The transition was the important part of the act.
For the first few weeks, she had made a name for herself as the person the refugees of Cliff could come to for nearly any concern they had. Cold at night? Katja had blankets. Little ones fallen ill? Katja had medicine. Rations handed out by the guards weren’t enough? Katja had food. Injuries accrued from fleeing the enemy of the people? Katja knew healers.
In only a few short days, no one at the refugee camp hadn’t heard of her. Even those inside the walls, thanks to some of Edvin’s manipulations, knew of her and had used her services. The war and the refugees meant rationing for all but the wealthy, so even inside the city, people found themselves running low on food and supplies.
But altruism on its own wasn’t the goal.
Katja walked through the encampment, wearing a thin smile on her face to hide her disgust for the rabble. It wasn’t their raggedy attire, the stench of their unwashed bodies, or the unfortunate situation they found themselves in that disgusted Katja. She had been through all that and worse.
It was their helplessness. Their lack of drive. Were it not for Katja and the supplies brought in from Fortress Al-Mir, half the camp would have sat down and accepted death as if there was nothing they could do about it. They saw their current station and, in their feeble imaginations, could envision no grander future for themselves beyond being slaves, in action if not in chains.
Katja had once been an actual slave. Complete with chains and lashings for any perceived slight or fault. She hadn’t been content with her station in life. Through plots and schemes, and one careless master who had foolishly entrusted his servants with poisoning his mistress, she had risen above and carved a bloody path forward.
The transition was the important part.
“Woah there,” Katja said, forcing a laugh as a dozen children rushed up to her, all waving about little wooden bowls.
“Katja!”
“Tiger Lady!”
“You’re back!”
“I said I would be back, didn’t I?” Katja said. She then turned her smile into a disappointed frown. “And what else did I say?”
Blank looks swapped between the children’s faces as they looked back and forth before finally settling on Katja.
She let out a sigh. “We can’t serve food when you’re crowding around.”
“Oh! Line up,” one of the older kids barked out.
“No pushing or shoving now!” Katja called before turning to her side. “Horrik!”
“Aye.” The tall man, ever-present at her side, waved the first of the young children over to the cart. He dipped a heavy ladle into one of the large cauldrons on the cart’s back. Taking the first child’s wooden bowl, he filled it to the brim with stew kept warm thanks to stones heated in a hearth and placed in the bottom of the cauldron.
As Horrik distributed the stew, Katja slipped past the rapidly growing line of both children and adults. Off to the back, standing with his hands tucked under his cloak and his face set in a grim scowl, the assumed leader of this section of the camp beckoned her with a slight jerk of his head. Mal. The one man among the refugees who saw the reality of things around him. He didn’t have the drive to do anything about it but…
Everyone needed a push now and again.
“Mal,” Katja greeted as she approached. “How are things?”
“A new group, a few hundred large, just arrived. Don’t have exact numbers. The guard said to house them in the existing tents but there isn’t enough space to go around. We could use blankets and tents, as soon as possible.”
“Doable.”
Mal didn’t show any surprise to her instant response. He had long since given up trying to figure out how Katja got her supplies. He simply nodded his head with a gruff grunt. “They’ll need food as well but the Duke’s dogs have been doing their jobs for once in handing out a few scraps. It isn’t much but it is enough for now.”
“We have plenty of food,” Katja said, shifting to look back at the cart and the four pots on its back.
“There is one other thing.”
“Oh?” Katja turned back, cocking one eyebrow when she noticed the worried expression leaking through his lined face.
“The guard has been asking about you.”
“Judging by your expression, I presume they aren’t interested in giving me any accolades for doing their job for them.”
Mal let out a low grumble. “It was the weapons, I think. They don’t care about us so they don’t care if you feed or clothe us.”
“People have a right to defend themselves. A few on the outskirts were talking about scrawny, winter-starved wolves prowling the edges of the encampment. Maybe if the guards did their jobs—”
Katja cut herself off as a commotion in the crowd pulled her attention off Mal.
