by Sean Oswald
What was worse though was that he couldn’t figure out how it had happened. The most important advice that Harold’s late father had given him was about the sanctity of the bloodline. Bastards brought houses down, and the late king had been fastidious about ensuring that none of mistresses ever got with child. Harold took the measures to ensure that his mistress could never get pregnant by making them drink a potion right after any carnal activities. A successful king had to be deliberate about everything he did.
It was completely perplexing to him. Due to the rumors, Harold had avoided touching Melani for weeks, with only that one liaison, but that was little more than a week ago. The king might not be a healer or a physician, but he knew well enough that a woman wouldn’t be showing that quickly, and showing was an understatement for the young mistress. She had new curves and not the kind which made the kitchen boys drool.
No, there was some foul play at work, of that the king was certain. He and Eleazor had traced and retraced his actions and especially his interactions with Melani. The one gap that couldn’t be filled was the afternoon of that last liaison a week before. He remembered being exceptionally worked up by the opportunity to steal an afternoon with his mistress. Excited by her passion and eagerness, even her forethought in giving him a drink ahead of time. That had to be it. The more they worked through it, the little details came back to King Borenstein. Melani had been the one to provide him with the drink. It was etiquette rule number one for any ruler, always take care where you get your food and drink. His excitement to be with her had drained him of common sense, and then whatever she had put into his drink had knocked him out.
Except that wasn’t all there was to it. He could remember having performed and performed and performed again. At the time, he was happy to take her praises and give her more, chalking it up to his extreme desire for her. The truth was that he had never sunk a lot of points into Endurance and that should have been completely beyond him. Maybe whatever drug she fed him had been more than to make him sleep and forget to make her take the protective potion afterwards. Perhaps it had been something intended to increase his virility and even accelerate the growth of any child she conceived. As he thought back over the events, it was the only thing that made sense. What's more, it must have been quite a potion because while he hadn’t increased his Endurance, he had spent a fair amount of character points increasing his poison resistance.
Now, though Melani was out of his grasp. She had been smuggled out of the palace last night by forces unseen. Around the same time, the entire contingent of Duke Holstein’s people had also left, which only sparked more rumors. All that could be done now was to gather some of the more covertly skilled members of the Purple and Gold and set them to tracking down the young woman. Else, he might end up with a contender to his son Randolph’s claim to the top spot in the line of succession.
The other Nelsons might miss each other. They were all missing Jackson of course and were worried about him, but in their mind, he was away at boarding school. They should have known that even a school in Eloria could be something so different from their expectations. Jackson Nelson, certainly was learning that, the hard way. He missed his family, but it was with a deep yearning born of a growing desperation.
For many reasons he didn’t fit in at the Royal Academy. He was a half-elf, and that certainly was the first thing to catch everyone’s attention. All of his classmates were human and raised to think of elves as mysterious creatures. Many told stories about elves that blamed them for sickness amongst animals, blights amongst the crops, or even the death of infants. That Jackson was handsome and attractive to the female students was even more infuriating to many of the boys. His family's meteoric rise from anonymity to being made the rulers of the largest barony in the kingdom was another sore spot, especially from the children of the older noble houses.
Most telling of all was the way that Jackson acted. He tried to fit in, but no matter how he tried, he couldn’t always think like an Elorian. He had concepts like fairness and taking care of those weaker than himself pounded into him by both his parents, yet those concepts had little place in the noble society of Albia. The others knew his family came from outside the kingdom, they just didn’t have any idea from how far outside, and even if they had, it would have been beyond their frame of reference.
The first couple of days had been fine. No one really said much to him other than pleasantries and everyone was trying to take stock of him. He quickly learned that there were cliques in this school like any other. The only thing that was different was that bullying didn’t only seem to be allowed but actually encouraged. The rank of one’s parents mattered, but more than anything else, the personal strength one could bring to bear mattered. That ultimately was what led to his own personal hell.
Once all of the other students learned that he was only level zero. All of the other students had parents who had taken the time to level them up at least a little bit. It seemed that the more rank their parents had, the more they had been able to level their children up. From the little bits of conversation he had caught, it was because it required power to level kids so that they would get levels without danger and was thus somewhat expensive to hire and set up the appropriate teams for that, especially in the more settled portions of the nation. The most common approach seemed to be using a dungeon which was few and far in-between and very expensive to gain access to since the king controlled all of the known dungeons. Of course, Jackson knew that there was a new dungeon in the Murkwood, but he kept that to himself after hearing about how the students and even instructors talked about dungeons.
His peers all turned out to be anywhere from level five to one foreign princess who was level nineteen. All but two of them were only tier 1, and yet, they were easily able to manhandle Jackson with their increased stats. The professors would turn a blind eye to all the new bruises that Jackson showed up with every day, and he began to get more and more scared for his life. What was worse, was he had no idea how to contact his parents, so he felt completely cut off. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold up, and it had only been a little over a week. That was until he became friends with Tabor.
