Empire Builder 2

by Dante King

  “Come in,” Ben said. He hopped off the edge of his bed and dressed himself in the dark robes his wardrobe had made available to him. The robes were India-ink dark, decorated with swooping, almost floral patterns.

  They were practical clothes. They wouldn’t provide a lot of protection, but they allowed for freedom of movement. And Ben liked the way he looked in them—the swooshing, hanging fabric reminded him of a superhero cape, and was vastly more appealing to him than the sort of stuffy, corporate suit a powerful man might wear back on Earth.

  Lexi opened the door as he approached and stepped inside. She gave Ben a look up and down, nodding approvingly at his clothes.

  “You truly look like a ruler,” she said, meeting his gaze.

  “Thank you,” he said, tugging his robe. “Now I just need to become powerful like one. I’ve spent a little time practicing with my blade.”

  “Yes? And how did that go?”

  “The less said, the better.”

  “I see. Keep at it—in time, the skill will come.”

  “I’m certain it will. But right now, I’m thinking of practicing my magic.”

  “Are you thinking of training your Transform spell?” Lexi asked.

  “That’s right,” Ben said. “Any last tips?”

  “You have more experience than I do with casting the spell,” Lexi said. “There is one tip I have heard, however.”

  “What would that be?” Ben asked.

  “I have heard from other beastkin that one can get lost inside one’s beast form,” Lexi cautioned. “Some mages have been lost to their animal selves, never to return. The ego is eroded, and all traces of humanity vanish for good.”

  Ben remembered how he had sensed the presence of another mind—the raw, instinctive mind of a hawk—when he was in the hawk form. His human consciousness had receded. It didn’t surprise him to hear that this consciousness could take over his own entirely.

  “How do I avoid such a fate?” Ben asked. “I am rather fond of my human form.”

  Lexi chuckled. “Ruling your Empire would be difficult as a hawk. And I still want that spell back.”

  “Don’t worry,” Ben said with a smile. “You’ll get it back soon. Is there a way to hold onto my human identity?”

  “Certain items can be infused with the soul of the wearer and serve as an anchor to the real world,” Lexi said. “You will sense the presence of these items even when you are in your beast form. Or so I have heard.” Lexi shrugged.

  “That sounds a little like the relics I left behind as Forgotten Ruler,” Ben said. “Many of them are infused with remnants of my memories or power.”

  “Those could well be the key to preserving your hold on reality,” Lexi said. “Experiment with them while you are practicing and see if you notice a difference.”

  “I will,” Ben said. “Thank you, Lexi. I appreciate you looking out for me.”

  “Of course.” Lexi smiled. “And good luck.” If you need me, I’ll be in the Library practicing my magic. I have a long journey ahead of me with the Purify spell, and I need to begin as soon as I can.”

  “Good luck,” Ben said.

  Lexi nodded, then left to return to the Library and continue improving her Purify spell. Ben found the crystal orb Melody had given him when he had first come to this world.

  The orb was larger than his fist, so not very practical, but it fit into a satchel that he could wear over his shoulder. He would see if it was possible to shrink the orb later, or cut a chunk out of it and wear it as jewelry. For the time being, it ought to suffice as an anchor to reality.

  The idea of using a talisman to anchor him to reality reminded him of the method used in Inception to keep track of whether one was in a dream. It seemed like an elegant solution.

  For the next week, everyone trained relentlessly. Ben practiced transforming between hawk and human form until he could perform it effortlessly. He could be in mid-flight and take human form, landing on his feet with a roll. He could jump off a wall and transform into a hawk before hitting the ground, gliding away smoothly.

  It took some time to set the orb to function as an anchor. He worked with Melody in the Library to find the proper texts. It took days of trial and error to finally get the orb to work as an anchor.

  But it did work. The orb did in fact help him stay anchored to the real world. His human consciousness was sharper, clearer, in the background his hawk-mind, no matter how insistent the animal side of him became.

  He also learned to soar higher, as well as lower, skimming the ground until the grass tickled his underside. He learned to catch rabbits and fish, birds and other small creatures, providing some variation to their daily meals.

  Melody, Lexi, Lulu and Vinata trained their spells in the Library every day, making a little more progress every time. They demonstrated what they had learned out on the lawns. It was small progress, but Ben was impressed every time, and made sure to encourage their efforts.

  Vinata trained the aurochkin in farming and harvesting, cooking and cleaning, and other domestic duties. The monsterkin made themselves indispensable around the tower, keeping the place in tip-top shape. And everyone looked forward to the meals they would prepare.

  Sybil turned out to be an apt student, picking up the basics of spell acquisition from Melody in the Library. She ‘d gotten better at manipulating her mana, and even learned to regenerate it a little more quickly.

  Sir Gallant the Younger familiarized himself with every instrument of torture he could find in the dungeons. He found controls for the doors and the various devices that would allow him to operate everything even at his own small stature. He could transport a prisoner in and perform an interrogation without help. Ben still withheld permission for any practical demonstrations however, much to the small knight’s chagrin.

