Chapter Book 5 Epilogue |
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SYSTEM ADDENDUM ADDED BY USER NAME: ERROR [REDACTED]
ADDENDUM NOTE: Meanwhile, in Timagrin.
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“That is the least of our concerns,” said Darwik, his hood slowly fluttering despite sitting in a closed room.
“How could the loss of half our harvest possibly be the least of our concerns?” asked Unad. Her maroon fur bristled under her delicately curved horns. Their faded yellow wax was chipped and would normally be unseemly. In these days, there was nothing to be done. Rohk imagined she had personally raided her subjects’ vanities for every last finger of dye before her fur pattern had returned to its dark natural color. In truth it was unlikely, but only because having a high Charisma sometimes had side effects like requiring mana woven dyes to recolor the body.
Bahap stayed quiet and crossed his enormous mass of arms. Rohk was certain the stag took Light Armor just so he could justify wearing a sleeveless top regardless of the weather.
Darwik’s eyes glowed a quiet blue under his large green hood. The elder of the council was right, the loss of crops wasn’t the most urgent issue before them, but that was easy for him to say from his ivory river. Everyone who didn’t have the only water route to Mittak was staring a rebellion in the face. The previous season was bad enough.
“My scouting party is missing,” continued Darwik. “It’s been over two weeks since their last check in. We are presuming them dead.”
“Were they, uh…” Marrid trailed off. The flowers in her hair were bright whites, pinks, and purples, contrasting against her blue and green bodice. Rohk had often wondered whether or not they were illusory, but now there was little question. The dyes for that blue had not been accessible for months and no traders had come from the north bearing those pink flowers in at least as long.
“They were the last,” said Bahap.
Everyone looked around the room with growing apprehension. The council had previously decided to send a large host of its Delver forces to foreign outposts and parties, believing the domestic danger to have subsided after Canotha. They’d wanted a show of force to feign power and gain influence. Rohk had thought it was foolish, but recent events at the Xor’Drel summit had reinforced his junior status on the council. He wondered if some of the others decided to go along with such a miserable plan just to spite him.
For the past two months, the remaining Delver parties within Timagrin had been disappearing. At first, the council blamed each other for poor discipline or bad strategy. By the time they realized it was a coordinated effort against all of them, their fingers were too locked pointed towards each other to allow for cooperation with mutual self-interest.
“There are no remaining Delvers within Timagrin borders other than us,” said Darwik. While that wasn’t technically true, the few Delvers in the north were certainly not loyal to the crowns and would love to see them melted into scrap.
“Who else knows about this?” asked Bahap.
“Only my steward, and no other,” said Darwik. “He has been informing me of their missed check-ins through our unique telepathy.” Typical for the oldest crown to wait a fortnight to mention the council’s total vulnerability.
Bahap shook his head. “That will not last long.”
Unad remained silent, which was a rarity for the woman.
“Once the commons realize the military is too thin to act without Delver assistance, it will be every crown for itself,” said Marrid. While Rohk thought some of these crowns might best be set on other heads, he had no desire to wear them. Managing his own kingdom was exhausting enough without having to fix decades of incompetent rulership and feed thousands of refugees.
“Do we recall the others?” asked Unad.
“General Oladl is out of contact,” said Marrid, “but that was part of the plan.”
“It wouldn’t matter,” said Bahap, ancient face creasing. His apprehension, having fully matured, was growing old into despair. Unad turned her eyes back to the table. Marrid stared at nothing in particular. Darwik leaned to one shoulder and traced his finger lazily across the mahogany.
Rohk had stayed quiet. Some still blamed him for not securing more resources from the Xor’Drel summit. If they had bothered to participate in those meetings, they would not be so stupid as to think the other delegates had any intention of aiding Timagrin. Eventually the silence lingered too long. It was up to him to get things moving.
“So what are our options?” said Rohk. Unad sat down and folded her arms in front of her before leaning into them. It was an unusually undignified posture for her royal ego.
“I don’t think we have any,” said Marrid. Rohk squinted.
“Nonsense. What about your tunnels, Darwik?”
