by Nick Harrow
There wasn’t much for me to say to that. Delsinia was damned if she did, and damned if she didn’t, at least in her eyes. It was nice to hear that she found my youthful exuberance to be at least somewhat of a strength because that meant she liked me at least as much as old Rathokhetra.
The ancient dungeon lord stirred at that thought, and his displeasure washed over me in cold waves.
“If there was only one thing, then it is this.” Delsinia had finally decided on what she needed to say, and her eyes were bright and clear when she spoke. “You are the ruler of all under your protection. The livestock, the peasants, and your guardians all depend on your choices and your strength to keep them safe. The advice of those you rule may be good, it may be bad. At the end of the day, though, you must be the one who decides the course to take. Only you can choose who to trust, who to disregard, and who to destroy.”
That wasn’t as helpful as I would have liked, but I understood Delsinia’s point. She wanted me to be my own man. I was the dungeon lord, and if I let myself get steered off course by bad advice, everyone would pay for that mistake.
“How did you do it?” I leaned back against the bench to get a better look at the soultaker’s beautiful, wise face. She seemed at peace with the decision she’d made, and her features were serene. “Know who to trust, I mean.”
A cloud passed over her eyes, and when it cleared, I knew Delsinia was centuries away from me. She’d gone back to a time and place as far away from the here and now as my life on Earth.
“I never wanted to be a dungeon lord.” Her voice was so low it was nearly a whisper. If her thoughts hadn’t been so clear to me, I doubt I would have even heard what she said.
“What did you want?”
The soultaker’s smile faltered for a moment, then spread wider. She blinked away the centuries gone by, wrapped her arms around me, and snuggled up.
“I have only ever wanted one thing, my love. Everything I have ever done, everything I will ever do, has been in service to that single goal. It has consumed me for these long, cold years, and it will comfort me in all the good years to come.
“I want to be your queen, Lord Rathokhetra, as it has always been and always shall be.”
Chapter 18 – Gathering Forces
AN HOUR AFTER THEY’D started, the dwarves and smiths had completed their first round of twenty-five swords. They were very proud of the polished sheen of the sharpened blades, and the dwarves demonstrated how keen and durable the weapons had become thanks to their techniques.
“That’s cool.” I lifted one of the blades from where they’d left them near the carts. A quick glance with my dungeon lord vision told me that this was, in fact, a very nice greatsword worth an even fifty gold pieces. “Delsinia, escort the herdsmen and their goats to get more iron ore. Leave the greatswords here. I’ll deal with them later.”
“As you wish, my love,” Delsinia said. The kind tone of her voice vanished an instant later when she addressed the herdsmen. “On your feet, you louts. We have work to do and no time for dawdling.”
Delsinia winked at me as she barked orders and whipped the men into shape and led the train of goats toward the entrance to my dungeon.
“She’s something else.” Tarl tugged on his beard and watched Delsinia walk out of sight. “I don’t know what, but she’s something.”
“She’ll be the death of you if she catches you ogling her.” I glared at the dwarf and he looked away, embarrassed. “Or I will be.”
The dwarf chuckled nervously and shuffled away to bark orders at the blacksmiths under his tutelage. They’d all seen what had happened, though, and ripped him back hard enough to transform his harsh demeanor into embarrassed good humor.
I couldn’t exactly blame the guy for eyeballing Delsinia, but far better that he be afraid of me catching him doing it then Delsinia actually snaring him red-handed. She’d pull his eyeballs out and feed them to him.
My trip back to City Hall was peppered with short conversations with my citizens. We were in that weird stage between godlike aloofness and relatable man on the street, and I hated every second of it. Half my citizens were scared shitless of me, and the other half thought I was their personal fixer for any problem they might have. For every crowd that avoided me like the plague, there was a merchant or three who wanted me to talk to their rivals about the evils of price-fixing or some other imagined slight. I had to constantly flip-flop back and forth between being the kind and just ruler and telling people to shut the fuck up and leave me alone.
It was enough to give a guy who had a ghost living in his head a split personality.
Zillah was in much the same boat. She’d somehow drawn the short straw and been stationed outside City Hall to keep the crowds away. She’d been successful in that there weren’t a bunch of petitioners waiting outside to bother me with their concerns, but she had attracted a significant crowd of admirers who watched her from the safety of the small restaurant’s outdoor seats across the street.
“They love me here.” She stretched her arms back and let the sun shine on the chitinous bands that scarcely covered her chest. “But not as much as I love you.”
She pounced on me with a throaty growl and nearly tripped me with her tail as it wrapped around my legs. The scorpion queen melted against me in a way that I knew had every eyeball across the street bugging from their sockets with jealousy.
“That’s good to know.” I slung Zillah over my shoulder and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. I ascended the stairs in a quick trot that had her struggling to catch her breath by the time we’d reached the doors to City Hall.
“You must’ve been a naughty boy,” Zillah chided me as we entered the audience chamber. “Nephket is pissed off.”
“Yeah, well,” I muttered, “somebody filled her head with nonsense.”
Zillah used her tail as a lever and bolted off my shoulder. She landed in front of me and pressed the fingertips of her right hand over her heart.
