Tribe Master 5: A Fantasy Harem Adventure

by Noah Layton

  ‘What is this magic?’ Ariadne said with amazement, looking around at the pictures cast upon the walls.

  ‘This isn’t magic,’ I said. ‘This is dwarven engineering, and it’s going to lead us to the agrarium. Do you girls recognize any of this?’

  My wives all turned their attention to the walls – even Elera, my nymph, who in these cold times could hardly be dragged from the bathtub, pulled her naked body dripping with water out and looked around.

  At first it seemed like there were three images, but quickly it became apparent that they were all part of one bigger picture.

  ‘You girls ever seen anything like this before?’

  ‘Never,’ Elera muttered in a bewildered whisper, ‘are you sure this isn’t magic…?’

  ‘Even for the dwarves this is engineering of an unheard-of sort,’ Lara said with wonder. ‘Capturing images and placing them somewhere new…’

  We examined the flickering image that was cast upon the walls. It depicted trees and shrubs, with strange structures interspersed among them.

  ‘I would say maybe it’s part of the forest,’ Talia shrugged, ‘but it seems that that part is quite obvious. Perhaps a feature can provide some specific marker…’

  Upon closer inspection, the central aspect of the image depicted a collection of ruins; stone columns and platforms sat amongst the trees of the forest. They were beyond derelict, their corners and sides chipped and weathered by decades if not centuries of wear.

  We examined them in silence for several minutes, tracing and trailing the flickering images.

  ‘Wait,’ Santana said suddenly, rushing to her collection of books by the bed and retrieving one with the title Ruins of the Old World. ‘I know where this is. It’s not far from the homestead. Just a few miles northeast.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ I exclaimed with excitement. ‘That’s how close we are?’

  ‘I’m deadly serious. This place is not far at all…’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘They’re a small collection of ruins from an ancient tribe. It’s very obscure. According to lore it was an observation deck to the skies. The tribe, whoever they were, would gather here beneath the night sky and perform a ritual just as the particular constellations appeared overhead.

  ‘They’re nothing but crumbling pieces of old stone and marble now, but they have remained that way for centuries. During the Great War they were in such a secluded part of the forest that no tribe ever found their way to it.’

  ‘I can’t believe we’ve been this close this whole time…’ I whispered, staring up at the flickering image. ‘This is where it is… This is the location of the final challenge.’

  ‘The first challenge was an incredibly dangerous doppelganger,’ Lara said. ‘The second involved zombies, crossing a bottomless chasm and defying death. What the hell is the third going to consist of?’

  ‘Intellect,’ I replied, remembering the symbols from the very first clue. ‘The first revolved around combat and the second agility, and the hints from the psycho that designed these things made that pretty clear. This is different. It could be some kind of puzzle, something that needs to be decoded.’

  ‘What if that’s just a trick?’ Elera said. ‘I spent many years misleading men by promising them their dreams before stealing their clothes and leaving them waist-deep in water.’

  ‘Not all beings have the same devious streak as you,’ Lara laughed.

  ‘But this blacksmith does,’ I frowned admittedly. ‘The first two were about movement, but they still weren’t what they appeared. Locked doors, tombs, traps, crumbling walls, hidden monsters… There’s not a shred of doubt in my mind that this will be another story of deception.

  ‘We know the location. That’s the important thing. That’s the strength that we have. All we have to do is figure out what kind of challenge we’re up against, and then we can figure out how best to approach it. We stake it out, come back to the land to prepare if we have to, and then take this thing head-on.’

  The prize was in reach. I could feel it.

  ***

  After a decent night’s sleep with my wives, I geared up and prepared to venture out to the ruins of the North. Santana prepared a map to help guide our way there, which she presented to myself, Alorion and the rest of my wives in the Map Room.

