by Matt Forbeck
Walda sucked in her breath. “My apologies, Arch-Illager.”
Archie permitted himself a perfectly self-satisfied smile at the sound of his chosen title rolling off his former leader’s lips. He almost wished he could bring Thord back from the dead so he could hear it from him too.
It occurred to Archie that although the Illagers needed a day to recover from the celebration of his coronation, the same didn’t apply to the army of Undead clustered outside the gates of Highblock Keep. Besides which, he was worried about the Illagers traveling alongside the Undead. It would only require a small problem with those mobs for the entire affair to devolve into chaos. He needed his fighting forces focused on their enemies, not worried about each other, and he had the perfect plan to make that happen.
First, though, he needed to do some research. He excused himself from the throne room and headed to the top of the Obsidian Pinnacle again. Once there, he placed his staff in its regular slot, sat down on the chair there, and peered into the Orb of Dominance.
What do you want to see?
“The heroes that stand between me and the village,” he said. “I need to know where they are and what they’re doing.”
The surface of the Orb dissolved in front of Archie’s eyes, and he found himself looking down at the village from an incredible height. The Villagers there had built more fortifications around the place in an effort to protect themselves better, but they clearly had no idea of the forces Archie had at his command now. The defenses might be enough to protect the place against the Illagers, but the redstone golems and—better yet—the Redstone Monstrosity would make quick work of them.
The only thing that would put a kink in Archie’s plans was the presence of a hero. Any one of them alone would be able to take on a redstone golem, and together they might even present a reasonable threat to the Redstone Monstrosity. But if they weren’t there…
Archie zoomed the viewpoint in and searched around the village for any sign of a hero. To his irritation, he spotted five of them chatting with one another in the center of town. They had apparently been helping with the fortification of the village, and they didn’t seem to be done with their task.
The longer you give them, the tougher the village will become.
Archie knew that the Orb was correct. The sooner he moved on the village, the better. Otherwise, the heroes might throw up a castle’s worth of defenses around it, and he’d find himself thwarted.
But with the heroes there, it wouldn’t matter. Even without the defenses, they might be able to destroy his army, no matter how augmented with redstone mobs it was. He needed to get rid of the heroes.
Fortunately, he had an idea about how to do that.
“Show me their homes,” Archie said. “The places they care most about.”
The viewpoint in the Orb shifted wildly. It spun high up into the sky, whirling about until Archie had to clutch at the sides of the chair. He was so dizzy he thought he might throw up. Fortunately, just before that happened, the viewpoint stabilized, and he found himself gazing upon a serene scene far below.
As Archie peered into the Orb, he spied four different buildings scattered about the landscape. Even the closest of them stood at least a half day’s walk away from the village, maybe more.
The buildings sat in different parts of the land. One stood atop a mountain. Another overlooked the sea. A third had been built inside an amazing tower. The last sat mostly underground but for a glassy staggered pyramid that emerged from the earth to allow in all the sunlight possible.
Each one of them seemed large enough to house a tremendous family, and they were tricked out with the most amazing architecture. Archie spent some time zooming in with the Orb and examining the places, and he’d never seen such incredible marvels. To think that each of them housed only a single person seemed like a tremendous waste.
They can be yours.
Archie liked that idea. One day, he would rule the entirety of the land, from sea to sea. Today, though, he was only interested in the village. Taking that would be a huge victory for him and would supplement the force of workers he needed to build more redstone golems. From there, he could roll on to take out the heroes one by one.
All he needed to do was get them out of the village so he could attack it.
He studied each of the places and their locations, both relative to each other and to Highblock Keep. Then, when he was finally ready, he went to find Walda.
She was in the throne room, making decisions for him in his absence. Fortunately—for her—she was sitting in a simple chair off to the side of the central dais. If she’d been on his throne, he would have been tempted to execute her on the spot.
All eyes swung toward Archie as he entered the room. He ignored them and strode straight for his throne. He relished approaching it with his fantastic crown sparkling on his head—almost as much as he enjoyed the respectful attention.
It seemed like everyone in the place held their breath until he was seated. Just as they began to breathe again, he crooked a finger toward Walda to summon her to his side. “A word,” he told her.
She immediately excused herself from the conversation she’d been having and stood up. “Clear the room!” she called out clear and loud.
The others in the throne room vacated it immediately and without objection. The last of them closed the double doors that led into the room behind them with a resounding boom.
“Yes, Arch-Illager?” Walda said as she stood before him. She was so tall that even when standing lower on the steps of the dais, as she was, she could still look him in the eye. The height of Archie’s crown still made his head officially taller, though, so he decided he could tolerate that.
“I have orders for you,” he said. “I have chosen you for a most important mission.”
Walda’s face fell. “Will this take me from your side during the invasion of the village?”
