Author: Tower Curator

 

Agnete stood at the center of the Shadow Forge, frowning down into the swirling black mass that pooled within the crucible. She had always considered herself a creative person. During her downtime with the inquisitors, she often found herself left to her own devices. She liked to pass the time creating small sculptures, usually by turning sand to molten glass in her bare hands and then shaping the glass from there.

Since joining with Arkk, she had taken to spending time in the forge. At first, because it was a place where her natural, comfortable temperature went desired rather than shunned. Then she started to consider Arkk’s words regarding the source of her powers. The Burning Forge. A supposed god who had been shut out of this world.

A god of fire, manufacturing, and creativity.

She had joined with the blacksmiths, assisting as she learned the proper techniques of forging and manufacturing. Then she delved into her own projects. Ideas had sprung to her mind, often during dreams. Perhaps following the will of a dream was why none of her projects had yet turned out the way she had hoped. Nevertheless, she had ideas.

Those ideas only blossomed further when Arkk brought her to the Unilluminable Chamber in the Underworld. Just seeing the Shadow Forge was like a burst of inspiration. A thousand different ideas came to mind.

And yet, she found herself at a loss.

In the heart of the Unilluminable Chamber, Perr’ok dipped a ladle into the central crucible. The head blacksmith of Fortress Al-Mir had broad shoulders and hands calloused from years of crafting, but his hands moved with a practiced finesse as he carried the ladle exactly as Agnete had directed him.

She couldn’t help. She couldn’t even get close.

All the ideas in her mind and she couldn’t even get close. The liquid-like shadow did not enjoy the company of heat or light. The Unilluminable Chamber kept it safe from the latter but not the former. If she approached or even lost a little control, the shadow would begin to evaporate, ruining the product.

It was frustrating to watch Perr’ok pour the shadow into the mold they had found within the forge. Could she do it better? Perhaps not. Perr’ok was skilled. He didn’t spill a single drop. But she wouldn’t get the chance to test it for herself.

Perr’ok stepped back and grasped a lever on the wall. With a look to Agnete—she offered him a nod—he pulled the lever down.

The mechanism of the Shadow Forge activated. With a few ratcheting clicks, a hammer slammed down onto the mold. Each pull of the lever brought the thick slab of metal down with astounding force.

The process began. The rhythmic clanging of the hammer, interrupted occasionally to add liquid shadow to the mold, echoed through the chamber like a steady heartbeat. Agnete couldn’t quite comprehend how there were normal shadows in the Unilluminable Room and yet, as the mechanism continued its operation, the shadows of the room drew around the mold. The melding of the tangible and the intangible was a swirling vortex of darkness. Sparks of shadowfire cascaded down around the hammer as the process neared its conclusion.

With a final slam of the hammer, the magic of the room stilled.

Perr’ok reached in. He cracked apart the two halves of the mold. It was a blade. Long and curved, like that of a wheat scythe’s head. Although it bore a resemblance to farm equipment, it was a potent weapon.

He brought it over to Agnete, holding it out in both hands for inspection.

It wasn’t metal. It didn’t gleam with that metallic shine nor did it hold ridges as a more matte alloy might. It was a mass of shadow and material, rippling with an ever-shifting darkness. A darkness that would hold even out of this room and in the light of the sun. Now that it had completed the forging process, Agnete could safely hold it as long as she didn’t turn the heat up too much.

Lips pressed together, she offered a nod. “This would be the best we’ve produced. I can tell just by the trail it leaves behind as it moves.”

Perr’ok split his lips into a wide grin. “Gives new meaning to the term ‘blacksmith’, don’t it?”

Agnete gave him a look. Once upon a time, a purifier like her giving anyone a glare would have sent them running. Even if they didn’t know what she was, glowing eyes meant something was wrong with the one doing the glaring. Perr’ok, whether used to her in specific or used to people with glowing eyes in general, just laughed.

Must be losing my touch, Agnete thought, unable to stop a thin smile from touching her lips.

It was… nice. Compared to her time with the inquisitors, she had… people she could count on. A strange feeling, but not an unwelcome one.

“You wanna see if we can’t get this attached to that staff we made?” he asked.

Perr’ok carried the scythe head over to another station within the Shadow Forge, leaving a trail as he moved that was somehow darker than the rest of the Unilluminable Chamber. Agnete fetched a fairly simple wooden staff, long and narrow with brass caps on either end for a little weight. It could have worked as a simple quarterstaff. But one end held a twisted bit of shadowy material that they had forged earlier.

Holding it steady for him over the second station, Agnete waited while Perr’ok’s hands moved with a seasoned precision. The station came alive, this time with a flexible head that followed Perr’ok’s movements. Thin bolts slid through thin air, which the machine affixed with light whirring noises. In short order, the scythe head curved off the end of the staff like a proper scythe.

Except it didn’t actually touch the head. The shadowy blade hovered just a finger’s width away from the intricately twisted bit of shadowy material.

A strange mechanism. It would nonetheless assist with its usage.

Perr’ok handed over the scythe for Agnete to inspect. Satisfied with its quality, she carried it up and out of the Unilluminable Chamber.

She had to blink her eyes several times as she reemerged into the Underworld’s orange sunlight. It was almost blinding, although it was a far dimmer light compared to the real world’s sun.

In comparison, the blade of the scythe was like a trail of the night, slicing through the very world. The trail it left in its wake was a wound in the very air that took a second to heal.

“Wonderous. Most wonderous. Poor Lady Shadows must be pleased to see her techniques once again put to use.”

The Protector—one of them—stood out in the open just beyond the ruined and crumbling building that had once been a temple or church. The tall, carapace-covered being turned its head slowly, watching Agnete’s approach with its wide eyes. When she stopped a short distance away, it clasped one pair of its hands together while lowering the other pair to the ground, prostrating itself in front of her.

That made her uncomfortable. Agnete was used to people cowering away from her, looking at her with fear or hatred, or simply fleeing. Never showing such reverence. Even if it was reverence toward the scythe and not her, she couldn’t quite shake the sensation.

Shaking her head, deciding to ignore the Protector for the time being, she focused on the tall straw-stuffed dummies they had set up. A few were in pieces but one was still whole. It had a bit of armor equipped—worn and with a few holes in it from having seen combat.

Agnete stepped one foot forward, bringing the scythe around in a long, sweeping arc that trailed darkness behind its head. With a twist of her grip and a lever action between her arms, she pulled the scythe straight through the stuffed dummy.

The metal armor clanged to the ground in two pieces, the bound straw exploded outward, and the wooden stick holding it all up fell out from the middle.

Whipping it around again, she planted the bottom end in the dirt and stood with it at her side.

Perr’ok started clapping, unable to hold back his excitement at seeing their efforts work out. “The blade is incredibly dangerous,” he said with a wide grin. “I wish we had a more conventional weapon shape—anyone using these is going to have to do a lot of training—but what we’ve got is what we’ve got.”

“The blade is still stable,” Agnete said, looking at the swirling mass. “If we can keep up with this quality, we might be able to produce enough to make it worth training a few of the squads.”

“I’ll get a few of the blacksmith boys learning how to do it now that I’ve got it down. We’ll make plenty to use.”

Agnete pressed her lips together. Perhaps it was for the best that she couldn’t use the Shadow Forge for her projects. Production time was needed for the war.

But after, perhaps Perr’ok might be willing to hear out a few of her ideas.

“Read it back to me once again.”

Zullie sat in complete and total darkness. A darkness of her own making. No matter the spell she used, no matter the alchemical concoction, she couldn’t see the world around her. Her eyes were completely gone. Even Hale, with her strange prowess over the Flesh Weaving spell, could not regrow Zullie’s eyes.

So she sat with Gretchen, now returned from the temple expedition in the Underworld. While Zullie still knew how to write, she had trouble keeping lines of text separated while writing. Unwilling to let a little blindness keep her from publishing results, she had been dictating to Gretchen.

She had such results to publish now.

“Gretchen?” Zullie asked. “Are you there?”

“I am,” came the soft response.

Zullie turned her head to where she thought the sound had come from. She had heard rumors that those without eyes would develop enhanced hearing or even sixth senses for certain things. Thus far, Zullie had not been blessed with such changes. She had plans and spell possibilities for enhanced hearing churning in the back of her mind with everything else, but working on such a mundane problem just felt… unimportant.

“Why are you not reading what I wrote? You are literate, are you not?” Good help was hard to find. More so now that she couldn’t see to confirm that others were carrying out the tasks she assigned.

“I am. I just… Are you certain you are feeling well? Do you need another week of rest, perhaps?”

Zullie leaned back with a scowl. She folded her arms over her chest, drumming her fingers against the crook of her elbow. In the past, she would have narrowed her eyes—a flash of unease coursed through her at the thought. She tried not to think about her eyes. There was this… uncomfortable emptiness there. Like she could still feel her face around her eyes but there was no pressure against her facial muscles and skin. Just a vacancy.

Shaking her head, suppressing a shudder, she affixed her scowl firmly on her face. Rather, in the past, she wouldn’t have been in this position in the first place. This was what relying on others got her.

“Read it back.”

“It just… I admit I may not know as much as you do with regard to spell creation, but I did attend the Cliff Academy for three years. I even sat under some of your lectures. But this does not make sense. It’s such a far cry from the pristine work I’m used to from you that—”

“Stop,” Zullie said, holding up a hand. “You are dismissed.”

“I’m just worried—”

“I said you are dismissed, Gretchen. Leave the dictated transcription—if you even completed that simple task. Do not return. I don’t need an assistant who cannot follow simple directions.”

A long moment of silence followed before Zullie heard the scraping of a chair against the stone floor, a rustling of clothing, and the door to the library swinging open and closed. Letting out a long sigh, Zullie stood and shuffled her way across the library. She kept her feet on the ground, sliding one forward and then the other, all while keeping her hands out in front of her. Reaching the desk, she felt across the top, only to bump the back of her hand against an inkwell.

“Damn it all,” she hissed, feeling the liquid run across the surface of the desk. Gretchen must have left it uncapped.

Now it was all over the desk. If Gretchen had written down Zullie’s notes, they were surely ruined now. Not that it would have mattered. Zullie’s normal spell creation methodology involved writing down everything that popped into her mind so that she could review, add, and remove parts as she needed. Having everything laid out in front of her ensured that she wouldn’t miss something.

Trying to replicate that method with Gretchen was obviously a failure.

She needed a way to review her notes without being questioned over every little thing…

Could undead read and write?

“What is this supposed to do?”

Zullie yelped at the unexpected voice in the room with her. She whirled around to where she thought the voice had come from. One hand clamped against her chest where her heart had started hammering. Her other hand went to the wand she kept in the folds of her robes. Before she could actually grasp the wand, her mind registered a hint of recognition.

“Hale?” she asked. “You’re here?”

“I’ve been here the whole time.”

Letting out a long sigh, Zullie kept patting at her chest. She hadn’t always been this easy to startle. The quiet girl, practically an ever-present fixture of the library, would never have surprised her before. Zullie would have seen her in the corner, filed that away, and gone about her duties. Now…

Zullie ran a hand down her face, taking care to avoid touching near her eyes even as she let out a relieved and exasperated sigh.

“Don’t startle me like that,” she said, feeling a little weak in the knees. Not knowing where the chair was, she forced herself to keep standing.

“I saved your notes,” Hale said. She must have waved them like a fan. Zullie felt the slight breeze from the motion against her face. “I don’t understand them either. What is the Key of Forbidden Knowledge?”

Zullie pressed her lips together. Hale might not be half as educated as Gretchen. Zullie might have to dictate a little more simply or comprehensively, but Hale was probably less likely to stubbornly refuse to respond out of misplaced concerns for her mental wellness.

Fumbling around, Zullie found the chair and quickly took a seat. She didn’t like standing much these days. Even though her sense of balance was still working, she still felt just a little unsteady on her feet.

“It isn’t a literal key, if that is confusing you,” Zullie said as she smoothed down the front of her robes. More of a nervous tick to still her beating heart than because they were wrinkled—she wouldn’t be able to tell if they were messy. “It is a metaphor for a concept I think I’ve come to understand. The Key of Forbidden Knowledge is required to access knowledge that… well, is forbidden.

“You see, I have had an epiphany. Xel’atriss, Lock and Key, is said to be the god of boundaries, barriers, and separation, among a few other minor domains. That’s all well and good until you understand the breadth of her domain over boundaries. Both Arkk and I experienced it. The Lock and Key gave us information by manipulating the boundary between ignorance and knowledge. We mere mortals don’t normally think of something like that as having a boundary and yet I felt it. My knowledge shifted.

“If knowledge and ignorance is just one boundary that the Lock and Key can manipulate, what else might there be?” Zullie said, leaning forward as she got into her explanation. She had hardly seen Arkk—she wasn’t sure if he was upset with her, disappointed with her, or simply too busy with other matters—and discussing such a thing with anyone else in the fortress was… unappealing. “Is there a boundary between Spring and Summer? Inside and outside is a fairly obvious boundary. What about the boundary between youth and age? Between chaos and order? Between life and death?”

“Question,” Hale said. “What does it mean to manipulate the boundary between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’? So if Xel’atriss decides to shift that boundary, what happens?”

“Maybe a hole in the world opens up that allows us to step from here to outside instantly. Like the portal room. Maybe all of reality collapses in on itself. I haven’t the slightest idea!” Zullie said with a laugh. “And who knows what other barriers a god can perceive that our mortal minds can’t begin to comprehend. The Key of Forbidden Knowledge will let us understand so much more.”

“Are you trying to get your mind burnt out along with your eyes?”

Zullie’s mouth clicked shut. “No?”

“It sure sounds like you are. Maybe try something a little smaller?”

Zullie propped an elbow up against the desk, tapping her fingers against the side of her chin. “I suppose you’re full of ideas, aren’t you? You didn’t see what I saw. You don’t know what I know—”

“Maybe not, but of the two of us, I’m the only one who can see how ridiculous you look.”

The tapping stopped as Zullie dropped her hand flat against the table. The elation at speaking her mind quickly died off. Of course, talking with others was, as ever, an exercise in tedium and frustration.

“Instead of some boundary between ignorance and all knowledge that you shouldn’t know, start with something we mere mortals can think of. Like the boundary between seeing and unseeing. Then you could look over your own notes, you’d have a foundation you could build on, and you’d be able to see yourself. The Key of Unseen Knowledge instead of Forbidden Knowledge.”

“Why do I need to see myself?” Zullie asked. She wasn’t sure she liked that idea. It was bad enough thinking about her loose eye sockets.

“Well, you’re—”

Hale stopped speaking as Arkk popped into the room. Zullie wasn’t exactly sure how she knew Arkk was there. Perhaps it was the way air just moved out of the way to make room for him. Perhaps it was those glowing red eyes that, even blind, she could feel turning her way.

“Gretchen said that you’re—” Arkk abruptly stopped. There was a brief beat where some anxiety started to well within Zullie, only for her to jerk back when he burst out laughing.

“What? What’s funny?”

“You’re… You’re covered in ink.”

 

 

“Damn snakes,” Katja said, shaking her head.

The meeting with the Abbey of the Light had been long and trying. As she had consolidated most of the military power inside Cliff City under her banner, they knew that she had the technical capability to throw them out of the city. They also knew that she wouldn’t do that. If she did, another riot might break out in the city, this time with her as its target of ire. The Abbey was too popular.

She needed a way to turn them into villains. Put them against the court of public opinion and have them found guilty. But they were too careful. They were taking special measures against anything that might be seen as negative. For as benevolent as Katja was trying to be, supported in her rule through Arkk’s near-endless resources of both food and gold, some people of the city still fell through the cracks. The Abbey had a preternatural sense for finding and helping those people, giving them far too much goodwill to do anything about.

The general populace didn’t know of the Abbey’s drive to ally with Evestani. The Duke had announced it, not the Pontiff. They came away from that ordeal smelling like roses.

And they hadn’t spoken out against her. Both privately, at these meetings, and publicly, they even seemed to support Katja. It was more likely that they knew just how unpopular the Duke had been in his final days and showing any support for him would have been something she might have been able to use against them.

Just as Katja was plotting against them, she knew they were plotting against her. Behind their smiles and offers of cooperation was a dagger poised to strike at her back the moment they saw an opportunity.

And that opportunity was on its way.

Prince Cedric. Katja had honestly never heard of the man prior to taking over the Duchy. Life as a slave and then as a bandit out on the western edge of the kingdom didn’t make an education in the goings on of the eastern side of the kingdom all that important. But her manor had a large library of historical texts, collected by the Duke—or his predecessors and servants, since Katja didn’t see him doing all that much historical reading in his spare time.

That let her look at some records of his current domain, Vaales. There had been a minor uprising. Rebels against the King. Prince Cedric had been sent in.

The texts had to exaggerate. The way it was written, it was like Prince Cedric had slaughtered everyone in the entire region and resettled it from scratch with loyalists. According to a quote from the Prince, ‘All are complicit. There are no innocents. The rebels are obvious in their guilt but the so-called innocent allowed the rebels to form and failed to put down the treasonous actors. If nothing else, they are guilty of wasting my time.’

And he was coming here.

This was not how they had planned. Katja and Arkk wished for the Duke to be seen as incompetent and a traitor, someone unable to keep the population in line while also courting favors with the invaders. Katja was to be the populist, the one all the people would support. She had sent letters to the King, stating her intent to align with his rule. All she needed was a writ of regency.

Although King Abe had returned letters with cordial words on the paper, his actions in sending his son were… not in line with his statements.

“What to do… What to do?”

If Prince Cedric were to be killed in her lands, she could easily imagine King Abe deciding to dispense with whatever air of pleasantry he had and launch a full assault. Then again, if he were killed by the Evestani, perhaps…

That would cement the Kingdom against Evestani without a doubt. The Abbey of the Light was pushing for an alliance even with her in charge, trying to focus both nations against Arkk in the fear that he was going to destroy the world. She had no doubt that the Abbey was pushing on the King for the same. Yet the King would never overlook their hated neighbors killing his son.

Arkk would like that. More importantly, Katja would very much like to not come face-to-face with Prince Cedric.

But how? She was probably going to have to frame Evestani. Maybe they would kill him on their own if he ventured too close to their holdings. Katja wasn’t the type to leave luck to its own devices. She made her own fate.

It needed to be convincing. Witnesses needed to see the Prince die at the hands of individuals who could not be doubted. She…

“Lady Katja.” Horrik entered the room, ducking slightly to pass through the door. “Sorry to disturb you. We found another.”

Taking a short breath, Katja nodded her head. She stood from the round table—in an attempt to distance her appearance from that of the Duke, she had been neglecting to use his throne room for most meetings. She kept her hair wildly styled and wore attire that left her arms bare, showing off her striped tattoos. No golden rings adorned her fingers. It was important, at least for now, to be a regent for the people, of the people.

She followed Horrik through the manor, heading down into the dungeons. Most of the cells were empty. Troublemakers were held in the garrison, apprehended by the local guard. Her private cells weren’t for anyone so mundane.

At the end of the corridor, with two of her loyal bandits—former bandits—standing guard outside, she found a cell holding one young boy. Fifteen years old at the most. He had brown hair and a pudgy face with familiar features.

Katja had seen that face all over the manor. The Duke apparently loved to look at his own face.

“Do you know why you are here?” Katja asked, stepping inside the cell. Horrik followed behind her. The other two remained outside.

The boy looked at her, eyes widening as his eyes roamed over her arms. Katja well knew that most of the city’s population likely didn’t know what she looked like as far as her face was concerned. Knowledge of the tattoos she bore had become commonplace. So it wasn’t surprising when he narrowed his eyes and spat out, “My father, I presume.”

Katja dipped her head. The Duke had been unwed and had no official children. Unofficial, on the other hand, was another matter entirely. Buried deep in the records room, someone had taken an accounting of mistresses and potential heirs. Many were dead. Many died under suspicious circumstances just before reaching the age of majority. Only one before this boy had been found and… well… the likelihood of that boy being the Duke’s child had drastically gone down.

This boy, aside from being far thinner below his pudgy jowls, was the spitting image of the late Duke.

