such as this one. My fortress has protections against a variety of divination.” He hoped those protections were working. “Better to avoid saying anything at all here, unfortunately. If you wish to join me at Elmshadow…”

Arkk knew he said the wrong thing before he finished speaking. The Prince’s eyes flashed. Not in the way that Arkk’s might. There was no glow. No sign that he had made a contract with an otherworldly artifact of power. Just the mundane anger of someone unused to being denied.

It only lasted an instant. Prince Cedric quickly covered his expression with a simple frown. Running his finger along the rim of his goblet, the Prince moved to his feet. Both Kia and Claire tensed. They didn’t move, but Arkk could still feel their sudden wariness through the link. It was a similar feeling to when someone was in pain or danger.

It wasn’t a feeling he got often. At least not outside combat. Concerned, Arkk looked back at them through the link, keeping his actual eyes on the Prince. There didn’t appear to be any cause for concern. Arkk couldn’t see any threats to them, supernatural or otherwise.

Were they just being wary?

“I am at a crossroads, Arkk of Al-Mir. My father, the King of Chernlock, charged me with restoring stability to this land. He tasked me with doing whatever is necessary to achieve that end. I’ve tried diplomacy—”

“Really?”

“It went over about as well as you might expect. One of the early responses contained a coded plea for help. Unfortunately, I was never able to follow up on it. Messengers after that point began returning decapitated.”

Arkk grimaced, nodding his head. He suddenly felt uneasily aware of his neck.

He hadn’t had any diplomatic interactions with Evestani since exchanging prisoners for gold. Given that they had turned around almost immediately and started marching back, Arkk hadn’t been too interested in pursuing further relations with backstabbers and traitors of their ilk.

With the precautions he had taken, both in having the gold retrieved by undead and, after, having Agnete melt it down, he did wonder whether or not it had been trapped. Did Evestani think they caused him some inconvenience? Had they expected him to die? Did they think they got the better end of the deal? From Arkk’s perspective, the gold had been worth a whole lot more than a few thousand mouths to feed.

The Evestani got their soldiers back, but they had paid for about half of Leda’s tower. An excellent trade, in Arkk’s opinion.

“I have deployed elite units to secure tactically advantageous positions throughout Mystakeen,” Prince Cedric continued. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed a rolled-up scroll onto the table in front of Arkk.

Unfurling it, Arkk stared down at a map of Mystakeen. A fairly oblong stretch of land. He could see the border of Evestani, Moonshine Burg, and a long trailing route that indicated Evestani’s path into the former Duchy. Rather than a wave washing through the country, Evestani had been pushed down into a thin, narrow corridor. The same route Arkk had harassed them upon. He could even see the odd turns his various efforts had forced them to take.

Following the map back to the Evestani border, Arkk leaned forward, narrowing his eyes at the notations written down.

“This is…”

“Did you think I sent you everything I had available to me? Were you disappointed at only being spared a little less than ten thousand soldiers?”

“You’re poised to—”

“Ah. As you said, you never know who might be listening in.”

If the map was accurate, Prince Cedric had several sets of roughly nine thousand soldiers lined up along the border. They were positioned carefully so that they weren’t likely to be spotted. They weren’t just guards maintaining the border. It was an invasion force.

Arkk looked up, eyebrows raised. He hadn’t the slightest clue that the Prince had managed to maneuver several armies around like this. Granted, he hadn’t been searching for it. The scrying teams focused on immediate threats and certain key areas of observation. Mostly wherever Evestani’s army was and anywhere surrounding his territories. The border was far off from both.

Katja, who was peering over the map while trying to look like she wasn’t all that interested, looked just as surprised as Arkk was. After a moment, she met Arkk’s eyes. The corners of her lips twitched downward and she slowly shook her head. Arkk didn’t expect her to know everything the Prince got up to but she was supposed to keep an eye on him. For something like this to have gone unnoticed meant he must have been playing with his hand very close to his chest.

“Why haven’t you pushed forward?” Arkk asked slowly, looking at the Prince.

Cedric put on a faint smile. It might as well have been the biggest, smuggest grin for all that it implied he had gotten one over on Arkk. Still, he managed to maintain some level of decorum. “The answer should be obvious, no?”

“The avatar,” Arkk said, looking back down at the map.

With the numbers he had, Prince Cedric could have crushed Evestani’s army at any point along their route into Mystakeen. At least, if they were a conventional army. But they weren’t. Even if one didn’t know about the avatar and his near-immortality, anyone could look at their army and spot the numerous esoteric magics to which there were few, if any, answers.

“Among other reasons, yes. The avatar has been spotted in numerous locations distant from one another yet close enough temporally that he must have access to teleportation—”

“Possession,” Arkk said, shaking his head. Ignoring that his own movements had likely been tracked in some manner, he motioned to the top of his head. “Evestani shaves people and tattoos magical runes on their heads. Some, mostly those from Evestani, are likely willing. They are not above tattooing them on innocents from Mystakeen. Unfortunately, my researchers haven’t been able to study the exact mechanics of the system. Anyone with those tattoos is at threat of becoming the avatar without warning. Don’t really want a golden beam blasting through my researchers, now do I?” he said with a wan smile.

“Whatever the means, this avatar has a method of effectively appearing in multiple locations at once.”

Arkk looked down at the map, noting the movements of the troops across Mystakeen. The paths each group followed were annotated with dates, giving Arkk a rough picture of where everyone had been at any given time.

“I think I see,” Arkk said. Cedric wanted Evestani focused on him and Elmshadow, not looking at their borders.