Darwik shook his head. “You know as well as I that they would follow us,”
Now Rohk shook his own head. “No, I don’t. Who are you even talking about? No one outside this room even knows those tunnels exist, and they teleport to the other end of Mittak.” Marrid laid her head upon the table, using her arms as a pillow. Bahap slumped in his chair and closed his eyes.
“I think it would be better to accept our circumstances than fight in such vanity,” said Darwik, who had more to lose than anyone.
Rohk narrowed his eyes, looking between his fellows as they each laid their heads down in turn. He searched the room but saw only a still table in the dim light of glowstone. Something was present, however, some foul spirit or powerful spell or... worse. He closed his eyes to shut out the physical world and search the realm of spirits. There were no mind-altering spells or other Spiritual magic present on the others, but his Third Eye gave him limited vision of the Third Layer, and that revealed something was very wrong.
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The Third Layer was silent. Thin. The usual pressure on his mind was absent. The spirits were missing, or rather gone entirely; the world was a monochrome gray, lifeless and unformed. It didn’t make sense. It was difficult to even think; any desire to puzzle it out was met with a strange apathy, as though reality didn’t care to consider it. Something looming was more present to his senses, and drew his attention away.
A deep dark was growing across the room, pulling Rohk’s gaze. A deep chasm had opened in the wall, and an intense gravity was dragging everything toward it. Rohk tried to look away, but he couldn’t turn his head. It felt as though it was something he had been craning his neck to avoid for too long and his muscles had finally given out. Nothingness was emanating from the hallway beyond the door, and its empty ink was seeping through the walls, pulling on his skull with such strength he physically grabbed his head to avoid walking toward it.
He saw the others dragged across the room on their faces, and Rohk watched them grind off the skin, then the fat and muscle and bone until their heads were grated across the ground like a wet, red cheese. Their bodies crumpled and snapped as they were folded into wads and sucked into the nothing across the room, smearing bloody fragments along the floor. Rohk opened his mouth to scream, but instead froze, unable to breathe. He could do nothing else. He could not tear his gaze from the hole in front of him.
It was only a short distance. His leg gave for a moment, and he took a step forward. What if he jumped in? His legs gave a step, step. What did he have to lose?
He found the room snap back to its dim lighting, and he almost fell out of the chair in which he was still sitting. The large chamber door returned to where the abyss had stood calling a moment before. His thumbs were under his eyelids and his fingers stretched above. It seemed as though some part of him was aware enough to force his eyes open and stop looking at whatever that was.
Rohk stood so fast his chair toppled across the room. The others were still in their chairs, but they were all asleep. He ran over to Bahap and shook him, but the older Timan didn’t move. He moved on to Marrid and Unad, to the same effect. Rohk couldn’t detect any movement, thought, or soul. There was no indication of life at all. They had simply put their heads down and died.
It did not look nearly so pleasant from what Rohk saw in the Third Layer.
Something was outside. Rohk moved behind Darwik’s corpse and drew his dagger and tomahawk. He had no idea what was about to rip through that door, but he tightened his grip and gritted his teeth for whatever monstrous entity was about to burst into the room. This provided ample surprise when a soft knock came from the large, ornate wooden frame.
Rohk crouched behind the table, unsure what to do. He had faced many monsters, but none of them were polite. He started to poke his head over the tablecloth before the handle turned downward and the door opened.
A feminine hand extended out, palm forward and facing the room. A woman’s head slowly leaned in, revealing a lupine skeletal structure covered in short, soft black fur. Her face was strangely flat, but it bore a calm smile. She raised her eyebrows before speaking.
“Excuse me,” she said. Her voice was water running through the cracks of his mind, smoothing and polishing the stone and releasing all the tension he didn’t realize he’d been holding, some of it for decades. His muscles loosened, his breath deepened, his posture relaxed, but he still hesitated. Some recent images were not so easily forgotten.
“My name is Mercy,” she continued. “I promise I’m not going to hurt you. I know that doesn’t mean much to you at the moment, but let’s talk and get to know each other first.” She paused before turning and gesturing towards the hallway. “I’m going to walk in the room now. I’m bringing a friend, but he’s not here to hurt you either. Okay?”