Reaching into her pocket, Katja withdrew a small box. Removing its lid, she held it out toward the boy.

A brilliant, gold ring encrusted with several gemstones which bore the ducal signet.

“Place this on your finger.”

“Uh. No, thank you.”

Katja put on a grin, leaning forward to put her eyes on his level. “I shall not mince words. Do it or we will kill you. Painfully.”

The boy bit his lip, staring at her. She cocked an eyebrow in turn.

“Do you think I jest?”

“They said you were nice. Kind. Better than my father.”

“No one is one-note. I choose to be kind. I choose to be cruel. Put the ring on and you may see a nicer side of me.”

The boy gnawed at his lip a little more before stretching his hand forward. He took the ring from the box gingerly, as if it were a snake about to bite. An accurate assessment. Nevertheless, he slipped the ring onto his finger.

Nothing happened.

Katja grinned. “Less crispy than the last one,” she said as an aside to Horrik.

“Aye.”

“What—”

“It is an enchanted ring,” Katja said, interrupting the boy’s question. “Only one of Duke Levi Woldair’s blood can don it without consequence. Congratulations, you truly are his bastard.”

He scowled.

“What’s your name, boy?”

“Roland.”

“Well, Roland. Although you seemed to know the truth of your parentage beforehand, now that it has been confirmed, there is a bit of an unfortunate conundrum here. You see, the first thing any competent usurper does upon usurping a position is eliminate anyone else who might have a better claim to the position. For you and me, that means heirs.”

The boy, for his age, was quick in the head. He understood her meaning immediately. His eyes widened again and he backed up against the wall of the dungeon. “I… I don’t want to be a duke.”

Katja put on a smile. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t revoke your claim to the throne. Even if you venture out to the hills and live out your life as a hermit, any children you have will be in line, as will any children they have. It gets messy. Ah, ah. Don’t panic just yet. You see, I wouldn’t be telling you this if I intended to kill you immediately. It’s a waste of breath. I would just kill you and be done with it.

“No. Rather than kill you, I think I could find a few uses for you. For one, there is a vault in this manor that can only be opened by one wearing that enchanted ring.”

“And then you kill me.”

“Not necessarily. I said a few uses for you. I’m trying to legitimize my rule as much as possible, as quickly as possible. You represent a few possible paths to legitimacy.”

Katja doubted that Prince Cedric would care much if she was married to an heir or if she adopted one if even half the rumors of his personality were correct. It was nevertheless a possibility. One she was more than willing to explore. There was little that Katja wouldn’t do if it meant both gaining power and surviving with that power.

“So here is the deal, Roland. You open the vault for me and then we find ways to make you useful to me. You move in here, enjoy a status your position as a bastard would never have normally allowed. It might seem like something of a gilded cage, I’m sure, but at least the meals will be far better than that hovel the Duke shoved you into. And if you play your cards right, there might be plenty of other benefits to a positive relationship with me.”

Katja paused and then added, “Or we kill you right now. Trust me, you are hardly the only bastard our dear Duke had. One of them will be more than happy to take me up on my offer. So. What will it be?”

To his credit, the boy didn’t hesitate for long.

“Hey. Did you guys feel something?”

Milos opened his eyes, disturbed by the sudden voice. He hadn’t really been asleep. Milos was the sort of person who found it difficult to sleep in the wilderness at the best of times. Freezing cold, huddled up as close to the fire in the center of their thin tent, with a heavy cloak failing to stave off the chill, were far from the best of times. He wasn’t sure that he had slept properly since the Sultanate ordered his family to provide a soldier for their campaign.

The others slept easily. He had thought long marches through snow-covered terrain would wear him down to the point where he wouldn’t be able to stand the exhaustion. It never had. He slept just as fitfully as ever.

“Hey? Anyone—”

“For the love of the Golden Good, shut up Jovan,” Zayd snapped, eyes still closed as he tried to keep hold of his sleep. His voice, louder even than Jovan’s, caused stirring among the other members of the Golden Army Pathfinder unit.

The stirring didn’t amount to much. A few weeks ago, when the air had been even colder and the days even more exhausting just trying to keep alive, Milos wouldn’t have been surprised if a brawl had broken out over the lost sleep, thus making the idiots lose even more sleep. Assuming anyone would have worked up the energy for it, anyway. Although the nights were still freezing, the weather was warming to the point where daytime wasn’t so much of a struggle, so a little disturbing of their sleep wasn’t quite as big of a deal.

Milos would still prefer if they were back with the main army. The Pathfinders were scouts and watchers, leaving them out in the cold far in advance of everyone else who enjoyed the blessings of the Golden Order. They could remain warm at night even in the absence of any flame.

When Jovan didn’t speak again, everyone settled back down. Even Milos closed his eyes once more.

It wasn’t sleep. It was just resting his mind. Nevertheless, he settled into a comfortable stillness, taking solace in the heat of the fire against his face. He could almost imagine his mind shutting down enough to call what he was doing ‘sleep’.

Until he felt it.

It was faint. Just a slight strange sensation in the ground. Someone brushing against him in a crowded market would have been more of a shock. Yet someone brushing against him would have been expected to the point where he probably wouldn’t have noticed. Out here in this Gold-forsaken land, he expected the ground to stay put under his feet.

Yet, there it was again. A slight bump.

In an instant, whatever semblances of sleep he managed to grasp hold of escaped as a jolt of adrenaline struck his heart. The light weight in his eyelids vanished, leaving him staring at the fire with wide eyes.

Slowly, he looked up and away from the fire. Of the six men huddled around, only Jovan had his eyes open as well, wide and full of fear. Jovan looked to Milos, looking relieved that someone else was taking note.

It happened again. The flames in the middle of the tent, though small and dim as they needed another log thrown in, jolted to the side. A slight shudder ran through the thin wisps of smoke as they traveled up to the opening in the tall, pointed tent. One log, precariously propped against another, shuddered and fell, sending a small cloud of ash and embers up into the air before it all fell back into the fire pit.

“See?” Jovan hissed. He was trying to be quiet but was too panicked to succeed.

“I swear,” Zayd said, sitting up. “If you don’t—”

“He’s right,” Milos said. “Something is… There. Again. Did you feel it?”

Zayd, eyes open now, just glared. He waited, feeling and thinking, before shaking his head. “Even if it is something, it isn’t anything to worry about. Tarek and Kian are on watch. They’ll wake us if it is important. You two can join them out in the cold and leave us to our sleep if you’re that worried.”

Jovan, for as worried as he was, quickly settled down at the mention of venturing out of the tent. Kian and Tarek had special coins, magically made so that they would keep warm even in the coldest parts of winter. But there weren’t enough of those for everyone, so only those on watch got to hold them.

While Jovan might be unwilling to brave the cold, Milos wasn’t. It wasn’t like he was sleeping anyway. He stood, pulled his cloak a little tighter, and wrapped a scarf around his face. Pulling loose the tent’s flaps, he hurried out, trying to keep as little cold air from invading the warmth of their shelter as possible. No sense in irritating everyone else more than necessary.

He did hear Zayd scoff as he secured the flaps from the outside.

The cold immediately bit at the skin around his eyes. That only served to further his alertness, making the next shallow thump feel all the more intense.

Their unit was currently occupying one of the most forward positions that Evestani held. They weren’t a large group. Just a forward scouting unit that had been dispatched to keep an eye on things after some incident that got everyone in charge all riled up. And that was after the disaster of the falling rocks during Gleeful Burg’s occupation.

Milos had never been enthused with being forced into the army. Yet, up until that moment, he carried a sort of pride in his nation. Led by a living prophet to finally destroy their heretical neighbors? Milos hadn’t known too much about those who occupied Chernlock before joining the army but the stories he had heard since gave him enough of a drive to put his best foot forward in serving his country.

Now, their unstoppable advance had ground to a halt. It was… disappointing. How could an army blessed by the Golden Good have ended up like this?

“Who’s there?”

Milos froze as the pointed tip of a spear dropped in front of his face, barring his way through the thick forest. The spear remained steady only until the next thump—more vibrant than the previous ones—at which point, it fell by the wayside.

Tarek stepped out from behind the tree, shuddering as he let the spear drop to his shoulder. “Sorry about that. Jumpy. What in the fifteen hells is going on here?” he murmured, stepping up to Milos.

“No clue. Jovan woke everyone by freaking out over it. It felt stronger out here.”

He could still feel it, every few seconds another thump. It was enough to make him feel like the ground under his feet was going to give way. He could hear their horses in the distance, tied to a tree with heavy blankets on their backs, going wild with neighing and worrying.

“No,” Kian said, stepping up alongside Tarek. “It’s been getting stronger.”

“Some kind of monster?” Milos asked. “I hear these Light worshippers call on demons occasionally.”

“It better not be or we’re all dead men.”

“It sounds… large,” Tarek said. “I don’t think demons are very big.”

Kian shuffled, looking over at his partner with a frown. “Oh, you would know, would you?”

“I can read.”

“I’ll believe that when I—”

The ground underneath them rocked. Hard. All three men stumbled where they stood. Tarek’s spear fell from his fingers as he grasped hold of a tree for support. Milos mimed his actions with his own tree while poor Kian, standing a short distance from the nearest tree, stumbled hard enough to fall forward onto his hands.

They barely managed to recover before another heavy rumble threw them off the ground. A deep cracking of distant wood breaking and trees falling joined with the rumble in the ground. Shouts from the tent started up and, in a moment, the rest of the Pathfinder unit hurried out into the cold despite their earlier protests.

And not a moment too soon. The repeated quakes dislodged part of the tent. The linen, though treated with an alchemical concoction to avoid catching fire, couldn’t withstand falling directly onto an open flame.

Zayd, the commander of their group, tried to call for a report. Another quake interrupted him, this one strong enough to send everyone to the ground. The tree under Milos’ hand swayed back and forth far enough that he lost his balance and hit the ground. Jovan curled up, huddling in on himself just in time to avoid a broken branch from one of the trees landing right where he had been standing.

All attempts at talking were cut off as gusts of wind started blasting through the trees, each either preceded or followed by more of the quakes in the ground. The sheer noise of both the thumps and the wind forced Milos to cover his ears.

Even still, he heard the cry from one of his fellow Pathfinders.

“Good Gold!”

Milos stared up, unsure exactly what he was looking at. It was like his mind just couldn’t quite process what was going on. For a brief moment, he feared that something had happened to the sky again. Another slice cut out for that false moon to roll overhead.

But no. The night sky had changed. A column of darkness appeared between the tops of the trees, lit only by faint violet lights covering its surface.

The massive column moved. With steady, repeated hammerings in the forest around Milos, it steadily glided forward, passing overhead until he could see nothing but its underside. If he had emerged from his tent, absent all the thumping, and looked up, he might not have noticed a difference between the sky and this thing. At least not at first. Hundreds of tiny violet dots lined its underside, giving it the illusion of a night sky filled with stars. But they were all wrong. The lights were too orderly, too regular. They formed a grid-like pattern on the underside of this thing. And they illuminated too much of it, letting Milos see the maze-like pattern of shadowy material it was made from.

Something slammed into the forest a hundred paces away from Milos, forcing his eyes from the thing overhead. He could barely see it through the forest. A building-sized leg stretched up into the sky, bent back down, and then bent back up into the underside of the thing overhead. The gust of wind that followed the slam kicked up debris into his eyes, forcing him to cover his face and hunker down.

He could do nothing more than hope it would ignore him like he might ignore a single ant under his feet.

More thumping followed. More trees broke, more wind coursed through the forest. Slowly, the sound and the quakes faded.

When he finally opened his eyes and blinked the dust from his vision, he looked up to see just the circular peak of that monstrosity over the tops of the still-standing trees. Even that vanished toward the horizon with a few more repeated thumpings.

Without the wind and loud quakes, Milos could hear the others around him. He heard whimpering, swearing, prayers, and rambling mutters. It took him a long few moments to realize that his mouth was moving, though he couldn’t be sure if he was whimpering or praying. Milos managed to clamp his jaw but he couldn’t stop the trembling in his fingers.

Slowly, the rest of the Pathfinder team calmed down. Nobody spoke to one another, as if worried that proper conversation might draw that thing’s attention. They didn’t need to speak.

Milos could see the fear in their eyes. The uncertainty. The worry. None of them could do a thing about a walking mountain, or whatever that had been.

Yet they all knew one thing.

It was headed directly for the main Evestani army at the captured burg between the two mountains.

“We… We have to warn them…” Milos muttered.

 

 

 

They were on a time limit.

Arkk didn’t know exactly when, but this Prince Cedric would be here sooner or later. At that point, Arkk would lose Hawkwood’s help. Worse, he might possibly lose Hawkwood as an ally and, instead, gain an enemy.

Although Arkk had passed on the warning about Prince Cedric to Katja, he was very much hoping that the Prince would be too focused on the Duke’s usurper to concern himself with the goings on out in the middle of the Duchy. In case he wasn’t, they needed to move fast. Fighting off a war on two separate fronts wasn’t going to be pleasant.

That was the whole reason he had taken out the Duke in the first place.

“I still can’t believe that thing can move,” Ilya said, standing alongside him as the Walking Fortress took a step. One massive leg lifted from the ground, trailing small bits of dirt and stone in its wake.

It came back down. The brief instant of silence fell apart as a gust of wind blasted across the surface of the Cursed Forest. Ilya’s long, silver hair whipped up against Arkk’s face, forcing him to turn aside just as the leg hit the ground.

The ground rocked.

Arkk had felt several quakes in the past. Mostly after having contracted with Fortress Al-Mir in the form of enemy attacks—such as Evestani dropping boulders on him. But none could compare to this.

He was thrown clean off his feet. Ilya, by virtue of her elven grace, managed to remain standing. Even she faltered as the fortress slammed down its second leg. Before she could hit the dirt, Arkk teleported both of them down into Fortress Al-Mir.

The fortress still shook, though not as severely. Enough that he wouldn’t want to try running around but not so much that he couldn’t keep upright. A quick check through the fortress showed most people having stopped what they were doing to just weather out the repeated steps. Everyone, including refugees, had been warned, so there wasn’t any panic or alarm. There wasn’t much panic or alarm.

Peeking into the refugee section of the fortress did show a few huddling together with worry riddled across their faces. Mostly the elderly or the young.

“I’m going to adjust its pathing to swing wide around Stone Hearth Burg,” Arkk said.

“Good,” Ilya said with a short sigh. “I was going to say… Not sure you needed all those rituals and trebuchets you put in that thing. If it walks too close to a burg, it’ll shake the buildings to the ground.”

Before winter, Arkk would have agreed. As it was, he fully expected some gold magic to suffuse throughout any target he neared which would render those stomps completely inert. Assuming the avatar of the Golden Order couldn’t just blast it down with one of those rays. That was the biggest worry he had.

“Our goal shouldn’t be to destroy places without regard. I know what I did in Gleeful, but… Targeted strikes which leave most of a burg intact while routing Evestani are better ways of going about things.”

It was something to keep in mind, however. An extra weapon that he hadn’t counted on. If they encountered an army out in the open that, for whatever reason, hadn’t run away upon spotting the approaching tower, the tremors alone would keep the soldiers from being able to move. At that point, they would be at Arkk’s mercy.

“Come. We’ll head to Stone Hearth Burg and let Hawkwood and Richter know that they will have to move further north to meet with the tower.”

Ilya accepted, taking his hand into hers, but frowned. “Probably should wait until it stops moving.”

She… had a point.

Still, he wanted to visit the burg sooner rather than later.

He teleported both of them to the end of the far tunnel leading away from the Cursed Forest. The exit had once been a small hatch, covered in dirt and brush to keep it hidden. Now, he had built a proper structure. Getting a dozen people out by ladder alone was hard enough. Trying to force a few hundred people to enter and exit by ladder was a degree harder.

Steep stairs led up to a hastily constructed hut on the outskirts of Stone Hearth Burg. It was an unassuming building, constructed with worn scrap wood from one of the buildings destroyed in the orcs’ initial raid of Langleey village. That gave it a look like it had been around for a while. Some old farmer’s shed. Nothing notable. It probably didn’t have any valuables. Only the most desperate would look twice at it and even they wouldn’t discover that the floor slid aside.

Arkk and Ilya stepped out, both grimacing at the chill air. It wasn’t dead-of-winter cold. The general trend of the weather was upward. It was still a far cry from the heat of summer or even the warmth of Fortress Al-Mir.

At least the ground wasn’t covered in snow. The trek to Stone Hearth Burg wasn’t far but trudging through snow wasn’t fun.

Walking Fortress Al-Lavik stood tall in the distance, visible clearly across the rocky quarry that extended out from Stone Hearth Burg. It was a dark, shadowy blight against the otherwise bright blue sky. Arkk wasn’t quite sure what had caused that. When he first built the tower, it looked like Fortress Al-Mir, filled with violet glowstones and maze-like patterns everywhere. Over time, the stone had faded and blackened, turning similar to the shadowy blocks that made up the Walking Fortress Istanur in the Underworld.

According to Vezta, it was the [HEART]. There were many such artifacts strewn throughout the various planes. Al-Mir’s was granted to Vezta’s former master by Xel’atriss. If it wasn’t faulty as a result of the Calamity, they could have split it to form a Walking Fortress that would have matched Al-Mir’s aesthetics. The one inside the tower had been gifted to someone by the Cloak of Shadows. Thus, it rewrote its construction materials to match its patron deity.

It wasn’t dangerous. If the [HEART] had rejected him, he would have known it early on.

“You can feel it even out here,” Ilya said.

She was right. It was far fainter. If one wasn’t paying attention, they probably wouldn’t notice. Inside the burg, things could be different. The slight tremors would shake the buildings and items on shelves, and probably disturb any animals. The stables down in Fortress Al-Mir were going a little crazy. All the horses were in a wild panic.

Except for the skeletal horse. It just sat still, awaiting orders.

“We just have to make sure people know that it is here to help, not to attack.”

In truth, Arkk expected little panic inside Stone Hearth Burg. Or Smilesville Burg and Langleey Village, for that matter. When he realized that the tower, even inside the Cursed Forest, was visible from all the nearby settlements, he sent Ilya around to make sure that the people in charge knew nothing was amiss. Of course, being told of a distant construction project and seeing—and feeling—that construction project stomp toward your town was another matter entirely.

With White Company keeping most of their men around Stone Hearth Burg, recovering and recuperating from their part in the war, he hoped the burg felt relatively safe.

The vibrations only grew more intense. As Arkk neared Stone Hearth Burg’s main gate, he could feel each step of the great tower. So could everyone else.

He could hear the alarm of the local abbey’s bells sounding, ringing relentlessly. Guards stood on the burg walls and the main gates were closed.

White Company, as a whole, was arranged in a defensive formation around the outside of Stone Hearth’s walls. Some ushered people toward the burg but most just stood in formation. Even though most of them knew, he could still see nervousness on many of their faces.

“So much for not panicking,” Arkk grumbled.

Thankfully, he wasn’t denied entrance. White Company ushered him along with a few others to the burg walls where he had to wait for a long few minutes, standing in line to be admitted through a smaller side gate. As was typical of a burg like Stone Hearth, when the alarm bells rang, everyone who lived outside the walls was to make their way inside. If bands of raiders or even just a small horde of goblins showed up, the best place to stay safe was behind the guards and their walls.

“Oh Light,” an older woman in line murmured as one of the heavier thumps resounded across the land. She clasped her hands together, turning toward the sun—and, inadvertently, the tower—in prayer. Only for the words of her prayer to get caught in her throat as she saw the dark shadow stretching out from the Cursed Forest.

An older man placed an arm around her shoulders, turning her back toward the burg while lightly rubbing her back. “It’ll be fine, dear,” he mumbled. Despite his words and comforting actions, he clenched and unclenched his other hand repeatedly, a nervous action. “As long as those rowdy hens don’t tear down the coop in their panic.”

“It isn’t heading toward us,” Ilya said. She spoke softly and with a pained look on her face.