She fought to keep the grin off her face as she spotted a squad of armored men, all bearing the insignia of the Duke’s Grand Guard, making their way through the encampment.
The transition was the important point. The real problem with altruism, especially in a situation like this, was that it eased tension. Perhaps easing tensions would have been good under other circumstances, but not these ones. Katja had other goals, other designs and plans. She wasn’t here to make people’s lives easier.
So what needed to happen?
Well, everyone needed a little push now and again.
Katja wasn’t planning any little push, but a massive shove.
The guard quickly surrounded the cart, shoving away hungry people. A young man at the lead of the group, not wearing any armor, raised a hand and pointed out Katja.
“Looks like we’re about to find out what the guard wants with me,” Katja said, forcing a worried tremor into her voice.
“Edvin, you traitor…”
“Hm?” she hummed, looking at Mal.
“The man leading them. He was another refugee but… I thought he was better than this.”
Katja chomped down on the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.
“They must have bought him off,” Mal finished.
“Just doing what comes naturally, I’m sure,” Katja quipped as the guards and Edvin approached.
“Katja, Bandit Lord of Porcupine Hill,” the lead guard barked out, eliciting a few gasps from the people around.
“Formerly,” Katja said, straightening her back. “The war gave me a new perspective. I decided to use my ill-gotten gains for the betterment of the people.”
The lead guard didn’t look like he cared. “Submit to trial and summary execution—”
“What if the trial finds me innocent?”
The man sneered. “It won’t.”
One of the gathered crowd stepped forward, holding out a hand. “Hey now, that’s—”
The guard at the end of the group slammed a gauntleted fist into the man’s stomach, sending him sprawling to the cold, muddy ground.
Everything changed in that instant. Like an electric spark from one of Arkk’s lightning bolts had jolted through the entire refugee camp. The guards drew their swords and readied their pikes. Edvin shied back, hiding behind the armored wall of the guards as the refugees began producing weapons of their own. Swords, spears, and even bows and arrows.
A little altruism went a long way. It garnered goodwill and loyalty.
Threaten to take away the source of food and supplies?
Katja stepped forward, closer to the guards. “Wait, please. I’ll go peacefully. Don’t hurt anyone else.”
A long, tense moment passed while the lead guard pulled out a set of iron manacles.
“Katja,” Mal said, voice soft behind her back.
“I’ll be fine,” Katja said, shifting her shoulders in a way that disagreed with her statement. The guard clamping the manacles around her wrists with a resounding clank and the following jerk, practically throwing her off her feet, only reaffirmed her lie.
The crowd started to close in on the soldiers, only to pause as Katja turned to address them.
“Please don’t fight now,” she said. Her gaze passed Horrik’s tall form.
She gave him a small nod of her head. One he returned with a grim scowl.
“Don’t you dare show your face here again, Edvin,” Mal said, anger plain in his tone.
The cocky conman gave the refugee a jaunty wave as he jingled a bag full of coins. “After tonight? Don’t need to be here.”
A hand on Katja’s shoulder, shoving her forward, got her walking. The guards parted the incensed crowd with drawn weapons, dragging her straight through the encampment and to the main gates of Cliff City.
Through the gates and halfway to the garrison, the guard led Katja off to a side alley. With a few rhythmic thumps of one of their fists against an old wooden door, the wooden slat shifted aside. A pair of eyes gleamed in the darkness, staring out, before the slat slammed shut and the door creaked open.
“Ugh. How do they move in this much metal,” one of her guards groaned as the door shut behind them.
“Who knew Kev had it in him to order around the boss,” another said with a laugh.
Holding her hands over to Kev, he produced a key and unlocked the manacles around her wrists. “Good work, everyone,” Katja said, looking around at the ‘guards’ as they removed their helmets.
Her crew looked back at her, eager grins on their faces.
“Especially you, Edvin.”
“Praise?” He straightened his back. “From Katja the Great?” he said with sarcasm in his tone.
