by Eric Ugland
Looking around the campsite as my blankets illuminated the surrounding countryside, I noticed Ragnar stood next to me, looking at me like I was insane.
“What?” I asked.
“You need to sleep more if that’s your reaction being woken up.”
“Don’t yell my name—”
“You see anyone else awake?” he asked, pointing at all the others sleeping.
“No yelling?”
“Just poking and whispering.”
“Guard time?”
“Not quite. Just, well, two things—”
“It’s always two things.”
“Emeline darted off in the night.”
“Perfect.”
“And there’s something big and nasty lurking out in the dark.”
“So?”
“I have no desire to solo a monster,” Ragnar said. “So I woke you up.”
“How long has Emeline been gone?”
“Just a minute or two.”
“Monster first then,” I said with a nod.
I pulled the Xiphos of Sharpness out of the bag, gave it a bit of a swing, and spun it in my hand. While most of the treasures from the Dungeon of the Ancients had yet to be catalogued or identified, I was reasonably sure the sword was going to wind up being one of the highlights. It was just such a versatile little weapon.
“Let’s go kill something,” I said.
Ragnar smiled, and pointed.
I pushed into darkvision, and the world lit up around me. Sure enough, something large lurked a fair distance away, past the 100 yard mark for sure.
“You stay back, here at camp,” I said. “And get Skeld up.”
“Nathalie?”
“No.”
“Letting Nikolai sleep?”
“Yeah.”
“He won’t like it.”
“He doesn’t like anything.”
Ragnar shrugged in reply, but seemed to agree.
I started towards the thing with a light jog. Since we had the fire going, I knew the monster in the darkness saw us, so there was no need to go stealth. Straight at the motherfucker — that was the way to do it, especially if it was a predator of some kind.
The creature popped its head up. Just for a second, I caught the gleam of its eyes as it looked at me before leaping up into the air. Huge wings shot out and flapped hard, getting the creature truly airborne. I lost it against the night sky.
Which was not good.
I stopped and peered around, unsure how the thing could’ve disappeared. Could it be smart enough to have drawn me out of the camp so it could fly over me and attack? That was a very bad and very real possibility, so I turned and sprinted back towards the firelight.
I heard a loud woosh as the creature came right overhead, landing in a big cloud of dust right between me and the fire.
I didn’t stop this time — I just launched myself at the creature, leading the with the sword.
Again, the creature leapt up, almost lazily, I went flying through the air and crashed into the ground, sword cutting deeply into a rock.
There was a heavy thump, and I felt warmth on my back.
I rolled over only to have a weighty paw come down on my neck, and huge face full of teeth looking down at me. The creature sniffed me.
“Mon-tan-ah?” it said in a gruff barely understandable voice.
“Uh,” I stammered, confused, “yeah?”
“Com-pan-yon.”
He moved off me, and sat down like a giant dog. Immediately, I realized I’d gotten one of the other treasures of the dungeon. The monster companion as promised by the boon Typhon had gifted me. Aptly named Monstrous Companion.
I heard the pitter patter of little feet as the unceasingly courageous otters charged with their spears. I hopped up and spread my arms wide.
The hirðmen skidded to a stop, and stared at me. And whatever it was that was behind me.
“He’s with me,” I said.
As I expected, the statement was met with confusion.
“That thing?” Ragnar asked. “It’s—”
“Say same of you,” came the gruff voice behind me. “You small ug-lee.”
“Who you calling small?” Ragnar said, shaking his spear.
“Snack,” came the reply.
“They aren’t snacks,” I said, turning to face the creature. “No eating anyone here.”
“Want snacks,” the creature said.
I had a moment to look at the thing, so I shot my little spell in its general direction and I got back:
Manticore
Lvl 25 Monster
He was a big guy — sitting down on his haunches, his head was above me, his big eyes looking down at me, a massive mane around his feline face. Which wasn’t completely feline. It was feline-esque, with a large mouth full of three rows of teeth. Massive reddish eyes matched its fur, and huge wings hung off its back, black and leathery like a bat’s. If a bat had a wing span measured in yards, that is. His tail curved around his back, ending in a large stinger. I’m sure I was just imagining it, but I swear it was dripping venom. The creature was big and bad and more than a little terrifying. And yes, there was sufficient evidence it was a he.
“Do you have a name?” I asked.
He nodded his massive head, then said, “Fritz.”
“Fritz, I’m Montana—”
“Know.”
“Yeah. Well, these are my hirðmen Ragnar and Skeld—”
“Herd?”
“No, well, I guess you might be able to think of it that way. But they are more like, you know, trusted friends. I have several friends—”
“Snacks.”
“Nope. None of them are snacks. Do you, uh, what do you eat?”
“Flesh. Met-tal.”
“Metal?”
“Need i-ron.”
“Okay. Iron. That’s not impossible. Any type of flesh?”
Fritz frowned, then seemed to think it over before answering. “Yes.”
“Okay, that’s doable. Just, like, blanket rule as long as you and me are, what companions?”
“Yes. Com-pan-yon.”