“It is more than that. Unless there has been some severe…” Prince Cedric waved his hand vaguely as if grasping for the right word. “Miscommunication,” he settled on. “Barring miscommunication with my father, the force we sent to you should be the only other major force in all of Mystakeen. I am certain Evestani is aware of them, but if they don’t see that force with you…”

His trailing off left Arkk filling in the rest of the sentence. It seemed like the Prince was doing so as a countermeasure to potential observers, but he still said too much. Anyone with half a brain could figure out that he was worried Evestani might feel something amiss and wouldn’t focus entirely on Elmshadow. Of course, depending on Evestani’s true abilities in gathering information, it might not matter.

For Arkk, a map on the table was far more valuable in his crystal balls than a word in a meeting. Crystal balls communicated visually, not audibly. His earlier rejection of the Prince’s question had been more of an excuse than anything else. Did the Prince know something more about their abilities?

Something to ponder.

Regarding the Prince’s actual words, Arkk wasn’t sure he agreed that Evestani would spread their focus away from him.

Evestani didn’t like him for more reasons than just getting in the way of their invasion. He had little doubt they would focus on him. But he could still see where the Prince might disagree.

Arkk took a moment before nodding slowly, indicating he understood.

“I’m still not sure what exactly you want from me,” Arkk said. “Like you, I’m sure Evestani is aware that your army is present in Elmshadow. If you insist, I can put them on the frontlines, but they will almost certainly die.”

Prince Cedric pursed his lips, letting out a short hum. “My objective will succeed regardless of your input. The crossroads I find myself standing upon regard whether or not you survive the coming conflict.”

This time, both Kia and Clare tensed. Arkk saw them move, their afterimages positioning themselves closer to Arkk, providing a barrier between him and the Prince. Their actual selves caught up to their afterimages a moment later.

Katja tensed as well, though only after seeing the two dark elves move. With the way Prince Cedric had moved around the room, she was now at his back. The fingers of her left hand gripped the edge of the table. Her right hand slipped somewhere below the table. Just from the way the muscles in her wrist tensed, it looked as if she had grabbed hold of something.

A blade?

Did she intend to use that against the Prince? Or Arkk?

“Excuse me?” Arkk said, keeping his calm. He even offered a polite smile, looking first to Katja to maybe calm her before his eyes refocused on Cedric. The Prince said his survival in the coming conflict was in question, not his survival for the evening. There was no need to panic just yet.

The Prince’s expression didn’t change in the slightest. He barely glanced at Kia and Claire, dismissing their unusual manner of movement as if it wasn’t anything more threatening than an old man hobbling on a cane. Was he that confident in his abilities? Had he finally summoned a demon that he knew would protect him? Or did he just expect that Arkk wouldn’t order Kia and Claire to do anything before he had given him an actual reason to do so?

If the latter was the case, he had a whole lot more faith in Kia and Claire’s willingness to remain constrained by Arkk’s orders than Arkk had.

If Arkk were Cedric, he would be especially wary about making any sudden movements. Or saying anything that could be construed as a threat. Or breathing too heavily.

“I am something of an overachiever,” Cedric said, making Arkk blink at the apparent change in subject. “When I was a boy, my mother asked me to watch my younger sister and ensure she stayed safe. She meant for the afternoon, but a year later, I poisoned my uncle after I discovered unreasonable levels of abuse perpetrated against my sister. When I was a teen, I was given the duty of overseeing a small vineyard in Chernlock to demonstrate my skills in management.

“It is now the largest supplier of fine wines throughout all four of the Kingdom’s states,” he said, gesturing toward the decanter on the table. “Of course, my most infamous contribution to the Kingdom of Chernlock was the resolution of a… ruling dispute within Vaales. I’m sure you’ve heard of that one, at least.”

“I have,” Arkk said, narrowing his eyes. “I suppose you’re going to say that mere stability in Mystakeen isn’t enough for you?”

Prince Cedric smiled, chuckling lightly. “I’m glad we understand each other. Yes. Stability is far from enough. Evestani and the Yzanstani Empire they replaced have engaged in numerous wars with Chernlock over the centuries. If there wasn’t some conflict, large or small, at least once every fifty years, I would be shocked.

“So tell me what good is stability now if a new war is going to break out in another twenty years? In my eyes, peace is an impossibility as long as Evestani exists as an autonomous power. The solution is, therefore, simple.” Prince Cedric spread his arms, palms facing upward. “They cannot continue to exist as an autonomous power.”

Arkk couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow, both in surprise at Cedric’s ambition as well as his blatant speech despite the suspicion that they might be spied upon. Not that he said anything beyond a vague plan to destroy the enemy country. Bringing that vision to reality was another matter entirely.

But it sounded… good to Arkk, if he were being honest. Arkk could use the Prince’s ambitions against him. Let him have Evestani. He would be off fighting a war, acting as a barrier between Arkk and anyone else who wanted his head. Arkk might even consider supporting that effort. Leda’s tower was already positioned to perform a similar task. Arkk hadn’t been planning on conquering the entire country but…

If the Prince was in Evestani, he would likely leave Katja in charge here—he surely wouldn’t have kept her alive thus far without plans to use her for something. That would let Arkk get back to what he needed to do. Which, at the moment, was researching the other realms and bringing down the Calamity.

There was just one problem.

“You don’t believe it is possible?” Cedric asked, reading Arkk’s expression.

Arkk thought a moment and slowly shook his head. “Not while the avatar exists.”

“Yes,” Cedric said with a small sigh. “If even half the reports are accurate, the avatar must be dealt with. Thus, I am forced to act to your benefit.

