by G. Akella
"Breastfed them, huh?" Vaessa hissed behind me. "I'll show you breastfeeding..."
"No! Don't show me anything! I'll find my own food!"
There was the clapping sound of a teleport, and there was Reece, walking in front of me with hands in his pockets and not a care in the world. Having escaped the magus' wrath, the rascal knew that Vaessa wasn't going to make a scene with me in the middle. Let her work through that anger—she'll come to her sense sooner.
The mage really was something else. The way he had diverted my ire from his sword sister—at his own expense, no less— was masterful. It didn't matter one bit that she was higher level than me. She had sword an oath to me, and she had no right to take such reckless risks! Of course, I wouldn't have done anything to her, but still! Mother of dragons... Hart!
Reece was the first to reach Kan, to no one's surprise. Halting under a pine tree next to which stood the knight-commander, the youth scratched his chin contemplatively, threw up his head, and slowly made his way around the tree.
"You're gonna cut it down, or what?" taking a step away, Kan smacked the trunk with his palm, just as a seasoned woodcutter might. "It's a fine tree, too. Straight as an arrow!"
"It's not that, uncle," the mage replied in a deflated tone, eyes still glued to the treetop. "It's just that I find myself in hot water, so I'm thinking how to best climb this tree to the top."
"And why is that?" the warrior inquired. "Are you trying to hide from the lady?"
"Not at all," Reece drew a dramatic sigh. "I'll cozy up on a branch, break out a banjo and start playing, celebrating the feats of our beloved prince. I'd promised him as much once. I suppose now is as good a time as any to deliver..."
"What's that now?" the irony in the knight-commander's voice gave way to bemusement.
"Such are the vagaries of life, uncle," Reece tore himself from contemplating the treetop, and turned toward Raena.
I stopped next to these two, realizing that the knight-commander was in no state to answer any of my questions, crossed my arms and proceeded to wait for the show to conclude. I was soon joined by Vaessa and then George, huffing and puffing as he curled up on the grass.
"Perhaps Raena will agree to such a life," Reece continued in the meantime. "To live up on a branch with me. We'll make a nest. Or maybe a large enough hollow. I'll be playing my banjo, and she will sing."
"How are you going to make a hollow, exactly?" the sorceress inquired.
"And the prospect of sharing a life with me, that doesn't scare you?"
"I think I'd sooner see you share a life with woodpeckers," the young woman shrugged.
Reece held a dramatic pause, then glanced at the lounging dragon, and winked at him.
"You have no idea how lucky you are, George! Your girlfriend was tamed, not summoned, by auntie. And if that tall somber-looking fellow is to be believed, she'll learn to spit fire much later than you." Casting a sidelong glance Raena, the mage walked over to the pine tree where Kan had just stood, and lowered himself to the ground, leaning back against the trunk.
"Then again, females learn to spit poison from a very early age," he concluded philosophically before falling silent at last.
"Banjo is a string instrument you pluck to produce music, similar to a guitar, in the world I come from," I answered Kan Shyom's silent question, then added, nodding toward Reece. "Unfortunately, our esteemed scald doesn't know how to play one, since he'd only heard of it from me. I've no idea whether such instruments exist in this world, but I suppose there are some among those who had ended up here who would know how to craft them. So, once we've wrapped up all our affairs, I will make sure to find such a craftsman and commission from him a banjo or something similar. And then we return to this meadow, boost this here loudmouth up on the branch, and enjoy the concert."
"I object to the ambiguity!" exclaimed the mage, struggling mightily to keep a straight face. "Only a banjo and nothing else!"
"Fine, I'll even have the master inscribe your name on it. And now, if we're done with all the tomfoolery, let's get down to business." I looked around at the faces of my party members. "Kan, Vaessa, Raena. Your thoughts?"
"We shouldn't go that way," Vaessa pointed to the southeast. "I don't sense the echoes of the Twice Cursed's power in that direction, but only a strange kind of Death magic. Almost like my Mistress' power turned inside out, though Celphata was never here. I can't describe it any other way."
The magus fell silent, looking discomfited. I turned my gaze to the knight-commander.
"Kan?"
