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Agnete stood in front of the crystalline archway.

It was the same portal she had originally come through when entering the Anvil. The Anvil was a truly massive world—Agnete didn’t have the slightest idea how fast their trains moved over the terrain, only that they moved far beyond even the swiftest horse. That made comparing it to Mystakeen or even the Greater Kingdom of Chernlock somewhat difficult.

As it turned out, the portal wasn’t all that far from her workshop. Which, she supposed, made sense. She had ridden atop one of the conveyor belts to reach her workshop the first time around, not one of the high-speed trains. Arkk had avoided this one while gathering crystalline shards for her smaller portal frame due to the active watchers—and also because he hadn’t wished to damage the portal frame they knew was functional. Had he directed her toward it, she could have simply come in person, but there had been communication issues.

Arkk hadn’t thought she was allowed to wander the Anvil freely.

Now that the communication issues had been solved, Agnete had directions directly to the portal.

“You couldn’t have brought me here yourself?” Agnete asked with a mild frown.

“ᛊorry,” Who said as the cogs on her hitched in a nervous stutter. “Central Operations denied me the information.”

“I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore.” Agnete looked over the crystalline archway, honing in on the central point high above.

The archway loomed before her, a near mirror of the portal at Fortress Al-Mir, as well as both portals she had seen inside the Underworld. It was as if the universe had a blueprint for these portals, one that cared little for the precise shape of the arch as long as they adhered to the general form. The only thing perfectly replicated were the runes scrawled up and down the arch’s surface.

But, at the top center where the keystone should be, there was nothing but a vacancy.

A large mechanical arm, currently dormant, perched off to one side of the portal’s platform. Behind it, an array of crystals were meticulously organized, each piece a perfect fit for the keystone’s vacant throne. Every last one bore a unique rune, glowing faintly as if eager to fulfill their purposes. There was a hum in the air beyond the drone of the Anvil’s factory that set Agnete’s hair on end.

None of the other portals they had found, including the one in the Necropolis that Agnete had yet to visit, had anything like that. There were a few vacancies in the storage bank, perhaps the keystones had been lost or perhaps they had never existed in the first place.

Arkk wanted all of them eventually, but at the moment, he wanted aid more.

Agnete had instructions from Zullie on how to reconfigure the runes in this portal to get it to connect to Fortress Al-Mir’s mirror. Most of the runes could be turned or rotated or removed from their own slots entirely. But if she was unable to activate this portal, she could still take the keystones back through the small gateway she had fabricated in her workshop.

As soon as she took a step onto the portal platform itself, a warning horn wailed and several lights began to flash. One of the large overseer gantries slid along its tracks, rushing straight toward her. The mechanical eye, lowered from cables, descended to Agnete’s eye level and stared.

“ᚠᛟᚱᚷᛖᛗᚨᛊᛏᛖᚱ, ᛊᛏᚨᛏᛖ ᛃᛟᚢᚱ ᛁᚾᛏᛖᚾᛏᛁᛟᚾᛊ.”

“I intend to reopen the portal and use it to deliver some of my constructions to assist my allies on the other side.”

“ᛁᛗᛈᛟᛊᛊᛁᛒᛚᛖ. ᚢᚾᛊᚳᛖᛞᚢᛚᛖᛞ ᛁᚾᛏᛖᚱ-ᛈᛚᚨᚾᚨᚱ ᚨᚳᛏᛁᚢᛁᛏᚣ ᛁᛊ ᛈᚱᛟᚺᛁᛒᛁᛏᛖᛞ. ᚠᛁᛚᛖ ᚠᛟᚱᛗ ᛈᛚᛏ-ᛖᚹᛖ-ᚨ ᚨᚾᛞ ᛊᚢᛗᛒᛁᛏ ᚱᛖᚳᚢᛖᛊᛏ. ᛖᛉᛈᛖᚳᛏ ᚱᛖᛊᛈᛟᚾᛊᛖ ᛁᚾ ᛖᛁᚷᚺᛏ-ᛏᛟ-ᛏᚹᛖᛚᚢᛖ ᚹᛖᛖᚲᛊ.”

“Twelve weeks? Unacceptable,” Agnete said, continuing forward with a slight pivot around the overseer. There was no way she was submitting a form and waiting eight to twelve weeks. She might have been willing to wait a day under other circumstances. But today?

She was in a bit of a rush.

The gantry rolled forward. The overseer eye lifted over her head before dropping down directly in her path once again. Its deep, reverberating voice took on a far more hostile tone. “ᛁ ᚹᛁᛚᛚ ᛒᛖ ᚠᛟᚱᛊᛖᛞ ᛏᛟ ᚷᛖᚾᛖᚱᚨᛏᛖ ᚨᚾ ᛖᛗᛈᛚᛟᛃᛖᛖ ᛁᚾᚳᛁᛞᛖᚾᛏ ᚱᛖᛈᛟᚱᛏ ᛁᚠ ᛃᛟᚢ ᚳᛟᚾᛏᛁᚾᚢᛖ ᚹᛁᛏᚺ ᛃᛟᚢᚱ ᛊᛏᚨᛏᛖᛞ ᚨᚳᛏᛁᛟᚾᛊ.”

“Be my guest,” Agnete said, sidestepping the eye once again. “I’m not afraid of your incident reports.”

Another horn blared at her, ruffling her hair with the force of the noise it generated. Agnete paused, turning, and raised a single brow at the overseer.

“ᚹᛖ ᚳᚨᚾ ᛊᛏᛟᛈ ᛃᛟᚢ.”

Agnete turned up the heat. A thin beam of flames surged from her with barely a gesture, swirling around one of the gantry’s supports. The overseer started making all sorts of alarmed noises even as a few of the flying voltcoil wyrms circled overhead, responding to the cries. She didn’t need to defend herself from them.

They wouldn’t attack her. Not without higher authority than the overseer possessed.

The wheels of the gantry spun against the tracks, trying to get some distance from her heat. But it was too late. It had been too late by the first few seconds. The sudden attempt at motion just revealed the mess that had been made of the gantry’s leg as it buckled and collapsed.

A reinforcing bar snapped under the strain of the rest of the gantry, flying directly toward her. The heat bubble surrounding her turned it into a metallic vapor well before it hit. Her control was so precise these days that she didn’t even leave molten footsteps in her wake as she stepped forward.

The mangled mess of the gantry melted away before her, leaving her a clear path to the immobile but still swiveling overseer eye. It darted around in a panic until she got close enough. Then, it locked onto her.

“Try to stop me and I will turn this entire sector into slag. Think of the efficiency loss.” Agnete leaned over the eye, making sure her point was made. “There is only one being who can stop me. And I doubt THEY will. Us fighting would probably turn this entire realm into a puddle of molten waste.” Agnete paused a moment then added, almost as an afterthought, “Besides, I was promised aid.”

At least, she thought she had been promised aid. The conversation with the Burning Forge had been… a bit confusing to say the least.

Agnete stared one moment more before turning away. The overseer didn’t try to stop her this time. It couldn’t even move.

Also, it might have been too damaged to give a response. Some of the servitors would likely come along the moment she wasn’t around and fix it up. Or scrap it. One of the two. Either way, Agnete wasn’t concerned about it.

Who, on the other hand, folded her arms as Agnete turned back to the portal. She had recently drawn up some preliminary ideas for giving Who a proper face, one she could manipulate mechanically to show off emotions or move a mouth in the hopes of disturbing others a bit less. Right now, Agnete didn’t need any kind of complex clockwork face to see the disapproval radiating off the construct.

“Was that really necessary, Agneᛏe?”

“Maybe not. But I did ask nicely several times over my stay here and was always denied access to the portal.”

“You didn’t ever fill out the proper form…”

“I can requisition material in five minutes with a single word. These forms they keep talking about are just there for obstruction purposes. Besides, they never once delivered a form to me when I asked.”

Who shifted. If she had a face, she would have looked exasperated. “You probably forgot to fill out the Preliminary Acquisition Document for the Acquisition of Standardized Form Requests.”

“I’m not going to fill out a form to request a form,” Agnete said with a shake of her head. “Especially because I’d probably have to fill out a form to request the form request form. If you want to go fix the overseer, be my guest. I’ve got a job to do.”

Who let out a warbling whistle noise that gave the impression of a sigh. “Would you like for me to activate the inserᛏer?” she asked, gesturing toward the mechanical arm near the bank of keystones.

“If you would,” Agnete said, reaching into the breast pocket of her fresh suit. Despite her activity, there wasn’t a single scorch mark on the fabric. The paper she pulled from the pocket was more than ash. She couldn’t help her smile. She probably looked silly, grinning at a diagram of the archway and all the configuration changes she needed to make, but holding proof of her control’s precision felt good.

Contrary to her words to the overseer, she was somewhat leery that the one being here would object to her actions. The Burning Forge had given her that control. While Agnete felt like she had fought for it and managed to keep her powers through sheer willpower, that control and her powers in general could likely be taken away just as easily.

Agnete didn’t feel like THEY would throw away an avatar over relatively nothing, but a god’s mind was impossible to read almost by definition.

During the meeting with the Burning Forge, Agnete had effectively offered to build a city in Mystakeen in the Anvil’s image. In exchange, She offered aid. Hopefully, a little miscommunication with the overseer wasn’t going to change that.

Either way, Agnete needed to get back as soon as possible.

The whale ships weren’t like the flying ship that had bombed the hell out of the undead army. Lexa could wrap her head around that ship. It was an ocean-faring ship that could fly. Strange and unusual, yes, but considering everything else, a flying ship wasn’t worth a confused blink of an eye.

But the whale ships… something about them filled Lexa with unease. A disquiet in her chest at the mere sight of them wormed its way under her skin. It wasn’t something she could easily explain. If it had just been a whale, she might not have noticed the oddity. If a ship could fly, why not a fish or whale or any other creature of the sea? But the whale ships weren’t quite like that.

Lexa stood there, watching the wind twist and curl in unnatural patterns where the ship was resting. Small swirling clouds of dust chased each other across the trodden-down dirt until they lost their energy and died, only to be reborn elsewhere as fresh wind picked up. Although she could see the whale ship, it felt like there was something else there as well, lurking in the space around it.

The ship itself felt wrong as well. It was metallic and hollow, given the ports on the sides where workers were moving supplies and gear. On any other ship—on regular ships, carriages, and even Arkk’s walking fortress—she might expect to see someone up top, driving the vessel. The helmsman’s bridge, the carriage driver’s seat, and the fortress command room with its great windows looking down below. Given that the whale ships didn’t look like people were meant to sit on its back, Lexa figured the ship would have something akin to the walking fortress. Large windows with a helm somewhere behind.

There were no windows.

There were eyes.

Uncannily fleshy eyes. They swiveled about, glistening with moisture as they rolled in their sockets. They blinked with heavy metal shutters clamping down before slowly lifting back up. They weren’t human eyes. Nor like any kind of demihuman or beastmen eye that Lexa had seen. The eye itself had dozens of colors all swirled together. A squiggly black line cut through it, almost resembling the smile of a cat in how the corners and the middle were lifted up while the rest swooped downward. The line widened and narrowed like a pupil as it focused on anything that moved in its surroundings.

The fins bothered Lexa as well. Their movements, even lying on the ground like this, were far too organic. She had peaked into the Anvil through crystal balls and seen the mechanical creatures within. Those creatures moved with a stiff rigidity befitting of their metallic nature. The whale ship should have been the same, but it wasn’t. It was like some kind of cross between a living creature and one of the Anvil’s mechanical beings.

Lexa pulled her shadowy cloak around herself a little tighter as the creature’s eyes swept over her hiding spot.

It was her job to take it out. If possible. Given the restricted loadout she was able to carry as a small gremlin, the few alchemical bombs she carried in small clay orbs might not be enough to do serious structural damage. She couldn’t carry one of the big clay jars even if she wasn’t trying to sneak around. So, the plan was simple: she was to sabotage it in any way she could, likely by blowing up anything that glowed or had too complex of a magical array.

To do that, she had to get closer.

Worse, she had to get inside.

Given a highly secured manor like that of the Duke’s, she would be in and out without even thinking about it. A prison? Couldn’t hold her any better than it could hold water. But that thing? Lexa shuddered, stomach twisting.

She took a step forward. Unsettling or not, she had a job to do.

Two workers stepped out of the side hatch as Lexa crossed the field. She had been watching for a while now, noting the people coming and going. Unless a bunch of people had been hiding out prior to her arrival, the craft should have only three people in it right now. She almost wanted to wait around and see if they would leave too, but she couldn’t risk the whale taking to the skies. If that happened, she would have to sulk back to Arkk with a failed mission on her hands.

And if it took off while she was on it, sabotaging it would become a rather awkward affair.

She was a gremlin, not a harpy.

Nothing stopped her from reaching the ramp into the whale ship. Guards—armored in the Eternal Empire’s white and black—were posted around the perimeter and at the entrance. Between her shadowy cloak and the stealthy spells she knew, not a one of them so much as glanced in her direction. The eye of the whale ship didn’t seem to notice either, but it was harder to tell which way it was looking with its odd shape.

Creeping inside, Lexa slowed even further.

The inside was worse than the outside.

She expected something like Fortress Al-Mir except condensed down into the space of the whale ship. Hallways, rooms, and metal or wood holding it all together. What she got was a strange fusion of meat and metal. The walls pulsed slightly under her fingertips, expanding and shrinking like the metal could breathe. Every so often, a thin membrane like the wing of a bat stretched across a corridor or doorway, blocking access. At one of them, she could hear voices on the other side—the other workers, presumably—so she figured they could open. There were no levers or handles or anything to indicate how.

Other thresholds were open, letting her peek inside various storage areas. A worker pried open a crate within one, pulling long metal tubes out to hang on hooks on the walls. Parts for the ship? Or weapons of some kind? It was hard to tell. If they were metal versions of Arkk’s clay bombs, it could be a worthwhile target for her sabotage.

For now, she would keep looking and see if there was anything more guaranteed.

A slick squelch almost had her making a noise. One of the membranes pulled back right in front of Lexa. She pressed herself up against the wall as another worker stepped out. With the talking earlier and the worker at the crate, she had thought she had an accounting of all the people. But this guy stepped out looking exhausted. His outfit, a black tunic with the white swords of the Eternal Empire embroidered on his chest, was slick with sweat—Lexa hoped it was sweat.

He didn’t notice her. He walked right past, movements stiff and more mechanical than the metal whale. Like a puppet on strings. A foul alchemical stench wafted in his wake.

The membrane slid closed behind him, squelching once more. He made no motion to close it, so she figured it must be something like Fortress Al-Mir. The doors wouldn’t open unless someone part of the place was there to open them.

That could pose a problem going forward. Would knocking one of the workers out and dragging them in front of a door work? Or did it take a conscious effort to open them?

Savren might have been the better infiltrator if the latter was the case.

The deeper Lexa went, the more the surroundings changed. The metallic components seemed to grow ever more organic, pulsating and oozing. The walls grew slick and damp while the air grew heavy and humid. The thick smell of rot started to overpower the fresh air coming in from behind her.

A sudden fear that she was walking down some creature’s digestive tract welled up inside her. The whale ship already had her uneasy but walking herself in to be eaten? It was enough to make her want to give up. What was a failed mission compared to being slowly digested in the bowels of some monster?

It was hard to stay focused. There had to be something she could blow up. Some vital-looking component or a magical array that kept the whole thing alive. Those racks of metal tubes from earlier came to mind, but it was so close to the outer edge of the ship that it probably wouldn’t even damage the bulk of it. Was that enough?

Lexa took a step back, then another. She turned around, only to spot an opening she had walked right past in her distracted thoughts. The corridor beyond was even more meat-like. Even the floor went from metal to thick yellowed cartilage. Veins in the walls pulsed and thumped to a steady beat. A beat which she could hear, coming from further down the meaty corridor.

Another membrane and the end of the corridor separated her from whatever was making that noise.

Her imagination filled in the gaps.

The repeated thumping. The pulsing in the walls. The meat.

It was a heart. Not like the maze-covered stone that was the Heart of Fortress Al-Mir or the shadowy orbs that served as the cores of the walking fortresses. This was a heart. The core of a living being. Whatever monster this was—she doubted the Eternal Empire had built them here, more like grown them—it was alive and this was its core.

Lexa’s fingers itched to pull her whole bandoleer of clay orbs off her shoulders and just set them right up against the membrane-like door. Although small, they were still volatile. Would they do enough damage through the door to take out the heart?

Lexa bit her lip.

No. She couldn’t take the chance. Better to ensure this abomination went to whatever hell it had crawled out from. She had to get the door open.

But how?

Drag a worker in front of it? That might work…

Or maybe…

An idea popped into Lexa’s head.

All she had to do was get one of the workers to open it on his own. Lure one here. Maybe make him think something had gone wrong inside and consciously open the door. That would surely work better than trying to shove an unconscious body into the membrane.

Besides, if she couldn’t lure someone, she could always try knocking someone out afterward.

 

 

The sun was beginning to dip below the horizon. Long shadows cast over the streets of Elmshadow, stretched out from the mass of freshly built buildings into eerie shapes. The twin mountains on the north and south sides of the burg made even longer shadows that covered huge sections of the valley. Even they looked curled and unpleasant.

Thorne shuddered.

Elmshadow was a creepy place. He thought that ever since he first arrived with the rest of Lord Bonsworn’s regiment. When Lord Bonsworn’s chief retainer came to him, levying him into service as part of the King’s Royal Armies for fighting off heretical invaders in Mystakeen, he had expected… anything other than what he had gone through. First being denied entry by the very people they were supposed to aid, then waiting while the Duke had been assassinated, the Prince taking over from the Duke, and finally arriving here… only to be told that they wouldn’t be fighting, then a few weeks later being told that they would have to fight after all. It had been six months since first setting out and he still hadn’t even seen the alleged enemy army.

Not that he was complaining. Some of the other regiments got it into their heads that they needed to be heroes.

They were probably dead by now.

Idiots.

But he couldn’t say he didn’t understand. The sooner he got away from Elmshadow, the better.

It wasn’t just the shadows every night. In fact, the shadows were about the only normal thing here. It was the mercenary company who held the burg like it was their own little fiefdom. They were a strange sort. The joint training that had started up since being told that they would be fighting the enemy at some point served more to demonstrate just how outclassed anyone normal was. Half the mercenary company seemed to be made up of orcs, all of whom had creepy shadowy armor that let them move as if they were wearing a light tunic while taking heavier hits than a fully plated knight. They had beastmen and demihumans and Thorne thought he had seen gorgon slithering about the place.

Strange.

But nothing was as strange as that tower. Yet another odd shadowy thing in the burg of odd shadows. Its bricks were dark and the maze-like designs that covered their bricks also seemed to cover near every building in the burg. An unsettling appearance that wasn’t helped by the wafting curls of black that flowed down its sides like fog.

