For long moments, Eric just stared out at the vast fields and woodland groves stretching out to the ochre horizon lit up by smouldering fires from both Lilly’s and his own earlier interventions, allowing silent tears to flow down his cheeks as he heard the sweet notes of his friends and boon companions being reunited with Aurelia’s freshly minted paladins, Elonia’s sworn defenders, and the friends and siblings of the New York elites who were now delving by Eric’s side.
He smiled at the sounds of their giddy squeals, tearful hugs and excited conversations as inhuman Perception made out so many streams of excited conversations and happy reunions and now he was choking back sobs of his own, humbled by just how close he had come to ending all their precious lives. Precious stories cut short, if he had unleashed deadly cannon shot that would have utterly obliterated that mockery of a tribunal in Freetown, or allowed that asshole Ron to goad his newest companions into trying to take him down in the delve just outside New York City’s far safer white-tier territory.
Instead he had held back and resisted embracing those easier paths, even if he had paid a terrible price in pain and a humbling price in discipline to get where he was right now. Witnessing a miraculous sunset with the sounds of revelry and laughter as Aurelia, a strikingly powerful Silver who had revealed herself at least, played consummate host to an extend group of White-tier mortal youths only a year or two younger older than her own children.
At that very moment, as the solstice moon caressed their shivering forms, she was touching their brows and infusing them with the inconceivably powerful boons of a Silver-tier titan pleased with their service to her son. A woman who was now, thanks to Greed’s multiple infractions including revealing his own hideous strength, was finally allowed to reveal just a sliver of her true faerie power.
Eric could only hope his boon companions wouldn’t find fae’s price too bitter to bear, however sweet the boon. Yet he could spare no energy in counsel or gentle interrogation of his mother’s intentions, as he was doing his best to come to terms with what was perhaps the greatest miracle of all.
A child of his own.
A child who had just been thrown into the deepest end imaginable, leading the furious charge to claim an entire world.
“Hi.”
Eric turned around at the sound of a husky, playful, and oddly shy voice that he knew intimately well, slowly turning around to catch Annika Drevyn’s shy grin as she handed him a fluted glass of champagne, and somehow Eric wasn’t that surprised to see that his mother had managed to turn the entire military field into a grand gala with dozens of exquisitely tailored and beautiful elven servants presenting platters filled with an endless supply of drinks and delectable canapes to both the human adventurers, Paladins, and guests who happened to be at Ashland at that moment, as well as the entirety of Sylvan command and some 300 or so fully kitted elves who moved with fluid grace in their silvered helms and mail, their sabers and elegantly recurved bows secured to clever back cases not hindering them all as they moved through the gala.
Eric shook his head with a smile. “And somehow what I swore was an autumn evening turns to the Winter Solstice and the Winter Queen’s granting boons and blessings that will alter my friend’s lives forever.” Eric sighed. “Mother never ceases to amaze.”
Annika’s eyes twinkled. “Yes, our Empress truly is one of a kind. And yes, it truly is the Winter Solstice, Eric. No matter how long halcyon summer days stretch in wild territories saturated with magic, peril, and wonder.” Her gentle smile filled with heartfelt concern. “Eric…” she swallowed, clearly looking for the right words, before looking up at him once more. “Are you alright?”
Eric closed his eyes and sighed. “I got tortured to within an inch of my life and gave up my deadliest trump cards to secure 400 thousand soldiers that Greed was diabolical enough to twist to his own purposes, only for my daughter to emerge just in the nick of time to save the day. And now mother’s got her fingers in yet another choice pie, a fresh new world the goblins were stupid enough to link to this one, and all under the must righteous and glorious of circumstances.”
He gave a rueful chuckle, ignoring the pained look Annika gave him. “And here I’m finding that despite my reluctance to play the game of kings and thrones at all, it’s my own flesh and blood, a child who’s soul I helped forge as much as any father could, just two days ago… is now leading the charge.”
He sighed, blinking back a bitter tear. “And I absolutely hate that System shenanigans mean that I can’t be there to watch her back every step of the way, and slaughter anyone who even dares look at her wrong.”
