Fortress Al-Mir

“It doesn’t feel good.”

“War never does.”

Arkk didn’t have the experience to make that kind of claim. He wasn’t old enough to have seen any other wars. All he had were the stories told by bards, mercenaries, adventurers, and other ramblemen who passed through Langleey Village.

Hawkwood sat on the other side of the room, scowling at a letter delivered by a Swiftwing harpy.

“They always glorified it. Stories, that is. Warriors fighting off the barbarian hordes and heroes standing up against evil. They never mention the mud, blood, and dead children.” Arkk paused, then added, “Dead soldiers as well. Nor the prisoners and their fates.”

“The poets won’t mention it here either,” Hawkwood said, not taking his eyes off the letter. “It will become a shining battle, the moment the invaders were forced back to the border. They’ll pose you with a sword raised high in the sky with Evestani fleeing like cowardly dogs… Unless, of course, history chooses to vilify you. Then this will be the dark point in the Kingdom of Chernlock’s story.”

Arkk shifted in discomfort. Another weight settled in on his shoulders. He had never really considered a legacy. Simple villagers didn’t leave legacies. Now he had the weight of future narratives pressing down on his mind. “Why can’t they just tell what happened? Evestani invaded, assassinating leadership before their armies killed the masses. We fought them back.”

Hawkwood finally looked up. His gaze pierced Arkk with an intensity that made him flinch.

“The truth,” Hawkwood started, “is the first casualty of war.”

Arkk broke eye contact. That was certainly true. After all, he well knew that Evestani had come for him and Vezta. It wasn’t his fault, he didn’t antagonize them or invite them here. Nevertheless, Evestani wasn’t simply trying to conquer territory and expand their nation.

“The truth gets distorted, covered up, and buried under the rubble of grand moments and epic tales. Even absent political influence, the truth is too… raw for feasts and celebrations.” Hawkwood stood, picking up the letter as he did so. “But, ultimately, history is written by those with power and influence. In the long term, perhaps that will be you—and you’ll be able to say whatever you want. For now, whether you are a villain or a hero will likely depend on Prince Cedric’s judgment.”

“A man about whom I’ve heard nothing but good things,” Arkk said, sarcasm on full display.

Hawkwood motioned with the letter. “As the sole remaining member of our former Duke’s retinue, I’m to meet with the Prince as he enters the Duchy. I just got the exact date he is expected to arrive. Two and a half weeks from today—”

“Does he know you’re in Elmshadow? You wouldn’t normally be able to get to the eastern border in three weeks. Obviously, you’re free to use my teleportation circles…”

“I suspect it is some attempt at a power-play. Perhaps he wishes to use my absence as an excuse to justify moving all the King’s armies into the Duchy to… quell matters.”

“More war,” Arkk said, slumping.

“More of a purge, at least from their perspective. White Company has been decimated and split, the Grand Guard is barely being held together, and there are few other major threats in the region—at least on the level that can contend with the King’s armies. Except for you.”

Arkk only slumped further.

“Which is why I will be there on time. I will be doing my utmost to convince the Prince that you are the hero of this story, not a villain.”

“Thank you.”

Hawkwood smiled. That was a rarity these days. When Arkk had first met the man in Cliff all those months ago, he had been nothing but smiles. He had been larger then too, with a well-kempt beard and hair.

“Don’t get me wrong, Arkk. I like you. But I’m doing this for me,” he said with a chuckle. “The idea of fighting against you is terrifying. We just took out an entrenched opponent that numbered up to four times larger than our force. All in under a day. All without using this tower in the actual attack.”

Arkk almost said that it was because of the tower that they could create such deep and intricate tunnels and make use of instant teleportation to get their wounded out even from the midst of battle. It was the tower that had finally shaken the resolve of the defenders, instigating their surrender and rout. The tower that now stood tall in the middle of the ruined city was their victory, even if it hadn’t personally stomped down their shields or crushed their armies under its feet. He closed his mouth, deciding against saying anything. Hawkwood surely knew all that.

Instead, Arkk smiled back. “You could always join up more permanently.”

“It is a consideration,” Hawkwood said, folding the letter and sliding it into the inside pocket of his militaristic jacket. “Whatever happens, I will take the route I believe will lead to less conflict. I’d urge you to do the same, not that I expect you to lay your head on the chopping block should the Prince call for that.”

“I’ll take that advice,” Arkk said, grimacing at the image.

“Good. Then I should be off. I’ll have my adjutants lead the majority of my army back over land while I and a small retinue take the ritual transport.”

“Before you do,” Arkk said, standing. He held up his letter, one that had arrived just this morning via harpy. “Any idea what I should do about this?”