“I’m afraid so,” he said, “but it will ensure the invasion’s success.”
She let the frown on her face transform into a look of sheer determination. “Then I am yours to command.” A dissatisfied look from Archie prompted her to hastily add, “As always.”
Archie ordered her to produce a pen and paper. She complied immediately, taking some from the supply she’d set up next to her desk. He then drew her a rough map of the land. He would have made her do it, but she had no concept of the shape of the place.
In her younger years, she had led nomadic Illagers throughout much of the land—before she had settled down in their tribe’s woodland mansion—but that only gave her an Illager’s view of the place. With the help of the Orb of Dominance, Archie had access to the view of a bird.
The view of a god.
That statement disturbed a part of Archie for reasons he couldn’t put into words. Another part of him was absolutely delighted.
Once he was done with the outline of the map, Archie marked off the different regions he was sending Walda through. He also included the locations of Highblock Keep, the village, and even the Desert Temple—which he instructed her to keep well away from, just in case, although he didn’t say exactly why.
Then he marked the locations of the homes of the four heroes.
“I need you to take the Undead mobs and attack these places,” Archie said to her.
Walda grew pale. “You’re putting me in charge of the Undead?”
“It’s a position of great power,” he said in an effort to keep her from breaking into a full-blown panic. “You’ll lead fully half of our forces, and on a mission of the utmost importance. Without your help, the attack on the village will fail for sure.”
She swallowed hard and nodded firmly, as if she was trying to convince herself that an apparent suicide mission couldn’t possibly be that bad. “And when do I leave on this mission?”
“Immediately,” Ar
chie said. “Now. As soon as you can pack your things, go.”
Walda blew out a long breath as she tried to acclimate herself to the idea of marching off alone, the only living being at the head of an army of Undead mobs. A trip that would have those husks and skeletons following her through the night.
“If you move quickly, the mobs should recall their orders long enough that they won’t turn on you. If you fail, well, you’ll suffer the inevitable consequences.”
“All right,” Walda said after only a moment’s hesitation. Archie could tell she wanted to refuse such a terrifying task, but she feared even more what he would do to her if she defied him.
He smiled at her. “I appreciate your loyalty.”
She nodded, still trying to absorb the horrors that lay ahead of her. “What is the mission?” she asked, distracted by those stray thoughts.
“I need you to find the homes of the four heroes that like to hang around the village, and destroy them.”
If Walda had turned pale before, now she blanched white. She hadn’t led a raiding party in years, preferring to leave that duty to Thord, but with him gone, she seemed like the natural choice. Even she could see that.
The idea of destroying a hero’s home, though, gave her pause. Archie would have been shocked if it hadn’t, maybe enough to pull her away from the mission. Anyone who would promise to take care of something like that without any trepidation was clearly either insane or a liar—or both.
“You don’t need to dismantle them to their foundations,” Archie said. “Actually, I would prefer if you didn’t. I want you to hit each one hard, set it on fire, and then go on to the next.”
Realization dawned on Walda’s face. “You don’t want to hurt them. You just want to distract them.”
Archie grinned at her. “They’re all in the village right now. We just need to draw them out to give ourselves a chance.”
She cocked her head at him. “You don’t think your redstone creatures can tip that scale for us?”
“Possibly,” Archie said. “But there’s too much that can go wrong in a battle. I want to guarantee our success. To do that, I need to at least reduce the number of heroes in the village, if not get rid of them entirely. Every one of them you can draw away will be a huge boon to us.”
Walda gave him a firm nod. “All right,” she said as bravely as she could manage. “I will not fail.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
You have done well.
Archie didn’t need the approval of the Orb of Dominance, but he appreciated it. Regardless of its encouragement, though, he’d begun to have his doubts about the upcoming attack on the village.
That hadn’t stopped him from launching his army out of the doors of Highblock Keep the morning after he’d sent Walda off with the Undead mobs. The Illagers who came with him had been relieved to not have to forge through all the husks and skeletons to find their way south, and he couldn’t say he blamed them. Any day you didn’t have to deal with Undead mobs was a good one.
The march toward the village was mostly uneventful. Despite his arrangement with the Nameless One, Archie steered his army well to the east of the Desert Temple. He didn’t want to tempt the Undead leader into anything that could spoil his plans now.
Because many of them were nomads—or at least hailed from a tribe that had once been—the Illagers were used to such long marches on foot. They hadn’t resided in Highblock Keep long enough to become soft yet. If Archie had his way, they never would. They were a warrior people, always looking for a fight, and to shut them all up inside Highblock Keep forever would destroy the core of who they were.
Once the village and all the heroes were destroyed, Archie knew of no one else who could challenge his supremacy. He could gather even more Illager tribes under his banner, and he could solidify his power from coast to coast.