  ‘The homestead is not far,’ she said as the blue grid on the stone table came to life. She placed her hand on the tablet at the head of the table, then uploaded her map as an overlay onto our current understanding of the lay of the land. ‘The ruins are just a few miles north of the homestead. They reside in a patch of dense forest – it shouldn’t be too hard to get there. Just follow this trail…’

  She traced her finger along the blue grid, following the line that she had drawn on the handmade map.

  ‘We could just head north-west of our land, couldn’t we?’ I suggested. ‘Wouldn’t that lead us to our destination faster?’

  ‘If you stayed on the right track,’ she replied. ‘But like I said, the forest becomes dense and untamed out there. I only know this way, and the homestead is a reasonable point at which to rest.’

  ‘Good point,’ I agreed. ‘Now, we’re going to keep numbers low just while we check this place out. This is the last challenge and we don’t know how dangerous it’s going to be. Ariadne, Talia, you’re coming with me. Everyone else, stay on alert here and keep an eye out for any threats. We’ll make it back as quickly as we can.’

  For once, my closest advisors were all in agreement. Even if we knew that we had the upper hand with regards to the location of the final challenge – and likely the agrarium itself – we had to act quickly.

  The forests were dangerous, and I couldn’t risk an attack. We had already sustained one in the last ten days and lost one of our people to it.

  I couldn’t let that happen again.

  Less than an hour later I headed out into the wilds of the snowy forest with Ariadne and Talia. We travelled along the north-western trail that led to the Rourke Homestead, arriving before midday at the gate of the outer perimeter.

  Jeremiah and Lola left their house and approached the gate with weapons raised, but upon laying eyes on us quickly lowered them.

  ‘Master Jack,’ Jeremiah said, unlocking the gate and letting us in, ‘a pleasant surprise. How are things?’

  ‘Dangerous,’ I smiled. ‘How are things here?’

  ‘Running well. The livestock are holding up in the cold.’

  ‘And you two?’

  ‘We have the furnace to keep us warm. Food stores are building up nicely.’

  Ariadne and Lola embraced quickly upon the gate opening, pressing their foreheads to each other’s briefly in a brief show of affection before withdrawing from each other. It was a motion that I had seen them pull on certain occasions when they had been apart for some time.

  We had found Lola on a research expedition out in the Black Patch, the remote area of dangerous marshland downriver from Ichabod’s Cove. She was one of many fox-people who had escaped the clutches of slavery when Ariadne’s tribe had been overrun.

  Now she was living at the homestead with Jeremiah, putting her wrangling skills to good use.

  And it was no mystery to me that the two of them were practically an item now – no mystery because Jeremiah had told me the explicit details to my face.

  Say what you will about the people of Agraria; they were honest.

  ‘We’re heading north of here in search of something,’ I said to Jeremiah, presenting the map. ‘What can you tell me about these ruins?’

  Ten minutes later we were standing in the northern-most part of the snowy pasture, looking over the gate to forest that we had not trekked before.

  But Jeremiah had.

  ‘I discovered it some years ago during my explorations of the wilds after I first settled here. The forest surrounding it is thick, but there is a trail that begins a few hundred yards from here that should provide a reliable route. I cannot promise tha
t it will not be overgrown now, though.’

  ‘Not the worst thing in the world.’

  ‘Indeed. Why is it you are venturing there, tribe master?’

  ‘There might be something there of interest to us.’

  ‘It is not surprising,’ Lola added. ‘Those things that are most prized are often hidden in the most dangerous of places.’

  ‘Let’s hope you’re wrong,’ I smiled.

  ‘This place is, admittedly, no different,’ Jeremiah continued.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I am not so sure myself of what I mean,’ he laughed fleetingly. ‘I have no desire to return to that place, though.’

  ‘There’s trouble that way?’

  ‘Not that I saw when I first discovered it, but it possesses a strange quality… Almost as if there is some unnatural force that resides there… Something ancient and deadly.’

  I looked out to the snowy, silent forest north of the pasture.

  ‘I’m counting on it,’ I whispered quietly to myself.