“It has come to my attention that a large portion of the army, currently housed inside one of the Elm mountains, has developed a… shall we say dissatisfaction with your leadership in Elmshadow.” Prince Cedric paused, giving a pointed look to Arkk. “They are a prideful people who don’t take kindly to being sequestered away.”

“Dissatisfaction. On the level of rising up against me just to die to Evestani?”

“You have powerful subordinates,” Cedric said, waving a hand at Kia and Claire. “That much is clear. But Hawkwood’s reports of your numbers suggest you don’t have all that many personnel in the grand scheme of things. You believe you can handle Evestani and their Eternal Empire allies—something I am uncertain about but willing to overlook for the sake of this argument. But can you handle that front while also dealing with an uprising at your rear?”

Arkk closed his eyes, sighing loudly. “I’m trying to keep them safe,” he said, only half lying. Keeping them as witnesses to Al-Mir’s might was another reason to keep them away.

“I am aware. But the force sent to you is primarily young and hotblooded men eager to prove themselves.” Prince Cedric adopted a rather cruel grin. “They won’t realize how good of a deal you offered them until they’re standing in the mud and muck, watching the enemy charge toward them. Only when they wet themselves with blood will they wish they had taken you up on your offer.”

With a groan, Arkk leaned back, closing his eyes. “You try to do a nice thing for somebody and they stab you in the back…”

Cedric chuckled again. “A common hazard among those who find themselves in positions such as ours.” He turned partially, not quite looking toward Katja while still flicking his eyes in her direction. She wouldn’t have been able to see it.

Arkk definitely could.

Maybe he wasn’t keeping her around to groom her into the new Duchess.

“Speak with my adjutant with the army,” Cedric said. “Let Mags know of our discussion and that I would be exceedingly displeased were something unfortunate to happen to either of our forces at this particular time. As for the army? Put them on the front lines. I would request you try to keep them as far away from the avatar and other such threats as possible, but if Hawkwood’s opinion of you is half the truth of reality, you’ll try to keep them safe without my input.”

He said to put them on the front lines. Plenty would die from that alone. But they were soldiers. Arkk didn’t know if they had been conscripted or if they signed up for it. But then, he went and essentially asked for them to be placed up against things soldiers should handle, rather than the things Arkk had to handle.

Arkk drew in a breath, looking over the Prince. For all he had heard of the man, Arkk would have expected a callous disregard. Yet here he was, maneuvering around to try to protect them. Knowing what he now knew of the grand scheme of things, Arkk would have figured that they would be even less valuable for anything but a distraction for the rest of the soldiers on the Evestani border.

“I’ll have my soldiers start running drills with them,” Arkk said, formulating a few plans of his own in the back of his mind. “Tell them they’re going to fight to keep them happy then beat them down with my specialists to show them just how outclassed they are.”

“A lot of effort to keep them alive,” Cedric commented in a neutral tone.

Arkk shrugged. “That’s just how I am.”

Besides that, perhaps he could sway a few into joining him on a more permanent basis.

With Edvin no longer able to act around Cliff as he had been, perhaps he could start sowing a few seeds of doubt among their allies.

Arkk stood, somewhat surprised that the meeting had been productive and not a series of stealth insults, assassination attempts, or other subterfuge.

He had a path forward now. A proper one. Defeating the avatar had always been the plan, but it had been more of a symptom to deal with, leaving Evestani as a whole and possibly the Eternal Empire. Now, that same symptom being removed was the cure. Kill the avatar. Enable Prince Cedric’s ambitions and get him out of Mystakeen. Arkk would show off that he was a force not to be messed with and get all his problems out of his hair in one fell swoop.

A perfect plan if ever there was one.

 

 

“Emissaries of the Laughing Prince are not to be trusted,” Vezta said through pursed lips.

“You don’t like undead either?” Ilya asked.

Watching the skeletons move about gave Ilya a deeply unsettling feeling inside her chest. The undead of the Necropolis weren’t like the skeletons Arkk had raised. Arkk created puppets using bones as a base. The denizens of the Necropolis were people, able to think and act on their own. Not only did Ilya find herself uneasy in their presence, but she felt bad about it because they otherwise seemed normal. If she closed her eyes, she wouldn’t even know she was talking to an animated skeleton.

But to hear that Vezta didn’t like them either surprised her. Vezta always struck her as someone with a sense of morals that didn’t quite align with anyone else. In all their time together, Ilya really only knew two things that Vezta desired; The protection of Fortress Al-Mir—and Arkk by extension—and carrying out her former master’s final directive of reversing the Calamity. She didn’t want food, she didn’t want fun, she didn’t want to socialize much at all. Oh, she could be polite and smile at the right times, but if an action didn’t drive her toward either of her goals, it was like she didn’t care.

To hear her express discontent with something actively aiding them in one of those two goals came as a shock.

Ilya wondered if Vezta was just more open with her. Had they… Ilya frowned to herself, watching Vezta as the slime-like monster seemed to ooze back into her seat, losing part of her defined form in the process. Had they somehow grown closer than she figured was possible?

Coworkers, yes. But Vezta had a lot of coworkers that she would never relax in front of.

“I don’t care if they’re undead or sapient lumps of sewer muck,” Vezta said after a long moment of silence. “The problem is their target of worship.”

Ilya slumped back herself, somewhat disappointed that she hadn’t found someone else uneasy about the undead. She supposed it made sense. As far as she could tell, Vezta didn’t have bones. The sight of a skeleton walking around was likely no different to Vezta than a werecat or orc walking around.