Tabor Eikhorn hadn’t been there the first few days after Jackson arrived as he had been busy with duties at the palace, but once he was returned to class, he had immediately taken a liking to Jackson. It probably helped that he had met Jackson before with Dave. If it hadn’t been for his new friend’s help, Jackson didn’t know what would have happened, but Tabor had just the right combination of status as the son of a baron and general as well as having been leveled up by real life combat not just power leveled through a dungeon. Now armed with an ally, Jackson felt he had some chance at least.
Even as his son was becoming friends with Jackson, Baron Eikhorn was racing by horseback towards the capital with a small contingent of soldiers. He couldn’t spare too much time away from the border just in case the goblins came back, but he felt the news, well actually, more suspicions were too important to ignore, and so he had to speak to the king directly. He only hoped that he would arrive in time.
It was time. The goblins had accomplished as much as they could in the past week, but if he held them together in one place any longer, Thelan felt that even the threat of his wrath wouldn’t be enough. Goblins just were not meant to stay in one place for long. They were an impatient lot. Thelan rolled the furs off of him exposing the naked bodies of the three goblin females who had been chosen to spend last night with him. The brisk autumn air hit his skin and made him feel alive. He flexed and muscles incomparable to any other goblin flexed as the magical tattoos inscribed into his flesh rippled with the movement. As he stood unashamed of his nakedness, for he knew that he was a specimen amongst all goblins, he felt a shadow pass over him. Immediately,
he dove to the ground in a roll coming back up with the massive hatchet style sword he wielded.
Coming up smoothly to his feet, Thelan looked all around. Challenges to leadersh
ip were a common thing amongst his kin, but since the gifts he had received from the gray mage, he had little to fear from any other goblin. Hovering in the air was a strange shadow creature almost like a blacken sheet wafting in the wind. The goblin king had never seen anything like it before, and his primal fears rose within him.
“Attack, attack! Wake up you lazy scum!” He screamed while never taking his eyes off the shadowy creature.
In response to their king’s call to arms, goblins all over stood up. Most were shaking sleep off. The few who had been posted as guards were just slightly more awake than the rest and at least already had their limited weapons and armor equipped. One of the guards, overly eager to show that he hadn’t been sleeping, lunged with a spear at the shadowy creature. The spear passed right through without any appreciable damage. Yet when the creature wrapped around him like a cloak, all that could be heard were the shrieks that the tiny goblin made, for two seconds and then there was silence. As the creature unfurled from around its prey and floated higher into the air, the goblin’s corpse fell to the ground withered and dry like an empty husk.
Upon seeing that, most of the goblins screamed and shrieked, cowering back in fear. Not so Thelan, who knew that decisiveness was needed. The creature was something out of a nightmare, and while no one would have ever mistaken the goblin king for an intellectual giant, he was still able to deduce that the creature must have some form of invulnerability to physical harm. If that assumption was true, then not even the ogres of giants in his army would be able to harm the creature. He could only hope that the enchantment on his cleaver would work against the monster.
While Thelan was weighing his options, three different shamans all cast spells at the creature. The acid did nothing other than passing straight through to rain down upon a cluster of goblins huddled together on the far side of the monster. Their screeches of pain joining into the cacophony already filling the cave. The frost attack did a little as the fringe of the creature seemed to be covered with ice, but the attack which really affected it was the flame. A tier 2 spell, the scorch of fire, from one of the most powerful shamans in the goblin army blasted a hole one foot in diameter through the creature and made it hiss. Still, the caster wouldn’t be long for this world as the creature descended upon the shaman in a flurry. Thelan could wait no longer. He activated his power attack and leaping attack skills and swung with a heavy overhead blow, timed just so it would come down mid-swing. The blade true to its type was meant for cutting, and the enchantment upon it increased its chance of inflicting critical damage. Since the creature had been so focused on the shaman who burnt it, it took no measures to avoid the blow and was sheared in half. (813)
Thelan howled in victory, “There is none as strong as the basher. I am king of all. My people we shall slay the humans. We shall feast upon the elves. We will rule over all the soft southern lands.”
He looked around. Surprised at the lack of response from his people. They should have been hooting and lifting up their praises for his might. Instead, they were cowering. As he looked closer, he saw why. Up higher in the cave floating around the fringes were six more of the same type of creature. Three upon each side of him.
The goblin king’s howl changed from victory to despair. His mind as sluggish as it was realizing that his odds were slim to none of finishing six without being drained. Then as he fell silent, another sound took up the place of his howls. It was a deliberately slow clapping. Once, twice, three times the claps sounded and reverberated through the cave as a figure cloaked in gray robes stepped out of the shadows. “Very good. You continue to justify our master’s choice of you and my investment of time and resources.”
Thelan knew that voice with its strange chittering sound. “Seimion, is this your doing?” He roared as anger replaced his fear.