  Sir Gallant summoned monsters on the ground floor of the tower. The women took turns dispatching the monsters, allowing the monster children to increase their power by consuming the monsters’ carcasses, or just by being present during the combat. Sometimes the monster children were able to coordinate their attacks and take down a monster themselves.

  They grew in strength and continued to evolve along the paths they had already opened up. Soon Mander and Sap became fierce fighters, and Lily was able to replenish mana more and more quickly. She visited Sir Gallant the Younger in the control room periodically to replenish his supply.

  One day, after they’d been training for about ten days, Ben managed to fly higher than he’d ever gone before, circling the crown of the tower. He could see so much from there, as much as he could when he was in the crown itself. That would allow him to survey the land much more effectively.

  He flew past his bedroom as he began to descend, and saw Lulu admiring the egg collection yet again, with the monster children crowded around behind her. He paused in his descent and hovered in front of the window.

  Lulu looked up and spotted him. Her eyes went wide with surprise. Then she waved. Ben saw her lips moving, and it looked like she was saying, “Look, there’s daddy.”

  The monster children regarded him, clearly a little confused. They didn’t recognize him in his hawk form. But they seemed to sense his presence and eventually became excited, pressing up to the windowpane.

  Ben could feel a powerful amount of energy escaping from his body through the window. He was spending a lot of mana in his hawk form, hovering there. He hadn’t been aware of his own magical aura before, but now he could sense it flowing around him.

  Lulu sprang to her feet. She opened her mouth wide, as though she were screaming. Judging by the way the monster children turned to look at her, she was. But there was excitement in her eyes.

  She rushed to the window and stared intently at Ben. She pointed behind her to some of the eggs. One of them wobbled all by itself.

  Lulu was mouthing words, but Ben could hear nothing through the glass. He decided to descend to the ground and come up to his bedroom himself to see what the fuss wa
s about.

  He spread his wings and focused on the ground below. He dove headfirst, plunging at phenomenal speed. Everything became a blur. He had learned how to use his eyelids to protect his eyes from the wind, which would rip tears from him if he wasn’t careful.

  As the ground rushed up to meet him, he kept his full attention on the air whistling past him. He had misjudged his timing a couple of times in the past. Too soon and he would be left hovering above the ground. Too late, and he would hit it with an impact that could injure or kill with enough speed.

  This time he judged it almost perfectly, coming to a halt several yards above the ground. He dipped his wings and brought himself gently to the ground, transforming back to his human form as he landed.

  He made a dash for the tower. It seemed that Lulu had already informed the others. The women joined him in the elevator as they rode for the crown.

  When they entered the master suite, Lulu and the monster children had gathered in a circle, watching the eggs.

  “Which ones are hatching?” Ben asked.

  “I think they’re the same ones as before,” Lulu replied, distractedly.

  That meant Melody, Lulu and Vinata were the mothers. The monster children moved aside, allowing Ben and the women to kneel down and wait to greet the new arrivals.

  Sure enough, two more cat children emerged clawed at their eggs, along with another walking tree, a lizard child, and a water lily. The women affectionately greeted their new children. Sybil and Lexi were particularly enraptured by watching the little hatchlings embracing Ben and their mothers.

  “I can’t wait for our child to be born,” Sybil said.

  “Don’t worry,” Lulu said. “Ben has been working hard to increase his power lately. It shouldn’t be too long.”

  Lexi had longing and tenderness in her eyes. Not for the first time, Ben wondered if the hawkwoman would ever join the family in the more intimate sense that the other women had. But there was no need to rush things. He would allow her some space for the time being.

  Ben named them all with numbers, as he had promised before. Nipper-Two and Pearl-Two were first, followed by Sap-Two, Mander-Two and Lily-Two. The women grumbled slightly, Ben sensing that they wanted names that were cuter than simply names with numbers attached. But they didn’t object too much, knowing Ben had to keep track somehow.

  He left the room and went up to the crown of the tower to survey the route he needed to fly along. He’d trained enough, and it was time for him to advance his plans to retake his empire.

  Tomorrow morning it would be time for him to set out to discover what kind of foes were lurking in the other towers. He would be ready to defeat whoever he might find.

  Ben was eager to begin the fight.

  Chapter 17

  Ben would have had the biggest, widest grin on his lips—if he’d had lips, that is.

  In his hawk form, Ben flew up, high into the sky, the warm wind rushing through his feathers as he gained more and more altitude. Every now and then, a burst of almost hot air would rush over him as he flew higher and higher into the heavens.

  Ben had the urge to push himself and see exactly how high he could go in his hawk form. His tower shrunk smaller and smaller beneath him, his top-down view giving it the impression of a small circle among an endless expanse of green. Shapes moved at the base of the tower, and Ben recognized them as the aurochkin entering and exiting.

  He rose up higher and higher, the forests around the tower blurring into an indistinct carpet of pine green. The sky was brilliant and blue, the sun bright and orange among the cerulean. Gray, imposing mountains, their peaks crooked and jagged and topped with white blankets of snow, loomed in the distance.

  Before long he was high enough that the air turned cool and thin, his lungs working harder and harder to bring in less air. The sky shifted from bright and blue to dark and purple, the faint twinkling of stars dotting the firmament. The cold gripped his wings, forcing him to expend more energy than he was capable of.