“The Laughing Prince,” Ilya said, trying to keep on track. “That isn’t one of the traitor gods though, unless you were wrong about the Calamity. Why wouldn’t we ally with them?”

“The Laughing Prince is the god of festivals, children, and extreme joy. He—”

“And undeath.”

“Yes,” Vezta said. “And undeath. But I’ve already mentioned that I don’t care about that aspect. Nor do I care about festivals and children. The former are a waste of time except when a morale boost is needed, the latter are generally useless with few exceptions.

“It is the subject of the joy that disturbs me most.”

“Having fun?” Ilya asked, confused. Vezta was an ancient being who could only communicate with the people of today using her connection to Arkk. Otherwise, she spoke in that language that felt like every word was slamming a book into someone’s brain. So perhaps there were some word communication issues, but Ilya didn’t see a problem with a little elation.

It just meant the Laughing Prince was a god of happiness and fun, didn’t it?

“I believe I’ve said it before,” Vezta said, peeling herself off the chair as she leaned forward. “Perhaps not to you, I don’t recall, but some of the Laughing Prince’s few words to the people are that ‘Life is a joke,’ a phrase that can be taken many ways. Some say, ‘Life is a joke so enjoy every laugh.’ Others say, ‘Life is a joke, and not a good one.’”

“Ah. You’re worried they might be part of the latter faction. What are they doing? Biding their time before they betray us?”

Vezta slowly shook her head with a humorless chuckle. “No, Ilya. The latter group are by far the more predictable. Nihilists who want to end everything aren’t very subtle. I don’t believe our guests subscribe to that philosophy. If they did, the Necropolis would surely be devoid of both life and undeath.

“It is the former believers that disturb me the most. They tend to be far more in tune with their god than most and what a god finds amusing is often not what you or I might find amusing.” Vezta stood up, forming full legs as she started pacing back and forth. “One of them might do something just because they feel whatever their current task is isn’t fun enough. Perhaps we start a battle only to find our bombardment magic has been subtly altered to rain down confetti rather than destruction. Or our soldiers might find their armor enchanted to dance a hornpipe when worn. The prisoners might be set free simply to cause a bit of chaos.

“Or they might do nothing at all!” Vezta barked out, slamming her palms against the armrests of Ilya’s chair, bringing her face far too close. “They’ll just enjoy watching us squirm.”

Vezta stared a moment longer before dropping her head with a great sigh. She slowly pushed herself back, straightening herself. She ran her hands down her sides, smoothing out the oily slime that made up her body.

“I apologize,” Vezta said, “for venting just now. But there are few I feel I can express my frustrations toward without negatively impacting operations.”

“That’s alright,” Ilya said slowly. “I don’t care that much.”

“Which is why I came to you.”

“More importantly, if you feel they are such a threat, did you talk to Arkk? Tell him all this?”

“No.”

“But, if they’re such a threat—”

“They are useful,” Vezta said with a deep frown. “I cannot deny that. Already, that Lord Yoho has brought over rings of power, enchanted masks and cloaks, and researchers who have all studied the Calamity far longer than us. I wouldn’t dare speak my mind to Arkk for fear that he ends up souring a useful relationship because of my words.”

That was a good point. If Vezta said to be wary of them and it ended up putting them off…

“Then it is up to us,” Ilya said. This was something she could do. Support Arkk from the shadows. “We’ll keep an eye out for any subterfuge. They already know I’m wary of them just from how I acted while visiting the Necropolis. A bit more suspicion won’t be unusual. Dakka as well. She could keep another eye on things.”

“Three people isn’t many…”

“There aren’t many of them. Arkk did bring up the possibility of undead volunteers joining him. Apparently, beyond Yoho and the researchers who aren’t actually with us, only about a dozen agreed. Those seemingly disillusioned with the endless festivities of the Necropolis. Arkk wants to give them command of some of the undead soldiers he has been creating…”

“If they truly contracted with Arkk, deliberately betraying him would be difficult without him noticing,” Vezta mused to herself, resuming her pacing. “That said, followers of the Laughing Prince can be sly if they think they’ll enjoy the outcome more than the drudgery of their task can wear them down.”

“Which is why Dakka should help. Perhaps with a few others who are in a position to keep watch over things.” Ilya paused a moment, mentally running down a list of everyone in Company Al-Mir. She snapped her fingers as a clear choice popped into the forefront of her mind. “I bet Richter’s abbess would be overjoyed to spy on the undead. We’ll probably want some spellcasters too, since none of us know anything about rituals or magic.”

“Not Zullie or Savren,” Vezta said, vetoing them before Ilya could even suggest it. “They have to work closely with the researchers. Causing suspicion between the groups would hinder that.”

“For all her faults, Zullie is rather meticulous. I don’t doubt that she would notice sabotage in her rituals. But that other problem? Bombardment being replaced with confetti? That is something to keep an eye on.”

“Perhaps Zullie’s two assistants? We inform them to keep watch over any magics the undead might come into contact with.”

“They work closely with Zullie but increased scrutiny from either of them wouldn’t be out of place. Especially Morvin. He is a bit more cowardly—Don’t tell him I said that.”

Vezta nodded her head in agreement with Ilya’s proposition. “That would work, yes. Assuming he can keep his mouth shut and not give away our suspicions to Zullie, Savren, Arkk, or the undead researchers.”

“He isn’t that bad. He just gets nervous in stressful situations.”

Vezta raised an eyebrow. “Like the one we intend to place him in?”

“Well… yes. Like that.”

“Better than nothing, I suppose,” Vezta said. She let a rare smile cross her face. “I’m glad I came to you. I feel much less frustrated.”