Her smile was nice, but as he looked, it had far too many teeth and it didn’t crease her eyes. They stared at him too steadily. There was no wetness or tiny darting movements to them. They were more like polished glass behind which something very patient was watching and waiting. Rohk managed to find enough wherewithal to realize he should respond in some manner, so he nodded before slowly standing.
A massive creature appeared at the doorway. His footsteps shook the ground, which Rohk could not understand since nothing in the room shook with it and he had not felt it before.
The man towered over Rohk like a volcano. Rohk dared not use his Third Eye again, but the way the universe flexed before this man’s presence told him enough. Even the furniture in the room wanted to crowd away from the titan as he unfolded upon moving through the doorway. Enormous black robes with blinding white ribbons draped from the man. The ground seemed to sink beneath their weight while the air thickened around them. Even with Rohk’s Reconnaissance skill, it was difficult to make out the man’s face under the robes, but it looked like it might have been Davahn.
“I am Brae’ach,” said the man. His hands were open and his posture straight, as relaxed as one would walk around their private estate. His voice was so very low, but its vibrations massaged the soul. Rohk remained silent. He was certainly not in control and he had learned when to keep his mouth shut.
“I know you’ve heard a lot about me,” said Brae’ach. “You must have many questions.”
Rohk swallowed. Of course he had, and of course he did, and he had a fair guess as to the nature of the wolven woman given Brae’ach’s known company. Still, he could endeavor to say and reveal little.
“What happened to them?” he asked, pointing to the other crowns slumped across the table. The wolfish woman answered.
“They accepted their fate,” said Mercy. “It was their choice.” The blood trails in Rohk’s vision provided reasonable doubt that such a choice was well-informed.
“Why not me?” asked Rohk.
“Well,” she said, “you almost did, actually, and I didn’t even ask. I’m sorry, I didn’t know you could see that clearly or else I would have hidden better.”
“Regardless,” said Brae’ach, “it is evidence of your resolve. I would ask you to lend it to me.”
Rohk looked back and forth between the two. He had the overwhelming comprehension that he was hopelessly - hilariously - outclassed. He didn’t know what the giant meant by such strange words, but he doubted he had anything these people could need.
“Forgive me if I am curt,” said Rohk, “but I do not trust flattery before a request, even less one so cryptic.”
“Nor should you,” said Brae’ach, “but the evidence speaks for itself. You had the option to give up and you chose not to. That is obviously more than can be said for everyone else.”
Rohk looked around the table again. The bodies were already growing cold, as though their metabolism had simply ceased the moment they closed their eyes.
“What is my ‘resolve’ to you?” said Rohk.
“My objective is not to destroy Timagrin,” said Brae’ach. A slow breeze moved through the room as he spoke. “I need someone to lead it.”
Rohk began to narrow his eyes before reflexively returning them open. He was not keen on closing them again for any length of time in their presence.
“I find it conspicuous for you to choose the youngest crown on the council,” said Rohk.
“Why?” said Brae’ach, gesturing to the empty bodies. “They only knew how to run small kingdoms for their small benefit. You’re the only crown to have expanded their territory rather than shrunk it over the past year.”
“I also find that conspicuous under the circumstances, considering everyone else’s territories were ravaged while mine were left mostly untouched.”
Brae’ach shook his head. “I didn’t hand anything to you. You took advantage of the circumstances as they played out.”
Rohk found it difficult to argue against that assessment. It took every ounce of his wit to negotiate through the disasters as he did, and the gains he secured were most certainly not free. Still, he had little desire to serve as another’s puppet. Under the situation of the room, however, he was having a hard time imagining a scenario where he refused and remained alive.
“What exactly are you planning?” said Rohk. Brae’ach looked into the middle distance for a moment, searching for something Rohk couldn’t perceive.
“Let me close the curtains first, so to speak,” said Brae’ach. “Jakom, could you please give us our privacy for a moment?”
[CONNECTION LOST.]
[END ADDENDUM.]