Thorne shuddered again, deciding to turn away. He wished he was still up in those mountainside housings. They had been covered in maze patterns as well, but at least they looked like normal stone. Unfortunately, as one of Bonsworn’s captains, he had moved down here to observe the joint training exercises the rest of his men carried out.

“Something blew smoke up the hive tonight.”

Thorne glanced to his side, frowning as Rubee leaned against the house they had been assigned. She swept a lock of red out of her face, bringing a lit pipe to her face. She drew in, puffed out a few rings of smoke out the side of her lips, and grinned at him.

“What’s wrong? You look like you didn’t want to see me.”

Thorne shook his head with a small scoff. “Smoke under a hive tends to calm the bees,” he said. Bonsworn was a smaller vassal of the King out on the outskirts of Chernlock’s deserts, known for his vast fields and honey production. As such, Thorne knew a thing or two about beekeeping.

Rubee, on the other hand, came from Vaales. One of the Prince’s own handpicked. She wasn’t someone he particularly wished to draw the attention of.

Unfortunately, given that meeting like this had become a near nightly occurrence, it looked like he had failed to keep his head down far enough.

“Weren’t they your men who up and vanished?”

“No more my men than my men are yours.” Rubee puffed her pipe a few more times. “Tannen was in charge of them. He’s gone too. Raised a big fuss before he left, saying they needed to bring the fight to the enemy before it was too late. Bet they’re dead already? Or just decided to outright desert?”

“Idiots,” Thorne said, repeating his earlier thoughts. “Probably a mixture of both. Tannen might have believed in the fight. My coin in on half his men only joining to get far enough away to make a run for it.”

“Yeah, well, I can tell you that my Prince isn’t going to be happy about this. He’s sure to go on a rampage once he finds out…” Rubee trailed off, face contorting into a confused frown.

Before Thorne could ask what was wrong, he felt it. A low, thunderous groan rumbled through the air. The sound reverberated through his bones, making his teeth chatter like dice in a gambler’s cup. His head whipped around, searching for the threat as his hand went to his sword. A shadow swept over him, blocking the final rays of the dying sun momentarily.

A clatter behind him had him spinning, but it was just Rubee. She dropped her pipe. The long bit of wood made the noise against the ground.

Her expression had changed. Fear replaced the confusion. She stared, eyes wide and mouth agape at something over Thorne’s shoulder.

He whipped out his sword, turning to face whatever she had in her sight, only to freeze himself.

At first glance, nothing had changed. The burg stretched out around them. That massive fortress still dominated the skies with its towering battlements and countless arrow slits. But, it had changed. It was leaning, tilted off to one side.

For a moment, Thorne thought it was going to tip straight over, but it managed to stop itself.

Slowly, impossibly, one of the circular columns that had been built along its base began to rise. It pushed away from the rest of the tower, looking like the leg of a spider. Stones grated against each other, sending chills down Thorne’s spine at the unpleasant noise. More legs joined the first, unfolding from beneath the tower’s base.

The first leg came down onto the ground, helping to right the tilted tower. Thorne expected an explosive force, pushing outward, shaking the surrounding buildings to rubble. But the leg came down so gently. It still made a noise, but it was the noise of a distant, rumbling thunder rather than the violent shock of a sudden explosion.

Thorne staggered back, eyes wide, heart pounding against his ribcage. He bumped into the same wall Rubee had been leaning against. She hadn’t moved a muscle, but others had. Around him, the city’s inhabitants—almost exclusively the soldiers stationed here—rushed out of the buildings, ready to fight, only to freeze and gape alongside him and Rubee.

Those legs lifted, stretched forward, and settled down again with gentle thunderclaps. It moved awkwardly, like it was always trying to maintain contact with the ground with at least four of its legs. But that didn’t stop it from moving. In a mere four steps, it crossed over the western wall of the burg. Five more and it was about out of the field beyond.

It took a force of willpower to pull his eyes off the tower as it put distance between itself and the burg. He knew there was something creepy about this place. If there was anyone who could explain, one of the joint training captains would be the one. But, as his eyes swept over the crowd of people who had come out to see what was going on, he couldn’t find a single member of Company Al-Mir among them.

He was about to charge off looking for one of their hosts when movement caught his eye. Rubee bent. With trembling fingers, she plucked her pipe off the ground. She tried to smoke it again, only to find that it had gone out. Still shaking, she upended the pipe, dumping the contents with a light tap against the wall, before taking a fresh pinch of hash from her pouch. With a muttered incantation, she lit the pipe again using flames burning at the tips of her fingers.

Five wobbling rings of smoke later, she visibly calmed down. “Lighty Light,” she muttered. “Didn’t expect it to be so… mobile.”

“You knew?”

“Heard it could move. My Prince told us all.” She puffed at her pipe a few more times. “You didn’t hear about Company Al-Mir much, I take it.”

Thorne clenched his teeth, glaring around the streets again. Not a sign of even one mercenary among them. “Must have forgotten to tell us,” he ground it. “They’re gone? Just like that?”

“First they reject our help on account of Evestani being too powerful, then they ask us to help, and now they rush off without us. Typical.”

“Typical? This has happened before?”

“Well, not this exactly. Still, rather relax than fight anyway. Fighting hurts—”

A sharp shout cut through the growing noise of the gossiping soldiers. “Rally!” cried the grating voice of Magatherion Goth. He charged on horseback into the fray with an odd look of glee on his portly face. “Rally all soldiers!”

“Light,” Rubee groaned. “Spoke too soon.”

Thorne frowned, watching as Goth rode along, crying out to all the garrisoned soldiers. He didn’t like their obstinate commander. He had overheard the man giving out contradictory orders, seemingly for no reason other than his own amusement. Thorne doubted his competence and was willing to bet that the only reason he was in charge was because he was the childhood friend of some noble.

Unfortunately, he was in command.

Thorne shot Rubee a small frown before turning away. He had Bonsworn’s men to command.

“Is there something wrong with the tower?” Rekk’ar asked as he braced himself against the window frame.

The movement of the tower couldn’t actually be felt while inside. Some magic kept everything in place. Even a ball resting on a table wouldn’t roll off no matter how far the tower tilted. At least to a point. When Arkk had thrown those golden statues out of the tower during the siege of Elmshadow, he had tipped the tower near horizontal. Things had fallen, broken, and otherwise moved about then.

That didn’t stop Rekk’ar from holding on like he was going to be thrown around. It was somewhat understandable, given that he was looking out the window. Seeing the world around tilting and swaying messed with something deep inside. Several of Arkk’s employees refused to go near any openings to the outside world when the tower was in motion, a few after spontaneously vomiting. Rekk’ar wasn’t one of those. If anything, Rekk’ar was quite proud of his constitution.

Normally.

“It’s like we’re limping,” Rekk’ar said. “You fixed everything up after the golden ray hit the tower, right?”

“Nothing is broken,” Arkk said, standing in the middle of the large observation window with his hands clasped behind his back. He wasn’t sure if he had exceptional constitution as well or if him being the owner of the tower granted him some immunity to the effects of it moving—he didn’t feel a thing even as it swung from leaning to the left to leaning to the right like some kind of inverted pendulum. “The tower is moving exactly as I’m directing.”

“I hate it.”

“Then don’t look outside,” Arkk said with a shake of his head. “It’s what we discussed in the meeting. The tower needs to make constant contact with the rest of the land. Once a leg hits the ground, lesser servants rush out, claiming territory, digging tunnels, and connecting the leg to the rest of my territory. Yes, it makes the gait odd, but it is necessary.”

If the Heart lost connection with the rest of Elmshadow, even for a moment, his claim over the land would dissipate. Every building within its walls had been rebuilt using the magic of the fortress, granting everything the magical reinforcement necessary to survive the tower stomping around so close to the burg. While the Burg was far from filled relative to how it had been before the war, there were contingents of soldiers and even several civilians living within.

He couldn’t let the burg collapse on them.

Even after the tower moved far enough away, he wanted to maintain the connection for as long as possible. Indefinitely, preferably. Claimed territory was power for him and the Heart, it was tactically valuable for the rapid movement of his employees, and, generally, he just didn’t want to. Some part of the back of his mind identified the land as his. He wasn’t about to let it go if possible.

Things were easy right now. His lesser servants had been burrowing outward around Elmshadow, claiming underground territory about as far as the eye could see. It was a simple matter to send out a few lesser servants to bridge the tower’s legs to the rest of his land. Things would slow down immensely once he moved beyond his current territory. Lesser servants were already trying to dig out ahead of the tower, but even at the slowed gait, the tower would outpace them in only an hour. Two if they worked fast enough.

“Any evidence of our deserter friends?” Arkk called out.

The scrying pits were fully staffed today. Both crystal balls sat atop their pedestals with a trio of scryers watching each. Each crystal ball could only view one thing at a time but the extra eyes helped to spot things one person might miss as well as allowed for them to rotate who was manning the devices, giving each other breaks from what was often a monotonous yet mildly draining task.

Camilla popped her head up. Arkk tried not to wince at seeing her face. He only had a few fairies working for him. Camilla was one of them.

“No, Sir,” the blonde fairy squeaked. She coughed, clearing her throat, then continued speaking in a more average pitch, “No tracks or sign of a large group camping.”

Arkk couldn’t hold back a disappointed hum. If he hadn’t checked the barracks, he might have thought Mags was lying or misinformed. But a tenth of the soldiers really were missing. He expected some sign of them by now. Unless they hadn’t marched off toward Woodly Rhyme at all. It was entirely possible that he was being misled.

Speaking of Woodly Rhyme… Arkk turned to the other scrying pit. “Any activity among Evestani or the Eternal Empire? Have they noticed our departure yet?”

Luthor didn’t take his eyes off the crystal ball. “If they have, they a-aren’t showing it,” he said. The chameleon beastman squinted into the ball. “Most of Woodly Rhyme is still covered in that fog though.”

Arkk nodded, then asked, “Are the whale ships still visible?”

“Yes, Sir. Still on the ground.”

“Good. Let me know the moment something changes. I doubt we’ll make it a full hour before they realize we’re moving.”

Arkk was about to turn away when Luthor did look up. “Uh, Sir,” he said. “Seems like the Prince’s army is trying to follow us.”

Focusing on the crystal ball, Arkk frowned. Mags was atop a horse, leading presumably all the remaining soldiers. They were all outside the Burg’s walls. Not far outside, but outside enough to tell that they weren’t going to stop.

“Maybe we should stop and pick them up?” Rekk’ar said, wobbling a little as he stepped away from the windows. His hand gripped tight to a railing. “They want to be fodder, I say let them.”

Rekk’ar’s suggestion did little to ease Arkk’s frown. “The tower is large, but not nearly ten-thousand-people large.” He folded his arms, glaring at the figure of Mags at the head of the army. “I’m not too keen on inviting the demon inside either.”

“You say we’ll slow down once we reach the end of your current territory?” Rekk’ar asked. “Slow enough for them to catch up?”

“I suppose that depends on how fast they can move and how fast we can move. I’m not sure about us. Not like we ever tried to move while keeping everything connected before.”

Arkk could guess how long it would take for the lesser servants to do their jobs and keep the planted legs connected. He had worked with them enough to know how they handled themselves. But he wouldn’t know until they reached that point. Unforeseen complications might crop up. And he was a little wary about leaving a single, exposed pathway back. With no redundancies, it was vulnerable to enemy action as well as a single slip-up on his end.

He could try to run above-ground connections while digging out tunnels, but the latter would take far longer. And if the tunnels were directly beneath the overland claimed territory, that wasn’t much of a redundancy. Where was the sweet spot between speed and having a backup?

He wasn’t sure. But he had an hour to figure it out.

“Sir,” Luthor said, cutting into his thoughts. “One of the w-whale ships…”

Arkk focused on the crystal ball immediately.

All the side hatches were closing up. Lights along its sides started glowing like someone had planted dozens of glowstones into small ports. It looked like something from the Anvil more than it did anything he was familiar with, except some small part of those glowing blue lights gave him the impression of something organic.

The large fin-like shapes jutting off the whale ship started moving, gently raising and lowering. Slowly, befitting the colossal size of the thing, it lifted off from the ground. The shadow underneath shrank as it gained altitude.

Arkk scowled. He had hoped to get out there before the Eternal Empire was ready.

“The other whale ships?”

There were two others that looked ready or nearly ready to take flight. Luthor quickly switched the viewpoint of the crystal ball. Both others were still on the ground, hatches open with no lights on their sides. That was good. For now. Arkk wasn’t sure how far along the other two were. He considered another sabotage attempt. But after the disaster that was his last effort at destroying them…

Maybe something different?

“Rekk’ar, get me as many of the smaller alchemical explosives that you can. Nothing more than what Lexa can carry.”

 

 

Arkk could feel the demon at work behind the scenes.

How else would one thousand one hundred thirty-eight deserters slip away without anyone noticing? Most had been at the mountain hive where Arkk had sequestered the soldiers when he was still planning on them doing nothing but watching. They didn’t have the rebuilt walls of Elmshadow keeping them in. But still, someone should have noticed. There wasn’t much cover in the fields west of Elmshadow that would have hidden them from casual scrying.

His scrying team had been busy.

Had the demon caused the reveal with the Eternal Empire’s whale ships? Just to hide these soldiers, just to draw the Prince’s ire toward Arkk?

“Have you found them yet?” Arkk asked, arms crossed as he stood between his two scrying teams. He was well aware that his eyes were glowing more intensely than usual. He didn’t do a thing to try to stop it.

“No, Sir,” Harvey said, sounding upset. “How do a thousand people, presumably geared up in armor, hide themselves while moving like this?”

“Let’s just say I have suspicions about why we can suddenly see the Eternal Empire’s ships.”

What did one thousand people think they were capable of accomplishing against an army twenty times their size? Arkk had been planning on the same thing, but he had powerful weapons and personnel at his command. The Prince’s army were all regular people, mostly human with a handful of demihumans thrown in. No beastmen.

Even the greatest fools wouldn’t rush headlong into their deaths like this.

But if they had somehow acquired an artifact that rendered them imperceivable, their confidence might swell. A thousand invisible soldiers wouldn’t have a hard time slitting the throats of every enemy combatant while they slept. Or even while they were awake. Arkk doubted it would be that easy. In addition to those offensive rays, the Golden Order’s avatar seemed to specialize in defensive uses of that power. Defense seemed more prevalent, even, between using that power to march through the winter to using it to protect from Arkk’s various attempts at bombardment. Even possessing other bodies could be considered defensive.

But the idiots marching toward their deaths wouldn’t know that.

“Nothing in the f-fields,” Luthor said. “Expanding search area.”

“I’m about a hundred paces into the forest, sweeping up and down. If you want to start at the Woodly Rhyme end, maybe we’ll pincer them.”

“S-Sure.”

They couldn’t have gotten that far. Not unless Mags was lying about when he thought they had left—it wasn’t that Arkk trusted Mags, it was just that he doubted a thousand people could sneak off without supernatural invisibility. Assuming that came from the Eternal Empire, perhaps in the form of some artifact, there was a limit to how long they could possibly have been gone.

But he wasn’t holding out much hope for the scrying team to find anything.

“Keep searching,” Arkk said, turning away. “Don’t just look for the people. A thousand soldiers can’t march without leaving tracks behind.”

Unless the demon hid those as well.

If anything, this incident made Mags less likely to be the demon. The demon would be with the deserters, cloaking them.

It was a good thing he hadn’t had Kia and Claire kill the infuriating man.

Arkk teleported himself. All of his forces who were currently able were on hand today. He had even recalled Ilya and Vezta, taking time away from her learning how to construct rooms in order to utilize her abilities here. Priscilla was still out, unfortunately. Whatever caused her recent injuries left scars behind that weren’t healing as well as Hale thought they should. Agnete and Who had returned to the Anvil, temporarily, as they sought out some assistance.

That left him with distressingly few specialists that he could send out. He was wary about having Kia and Claire move out of range of his teleports. He needed to be able to move them to the Heart chamber the moment he felt anything amiss. Lexa could slip through just about anything with her spells and the cloak, but an assassin wasn’t what he needed at the moment. Dakka and the orcs of the newly reformed Black Knights, the Shieldbreakers, and anyone trained to use the counter-demon equipment Zullie had produced weren’t slouches, of course, but he still wanted heavy hitters ready to deploy should the avatar, or demon, decide to act.

Arriving at the top of the tower, Arkk planted his hands on the crenellations, leaning over the side. He squinted, hair whipping around his head. The wind was a bit brisk today, especially as high up as he was. It wasn’t like he would have been able to see anything that his scrying team had missed anyway. He was up here solely for the way it helped clear his head.

The demon. The Prince. The enemy at their doorstep. The first was the most pressing issue. It was causing problems. Direct sabotage. Likely the only thing keeping them from being killed was his surprisingly good relationship with the Prince. Something the demon knew and was clearly trying to undermine.

Could he cut off communications with the Prince? Intercept any outgoing letters?

Unlikely. If the demon could orchestrate this mess, it could find a way of getting word back to Cedric. It probably couldn’t lie to the Prince. If it could, it would have been easy enough to say that Arkk had gotten all his men killed, negating the need to go through with this convoluted plot. Until the demon was found and dealt with, he had to be as accommodating toward the Prince as possible.

A brief thought of assassinating the Prince flickered through his mind. He dismissed it as quickly as it came. Not only would the mere action of ordering Lexa to attack the Prince probably count as becoming his enemy, but it would also result in a rogue demon on the loose. That would be so much worse than the current situation, he couldn’t even imagine…

Savren was working on something that would hopefully identify anyone who wasn’t who they said they were. Now that it had revealed itself and its capabilities, it wouldn’t be long before he had a proper solution.

After that, he would have to focus on the Prince. The man couldn’t be allowed to summon a second demon. It was best to not think about how he was going to go about that now, however. Not unless he wanted the demon showing up and killing him before he could get the thought out.

Then there was the problem of the actual army perched upon his windowsill. He had been letting them sit there, gathering strength, because he felt he had been gathering more strength. The longer they delayed, the more options, the more tools, and the more forces Arkk would have at his disposal. That was partially true, especially if opening up more realms brought him more equipment to use, but now he wasn’t sure that he was growing faster than Evestani.

Not with what the Holy Light’s avatar had said about those flying ships. They could rain down enough destruction to change the landscape.

His sabotage had destroyed a few, but not all of them. They were still grounded. They could even be building more of them elsewhere. If Arkk had that kind of magic at his disposal, he would be building a few here to get into the air as soon as possible while building even more at Fortress Al-Mir, ready to swoop in wherever they were needed.

Could he afford to let them get into the air? Between the ships and the avatar’s abilities, and the possibility that the Almighty Glory’s avatar was scurrying about like a rat as well, he wasn’t so sure about defending Elmshadow any longer. Even if he did use the Prince’s army.