“Any time, I suppose,” Ilya said, wondering if they had become friends at some point. “I’ll speak with Morvin and Abbess Hannah—I feel like those two will be more receptive to me than you—if you want to inform Dakka of our worries.”

“It’s a plan.”

“Dismissed. Rejected. Publicly humiliated.”

Cedric Valorian Lafoar let out a long, withering sigh. He set his pen down, adjusting it slightly so that it was aligned with the edge of the desk. Reaching up, he pinched the bridge of his nose, sighed again, and finally said, “Mags. Thought you were in Elmshadow.”

“I am.” A slovenly woman sat draped over a day couch, dangling an arm off one side. A mane of curly black hair was tossed up and over her head, hiding her face from view. She managed to affect a perfect picture of a depressed and drab young lady.

Affect being the key word.

Mags had no true emotions. Cedric was well aware.

“Comfort me?”

“No.”

The woman seemed to slump into the couch even further.

It didn’t last long. Her skin, hair, and even the couch itself took on a glisten. Her delicate fingers elongated and thickened, the soft curves of her body rippled like water disturbed by an unseen force. Her curly hair retracted, lightening to a salt-and-pepper gray in a trim, militaristic cut. The silk dress flowing around her dissolved, leaving behind the rigid lines of a military uniform. Her face contorted, features hardening and sharpening while a stubble sprouted across her chin.

The once reclining figure now sat bolt upright in a high-backed chair, exuding an aura of command and discipline.

“You read my report?”

“I did,” Cedric said, not reacting to the change. A reaction was just what Mags wanted. “Four of my best men, trounced by a single orc? Are you certain they were my best?”

Mags shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe. Hard to tell. All you humans are the same to me. That said, they certainly didn’t look their best. The orc didn’t even use weapons.”

“Yes, you mentioned that,” Cedric said, his eyes drifting to the report on his desk. A single, unarmed though not unarmored orc managed to lay waste to four men at the same time. Orcs were hardier than the average human, it was true, but not to such an extent as that. The victory condition for his team was merely scratching the orc whereas the orc had to render his men incapable or unwilling to continue.

“Arkk didn’t use magic to strengthen or hasten his champion?”

“The armor itself was enchanted,” Mags said. “I didn’t recognize it, but it was shadowy and translucent. Took sword strikes and spears without even a mark. Beyond that, there was no magic involved in the fight.”

Cedric sighed once more. When he had first heard of this Arkk, he hadn’t sounded all that different from the usual mercenary company. Company Al-Mir wasn’t even particularly large, employing under a thousand men. But it seemed like every time he heard Arkk’s name mentioned, the man had some new trick up his sleeve. From illegal magics to that walking tower of his. Now impenetrable armor?

“Then he sent the army away,” Cedric said, frowning.

“Not away. Just off to the side. I think he wants them to watch. Bit of an exhibitionist, I think.”

Cedric didn’t rise to Mags’ words. He tapped his finger lightly against the letter on the desk. “I was just penning a letter to Arkk asking what could possibly be going through his mind. Rejecting the aid of my army after having been the one to request it…” He shook his head.

“Isn’t it fun?” Mags said, his smile wide. “I haven’t the slightest clue what he is thinking! A Keeper like that turning down a whole army offered on a silver platter? Unheard of!”

“I take it things didn’t go according to your plans.”

“I didn’t even get to start my plans!” The general in the armchair shook his head, completely exasperated. “Rejecting the army… Who would have planned for that? But, to be honest, this is still working out well.

“He is housing the army in a series of corridors and chambers built into the mountainside,” Mags said, a sly grin slowly seeping across his face as he propped an elbow on the chair’s arm. “He has made an enemy of most of them. He doesn’t even know it. The discontent, the insults, the anger. Some of the older soldiers are more relieved than not but most of the army is made up of younger, hot-blooded idiots who would rather die for their pride than live to see—”

“Mags,” Cedric cut in, his voice harsh and commanding. “You are not to get my men killed.”

The chief adjutant parted his lips, showing off razor-sharp teeth. “Afraid that might not be up to me any longer. You see, I rolled over and accepted Arkk’s rejection with hardly any defense,” he said in a glee-filled tone. “I’m not exactly very popular at the moment. Combined with a few whispers that have made their way through the army, claiming tricks, sabotage, heresy, and all manner of unfortunate rumors about Arkk… Let’s just say that I might not be the one in charge much longer and those who will replace me might be keen on showing off the might of Chernlock’s Armed Forces.”

“What have you done?” Cedric asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Surprisingly little. A whisper in an ear here. A nudge there. But overall, you’ve got your hot-blooded toy soldiers to thank for anything that might happen.” Shaking his head with a wan smile, he shrugged his shoulders. “The depths a human will sink to when their pride has been insulted…”

“Mags—”

“Ah! Got to go. I think rumors of me taking bribes from Arkk have reached a boiling point.”

“Mags!”

Cedric stood, slamming his palms against the desk. But it was too late. The room was, once again, empty. Grinding his teeth and clenching his fists, Cedric glared down at the half-written letter to Arkk. Shaking his head, he stalked around his desk, out the door, and into the manor at large. A few of his personal guards, who had been waiting right outside his door, started following after him. He waved them off.

Downstairs on the ground floor, he stopped in front of Lady Katja’s quarters. She normally had her own guards posted, not trusting his, but the hallway was clear today. Hoping that didn’t mean she was out, Cedric thumped his fist against her door.