Hawkwood hesitated. “Instinct tells me not to trust the Evestani leadership. Not after everything they’ve pulled. That said, I can understand and empathize with a leader trying to get his men home. I believe I would make the emotional decision and agree to the release.”

Sighing as Hawkwood departed now that his advice had been delivered, Arkk stared down at the paper. A letter from some sultan. The supposed leader of Evestani. In all the war, Arkk had known there was a sultan, but he had been so focused on the Golden Order and their avatar that he hadn’t even considered the Sultan an actual person, let alone one potentially involved in the war.

He wanted his people home. People who, just a few days before, had been fully ready to take the heads of everyone Arkk knew. How long would it be before they turned around and pointed their swords at him once again?

There were no apologies—though there might have been a few implications that the war had been a mistake, if Arkk squinted between the lines—and no restitution or ransom for the majority of the soldiers. A few names with monetary amounts attached as a reward for their release, Arkk recognized. Leaders who were unaccounted for that the Sultan hoped Arkk had in his prisons. Only a small fraction of the names were in his prison. The others had either escaped with the rest of the fleeing army or had perished in the assault.

The Sultan was willing to part with a significant chunk of his treasury, gold all of it, in exchange. That was the price for the important leaders and a smaller lump sum for anyone else Arkk had imprisoned.

Arkk needed gold, it was true. Building the tower had not been cheap and he still had his minions to pay. At the moment, he was supplementing his income by eating through Elmshadow’s ruins. The lesser servants could convert the material they consumed into gold. It wasn’t much. The amount converted seemed to be based on the general value of whatever they ate and ruins just weren’t worth that much. Still, it cleaned the place up.

He had a few lesser servants digging deep into the ground below Elmshadow and into both of the mountains, looking for any deposits of gold he could mine from while occupying the city. They found something, though it wasn’t gold. Some kind of large gemstone that they had a hard time eating through. For the time being, he had them ignoring it, spreading out while looking for anything else of value.

Funds weren’t an emergency yet…

But if Priscilla did find another tower on her exploratory flights through the Underworld, Arkk would need a sizable amount of gold more than he could spend to rebuild it here. The amount the Sultan was offering could almost fund a quarter of a tower on its own.

Yet, he had to be suspicious.

He knew things that Hawkwood didn’t. The Heart of Gold, a deity, could easily curse the gold or cause it to attack like those golden statues.

The golden statues that had attacked the tower had gone inert. Agnete was going to try melting them as soon as she got back from capturing another small group of enemy soldiers. If they were solid and proper gold, that would certainly help.

Arkk performed a quick check on all his employees. Finding no immediate or major problems at Elmshadow, he stood, teleported himself to the teleportation ritual room, and performed a few quick chain hops back to Fortress Al-Mir.

As soon as he was inside, he made his way to the private quarters. On the opposite end of the section from his quarters, he lightly knocked on a door.

The door opened after a short moment, revealing a tall elf with long silver hair. Her face pinched when she saw who was standing there. “Oh. It’s you.”

“Alya,” Arkk said, keeping his tone carefully neutral with the elven matriarch. “Glad I caught you before you left.”

Convincing Alya to head out on an expedition in the other world had not been as difficult as Arkk expected. For all that she viewed Fortress Al-Mir and their activities within much like the Abbey of the Light—and likely the Golden Order—the fact that Ilya was here tempered her somewhat.

It was… strange. Arkk had observed their interactions, usually from a distance. Personally, he couldn’t stand Alya. She had once been like a mother to him, but now? Not so much. But the way Alya acted with Ilya was a lot like how Arkk remembered from his childhood. It made Arkk consider her actions, that of leaving Langleey to serve as the Duke’s advisor, in a somewhat different light.

She was an elf. She lived naturally for… potentially forever. Arkk had never heard of an elf dying of old age. While she hadn’t lived forever—she was roughly six hundred, give or take—Arkk had only been a part of her life for a tiny percent of that. Even Ilya didn’t amount to a significant chunk of that time. To an elf, spending fifteen years trying to prevent a war was hardly worth considering. Were it not for Fortress Al-Mir’s activation pushing that avatar to war, she might very well have been successful. Then she could have let the Duke die of old age or simply found some other way to leave. She could have come back to Langleey and reentered her daughter’s life without a significant delay from her perspective.

It was different for Ilya. Ilya was only a little older than Arkk was. Her perspective was more akin to that of a human. That would probably change after a few centuries, but for now, Ilya had much more human-like attachments.

“Was there something you needed?” Alya asked, folding her arms over her chest. She tilted her head down ever so slightly. It was something of an illusion but the pose made her look dignified and yet a little more approachable for someone of lesser stature. A pose she had likely grown used to using while in the Duke’s employ.

“Do you know anything about Evestani’s Sultan?”