“That’s true,” Arkk added. Maybe quelling the fears of one couple wouldn’t mean much in the long run. It was still obviously a bother to Ilya and that did mean something. “We were further out when it started moving. You can see that it’s headed north of here.”

The old man offered a wan, humorless smile. “Mags hasn’t been well since that tower appeared in the Cursed Forest,” he said. He traced a light pattern on the woman’s back. “No. She hasn’t been well since the sky…”

Arkk grimaced, especially when Ilya shot him a glaring look. He had almost forgotten about that. It helped that he hadn’t actually seen it.

“I’m sure it’s nothing to worry over. Nothing bad has happened yet, has it?”

“War. A moving tower. The ground quaking. The chickens losing all their feathers in worry while it’s still winter…”

“Ah… Well…” Arkk wasn’t sure what more to say. He shot a look to Ilya but the elf just gave a light shake of her head. It did seem like they weren’t helping at all, so best to remain silent.

By the time Arkk made it into the burg, the rhythmic steps of the fortress felt like he was standing on a wooden board with someone jumping on the other end. Still nothing too intense but definitely notable.

With a mental directive, he ordered the tower just a little further north than it was, hoping that the intensity of the thumps didn’t increase much more. And maybe help quell the fears of that old couple and their chickens.

The garrison was caught in a whirlwind of activity. Guards hurried this way and that, gearing up and readying arms. Some directed the villagers who had been outside the walls to safe places. Others spent time calming—or trying to calm—a crowd of worried people. It was all the panic that Arkk had hoped to avoid by having Richter and Hawkwood inside the village. That was the whole reason they were here instead of inside the tower.

The course they had plotted through the Duchy to Elmshadow carefully navigated around most large villages and burgs. Plenty had been destroyed or abandoned thanks to Evestani’s push to Gleeful. Those that remained might get spooked when they saw the tower on the horizon, even if it wasn’t headed directly toward them. Stone Hearth Burg, on account of its proximity to the Cursed Forest, would likely be the burg who felt the thumping the most of anyone they passed. And that was after his adjustments to its pathing further north.

He had been planning on sending out scouts in advance to assure the villages that the tower wasn’t coming to stomp on them. But if all his efforts to avoid panic here still wound up like this…

Arkk had become something of a well-known figure in Stone Hearth Burg. As such, it didn’t take long to find someone who knew him and could admit him to the garrison.

It turned out, the panic was only on the outside.

There was tension in the waiting soldiers. Every thump of the tower’s slow yet steady march made everyone jump. But they weren’t running ragged, as if preparing for a war that wasn’t coming.

“Arkk!”

Hawkwood’s voice carried well over the hushed nervousness in the surrounding whispers. He stood from a table he shared with his adjutant, Neil, Richter, and the head of Stone Hearth’s garrison, a stout young man who went by the name of Harrison.

“What’s all the commotion about?” Arkk asked, looking from Hawkwood to Harrison. “I thought everyone understood the plan?”

“Oh, we understand it,” Hawkwood said, gesturing around the main room of the garrison.

“Keeping a few thousand people from panic is easier said than done,” Harrison said. “So make a show. Put up the guards. Rings the bells. Let people know that we’re taking the suddenly moving tower seriously and, when it passes, everyone will be all the happier for it.”

Arkk wasn’t so sure about that. The old couple who had been waiting for admittance into the burg along with Arkk and Ilya would have probably been happier out trying to keep their chickens calm. Despite that, he could see the logic in it. Make it seem like they knew what was going on and had a defense plan, even if they had nothing of the sort, and people would have a little more trust in the ones in charge of them.

“How soon are we ready to move?” Richter asked, eager. “Not to say that your hospitality hasn’t been adequate, Harrison, just that all my men are ready to evict these godless scum from our lands.”

That got a few cheers from around the garrison. Most from locals rather than Richter’s deserters or White Company. Arkk had a feeling that a few tales had been passed around while Stone Hearth Burg had been playing host to their guests. Maybe a few plots and plans of what the future might bring. Hopefully, nobody had been waxing lyrical about the capabilities or weaknesses of the Walking Fortress.

“There has been a slight change in plans,” Arkk said. He quickly continued to avoid any complaints. “The Al-Lavik will not be approaching the burg as close as we thought. It will instead be trudging through the forest to the north. We’ll have to march up there to meet it.”

“Oh. Well, I suppose the men will be good for a short march if it means not walking all the way to Elmshadow.”

Arkk nodded, grateful for the agreement. “Now that it is moving, I realized that its walking alone is a bit too destructive to bring close to a burg. It’ll shake down the buildings otherwise.”

There was a brief moment of silence as those present processed that fact. Arkk was uncomfortably aware of just how many people were listening in on this impromptu meeting. All the hum of conversation from the garrison guards died out as well.

“Thank you for your consideration,” Harrison said.

“Of course,” Ilya said, sounding mildly offended. “We’re not here to… hurt people. We’re just trying to help.”

“Well,” Richter said with a sly chuckle. “Help our people. Evestani now…” He trailed off to another round of chuckles throughout the room. “But, if we’ve got a longer march than we thought, perhaps it is best if we get the troops moving.” He looked over to Hawkwood as he spoke.

The commander of White Company nodded his head. “Very well. Arkk,” he said, turning fully to Arkk. “Until the Prince has us recalled, we’ll lend you White Company’s blade. I hope we can do some good in the short time we have.”

“As do I,” Arkk said, clasping his hand with Hawkwood’s. “As do I.”

 

 

“Brace. Three. Two. On—”

The floor of the Walking Fortress Al-Lavik shook as a boulder slammed into its side. The slight rocking made Arkk take a step to the side. Beyond that, he barely felt anything. Closing his eyes, he focused on the tower, examining it through the link to its [HEART].

Some of the reinforced stone bricks had taken a slight beating. He could see where the boulder had impacted it. Conjured dirt and stone from the boulder scraped off against the wall, leaving an ugly scar on its side without causing significant structural harm. By the time the boulder fell the rest of the way to the ground, sending up a small column of dirt and dust, Arkk decided that there was no appreciable damage.

As expected. This wasn’t the first boulder he had launched at the Walking Fortress. Just the first he had launched while it was occupied.

“Test c-complete,” Luthor said, almost avoiding his stutter entirely. The chameleon had been rather nervous about meeting with Savren—a sentiment Arkk hadn’t exactly felt different about—but the sessions with the mind mage seemed to have paid off. Given Savren’s extensive research into his own speech issue, it wasn’t a surprise that he could help others. “No damage.”

“That’s… terrifying,” Hawkwood said, gripping the railing that overlooked Al-Lavik’s scrying chamber.

There were two pits on either side of a raised central platform. A large table had been set up. Thanks to John the Carpenter’s efforts, little wooden pegs of varying colors could fit into little holes in the table, allowing Arkk to easily set up a map and pin down important locations. The scrying team, occupying the two pits, would ideally spot points of interest and inform whoever was in charge of the map.

Now that Arkk had the Protector among his ranks, he wasn’t sure that it was necessary to bring the scrying team along with the tower. One Protector could sit back at Fortress Al-Mir while the other was here, either informing those in charge of the map or manipulating it on its own. A slight delay causing reactions to slow too much, communication issues, or someone managing to interfere with the Protector’s linked minds were all potential problems. Arkk hadn’t quite decided whether or not to keep the pits occupied.

For now, they were.

“Everything held up well in the previous tests,” Arkk said, smiling. There was a lot of uncertainty still but Al-Lavik—named after one of the few ancient phrases Vezta could remember which translated to roughly ‘Of the Stars’—was not really a part of that. It felt like everything Vezta had advertised. A device of ultimate offense. “I wouldn’t be inside here if I thought it was a danger. I just wanted to see what it felt like for the tower to get hit.” He paused, then added, “It’s also getting the bombardment team some practice.”

Two levels below, Morvin headed the small squad of spellcasters. Two humans, an orc, and an elf made up the primary bombardment team. The best spellcasters Arkk had available. Not wanting to deplete the glowstones on simple tests, they were using their own magic to conjure the boulders. That was good practice on its own, as was getting used to the ritual and its targeting mechanics.

The large ritual chamber had space for six of the massive boulder-drop ritual circles. Only two had the ritual inscribed on them. Three were blank, awaiting components from the smithy. The last wasn’t a boulder-drop ritual, but rather a newly forged ritual circle whose design had come from the Duchy’s siege magic records. With Katja effectively in charge, Arkk hadn’t run into any trouble digging through the archives for less-publicized magics.

The other three slots would go toward other siege magics. He might even swap one of the two boulder-drop slots for a unique spell. Unfortunately, the Duchy’s siege magics weren’t quite as advanced as Evestani’s. They lacked the modular targeting component, thus requiring them to undergo a bit of reverse engineering to break them down and build them back up. Savren was working on that task.

“It isn’t terrifying,” Richter Porter said, gripping the railing much as Hawkwood was. The captain of the deserters looked more excited, contrasting with Hawkwood’s wariness. “It’s brilliant! Military doctrine states that a counter-siege ritual must be erected as soon as possible anytime a capable company comes to a halt. Non-magically capable companies are too spread out to make for a less appealing target. But all that takes time and severely harms the ability to begin launching our siege magic.

“If the building can take the punishment, spellcasters can begin bombardment as soon as a target comes within range. Whether that be an opposing army or a city.”

“Yes,” Hawkwood said, staring down into the pit where Luthor held his hands above a crystal ball. “Terrifying for anyone opposing.”

“That’s rather the point,” Olatt’an said. The older orc stood at the far end of the room, peering out the large windows—which were reinforced with the same magic that kept the stone of the structure from harm. “Any army who sees this tower on the horizon would do well to surrender.”

“It isn’t quite that easy,” Arkk said with a small sigh. “Unfortunately, rituals don’t like to work while being moved.” The cooling ritual Zullie had designed for the Underworld wouldn’t work here. It relied on the overabundance of magic in the Underworld’s air. “The tower has to plant itself before any bombardment begins. It is surprisingly fast for its size but still visible enough that everyone will have plenty of time to set up defenses or even countermeasures. I’m still not sure if the reinforced stone will hold up against those rays of gold…”

They had no way of testing that short of inviting the avatar over for tea. Somehow, Arkk didn’t think that would go over so well.

“We’re working on countermeasures for that,” Arkk finished firmly. “In any case, the test is finished for now. We’ll perform another few as we finish the siege magic components, which you both will be invited to. Luthor, I’ll send you and the crystal ball back to the usual scrying room for now.”

Richter nodded eagerly, barely taking note as the chameleon vanished from the room. “We’ll finally be in a position to strike back at the invaders. The men will be cheering all night.”

While the young captain looked positively ecstatic as he headed toward the tower’s stairs, Hawkwood didn’t look quite so certain. Neither did Olatt’an.

One would have been concerning enough. Both looking like that? Arkk felt he was missing something. That something started gnawing at his stomach as he followed the three down the stairs. It grew as he dismissed the spellcasting team and grew more as Richter kept extolling the virtues of a massive tower marching across the terrain.

Fortress Al-Mir was divided into roughly four sections at the moment. The core of Fortress Al-Mir, where Arkk and all his direct employees lived and worked. The refugee section, which Arkk was hoping to diminish now that winter was ending—large numbers of people had already started leaving, following an effort set up by Katja to create a new burg not far from Cliff for those displaced by the war. The mass barracks where the deserters stayed and the even larger barracks where Hawkwood and his army were housed—none of whom were actually linked to the [HEART] and were therefore kept at a distance. The latter two groups were by and large the most sizable factions in Fortress Al-Mir. Especially Hawkwood’s army of nearly four thousand.

When Richter split off to his section of the fortress, Arkk held Hawkwood and Olatt’an back. Leading them off toward a smaller less-used room, Arkk teleported in some chairs, a table, and a few drinks.

“So,” Arkk said, taking a seat and propping his elbow up on the table. “What’s the problem?”

Olatt’an and Hawkwood glanced at one another. They didn’t say a word but Arkk got the impression that neither wanted to speak in front of the other. Olatt’an was understandable in that regard, not wanting to question Arkk in front of an outsider. Hawkwood… perhaps recalled that Arkk’s original orc force came from a bunch of barely-reformed raiders.

Whatever their reasons, Arkk didn’t much care for it. “Just spit it out. If there is an issue, especially with the tower, we need to know now so we can work it out.”

Hawkwood opened his mouth only for Olatt’an to beat him to speaking.

“First, let me ask what your is plan when this tower is finished?” the old orc said.

“March it on Elmshadow. That’s Evestani’s largest stronghold at the moment. We force them back, keep following and, once we reach Moonshine Burg, plant the tower there to keep more Evestani from entering the Duchy.” Arkk held up a hand, forestalling the objections he was sure were coming. “That is an oversimplification. I was planning on gathering everyone together for a proper meeting on the topic later. I know it isn’t likely to work out so nicely once we make contact with the enemy, but planting an insurmountable object in the main pass to enter the Duchy seems like the best bet at ending the war now before it drags on for another few decades like the last war.”

A long silence followed Arkk’s explanation. He well knew there were flaws with it. The most glaring of which was the Golden Order. Their war was against him. They wouldn’t give up so easily as long as they still existed. It wasn’t the only flaw, just the biggest of them. For that one, he was hoping that Inquisitrix Astra would come through with countermeasures for the golden magics. There were going to be meetings and discussions about how to fix those other flaws.

The way Olatt’an and Hawkwood glanced at each other again, like they thought his brief summary was the full stop of his plan, had Arkk’s eye twitching.

“I imagine things won’t go well even before Moonshine,” Olatt’an said. “The army holding at Elmshadow has no local loyalty or reason to remain at the burg. It is a strategic location, yes, but not one worth fighting against something like the tower.”

“That’s… part of the plan,” Arkk said, not quite sure what point Olatt’an was aiming for. “Make them retreat.”

“The army there can split in half,” Hawkwood said, smoothing down his trimmed beard. “Some go north and some go south, making their way around the Elm mountains. You can only chase one of them. They might not even need to split up if they’re fast enough.”

Arkk nodded his head. “That works to our advantage as well. If they maneuver around us then the tower will be between them and their supply line. Even if Evestani deploys that golden armored soldier to protect them, the supplies themselves won’t hold up to bombardment magic.”

“It still leaves the rest of the duchy—and us here—vulnerable to that army. They raid and pillage,” Olatt’an said with a small smile. “They’ll keep doing that to support themselves.”

“At that point, it is a problem for the Duke’s Grand… or… Katja’s Grand Guard?” Arkk paused a moment, wondering if the Duchy of Mystakeen was even a Duchy now that they no longer had a duke. He shook his head. The name didn’t matter. “We just need to make it impossible for them to continue their campaign. Even if that means taking the fight all the way to Evestani.”

“That would change things,” Hawkwood said slowly. “No books have been written on fighting with or against one of these towers, so I cannot say with any resolute authority, but the tower isn’t frightening to an army that can move easily.

“Put it up against villages and burgs that cannot simply get up and walk away… Once people become aware of the level of siege magic you can unleash and the futile effects of siege magic on the tower…” Hawkwood pressed his lips into a thin line. “When I first saw that tower, I mentioned that it would get people worried. That was before I realized the true scope of its capabilities.”

“It is a siege weapon unlike any other,” Olatt’an agreed. “It is not a weapon to fight an army with. That’s all we’re trying to say.”

Arkk folded his arms and, for the first time since taking a seat, drank a little of the alcohol that he had poured at the start. It wasn’t the really strong stuff but it did leave a small burn at the back of his throat.

“First of all,” Arkk said, looking to Hawkwood. “I’m not interested in sieging villages and even most burgs. Military targets, yes. Regular people? Absolutely not.”

“Of course. It was just an example.”

“As for fighting an army with the tower… It isn’t impossible, exactly. Even if they split up. Only mounted troops can move faster than the tower. The Walking Fortress can soften any hard target.” Arkk had thought long and hard about the best way to use the tower in combat. He doubted he had the best use of it possible and he was sure he would learn once he engaged the enemy. But from talking with Priscilla and Vezta, he had a fairly good idea of how to use it effectively.

“But don’t forget that it is capable of carrying a small army,” Arkk continued. “There is no line of logistics to protect. The tower acts as a supply point that cannot be depleted, so even at a distance from anywhere, the army can carry on. The same cannot be said for the enemy. The tower’s mere existence shuts down any attempt at resupply. They cannot stop to rest. They cannot raid villages and loot supplies without the tower catching up to them. They will wear out and either surrender or, exhausted and harried, try to fight.

“If an army splits up, they, by definition, become less of a problem. Assuming our estimates are correct regarding the occupiers of Elmshadow, there are ten thousand there. If they split evenly, we chase five thousand and leave the other five alone. If they carry on together, they suffer the problem I just stated. If they split again, then White Company alone—even with the losses you sustained—outnumbers them by almost double. You handle one group, we take the other. Then we can figure out where the other five thousand went and do the same thing to them or leave them for the Duke’s Grand Guard.”

“How long will that take?” Hawkwood asked.

Arkk shrugged. It didn’t matter, in his mind. If it took too long, he could simply leave and head toward Moonshine Burg. A routed and split army, exhausted and without supplies, should be easy to handle even for a lesser force. He could leave Richter and his men to handle that while the Walking Fortress marched.

“Alternatively… we could make it impossible for the enemy to run. Sabotage routes away from Elmshadow. Lay traps and alchemical explosives in their path.”

“Dangerous,” Hawkwood said. “A force that cannot flee will fight to the end.”

Arkk hummed. That was something to consider. He still wasn’t sure that they would flee. Not with the avatar at their backs.

The old orc scowled at his empty glass on the table. After a glance, seeing that Arkk and Hawkwood weren’t drinking, he simply grabbed the whole bottle. “When do we begin our campaign?”

That was another question. Between the avatar and that gold soldier, Arkk didn’t want to send his employees into a fight that they couldn’t win even with the Walking Fortress at their backs. Savren was still updating the siege rituals for relational targeting and pieces of the siege rituals were still under construction at the smithy. Then there was the Shadow Forge to consider.

Agnete was trying to get it working along with one of the Protectors.

Priscilla was going out in the Underworld for another scouting trip in the morning. This time with directions provided by the Protectors that might lead to more useful artifacts and equipment. Those additions might change how he fought entirely if they were powerful enough.

He could sit around forever, constantly waiting until he and his men were just a little stronger.

But Evestani were getting reinforcements from their homeland. After the gold knight fended off the supply line strike team, more and more were headed over. Not just supplies either, but men and equipment. A day ago, Evestani had deployed their scrying fog once again, presumably to transport something that they didn’t want everyone to know about.

Evestani was building up just as he was. They would eventually launch an attack and, when they did, Arkk had no doubt that they would believe in their victory. Whether or not they could actually achieve it was another question. No matter what, he doubted it would be a battle he would enjoy fighting.

Then again, perhaps he should allow them to attack first. With Walking Fortress Al-Lavik and Fortress Al-Mir here, he felt his position was relatively unassailable. If he allowed Evestani to throw themselves upon his blade and then launched the counter-attack, he could sweep across the Duchy all the way to the border without sizeable resistance.

“There is another thing,” Hawkwood said, interrupting Arkk’s thoughts.

There was a reason he had a whole host of advisors. He would put the topic of when to attack on the table. Until then, he neglected to answer Olatt’an’s question in favor of Hawkwood’s interruption.

“A Swiftwing harpy delivered a letter to Stone Hearth Burg yesterday evening.”

“Another of Lady Katja’s attempts at buying your loyalty?”

“No,” Hawkwood started, only to pause and nod. “Well, yes. There was one of those. But no, the letter I’m concerned about bore the stamped seal of King Abe Lafoar. A follow-up to the message I received earlier, if you remember. This one is, however, signed by the King himself.”

Arkk grimaced. He had almost forgotten that there was another faction he had to worry about. One that, in all likelihood, wouldn’t exactly be on friendly terms with him. The Abbey of the Light had pushed the Duke against him. He did not doubt that they were pushing the King as well.

He didn’t know much about the King. Was he a despot as the Duke had been? Corrupt and fat on the people? Or was he just ignorant of how the Duke handled his domain?

