Chapter 67 - Make Him A King
Carver stood over his map table. He was rather proud of the thing. It had taken a fair bit of work and more than a little personal scouting to get a good feel for the way the city was falling out, but at last he had the first inkling of understanding how this new world was shaping up.
At the lake front, someone had decided to play pirate. Gideon wasn’t sure who it was or just what they were up to, but he’d spotted a pair of vessels flying honest to god Jolly Roger flags on their masts. They were a good distance from shore when he saw them, but they clearly were returning to land periodically to raid and scavenge. Finding a way to contact them was on his to-do list.
Most of the downtown region of the city was a disaster and growing worse by the day. Fires had broken out, spreading quickly from building to building. Without a fire department, they raged uncontrolled. To prevent the fires from taking down his new fortress, he’d ordered his undead to tear down every building within a few blocks. They’d scavenged everything useful from the structures, even recapturing the construction materials where possible. Over time, he’d surely need more space.
He’d returned to the UVM campus earlier that day, recalling that there was a traveling exhibit from the Fields Museum that he might just be able to make use of… But the one dinosaur they’d sent was gone, probably wandered off, from the looks of it. There were signs of battles on the campus, so someone human had stuck around, trying to make their stand, but he saw no sign of them still being there. Unfortunate; he would have considered taking in a few more people.
There were goblins to his east, or so the scout undead he’d sent out reported back. Several bands of rat-people were scattered across the city as well. And monsters were showing up with increasing frequency as time went on. Interestingly, they weren’t spawning close to the castle Carver was building. When something did wander into his zone of control, his undead dispatched it quickly, but nothing was appearing inside his walls, for example.
That had worried Gideon a great deal. It was clear these monsters were appearing from somewhere, although he’d yet to see the process in person. If they could appear anywhere, then in theory a dragon could appear in his bedroom while he slept, and eat him before he even had a chance to wake. But that didn’t seem to be how it worked. The monsters were appearing mostly in places where the existing monsters hadn’t been cleared yet. Somehow, the act of clearing an area kept new creatures from arriving there, too.
It was something he needed to study with much more detail, because it would mean the difference between creating actual secure, safe regions, and never being able to do so.
“Sir! Come quick! There’s something you have to see!”
That was Brian, Carver’s de facto second in command, out in the castle courtyard from the sounds of it. While the man didn’t seem especially upset by whatever it was, his voice sounded alarmed. Gideon ordered several of his undead to join him and went quickly down the stairs and outside.
His castle was coming together nicely. The walls were finally up, although they still had a lot of work to do. When finished, the stone wall surrounding his base would be taller, with stairs leading up the inside to battlements from which his undead could patrol and defend the place. The one building he hadn’t done much to change was the old administration building of St. Joseph’s. That was now the core of the ‘castle,’ where he and those he’d brought under his wing slept, ate, and worked.
The ‘courtyard’ was what had been the back yard of the administration building. Now, it was the grassy centerpiece of his castle. Brian’s wife had taken to planting a small flower garden there, which Gideon rather liked. A spot of bright beauty made each day that much nicer.
But now, there was something new in the space.
Hovering about four feet above the ground was a small gray statue. It was only about five inches tall, and it looked something like a medieval tower—perhaps like the rook from a chess set. There was nothing beneath it but air.
It hung there, not glowing, not flashing, just…floating and doing nothing.
“What is it, sir?” Brian asked.
Carver shook his head. “I don’t know. But I mean to find out.”
He stepped forward, intending to grab hold of it, but Brian grabbed his arm. “You sure that’s wise, sir? What if it zaps you or something?”
Gideon arched an eyebrow, and Brian let go. Then he looked back over at the strange carving and sighed. “You’re probably right. I have minions. I should use them for this sort of thing.”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Instead of reaching out to touch it himself, he sent one of his undead over. It snatched the carving from the air, and…
Nothing at all happened.
Carver wasn’t sure if he felt disappointed or not. He’d been expecting something more interesting than that. He ordered the skeleton to bring it to him. Sitting in the undead hands, it didn’t look any different. What was it? Finally deciding, Gideon reached out and took the thing from his skeleton.
Immediately, it began to change. Where it had been only gray before, now it was streaked with lines of black. From the crystals he carried? Perhaps. Much like when he embedded those crystals, Gideon’s mind flooded with information about the stone. It was a control stone, used by the ruler of territory to help control the lands they’d won. Apparently, building up his little castle had triggered one to appear here.