Arkk frowned to himself, casting his gaze at the lands below the tower. Everything he had constructed here. All built with the power of the fortress, it would lose its reinforcing magic the moment he moved the tower. He had claimed territory as far as he could see, and even a bit further. No conventional army could stand up to even a hundred of Dakka’s Black Knights if he actively teleported them back and forth throughout his territory, helping them dodge any dangerous attack. It was part of the reason he had been so confident he could have taken on the combined Evestani-Empire army without the aid of the Prince.

Now his grand plan was holding him here. Keeping him from advancing forward with the force of the tower at his back, keeping him from sending Kia and Claire out into the field where they could do the most damage, keeping…

Arkk lifted an eyebrow. He looked up, eying the large fields, the river that snaked through it, and the forest beyond. Woodly Rhyme took a few days to reach by foot travel through the forest, less for horses.

Perhaps…

Arkk teleported down to the central meeting room. All his advisors teleported in from their stations at the same time. The last time he had taken a walk around the roof and come up with a plan, Kia had ridiculed him for not discussing it with his advisors.

Rekk’ar, Olatt’an, Ilya, Vezta, Zullie, Savren, Alma, Khan, Dakka, Lyssa, Lexa, Kia, Richter, and even Perr’ok stood around the table with varying levels of confusion on their faces. Most quickly adapted and took their seats. Vezta moved to her usual spot just behind his chair. Such teleports weren’t out of the ordinary and weren’t worth grumbling about. Richter was a bit slower on the uptake, though he quickly followed suit with the others, and Perr’ok looked surprised to be included at all. The blacksmith shuffled around, watching in obvious discomfort as the others all took seats they knew were theirs. Arkk, catching his eye, gave a slight nod to one of the empty chairs. With a grateful look, he sat down and quickly composed himself.

“I think,” Arkk started, planting both hands on the table as he leaned over it, “we have nothing to gain by maintaining the defense of Elmshadow.”

That noisy sort of silence filled the room. A breath as his inner circle processed his words.

The silence departed abruptly, replaced with a noisy sort of noise. Khan and Perr’ok refrained from joining in. The former, as was usual for the gorgon, simply settled down on his heated rock and waited. The latter looked around the rest of the group with an awed bewilderment. They were the only ones. Everyone else had to make their opinion known. Arkk was surprised at some of the sudden voices. Kia’s especially. While not as stoic as Claire, the dark elf was generally reserved.

“Running away?” Kia barked out, voice overpowering the rest for a brief moment. “We can take ’em! Send me and Claire in and we’ll grind them to paste ourselves!”

Of course, she wanted to charge headlong into battle.

“The people here are counting on us,” Ilya said, close enough to him to put a hand on his arm. “And if we stop the defense, the rest of Mystakeen… It’ll be just like before we took back the burg.”

Olatt’an, though his voice remained at his usual neutral level, managed to make himself heard through sheer presence. “I presume there is a good reason for abandoning territory we’ve fought and bled for.”

“Master.” Even Vezta joined in with a heavy note of disapproval in her tone. “I concur with the orc. We spent weeks claiming every scrap of land and burrowing beneath the land. All that effort claiming territory will go to waste if we move the tower.”

On and on it went. Rekk’ar thumped his fist against the table. Dakka and Lyssa agreed with Kia, wanting to fight rather than flee. Savren sought to scan Arkk, searching for subtle synapse stimulations that might suggest cerebral sabotage. Richter, having joined solely because Arkk was the one standing in the way of Evestani’s first invasion, was actually straining on the link. It was close to snapping in his case.

Arkk held up his hands, calling for them to calm down.

Alma bit her lip, chewing a little before trying to talk over the ongoing arguments. “You can’t possibly want to fight,” she said, not to Arkk but to her fellow werecat. Lyssa growled back, only for Alma to sit up straighter. “If Arkk says to leave, there is something out there that we can’t handle. Listen to your head for once, not your bloodlust.”

“Are we trying to escape the demon?” Zullie asked, “Because I think I have a few more ideas—”

“You haven’t finished formulating your freshest fancies, now you’re fishing for more? You’d contribute to this conflict more if you chose one idea and completed it counter to commencing continuous half-cocked creations—”

“Oh, like you would know. Found your notes yet?”

“You—”

“What of the avatar?” Lexa asked, her simple question pulled thin by the tension in the back of her throat. “We can’t leave that monster alive.”

Arkk snapped his fingers, teleporting everyone to a random seat at the same time. The sudden teleportation, following disorientation, and confusion as they found themselves staring across the table at someone they hadn’t been expecting bought him a precious moment of silence. A moment he used to slam his hands down on the table.

“If you all would let me finish,” he shouted, red eyes burning so bright that he could see his face reflected in Zullie’s rectangular glasses. He waited a second, making sure he wouldn’t be interrupted, before letting out a small sigh. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have started with that.

“We’ll be abandoning the defense to go on immediate offense,” Arkk said.

That noisy sort of silence filled the room. Again.

Arkk opened his mouth but didn’t manage to beat the sudden voices shouting across the table at each other. Kia, Richter, Dakka, and Lexa started shouting at everyone who advocated for more caution. Zullie and Savren picked up on their argument right where they had left off. Vezta was still concerned about losing access to all the territory they had claimed.

With a snap, Arkk shuffled the room around once more. “If I have to throw you all into separate corners of the fortress and talk to you individually, I will,” he threatened, skimming his gaze over everyone. He deliberately let the silence hang this time, daring someone to speak. Nobody took him up on it. “We aren’t going to get a better opportunity to attack. Those airships are grounded still, but they won’t be for long. More importantly, they are visible. Agnete is back and she is trying to requisition support from the Anvil. We have a full stock of charged glowstones.”

“What of the demon?” Olatt’an asked, speaking up in a deliberately respectful tone. “Is it wise to make our moves with that thing causing havoc?”

“That is the one blight,” Arkk admitted, allowing the interruption this one time. “But unless Zullie can accurately locate the demon now…” He paused, looking at the witch. She shook her head in a sorry negative. “Then the demon will only continue escalating the problems it has been causing until it manages to succeed in its goal of turning us against the Prince or the Prince against us. There is a minor benefit in that our enemies are also the Prince’s enemies. The demon may just put harassing us on hold to revel in the destruction of opponents it can actually strike at.”

Vezta’s lips twisted into a faint frown. “A dangerous proposition,” she said with obvious disapproval. “A lot can happen in the chaos of battle.”

“A lot can indeed,” Arkk said, nodding his head. “Which is why we’re having this meeting. We are going to eliminate as many risks—from demon, avatar, and conventional army—as possible.” He looked over the table once again. “Any questions?”

That noisy sort of silence hung over the table.

Arkk braced himself for the start of a very long meeting.

 

 

The first thing was the easier task to deal with.

“Report,” Arkk said as he teleported into the command center.

His scrying teams, hunched over their crystal balls, jerked upon his announcement. Harvey and Luthor glanced at one another, the latter nodding to the former. Luthor returned to scrying while the flopkin hopped over to Arkk, crystal ball in hand.

“Whatever magic hid those construction sites has fallen,” Harvey said, holding up the glass orb. “I don’t know if it was deliberate or accidental, but we can see what they’ve been working on.”

Arkk expected airships. They, combined with weapons that the Almighty Glory was said to provide to his worshippers, could fly untouched and unseen overhead while utterly annihilating anything beneath. Or so said the Holy Light’s avatar. Arkk didn’t have any reason to doubt that right now, especially since he had seen the destruction of his undead army. The bombs that blew apart his first foray into necromancy hadn’t come from nowhere.

But what he was looking at didn’t resemble a ship in the slightest.

Airship, as its name implied, was a ship in the air. A large boat, not unlike the warships that had attacked Prince Cedric at Cliff. Except flying. When Rekk’ar had first come to him, suspecting what was hidden in the skies above, Arkk had gone straight to Zullie for more information. He still remembered the magic she had used to lessen the weight of her books when she first traveled from the academy to Fortress Al-Mir.

Flying ships was an idea that came up time and time again at the academy, frequently proposed by ambitious and ill-educated initiates eager to distinguish themselves by finally solving this persistent challenge. The lack of ships soaring through the skies over Mystakeen was a testament to their success, or lack thereof.

A spellcaster of Zullie’s caliber could slap their hand on a crate of books, lessening its weight for an hour while the magic slowly drained from the ritual circle. Something larger and heavier, like a skiff, might be possible if she sat in the ritual circle and constantly maintained a weightless ritual—which would only last a few hours until exhaustion set in.

Lifting anything larger than a skiff into the air and keeping it there demanded significant magical power. Ritual circles could be expanded to include multiple casters, like the defensive spells Arkk had participated in, but each additional person just increased the weight of the craft even more. They would need to be rotated out regularly, meaning even more casters had to be on board, themselves increasing the weight further along with expansions to the craft to hold them all. It was a self-perpetuating problem that theoretically could never reach equilibrium. And that was before adding in non-caster personnel, supplies, and any other items needing transport.

Including alchemical bombs.

The only explanation Zullie had come up with for the Eternal Empire’s alleged flying ships was that they had somehow solved that problem. Or they were cheating by using some gift from the Almighty Glory.

The latter made the most sense to him.

But he still expected something ship-like. Sails, boat-shape, maybe even oars sticking out the sides.

“What am I looking at?” Arkk asked after staring for a long few moments.

Harvey’s long ears twitched in annoyance. “How am I supposed to know?”

Arkk shook his head, looking away from the flopkin and back to the crystal ball, peering at the peculiar thing. It resembled a gargantuan, elongated fish, yet its shape was unlike any sea creature he had encountered. Not that, as a landlocked farmer, he had experienced all that many. Its smooth, metallic surface glistened in the sunlight, adorned with bright white glowing runes. Its vast hull tapered off at one end into a broad tail while two massive fin-like appendages extended from its sides.

“A w-whale,” Luthor called out from the other scrying station. “Seen them h-hauled into the harbor on occasion. Nobles like the taste of the meat. Never tried it myself.”

Harvey looked just as surprised as Arkk that the chameleon beastman knew what kind of creature the construction was modeled after. “I take it they don’t normally have metal skin,” Harvey said.

“No. Not that b-big either. Still quite large. Wide as a fishing trawler and just as long.”

Arkk looked back to the crystal ball, skimming over its surface until he found something to compare the size to. A human pushed a wheeled cart up a ramp. Unless the human was as small as a gremlin, the whale-ship was at least the size of two of the warships that had attacked the Prince, side-by-side, and four times as long.

“Move the view to one of the sites we targeted in the operation the other night.”

Harvey complied, sending the view in the crystal ball zooming across the landscape. It stilled with expert precision, landing directly on a blackened crater. A twisted metal husk sat, broken and destroyed, in the middle. Something… meaty was tangled up in the mass of metal, making up most of the carnage. It even bled, dripping out great swaths of red liquid onto the ground. A swarm of people moved about it, dismantling it? Probably to use the parts in one of the other constructions. Though Arkk wasn’t sure what they were doing about the flesh.

“At least we did some damage. It is concerning that they are revealing them now, though. Any sign of the one they came in?”

“Been checking the skies periodically,” Harvey said as the view in the orb pulled away from the ground. The perspective tilted back, showing mostly sky. It slowly spun around. “No sign of it. Not even a cloud out today.”

“Concerning…”

Could it have left? If the magic that hid the other craft stemmed from the one operational airship, that would explain why they were now visible. The question was, where had it gone? Away? To resupply? That would explain why this incursion didn’t seem to use supply lines. Or had it gone forward? Surely not to attack; why come alone when at least one of the others looked almost complete?

“Evestani’s army hasn’t moved, has it?”

“They’re using the fog to cloak themselves but haven’t seen the fog move at all. No soldiers marched out of it. I’d say they’re still in Woodly Rhyme.”

“Good. Keep watch. If any of these whale-crafts take to the skies, warn me immediately.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Arkk teleported away. He had alert levels to raise. All of Elmshadow was at a constant low-level of alert, but until things returned to normal, he wanted all defensive rituals manned, not just the most crucial ones, ready to activate the moment enemy ordinance fell anywhere nearby.

It took almost an hour to teleport around, ensuring the proper people knew what to do. The Protectors helped since informing one informed them all and they could relay further commands, but it still took a while. In the future, he hoped Ilya could help streamline such problems. At the moment, she was out at the other tower, learning from Vezta how to manage the walking fortress in preparation for her upcoming duties. And, hopefully, committing spells to memory.

All the while, a constant ringing was going off in the back of Arkk’s mind. Mags was still thumping his fist against the door. It was an irritating nuisance, made all the worse because if something did attack his fortress, he might not notice with all the commotion the man was making. He had thought the man would get bored after a few minutes, but he was still going.

He suspected that Mags somehow knew about the cloaking on the whale-ships being removed. Perhaps he had his own crystal ball. The timing was too coincidental otherwise.

Whatever the case, Arkk supposed it was time to deal with the issue.

Arkk teleported to the main entrance. Kia and Claire appeared along with him. While arranging the higher alert status throughout Elmshadow, he had stopped in and informed them of what was going on along with his suspicions regarding Mags.

Even if Mags wasn’t the demon, Arkk wasn’t about to meet with anyone of the Prince’s faction—or anyone else who lacked a link to him—without some anti-demon weaponry at his side.

He patted down his pocket, confirming the presence of a warp blade.

Arkk then looked up, turning from Kia to Claire and back again. The latter cracked her neck, the noise oddly echoing as afterimages copied the motion. Kia looked on with a mild frown.

“Should we not take his head,” Kia asked, swiping a hand through the air. An odd warbling vibration disturbed the air in her wake. “You know, just in case?”

“I would,” Arkk said with a shake of his head, “but assuming we’re right in the limitations on the demon’s contract, we are only protected as long as we’re not enemies with Prince Cedric. Attacking his army’s commander could easily violate that clause and open us up to whatever retaliation the demon chooses. Given its ability to skulk around in disguise and bide its time… you two might survive a sneak attack, but everyone else? Me? Ilya?” Arkk shook his head far more vehemently.

“Disappointing,” Claire said.

“Trust me. I feel the same. At the same time, if Mags does reveal himself to be the demon…”

Both dark elves shifted, growing a little more eager in their stances.

Arkk wasn’t sure if it was good or bad that his two dark elves, who admittedly had undergone a ritual designed to counter demons, were excited to fight one.

“…then I’m trusting you two to deal with him accordingly,” Arkk finished. He looked between the two of them, meeting both of their eyes, from Claire’s icy blue to Kia’s dark brown. There was a faint glow there, but then, their entire bodies were wreathed in their afterimages—even when they stood still, their eyes were still moving about, tracking things that Arkk couldn’t see which probably didn’t even exist in this reality. More importantly, he saw determination. “Play safe and smart. No mistakes.”

Claire nodded her head, her afterimages flickered and dissipated. Concentrating as she was, she could mostly hide the effects of Project Liminal. There was still a haze there, but it diminished to something Arkk would have missed had he not been looking for it.

Kia, not quite as experienced as Claire, tried to do the same. It wasn’t as effective. But it would do for now.

Arkk turned back to the main entrance and, with a thought, unbolted the door just as Mags started hammering on the other side once again. The portly man stumbled over the threshold as the door swung open before he could make contact, his foot knocking against the metal brace as he tried to stop himself.

He didn’t fall. It looked like he was going to. His stumbling, trying to stop himself, carried him a few steps forward. He might have crashed into Arkk were it not for Kia and Claire, moving forward as one. They were about to catch him when he slid a foot forward, finally righting himself just before reaching them.

It could have been a natural movement. Suspicions and paranoia high, Arkk couldn’t be sure. Bumping into Arkk might have been a way for the demon to try to provoke him—or Kia and Claire—somehow rendering them vulnerable to the terms dictated in the contract. If the demon realized what Kia and Claire were capable of, stopping short of coming into contact with them could be a clue that the ritual would work.

Or he could have simply tripped.

Kia and Claire didn’t move forward to make contact themselves. Claire’s fingers twitched, making her look as if she had eight fingers momentarily, but she quickly collected herself. Both stepped backward.

The temptation to order them to rake their hands through Mags’ chest was there. The only thing stopping Arkk was not knowing for certain that Mags was the demon and not some other individual in the Prince’s army. There were ten thousand of them. Plus logistic crew. If Arkk were a demon infiltrating the ranks, he wouldn’t have gone with the most visible person. He would have slipped in as one of the thousands.

“About time,” Mags mumbled to himself, meticulously smoothing down his dark blue suit, as if his slight tumble had gathered a coating of dust. He didn’t even look at Kia and Claire, too focused on himself. “Do you know for how long I waited?” he asked, picking a bit of imaginary lint from his shoulder.

“Deeply sorry,” Arkk lied. “Activity at Woodly Rhyme required my immediate attention.”

“Activity? In the invader army?”

“Indeed. Is that not why you came? You started knocking on my door at around the same time I was warned of the activity.”

“Do you mean to say—I say, do you mean to say that you knew! You knew the whole time and you left me out there to rot?” Mags finally turned his beady eyes on Kia and Claire, narrowing his gaze in obvious distaste. “You couldn’t have sent one of your attendants to permit me entry?”

“No.”

“Whyever not?”

“Trust is at a premium at the moment,” Arkk said. “Too many jackdaws strutting about in peacock feathers.”

That caught Mags short. He had his mouth open, another complaint already on the tip of his tongue, only to pause and give Arkk a strange look. He wasn’t the only one. Kia glanced at him, raising an eyebrow. Only Claire kept her razor-sharp focus centered on Mags.

“Excuse me? Birds? There is a war on and you’re babbling about birds?”

Arkk frowned at the confusion in Mags’ tone, trying to decide if it was genuine or not. He had picked up that phrase from a bard at some point. Although out of context here, it seemed fitting given what happened with the demon. He had hoped for some reaction, some tell that a demon would reveal while a normal person would…

Well, a normal person would look at him in confusion.

Arkk sighed, shaking his head. That reaction didn’t mean Mags wasn’t a demon, just that the demon was a good actor.

“The Eternal Empire was hiding large-scale construction projects through unknown magic. That magic has either been removed or has failed, possibly as a consequence of an operation we ran the other night. My scrying team believes the revealed construction projects to be flying ships, after a fashion. As commander of an allied army, I felt you should be informed that, should these airborne warships bombard us with magic or even alchemical ordinance, there will be little a conventional army can do to stand against them. Your men will be obliterated.”

“Trying to shove us aside again?” Mags asked with an odd smile. “You have a plan, don’t you?”

“It is in progress.” If Agnete could get those flying serpents over here en-mass, Arkk would feel a lot more confident. “Thus far, the airships are grounded. That allows us some time. And again, I have to ask, was this not what you came hammering on my door for?”

Mags jerked back in sudden surprise as though the change in topic surprised him. He quickly shook his head. “There is a more pressing issue, I’m afraid. It would appear as if some of the men got it into their heads that sitting around is detrimental toward defending the realm. They fear that the longer things stand without either side advancing, the more likely Evestani’s borders will be repainted at the edge of Woodly Rhyme.”