Having heard Mags report on the woman’s nightly activities, he half expected the door to open to a sweaty and nude woman with her companions standing awkwardly in the background. Instead, a fully clothed young boy opened the door with fingers marred with fresh ink. It was the pudgy page-like boy that Katja kept on retainer who bore a suspicious resemblance to the late Duke Woldair.

Upon seeing who was at the door, the pageboy threw open the door fully and dropped down to his knees. “My liege,” he cried out, only to squawk in pain as the door rebounded off the wall and struck his shoulder, knocking him aside.

Cedric paid him little mind, pushing the door fully open and taking in the room.

Lady Katja, formerly sitting on a short couch by a bookcase, was both standing up and offering her usual archaic bow. A somewhat scruffy man sat at a desk not far away, adjacent to the desk’s main chair. He dipped into a bow of his own with an expression on his face that said he would much rather be anywhere else but here.

“My Lord,” Lady Katja said, still in her bow.

Stepping inside, Cedric glimpsed the contents of the papers on the desk. It seemed like learning materials. The man must have been some kind of tutor brought in to teach the pageboy how to read or write.

Cedric decided both were completely ignorable. He turned to Katja as the woman stood properly, hands tightly clasped together. “You have a method of contacting Arkk in an emergency. Illegal magic.”

He knew that they often met, thanks to Mags, so such a method was only logical.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what—”

“I don’t care about your usage of illegal magic. I just need to speak with Arkk before something unfortunate occurs to my men. Don’t waste my time, Lady Katja,” he said, employing all the verbal and bodily imposition he had learned over his years.

It worked. She swallowed audibly before casting a glance at the tutor. “Do it,” she hissed.

Cedric cocked an eyebrow, turning to regard the scruffy man with a little more scrutiny.

“I…” The man started, looking up with the expression of a man who knew he should have stayed in bed this morning. He swallowed, smiled a fearful smile, and cleared his throat. “My mother always said never to disagree with someone who can put your head on a pike.”

 

 

Priscilla stalked back and forth inside Fortress Al-Mir’s temple chamber, shooting the occasional glare at one of the statues despite her lack of proper sight.

Arkk tried to ignore it. He wasn’t sure what she was upset about or even why she had come back to the fortress from Leda’s tower. She must have heard about the statue’s appearance and wanted to see it for herself, but she hadn’t said anything. Was she upset? The glares made it seem so but it was hard to tell with the ice covering part of her face. Her pacing, however, made her look more nervous than angry.

“Marvelous!” Yoho shouted into the room, performing a slow pirouette that made the bells dangling from his collar jingle.

Arkk turned away from the confusing dragonoid to meet the glowing red eyes of his skeletal guest. Priscilla wasn’t someone Arkk could focus on at the moment. Yoho wanted a tour of this side of the portal, so Arkk figured the temple was a good place as any to take him. They could head out above ground afterward.

“A temple thou hast dedicated to the full Pantheon? I haven’t seen such sights since I scrubbed the last sinew from my old bones,” Yoho said with such elation in his voice. Arkk could hardly imagine being that excited about a simple room, even if it was some magical gateway to the realm of the gods. “Thou art missing a few spots,” he said, stopping in front of one of the empty pedestals. “But thine earnest dedication nonetheless pierces my heart.”

“I have a theory that filling the empty pedestals will resolve the Calamity—or at least be one of the steps toward fixing it,” Arkk said slowly. “It is one of my long-term projects. Based on recent experience, it seems that I need either something of significant relation to a god or to connect to their realm via the portal. But I probably won’t do any more until my researchers finish their analysis of the Calamity and its effects on both this world and others.

“The magical toxicity of the Necropolis and the Underworld is something that cannot happen here,” Arkk finished.

“No. I concur,” Yoho said with a solemn nod of his head. “Such a diverse pool of life would be a tragedy to lose. Necrovale houses few warriors, but we doth possess vast knowledge. Shall I provide researchers who may be useful in thine task?”

Given what had happened to the Necropolis—all its living population had inevitably perished because of the overabundance of magic—Arkk wasn’t quite sure how useful those researchers would be. Still, he wasn’t in much of a position to decline. “That would be most welcome—”

“Oi,” Priscilla grunted. “Bonebag. You—”

Arkk teleported Priscilla out of the temple in an instant. He tossed her into a random corner of the fortress, somewhere deep and labyrinthine. Without teleportation of her own, she could very well take weeks to walk back into a populated section of Fortress Al-Mir. “I am so sorry for her,” he said, considering leaving her there for every one of those weeks as punishment.

“Thou hast such lively subjects,” Yoho said with a good-natured chuckle. He didn’t show even the mildest surprise at Priscilla’s sudden disappearance. “I take no offense. Allow thine lady to speak her question.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Arkk mumbled to himself. He wasn’t sure if Priscilla had an actual question or if she just wanted to insult someone. Priscilla didn’t exactly get along with anyone, even if she had taken Leda under her wing.

But, it was a request from his guest. Mentally preparing himself for whatever apologies he might have to give, Arkk teleported the now definitely angry Priscilla back into the temple room.

She promptly snarled, lunging toward Arkk. He didn’t even flinch. A second teleport put her back a few steps. A third teleport put her back a few steps more when she lunged a second time.

Warning bells from the [HEART] went off in the back of his mind. The sudden alarm made him tense. It was something he hadn’t felt very often. Only once or twice. Someone straining against the link. It wasn’t breaking. Probably only because Priscilla had her own experience with minions and contracts. She was deliberately pushing on it without breaking it.

“Can’t teleport me if I cut our bond,” she snarled.

