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“This is it?”

Arkk leaned over Zullie’s desk, frowning at the object clasped between the metal claws. It… wasn’t exactly what he had expected.

His researchers had been hard at work. Since they couldn’t try to connect to the Anvil until the scrying team found another portal archway, Sylvara, Zullie, and the others went back to the binding agent project to oppose the avatar of the Heart of Gold. This binding agent was constructed using items recovered from the Silence. Although several plant clippings had been brought back, the two main items of note had been a hammock and those flowers that put people to sleep. So, he had expected rope or a flower to sit on top of the table. Or, failing that, a skull to represent the Eternal Silence’s other dominion.

Instead, he got… that.

A horrifying bundle of dried twigs and grass, tied with thin strings into a rough, humanoid shape. The entire thing looked like it had been dipped into a vat of molten gold—which might have explained a minor deficit in the treasury—but the dipping job had been poor enough that the somewhat charred plants were still visible at various points and the gold was flaking off. It looked like a haphazard mess, far from the quality he had come to expect from most of Zullie’s work.

Arkk folded his arms, looking around the assembled group. Sylvara sat with heavy eyelids, clearly trying to use pure frustration to stay awake. The witch in the next seat around the table wasn’t even trying. She was stretched back in her seat, head resting on one shoulder. Savren hadn’t shown up at all. Morvin and Gretchen had their backs to one another, both fast asleep. Only Hale was looking at Arkk, frowning slightly but not any more than normal.

“It isn’t affecting you?” the youngest of his research team asked before breaking out into a long yawn.

And when had Hale joined the research team properly? At some point, she had just become a fixture of the group and Arkk hadn’t questioned it. Did she contribute or just observe?

She took in all the magic around her and just made it work so easily? He had struggled for years. It wasn’t until he contracted with an ancient magical artifact that he found himself able to control his magic enough to utilize it. It was true that she had proper books and even a tutor in the form of Zullie rather than just what he had gleaned from passing travelers… If he were being honest… seeing her like that made him feel like he could never compete. There just wasn’t a point in trying further. He really should just lie down and quit…

Arkk’s thoughts jerked to a stop. He looked around the room at everyone’s lethargic state before his eyes settled on the gold effigy. With a thought, he teleported it off to a secure vault down in the lower reaches of Fortress Al-Mir.

The instant it was gone, it was like the air itself became lighter. Hunched shoulders relaxed, droopy eyes picked up, and Morvin and Gretchen shifted but failed to wake.

Arkk looked at Hale again.

She shifted, looking uncomfortable. “What?”

Smiling, Arkk reached out and ruffled her hair, prompting a brief shout and a sudden scramble to get away.

It was a good thing he had checked in on them. Or, rather, it was a good thing Hale had tugged on the employee link. He hadn’t been paying attention to what they were doing. A dangerous prospect. If they had been left to sit in that thing’s presence, who knew how it would end up.

“So,” Arkk said, knocking the tip of his boot into Zullie’s chair, startling her awake. “Apathy? Or sleep inducement?” Arkk looked to Sylvara. “Is that going to work on the avatar? You were fighting it off.”

“It was a test,” Sylvara snapped, her fingers digging into the table’s edge. “If I can resist it then the avatar can too.”

“It’s fine,” Zullie said as she lazily waved a hand back and forth. She was still fully reclined in her chair, not even able to muster the energy to look at anyone else. “I proved it gets stronger with proximity. Couldn’t even get close enough to touch it.”

Arkk pursed his lips into a frown. “If we have to touch the avatar with it, I might as well hit him with a lightning bolt.”

“Ah! But that’s the beauty of it,” Zullie said, snapping her fingers. “Allow me to explain…”

“We should bombard them now.”

Rekk’ar slowly shook his head, lowering the looking glass. The motion made the thin cloak of shadow draped over his prone body shift uncomfortably. He tried to adjust it without moving too much only to find a twig digging into his side in the new position.

“Think about it, all we have to do is move that magic thing out here, activate it a few times, and then run away. Come back a day later and do the same thing. They can’t march while protected by the golden dome so they have to take it down at some point. We slow them down and, by the time they even reach Elmshadow, they’re beaten down to a tenth of what they are.”

“Being out here like this is a risk as it is,” Rekk’ar grunted, pulling the twig from his side. “Maybe it works once. Try it a second time and the bombardment team will be eating one of those golden beams. I guarantee it.”

Dakka scowled, shooting him a glare. With the shadow cloak in the way, her face was little more than a haze against the forest backdrop. He knew her well enough to fill in the gaps. “Maybe once would be enough. Get them wary and sluggish. Wait a few days until they think they’re safe and then do it again.”

“You want to? Be my guest. You have Arkk’s ear. I’m sure you can figure out the words to convince him—if he isn’t already planning something similar on his own.” Rekk’ar grunted as he pulled up the spyglass again. “But don’t come haunting me when you get your name scrawled up on that memorial wall of his.”

The wide open plains made Rekk’ar uneasy. Five steps forward and there would be nowhere to hide even with these shadow cloaks. The army had lookouts specifically on guard for anything out of the ordinary.

The army itself stretched long in several serpentine lines of soldiers, horses, and wagons. All looked out of place in this landscape. Their armor glinted in the fading light as their banners fluttered in the weak breeze. There were two distinct banners among the lines of soldiers. One of Evestani, encrusted in gold. The other were simple black banners bearing a ring of white blades—the so-called Eternal Empire.

The lines began to bunch up as the sun set, all gathering around the campfires that sprung up in their midst. He could make out the figures of soldiers setting up tents in a methodical, practiced way, just as they had every night since invading Mystakeen. A group of their scouts returned, speaking in tones too distant to hear to an individual who seemed to command respect; they were tall and imposing even among the Eternal Empire’s already tall men.

“So?” Dakka said, whispering as the night fell. “What’s your plan?”

“Plan?”

“You didn’t come out here just to watch, did you? I sure didn’t volunteer to join you just to sit around.”

Rekk’ar lowered the spyglass. Peering into those tiny crystal balls strained both his back and his eyes. Seeing things in person had a value of its own. Not that he expected Dakka to understand. “Didn’t ask for your presence,” he said with a grunt. “You want to tag along? Fine. But don’t complain about my job.”

It didn’t help that he didn’t trust those crystal balls. Sure, they worked fine for random scrying, but an army like this knew they were being watched. They weren’t using that white mist to obscure their forces this time, at least not while marching. There wasn’t much point. A blob of white fog or a blob of men, both were obvious.

Information allowed them to plan. The enemy knew that. They wouldn’t march directly toward Elmshadow without a plan of their own. Simple logic dictated that they would try to conceal crucial aspects of their plan just as Arkk burrowed his secrets beneath the ground.

“So what is it?” Rekk’ar grumbled to himself. “Is it a larger army than we expected?”

It was hard to tell the size of the opposing force. Scrying was typically conducted from overhead, allowing them to look down on the entire enemy army. His position now only afforded him a look from a lower angle. Even still, he didn’t think there was a significant difference between what he had seen in the crystal balls versus what he was seeing now.

Was it their carts? There were a number of siege engines in the army. Wheeled catapults and trebuchets capable of launching alchemical bombs or even just stones if the situation called for it. Some of the covered carts were magically protected against scrying, showing nothing more than a black void. Arkk’s current theory was that those carts carried magical bombardment arrays much like the one he had stolen from Evestani in the first defense of Elmshadow. Unless Rekk’ar was willing to venture forth and leave the safety of the forest, venturing straight into the center of the enemy encampment, he wouldn’t be able to ascertain the accuracy of Arkk’s theory.

That was a little too risky. Perhaps the gremlin would manage with her light feet and stealthy spells. Neither Rekk’ar nor Dakka would make it far enough to peek inside those carts, let alone escape with the information.

Even still, that didn’t feel like the answer either. Arkk was likely correct about the contents of most of those carts. If only because of the absence of such magics elsewhere in the army.

“The stars are strange tonight.”

Rekk’ar shuddered as he lowered his spyglass once again. Olatt’an had muttered some words like that before they got themselves into this whole mess. Despite himself, he craned his neck and looked up.

Night had only fallen a short while ago, during their little stake-out. The sky wasn’t totally dark yet. An orange hue struck the undersides of distant clouds, looking an awful lot like the Underworld’s persistent lighting. But directly above, in a cloudless section of the sky, Rekk’ar could see the faint dots of light gleaming down.

He was about to roll his eyes and focus back on the army when one of the stars winked out. That, on its own, wasn’t particularly odd. Stars twinkled. They brightened and dimmed depending on their whims. With the light still in the sky, even if it wasn’t on the ground, he could easily imagine a star being washed out.

But that wasn’t what happened. It had been one of the brightest lights in the sky. Now it was simply gone.

And it wasn’t the only one. Another star disappeared, not far from the first. And another. And another. All in a rough line. There was simply a void where those stars had been.

Except, a short distance back, a star appeared. It popped into existence like it had never left. And another. And another. Even the bright star reappeared after a moment.

Rekk’ar rolled onto his back, staring up with the aid of the spyglass. He aimed it directly at the next star that should disappear if the pattern held up. And sure enough, it did. But it didn’t disappear all at once. Though it was a tiny dot even in the spyglass, he could still see it disappear from one side to the other. As if something crossed between him and the stars above.

Realizing that, he mentally traced out the pattern of missing stars. It was like a leaf. Pointed at one end, wider in the middle, pointed at the other end. Oblong.

Or… not a leaf.

A slight chill ran down Rekk’ar’s spine. That…

That wasn’t possible.

No. Thinking something was impossible was foolhardy. A year ago, he would have said everything about Fortress Al-Mir was impossible. He would have said other worlds were impossible. He would have said monsters like Vezta weren’t possible. Just a few months ago and he would have said giant walking towers were impossible.

“We need to get back,” Rekk’ar said. He had a report to make.

“My father’s armies will finally be arriving within the week.”

Katja tensed, fearing the next words from the Prince’s mouth. Thus far, most of their interactions had been cordial. Even accepting. Which was exactly what Katja had been aiming for.

It honestly felt like she was a slave again, putting on the polite smile to avoid her master’s beatings. The entire charade made her sick. If only the Prince had died like he was supposed to have, she wouldn’t have to suffer through this. The only thing that kept her from snapping was the knowledge that it wasn’t a permanent situation.

She wasn’t a slave. He wasn’t her master. The situation was more akin to that of an employer that she needed to appease.

And the reward for her patience? A chance to take his position. To be named the reagent of Mystakeen, whether that was as Duchess, Countess, or whatever other title she might be able to scramble and scrape for.

But there was always that fear that the Prince or his father might have someone else in mind. And if an army was approaching, so too was the possibility that a less deserving replacement for her was on its way.

The way Prince Cedric was drawing out the conversation did not fill her with confidence. He sat on the former Duke’s throne, surrounded by aides and advisors, of which Katja had effectively become one. She wasn’t quite sure why, but the Prince had seen fit to assign her to a position of effective honor, directly on his left. His right-hand man was, naturally, one of his chief adjutants.

Katja eyed the adjutant with envy. More than once, she had pondered the possible changes to her position should the bearded man fall victim to an assassin from the Eternal Empire. Never enough to engage in any plotting. Given her earlier… actions, she didn’t want to tread through any dangerous waters at the moment. Not when things looked to be going so well.

She held a respected position. In no part due to her intimate knowledge of the territory Evestani currently occupied. Moonshine Burg and its surroundings had been her own territory at one point. What she didn’t know personally, she knew from Arkk. The information he fed her ensured she always appeared ready and competent. Indispensable, in other words. There was no need to vie for a position with the Prince’s clear favorite.

The adjutant—Mack or something to that effect—turned his head toward her and smiled just a little too wide. It was a polite and agreeable smile, but it just widened at the corners of the lips a little too much. He always smiled like that at her. She might have thought he fancied her if not for the look in his eyes. The way he stared always made her feel like she had been speaking her thoughts aloud.

“My lord?” Katja said, prompting the Prince as she looked away from the adjutant. “You don’t sound pleased with that. Is the army a problem?”

With a small scowl, Prince Cedric lowered the letter he had been reading. “Only eight thousand strong. Less than what I requested. With the chaos in Mystakeen, my father wants to ensure that no section of the border between it and Chernlock goes undefended.”

There was something in his words. Some odd hint that he wasn’t quite telling everything he knew. It wasn’t anything big, but Katja had well learned how to spot a liar. “Did you not have your own army in Vaales?” Katja asked, gently prodding. She wasn’t about to call him out for lying. The Prince obviously had his own secrets and she liked her head attached to her shoulders too much to question his plans.

“Only the elites I brought with me.” Cedric drummed his fingers on the throne’s armrest. “Vaales has little need for a standing army. We have other methods for dealing with our problems.”

The adjutant’s smile grew ever so slightly wider at the Prince’s words.

“No,” Cedric continued. “The problem now is what to do with them. I intended to send a detachment about as large as we are getting to Arkk for the defense of the realm, contingent on an in-person meeting with the man. But that plan involved a much larger force that I would direct at my will. With only eight thousand… I either send them all and risk feeding a man with already too much power the notion that he can use them for his own goals, keep them all for myself and risk another incursion through Elmshadow, or split them and potentially fail in all regards due to low manpower across the map.”

He feared lending the full army to Arkk and having Arkk turn around to try to conquer the land with them. Arkk, Katja knew, wouldn’t do that. He had shoved this job off on her, after all, when he easily could have taken it for himself. Of course, perhaps he foresaw the problems that would come with usurping the Duke’s throne right out from under the King’s nose, but, simpleton as he was, Katja doubted that. It was still a reasonable worry for someone who didn’t know the man…

“But wouldn’t the men remain loyal to you? Or your father, at the very least. Just because they would fight with Arkk against Evestani—”

“Company Al-Mir has accrued a large amount of power in a very short amount of time. Not in the least because of a seemingly endless supply of gold that Arkk uncovered somewhere.”

Katja had to hide her scowl. It wasn’t endless. She knew that. A large portion of the gold he used was her gold. Not that she could say that aloud.

“I imagine many soldiers would be loyal. But many more wouldn’t. Never underestimate the greed that lies within the hearts of men.”

“My liege,” the adjutant said. “Why not entrust the army to me? I will march them to Arkk—or rather, to Elmshadow. They will not be under his command, but mine. We will defend the realm, and even continue the march all the way through Evestani until there is nothing left of it.”

“If eight thousand were enough to destroy a nation, no nation would exist,” Katja said with a scoff.

“Eight thousand alone? No. But Eight thousand with unprecedented magical might at their backs?”

Katja pursed her lips into a frown. If Arkk’s fortress could manage that, he surely would have already.

Or perhaps not. Reclaiming Elmshadow had taken about two thousand men. Most of whom had been under Hawkwood’s command, all of whom had pulled back immediately after the battle because of the Prince. Arkk had been left with nothing but his own few men.

Hawkwood, at the moment, was running an errand for Prince Cedric. Katja had not been privy to the details. Another secret. Maybe related to the other lies Cedric was telling?

“If he continues to ignore a meeting with me,” Prince Cedric said slowly, trailing off without finishing his thought. It wasn’t hard to guess at his meaning, however.

Katja slowly drew in a breath. Arkk had been planning on meeting with the Prince. He had sent her letters stating so. But then some emergency cropped up with his men and had been forced to delay. And now…

Katja’s eyes narrowed as she looked to the adjutant. The way he had phrased his plan… March with the magical might at their backs, but not necessarily Arkk. Was he planning on taking Arkk’s power for himself? Katja had abandoned those plans early on in her stay with Arkk, if only because that monstrosity kept killing the men she sent out into the restricted areas of the fortress. It had to be the source of Arkk’s power and it was clearly loyal to him.

A sly grin spread across Katja’s face. If the adjutant wanted to try for himself… who was she to stop him? And if he left Cliff, all the better. She would be here, alone, with the Prince.

“Your adjutant makes an astute point,” Katja said. “Keeping control of the soldiers through a trusted subordinate seems ideal given the situation.”

Cedric turned his head, eying her with a piercing look. “You would nominate yourself?”

Katja let out a short laugh. “No, absolutely not. I am self-conscious of my position. I’m well aware that you would never trust me with an army like that at this stage. But your adjutant suggested himself. I can see how much you trust him. Unless there is a more ideal candidate that I am unaware of…”

The Prince shot a look at his adjutant. Almost a glare, for which he got an even wider smile in return.

Katja made sure to keep her own smile restricted to dainty, no matter what kind of grin she wore inside.

 

 

“ᛈᛚᛖᚨᛊᛖ ᚲᛟᛗᛖ ᚹᛁᛏᚺ ᛗᛖ.”

Agnete jerked her head at the voice. The background thrum of the Anvil hammered away, clacking and clanging and whirring and grinding. It had been overwhelming in the first few moments. Agnete wasn’t sure if she had adjusted to it or if her magic was at work, but it felt like a mere distant noise now.

But that voice had not.

As a living human who, on occasion, interacted with others, Agnete had heard voices before. In her time with the inquisitors, she hadn’t often been called upon to speak, but she still heard. Lords and serfs, priests and traders, all had slightly different ways of speaking. There was a difference between a bombastic baron throwing his authority around with every word and a humble toymaker speaking excitedly over a newly fashioned doll.

Each word in the voice that now addressed her, coming from the large orb hanging from the gantry, was not natural. Not born of flesh and breath. It had a cold, metallic timbre. Each word was sharp and clear, she could tell that even without understanding the words, yet the precision was too much. It was unfeeling to the point where it sent shivers down her spine.

“ᚲᛟᛗᛖ ᚹᛁᛏᚺ ᛗᛖ,” it said again. There was a strange crackling behind the crisp words that only served to make them more apparent, further drowning out the background voices. Like the hiss and pop of a fire but more erratic. “ᚲᛟᛗᛖ ᚹᛁᛏᚺ ᛗᛖ.”

The metal eye swung away from Agnete. As it did so, the entire landscape began rearranging itself. Panels swung down on large mechanical arms, forming steps. The walls of a nearby building peeled back as if made from mobile bricks. One of the moving pathways, perpendicular to the steps, slid into place. The gantry moved the metal eye directly over the moving pathway.

Agnete flicked her gaze upward. A half dozen of those flying serpents were lazily drifting about overhead. They weren’t attacking. Rather, they looked calm. The lightning bolts hopping between the nodes on their backs even felt subdued. They were just watching.

She turned back to the large metal eye with a small frown.

Its words were unintelligible but the meaning was anything but. It wanted her to follow.

Agnete looked back. The portal wasn’t working. Even though she was far from a capable spellcaster, the reason was obvious. A mechanical arm had removed the keystone, depositing it into a bank of similar rune-covered crystalline stones. She could try to get it operational again. She didn’t know which of those crystals was the right one, but it wouldn’t be hard to test them one at a time. All she had to do was get her escorts off her back. From what she saw of those flying serpents, she doubted they would be able to withstand her flames. The lightning could be dangerous, but with nothing else here that she had to care about, she could go all out.

Arkk’s lesser servant coiled around her boot. Agnete frowned, looking down at it. Was it trying to say something? Was Arkk still controlling it or was it just latching on to her on its own?

