Fortress Al-Mir

“Why are you still here, elf?”

Alya turned an irritated glare on the old orc. “You well know why I am here, orc.”

Olatt’an let out a small chuckle. “Not here,” he said, waving a hand around the desolate landscape.

The Underworld was, as always, void of life. The air was thick with an almost palpable sense of loss and desolation, as if the land itself mourned its fallen state. Olatt’an wasn’t sure if that was because of the Cloak of Shadows or if it was his imagination, projecting his feelings onto the emptiness.

Where he was at the moment, the landscape was dominated by hues of gray and muted blacks. Not shadows, exactly, but darkness all the same. The colors shifted into each other, transforming and moving unnaturally. Almost like something was out there, moving. But… there was nothing. Were it not for the presence of the Protector and the general lack of life outside the Protector, Olatt’an might have been far more on edge and wary of attacks.

The only thing that really put him on edge was the lighting. The cloudy orange skies never changed. There was no night. No day. The concept of time felt distorted. The only way they had to tell how long it had been since the last break was their grumbling stomachs.

That and the exhaustion that came from travel.

All-in-all, not the worst expedition he had been on.

“I’m wondering why you remain in the fortress,” Olatt’an said, adjusting the reins of the horse pulling the cart. “You must realize that you aren’t a prisoner. If you approached Arkk and asked, you could leave at any moment even if it wouldn’t be in his best interests. Even if that failed, a word or two from your daughter would have Arkk providing teleportation to anywhere in the Duchy. Maybe even beyond.”

Alya, sitting in the back of the cart, looked away. Her gaze turned out toward the distant columns of shadow that seemed to stretch up through the clouds. She didn’t answer and gave no indication that she was going to.

After a long minute of silence, Olatt’an shrugged. “Don’t answer if you don’t want to,” he said as he let go of the reins and hopped off the back of the cart. “Eiff’an! Take over the horse. I’m going to walk for a bit.”

Eiff’an grabbed the side of the cart and hauled himself into the lead seat without complaint. He had been walking for a few hours now, so he was probably beyond pleased for the break.

Olatt’an let himself fall a short distance back from the cart before he matched its pace, leaving him a little on his own with a clear view of the entire caravan. Half a dozen orcs marched along while another half a dozen were split across three carts. The Protector walked ahead of the group, leading the way to where he thought some of Olatt’an’s stories might have been described. Ritual circles in the carts provided cooling for the entire group, letting them pass through the warm Underworld without cooking in the uncomfortable heat.

It really wasn’t that bad of an expedition.

“The company could be better,” he mumbled to himself.

To say that Arkk was disappointed would be an understatement.

Elmshadow, despite the losses, had been a great victory. Gleeful before it had been more of a pyrrhic victory with the entire burg buried under a mountain of magically conjured boulders. But not Elmshadow. They had recovered the city, captured a significant chunk of the opposing force, and rescued all the remaining civilians who hadn’t been able to flee when Evestani first took the burg—not that there were all that many, only a few thousand, mostly the elderly or children.

It wasn’t like he assumed the war would just be over.

But with the retreating of the Evestani army followed by those letters that sounded like the Sultan would be open to negotiations, Arkk had thought—he had allowed himself to believe—that the western side of the Duchy would calm down enough.

Now this…

“Lexa. You’re back.”

A shadowy figure uncloaked at Arkk’s side, standing hunched with a deep scowl on her face. She gripped the blade of her knife with a cloth and pulled the two apart, cleaning off blood. “They aren’t bandits,” she said, sheathing the dagger. “Or, if they are, they aren’t from around here.”

“Did you learn anything?”

“Learned they speak an awful lot of Evestani and not a lick of Chernlish. Caught one of them out. Tried to interrogate him. Didn’t go so well.” She paused, frowned, then added, “For him, anyway.”

Arkk sighed. He had been hoping for a little more information. He wasn’t surprised, however. He had learned from the prisoners captured at Elmshadow that, aside from perhaps one or two of the higher-ranked soldiers, nobody in Evestani spoke a language he understood. The same was true in reverse, to be fair. Nobody in Arkk’s employ spoke Evestani.

And if they were Evestani… he now had this to deal with.

What were they doing up here? North of the Elm mountain range, there wasn’t much of interest. Was it just a way to the eastern side of the Duchy that they were after, now that Elmshadow had been closed off to them? Were these men remnants left behind, ignorant of their army’s defeat at Elmshadow, or were they on a mission that had been decided in response to that?

Well, he could puzzle such matters out later. They weren’t up to any good. If the scrying reports were accurate, they were producing and stockpiling alchemical bombs out here.

