Isekai Elf King: Architect of a New Empire

The man smiled, a half-sneer that seemed to exult in the pain of others. He turned his head slightly to Audrey without ever removing his gaze from Leo.

"I'm glad that you were right about your employee and his dedication, Ms. Melendez," the man said. "It pleases me that I don't have to aerate your brain."

One of the other men, a short Irish looking guy with wispy orange hair and a crooked nose, gave an ingratiating laugh. "That's funny, Kruegar."

"Liam, please, not now," Kruegar snapped. "We've got business to take care of."

Then he pointed the gun toward Leo. "All right, bring everything over here. Your CEO here is late on her payments, and so I'm repossessing her business. You guys get this back when I get a very hefty share of the company. Any sudden moves and I shoot you. Don't do what I tell you, and I shoot your woman. Plain and simple. This is a business transaction between me and little wannabe CEO here. Got it?"

Leo hesitated. Kruegar held himself like a trained fighter, his body language subtly conveying a deadly grace and confidence in the use of physical violence. Leo knew the signs of someone familiar with violence--he had been an amateur MMA fighter once, going six-and-two in unpaid but formally sanctioned fights on a local circuit. He had also kept going to the gyms until a couple years ago.

Plus, the other five guys had guns at their hips.

My chances of stopping this man and getting out alive are between a snowball-in-hell's and absolute zero, unless something radically changes, Leo thought. And if I try, I'll probably get Audrey hurt. Damn it! This was supposed to be my ticket to fame and fortune and a life that didn't suck, building things that mattered!

But I can't let them kill Audrey.

With a heavy heart, Leo carefully put everything down on the ground at his side.

Kruegar's lips twitched back upward in a satisfied smirk.

A tear slid down Audrey's cheek, and she glanced up at Leo with wide, watery eyes. "I'm so, so sorry, Leo. I didn't mean to get you caught up in all this. I just wanted to make sure—"

"I know," Leo said, his heart going out to her, even as he saw all of his own dreams, and two hard years' work, disappearing before his eyes. "It's okay."

"Quit the waterworks," Kruegar said. "This went smoothly for once. Liam, go get the goods while I keep an eye on this dude. And, friend, just in case I wasn't clear, if you make any kind of move against Liam, I'm going to perforate you. He's mu boy and your corpse would be a mild inconvenience."

Kruegar's eyes flickered downward, and his eyes widened. "What the fuck is that?"

A flash of multicolored lights appeared around Leo's feet. The same circle from before.

Kruegar pointed the gun back at Leo. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"I'm not doing anything, you asshole!" Leo exploded back. "How the fuck would I be doing anything?"

Audrey glanced between the lights and Leo's face, and he had the sudden thought that she might also think he was somehow responsible.

Although, she no longer looked fearful. An intellectual puzzle could pull her out of nearly any emotional state, same as Leo. She stood up as Kruegar kept his gun moving between Leo and the lights at his feet.

Then the circle became glass-like all over again. Leo saw the same beautiful face as before. It appeared under his feet, the brow furrowed and gray-brown eyes darting between him and something to the side.

This time, Leo waited, and as he did, the circle became more vibrant and filled with images. He now saw that the face wasn't truly looking up at him—it was looking down, as if someone were standing on the opposite side of the glass, upside down from his perspective. And he also saw a stone ceiling with a glowing crystal hanging from it behind her face, and he could make out the top of her body bent over.

The beautiful woman turned and screamed soundlessly at someone, or something, and motioned frantically back toward the circle with her pale hand.

The circle expanded rapidly, until it was about fifteen feet across.

"What are you doing?" Kruegar yelled, his hands shaking as he aimed his gun at Leo again.

"It's not me!" Leo cried, his body tensing, hoping Kruegar wouldn't do something foolish.

A six-foot-tall but quite thin man with androgynous features and long, golden hair, rushed onto the circle on the other mirror side. The man lay down, his back pressed upward against the circle below Leo.

The man's fine clothing was soaked in blood, even the satchel at his belt. He carried a sword in his hand that he put down beside him. And his ears were entirely too long, like Vulcan ears. He didn't move like he was hurt, in spite all the blood on his raiment. He had a bow and quiver on his back, which made his pose appear uncomfortable.

Kruegar screamed, "That's it, bastard, you're going down!"

Something wrenched, and Leo felt as if he were having an intense, out-of-body experience. His actual body slowed, and he saw through widening eyes as Kruegar raised the gun. Simultaneously, he watched from above as Kruegar fired the gun into his chest from just a few feet away.

Then Leo felt no connection to anything at all for a brief second.

He rolled to the side, pain lancing through him. His lungs struggled for air, finally dragging some in as he explosively coughed. He was inside a huge, stone room decorated with ornate statues—abstract geometric patterns carved into the floor, walls, and ceilings. Multiple glowing gems hanging from iron chains provided light.

Leo was on the stone he had seen before. Some kind of altar, he thought. At the end of the altar was a purple crystal, floating in the air, threads of energy lancing down from it in glowing lines around the altar that defined the fifteen-foot radius. A single drop of blood had been smeared across the purple crystal.