"We're in Tyremian Wood," he said. "I was here six years ago..." he faltered, then sighed and corrected himself. "Two hundred eighty six years ago, I should say. We were returning from a mission to Tarsa. There were ten of us." Kan looked at the trees lining the meadow, as if calling them to witness. "The krags had dug a den somewhere in the area, and the locals had been unable to track it. We helped them, got our reward of one hundred gold from the senior warden, and left. The baron's castle is roughly four-five miles north of here," he waved in that direction, "and a well-fortified village along the way, with a decent inn. I remember liking the ale, and the wom..." he faltered again, then continued. "The village shouldn't be much farther than two miles. At least it was there three centuries ago."
"Well, I wasn't here then," Raena said, and I shifted my eyes to her. "I didn't guzzle the local ale or feel up the local barmaids," she shot Kan a wicked smile. "So, I don't have much to say."
"What are krags?" I asked the commander.
"Quasi-ghosts," he said, his eyes fixed reproachfully on the garrulous sorceress. "They live in large families, twenty-thirty strong on average, and like to feast on human flesh. But they pose no danger to us. The magus here," he nodded at Vaessa, "will put down a whole family with a wave of the hand. Which leaves me clueless as to what we should expect here, prince."
"I see," I said, giving another look around the meadow. "All right, then, listen up. Reece and Raena, line the perimeter with traps to the max. The rest of us will gather brushwood and get a fire going. After dinner, we sleep. At dawn we move out toward that village. I'll keep watch first. Get moving! We have maybe six hours till daybreak, and I want everybody freshly rested."
Fire had long been a source of life for mankind. Throughout history, fire had chased away predators and served to gather communities around it. With fire people had acquired a home to always come back to. People... When was the last time I've seen a person? I sighed and gazed into the softly crackling flames. Thirty feet to my right Vaessa was feeding her new ward, and I just sat here, listening to the nocturnal birds' cries and... and nothing. I didn't want to dwell on what may await us further. It wouldn't change anything, so why stress about it? Sure, I hoped that we would get out of this dump quickly and without incident, and then move on to where we actually needed to be, but, alas, my hopes couldn't make that a reality. Many people were afraid of the unknown, but I wasn't one of them. I doubted that whatever awaited us was scarier than the Twice Cursed God, whom I'd already grappled with a few times and didn't fear meeting again whatsoever. Was it foolish of me? Perhaps, but I didn't care—what was the point of fearing the inevitable? The bastard had already croaked twice, so I'd try to make third time be the charm.
I was sitting facing the campfire, thus breaking the number one rule of Medieval night watchmen of Earth. What use was a watchman that was seen from a mile away, and one blinded by the flames besides? Of course, I'd never read any Medieval-era manuals on keeping watch at night, but I had read books that mentioned such things. And I wasn't an idiot that couldn't see the obvious. In winter, a watchman must sit with his back to the campfire at worst, and in all other seasons nowhere close to the fire at all. But that was there. Here, getting past Reece's and Raena's traps overlaid with Vaessa's alarm network could only be done by a higher-level NPC, and one who was a master of several schools of magic to boot, and I doubted someone like that was hanging around a level 220 zone. No, my watch duty was purely s
ymbolic, but here I was, staying up while contemplating the flames. I mustn't allow myself to grow weak. Heck, I'd prefer to be patrolling the perimeter, but that would probably end with me setting off some—if not all—of those traps. And the fire wasn't blinding me at all—an Elder Demon's eyesight wasn't like that of an ordinary human. I could stare at the flames for hours on end without feeling any ill effects.
Lying on the ground to my right was George. The dragon wasn't sleeping—his kind rarely slept at all, it seemed. No, the creature was gazing into the flames along with me. Dragons were fond of fire for obvious reasons, and George could stare at it for hours, mesmerized. Hart! I sighed, gazing up at the star-studded sky. Why couldn't we have taken mounts into this dungeon? It wasn't like there wasn't enough room for them—these pets were about the size of my boar, and there weren't any restrictions on them... Damn, but I was really missing my Gloom.
My brooding was interrupted by soft footsteps and creaking leather.