“Of course. I always knew you were a traitorous slime. Good job revealing your true colors.”
Edvin’s back slumped as he put on a flat expression. “Ha. Ha. Very—”
“Put on those rags, everyone, and get back out there. Spread the word. Light a fire under their asses. Harry, Victor, go speak with the malcontents inside the city and stir them up as well.”
The powder kegs were set. It was time to light the fuse.
Everyone needed a little push every now and again.
Walking Fortress Istanur had arrived.
Arkk’s powers as Keeper of the Heart worked in its vicinity, allowing him to rapidly teleport books, equipment, and everything else of value down to the lowest levels. A gaggle of lesser servants, supervised and assisted by some of his workers, carted crates of valuables over to Fortress Al-Mir. All of it had to go.
“Truth be told, I didn’t believe I would ever see one of these again,” Vezta said, voice soft as she ran her fingers along the shadowy stone.
“A walking fortress or stones made from shadow?”
Her lips quirked. “Both, I suppose, though I was mostly referring to the fortress.”
Arkk walked over, planting a hand on one wall. The shadowy stones felt… odd. The entirety of the Underworld was uncomfortably hot but the stones were cool to the touch. Not quite cold, they weren’t frosty or icy. It was like everywhere else in this world was constantly baking under the sun—even despite its perpetual cloudy skies—but this one fortress was made from normal shade.
“This [HEART] belongs to the Cloak of Shadows,” Vezta said, watching his movements. “Each of the [PANTHEON] has their little quirks and oddities. Rather than the lesser servants siphoned from the fractured sky that you’re familiar with, the servants maintaining this place would have been living beings made from pure darkness.”
“The lesser servants didn’t have any troubles fixing this place up,” Arkk said. They had all died during the incident with Zullie’s spell.
“There is some level of unification between all the [PANTHEON]’s gifts,” Vezta said with a small nod of her head.
“Mine, as well as Fortress Al-Mir, come from Xel’atriss, I presume?”
Vezta nodded her head, bowing slightly. “The Lock and Key is the only one of the [PANTHEON] capable of reaching through that fractured sky to reach the [STARS] where I, and the little ones, come from.”
Arkk pursed his lips, pondering for a moment, before raising a hand. “Slave Natum,” he intoned, calling forth one of the lesser servants.
They were disgusting beings. Arkk hadn’t watched the spell work before, not wanting to look at the creatures as they grew. Crawling masses, quivering and indistinct in form, didn’t so much as manifest from nothing. The very fabric of reality wrapped around the point where it spawned, as if the world itself recoiled from its presence. A thin slice in the world opened, visible for a bare instant before the amorphous body squeezed through, adorned with grotesque appendages—countless eyes and mouths opening and closing at random.
Arkk shuddered in a way that he hadn’t since seeing his first lesser servant. Having long since gotten used to the creatures, he wasn’t disturbed by its visage. It was what happened at the moment of its summoning that filled his mind with disquiet. For just a sliver of an instant, he glimpsed beyond the veil that had been cast over the world, keeping all ignorant of the ever-watching eyes of the [STARS].
The hole in the world was gone by the time the servant finished forming. Or perhaps it closed on the creature, squeezing off just a small aspect of a much larger creature that lurked just beyond.
His eyes drifted away from the newly spawned lesser servant to the face of Vezta. She stared at him, watching with a critical eye—dozens of eyes, rather—as he wondered if she was just a larger mass of some larger creature still hidden just on the other side of the world’s veil.
“Something amiss, Master?”
Arkk pressed his lips together. Horror from the Stars or not, Vezta was Vezta. Aside from Ilya, there was no one he trusted more among his crew. “Just thinking about Zullie,” he said with a small sigh.
The witch was up and about… well… mostly. She hadn’t spoken a word. She woke, she ate, and she sat still in the corner of her room. None of Hale’s attempts at regrowing her eyes had worked.