Annika gently stroked Eric’s tightly clenched fist. “Yet thanks to your efforts, Eric, she has nearly four hundred thousand troops tied to her soul who will defend her life, and her honor, with their dying breath.”
Eric forced a chuckle. “Yeah, I’m still kind of surprised by how exactly that worked out, and all I got was the briefest sense of her claiming a Commander’s class, and then we had no time at all for anything save final goodbyes.” He shook his head and sighed. “And I didn’t even get a chance to show her the runes I know, and the handful of spells she hasn’t already figured out.”
Annika winked, pointing to the glowing remains of the obliterated trees, over two and a half acres worth, that a convenient shower was presently putting out. “Somehow, I think she’ll be okay, Eric. With that miracle she pulled off against a full dozen of Greed’s top killers he should never have been able to smuggle onto Earth at all…”
Eric’s teeth ground in remembered fury, finding out the full details of that fight, before he blinked in sudden understanding. “She wasn’t actually a sheep let to slaughter, was she.”
Annika quickly shook her head. “Aurelia made it clear that your daughter could bow out at any time. Goblin oathbindings and contracts now are essentially worthless after the System sanctioned them… at least until any contract giver ascends at three full levels, and you’d better believe that we made a deal with the Blue to be kept abreast of all level advancements to which, after Greed’s acts, even Caliban didn’t blink twice at accepting our contract.”
Eric nodded. “Good,” he said, flashing a jaded smile. “Maybe we can inspire a global policy wherein no one makes any deals with any goblin who has advanced in levels… just so they can never trick, trap, or enslave another soul again.” His jaw clenched. “Even if our best course would be to wipe them entirely off the map for all time.”
Annika dipped her head, her exquisite features all but glowing under the soft glow of the moonlight. “Agreed. But we respect both Caliban and our alliance with the Blue, far too much to take the battle straight to Freetown.” She then flashed a rueful smile, pearlescent teeth flashing. “Though considering that we are once more at under 400 troops, the pressure is on us once more. Even worse, with Greed gone we’ve suddenly found System markers to the dozen or so Classers who were interested in joining our faction immediately after the Freetown negotiations.”
Eric braced himself, fearing the worst. “Really.”
The beautiful elven woman beside him nodded, her bright green eyes filled with regret. “My scouts report multiple unmarked graves between here and Freetown. Whatever was cloaking their remains before has clearly expired.”
Eric flashed a hard smile. “I’m betting it’s all deliberate. That we were to find their remains the minute Greed mocked us with the theft of 400,000 souls, doing all he could to goad us into attacking so our own ally could finish him off.”
Annika’s eyes widened with horror, before giving thoughtful nod. “I fear you’re right, my prince. Regardless, it’s damned clear that the Goblin factions never for one second negotiated in good faith in any single facet of our agreements or accords.”
Eric gave a hard nod. “Damn right. Don’t get it twisted, Annika. There is no compromise with them. No accord that can be reached. It’s a war to the bitter end between us and them. And it’s a war we need to win, lest genocide be the bitter price we pay.”
Annika gave him a surprisingly intense look, that of a tactician more than a lady striking a conversation with a man she fancied. “What do you know?”
Eric took a deep shuddering breath, and revealed what little he felt he safely could about the nightmare travesty that had been the goblin’s soul-steel operation, knowing without even needing to feel the cold silvery finger of a System cautioning a possible hero that certain things were never to be said allowed if one didn’t want to end up as censured as the Goblins now were.
Eric shivered under that silvery touch, pretending he didn’t know what it meant.
Not that anything more than that was needed. Eric had damn well planned on keeping his mouth shut, for his daughter’s sake, if nothing else. She was clearly benefiting from being a favored child of the System at the moment, and he sure as heck wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize that.
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But certain things, he sensed he could freely say. Was, in fact, more than welcome to say.
He gently clasped Annika’s hand, earning a gasp, sapphire eyes glittering in the brilliant moonlight gazing so deeply into his own. It was nothing for him to sense the rapid surge in her heart rate, and the release of pheromones that came so naturally to his tribe.