“No humanoids.”
“Like hu-man snack.”
“Sure, I get it. I like marshmallows, but sometimes we have to do without what we want because.”
“Why.”
“Because.”
He growled, pushing his giant head towards me. I did not back down, taking a step towards him until our heads touched. I could tell he had some serious strength, but so did I. For a moment, we played a weird little game of inverse tug-of-war (shove-of-war).
Finally, he realized he wasn’t going to win, and I suppose, saw that I wasn’t going to really fight him, and he relented.
“No hu-man snack.”
“Or elf or—”
“Know what mean,” he growled at me.
“Are you hungry right now?”
“Hun-gry.”
“Okay, well, quick question here: do you hunt via smell?”
“Tracking?”
“Sure, tracking.”
“Can track,” he grunted with a sharp nod of his massive head.
I walked back to the camp, feeling the eyes of the Manticore on me, still not convinced he wasn’t about to pounce. I grabbed Emeline’s blanket and brought it back to Fritz. I held it out to him.
He sniffed it. Deep.
“Want find?” he grumbled.
“If you can—”
“Can,” he said, getting ready to leap into the air.
“Hold on just a second,” I said. “This person you are hunting, not a snack.”
“Know rules.”
“And can you fly someone with you?”
He grumbled very loudly.
“I’m taking that as a yes, but you don’t want to. How about you go with someone, and you make sure they know where you are, and the like?”
He grunted. “Fine.”
“Skeld, Ragnar—”
“I will go,” Skeld said.
“Keep him away from the city. I don’t want an overzealous guard firing off a ballista at our new buddy here.”
“I see no way this can go catastrophically wrong,” Skeld said with his usual hard deadpan. “Let us go hunting, Fritz.”
Fritz leapt into the air, unfurled his wings, and did a barrel roll before flying out towards the city.
Ragnar, standing right next to me, had a stick in his mouth, chewing on it. “Want to put a bet on how long it’ll take for Fritz to be Fritzkebabbed?” he asked.
Chapter 4
I decided not to wake Nikolai. Yes, he was supposed to have guard duty with me, but the guy just seemed so tired all the time. Instead, I sat on a rock a ways from the fire and waited for my new friend Fritz to come back from his hunt.
Maybe half an hour later, when the sun had just peeked up over the horizon and streaks of brilliant light painted across Osterstadt’s great walls, Skeld came tearing back along the path.
“Montana!” I heard Skeld yell out. “There is a problem.”
I poked Ragnar and told him to take my watch, and then I sprinted off towards Skeld.
As soon as Skeld saw me running, he turned and hoofed it back towards the city. The view was still jolting; it looked as if Osterstadt had literally been carved out of the huge mountains soaring up on either side of it. According to some legends, the ancients who built the aptly named ‘Dungeon of the Ancients’ were the same who’d removed a large portion of the mountains before building a city and a dungeon then mysteriously dying out. The Osterstadt walls were huge, towering more than a hundred feet above the landscape. It stretched from one cliff to the other, providing a total blockade between the rest of the world and the Emerald Sea. A river meandered towards Osterstadt, getting almost to the wall before disappearing underground in cleverly built-canals leading the water through the city before falling into the Emerald Sea beyond. A bridge across the river denoted a pretty fair north and south split, and the tree we camped under was quite a ways north of the city, far enough distant that we could see the entire place.
We broke off from the road fairly quickly, heading south along the wall towards the Noble Gate. We went at a fair clip, eating up the ground. I didn’t have any weapon out, and wore little in the way of armor, only my Seal pants and a billowy white shirt. Well, a shirt that was supposed to billow. It was a little tight on me now, to be honest. I hoped Lee had been able to hire a tailor.
Up ahead, I could see the problem.
Fritz the manticore stood there, looking all big and scary. Ballista bolts were sticking into the ground near him.
On the other side of the ballista bolts stood Emeline. Well, cowered Emeline. Further beyond Emeline was a group of guards standing behind their shields, spears out and ready to rock.
“Find,” roared out Fritz.
“Good,” I shouted back, hands up towards the guards. “Maybe go back to camp now.”
“Hun-gry,” replied Fritz.
“Then get away from the city and go hunt.”
There was a slight whistling noise. Another ballista bolt slammed into the ground in front of Fritz, sending a spray of dirt and grass up into the air.
Fritz growled, and I could almost feel his desire to attack.
“No,” I shouted. “I’ll take over from here. You go hunt.”
In one motion, he leapt up, over Emeline and towards the guards. Right as I truly feared he was going to land amongst the phalanx, he spread his wings, cut a tight turn, and flew away.
The guards stood down. Sort of. The spears went up, and the shield wall went mostly away.
“Sorry about that,” I said, keeping my hands wide and very obvious to the guards so as to make sure they knew I wasn’t a threat.
“Is that your beast?” one of the guards asked. He had an aquiline nose, a prominent chin, and piercing blue eyes. He seemed like the leader of this unit, given how the rest of the guards looked at the man.
“Uh, well, I hesitate to denote terms of ownership. After all, he’s his own creature,” I said.
