“I want more.”
“Water?” Vezta asked, leaning over Arkk’s shoulder.
“Everything,” Arkk said, hands slamming against the top of the meeting room table as he stood up.
“I see. I shall see if the kitchens are well stocked. If you’ll excuse me…”
“What?” Arkk waved her off, motioning for her to remain where she was. “No. I’ve just had a realization in the last few days. We can’t continue as we are.”
Arkk looked around the meeting room. All his advisors were present. Ilya sat to his immediate right while Vezta stood just a step behind his seat. Rekk’ar and Olatt’an sat around the circular table toward the right, the former with his arm still in a sling from the battle a few days ago. Zullie was to Arkk’s left. Her eyes had been cast down toward a notebook in her lap until Arkk slammed the table. Khan stood across the table from Arkk, all the other members still giving him a wide berth.
He had considered inviting Agnete but… he still wasn’t quite sure about the former inquisitor. She had agreed to join him so easily that he half expected her to be a spy.
It had taken a few days for the realization to fully set in. He had been busy running around, making sure everyone was as healed as could be, making sure the inquisitors weren’t coming back for round two—they had stuck around for a little over a week, resting and recuperating at Smilesville Burg while perhaps watching to see if Agnete would try to burn down the region—and generally putting out the fires around the fortress. Not literal fires, thankfully—Agnete had hardly left her room since arriving—but there had been some minor discord among the orcs. Word had gotten out that the flame witch was in Fortress Al-Mir. Some thought she was a prisoner, some wanted revenge for what she did to one of their own. Under other circumstances, Arkk would have applauded the comradery they were showing, which he felt they might have been lacking under their former chieftain, but here and now, it was yet another thing to deal with.
He still wasn’t sure what to do about Katt’am. The man’s injuries were severe and the local abbeys had been unable to assist. John had agreed to venture to Darkwood to see if he might be able to purchase any aid from the alchemist, Morford. Arkk doubted the man’s alchemy would be able to bring back the orc’s feet but maybe it would help with the pain.
Once he had found a moment to reflect, his mind kept going back to the one thing he felt had slipped by without the reaction it deserved. It wasn’t anything to do with the inquisitors or how Vrox had suggested they put aside their differences long enough to get Agnete under control. It had nothing to do with an avatar of one of Vezta’s [PANTHEON] walking among them. It didn’t even have anything to do with the fact that Vezta still didn’t have an arm from the elbow down.
Arkk was trapped here. The [HEART] was his heart. If it stopped beating… If those inquisitors brought in a dozen purifiers… If they rallied the Duke and got the Duke’s Grand Guard sent to purge the fortress… The only defense Arkk had was a handful of spells, a cadre of orcs and gorgons, and a pre-Calamity artifact that wasn’t even functioning properly. It was no small thing. Fending off the inquisitors with Purifier Agnete and their strange holy magic had proved that beyond any doubt.
But it wasn’t enough.
“I need more personnel, more magic, more weapons, more knowledge. Everything.”
“Finally,” Rekk’ar grumbled. Arkk shot him a questioning look, prompting a shrug from the green-skinned orc. “The Chieftain had me by the balls,” he said, louder. “Didn’t enjoy that much but working for a limp-dicked farm boy wasn’t much better.” He turned, glowering at Olatt’an.
The older orc simply smiled.
“So,” Rekk’ar said, leaning forward. “How are we becoming a force to be feared?”
Arkk looked around the room, stopping his gaze briefly on each of the others in the room. He honestly had no idea. That was what this meeting was for. Saying that would probably not go over well with Rekk’ar, however. Instead, he looked to Zullie. “First,” he started, “something that can help without doing much else…”
He held out a hand. Retrieving the black book from his private quarters, he placed it down on the table. Both Olatt’an and Rekk’ar stiffened at the sight of it. Olatt’an in particular lost his placid expression. Had he tusks, Arkk imagined he would have been bearing them in full at the moment. Arkk was counting on what trust he had managed to garner with them over the last few months to keep them calm until he fully explained.