“ᛇᛟᚢ ᚲᚨᚱᚱᛇ ᚨ ᛊᛚᛁᚹᛖᚱ ᛟᚠ ᛏᚺᛖ ᚠᛚᚨᛗᛖᛊ ᛈᛟᚹᛖᚱ. ᚹᛖ ᚹᛁᛚᛚ ᛏᛖᛊᛏ ᛃᚢᚱ ᚹᛟᚱᚦᛁᚾᛖᛊᛊ.”

Agnete looked up to the eye again. It was trying to communicate with her in that deep, vibrating bass tone.

Agnete stepped forward, climbing the panels toward the moving pathway. A year ago, she likely wouldn’t have been able to stop herself from burning the entire place down to slag. She very well might have boiled away the crystalline archway in a blind fury. Were this anywhere else, she might have done so anyway.

But there was something about this place. A connection that resonated somewhere deep in her chest. It was like when she had first agreed to work with Arkk and found that connection to his fortress. Except this was on a whole other level.

Once she stepped on the moving platform, the stairs she had climbed moved back, pulled to their resting spots to make way for some kind of horseless carriage transporting a load of rocks in its back. A moment later, the moving platform began actually moving, ferrying her away from the portal fast enough to pull her hair back, whipping it around.

This was the Anvil of All Worlds. The home of her supposed patron. It was time to see just what it had in store for her.

“Can’t make heads or tails of them. Sorry about that.”

“Thank you for trying, Perr’ok.”

The orc blacksmith dipped his head in an apologetic nod. If he were being completely honest with himself, he hadn’t expected much. The blacksmiths working for him were skilled in arms and armor. Even more mundane things like door hinges and locks weren’t beyond them. But a door hinge was a far cry from those mechanical serpents. They were akin to living beings, albeit made from metal and lightning.

Arkk pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. Agnete was still over in the Anvil. She was the only one who would have been able to… dissect those creatures with a chance at understanding them. At least she was safe. Thus far, nothing over there had tried attacking her. Arkk wasn’t quite sure what the denizens of that land intended, but they had brought her to one of the largest structures and then effectively shoved her into a room.

It wasn’t a prison. Arkk thought it might have been at first, given how minimalistic it was. There was a simple iron bed, raised off the floor, and a similar chair built into one of the walls. But a whole side of the room was a kind of workshop, one filled with equipment and yet more machines whose purposes eluded Arkk. Agnete, on the other hand, seemed to have an idea of how to work them. For the last full day, she had sat in front of one of them, constantly moving back and forth between various tools at the station as she worked on… something.

Arkk wasn’t sure what it was. It was based around some dark cube that had been sitting on the workbench when Agnete arrived. A black box with a multitude of gears jutting off it at odd angles, pipes strewn across its surface that occasionally emitted puffs of steam, and even sparking nodes of electricity. Its gears whirred on their own, somehow powered from within the box that was no bigger than Arkk’s torso.

Inside each of the flying serpents, they had found similar black boxes. With the serpents broken apart and damaged as they were, the boxes were the only parts still moving.

He almost wondered if she was being ordered to replace the serpents that he had killed.

It was somewhat strange that she seemed to be complying with everything around her. There might have been some communication going on that Arkk couldn’t hear through the employee link that had convinced Agnete to cooperate. Either that or she was doing so willingly in the hopes of learning more about the Burning Forge and her powers.

Whatever it was, Arkk was stressing over the fear that the cooperation wouldn’t last. Those serpents had attacked Olatt’an’s team, killing two and injuring more. Agnete was powerful. Her flames could deflect the golden rays of the Heart of Gold’s avatar. But if she were caught unawares by one of those serpents who suddenly took a dislike to her…

There was nothing he could do about it for the moment. Zullie, despite her best efforts, had been unable to connect the portal to the Anvil portal that they had opened before. The scrying teams could see the anvil, although they could only see it through a static haze that indicated an overabundance of magic, but they had yet to locate any additional portal structures to try to connect to.

A heavy clearing of a throat had Arkk opening his eyes.

Perr’ok was still here, standing in front of his desk. “Was there something else?” Arkk asked, already dreading what problems might have arisen.

Was Agnete’s absence causing problems in the smithy? He knew that she was a common fixture down there, one very much appreciated by all the blacksmiths even if she wasn’t contributing to their work. Or had the Shadow Forge suffered problems in her absence? She was the one who taught everyone else how to work it. If something unexpected came up…

“Those metal hulks we dragged over from the Underworld were simpler to understand.”

Arkk blinked, taking a moment to remember. With his mind occupied by Agnete and those serpents, it took a second. A quick glimpse into the foundry confirmed his thoughts.

They had salvaged a few items from the orc homelands before Zullie reset the portals to how they normally were while she worked on how to get back to Agnete. One of those pieces of salvage were the large metal… hulks. Arkk wasn’t sure how else to describe them. They were large, standing at least three times as tall as an orc with boxy metal torsos and a pair of somewhat stubby legs. Unlike the serpents, they were at least as old as the rest of the ruins in the area. The wear and rust were evidence of that.

“You understood their construction? Or what they were for?”

“What they were for is obvious,” Perr’ok said. “Nothing gets that much armor if it isn’t intended for battle. Their arms were like swords with little teeth on them that could move about, ripping and tearing at whatever they hit. As for understanding… I wouldn’t be able to build one from nothing, but if it is recreating the rusted-over parts and copying the designs exactly? I think we could do that. Nothing like those black gearboxes the serpents had.”

Arkk clasped his fingers together on his desk, staring at Perr’ok while using Fortress Al-Mir to stare at the hulking machine that was strung up by chains down in the depths. “You want to recreate one? What of our other projects? This will take away from them.”

Perr’ok scratched at his chin. “With the Shadow Forge providing armor, we actually have something of a surplus. At least for orc-sized gear. We haven’t made any new orc armor in the regular forge since we started using the Shadow Forge. That’s left it partially unused. Manpower is a problem, as we still have to staff both forges, but if you can hire… five good smiths to take over regular armor production? I think I could get a small team to reconstruct one of these things in a week or two.”

Arkk tapped his fingers against his desk. Two weeks would be just in time for the first of his planned encounters with Evestani’s renewed force that was marching across Mystakeen. Any later than that and it would be too late. At least for this battle.

Was it worth it?

Gold was relatively thin at the moment, but he could hire a hundred if he wanted. The real limitation to his gold reserves came in the form of creating new walking fortresses or other large projects like that. “Would ten new hires complete the project faster? Or would you start tripping over each other’s feet?”

“These hulks are big enough that we could set everyone on different components. Might need to expand the smithy to make room. Otherwise, yes. It should be faster.”

“I’ll see what I can do, then. Draw up a routine and plans for ten people to work on this project.”

A single war machine, unless it was far more capable than he thought it would be, wouldn’t be worth it, but he was already reconfiguring some of his plans. Specifically his plans for Leda’s fortress. Staffing it with soldiers wasn’t something he could easily do without taking away from elsewhere. That was why he had sent his letter to the Prince, requesting aid in dealing with Evestani’s army. He needed men here so that he could send his own men to Leda.

But if one of these war machines was worth even ten men…

Perr’ok flashed his tusks, not in anger or rage, but in pride. He offered a shallow bow before he turned and left Arkk’s office.

One was a prototype. A test. If that one turned out to be worth the time and manpower, not to mention whatever gold he had to spend on it, he could redirect more manpower toward manufacturing more of them. There were plenty of displaced people from the war. Plenty of local smiths that now lacked a forge. He could recruit. A quarter of a gold coin a month would be a windfall for many, not to mention guaranteed food and housing.

Arkk closed his eyes again, focusing on Agnete. If only she were present. Her mere existence generally made things run smoother down in the smithy.

But… Of all the Pantheon, the Burning Forge was the one god he thought would be the most willing to assist them. He had thought that long before they opened the portal with Xel’atriss. That belief mostly came from the fact that Agnete was working with him. And she still was an employee of his, as evidenced by his ability to look in on her.

If she could convince the Burning Forge, or even the denizens of that realm, to lend their assistance…

Arkk wondered what answer the Golden Order would come up with to a swarm of those lightning serpents flying over the battlefield…

Agnete staggered back from the workbench, grasping a hand to her head. She felt dizzy. Weak. Her arms were shaking in a way that reminded her of the week she went without food or sleep while on a mission with the inquisitors. But it couldn’t have been that long. The moving pathway brought her here and just left her in the room. She had seen the workbench… All the ideas she hadn’t been able to bring to fruition with the Shadow Forge came surging back and…

And…

Agnete, leaning forward as she sat on the edge of the metal bed, looked up at the workbench. At what she had created.

At its core, the black box that had been sitting on the workbench, waiting for her arrival. The moment she laid eyes on that labyrinth of gears, pipes, and tubes, inspiration had struck. All the ideas she had, all the experience she had built up in Al-Mir’s forges, had come flooding out. She could see the efforts that had gone into building Katt’am new legs here as well, expanded upon to a fully formed human.

Or… not a human at all.

The silhouette it cast was disturbingly humanoid. Yet, in every other aspect, it was not. Limbs, if they could be called that, jutted out awkwardly and bent, jointed, at odd angles. Steam hissed from its joints and the occasional puff of acrid smoke seeped out from hidden valves, filling the air with the scent of burnt metal and oil.

The vague outline of its head was an utter abomination. An amalgamation of rotating cogs and the odd flickering lights, devoid of any facial features. Vezta was a beautiful woman in comparison. Even the lesser servants were more appealing to look at.

It sat on the workbench like a toymaker’s doll, head hanging to one side and arms limp, resting on the bench. But, as Agnete stared at her creation, the gears in the black box began to turn.

With a sudden creak and grind that quickly smoothed out, its limbs snapped forward. Fingers with far too many joints grasped the edge of the workbench and pushed it off. Its feet caught the ground and thumping pistons in its legs kept it upright.

Agnete got back to her feet. With the adrenaline flooding through her body, she could hardly feel the effects of hunger or fatigue. The temperature of the room started rising.

It slowly straightened its head, turning it in a full circle as if it were observing its surroundings with its eyeless face.

It could observe its surroundings, Agnete realized. Not in the way any human or beastman could, but that black box had feedback mechanisms. Mechanisms that she had hooked up in her hazy fugue of inspiration. As its head reached its second full revolution, it stopped on Agnete. She wasn’t sure how she could tell, but she knew it was staring at her.

With it standing like that, arms at its side, it almost looked more human. The many joints in its limbs and hands were invisible unless it actuated them.

Worse than looking human, some vague part of it made Agnete feel like she was looking into a mirror. Like she had designed the mechanical monstrosity after herself. It stood at equal height to her. If it kept its arms steady, the defined lines of Agnete’s muscles and shoulders matched with the creation, as did its legs and torso. If garbed in the inquisitorial uniform—and one avoided looking at its face—it might even fool Vrox.

“ᛏᚺᛖ ᛈᛟᚹᛖᚱ ᛟᚠ ᛏᚺᛖ ᛒᚢᚱᚾᛁᚾᚷ ᛟᚾᛖ ᚱᛖᛊᛏᛊ ᛁᚾ ᛃᚢᚹ ᚺᛖᚨᚱᛏ, ᚺᛟᚾᛟᚱᛖᛞ ᚷᚢᛖᛊᛏ. ᚠᛟᛚᛚᛟᚹ, ᛈᛚᛖᚨᛊᛖ.”

Both Agnete and the creation jolted, snapping their heads toward the chamber’s door. A small glowing yellow eye, metal like the larger one on the gantry, sat embedded in the wall. Agnete still didn’t know what the words were. Without the changing platforms creating a stairway for her providing some context clues, she couldn’t even guess at this one.

The same did not appear to be true for her mechanical clone. It turned fully—first its head, then its torso swiveled, then its legs moved to follow—and approached the door. It slid open with a steam-emitting hiss without the machine even touching it, much like the doors in Fortress Al-Mir. It didn’t leave the room, however. It paused at the threshold, turned its head, and held out an arm with the palm of its hand facing upward.

“ᛇᛟᚢ ᛈᚨᛊᛊᛖᛞ ᛏᚺᛖ ᛏᛖᛊᛏ,” it said, emitting the words through steam-filled pipes deep within its chest. It didn’t sound as deep and reverberating as the metal eyes, but it still had that same tone to it. “ᛏᚺᛖ ᛖᚾᚷᛁᚾᛖ ᛟᚠ ᚲᚱᚨᛖᛏᛁᛟᚾ ᚨᚹᚨᛁᛏᛊ.”

This time, with its hand out, Agnete had enough context clues to know it was asking for her to follow. Agnete hesitated a moment, first looking around for the lesser servant. It was nowhere to be seen, but there was a small trail of black oil leading to a narrow vent near the bed. Taking a breath, she looked back to the humanoid construct.

“Fine.” She stepped forward. Although there were some hunger pangs in her stomach, her curiosity won out. “Lead the way.”

 

 

Arkk stared at the crystalline archway with a mild nervousness. He couldn’t stop sweating. Granted, part of that was Agnete at his side, running a little hotter than normal, but at least a little came from worries over what might come through that portal.

The former orc homeland was a wide and, as with all of the Underworld, desolate place. A few days of labor had rebuilt some of the ruins around, providing shelter and, more importantly, fortifications around the portal. Flying, lightning-spewing machines wouldn’t take them by surprise again. Not to mention, Arkk was present and completely ready to cast slowing spells, explosions, haste spells, and whatever else might help bring such an opponent down enough for Agnete, Claire, or Dakka’s crew to dismantle them.

The most unnerving thing about the situation wasn’t the thought of monsters on the other side of the portal coming through. It was that he might not be able to return if something went wrong. Zullie had assured him that nothing would. They had effectively tested shutting down and reactivating the Fortress Al-Mir portal both in rescuing Olatt’an’s expeditionary team and a few times since then just to make sure it hadn’t been a fluke.

But, while the portal was inactive and the orc homeland portal redirected to the Anvil, Arkk would be entirely cut off from his home world.

A thin membrane of translucent liquid stretched across the interior of the archway. Arkk felt a prickle of magic against his skin, not unlike the sensation of walking into a spiderweb. It wasn’t pleasant. Was that normal? It hadn’t happened when they had rescued Olatt’an. It could just be a product of stress-induced imagination.

He exchanged a glance with Agnete. The flame witch stood stoic and impassive as always, but the embers in her eyes betrayed a hint of the same anxiety that he felt.

“Worried?”

“Excited,” she said, her tone flat. Maybe it wasn’t anxiety then. “Though, perhaps I am somewhat concerned. I don’t… I wanted to know why I am the way I am ever since you told me about the Burning Forge. Why or how I was chosen, who They are, what reasons They have for creating purifiers like me. But now that we’re here, ready to step foot into the world of my patron, I feel like I’m not sure I want to know. What if the answers are lacking? Or nonexistent. It isn’t like we’ve had an audience with the Cloak of Shadows here. The gods might simply not wish to speak to mortals.”

Definitely anxiety then.

Pressing his lips into a thin smile, Arkk nodded, understanding Agnete’s mix of emotions. Frankly, he had been feeling roughly the same since encountering Vezta for the first time. Or, maybe even before then.

“Isn’t that just life?” he said, not quite meaning to say it aloud. Agnete looked over at him, making him shift in mild discomfort. He bought a moment of thought by clearing his throat. “I mean, why are any of us here? Why am I the first to stumble across the fortress in a millennium? Would a massive war have broken out if someone like Hale had come across it or am I at direct fault for that? Or you and Vrox—you probably would have destroyed it, right? What might the world have looked like then?

“Answers might… No, whatever answers you get, if any, will undoubtedly be disappointing compared to any expectations you have built up in your mind,” Arkk said. “Based on what I know of the Pantheon, none of them operate on human-level thought. Listen to the Protector talk of the Lady Shadows and how she doesn’t understand that living beings are different from the shadows she turned them into.”

Agnete’s black lips twisted into a tight frown. “If you mean to comfort or reassure me, you are performing poorly.”

Arkk chuckled, clapping a hand on Agnete’s shoulders. It burned a little, even through her clothing, but not so bad that he pulled back. “I guess I’m just saying not to worry too much about it. Regardless of what answers you find, if any, you have a place here with us.”

Agnete’s frown softened somewhat at his words, prompting him to give a firm and hopefully reassuring squeeze of her shoulder before letting go. He tried to subtly waft his hand behind his back to cool it back down. Judging by the faint smile that graced her lips, he wasn’t too successful.

“A place here,” she mused. “I believe that is a line I have heard coming from ramblemen and bards more often than not when their stories involve people uncovering uncomfortable truths.”

“Langleey got the occasional bard but I was always more interested in stories the adventurers, mercenaries, and bounty hunters had to tell. And learning what little magic they could teach in their short visits to the village.”

“Really? Didn’t just copy one of their lines?” she said with… teasing in her tone? That was unusual. Agnete must have been feeling quite excited. Or anxious. Both.

The conversation trailed off as a ripple spread through the portal. The shimmering membrane, looking like a vertical pool of liquid silver, shifted and spread out into a view of yet another world.

This one was unlike anything he had seen before. The Underworld was a desolate wasteland, much like a desert or the Cursed Forest. The Silence looked like a lush forest; though colored strangely, it hadn’t been anything out of the norm. His world had a whole variety of landscapes and biomes from mountainous forests to sweeping planes and wide oceans. Perhaps that was why those gods had fought over it all those years ago. The variety.

Then again, he had only seen very small slices of both the Underworld and the Silence. They could easily have more variety further out.

But the world before him now was…

It hardly looked like a world at all.

It was a landscape dominated by a monstrous edifice of gears, pipes, and towering metal buildings. Massive stretches of moving pathways snaked back and forth between, through, and around the buildings, carrying an endless stream of glowing rocks, metal ingots, and manufactured creations that Arkk couldn’t begin to name. The pathways fed the materials into hulking machines that belched smoke and hissed steam. Elsewhere, giant arms made of grime-covered metal and bristling with tools moved with precise, eerie efficiency. They lifted components from the pathways with exacting accuracy, assembling intricate devices that whirred to life as soon as they were completed.

Sparks flew from grinding wheels. Furnaces roared with an intensity that could only be matched by Agnete at her highest, though he couldn’t feel them from this side of the portal. Small, boxy carts zipped along narrow rails as they carried more materials throughout the world. Black tar spewed from the open end of a pipe in brief yet intense spurts. Flames at the top of narrow towers burned bright, lighting the horizon.

There were creatures there as well. Monsters, more like. High in the air, he could see a pair of those lightning serpents patrolling about, the crackling electricity on their backs was blatantly obvious against the black clouds in the sky. Neither seemed to have noticed the open portal just yet.

Other creatures moved about. He was pretty sure that they were living beings… but they could well be more artificial constructs. Human-like creatures fully enclosed in tight-fitting suits. They carried tools that emitted a multitude of lights as if they were covered with dozens of tiny glowstones. They seemed to oversee the operation of the machinery around them, walking along on high catwalks that crisscrossed above, around, and between the moving pathways and turning gears.

There was so much to see, so much movement in every speck of Arkk’s vision that he felt utterly overwhelmed. Every time he looked back over a spot that he had already moved on from, he saw something new there. One of the buildings was even moving on massive treads like it was trying to copy a Walking Fortress.

He was far from the only one overwhelmed. It took effort, but he dragged his gaze back to his employees. They were all staring, most with wide eyes and equally wide mouths. The only ones somewhat unaffected were those who had been part of Olatt’an’s expedition. They had obviously seen the other side before and even they still stared.

Agnete started to step forward. Arkk held her back with a much firmer hand on her shoulder.