"You're not mad anymore?" asked Vaessa, taking a seat across from me by the fire.
Lola walked over with her mistress, moving soundlessly. As if she weren't a dragon, but a large gray cat. A very large cat. Sizing up the company, she lowered herself to the ground just as soundlessly, and was still.
"No," I replied curtly.
"Dar... Krian... You must understand..."
"Stop," I stopped her with a gesture. "It's behind us. But I want you to think critically next time. Not just about you, but about all of us here, your companions."
"All right," she sighed.
"Good. Now, did you want to ask something?"
"Not just ask, but tell."
She glanced at her due of pets, sighed again, and continued in a hushed tone.
"Something terrible is afoot in the Gray Frontier, dar. The streams of power have gotten so tangled up that I can no longer hear or sense my Mistress. I don't know what is happening, but it feels to me that the Great War has begun!"
"That should be expected," I slipped a pipe into my mouth, reached into the fire for a smoldering branch, and lit up. "Vill has possession of the White Dragon's blood and the support of one of the world's creators. It's only natural that he will try to rid himself of all his enemies. I'm sorry, but there's nothing we can do to help her. We must follow our own path. Isn't that what she herself wanted for you?"
The magus nodded without saying a word, falling into somber thoughts of her own. A predator roared somewhere nearby, and then silence fell on the surrounding forest, over which only the crackling of embers and the panting of the lounging dragons could be heard. Vaessa kept her silence, and I sat across from her as before—smoking and watching the flames dancing in her dark-green eyes. She was in a tough emotional state, but I'd already said all I could. A war in the Great Frontier? Her mistress in danger? Well, we hadn't exactly come to this forest to pick dandelions.
"What is next for us, dar?" Vaessa leaned forward, peering into my eyes.
"What do you mean?"
"Where are we going? Why are we going there? Will we make it? And what's going to happen if we do?" She rapped out the questions with barely a pause in between.
And the questions were certainly of a new kind. Was this the result of her bond to Celphata being severed? Or had she begun to transform into a regular woman following Kan's proposal, one that worried needlessly and asked a bunch of stupid questions that had no answers?
"We'll make it," I chuckled. "We'll waste all the bad guys, and live happily ever after. Everybody will pair up: you and Kan, Reece and Raena, George and Lola, Jack and Jill... I'm already married. We'll all have a bunch of kids, and then—"
"Why do you speak to me as though I'm an idiot?" the magus frowned.
"Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer," I shrugged nonchalantly. "I don't know any more than you do. Only that we don't have many options. Or rather, we have only one option."
"Do you sincerely believe that we'll make it?"
"I know we will," I said just as nonchalantly. "And I'll know it even when on the verge of death! Why bother with any of this otherwise?"
"I suppose. You are the Elder, after all..." Vaessa sighed, and then... smiled. "Thanks, Krian," she nodded, rising to her feet. "I suppose I'll go get some sleep."
She drew away from the fire, laid a blanket down on the grass, then curled into a ball on top of it. The dragons rose in unison as well, waddled over to their mistress, and lay down carefully on either side of the magus, shielding her from the world and from the elements. I smiled at this expression of dragon affection, then shifted my gaze back at the campfire.
"We'll make it! We absolutely will!"
As morning rushed in, the forest around us was transformed beyond recognition. The trees lining the meadow no longer looked crooked. It was your typical mixed wood, the kind I'd seen plenty of in the heartland of Russia.
Having packed up our things, we breakfasted quickly and set out in the direction shown by Kan. Soon we hit a wide dirt road, and started following it northwest.
We saw the soldiers after about fifteen minutes. Ten of them in all, level 220 with a level 250 captain, they wore a mix of plate and chainmail; four were armed with bows, and the rest with shields and short spears. Their attitude toward us was unfriendly—hardly a surprise. It wouldn't take us longer than a minute to dispose of them, only I had no intention of doing so.
As we came into sight, which happened at a distance of around fifty yards, the captain barked something, causing the bowmen to slip behind the roadside trees, and the spearmen to grab the shields from their backs and form a line, blocking the entire width of the road.
"If even one arrow flies out from the forest, kill nine of them. Leave one for questioning," I commanded calmly into the channel.
