The Long Road to Karn (Realm of Arkon, Book 5)

by Akella, G.

  "About what?" I replied automatically, a bit flustered.

  "It's not every day a Lord of the Netherworld visits our princedom, dar," he said in an amplified tone for all to hear. "As for seeing one in their true form, not even our grandparents can make that claim."

  "Not you, too," I shook my head wearily and smiled. "We're just friends, nothing more. And today she had decided to lend a hand."

  "It must be hard to be 'just friends, nothing more' with the patron of lust," James nodded with the kind of gravity that showed he didn't believe a damn word I'd said. In fact, the same thing was written on the mug of every guy and gal surrounding us. Apparently, grand victories weren't enough anymore—no, they also wanted all the juicy details. It was realizations like these that kept blurring the lines between this and the former world.

  Gorm appeared from the side of the donjon, gesticulating wildly to some demoness that was mincing alongside him and nodding incessantly. Upon seeing me, the satrap pointed the girl to the gates, and walked over.

  "I am an old man, prince," he chuckled bitterly, watching the girl scamper away. "Such spectacles have rather an adverse effect at my advanced age."

  "What are you getting at?" I inquired, biting my lower lip to keep from smiling—a man powerful enough to be a raid boss pretending to be a delicate old man was quite the sight.

  "In all my life—and it has been a long life indeed—never have I beheld a Great Essence with my own eyes. But in the two weeks I've been with you, I saw two and heard one more besides." Gorm looked over my head thoughtfully. "I think I'd like to go home, prince. Home to Xantarra. Seeing these things only strengthened my desire to settle down and start a family."

  "I'm all for it, brother. In fact, I'm about to marry off all these knuckleheads," I glowered at the crowd gathered in the courtyard. "Once married, I'll send most of them off to live peaceful civilian lives. And then you and I will head out: you to get married, and I..."

  Not knowing how to finish the thought, I pulled off my helm and shoved it into my bag. Then I broke out my pipe, lit up, pulled on it, held the smoke for a few seconds and exhaled, then looked at the satrap.

  "You know, I can understand wanting a girlfriend after today. But kids..."

  "The princedom has been liberated, prince," the satrap looked into my eyes calmly. "Raising the new generation is going to become a priority. Besides, who's going to listen to my crazy tales of these past two weeks when I'm old and senile?"

  "You be sure to share that desire with others," I grunted, looking around the gathered soldiers. "Seems to me they might be crushing on a certain demoness from earlier today."

  "No, dar," said a youth standing directly across from me with centurion markings on his navy blue, somewhat dented breastplate. His tone was dead serious. "That would mean certain doom for any of us. The best we could hope for is to snatch a glimpse of—"

  "There you are!" shouldering her way through the crowd, Vaessa hissed at George who was toddling behind her, then shifted her eyes to me, folding her arms as she gave me a once-over. "I'm so proud of you, my prince! Two Great Essences in two weeks—that must be some kind of record! And finding the time to elope besides! Speaking of, you've been awfully silent about your consort. Who is she? You promised to tell us!"

  Yep, I was right: we're handling our business here, and getting the hell out, my earlier decision was now cemented. What was it Lilit had said? That I had to hurry? Well, don't mind if I do!