“Let the lesser servant go first,” Arkk said, looking over to where a servant bubbled and glopped. One of its eyes burst, only to be replaced by a fresh one. In the new eye, he saw mild resignation as he gave the command for it to move forward.

The moment the servant crossed over the threshold, the entire atmosphere on the other side changed. First, mounted atop a massive moving gantry, a spherical orb rushed through the air. A single ray of off-yellow light danced in the smoggy air. As the gantry came to a stop in front of the portal, metal plates on the orb constricted, tightening the beam of light to a thin ray that swept over the lesser servant.

The eye-like orb stared for just a moment.

Spinning red lights lit up at the corners of every building, several of the nearby mechanical arms and moving pathways jerked to a stop, and the two lightning serpents turned and plummeted from the sky. The more human-like figures on the catwalks stopped and turned toward the portal, stared for a moment, and then immediately took off in hasty sprints toward the nearest building.

Arkk didn’t even get a chance to try to pull back the lesser servant before a bolt of electricity splattered it across the smooth surface on the other side of the portal. The serpent that hadn’t fried the servant slithered through the portal high in the air. It opened its metal maw as lightning coursed up and down its spine.

But it didn’t get a chance to attack. The portal structure was low enough that Dakka, leaping even in her armor, managed to bisect it with her scythe. The two halves crashed to the ground.

If the serpents had any sort of self-preservation instincts, the second one didn’t show it. It came through the portal on the tail of the first, stopped over the assembled crowd of soldiers like the first, and promptly got bisected by Raff’el’s scythe as he copied Dakka’s attack. With Dakka’s team here, it seemed the greatest threat they posed was their bodies landing on someone.

“Excellent work you two,” Arkk called out. “Keep ready. We don’t know if there are more.”

He couldn’t see any others, but he could only see one side of the portal. There could be an entire swarm of them behind the portal or more on their way. It wasn’t like he could see all that far with the massive buildings and columns of black smoke. The red spinning lights were still running and none of the humanoids had returned, still hiding. If Arkk could just convey to them that he had come in peace…

With a small sigh, he summoned up another lesser servant and directed it through the portal. It didn’t die instantly, which he took as a good sign, though that mechanical eye mounted on the gantry stared and stared. He had it move around a little on the large circular platform that surrounded the portal. It was about the only space on the other side that wasn’t in motion.

“I’m going to take a quick step over, just to see what I see,” Arkk said when the servant managed to survive for a good three minutes. He took a breath and chanted a brief spell. “Xel’atriss Pargon Bankorok Santak Pargon.”

A swirling void wrapped around Arkk, curling tight against his skin. It let him see out, but it was a bit hazy. This was a perfected version of the spell that had taken Zullie’s eyes. It called upon Xel’atriss, Lock and Key’s dominion over barriers and separation to effectively cut Arkk off from the rest of the world, though only partially. It should keep him safe—it worked on most magic and all physical weapons—though they had never actually tested it against lightning. Or the shadow scythes, for that matter.

Testing it was, unfortunately, a bit dangerous. With it wrapped around his skin, there wasn’t much margin for error. If something pierced the shield, it would pierce him too. He couldn’t even have Priscilla use it to test stronger weapons against her tougher body. Thus far, no one had been able to cast it without instantly collapsing aside from Arkk. The drain on their magic was just too great. And he couldn’t cast it on anyone else, it was a personal spell only.

At least she had worked out a better incantation. It wasn’t as short as Electro Deus, but it wasn’t as long as modern magic.

The moment Arkk stepped through the portal, he staggered in shock.

There were three things that the barrier did not stop that they knew of. It didn’t stop light, allowing him to see. It didn’t stop sound, allowing him to hear. And it didn’t stop air, allowing him to breathe.

All three hit him at once.

The lights, he had expected. There were flashing and blinking lights everywhere in the other world, on buildings, on catwalks, on the moving pathways, and on the machinery. Flames topped tall towers and massive furnaces ate raw ore, belching out sparks and more flame.

The light of the gantry’s eye settled over him, though it did nothing to attack or flee. It simply watched.

While he had expected the lights to be a little more intense, he hadn’t expected the sound.

The noise was overwhelming—a cacophony of clanging metal, hissing steam, and the rhythmic thumping of pistons. Arkk clapped his hands over his ears, but with the barrier in place, he couldn’t quite seal the sound off. Not that he expected it would have helped. The whirring of movement around him and the crackling of electricity somewhere beyond where he could see was noisy to the point that it surely would have made it through his hands. The entire place vibrated like it was some kind of living being. A massive mechanical cat purring loud enough to shake him apart. To top it all off, a truly deafening whining drone heightened in pitch before falling and then rising again, incessantly whining as it oscillated.

And even the sound was nothing compared to the smell.

A potent blend of metallic tang, caustic musk, and acrid burning coal and hot metal. Arkk had once thought that being in the Darkwood alchemist’s workshop had been the worst smell he had ever experienced but even Morford’s most potent concoctions were like flowers compared to this. The smell alone left a greasy, oily feel that lingered in the back of his throat. The occasional whiff of sulfur in the smoke only made his nausea worse.

Arkk wasn’t sure how long he stood there, gaping in shock at the sounds and smells. It could have only been seconds and yet, staggering back into the Underworld coughing and sputtering, it felt like it had been an eternity since he breathed fresh air. The air in the Underworld wasn’t exactly the kind found on a crisp morning in a lush forest and yet he couldn’t get enough of it.

He fully emptied his lungs, canceling the protective spell as he did so, and drew in a completely fresh breath of air until he couldn’t breathe in anymore. The air was stale but somehow oh-so-refreshing.

“Are you alright?” Agnete asked, looking concerned.

“Fine,” Arkk said before breathing a few more times, just to make sure he wasn’t about to throw up. “I don’t know that we can…” He trailed off, breathing again. Air certainly was nice, wasn’t it? He steadied himself and shook his head to try to focus.

“I don’t know that we can do anything over there,” Arkk continued. “It’s worse than the Silence. The air is vile. I’d rather stick my face over a forge’s flume and breathe nothing but that for a week than take another breath inside that place. And the sound…” He wiggled a finger in his ear, opening his jaw as wide as it could before he heard a popping sound.

Agnete stared at him, keeping up her usual impassive look but tainted with a hint of disappointment. She looked away, frowning at the portal. “Would it be alright if I stepped over?”

Arkk waved a hand toward the portal as Ilya found her way to his side, lightly patting his back. She could see for herself.

Agnete gave him a curt nod and, hands tense at her sides, she stepped up alongside the lesser servant on the smooth platform through the portal.

Arkk narrowed his eyes at the bubbling slop of oily tendrils. The lesser servant didn’t seem to care about the air or the noise. The traitor. It could have warned him.

Agnete, on the other side of the portal, appeared to be handling the situation much better than Arkk had. She stood straight, clearly wrinkling her nose but not hacking and coughing. Maybe the forewarning helped. Or maybe her avatarness was helping out in a way that Arkk lacked. She even took another step forward as the gantry eye swiveled over to focus on her.

As soon as it did, the other world changed. The red lights stopped spinning, going dark again. The gantry shifted, its gears twisting in a rapid spin. The orb dropped down, lowered on a series of thick black cables. Agnete tensed as the orb came to a stop directly in front of her. A glowing pane of glass on its surface constricted like an eye, staring directly at her. It waited a long moment before shifting its gaze to the portal.

The membrane popped like a soapy bubble, leaving a space in the crystalline archway.

The shock wore off quickly. He could still see Agnete if he followed her employee link. She was unharmed. So far. Several more of those lightning serpents were coming in from above, but they weren’t attacking just yet. Shaking his head, Arkk turned.

“Zullie,” he called out. “What happened?”

“I… I don’t know! It wasn’t supposed to do that!”

“Get it open again,” Arkk ordered.

Zullie hesitated before rushing up to the crystalline archway. Even sightless, she quickly found the runes in the crystal as if she could see them without trouble. She ran her fingers over the nearest before moving to the next. Calling over the Protector, she got it to lift her where she could continue inspecting the higher ones. It took a few minutes, the entire time Arkk sat tense as the serpents drew closer to Agnete.

Agnete didn’t look all that upset with the situation. She stared up at the serpents, wary but unconcerned. Flames coiled between her fingers, but she wasn’t attacking. They weren’t attacking either.

Did they recognize her for what she was?

“Nothing is wrong with it,” Zullie said as she finished the inspection. Her voice was strained, worried. Which weren’t usually emotions Arkk would have ascribed to Zullie if something went wrong with one of her experiments. Even losing her eyes, after she had recovered enough to speak, she had sounded… excited with what she had learned. “It should be active. This portal is fine,” she said, this time with some amount of relief. “The only reason it isn’t working… if it got cut off at the other end.”

Arkk pressed his lips together. Glaring at Zullie didn’t help. Both because it wasn’t a productive action and because Zullie, though she could somehow see the runes on the portal, couldn’t actually see him. “Solutions?”

“We… know the planar coordinates to the Anvil now. We could try to force a connection to a different portal just like we changed the Fortress Al-Mir-to-Underworld portal to get here.”

“How long?”

“Without you able to give me the coordinates like you did last time? It’ll take a bit… If we can scry over there… I wasn’t able to take magical level readings, but if it was like the Silence rather than the Underworld, they might be low enough that scrying works.”

Arkk closed his eyes. The crystal balls were back at Elmshadow and Fortress Al-Mir. “Get the portal connected to the fortress again,” he said, trying not to snap. “As fast as possible.”

Agnete was alright for now. The large orb hanging from the gantry had moved aside, leaving a short opening to one of the moving pathways. The serpents seemed like they were escorting her toward it, though she was somewhat reluctant to get aboard.

The lesser servant was still over there. It was still alive at Agnete’s side. For a moment, Arkk debated. He could command it to stay by the portal. Perhaps it could repair it on that end if the serpents continued to leave it alone. There was no guarantee of that given how the first servant had fared. And that assumed this portal could even be repaired. It was also his only method of communicating with Agnete. He could see her through the link but without the servant, he might not be able to direct her toward another portal if they got one working.

Agnete reached the moving pathway. She hesitated but stepped up.

Arkk had the servant coil its tendril around her leg, following her on as the pathway began moving, carrying them off through the massive machine that was the Anvil of All Worlds.

 

 

Prince Cedric Valorian Lafoar stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring out to sea from the tall tower of the Cliff manor. The early light of the Mon morning gleamed off the glassy surface of the calm ocean. Clouds, high and wispy, did little to diminish the light.

It gave him a clear view of the three dozen ships spread out around the Cliff harbor in a defensive arrangement.

None of the ships were even half as large as one of the Eternal Empire’s warships, but they didn’t need to be. They were mostly for show, demonstrating to the citizens that they were well protected. Their other purpose was troop and material delivery.

When the Duke had stopped the King’s army at the borders to make his ill-conceived alliance with the Evestani without their interference, the King had not simply sat around doing nothing. Sensing a rebellion of some manner, he had recalled a portion of the soldiers, leaving some to watch the border, and loaded them up on these ships to secure the Duke’s seat of power. They were supposed to have arrived with Cedric but the weather had delayed them and he had never been one to wait around.

Their original purpose was a moot point at the moment. Lady Katja handed over control of the city with hardly a word of protest. It was… unsatisfying. If she wasn’t going to fight, why was he even here? He could be on the other side of Mystakeen, leading the charge in person. The whole situation left him feeling like he had wasted his time. Like they were wasting his time. Katja was hiding something—because of course she was. It was obvious the way the eggshells she walked upon kept cracking. But she wouldn’t bare her fangs. She wouldn’t show her claws. She bowed her head, said the right words to ingratiate herself with him, and waited patiently for the opportunities she wanted.

Cedric had half a mind to push her, to find out just how far he had to go to get those claws out.

Katja was lucky that more interesting targets existed to occupy his focus and attention.

“Staring out at sea again? One expects action from you, not idleness. You aren’t going soft as your age advances, are you?”

Cedric didn’t turn to face the light and innocent voice. “Mags. You shouldn’t be here.”

“I shouldn’t be anywhere. But I am. Thanks to your beloved Jewel—”

A rage erupted deep within Cedric’s chest. He whirled around, hand snapping out as he moved to grasp the cheeks and jaw of the creature. Only to find himself frozen upon turning and seeing what was behind him.

The princess pulled back, her heart-shaped face going pale at the sight of him. Her eyes sparkled with a deep, expressive blue as she fluttered her long eyelashes. The long, flowing hair cascaded down her back in soft waves of rich chestnut. She looked… frightened. The playful quirk of her lips was nowhere to be seen, replaced with a slight opening of her mouth.

It was her. Again. She was there, in front of him, looking as beautiful as the day he first laid eyes upon her. Heart aching, his hand slowly dropped to his side.

“Ced?” she asked, her voice light and innocent but filled with an air of trepidation. “Are you alright? It’s early. You should come back to bed.” Her fingernails, painted solid black, tapped together with a nervous clicking. “We can… do that thing you like.”

His eyes followed the movements of her fingernails. Her black fingernails. One flaw was all it took.

Cedric’s hand shot out, grasping her face. With a wrench of his wrist, he ripped his Jewel’s face straight off.

The flesh came apart in long, sinewy strands that clung to his fingers like sticky tree sap. A waterfall of blood erupted from the gaping wound, cascading down Jewel’s neck and staining the pristine white of her nightgown. The body melted apart, crumbling in on itself until it was nothing more than a compacted pile of meat, bones, and flesh.

“I’ve told you to leave her alone,” Cedric snarled.

A deep, hearty chuckle echoed off the coned tower roof.

Cedric turned again, hand reaching out, only to pause once again.

His father stared back, face lined with age. Hard, steely eyes met with his. “You’ve let that woman live,” the King said, voice dour.

“She’s cooperating,” Cedric said.

“I’ve spied on her, seen her meet with that mercenary commander everyone is talking about. They plot against you, you know? She grew tired of stealing gold and has turned her sights on stealing the entire kingdom. From me.” Cedric’s father shook his head. “A thief and a bandit to the core. The only cure for the likes of her is a short drop from a long rope.”

“It… isn’t necessary.”

“But it would be fun, wouldn’t it? Remember the look on that count’s face when he realized there was no hope for his little rebellion? You were far more willing back then. What happened to you? You’re no fun at all, anymore.” The King’s eyes widened as he emphasized his words, with his mouth splitting into a too-wide grin that showed off too-sharp teeth. “Or are you wanting other kinds of fun with her?”

The King melted away on his own without any contact from Cedric. The bloody mess left behind let off clouds of steam in the chill morning air. Cedric tried to turn around but a pressure on his back kept him facing the bloody mass.

“Her body is shapely,” a low, seductive version of Katja’s voice whispered in his ear. Hands snaked up and over his shoulders. Dark arms with tattooed black stripes crossed over his chest. “She likes the pleasure as well. Shares her bed with her men—and women—more nights than not. If you just ask…” Those hands moved up and the long, black fingernails caressed the underside of his chin. “You could have a new princess to replace that little Jewel of yours.”

Cedric gripped one of the hands around his neck, squeezing it until he heard bones crack and crumble. “Mags,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “Why are you here?”

A fully nude Lady Katja sauntered around Cedric, managing to hang off him the entire time. The bent angle of her crushed wrist didn’t bother her in the slightest. “I’ve been asking myself the same thing,” she said with a pout that didn’t fit on the former bandit’s face. “Why am I here? You promised me the blood of your enemies dripping off my skin. But look.” She ran a hand over her chest. “Completely dry. I’m bored. I’m so bored it is threatening to break our little contract.”

It was useless to try to decide if the creature was telling the truth. The contract shouldn’t have such an easy hole in it. Yet, if there was a loophole that she had seen, leaving things as they were was dangerous.

“The Eternal Empire has a cutter out in the waters a league away from shore, watching our movements. Go have your fun with that.”

“Another warship?” the nude Lady Katja said. She shook her head in disappointment. “You can’t keep giving a woman the same gifts over and over again and expect her eyes to light up with the same excitement as the first time. How about that girl? I won’t even break her completely if you want to use her after I’m done. It isn’t like humans need all these arms and legs and hearts, right?”

“You destroyed the first ship in the blink of an eye. Go have fun with this one.”

That only made her pout grow stronger, probably more at her last quip being ignored than at his suggestion. Letting out a disappointed hum, she flashed him a quick smile. Then… disappeared.

“My lord?”

Cedric turned to find a fully clothed Lady Katja standing at the stairway leading up onto the tower proper. A part of him was tempted to reach out and rip her face off. This wouldn’t be the first time Mags had sought to trick him like this, usually in an attempt to break some clause in the contract.

He managed to restrain himself.

“Sorry to disturb you and…” Katja looked around, face poised and serious but with an air of confusion. “I thought I heard you speaking with someone.”

“Musing to myself,” he said, narrowing his eyes as he looked around for any sign of Mags. The creature was gone. For all he knew, she had never been here in the first place, still stuck in her warded carriage. He shook his head, disguising his glance about by looking out to sea once again. “Did you require something from me?”

“I received a letter from Arkk of Company Al-Mir. He says he has a plan for forcing the invaders out of Mystakeen for good—he has a solution for the Golden Order’s avatar—but not the manpower to carry out the plan. He requests a joint operation with men under my… my command, your command, White Company, and any other free company that is still intact.”

Cedric closed his eyes, very much doubting the wording of the last line. “How soon? How many men, exactly?”

Katja hesitated in answering, looking down at a paper in her hands. “He… proposes… meeting in person to discuss further details would be best.”

“Does he now,” Cedric said, his tone flat as he looked back over his shoulder.

Katja didn’t manage to suppress her grimace. Cedric wasn’t all that surprised that the letter didn’t have all the information needed. If what he had read and heard was true, this Arkk wasn’t qualified in the slightest to wield the influence and power that he did.

“Very well,” Cedric said, dismissing Katja with a short gesture. “Send a return letter inviting him to Cliff for discussions.”

“Of course,” she said, bowing and backing down the steps.

“And, Lady Katja?”

She paused, looking up at him from several steps down. She didn’t look afraid. Was that good or bad? Mags wouldn’t like it. But, despite making good points on occasion—when it suited her purposes—he tried to avoid doing things Mags liked.

“Good work,” Cedric said.

The beginnings of a sly smile touched the corners of her lips. It only lasted a moment before she bowed again and ducked fully out of view. That left Cedric narrowing his eyes, watching the stairwell for a long moment.

Perhaps Mags was right about her.

“I’d love to break her,” Cedric said, watching the stairs. “Twist her little lips off her face.”

Cedric looked to himself, fingers flicking to the black fingernails on his hands. Something about the way he spoke rubbed against the grain. “How would you hold up against that so-called avatar?” he asked, ignoring the call for violence.

Cedric looked to Cedric, flashing a maw filled with sharp teeth. “No clue. Never encountered one before. No matter what, it’ll be fun to find out.”

Cedric frowned at Cedric before clasping his hands behind his back and turning to face the sea. He didn’t say a word.

“Ah, but the little fortress keeper? I have encountered their kind before. They’re always so arrogant. Watching the glow in their eyes fade as their confidence amounts to nothing is… most entertaining.”

“He isn’t our enemy.”

“Yet,” Mags said, voice dropping a dozen octaves behind Cedric’s back. “But don’t worry. I can fix that. You just leave everything to me…”

Cedric turned, a protest hanging off the tip of his tongue, only to find himself standing alone at the top of the tower.