“Any sign of the avatar?” Arkk asked. “Or the gold-armored knight?”

Lexa shook her head back and forth. “I swept through the whole camp. Nobody had tattoos. Nobody had that armor.”

Arkk clicked his tongue in annoyance. It wasn’t like he wanted to fight them. Especially not with Priscilla exploring the Underworld and Agnete back at Al-Mir working on her projects in their downtime. At the same time, getting eyes on them would be valuable. Perhaps valuable enough to let the group carry on as they wished, if only to keep a watch on them and learn what they were up to.

Since Elmshadow, there hadn’t been a single sighting of the avatar. Not a hint of golden magic among the Evestani army. Some areas were still protected from scrying, especially within Evestani territory—Arkk had tried to get eyes on the Sultan after receiving the letters only to find that misty fog covering practically the entire capital city. So the avatar could have been there.

It just made him uneasy. Like the avatar was plotting something and could pop up at any moment, blasting him down before he could react.

But until that happened, he still had a job to do.

“Kia. Claire.” The two dark elves stood from their crouched positions. Kia sported a bright smile while Claire just stared off into the distance with an utterly blank look on her face.

He had considered recalling Agnete for this. Wiping them out would have been easy for her. But she was busy and it wasn’t like Agnete was his only enforcer. He had other employees and those employees needed to earn their keep. Or, rather, he didn’t want the dark elves to get too bored. Claire especially. He wouldn’t say that he feared for himself but he did worry a little about what Claire would do if she had to sit still for too long.

“Extermination time?” Kia asked, chipper as she drew her heavy sword.

Kia was a little concerning as well.

“I would prefer if their leaders survived,” Arkk said, hoping that one of these higher-ups would be more susceptible to interrogation. “But it is not a requirement.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” she said, half turning. “Vector, Prav’en. Take your team to the east side. We’ll ambush from the west. Claire’s arrow will signal our start.”

The squad split up, moving to follow their orders. As had become their typical tactics, Arkk hung back with Lexa. His duty was to move in and assist if something unexpected popped up. It hadn’t always been a successful tactic. In the case of the golden knight, he hadn’t managed to do all that much. But anything short of an agent of the Heart of Gold wouldn’t be trouble for his old magic. Or even some of his regular spells.

And Lexa was here too. The gremlin donned the hood of her cloak once again, shrouding her in shadow. She wasn’t invisible, but she was far more difficult to keep track of. Especially in these thick woods up in the hills. Every tree cast a shadow and Lexa’s form blended in with them while she was wearing that cloak. If not for Arkk’s ability to sense all of his employees, she could easily disappear from his perception.

“How are you doing?” Arkk asked as he observed the coming fight through his employee link.

Claire just loosed her first arrow, picking off one of the Evestani on their own without alerting the rest of the camp. Even though the teams were split, she managed to hit the guy in such a way that their other team saw.

The shadows shimmered. “I’m fine.”

Arkk sat down on a fallen log. It looked like it had been felled by human hands but had been left behind instead of hauled off. Not that he was complaining. It provided a decent place to sit. “Are you? After our last talk—”

“I’m fine.”

“—you haven’t once tried to get me disrobed and in your bed.”

A silence settled in, disrupted only by distant sounds of fighting. Not that it was much of a fight. Evestani tried, but they were being ambushed and had no arms within easy reach. They did have weapons, but they were hidden within those hollowed-out logs on the carts. Someone managed to get to one of the carts and started tossing out weapons to his comrades. At least until he took an arrow to the skull.

Lexa threw the hood of her cloak down, revealing her wild red hair. She looked back, raising an eyebrow. “Finally up for something fun?” she asked.

“No.”

With a huff, Lexa turned away again, glowering. But she didn’t raise her hood again. “Katja was a whole lot more fun,” she grumbled.

“I’m sure she’d take you back.”

“Haaa? You think you can get rid of me that easily?” She scoffed. “Besides, Katja is going to be the first one eaten by the Prince’s demon. No way I’m going near her.”

“Do demons eat people?” Arkk asked, earning an uncertain shrug from Lexa. “Well, it doesn’t matter. Nobody is getting eaten by a demon if I can help it.”

Kia took the head of one of the soldiers with a wide smile on her face. In the same swing, she changed the angle of her sword, jamming it through the leg of another. She left it there, turning away from the man who was now screaming in pain, and drew a smaller blade that she immediately stabbed through another soldier’s chest. Arkk wasn’t sure why she hadn’t killed the one man. Nothing about him stood out to Arkk from what he could see. Something must have tipped her off that he was a kind of leader.

With that large sword through his leg, he would bleed out in short order if it were removed. Arkk would have to patch him up to keep him alive long enough to interrogate.