A dozen of the shadowy scythes vanished from the armory. Arkk teleported them straight into the temple, burrowing them into the ground to keep them in place. They were positioned around Priscilla so that if she moved more than a hair in any direction, she would start losing limbs.

“No,” he said. “But if you want to fight me, probably best to do it outside my territory.”

The warning bells in the back of Arkk’s mind went silent as Priscilla showed off the sharp teeth in her mouth. It wasn’t quite a smile, but close enough.

“Sometimes,” she said, losing the tension in her arms, “you almost make me like you. Then I smell the human stench that hangs around you like a poisonous cloud.”

Arkk sighed, teleporting the scythes back to their places. “Have you cooled down now?”

“Funny,” she snapped.

Yoho certainly thought so. He clapped his bony hands together as he laughed. “Wonderful. Thine performance is truly a blessing from my Prince.”

“Huh?” Priscilla grunted, curling one side of her lip up as she turned her head to Arkk.

Arkk returned her confused look with a shrug that she probably couldn’t see.

“Perhaps Necrovale ought to bring back one of the old gladiatorial festivals…” Yoho mused to himself. “Though violence is detestable, a good sport isn’t.”

“Right,” Arkk said slowly, turning to Priscilla. “The First and Last Primeval Lord,” he strained the title, trying to hammer its importance into the obstinate dragonoid, “asked that you be allowed to speak the question you had before I threw you out of the temple.”

“Just Yoho, please,” the skeleton said in good nature.

“Yeah, whatever. You worship the Laughing Prince, right?” Priscilla said before jerking her thumb to the Prince’s statue. “Is that what he looks like?”

Yoho turned to the statue. A tall, thin man in a fine suit. The statue had a fleshy, humanoid face but his smile stretched from ear to ear, showing off far, far too many teeth. Looking at it almost hurt the eyes. Or the mind. There were more teeth than could possibly fit in the mouth.

“It is recognizable,” Yoho said after a long minute of staring. “But unfamiliar. The statues honoring the Skeletal Lord in the Necropolis tend to be more… skeletal. But who can say they know with any accuracy the true form of any god? Or, should a god wish it, why can they not alter their form on a whim and whimsy? And the Master of Ceremonies is a most whimsical god indeed.”

Arkk raised an eyebrow. Less at Yoho. What the skeleton said made sense enough. He was more confused with Priscilla. “Why do you ask?”

Priscilla gave him a glower. She couldn’t help but frown at that. It seemed she was still upset. Still, she looked to the draconic statue of the Permafrost, pointed a sharp claw in its direction, and said, “This is not the Permafrost.”

“What? How is it not?”

“The Permafrost isn’t just a big dragon,” Priscilla snarled. “The Permafrost is a blustering storm. THEY are a frozen cap on a tall mountain. THEY are the chill down your spine when you realize the futility of your actions. THEY are the silence of a snow-covered forest, where every sound is swallowed by the icy stillness. The Permafrost is the relentless march of time, freezing moments into eternity. THEY are the embodiment of inevitability, the cold truth that no matter how much we struggle, some things are beyond our control.”

Arkk shivered, feeling some unnatural cool seeping into the room. He might have thought it was coming from Priscilla had he not been staring directly at her. She wasn’t the source of it.

His eyes slowly drifted over the statue. The icy sculpture was staring at him. Its cool blue eyes almost looked searching, like it expected something from him.

“That’s all well and good, Lady Dragon,” Yoho said with a tinge of amusement in the back of his throat. Not that he had a throat. “But how doth thou fashion a statue to embody a shiver down thy spine? I have beheld more spines than thou may care to imagine and yet remain unable to conjure an image of a statue of a chill.”

Just like that, whatever spell the statue had was broken. With one last breath of frost in the air, the room temperature felt normal. The statue instantly transitioned from staring at Arkk to staring at some vague point in the center of the room. Neither of his two companions seemed to notice the change. Or, if they did, they didn’t mention it.

Priscilla ground her teeth together, glowering at the skeleton for a long moment before snapping her head to Arkk. “You did something. You did this.”

Arkk let out one last breath, making sure that there wasn’t any frost misting in the air. “While I appreciate your opinion of my artistic capabilities, I can’t take credit. It did it itself.”

“Pray, tell me,” Yoho said, stepping closer to the draconic statue. “Were thy thoughts upon the young lady when the statue did manifest?”

“Young?” Priscilla said with a note of aggression in her tone. She opened her mouth. Arkk could hear the complaint before she actually said it. But, with a click of her tongue, she decided to remain silent, huffing slightly as she looked aside.

Perhaps she realized that the First and Last Primeval Lord might just be a little bit older than she was.

For his part, Arkk scratched at the back of his head, not quite sure how to answer. “Maybe. I don’t think it was deliberate, but Priscilla is my closest connection to the Permafrost.”

“Though hast the notion… Our inward preconceptions of the gods can alter our perception of them.”

Arkk raised an eyebrow. “Because I thought it might look like a dragon, it became a dragon?” He didn’t believe for a minute that he had that much power over a god.

“Well, no,” Yoho said with a small chuckle. “As I said, the gods manifest how they will. As for the Permafrost, it mayhap hearkened to thy desires and conformed to meet thy expectations. Why? To remove ambiguity? For the fun of it? Who can truly say their hearts know the intentions of higher beings?”

Based on everything he had heard about the Permafrost, Arkk doubted that fun was the reason. The Laughing Prince, maybe. The Fickle Wheel, maybe. But not the Permafrost.

A low growl interrupted his musings. He turned to find Priscilla hunched over low enough that she was practically on all fours. Her claws dug into the tiles.

