Watcher's Question: A LitRPG Saga (Life in Exile Book 2)

by Sean Oswald

  When he was finally called into the bishop’s office, he found the man alone. Kneeling, Sir Elgin bowed his head and waited to be told to rise. The wait lingered on past a few seconds, and he was tempted to look up, but far too disciplined to give into that temptation.

  After over a minute he heard, “Rise my son.” As Sir Elgin stood up, he saw the bishop still sitting behind his desk. The man made a gesture with his hand and added, “Please take a seat Sir Elgin. I have some questions for you.”

  “Yes, your Excellency,” the paladin said as he sat in the chair. Clearly, it was made for priests and secretaries to sit in. His armor made it distinctly too small for him, and he was not able to sit flat on his backside. Instead, he had to wedge himself in at an angle. The cynical thought crossed his mind that maybe he was being asked to sit in such an uncomfortable position in order to make it easier for the bishop to get whatever answers he wanted. Sir Elgin had no desire to be involved in church politics but knew it was somewhat unavoidable in his position. Without Jaselm present, he was the second highest ranking paladin and thus would have a seat on any temple council meetings.

  “I’m so pleased that you have made it back safely, Markus. “You don’t mind if I call you Markus, do you Sir Elgin?” The bishop’s tone was sincere and Sir Elgin wanted to take him at face value.

  “Not at all your Excellency.”

  “Very well, then Markus you must tell me everything about your trip.” Markus noted that there was no offer made to refer to the bishop by his first name.

  “It was actually quite uneventful. Sir Von Marek was quite correct that it was overkill to send a full twenty soldiers simply to escort a boy to the academy. Yet he sent all of us because the Daughter of Redemption was so insistent.”

  Bishop Tengur had a patronizing smile upon his face as he said, “I’m glad to hear that Jackson, that is the boy’s name, correct?” The bishop asked but continued without waiting for a response, “has made it safely to the academy. He will bear watching, and it will be important that he receives aid from the church of Shanelle and that he knows he can depend upon us. But what I was actually asking about, if I may be a bit more precise, is how did you find your time in Eris’ Rise?”

  Of course that was what he was interested in. It was what they were all interested in. A Chosen was not inherently a political figure, but since the church hierarchy had no way to create a Chosen apart from a divine act, they were of great importance to the church as a whole. “Your Excellency, if you are asking about Emily Nelson, the Daughter of Redemption, we were able to confirm that she bears the mark, and honestly there is an aura around her which reminds me of when Shanelle spoke to me on the day I swore my oaths.” Markus stopped and waited to see if there were any more specific questions. When Bishop Tengur didn’t say anything, he continued. “Jaselm gave her the tabernacle and she was able to activate it. I never went inside it, but from what Jaselm said, there were miracles beyond belief inside of it.”

  For his part, Bishop Tengur sat taking in the descriptions of Eris’ Rise and most specifically the actions of this Emily Nelson. Her use of the tabernacle put to rest in his mind the question of whether she was a Chosen or not. Now the only question was for what purpose Shanelle had chosen her. He was pleased by much of what he heard. She seemed to be a simple woman, genuinely interested in helping people. Myren could remember when he was first an acolyte, the excitement to do good. Somewhere along the way it had all become so complicated, so unclear, but still he knew that with a firm hand the desire to do good could be shaped to make this Chosen a proper tool.

  The thing that he didn’t like was confirming what the early message had been. She was a Moon Elf, and not a half-blood but a full elf. To Myren’s knowledge, there had never been a Moon Elf worshipper of Shanelle in the entire history of Talos. Oh well, it was just proof that his Goddess worked in mysterious ways. He would have to work with it and hope for the best.

  The priests of Bal Zar all spoke the same when they came before Narannbaatar, he who was the First, the ruler of the Ironclaw Orc Clan. Each priest came bowing and scraping to his yurt. There the First would sit and wait to hear any wisdom from their god as prophesied by the priests. Next to him sat his brother, Khunbish and sister, Jalaqai, the other two members of the triplets who ruled the clan. Known respectively as Second and Third, they along with the First comprised all the aspects necessary for an orcish ruler. Naraanbaatar was the leadership, wisdom, and strategy. His brother was the might, the brutality, and the overt confidence of their race. While their sister was the one who acted in the shadows, doing in secret what the First could not be seen to do in public.

  Each priest spoke of the silence which answered their prayers. Naaran knew well enough that their chosen deity was fickle. His rewards were only for the strong, and so the silence while the clan retreated from the dwarves was not surprising, just disappointing. The loot that the clan had accumulated in terms of dwarven slaves, precious metal and gems was going to set them up for a run at uniting all of the orc clans. That is to say nothing of the dwarven weapons which had been taken. The runts might be ugly as spit behind their scraggly beards with their tuskless mouths, but no one could dispute that they crafted the best weapons. There were some orcish smiths who approached the skill level of the dwarven masters but none who could add that extra something. There were human or even better elven enchanters who could add magical effects to the spells. None of that was as good as a rune crafted dwarven weapon. They were physically the best weapons, and the magic of the runes couldn’t be stripped away or negated by magical resistances like regular enchanted runes. Something the dwarves did made effects caused by their runes to become a physical and permanent part of the weapon. Beyond that, the dwarves were the only race to harbor the secret of forging adamantium. Naraan had hopes that one of the dwarven smiths they had captured would know that secret. Of course, obtaining the knowledge from the stoic little man might be something else entirely.