  Lola provided us with further provisions for our journey, and we left the homestead a short while later on our trek north.

  ‘We must soon begin to ask ourselves the question of what this treasure does,’ Ariadne said.

  ‘Jeremiah said it felt like there was an ancient and deadly presence,’ Talia said. ‘That does concern me just a tad.’

  ‘More than a stone column filled with zombies collapsing and almost killing us?’ I asked.

  ‘You never know,’ Talia replied.

  ‘Ancient and deadly. That seems to fit the agrarium just fine based on the lengths at which the dwarves have gone to hide it.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s going to be a double-edged sword, do you?’ Ariadne asked. ‘I mean, not literally a double-edged sword, but something that is both beneficial and destructive to the one who wields it.’

  ‘If it was purely destructive to all things around it, Blacksmith Kalungri would have surely just dropped it into the darkest hole that he could find and be done with it, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘If he’s crazy enough to build all of these elaborate challenges in an effort to hide it,’ Talia replied, ‘surely he is mad enough to have other peculiar beliefs.’

  I couldn’t help but agree as I listened to them both. The truth about what awaited me beyond the completion of the final challenge was gnawing at the back of my mind like a cloaked monster.

  The gods used this substance to craft their weapons. Was a weapon what awaited me?

  ‘Hmmmm…’

  A sudden low whirring sound cut through the crunching of the snow beneath our feet like a knife.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ I asked aloud, pulling to an immediate halt and drawing my sword.

  ‘What was what?’ Ariadne asked, drawing her twin blades and scanning the forest.

  Talia shifted into a fighting stance too, scanning her surroundings with a skeptical look.

  My wives both looked to me in confusion after a couple of seconds.

  ‘What is it we’re looking for, Jack?’ Talia asked.

  ‘You didn’t hear that?’ I said, searching around and scanning the forest floor. ‘That sound…’

  My wives exchanged a quick look, shaking their heads.

  ‘Probably just the wind,’ Ariadne said, sheathing her blades.

  Ariadne had the best sense of hearing of my wives by far, and Talia wasn’t far behind. Their senses were almost supernatural in sensitivity.

  And yet neither of them had heard a thing.

  Did I really just imagine that?

  ‘Probably nothing,’ I said, quickly changing the subject and sheathing my own longsword. ‘Let’s get moving.’

  I told myself that I had heard nothing.

  Before long we found the trail on Santana’s map. Jeremiah was half-right; while the route north was clear for a few hundred yards, it quickly became overgrown with shrubs and branches.

  The undergrowth was so thick that the cold weather had failed to rid our path of obstacles. Our pace promptly slowed, and for the next mile we were cutting through twigs and decaying mulch.

  I constantly kept my eyeline flitting between the trail, the map and the obstacles blocking our way.

  I was so focused on the path ahead that it took me hundreds of yards of progress before I finally looked around to see the true nature of the scene we were standing in.

  We were standing on a blackened pathway that cut through ever-growing darkness. Thick trunks flanked us on either side, blocking any sight of a more optimal path – or potential attackers that might be waiting in the darkness.

  As I surveyed the forest, I thought I caught sight of movement jolting between the trees, shifting the balance of light.

  I stared hard, but nothing else appeared.

  ‘Wait…’

  This time it was Ariadne that had spoken.

  Talia and I turned sharply to her. She was staring hard towards the ground, her ears twitching, pulling the same motions she did every time she was straining her sense of sound.

  ‘What is it?’ I whispered after a long stretch of silence.

  Ariadne glanced up and frowned at me, then at the forest.

  ‘Nothing…’ She replied suspiciously. ‘Just thought that I heard movement. No matter. This is a densely packed area. Such sounds from the beasts in the area would not be a surprise.’

  ‘Beasts?’ Talia repeated.

  ‘We need to keep our guard up,’ I said, getting my sword at the ready. ‘There might be a reason why these ruins are so difficult to find.’