The woman that had been staring at him through the portal was next to him, staring down at him with furrowed brow.

Then Leo realized he wasn't in his body.

He stared at the pale skin of his thin wrist and the long, golden hair running down his shoulders. I'm in the body of the elf that lay down on the altar a moment ago. What the…?

A battle of sorts was happening inside the chamber, chaotic and bloody, and after a shocked half-second, Leo glanced up. Honest-to-God orcs, judging by their gray-skinned, overly-muscled, pig-faced appearance, were fighting with slender people with long ears. Elves. And the orcs were winning—most of the elves were lying in pools of blood, hacked down or apart.

The rest had formed a clear defensive line and were trying to hold the orcs back from the altar.

One orc, however, was far different than the others. That one was nearly nine feet tall and had four tusks poking from his face, around his mouth in a near circle, that made him look almost like the Predator. Although the tusks were larger, almost eight inches long each.

Leo stood. The main orc went berserk, pointing at him and screaming, "Da elvesti jal demokranthak dar uruk! Bahk qo!"

The giant tusked orc slammed into the elves, killing one with his giant axe and kicking another so hard its arm broke with a snap audible even over the din of battle.

The woman with the gray-brown eyes grabbed Leo, her face breathtaking but now speckled with blood, as was her pale-bronze hair.

She spoke to him in a melodious language he hadn't heard before. It reminded Leo of a beautiful Ugandan accent or someone speaking something close to Chinese, as near as he could parse it. Somehow, Leo understood it.

"In the religious tone, position of inferior addressing a high superior, most formal: My deepest and most sincere apologies: which is bourn from necessity regretted: o' Star-Guided Champion. The situation is untenable: regret at failure to control: due to the unfortunate presence of our enemy: ancestral, deservedly hated, victorious:"

Her language used sentence prefixes to indicate the context of the conversation—in this case, for some reason, a church conversation. It also used word suffixes to indicate the comparative authority of the speakers, and this woman was indicating that she thought Leo was far, far above her. And lastly, it used words to modify the meanings of adjectives and emotions, giving them subtle clarifying alterations. He knew, somehow, that she was speaking something called High Averian, a most complicated but expressive language.

But after a mere heartbeat, his mind translated the words to his English thought patterns.

She had said, basically, "I'm sorry but we need to run because the orcs are murdering us!"

In the half second that it had taken Leo's mind to absorb and process that, the nine-foot orc had managed to move next to him. Leo stood on the altar he had been sitting on, his body feeling lighter and more agile than he remembered, as the giant tusked orc swung the axe at him.

Leo jumped back, precariously, to the edge of the altar, barely dodging the axe. He glanced down, briefly, at the stone his new body had just been lying on.

The stone surface now faced upward into the lab, and his body—his real body!—was lying on the ground, blood pouring from it, covering part of the sight through the circle. He saw Kruegar and Audrey fighting.

Kruegar flung Audrey down onto the ground, next to Leo's old body.

I have to do something to save her!

But he had no idea what. Leo spasmed, almost empathetically, as Kruegar slowly emptied his gun into Audrey, whose body jerked with each shot. No, damnit, no! I did the right thing to save her! Not to watch her die mere seconds later!

The tusked orc climbed onto the altar next to him, and Leo grabbed his sword from its sheathe at his waist, his mind somehow having skills it hadn't before. He danced forward on the balls of his feet at the orc. But the orc was incredibly quick and strong. He kicked at Leo, hard and fast.

Leo blocked with his arms and felt both snap as he was propelled backwards to the edge of the altar, inches from the floating purple gem.

A translucent box appeared over his view, like a message in a computer game.

System not connected. Attempting to calibrate. Remain still, please.

Like hell I'll remain still! And get out of my face, whatever you are!

The box obliged, disappearing.

A delicate feminine hand fell on Leo's leg, and he felt a soothing warmth pass through him. One arm healed entirely. His other arm also felt better, although not perfect.

The gray-eyed woman from before—who was also an elf, Leo realized with certainty—was beside him, looking up at him from her position standing next to the altar.

"Run!" she screamed at him again in her melodious voice.

"Then follow me!" Leo shouted as the giant orc started another charge.

"I have to shut down the ritual and take the gem, or all will suffer!" she cried out. "I can't let the Blood Tribes have Asnandi's Key!"

The orc swung his axe, and Leo dodged. The clumsy swing resulted in the orc accidentally striking the purple crystal, which fell to the ground.

The crystal cracked as it hit the floor, and a massive surge of power flowed into the lines around the altar. The view into Leo's realm seemed to expand, rushing out until the entire lab and even the nearby rooms were covered.

But Leo's eyes were on the people in the lab. After-images—their souls?—of Kruegar and his men, and of Audrey, were being pulled from their bodies as each of the men slumped to the ground. And the souls were being pulled toward the portal. At the same time, the room started to spin in Leo's perception.

He briefly saw worlds, plural. Alternate Earths, where people wore strange clothing. A world where dinosaurs roamed. A hellscape of fire and molten metal. A vast void filled with unknowable beings that looked like cephalopods large enough to swallow the sun. The elf woman reached for him before she spun off into nothingness.

Then everything exploded.