  Still despite the silence of their god, Naraan was more and more certain that his chosen course was the correct one. The clan had almost escaped the dwarven lands. Another two nights and they would be back into orc controlled lands, and it would be time to start sorting out which of the other clans would willingly join with them and which would have to be brought to heel. Already visions of a grand army of orcs sweeping over the dwarves as inexorably as the waves of the ocean, his father had taken him to see as a small boy, filled his mind. Perhaps along the way he would regain the blessing of Bal Zar and be blessed with the opportunity to wreck his vengeance upon the snake, Seimion, who had abandoned his clan after leading them deep into dwarven territory.

  Baron Steffen Eikhorn was glad to be out of his armor. It felt like months since he had been out of it, and that wasn’t far from the truth. This most recent goblin incursion, what some were calling an actual war, had begun almost a year ago. At first, it had been the simple raids that they were accustomed too. What had been unusual was that even throughout the frigid winter the goblins had been moving. They had set up camps and when the first spring thaws had cleared the mountain passes they had poured out in historic numbers.

  That had all ended around two weeks ago though when the goblin attacks went from taking place every few hours to none at all. Some of his officers wanted to believe that the goblins had finally run out of bodies to throw at them, but Steffen couldn’t bring himself to believe anything so simple. Each of his units knew how very tired the continual conflict had made them, but none of them had the overall picture that he had. He spent the past twenty years as a noble of Albia, proud to be called a border baron. It was a title that he had inherited from his father. For all those twenty years and for some fifteen years before that under the command of his father, he had defended the kingdom from the goblins. This last war or whatever it was had been unlike any before it. What he knew, because he had the big picture, was something that his officers didn’t know. They had been very close to losing. They had almost ha
d to fall back to the borders of his home city of Breslau. As it was, they had already fallen back ten miles and had been another ten miles from the city walls.

  Then all of a sudden it stopped. There had been a good two months before the snows started to clog even the most northern of the passes within the mountainous homelands of the goblins. With good weather, they would certainly have been able to fight on for another three and possibly four months. Never had the annual goblin raids ended so early in the season. Yet this time not only had they ended, but they had stopped abruptly. Captain Raddick’s report had been correct. Only a small token of goblins, none of whom were classed or possessed any special skills, had been left to maintain some guard posts.

  The sorties to reclaim the ground they had given up over the past few weeks were cautious at first, but time after time the goblins were defeated without any human casualties, and they became bold. Within four days the border had been pushed back to its traditional location along the Egret river.

  Now he was back home. Enjoying the warm welcome from his two younger children and his wife. He had allowed most of the troops likewise to take leave and had only left three hundred of the freshest troops along the border. Even those soldiers were set to cycle out for some much needed rest when his men had all been allowed a week of rest and relaxation with their families. The only part of his command which would not be allowed rest was Captain Raddick and a handful of scouts. Steffen had compiled all the data from the scouting reports and the things the other officers had observed and came to one entirely unpleasant conclusion: the goblins had found another way to attack the kingdom.

  Thelan the Basher sat deep in the bowels of the earth in a cave which had been burrowed out by dozens of generations of goblins before him. He was not the first goblin warlord, nor the first to try to assert control over all of the various tribes. He was only the most successful. No matter how much he wanted to claim the glory for that success, which is certainly the goblin way, he knew in his heart of hearts that the successes they had enjoyed in the west and the preparations that were being made for the new war in the north were only made possible by the contributions of outsiders.

  He thought back in retrospect to the cold morning some three years ago when he had first met the mage Seimion. Thinking through the events of the past is not a common activity for goblins at all, and three years is a long time for a creature who had an average lifespan of ten years. There was a cost to the aid which Seimion provided. The first part of which had been that the mage had insisted that Thelan kill the other members of his goblin hunting party in some sort of ritual sacrifice to someone whom Seimion only referred to as the Master. Thelan bore no particular love for his fellow goblins, he probably only hated them slightly less than the other races. So, Thelan had paid the cost that day and had continued to pay it.

  The rewards had been all that he had been promised too. The Goblin King was the first of his race ever to reach tier three in levels, the first of his race to receive a rare class, and the first of his life to have his life extended. He was now a veritable god amongst his people and it showed. More and more of his offspring were hobgoblins rather than their more normal lesser kin. Even pondering that fact made him grin. It was a heavy burden, but if he had to take it upon himself to impregnate every female in the assembled tribes, well then he would just have to suffer through it.