“This book formerly belonged to the orc’s old chieftain,” Arkk explained for Zullie’s benefit. “It has a number of distinctly unpleasant spells and rituals within. But it is also where I learned the Flesh Weaving spell.”
“I had wondered…” Zullie said, not reaching for the book but very much looking like she wanted to.
“Look through it. See if there is anything useful that I turned a blind eye to. Make sure you learn the Flesh Weaving spell.” Arkk paused then added, “Teach it to Hale as well, but make sure the book stays out of her hands.”
“Arkk!” Ilya said, admonishing in her tone.
“It’s just the healing spell. If I’m not around, having Zullie and Hale as backups could be the difference between life and death for someone.”
“Still…”
Arkk shook his head and then looked back to Zullie. “Keep this out of Savren’s hands as well,” he said.
“Didn’t even need to say that,” Zullie said, reaching for the book.
As soon as her hands touched the cover, Arkk clamped his hand around her wrist. One more warning occurred to him. “And Zullie, this book contains instructions for demon summoning. We are not summoning demons. Am I understood?”
“Y-yes,” she said, nodding her head. “I understand.”
“Good.” Arkk smiled. “That taken care of—”
“Do you mind if I read the demon summoning portions? Purely for reference. The planar magic involved might…” She took a deep breath and let it out in a thin sigh. “There is something you should be aware of regarding the ritual.”
“Oh?”
“Savren found the model we were using. He figured out its purpose and… well, made a few comments that I shouldn’t ignore because of the source.” She paused again, waiting for Arkk to nod his head. “He expressed to me his concern over the catastrophic collision of conceptual corporeality owing to our count of casters charging the catalytic array.”
Arkk stared, giving Zullie a flat look. “He is bad enough. Don’t start as well.”
“Sorry. It’s just… when I designed the ritual array, I thought it best if we err on the side of caution. Overcharge the array to ensure we punch a hole into reality. But we’re not trying to punch a hole into reality. We just need to weaken the boundaries enough that the archway can connect to a different plane. It will punch a hole as it was designed to do. Us doing so could have… potentially less desirable outcomes.”
Arkk rubbed his forehead, closing his eyes. “So it won’t work?”
“It will, I wasn’t wrong,” she insisted. “It just might be best if we reduce the personnel count. Savren and I were thinking about redesigning the ritual from twenty-five personnel—you, the four higher quality casters at the corners, then five between each of us—to a mere thirteen. You and the cardinal directions will still be required but we reduce the ancillary members to eight in total, two on each side.”
“That’s…” Arkk looked up, eyebrows raised. “That’s good. Right? We could perform the ritual immediately.”
“Ah. Not quite. Previously, I cleared several of the orcs for duty on the sides. I failed to account for one small problem. The magic that allows Dakka to cast your lightning bolt spell comes from you. You’ll be needing that power yourself. We need to find middling-average quality casters capable independent of you.”
“So basically nothing has changed then.”
“Correct. I just thought you should be aware.”
Olatt’an cleared his throat, drawing attention to himself. At a nod from Arkk, he asked, “What, exactly, are we expecting from the outcome of this ritual?”
“Well,” Arkk started, then looked to Vezta.
Vezta wasn’t at his side. A quick peek through the employee link found her off in the kitchens, gathering a plate of mugs along with some bread and butter. For a moment, he considered pulling her back to the meeting room. When had she even left?
“According to Vezta, we’ll find another world. One similar to our own except inhabited primarily by denizens who worship the Cloak of Shadows, the member of the Pantheon who holds dominion over the Underworld. It is Vezta’s belief that many will desire to join us.”
“They would cross over from another world to fight in our battles?”
“The Calamity is likely affecting them as well. As long as our long-term goal remains to undo that, there should be some willing to fight. Aside from that, as Zullie mentioned, I can provide magic and it seems like people from other planes of existence are heavily dependent on magic.”