He swallowed his suddenly dry throat, doing his best to stay focused on the topic that mattered. “The goblins aren’t hustling for profit. Their goal is to get every single mortal soul on every newly ascended world they can get their claws into trapped in endless usurious debt. Then they use their own twisted version of necromancy… yes, the arts your race so rightly fears…”
“Our race, Eric.”
Eric smirked. “An art that the goblins use in ways that make your fears so understandable. A hell of a lot different than my own path, I assure you. The point is, they bind the souls of their victims, their debtors, into eternal binds of steel. And it’s not for any deep transcendant dark religious purpose, but pure profit. They then use those steel panels to make nearly indestructible armor hulls for starships designed for conquest. Since they’re using tortured souls and not whatever exotic alloys or advance techniques other races use, they can cut costs to an infinitesimal amount of what it would otherwise be, and utterly corner the market in starships, or at least their armor plating.”
Annika paled, herwide, horrified eyes locking with his own. “Their plan is racial genocide and planetary destruction… just to dominate a segment of the starship market?”
Eric flashed a bitter cold smile. “That’s my understanding. And I’ll tell you this for free. There is a school of necromancy that can shatter those bindings and free those souls.”
Powerful fingers gently stroked Annika’s soft, flawless cheeks. “Human necromancy.”
She gazed slack-jawed at Eric for long moments as everything clicked at once, her champagne flute slipping from lax fingers that Eric adroitly caught without breaking gazes.
“Now do you understand why Greed was so insistent on whatever anti-necromancy pact he coaxed so many human factions to embrace?” He flashed a mirthless smile. “He was preying on people’s natural abhorrence to those unorthodox arts, both humans and elves. Coaxing people into slaughtering the only ones who can save them. Purging the only path I know of that can shatter the goblin’s diabolical hold on so many tormented souls.”
Annika trembled, staring at Eric for one final speechless moment before squeezing his hand and darting away as fast as her heightened speed would take her. Somehow, Eric wasn’t surprised to see her discretely whispering into the ear of his mother, just as Eric had hoped she would.
For all Eric knew, his mother had mastered this game so well that she already knew what Annika was desperately sharing. But too much was riding on this for Eric to take any chances.
Now that he was free of company, he was also free to plan his next move.
With a final smile his friends’ way, happy to see them all happily conversing with each other or their obvious siblings now clad in paladins’ regalia after receiving Aurelia’s boon, or in the case of Steve and Jack, being talked up by a pair of strikingly beautiful elven ladies hanging on to their every word… Eric smirked and turned back to the palace, making full use of his monstrous Quickness and Speed Racer perk evolution to dart forward so fast that not even Sufia’s huntress instinct and movement techniques could keep up with him before he had slipped through the crackling wards of the front gates. Powerful wards that of course opened for him the instant he stood before it, Eric earning nothing but respectful nods from the pair of guards by the front entrance as he slipped inside.
He took a deep breath of rarefied air before making his way past extravagantly decorated conference rooms, gala chambers and boudoirs all embracing baroque decadence to the fullest, though Eric’s eyes did widen when he recognized several exquisitely painted landscapes that hadn’t caught his eyes the first time he visited the palace. One in particular stopped him in his tracks.
It was a picture of a beautiful city of pastel colors and marble carved into the gentle slope of a caldara, surrounded by lush blossoming fruit groves with countless tiny speckles of paint somehow revealing themselves to be fully fleshed out tiny fishermen bringing home rich bounties from the blue lake waters.
Eric felt a shiver down his spine, recognizing that territory.
It was the one he himself had reforged, embracing all the power and potency of six or so million souls trapped in torment, blessing the land with one powerful halcyon gift before being allowed to slip free. Some few souls finding it within themselves to be reborn as fisher-folk right then and there, along with the sixty thousand trapped souls Bunbun, now his daughter Lillian, had gone to such desperate efforts to free.
“How the fuck does mother have a picture of that moment here?”
Eric felt a cold shiver with the realization that maybe he hadn’t needed to tell Annika anything at all.
Maybe his mother already knew.
“There’s no way she could have predicted that things would turn out this way, right?” He whispered softly to himself in the dark palace corridors, lit only by moonlight reflected through the grand windows. Which itself made Eric pause.