  The half-naked female laying at his feet looked up when he chuckled to himself. Her expression inquired if her king needed something, but in his mind she was too ignorant to be able to understand his mirth. So he did what any good goblin would do. He kicked her. Hard. The sickening sound of her skull cracking rang out in the cave. All eyes stopped and looked at their king. No one cared though for her fate. None of them even bothered to check on her as she choked to death on her own blood. Each simply returned to the rutting or eating or gambling over little shiny bits they had taken from the slain humans.

  Thelan looked out over his kingdom, or at least this little corner of it. He smiled. All was right in his little world, and soon the rest of the world would feel the revenge of goblinkind.

  In a small farm house in the far north east of the Duchy of Holstein, an assortment of elven warriors stood in twos and threes around a perimeter. Closer to the structure standing in clusters of four or five were human soldiers. The former occupants of this remote house, a farmer, his wife, and two daughters lay dead where they had been shot in the fields by Moon Elf arrows. Not even the children had been spared. Eloria was indeed a brutal world, and the men meeting inside the now ownerless home were among the most brutal.

  Around the small kitchen table, Duke Edwin Holstein sat across from Lord Itsu a Moon Elf noble now in rebellion to his rulers. Both men stared at one another and the guards inside the room behind them and both glanced from time to time at the gray robed figure standing in the corner. The two talked and argued. They each tried to bully their will upon the other. Clearly neither trusted the other, and equally, it would be obvious to any observer that they had an open distaste for their counterpart.

  Eventually, the gray robed figure moved slightly, his features still obscured by his robe as always. That both men jumped away and put hands upon their swords at such a small movement by Seimion was a testament to how tense the situation was.

  “Duke and Lord, you both have much to gain by working together.” Seimion’s accent while clear was strange almost as if there were clicking sounds between each of his words. “You have both been given much, and yet both have been denied the vision you have for your nation.”

  “Bah, I don’t trust this pointy ear.”

  “And I won’t listen to insults from this round eye.”

  A chittering laughter broke out from the depths of the gray hood. Both human duke and elven noble stared at their so called advisor, with red tinged cheeks. These were not men accustomed to being laughed at. “I have not brought you together to become friends or even allies. You are enemies who simply happen to want the same thing. Both of you want a reason to go to war against the other. Is that not so?”

  Again the two men stared at one another. Then back again at Seimion.

  “There is no need for you to say it outloud. Both of you are certain that your nation can prevail and both of you are certain that you will gain power not only for your nation but most importantly for you personally. Both of you believe yourselves to be patriots looking out for the best interests of your nation despite the short sightedness of your liege lords.”

  When the two men each began to protest, Seimion lifted his hand and the tips of two black finger like appendages poked forth from the robe. Both men felt a quickened spell slam into them. Their bodies stiffened and they felt as though bands of steel bound their arms, legs, and even their chests. It felt almost impossible to draw a breath. The two human and two elven guards drew swords but felt the weight of a fear aura seize them as the gray robed mage unfettered his presence.

  “Stop bickering like children. I am here to give you both what you want. What you do with it after I do is up to you, but my patience is not limitless. So shall I advise or shall I find others with a bold vision for the future?” His chittering voice echoed through the small house and not a soul dared to move.

  Time dilation can be a tricky thing. For Eloria as a whole, it had been a little over two weeks since the battle of Eris’ Rise, but inside Altracia’s dungeon some two hundred and eighty-nine days had passed. Not that the drake or her minions really thought in terms of day and night. The celestial bodies held no sway in her underground domain.

  What she did know though was that there had been an uptick in the flow of energy into the dungeon from the veins of magicyte which ran through its walls and out into the world around. Conflict was the life blood of Eloria and the surrounding zone had experienced alot of this in the past three weeks. More than that, there was a sense of potential, an energy only waiting to be tapped.

  During this time, Altracia grew even more intelligent, her stren
gth developed further and she learned how to expand the dungeon and create a better lay out with some rudimentary traps. Her drake hounds multiplied and she learned how to create gear from them. The power pulsing through the magicyte was entirely hers to control and it allowed her to duplicate objects which had been in the dungeon. Items which had hit the ground or wall were the easiest for her to copy.

  Thus she no longer had a single alpha and a pack but had three pairs of alphas, male and female, with each pair leading a pack. She was able to duplicate the scalemail which Dave had been wearing, as well as his sword which had lain upon the ground and perhaps most importantly she was able to pattern items off of the ring of health which had been upon his hand.

  Altracia chuckled to herself. She enjoyed the building but what she wanted was for more of the human things to come to her home. The mana which the half-breed had manifested in her home had served not only to empower her but also to expand her knowledge of magic. The schools of Charm and Conjuration opened up to her and her understanding of Evocation magic was expanded. She felt that the next time Dave and his little companion came back in that they would find a very different dungeon waiting for them.

  Part II

  A Tale of Questing

  Chapter Fourteen

  “You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world; but it takes people to make the dream a reality.” — Walt Disney