“Good news?” Arkk asked. “I’m a little surprised that he sent a direct letter to you.”

“With Lady Katja sitting on the Duke’s chair and many prominent commanders of the Grand Guard missing, dead, or bought out by Katja, I don’t think he has many options. White Company has, through our contract with the Duke, served the Kingdom well for decades.” Hawkwood paused with a frown on his face. “As for what he had to say… Nothing we didn’t already know. He is displeased with the state of affairs. Evestani has ransacked half the land. The Abbey of the Light is arguing for collusion with Evestani to focus on capturing and containing some nobody that has been stirring up trouble in spite of the Abbey’s historical hostility with the Golden Order. His Duke is dead with some upstart in his place. The Grand Guard are scattered and have conflicting loyalties. Etcetera, etcetera. The letter went on for a good three rolls complaining about every little thing.”

Arkk pressed his lips together at the reference to him as a nobody. He thought he had been making a fairly prominent name for himself. Though, maybe it was better that the King saw him as a nobody. “What is he planning on doing about it?” Arkk asked after a moment of pause.

“Prince Cedric Valorian Lafoar, as we know, is on his way to ascertain the truth of what is going on in all this chaos. Prince Cedric will have full authority to act as he sees fit with regard to you, Lady Katja, and Evestani. That means allying with or fighting against any or all of you.”

“So… potentially good if we can ally with him. What are the chances of that, do you think?”

“I would lean more toward unlikely,” Hawkwood said. “King Abe sent his son to Vaales ten years ago to crush a rebellion. I have looked into it a little bit more since we last spoke on the matter. He arrived with an elite guard and dozens of powerful spellcasters on loan from his father and crushed the entire region before rebuilding it as his private fiefdom.” Hawkwood paused, shifting in discomfort. “Utterly crushed it. Practically wiped the realm clean of anyone who would dare put on a look of defiance.”

Olatt’an broke in. “It isn’t said to be a pleasant place to live,” the old orc said. “Doubly so if you’re a demihuman or beastman. Most fled the land for Lockloch, from what I understand.”

“It didn’t used to be like that,” Hawkwood said despite nodding along. “Something happened to his wife many years ago, leaving him with… less than a pleasant demeanor toward non-humans.”

“Let us not mince words,” Olatt’an said with a scoff. “He would hang us all if he got the chance.”

“But,” Hawkwood said. “He won’t be able to do the same thing here. Crushing a few peasants and fighting a war are two vastly different things. It doesn’t matter how elite his guard is or how capable his spellcasters are.”

“A man like that…” Olatt’an trailed off with a frown. “I would have spent the last ten years raising an army loyal to me.”

Hawkwood considered and shrugged. “Whatever the case, the King sent the letter to me personally to ask that I cooperate fully with him, giving him whatever he needs as he takes in the state of the land.”

Arkk waited a moment, taking in all their words. After it all, he couldn’t help but let out a small laugh. At Olatt’an and Hawkwood raising their eyebrows, he could only laugh a little harder.

“You know,” Arkk said as the chuckles died down. “I would really appreciate the chance to solve one problem before another reared up. Just one.”

 

 

 

Arkk stared into the darkness, feeling a constant pull in the back of his navel. He stood still. The ground underneath him was perfectly solid. Yet that twisting in his stomach felt like he was climbing a set of stairs only to try to step up one extra stair that didn’t exist.

Behind him, that orange, hazy light that extended throughout the Underworld illuminated Savren and Dakka along with the wide staircase that led beneath the Cloak of Shadows’ temple. The light cut off abruptly at his feet. Beyond… An abyss. It looked like the bottomless pit beneath Fortress Al-Mir’s [HEART]. Except it wasn’t just a pit. The abyss extended outward to infinity and even above as well despite the impossibility of that. The temple was above, after all.

Holding out a hand, Arkk uttered the incantation for a small ball of light. Enough to hopefully shed some light on the room beyond.

For it was a room. The Protector, forced to crawl on all six limbs like an insect because of the height of the stairwell, stood within the abyss ahead. It looked like the Protector was simply floating. Its chitinous face stared at Arkk without discernable expression, patiently waiting.

The light did nothing. Arkk held it out ahead of him, past the threshold of darkness where the orange haze cut off. He could see his hand. He could see the orb of light hovering above his palm. Yet it didn’t seem to cast any light at all. Not back on him in the stairwell. Not ahead on the Protector. Not even on his palm. Rather, the dark abyss in the room encroached. Thin black tendrils wormed their way around the hovering orb, entangling it. The light shrank and, as the darkness encircled it fully, snuffed out entirely.

“Uh…”

“The Unilluminable Chamber is land consecrated to our Lady Shadows. It cannot be lit through any means.”

“I see,” Arkk said, frowning down at the darkness. Taking a breath, he stepped forward. He didn’t place his weight on his forward foot until he fully felt the firm ground beneath him.

As soon as he crossed the threshold, a chill ran up his spine. Inside the temple, the heat of the wasteland faded somewhat but in here? He might as well have been thrown outside a warm tavern on a cold winter night.

What was more, he found he could see. It wasn’t a large chamber. The rounded walls were adorned with sigils and runes. Even with Zullie’s tutoring, he didn’t recognize a single symbol. All he could tell was that the area immediately around them was somehow darker than the abyss that surrounded him.

What could only be the Shadow Forge stood tall in the center of the room, right next to the Protector. A marvel of mystical engineering. Its design was a fusion of obsidian-like alloys, glowstone crystals that seemed to do the opposite of regular glowstone, and more glyphs that pulsed colors that Arkk had never seen before, nor could he find the words to describe.

At its core, a swirling mass of shadow contained within a crucible mimicked the molten metal that might be found in a regular smithy’s forge.

Parts of it moved. An arm lifted. A hammer crashed down. Gears turned and pistons shifted. All without a hint of sound. It operated autonomously, filling that core with more liquid-like shadows with no clanks of machinery or hisses of steam. The crucible overflowed constantly, spilling the swirling mass. None of the shadows quite reached the ground beneath the forge, however, fading into nothingness well before it could reach.

“Knowledge of its operation is lost to us,” the Protector said, still crawling on all six of its limbs as it circled the forge. “There is one within each temple to poor Lady Shadows. Once upon a time, they were used to manufacture all manner of items. From simple bowls and spoons for the needy to weapons and armaments in times of war.”

With one foot planted on the side of the forge and two hands grasping at some stationary machinery overhead, the Protector dipped a hand into the crucible. The shadows within clung to his fingers like honey, dripping down in long, stretching strands.

“The Night Blade you found above was crafted here by the priests and acolytes. Few were permitted to observe their rites.” It tilted its hand, letting the last of the shadows run off back into the crucible. “Now, they are gone. The knowledge lost with them. I do not know what use it may be but, as it once made weapons of war, it may serve you should you discover its secrets.”

Arkk pressed his lips into a thin line as he stepped closer, watching as a spigot above dispensed more of the liquefied shadows into the crucible. Gears turned and a piston chugged before more spewed out. It was unlike anything he had ever seen. If it was just a bowl of liquid shadow, it would have been unlike anything he had seen. The machine working entirely on its own…

Autonomously.

“In my employ, I have an avatar of the Burning Forge. The member of the Pantheon who deals with fires, fabrication, creativity, and autonomy.” Agnete had been tinkering in the smithy lately. She had crafted Katt’am’s wheelchair among a few other simple items. Nothing as fancy as this, but she seemed to have a knack for manufacturing.

Agnete had never touched an anvil before Fortress Al-Mir. According to Perr’ok, the orc blacksmith who headed Al-Mir’s foundry, her level of skill was equivalent to someone who had been working a smithy for at least ten years. Arkk suspected that was something to do with her status as an avatar, whether by receiving divine inspiration or having already had an innate talent that led to her being chosen as an avatar. Arkk hadn’t thought too much of it before—he had plenty of smiths after recruiting some of the refugees with more than ten years of experience—but now…

“If anyone can figure out how to get it working, it will be her.”

Arkk wasn’t sure what they would do with it. It depended on what the forge was capable of. That ceremonial blade was clearly magical. If they could arm an entire army—or at least their specialists—with magical weapons… Well, maybe that would help level the playing field. Maybe a shadow sword could penetrate or ignore the gold armor of that knight. That alone would help with so much. Morale, mostly.

“The gadget grimly gazes at gravity, grounded and ungraceful. Gathering a gang to govern its gears shall be a gargantuan game.”

Turning, unsurprised to find that Savren had joined him in the dark room, Arkk nodded. “It doesn’t look very mobile,” he agreed. “You said there were more? Is there one closer to the portal?”

The Protector, now a step away from the forge, nodded. “There are several. The closest would be the village where we initially encountered one another.”

“Good,” Arkk said, trying to keep any annoyance at being unable to examine one of these forges earlier out of his tone. “Once we get back, if you would be so kind as to show Agnete the way. Perhaps a few of our other smiths as well.” When the Protector nodded again, Arkk looked back to Savren. “Any input from you on how to work the shadows?”

“I’m a sorcerous scholar, not a smithy savant. Nevertheless, those spellbound symbols on the surfaces…” he said, looking at the eerie runes on the walls of the Unilluminable Chamber. “I’m inclined to intricately inspect those.”

“Very well,” Arkk said, only to pause and look to the Protector. “Uh… if that’s alright with you. It isn’t our intention to commit any sacrilege or blasphemy against the Cloak of Shadows.”

“That you have not fallen to darkness already is evidence enough that your presence here is accepted.”

Arkk shifted in a sudden discomfort. He tried to avoid glancing downward. “That’s a possibility, is it?”

“You stand within land consecrated to the Lady Shadows. Her power is at its highest here.”

“That isn’t… frightening at all. I’m glad we’re accepted.” He leaned over, hissing in Savren’s ear. “Be respectful during your examinations.”

“Eminently,” Savren said with half a bow.

“Good,” Arkk said. “I… I’m curious, Protector. What does it take to consecrate land to the Lady Shadows?”

“You ask for more lost knowledge. The Lady Shadows is also the Lady Secrets. Her acolytes were not the kind to share their tradecraft with outsiders.”

“I see.” The Cloak of Shadows was the god of secrets, shadows, and night. Shame they hadn’t stumbled into someone whose domain involved a little more openness. That said, perhaps Vezta would know. Consecrating land to one god might be similar to all of them. Failing that, the temple back in Fortress Al-Mir was somewhat similar, wasn’t it? Hadn’t she said that the silvery waters were some kind of connection to the realm of the Pantheon?

A few ideas started churning in the back of Arkk’s mind.

Nothing he could act on immediately, however.

“Well, thank you for your willingness to share in any case.”

“I revere the Lady Shadows for all she has done and tried to do for the people here. But I was never an acolyte.”

Arkk gave the Protector a curt nod of his head. “We’ll spend the night here,” he said. Not that there were nights in the land of the night god. That orange haze outside never faded. “Savren, Dakka, continue looking around for anything that might be useful, provided the Protector permits. We’ll head back in the morning and… introduce everyone to our new ally.”

The temple had an armory nearby. Or the remains of one.

Unfortunately, not much within was usable. The building itself was little more than a few crumbling walls, held up by sheer spite against gravity. Metal had rusted, cloth decayed, and shadows had been exposed to the light overhead for far too long. For normal use, light exposure wasn’t a problem. But having sat around in the light for a thousand years, the weapons and armor made from shadow had faded to faint silhouettes of the items in question.

Arkk still had them collected, carefully wrapping them to preserve them as much as possible. Even if they were useless in combat, they were examples of items manufactured in a Shadow Forge. Their existence could help Agnete and the other smiths figure out how to work one of the enigmatic forges.

He held one of the more intact blades aloft. It weighed little. Like lifting a chicken’s feather despite its unwieldy size. And it was unwieldy. The blade was too long. The grip, too thick. At least for a human.

Although Dakka was the smallest of the orcs in his employ, she was still larger than he was. Passing the sword over to her, he noted that it fit far better in her grip. Vezta had said that orcs resembled one of the former inhabitants of this world. He supposed that made sense. She swung it, hacking through the air as a test. It left a faint trail of shadow in its wake, arcing a dark slice.

While it looked right in Dakka’s grip, her few experimental swings with the weapon left a frown on her face.

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “It feels flimsy. Weak. It doesn’t have the heft that my axe has. The weight of my axe head helps chop into things I wouldn’t be able to otherwise.”

“Perhaps it has properties that aren’t apparent. Or a freshly made sword would be better.”

Dakka glanced around the room. Not finding what she had been looking for, she set the sword down and removed her helmet. Her face underneath gleamed with small beads of sweat. While the cart had a cooling ritual pumping out chill air in a small radius around it, their exploration into the area around the temple was back in the persistent heat of the Underworld.

She placed the helmet on the ground in front of her before taking up the sword once again.

“Bit of an awkward position for this,” she said, looking down. Even a goblin would have been a larger target. Nevertheless, she raised the sword and brought it down on her helmet with all the force she could.

Arkk wasn’t sure what he expected. Perhaps for the blade to bounce off the armored helm. Or a broken shadow blade.

But something strange happened as the blade drew near the helmet. Covered in small spikes for a fearsome appearance, though designed to break off easily in combat, several little shadows stretched across the top of the helmet. Those lines of shadow cracked and broke when the blade hit, snapping the spikes even though the blade hadn’t touched them.

The helmet itself dented where the blade made contact. It didn’t slice straight through without resistance, instead hitting it as if the sword were any regular metal sword.

“Huh,” Dakka said, pulling the sword back to look it over.

“Huh,” Arkk agreed. “Try stabbing the shadow of the helmet?”

The orange light against the constant haze of the Underworld’s sky wasn’t directly overhead but it was close enough that the helmet didn’t cast a very long shadow. There was still enough of a diffuse darkness for Dakka to grasp the sword in both hands and slam straight down, just to the side of the helmet.

Two things happened at once. The sword, brittle and weak from light exposure, cracked and splintered. Small shards of shadow scattered off into every direction, all but the largest of which faded and vanished. Dakka was left holding nothing but the sword’s handle and the finger-length of shadowy metal sticking out of it.

The helmet, on the other hand, split. Cut straight down the middle, the helmet fell apart, clattering against the dust-covered stone.

For a long moment, Arkk and Dakka simply stared.

“Huh,” Arkk said.

“Huh,” Dakka agreed. “I’m not sure what to think of that.”

“Do you think a normal hit from your axe would have split it down the middle like that?”

Dakka shook her head. “It would have bit into it. Probably killed the guy wearing it—maybe, hitting someone who can fall back is a lot different from hitting a stationary target stuck against the ground—but these helmets aren’t poorly made. It would have left a gash without breaking apart.”

“I see. That’s… interesting? I’m curious to see how it handles something… squishier. Not willing to volunteer for testing, however.”

“Same.” Dakka lifted the handle and turned it over before shaking her head. “It would certainly be a surprise in combat, me slamming a sword down on some guy’s shadow only for his armor to fall off. Assuming it doesn’t slice a guy in half. But at the same time, attacking a shadow seems like it would be awkward in a fight.”

“And what if it is nighttime? Or sufficiently overcast? Or the Golden Order’s avatar produces some light that puts the opponent’s shadow directly behind them.”

“The same works for us, doesn’t it?” Dakka asked, bending to inspect the helmet. She ran her fingers along the cut edge, accidentally slicing part of her glove open. “Toss a glass orb filled with some alchemical solution behind the enemy that lights up when the glass breaks. Their shadow stretches toward us and then we stab it easily.” Her fingers moved to the heavy dent from the first strike against the helmet. “Even if we can’t, they still act like regular weapons it seems. And any little shadow on their body or helmet might cause their armor to break apart.”

“It’s a shame that the Protector never fought with these,” Arkk said with a frown. They were going to have to do a big meeting on just what kind of uses these weapons might have. “There is probably some lost treatise for fighting with and against these kinds of weapons.”

“I cannot recall a time before the end.” The Protector stooped, ducking through the remains of a doorway that was not sized for it. “I know I was there, smaller and less… aware. Although there were many wars after the end, I was not an observer or participant. My time came after, just before… I recall the fears of the people as crops died and livestock thinned. I recall the final words of acolytes across the land. ‘And so, we shall ascend, delivered from our burdens by the grace of the Lady Shadows.’”

“Ascend,” Arkk said, turning to face the Protector fully. “Into those shadows outside?”

There had been more… gatherings of the shadows than just the procession in front of the temple. Arkk had passed a group that might have been browsing a market, another couple who appeared to stand guard around the armory, and plenty more occupying the shadows of old homes, long since broken and withered away.

The Protector did not answer Arkk’s question. It simply looked around, slowly turning its head from Arkk to Dakka and the broken helmet between them. “Did you find aught of use?”

“Just the examples of items from the Shadow Forge as you suggested we would find.”

The Protector nodded. Then, promptly stood aside.

Gretchen stepped into the room, shooting a wary look at the Protector before looking to Arkk. “Cart’s all packed up. We’re ready to move when you are.”

“Thank you,” Arkk said. “We’ll be there shortly.”

Gretchen shot one more look at the Protector before turning on her heel and fleeing back to the safety of the others.

“They fear me.”

“They’re not used to you,” Arkk said, looking over the chitin-covered monster before him. If this building still had a ceiling, it would have to duck and walk on all six limbs as it had down in the Unilluminable Chamber. It was tall, lithe, and had that uncanny face carved from its carapace. “We… don’t have anything like you back home. If they can get used to Vezta, they can get used to you. I wouldn’t worry.” Arkk said with a shake of his head. He left the statement hanging in the air for a long moment, somewhat expecting a response. When none came, he cleared his throat and asked, “Are you ready to leave?”

“I will not leave. I will meet you at your portal.”

“You aren’t coming with us? I thought—”

“I shall maintain my vigil over the shades. It is the solemn duty I have taken on, to protect the subjects of the Lady Shadows. Fear not, I am already waiting for your arrival near your portal.”

Arkk hesitated. A being with multiple bodies was… a strange thing to talk to. One-on-one, it wasn’t so bad. If there were multiple in the same room, what would he do then? Which would he look at when talking to it? Would all of them speak as one or would they take turns?

With a small shake of his head, Arkk looked up at the Protector again and started to nod, only to hesitate as a thought occurred to him. “You are the protector of the shades but… protector from what? We haven’t seen anything in this world apart from you and them. Are there other beings here?”

The Protector didn’t answer right away. It tilted its head up toward the hazy skies, turning slightly to face one of the tall columns of darkness that were scattered across the Underworld. “It has been some time since I last saw others. Perhaps they have gone extinct and only I remain.” It paused a moment before its tone turned to something a little more hostile. “Shadows act differently here compared to memories lifted from your spellcaster. More things interact with them. As I am sure you have noticed,” it said with a gesture toward the broken helmet. “Shadows have developed their own predators.”

Arkk shivered, though he wasn’t quite sure why. Something about the Protector’s tone made him think there was more to it than that.

But the Protector turned away, crawling on all sixes to pass through the armory’s doorway. Arkk followed slowly, making sure to keep a respectful distance. Dakka followed after him, holding the broken helmet under her arm while carrying the remains of the broken blade in her other hand.

“Nevertheless, the Lady Shadows gave me strength and purpose,” the Protector continued. “Allowing me to live in this world. I will continue my vigil in turn.”

“What would you do if these predators have gone extinct?”

“I would change nothing. I can experience things in ways that my memories of your spellcaster cannot. I can explore the world while keeping watch on the shades. I will shortly venture to your world. I imagine it will be a novel experience.”

“I’d say we’ll be as hospitable as we can be. The ongoing war might limit that hospitality.”

The Protector didn’t answer again. Arkk wondered just how introspective it was. Had it had any contact with something that wasn’t itself or a predator since the Calamity? Feeding it Savren’s memories had probably been an unimaginable gift, giving it something other than its thoughts.

“Farewell, Arkk of Al-Mir. I await your arrival.”

With that, the Protector broke off and headed toward the center of the dead city. After glancing at Dakka—and getting a shrug in return—Arkk turned and headed to the outskirts where their cart awaited. It would be a few days back and then…

Then, just how ready were they for the war to resume anew?