It was subtle but Alya twitched her head in surprise. Ilya did the same on occasion, though a bit more obviously than the time-tempered manners Alya had developed. “I know plenty,” she said after a slight pause. “We met on several occasions. You may wish to narrow down what you wish to know if I am to make it to the expedition in time.”

Rather than figure out what questions would be best to ask, Arkk simply held out the letter requesting the release of the captured Evestani soldiers. He watched Alya’s eyes move back and forth over the paper, widening slowly in the process. Once she reached the bottom, her eyes darted about the paper once again before finally settling back on Arkk.

“This is signed… Sule. The Sule I knew was a man of the people. Well-liked generally and respected. He even offered one of his daughters for marriage with Levi in an attempt to strengthen comradery between our nations and to prevent another war.”

“You doubt its authenticity?”

Alya slowly shook her head. She turned away from Arkk, reading the letter again while pacing around the doorway to her chambers.

That gave Arkk a good look at the interior. He did try to avoid looking in on his minions around the Fortress, especially in private locations. There was a near-constant level of activities going on that he would rather ignore. Yet it still wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before.

The magic of the personalized rooms only worked for employees. As Alya was neither a prisoner nor a minion, she had been left to collect furniture from John the carpenter. She had a spartan bed, covered in only a few thin blankets, and a simple desk with a chair. A tall wardrobe held a few changes of clothes. Beyond that, she had next to nothing. The walls and floors were plain brick much like any corridor or empty room in the fortress.

Alya stopped her pacing back in the doorway, frowning down at the letter. “The words read like someone overly concerned with his men. Not the kind of person who would throw years of peace away for… whatever the goal of this war is.”

Arkk carefully did not change his expression. He doubted anything good could come of letting others know his suspicion that Evestani marched for Fortress Al-Mir, not the rest of the Duchy.

“So it is a genuine offer?”

“I… believe so. But I do have concerns about some of the other content in this letter,” she said, dragging a lithe finger down the paper. “You captured five thousand soldiers. You?”

“Closer to two thousand. I’m not sure they knew how many survived the battle when they wrote the letter.”

“You… Hawkwood,” she said, speaking with finality, like she had realized something. “White Company captured the Evestani.”

“White Company made up about half of our side of the battle,” Arkk said slowly.

“Who else? What other free companies? The Grand Guard?”

“Just us. Most other free companies have been destroyed, were absorbed into our companies, or stayed out of the war entirely. And the Grand Guard is… still a little discombobulated following the change in leadership.” He paused and then added, “I’m not quite sure you know just what it is you were supposedly keeping an eye on out in the Cursed Forest.”

Alya crossed her arms again. This time, she tilted her head upward, looking down on Arkk without a word. Her posture said enough.

“To be fair, I own the thing and still am discovering things,” Arkk said with a small laugh. “You know, when it was just me and Ilya, practically the first idea we had was to rescue you. There was no plan, no thought behind it. Just the idea and a whole lot of gold. We thought we were going to buy your freedom—thought you were some kind of slave back then. Yet I was cautious. Didn’t want to do anything that might get the Duke’s armies set against us.

“Now look at me,” Arkk said with a casual shrug. No grandiose arm waving or haughty posturing. It just wasn’t needed. “Fighting on even footing with an entire foreign army. When I rescued you and Ilya from the Duke’s dungeons, there was barely a consideration that making an enemy of the Duke would turn out poorly. It just didn’t matter. I knew I could handle the Duke. Turned out, he handled himself pretty well. I hardly needed to lift a finger.”

Alya pressed her lips into a thin, disappointed line. “Only the foolish seek conflict instead of cultivating allies.”

“I am cultivating allies,” Arkk said, thinking of the Protector. “They do seem to come from strange places. Besides, it isn’t like I want conflict,” he added, fully in agreement. “But it seems like a lot of people want to fight me. Maybe you’ll be happy to know that I’m trying to get more normal allies. Hawkwood is heading out to try to convince the Prince that I’m some kind of hero.”

“Prince?” Alya tilted her head again. “What prince?”

“Prince Cedric of Vaales. He is apparently on his way to the Duchy—”

Alya closed her eyes, pressing a hand to her forehead as she let out a long sigh. “If that prince is on his way here, I fear the King feels as if the Duchy is beyond salvation.”

“So I’ve heard,” Arkk said with a frown of his own. “But he is approaching with a relatively small entourage, not an army. I hope that means there is still some hope.”

“I would advise caution regardless. There was some… discussion regarding the methods through which he subjugated the Vaales rebellion among the Duke’s advisors. The systematic and utter destruction of rebellious elements and the speed at which that destruction was carried out have… unpleasant implications.”

“Unpleasant meaning what, exactly?”