Raena cast shields on all of us as we kept walking, including the dragons walking on either side of the main party.
"If anything starts, I'll stick to the center. You, prince, head into the woods to my left. Vaessa and the dragons, to my right," Kan added.
No sooner than the command was voiced, George slowed his pace and shifted to the right. As he should have—in these situations, Kan was in charge. Besides, he knew the locals far better than I ever could. I would take over command only in the event of something truly unpredictable, which this situation clearly wasn't.
As we drew close, the captain took a step forward and put up his hand in a halting gesture.
"Who are you?!" he asked anxiously upon sizing us over. "And what are you doing in the lands of Baron Daenic Laetan?"
Narrowed brown eyes, massive lower jaw, windswept face—something about the man reminded me of Gerid, while the small triangle on his cheekbone assured me that we would find a common language. And the eyes of his soldiers, despite their wall of spears, displayed no hostility whatsoever. In fact, the best way to describe their expression would be that of utter bewilderment. And indeed, it wasn't every day that their barony was visited by demons and dragons. Now, sure, the dragons were still on the small side, as were my horns, praise Hart, but still.
"Krian, Prince of Craedia, and his companions!" the knight-commander cast a heavy gaze around the battle-ready soldiers, eventually stopping at their captain. "I remember there being a village up there, with an inn," he continued with a nod forward. "That's where we're headed—to that inn."
"Demons?! Where do you come from?" the captain's eyes stopped on Reece for a moment, and his brows shot upward. "An officer!? But..." he looked again at Kan, struggling to express his thoughts. I sighed and showed him my marks, which finished the job of stripping the man of the gift of speech.
Your reputation has increased. Kulam, captain of Baron Daenic Laetan's first century, relates to you with respect.
"What is going on here?" Kan inquired after waiting a few moments.
"An army of undead, the one that had blocked off the border with the orcs and Darkaan last year, attacked the baron's castle yesterday!" Kan exclaimed, gesturing behind him as his soldiers a
ll lowered their spears. "They had never crossed the borders of the wastes before, but last night..." he faltered, gritted his teeth and let out a heavy sigh. "I'm stationed in Dorca, so I wasn't there. Last night a rider came from the baron and reported what had happened. And earlier today our first century arrived in the village. We fought off the attack, but the eastern wall is completely ruined. Thirty five casualties, five of which were our brothers from the Order... They departed to serve Ingvar in their next role. These are the Borderlands, a troubled place. Many of us have sworn fealty to the Lightning god."
"What about these undead?"
"I don't know, I wasn't there," said Kulam. "Centurion Arvid is in Dorca, he will tell you. He's from the Order as well."
"So what are you doing here?"
"The stiffs all came from there," the captain gestured northeast. "That is why they avoided Dorca. And though last night was peaceful, the baron ordered us to leave anyway. The wastes are crawling with the undead, and the castle will not withstand another assault. Arvid has posted riders on all the roads, since these beasts are everywhere. The wastes are right behind you, barely over a mile away. If we see anything, we're supposed to mount our horses and ride straight for the village. Over in Dorca they're packing everything up, and preparing to burn Tissy soon." The captain stepped aside, and waved to his soldiers to clear the way. "Go to Dorca, sirs. Find Arvid, he'll be able to answer your questions better."
"Tissy? Who's that?" Reece asked from behind me.
"Merid's daughter," the captain frowned. "Stupid girl—apparently, she's the one who set the undead on the baron's castle."
"A necromancer?" Vaessa asked.
"Who can tell?" Kulam shrugged. "A group of the Untainted come the village three days ago, aiming to study the undead on the borders. All the way from Vaedarr, I think. So, the day before yesterday they were returning to the village at night, and saw the wretch drawing some sorcerous symbols on the ground, right on the border with the wastes. They brought her straight to the elder, and she didn't deny it. Admitted to everyone that she was summoning skeletons. And that very night, the undead hit the castle." The captain shook his head in distress. "You know, we honor necromancers around here. A couple even lived in the castle, though only one survived the night. But the Untainted accused her, so Arvid ordered to have her burned at the stake. That's the story as I know it."