“So it was you,” she said, turning her iced-over eyes to Arkk. Priscilla unfurled her wings like she was about to leap at him again, only to pause before Arkk could teleport her off into one of the dungeon cells.

Priscilla slowly stood upright, relaxing her claws and her wings, and looked at the draconic statue. As a dragonoid and one heavily attuned to ice magic at that, Priscilla wasn’t one to shiver.

So, when a terrible tremble wracked her body, Arkk grew imminently concerned.

He didn’t feel anything himself. That unnatural chill in the air from earlier had vanished entirely. The draconic statue was still sitting in its neutral pose, the same as it had been when it first appeared. It wasn’t even looking at Priscilla. Yet she stared directly at it.

Priscilla stumbled backward with a flinch like someone had struck her square in the face. One foot went back, but not so much to catch her. It was more of a reflex than anything. The momentum made her take another step, then another. She wasn’t even trying to fight it, not with the draconic might Arkk knew she possessed nor with her wings.

Another step and she would fall into the silvery pool of the temple. Already, her tail skimmed just above its surface. Seeing that snapped Arkk out of his confusion. He teleported her, picking her up and dropping her just behind him, making sure that he was between her and the draconic statue.

He couldn’t just teleport them all away. Yoho wasn’t his employee or prisoner and thus would be left alone and defenseless. The skeleton didn’t seem perturbed by the goings on. Yoho simply looked around, watching with that grin that he couldn’t get rid of.

Without moving through the intermediate space, the statue faced him. A rush of cold billowed out from it, sapping the warmth from his fingers, arms, and nose.

Arkk held his ground. A bright red light flooded over the temple, touching everything he could see.

“Leave her alone,” Arkk said, focusing all his ire on the statue. “She is my employee. I won’t take kindly to anyone trying to harm her or… take her back,” he said with a flick of his eyes to the silvery pool that connected to the realm of the gods. “Not even one of the Pantheon.”

“I’m not yours,” Priscilla whispered from behind him.

“My employee,” Arkk repeated.

Priscilla let out a growl, but she didn’t protest again. Nor did she try to move out from behind him. He could feel her, hovering close to his shoulder. But he didn’t feel her blind gaze on him. A quick check through the employee link showed her head fully turned toward the statue once again. He saw her nod her head.

The cold stopped. The statue stared off into the distance. The temple switched from imposing and unnatural to business as usual in the blink of an eye.

Priscilla dropped to her knees, panting and… sweating? Arkk hadn’t known that dragonoids could sweat.

Or was that condensation that hadn’t yet frozen on her icy scales?

“Are you okay?” he asked, kneeling down at her side and gently resting a hand on her shoulder.

He quickly pulled back when she turned a glare at him. She didn’t bite or snap at him.

She let out a long, sorry sigh. “The Heart I once held belonged to the Permafrost, as I’m sure you’ve guessed. THEY aren’t happy that I broke it. I have some amends to make, it seems.”

“Amends?”

Priscilla’s claws gripped the tiles of the temple floor, not doing quite as much damage as she would have done were it not for the magical reinforcement of the fortress. Shallow scars still marred the tile when she moved her hands away. Arkk was going to have to get one of the lesser servants in here to repair all the damage she had caused today. Not that it was a big deal. It was just a few gold coins worth of scars.

He waited, letting her speak at her own pace. If she even wanted to at all.

Her wings spread wide. The clawed ends dug into the tiles as she used them to push herself upright. He stared at the newest marks on the floor, wondering if he should actually start charging her.

“Amends,” she repeated, drawing Arkk’s eyes up to the ice over her face. “I’ll need your help. But later. If you would relocate me to my room, it might give me a higher opinion of you.”

“Alright. Whenever you’re ready, feel free to come to me,” he said. He waited another moment, just in case she had something else to say, and finally teleported her off to her quarters when she didn’t.

Arkk turned back to the draconic statue, glaring at it for a moment.

It sat there, staring without movement or change in temperature.

Letting out a short breath as he scanned the rest of the temple—it would be just his luck for something else to have changed—Arkk ended with a wan smile to Yoho. “Sorry about that,” he said, earning a hearty chuckle from the skeleton.

“Verily, what a lively temple this is,” Yoho said, clasping his hands together. “I have not beheld aught of its like since ere I did resurrect myself. Though art most blessed, art thou not, Mister Arkk?”

“Blessed? Hah. Or cursed?”

“Nonsense. Activity in the Pantheon. What an age to be undead,” Yoho said with a shake of his head. “Praise the Laughter.”

Arkk looked at the thin figure of the Laughing Prince. “He ever talk to you?” Arkk asked.

“Talk? No. Not since granting the final gift of undeath to those who recently departed His realm oh so many years ago now. Yet I still feel the honor of His Smile upon all our festivities.”

“I see,” Arkk said, not sure that he saw at all.

Certainly, the Abbey preached that the rays of the sun were the Light itself shining down on them. But, even including that, he wasn’t sure that he had ever felt the presence of any god. Outside the obvious interactions, that was. His encounter with Xel’atriss, the gift from the Laughing Prince, and the letter from the statue of the Holy Light were interactions. It was the distant observations that the Abbey preached of that he had never really experienced.

With his intentions toward filling the remaining empty pedestals and connecting to other realms, he had a sinking feeling that these more lively—as Yoho had put it—encounters were only going to increase.

“I think that was enough fun with the Pantheon for one day,” Arkk said, turning his back on the temple as he swept a gesture toward the open door. “You wanted to see the surface, did you not?”

“I am most eager.”