Alya shifted, moving from foot to foot in clear discomfort. Not even spotting her daughter in the middle of the Duke’s party had her quite so rattled. It was enough that Arkk, though normally dismissive of Alya’s concerns, felt compelled to listen as she whispered, “Rumors imply he may have sought extra-planar assistance in subjugating Vaales.”

“Extra… Demons? He summoned a demon?” Arkk shook his head. “Impossible. The Abbey of the Light—”

“Either doesn’t know or they lack the evidence to accuse a royal—or they were convinced to look the other way.”

Arkk clenched his eyes shut, grinding his teeth together. When he had heard that the Prince was approaching with only a small force, he had been overjoyed that there wouldn’t be a big fight. But it didn’t take a lot of people to summon a demon. If Alya was right and those rumors were true…

Most of his advisors were still at Elmshadow. Luckily, his spellcasters had all returned to Fortress Al-Mir following their victory. Zullie sat in the library, speaking with one of her assistants. Savren stood hunched over a ritual circle, drawing out fresh lines in what looked like a way of trapping people in a daydream-like hallucination. Hale was in the infirmary, patching up some of those who had been injured worse than others and had volunteered for her… unique methods of using Flesh Weaving.

Arkk pulled all three of them straight to the hallway. After a moment of hesitation, he pulled Ilya in as well.

All three jerked slightly, reorienting themselves after the sudden relocation. They were all used to it enough that they didn’t fall flat on the floor. Zullie looked around the most, turning her head back and forth as her empty eye sockets took in some small amount of the surroundings. She had performed some ritual that let her know a few things that she shouldn’t be able to see. It wasn’t perfect, but she eventually looked to Savren and then down at Hale.

For some odd reason, she had taken to wearing her rectangular glasses again, though the lenses were far more smudged than she had kept them previously.

Ilya first looked surprised to see Arkk. He probably should have visited her when he first got back to the fortress. Especially as she looked at her mother with mild accusation in her eyes. However, she was quick on the uptake. That Savren, Zullie, and Hale were all present meant this situation was serious. She folded her arms in an almost exact mirror of her mother’s earlier pose and waited for Arkk to speak.

“I infer an issue has intruded, incessantly. Immersed in intellectually intense investigation, if it isn’t an exigent emergency, I entreat you to escort me back to my endeavor. My colleagues can confront the conundrum.”

Arkk stared at Savren for a long moment before he simply shook his head. “I need all three of you on a priority task. Delve through the black book again. Find anything you can on demons—”

Ilya sucked in a breath. The anger in her pose fled, quickly replaced with worry.

“Don’t summon one,” Arkk continued, giving a firm and deliberate glare at Zullie. He wasn’t sure if she quite got the look but the way she shifted implied she heard something aimed at her in his tone. “Look for defenses, ways of banishing one, or otherwise ways of dealing with hostile demons.”

“What idiot summoned a demon?” Zullie asked, somehow managing her haughty tone even as she failed to look directly at Arkk. “Not the Golden Order.”

“No one has, yet. I hope no one will. But I have come to appreciate the maxim of being prepared for anything.”

“You’re asking in such a hurry that we’re having a meeting in the hallway,” Ilya said, trying to keep her tone flat. There was a slight waver in her tone, betraying her worry. “What’s going on?”

Arkk shook his head. “I’ll call a full meeting to explain the situation,” he said with a small glare at Alya. He shouldn’t hold it against her for dropping this on him but… it was still annoying right now. He wanted a few days of peace before being bombarded with more problems. “But I need to get to Hawkwood before he gets too far away. While I’m doing that, I want you to pen a few letters to Astra and Vrox. See if they know anything about fighting demons. We’ll have the meeting after.”

Turning, Arkk looked fully at Alya. “I don’t suppose you have any information on the topic? Or are capable of fighting demons yourself?”

“Certainly not,” Alya said.

“Then you’re still on for Olatt’an expedition.” There wasn’t much point in delaying their journey. If Olatt’an had a way of fighting demons, he surely would have used it with their old chieftain instead of coming to Arkk for aid.

Hale piped up. “What about the wounded?”

Arkk stared down at her. She wasn’t a researcher or all that knowledgeable in magic. He had pulled her into this mostly because of her propensity for Flesh Weaving. If she could use that spell to such a degree… Well, it had come from the black book…

Quickly scanning through the infirmary, Arkk grimaced at the sight of it. There had been a lot of wounded in the aftermath of the battle of Elmshadow. Most of everyone had already been stabilized. But stabilized and healthy were two very different things.

“Get the worst of them as healthy as you can,” Arkk said. “Then join the others.”

Hale nodded her head, her twin tails of black hair bobbing with her.

Without further room for arguing, Arkk sent all of them away even as he teleported himself straight to the ritual circle room. He had to get to Hawkwood and find out if he knew anything about this demon summoning that he had neglected to mention. And, if not, to warn his mentor.