After that, Archie planned to send his Illagers far and wide. With the Villagers as their unwilling workforce, building more and more golems for them, they could sail across the seas and conquer even distant lands. They could take whatever they wanted without fear of reprisal.
No one would be able to stop him. The wealth of the entire world would be his. Perhaps he would have his empire after all.
At that point, he’d have to figure out if he could really bear to share the land with the Nameless One or not. He had little doubt that the Undead ruler was already plotting against him. It was in the creature’s nature.
The question was: What was the best way to stop that? Should Archie simply try to contain the Nameless One in the desert? Did circumstances demand that he limit its reign to the Desert Temple alone? Or did he really have to crack the entire fortress open and root the Nameless One and its Undead minions out?
Those were problems for another day. First Archie needed to destroy the village. Until he managed that, everything else was just fodder for daydreams.
As his army grew closer to the village, though, his doubts grew too. If he wanted to destroy the heroes—who were the real threat to him and his power—did he really have to raze the village?
Do you remember what the Villagers did to you?
Archie recalled it all vividly. They’d distrusted him at first—especially Salah—but they’d eventually taken him into their village and treated him fairly well. All of that had been due to Yumi’s kindness. If she hadn’t been willing to stick up for him and let him stay in her place, perhaps no one would have.
The day before Archie had left, though, even Salah had been treating him better. Grudgingly, maybe, but better.
If it hadn’t been for Smacker picking on him, Archie might still be living there. A large part of him still wished for that.
Sure, he had incredible power at his disposal. He had control of Highblock Keep and over every Illager in his army. But he still missed the camaraderie he’d found in the village.
He still missed Yumi, his friend.
And now he was going to her home to destroy it and to make her people work in his mines.
If you want to destroy Smacker and the rest of the heroes, you need to destroy the village too. The heroes know the place and the Villagers who live in it. They barter with them. They care about them. Obliterating it will hurt them in a way that even burning their homes to the ground cannot.
Archie understood that—or at least thought he did. Having the Orb whisper things into his head for so long and at any moment of the day had made it hard, sometimes, to keep his own thoughts separate. He wondered if he should put it away for a moment, just so he could walk for a ways on his own, without it reinforcing certain ways of thinking for him.
A great fear that someone might steal his staff from him—along with the Orb of Dominance—seized him then. He knew intellectually that no one would dare try such a thing, but emotionally he couldn’t shake the bone-deep conviction that without the Orb he would be nothing. He needed to cling to it with all his might.
He actually clutched his staff tighter. He didn’t want his people to think he was faltering, so he turned toward the Redstone Monstrosity and ordered it to pick him up. It did so and set him down upon the top of its head.
From up there, Archie could see his entire force of Illagers and redstone golems assembled around him. Together with the Redstone Monstrosity, they formed the most powerful army he had ever seen.
He wondered what Yumi would think when she saw it? More important, what would she do? Would she be wise enough to flee? Or would she be too brave and decide to make a doomed stand with her fellow Villagers?
And how could Archie keep that from happening?
You need not worry about her. She is beneath your notice.
That was the last thing Archie wanted to hear. He didn’t want to attack the village if it would mean Yumi’s defeat. At the very least, he wanted to protect her from his own people.
Ideally, he’
d get her out of there before the attack came, but he didn’t see how he could manage that. He’d tried that the last time he’d led an attack on the village, and that had only ended with him being shot—nearly killed—and kidnapped to the Desert Temple. The way she’d dug her heels in the last time told Archie that he probably wasn’t going to have better luck with her this time.
Maybe if he went into the village alone ahead of time he could warn her. He could disguise himself as a Villager, and with luck, no one would recognize him. Of course, the moment someone did, everything would go sideways. The last thing he needed to do was get captured.
Plus, his great plan depended on him attacking the village before the people there could call for help. If the Villagers managed to alert the heroes and call them back before the full-blown attack, all of Archie’s preparations would be for nothing.
We need those workers. We are on the edge of realizing our goals.
The Orb clearly didn’t want Archie messing around with their plans, and he understood why. Going to save Yumi ahead of time was ridiculously risky—especially when it did nothing to improve their chances of winning the upcoming battle. But Archie just couldn’t find it within himself to leave Yumi’s fate to chance.
You cannot protect her always. You were not so worried about her when you were at Highblock Keep.
That was all true. Archie supposed he could have checked in on Yumi regularly via the Orb to see how she was faring, but he honestly hadn’t worried all that much about her. Life in the village was fairly tranquil almost all of the time—with the exception of the occasional Illager raid. Since Archie was in charge of the Illagers now, no such raid would happen without his orders, which meant—in theory—Yumi was safer than ever.
Now that he was about to lead an attack on her hometown, though, he was going to upend that safety. He knew he couldn’t keep her safe constantly, but he could at least make sure that he—or his people—didn’t threaten her life.
Couldn’t he?