Because why would the palace be lit only by moonlight when a celebratory gala was happening just outside?
“Because Mother knew this was the only way I’d be comfortable entering.”
He froze, slowly turning around, expecting to see his smiling mother behind him, eyes twinkling with bemusement and eldritch knowledge, somehow three steps ahead of them all.
But there was nothing. Just an empty corridor, as Eric quickly made his way from the hauntingly beautiful picture that made it damn clear that his mother pretty much knew her son and granddaughter’s tale as if she had been watching it all play out, firsthand.
Eric shook his head, having only hunches to go on. “I’m her blood. The blood of the Winter Queen, with all her legends, enchantments, and bittersweet tales, flows through my veins. Of course all sorts of fucky fae sympathetic magic can be going on behind the scenes and I’ll never have a clue. Fuck.”
He wasted no further time brooding on his mother’s machinations, his focus now entirely on the person he most wanted to see.
He didn’t know why he was feeling such an ache in his chest as he slowly approached his sister’s chambers, standing before her grand double door for long moments, having no idea what to do.
“Would you like to see her?”
In a flash Eric spun around, hand on the hilt of his blade, only to flush with embarrassment and bow his head in mute apology to the pair of women gazing at him with such frightened eyes for just a heartbeat… before curtsying deeply in turn.
“Our apologies for startling you, Your Grace,” Annika and Sufia whispered in tandem.
Eric held back a rueful chuckle, knowing he shouldn’t be surprised by their presence. Far from it, and he couldn’t deny the admiration he felt for both beauties either. Sufia’s sharp, angular features and powerful physique were a striking contrast from Annika’s exquisite refinement, yet he’d be lying if he didn’t concede that Sufia was every bit as captivating as the girl who had been raised a noblewoman from birth, both of them possessing the consummate grace and coordination that seemed to be the birthright of every elf or half-elf he’d ever seen.
Except for himself, of course. Not until he’d started walking the Contender’s Path and advancing along Paths of Potency both terrifying and grand.
And none of that mattered at that moment, as he matched their bow in turn.
“My apologies as well. It’s been a very… trying week since we last…”
“Kissed?” Sufia teased with a certain twinkle in her eye.
Annika blushed prettily. “Eric, would you like to see your sister?”
Eric’s playful smile tightened. He bowed his head. “Please.”
The girls exchanged looks, then grabbed his hands, leading him along countless passageways that faded by delicate stages from baroque to practical to coldly modern, before stopping at last before a chamber just beyond the ascension pod Elonia had once invited Eric to join her in using, unlocking countless arcane possibilities and a pair of exquisitely powerful spells that would have otherwise taken him months or more than a few precious character points to learn. It had been a true wonder to use. Or at least it had been until goblin shamans had tried to slaughter him and his sister while they were lost in dreams of ascension.
Eric felt a certain chill when he glanced upon the strangely inert machine.
“What happened?” His voice was curt, clipped.
Annika sighed. “I’m sorry, Eric. We’re not exactly sure.”
Eric’s gaze hardened. “This is her System-summoned ascension device, part of her territory evolution, right? The faction boon you guys were able to lock down, if I understand correctly. Mother made it clear to me, before I ever consented to that damned collar around my neck, that shaman tamperings were something Elonia never had to worry about again. That she would be safe! So how the hell did something happen to it that left her like this?”
Annika furrowed her brow. “We don’t know, Eric. All I can tell you is that the palace was in a panic when Elonia’s ascension device blew out.”
Sufia nodded. “Your mother looked ready to cover the entire continent in a fresh new ice age, and damn the accords. Don’t look at me like that, Annika, you know it’s true. But by some miracle, even though that device had become a smoking ruin, your sister was in perfect health, completely untouched.”
Eric took a moment to glare at the machine he had once placed such high hopes of in helping to advance in glorious point-efficient ways, now seeing the scorch marks on a nearly indestructible frame, smelling the irony tang of exotic salts still lingering in the air for it to click, sensing the trace remains of an accident, or a catastrophe, near perfectly cleaned and repaired since it had happened.
“We’ve wasted enough time,” he said, his voice raw with worry. “Take me to my sister.”