  We had to move fast, and we had to keep our eyes open.

  Before long the trail began to clear again, and the path ahead became much more apparent.

  Then, suddenly, the trail opened wide.

  Daylight flooded into a large clearing just fifty yards ahead.

  ‘This is it,’ I said, my wives stopping either side of me and looking ahead. ‘You girls hear anything?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Ariadne said after a moment of glancing around. ‘I believe we are alone.’

  I could make out some features of the ruins up ahead, but only vague shapes.

  But I didn’t trust this location in the slightest. Even here, far away in the forest, I expected some retribution to come hurtling towards me out of nowhere.

  The first two challenges had taught me as much.

  ‘You girls hold up back here,’ I said. ‘Duck into the forest and stay off the trail. I’m going to check this out.’

  Ariadne and Talia both hugged me, nuzzling into my chest.

  ‘Be careful,’ Ariadne said, kissing me and pressing her hands to my cheeks as she gazed into my eyes.

  ‘Always am,’ I winked.

  They both moved into the trees nearby, and I stared down the path ahead, examining every single orifice and opening.

  No tripwires. No spiked logs waiting to come swinging down from the trees above. No hobgoblin assailants waiting in the shadows.

  I was alone.

  I started ahead, taking cautious footsteps towards the clearing with a hand firmly on my sword and my other ready at a moment’s notice to bring up my spell selection wheel.

  I had no hesitations about incinerating anything that posed even the slightest threat.

  Needless to say, I was done with this dwarven blacksmith’s bullshit.

  Why did he just disappear? I thought as I approached the clearing. You stumble upon an immensely powerful, near-mythical substance, and the first thing you do is create a series of challenges that are nigh-on impossible to complete, and after it all you go missing. Did he go into hiding? What about the other blacksmiths who helped him? Where the hell did they all go?

  ‘Hmmmm…’

  There it was. That sound again.

  I jolted to a stop and looked around.

  Nothing jumped out at me. No threats presented themselves.

  I must be going crazy.

  I slowed as I approached the end of the trail,
then I searched about.

  The clearing measured around a hundred yards in diameter, roughly forming a circle that surrounded the ruins at its center.

  The ruins were composed of crumbling marble and stone columns situated at the very center of the circle. They stood upon a small rise, protected from the ground below but not from the battering of the weather over the years.

  That said, it could withstand the elements – it had taken 500 years of walking up and down the steps of the leaning tower of Pisa just to wear them down by an inch or two. As a result there was little difference between the images projected from the second orb and the one that stood before me.

  This was the place.

  In contrast to the rest of the forest, the ground here was different. The snow was minimal, and for some reason the grass was still flourishing, like the clearing existed in its own tiny biome. It was beautiful.

  But I had been screwed over enough times by hidden traps that I was still paranoid beyond belief.

  I scanned the scene before me. Still no sign of any traps in the grass. No mines, no bombs, no tripwires.

  I reached into the undergrowth of the forest’s edge and lifted a hefty log, then hurled it into the clearing.

  Nothing happened – no disappearing floor, no bizarre magical electric field, no zombies clawing up from beneath the earth.

  ‘Fuck it,’ I muttered to myself, stepping forward.

  I crossed the forest’s precipice and started across the clearing.

  I felt deathly exposed in the empty space. The crunch of the grass beneath my feet seemed to be the only thing that existed between myself and the ruins at the center of the huge clearing.

  I slowed as I approached them, examining the collapsed columns and fallen stones.

  Stood between them all was a platform raised several feet above the rest.

  I climbed atop it and searched among the rubble of the old world – and there, through a gap just large enough for a man to slide through, was a tunnel mounted with stone steps.

  This is it, I thought. This is the final challenge.

  And at that very moment, I heard the unmistakable drawing of a bow string.

  ‘Cease your movements, tribe master,’ the smooth voice called out.

  Fuck.