 

 

 

With lightning from an Electro Deus spell crackling between his fingertips, Arkk rushed out of the temple.

Dakka, Orjja, and Eiff’an stood in front of the temple’s entrance with their heavy shields raised. The rest of the team fanned out behind them, readying crossbows and battle axes. The horses, off to the side of the entrance, were pulling and tugging against the ropes used to hitch them to an old post. Their agitation didn’t extend to the skeletal horse. It stood, still hooked up to the cart, without moving.

Arkk fully expected a Protector on the other side of the orcs’ shields. They had warned him against exploring the Underworld. While they had left the portal when the Walking Fortress arrived and hadn’t been seen since, he doubted they would be all that excited to hear of him looting an old temple dedicated to their god.

Yet the tall, carapace-covered forms of the Protectors were nowhere to be seen.

A darkness unfurled across the desolate landscape. An inky shadow, elongated under the skewed light that seeped through the orange clouds in the sky, was little more than a murky silhouette. It possessed an eerie semblance of a humanoid figure rather than the multi-armed shadow of the Protectors. Its stockiness gave it the familiarity of an orc rather than a human or an elf.

Nothing cast the shadow.

The absence of any discernable body to account for the shadow that stepped closer to the temple sent a jolt of unease up Arkk’s spine. He shouldn’t feel surprised at shadows acting oddly in the Underworld. Yet there was just something disconcerting about watching a shadow step and move without anyone there to block the light.

That unease only grew as Arkk realized that there were more of the shadows. A dozen. Two? They blended together at points, like groups of people walking alongside each other. Just without the people. Some walked in pairs, some walked alone. They all headed directly for the temple.

Watching the shadows, Arkk made a snap decision. “Out of the way,” he said, motioning with his hands off to one side. “Back!”

The shadows didn’t noticeably react as Dakka and the others, with their shields aimed toward the shadows, backed away toward the horses and cart. They carried on, continuing their walk toward the temple. Based on the way the heads bobbed and turned, the shoulders shifted, and the arms gesticulated, Arkk could imagine conversations going on between the shadows.

It reminded him of the Suun sermons at Langleey Village. Everyone would head up the hill to the church, chatting amicably as they prepared for Abbess Keena’s lecture.

Priscilla, emerging from the temple just after Savren, stood around with a blank look on her face. Arkk was about to yell at her only for Leda to grab her by the hand and, hovering above the ground, tug her away. Leda didn’t manage to move the dragonoid even a single step despite her best efforts but, after a moment of staring at nothing with her blind eyes, Priscilla allowed herself to be pulled over to Arkk.

The shadows continued past Company Al-Mir, taking no note of them. As they passed into the shadow of the temple, they formed more three-dimensional bodies, standing upright instead of flat against the ground, though they stood no less shadowy. Most of the dark figures headed inside while a handful stayed out. Those that remained mostly chatted with one another. One group stood outside only until a fifth shadow approached their group, at which point they all entered. The others slowly trickled in until all the shadows had vanished inside.

Company Al-Mir stood silent, watching from the side of the church. Weapons and shields slowly lowered as it became clear that the shadows weren’t attacking. Dumbstruck silence hung over the group as confused looks passed from party member to party member.

“What in the Light was that?” Gretchen mumbled, breaking the silence.

Not that anyone had a proper answer.

“There was something strange,” Priscilla said, speaking slowly and thoughtfully. “A chill passed over the area as if a thick cloud passed in front of the sun.”

That was a fairly apt description, even if Arkk hadn’t felt a physical cold. He looked over to Savren. The warlock had joined him along with Priscilla and the two magical assistants. Savren held the ceremonial dagger and the shadowy cloths that Arkk had shoved in his hands when he thought they were under attack. “Thoughts?” Arkk asked.

“Lexa lent lexicon after leaving your first ’loratory lot.”

Arkk slowly raised an eyebrow. “Really? ’loratory for exploratory?” Savren just shrugged, leading to Arkk shaking his head. “Shadow puppets,” Arkk said after a moment.

Lexa had mentioned that. She slipped away during that first encounter with a Protector and scouted out some of the village ruins near the portal. She had found shadows of villagers doing perfectly normal things like eating at a table, knitting, or sleeping. Not wanting to provoke the Protectors, they hadn’t returned to the village to investigate further.

Arkk had almost forgotten about it.

“Think we can communicate with them?”

“It looked like they stood around talking,” Dakka said, still on guard. “Didn’t hear a whisper. Did you?”

Arkk couldn’t say he had. The entire… procession had been utterly silent. The only noise came from disturbed horses and armor clanking as his crew moved around.

“I don’t think they’re real,” Morvin said. He winced and looked back to Savren as if he were asking for approval. Savren didn’t move one way or another but Morvin took that as permission to continue. “I mean. Obviously, there is something there. But nothing with thought. Shadow puppets is an apt description. Perhaps shadow echoes or shadow ghosts. We would need to examine them a bit more to be sure.”

“Sounds right to me,” Dakka said. “Not that I know anything about magic. Just the feeling I got, you know? There’s nothing there but—”

“Poor Lady Shadows.”

Arkk jolted. He whirled around along with most of his team. Dakka jumped in front of him, shield raised. Priscilla was a little slow on the uptake, looking around as if nothing was wrong. She must have sensed the tension in the air as everyone else scrambled to reposition. Her wings, unfurled fully, worked as a shield over the group.

If only she were facing the right way.

A Protector stood in front of them. Twice as tall as their tallest orc without including the elf-leg-length horns, it loomed over the group with its long and lanky limbs. This Protector did not carry a jagged sword or a goblet. Its long, sharp fingers would work well enough for a weapon, as would all the many spikes covering its reddish-orange carapace.

“Faced with the end, the Lady Shadows reached out and touched her people. An attempt to save them, I am sure. But the Lady Shadows doesn’t understand. Can’t understand.” The Protector’s yellow eyes shifted their horizontal pupils to the group of Company Al-Mir, now fully prepared for battle. “Their shadows endlessly act out happier days. They fail to notice that their cities have crumbled around them. There is no thought. No desire. No drive. Just the act. A final and endless performance for poor Lady Shadows.”

It let its commentary hang in the silent air for a long moment, looking back to the temple’s entrance. Arkk stared at it, tension slowly lessening as he took in its words. Compared to his last encounter with a Protector, this encounter was going positively swimmingly. It was talking. It was explaining things. Why explain things so calmly and casually if not to engage in communication rather than violence?

“You can speak now?” Arkk asked, stepping around Dakka to face the Protector directly.

“I learned,” it said, eyes swiveling down to Savren and the artifacts he carried. He shied back, shirking behind Gretchen and Morvin. “Poor Lady Shadows, suffered so much, must now suffer at the hands of pillagers and looters, raiding what little remains of the Lady Shadows’ once great kingdom.”

All that tension came flooding back. The Protector hadn’t moved but the hostility in its tone was enough to twist Arkk’s stomach.

“We sought audience with the Cloak of Shadows to ask for her aid,” Arkk said, as fast as he could. He still had some hope that they and the Protectors wouldn’t have to be enemies. “Our enemy is the Heart of Gold, one of the Pantheon who is responsible for the sorry state of your Lady Shadows. But fighting on our own while the Heart of Gold sends boon after boon to their worshipers is… not the kind of battle we can win.”

“You fail to find audience and thus you resort to theft.” The protector leaned forward, looking at Savren even as one of the orcs moved between him and the creature. “I understand.”

“Not theft. A boon from a god can come in many forms. It need not be a personal chat with a god. Divine inspiration leading us to valuable artifacts like the tower or this dagger are equally valid,” Arkk said, bullshitting to the best of his ability. “How can you say that the Cloak of Shadows would prefer for such artifacts to rot away in this wasteland rather than be put to good use?”

“You claim to understand the wants and desires of the Lady Shadows? Impossible. You cannot know the unknowable.”

“I only claim to know what I know,” Arkk said. “And I know we didn’t find this place by chance. You think, in this entire wasteland of a world, we would have just happened across this temple and the Walking Fortress Istanur?”

The Protector did not respond. It stood, stooped forward with its long, blue hair flowing down its back like a waterfall. Its head tilted, swiveling somewhat as it looked over the group.

Arkk couldn’t tell what it was thinking. The faces of the Protectors, although humanoid in appearance, were rigid chitin. Its only means of conveying an expression came in its eyes and even those were alien and unreadable.

“We aren’t here to disrupt the… lives of the shadow people,” Arkk said, pleading his point. “Nor are we here to destroy or plunder. But when inspiration points us toward artifacts that might help against the enemy of the Cloak of Shadows, who are we to not make use of them?”

Priscilla had found both the tower and this temple. She claimed that the stars showed her what she needed to see. Maybe he was twisting things somewhat, but that sounded like divine inspiration to him. Perhaps not inspiration from the Cloak of Shadows, but it was the best they had.

“Come with us,” Arkk continued. “If you don’t believe us, join us and witness the enemy we fight. Make your decision after.”

“I don’t believe you so I should join you. The logic is… absurd.”

Arkk just scoffed. “These are absurd times we’re living in.”

The Protector didn’t seem to have a response to that. It simply swiveled its head, its alien expression conveying nothing.

“So what will it be?” Arkk asked, not even trying to read the creature’s body language. “Will you come with us and at least look for the possibility of a brighter future? Or do we have to fry another one of your… bodies? Or however you work.”

A few of Arkk’s crew tensed at the casual threat. They were tense enough as it was. Antagonizing the creature that towered over them, especially when they all knew how difficult the last one had been to put down, probably didn’t sit well with them. Arkk wasn’t so concerned. This time, they all knew that lightning would take them down with relative ease. Everyone present could cast at least one lightning bolt. Likely more in the Underworld, given the constant ambient magic in the air.

The Protector didn’t rise to the quip. It stared for another moment before breaking eye contact, looking back toward the temple. Although its expression was just as unreadable as usual, Arkk felt a vague forlorn sensation in the way it stared where the shadows had gathered. Alien mind or not, Arkk felt he had a decent grasp on what it was thinking at this moment.

“A brighter future…” it said, still staring at the temple.

Arkk thought he caught a note of disappointment in its tone that was separate from that forlorn feeling.

Dakka nudged him in the side. “A shadowy future? A darker future?” she hissed. Her voice was somewhat stressed despite the forced humor in her quip.

“Ah. Sorry,” Arkk said to the Protector. “That was a tactless remark. Turns of phrase here are probably a little different than back home.”

It turned away, looking back to Arkk. “I understood your meaning.” Slowly, it turned its gaze over to Savren once more. “I learned much since our last encounter.”

Savren adopted a sneer, glaring at the Protector. “You harbored the hallowed harvest of knowledge, pilfered precious perceptions from my pondering psyche?”

“I presume that is why you’re able to communicate so naturally,” Arkk said, ignoring Savren.

Savren had mentioned that, during the time where their minds were linked, several secrets of Fortress Al-Mir may have made their way from his end to the other. Arkk wasn’t too concerned about that. Unless the Protector had a whole army of bodies to use, they weren’t going to be able to make use of any real secrets. Not like Evestani or the Abbey of the Light would if they learned more.

Rather, Arkk probably owed Savren thanks. Although unintentional, that pilfering of his psyche was likely the only reason the Protector was communicating now, instead of attacking immediately like they had at the village. That alone made that mind ritual worth it, even if Savren hadn’t enjoyed it.

The Protector dipped its head in what had to be an agreement with Arkk’s statement. “Knowing what I now know, I am more inclined to believe your words of peace even despite your actions here today.”

“So…?”

“Your proposition is acceptable. I will observe your actions and render judgment, even aid if I deem it worthy. In exchange, you will assist the Lady Shadows.”

“I’m not exactly sure how to assist a god, but what we’re doing is hopefully for the good of everyone, including the Cloak of Shadows. Is that enough?”

“It will have to be.”

The moment the Protector spoke, Arkk staggered. He smacked a hand into his forehead, rubbing at a sudden ache as a link formed. A strange link. It felt like just a single person but, the moment he tried to follow the link, it split and split and split. Dozens… hundreds… perhaps even thousands of the Protectors stood at the other ends. They were spread across the Underworld, and few were gathered together in groups. They were dotted about, few and far between. Only near the portal were there any gathered together. Even then, there were only a dozen, all hiding out in that village.

“Arkk?” Dakka whispered in concern. She reached out but wasn’t able to accomplish much with her shield and weapon in her hands.

Arkk shook his head, pulling his awareness back to himself. “I’m fine,” he said, patting Dakka on her armored arm. He turned back to the Protector and added, “Don’t try going near the portal until we get back. The guards have standing orders to defend the wall if any of you get too close. I’ll inform them of the change in situation once we return.”

“Acceptable.”

Arkk could already think of a dozen uses for the Protectors. Even if they weren’t willing to fight, their shared mind even over vast distances and a multitude of bodies meant that they could communicate instantly. Arkk could ask one to do or say something and someone else, far away, could hear his orders instantly.

Stationing one inside the scrying room would let them disseminate scrying updates to any active teams instantly. Something like that could have warned against the ambush at the supply lines, warning the team the moment the fog settled into the crystal balls. One at the former Duke’s manor, one with Hawkwood, one with the Walking Fortress…

Arkk was getting ahead of himself. The Protector had said that it would render aid, but Arkk would have to hash out the details with it later on. See what it was willing and unwilling to help with.

And how best to keep it happy.

He had ideas about that as well. Some he had built up just during their conversation.

Arkk set the lesser servants in the fortress to clear out a large chamber. One with a high ceiling and plenty of open space. A new temple. One dedicated to the Cloak of Shadows. Something modeled after the temple here. He might have to get Vezta to help design the schematics for the room but he could start making the space right now.

They could even keep the ceremonial knife there, along with any other objects they took from the Underworld. Although they might be engaged in a little plundering of this world, despite his earlier words, they could at least show that they were treating the recovered artifacts with respect. The temple could act as a reliquary for anything related to the Cloak of Shadows.

Speaking of…

“I imagine we have a great deal to discuss even if you know most of our story from Savren. The way back is long and we’ll have time aplenty. For now, however…” Arkk paused, not quite sure how to breach the subject. Open honesty was the best option, he supposed. “We came out here to find aid from the Cloak of Shadows. As long as we are out here, I don’t suppose you would be aware of anything that might assist in our efforts.”

“More trinkets to loot?”

Arkk heard the disapproval in that question. He quickly shook his head, only to pause. “I wouldn’t phrase it like that.”

The Protector’s eyes flicked to the ceremonial dagger. It held out a hand, wordlessly asking for it to be passed over.

Out in the sun, it wasn’t visible. The only reason Arkk knew it was there was because of the way Savren gripped at nothing. Though he didn’t grip for long. Without even looking to Arkk for permission, Savren held out the dagger and the shadowy cloths for the Protector.

With reverence befitting a priceless artifact, the Protector took the dagger and held it up in one of its four hands. The long claws didn’t fit around the leatherbound grip in a way that indicated it had been designed for something like the Protector. After holding it up, examining the invisible blade in the light, it took the smaller of the cloths from Savren and wrapped the blade from tip to pommel.

It left the larger cloth in Savren’s hands but kept a tight hold of the bound blade.

“There is one other object of note in the area,” it said, using its long legs to practically step over the group as it made its way to the temple entrance. “Though I do not know if the Shadow Forge will fit in your small cart.”

 

 

Ever since Walking Fortress Istanur arrived at the portal, the Protectors watching the activities of Fortress Al-Mir vanished. Nobody had seen one sitting out and observing. None had tried to attack. They just left.

Given the tower’s shadowy nature and their professed loyalty toward the Cloak of Shadows, or The Lady Shadow as they called her, Arkk had to wonder if something about the tower convinced them that he was genuine in desiring a peaceful cohabitation with the denizens of the Underworld. Or perhaps blessed by their god.

The way his luck normally went, Arkk was a little worried that they were plotting something.

However, he couldn’t afford to sit around and ignore the opportunity.

Dakka was right. Something needed to change. The Walking Fortress standing tall in the Cursed Forest wasn’t enough. Perhaps if another dozen dragonoids joined or another few purifiers defected, he could assign one or two to each team just to handle heavy threats. But wishful thinking wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He needed to strike out and seize power where he could.

“There it is,” Arkk said, looking out over the wasteland that was the Underworld. Priscilla and Leda reported back from another outing. Although they had managed to fly out and back in a single afternoon, it took three full days of travel to reach the spot they found. They located a point of interest that Leda described as a kind of temple. Tall, black shadowy spires, grand gates, and statues vaguely matching the one in Fortress Al-Mir’s temple room.

He didn’t like leaving Fortress Al-Mir alone for so long. Vezta was back at the fortress and she could take care of most things but… It just made him nervous. After that ambush at the Evestani supply line, the forces arriving at Elmshadow had been increasing. Slowly. They weren’t yet charging across the Duchy as fast as possible. It was still enough to make Arkk wary about leaving. Especially when he lacked a method of returning quickly.

If something went wrong, his fastest way back was Priscilla carrying him. That would still take half a day.

“You plan to plunder a place the Protectors prioritize?”

Arkk glanced at Savren, riding along on a horse alongside the rest of their team, before looking back to the temple.

It was… a sight. Tall walls, sharp angles, peaked roofs, and long supporting buttresses cast off well away from the structure. It looked like there was glass in most of the windows but the structure had fallen into disrepair. One buttress and a small portion of the roof had collapsed. A wispy statue of the shadowy god had crumbled and broken. Another statue had lost its arms.

That was to say nothing about the surrounding land. It looked like a city had once stood around the temple. That city had long since fallen into decay. A few scattered walls stood, often at angles, but no one whole structure. Just the temple.

It must have been a sight to see back in its prime. The whole building looked larger even than Cliff’s temple to the Holy Light.

“Plunder is a strong word,” Arkk said after a long moment. “Evestani and their Golden Order have a god sitting on their shoulder, handing out boons like they were pies at the harvest festival. The closest thing we have is Agnete and her patron god is cut off from our world.

“What I hope to find here is something more than just a few trinkets or old books. I’m sure they could be helpful—” More so if his spell crafter still had eyes with which to read them. “—but Xel’atriss, Lock and Key, either cannot or will not lend us further assistance.”

Zullie was back on her feet. Unsteady and blind, but awake, active, and even talking. A little. What few words she had were spent on the concept of the [PANTHEON]. Xel’atriss had tried to show her something but that something hadn’t come through clearly. Zullie wasn’t sure if it was a warning, an attempt at assisting, or a deliberate attempt at dissuading her from continuing her line of research.

Regardless, she didn’t think burning her eyes from her head was the intended outcome. Just a side effect of a god not knowing or not caring about the consequences of its actions. Likely the latter option, in Arkk’s opinion.

He would have liked her expertise available on this journey. Savren’s magical expertise was mostly constrained to ritual magics and mind magics. Zullie’s was in spell creation and planar magics. Hers just felt a little more applicable to his current goals. She was, unfortunately, in no state to travel.

“Vezta told me that, in the past, temples like the one we have at Fortress Al-Mir were once used to commune with the Pantheon, petitioning for boons and making offerings. Things like that. I hope to find a way of communing with the Cloak of Shadows here and, gods willing, perhaps a boon.” Arkk paused, directing the horse around a set of wind-worn bricks that might have once made up a wall around a small courtyard. “Failing that… I would like to discover more about the Anvil of All Worlds. The plane associated with the Burning Forge.”

“Ah. Agnete asked an accommodation of you, I apprehend.”

“It isn’t just that. I mean, I appreciate all she has been doing for us but, war going on as it is, there isn’t time for personal quests. The Burning Forge is, however, an active god. At least active enough to push a sliver of power out to Agnete. With Agnete already working with us, additional help seems likely.”

Priscilla drew back her lips, grinning at the sky as she lounged on the long cart they hauled alongside the horses. Zullie’s skeletal horse pulled it, never tiring nor needing feed. “Unless the Burning Forge believes you have received and squandered aid in the form of Agnete and refuses to offer more.”

“Why would that be the case?”