“Do you think he didn’t get my message?”

Darius Vrox looked up from a tome he was in the midst of modernizing for proper reading. He slid his reading glasses down to the end of his nose, looking out over the top rim at the so-called archivist who was lounging across one of the nearby desks. She was on her back with her dark red hair spread out around her head, hanging off the edges.

Lyra Zann, if that was her actual name, had become something of a fixture during the study sessions Darius engaged in. She was the High Librarian. Within the library, not even an inquisitor could claim authority over her. Not without cause. With everything she had told him—and had shown him, especially in that little hidden segment of the library—he could certainly find cause.

As she turned her head to face him, a silver glint shined in her eyes despite the lack of any light in the room that might have caused it.

No. Finding cause to accost her wasn’t going to turn out well for him. And it wasn’t like her presence was unwanted. She was knowledgeable. She didn’t necessarily know everything that he wanted to know, but she would know which tomes held the answers he sought.

“I warned you that he is a simpleton,” Darius said. “His greatest attribute is his luck with, perhaps, a secondary ability toward charisma given the forces he has managed to amass in the short time he has been active.”

Lyra let out an elongated hum as she brought a finger to her chin. She tapped a few times with the white, almost glowing nail. “Perhaps another revelation for the oracles is in order. I wanted to cloud the true intentions of that prophecy as some individuals in the Abbey are likely to be sharing information with undesirables, but if he isn’t going to understand… Or maybe I should just try a more direct route.”

Darius narrowed his eyes. The Ecclesiarch was supposed to lead the Abbey. It was he who supposedly received direct revelation from the Light. The oracles were there to assist, granted their information-gathering abilities through hard work and training, though they nominally acted more as clairvoyants than seers. Yet here was Lyra, the unassuming librarian who hadn’t left the library in years if Darius understood the rumors correctly, casually suggesting that she could give out visions on a whim.

Darius wasn’t a fool. It was one thing for a librarian to have access to a hidden trove of books. But he and Sylvara had been doing research on avatars, purifiers, and the ways they used their powers. He could connect the dots as easily as anyone with a modicum of cognizance.

He didn’t want to admit it, however. If the avatar of the Light really was sitting across from him…

The implications were unsettling. Both in that he wasn’t sure how he should act—thus far, treating her simply as the archivist was working well for him—and in that her existence here meant that their side of the conflict could have had a powerful force behind it if she had just left the library.

The previous war with Evestani that had ended a little over thirty years prior had been before his time. He had barely been born at its conclusion. Had it also featured avatars slinging powerful spells at each other? None of the historical records he had come across mentioned great beams of golden light or winter-time assaults throughout the Duchy.

Lyra was watching him again, her eyes glinting with that impossible silver light. It was like she was looking through him.

Darius turned back to his book, pushing his reading glasses back up the bridge of his nose. Another historical record of war, this one from centuries past. A great war that left such a mark on the land that the scars still remained in the form of the wastes the Beastmen Tribes now occupied, west of Evestani and Mystakeen. He had never heard of the war before coming across this book, nor had he ever questioned why the Beastmen Tribes occupied a wasteland beyond the simple fact that nobody else wanted the territory.

“We signed a treaty.”

Darius jolted. Lyra wasn’t draped across the desks any longer. She hung over his shoulder, looking down at the book he had opened.

“To stop something like that from happening again, The Eternal Empire, the Golden Order, and the Abbey all signed a treaty that none would use such tactics in future conflicts. Any future disagreements were to be fought through the hands of mortal men and the magics they could wield, nothing greater.”

“It would seem the Golden Order has forgotten the treaty,” Darius said after a short breath. “Unless you are suggesting that those golden rays capable of leveling large swaths of land are mortal-level magics.”

He hadn’t seen the magic used in person. Sylvara had. The picture his fellow inquisitor painted of the situation was far and beyond what even purifiers like Agnete could accomplish.

“Magics that mortals can wield,” Lyra corrected in a chiding tone before she continued. “Technically, the Golden Order is not assailing the Abbey in this current war. They’re after Arkk and, perhaps more specifically, the being of the Stars at his side.” She paused, donning a wan, humorless smile. “Of course, if the Abbey were harmed or even wiped off the face of the world as a side effect of this conflict…”

“Loopholes,” Darius said with a scowl.

“Don’t sound too upset. Loopholes benefit everyone if they’re positioned to take advantage of them. Purifiers, for example, are mortal men wielding higher-level magics. Were it not for the Abbey’s policy of… nurturing purifiers, the war thirty years ago could have ended far worse for us.”

Darius raised an eyebrow. “What stops our enemies from using that same loophole? Or were their purifiers simply weaker than ours at the time?”

“That,” Lyra said with a chuckle, “is an accomplishment that I cherish. It is all about knowing the natures of your opponents when writing out loopholes like that. The Gree… The Golden Order would never make use of purifiers. They are run by an envious, jealous, and utterly insecure individual who sees everything as threats. The Eternal Empire has a similar problem, except it comes in the form of pride.”

“Knowing is half the battle,” Darius said. He decided to not comment on the implication that Lyra had written out part of the treaty.

“Knowledge is the most important thing in this world of ours,” she countered with a grin. “Wisdom comes in at a close second. Which,” she said, smile turning to a frown, “is why it is so disappointing that I haven’t received any response from your boy. Did he even pay attention to the words? And now he is off galivanting through the land of darkness? No signs of wisdom or knowledge there.”

Darius considered for a moment. “I told you about him, but I know Arkk. Perhaps if I were to write out some suggestions..?”

Lyra Zann put on a small smile, looking at him as if she had expected him to offer all along. “Lovely. Let’s get started then.”

 

 

They said that the heat of battle could do one of two things to age. The adrenaline, the sudden happenings, and the drive to survive in the face of death could erode the effects of age, temporarily lessening the wear and tear on a soldier’s body, making them move with the agility and vigor of a man ten years younger. Muscles, remembering past and training, might stretch and react with a quickness honed to a fine point in years past. Reflexes would hasten, senses heighten, and, for a few fleeting moments, one might reclaim a vitality they had long thought lost.

The opposite could equally be true. Olatt’an dived to one side, feeling every ache, every pin-and-needle in his creaking bones. Hitting the ground shoulder-first only exacerbated the relentless strain. If anything, he felt aged beyond his years. But, as a jagged bolt of lightning arced to the sword he had jammed into the ground and dived away from instead of his chest, he felt some small surge of elation.

He didn’t pick himself up. He simply twisted, bringing his crossbow to his shoulder. Holding his breath, he waited just a moment and finally loosed the bolt.

The crossbow bolt closed the distance in the blink of an eye, striking the strange flying machine’s inner cogs just as his last three had. Once again, gears locked up, spinning bits of metal jammed, and the entire contraption seized. But it only lasted a moment. The metal serpent lost some height, falling low enough to the ground for Zojja to slam her axe into its ribs of iron, but quickly recovered. Its movements seemed a bit stiffer once it resumed the undulating movements of its serpentine body.

Olatt’an grunted as he shoved himself off the ground. He crouched behind the sword in the ground, now warped from the lightning strike, hoping it would serve as cover long enough for him to reset his crossbow.

His bolts were having an effect. Eventually, with enough of the serpent’s gears locked up, it had to fall and stay down. Three of his bolts were jamming three different sections of its innards. How many more were needed?

How many more could he land before his luck ran out?

Drawing the string back on the crossbow was not an easy or quick task, but it was a mindless one. It allowed him a brief moment to scan the battlefield.

Things were not looking good. They hadn’t been prepared to face a flying opponent. Only three of the group had crossbows and Eiff’an was either dead or down for the rest of the battle. Vippa picked up his crossbow but the one and only shot she got off before being fried wouldn’t have hit the creature even if it had been ten times its size. One Protector was dead. The other had shouted something before rushing off to the portal.

Olatt’an hoped it knew what it was doing. If it opened the portal and another of these things came through, there wouldn’t be the slightest hope.

The elf was missing entirely. Not surprising. She wasn’t a combatant. Better for her to hunker down and stay out of everyone else’s way.

As for everyone else… They were more or less useless. Early on, it had tried biting a few of them. And it got a few of them, but they got it in turn, even hacking off one of those pylons on its spine. Now, it was admirable that they were trying to draw the serpent’s attention away from Olatt’an, usually by flinging rocks before ducking for cover, but their efforts just weren’t enough. After this third crossbow bolt struck true, the serpent wasn’t even turning to snarl at the minor pelting of stones it was receiving. Its eyes, crackling with the same lightning that ran along the pylons on its back, were locked on Olatt’an.

He sucked in a breath, trying to steady his shaking hands as he finished setting the crossbow. It took time for the serpent to ready another lightning bolt. But with it staring straight at him, he doubted he would get an opening.

In the distance, he could barely hear his men shouting—cries of desperate defiance and fear as they tried to draw the serpent’s aggression toward them.

His eyes flicked to Zojja, who was reeling from her latest strike but not backing down. She stood almost directly beneath the creature, glaring up at where her axe had chunked away a small bit of the creature’s metal ribs. As if knowing she was being watched, she lowered her head. Her eyes met his and, in a brief moment of understanding, she nodded.

With a feral roar, Zojja clambered up the slope of a toppled wall. She swung her axe around, using its weight to counterbalance her brief spin. Then, she let it go. An orc letting go of their weapon was something simply not done unless they were dead or unconscious. Yet she did. And it was a perfect throw, flinging high until the bladed edge struck the underside of the serpent.

It could ignore rocks. It didn’t overlook the axe. The blade crashing into its underside nearly knocked it out of the air. Not quite, but it still turned to face Zojja.

The orc stood there, weaponless, glaring defiantly as lightning surged up and down its pylons.

Olatt’an wasn’t about to let her sacrifice herself. From the moment they made eye contact, he had been ready.

He loosed a bolt.

It opened its jaw, lightning crackling between the sharp points of metal that served as its teeth.

The crossbow bolt struck another gearbox, locking it up. Just like last time, the creature lost altitude, this time landing in the dirt of the ruins completely.

But it didn’t stop the buildup of lighting. Zojja didn’t have anywhere to run and had nowhere to hide. Her legs were poised to leap to one side at any moment, but it wouldn’t be enough. Olatt’an had seen those lightning bolts veer toward their targets.

Just before the crackling buildup reached its peak, a small flare of red formed just below the machine’s chin.

A conflagration erupted, knocking the serpent upward. The bolt of lightning it had been charging crashed into the orange clouds overhead.

Three dark shadows dashed toward the serpent, each wielding long curved blades at the ends of staves. They moved far faster than the dark armor they wore should have allowed, closing in on the creature before it could recover from the explosion.

It seemed to sense their presence, even with it still roughly facing Zojja. The serpent squirmed and shifted, twisting out of the way of two of the three blades. The third cut through the strong metal with only mild resistance, slicing off a quarter of the creature’s end.

Even with that bit flipping and flopping on the ground like a fish tossed on a sandy beach, the rest of the serpent managed to take to the skies.

And, once again, they were back to where they started. The creature high above. Them down below. The lightning along its back sparked and fizzed, no longer simply cascading up and down the pylons on its spine. The lightning jolted and jumped at random, arcing to random points in the air in instant flashes of light. The creature itself dipped and rose, unable to keep itself at a steady height. But it didn’t come crashing down again.

Despite the damage it took, it was charging up once again. Maybe even faster this time, with all the mechanics inside it going haywire.

Until… something happened to it. It slowed to a crawl. For a brief instant, it looked as if the undulating movements simply stopped, but in reality, it simply moved so slowly as to look like it stopped. Even the lightning took several seconds to arc between the pylons.

Another spark of fire appeared near the serpent. This time, above it. The resulting conflagration blasted it toward the ground. Whatever slowness took over its body didn’t affect its fall. The three scythe-wielders and Zojja had barely a second to dive in opposite directions, barely avoiding being crushed.

Before any one of them could get back to their feet, a blur moved through the air. A haze that shimmered past Olatt’an, moving toward the serpent. It passed through the mechanical monster, consolidating to a stop on the creature’s other side in the form of a dark elf who simply stared down at a short sword held in her hands.

The serpent’s sparks sputtered a moment more before, in slow motion, it peeled apart into a dozen thin strips of metal, split cogs, and broken gears.

“Hale! Help Eiff’an. He’s still alive. Morvin and Zullie, get to Krett’al.”

Olatt’an, bones aching to their fullest, turned to find Arkk alongside an entire crew from Fortress Al-Mir. They were surrounded by the dark knights, all clearly on guard for any additional threats both in the air and on land. Arkk himself, eyes ablaze far brighter than Olatt’an could remember, knelt over Vippa. From the frustration on his face, Olatt’an didn’t think his healing was doing as much as he hoped.

Grunting as he stood fully, Olatt’an stretched his back, felt the grinding of his bones, and ignored the aches. He turned, assessing the changed situation.

The crystalline portal was active once more. This time, rather than an infernal land of metal machines and movement, he could see the familiar interior of Fortress Al-Mir. More of Arkk’s men were on their way through. Not ready to fight as Dakka’s troops were, but ready to lend aid and help recover what needed recovery. They were already spreading out, moving to the less injured who weren’t currently receiving attention from the healers.

Dakka, her men, and the dark elf stood around the metal serpent, watching it warily as if it might spring back to life despite having been taken apart. It didn’t look like it would, but Olatt’an couldn’t fault their caution.

The silver-haired elf, Ilya, hurried through the portal as Olatt’an watched. She had fear and worry on her face, but not for any of those who deserved it at the moment. As soon as his stare caught her eye, Olatt’an raised a hand and pointed off in the direction he last saw the elf’s mother. Ilya gave him a curt nod and immediately hurried off.

“Alive?” Olatt’an grunted as he limped toward Arkk. That last dive had jolted his hip enough to send a spike of pain through him with every step.

“No,” Arkk said with a heavy scowl. His glowing red eyes lifted from Vippa’s body, locking onto Olatt’an. In an unnaturally calm voice, he asked a single question. “What happened?”

Olatt’an took his eyes off Arkk, looking around once more. This time, it wasn’t at the people around, but at the scenery. The ruins. A desolate expanse of crumbled stone and shattered hope. The jagged remains of a once-proud fortress—a proper, above-ground fortress—jutted up from the ground around him. Blackened stones still bore the scars of ancient fires, visible even through the layer of sand and dust that coated everything. Here and there, the rusted hulks of long-abandoned war machines lay half-buried in the soil.

“We found the orc homeland,” he said, sighing somewhat. “Or, at least, the homelands in this world. It is just as the old songs say, if a bit less intact.”

Despite his obvious anger—directed more at the situation than at Olatt’an, at least for the moment—Arkk did raise a curious eyebrow. “This world?”

“I don’t know exactly where orcs come from. The songs tell of a people on the run, moving from land to land all while learning and, in some cases, plundering what unique magics they could from the locals. I once thought that referred to orcs traversing actual land, such as the lands of the Beastman Tribes, the Tetrarchy, Evestani, and even lands across the seas. But after meeting you, my notions changed. We—my people—traversed planes.

“The bones we found in this place prove it. As does the utter lack of those living shadows. Orcs arrived here from another world, built this fortress, and, perhaps, spread out and learned local magics to become those black knights your servant speaks of.”

“And what,” Arkk said, looking to where Dakka and the dark elf were standing guard, “you found what they were on the run from?”

“I don’t believe so, no. I’m not sure what that is but it fell far too easily to force an entire people on the run,” he said, turning his from the serpent to the portal. “We found the portal and, wanting to take as much information back with us, started investigating it. None of the team are spellcasters or magical experts and we didn’t mean to activate the artifact. I suspect that some of our investigation work combined with the overwhelming magic in this world to spontaneously activate it. We managed to shut it back down by damaging one of the runes, but not before that thing made it through.”

Arkk pursed his lips into a thin line, following his line of sight to the portal. “I suppose it is something that you didn’t mean to activate it. But this… this is a mess, Olatt’an. I expected far better judgment calls from you of all people. If Alya ended up hurt…”

“It is a shame,” he said, kneeling down to Vippa’s body. He tried to keep the annoyance in his tone as low as possible. It wasn’t like he had room to complain. Arkk was right. Rekk’ar was the brash one. He was supposed to be the wise one. He should have realized that fiddling with a magical artifact in a world of abundant magic wasn’t the best idea.

But what had happened happened. There was no changing that. All he could do was to make up for it.

And he had a way to make up for it. “It isn’t going to lessen injuries or bring Vippa back,” Olatt’an started, “but I think you might be quite interested in what we’ve found here.”

Arkk closed his eyes, drawing in a deep breath. When he opened his eyes again, they were still glowing a bright red, but it wasn’t quite as intense as it had been just a few moments prior. “Hold onto that thought, unless it is an emergency—”

“It isn’t,” Olatt’an admitted.

“I’m going to ensure everyone else survives this. Then we can speak.”

Olatt’an simply nodded his head. Arkk cast one last pitying glance at Vippa before he turned and hurried off toward where Hale was working on replacing the missing flesh of Eiff’an with something bulky and scaled.

Olatt’an didn’t follow. After running around for his life as much as he had, he needed a moment to himself more than he thought he had. Resting his crossbow on the ground, he sat down next to Vippa’s body. It really was a shame. There wasn’t supposed to have been danger here. Nobody had been prepared for it beyond the basics. Half his team didn’t even have armor with them, let alone on them. Would armor have saved Eiff’an’s arm from being bit off by that machine? Possibly. Possibly not. Would it have saved Vippa? Krett’al?

Probably not.

Olatt’an could have saved them. Activating the portal had been accidental, he hadn’t lied about that. But they hadn’t tried to shut it down immediately. Olatt’an could have given that order. He could have stopped that creature from coming through with plenty of time to spare. But he wanted a peek. A selfish glimpse at the likely next land his people had once called home.

When Arkk had activated the portal to the Underworld, he had ensured that there were contingencies in place. An entire group of guards to keep anything that might come through from posing a threat, traps and pitfalls in the corridors beyond the portal, and even lesser servants burrowed in the walls, ready to collapse the entire chamber if the threat proved greater than traps and guards could handle.

A farmer and a hunter with barely a lick of sense between his ears had taken the threat of other worlds far more seriously than Olatt’an had. It was, frankly, embarrassing.

He rested a hand on Vippa’s chest. “Sorry,” he said, grunting the word out. There wasn’t much else he could say.

He sat there, staring out with a scowl on his toothless face, until Arkk returned.

Everyone else survived, though several suffered varying levels of injury. That was a small consolation. His mistake hadn’t gotten everyone killed.

“Those hulking machines,” Olatt’an said without preamble, gesturing at some of the ruins that weren’t buildings. “They’re something similar to your walking tower, except on a smaller scale, designed for a single occupant to fuel them with magic. These are obviously little more than rust and dust, but they are intact enough to see how they’re made, aren’t they?”

Arkk frowned, staring at the nearest of them.

“And the serpent too. It was a machine, not a living creature. I think it was protecting the other side of the portal. When we inadvertently activated it, it saw us as invaders and attacked. I’m not sure how to make it see us as allies rather than a threat, but there is someone in your employ who might be the right person to figure both the hulks and the serpent out.”

“Agnete,” Arkk said, earning a nod from Olatt’an.

