Tribe Master 5: A Fantasy Harem Adventure

by Noah Layton

  I looked up at the structure. Only now that I was stood before it did I truly realize what this was.

  I hadn’t seen a house that resembled anything like the ones back on Earth since I had arrived in Agraria, but this was the closest thing to it.

  ‘What the hell is this doing here?’ I asked openly.

  ‘We have no idea,’ Lara replied. ‘Do you remember when we robbed Alder’s house in Grayholde? It looks kind of like that, but…’

  ‘Unfinished,’ Ariadne added. ‘It seems that the dead tribe master was building this outside of the reaches of his land.’

  ‘I just don’t understand why he would go to so much trouble,’ Elera said, looking up at the building. ‘Maybe it is the cold speaking, but building structures upon tribal land is so much easier. Why go to the trouble of going so far from his land to build… This.’

  I surveyed the large house for a moment, thinking, before turning to look over the treetops. A little higher and we would be able to see the land where the celebrations were taking place.

  ‘He wanted to look down over his kingdom,’ I said. ‘Maybe that was the plan that he had in mind for all of this. Claiming the surrounding land, collecting it all... I wonder if…’

  I crossed to the house and tapped the edge of the building. It lit up blue to my eyes, and an option window appeared before me.

  This tribal land was recently claimed by you. Would you like to deconstruct?

  Yes/No

  I tapped No and turned to the girls.

  ‘He claimed this section of land as part of his tribe. Makes sense seeing as it would have made the building operation much easier. It’s a pretty interesting custom structure, though. He must have used basic materials to construct it from scratch to his own specifications. Have you checked things out inside yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Lara replied. ‘We couldn’t be sure that there wasn’t some last man still lurking inside after the battle.’

  ‘Garrison loyalists,’ Ariadne muttered, producing one of her scimitars and frowning.

  ‘They’re going to wish they had given themselves up instead of thinking that they could hide from us,’ I remarked, drawing my sword and pressing it to the door.

  I was saying it purely as a formality.

  Garrison’s men had killed warriors under my command. We hadn’t even buried them yet.

  If I stumbled upon a single dark-elf, I would put the sword through his head before he even had a chance to think about begging for mercy.

  I plunged the sword into the wood and watched the obstacle crumble to pieces.

  Locks were no match for us anymore.

  I checked for traps, then moved through the doorway into the dark of the large house.

  The girls followed me in, and we found ourselves standing in a large, empty reception hall. It was the kind of thing that I would expect from a new mansion back on Earth that hadn’t been moved into yet.

  ‘This certainly doesn’t seem like the kind of place that Garrison would want to live,’ Talia remarked, looking around the dark entrance hall. ‘Surely he would want some furniture, some decorations… Something to liven the place up a little.’

  ‘The snow might have gotten in the way of construction,’ I replied, scanning my surroundings carefully. ‘Or maybe the project was too big for him to manage.’

  ‘Bit off more than he could chew,’ Lara smirked.

  ‘Precisely,’ I replied. ‘Let’s clear the rooms. And make sure to watch out for traps.’

  I was still pretty convinced that Garrison wouldn’t risk blowing up his own property, but even though he was dead I still wouldn’t give the guy a single stroke of trust.

  The girls drew their weapons and we split up, examining every room on the ground floor.

  I moved into one of the many rooms and found the same scene that the girls were finding – stone walls that were still in the process of being manipulated and changed.

  Wooden panels covered some sections of the floor, but the rest simply comprised smooth, sanded stone that gave onto more empty rooms.

  We took the well-built staircase to the upper floor and found the situation wasn’t much different. A mezzanine looked out over the staircase and the reception hall, and more doors gave onto more rooms.

  McMansion eat your heart out.

  We investigated every room on the upper floor carefully before concluding that we were probably alone.

  Probably.

  Because there was one more room that we had yet to investigate.

  Opposite the stairs, a huge pair of wooden double doors gave onto a room at the front of the house.

  ‘Does it seem like things should be bigger up here?’ Santana queried. ‘The section overlooking the reception hall must be behind these doors.’

  ‘Uh huh,’ I replied. ‘And I think if anybody is still inside this place, they’re going to be in there.’

  We fell silent, and I nodded to my wives.

  No doubt any occupants of the house would have already heard us; still, I felt compelled to creep quietly to the double-doors and wrap my hand around one of the handles.

  I nodded to my women, and they nodded back, their weapons at the ready. They were always ready to dutifully attack at a moment’s notice if any semblance of a threat appeared.

  I turned the handle slowly and pushed. It gave into the room by an inch.

  We paused collectively with bated breath.

  I nodded to the count of three, then threw the doors open hard and bounded into the room.