“As commander, is it not your duty to dissuade them of such notions?”

“I would,” Mags said, fidgeting in apparent nervousness. “Some of the men have already decided to take matters into their own hands. I couldn’t stop them. Black sheep dwell in every fold, Mister Arkk.”

Arkk narrowed his eyes at the phrase. It felt like a taunt. His tone was neutral but…

Kia shifted at Arkk’s side, uncrossing her arms. She must have picked up on it too. But Mags didn’t notice. He just stood there, looking worried.

“I’ve come to you to ask your assistance, Mister Arkk,” Mags continued before Arkk could decide whether or not to give Kia the signal. “If Prince Cedric learns that the men he has entrusted with me—with us—have gone to their deaths under a misguided notion of protecting the Greater Kingdom, he’ll have both our heads.”

That was it. That was the game. The Prince had contacted Arkk and forced a meeting through Katja out of concern for his men. He had effectively tipped Arkk off about the demon being present just to ensure their safety. So if some of those men ended up running off to their deaths under Arkk’s watch, even if it was because of their own idiocy, he might well consider Arkk an enemy, thus nullifying the protections against the demon.

Whether or not the men deserted on their own or because the demon influenced them didn’t matter. They were out there.

Arkk pinched his brow, grimacing. If Mags was the demon, he could end the threat right now and not have to worry about the deserters. If Mags wasn’t the demon, he would open up all of his men to demonic retaliation.

If Arkk swooped in and rescued the deserters, the demon would just try again to find some avenue that would lead to Arkk and the Prince considering one another enemies.

He needed to talk to the Prince and cut off the problem at its source or identify the demon with absolute certainty and rid the world of its presence. Both, ideally. But both would take time and going to meet the Prince while allowing his men to rush off to their deaths wouldn’t end well.

He had to rescue the fools.

 

 

“The things I was working on over there… You should have seen them.”

“I did see some of them,” Arkk said. “The lesser servant is over there even now. So far, nobody has come by your workshop to check on you.”

“Not surprising. I wasn’t… captive. At least, I don’t think I was. It’s just that only I and the leader of that place have the capability to create beings like Who. They figured now was a great time to increase production.”

Arkk closed his eyes, drawing a deep breath as he honed in on the artificial construct. She wasn’t one of his employees, so he had to extend his focus on the foundry itself. It wasn’t a problem. Within Fortress Al-Mir, he could see all. What he saw now was the anxious figure of Perr’ok fretting over one of his walking machines. The construct deconstructed it with a precision that bordered on the supernatural—which he should have expected of a walking, moving piece of metal. Her limbs moved with a speed that made them blur. If Arkk hadn’t known better, he might have thought she had undergone Project Liminal.

Every component she removed from the walker went on the floor, organized in lines and rows so perfectly that they could only be described as obsessive. Cogs were lined up by size, screws were set next to the components they came from, standing on end with the tallest on the left and the shortest on the right, and pipes formed a two-dimensional map of the dismantled parts of the walker.

Watching the construct move was something else entirely. Her head remained eerily still, almost detached, while her body rotated around her. One arm stripped apart a driving shaft while the other rearranged some of the components on the ground. Rather than hand the driving shaft from hand to hand, she twisted, moving to arrange the components along with the driving shaft while her empty hand began a fresh assault on another part of the machine.

Who, odd name aside, worked with speed and precision.

Arkk thought the display was both amazing and terrifying. “You’ve made more of it—of her?” If he could recruit a few—even just one would rocket production in the smithy to heights formerly unimaginable. If they could figure out what was wrong with the walkers, all the better. The ones he had, assuming they could get them working, were destined for Ilya’s tower, but more couldn’t hurt. A whole army outfitted with them would certainly help aid his efforts toward demonstrating just why it would be a poor idea for the King’s forces to go against him.

“More implies that Who isn’t unique,” Agnete said, cutting off Arkk’s thoughts. “She is, and she is the only construct that has remained as my assistant. I don’t actually complete any others. The Anvil can complete them on its own before sending them off to whatever jobs it has for them. I just need to craft the Black Box. Which, in effect, is them. The rest is just to allow them to interact with the world.

“Although their shell differs, from those lightning serpents to massive mobile foundry buildings to human-sized constructs, the Black Box is at all their cores. They effectively make up the entire population of the Anvil.”

Arkk hummed to himself, nodding along. It sounded fantastical. An entire population of machines? He had heard about mobile constructs, usually used to show off feats of magic conducted by large groups of spellcasters given how magically intensive they were. But, much like necromancy, they weren’t beings. They were puppets.

“There aren’t any people over there?” he asked before realizing what he might have implied. He quickly added, “I mean people like you and me, not these Black Boxes.”

“Not as far as I’m aware,” Agnete said, shaking her head in the negative. “I don’t know if there ever were, but I do know there didn’t used to be this many constructs. I think the Black Boxes are the Burning Forge’s solution to the overabundance of magic in the Anvil. They consume ambient magic to power themselves the same way we eat a loaf of bread.”

Arkk sat forward, concerned. “Is that going to be a problem here?”

“I’ve been keeping an eye on Who and she seems fine. It has only been a few hours. I’d also like to take her outside the fortress to see how she handles it. There is a healthy amount of ambient magic in here.”

Arkk nodded again, leaning back with a frown. The ambient magic in his world was at an all-time low. Both Vezta and Zullie agreed that magic had been much more prevalent a thousand years ago. The traitor gods and their Calamity were the cause. It had never been at the levels seen in the Underworld, but somewhere between.

If beings in the Anvil needed ambient magic to survive, one or two might live fine here. More than that and they could run into problems. He would have to confer with Zullie to be sure, and Agnete after she brought Who around. Following that line of thought, their home world posed a problem for him.

He was trying to undo the Calamity and its catastrophic effects both in his world as well as in other realms. But it sounded as if the Anvil had come up with its own solution for the problem. If magic started returning to its pre-Calamity levels in all realms, that solution would become a problem.

Arkk was a lot of things. He had killed a lot of people, both directly and indirectly. As Ilya had recently said, she hadn’t been able to keep her promise to rein him in. He was aware of that and accepted that, but he never would consider himself genocidal. Yet if he continued on his current course, he could very well be damning an entire world’s population.

It wasn’t certain. Just conjecture based on a single conversation. But, in his head, it sounded like pretty logical conjecture.

A solution popped into his mind.

Fortress Al-Mir. Its [HEART] amplified magic. Just contracting with it made him likely the most powerful non-avatar spellcaster in the world. And it only got stronger as he claimed territory, recruited employees, and spread his influence. How would Who react to an offer of employment?

“How many of these Black Boxes do you suppose live in the Anvil?”

“Hard to say. Could be as low as fifty thousand. Could be in the millions. I don’t know exactly how fast the Infernal Engine works or for how long it has been creating them. I don’t even know if they existed before the Calamity.”

Arkk let out a small laugh despite himself. Fifty thousand was a mind-boggling number to have as employees. Millions?

Now that he was thinking about it a little more, it seemed just a little bit absurd to think he could employ the entire population of another world.

“Something wrong?” Agnete asked. Her eyes, formerly dim embers, now burned like molten steel pulled fresh from a crucible. She cocked an eyebrow.

Arkk just shook his head. “Just ruminations on logistics.”

“If there is one thing the Anvil is good at, it is logistics.”

Considering that for a moment, Arkk eventually shook his head. “There are other things,” he mumbled to himself. Louder, he said, “How friendly would the denizens of the Anvil be if we managed to reopen a proper portal? They attacked on sight the first time around.”

If they were perpetually hostile, recruitment was an impossibility well before logistics became a consideration.

Agnete didn’t answer right away. Arkk took that as a less-than-promising sign.

He turned his focus back toward the foundry, watching as Perr’ok stopped fretting and moved in a little closer to Who. Both had their heads half up the walker’s backside. They must have found the root of the problem. A discussion ensured. Trying to find solutions? It seemed amicable enough.

Was that just because Agnete had told Who not to cause problems? Who was unique—they all were—according to Agnete. Did that mean the first encounter with denizens from the Anvil was just them coming across some machine in a bad mood?

“Anything that disrupts the efficiency of the Anvil’s operations is not tolerated,” Agnete eventually said. “They were going to shut down the portal before I stepped through, but the Infernal Engine somehow sensed me and made them wait. If it turned out that I wasn’t able to create Black Boxes, or was otherwise useless, I doubt they would have hesitated to throw me into a vat of metal.” Agnete snorted to herself. “Actually, I might have survived that—and if not, my melting flesh would have reduced the purity of the metal. No, they probably would have dumped me off in one of the slag heaps and buried me.”

“So friendship and recruitment is not an option then…”

“I didn’t say that.” Agnete shook her head. “Demonstrate some level of worth and you’ll find friends.”

“Worth, huh?” Aside from a potential if logically impossible solution to the calamity of ending the Calamity, Arkk wasn’t sure what he could possibly offer.

“I believe, with me acting as an intermediary, we could at least avoid outright hostilities. As long as you don’t disrupt the manufacturing. Though a language barrier made it somewhat unclear, I was promised some amount of aid when I explained our plight.”

“I probably have disrupted manufacturing by bringing you back,” Arkk said with a raised eyebrow. He shook his head. “Let’s table that for now. We got on a side topic. I meant to ask you how you are doing. You were over there for weeks and I didn’t see much in the way of food or water. Are you alright?”

Again, Agnete didn’t respond right away. This time, she cast her gaze downward, staring at her hand held out in front of her. She had changed, physically, since the last time Arkk saw her in person. Molten metal ran over her blackened skin like thin rivers cutting through a burned-out forest. The dark portion of her skin extended up to her shoulders where it gradually faded out to a faint red color, as if she had been spending a great deal of time out in the sun but couldn’t tan. Her face was similar, though charred around her now brightly glowing eyes.

It looked painful. Like she needed regular application of ointment at the least. She didn’t move as if she were in pain and she hadn’t requested an immediate visit to Hale. Watching the skin of her fingers crack when she flexed and the following stream of molten metal moving to fill the gaps still made Arkk wince.

“I met with… a being.”

“The Burning Forge?”

“I’m not sure. Who and the Infernal Engine referred to it as the Burning Forge, but it didn’t fit with what I thought a god should be.” She frowned, clasping her hand into a fist. “Assuming it was, you were right. Meeting god held little answers. It changed me, then promptly ridiculed me for not being creative enough…”

A little rude, Arkk thought to himself. Though it did make sense. The Burning Forge was, among other things, a god of creativity and innovation. “Changed you?”

“Beyond the obvious,” she said, waving a hand. “I don’t get hungry. Or… I didn’t in the Anvil. Since returning, I feel like my stomach has been complaining.”

Arkk swept his hand across the table in an unnecessary but grandiose gesture, teleporting in wine, water, bread, fruits, and meat. Nothing too fancy. “Say the word and I’ll have Larry prepare a full meal.”

Agnete’s eyes roamed over the table. Reaching forward, she paused before grasping an apple and moved to a simple loaf of bread. A razor-thin jet of flame sliced off one end, lightly toasting the interior. “This will do for now,” she said, biting into it with a crunch.

“Butter?”

“No, thank you.”

Arkk let her have a moment of silence given this was her first meal in who knew how long. He was especially keen on watching the way she sliced off another piece of bread. Except, instead of going for another piece of bread, she went back to the apple. Just holding it in her hand was enough to make a faint sizzling noise in the air, though Arkk didn’t feel particularly hot despite being in her presence. A moment later, the mouth-watering aroma of a freshly baked apple pie spread through the room.

“You’ve gotten better,” Arkk said as she finished.

“More precise. I haven’t needed to control myself. Not in the Anvil. Now that I’m here, I can tell that things aren’t quite as they used to be.”

It certainly showed. Even after joining him, Agnete basically had two options when it came to using her flames—burn everything they touched to ash or avoid using them to begin with. She had been able to control the intensity to a degree, but that degree was the difference between burning down a cottage and burning down a field.

“I suppose my next question is…” Arkk stumbled, not quite sure how to ask what he felt needed to be asked. “Well, do you want to stay here? Working for me in this world, that is to say.”

Agnete cocked an eyebrow, giving him a strange look. “I wouldn’t have returned if I wanted to stay over there,” she said simply, pouring herself a small glass of water.

“It’s just that you had a life-changing event, I understand. Meeting a god, working in some fantastical forge that even with Fortress Al-Mir, I wouldn’t be able to replicate, creating things like Who…” Arkk shrugged. “Things like that change people’s perspective.

“That place… the Anvil, honestly I think it is worse than the Underworld. Constant noise, constant work, constant tone to everything. No matter where you look, everything in that world is the same. The god of creativity had the gall to ridicule me after creating something like that?” She shook her head with a small laugh. “Another reason to doubt that thing’s divinity.” Pausing, Agnete frowned in deep consideration. After a slight moment, she gave Arkk a questioning glance. “Is it strange for an avatar to be so… atheistic?”

Arkk just shrugged. “I’ve met a god. A definite god, not a potential avatar gussied up like a god. Frankly… not exactly what I was expecting either. It was intense at the moment, but in retrospect, I feel like the god of boundaries, borders, and barriers shouldn’t be even mildly inconvenienced by the Calamity. A wave of Xel’atriss, Lock and Key’s hand and everything would be fixed. So what am I even…”

A sudden tug from the link had Arkk trailing off. It wasn’t an immediate urgent type of tug, but feeling anything at all meant something had gone awry. He followed the link, trying to find the source of trouble. Not urgent probably meant not a demon, not an enemy avatar, nor any other direct enemy action against him.

The source of the link was outside Fortress Al-Mir. Nothing to do with Who—who appeared to be in quite enthusiastic discussions with Perr’ok now that they had the walker picked apart. The tug from the link split from Elmshadow, going straight to both Harvey and Luthor, both working separately at the crystal balls. The scrying team alerting him probably meant Evestani or the Eternal Empire were up to something.

“I hate to cut our reunion short, but something has come up. Not sure what yet,” Arkk said with a small frown.

Agnete was on her feet in a moment. In the past, Arkk likely would have started sweating from the sudden rush of heat. Today, there was no heat. Her eyes burned a little brighter and the molten metal in her arms started flowing a little faster.

It was something of a relief that she was so ready to act. He had been worried that things might have changed. Well, things had changed, but not her willingness to fight. “It isn’t an immediate problem,” he quickly said, not wanting to rile her up to the point where he could feel her heat. “You’ve only just gotten back. Take a rest. Please. I insist.”

“I’ve been away for long enough,” Agnete shook her head. “If the Golden Order is still pushing forward with their avatar at their back, I think it is time we send them a little message: I’m not sure this world needs gods.”

That made Arkk’s brow furrow. He supposed he should have expected it, given everything Agnete had said. It wasn’t something he really disagreed with either. Every problem he had at the moment could, in some way, be traced back to one of the Pantheon, whether that be their actions or their minions.

“Oh,” Arkk mumbled to himself. “That reminds me… The Light—or the Abbey? Or the Light’s avatar… Or something related to the Holy Light might not be as opposed to us as we once thought. But they want something from you.”

“Me?”

“Mentioned you by name. I declined to hand you over. Not sure if that means the alliance is off the table or what, but thought I should mention it.”

“Seems like a lot has happened since I’ve been gone.”

Arkk could not agree with that statement more. “I would explain more, but I need to find out what the problem is before it becomes an emergency. In the meantime, the best way you can help is by visiting Ilya. She can fill you in on everything that’s happened, from Prince Cedric’s army readying to invade Evestani homelands to the demon to…” Arkk trailed off, wincing slightly before deciding to just admit it. “We have made an alliance with cognizant undead from the Necropolis.”

“Undead?”

“They’re surprisingly friendly. Love parties.”

“Uh…”

“I promise, they aren’t like normal undead. They’ve been helping get some farms going in areas that were occupied by Evestani prior to us reclaiming Elmshadow.”

“I’ll…” Agnete trailed off with a heavy frown.

“Believe it when you see it?” Arkk offered.

“Something like that.”

“That’s the best I can ask for,” Arkk said, standing. “I’ll send Ilya in. Enjoy some more food until she gets here.” He turned, only to pause. “It’s good to have you back.”

“Good to be back.”

Arkk teleported away, intent on finding Ilya, only to stop just outside her room. Another warning came across his link. This time, it wasn’t a slight tug from a minion, but a warning that his fortress was under attack. He quickly followed the link to Elmshadow where he discovered nothing too alarming. Mags, the commander of the Prince’s army, was hammering a fist on the main tower door, trying to get someone’s attention.

Arkk couldn’t help but scowl at that. While he didn’t know exactly who among the Prince’s army was the demon, he had suspects. Mags was at the top of that suspect list.

Then again, the demon could shapeshift into whatever or whoever it wanted. Who was to say that Mags wasn’t real? If Mags was the demon in disguise. It could surely knock down the door if it wanted. So, either this Mags was human—in which case attacking him might just rip away that protection of not being enemies with Cedric—or the demon was playing nice today.

He wished Zullie or Savren had developed a way to distinguish the demon with certainty. He would have had Kia or Claire just punch their fist straight through the door, sending it back to where it came from in an instant.

On the other hand… it couldn’t attack them as long as they weren’t enemies of the Prince.

Evestani and the Eternal Empire didn’t qualify for that clause.

Had he successfully convinced the demon to turn its attention to their actual enemies?

Arkk imagined he would find out once he met with the creature again. He could only hope it would be a bloodless meeting.

 

 

“Me? Me?”

“Ilya…”

Arkk sat in a high-backed chair, leaning on the armrest. The matching chair next to him, angled so that it wasn’t quite facing him while not facing away, currently held a visibly distressed Ilya. Her fingers were cold beneath his, his grip doing little to wipe the furrows of worry off her face.

“You’ve got to be joking. I can’t… It’s not…”

“It’s either you or Edvin,” Arkk said. His words shocked the frown off Ilya’s face. Her eyebrows crept up her forehead. “A tough decision, but I figured knowing each other for so long meant I should ask you first. But if you’re really against it—”

“Edvin,” Ilya said, her voice utterly flat. “That has to be a joke.”

“Vezta and I discussed several candidates,” Arkk said with an evasive shrug. “His name came up.”

“Came up in the no pile, surely,” Ilya said, shaking her head.

“We considered everyone quite carefully, weighing the positives and negatives…”

“And you narrowed it down to me or Edvin.” Her eyes narrowed. “I should slap you.”

Arkk recoiled at the venom in her tone. He expected a number of reactions from Ilya—shock, surprise, denial. Things had been mostly going as he thought they would. He had not planned for violence. “Can I ask why?” he said, carefully, like he was tiptoeing through an undead-filled graveyard. And not the friendly kind of undead.

“The fact that you have to ask only makes it worse.” She turned aside in her seat, pulling her hand out from under Arkk’s. Folding her arms over her chest, she glared. It took a minute before she huffed and decided to throw Arkk a rope. “Either you’re lying to me or you have me on the same level as Edvin of all people. That’s quite offensive.”