He held up the stone, watching it as it continued to change color. Fascinating stuff; he would need to explore this new type of magic in much more detail.
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Colonel Turner took the stairs up from his basement office at a steady, solid pace. This day hadn’t been going his way so far. From the sounds of it, things were either about to get a lot better or much worse. It was difficult to tell which, so he tried to keep his mind open, to be ready for whatever.
As much as he tried to keep her out of his thoughts, Turner’s mind kept returning to that Serrano girl. She was a powerful weapon, but she’d already proven to be difficult if not impossible to control. His Charisma, which kept everyone else around him in line and following orders, seemed to have limited effect on her. If anything, that was more true after her return than it had been during her first visit. He wasn’t sure how she was doing it, but somehow Selena was resisting his Charisma.
Will crystals were the most logical rationale, and since she was a caster, it stood to reason she’d attempted to build that up. Was she already rank five in Will, though? Based on the raw number of undead she controlled, Turner felt confident she was rank five in at least Animate Dead, and probably either rank four or five in Control Undead as well. If she was rank five in Will as well, how many rank five crystals did she have? How had she gotten so damnably strong so quickly?
Then there was the titan skeleton, the tyrannosaurus. It wasn’t enough that the girl left his base and came back with a dinosaur under her control; no, on top of that, the Guards on his walls said the T. Rex was able to spit Fireballs. She’d used a Minion Augmentation on it, he was sure of it. She was strong—too strong for him to easily control. That made her a potential threat, and he hadn’t kept his command for so many years by allowing threats to his power to linger. Sure, the nature of the dangers he faced now were wildly different from those in the old world. But his mindset toward threats? That was old and well-established.
With effort, he pushed her from his thoughts. She’d taken off again, and there was little he could do about her for the time being. Better to keep her as an ally, if an uneasy one. She’d be far worse as a full-out enemy. For the time being, he had other problems which needed his focus.
“You said it just appeared in mid-air?” Turner asked Farnsworth, who was leading the way up the stairs.
“Yes, sir. Snapped into being like…well, like magic, sir. I heard the pop, turned around, and there it was.”
“No one has gone near it?”
“No, sir. I’ve got six of my people guarding it right now,” Farnsworth replied. “They won’t let anyone near it, and if it turns into a giant monster or something, we’ll have people there to face it right away.”
Turner didn’t think it was going to change into a monster, but it wasn’t impossible, given all the other wild things he’d seen. “Good call.”
They burst out into the fading daylight, the afternoon sun still casting an orange glow over the base. Farnsworth’s description had been accurate. About thirty feet away, Turner saw the strange object he’d described.
It floated about four feet off the ground, this small piece of gray stone. It was the height of a hand, perhaps five or six inches, and looked exactly like a rook from the chessboard in his quarters—a stone tower, complete with a heavy front door. It didn’t glow, shine, or give any other indications of magical nature—aside from the floating bit, and the ‘popping into existence’ part, anyway.
He felt called to it. Without a word, Turner walked closer. He heard Farnsworth’s steps coming along behind him, so he knew he had backup if something bad happened, but that didn’t feel likely. This wasn’t a threat. Whatever this thing was, it was something different, new—something they hadn’t seen before. But that didn’t mean it was harmful.
“Careful, sir. We don’t know what it can do,” Farnsworth warned, once they were only a few paces away.
“That’s true, Master Sergeant. But we need to find out what it does,” Turner replied. Before he could second-guess his instincts, Turner took three steps forward and grasped the thing in his hand.
It took only light force to tug it free from whatever was holding it in the air, and once it was in his hand it didn’t try flying away. Nor did it turn into a monster, shock him with magic, or anything else strange. The stone did begin to shift and change, though, new color twisting through it. Interesting; the color it changed to matched his rank six stone. It was linking to him, bonding with him in some way.
As it did, Turner’s mind flooded with new information, same as it had when he’d absorbed crystals. He knew what he was holding and how to use it. With this, he would end up far more than just a colonel in the Air Guard.
“You okay, sir?” Farnsworth asked.
“Yes, Master Sergeant,” Turner replied. “I’m good. This is interesting. It’s going to take a little experimentation to figure it out, but this artifact is a powerful thing. It’s going to change things for us, in a good way.”
Especially for him. He felt the power this thing represented. And he knew, deep in his gut, that there were more of them out there in the world. Probably more appearing all the time, too. One of these would make him even more powerful than he had been.
Enough of them would make him a king.