“They might be less inclined to fight off dukes and inquisitors…”
“True,” Arkk agreed. “I’m not saying that everything will be perfect once we can get this ritual going, but it shouldn’t hurt. That said,” Arkk paused, double-checking that Vezta wasn’t around before speaking. “I will admit that Vezta hasn’t been there in well over a thousand years, well before the Calamity began. She hasn’t said this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if things changed over there as well. Maybe we’ll find people desperate for change, maybe we’ll find an idyllic world where nobody wants to rock the boat by joining us.”
Olatt’an hummed. “They may even try to fight us if we state what we’re trying to change.”
“Correct.”
“You have a plan for that?”
“Collapse the crystal archway,” Arkk said with a shrug. “Move on without them or the support of other planes.”
Olatt’an nodded his head, accepting the answer.
“Though I hope it doesn’t come to that. Vezta also mentioned the possibility of finding people who know more old magic. Or, failing that, someone who can translate the books we salvaged from the original fortress library.”
That was one of the main reasons Arkk wanted to get a jump on this ritual. Eight casters of any caliber shouldn’t be difficult to find. Hopefully. He wasn’t interested in magic merely for the sake of learning it anymore, it could very well mean the difference between survival and Fortress Al-Mir’s destruction—and his own along with it.
“Which brings us to our next topic,” Arkk said, turning to Ilya. “Recruitment. Is it possible?”
Ilya sat up, leaning forward. She had just gotten back from visiting Stone Hearth and Smilesville. The two closest burgs. “The inquisitors haven’t put a bounty out on us or Company Al-Mir.”
“Yet,” Rekk’ar said with a scoff.
“Yet,” Ilya agreed. “As far as I can tell, we’re in the clear. Company Al-Mir can submit recruitment notices with the garrisons. However, it probably isn’t a good idea.”
“What? Why not?” Arkk asked with a frown.
“We’re trying to maintain the fantasy that we’re not based out of the Cursed Forest, right? That was the whole reason we let the inquisitors go.”
Arkk clasped his hands together, nodding his head. “Alright. Good point. You have a suggestion?”
Ilya stood and moved to the large map hanging from the back wall of the room. It was a copy he had commissioned of the map in the Stone Hearth garrison, the entire Kingdom of Chernlock’s peninsula along with some of the rest of the continent. Ilya looked over it for a short moment before planting a finger on the western border of the Duchy, right on the Evestani border.
“Moonshine Burg,” she said. “Far away from both the Cursed Forest and from Cliff. If we set up a few of those portal chains, well hidden, we can move back and forth with relative ease while everyone else would have to travel across the entire Duchy. We go out there, get seen, and put out recruitment notices around there. Word eventually gets back to the inquisitors and they head out there instead of here.
“And…” she started, looking back to Arkk with thin-pursed lips. “While I was in the burgs earlier, the archivist mentioned that a tip had come in on the bounty you put on the slavers. It seems they’ve been active around the area.”
Arkk had a strong feeling that her choice in burgs to be seen at had a whole lot more to do with the slavers than the distance from Fortress Al-Mir. Still, it wasn’t a bad idea. He found himself nodding his head. “Alright. I don’t see why that wouldn’t work. At least until the inquisitors have us outlawed. After that… Rekk’ar, Olatt’an, I don’t suppose you’re aware of any other roaming groups of raiders who we can browbeat into joining us?”
The two orcs glanced at one another. Arkk saw the answer in their eyes before Olatt’an gave it. “There wasn’t exactly a community of raiders where we all gathered for fun and games,” he said. “In addition, our group had already subsumed most every orc we came across, including several smaller raiding parties.”
Arkk nodded then turned to Khan. “Any other gorgon groups you know of?”
The snake’s tongue darted out of his mouth. “We aren’t the mosst ssocial creaturess. Gorgon aren’t common in the firsst place. Our den iss the only one I know of.”
“I figured, thanks anyway.”
“The slavers,” Ilya said again.
“I’m not interested in recruiting slavers,” Arkk said, glancing at Olatt’an and Rekk’ar. “Maybe that’s a bit hypocritical…”
“I agree,” Ilya said, “but if we hunt them down, they’ve surely taken slaves. Judging by the ruins of Eures, a lot of them won’t have places to return to.”