“Oh. Right.” That was reasonable. Arkk didn’t fancy being compared to Edvin much either. “If it makes you feel better, his name did come up, but only for the sake of completeness. The actual second contender is Olatt’an.”

“Mildly more palatable,” she said. After a moment of holding her offended pose, she relaxed her shoulders and let out a small, humorless chuckle. “Don’t suppose you’ll tell me why me?”

“We have an extremely powerful magical artifact just sitting, open and vulnerable. The number of people I can trust with something like that is, understandably, not all that vast. You’re smart. Capable. I’ve known you my whole life. There is nobody I trust more with this kind of power than you.”

Ilya kept her expression neutral. Arkk’s eyes flicked back to her ears. The tips turned a little rosy.

“When you put it like that…”

“So you’ll do it?”

Taking in a breath, Ilya held it and then let it out slowly. Her silver eyes met with Arkk’s. “I don’t know if I like this.”

“Ilya…”

“I’ll do it. I just… We’re farmers. Hunters. Most people in Mystakeen haven’t even heard of Langleey Village. Ever since we got involved with these fortresses—with Vezta—it has been one thing after another. Those things have changed the very landscape, both politically and literally. You’ve dipped into necromancy, ordered the Duke’s death, you’re playing games with a demon.”

“Who would you rather have in charge of these kinds of things? The Duke? The demon-summoning Prince?” Arkk wrinkled his nose. “At least with us, we know we’re not that bad.”

Ilya gave Arkk a look that he couldn’t quite decipher. “When this first began, you asked me to keep you from letting all the power go to your head. I’m not really sure I succeeded with that. Now you want me to take up all that power too.”

Arkk couldn’t help but wince a little. That… was true. He couldn’t deny that as things around them escalated, he had risen to match. “If you don’t want to, Olatt’an—”

“No. No. I don’t think giving power that has turned you into a warlord to someone who used to be known as the Ripthroat is a good idea,” Ilya said with a firm nod of her head. “I understand you don’t have much choice here given the people we know. So I’ll do it. I just want it to be known that I am not happy about it.”

“I understand,” Arkk said. “And thank you. We better get moving.”

“What, now?”

“Yes now. Ancient magical artifact. Vulnerable ancient magical artifact. Maybe another time, we could dally, but there are enemy avatars, demons, and who knows what else all running around.”

“Of course,” Ilya said. She nodded with her jaw clamped shut. “Just thought I’d get a moment to prepare myself.”

“Vezta and Kia are keeping a close eye on it, so nothing should happen, at least not without my knowing. But better not leave it unclaimed. I’d rather see it destroyed than fall into anyone else’s hands.”

“Understandable. Where—”

Arkk teleported both of them straight to the ritual circle room. “You’ll be able to do that yourself soon.”

“Can’t wait,” she said, not sounding as enthused as Arkk would have expected.

Even ignoring all the other benefits, instantly moving about without having to walk was one of the best features of the fortresses, in his opinion. Which, he presumed, she would learn soon enough.

It took a few hops to make it to the western border of Mystakeen. The tower, inert and unpowered, stood at about half the height of the one in Elmshadow. Its thickness wasn’t anywhere close to the other one either, looking more like a thin, narrow spire compared to the massive hulking tower. The shadowy bricks were far more pronounced with a dark mist wafting off them. Arkk presumed the difference in appearance was because of the servants used to construct the place.

The servants of Fortress Al-Mir liked tangible walls and tiles with maze-like patterns on the floor. The shadowy servants Leda had summoned made bricks closer to their own appearance than any normal construction material. In retrospect, Arkk counted himself lucky that his servants preferred actual brick instead of something that looked like themselves. He could only imagine the difficulties he would have had in recruitment had his fortress looked like a slimy, oily pit of living, pulsating flesh.

Shaking that thought from his mind, Arkk led Ilya up to the base of one of the spire’s legs. There had been one last ritual circle that exited directly inside the tower, but Arkk and Vezta had destroyed it, not wanting anyone unexpected popping inside. While inert, the tower still had reinforcement magic in its bricks. Most beings wouldn’t be able to enter easily.

That, unfortunately, included Arkk. Because Leda had been his subordinate, the tower had been something of a subordinate as well. He had been able to teleport himself around within it as freely as his own territory. Not so anymore.

Reaching the shadowy brickwork of the tower leg, Arkk pulled out a thin black loop of rope. It wasn’t actually rope, but it acted like it. “One of Zullie’s latest creations,” he explained as Ilya started eying it.

Giving it a light flick of the wrist, he flung it up against the side of the tower. The deity of barriers, boundaries, and borders did not have trouble entering the tower. A warping hole opened up in the side. Arkk simply stepped over the slight lip and into the tower.

Ilya took her time, eying the void-like ring in the tower. When she did finally step through, accepting Arkk’s offered hand, she shrank in on herself and clutched at her clothing, as if she didn’t want even a single stray hair to touch the void. Which was fair enough.

Once she was through, Arkk pulled down the rope on the inside of the tower—he hadn’t the slightest idea how it could be both inside and outside at the same time and, frankly, tried not to think about it too much. They made their way up the spire, using the rope to pass through a few closed doors.

The final door, though not quite as unnaturally dark as the Unilluminable Chamber, was almost impossible to see within. Vezta’s glowing yellow eyes were spread throughout the room, occupying the walls, floor, and ceiling. Kia, standing within Vezta’s mass, shifted to a ready stance at the opening of the void-hole. Her afterimages weren’t quite as bright as Vezta’s eyes, but still gave her a faint white silhouette.

“It’s them,” Vezta said, her voice coming from everywhere at once.

“You’re sure?”

“I can confirm Arkk with absolute certainty. Arkk would not be traveling with a false Ilya—he can sense the real her. Ergo, they are real.”

Kia let out a small sigh, straightening her back and lowering her arms.

Just to double-check, Arkk followed the links from him to Vezta, Kia, and Ilya. All were who they appeared to be.

“Getting real tired of this, Arkk,” Kia grumbled. “Please tell me we’re dealing with the demon sooner rather than later.”

“Sooner,” Arkk confirmed. “There are just a few priority tasks to handle first.”

Kia scoffed. “Hard to believe we have higher priorities than a demon.”

“Strange times we live in. Let’s get this done quickly. Ilya?”

The elf looked between Arkk, Kia, and the quickly coalescing Vezta with a frown. Her gaze finally settled on the shadowy orb floating above a pedestal just behind Kia. “What do I need to do?”

“Touch it then pulse magic into it.”

“That’s it?” Ilya said.

“That’s it.”

Ilya stepped forward. Her strides were smaller than normal, nervous. She wiped the palms of her hands on her pants. “Just thought claiming an ancient magical artifact would be a little more complicated.”

With one last look to Arkk, who gave her a reassuring nod of his head, she reached out and planted her hand against the shadowy orb. She sucked in a sharp breath, winced, and pulled her hand back just as a heavy thump echoed in the room.

When she opened her eyes, a bright red light spread throughout the room.

The armored walker roared to life as a pulse of magic surged through its metal core. It stood tall and menacing, the top end scraping against the foundry’s ceiling. Armor plates, mismatched and patchwork made from scraps leftover from Perr’ok’s latest efforts in equipping the employees of Company Al-Mir, were bolted and riveted to the skeletal frame. Long arms tipped with spinning, jagged metal wheels could swing with the force of twenty orcs.

Standing at the armored control station, looking out at the large foundry’s test area through a thin slit, Perr’ok grasped a lever. Jerking it past several ratcheting positions in the panel made the right leg shift up and forward. It came down with a heavy clanking of metal against stone, jostling Perr’ok around. The lever automatically moved back to a neutral position, ready to move forward or backward as he needed the leg to move. First, the left leg.

Grasping the left lever, Perr’ok pushed it forward.

The left leg lifted, jerked, and locked into place. The entire walker tilted, throwing Perr’ok against the side wall. Caught on the lifted leg, it didn’t tip over this time. That was an improvement.

Grasping the lever again, the orc blacksmith tried to extend the leg back out, righting it. Instead, the armored walker sputtered. With a shuddering cough, blackened smoke flooded through the foundry.

One of the assistant blacksmiths planted a hand on an array near the wall. A gust of wind started up, filling the foundry with fresh air while carrying all the magic-burned smoke out through the flue. Perr’ok grasped for the latch, holding his breath inside the walker’s smoke-filled control station. It stuck and jammed, but a boot to the latch popped the hatch open. He hopped out, gasping for a breath of fresh air as the smoke leaking from the machine whisked off toward the flue.

“That’s that,” he said once he caught his breath. He snatched a grimy rag from a rack and tried to wipe his face, only to smear the soot around even more.

He glanced up.

It had been a few weeks since he last saw Agnete. She was wearing less than she used to. Gone was the long black coat that all inquisitors seemed to favor. In its place, she wore a thin white bit of fabric that left her arms fully visible. It must have been a specially made piece of cloth since it hadn’t burst into flames yet. Just looking at her made sweat bead on Perr’ok’s forehead and she said she was running cool.

The molten metal running along her blackened arms like veins was new as well. A lot of the heat probably came from that.

“ᚹᚨᛋ ᛁᛏ ᛋᚢᛈᛈᛟᛋᛖᛞ ᛏᛟ ᛞᛟ ᛏᚺᚨᛏ?”

His eyes flicked over to the… creature at Agnete’s side. Who, apparently. Like a metal statue of Agnete come to life. He had heard about constructs. Ancient beings made from metal or stone instead of flesh and bone. All the stories about them dated back hundreds of years. If Perr’ok wasn’t staring at one right now, he would have thought they were myth.

It seemed instead that they were pre-Calamity.

And Agnete had found one while off in the Anvil.

Perr’ok wasn’t sure he liked the thing. It was hard to tell where Who was looking at any given moment. Its—Her, he had been corrected— Her face wasn’t really a face at all. There were odd blinking lights around it that might have been eyes, spinning gears and cogs, and a grated vent that might have been a mouth. He was partially sure that the voice had come from there.

While he couldn’t understand what Who said just now, it seemed like Agnete could. Agnete quickly shook her head, waving down at Who the way a parent might try to quiet a talkative child.

“Do you know what the issue is?” Agnete asked.

“Right leg works fine,” Perr’ok said, frowning. He didn’t like not having a proper answer. “The original we hauled back was too corroded in the left leg, so we copied the right exactly figuring that would work. But the left leg always seizes. Had that witch down here the other week, she said the magical array should be fine, it’s just that the seizing overloads it, making all that smoke. If the leg didn’t seize, there wouldn’t be any smoke.”

“ᚺᛖ ᚲᛟᛈᛁᛖᛞ ᛖᛉᚨᚲᛏᛚᛃ? ᛞᛁᛞ ᚺᛖ ᚠᚨᛁᛚ ᛏᛟ ᛗᛁᚱᚱᛟᚱ ᛏᚺᛖ ᛚᛖᚷ? ᛁᚠ ᛏᚺᛖ ᛗᛖᚲᚺᚨᚾᛁᛋᛗ ᚹᚨᛋᚾ’ᛏ ᛞᛖᛋᛁᚷᚾᛖᛞ ᚠᛟᚱ ᛟᛗᚾᛁ-ᛞᛁᚱᛖᚲᛏᛁᛟᚾᚨᛚ ᛗᛟᚹᛖᛗᛖᚾᛏ, ᛁᛏ ᚹᛟᚢᛚᛞ ᚠᚨᛁᛚ ᚢᚾᛚᛖᛋᛋ ᛗᛁᚱᚱᛟᚱᛖᛞ. ᛏᚺᛖᚾ ᛏᚺᛖ ᛗᛁᚱᚱᛟᚱ ᚾᛖᛖᛞᛋ ᛏᛟ ᛒᛖ ᛁᚾᚹᛖᚱᛏᛖᛞ—”

“Agnete. Who.” Arkk appeared just off to the side, teleporting straight in. His glowing red eyes swept over the foundry. “Perr’ok,” he added as his gaze crossed the blacksmith. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“Have you finished your other business?”

Arkk nodded his head. “I have,” he said. “Sorry for taking so long. I trust getting reacquainted with things here hasn’t been a problem?”

Agnete quickly shook her head. “Just as I remember,” she said with a faint smile.

Perr’ok wasn’t sure if she was all that enthused with being back. She had told everyone stories of the Anvil before asking to see the armored walkers. The Anvil sounded… intense. And useful. He couldn’t quite conceptualize it all, but he guessed the Anvil had been akin to a painter with a palette containing every color the eye could see. Now she was back here, a master painter being handed a bit of mud and being told to make a masterpiece.

“I was helping Perr’ok with some issues he was having.”

“Ah yes,” Arkk said, looking at the walker now. “We’ve got ten of these prototypes, but they… ah… don’t exactly work.” Although he was hesitant in his words—not trying to offend Perr’ok, even giving him an appreciative glance—Perr’ok couldn’t help but wince. “If we could get a full production going, that could only help things.”

“Who has some ideas,” Agnete said, nodding to her construct companion. She turned half to the side. “Would you see if you can’t find the root of the issue while I speak with Arkk?”

The construct seemed to tense up. Her fingers split apart, from five to ten to twenty, clattering lightly as they moved in a nervous manner. “ᚹᛁᛚᛚ ᛃᛟᚢ ᛒᛖ ᛋᚨᚠᛖ?” she asked, deep, steam-filled voice unusually quiet.

“Of course,” Agnete said. “You have nothing to worry about here.”

The construct’s head swiveled. Perr’ok got the impression she was giving Arkk more than just a questioning glance. Her analysis continued for a few moments, watching as Agnete walked to Arkk before they both teleported out of the foundry. Only then did the construct turn to him.

“ᛈerrᛟk?”

Perr’ok flinched, then quickly nodded his head. It wasn’t exactly his name. It was close enough. “Yes, ma’am.”

The construct nodded her head, turned away from him, and stepped closer to the walker. One of her arms split apart, opening to reveal several tools within. A tool moved along rails, brought to the end of her arm in place of her hand. A thin beam of hot metal sliced out, sheering off some of the metal paneling on the underside of the walker. Her other arm split into two, each with fingers on the ends. Her split hand caught the bulky metal plate as she sliced it off, gently placing it on the ground without even looking to her side.

“Leᛏ us see whaᛏ we have ᛏo work on here…”

Perr’ok nodded slowly, frowning at the construct. If it could speak like normal, it should have done so from the start. With a small shake of his head, he stepped closer to watch as the construct started picking apart the left-leg gearbox.

 

 

One thing after another. Never a chance to rest.

Arkk stood inside the currently inert walking fortress, frowning at the [HEART] on its shadowy pedestal. He had half a mind to claim it for himself. Vezta worried that anyone else might betray them once they had a taste of its power or just go rogue. Arkk wasn’t quite so pessimistic. Leda hadn’t betrayed him. He hadn’t planned for her to take the [HEART], that had been Priscilla’s machinations, and she certainly wouldn’t have been his first pick from those he considered trustworthy. Her rise to prominence had simply been one of convenience. Few others were small enough to comfortably ride with Priscilla and act as her eyes.

But she hadn’t betrayed him.

This time around, Arkk had the option of choice.

The obvious choice was himself. He wouldn’t betray himself. But he already felt stretched thin. Magical fortress or not, he was only one person. He could only be in one place at a time. If problems occurred at both Fortress Al-Mir and Elmshadow, he would be in trouble. If problems occurred at both those places and here, he would be screwed. If that demon caught him once again, taking him out of the picture, all three locales would be in jeopardy.

That was the only reason he didn’t reach his hand forward.

He needed someone else. Someone who could manage servants, who could teleport forces around at will, who could cast spells at his level…

The obvious choice was someone in his primary circle of advisors. Ilya, Rekk’ar, Olatt’an, Zullie, Savren, Khan, Alma, Agnete, and Priscilla. Those one step removed were possibilities as well, his main field commanders. Dakka, Richter, Abbess Hannah, Sylvara, Vector, Joanne, Lexa…

Katja?

No. Not unless he wished to see betrayal sooner rather than later.

Some of those options were out. Priscilla was impossible, she couldn’t claim a [HEART] after having broken her contract. Zullie and Savren were busy with their research. Rekk’ar butted heads with Arkk enough that he wasn’t sure how loyal the abrasive orc would be. Khan…

Gorgon in general didn’t seem like the type—they were too content with food in their bellies and a warm rock to sit upon. Zhajra was probably the most ambitious of the group and even she spent most of her time relaxing. Arkk needed someone with drive, but not so much drive that they would try to take over.

Alma reminded him a bit too much of Leda. Not to mention he had originally threatened her into joining him, which he thought they were past but he wasn’t sure if they were hand-over-obscenely-powerful-magical-artifact levels of past it.

Abbess Hannah and Sylvara were out for obvious reasons relating to the Light, as were most of the rest of the field commanders on second thought. Lexa was too effective as an assassin to bog her down with managing a fortress. Richter had control over the majority of Arkk’s forces, most of them having joined up as deserters from the Duke’s Grand Guard, but they all joined solely to defeat Evestani. Arkk couldn’t begin to guess what they might do once that task was done with. Vector was the same as Richter, having been the man’s main battlecaster. Dakka, like Lexa, was just too effective in the field, though as a commander rather than an assassin.

Who did that leave? Ilya, Olatt’an, Agnete, and Joanne?

Joanne had been a sub-commander in the Order of the Claymores, so she had experience leading. She wasn’t so effective in the field that Arkk would feel her absence if she were tied to the tower here. Unfortunately, she was taking Leda’s death harder than Arkk expected, believing it was her fault, rather than his, that she and Kevin required rescue in the first place and then, later, that she had failed to adequately protect the small fairy. She might move past it in time, but time was something Arkk lacked at the moment.

Agnete was more like Lexa and Dakka than anyone else, too useful elsewhere. She was already powerful beyond most of the rest of Arkk’s forces. And now, she had ideas on how to improve things based on what she had created from the Anvil.

That left Olatt’an and Ilya.

Olatt’an probably wouldn’t betray Arkk in any sense of the word. They got on well enough and had never really come to harsh conflict. Not like with Arkk and Rekk’ar. He was older. Less effective on the battlefield. The ability to cast magic on the same level as Arkk would certainly make whatever appearances he did make in battle all the more prominent. He was generally wise, the incident with the initial opening of the Anvil portal notwithstanding, and could command respect when required.

There was no doubt in Arkk’s mind that Ilya would ever betray him. They had known each other their entire lives. It simply wasn’t even a question. Arkk trusted her implicitly. The injuries she had sustained at the Duke’s party, and subsequent botched healing by Arkk, longer healing at the manor, and touch-ups by Hale, weren’t holding her down anymore. At least not enough to be worthy of note. While she didn’t have quite the experience with leading men that Olatt’an did, she did have experience with the fortresses, having been effectively the second-in-command at Fortress Al-Mir.