“Indeed. In addition, I believe she would be very interested in the world we found, if it is possible to open the portal there once again.

“I think we found the Anvil of All Worlds.”

 

 

 

“Excellent work, keep it up,” Arkk said, leaving Sylvara and the rest of his research team.

Following the information Sylvara acquired from the Abbey headquarters, they were well on their way to creating an actual weapon against the Heart of Gold’s avatar. They were utilizing both the flowers and the hammock from the Eternal Silence’s domain. Judging from early trials, the hammock was going to work better as whatever catalyst Sylvara needed. Arkk didn’t care much what they used so long as it worked. And so long as they didn’t have to go back to that plane of existence again.

Three people had fallen asleep there. Today, half a week later, one still hadn’t woken up. He seemed to be having fits in his sleep. A nightmare that he couldn’t quite wake from.

It was… disconcerting. Not the kind of place they would be building a long-term outpost like the Underworld. Even if they could get the portal open permanently, it was just too dangerous. That wasn’t going to stop Arkk from investigating other realms if he could. As soon as Savren was done lending his expertise to the anti-avatar project, he wanted the warlock trying to use the ice marble to figure out how to access the Permafrost’s domain. It wasn’t his first choice to venture to but, at the moment, it was their only other hard link to one of the god’s realms.

Everything was falling into place. Leda’s tower was nearing completion, the Prince had not killed Katja yet and had, in fact, responded to a letter Arkk sent, and Zullie’s other projects were progressing well. The Evestani army, accompanied by the Eternal Empire, was still on its way toward Elmshadow. If not for that, everything would have been perfect.

Arkk strode down the corridors of Fortress Al-Mir. With everything going seemingly well, he decided to physically walk. Just to keep up with his efforts toward connecting with his employees.

Perr’ok passed him outside the canteen, waving Arkk down with a raised hand. “We’re ready to equip another twenty with shadow armor.”

“Really? Already?”

“The boys are getting better at working that forge.”

“Excellent. Speak with Dakka. She’ll know who to equip next.”

“Is she here or at Elmshadow?”

Quickly checking in on Dakka’s state, Arkk said, “Here, for now. Sleeping in her quarters. Probably best not to disturb her this very second.” A lot of those who had gone to the Eternal Silence’s domain had been sleeping a bit more than usual these past few days. Arkk hadn’t been feeling too exhausted himself, but Ilya had barely been able to keep her eyes open for the first day and a half.

It was getting better, thankfully. That was just another reason to avoid that domain going forward. If they did need more flowers or hammocks, they would be getting in, grabbing the item, and getting out as fast as possible. The less exposure, the better.

“Any luck fabricating armor for… less bulky bodies?” Arkk asked, raising an eyebrow. He would have loved a set for himself. But it was all sized for orcs.

Perr’ok shook his head. “Sorry. Agnete tried to make some other molds but… something about her magic just doesn’t work with the Shadow Forge. I tried my hand as well but didn’t get anywhere. Testing takes up work time on the forge, so I could put more time into it. It will delay the next batch of armor, however.”

Arkk hesitated. The chance of having some human-sized armor for himself and his other employees was tempting. But it was only that, a chance. It could be a complete failure or it could take an extended amount of time. If he had to weigh a distant hope against getting another squad of orcs outfitted and ready to go now… “Focus on orc armor until everyone has a set. Then experiment,” Arkk said.

“We’ll see if we can’t get the next batch out even faster.”

“As long as it doesn’t sacrifice quality,” Arkk said, clapping Perr’ok on the shoulder as he moved past the head blacksmith. “Good work.”

Fortress Al-Mir was feeling fairly empty these days. Much of his fighting force, including Richter and his soldiers and battlecasters, were out at Elmshadow. Roughly six hundred men in total, including some fresh faces recruited from the survivors of the burg’s occupation. In comparison, Al-Mir had a mere hundred stationed in its walls.

Even the refugees had mostly departed. With Evestani having been pushed back, the villages west of the mountain range felt a little more secure in their positions. That combined with the dawn of spring had villages a little more willing to accept additional hands for tending fields, collecting lumber, and anything else that needed doing. Fortress Al-Mir still housed about a hundred and fifty flopkin, who made up the largest single group in the refugee section of the fortress, and about a medium village’s worth of humans, demihumans, and other beastmen.

It was a wonder how much gold he saved not providing food for over a thousand refugees.

“Arkk.”

Turning, Arkk found Kia standing in a doorway, fiddling with one of the many piercings in her ear. Her eyes were off to one side, not looking at Arkk directly.

“Is Claire…”

“She’s alright,” Arkk said quickly. “Have you not seen her since she volunteered?”

“I did a… week or so ago? She could barely get out of bed.”

Arkk nodded his head. “There was a bit of an after-effect that had her dizzy whenever she did anything. But I understand she’s adapted to it a bit more now. Do you want to see her?”

“I don’t know…”

With a small sigh, Arkk teleported himself and Kia down into the lower levels of Fortress Al-Mir. They appeared in front of a heavy door covered in various runes, all of which were inactive at the moment. They were originally intended to keep the rest of the fortress safe from Claire should anything have gone amiss with Project Liminal. Now, they were unnecessary.

Arkk thumped his knuckles against the door. “Claire?” he called. “Are you in?” He already knew the answer but felt it was polite to ask anyway.

Kia stood back, looking like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to be present at all. Arkk didn’t know what had transpired a week ago, but the last time he saw them together, they had a bit of a fight. He could easily see that there was some lingering awkwardness. At least on Kia’s half.

A translucent afterimage of Claire appeared at the edge of the door before it opened, leaving her looking like she was poking her head through the metal. The door opened just a crack as the afterimage solidified into Claire. Her sharp blue eyes flicked from Arkk to Kia and back.

“Morning,” she said with an exhaustive yawn large enough to make Arkk wonder if she hadn’t managed to sneak into the Eternal Silence’s domain.

And… it was actually late afternoon.

“Demon problems?”

“Not yet,” Arkk said. “Hopefully not ever. The Prince responded to one of my letters in a most cordial manner, thanking me for my and Company Al-Mir’s efforts against Evestani thus far. I am hoping that is a positive sign. Though he did have a few words to say on my ‘attack’ on the Duke’s manor… I’m still trying to decide whether or not to claim that was an imposter from Evestani or just a misunderstanding.”

He had the return letter half-written up in his quarters right now.

“I… see. Then perhaps a test against the avatar?”

Arkk shook his head. “I have some plans for throwing a few things in Evestani’s direction. Partially to slow them down and give us more time to develop weapons, mostly to see what may or may not be effective against the avatar’s magic. You are part of those plans, but they aren’t quite ready yet.”

She nodded her head, afterimages bobbing up and down before the rest of her head. Watching her short brown hair split apart into various afterimages was somewhat nauseating, but Arkk kept his expression firmly neutral.

“We’re here because Kia was wondering how you were doing.”

Claire’s eyes blue eyes flicked over to Kia. Her expression didn’t change at all. She simply said, “Better.”

“You haven’t been out of here at all,” Kia said with obvious concern in her voice. It was probably the most genuine emotion Arkk had ever heard from the dark elf. “You aren’t…” Kia’s eyes narrowed as she turned a glare on Arkk. “She isn’t here against her will, is she?”

“She opened the door on her own,” Arkk said quickly, absolutely not wanting to upset either of the dark elves. “She is free to go anywhere she pleases now that Zullie has confirmed that her state is stable.”

“It’s fine,” Claire said with a faint sigh. “It’s safer down here.”

Kia frowned. “Safer?”

Rather than answer her, Claire went for a demonstration. An afterimage of her hand appeared through the door, punching through it. Unlike when she peeked her head through, this time, the door started falling apart around her wrist. The metal simply came apart, as if made of millions of individual granules that had simply been pressed together into a flimsy sheet. By the time her actual hand caught up to the afterimage, there was a completely clear hole in the door for her arm to occupy.

“I keep doing this,” she said, pulling the afterimage of her hand through the door again. Even though the hole was barely wide enough for her wrist to fit in, her fist slid through as if it didn’t care at all about the piece of metal that should be blocking her way. “Accidentally.”

“You can’t control it?”

“I’m getting better.”

“At least it isn’t making you dizzy anymore,” Arkk said.

“No,” she agreed. A wide and unpleasant smile made its way across her face. “It makes me excited. I can’t wait to see what I can do in a fight.” Her fingers blurred through the door, taking away long narrow streaks of the metal as she dragged them down.

“Please don’t destroy the fortress more than necessary,” Arkk said.

Claire never looked embarrassed or sheepish about anything. She still pulled her hand back.

“Thank you,” Arkk said. He waited a moment, watching the two dark elves. Neither spoke further but neither looked like they wanted to leave each other either. “If you two would like to talk for a time, I can leave you in peace,” he said, reading the room. “Kia, the way back to the fortress proper is fairly convoluted, so if you get lost, feel free to tug on the link and I’ll move you back up.”

Neither objected to his proposal. Kia nodded her head.

Arkk teleported away. He finished his walk around Fortress Al-Mir, greeting his employees and doing his best to project an air of confidence about their path forward in this war. He was about to head over to Elmshadow to do the same there—there had been no calls for his attention for several days now and no notes left on his throne for him to read from afar, but he figured it would still be a good idea to meet with people there in person.

A tug on the link stopped him before he could. He first peeked in on Kia and Claire, figuring they had finished their discussion, only to find them engaged in a rather intense discussion that he should probably not ever admit he had seen if he valued his life. Quickly turning his attention away, he followed the link. It was far off. Through the Underworld portal and then some. Far, far further than the little outpost they had constructed around the portal archway and beyond even the village where the Shadow Forge was.

Arkk found himself staring down at Olatt’an, engaged in a fierce battle against… something. The other members of his expeditionary crew were fighting alongside him. Two of the Protector’s bodies were fighting as well. That was probably the only reason none of Arkk’s men had been killed so far.

A bright flash of light drew Arkk’s gaze back to the creature they were fighting against. It was some kind of flying serpent, long and narrow. It didn’t have… innards. It was made up of large metallic rings, joined together by flexible metal bars along their tops and bottoms. The only interior it had was made up of cogs and springs, looking rather like some of Agnete’s projects in the forge. Large poles jutted out from its body periodically along its spine, each capped with a small ball. Lightning coursed between the balls, arcing from one to the next like it was constantly casting the Electro Deus spell on itself.

One of the orcs tried an Electro Deus spell. It veered off to the side, slamming into one of the pylons without doing any obvious harm.

“There is a situation.”

Arkk jolted, surprised at the heavy voice. He turned to find the Protector looming over him.

“I’m aware,” Arkk said as he immediately teleported them both away. He reappeared in the library alongside the Protector. Sylvara jumped to her feet, not quite used to people suddenly appearing around her. Savren jolted somewhat as well, locking eyes with the Protector.

Zullie carried on dictating what sounded like a simple introductory to planar magic, probably for Sylvara’s benefit, until Arkk interrupted.

“I have an immediate need to travel rapidly through the Underworld,” he said. “Is there any possibility of getting that done.”

After a brief silence fell upon the group. Zullie, looking irritated at being interrupted, planted a hand on her hip. “Teleportation rituals don’t work in the Underworld.”

“I know. I’m asking for alternate solutions.”

“If I may interrupt,” the Protector said, leaning high over the table where one of the Eternal Silence’s flowers sat under a glass dome. “The creature came from a world-hole. There is one in the vicinity.”

“World hole?”

“A crystalline archway covered in runes.”

“They found a portal over there?”

“And managed to activate it. The creature we fight now slipped through before we could shut it back down.”

Arkk grimaced. That was careless of them. They should have… spent weeks returning only to spend weeks heading back out with a proper force? He could see why they made that choice. But now they were in a mess and Arkk had no way to help. He could only watch.

“A working portal might work,” Zullie said, thumb furiously rubbing at her chin. “Especially with the Protector there. We can reconfigure the portals to connect to each other. I know how to do this.”

Arkk looked at her. She stared back with those eyeless eyes, with glimmers of starlight magnified by the lenses she still wore. He had shut her down earlier, not willing to risk the expeditionary party by changing the portals. With the glowstones still depleted from their excursion to the Eternal Silence’s domain, they didn’t have any other choice but to shut down the portal here and use it, hoping it would come back up afterward.

Could the expeditionary team beat the creature and survive? There were several injured already. Eiff’an was on the ground, by far the worst, with half his arm torn off in what looked like a massive bite. He would bleed out if he didn’t get immediate assistance.

The lightning coursing down the back of the serpent grew in intensity, surging forward from back to front. At the base of the metal creature’s head, it jolted down inside the thing’s body. It opened its maw, a solid jaw of sharp metal shards, and a lightning bolt as strong as some of Arkk’s strongest shot out.

One of the Protectors caught the blast square in the chest despite its best attempt at dodging. It immediately collapsed, smoking.

The Protector at Arkk’s side jolted but otherwise made no noise of alarm or panic.

One of Olatt’an’s crossbow bolts struck the side of the creature during the brief moment it had stopped to line up its lightning. It slipped between the skeletal-like ‘ribs’ of metal, jamming up one of the cogs inside it. But that wasn’t enough to bring it down.

If it fried the other Protector, they might not have a chance at redirecting the portals. Arkk assumed there were other Protectors out there, but he didn’t know how close they might be.

Arkk teleported everyone to Fortress Al-Mir’s crystal archway. “You!” he barked, pointing at a random orc on guard nearest to the portal. “Get on the other side and ring the recall alarm bells. Everyone over there has two minutes to get on this side or risk being stuck over there.”

Arkk turned away, knowing the order would be carried out. “Zullie,” he said. “Tell the Protector what to do.”

“I need to know what the portal over there looks like. The runes are like a key. We need to shift the ones here to match.”

“Protector,” Arkk said, “disengage from the fight immediately or get one of the orcs to run to the portal. I’ll be able to see it.”

“Understood.”

Arkk couldn’t hear through the link, but he could see the Protector move to carry out his order. He was pretty sure the Protector shouted something to the others. They all shifted their formation, moving to protect the remaining Protector.

Another buildup of lightning surged out of the serpent’s mouth. Livva dodged in front of it, taking the bolt on her metal armor to save the retreating Protector. Arkk swore out as she collapsed, smoking as well, but, strangely enough, she didn’t die. It was like the lightning caught her armor and decided to simply flow along it to the ground. She wasn’t unharmed. Arkk could feel the pain and panic over the link.

But she was still alive.

Another in need of emergency aid.

Arkk pulled Hale to him even as the Protector drew close enough to the portal for Arkk to see it. Hale looked around in confusion for a moment. She saw the emergency going on and steeled herself for administering medical aid.

Without a second thought, Arkk dropped Dakka in front of him as well. She was not armored up. “Equip yourself,” was all Arkk said before teleporting her to the armory along with her main team. Then, with slightly more of a second thought, Arkk teleported Kia and Claire into the room—a short distance apart from one another. They brought with them a strong stench of sweat, but that wasn’t worth commenting on given the situation.

“Claire,” Arkk said. “Are you prepared to test your abilities against a real opponent?”

Her afterimages nodded before her actual head.

“Good. Gear up,” he said, teleporting both her and Kia to the armory. “Zullie. Starting at the bottom left of the portal, the first rune is a loop with a dot in the middle…”

 

 

Arkk had missed the opening of the Underworld portal. It was understandable, really, on account of having an audience with a god at the time. He had seen the after-effects, of course. The shimmering, almost water-like membrane that separated the two worlds and the lit runes embedded in the portal’s crystalline archway were certainly a sight to behold. Arkk wasn’t sure that he had much of a reaction after seeing the other portal. But, again, he had just met a god. It was hard to be impressed by much after that.

With the memories of Xel’atriss having faded over time, Arkk watched with rapt attention as the shimmering liquid flooded the interior of the archway, like a pool of water lifted vertically. A light ring rippled out from the center, vibrating the water’s surface until the wave reached the crystalline walls.

Another ripple spread through the shimmering membrane, this one bringing with it proper imagery. The Slumbering Vale, Vezta had called it, was a much more lively land than the Underworld. The realm was a vast, endless garden of soft, lush grasses and sprawling fields of flowers. The undoubtedly fragrant smell of the fields didn’t pass through the portal, but Arkk could still almost taste the strong floral air on the tip of his tongue. Above the garden, the starry expanse in its clear sky was stuck in a smooth transition from twilight to a gentle night, never quite reaching it.

A small warning note in the back of Arkk’s mind alerted him to an alteration to Fortress Al-Mir, one he had not sanctioned.

One of the pedestals within Fortress Al-Mir’s temple room, formerly vacant, now held a statue. This one held an aged man, clean-shaved, slumped in a small, simple chair. His head, topped by a crown, rested against one of his shoulders. Unlike the other statues, his eyes were closed, sleeping, while cradling a humanoid skull as if it were a cloth doll given to a child. He looked entirely at peace as if nothing could possibly disturb him from his rest.

The Eternal Silence. God of sleep, rest, peace, and death.

“It worked!” Zullie said, breaking the silence in the portal room. “And everything appears stable.”

“How could you possibly know that?” Dakka said.

Zullie huffed. “These portals use the Lock and Key’s power. I can see that,” she said with an offended wrinkle on her nose. “It won’t last forever though. Without Fortress Al-Mir to sustain the portal magically, it will shut down when the glowstones run out of power. We should hurry.”

“Stop,” Arkk said, tone flat as he clamped a hand on Zullie’s shoulder to stop her from skipping through the portal. “First, how long will the portal last? Can it be reopened?”

Morvin crouched near an array of glowstones linked to the archway via ritual circles and answered for Zullie. “I’ll have better numbers after a few minutes, but at the current rate of drain—assuming it doesn’t change—I would guess an hour? Give or take ten minutes.”

“No reason why we can’t reopen it,” Zullie said. “Just like opening it the first time. We will have to recharge the glowstones—”

“Which takes a fair amount of time,” Arkk said, frowning as he looked over the glowing stones. The glowstones they were using to power this could have launched dozens of bombardment spells. It would take several days to process them through the Underworld charging rituals.

“Yes, but it is possible.”

Just as he had done with the Underworld, Arkk conjured a lesser servant. The slopping mess of oily mass looked up at him with a multitude of eyes, awaiting his command. So he gave it one. He sent it through the portal’s threshold.

With the Underworld, he had been able to feel the creature on the other side and even give it commands to return. The same was true here. But he stopped it before it could come back.

“Shut the portal down.”

“What? But—”

“Shut it down,” Arkk said, looking at Morvin. “And then start it back up.”

Morvin hesitated a moment, looking to Zullie, then looked back to Arkk. “The starting procedure cost ten percent of the magical reserves held in the glow—”

“I don’t care.”

Morvin sighed but started carrying out Arkk’s order. If it took a chunk of magic off the top just to get the portal started, it would reduce the time they could spend in the Slumbering Vale today. But he wasn’t about to step through a portal without knowing that it could be turned back on again. He’d be damned if he ended up trapped on the other side.

It took a few minutes. The rippling of the archway stilled and the image faded. Slowly, the shimmering membrane disappeared as well. As soon as the last bit of glowing light in the runes around the archway diminished to nothing, Morvin and Gretchen got started turning it back on.

The entire time, Arkk focused on the lesser servant. It sat on the other side, trembling and bubbling as they were wont to do. He might have described its movements as agitated and worried but, from possessing one just to test it out, he knew they didn’t feel much at all. They weren’t like Vezta or any normal being. Its movements did slow as the portal cut out entirely. Its eyes closed and its tendrils slowly settled in the grassy garden.