  Chapter 7

  It had been raining for five days straight, making me curse time and again the devs and their damned obsession with realism and immersion. With the pseudo-Medieval setting of the game, the rain had turned the dirt road into a veritable swamp, making transportation a nightmare as wagon wheels and draft yaks kept getting bogged down. The gray shapes of the animals wading through the mud beneath an overcast sky made for a miserable sight. I had no problem with rain, generally speaking, but after a week's worth of it while traveling—that was simply too much. It was one thing to lounge on a veranda with a cup of hot coffee, warm and dry as you gazed wistfully out the window at the dreary weather so beloved by the poets of yore—it was quite another to ride for days on end in a damp wagon with hole-ridden tarpaulin-like cloth as protection from the elements, feeling every gust of cold wind and every bump in the road. I took a deep drag, exhaling the smoke through clenched teeth, and leaned back against the high wooden side. Seeing the long road sprawled before me felt like déjà vu. Here I was again, sitting alone in a caravan, just like I was on the road to Nittal. Only I had no need of the courier's badge anymore. All of my achievements were hidden, though the caravanners still knew that I was an Elder—for some reason, this couldn't be hidden even by the blood of the White Dragon—and that was precisely why nobody was pestering me with questions. When the coachmen changed shifts, the one being replaced wouldn't even stay in the same wagon with me, but would go rest in a different one. They must have thought me some barbarian chieftain with business in the neighboring kingdom, and I was content to let them, not particularly pining for company. I should note that despite the rain and the slush, the caravan's speed remained unaffected. Was it an immersion problem or a testament to the skill of Rualt road builders? I couldn't begin to guess anymore. Yesterday the caravan had crossed the border into the dominion's central province, with only two days left to Sarykas. I felt a chill at yet another realization that all this was really happening! This whole caravan, the horned taciturn driver named Merid sitting up in the coachbox, every hole in the tarpaulin and every droplet of rain that fell on my forehead—all of this was real, and not some bloody dream! No dream could ever feel this real, no matter how unbelievable it may all feel.

  Taking a few sips from my flask, I grimaced and screwed the lid tight. Hart! Despite having already captured a whole princedom and marrying a princess, a peaceful life still seemed so distant... Moreover, to be perfectly frank, my lady wasn't exactly your typical princess bride. Not that I was complaining—and besides, she was who she was, and there wasn't anything I could do about that. Some women were into pink polka-dot summer dresses, others preferred sparks of Primordial Chaos and cities engulfed in flames. The truth was that this woman was a gift, an advance of sorts—one of many bestowed by fate—and I had a feeling that sooner or later fate would come to collect. With another sigh, I reached for the flask that I'd just put down. I was neither blind nor naive, and realized full well just how inordinate the rewards reaped were to efforts exerted. Was it all luck? You'd have to be pretty daft to believe that, and I'd like to think that I wasn't. Perhaps I truly had become "the chosen one" that I'd read about in hundreds of books over my lifetime. And though those books usually ended well, a worm plucked out of a can was also "chosen" from hundreds of its kin, marked by a Higher Being—the fisherman... And nobody ever wrote books about those chosen worms. Books were nice and all, but presently I felt more like that very earthworm... Quit your crying! I scolded myself. If anyone tries to put me on a hook, I'd string them there first! That made me imagine Adam writhing on a metal hook, and I grinned. I'll have you squirming there a long while, worm. You and your towheaded chum. As if sensing my mood, the coachman turned around and drew a warding-off sign in the air.

  "Is something the matter, master?" he inquired, wheezing.

  "Everything's fine, I just remembered an old acquaintance," I smiled at him.

  "Some folks are better left unacquainted," mused the demon, gazing off to the side. "But we're not often given the choice." With a sigh, he looked at the whip clenched in his fist, shivered and turned back to the road.

  I stared at his tense back for a while—what was I turning into that I was making level 200 demons edgy? If I were a young and scrappy youth, I might have found that flattering; alas, I was a grownup, and as such, the idea of terrifying everyone I came across was hardly appealing. Then again, the players above probably didn't give a damn about who or what I was, what with many of them being hardened veterans. And I, in turn, did
n't give a damn about their precious sensibilities. Taking another gulp from the flask, I tossed it back into my bag, and let my thoughts shift to recent events, serenaded by the rain's rhythmic drumming.