“Ilya or Olatt’an?” Arkk mused to himself.

Vezta, standing at his side, tilted her head. “Those are your selections?”

“Unless I’m forgetting someone,” he said, humming. He had a lot of people working for him. It was entirely possible someone had slipped his mind. But if they didn’t come to mind now, he probably would have dismissed them for one reason or another. Hale popped into his mind momentarily, but he quickly shook his head. She was effective at healing but young and withdrawn.

Kia and Claire were out for the same reason that Zullie couldn’t give him the same treatment that she had given the dark elves. They weren’t quite part of this world. Besides that, he wasn’t sure giving the volatile dark elves access to even more power was a good idea.

“You have better ideas?” he asked.

Vezta fell silent, her eyes shifting back and forth as if reading from a scroll of names that Arkk couldn’t see. “Edvin?”

“Funny,” Arkk said, his voice utterly deadpan. Despite that, he did pause to consider for the briefest of instants. He would have to be beyond desperate to give Edvin a job of any level of importance.

“Darius Vrox?”

Arkk looked over to the servant, frowning. “I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not. First of all, I’d give the job to Sylvara over Vrox. Second, you don’t think an inquisitor would bind with an ancient magical artifact of dubious origin, do you?”

“Just listing possibilities you may not have considered,” Vezta said with a shrug. “It is among my duties to ensure that you see the full scope of the situation, not just what your mind likely first jumps to. That said, Ilya makes the most sense to me.”

Arkk pursed his lips, staring back at the shadowy orb. He had been afraid of that. “Maybe Vrox deserves some more consideration.”

“I believe Ilya would be most upset if you are coddling her just because you fancy the shape of her backside.”

“I don’t fancy… I mean, it’s more than just her butt—”

“Ah yes. Mammaries,” Vezta said, looking down at her own chest. The fabric-like texture of her skin over her chest turned oily and slick as more and more mass built up. Her chest bulged out, prompting her to prod herself with a finger. “Not sure I understand,” she said as they rapidly deflated back to their usual level.

Arkk boggled, unable to hold back a sudden snort of laughter. “Are you feeling alright?”

“I feel fine. What about yourself? Do you feel any better?”

A small smile settled on Arkk’s face. She was trying to make him feel better? First with ridiculous suggestions like Edvin, now this? One laugh wasn’t going to wipe away the latest disaster, but he did nod his head. It helped.

That help didn’t help solve their problem, unfortunately. “Why Ilya over Olatt’an?”

“Beyond trustworthiness? Her bond with you?” Vezta hummed, tapping her chin with a finger. “Just imagine the look on her mother’s face when she hears that her daughter contracted with an artifact like the one she was supposed to guard for the last few hundred years.”

Arkk stared at Vezta, narrowing his eyes. But now that the words had been said, he couldn’t help but picture Alya’s face. He let out a small laugh that quickly shifted into a hearty chuckle. It wasn’t that funny.

Smiling still felt good.

“Thank you for meeting me on such short notice,” Arkk said, clasping his hand with the bony, skeletal hand of the First and Last Primeval Lord. It was surprisingly warm to the touch.

Yoho, unable to do anything but smile, grinned and nodded his head. “Certainly. Our recruitment efforts are going well, thanks to you. None have moved to the Necropolis yet—we need a solution for locally grown food in the event access is cut off—but it would be remiss of me not to hear you out.” He pulled back, sweeping his fabulous clothing across the floor as he took a seat. “I understand you had questions regarding aspects of necromancy?”

Arkk, taking a seat as well, rested his hands on the table. It was a small meeting room, meant for one-on-one discussions. The whole room smelled faintly of old books. Several occupied the shelves around, more for decoration than for reading—he had a library for that—along with various trinkets and toys designed to catch the eye and start conversations. A decanter filled with wine sat next to some glasses off to the side of the table, its dark red liquid catching the dim light from the chandelier above. Arkk didn’t touch the wine. Yoho, being a skeleton, couldn’t exactly imbibe.

“Yes,” Arkk began, his voice steady but he was sure his eyes betrayed unease. “I… The necromancy I know, even with the tips you offered, raises undead but doesn’t bring the living back. Not like you and your people. I wanted to ask about that.”

“Ah,” Yoho said, falling silent immediately after.

That one word, the tone in which it was spoken, did not fill Arkk with any level of confidence. He closed his eyes, drew in a breath, and prepared for bad news. By the time he opened his eyes once more, Yoho was ready to continue.

“I would describe the process more as a ceremony than a ritual or magic spell. Family, friends, or other individuals of similar position, will bring the recently deceased to the Court in a great funeral procession. A grand celebration will commence, exploring the joy of life and the good deeds of the fallen. We’re the kind of people who love a good party.”

“So I’ve noticed,” Arkk said, keeping his voice neutral.

Yoho nodded his head. Leaning back, he tilted his skull up toward the ceiling as if reminiscing. “Those celebrations could last hours or days or, in certain cases, weeks. Oh, we had some good ones back in the day,” he said with a hearty chuckle. “But they eventually draw to a close, at which point the petitions begin. Relatives of the deceased go before the Court’s twelve Judges and begin a lengthy debate, making their case for why the deceased should be brought back in undeath.”

“They have to argue over it? Argue the merits of saving someone?”

“Argue is a strong word, Arkk,” Yoho said, looking back down. “As is the idea that we are saving someone, but that is a different topic entirely.” He sighed, gesturing vaguely with his hand. “It’s all part of the ceremony. It has happened that the debate fails to find favor with the deceased, yes, but frankly, if the Judges find no reason to revive someone, they’re probably the kind of person you wouldn’t want as your neighbor for the rest of your undeath, if you know what I’m saying. Half the people like that wouldn’t even be brought to the Court to begin with.” Yoho punctuated that with a sarcastic laugh.

“When the petition is accepted, as is usually the case,” Yoho continued, “the Judges call upon the Prince—praise—and ask that He look down upon the deceased with His Smile. Assuming that petition is successful, which has only failed a handful of times throughout all of history, the dead will walk again.”

Arkk nodded slowly, absorbing the information. “The community, the celebration, the debate… How integral is it all to the actual act of bringing someone back?”

Yoho clasped his fingers together over his stomach, the bones clacking with the movement. “Let me ask you a question, Arkk. Did you recently lose someone you cared for? Or perhaps feel responsible for?”

“I’m fighting a war, Lord Yoho,” Arkk said, deflecting. “I lose men every time they pick up their weapons. If I could bring them back, I would in an instant.”

“Ah, but you weren’t asking these questions last week, nor the week before. So something changed.”

Arkk closed his eyes. “She was a young fairy. Nervous about a lot of things. Frightened of a lot of things. Yet so brave. When the pressure mounted, she forced down her fears and took charge, saving several others.” He pursed his lips into a thin line. “I could have saved her. I could have gotten people to her in time or directed the rescue better. But I got captured by a demon,” he spat. “It’s just so… frustrating. She was just starting to come into her own. She wasn’t a warrior. She didn’t join up to fight. But I sent her out there all the same and because of a demon of all things, I couldn’t be there when she needed.”

A long silence hung over the table. Only the slight grinding of Yoho’s bones as he moved broke that silence.

“An impassioned petition,” Yoho said, voice soft. “Though full of brevity compared to the usual.”

Arkk blinked his eyes open, raising an eyebrow at the skeleton across from him. For an instant, a spark of hope filled Arkk’s chest. It withered and died almost immediately. Even though his face was skeletal and unemotive, the look on Yoho’s skull was enough to know that he was about to say something else that Arkk didn’t want to hear.

“I don’t believe I can help you.”

There it is.

“Two reasons,” Yoho said, holding up a pair of bony fingers before Arkk could speak. “First and foremost, I have no Judges!” he said almost gleefully. “It has been a thousand years since the last living person in the Necropolis passed away. Having twelve Judges sit about on their thrones with nothing to do was simply too droll of a duty for anyone, even the most stoic of undead. Some of my Judges returned to the crypts for an eternal rest. Others spread out, exploring the vastness of the Necropolis. I know where only two are. In light of our agreement, I have been accepting applications to fill the other seats, but even were I to select ten more today, they would need training…

“Then there is the possibility that the ceremony has broken entirely with the current state of the worlds. The final few living in the Necropolis weren’t revived with quite the same vigor that most denizens possess. They are there, but sluggish and solemn. According to the most recent census, all five hundred of the most recently revived chose to return to the crypts for their eternal slumber by their fiftieth unbirthday. A statistical oddity.”

Both Arkk’s eyebrows shot up at that. “You want more living among your number and you don’t even know if the ritual will work?”

Yoho simply grinned. “You said you were going to fix the state of things. I have faith in you. Better hurry though. Time keeps on slipping into the future.”

Arkk brought his fingers to his forehead, rubbing at the mounting headache. That was more pressure he definitely didn’t feel he needed or deserved. “So that’s it? No judges and no idea if it will work even with judges.”

“Oh,” Yoho said, glancing at his two fingers before lifting a third. “I was considering those the same reason, but I suppose they are different enough to separate. The actual final reason is that… undeath is simply not for everybody.”

“How do you mean?”

“Death is no treat, make no mistake. I died. So has everyone else in the Necropolis. So will everyone else. But it can be… tranquil to most people. You told me you visited the Silence. Peaceful, isn’t it? Undeath, on the other hand…” The Primeval Lord trailed off, somehow affecting a frown without his skull moving. He looked up, reached over to the decanter of wine, and poured a small amount into one of the glasses set aside. He held it in front of his face, swirling it around.

Yoho shook his head, setting the glass back on the table.

“I can’t smell. Can’t taste. Can’t feel. There are a great many things to enjoy in life. Family, friends, all the twists and bends, unexpected encounters, the joy of learning and finding meaning in work. I can experience those. But there are holes.” He picked up the glass once again. “For example, there is a large hole in my chest!” he said with a laugh. “If I try to drink this, I fear I will only end up staining your lovely cushion!”

Yoho slowly set his glass back on his table and clasped his hands together. “In the Necropolis, we used to work to prepare minds for return. Some elected not to be revived at all. Others found the experience… lacking. And that is for prepared minds.

“For the unprepared mind, a state of undeath could be a worse hell than simply remaining dead.” Yoho stood, smoothed out his colorful robes, and started to turn. Pausing halfway as if a thought occurred to him, his skull swiveled back to face Arkk. “Once I find my Judges, if you wish, we may revisit this conversation. But I suggest you take the time to consider whether what you’re asking is in your friend’s best interests or if you’re asking because you wish to alleviate your guilt over her death.”

Statement given, Yoho turned and departed, leaving Arkk with far, far too many thoughts.

 

 

“Damage report?”

“Constructions two, four, and five have suffered catastrophic structural failure. We have been unable to stop the bleeding in any and, in the case of five, stockpiled ordinance went up with the blast. Eight of our engineers were killed in the resulting explosion.

“One and three suffered minor damage thanks to your timely intervention. It will set us back but is salvageable. The alchemical explosives the enemy planted under six failed to explode and merely caused a small fire that was swiftly dealt with.”

“I see.” A tall woman seated at the table gave her adjutant a shallow nod before dragging her knife through the slab of roasted meat.

The meat was perfectly seared, its exterior a rich, caramelized brown that protected the savory flavors within. Juices pooled on the plate as she cut through, revealing a tender, succulent interior. Roasted root vegetables, crisp and decorated with fragrant herbs, sat beside the meat. It was the sort of meal befitting a king in a palace, not a general at a battlefield.

Lucky for her, she was both.

“Make a note of the dead. Their families are to receive adequate compensation upon our return,” she said before popping the slice of meat into her mouth.

The adjutant, a wiry man with a perpetually furrowed brow, scribbled in his notebook as if the pen had personally insulted his mother. The scratching noise echoed in the otherwise silent chamber. Outside, the distant rumble of yet another explosion made them both pause.

To the best of her knowledge, their enemy had fully retreated.

“Go,” she said, grasping the goblet of amber-colored wine. “Find out what that was.”

“Yes, Empress,” he replied, his voice barely above a whisper. He dipped his head in a respectful bow before scurrying from the room.

Watching the doors swing shut behind him, she slowly stood, leaving her meal half-eaten while keeping the goblet of wine. She approached the windows with a frown, peering out into the darkness. There had been a second one out there tonight. She was fairly certain they had perished, but it boded ill to assume anything in this war. The enemy was cunning and had a knack for turning the tide when least expected.

More distressing was the idea that additional active Hearts existed out in the wild. One fortress was nothing if not expected. Thousands existed in ages past and finding every last one of them was a task beyond even her abilities. Keepers cropped up now and again, often drawing far too much attention to themselves, before being put down by one of the three. Even if they carried on for long periods of time, they weren’t problems. Just selfish people trying to scrape together what power they could until they inevitably burned out.

This time, this Arkk, was different. The Golden Order already confirmed the presence of a Servant of one of the old gods. Someone standing behind the scenes, guiding and pulling strings, ensuring that the power didn’t consume the Keeper. There was little doubt that the influence of this Servant was the true cause of the fracture in the sky leading to the domain of boundaries.

Then the walking fortress appeared. Those had all been destroyed. With how obvious they were in comparison to the deeply buried fortresses, there was little question that she or one of her contemporaries had demolished every last one centuries ago. Yet it existed today, standing tall, with stonework crafted from shadowy bricks. A Heart belonging to the old god of darkness.

It was possible that the walking fortress had been inactive, its Heart stored within the confines of another fortress, but the likelihood was low. It had only appeared after the fractured sky.

She sipped the amber wine, her thoughts too loud to savor the rich, velvety liquid.

That second Keeper tonight, she had felt them, their connection to their own Heart. They had a walking fortress somewhere out there. Missing one walking fortress was almost believable. Two? Both operating in such a short timeframe, so obviously allied to one another?

Gods were intervening where they had no business anymore.

Turning from the window, she approached the table. A large map spread across its top was covered in small pins and points. Mystakeen’s terrain was replicated in detail. Most pins were centered around Elmshadow. It had certainly become the main base of operations for their enemy. However, it wasn’t the location of the main fortress. That lay somewhere further to the east.

The Golden Order suspected Cliff City. It was known to have housed a fortress in its mountainside once upon a time. The idea that the Heart had somehow survived wasn’t out of the question. Especially considering it was the Holy Light’s territory; the recent duplicity coming from the avatar of the so-called god of wisdom meant everything had to be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism, including claims that she had destroyed all Hearts within the land the Light touched.

There was further evidence, however. Upon her arrival at Mystakeen, the Eternal Empire launched a surprise attack, intending to draw out proof of the Golden Order’s suspicions. The city was heavily defended, first by mundane magical arrays. Then, when those arrays overloaded, boundary magic protected the city.

And a demon destroyed a warship.

The fact that the demon had not been seen since gave some hope that it had only been summoned as a temporary defensive measure and had since been banished, but she wasn’t willing to waste men and resources assaulting the city again. Best to whittle down their enemy’s power and forces from this side of the country instead. If he did summon a demon again, at least two avatars together stood a chance at defeating it.

It did mean they would end up with a cornered rat, but they intended to corner it all along. Now they simply knew what to be wary of.

The Empress traced her finger along the map, her eyes narrowing as she considered the strategic points. Three of her six weapons of war were gone in one night. Others were in construction, but they were lagging behind, intended to be used if this turned into a protracted siege rather than the swift destruction of that tower. Perhaps two and four could be cobbled together to salvage one, but it was still a blow. And then there was a walking fortress somewhere. Likely a smaller one to keep it from being found. Elmshadow was a thorn in her side, but Cliff City was the festering wound. She needed to cut it out and cauterize it.

The Golden Order and their listeners weren’t often wrong, but she had learned to trust her instincts above all. At the moment, her instincts told her that there was something wrong with the picture they had. Something missing. Elmshadow wasn’t truly important. Leaving the Golden Order to keep it busy while she advanced to Cliff…

The door creaked open, the return of her adjutant interrupting her thoughts. His face, pale and drawn, brought the bad news before he even opened his mouth.

“Empress,” he began, bowing his head before lifting his gaze to the level of her neck—no further. “The explosion was at site two. An uncontained fire spread to the stockpiled armaments and—”

She waved a hand, stalling the rest of the report. “Dead?”

“Only three confirmed. There may be more.”

“Viability of salvaging the construction?”

“About on par with site five.”

She gently placed her goblet on the table, nodding her head slowly. So much for cobbling together the remains. “Abandon site four, have everyone focus on growing the other three. I want them in the air by the week’s end.”

“So soon?” His eyes flicked up in surprise before darting back down. He suddenly found his shoes fascinating. “With everything that has happened, I’m not sure if they’ll be finished on your schedule.”

“They don’t need to be finished. They merely need to be airworthy. It will be troublesome, but we can complete them in the air where they are safe from similar attacks.”

“I… understand.”

“If we move the remaining engineers over from the destroyed projects and stagger labor throughout both day and night, we’ll at least have the frames ready. Detail the schedule immediately. Have it put into place the moment we have finished confirming the status of anyone caught in the recent explosion.” She paused, staring at her adjutant for a moment before adding, “See it done.”

“Understood.”

Orders given, she turned back to the map on the table. The door clicked shut behind her back as her adjutant departed. That left her with nothing but her thoughts.

Her thoughts and that feeling that something was still missing in the larger picture.

“Wᚺat are you working on now?”

Agnete didn’t stop to respond. This was delicate work.

She stood over a small archway constructed of a crystalline lattice, amber in base color but with an iridescent sheen that changed color based on the lighting and the angle one observed it. Meticulously etched runes dotted the sides while several thick bolts and metal clamps affixed it to the ground. Burning heat from Agnete’s fingertips fused a fresh chunk of the amber crystal to the main structure.

She had to control her heat carefully. Too much and the crystal would crack, score, or melt entirely, deforming it and losing the magic properties she required. Too little and it wouldn’t be part of the structure, just an odd hanger-on. It was by far the most precise she ever had to manipulate her heat.

Agnete doubted her old self would have been able to manage. Ever since meeting with… that thing—she still wasn’t convinced that it was the actual Burning Forge and not just an avatar-like construct—the heat in her chest wasn’t constantly leaping to escape, to burn everything around her. It was like the difference between when she had been working under Vrox and when she joined up with Arkk except now Arkk was the former party.

Finishing with the large rectangular block of crystal, Agnete paused and looked down at her hands. Molten seams of glowing golden metal ran through the cracks in her flesh, looking like veins. Using one of the magnifying eyepieces that had been provided to her, she had gotten a close look. Despite being molten, runes covered the metal, shifting and flowing as it moved through her skin. The runes were unlike anything she had seen before—and that included some of Zullie’s more heretical ideas. Agnete hadn’t bothered trying to analyze it. She was no researcher.

“Are you alrighᛏ?”

Agnete looked up, staring at the mechanical copy of herself. Who stood to the side, head tilted to the left. Agnete had tried to tell her to change the name now that they could communicate comfortably, only to be refused. To Who, her name was something her creator had given her and she didn’t want to lose it. Despite the fact that Agnete hadn’t been trying to give her a name at the time.