  Hawks can only go so high, he thought. And it’s looking like the stratosphere is my limit.

  He imagined going even higher, frost forming on his wings and making it impossible to fly. The last thing Ben wanted was for his scouting mission to result in him freezing or burning in his new home’s atmosphere.

  Ben glanced down and confirmed that he was far too high. Pointing his body down, he descended, the wind rushing through his feathers, the ground getting closer and closer. And as he dove, he realized that he didn’t feel that sickening, dropping feeling that he remembered from riding rollercoasters.

  Must be something to do with the hawk’s body, he guessed. They are built for this, after all.

  He dropped lower and lower, loving the feeling of the air whooshing over his wings. When he was close enough to make out specific details of the landscape, he pulled himself up and leveled with the horizon. Next, he pulled his path into a wide arc, turning until the sun was at his tail feathers. He headed west, sailing through the sky over the endless expanse of forest.

  This skill is going to prove incredibly useful, he considered as he flew. Being able to scout miles and miles ahead will likely prove the difference between victory and defeat in the battles to come. But I’ll have to make sure I’m careful—the hawk form is no doubt fragile, and a single well-placed arrow could bring me down.

  Ben looked at the forest below, but didn’t see much to break up the endless green. The canopy was too thick to see through. He made a mental note of that, as well. Any enemy who might march against the tower would likely use the forest cover to hide their movements and numbers.

  After some minutes of flight, he spotted the edge of the forest off to the west. The tree line gave way to countryside, rolling hills of emerald green stretching off into the horizon. It was beautiful, reminding Ben of pictures he’d seen of Ireland back on Earth. Clouds gathered in the distance, dark and gray. He could easily imagine the moody, dark weather on the ground.

  But there weren’t any people. Ben would’ve expected to see herds of sheep and cattle on the rich plains of the countryside. Instead, he saw nothing aside from the occasional ruin. He lowered himself, drawing closer to one of the ruins and taking a slow pass around it.

  The structures had been long abandoned, pillars that he recognized as the Corinthian style, with their ornate caps, toppled over into the grass, most of the white marble overgrown with moss. He wondered what those structures could’ve been—shrines perhaps. Possibly, he considered, shrines to him from back when he ruled this land.

  Ben spotted the shimmering blue bend of a river in the distance. He drew closer, noticing a large cluster of buildings tucked into the crook of the water. Flying nearer and nearer, he saw that the buildings were the remains of a small town, the ruined streets a crisscross through the collection of fallen structures. Like everywhere else in the countryside, he didn’t see any sign of civilized life.

  He decided to follow the river as it bent westward. As he flew, he spotted more small towns, all of them just as abandoned as the first one he’d seen. He flew lower to one of the abandoned towns, and as he did, he saw something that gave him pause——crops. In small, scattered patches grains and vegetables poked out from the soil. It was the first sign of civilized life that he’d seen since starting out on his journey.

  After a slow loop around the town to search for any living beings, Ben pulled back into the sky and continued on along the length of the river.

  It’s strange, he thought. How could there be perfectly usable structures and crops, but no beings actually living there? Surely I would’ve seen something.

  But as he flew on, he realized the answer—there likely were beings living in those ruins, surely beastkin and monsterkin. Anyone who lived there, however, would certainly be wary of anyone trying to find them, like scouts from the Xurian empire.

  If they’re hiding from me I’ll need to establish regular scouting over the area, Ben decided. I need to know who’s living her
e, and they need to know that they have nothing to fear from my empire. Establishing good relations with whoever’s living in these ruins could be the key to holding this region.

  Who would do the scouting, however, would have to be determined later.

  To the right of the river, Ben spotted a large mound of green. At first, it struck him as nothing more than another hill among many others. But as he drew closer, Ben realized that there was something unique about the hill. It wasn’t uneven like the others——it was a perfect mound.

  Ben thought of what he’d learned about English history back in high school, how the Anglo-Saxons would make massive burial mounds. He flew closer, close enough to see without a doubt that the hill had been made by hand.

  He flew on, perpendicular to the river. There were more hills over the first, each of them seeming as handmade. A thought occurred to Ben. He flew up, gaining some height over the hills. When he’d gone up high enough, he turned back toward the hills and looked down. If there had been any doubt that the mounds were unnatural, what he saw dispelled it.

  From his height he could see that the hills were in a perfect circle, forming a ring around another mound, this one larger than all the others by far. And Ben could see something on the very top of the center hill. He descended, drawing closer and closer until he could make out what it was.

  Stonehenge, he thought. That looks just like Stonehenge.

  The structure on the top of the largest hill was constructed with a few dozen stones, all the same white marble that he’d seen in the shrines he’d passed. Many of the stones had long since toppled over, the circle formation barely noticeable.

  Ben flew past it, lowering as he came around for another look. But this time, as he drew closer, something strange happened. A voice spoke as if inside his head.

  “Come.”

  At first, he was certain he’d simply heard something—maybe the wind rushing past his ears in a way that sounded like a voice. But as he swooped closer, he heard it again.