“You think I had something to do with that?” The scorpion queen sniffed dismissively. “Maybe if you had been a little more forthcoming with how guardian bonds work, they wouldn’t have come to me with so many questions.”
The audience chamber was empty, so I took a seat on my throne and motioned for Zillah to join me. Might as well get this conversation out of the way so we could get down to the serious business of saving the city.
“Maybe you all should’ve spoken to me instead of gossiping behind my back. I’ve never lied to any of you, but if there are things I don’t understand, how would I know what I wasn’t telling you?”
Zillah consider that question as she approached my throne and settled into my lap.
“You’re the dungeon lord. You’re supposed to know everything.”
“I’ve been a dungeon lord for less than three weeks.” It was beyond frustrating that people kept forgetting that. “There’s a lot of shit I don’t know. That’s why I need all of you to work with me.”
“I didn’t know.” Zillah furrowed her brow in concentration. “I guess I should’ve, but I didn’t think about it. You’re always so confident. You always know what to do next. I assumed you knew about the bonds and how they could be broken.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t. And now Kez and Neph are positive Delsinia’s going to break loose and kill us all. How do I fix that?”
“We can always try to fuck some sense back into them. I’ll be glad to help.”
“Do you think Del’s a danger?” I put on my best serious face to make sure Zillah understood I meant business. Her suggestion was welcome, but I needed real help here.
“I do. I think she wants something that’s gone. And I think she’s willing to do a lot to get it.” Zillah took my hand in hers and rubbed my knuckles against her cheek. “But, honestly? I don’t think she’ll hurt you. At least she won’t intend to. It’s the rest of us that have to watch out for her.”
Delsinia’s words on the edge of the oasis seemed a lot more sinister in l
ight of what Zillah had to say. Would the soultaker do away with the rest of my guardians to secure her position as queen?
“Thanks for the very unpleasant thought to consider.” I pinched Zillah’s cheek lightly and chucked her under the chin. “For that, it’s only fair I give you the dirty job. Go get Big Gnome and all her little buddies.”
“Oof, you fight dirty.” Zillah curled up closer to me and drew a long, warm line up the side of my neck with the tip of her tongue. “Wouldn’t you rather I stay here with you instead of going down there with those nasty little pervert gnomes?”
“There are a lot of things I would rather,” I chuckled. “But everybody’s got a job to do today. Unfortunately, this one is best suited to your abilities.”
The scorpion queen sighed and draped herself dramatically over the arm of my throne. The bands of chitin that served as her clothing and armor revealed far more than they concealed, and it took all my self-control to stick to my guns.
“Fine.” Zillah pulled herself together and lifted herself out of my lap with her tail. She hung in the air before me for a moment, and when I didn’t react to what she had to offer, she crossed her arms over her chest and backed away. “Where do you want me to take them?”
“To the Solamantic Web. Stick them in the waiting room and have Pinchy and her friends keep an eye on them. If you need me to help you herd them, let me know. I’ll hop back inside you to scare the living shit out of those creepy fucks.”
“Why don’t you just get inside me now?” She winked and darted away before I could respond. “I know, I know. Business, then pleasure. Lots and lots of pleasure.”
“If it’s any consolation, you can eat one of them if they get out of hand.”
“Truly?”
“I’ve never been more serious.” I crossed my heart with my right index finger. “But just one.”
“Ooh, this is exciting.”
The doors closed quietly behind Zillah, and the empty audience chamber felt less alive than ever. The scorpion queen had made my life harder than it had to be with the information she’d revealed to her sisters, but I couldn’t blame her. She was worried about us.
“Nothing can ever just be simple,” I muttered.
“Bacon is simple.” Izel appeared from around the edge of my throne, a wahket right behind her. “Kirzet says it’s just pig and smoke.”
“That isn’t exactly what I said.” The wahket bowed to me and hustled Izel toward the front doors. “Come along, child, Lord Rathokhetra has many things he must do today.”
The wahket was right. I still had a lot of work to do and a dwindling amount of time in which to do it. With the blink of my eyes I popped out of City Hall and over to the buildings Nephket had picked out to house the raiders.
The treasure hunters had settled in quite well and had even gone so far as to establish a few guards who patrolled their block. The rest of the raiders lounged outside their new dwellings, sharpened their weapons in open doorways, or relaxed in the shadows inside their new homes.
“Where’s Charlie?” I asked the small knot of guards who eyeballed me as they approached. They clearly knew who I was, but they wanted me to know they weren’t afraid of the big, scary dungeon lord.
“That’s her place.” The leader nodded his head toward one of the few unpainted buildings in the area. Its door was closed, and the curtains had been drawn over the windows. “But I don’t think she’s taking visitors.”
“Thanks for the heads up. She’ll see me.”
The other guard, a stocky human with a bare chest and more tattoos than sense, rested his hand on the hilt of his broadsword and stepped between Charlie’s place and me before I could take a step in that direction.
“I think my friend said Charlie wasn’t available for visitors.”