  Seventy five thousand square miles of territory, two cities, three castles and ninety six thousand citizens! The first time I had opened the princedom's control menu and attempted to grasp the full scale of such a windfall, I must have fallen into idiotic stupor for a full five minutes, perhaps because I wasn't quite sure if the windfall wasn't, in fact, a cleverly disguised pain in the ass that I would soon come to seriously regret. It was one thing to ride around Craedia on Gloom, even at the head of a small army, and fantasize about becoming some big banana; it was quite another to suddenly be faced with the reality of having to run a territory more than twice the size of Belgium! Why Belgium? Why the hell not Belgium?! Back in the real world, I would think twice about commuting anywhere beyond fifty miles!... The most ironic thing about all this was that, with every knot I'd untangle, every loose end I'd tie up, two more would magically appear. And for all the helpers I'd been recruiting, the burden was shouldered by me alone, and the rest of them were content to leave it that way: "Let that dude in the purple armor and two-foot-long horns figure it out—he's been doing a bang-up job so far..." The 1270 victory points the clan had earned for capturing the princedom was nowhere near enough to rebuild it. It cost 15 points to build a category five village, and 400 for a category six castle; worst of all, you couldn't "summon" residents like when they were simple NPCs—now that they were living sentient beings, and you still weren't Lord Almighty, growing the princedom's population would require standard, old-fashioned methods. On the other hand, before worrying about any of that, I should figure out what to do with the hundred thousand or so residents of Gilthor and Xantarra? They would all need to be accommodated, and I didn't imagine they'd welcome the idea of relocating from a place that had always been home.

  I had spent most of that first day in solitude, sitting up in a ruined battlement while my troops were clearing the mountains of undead corpses outside the citadel, and wondering what to do with all this goodness that had fallen into my lap. It wasn't until some point in the evening that I kind of snapped, thinking, What the bloody hell?! Why should I be the only one concerned with this stuff? Incidentally, victory points could only be used once, and there's a saying that one's first impulse is usually the right one, so I decided not to sweat it and, after driving everyone from the castle, with a single mental push of a button I fully rebuilt Suonu and Acrahl, a category seven castle. Then I built five category five villages—similar to Lamorna, where I had begun my journey in this realm—around each whole castle and in Zellyn, a Gilthor province. And, finally, I completely reshaped the donjon in Craedia. Why villages? I knew enough of strategy games to know how essential they were. Moreover, the security and prosperity of any country hinged on the happiness level of its citizens, and people should be far more willing to relocate to such villages. A tavern, four wells, six storehouses, four towers, a palisade, spacious dwellings built of wood and stone to accommodate a population of five hundred, an elder's house, barracks for fifty soldiers... Hell, I'd probably live there if it weren't for all my problems. As for the stupid donjon, too many terrible things had happened on its roof for me to just leave it standing, and then there was the staircase leading up... No, I didn't want to make that task easier for potential aggressors, so the only way to get to the roof now was from the inside.

  My people didn't seem to particularly surprised with the makeover, at least nowhere near as surprised as they had been with Lilit's appearance. Having reset the balance of victory points back to zero, I gathered my tiflings in my office at night for some gift-giving. For their wedding present, Iam and Reena got Suonu, Salta and Elnar would go to La-Kharte, Olta and Ivar to Tehran-Ash, and Aritor and Zara to Acrahl. Hyld and our resident modest mouse Hagedia, whose romance had become news to me only a week ago, were granted Zellyn. Though there wasn't a castle there, the seven quarries readily available for mining would fix that deficiency in no time. Even if the castle wouldn't be erected before the snows came, they could always go south to Mishtah for winter. As for Reece, he was gifted Kjier, the ravaged far outpost on the border with Ashtar. The mage would follow me anyway, and nobody knew how long we'd end up roving that area. And when we returned—if we returned—I'd reevaluate the situation then. At this point I had enough gold to hire a whole brigade of migrant workers to build him the kind of castle that would make the Kremlin look like a doll house. All we had to do was get back in one piece.

  The biggest surprise came courtesy of Raud, my second scout, when he rejected the gift of Careolla—Gilthor's third province. The young man had resolved to devote his life in the service of Ingvar, and asked to be given control of the temple in Suonu where we had hung the disavowed on the walls a week ago for that purpose. The corpses weren't there anymore, of course, and the temple looked shiny and new. With a shrug, I gave him what he wanted. In this world, gods' priests were a caste of their own—they were allowed to marry and have children, but couldn't hold any lands. In becoming Celphata's head priestess, Vaessa had given up that opportunity, not that it bothered her in any way. Becoming a priest was a deeply personal choice, and it wasn't my place to stand in the way. And besides, there might be real advantages to having a couple of fairly large temples in service of gods that favored my clan.