Just as Arkk was about to turn back to Lexa, he spotted one of the soldiers fleeing from combat. Right at the edge of the employee link vision, Arkk watched him grab hold of a flaming plank of wood, burning his hand. But he kept hold of it and started rushing off toward one of the carts.

One of the carts with the bombs?

Arkk bolted to his feet. “Acceleratæ!” he barked out. The haste spell had him sprinting through the woods at speeds that turned trees into blurred lines. “Electro Deus,” he said, well in advance of the encampment.

He arrived at the edge, fingers crackling with lightning, just in time to watch one of Kia’s arrows slam through the back of the soldier’s neck. The flaming log dropped from his limp fingers, harmlessly hitting a patch of dirt nowhere near the bomb cart.

Arkk let out a small sigh, observing the final moments of the battle in person. The lightning at his fingertips dissipated.

He should have trusted his subordinates more. If they weren’t faced with an avatar, they were quite competent. He should have known that no rank-and-file soldiers of Evestani would pull one over on them.

Lexa rushed up behind him with her blades drawn and ready. She moved fast but nowhere near as fast as magic could make him. Upon seeing that he wasn’t fighting and nothing seemed to be going wrong with the battle, she gave him a look as she sheathed her knives.

“Can you help it?”

“Help it?” Arkk asked, turning his gaze to the man still pinned to the ground with Kia’s sword.

“Keep the demon from killing everyone.”

“Ah.” Arkk… Well, he didn’t exactly have a good answer for that. There were plots and plans in place. His magical researchers were carrying out their duties and Sylvara had sent a letter stating her intention to help with both the demon and the avatar. But could he? It was easy to talk. Less easy to do.

“I think you’re focused too much on the avatar.”

“You think that,” Arkk said, disbelief in his voice.

“I do.” She traced a hand along the handle of her blade. “Make no mistake. I will kill him. But the avatar has been in hiding. Meanwhile, the potential demon summoning is approaching far more visibly. It is good to be on guard against the avatar and whatever he is plotting, but to the exclusion of all else?”

“That’s… a good point. I don’t like leaving an enemy half-defeated, able to strike back. But…” Arkk looked around the encampment. “Maybe you’re right. Perhaps another visit to Cliff is due.”

“Arkk!” Kia called out, raising a bloody hand in greeting. She planted the hand on her hip and looked over the encampment. There wasn’t much movement outside the warriors of Company Al-Mir. “Think we’re just about done. Even got one alive for you.”

Nodding, Arkk started forward. “For now,” he said to Lexa, “we should see if we can’t find out why they’re here. After that…”

After that, he would turn his attention to the demon summoning.

“I was chosen, when I was born, to keep watch over the Cursed Forest.”

Olatt’an didn’t look up as the elf came to sit next to him. He kept his eyes on his bowl of porridge. A few berries spiced up the paltry breakfast, but the fresh fruit wouldn’t keep long and they still had days if not weeks of travel left, according to the Protector.

He had to savor what they had while they had it.

“I was told that a great evil cursed the land,” Alya continued, “that my presence would be needed to ensure it didn’t spread, consuming the entire region and beyond.”

“They think a little dead land might spread out and consume the whole Duchy… And they send one elf to observe it.”

“As decreed by the goddess Ya, only one was needed,” Alya said with a sigh. “And I was to do more than merely watch. There were wardstones erected around the Cursed Forest. I was taught a truly paltry amount of magic. Just enough to maintain them. Five of them, positioned around the edge of the boundaries.

“Except, when I arrived in my… fifteenth decade? Was it that long ago?” Alya whispered to herself. With a shake of her head, she continued. “I found one of the stones had broken. I’m not sure what caused it. I reported it immediately, of course, but my people were still suffering from the after-effects of the wars that followed the Calamity. No one with the magical expertise necessary to repair or remake the wardstone had survived. They said they would try to contact others to find someone who could…”

Olatt’an grunted an acknowledgment. Seeing the way her story was going, he said, “A failed effort, I presume.”

“No, actually.”

“Really?” Olatt’an said, looking up from his bowl of porridge. “Huh.”

“They found a magical expert. Not an elf. An old fairy who, while he had lost his capacity for magic, still retained his knowledge of magic.” She scoffed. A hint of elvish superiority shone through her calm demeanor. “He inspected the remaining stones, called us all fools, and took off. According to him, the stones were doing nothing. Just scribbles and made-up nonsense that looked like magic but was anything but.