  Over my shoulders my wives joined me; Lara with her bow drawn, Elera ready to fire a bolt of frost magic, Ariadne with her dual blades, Talia ready to throw herself at any attacker, and Santana aiming her crossbow with steady hands.

  No threats greeted us. The room was quiet.

  Instead we were met with something so much better – the room itself.

  The huge space was almost the same size as the entire ground floor combined. Luxurious wooden furniture similar to that in the treehouse back on the land crowded the walls, including a huge unused bed set against the left wall.

  At the center of the room a stone firepit had been set into the floor, already filled with unburned and freshly-chopped wooden logs. Beyond it, opposite the door through which we had entered, were a pair of French doors set with glass panes.

  ‘Woah…’ Elera exclaimed quietly. ‘What is this place?’

  ‘I have never seen such luxury,’ Talia said. ‘Not even as a princess of my old tribe.’

  ‘We all know that you were a princess,’ Lara smirked. ‘But thanks for reminding us.’

  ‘I’m serious!’ She laughed. ‘The only buildings that I have even heard of that look like this are…’

  ‘Palaces?’ Ariadne commented.

  At the utterance of the word I turned to look at my foxgirl wife.

  ‘You have palaces in your world?’ I replied.

  ‘Of course we do,’ Santana said. ‘Don’t you remember the stories that we told as we ate around the fire back at the land some time ago? Ruins of old kingdoms exist across Agraria, where dragons guard ancient treasures in the crumbling remains of ancient civilizations. At the center of all of these kingdoms is a palace, and that palace was once owned by a line of kings, long before tribes even walked this land.’

  ‘I thought that was just some old legend.’

  ‘Not at all, husband, but when so few people witness something for themselves and the years pass by, it is easy for such things to fall into the realms of myth.’

  ‘A palace,’ Elera smiled. ‘Can you imagine?’

  ‘I can do more than imagine,’ I smiled to myself, crossing to the bed and running my hand across the soft sheets. Not a fleck of dust came up from it. ‘This was built recently. Looks like the snow really did interrupt its construction.’

  ‘This is the kind of place I could get used to,’ Talia remarked. ‘And if Garrison’s not around to use it, we might as well take control.’

  ‘Already ha
ve,’ I smiled.

  ‘Think we should head back down to the celebrations?’ Ariadne said. ‘People may be starting to wonder where we are.’

  ‘I’m sure that Alorion can keep them occupied,’ I said. ‘Besides, we’ve done enough over the last few days to justify a little rest.’

  ‘Now that’s the kind of suggestion that I like,’ Elera grinned.

  In the pleasant din of the bedroom I brought some flames to life in the firepit. They fed greedily on the logs, and within minutes the whole room was lit up by the ferocious but well-controlled flames inside their stone chamber. Smoke filtered out through an opening in the ceiling, drifting quietly into the night sky.

  My wives stripped off their dresses, sliding out of their clothes into nothing but their underwear.

  We were all exhausted, and I was more than ready to sleep off the events that we had endured over the past few days – but not so ready that I couldn’t indulge in the presence of my wives as they crowded around me beneath the silk sheets of the huge bed.

  Their smooth skin and firm, tight bodies felt incredible as they settled around me, drifting off to sleep in the safety of the house.

  The bed, my wives, the warmth of the fire – all of it felt beyond heavenly. This was what I fought for every day, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  I loved my women more than words could say. They were always at my side, always there to support me, and always ready to lay down their lives in the name of our tribe.

  I wanted to stay awake a little longer just to enjoy the place that we had reached, the pure bliss of this moment as I lay in bed surrounded by my women at the end of another adventure.

  Sleep was ready to take me, though. The decadent perfume of my women was the penultimate thing I registered; the true finality, though, was the blue glow coming from my sword.

  It was propped up in its sheath by the firepit, glowing complacently.

  Every night up until now I had gone to sleep relatively soundly, but there was always a whispering threat lingering in the back of my mind, the worry that a terrible force would attack us while our guard was down.

  That feeling had now gone. With my new sword within arm’s reach, I knew that I could face off against any force that would come through that door to threaten Ariadne, Lara, Santana, Elera, Talia or myself.

  Now I was truly powerful.

  Now I could truly sleep.

  Epilogue

  I awoke a few hours later, finding that it was still night.

  My women were sleeping peacefully, and the press of them and the covers and the hot air against me was enough to knock me out for many hours more.

  Still, my mind was busy.

  I climbed out of bed and pulled on my overshirt, pants and boots quietly before picking up my sword and stepping outside of the hideaway onto the balcony. Despite the cold, the wind at this height had let up, and my body was warm enough thanks to the temperature inside, meaning I could cope with the cold for a few minutes at the least.