There were a few different ways I could’ve handled the situation. In the end, I decided the assholes weren’t worth the ka and walked right past them without kicking their asses over the moon. The tattooed man shuddered as my body drifted through his.
“And I said she’d see me.”
Unfortunately, my super spooky ghost routine didn’t do shit to the front door. Unlike City Hall, which I seemed to be able to manipulate just as I could my dungeon, the rest of the city didn’t respond to my ghostly hands. I should’ve brought some wahket to deal with this stuff.
“Charlie!” I shouted with amplification courtesy of the Dungeon Speaks ability. “Get your ass out here.”
A few seconds passed before I heard anyone move in the house. Finally, someone grumbled, footsteps descended the staircase from the upper floor, and the door cracked open. Charlie peered at me through the gap with one bloodshot eye.
“I thought we had today to rest.” She looked as pissed off as I felt. “You’re a real liar.”
“Open the door. This won’t take long.”
The half-orc obliged my request and stepped out of the way. The interior of her borrowed home was empty save for the shadows that filled its corners. She walked into a room I could tell was supposed to be the kitchen because of the clay oven built into its wall, then spread her arms out to her sides.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” she said with a snaggle-toothed grin. “What brings you by this morning?”
“Plans. You already know the basics, but I want to get down to details.”
Charlie’s grin faded, and she gave me a sharp nod.
“We’re not soldiers, but I promised we’d help you.” Charlie crossed her arms over her chest and waited for her marching orders. “And as soon as we’re done with this, you’ll send us home.”
“That’s the deal. I’ve got three jobs for you. First, you’re my ninja team. I’ve got ways to get you folks around the battlefield without being seen. We plan on hitting Lexios before he’s ready to come at us. I want your people to set a bunch of fires in his camp.”
“We can do that.” Charlie held up her index finger. “That’s one, and it doesn’t even sound too scary. What’s number two?”
“We don’t have a lot of people. Lexios outnumbers us by a fucking lot. To survive, we're going to have to use hit-and-run tactics. After you’re done setting fires, you’ll pull back for a while.” I wished I had a whiteboard or some other way to illustrate what I wanted from Charlie and the other raiders. “When I give you the word, you’ll use the secret travel paths to harass the tax collector’s troops with surprise attacks. Don’t get stuck in close combat with his soldiers. That’s what they want, and it’ll get you killed.”
“Seems simple enough. How will we know where you want us to hit?”
“I’m sending one of my people with you. She’ll guide you through the secret paths and she’ll tell you where I want the hits.” I waited for Charlie to ask any questions she might have before I continued. Finally, she shrugged and motioned for me to go on. “Ready for number three?”
“I take it this is the one I won’t like.” Charlie smiled and revealed a mouthful of jagged teeth.
“I need you to be the hare to Lexios’s hound. Lead some of his troops into a trap I’ve set for him.”
Charlie paced back and forth a few times before she stopped in front of me.
“Why us? You have guardians. Wouldn’t they be a better choice than my crew?” Another thought occurred to her, and she eyed me skeptically.
“No. I don’t have enough guardians to keep Lexios’s attention. The raiders have the numbers to catch his eye, but not so many that he’ll worry about you turning around and fighting. This is the best way.”
Charlie was suspicious by nature, and she studied me for a long time while she tried to decide if I was shooting straight with her or if there was something fishy about this deal. I met her penetrating gaze without flinching because I had nothing to hide. The battle plan was the battle plan. Finally, she nodded.
“Thanks for trusting us. I won’t let you down.”
“Trusting you?” I laughed. “I’m only working with you because you guys need me to get yo
u home. You have every bit as much to lose if this fight goes south as I do.”
The half-orc’s eyes narrowed at that, but she let it go with a halfhearted shrug. We both knew the score: we weren’t friends; we weren’t even really allies. But we needed each other, and sometimes that was all that mattered.
“When do we move?” she asked.
“When I tell you to.” I walked out of the kitchen. I raised my voice so she could hear me as I headed outside. “Be ready to roll at a moment’s notice.”
I grinned as I heard her cursing behind me and teleported over to Nephket.
My priestess flinched when I appeared off to her right side, but she didn’t jump this time.
“Do you have to do that?” She threw a halfhearted, exasperated punch into my left shoulder. “You’re taking years off my life every time you poof in like that.”
“What is this place?” I didn’t recognize the cozy little room in which Nephket and I stood. The wahket she was with were gathered around a low dining table, its surface crowded with plates filled with cubes of barely seared red meat, bright blue bowls overflowing with spicy dipping sauces, and small iron braziers that held dancing flames. The wahket were all armed with long, two-tined forks they used to stab the meat, warm their food in the flames, and then dip it into the sauce.
I really wanted to join them.
“It’s a restaurant over on the south side of the oasis,” Nephket said. “Some tribesmen opened it after your last expansion. Or before your last expansion? I can’t keep it straight. It’s good stuff, though.”
“Looks like it. Am I disturbing something?”
The wahket watched the exchange between Neph and I with wary eyes. Seemed like everyone knew we’d had a little tiff.
“A strategy session.” The priestess stabbed a cube of meat on her fork and waved it to the flames. “I suppose you have something more important for me?”