  After my turn at playing demonic Santa, the princedom had three unallocated satrapies remaining: Careolla in Gilthor, Dareah and Liguahta in Antarra—the princedom's main province which also contained two ruined castles: Rus'An and Sche-Kith. While my tiflings were wrapping their heads around what had just happened, I promoted Elnar to be the general of my armed forces, and named Schen warden of the Craedia Citadel, then ordered everyone to think how to best accommodate the civilians across the princedom, allocate the loot, and establish and maintain communication and cooperation between the satrapies. Then I bid everyone good night and retired to my chambers. Was it foolish? I didn't think so! This was their world, and they were far better equipped to handle these matters than I was, especially given their vast experience in leadership positions. I would hear out their proposals come morning—I'd already spent all of that day thinking, and my brain was literally starting to ache. Truthfully, had this been happening in real life, I would have buckled down and set to crunching the numbers and studying all the codes of law, outlined in the book Gorm was always lugging around. And after all that, I'd draft a plan as to how I saw the princedom's development... Thankfully, this wasn't real life, or at least not in the traditional sense. My princedom was free of corruption and crooked bureaucrats, and my demons' management skills were far superior to mine. At least that applied to Gorm, Elnar, Elias, Schen and even Kargal, who, along with Lieta and the children of the warriors who had perished in the Derelict Temple, had been delivered to the citadel earlier that day. Where else would you expect to train your elite forces but in the main stronghold of your princedom? Speaking of Schen, the old soldier seemed to be comically wary of the tail that had magically sprouted out of his rear end. The magic had a simple explanation: the moment I discovered the option in the control menu to grant knighthood to my subjects, I wasted no time in rounding up all my centurions and touching each one on the shoulder with the tip of my blade. I probably could have arranged for a more grand and solemn ceremony, but where do you find the time?

  Even that wasn't the end of my day's adventures. As I was leaving the small hall of our council meeting, which I had dubbed "conference room" to myself, I was stopped by none other than Tilly, who was looking mighty bashful. Tilly, bashful? Gods, I'd never suspect the girl was even remotely capable of feeling shame! What could she have possibly done?! The expression on my face at that moment was probably similar to that of my troops when one of the Netherworld's Seven Lords had appeared out of nowhere to wipe a giant army of undead off the face of the plane.

  "Dar... Prince... I... I did
n't keep my promise to wait, I... I'm getting married!" She literally spat out those last words, then sigh and grounded her eyes.

  It took a monumental effort not to burst into hysterical laughter right there and then. Incidentally, how was it that keeping down laughter was so much harder than restraining rage?!

  "So, who is he?" I asked, instilling a dash of sorrow into my voice. The truth was that I was beyond relieved that this restless and rambunctious dame, already responsible for at least a dozen broken hearts, had finally found the man for her. Despite her rather lovely appearance, the very thought of having her as a girlfriend was enough to induce a panic attack. There is a type of women that wouldn't think twice about strapping on a pair of skates and joining a pickup game of roller derby even late in the third trimester. And the rest of the time... No, my life had enough excitement already. I raised a prayer of gratitude that nothing had happened between Tilly and me, but it would have been crass to show my joy to the girl, so I did my best to look somewhat vexed and disappointed. But when she gave her reply, the astonishment on my face was quite sincere.

  "Gerat, one of the mages you've rescued in this castle," she spoke softly, keeping her eyes down. "He doesn't have anybody up there, so he'll stay down here with me."

  Well, I'll be! The even-keeled, ever-grumpy Altus' student had decided to cast his lot with this black-haired absurdity?!

  "Er... uh..." I bleated, struggling to recover from my shock. "I think you're made for each other!"

  "You think so, too?" she exclaimed excitedly, her bashfulness evaporated. "And you're not mad at me?"

  "How can I be mad if you're made for each other?" I shrugged my shoulders while praying to all the gods in Arkon for strength not to burst into roaring laughter.

  "Dar, what about Lucy?" Tilly's exuberance was instantly replaced with sad puppy-dog eyes. "You've got Gloom now, and she—"