“Don’t tell me that my little pets bother you, the big brave king of the goblins,” the mockery practically dripped off of every word.
“This is my place, I decide what happens here,” Thelan spoke while crossing the distance between him and the gray robed mage.
“A test every now and again is a necessary part of life, else how would you know that you were alive?” came the sarcastic response.
“You killed one of my guards.”
“As if you haven’t killed more goblins by simply rutting too hard. Besides, I have come with good news for you.”
“What is it?”
“There has been a change of plans. You will no longer attack to the south. Instead, I need your people to establish a presence in the Chenhou forest and start launching sorties against the elves who live there.”
All around them cries of hatred towards the elves went up.
“Why did we build the siege weapons then? We will not be able to use them in the forest.” Thelan too felt the racial hatred for the elves, but something didn’t seem right to him.
“Another tool has presented itself and our master has decided to handle things differently.”
“I have no master, only wenches who rut, servants who obey, and enemies who bleed. You may be lapdog to some master but he is no master …” Thelan’s speech of defiance was cut short as his body was lifted by some invisible force and flung up against the wall behind him, knocking over a pair of cooking pans filled with hot coals on his path there. The force had the grip of a giant, and he was helpless against it. He felt the crushing force of a vise forcing the air from his lungs, and his eyes began to bulge, and his internal organs began to compress from the band of force across his midsection.
“Many sins can be forgiven, but not hubris. You have a master whether you acknowledge him or not. You have always had a master, since the day you were born. There are some few who walk the world with true choice, but neither you nor I am amongst them. The best we can hope for is to know who it is that we serve. So let me do you a great honor and open your mind,” Seimion’s words were delivered at a painfully slow cadence to make a point to the goblin king who was moment by moment being crushed by the telekinetic spell holding him against the wall.
The gray robed mage then pulled back his hood, and all around gasped again. Stunned by something they had never seen before. Shocked by a creature of myth standing before them. A wolf amongst sheep stood in their midst, and all they could do was hope that his ire was spent upon the king. Instead, a spell was cast in the same deliberate manner and the minds of all the goblins were blasted open just a bit. They were shown an image, really a fleeting glimpse of Seimion’s master and all cowered. Then fell prostrating themselves as to worship that image.
“That is better,” came the chittering voice as he released the spell upon Thelan. “Now let me tell you all how you may serve our master.”
At the same time, ten miles to the south east of Eris’ Rise, nearly five hundred troops were assembled spread out between two separate camps with a tent set up between them. In the tent, Duke Holstein and Lord Itsu both sat in chairs with their second-in-command standing behind them.
“You told Seimion that you would bring more than four hundred soldiers. Where are the rest of your followers, or can’t you actually produce them?” Lord Itsu asked. Every word out of his mouth spoken towards Edwin sounded like an insult.
“I brought as many soldiers as you did, and what other issues I have going on are none of your concern. I might as well ask where the rest of your soldiers are.” The Duke was frustrated beyond measure by having to put up with the sniveling elfling. He knew that the elf was no match for him, but that man for man, the elven soldiers were at least a little stronger than his own troops
“The concerns of an elder race could hardly be understood by the likes of you. This is nothing for you to worry about.”
Edwin scoffed and said, “So are we going to do this, or do you want to let Seimion know that you were not up to attacking a logging village?”
“No, between us, we have more than enough to wipe that village off the face of the earth. The issue remains again that we need to decide ho
w this attack is going to run.”
“There is nothing to decide. You and your soldiers will be the grunts while my archers soften up any of the villagers or their soldiers who stick their heads out.”
“Again you don’t get it do you. You elder races must have your heads stuffed with mumbo jumbo that you don’t live in the real world. All you want to do is stand back while real men fight, and you think shooting with a bow makes you true warriors.”
“The elves and I were killing with bows when you and your ‘real men’ were not yet sparkles in your sire’s eye. To compare the butcher of a human ax with the skill of an elven bow is like comparing piss to wine.”
“Argue all you want to, but the simple truth remains we have to make it look like elves killed all of the people, otherwise I will never be able to get named as commander of Albia’s armies. The threat has to seem overwhelming, but it also has to be perceived as being foreign. Harold may be a bit of a buffoon, but he isn’t an idiot. If he believes that there is a conspiracy within the country, he will consolidate his strength around Konig.”
“So what is it that you suggest then since you seem to know everything?”
“I’m glad you asked,” the duke said with a smile, “here is what we will do …”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Nature is a wonder of diversity. There is no room for magical corruptions. All those who would twist the world around them shall hold no place in the new purified world.” — excerpts from a speech by Imperial Praetor, Chuk Nor-Fan
The journey north was largely uneventful. Dave felt the moment that they exited the Murkwood. The loss of the bonus from his rulership hit him like a ton of bricks. He lost a step as he was running along enhanced by the movement spell and nearly plowed into a tree.