And yet…
When Arkk had last stopped by to visit the witch, she had looked directly at him. Even when he wasn’t making noise or talking, she had stared.
“I saw the same thing she saw,” Arkk said. “And everyone saw the sky during our ritual. So what happened?”
“As I have said before, I have no definite answer,” Vezta said, sounding genuinely apologetic. “Either she was being punished for her hubris, you were protected by the [HEART] where she wasn’t, or she caught a glimpse of something that you were unable to perceive. Or… any other possibility. Truthfully, the actions of the [PANTHEON] are beyond the comprehension of beings such as you and I.”
Arkk shook his head. With an unnecessary wave of his hand, the lesser servant vanished down to the base of the tower to join the others in removing the tower’s contents. The job was almost finished. Close enough.
He walked through the room, approaching the pedestal upon which Walking Fortress Istanur’s [HEART] hovered. A shadowy orb that pulled in any light in the room yet, somehow, still allowed those within to see.
“Are we sure this is the wisest idea?”
“This fortress does us no good in the Underworld,” Vezta said. “Even the Protectors have fled with the arrival of this tower. There is nothing to defend against. Its power would go to waste if you use it as a glorified carriage.”
“I mean… I’m mostly asking for reassurances that the whole tower isn’t going to collapse right on top of the portal.”
“Ah. It shouldn’t. Probably.” Hesitating, Vezta shifted her weight from foot to foot. “I hope.”
“That’s not very…” Arkk frowned, noting the cheeky smile on her face. “A joke? From you?”
“You’ve been stressed lately. A little humor helps, I hear,” she said with a faint chuckle. “If it truly worries you, move the tower further away. But I don’t believe it will collapse.”
Arkk pressed his lips together, shook his head, took a breath, and went for it. He grasped the shadowy orb from its place above the pedestal and pulled it toward him.
The tower didn’t move but Arkk still stumbled and staggered. Vezta was at his side in an instant, holding him steady. “Master?” she asked with concern in her voice.
“Fine. I just… feel like someone stabbed my… chopped off an arm.” Arkk shook his head. The world had shrunk down all of a sudden, leaving him unable to see the entirety of the tower or its contents. He could see his minions down on the ground below the tower, still carrying off the last of the equipment. None seemed to have noticed what he had done.
Which was good. It meant the tower wasn’t falling over.
Feeling like he was about to throw up anyway, Arkk graciously accepted Vezta’s assistance in guiding him down and out of the tower. The feeling faded by the time he reached the bottom and, once he passed through the portal and felt Fortress Al-Mir expand through his awareness, he was back to normal.
Keeping hold of the Heart of Istanur, Arkk teleported both himself and Vezta to the exit of the false fortress. The one and only access point to the surface within the Cursed Forest.
Ilya stood at the top, shooting a wary glance at the shadowy orb in his hands. Priscilla stood a few paces away, arms crossed and iced eyes glaring at nothing. Olatt’an’s eyes widened ever so slightly before he resumed a casual pose, leaning against the husk of an old tree. Around them, a gaggle of lesser servants stood at the ready.
“Is that it?” Ilya asked, taking a wary step back. “It’s… smaller than I expected.”
The older orc snorted at her comment. “It isn’t the size. It’s what it can do.” He paused and turned a calculating eye to the orb. “And I am hoping it does something impressive, Arkk.”
Priscilla let out a small growl from the back of her throat. “A walking fortress to crush your enemies is impressive enough.”
Arkk just shook his head. Priscilla was at least partially right. With everything he had experienced in recent weeks, he wasn’t sure he wanted something more impressive. A mobile tower was enough for him. “Stand back, everyone,” he said as the lesser servants squirmed closer.
Gold flooded from his treasury, draining it to a mere few scattered coins. This was by far the most expensive thing he had ever done. The mines would replenish it in time. As long as he avoided any large constructions in the near future. This should be worth its weight.
“We start with the chamber for the Heart,” Arkk said as the lesser servants approached the pile of gold. “Then… we’ll see if we can get it walking.”