“I’m fine,” Agnete said, lowering her hands to her sides. “Just busy.”

“What is this?” Who asked, moving around the small archway.

“Something I’ve been working on while you were out. Did you procure the parts I requested?”

“I did,” Who said without taking those mechanical eyes off the archway. “You failed to specify a quantity. I decided to ship a wᚺole train of them in. They’re waiting at the station.”

“Bring in five, please.”

“Five?” Who’s deep, mechanical voice took on a note of distress. “I have ᛏᚺousands out there.”

“Yes,” Agnete said, carefully controlling her facial expression to keep a small smile off her face. She had known this would happen. The same thing happened the last time Agnete hadn’t been perfectly clear. “Thank you, Who. Five will suffice.”

The quiet clacking of metal tapping metal filled the air as Who crossed her arms. A gout of white steam puffed out from her ears. Gears and servos shifted behind the plates on her face as pistons pushed her mouth open in what was sure to be an irritated response. However, Who’s voice stalled as her gaze shifted to one side. “And what is that?” she asked.

Agnete turned to find the lesser servant slop out from the ventilation duct. It landed with a splat and looked up, froze, and then quickly tried to scurry beneath one of the workbenches.

Who didn’t let it get away. Another blast of steam emitted from her legs with the sound of a low horn, propelling her into motion. Her arms extended outwards, grasping hold of a few stray tendrils. Some of it oozed out between her fingers. Just enough of it maintained cohesion when she pulled to drag the whole thing back out into the open.

“Wᚺaᛏ ᛁᛋ ᛏᚺᛁᛋ ᚠᛚᛖᛋᚺᛃ, ᛋᛩᚢᛁᛋᚺᛃ ᛏᚺᛁᚾᚷ?”

Agnete let out a small sigh. “Don’t harm it, please.”

“You know wᚺaᛏ ᛏhis is?” Who asked, looking back even as the servant struggled in her grip. She looked more curious than murderous, which Agnete took to be a good sign.

“It is a servant. It has been helping me construct the portal,” she said, gesturing toward the small archway.

“Portal. Like the one you wanted to visit a while ago?”

Agnete nodded her head. “I don’t suppose you discovered where it is? It certainly would be easier to use. Though I doubt it matters now.”

Who continued to grasp at the servant, continually readjusting where her hands were as the amorphous blob shifted out of her grip. Her head turned almost completely backward to look at Agnete then turned just a little more as she gave a negative shake. “Sorry. I was not created with that information and requests regarding the subject have been denied.”

“Unfortunate. But that is why I built this.”

“Portal.” Who said again, now turning to the amber archway. “The thing you wanted to use to leave? You’re leaving?”

“Not permanently, I hope. I have created a great many useful things that I need a larger portal to return to my home. To answer your question, however, yes. I cannot—will not stay here indefinitely, even at the behest of a god.”

Ratchets clicked, gears turned, and metal clanked in the silence that followed. The steam-filled pipes in Who’s chest thronged in a distressed note. “You’re the only one who can make… me. Things like me.”

“If the Burning Forge wishes me to stay and mindlessly toil in the factory until the end of time, She should have selected a different avatar.”

“But… You’re leaving me?”

Agnete stared at the metal copy of herself, wondering why she had fashioned it in her image. With a slight shake of her head, she sighed. “Not permanently, as I—”

“ᚾᛟ.”

“Who?”

“ᚾᛟ,” Who repeated, dropping the lesser servant. She turned, steps suddenly heavy against the metal floor as if she weighed ten times as much as she had five minutes ago.

It quickly scurried off, squeezing itself behind the workbench. Two thin stalks popped up over the top, forming thin yellow eyes.

Agnete paid it little attention, focused entirely on Who. “Do you think you can stop me?” Flames curled around her arms, flowing up toward her shoulders in thin streams. “I don’t want to hurt you, Who.”

“You can’t just make me and then leave me,” Who snapped. Her fingers clenched and unclenched repeatedly, making heavy thunking noises with each movement.

Agnete blinked. Smiling slightly, she let her flames die down. “Then come with me.”

“What?”

“Come with me,” Agnete said again, motioning to the portal. “It isn’t like only one person can get through.”

A hiss of steam spread out around Who, coming from her back, as she deflated. “With you?”

Nodding her head, Agnete turned to the portal. It should be finished. And if their haphazard communications hadn’t gone wrong, the lesser servant coming through the vents should mean that Arkk was ready on the other side. So, with a slight tug on the link, she let Arkk know that she was ready in turn.

It took a minute. Several minutes. Eventually, a magical hum started up around the portal. A liquid-like membrane spread through its interior, first shimmering silver, then shifting to display what Agnete recognized as a part of Fortress Al-Mir. The maze-like tiles and violet glowstones were almost nostalgic with how long she had spent here in the Anvil.

“What now?” Who all but whispered.

“Now we go through. Let me go first. The ones on the other side will probably attack anyone they don’t expect. You can follow in a minute.” Agnete started forward, only to frown. Unfortunately, the portal only went up to her chest. That meant she had to squat down and make an undignified crawling walk through the shimmering membrane.

Arkk, Zullie, Zullie’s two assistants, and a contingent of orc guards all stood on the other side. The first two had smiles on their faces, Arkk’s welcoming while Zullie just looked pleased that her cobbled-together portal actually worked. The assistants were near the portal frame, monitoring it. The orcs stood in an array around, weapons out but not raised.

All ten individuals stumbled back as soon as Agnete put her head through the portal. Morvin and Gretchen let out clipped shouts, jumping away while Arkk and Zullie staggered.

Agnete pulled herself through in a rush, worried something had gone wrong, only to come to the slow realization that they were pulling away from her, not the portal. It took another moment to realize why.

The tiles beneath her feet were melting.

Closing her eyes, Agnete took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down, to pull in that ever-present flame. Perhaps, in the Anvil, it hadn’t been easy to control. It was just that she hadn’t noticed she wasn’t controlling it.

The room slowly cooled down, both in temperature and temperament. “I apologize,” Agnete said. “I didn’t realize.”

“That’s alright,” Arkk said, slowly getting his smile back. That smile froze suddenly as Arkk stiffened, cutting off whatever he was going to say. He went on guard, wary once again. A few of the others took up more defensive positions, as if expecting a fight.

Exactly one minute had passed since her arrival.

Who, arms and legs crawling along the ground like a mechanical spider, slipped through the portal frame, crawling up right behind Agnete before straightening in one smooth, utterly inhuman motion.

Agnete stepped forward, making sure to place herself between Who and everyone else in the room. Her body language alone made it clear that anyone wishing to harm the construct would have to go through her first.

Obviously not wanting a fight to break out, Arkk quickly gave the hand signal for everyone to stand down. He still looked wary, but he trusted her enough to put on an air of welcome. “I saw through the servant, you looked like you were fighting with this… Who is this?” he asked, clearly forcing himself to be polite.

“That’s correcᛏ,” Who said, her low tones sounding pleased.

Arkk blinked, taking his eyes off Who to look at Agnete. “What’s correct?”

Agnete looked back, watching as Who took in the situation around her. Nodding her head, she looked at Arkk. “Who.”

“Who?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“No. This is Who.”

“I’m…” Arkk scrunched up his face, scratching at the side of his head. “I don’t know.”

Who, stepping forward with a small tuft of steam escaping from her legs, gestured toward Arkk. “You’re I Don’ᛏ Know?” she asked in utter innocence.

Agnete stared at Arkk. Arkk stared back. Eventually, she sighed.

 

 

Arkk, Kia, Olatt’an, Vezta, Zullie, and Abbess Hannah teleported into the undead storage room, the rapid movement still feeling slightly sluggish but not as bad as it had been. All carried a veritable armory of the counter-demon weapons Zullie had developed. In the five minutes since escaping the demon’s captivity, he had devised a tentative plan for dealing with the entity. He wished there was more time, but he couldn’t allow a demon to roam unchecked through his fortress.

There was so much to do. So much he needed to do.

The demon had to be dealt with first.

“What is that smell?” Hannah asked, pressing the back of her gloved hand to her nose.

“There’s a demon on the loose and you’re worried about smell?” Olatt’an grunted, his eyes never leaving the darkened chamber.

It was a large, open room, meant for holding undead until they were needed. He had first used it for the undead soldiers, then the goblins. Speaking of which… Arkk sent a mental command to the goblins under his control. They were no longer needed out in the field. Things out there had gone…

Focus, Arkk told himself.

With another thought, he teleported a dozen smaller glowstones throughout the room, dropping them into the large chamber to provide light. The light didn’t make that much difference for him—he had a near-perfect omniscience of his own territory—but it would help the others. Because of that, he already knew what he would find.

“No demon,” Vezta said.

“Would you stick around?” Hannah asked with an abrasive edge to her words, still pressing her glove to her nose. Arkk was well aware that the Abbess considered Vezta little better than a demon.

“If I thought I could ambush anyone coming after me, yes,” Vezta said. In contrast, her tone remained cool and neutral.

“It can’t attack us,” Arkk said, peering around the chamber. He hadn’t seen it through his localized omniscience, but he had hoped there would be something obvious to the naked eye. “Not as long as we and the Prince are not enemies.”

A long stretch of silence followed as the group’s thoughts churned. Based on their faces, Arkk could tell they weren’t thrilled with such a flimsy defense. Arkk wasn’t even positive that it was accurate. It was just the only thing that made sense given the situation.

Otherwise, he was fairly certain it would have killed him.

Instead, they had a brief talk, just before Vezta showed up.

One of the group decided to voice their thoughts. “What exactly constitutes his ‘enemy’ anyway?” Zullie asked, humming lightly. “Like if I say I don’t like the aesthetic of his shoes—”

“Probably best not to think of ways of becoming his enemy, witch,” Hannah said, sneering before her eyes went wide. “Oh Light,” she murmured. Her eyes darted back and forth, suddenly full of fear. “Prince Cedric summoned a demon and I’m a member of the Abbey. We’re… There’s no way I can’t not be his enemy… Oh Light—”

“Weren’t you excommunicated?” Olatt’an asked as calmly as if he were asking about the weather.

Although the fear didn’t fully flee her eyes, Hannah shot him a withering glare. “That’s beside the point. I still hold values incompatible with demons and their summoners—”

“Shouldn’t we focus on the demon? It shapeshifts, right?” Kia asked, her voice echoing with her afterimages as they looked around. “What if it turned into a rock?”

Zullie huffed in annoyance, casually swinging a black-bladed knife around her finger by the hole in the handle. “Did you not read the information packet on demons that I gave you and Claire? I didn’t go through all that effort—”

“Enough,” Arkk cut in. “Kia is right, focus on the demon. It will be humanoid. Maybe gremlin-sized at the smallest, minotaur-sized at the largest.”

Kia nodded slowly, taking that in. “Alright. If it isn’t here, where did it go?”

That one, Arkk didn’t have an answer for. “I have all doors sealed in the lower levels. Only I can open them. If anything tries to damage a door, I’ll know instantly… but I still don’t know how it got down here in the first place. It shouldn’t have gotten inside without breaking at least one door.”

“Maybe you didn’t notice?” Olatt’an asked, walking a few steps back toward the hole in the wall Vezta had made. “Too distracted with the operation going wrong?” Shuffling around, he pied off the corner with his crossbow raised. The tip of his bolt ripped through the world as he moved.

Kia moved up as well. Afterimages moved in front of her, peering out down both sides of the corridor at the same time. Apparently seeing nothing, she stepped out fully with Zullie following shortly after. The latter still languidly spun the short blade around her finger.

“It is hard to describe,” Arkk said. “And it has only happened a few times, but when something attacks the fortress itself, there is no way to ignore it. The fortress might as well scream in my ear, hammering gongs and setting off blinding blasts of magic. It is safe to say that nothing has damaged part of the fortress without me knowing.”

“A demon will do anything to fulfill its contract, even violating laws of magic, though I suspect that takes a special kind of contract. It is part of what makes them so dangerous,” Zullie said. Snapping the knife into her grip, she slashed at the air. A black void opened up, much like the openings Olatt’an’s bolt was causing except much larger. Although it started to seal shut, Zullie reached in and, after rummaging in the void, pulled out a solid black sphere. “It can break reality as easily as I can if its contract requires. Unfortunately, we don’t know any details of its contract. All we can assume is that it is only allowed to directly harm those aligned against Prince Cedric.”

Zullie moved back into the undead storage room, waving around the black sphere. Nothing obvious happened from Arkk’s perspective, but Zullie occasionally stopped, brought the sphere close to her face, and let out a few mild humming sounds.

“Could be that it has been here for a while,” Olatt’an said. “If it can appear like you convincingly enough to fool the dark elves, who can say it hasn’t been wandering the halls as an employee.”

“If it did sneak in and manage to get hired, I would have noticed it before it attacked me. I would have been able to teleport it away and I would be able to locate it now.”

Zullie looked up from the black sphere. With the tip of the black dagger against the corner of her glasses frame, she adjusted her lenses over her empty eyes. “What part of violates laws of magic do you not understand?”

Arkk nodded his head, conceding the point. “Fair enough. But it still seems… unlikely.

“What seems more likely is the direction it went,” Arkk said, turning away from the corridor. The opposite end of the undead storage room opened up into a large tunnel. “That way leads to the surface.”

“Directly to the surface?” Olatt’an asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Rekk’ar would be complaining about fortress integrity and security right about now.”

“This room is normally full of hundreds of undead goblins,” Arkk said, mildly offended. “The path toward the tower is a labyrinth filled with all manner of traps until you reach the border of Elmshadow where the fortress proper begins. Seems like enough security to me. More than half the other entrances have.”

“Just a thought,” Olatt’an said with a light shrug. He moved up with Kia, crossbow aimed down the dark tunnel. “No doors down there?”

“There are two before the surface,” Arkk said. They were more to protect from anyone accidentally stumbling in than to keep people out, but they still functioned like every other door in his domain.

“So it couldn’t have gotten in that way without you knowing.”

Arkk almost answered in the negative, only to pause as a thought occurred to him. “I had just sent the undead out. The doors opened for them. The demon could have slipped past them.”

“That sounds like one mystery solved,” Zullie said in a chipper tone.

Arkk closed his eyes, mentally pausing the goblins. No sense recalling them now when they might just open the door for the demon to escape through the same way it had come in. He didn’t like leaving them out in the open where anyone could see them, but nothing to do about it now.

Vezta shot the witch a glare. “I am still concerned it knew where you would be, when you would be here, and how to gain access.”

“Alright,” Arkk said, sighing. He had thought they were prepared. They had weapons and tools and people like Kia and Claire. If Zullie was right, just being touched by any of them should shunt the demon back into the netherworld. It was as simple as that.

Simple.

Right, Arkk scoffed to himself. As if. Something that could break into his fortress without him knowing, assault him, and then vanish from his sight was a bit more than he was expecting. He doubted even the Golden Order’s avatar would have been able to hide within the fortress. Not that the avatar would have bothered, but that was beside the point.

And there was so much else that still needed his attention…

“We’ll head up the tunnel on foot,” Arkk said. “If we find nothing, we call it there—”

“Call it?” Hannah said with a gasp. “And leave a demon wandering around?”

“Of course not. But standing around arguing with each other isn’t productive. We have an ongoing emergency, we might have just kicked Evestani into action, and…” He pressed his lips together. “Other things have gone wrong. Stumbling around in the dark won’t find us the demon and won’t solve any other issue. We’ll need a plan. Now that we know a little more about the demon, how it can hide itself and disguise itself, and even some of its limitations, we can make that plan. And maybe, just maybe, we won’t have to worry about the demon at all.”

Hannah looked genuinely offended that he was considering leaving even after the explanation. Arkk understood but at the same time, what did she want him to do? Camp out down in the undead storage room until it showed itself again? Shaking his head, Arkk did a quick check around him.

He counted heads, making sure there were still only the six of them, then checked to make sure all six had a link. He didn’t think it was possible that any of them could have been suddenly replaced by the shapeshifting demon, but he also wasn’t about to take any chances. Thankfully, everyone was who they appeared to be. With that done, he motioned down the tunnel.

“Let’s go. Eyes and ears open. Try to keep everyone else in sight at all times while also keeping a lookout for anything amiss.”

Olatt’an gave Arkk a look. Assuming the old orc was going to ask him to prove that he was still the real Arkk, Arkk teleported himself to the head of the group and rearranged everyone into columns behind him. There was a slight jostling as everyone adjusted but nobody questioned him.

If a demon could replicate all his [HEART]-granted abilities, they were already screwed.

“What do you mean, we won’t have to worry?” Hannah asked.

“The demon… stole my magic? Ate it? Something. I couldn’t do anything for a few minutes and I’m sure you felt that teleport wasn’t as snappy as usual.”

“Yeah,” Kia said. “Like we were swimming through water.” She paused and looked over the group. “Shouldn’t I be in the lead?” she asked as they continued walking down the tunnel. “I’m the one most likely to be able to take a hit from the thing.”

Arkk hesitated and almost waved her forward until Zullie let out a scoff.

“If we get ambushed in a relatively small tunnel like this, the demon will probably be able to pick and choose who it strikes at without worrying about who is where.”

“Point,” Arkk said, then waved the dark elf forward anyway. “Having Kia in the lead will allow her freedom of movement without the rest of us getting in the way.”

A quick shuffle occurred. Abbess Hannah positioned herself in the middle of the group, near Arkk and Vezta, while Kia took the lead and Zullie shifted to the rear. Olatt’an remained next to Zullie, keeping his crossbow raised but making sure he never aimed it at one of them.

“In any case, while the demon has to obey the contract, it still seems to have its own desires. Namely, it wants to eat magic—probably. Before you showed up to save me, I tried to tell it that Evestani and the Eternal Empire are full of magic and are already enemies of the Prince.” Arkk shrugged. “Not saying I shook hands and formed an alliance, but maybe it has decided to focus on them over us. For now.”

An uneasy silence followed. While arguing in the undead storage room had bounced between tense and lighthearted—the latter likely only there to help cover up just how tense some of his employees were—the time for games had passed. The tunnel wasn’t exactly narrow, having been designed to allow the undead to flood out to the surface, it was still a great deal more confined and claustrophobic than the storage room.

Smaller than the storage room, the lighting wasn’t quite so dim. He still supplemented the wall-mounted glowstones with a constant teleport of the loose glowstones onto the ground ahead of them, keeping everything nice and bright.

Arkk and the others made little haste as they moved. It had him growing more and more antsy with every step. Ilya was on her way back. He needed to deal with that. Most of the other groups were already back, all of whom he needed to deal with as well, but Ilya’s was the most important. The most… distressing.