“He means yes,” Skeld said.
The guard narrowed his eyes at Skeld, then at me.
“I do not appreciate being spoken to by your pets,” the guard sneered. “He should be on a leash.”
I bristled. It was a good thing I didn’t have a weapon in my hand because I was ready to attack the guards over that.
“Hey,” Skeld said, hand up to me, “Take care of them later. Focus. Emeline.”
I nodded at Skeld. “I got this,” I said.
“Camp?”
“Yeah.”
Skeld trotted away.
“Gents,” I said. “What’s the problem here?”
“Beyond your monster attacking the city?”
“Did he attack? Seemed like he was polite and,” I walked up and snagged one of the bolts from the ground and held it out, “looks more to me like he was the one being attacked.”
“Your monster was here trying to eat this woman.”
“This woman is my charge,” I snapped in reply.
“There are two problems I see here,” Guard Leader said. “One, this woman tried to sneak into the city. Two, it would appear she is trying to get away from you. Has he kidnapped you, young lady?”
“Absolutely not,” I said.
“Did I ask you?” he snapped, his spear dipping down to get ready.
“You did not.”
“Silence then, dog, or I will drag you to Osterstadt prison in irons.”
I waved my hand for them to continue.
He turned to focus on Emeline, giving her a smarmy sort of smile. “Now, girl, are you in danger?”
She looked at me. I just raised my eyebrows at her, making it clear that it was her choice to make.
“I was trying to sneak in to see my suitor,” she said, looking sullen and caught.
The guard smiled, and walked a little closer to Emeline. He knelt down, and whispered to her.
She shook her head.
“He is a duke,” Emeline said. “He would not do such a thing to me.”
“Him? A duke?” the leader asked.
One of the other guards looked at me, then whispered something to his comrades. Laughter trickled at first before becoming a guffaw.
“He is,” Emeline said.
The leader gave me a weird little smile and sorta sauntered over to me.
“Told her you’re a duke, eh?”
“You know, I suppose it was me who said that, yeah. But there are others who’d confirm it.”
“Impersonating nobility is a rather serious crime here in Osterstadt.”
“Surely you mean Glaton.”
“Oh, likely there too. Probably worse. Perhaps I should ask if you would prefer dealing with the Legion on this issue. They are known to take quite an offense to anyone who presumes to be above their achieved rank.”
“I’d love to talk to the Legion about this.”
He seemed taken aback, but then shook his head. “Well, perhaps we will involve them soon. Are you ready to tell me the truth about things?”
“I am a duke. An Imperial Duke to be precise. And I am her guardian, as requested by her father.” Sure, that last bit was a little bit of a lie, but it seemed like a good embellishment.
The leader looked me up and down before stopping at my face, and then smiled the smile of the cocksure. “I do not believe you.”
“Believe what you want, guardsman, but it’s true.”
“Have you proof?”
“Do you accept indicium as proof?”
Tired of his nonsense, I ripped my shirt off and tossed it to the side. I flared all of my indicium at once, and stood there, mostly exposed I guess.
The man’s eyes went a bit wide as he looked over everything before settling on the indicium on my chest, the Coggeshall family crest. One of his men behind him had a small book out, and flipped through the pages. He settled on one, then presented it to their leader. The leader looked at the proffered page, a
nd then back at me, and all the color drained from his face.
“Apologies, my lord,” he said. “I did not—”
“It’s fine. Just doing your job,” I said quickly. “Emeline, let’s go.”
She walked back over to me. I gave her a smile, and shot one over at the guards for good measure. But inwardly, I wanted to rage.
Chapter 5
“So,” I said, once we’d gotten a bit of distance between us and the guards, “what the fuck was that?”
“I know you are going to be mad with me—” she started.
“Bingo.”
“But did you need to leave your shirt behind?”
I looked down. I was in fact shirtless. And I looked pretty good if I do say so myself. I flexed some muscles—
“Stop,” she said. “You look ridiculous.”
“Uh, disagree.”
“You have absolutely no idea how foolish you look. You are out of style, out of—”
“You were the one running away.”
“I was not running—”
“Stop distracting me with semantics, answer my first question: what the fuck?”
“I needed to speak to Philomon.”
“He doesn’t want to talk to you. He wants you to get out of the city. He charged me with getting you out safely, and—”
“You know nothing of Philomon nor me—”
“I know more of you than you could possibly imagine.”
“Like what?”
“I, uh,” I stammered. She’d pretty solidly called my bluff. “You, uh, okay, I don’t know that much, okay? But I agreed to do something, and Philomon believed you needed to not be in Osterstadt for your own good, so I’m trying to keep you safe. And out of Osterstadt.”
“Do you know who Philomon is?”
“Like, beyond the shadowy figure who holds court under a shithole tavern in the seedy part of town? No, that’s pretty much the extent of my Philomon knowledge.”
“He is among the most powerful men in the city.”
“Yeah, figured that one out.”
“A crime—”
“Right, crime lord, dark side of things, fingers in all sorts of nefarious pies—”