Perhaps the distance across planes, without the portal active, reduced the amount of magic it could siphon from Fortress Al-Mir? It was still alive, so Arkk wasn’t too concerned.

Before long, the portal shimmered and rippled and the image of the Slumbering Vale’s garden spread out before him once again. Arkk gave it the command to return.

It jolted, eyes blinking open. It looked around, bleary, as if it had just been awoken from a long slumber.

Which… somewhat made sense but also didn’t at the same time. Lesser servants did not sleep or seem to tire at all. Some of the servants down in Fortress Al-Mir’s gold mine had been working non-stop since he first set them to the task months ago. It had been… over half a year? Or close to it. He had never once seen them stop to rest.

But this was the domain of the god of sleep, among other things. If a little exhaustion was the only side effect of being there—and not those other things—then that was probably the best outcome.

“How long will it stay open now?” Arkk asked, looking at Morvin.

“Forty… No. Thirty… five minutes?”

“We have fifteen minutes,” Arkk said, addressing the room at large. “Savren, you remain here in case anything goes wrong. You’re in charge of getting the portal up and running again. Zullie, you’re with me. Dakka, have half your team follow us through, half stay—”

“Why stay?”

“Two reasons. First, it is a low possibility, but it is a possibility nonetheless that someone could attack us here. Second,” Arkk nodded toward the lesser servant who was still a little sluggish. “If we all decide to lie down for a nap on the other side, I need people who are strong enough to drag us back as fast as possible. No sleeping,” he said with emphasis to the rest of the group. “And no venturing far. Stay in clear view of the portal at all times until we’re a little more certain of how things work over there. The objective is hopefully to find some object—any object—that might hold a bit of the Eternal Silence’s power. That might be an enchanted dagger, it might be a flower. Everyone clear on objectives and rules?”

Arkk waited, looking around. Nobody voiced any objections or questions.

“And me?”

Arkk turned to Ilya, hesitating. He wanted to tell her to stay here. It was the safer side of the portal. But… “Your choice.”

“I’ll be with you,” she said, eyes firm. “But are you sure it is a good idea for you to go over first?”

“A leader has to lead,” he said with a smile. “Besides, I’m curious myself. And the lesser servant survived. Now come, we’re wasting our valuable time.”

Arkk stepped up to the portal threshold and paused. Despite his words to Ilya, he was a little hesitant. To start with, he reached a hand through. Everything felt entirely normal. There was a bit of a tingle right at the membrane but nothing unpleasant beyond. Taking a full step forward, Arkk journeyed to his second alternate plane.

Or third, if he counted the encounter with Xel’atriss.

The first thing he noticed was not, surprisingly, the smell. There was a smell, it was true. A faint and far subtler—quite pleasing, in fact—scent of flowers. He couldn’t quite identify the type of flower, which made sense given that this was a whole other world. But the thing that stood out was the sound.

Or the utter lack of sound.

There wasn’t a hint of rustling in the flowers or the crunch of brush underneath his feet. Breathing in a deep waft of the air, he couldn’t even hear the rush of air through his nose. He turned to Ilya, who stepped through at his side, and opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

Ilya opened her mouth but, after a moment, snapped her jaw shut. She grabbed his shirt and forced him back through the portal.

“Can I—” Ilya sagged in relief. “I was worried for a second there.”

“Communication in the other world might be difficult. It seems the Lord of Silence takes that title seriously,” Arkk announced to the room at large. “For today, during our short venture there, that shouldn’t matter too much. Long-term postings might have issues. There will be no audible warning when it is time to return so ensure you are checking regularly. If you don’t think you can manage that, don’t come.”

He looked around once to ensure that everyone heard. Then, he turned back to the portal and stepped through.

The silence hit him like a rush of wind. Or, perhaps, the noise was drawn from him in a rush of wind. However the Eternal Silence’s land worked, Arkk didn’t think he would be spending as much time in it as in the Underworld. It was… eerie.

Beautiful, he could admit. The endless stretch of vaguely blue-green tinted fields of flowers and brush. It all looked… cared for. As if it hadn’t grown naturally. At the same time, it wasn’t sculpted and designed. There was overgrowth in some areas and undergrowth in others. Someone had guided the growth of the land without restricting it, allowing it to grow as it saw fit.

Oddly, despite how far he could see, he couldn’t see any sign of habitation. The Underworld held a great number of settlements strewn throughout its lands. They were ruins now, true, but it didn’t feel that different from the regular world. He could easily imagine people living in the Underworld a thousand years ago not so differently to how people lived in his world today.

The same was not true here. Which… maybe made sense. How many people would actually live in the realm of a god of death?

Then again, the plants, odd color aside, certainly looked alive.

It was a confusing place.

As the others started filing through the portal, taking their first looks around and invariably trying to talk, Arkk stepped up to a nearby bush of flowers. Large and vaguely circular petals, all with a blue hue, stuck off the end of a tall stalk, one that reached nearly as high as his shoulders despite the rest of the plant resting somewhere around his waist.

He did not lean forward to smell it. First of all, this was the land of the death god. Who knew what might happen? Second of all, he was fairly certain he could already smell it. The whole air was inundated with that floral scent and there weren’t many other obvious sources.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed one of the orcs that had followed them into the portal had no such reservations. Raff’el leaned forward with his helmet off and, before Arkk or anyone else could stop him, pressed his nose right into the flower’s petals.

He pulled back, looking awfully satisfied with that blissful look on his face, and then promptly toppled backward without a sound.

Dakka and Klepp’at rushed over, the former looking irritated and the latter looking worried. The concern diminished from Klepp’at’s face the moment he started inspecting the fallen orc. He tried shaking him with increasingly more vigorous movements up until Dakka had enough. She lashed out, swinging her gauntleted fist.

She pulled back right at the last moment, swinging her arm back to her chest.

Dakka wasn’t one to pull her punches. From the surprise on her face, Arkk guessed that she hadn’t intended to pull that one either. Her lips moved in what would have been a loud click of her tongue had any sound in this realm been possible. She looked around for just a moment before hefting up a rather large rock.

She let it go, letting it fall in utter silence. Right over Raff’el’s face.

That woke the orc up. Somewhat. He looked around, startled, but upon seeing nothing but the two orcs hovering over him, that blissful look took hold once again and he started to drift off despite the blood dripping from his now crooked nose.

Dakka curled her lips, showing off her tusks, before looking up to Arkk with a shrug.

He just thumbed back to the portal, prompting the two orcs to carry off their drowsy companion. Hopefully, that wore off in time. If not… He would have to figure something out later. Frankly, Raff’el was lucky that the plant hadn’t killed him outright.

Zullie, somehow having watched the exchange with her lack of eyes, promptly started miming out a game of charades to Morvin and Gretchen. The two went over to one of the nearby bushes. Morvin, cautiously, started clipping off flowers for obvious later experimentation while Gretchen worked to pull an entire bush from the ground, presumably to grow them in the real world, if that was possible. As they worked, Zullie turned back to the portal archway on this side and started inspecting it.

She opened her mouth, holding out a hand with clear intent to cast a spell.

Arkk had to suppress a yawn as he watched. Domain of sleep indeed.

The silence of the world didn’t let Zullie speak a single syllable. Frustration quickly etched its way onto her face. She tried twice more, perhaps thinking that verbalizing the words wasn’t necessary. That only led to more frustration that quickly culminated in her crouching down in front of the portal and drawing a wooden dowel from her robes. She started scribing out a ritual circle on the ground, glaring at it the whole time.

Arkk shook his head and looked away, only to spot something he hadn’t noticed before. A peculiar pair of trees stood not far from Arkk with something slung between them. He hadn’t noticed them before despite their relative proximity. Curious, Arkk approached, making sure to keep in full view of the portal at all times.

A net had been tied to the trunk of either tree in such a way that it formed a rather appealing hammock. The exhaustion in the atmosphere couldn’t go unnoticed. If he had wandered here unaware of the nature of this world, he might have decided that it would be the perfect time for a nap.

Arkk slapped his hands into his cheeks, sparking a jolt of adrenaline to stave off the sleep.

Rather than touch the hammock—he knew he sometimes made foolish decisions but he still liked to think of himself as smarter than Raff’el, at least—Arkk called for the lesser servant once again. It slithered and slopped its way over and, at Arkk’s command, it reached out and touched the netting.

It didn’t die. Nor did it immediately fall asleep.

That was good so far. But just to check, Arkk had it climb up into the hammock.

Which… wasn’t exactly an easy operation to carry out. As ropes woven together with large gaping holes between the strands, the hammock presented a certain challenge to a being made of tar and slime. The lesser servant, in its attempts to squelch its way into the hammock, just kept sinking right through it.

After the third failure, Arkk had it stop its pointless task. Instead, he had it bite into the tree trunk right next to the rope.

Trees, as it turned out, did not make a sound even with a dozen people around to hear them fall.

The lesser servant did the same with the other tree, allowing Arkk to lift the hammock up and over the fresh stump. He coiled it up, handed it off to the lesser servant—who managed to carry it despite being unable to sit on it—and slowly looked around the crystal archway.

More than a few of his team looked like they were already worn out after a hard day of working. Voll’ey and Frezza were standing upright but their heads were bobbing as if they were trying to stay awake. Gretchen had completely fallen asleep and was in the process of being dragged back to the portal by two other orcs. Dakka looked to be sustaining herself through pure anger at her own exhaustion. Even Zullie kept yawning every few seconds.

Ilya…

Arkk’s heart skipped a beat as he looked around, failing to spot Ilya. That beat steadied out when he noticed her next to another hammock tied up between a pair of trees. She wasn’t looking at it with an analytical eye but rather the eyes of someone wanting to close them and never open them again.

Arkk rushed over and grabbed her by the arm before she could commit to climbing into the hammock. She looked at him with half-lidded eyes. The sluggishness of her mind took a long minute to fade away along with several shakes of her head. She opened her mouth.

And, of course, could not speak.

Arkk jerked his hand back toward the portal.

He didn’t know how long they had been here but they had stayed long enough.

 

 

 

An iridescent crystal with an odd yellow hue sat on the table, held upright by three nail-like prongs crafted down in Fortress Al-Mir’s smithy. There were no glowstones in the room. Nothing that might contaminate it with ambient magic. The only light came from a set of three oil lamps, slowly burning away. The small flames flickered and wavered, sending the iridescent gleam up and down the smooth sides of the crystal.

“The gem matches the portal archway,” Hale said, staring at the crystal. “Like, close enough that if I didn’t know better, I’d have thought you hacked a chunk off it.”

“Portal archway?” Sylvara asked, looking at the small girl.

“I believe you sat in on a meeting or two where our access to the Underworld came up?” Zullie said, empty eyes locked onto the crystal. “Arkk never actually showed you it, did he.”

“Such secrets should strictly stay shielded from the scrutiny of your Inquisition.”

Sylvara eyed Savren but didn’t comment. She looked back to the crystal. “An archivist who frequently helped Vrox and I during our research gave me this the day I left. She said it would help, though she didn’t say what with. Hearing what you have to say on it makes the inquisitor in me wonder how an archivist got her hands on some kind of… planar shard?”

“Oh,” Zullie said, leaning forward with an almost maniacal grin on her eyeless face. “It’s far more than just a bit of errant planar magic. I have seen things. Those portals? They were created by Xel’atriss, Lock and Key, as gifts to the worlds. Most, I imagine, were destroyed in the years following the Calamity. Those that aren’t have been long buried, lost and forgotten for a thousand years. So, yes. Quite interesting that an archivist got her hands on a piece of one. An active piece. Now that it is out of that case, I can… well, I can see Xel’atriss, Lock and Key’s power radiating off that thing.”

“It has a rune on it,” Hale said, more for Zullie’s sake than anyone else’s. “A solitary dot within a larger circle.”

Zullie let out a long hum, tapping a thin finger on the rim of her glasses. “Doesn’t match any of the runes on our portal, does it?”

“No,” Hale said.

Arkk drew in a breath as he looked over the research team. He had asked Vezta about the rune upon first seeing it in Sylvara’s hands. “That is supposedly the symbol for the Eternal Silence. God of rest, sleep, peace… and death. One of three members of the Pantheon that Vezta suggested was most opposed to the Heart of Gold. The others being the Eternal Permafrost and the Jailer of the Void.”

“Rest, peace, sleep, and death,” Ilya repeated, speaking for the first time since this meeting began. She expressed confusion as to why she had been invited given her lack of magical knowledge. Arkk mostly just wanted her at his side. It felt like they were always apart these days. “Those traits oppose gold?”

“The Heart of Gold holds dominion over wealth, possessions, and—allegedly—love. I’ve not seen evidence for that last one but that’s what Vezta said. Material, worldly things, in other words.”

“Greed,” Savren cut in.

Arkk started to nod but paused. “According to Vezta, followers of the Heart of Gold often… well… engaged in violence—to put it lightly—against those who insinuated they followed a god of greed. But yes. The Eternal Silence’s focus on death and sleep is more immaterial—you can’t carry your wealth into a dream, after all. Vezta’s words, not mine.”

“I see,” Sylvara said, not sounding wholly convinced.

Arkk didn’t blame her. “Not every member of the Pantheon has a direct opposition like fire to ice,” he said with a light shrug. “That’s probably why she suggested three different gods. But having this crystal here now… Well, it can’t hurt to try with this one.”

“That’s… convenient. And raises more questions for the archivist. Did she know?” Sylvara murmured to herself. “Perhaps Vrox mentioned something to her. Or she just saw where our research was headed and knew this crystal was sitting somewhere in the archives.” Sylvara shook her head, focusing her red eyes back on Zullie. “I’ll interrogate—or thank—her the next time I’m in Chernlock. For now, I presume you know of a way to use this? I know how to craft Binding Agents, but I need materials infused with opposing power.”

“Yes,” Zullie said. “We—

Arkk interrupted, “No. We can’t.”

“It will be simple,” Zullie said, ruffling her robes as she folded her arms over her chest. “I don’t know how the Abbey gets their material, but all we have to do is replace the keystone rune of the portal with this. We walk in, find a few artifacts of the Eternal Silence, and walk out. Sylvara performs her artifice. Then we have a weapon to use against the avatar.”

Arkk let out a long sigh. “And if we can’t turn the portal back to the Underworld? Olatt’an and Ilya’s mother are still out there,” he said, giving Ilya a firm nod of his head. “Even if they weren’t, if we were to lose access to the Underworld, we lose our ability to charge up glowstones for siege magics. We lose additional artifacts from the Cloak of Shadows. And who knows what might happen to the Protector.”

“Having harnessed hidden insights from the minds of the multi-linked, I can confidently claim that the magic melding them moves beyond mere material planes.”

Arkk shot Savren a look, both in annoyance at having his argument undermined and in curiosity at how Savren felt confident in how the Protector’s mind linked together. Before he could ask, however, Zullie cut in, thumping a hand against the table.

“Think of what we gain! Whole new artifacts from a whole new seat of the Pantheon. Think of how great the shadow forged gear is and imagine outfitting another squad with Eternal Silence flavor scythes.”

“The Eternal Silence is the god of peace,” Arkk said with a frown. “Do you think we’ll find weapons?”

“Also the god of death.”

Arkk didn’t have a counterpoint for that. “Olatt’an and Alya are still out there along with their expedition,” he said. That was, by and large, the most important reason to not proceed at this point.

“Damn right,” Ilya added, shooting a glare at Zullie. “We might have had a little falling out, but I don’t want her banished to another plane for the rest of her life. Elves live very long lives.”

“If they were back,” Arkk continued, “I might consider it, but they aren’t. We’re not going to play with their lives. Even if you’re confident that you can switch the portal back and forth, I am not.”

Zullie would have glared had she her eyes. Instead, she pressed her lips into thin lines.

“But,” Ilya said, raising a finger. “Don’t we have another choice?”

Arkk looked at the elf, eyes trailing down her pointed ear to the thoughtful look on her face. It was the look of someone who just had an epiphany. But Arkk wasn’t having the same epiphany and, judging by the looks on everyone else’s faces, nobody else understood either.

“What do you mean?”

“The other archway.”

“Other archway?”

Ilya nodded. “Early on, when we were still looking for jobs for the orcs to do to keep them out of trouble, we accepted that request for expeditionary escorts out to some pyramid in the highlands. I remember we got a letter from them right around the time we were in Moonshine Burg dealing with the slavers,” she said with notable distaste. “The expedition found a big mural that seemed to detail some history of the world—I don’t really remember that bit—but they also mentioned a big crystalline archway. Isn’t that the same portal structure?”

Arkk stared at Ilya, blinking a few times. If he were being completely honest, he had forgotten that entirely. He did remember receiving a letter sometime in the aftermath of the inquisition expedition where he had acquired Agnete as an ally and fended off Vrox and Chronicler Greesom. Had that mentioned an archway?

Closing his eyes, he focused a moment. Somewhere in his study was a small leather-bound folder. And in that folder…

There.

Opening his eyes, he looked down at the freshly teleported letter. He skimmed through it until he came across one specific passage.

What we found was unlike anything I have witnessed in my thirty-nine years. A complex labyrinth of corridors and rooms. Most were, regrettably, empty. Their contents decayed beyond any reasonable identification. The full details are attached but I will call special attention to three rooms in particular. One, a room with a large crystalline archway, covered in strange patterns and designs. I have shipped off sketches of the designs to the Cliff Academy in the hopes of uncovering the nature or purpose of the archway—I am not a spellcaster myself nor were any on our expedition—but they have yet to return my missives. I will send another letter to you with their results if they ever come.

He had never received another letter. The war had started soon after, so that wasn’t particularly surprising. The war had disrupted almost everything. But there it was, clear as day. A detail he had forgotten that Ilya kept in mind.

Another archway. Not even that far away.

Arkk leaned back, taking his eyes off the letter to stare at Ilya with a rising feeling in his chest. “Have I ever mentioned how much I love you?”

Red flooded into Ilya’s pointed ears. “Not now,” she hissed.

“Later then. For now… I’ve got some ritual circles to scribe out to get us out to this place. Zullie, you think this will work?”

“You never told me about another archway,” she said with a small frown.

“I’ve always got a lot going on. I’m sure I’ve forgotten more things than I remember.”

“Which is why you need to tell me,” she snapped, then sighed. “As for whether it will work… It won’t be connected to Fortress Al-Mir, but if we charge up a crate of glowstones before… Ah, but the state of the portal might be… I’ll have to see it to be certain, but I’ll give it a tentative possibly right now.”

“Better than what we had before,” Arkk said. “Meet back here in two hours. I’ll be done by then.”

After a few more than two hours, a time spent poring over maps and tracking down a few of the orcs who had gone on the expedition, Arkk finally stepped out of a teleportation circle in the Mystakeen highlands and took a deep breath. The air was fresh and the skies were clear. The temperature was a bit crisp. He wouldn’t want to stand outside for long periods without a heavier coat, but he wasn’t planning on staying out in the sun.

They were a fair trek west of Elmshadow, almost directly at the midpoint between the burg and Evestani’s border.

During Evestani’s first march across the Duchy, the army had avoided the highlands, choosing the easier, less mountainous routes through the land. Arkk was hoping that continued, but even if it didn’t, they should have at least two unobstructed weeks before Evestani neared the mountains.