Priscilla shrugged, turning her head so that her icy eyes met Arkk’s. “Gods are fickle. And easily insulted. You have an avatar working for you and yet you can barely beat some human with magical armor.”

Dakka let out a loud and exaggerated scoff. “I seem to recall the fire witch doing a whole lot more than some others. What were you doing again? Lying face down in the mud for the whole fight?”

With a snarl, Priscilla sat upright and glared in almost the right direction. “Shut it, greenskin. You might as well have been beating against a mountain for all you contributed.”

“First of all, tan skin,” Dakka said, leading Priscilla to point a clawed finger at her face. “Second—”

“Enough,” Arkk said, raising his voice. “We’re here. Dakka. You and your team secure the horses and the cart. Shout if anything moves. Priscilla, you’re with me and Savren. Leda.” Arkk looked at the little fairy in the group. “You’re in charge of Priscilla. Keep her out of trouble.”

The fairy started to nod, only to flinch as Priscilla let out a guttural growl from the back of her throat.

“In charge of me?”

“I’ve seen the way you walk around the fortress,” Arkk said. “You bump into the wrong column here and the entire place might collapse on our heads. Let Leda help you or fly back to the portal. Your choice.”

Priscilla opened her mouth, failed to provide an argument, and clamped her jaw shut again. “The fairy can warn me if I’m about to bump into anything. Nothing is in charge of me.”

“As long as you listen when she says to stop.”

“Fine.”

Arkk nodded his head, more for everyone else than for the one who couldn’t see him nodding, and looked around the group. “And everyone shout if you see a Protector. Or anything else for that matter. But, again, try not to attack first.”

Orders given and confirmation received, Arkk turned to the temple.

The good news was that they wouldn’t need to figure out how to get inside. Two great doors, each as tall as three orcs stacked on each other’s shoulders, would have barred the entrance were it not for the massive hinges having come loose in the years of neglect. One of the doors had crashed into the ground, leaving the opening undefended.

With Savren at one side and Priscilla at the other, and Leda hovering just ahead of Priscilla, Arkk stepped on the dry and dusty wood of the door. He tested it with his weight, making sure it wouldn’t crumble and leave him stumbling, then walked forward into the dark shadows of the old building.

He wished he had Vezta here as well. Zullie would have been able to provide specialized magical insight but Vezta was his expert on the Pantheon. Having lived in a time where gods touched the world on the regular, she knew more than most even if she didn’t know everything. Priscilla was a poor substitute despite her insistence that the Stars told her all she needed to know. The dragonoid had been born before the Calamity but only just. The world had obviously been bereft of gods following the Calamity.

Even the Permafrost was a subject of worship more because of her gifts with ice and draconic culture than anything else.

Arkk expected the temple to feel different than the outside air. Even Fortress Al-Mir’s temple room had a certain stillness to it. An odd reverence that closed out the hum of the many people who now lived at the fortress. The silvery waters in the temple’s pools, alleged doorways directly to the gods, emitted this otherworldly aura.

Stepping into the temple lacked any sensation of the air changing. It was cooler than the hot open desert, cloaked in shadows as it was, but that was a physical difference. There was no feeling different. No looming sensation of being watched by a being he couldn’t perceive.

The ceiling of the temple, minus the parts that had collapsed, was high and arching. Dark, obsidian-colored tiles created an illusion of the night sky while glowstones, still brightly lit thanks to the ever-present magic in the Underworld, represented stars. The dominating feature was a depiction of the Cloak of Shadows. A swirling mass of inky darkness, with a pattern that tricked Arkk’s eyes into thinking it was moving and billowing in an unfelt wind. A shadowed, ashen face with bright white eyes peered out from behind the shifting cloak.

An inspiring sight, especially with the illusion of movement, but the awe it instilled still wasn’t what Arkk was looking for.

Arkk stood still, staring up with a small frown for a moment longer before dropping his gaze back to the rest of the massive room. The entire temple seemed made up of just one space. There were a few doors at the far end, behind a section of collapsed roof and a high altar that might have been used for ritual purposes, but those doors couldn’t lead to any spacious sections of the temple.

On the main floor, mosaiced with black and white tiles, ancient bodies littered the temple. Skeletal remains of a small population. It reminded him, for just a moment, of the first time he had stepped into Fortress Al-Mir. Except, in the fortress, the bodies had all belonged to warriors and fighters. Every body had a weapon and armor. Here in the temple, there wasn’t a sword to be seen. Just bodies huddled together.

Given the lack of plant life in the Underworld, Arkk had to wonder if these people had been simple villagers who had run out of food and, thus, starved to death. Arkk well knew the aches of hunger. Langleey Village hadn’t suffered many famines, but… There had been one long drought in his early teens where crops had withered and the river running past the sawmill had nearly run dry.

That hadn’t been a good year. He, obviously, had made it through. Some of the others, mostly the elderly of the village, hadn’t.

Despite targeting Evestani’s food stores and supply lines, starvation wasn’t the goal. It wasn’t a death he would wish on anyone. He wasn’t trying to kill them, just force them to turn back.

Shaking his head, Arkk turned aside. The lack of an obvious direct connection to the Cloak of Shadows almost made him want to rush back to Fortress Al-Mir.

At his side, Leda softly whispered to Priscilla, describing the sight overhead along with much of the rest of the room. The dragonoid interrupted Leda talking about the stone columns along the walls to ask more about the bodies, which made Leda stumble and hesitate over her words.

Savren, on the other hand, spent all of the blink of an eye observing the temple before swiftly directing Morvin and Gretchen to take charcoal rubbings of some lettering inscribed on the columns. The two assistants, formerly of Zullie’s apprentice group and now assigned to Savren, gaped and gawked at the temple far longer than Savren did, earning them a brief reprimand as Savren had to direct them a second time.

He thought those markings were important. Arkk, though he had learned a lot under Zullie’s instructions, didn’t see anything magical about them. But he was still vastly uneducated compared to either Zullie or Savren.

Arkk proceeded forward, carefully stepping over the bodies on the ground. They represented another good reason why undoing the Calamity without extensive research was a bad idea. With the war, he didn’t see that being a priority for some time. It still hung heavy in the back of his mind.

Climbing over a broken pillar and a small segment of the roof, Arkk approached the altar at the far end of the temple. At one point in time, Arkk could have seen the altar being the central and focal point of the temple. The place where the pious would come to pray or make offerings. It held the remnants of mystery in its shadowy stone and the air of a well-cared-for object of worship toward the Lady Shadow.

Breathing out sent a cloud of orange dust into the air. Arkk waved his hands back and forth a few times, clearing it away. As he did so, he noticed that there was something on top of the altar. A cloth draped over the top. Lightly running his finger over the top, he found himself surprised when it didn’t feel like it was going to disintegrate under his touch. In fact, it felt quite firm and strong.

Lifting it, Arkk gave it a light shake, filling the air with another cloud of dust.

It wasn’t a large cloth. Certainly nowhere near big enough to count as the namesake Cloak. Nevertheless, it was something special. Dark and moving even while still in his fingers. It diffused light, making the area around it marginally darker. He could feel some magic in it.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be useful, but he would take it with him.

Beyond the cloth, the altar had a number of items adorning its top as well as littered around its base. Small figurines representing shadowy figures and stealthy beings, candelabras whose candles had long since vanished to time, and an incense burner that still had a unique smell when Arkk leaned in close enough. It smelled just like the air after sunset following a rainy day.

Offerings left by worshippers littered the area around the altar. Gemstones and glowstones, small metal tokens in a variety of shapes, and even the bones of small animals. Despite the obvious deaths suffered throughout the temple, presumably by worshippers of the Cloak of Shadows, the offerings were undisturbed and intact. No one had grown angry and trashed the place in their final moments. The atmosphere was one of hushed reverence, even in the passage of time.

Arkk was about to turn away when he noticed an odd flicker in the corner of his vision. It was like a bit of shiny metal catching light except… backward. Dark metal reflected a shadow in a way that hurt his head to think about. Despite the mild ache, Arkk rounded the altar.

A dagger sat on the ground. Its blade, jagged and twisted, reminded Arkk of a smaller version of the blade the Protector had used. Except, this was clearly made from an unearthly metal. The light entering the temple from the broken ceiling seemed to stop abruptly at the corner of the altar where the dagger sat. It was almost pitch black in the darkness behind the altar. Despite the darkness around it, he could still see the dagger just fine. Not very good for stealth, then. It was probably a ceremonial dagger, given its placement near the altar.

Reaching down, Arkk’s fingers curled around the dark leather wrapped around the dagger’s hilt. He half expected some surge of power to course through his body. Instead, it felt just like any dagger. Weighing it in his hand, he didn’t feel like it was any heavier or lighter than the dagger he had given Nyala.

Moving it did make something happen. As he stood and took a step, the shadows behind the altar trailed after him like a long piece of cloth snagged against the dagger’s tip. It didn’t remove the shadow from behind the altar, just stretched it out.

Curious, Arkk reached down and closed his free hand around the darkness.

It felt like nothing in his grip and yet the shadows pulled away from the ground as he pulled back, leaving the altar in far more natural-looking shadows. The cloth-like shadow was like a far larger version of the smaller cloth that had adorned the top of the altar. Except this shadow was not marred by the orange dust.

As Arkk moved, the dagger kept dragging more shadows to its tip. None were quite so black as the one from behind the altar, they were more like regular gray-colored shadows that had been transmuted into cloth. Most of those dispersed and vanished as he tried to grab at them.

An odd item. Arkk… wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Aside from keeping it, of course. This was, presumably, an artifact of a god. Whether that meant an artifact given directly to the people as a kind of boon or just an enchanted weapon crafted by whatever equivalent to priests the Cloak of Shadows had, it was something special.

Arkk draped the thick shadow from the altar over one arm, the smaller cloth-like shadow over the other, and took the dagger in hand back toward the rest of the group to ask their opinions on the subject.

He paused once again as he crossed through the collapsed section of the temple.

As soon as he stepped into the column of light pouring in, the dagger disappeared. He could still feel it in his hand, he just couldn’t see it. The gray shadows dragged by its tip faded and dispersed in the light. The darker cloths over his arms didn’t, they stayed dark and whole. He quickly moved out of the light anyway.

That was something he hadn’t even been thinking about. These cloths were shadows. Shadows fled from light. He could have inadvertently destroyed the dark cloths or the dagger. It was only luck that he hadn’t.

The dagger came back the instant he moved it out of the light, once again snagging shadows as he moved.

“Savren,” Arkk called out as he drew closer to the warlock. “What do you think—”

A loud shout from outside the temple cut him off.

 

 

There was no preamble. No moment of banter or mocking. Just a long, pregnant pause where Arkk issued a few brief commands to get the most wounded out of the battlefield while the knight in golden armor sized up the group before him.

Were Arkk in the knight’s place, he wouldn’t have engaged. Dakka’s group contained a dozen strong orcs and Joanne’s had an equal number of human swordsmen. Alma might not be so imposing but she could hit just about anything with her smaller hand crossbows. Kelsey, large and muscular, nearly matched an orc in size and strength while Lyssa… Well, she wasn’t a feral werecat but she sure fought like one. The knight wouldn’t know how they fought but he should be able to recognize a threat when he saw them.

Not to mention those of Kia’s strike team who were readying weapons and, finally, Arkk and Agnete, both standing with eyes aglow.

The knight in golden armor bounded down the hill with great strides carrying him three paces with every step.

“Electro Deus,” Arkk intoned, slinging his arm forward after building up a moderate amount of magic. Enough to fry a goblin and kill an orc outright.

The lightning struck the dead center of his mass, arcing around his breastplate. It crackled and clung to the man, the magic trying to work its way into Arkk’s target, but failed. In the span of a single step, the lightning faded and dispersed into the air around him. He didn’t even break stride.

Dakka hefted her spiked shield in front of her. “Form up!” she shouted. An unnecessary command with the way her orcs were already moving to defend the weaker members of the group. They got in place, stances wide and stable, just before the knight reached them.

He didn’t stop. He lowered a shoulder, charging forward without hesitation. The moment one of those massive pauldrons struck the front of Dakka’s shield, a small shockwave went off. The nearest three orcs went flying with Dakka, launched from their stable stances into the air. Alma had to dodge and roll to one side to avoid one of the orcs crashing into her.

With the golden knight in their midst, the still-standing orcs pivoted, raising their hammers and axes.

A brash hand knocked one axe into a mace while the knight’s armor took another attack. He grasped one of the spikes on another orc’s helm, likely intending to use it as a handle, only for the spike to snap off with little effort. Although the sudden lack of resistance gave him some surprise, it wasn’t enough to stop his hand from lashing out. A fist caught one of the orcs square in the face. His head snapped back with enough force to shatter the metal of the back of his helmet as it clipped the back of the gorget around his neck.

The employee link snuffed out as the orc collapsed.

The knight didn’t stop. He caught the bottom lip of another orc’s breastplate. With only one hand, he hefted the orc up and over his head, bringing him down on another of the orcs.

“Scutum!” Arkk shouted.

A pulsing violet light surged around the orc just before his head crashed into the ground. The light spread out into the ground with the impact, taking the blow that would have shattered the orc’s skull.

Lyssa’s chain whipped out, whipping around his leg. She pulled but the man’s leg barely budged.

With a kick into one of Joanne’s men’s chest, Lyssa lurched off her feet and into the air. The knight barely seemed to notice that he had brought the werecat along for the ride. He simply moved on to grasp Joanne’s helmet.

Another Scutum saved Joanne from having her face caved in against the knight’s knee. She still stumbled back the moment the knight released her, disoriented and discombobulated. A small corner of Arkk’s mind made a note to thank Priscilla for teaching him a few other old magic spells. Though getting the spells out of her had been like prying open a blacksmith’s vices, he would probably be down two more employees were it not for her.

Even if he managed to intercept every lethal blow with the shielding spell, the fight would still end in their loss at this rate. The gold armor was shrugging off blows from axes that would lop heads from shoulders, bashes from hammers and maces that should have crushed the gold metal, and the less said about Alma’s crossbow bolts, the better. Even though she was aiming for the joints and the gap in the thin slits in the man’s helmet, not one had struck true.

Agnete stood at Arkk’s side, burning hotter than ever and yet unable to act without hitting their own side in the melee. Her flames, even under her control, were too indiscriminate.

Priscilla, though alive, was still in the crater she had made after being thrown down to the valley.

“Desidia,” Arkk shouted, trying another of the spells he had learned from Priscilla. If his lightning wasn’t going to do a thing, he had to find something that did.

This one had an effect. The knight’s fist, about to hit Kia, slowed in mid-air as if a pot of sticky molasses had been dumped over the knight. It didn’t stop him completely but it allowed the dark elf to duck to one side, avoiding the blow with time to spare. She even managed to swing her greatsword straight down on the overextended arm.

It clanged off, chipping a chunk from the blade without so much as scratching the golden armor.

“Need ideas!” Dakka shouted, her axe looking like one of the lesser servants had been taking bites out of the blade.

With the knight slowed from Arkk’s spell, Zharja saw an opportunity. She slithered forward, iridescent black scales gleaming as she coiled her body around the knight’s body. She only managed to pin one of his arms to his side as she started constricting but, seeing what she was doing, two of the orcs threw their weapons aside and grasped hold of the knight’s free arm to keep him from tearing Zharja away.

Grasping hold of the knight’s helmet, Zharja first tried to rip it from his head. She must have been trying to petrify him but found herself unable with the helmet in the way. Unfortunately, it didn’t budge. Undaunted, Zharja opened her mouth wide enough to swallow a boar whole. Caustic venom dripped from her fangs. She didn’t try to bite through the armor. Gathering a mouthful of the venom, she spat directly in the knight’s face.

That elicited a reaction. The first noises the knight made were shouts of pain as something hissed and sizzled inside that helmet. The slits for his eyes and the dozen small holes in front of his mouth weren’t much but some of that venom must have gotten inside.

Whether it was a surge of adrenaline from the pain, Arkk’s spell fading, or the armor somehow revitalizing the man, he found a renewed source of strength. The two orcs clinging to his arm went flying as he swung. Now freed, his gauntlet dug into Zharja’s side, making her hiss and squirm. The weakening in her constriction let him get his other arm free from Zharja’s coils. He grasped the gorgon and flung her. The lower segment of her tail, coiled around one of his legs, ripped clean from the rest of her as she joined Priscilla in slamming into the ground.

A shielding Scutum kept her from splattering against the ground but Arkk could do nothing for her tail at the moment.

The knight pivoted on one foot, swinging his arms wide to clear the immediate area around him. When he finished, he stood stooped, one hand pressed to his helm. Some wisps of white smoke steamed out from the holes in his helm along with a faint labored breath, but as the smoke dispersed, his breathing cleared up and, after a moment, he stood straight with no signs of internal injury. The golden armor itself looked entirely untouched. Not just on the helm but everywhere. He didn’t have a speck of blood or smudge of dirt, not even around his feet where he had been trudging through the muddy ground.

Arkk’s eyes flicked down to the ground and then back up to the man.

He was glaring now. Though his eyes were hidden in the shadows of his helmet, Arkk could tell just by the way his helmet angled toward him.

“Agnete,” Arkk said, planting a hand on her shoulder.

Zharja’s venom had gotten through. Thus, Agnete’s flames likely could as well. Her flames had already failed once against the gold magics of Evestani back at Elmshadow. She hadn’t been able to melt those gold statues. So, in case the fire through the helm failed, Arkk had a secondary plan.

“Melt the ground under his feet,” he said before casting the last of his newly learned spells on the purifier. “Acceleratæ.”

The heat around Agnete exploded, forcing Arkk backward with his gloved hands shielding his face. Small hairs of stray threads on his gambeson caught flame, burning to ash in an instant.

When Agnete moved, she moved. She crossed ten paces in the blink of an eye. The knight, for all the invulnerability of his armor, flinched back at her sudden approach. The rest of Company Al-Mir, already backed away thanks to the knight pivoting around, scrambled back even further. Those who couldn’t walk ended up dragged by others.

The knight lashed out, attacks more ferocious than earlier. Agnete simply tilted her head, dodging the first strike by a hair before she slid to one side to dodge another. Flames swirled around her, obscuring her exact movements. The enhanced speed was already visibly wearing out—Arkk could feel the drain of magic lessen—but it was easy to forget that she had been an inquisitor and could hold her own in close-quarters combat.

As expected, Agnete’s fire didn’t seem to do much to the armor. Even when Agnete planted a palm directly on the man’s breastplate, it didn’t start glowing let alone melting. From some second-hand analysis Zullie had done following the incident at Elmshadow, they had two theories on why her fires didn’t affect the Heart of Gold’s namesake metal. Either the Heart of Gold, being on this side of the Calamity, was simply stronger than the Burning Forge’s trickle of power or, as in alchemic theory, the Heart of Gold represented a purity that was so magically great that nothing could truly affect it directly.

All that didn’t stop the ground under their feet from turning red and molten. Even though the knight moved like he was wearing a light tunic, it had to weigh a ton. He rapidly started sinking into the ground. Agnete carefully kept him in one place, simply stepping side to side to dodge his attacks with a renewed haste spell from Arkk while she kept his focus on her, he didn’t even realize until his ankles were well into the ground.

But it wasn’t the flames in the ground that affected him. He kept grabbing at his helm like he was trying to wipe something off the front. His breathing, once again turning more laborious, grew in intensity the longer the flames surrounded his head. Giving up his attacks against the now normal-speed Agnete, he tried to take a step backward only to twist and bend at the knee with his feet unable to move.

As his back hit the ground and the earth turned red under Agnete’s increasing heat, Arkk let out a small sigh of relief.

A sigh too early.

The knight thrust his hands together, letting out a sound like the ringing of a church bell. A bright golden flash filled Arkk’s vision for a brief instant.

The ground, once molten, gleamed bright gold. Agnete, clutching at her chest, was on her back on the golden ground. The few tattered strips of burned clothing that had clung to her body gleamed gold just as the ground did. One body, two swords, and a shield, left behind near the fight while the others backed away, now matched. The living beings and plant life were spared, nothing else was.