And he had a demon on the loose that could disguise as him. Until he told Ilya, she would be vulnerable to it appearing in front of her. It could take on the appearance of him, her mother, or anyone else. With that, it could easily convince her to head somewhere of its choosing. Even if it couldn’t directly harm him or anyone who didn’t consider the Prince an enemy, Arkk wouldn’t put it past the demon to leave someone out in the middle of nowhere, deep inside a pit they couldn’t escape from, and let them starve to death.

Then there was the question of how much he should reveal to the rest of his employees. It wouldn’t be good to start a panic or throw everyone into a state of paranoia where they couldn’t begin to trust each other. The last thing he needed in the middle of a war was for his army to start turning on each other. At the same time, if the demon showed up somewhere he wasn’t paying attention—talking to a team in private or even managing to take command of a unit in the field—it could send his employees to their deaths with him none-the-wiser.

They needed to deal with this demon as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, they reached the closed door at the end of the corridor without encountering anything strange. There were no marks or damage on the door, no indication that anyone had forced it open. He had already seen that through his omniscience of his territory, but some part of him had hoped they would find the demon standing by, waiting for the undead to reopen the doors.

Unless Zullie’s information was wrong and it could disguise as something other than a person, the demon wasn’t here.

“Could it be elsewhere in the fortress?” Olatt’an asked, the first to speak in the last ten minutes. Hannah jolted at his sudden voice.

“It has to be,” Arkk said, frowning at the wooden door. “Unless it can teleport around at will. If that’s the case…”

If that was the case, they were, again, extraordinarily screwed.

“Kia, Olatt’an, Zullie. Remain here and keep an eye on the door. I’m recalling the undead. The door will have to open for them.” Unfortunately, the undead were a little odd. They weren’t employees or property, so he couldn’t teleport them around at will. They had to walk. “If you see the demon, alert me. Otherwise… Stay safe.”

The old orc snorted at that.

“Before you go,” Zullie said, stepping forward, “if you aren’t fighting demons, Vezta, mind swapping?” She held out the black dagger in one hand, asking for the curled staff Vezta carried in her tendrils. “The Veilstaff is probably better for fighting in these quarters than the Threshold Blade. Not enough reach.”

Vezta glanced at Arkk, getting a nod confirming that he didn’t intend to hunt down the demon at this moment, before tossing the staff toward Zullie. It warped the air around it, bending light ever so slightly towards it. Though blind, Zullie caught it out of the air with one hand.

“Keep them both,” Vezta said when Zullie started to offer the knife.

“Any other questions?” Arkk asked, looking around once.

Hannah had her lips pressed into a thin line but clearly wanted out of here more than she wanted to keep searching for the demon. Her fingers on both hands were clamped tight around a little ring that Arkk was fairly certain was supposed to be on her finger. Olatt’an kept his crossbow up, aimed just over everyone’s heads, while Kia was already looking in every direction with her afterimages.

“I’ll drop us off in our quarters—”

“Alone?” Hannah hissed.

“Probably better to be alone,” Olatt’an mused. “Given our enemy can appear as others.”

“But if I’m alone, there won’t be anyone else there to stop it from stabbing me in the back!”

“I’ll put you in the operations center. Keep with the scrying teams. They might still be able to locate the demon. Vezta and I will meet with Ilya and her group as soon as she is in range of teleportation.” Arkk glanced to his side, nodding at Vezta. “As soon as the undead are inside, if nothing happens before then, I’ll teleport all of you back to the operations room. We’ll decide what to do from there.”

After getting an acknowledging nod from each of them, Arkk teleported himself, Vezta, and Hannah. Hannah went to the operations center as he said. He and Vezta reappeared high up in the tower, in his private quarters.

She looked at him with a heavy frown. “You were trying to broker a deal with a demon?”

“Not like that,” Arkk said. “I was more pointing out that, if it wants magic, there is an avatar and those things the Eternal Empire has been building. Just the magic rendering them invisible has to be considerable. I’ve no idea how they’re managing it. Before you arrived, I think I was convincing it.”

“You cannot trust anything a demon says. Or does. Even if it nodded its head and said it would only go after the Evestani from now on, you should expect it to strike you in the back the first chance it gets,” Vezta said with a heavy scowl. “We need to find it. Or a way to detect it, at the very least. You cannot be compromised like this again.”

“Agreed. But that isn’t exactly why I’ve brought us here to talk.” He looked to Vezta, lips thin, and said, “Leda is dead.”

The eyes on Vezta’s face closed for a moment, then reopened. “Unfortunate. Her contract with the Walking Fortress Heart will have collapsed.”

“I had a thought. Since we opened the portal to the Necropolis—”

“Have the First and Last Primeval Lord revive her? I suppose that might be worth exploring, but we don’t know if some preparations or rituals must be done in order to revive her as a cognizant undead versus the mindless normally revived with necromancy.” Vezta paused, turning to face Arkk fully. “More importantly, it won’t repair the contract even if it works. It will have broken with her death.

“That means we have have an active but unaffiliated [HEART] out in the wild, vulnerable. It must be reclaimed as soon as possible.”

 

 

Ilya drew back an arrow on her bow, held it for a brief moment as she repositioned her aim, then loosed the arrow. It soared through the forest, missing trees and branches by the thickness of a leaf, narrowly avoiding being knocked off course. The forward scout of the Evestani Army dropped with the arrow sticking out the back of his neck.

A quick motion of her hand had the Shieldbreakers charging forward, backed up by Dakka’s team of shadow-armored orcs. The remaining eight scouts tried to put up a defense. Between the shadowy scythes and the Shieldbreakers’ enchanted weapons, they may as well have hidden behind a thin sheet of paper. From the first scout falling to the rest of the team joining him in the dirt, only a few seconds had passed.

“Clear,” Dakka said.

“Clear,” Lyssa echoed. The werecat sounded almost disappointed as she started looping her chain back around her arm.

It was the third such team they had eliminated. Barring movement from the enemy, it was also the last between them and the members of the sabotage team who had gotten trapped above ground. Ilya turned slightly and then pointed off in the direction they needed to head.

“Let’s go.”

“Why this way?” Dakka asked, trudging after her but with hesitation in her steps. “This isn’t the way we were headed before.”

Ilya glared at the short orc. “You think you can lead a team through the forest at night without getting turned around? Be my guest—”

“Woah,” Dakka said. The tone in her voice was the verbal equivalent of backing off a step. Physically, she moved forward, more in line with Ilya. “Just a question.”

“We took a detour to make sure that scouting team didn’t end up behind us,” Ilya hissed, narrowing her eyes as she scanned their surroundings for any sign of danger. “Now we’re getting back on track. That answer your question?”

Dakka didn’t respond, so Ilya took that as an affirmative.

With the distraction out of the way, Ilya focused on her surroundings. She could see well enough. Better than humans could—allegedly, not that she had ever seen through human eyes—it still wasn’t much in the moonless night. Her ears were the real secret weapon. Hearing far-off voices was how she found this last group of scouts in the first place.

Dakka and the other orcs weren’t exactly silent. Their steps were heavy, the non-shadow parts of their armor clanked, and even their breathing felt loud and heavy in Ilya’s ears. In contrast, the Shieldbreakers—mostly made up of beastmen—moved with far greater stealth. Probably because Lyssa and half the others were doing the same thing she was doing.

Concentrating let her tune them out, listening for distant sounds. Anything unnatural might mean a target to remove, an imminent attack, or another kind of danger. Rustling of leaves and even the crunching of underbrush weren’t uncommon in a forest. Any animal, small or large, could make those noises. The real giveaways were often more subtle. The sloshing of water in a half-filled canteen, metal clinking against metal, and especially voices meant someone was around.

“I know you’re worried about Arkk—”

Ilya jolted, half frightened out of her boots at the relatively loud voice in her ear. With how much she had been trying to tune down nearby sounds, Dakka’s sudden whisper might as well have been yelling. A short distance away, Lyssa let out a long hiss of her own, probably for the exact same reason.

“I’m not worried about him,” Ilya lied, snapping back at the orc. It wasn’t fair that she was taking out her anger and worries on the orc, but she found it hard to care at the moment.

It was one thing for Arkk to go missing. He had a lot on his plate. A lot of different moving components to keep track of. Vezta assured her that he was alive, so she had mostly ignored the situation, focusing on what she could do to help out with the ongoing operations.

Then she had been told that Arkk was facing down some copy of himself. Some being that Vezta suspected was a demon.

Arkk could take care of himself. But against a demon?

Ilya ground her teeth together. There was nothing she could do about it. She had half a mind to get Zullie to do to her what the witch had done to the dark elves. If she hadn’t known that it would be days if not weeks of recuperation, she would have right then and there. Now, all she could do was try to keep things from falling into further disarray.

Ilya took a step forward only to feel a massive tug across that ethereal link. The strongest she had ever felt. It wasn’t an attempt at teleporting her—she was far too far from Elmshadow’s fortress to teleport as it was—it was more like a warning.

She wasn’t the only one who had felt it. Everyone in their squad stopped abruptly. Alfred let out a quiet whine while murmuring erupted among everyone else.

“I take it we all felt that?” Viola asked, one of the few human members of the Shieldbreakers.

“The link, right?” Maria said, nervously shuffling. “Haven’t felt it like that before.”

Aya and Monika glanced at one another, nodding in agreement with Maria.

“Arkk is back in action, I take it,” Ellen said.

“Quiet down,” Lyssa hissed before Ilya could say the same thing. As relieved as she was that Arkk was seemingly in contact with them again, they still needed to survive this outing. “We’re still in enemy territory.”

“Do we keep going?” Alfred said, now in a barely audible whisper. His dog-like features took on a concerned look. “Or was that telling us to go back?”

“We haven’t completed our objective,” Ilya said, taking a step forward.

As soon as she did, she felt another massive tug. It was completely metaphysical, a pull somewhere within. Yet it had been strong enough that she almost stumbled.

“Or maybe not.” Something must have happened. Perhaps another team got to Joanne and Kevin first. Perhaps they… didn’t make it. The link was unfortunately not that great at passing on detailed information. “Let’s head back,” she said, turning back toward the east.

However, as soon as she took a step, she felt yet another tug.

The rest of the squad jerked to a stop after only a step or two.

“Again,” Ellen said with a frown. The taurus beastman, standing a little taller than even Ilya, tried stepping a little to her left, only to pause once again before taking a step to her right. “Ah?” She turned fully, looking southward, and took a large step. Then another. Then a third. “This way?”

“South?” Ilya said to herself as she took a few quick steps after the taurus. Sure enough, there was no heaving pull from the link. That meant the right direction, right?

“Why this way?” Dakka asked, moving up alongside Ilya again. “You get us turned around after all?”

“Absolutely not.” Ilya cast a subtle glance around, checking constellations in the sky and the growth of moss and other plants around the forest floor. No. They were headed toward the south without a doubt. “We’re not headed back, but we aren’t headed toward the enemy either. Maybe Evestani is on the move?”

“We’re supposed to be the rescue party. I don’t like the idea of us getting stuck out here and needing rescue ourselves.”

Dakka wasn’t the only one. A sudden alteration to the plan like this had Ilya’s nerves on edge. It meant something had gone wrong and she hadn’t the slightest idea of what or how to prepare for it.

“If I could make a request,” Dakka continued. “Maybe put a higher priority on communications to field soldiers? Surely Zullie can figure something out that’s better than a vague pull from Arkk. In fact, I even got some ideas for her. How about a hole in the world that lets us talk through it? Sounds like something right up her—”

“Dakka,” Ilya said, trying not to be harsh. First, she had been worried about Arkk. Now she was worried about their survival. “Later. Can’t do anything about it now.”

More importantly, she needed to concentrate. The beastmen did as well. Before, they knew roughly how many groups of scouts they would come across, it had just been a matter of noticing them before the squad got noticed. Now, for all she knew, they might be moments away from stumbling into a full detachment of Eternal Empire soldiers.

She didn’t think Arkk would lead them into something he didn’t think they could get out of, but things were weird right now…

Best to be cautious no matter what.

“I can sense them,” Vezta said, eyes focused on a point along a wall.

One of the undead storage rooms. It felt empty, from this side of the wall. She didn’t know where the undead had gone and, frankly, she did not care. All that mattered was what she could sense on the other side.

She was close enough now to feel her master distinctly form the background of the fortress. The demon wasn’t quite so loud, if it was still there at all. Odd given that she had expected a demon to have an aura of overwhelming pressure.

Her sole previous experience with a demon had certainly been that way. She still remembered the feel of it approaching from miles away. Contracted to destroy portal gates, it had ignored almost everyone who hadn’t been in its path. Those who hadn’t gotten away ended up dead without exception.

She reached out across the link with a metaphorical tendril, lightly tugging on it. Her link was a little different than that of any other employee. She was directly contracted to Arkk, bypassing the [HEART]. The end result wasn’t all that different, but it did help her locate Arkk. Vezta could almost see her tendril stretching through the wall, ending someone on the floor on the other side.

There was no response. Arkk could easily have teleported them into the room to try to catch the demon off-guard. A part of her was disappointed he hadn’t. But perhaps it was for the best if what Kia and Claire had said about the demon was at all accurate.

It would be all too easy for the demon to take the guise of anyone else, throw a little confusion in the mix, and end up causing chaos. How would Olatt’an and Kia handle two Veztas each accusing the other? Arkk would have been able to tell them apart thanks to the link, but in the short few seconds it took to register what happened, it might be too late.

Taking that into consideration, the slow route might be for the best.

Vezta looked at her side. Kia stood, eyes scanning around. Olatt’an, meanwhile, had hardly taken his eyes off Vezta and Kia, clearly wary of either of them somehow being replaced by impostors. If only they had enough eyes to keep track of everything at once…

“Ready yourself,” Vezta said, looking to Olatt’an.

Olatt’an at her side readied his crossbow, drawing the cable back with both arms as he used his foot to hold the end of the crossbow in place. He then took a small jar from a pouch. Vezta wasn’t sure what demihumans saw when they looked into the jar, but Vezta saw stars. Not the [STARS]. Just a starry scene that changed based on her position. If she were under the jar, she could look upward into the starfield. If she stood over it, she could look down at a completely different starscape.

One of Zullie’s creations. Although it looked like a liquid hole in the world, it wasn’t alchemical in nature. Truly, Vezta didn’t know how she had crafted it. The only explanation Vezta could come up with was that, since losing her eyes and performing a few rituals on herself, she had somehow come to grasp knowledge that belonged to Xel’atriss, Lock and Key. Not quite an avatar—though close—but just extremely in tune with knowledge from the god of boundaries.

Olatt’an dipped the tip of a bolt into the liquid-like concoction. The metal head of the bolt… did something. It was like it slid aside to make room for the starry liquid. Except instead of aside, it went elsewhere. One of Kia’s afterimages, watching the process, shifted her eyes as if she were tracking something that nobody else could see.

Then she shuddered.

The result was a star-tipped bolt resting in the slot on the crossbow. As Olatt’an moved the bow, after carefully stoppering the jar, the tip sliced through the air. If reality were a fabric, that bolt sliced through it like a sharp blade through a hung sheet of linen. Unlike a sheet of linen, reality sealed itself back together in the bolt’s wake.

Vezta honestly wasn’t sure if Zullie should be messing with stuff like that. If she were a true avatar, she would likely understand innately what was too dangerous to touch and what wasn’t. As it was, she was an overly curious human dipping her toes into the realm of a god.

But it was useful.

“Don’t miss,” Vezta hissed. “I’m going to breach the wall. I will point out Arkk. Both of you are to do your utmost to eliminate anyone not Arkk or us in the room. I presume tricks may be played. We may not be able to trust our eyes precisely. Try to stick together to avoid ourselves becoming targets for the demon to disguise themselves as.”

“I need to get close to use my abilities,” Kia said. “They don’t work at range.”

“You are on defensive duties. If Olatt’an’s bolt doesn’t work, we move as a group to confront the demon.” Vezta stopped, considered, and rephrased. “Or rather, we move to extricate Arkk. He is conscious, I can tell that much, but he must be in some way captured. Once we free him, he will be able to aid us more directly with the power of the fortress.”

Vezta looked between the two, waiting for any further objections or questions. Olatt’an had already questioned why so few were going to Arkk’s aid. Against a demon, anyone else would be nothing more than casualties at best. Vezta wasn’t sure that Olatt’an was the best man for the job here, but he had been available when much of Arkk’s minions were out and about.

The old orc had somewhat fallen out of favor following the events of his expedition into the Underworld and subsequent accidental portal opening to the Anvil. It was nothing official. Vezta doubted anyone but herself and Olatt’an even noticed that Arkk had started seeking advice from others whereas before, Olatt’an would have been at the top of his list. All that wasn’t exactly relevant to today, excepting perhaps the notion of Olatt’an wishing to regain some of that lost favor.

Vezta hoped he performed well.

She stepped closer to the wall, her arms and limbs spreading out far further than she normally allowed while maintaining her humanoid guise. Maws of razor-sharp teeth whirred across her oily flesh as she pressed up against the wall. The magical reinforcements in the brickwork meant nothing to her. They crumbled as easily as loosely packed dirt.

Stuffy, stale air rushed out into the corridor as Vezta consumed the wall. In mere seconds, there was a gap from the corridor to the storage room big enough for an orc, an elf, and a monster to step in without losing track of one another.

Kia took the lead, afterimages fanning out in front of them in a protective formation. Olatt’an, crossbow raised to his shoulder, peered down over the top of the bolt.

Vezta glanced from one Arkk pinned to the ground by another Arkk. “Demon is on top,” she said.

Before her words were fully out, Olatt’an pulled the trigger. The starry-tipped bolt sheared through reality. At the range they were at, the bolt crossed the distance at the speed a human took to blink.

The demon Arkk flattened himself against the real Arkk, grinning wide as he avoided the bolt by the hair on his back. As soon as it was clear, he flipped backward, flinging Arkk away—

The scenery changed in… not quite an instant. The familiar feel of teleportation, rather than a sudden jolt, felt like a slow drag on Vezta as she found herself within Zullie’s laboratory. Olatt’an and Kia remained at her side, unmoved relative to her.

Arkk stood in front of them, face set in a grim, angry scowl. He wobbled slightly, steadying as Vezta placed a hand on his back and chest.

Kia started forward, only to pause as Vezta shot a look at her, blocking her way.

“Are you alright, Master?”

Arkk looked over the three of them. “I’m fine,” he said, trailing the word. “But Leda…”

Ilya lowered her bow without loosing the arrow. The group ahead of her squad were not hostiles this time. They were…

She stepped forward, slowly, lips pressed into a tight line.

Priscilla sat face-down in the dirt, sending out a trail of ice crystals with every one of her shallow breaths. Kevin and Joanne sat behind her, hunched over a small figure with both their hands alight with magic. Magic Ilya easily recognized, having seen it up close more times than she wished. Flesh Weaving.

The arrow sticking out of the small fairy’s body was far too large for her frame. A coagulated droplet of blood fell from its tip, staining the grass around her. Glassy, sightless eyes stared upward at nothing.