Arkk stepped outside the ritual circle, allowing the rest of the research crew to follow one at a time, and looked over the surroundings. Tall trees grew thick enough that just trying to walk through them would have been nearly impossible were it not for the flagstone pathways set through what looked to be ruins of a rather small village. Even those paths were overgrown with brush and shrubs.

It was a rather strange place for a village, in Arkk’s opinion. Set on the top of one of the highland mountains, it had a clear view down the narrow valleys and across to other mountains in the land formation. There was no obvious source of water and no room for crops. Any normal village would have failed here.

This one had failed, but not before growing a little larger than Langleey. The remnants were all cobblestone buildings that lacked roofs. Presumably, they would have been made from straw or thatch that would have rotted away over the centuries. Before then… It had likely been supported by the fortress.

At the center of the village ruins was a black marble ziggurat that looked practically brand new. A smooth monolith with no seams and no openings, just as described in Ramis Phonk’s letter. Ilya sent off a letter to the Historical Curator of the Crown while Arkk had been locating the structure, inquiring about additional details, results of various research, and anything else Phonk might think of, but they probably wouldn’t hear a response anytime soon.

“Everyone’s here.”

Arkk turned to Ilya, gave her a nod, and looked out over the rest of the group.

Sylvara stood, back straight with her gloved hand on her hip, eying the ruins of the village and the ziggurat. Just behind her, Zullie rubbed her hands up and down her arms, shivering with Hale acting as a guide at her side. Savren, accompanied by Morvin and Gretchen, was amid a long yawn—he had decided on napping before coming out here, not sure how long they would be working. In addition to the research team, Arkk had pulled Dakka and her team from Elmshadow to primarily act as guards, just in case they did manage to open a portal and it held something hostile on the other side. A few others, orcs and humans mostly, were present as well to assist with heavy lifting or other grunt work.

Finally, Gratt’an stood just a little behind Ilya. The tan-skinned orc looked around with different eyes compared to everyone else present. The others looked around the area with unfamiliar expressions on their faces, the looks of people first visiting a new location. Gratt’an’s burly face was a lot more flat and uninterested in the surroundings.

For one simple reason. He had been here before.

“This way,” Gratt’an said, heading off toward one of the overgrown pathways.

Arkk, wanting to make sure nobody got lost or left behind, let out a sharp whistle to ensure he had everyone’s attention. A simple gesture had them all trudging after him.

“Everything seemed like a bust,” Gratt’an said as he turned down a path that led alongside the ziggurat. “Was just looking for a bit of loot. Anything to make the trip that much more valuable, you know?”

“Find anything?”

“Few stray coins. Not gold. Nothing worth nothing. Shopkeep in a town on the way back said he wouldn’t take them.”

“Shame,” Arkk said.

“Right shame. But thanks to that, I found this,” Gratt’an said as he stepped into a roofless building. It was a bit larger than most of the others. Maybe a storehouse? Or simply the entryway.

At the back of the cobblestone structure, there was a doorway with a large door crafted from the same black marble that the ziggurat was made from.

“We had to pry it open,” Gratt’an said, glaring at it. “Took six of us all heaving against it. Not fun, but we got it.”

“Good work,” Arkk said, peering down into the darkness. Everyone present had a few glowstones—the lesser ones for lighting rather than the large ones for spellcasting. He had known it would be dark but…

Just looking down the stairs, he was struck with a vague sense of nostalgia for his first visit to Fortress Al-Mir, before he had contracted with it and lit everything up. At the time, he had been concerned about the imminent attack on Langleey Village. Too concerned to appreciate the place.

Following after Gratt’an, he felt he could appreciate this place even more, now that he knew what it was and how old it was.

“It’s different from Al-Mir,” Ilya said, running her fingers along the walls. “Everything is smooth and glossy. No maze patterns at all.”

“The Heart probably belonged to a different god,” Arkk said, noting the floor’s lack of any pattern. “Vezta might have been able to tell us who. I’m not sure.”

Vezta was still at Leda’s walking tower. Arkk hadn’t recalled her or Priscilla for this, even though he probably should have.

There were too many things going on at once. He had to split his resources across Mystakeen. It was the same reason why Agnete wasn’t here. She was in Cliff alongside Claire, both of them being his best shot at preventing a demon from rampaging across the land if Katja’s diplomacy fell short.

Gratt’an let out a brief grunt, stopping at the bottom of the stairs where the corridor split off. “Good. They’re still here,” he said holding his glowstone up to the corner. A few white marks adorned the wall along with arrows pointing down the various passages. “Those historians left marks here to help find their way around. Place is a worse maze than home. Wouldn’t have wanted to try to figure out where to go without them.

“These are the ones we want,” he said as he jammed his finger next to a large chalk archway on the wall. “Just follow the arrows and we’ll be there.”

Sure enough, Gratt’an knew what he was talking about. It was a bit further along than Arkk expected but they still arrived at the archway without fail.

A large, crystalline archway covered in numerous runes in a room almost exactly the same as the one in Fortress Al-Mir.

“Perfect,” Zullie hissed, eyeless sight roaming over the arch. “This should work.”

“Arkk… Arkk…”

Arkk stirred, feeling a hand shaking his knee. He was sitting mostly upright but reclined back against something soft with his eyes closed. Sleeping? He hadn’t meant to fall asleep.

The hand on his knee gave him a hard pinch, twisting his skin underneath his pants.

“Ilya? What—”

“Not Ilya.”

Arkk’s eyes snapped open, recognizing the voice.

Hale stood in front of him, twin tails of black hair looking far longer than she used to keep them. She lifted an eyebrow, giving him a pointed look.

“Hale,” he said, leaning forward. Discreetly patting himself down, making sure he was still all in one piece, he glanced behind him. Ilya was in the same stone chair—the padding, if it ever had any, had long since withered away—sleeping as well. She stirred as he moved but didn’t open his eyes. “How long was I asleep?”

Hale shrugged. “You left us to the work about… five hours ago? Ilya said she would check on you an hour after after that. Neither of you came back.”

“Right…” Arkk said, rubbing his forehead. “Because we were…” He trailed off, frowning at Hale. “Plotting.”

“Uh-huh. Zullie is ready for you.”

“Ready?” Arkk asked, buttoning up his tunic. “Ready for what?”

“To activate the portal.”

“Already?” Arkk asked, suddenly feeling far more awake. “How long was I asleep?” he mumbled again. It had taken months of off-and-on work to get the first portal opened. If he had watched them work for the first few hours before fatigue caught up to him. It just felt like he never got a minute to sleep these days. If they had kept working through the evening…

It couldn’t have been more than half a day since they got here.

“She wanted to open it right away but Savren stopped her, saying it would be best if you were present.”

“Good man,” Arkk said, only to pause. “Never thought I’d say that.”

“Shall I tell them you’re on your way?” Hale asked before leaning to peer at Ilya. “Or do you want a little more time to straighten your clothing?”

Arkk pivoted in the chair again. Ilya’s tunic had lifted, exposing her waist. The once smooth skin was marred somewhat, a result of his poor attempts at healing her combined with Hale’s efforts to better her, leaving her with some plated scales cascading down from her chest to her belly button. He couldn’t help himself. He reached out and gave her a light poke just above the hip.

Ilya jolted awake with a harpy-like squawk. Entirely on reflex and certainly not on purpose, she shoved him out of the chair, throwing him to the floor. Her silver eyes darted about, first finding Hale, who took a step back, before landing on Arkk. “You,” she growled.

Arkk chuckled, feeling better than he had since hearing the Prince was a potential demon summoner.

“I’ll tell them ten minutes,” Hale said, backing out of the side room.

 

 

 

“It is quite simple,” Priscilla said, giving Leda a light push against her back. “Just reach out and take it. Push a little magic into it—”

“I don’t have magic. No fairy does.”

“You have magic from your contract with Arkk. That will work for this.”

Leda looked away from the shadowy orb that hovered above a narrow pedestal and looked at the dragonoid woman. “Why can’t you do this?”

“I said why,” Priscilla said with a bit of impatience leaking into her voice. “I can’t without killing myself, you, and anything else in sight. I want to. You don’t know how much I wish I could. But I can’t.”

“But—”

“This is what you want. It is a magical artifact that amplifies magic. And it will feed that magic back to you. Perhaps you’ll even regain proper flight. At the very least, you’ll be able to teleport around like Arkk does—even in Arkk’s territory as long as you don’t cut your contract with him. Now,” Priscilla took hold of Leda’s shoulders, digging her icy claws into Leda’s skin just enough to make the fairy wince. With a light shove that nevertheless sent Leda sailing toward the orb, Priscilla continued, “Activate it.”

Leda didn’t mean to, but the shove was enough to make her bump right into the orb. A spark jumped from her arm to the orb, a little burst of unintentional magic quickly spreading throughout channels and pathways built into the orb. It was like a large, spherical ritual circle.

Leda tried to pull away. The orb pulled at her magic, siphoning it from where her arm touched its cold surface. But she couldn’t free herself. It was as if some heavy vice had clamped down around her wrist, pinning her to the orb. She tried to wrench her whole body away, only for Priscilla to keep her firmly in place.

The temperature plummeted. It felt like ice against her arm, spreading both up to her shoulder and down to her fingertips. Leda let out a yelp as the chill reached up her neck.

A great thump resounded from the sphere. It moved, pulsing like a beating heart. That slight movement freed Leda from its grasp, sending her cartwheeling through the air. Leda’s wings beat furiously, barely keeping her from slamming into the wall of the chamber.

Priscilla looked up to her with a grin that showed off her sharp teeth. Leda wasn’t sure how she was staring at the right spot. So many times when Priscilla spoke, she wouldn’t quite look in the right spot. But now, Priscilla’s head was angled perfectly toward Leda.

Leda drifted higher in the room, keeping well out of reach while rubbing the numbness out of her arm. It was only when she started feeling her fingers again that Leda realized she was up near the domed ceiling of the room, far higher than fairies could normally hover. The shock of it jolted her out of her rhythm, sending her spiraling back down to the floor.

Priscilla caught her before she could hit the ground, using just a single hand around Leda’s waist.

Something had changed with Priscilla. The normally white-blue ice that covered her eyes and much of her scales was tinged with red. Not blood. It was almost like someone had lit a fire in the room. In fact, looking around, Leda found the rest of the room changed as well. Everywhere she looked, a faint red hue coated everything.

“Success? Excellent. I wasn’t sure if a fairy would be able to contact with a Heart.”

“You weren’t… But you said—”

“Yes, yes. I say a lot of things. Not all of them are true. Close your eyes and try to feel the tower. We need to shut it down so that you can remove the Heart. Then we can get back.”

“Feel the tower? That doesn’t make any sense. How am I supposed… to…”

As soon as Leda thought about it, the entirety of the tower unfolded in front of her. It was like she could see every part of it at once. Even in the part where she was, she could see herself as Priscilla gently lowered her to the ground. It wasn’t as big a tower as the one that had been perched out near the portal entrance or the tower Arkk had constructed back in the regular world, but it still had enough floors that Leda started to feel dizzy as she tried to think about it all.

“Good,” Priscilla said, making Leda focus directly on the sharp teeth in her mouth. “Just listen to what I say. I won’t lead you wrong.”

“You just said you lie a lot.”

“Only when it benefits me. Now, first, let’s make sure this tower won’t topple with us inside when we remove the Heart…”

“Slave Natum is the spell I use,” Arkk said, demonstrating with a wave of his hand. One of those mounds of oily black flesh and far, far too many eyes dragged itself into existence at his side.

Leda shuddered. They weren’t a common sight around populated areas of Fortress Al-Mir and she was glad for that. Neither Arkk nor Priscilla looked visibly upset at its existence. Of course, Arkk was the one who summoned them and Priscilla couldn’t actually see them.

Leda shuddered again. “I have to conjure one of those?” she said, trying not to sound like she was whining.

When Arkk had rescued her from the Duke’s dungeons months ago now, Leda hadn’t thought anything would come of it. Finding out she could cast some small amount of magic had been wonderous. Being thrust into a war had been the opposite. Being assigned the chief minder of the blind dragonoid ranked somewhere in between.

Now she had gotten her hands on a powerful magical artifact the likes of which only three were known to exist. And two belonged to Arkk. He wasn’t trying to take this third one from her—which Leda wasn’t sure how she felt about. She could break the contract with it. Apparently without even ending up like Priscilla—who had broken far more than just her contract in trying to extract every iota of power the Hearts possessed. But now…

Leda had somehow gotten herself a promotion from dragonoid minder to some kind of sub-commander of Arkk’s free company.

Another thing she wasn’t sure about.

But uncertainties aside, the power of the orb was… somewhat intoxicating. She could feel the magic swirling about within her as she repeated the incantation. It burst forth from her fingertips, forcing reality to align with her intentions of summoning a servant to help her manage her new position.

She recoiled as she felt that coalesced magic approach her, only for her revulsion to turn to curiosity as she noticed the form of the servant.

It wasn’t one of those oily monsters that Arkk summoned. Rather, it was some kind of… hollow being. Transparent and barely visible, but roughly humanoid.

Leda looked up to find Arkk just as confused as she was. Priscilla’s expression hadn’t changed. She probably couldn’t tell the difference without touching them.

Vezta, however, leaned forward. Her glowing yellow eyes, set across her entire body, analyzed the new form in mere moments. “An adequate servant,” she said, “it will be able to carry out the necessary tasks, even if it isn’t as capable as my kin.”

“Why does it look like that?” Arkk asked. “Did something go wrong?”

“No. It is simply a [HEART] gifted from the Cloak of Shadows. The servants it allows will align more to the preferences of Lady Shadows than the beings from the [STARS] that Xel’atriss, Lock and Key prefers.”

“I still summon… uh… normal lesser servants even after taking over the new Heart,” Arkk said with a clear question in his tone.

“Al-Mir’s heart is far stronger than that of a walking fortress. It takes precedence. In any case, it is nothing to worry about. They may not be able to dig well, but that shouldn’t matter for her purposes. They’ll build and maintain a tower just as well as anything else.” Vezta paused, turning her yellow eyes to Leda. “There are only two problems.”

Leda shrank down, drawing her wings tight behind her back. She didn’t like the look the monstrous woman was giving her.

“The first is one of trustworthiness.”

Leda winced at Vezta’s tone, only to be surprised when Arkk stepped between them.

“Leda hasn’t done anything to make me think I can’t trust her.”

“Ah, but the fairy has lacked any sort of power until now. And,” Vezta continued, shifting several of her eyes to Priscilla while still keeping a close watch on Leda. “We all know how hard power is to resist. Don’t we, former contractor?”

Priscilla snarled, gnashing her teeth. That forced Arkk to move between Vezta and the angry dragonoid. A brave move, considering Priscilla could snap his outstretched arms as easily as Leda could break a tiny twig.

“That’s enough,” Arkk said, eyes blazing red.

Vezta took a step back with a differential bow while Priscilla just stood in place, clearly seething.

“All I mean to ask is: Are you sure you would rather leave it in her hands rather than take it for yourself?”

“I have enough to manage as is,” Arkk said. “If Leda wants the position, that is acceptable. Otherwise, I think I would rather hand it off to someone else to use. It’s up to her.”

Leda drew her hands into tight fists, taking in a deep breath. She could do this. She wanted to do this. Just the way the magic swirled around within her chest, ready to be unleashed instead of having to force it out… She doubted it was like what her ancestors felt before the Calamity, but it was as close as she was likely to get.

“You can count on me.”

Arkk stared a moment as if sizing her up. It only lasted an instant. He probably wasn’t even aware of the brief consideration he took. But he ended up smiling at her, nodding his head. “Good. Then what was the other problem, Vezta?”

The greater servant, whose eyes did not take on a kindlier look, let out an almost disappointed sigh. “With what funds are we going to use to construct another tower? The treasury is diminished and the fairy has no wealth of her own.”

Arkk’s good mood turned pensive once again. He hummed a moment before the red light in his eyes shone ever so slightly brighter. “I’ve got a few ideas. Leave it to me.”

He vanished, teleporting away without another word.

That left Leda in the uncomfortable company of a seething dragonoid and whatever Vezta was feeling at the moment. The look she was giving Leda was anything but kind.

“It would be wise to keep any thoughts of betrayal in check,” Vezta said, turning her body toward the door without turning her head. Her eyes were still focused entirely on Leda. “Arkk may be merciful. I am not,” she said as she left the room.

Leda shuddered, only to jump with a slight yelp as an icy hand dropped on her shoulder.

“Ignore the servant. She is jealous that she cannot contract with the Heart herself.”

Leda clamped down on a retort asking if Priscilla wasn’t in a similar position. So she just nodded her head and hoped that Arkk would be back sooner rather than later.

Leda watched with mixed feelings as the largest mound of gold she had ever seen just evaporated like a bucket of water left out in the middle of a hot day. That had been enough gold to make even a fairy like her into a minor noble. And it was just gone.

Around her, the shadowy servants she had summoned toiled away. It was strange watching them. They were little more than flat silhouettes—no matter the angle Leda looked at them from, they didn’t have any form—and yet, they moved about the shadowy orb, exuding building materials from their bodies. The first was a tall pedestal that matched the one where she had originally found the orb. After that, they spread out black, light-absorbing bricks across the ground, forming a proper floor.

Leda shivered in the chill spring wind. Having spent so long in the heat of the Underworld, even despite her proximity to Priscilla’s natural cool, the open air of the regular world felt especially cold against her skin. It didn’t help that there was nothing around.

Her tower wasn’t being built in the Cursed Forest or anywhere near Elmshadow. They were in the plains far south of Moonshine Burg. Far enough that only a dedicated scouting team would find it, but close enough that it could move there in a short amount of time.

It didn’t seem like a good idea to her, being out here without any real support. There were teleportation circles, but Arkk didn’t have another army to help support her if she was discovered out here. He didn’t have extra crystal balls that she could use to watch over the surroundings, he didn’t have a proper escape plan for if things did go wrong, and he didn’t have the focus to dedicate to her while he was worried about demons and armies approaching Elmshadow.

All he had for her was one of the creepy Protectors. A lumbering giant of a being compared to him. Leda shuddered, looking over at it. She was about as big as its foot. Its face, stiff chitin molded in a vague humanoid shape, was utterly incomprehensible. It just stared at the construction project, its wide eyes following those shadowy servants as they went about their task.

The construction was getting somewhere now. A large, circular chamber now fully encompassed the pedestal and the orb it held. The shadows were building outward and upward. All with hardly any input from Leda. It was like they knew what to do. Some exuded bricks underneath the existing structure, lifting it upward as they formed the top of the next room below. Others built on top of it, apparently unconcerned with the potential instability of the base being worked on. The rest worked on creating what would end up being legs for the eventual tower.

Even the orb chamber would only be a small corner of its floor, protected by thick layers of outer walls, empty space for stairs, and even more walls around it.

As the structure grew larger, Leda started noticing something. A magical tingle deep within her chest.

When she had first touched that orb, way back in the Underworld, she had felt the magical power within her just waiting to explode out. To be used. It had been overwhelming until they shut down that tower to move the orb back home, but now, it was on the rise again. With every brick laid, with every additional tile spreading the building out, she could feel a sudden jump in her heart.

It was a wonderful feeling.