The knight himself was still in the now-golden ground, audibly panting and gasping for breath. Now that he wasn’t under Agnete’s constant attack, he might just be able to rip his feet out of the holes. Or pull out some magic trick that let him escape. His hands were still free. Arkk wasn’t sure if he could repeatedly use that clapping trick but he wasn’t about to test it.

This was a chance to escape.

Arkk let out a sharp whistle, catching the attention of all his employees. “Back,” he shouted. “Help anyone who can’t move on their own. Alma, Kelsey, get the dragonoid.”

Agnete, slowly sitting up and ripping the golden cloth off her chest, snapped her fingers, sparking a fresh flame in the area. The fire rushed forward from her even as the others began their retreat.

“Desidia,” Arkk said, enveloping the golden man in the slowing spell again just to keep him from doing anything in retaliation. Maybe Agnete could burn away all the air around him again. Maybe she could melt the gold and trap him further.

Arkk couldn’t take the chance. He grabbed her by the arm, meeting her fiery eyes for a brief moment. He didn’t say anything. Neither did she. After a moment, she nodded her head and started backing away. That didn’t stop her from keeping the flames circling the golden knight.

They were leaving four of their own behind. Arkk hoped the knight would die from the flames but couldn’t chance staying to watch. They were still in the scrying fog. The enemy could be just around the next hill. Maybe they could fight off a regular force of soldiers but if another of those knights showed up, or this one got back to his feet, they might well be done for here and now.

So he turned, following behind the rest of the retreating Company Al-Mir with Agnete at his side. Alma and Kelsey were dragging Priscilla while Orjja and Krett’al hauled Zharja. Two other orcs needed assistance walking and one of the humans was leaning on Dakka’s shoulder.

They had rescued Kia, Claire, and the rest of the strike team. From a pure numbers game, the rescue had been worth it.

Morale was buried at the bottom of a latrine. Even as they made it back to the teleportation circle, even as they passed through one at a time without Evestani harassment, he could feel the dour mood in the air and the discordance in the group. Arkk wasn’t immune.

He was livid.

Right when it felt like things had been looking up. The Walking Fortress and its near completion, the new spells from Priscilla, Hawkwood and the deserters gathering to help push back Evestani, Katja taking the Duke’s place to turn his armies against the invaders…

Now this.

Losses were inevitable in wars. Hawkwood had sat him down and told him that the moment the war began. Losses of personnel, losses of battles, losses of territories and holdings. Arkk didn’t expect to come out the victor of every engagement but this… This felt different. It wasn’t an honest loss. Evestani and the Golden Order had a literal god sitting on their shoulder.

The closest thing Arkk had, the Lock and Key, had taken his lead researcher out of commission.

The moment they returned to Fortress Al-Mir, Arkk sent the wounded off to the infirmary, including Agnete and Kia even though they had only superficial injuries. Hale was certainly getting all the practice she needed with the Flesh Weaving spell. There were no immediate calls for his attention from Vezta or the scrying team. A small relief. He still had to look over the group left behind.

“We rescued the strike team,” Arkk said, taking the small silver lining to this dark cloud. “And we uncovered the existence of another heavy threat, one we can now begin planning around. Four lost their lives in exchange.” He pressed his lips together. Perhaps he was still just a little too idealistic, but he did not view that as an acceptable exchange.

There would be four new names on the memorial wall now.

“Go,” Arkk said. “Rest and recover. Eat and sleep. But keep the encounter in the back of your mind, thinking of the strengths and weaknesses that Golden Knight had. We’ll do a full debriefing later.”

“You all survived!” Dakka shouted to the morose room, ripping her helmet from her head. The sudden gruff bark left Arkk stunned, though he tried to avoid showing it. “Against a foe worthy of legends! We’ll have a feast tonight and we’ll crack open the kegs!”

That got much more of a reaction, earning some cheers. Arkk could tell that the cheering wasn’t wholly enthusiastic, the tone was just a little too flat, but at least the troops weren’t showing their displeasure so overtly. Her shout got them moving as well, filing out of the room and into the rest of the fortress.

Arkk couldn’t help but notice Dakka remaining behind, not moving with the others.

As soon as the room was clear, she turned on him, face drawn tight in consternation. “Arkk,” she said slowly. “You need to work on your post-battle speeches.”

Arkk drew in a breath and let it back out, nodding his head without a word.

“And… Arkk… I have very much enjoyed my time under your service. Compared to being a raider, it feels good, you know?”

Arkk’s eyes widened as he looked up at Dakka’s face. The tan-skinned orc’s hair hung in a mess, matted with sweat and a small bit of crusted blood. She looked… worn. “You aren’t thinking of leaving, are you?”

Dakka didn’t answer right away. She stared down at him, eyes looking back and forth for a moment before she snorted. Her lips peeled back, showing off her tusks. Not in a snarl, but in a smile. “No. Not yet. But Arkk, something needs to change. I’m a girl who enjoys a good fight as much as the next orc but I’m no spellcaster. I’m not a fire witch blessed by the gods. I’m not a dragonoid or even a gorgon. We keep fighting these things. The golden avatar and now this gold knight.” She paused, pressing a gauntleted hand to her chest. “I’m not even going to say that I need fights I can win, just fights where the field is even. And it isn’t just me.

“Get us fancy golden indestructible armor or spells we can cast without taking a nap after. Get us opponents that aren’t gods walking among mere mortals. Something.

“Something needs to change and it needs to change fast. Or you might be finding yourself with less of an army to work with.”

Dakka stared for a moment longer before nodding her head. She turned on her heel and stalked out of the room, leaving Arkk alone in the teleportation chamber with just his thoughts.

Something needed to change. A walking tower wasn’t good enough. He needed something for his people.

 

 

Arkk knew he was walking into a trap.

It was pure complacency that allowed Kia and Claire’s successful attacks to turn sour. They had allowed it to turn into a routine. Routines were predictable.

If he had supply lines constantly under threat from an enemy he couldn’t defend conventionally, he would have been scrambling to find solutions as well. He wouldn’t have been content with merely repelling the attacks either. He would have been figuring out ways to strike back.

Thus, the trap. Perhaps Evestani wouldn’t consider that Arkk would try to rescue his employees. They certainly didn’t seem to have much compunction regarding casualties. Arkk had personally witnessed that golden avatar hit some of his own men in attacks meant for others. But if they were at all intelligent and even half as aware of Arkk’s character as Inquisitor Vrox was, they would be setting up and preparing for his inevitable arrival.

Arkk had distressingly little information about what actually happened. He could tell that his strike team was still alive through their links but anything beyond that was shrouded in mist. It could be that Evestani thought their mist would protect them from the strike team and, on the field, nothing had gone wrong. Arkk wasn’t sure that he was such an optimist anymore.

Thus, the rescue team.

Agnete. Priscilla. Dakka and a dozen orcs. Alma and a quartet of beastmen geared for stealth and rapid movement. Zharja and three other gorgon. Joanne and a team of swordsmen.

With so many of his trusted and, in Agnete and Priscilla’s case, powerful employees at hand, Arkk was leaving Vezta behind. She, Ilya, and Rekk’ar would maintain the fortress in Arkk’s absence. Rekk’ar would manage the soldiers and Vezta would act as a little surprise for anyone foolish enough to actually invade the fortress and lucky enough to get past the newly installed traps.

Although there was no evidence of any enemy forces moving toward the Cursed Forest, he had everyone remaining behind on high alert just in case.

The teleportation ritual carried Arkk and his team a fair distance from the obscuring fog in the scrying balls. It took time, unfortunately. A fairly significant amount of time. There were a lot of people to move and all needed to move in a hurry. If there was one upside, it was that the portal chain—a series of teleportation rituals leading away from the fortress—was already intact. They had simply taken the same one that Kia and Claire used up until the final hop where Arkk inscribed a new ritual circle to divert them closer but not quite to that fog.

Alma and her team teleported in first, immediately venturing into the fog to gather information while the rest of the force moved through the teleportation circle.

There wasn’t any literal fog around. The stretch of land east of Moonshine Burg where the supply caravans traversed—and thus where the latest strikes had taken place—was fairly sparse. Plains and gentle-sloped hills that stretched on and on, covered in low vegetation but without many trees about. Today, perhaps as a signal of the nearing end of winter, the sky was bright blue and cloudless. Still cold but utterly clear.

Despite that, the crystal ball still showed nothing but fog.

“They’re on their way back,” Arkk said, staring off in the direction that he could sense his employees.

“Sir?”

Arkk half-turned. Dakka, fully armored, stood at the ready with her team of warriors a few paces back. Zharja and her gorgon flanked them on one side while Joanne and her swordsmen stood on the other. They weren’t in any real formation, just standing and ready for the scouting to finish.

“I can sense that Alma’s crew have started heading toward us. I can’t tell exactly how far they are but they’ll be back soon. As soon as we hear their report, we’ll likely head out. Be ready.”

“I could have been there and back in half the time,” Priscilla grumbled from where she stooped, crouched with her icy claws on the ground between her feet. “Dealt with the problem on my own too. We’re wasting time.”

Dakka shot the dragonoid a dark look. She opened her mouth, probably about to needle Priscilla about something or other. Arkk stalled her with a wave of his hand.

“If I’m being honest, I would rather you not show yourself at all, in scouting or a fight,” Arkk said, earning a surprised look from Priscilla. Though she didn’t quite manage to look in his exact direction. Her iced-over eyes drifted past his shoulder. “Evestani may not be aware of your presence and, if they aren’t, you represent a surprise that I would like to keep for the most optimal moment. But I’m also not willing to risk the lives of the strike team, hence your involvement.”

Priscilla peeled her lips back in an ugly snarl. “You want me benched on the sidelines unless the pyro can’t handle it?” she asked with a lazy thumb flicked toward Agnete.

For her part, Agnete stood with a stoic expression on her face, ignoring Priscilla.

“I want everyone safe. After that, I want everyone used to their fullest potential. If the avatar of the Golden Order is here, you ripping him apart may well be a great use of your talents. But if it is anything but an entire army out here, I doubt even Agnete will be needed.”

Dakka, along with many of her squad, puffed up in pride at the implied praise and expectation toward their capabilities.

“Which reminds me,” Arkk said, turning to address the entire crew. “The lives of our comrades are our first priority but uncovering any magical secrets in the area is a close secondary.”

If he could figure out how they worked the obscuring mist and make use of it himself, he would feel a whole lot more secure in knowing that nobody was scrying on him. And Zullie—or… Savren, rather—might be able to find countermeasures, allowing their scrying to see through the enemy, thus giving them a false sense of security.

“That means any books or tomes in the possession of our enemies are a priority, as are taking notes of any ritual circles in the area. Depending…”

Arkk trailed off, turning at the sound of rustling brush. Since they left the area of effect of the fog, he had been able to track Alma, Lyssa, and Kelsey as they approached. The half-werecat stepped forward with the ox-like Kelsey at her flank. The full-werecat moved around the group and approached Joanne, who had been holding onto the long spiked chain which she quickly attached to the lone manacle she wore around her normal arm.

“Sir,” Alma said. “We found them. Some are fairly roughed up and some could use healing faster than others, but they all look alive. Unfortunately, they’re all caged up, being transported back toward Moonshine Burg.”

“Like the slaves,” Lyssa cut in, her voice a low growl. “Big beasts hauling big carts filled with tiny cages.”

Arkk closed his eyes.

Though his optimism had been lacking, there had been a glimmer of hope that Kia hadn’t run afoul of any problems and the fog was incidental to their mission.

“Enemy force?”

“About four dozen, most on foot but a quarter were armored knights with horses. Two dozen were pikemen and the rest archers of some variety. We did not see any children or other people with those Golden Order tattoos on their heads, however, most wore helmets making it difficult to tell for sure.”

“Any obvious spellcasters or ritual circles?”

Alma shook her head. “No, Sir.”

Arkk took a breath, frowning. “Well the scrying fog isn’t coming from nowhere,” he said. “How far exactly are we from Moonshine Burg? How long will it take the prisoners to reach it?”

Alma and Kelsey glanced at one another, uncertainty obvious on their faces. They weren’t locals of Moonshine Burg or its surrounding area. They had been teleported in with no real frame of reference.

Lyssa cut in, stepping back toward Arkk as she wrapped her chain around her arm, leaving the spiked end dangling. “A quarter of a day. Maybe less.”

“Not much time,” he said. If they let the prisoners reach the burg, getting them out would be much, much more difficult. And the enemy would probably identify which ones knew more than others in short order, interrogating them and executing the rest. In addition, Evestani might send out additional reinforcements to help escort the prisoners. Their hypothetical arrival would make freeing everyone all the more complicated.

There wouldn’t be time to spread out and find the source of the magic in the area. It might even come from the burg itself, directed to a distant location like the boulder drop ritual could be targeted.

“Dakka, Joanne. Come up with a plan to engage the transport. Involve Zharja in your plan—the gorgon can stone key targets before engaging themselves. Alma, you and your team use the chaos to free the prisoners. Focus on those least injured first—try to get them weapons so they can join in on the fight,” Arkk said.

He paused to think a moment, looking over the assembled groups. “Agnete, Priscilla, and I will remain at a short distance,” he continued, “ready to charge in as heavy magical support should the engagement need assistance or should additional complications arise. Dakka, you have field command. We need to move fast before they reach the burg or reinforcements from the burg show up to escort them. We move in no more than thirty minutes.”

Arkk watched in nervous anticipation as Dakka and Joanne’s teams ambushed the prisoner caravan.

From the reactions of the Evestani guardsmen, they had no idea what was coming. They panicked, broke rank, and fell into a disorganized mob. Half tried to flee, only to find themselves facing Joanne’s team. The other half tried to fight but, disorganized and lacking half their fighting force, they were quickly picked apart by Dakka and the gorgon.

Once Alma cracked the locks on several of the cages, tossing weapons to those captive within, the rest of Company Al-Mir tore through Evestani like a scythe through wheat.

The ease made him even more nervous. This was a trap. It had to be. The fact that it was going so well just set him all the more on edge.

“Waste of time,” Priscilla grumbled, twisting at the waist hard enough to send a series of snaps up her spine. “Thought I might finally get a chance to stretch my wings.”

“You were flying over the Duchy for at least a few weeks,” Agnete said, looking confused.

“It was a polite euphemism for crushing the skulls of some humans.”

“Surely you engaged in that as well during your trek, given what I know of dragonoids.”

Priscilla bared her sharp teeth. “You know nothing about me. I spent the last hundred years atop a lonely mountain at the behest…” A pained look crossed her features before she shook her head. “Forget it. Another waste of time to explain to a human.”

“Enough. Both of you,” Arkk said, not taking his eyes off the fight down below.

The fight taking place on the long path that stretched between two hills was nearing its conclusion. Not many of Evestani’s troops were still standing. Some looked to have surrendered. Arkk… wasn’t too sure how he felt about that. Callous though it was to think it, them all dying would have been easier on him. He doubted some grunts would have much valuable information and now he had to transport them back to Fortress Al-Mir, which would show off his teleportation ritual. Not a problem as long as they were captive but they effectively could never be released.

“What do we think? Was this too easy?” he asked.

“Your minions got lazy and got themselves captured. Nothing more to it,” Priscilla said with a yawn. “Got us all worked up for nothing.”

“Then why the fog in the scrying balls?” They were in the thick of it now. It was an eerie sensation. His normally clear and innate knowledge of Fortress Al-Mir, its contents, and all of his employees was obscured at the moment. Still there but just hazy and difficult to see. “There has to be something more.”

“It could be standard protocol to obscure scrying,” Agnete offered slowly, considering. “They never enacted the protocol in the past because the strike team acted too swiftly.”

That… was possible. But still too easy. “I expect we’ll know more once we have a chat with Kia. Until then, however, keep on your toes.” He glanced at Priscilla. Despite what he had said earlier about keeping her a secret… Something about this situation just rubbed him the wrong way. Better to use his assets than to lose them. “In fact, Priscilla, take to the skies and see…” Arkk trailed off, looking at the dragonoid’s iced-over eyes. “Well, see whatever it is you see.”

Priscilla gave him a frosty look for a long moment before she spread her wings out and, with a downward thrust that nearly knocked Arkk off his feet, took to the skies.

“Should have brought Leda or one of the other fairies to accompany her,” Arkk grumbled, not sure that Priscilla would be able to bring back any valuable information. She had an uncanny sense for some things, such as the Walking Fortress, but not other things. Arkk had spied her bumping into walls and knocking over chairs on more than one occasion.

“Will she be able to find her way back?” Agnete asked, looking upward with a hand held over her brow to shield the sun.

Arkk didn’t answer right away. He hadn’t thought about that and now, he wasn’t sure. Another reason for a fairy to hang off her back. Perhaps he should assign dedicated minders for Priscilla. She wouldn’t like that. He would have to call them something different. “She says she sees what the Stars want her to see, or something like that. So if the Stars want her with us, I assume she’ll figure things out.”

“Perhaps it is strange for an avatar of a god to say this,” Agnete started with a frown on her face. “I’m not at all sure that relying on higher beings to guide us will see us seize victory. They’re too… distant.”

Arkk had a feeling that the Heart of Gold’s avatar felt differently. But then, the Heart of Gold was one of the traitor gods. Agnete’s patron, the Burning Forge, was cut off from this world. As for the Stars…

Well, he had seen them for himself. Though they were distant and alien, they seemed to be aligned with the Lock and Key. Near as Arkk could tell, the Lock and Key was on his side. At least ostensibly.

He still wasn’t sure what happened with Zullie, unfortunately. Whether that was retribution, a misguided attempt at assistance, or just a freak accident. Zullie was getting better, slowly, in terms of eating and moving about. She still wasn’t saying much of anything. There was a lot of muttering. A lot of fascinated, awed murmurs. Things that sounded like they could be magical theories, but which sounded like nonsense to Arkk’s ears.

“Let’s get down to the prison wagon. I can already see some wounds that need patching sooner than we could get them to Hale.”

Still wary but taking some comfort in the shadow of the dragonoid’s wings that crossed over him, Arkk descended the hill with Agnete at his side. There was no sign of any ambush to counter their ambush.

Dakka, heavy axe resting over her shoulder, turned her head. He couldn’t see her face under the dark helmet but he could hear her smile. “Thought this was going to be a tough one,” she barked out, earning a few cheers from the orcs under her command.

“Be thankful it wasn’t,” Joanne grumbled, one arm held up to her shoulder where a crossbow bolt stuck out. Bright red blood leaked from between her fingers but it didn’t flow at a rate that warranted panic.

“The human is just angry she got caught out,” Dakka said with an even wider grin in her tone.

Not bothering to engage with Dakka’s post-battle revelry, Arkk merely uttered the incantation for Flesh Weaving and set to sealing Joanne’s wound. He worked quickly and without much regard for perfection. Hale would be able to do much better work once they got back to the fortress anyway.

He hopped from wounded to wounded, prioritizing those who looked worst off. Everyone who could walk quickly formed a line, organizing themselves by who needed care the most so that Arkk didn’t even have to think about who to move to next. Most of the injuries were among Kia’s team. Claire and Kia were no exceptions. Though, while Claire looked like she had been thrown under a stampede of horses, Kia had only a number of bruises and a large gash just above her left ear.

“What happened?” Arkk asked as he sealed the gash. The long blonde hair on that side of her head was a mess.

“The attack against a lightly guarded caravan was going as well as expected in such a scenario. It was small, just this wagon with its cages covered in tarps. Thought it was food until… well, it wasn’t. Then…” Kia looked pained, grimacing for emotional reasons rather than physical. “Not rightly sure. Something rang my bell, took my helmet off at the same time. A second knocked my lights out. Only came to in the cage.” She looked over, eyes locking on Claire.

The brown-haired dark elf pursed her lips together. A rare show of emotion. Claire didn’t speak much, nor did she enjoy attentions thrust upon her. Nevertheless, she stood and clasped her hands together behind her back. Now that she had been patched up with Flesh Weaving, she could actually stand.