  The view that gave over the treetops and down onto our new land looked just as it had before, all lit up with fires that burned strongly against the dark. Many hours had passed, and the citizens were likely all getting some well-deserved slumber considering the silence on the air.

  Beyond it, stretching out into the distance, the forests of Agraria spanned for miles upon miles in the moonlight, as far as the eye could see.

  I had no idea how big this world was. Few did, if any. The Great War that had taken place decades ago had, according to my people, shook Agraria to its foundations, and the three warring sides that had fought each other for control of the world had decimated each other’s forces so severely that no side had come out on top.

  So Agraria had gone back to its wild roots as the world fell silent, the forests grew again, the rivers ran and the animals took over. The remaining forces had split into a countless number of scattered tribes, all trying to make their way in the battered world that had been left behind after the war.

  Tribes had begun to grow. It was likely that there had been plenty of skirmishes and battles between other tribes in the time since. Many beings probably distrusted the idea of larger groups and had withdrawn from the idea altogether.

  It was unavoidable, though. There was safety in numbers, and people would always think of their own safety and those they loved first.

  The rules of power were similarly endless, but one rule always came back around, a rule that couldn’t be disobeyed; it would always fall into the hands of a few small players, and when that happened the final game would take place.

  After the battle in the new land my power had grown considerably.

  I ran my fingers across the sheathed agrarium sword. With this weapon now under my control, my tribe was more powerful than ever.

  I was be more powerful than ever.

  My forces and resources had expanded to incredible numbers in the past day alone. I now had well over a hundred members within my tribe, scattered across four different lands that I also had control of; the main land, the Rourke Homestead, the land of the warriors and this new land that I now looked down upon.

  I possessed a merchant ship, and a sought-after hideout that was hidden away in Ichabod’s Cove.

  With the haul that I would be taking from the new land, my gold reserves would now number well in excess of 100,000 pieces. When I had first arrived, 1000 seemed like a fortune.

  And that was just the pure currency that we were in possession of. I couldn’t even put a price on the assets that we owned – crops, weapons, tools, livestock, horses, precious gemstones and artifacts, and every other resources that belonged to our tribe, not to mention the pegasi that Alorion and I had discovered.

  Now was a time to regroup, to focus on arming our people and defending our free homes.

  Our alliances needed to be strengthened, too. Mariana wanted what was mine.

  And I wanted what was hers.

  She was one of my closest allies in war, but in a way one of my most dangerous enemies.

  She would never dare betray me, of that I was as sure as I could be about anything, but her appetite for this world was different to her father’s.

  The sun-elves had remained insular, locked away from the outside world and only engaging in warfare when they needed to.

  Master Artrix’s response to warfare was quick and clean – the explosives we had used to bring down Garrison were originally intended to blow up the land of the wood-elves until different matters got in the way.

  But the sun-elves weren’t going to maintain that mindset. I knew that Mariana now had a different vision, one that involved expanding the power of her tribe beyond their borders.

  They weren’t going to remain hidden any longer, not after what they had fought on this day.

  Neither was I.

  Then there was the different matter that had negated the need to use the explosives in the first place. Zagor, the gigantic winged demi-god that the wood-elves worshipped, had arisen from beneath the earth.

  He was still out there somewhere. I hoped that he had found another place to slumber far beneath the ground, but somehow I doubted that.

  Garrison had said it himself. Believe me, there are other things that exist in the deep reaches of the world.

  When power presented itself, just like my sword, there were only two approaches; harness it, or destroy it.

  There was no room for a grey area.

  The sun was beginning to rise against the horizon, casting a purple and orange sheen over the land. The short winter spell that we had endured was coming to an end.

  Things wouldn’t be quiet for long. Even though the evening was peaceful, I could practically hear the grunting of our enemies in the forests, the stampeding beasts that they rode, the war cries and the threats of destruction.

  They would be coming to try and take what was ours.

  I smiled at the thought, wrapping my hands tightly around the handle of the sword.

&nb
sp; I was counting on it.

  Because if they tried to take even a shred of what belonged to us, we would take everything that belonged to them.

  Palaces in faraway kingdoms. Those were the stories that my wives had talked about.

  Even though they had probably once existed, they were now just stories on the tongues of the citizens of Agraria.

  Those stories had come from somewhere though, and I had no intention of ceasing the construction of my empire any time soon, or ever for that matter.

  I had a vision for Agraria – to let the people live free, to defeat those who caused misery, and to harness this world’s resources to build an empire.

  One day I would be sat at the throne of a palace overlooking my kingdom, as my tribe encompassed all the peoples of Agraria.

  One day.

  TRIBE MASTER WILL CONTINUE IN BOOK 6

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