Leda’s worries over the future started to give way to excitement and anticipation. She watched the shadowy servants, just waiting for them to form the next brick and join it to the rest of the structure.

“Is this how you feel all the time?” Leda asked, breaking the silence as she looked at Arkk.

His glowing red eyes turned to her. “Feel?” he asked, confused.

“Just… the magic. Every brick that goes down…” Leda licked her lips, looking back to the shadowy servants.

“Ah. The Heart makes me a much more powerful caster than most people. Is that what you mean?”

“Maybe,” Leda said, distracted. She didn’t think he got it at all. Was it because he was a human? Or maybe he had just gotten used to it. He had been at this for a long time, after all. Unless he didn’t get this feeling anymore.

Every brick that went down was a significant increase in power, but each was less than the one before it. Ten bricks would double a ten-brick floor, but ten more bricks after that would only add half the previous total. Ten after that would be even less. Arkk controlled the entirety of the Cursed Forest plus Elmshadow. A single brick for him would be nothing relative to the rest of it all.

It was almost disappointing to think about it like that.

On the other hand… What must it be like to control that vast territory? If two rooms were making her heart pound this hard, what would a whole forest feel like?

“Keep at it,” Arkk said, ignorant of her thoughts. “I need to get back and figure out how we’re going to handle things going forward.”

Leda grimaced, elation crashing down as she looked at the three others standing outside her slowly rising tower. “You’re leaving?”

Arkk looked at her, then smiled oh so kindly. “Vezta can answer any questions you might have,” he said, gesturing to his servant. “She helped me a lot in my early days. And Priscilla and the Protector won’t let you come to harm. If there is any sign of Evestani, they’ll all help get you out of here.”

Grimacing again, Leda deliberately avoided looking around. She did not want to meet the glowing yellow eyes of the servant, the iced-over face of the dragonoid, or… whatever the Protector was.

Though the latter was still staring at the shadowy servants, paying her little mind.

“Head inside, practice teleporting around, and whatever else you can think of. I’ll be back in the morning to check on the construction progress.”

“I… okay.”

Okay.

Leda closed her eyes. She needed to focus on the good. That magic that was building inside her. The spells she could now learn, now that she had access to such magic. And… Well, that was about it for the moment.

Magic.

Magic was good.

 

 

“Regrettably, none of the nabbed notables were notably high-ranking.”

Arkk turned away from Savren, looking at the two bound sailors they had rescued from the wreckage of the warships. One’s head lolled to his side as if the muscles in his neck just wouldn’t work properly despite his best attempts. A long string of drool hung from the bottom of his chin. The other looked more aware, but was caught in a loop of rocking back and forth. At least as much as she was able with the ropes tying her to the chair.

Their state disturbed Arkk. But it was his doing. His order. He had told Savren to get as much information from them as quickly as possible. Savren had no qualms about obliging.

“What did they know?”

“I presume you are probing particulars of the war and not wasting whiles on worthless wonders.”

Arkk shot Savren a glare. The warlock, while running a hand through his greasy hair, simply shrugged. “Yes,” Arkk said. “I’m not asking what they had for breakfast.”

“Dried fish and cheese,” Savren said as he held out a long piece of paper.

Arkk looked down at it, finding a list of prepared responses neatly organized by priority. Although Arkk thought he had gotten quite adept at piercing the meaning of Savren’s words through his curse, he was always happy to remove ambiguity through the written word, which was not affected by Savren’s curse.

He leaned back against the wall as he perused through.

Both were soldiers of the Eternal Empire. Arkk had never heard of such a place. It sat across the ocean, far to the north. Savren included a few small details of their homeland. Arkk skimmed past. He wasn’t interested in their culture or culinary preferences. Perhaps when they weren’t attacking him, he would be more interested, but for now, he was far more interested in what they could do.

The woman, Porcia ‘Chain’ Catena, was a canoness. And a cannoneer. As a canoness, she was some kind of religious leader for the ship. They did not worship the Golden Good, Heart of Gold, or any variation that the Golden Order revered. Rather, they simply believed in a figure known as the Empress.

Presumably the head of their Eternal Empire.

As a cannoneer, she was adept at wielding the warship’s broadside cannons.

The man, one Titus Bellator—known to his friends simply as ‘Wart’—was the ship’s quartermaster and logistic supervisor. It was his job to ensure that the ship had enough food, medicine, alchemical reagents, and whatever else was needed to sail around the world. He also played a crucial role in navigation. Because of that, Savren had been able to figure out the exact route the ship had taken to reach Cliff.

The ship, called the Pungis Victoriae, took about six weeks to sail from their homelands, meaning they had set off well before Arkk had taken Elmshadow back from Evestani. Neither knew why the Eternal Empire’s army had set off for war but both were utterly elated to be serving in their empire.

Which was just what Arkk didn’t need. More zealots.

Titus knew a few things beyond the realm of his ship, as a result of being a higher-ranked individual. “They set out with twenty-one warships?” Arkk said, raising an eyebrow. “And another thirty or so are supposedly on their way? How big is this empire?”

“Unknown,” Savren said with a shrug. “I know nearly nothing about neighboring nations; I know even less regarding remote realms.”

“What are they going to assault with those warships? The entire northern side of the Duchy borders the ocean, but it is all cliffsides and rough rocks. There are only a handful of villages up there.”

“I believe their boats were better built for bearing both bodies and belongings,” Savren said, pointing a finger halfway down the list he had given Arkk.

Sure enough, according to Titus’ memories, a good number of the warships had been hastily converted to full troop transports.

Which explained where the additions to Evestani’s army came from.

Skimming back down the remainder of the page, Arkk’s eyes jumped to one particular line. He read and reread it a dozen times over, just to make sure he was reading it correctly. “Every single one of their knights is a high-caliber spellcaster?”

“That is what the persuasive propaganda, published by their superiors, plainly points to. Among our captives, only the canoness commands casting.”

“So it could be false…” Though it was better to assume the worst and be pleasantly surprised if they all weren’t slinging powerful spells across the battlefield. It would explain the level of firepower those warships had unleashed upon Cliff. The constant volleys raining down upon the city would have exhausted any minor casters.

“Did you yet devise a detailed design for dispatching them?”

“I have a plan, yes. I’m waiting on a few things, but I hope to… isolate this incident as soon as possible. Some parts of the plan may change depending on whether or not Zullie’s assistants can put together that damaged ritual spell we recovered from their ship.”

“Shall I skillfully shift myself to spearhead that scheme?”

“No. That is a project that would be nice to have but unnecessary to the immediate plan. I need you on the inquisitor’s project.”

Sylvara was back at Fortress Al-Mir. She, Zullie, and Savren would hopefully have a proper countermeasure to the avatar of Gold before he was ready to enact his plan. If they didn’t… Well, he had seen how the golden rays affected the reinforced bricks of the walking fortress at Elmshadow, so he had ideas on how to mitigate damage in more mundane means.

“Understood,” Savren said. “I shall steadfastly steer this stint with supreme sincerity.”

“Get back with them as soon as possible,” Arkk said. “I need—”

“Concerning the captives…”

Arkk paused and looked at the two. Their states hadn’t improved during the short conversation. It made him feel a bit uneasy. “Will they recover? Or can you get them back to normal?”

“Unlikely, as I intruded into their intellects indifferent to their individual welfare.”

“I see,” Arkk said, somewhat disappointed. They were his enemy, but… He shook his head. There were other things to worry about now. “I’ll have Kia and… I’ll have Kia deal with them later,” he said, trying not to think too hard about what he was doing.

Arkk teleported away, heading to the transportation circles that would take him back to Cliff, leaving Savren alone with the two captives.

Savren softly surmised to himself, scrutinizing the seemingly soulless souls stationed before him. If they were destined for doom, better to not squander such subjects for study. His pursuits permitted little need for plentiful participants, but their procurement promised to pacify part of Zullie’s persistent pestering.

Arkk hurried through the halls of the former Duke’s manor, making heavy use of the servant corridors to pass through while avoiding the Prince’s guard. Most of the Prince’s guard, anyway. There were a few patrols in the servant corridors. But simply donning one of the uniforms Katja had left down in the hidden dungeon room where his teleportation circle sat gave him enough plausible deniability.

It helped that he was carrying a vintage bottle of wine. A servant hurrying around was suspicious but a servant carrying out a task was something to be ignored.

It certainly seemed as if the Prince had taken over the manor in its entirety. Arkk recognized a few faces around the manor as he passed through a regular hall between two servant corridors. Bandits of Katja’s. So she hadn’t gotten herself kicked out entirely. He quickly conversed with a few of them, getting directions to where Katja was.

Arkk found Horrik standing guard outside one of the lower-level guest rooms. The hulk of a man had his arms crossed over his chest, blocking the door entirely with his body. For a long moment, he just stared at Arkk, not really glaring but also not moving aside.

“Lady Katja requested a bottle of wine,” Arkk said, not sure how many of the walls had ears now that the Prince was here.

Horrik looked at him. One of those looks. But he stepped aside. He placed his hand on the door handle but paused. “Lady Katja is not in the best mood today,” Horrik said.

“Yeah. I imagine not.” The fact that she was staying in the guest quarters was indicative enough of that. Of course, if he were in Katja’s place, trying to play nice with royalty both to keep his head and keep his position, he would have offered up every accommodation possible to Prince Cedric as well.

With a firm nod of his head, Horrik turned the handle and pushed the door open.

The guest chambers were quite lavish compared to most anything at Langleey Village. They were still small enough to see throughout the entire room in one sweeping glance. Katja, clothes askew, lounged in a large chair nestled in the corner of the room. A younger man, maybe a little younger than Arkk, slept beneath the covers of the bed, his brown hair poking out from behind the fine blanket.

Arkk hesitated on seeing the man and Katja’s state of dress, but she simply waved a hand, beckoning him further into the room. As soon as he stepped past the threshold, Horrik closed the door behind him.

“Am I interrupting something?” Arkk asked, speaking quietly.

Katja didn’t bother adjusting the doublet-like outfit she wore. Not a single button was done up, leaving nothing covering the center of her chest from neck to navel. “Interrupting?” she said with a scoff, shooting a disdainful look toward the bed. “Hardly. We were engaged in nothing more than polite fiction. Though perhaps he thinks he’ll be allowed to touch me if he acts mature enough.”

“I’m… not sure I understand.”

“I don’t have to tell you all the details of my life, do I?” Katja said with a long sigh.

“No,” Arkk said. Frankly, he didn’t want to know all the details of her life. Just the important ones. After shooting one look at the boy, watching him half-snore into the feathered pillow, he turned back to Katja. “How did things go with the Prince?”

“I still have my head, don’t I? I’m taking that as a positive sign,” she said, not bothering to lower her voice in the slightest. “It seems as if my preparations paid off. Prince Cedric seemed quite pleased with my knowledge of the current state of affairs across all of Mystakeen. Even your company commander friend was surprised with how well I handled myself.”

“Hawkwood? How is he doing?”

Katja shrugged, loosening her doublet even further. “Running around like an obedient lapdog. The kind wealthy nobles preen over in the company of their peers but usually abuse behind closed doors.”

The bite in her tone sounded a bit… personal. Arkk wondered if she was talking more about her past rather than the Prince.

“I suppose you’re here wanting every detail of what transpired?”

“No, not really. Only if he is intending to act against Company Al-Mir. I trust you to handle everything else.” Or, rather, he trusted that she would act in her self-interest. Which generally meant keeping her own power by keeping friendly with others in power.

Arkk just needed to ensure that she remained aware of his power compared to whatever the Prince could offer.

Katja cocked an eyebrow? “Really? Huh.” She started to say something more, only to pause for a long yawn that devolved into an extended stretch. The striped tattoos that adorned her arms also ran along the sides of her ribs. “Sorry. Long day. He is certainly interested in you. But it seems to be more in how he might make use of you as a tool rather than an obstacle. Especially in light of this renewed attack from Evestani. He wants to meet you at some point. Hawkwood and I managed to delay, saying you would need to focus on preparing for conflict. I doubt that will work forever.”

“Fine,” Arkk said, moving just past Katja to look out the guest room window. It had a view of the harbor. Most of the ships out there were just dark silhouettes against the dark sky, but the largest ship was lit up with dozens of glowstones as people hurried across its decks. “I’ll have to find one of my nicer suits. But before that… I had another matter I required assistance with. Your assistance.”

“Oh? Not here just for a chat? I’m hurt, Arkk.”

“I need access to the Duke’s treasury.”

Arkk could feel the stillness at his back. He turned to find Katja no longer lounging in the chair but leaning forward with a scowl on her face.

“My treasury? For what reason?”

“I’m planning a construction project. It will consume a rather large quantity of resources.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I thought you had your own source of funding. You certainly poached a number of my crew with promises of gold.”

“It would be months before my source accrues enough for this project. Naturally, I would return it all in time. And until then, I thought you might be interested in purchasing some… services from Company Al-Mir.”

“Services,” she repeated, tone flat.

Arkk swept a hand through the air. Without a word of incantation or any visible effort, a slit of a void opened between him and Katja. Her forward lean reversed, leaving her pressed against the back of the chair where she remained frozen and unmoving.

“The spell I used earlier today is a result of counter-demon magic my researchers are developing,” Arkk said, pinching his fingers together. The unnatural void in the air sealed with the movement, leaving no evidence of its existence. “Given who you’re sharing this manor with, I thought you might be interested in learning some of my secrets.

“Of course, if you aren’t interested,” Arkk said after leaving his proposal hanging in the air for a short moment. He turned and started back toward the door. “I do have others who owe me. I think I’ll pay a visit to Silver City—”

“Wait.”

Arkk paused and looked back over his shoulder.

Katja stood, finally clasping together the wooden toggles on her doublet. “Roland!” she snapped.

The boy in the bed snorted, jolting upright. He looked around with bleary eyes set in a pudgy face. A vaguely familiar face at that, though Arkk couldn’t quite place where he had seen the boy before. Perhaps among Katja’s bandit crew… except she didn’t have many youth among her crew.

“Roland, you have your ring?”

Blinking more times than Arkk felt necessary, the boy sluggishly nodded his head as he lifted his hand. Right on the middle finger, the Duke’s signet ring gleamed in the room’s lights.

Arkk looked in askance at Katja, only to find her shrugging.

“Some parts of the manor are protected, requiring the Duke—or one of his progeny—to access. The treasury among them. I’m working to adjust the locks to be a bit more favorable, and have succeeded elsewhere using help from the academy, but I’d rather not have random people having access to the treasury.”

“Perhaps you can use the time it’ll be empty to change the locks.”

“Empty?” Katja snapped. “You’re taking it all?”

“Depends on how much is there,” Arkk said. “Roland, is it?” he said as he looked at the boy. “Let’s go. I am apparently pressed for time.”

Roland didn’t do anything until Katja gave him a nod of her head. Only then did he untangle himself from the twisted blankets and scramble for a set of slippers. In short order, they were back out in the corridor and hurrying down the halls.

“Prince Cedric has taken over the upper floors,” Katja explained as she waved them down a side route. “Aside from a few of his guards posted near stairs and main entrances, he has left much of the lower levels to me. He…” She sighed. “He isn’t going to be happy if he finds out about this. I imagine the contents of the treasury technically belong to the King or somesuch.”

“Has he seen the contents?” Arkk asked. When Katja shook her head in the negative, he continued, “Then claim the Duke squandered his riches, which is why taxes were so high. Or something else to that effect. Think of it this way: You’re giving me the gold for safekeeping, making sure he can’t run off with it. After he leaves, I pay you back, and you get to sit on your mound of gold without him messing with it.”

A look of consideration crossed Katja’s face. She didn’t look happy, but the irritation that had lined her features since Arkk brought up the treasury diminished somewhat. That was good enough for him.

The treasury sat behind a large vault door beneath the throne room where the incident at the party had taken place. Katja had to bring him through the throne room. Only a few of Katja’s men were present.

Arkk had already used his crystal balls to ensure that the Prince was busy and separated from Katja before daring to step foot nearby. Even now, he had his scrying teams watching them, ready to give a warning tug should the Prince so much as look toward the door of the study he had sequestered. He would have to thank Katja later for disabling the counter-scrying magic in the manor.

At the vault door, Roland stepped forward, taking the lead. He pressed the signet ring into a little slot in the center of the rounded door and twisted his entire hand. A series of ratcheting clicks behind the door sounded out, filling the quiet corridor with an uncomfortable noise. But the door swung open without incident.

It… wasn’t as full of gold as Arkk had hoped. The treasury at Fortress Al-Mir was larger currently, even in its diminished state after building up Walking Fortress Al-Lavik. Still, it was an influx of gold that he very much needed if he wanted to press forward.

It wasn’t all gold either. Arkk could see plenty of other metals—silver mostly—along with gems and jewels all arranged in decorative cases. Fine paintings of landscapes, scenery, and people who Arkk didn’t recognize were hung from the walls, often between fanciful tapestries. Suits of armor stood in the corners, ones clearly not designed for combat. The metalwork was more a work of art than anything designed to take the blow of a weapon. Arkk wondered how often the former Duke walked through the treasury, just browsing his riches. Did he ever bring others in to show it off or was it all for himself?

Shaking his head, Arkk held out a hand and, with a muttered incantation, conjured up a lesser servant. Mentally commanding it, Arkk set it to eating everything of value in the room. That included the gems and jewels, which Arkk had discovered were worth a lot of wealth to the [HEART].

Beneath Elmshadow, Arkk had found some kind of hollow formation in the ground where glossy emerald crystals had grown from the outer shell. A geode, according to Vezta. It was supplementing his gold income almost more than the gold mine underneath Al-Mir, though it wasn’t nearly as large and would soon run out.

Katja watched the lesser servant go about its work, harvesting all the treasury, with a look of utter disappointment on her face.

Taking some pity on her, Arkk reached into his pocket and pulled out the blade he had hidden in his palm earlier. A dark, black blade with glimmers of light dotting its surface. A product of Zullie’s research into both the magic of Xel’atriss and work replicating the ceremonial dagger they had found in the Underworld.

“No incantation necessary,” he said, holding its hilt out to Katja. “Just push a little of your magic into the pommel and swipe it through the air. A little mental direction will have it form in the rough shape and size you want. We haven’t had an opportunity to test, but the hope is that a demon coming into contact with it will be shunted out of this reality and back to its own. It certainly works to stop most other things as you saw with the warships.”

Katja accepted the blade with a lot more care than he would have expected from the former bandit. Then again, he had done the same when Zullie first handed it to him. He never knew if something was going to blow up in his face.

“It won’t last forever. Only a few of those large gaps. Three or four more, I imagine. More if you use it for smaller things, but I would keep it secret until you absolutely need to use it.”

Katja stared at the blade for a long few moments before slowly looking back to the rapidly emptying treasury. “I suppose it is something,” she said, sounding glum. “You are repaying me, right?”

“After the Prince leaves. So anything we can do to expedite that would be best.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

That was more than Arkk figured he would get from Katja, so he didn’t bother pressing for anything else. He simply waited for the servant to finish its job. Once it did, he set to leaving the manor the same way he had come. He got out without incident, teleporting via ritual circle back to Fortress Al-Mir.

Deep within the recesses of the fortress, he appeared in the midst of a rather pleased-looking Priscilla and a somewhat frightened-looking Leda. The young fairy had changed since Arkk last saw her.

Her glowing red eyes were locked on the shadowy orb hovering just above her fingertips.