“A soldier in gold. He—”

“Gold soldier?” Arkk said, tenser now than he had been since hearing about this ambush. He immediately started looking around.

“It can’t be one of those,” Agnete said. “Or they would all be gold as well.”

Claire nodded. “Golden armor,” she corrected. “Taller than an orc. Beat us all and threw us into the cages one by one. I tried to escape. He was too fast.”

Despite Claire’s correction, Arkk didn’t feel any more at ease. “Just one soldier beat your entire team?”

Claire nodded again. “Bare-handed. He intended to capture us from the start.”

“Where is this soldier now?”

She just shrugged, sending even more chills up his spine. “We move immediately!” Arkk said. “Leave the Evestani who surrendered. Fall back to the ritual circle. No one is to go anywhere alone. Guards at the fore and rear of the group. Keep eyes open and shout if you see anything at—”

A dragonoid crashed into the ground, gouging a deep trough through the winter-hardened earth. Arkk spun, looking in the direction Priscilla had come flying from.

There, standing atop the nearby hill, gleamed a hulking man in golden armor. Massive pauldrons hid most of his head and his helm sported a long red plume that draped down his back. Although he carried no weapon, the thick gauntlets around his hands could easily crush someone’s skull if he hit hard enough.

For a long moment, he just stared down from the hill.

“Uh, Arkk,” Dakka said. “I think I see something.”

“Impressive,” Joanne snipped as she drew her large claymore. “The orc’s command of the obvious is truly unmatched.”

“Quiet,” Arkk snapped. “Those whose wounds weren’t healed enough to fight, fall back. Everyone else… get ready.”

 

 

 

The Walking Fortress in Allworld was almost complete.

It wasn’t as tall as the Walking Fortress over in the Underworld, nor was it as bulky. That wasn’t to say that it was small. The base of the tower occupied an area as large as the Stone Hearth Burg garrison. And it just went up from there.

Following his directions, the lesser servants had constructed a simple series of circular rooms, all stacked on top of each other. Living quarters and ancillary rooms, for the most part. It fit the definition of a tower far better than the structure in the Underworld did. There were a few small platforms that jutted out. Arkk planned to equip them with siege equipment. Catapults, mostly.

He hoped to get enough spellcasters to man siege ritual circles—combined with charged glowstones from the Underworld—but having manual, mundane backups seemed wise to him.

With a sigh, Arkk turned away from the shadowy tower and looked over the landscape. Winter was almost at an end. Already, the temperature was heating up. It didn’t snow much in the Cursed Forest, fitting with its cursed nature, but even outside, the snow had melted off. Villages were prepping the land for spring crops, travel was becoming more possible for the layperson and refugee alike, and reinforcements from Evestani were storming across the Duchy, headed for Elmshadow.

It was somewhat upsetting that only now did he have this Walking Fortress. Perhaps it wouldn’t mean much against Evestani, who traversed the winter with their golden magic as if it didn’t exist, but mobile housing for an entire army sounded like the perfect way to move through the cold. It was still a mobile fortification that afforded him all the powers he had in Fortress Al-Mir while on the move. The magically reinforced stone, which turned somewhat shadowy after being constructed thanks to the [HEART] of the tower, should be able to shrug off most siege attacks without even needing additional magical barriers.

He wasn’t sure if it would shrug off the golden rays that the avatar could fire. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t be sure until one of those rays hit the tower.

“And… you say this building will… move.”

“Walk, yes,” Arkk said, motioning toward the thick legs that stuck out around the base of the tower. With the bulk of the tower resting on the ground, the bend in the legs reached up to the fifth floor. A little under a quarter of the way up the tower.

Hawkwood ran a gloved hand through thinning gray hair. His hair hadn’t been quite so thin or quite so gray at the start of Winter. Nor had his face sported the deep lines of stress and the sunken look around his eyes. Nor had his hand been so stiff and… injured. Arkk had hoped to relieve some of the pressure from the man’s back—along with an introduction to Hale and her expertise with the Flesh Weaving spell—but seeing the way Hawkwood was looking at the tower, Arkk wondered if he had only added more stress into the man’s life.

“It won’t be fast,” Arkk said, wondering if that was a reassuring statement. “But when each step carries it across the length of a cornfield, it can make good time.”

“How… Just how?”

“Magic,” Arkk said with a shrug.

Hawkwood let out a withering laugh. “Magic, he says. I’m no arcanist nor am I a theologian, but I’ve never heard of magic like this before.”

Rather than give a straighter answer, Arkk gestured around the building. “The walls are magically reinforced and it should even be able to grow its own food, enough to support at least three thousand. Filling it to that capacity will be… cramped, but it is possible. I can enlarge it later as well. Those same skull defenses that we used at Elmshadow will be around each leg, which should prevent anyone we don’t want from even getting near the thing let alone assailing it…”

“I… I don’t…” Hawkwood ran his hand through his hair again. Then settled on tugging at his beard. “When you said you had something to help turn the tides, I… I don’t know what I expected. Not this.”

“Oh, it isn’t the only thing.”

“Dear Light. There’s more?”

“Not like this,” Arkk said with a small chuckle. “We’ve been working on ways of casting large-scale rituals without ritualists. My spellcasters have uncovered a trove of old magic which, while most of it isn’t as practical as I would have liked, still has enough to cause a few surprises in any conflict. I’ve been collecting as many groups of deserters from the Grand Guard as possible. And… Well, you remember that dragonoid that Inquisitrix Astra was after?”

Hawkwood closed his eyes. “I can guess what you’re going to say but I’m still not quite ready for it.”

“Yeah, she’s working for me now.”

“Light. The gorgon, I could understand. Offer them food and safety. They’re pretty simple. But a dragonoid? I didn’t know they ever talked with people long enough to be offered food. How did you manage that?”

“Funny story,” Arkk said. It was his turn to sheepishly rub the back of his head. “I didn’t know it at the time but she was coming here to help me out in the first place. It has to do with all the magic I’ve been learning.”

Hawkwood shook his head from side to side, clearly trying to shake off his exasperation. “Don’t take this the wrong way. I can see why so many people are… nervous about you.”

“That is a way to put it.”

“Who would have thought that a farmboy, in over his head with a handful of orcs begrudgingly working for him would turn out like this.”

“Not me, that’s for sure,” Arkk said, then leaned in conspiratorially despite the lack of any eavesdroppers in the area. “If I’m being honest, I still feel in over my head about as much as I did that day you found me in Cliff.”

“Cliff…” Hawkwood’s bewildered expression turned sour. “Have you heard the news?”

Arkk nodded slowly. There was only one bit of news out of Cliff that anyone would be talking about for a while. “The Duke is dead. Not sure how I feel about that,” he said, honestly. “On one hand, maybe the Duchy won’t be after my head anymore. On the other hand, the Duke’s replacement offered amnesty to anyone who deserted the army due to disagreements with the Duke’s choice of friends.

“More than a handful of those deserters I mentioned hiring have… expressed interest in returning to the Grand Guard. I’m not going to try to stop them but it is a bit irritating.”

“Bah. The ones who aren’t returning are likely the wiser of the group. Nobody takes kindly to deserters, good reason or not, amnesty or not. I’m not all that thrilled to hear that you’ve hired them.”

Arkk shrugged. “I needed men.”

“There are men and then there are men,” Hawkwood said.

“Question, though, since I’m fairly ignorant of larger political matters. Can this replacement of the Duke offer amnesty?”

“She has no legitimacy. People listened to and respected the Duke because the King gave him the title. That gave him the authority and command of armies needed to enforce that respect. This so-called Lady Katja has no such authority. As far as I can tell from Neil’s reports, she has managed to gather a sizable foundation of support within Cliff, but that support doesn’t extend much beyond the walls of the city.

“Until and unless the King grants her a title—which isn’t likely as I doubt the King will be all that enamored with those who kill his noblemen, regardless of their reasons—she won’t have any true authority.”

Arkk opened his mouth, only to have his comment stalled by a raised hand from Hawkwood.

“However,” Hawkwood continued. “The situation in the Duchy is… chaotic. Some, like those you mentioned under your command, will be interested in working for this Lady Katja solely because she offers them the ability to continue living in their home. Others will still see the threat of Evestani and join together for a better chance at fending them off. Villagers and those outside the military will likely be pleased with the change in leadership once they hear of the cut to taxes.

“How the situation plays out will likely revolve around how the regiments of the Grand Guard at the southern border react to the news. They could easily step back and allow the King’s army entry to the Duchy or they could maintain their postings for the usurper. If Lady Katja is wise, she will be doing everything in her power to convince the border regiments to come to her, further stalling the King’s army while she consolidates power.

“Ultimately, the King will likely send word to the army to force their way in. Maybe this Lady Katja will have used that stalling time to muster the resources necessary to fend him off. Maybe they roll through faster than Evestani and take her head.” Hawkwood let out a long sigh, casting his gaze back upon the tall tower. “Your presence, especially once this Walking Fortress manages to take its first step, throws an awful kink in the rope as well. I can’t even begin to predict how anyone will react to it.”

Arkk took in his words for a long moment, simply staring up at the tower as he did so. “Well, I can tell you how I’ll react. I’m very much interested in not being tried for treason or heresy or anything else that would result in… an unpleasant outcome.”

Hawkwood nodded his head. “If Lady Katja is at all intelligent, she will be making overtures to get you on her side as soon as you unveil this tower. This is… I mean, an army spotting this approach over the horizon is going to lose all its morale even if it doesn’t do anything. It represents a power that will frighten many.”

Hawkwood paused a moment as a conflicted look crossed his face. Like he had something more to say but wasn’t sure if he should say it. Eventually, he decided to speak. “There is one other thing. I have received a letter via Swiftwing that asks, if I am still loyal to the Kingdom, to meet with Prince Cedric on the Vaales border of the Duchy. The King is sending his son to… investigate matters.”

Blinking twice, Arkk tried to think. He really did. While Duke Woldair was a known name even in small villages like Langleey and he had heard the King’s name in passing, Arkk wasn’t sure that he could name a single prince. Or princess, for that matter. Did the King have daughters? He didn’t know.

There was the Principality of Vaales to the east of the Duchy and the Principality of Lockloch to the southeast. Presumably, both were run by a prince. Which ones or what their names were just wasn’t something that most villagers in the Duchy cared about.

“Is that… bad?”

“The Prince shut down a rebellion in Vaales, orchestrated by the local count of the land, through overwhelming force. I don’t know much about it other than it happened, nor what his exact plans are in coming here, but…” Hawkwood drew in a deep breath. “No matter what, we’re all going to have some heavy choices ahead of us. This isn’t for a few weeks, however, so we have some breathing room to think.”

Arkk didn’t move outwardly. Inwardly, he wondered exactly what kind of choices Hawkwood intended to make. There was something in Hawkwood’s tone. In his words. Arkk wasn’t sure that he would like the answer if he asked where Hawkwood stood on matters.

“For now,” Arkk said, “until we reach the point of those choices, I could use a drink. And you haven’t even seen the fortress proper yet.”

Hawkwood immediately cast his gaze around, looking confused.

He had arrived in Smilesville Burg to the north of the cursed forest earlier in the day along with a small retinue. Most of whom were still back at the burg. Arkk joined them there before riding in along with Hawkwood and two of his direct adjutants. They were waiting some distance back, Hawkwood having been the only one to approach the tower.

“Not here,” Arkk said with a small laugh. “We’ll be using teleportation circles to reach it. Your men are welcome to join or to rest in the tower. Though the tower is somewhat… lacking in amenities, the crew I have stationed here will be happy to accommodate guests.”

“Arkk,” Hawkwood said, tone flat. “We’ve been camping through the winter in tents and sleeping on hard ground in our armor most nights. I’m sure whatever you’ve got will be a luxury.”

Arkk blinked, feeling foolish all of a sudden. Although he had helped out at various points during the war, he hadn’t been on the campaign trail. He hadn’t roughed it out in the wilderness with nothing but watery stew and hardtack rations.

“Sorry.”

Hawkwood just shook his head, clapping a hand on Arkk’s shoulder before heading back to talk with his adjutants. Arkk, deciding to follow his lead, pulled Dakka straight to the entrance of the Walking Fortress. The land on the surface was still unclaimed, meaning he couldn’t drop her off directly in front of him. Even if he could, it was probably best not to startle the newcomers too much by having her appear right in their midst.

As Dakka hurried over from the tower, Arkk looked around. If a war was to be fought here, claiming the territory so that he might use it to instantly move himself and his forces around the battlefield would be an undeniable advantage. It would be obvious, however, turning most of the land into glowstone-encrusted tiles. He could build on top of that to disguise it, but whatever he built probably wouldn’t be enough to hide the complete transformation of the Cursed Forest.

Then again, he was fairly certain that anyone who cared already knew where he was positioned. Perhaps his fiction that Fortress Al-Mir had moved following the inquisitor’s invasion had worked for a time but he doubted it did now.

He would give the order later for the lesser servants to begin claiming the land.

After giving directions for Dakka to show their guests around the tower, Arkk and Hawkwood descended into the false fortress and made their way toward the ritual circle room at the back. Normally, none of the eight ritual circles went anywhere important. They were intended to be decoys. But today, Arkk had altered one to take them into the fortress proper.

What followed was a fairly standard tour of the fortress. Fortress Al-Mir had become unwieldy large and sprawling in the time since the war had begun. Mostly to make room for all the refugees and the necessary food supply for them, but also because Arkk felt it would be wise to have as much of the Cursed Forest’s underground as possible under his control.

He didn’t bother touring most of those areas, just touching on them in passing as they moved around the more important locales in the fortress. The canteens, the library, the training rooms, the forge, the alchemy lab, and so on and so forth… Arkk skipped over the portal room and the prison, feeling no desire to further shock the poor man with the former or to explain what the unmoving carcass of the Protector was in the latter.

Arkk ended the tour in Fortress Al-Mir’s larger meeting room. The one with a detailed map of the entire duchy hanging across one entire wall. It had been updated recently by a particularly artistic refugee working in conjunction with the scrying team to get what Arkk believed to be the most accurate map of the land that existed.

It was covered in dozens of little metal pins that had been dipped in a variety of colored paint to denote various points of interest, enemy force concentrations, logistical routes, and anything else that might come in handy for this war. Hawkwood spent several minutes just staring at it and then several minutes more asking about each of the pins. He pointed out a few notes of his own, items he knew about that Arkk was missing.

Arkk made notes to confirm that the information was still accurate. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Hawkwood, it was just that the war had effectively been on hold for a little over a month now.

“I must say,” Hawkwood said, swirling a small glass of ruby-colored alcohol. “This is all… impressive. Hard to believe if I wasn’t seeing it for myself.”

“When you have a crystal ball capable of scrying, gathering information is surprisingly simple. There are some holes—Evestani likes to obscure what they’re doing with a sort of fog.”

“I meant everything,” Hawkwood said, waving his glass around. “The crowded halls and training rooms, the manufacture of armor and weapons, the magical research. I lost count of the number of soldiers you have. Beastmen, demihuman, and humans mixing together, working together. Gorgon of all things. No, dragonoids of all things…”

“Just the one.” Arkk hadn’t seen Priscilla on the tour. Although she was working with him, she didn’t exactly get along with many of the others at the fortress. Mostly just the fairies, who Arkk presumed to spark some note of kinship in her given their loss of magic in the Calamity.

“The rate at which you’ve built your organization is staggering. It’s been, what, a little over six months since you stumbled into Cliff City looking lost? You claimed to have two dozen orcs in your employ at the time and were having them doing farming work,” he said with a loud laugh. “I figured you would go out and handle a few bandits or other menial work before some other company annexed your group, offering benefits you couldn’t provide. Maybe suffer a mutiny if you try to get the orcs farming again…”

“You didn’t mention that at the time.”

“I like to think of myself as a man with boundless optimism and firmly believed in your eventual successes.” Hawkwood knocked back the entire glass of alcohol. His face twisted like he expected a burn only to find that burn missing. He looked down at the glass with a frown. “A bit weak,” he said.

Arkk, after taking a long drink from his own glass, Arkk shrugged. “I’m not much of a drinker. Give me a celebration or social meeting like this and I’ll pour a glass. Otherwise, it isn’t to my taste. If you want something stronger…” Arkk held out a hand and, in an instant, a small keg appeared on the tabletop, pretapped with a little nozzle. “This is what the orcs drink.”

Although Hawkwood jolted at the sudden appearance, he only looked at the keg with mild suspicion before twisting the nozzle and filling his glass. He immediately tried a bit only to start coughing. “That’s,” he started with a wheeze in his voice, “a bit stronger.”

Arkk laughed, leaning back in his chair. “My success is definitely not because of any iota of charisma or leadership qualities. I lucked into a magical artifact that lets me do things no other mercenary leader would be able to manage,” he said with a nod toward the keg. “An assistant who pushed me along, driving me to be what I am today,” he continued. Then, dipped his head toward Hawkwood. “And a decent mentor.” Arkk held his glass aloft in a small toast.

Hawkwood hesitated a moment before slowly smiling and taking another sip.

Drinking it just made him cough again.

“You shouldn’t disparage yourself so much,” Hawkwood said as he got the last of the coughs out. “I’ve seen men squander wealth, born leaders waste away in depravity and laziness, and corruption take hold of even the most honest of men. In the hands of the majority of people, a magical artifact would have gone to waste at best, directed toward nefarious ends at worst.” He paused and chuckled. “And don’t underestimate the value of a trusted assistant. You think White Company would be what it is today if I didn’t have my advisers and adjutants? I would have been the squanderer.”

Arkk wasn’t sure that he believed that. Hawkwood was probably just being polite and humble.

“And a mentor? I hope you aren’t referring to me,” he said with another humble laugh.

“Well, someone who showed me the ropes. I might have tried to send the orcs into the gorgon’s mine if left to my own devices and that would have ended in a mutiny for sure. I…” Arkk paused, feeling a tug from the scrying team. “I’ll be right back,” he said, bolting to his feet.

He had specifically asked to not be disturbed today unless an emergency came up. That someone was trying to get his attention meant that something had gone wrong.

Harvey, the flopkin, sat in front of one of the crystal balls with worry lining his rabbit-like face. The moment Arkk teleported into the scrying room, Harvey sat upright and waved him over.

“Kia and Claire were ambushing an Evestani supply caravan as normal,” he said without prompt. “They were ambushed in turn. Fog obscured the crystal ball before I could see much more.”

Arkk blinked twice and cast his attentions out, following the link from himself to Kia. He could sense the dark elf but it was distant, like the fog in the crystal ball was affecting the employee link. It was an unnerving sensation. He had been inside the Evestani encampment during the siege of Elmshadow but hadn’t felt that effect.

Evestani weren’t resting on their asses while waiting for winter to end. They had been working to counter him just as he was working to counter them.

Unfortunately, it was something he would have to think about later.

Arkk teleported Dakka, Alma, Rekk’ar, Zharja, and Joanne straight to him. “We have an emergency,” he said before they fully got their bearings. “Dakka, Alma, Zharja, Joanne, I need you and your teams ready for combat immediately. Rekk’ar, you get everyone remaining on high alert. That means gear and postings. I’m teleporting you all to the armory. A full briefing will be conducted in a few moments as you are armoring up.”

He teleported them again before they could even think to argue and then teleported himself back to Hawkwood.

The man, standing and looking somewhat alarmed at Arkk’s sudden disappearance, jolted at Arkk’s sudden reappearance.

“Sorry, we’re going to have to cut this short. There is an emergency.”

“Something I can assist with?”

Arkk paused to consider. Most of White Company were out around Smilesville Burg. They weren’t his employees yet—maybe ever—so he couldn’t just teleport them around. It would take too long to get them over here. So Arkk just shook his head. “Not this time. Ilya,” he said, gesturing to where the elf appeared in the meeting room with a short, surprised squeak. “Ilya, if you would be so kind as to help Hawkwood. He is welcome to stay if he wishes or show him the way to the teleportation ritual back to the tower if he wishes to return to his men.”

“Arkk, what’s—”

“Sorry, no time to explain more. Kia and Claire’s group were ambushed.”