“I kept watch anyway. My family tried to find others who might be able to repair the stones. That effort failed. But over five decades, the Cursed Forest hadn’t spread further than the length of my arm. Shortly after that, another of the stones failed. Washed away by a flood. It didn’t seem to affect the spread or growth. If anything, the spread slowed. The next five decades, it only grew as far as my hand to my elbow.”

Olatt’an hummed. From what he knew, the Cursed Forest was a side effect of the magical fortress seeking sustenance in the absence of a master. Assuming its need for sustenance didn’t increase or decrease over the years, the spread of the forest probably only appeared to slow as the area in which it fed spread outward. Every step out from the center point, several steps worth of land would be added to the total space.

Rather than comment, he just nodded his head and gestured for her to continue.

“Another stone went missing some time later. No idea where or how. Maybe it was stolen. The fourth was defaced by humans who didn’t know—”

“It sounds as if you weren’t very good at your job.”

Alya stiffened, turning her distant gaze into a harsh glower. “I was to travel around the Cursed Forest once every decade, maintaining and charging the stones with magic.”

“A lot can happen in ten years. You elves might be unable to parse the difference between your thirtieth and thirty-first decades the same way my thirty-first and thirty-second years have become hazy with age. That doesn’t mean the world stops turning.”

“I am aware,” she said, barely moving her lips. “And I have certainly become more aware of that as of late.”

“Indeed? Good for you. So, one stone left. I presume that one broke as well?”

“Arkk,” she said with a scowl. “He and Ilya were playing in the woods. He was… three? Four? Before his parents died. Always following Ilya around…” Alya’s tone turned nostalgic for a moment before she shook her head. “He came across it, touched it, and it exploded. Violently. Near killed the boy.”

“Really? Interesting…”

“Is it?”

Olatt’an shrugged, slurping down some of his porridge. “I don’t believe in coincidence. Even the smallest happenstances have connections. That Arkk is what he is today…”

Alya fell silent, eyes turning inward as she reflected on Olatt’an’s words. “The local abbess tested him for magic shortly after. He blew up every test. The academies didn’t want him and just told us to keep him away from magic. Now though… I wonder if they hadn’t made an error in their judgment. Whatever was up with him, it destroyed the stone.

“But my family didn’t care. At this point, it had been over a thousand years since the Calamity. Whatever magic had created the wardstones was long lost. Recreating them was impossible and, besides that, the Cursed Forest’s expansion had slowed to a crawl. Mere finger lengths after decades. They even said I could return home, if I wished.”

“You didn’t.”

“I didn’t.” Alya pressed her lips together in distaste. “For an elf, a decade or two might be nothing. It is as you said. We live so long that even ten years feels like no time at all. Yet I spent hundreds of years out in the middle of the Duchy, watching towns spring up and fall and build up once more, always feeling like an outcast among the humans, all for some worthless duty that apparently hadn’t ever mattered. That fairy was right. The stones did nothing.

“I had Ilya. I had a home in Langleey. Shortly after, practically the next day, though it must have been a year or two, Arkk’s parents died. I took him in. It was something to do. Something that felt like it had more meaning than the rest of my life. Then, a short time after, a harvest failed. The Duke’s taxmen came, demanding tribute…

“I heard about the rumors of another war brewing. Wars happen all the time. Every few decades. But I saw a chance. An opportunity to do something important. So I went to the Duke, gained his trust, influenced him, supported the strengthening of bonds between the nations… Everything was going so well. I knew I would be leaving Ilya for a time—I didn’t want to subject her to the Duke if even half the rumors of his… personality were true—but what is a few decades apart?”

Olatt’an couldn’t help the smile. “A few decades is an entire lifetime for the young.”

“Yes,” Alya said, glaring down at her bowl of porridge. “I have noticed. And it was all… wasted in the end. Again. Everything I do…

“Why am I at Fortress Al-Mir? Why haven’t I left? I don’t know. Maybe I just need to see with my own eyes what I wasted my life for. What is this great evil I was supposed to prevent spreading? What will become of the land after the war?”

Olatt’an drained the last of his porridge. He was a little disappointed, if he were being honest. He was expecting a little something more. Glancing to his side, watching as Alya finally began to eat her meal. “In all that time,” he said, speaking slowly. “Did you ever hear anything about the Stars?”

Alya tried to suck in a breath. With the bowl of porridge at her lips, she ended up inhaling her food instead. She promptly doubled over in a fit of coughs. Olatt’an gave her a few good pats on the back.

“The…” She sputtered, coughing a few more times before finally drawing in a decent breath of air. “What do the stars have to do with anything?”

Olatt’an slowly shook his head. “Perhaps I’ll tell you some other time. For now, it would be best if we got moving.”

They still had a long way to go. Plenty of time to talk.