Arkk wasn’t interested in recruiting former slaves either. There might be a few fighters or skilled workers among them but… most of them would surely be regular people. He couldn’t claim knowledge of how slavers operated but he guessed that anyone who could fight back would have been killed rather than captured. He was expecting a lot of children and young adults, most of who would be farmers at best. Arkk wasn’t going to make desperate people fight for Fortress Al-Mir just because he was desperate.
Still, he nodded to Ilya. “We’ll make the slavers a priority,” he said, reaching out to rest a hand on her arm. It was clearly important to her. And besides, maybe they would find someone who knew Yavin or Nyala and would take them off his hands. Maybe that was cruel to think but accomplishing several objectives with one move didn’t feel bad.
“Good.”
“As for recruits, we’ll have to see. I doubt many people will be happy if they join up and then the inquisitors declare Company Al-Mir outlawed. We might have to search through less reputable sources while at Moonshine Burg.”
“What have the inquisitors been up to since their departure?” Olatt’an asked.
Vezta threw open the doors, reentering the room. “We don’t know,” she said, moving around the table with her mugs of tea and bread. She had dug up fruit preserves from the storeroom as well. “Unfortunately, scrying on the inquisitors is no longer possible.”
“Not possible?” Rekk’ar barked, alarmed. “Why not?”
“Vezta was monitoring the inquisitors the entire time they were traveling back to Cliff City,” Arkk said, scowling at the glass Vezta placed in front of him. “They entered the large church there. We have never been able to scry on the interior of churches.”
“So they’re staying put?” Rekk’ar asked, calming slightly. “Good.”
“Not quite.”
“The tall inquisitor exited the church the next morning,” Vezta said. “I do not sleep and thus was able to observe the exits to the church at all times. When he emerged, he paused looked up directly at the point I was watching from, and gave a jaunty wave. After, the crystal ball went blank.”
Vezta came to a stop at Arkk’s side once again, having fully distributed her drinks and snacks among the individuals at the table. She smiled, hands clasped together at her navel. “Any attempt at scrying on one of the inquisitors results in complete failure, no matter the distance. I can scry on the street over but the crystal ball fails before the inquisitor enters the perspective. Presumably, I admit. I cannot say for certain given my inability to scry on them.”
“It isn’t just her,” Arkk added. “I tried and Zullie tried as well. We know where they are not, effectively, but even that isn’t guaranteed. I feel it would be easy to create decoy blank spots or hand whatever is blocking the scrying off to some acolyte of the abbey if they can do this.”
“There may be alternate methods of scrying that would work,” Vezta admitted. “A listening pool or soul stone. Fortress Al-Mir is not in possession of either, unfortunately.”
Rekk’ar scowled, lips curling. “The witch can’t make those?”
Arkk glanced over to Zullie, who wasn’t paying attention to the conversation in the slightest. Her eyes drifted back and forth over the text of the black book. “Zullie?”
“Huh? What?”
“Listening pool or soul stone. Can you craft those?”
“I’m a theoretical researcher, not an artificer,” she said, tone absent as she looked down at the book once again. “I can affix a spell to a magic wand. Never learned the art of artifice beyond that.”
Arkk looked back to Rekk’ar and shrugged his shoulders. “So she says.”
“So,” the orc said, “find artificers or magical artifacts as well. You sure have a list of things to get done.”
Arkk grinned, feeling a little better now that they had something of a plan. “The nice thing about having a lot to get done is that you’ll end up getting several things finished in the process of finishing others. Now, gather together a team for this outing to Moonshine Burg. A large team, we want to be seen. Leave those too injured and the non-fighters only, pretty much. Khan, if you can ask the gorgon for volunteers, I’m sure they would come in handy.”
Khan nodded his head. At the same time, Vezta leaned forward. “Moonshine Burg, Master?”
Arkk shot the pre-Calamity monster a look. “Maybe if you hadn’t run off in the middle of the meeting… Let me get you filled in.”