Iniri traced her fingers over the cubes that made up the Adamant Fortress. While there had just been one or two, they’d seemed no more than heavy brass, but now that all five were together she could feel the power entrained in their cores. Why it was five pieces instead of one she wasn’t certain, but it was definitely real and definitely alive.
From what she could tell what it wanted was [Shield of Tarnil]. Of course, it made sense that the Lineage Skill was the one it needed to activate or be controlled, if this was Tarnil’s greatest treasure from the time of the founding. Only those of the Tarnil line would have such a Skill, and only the actual ruler would be able to evolve a royal Class. The only issue was that from all accounts the Fortress was not exactly safe to activate, not without a serious source of mana.
Which she did have access to, if she could come up with something to entice Blue.
Speaking of whom, she was pretty sure Blue was doing something. She’d gotten some very strange feedback more than once over the past while that had nothing to do with her Class or any of her Skills. She’d asked him to send Shayma over to discuss things but that hadn’t happened yet. It seemed the girl was visiting her family, and by the time Iniri had finished talking over things with Cheya and the rest of her council it had gotten fairly late. Normally people wouldn’t think of putting off a request from a Queen, but Shayma wasn’t exactly her subject anymore and Blue was Blue.
Bizarrely, she felt an urge to go to Blue’s core room, and while she would like to take a soak in the hot spring he’d set up she mistrusted the feeling enough after the strange mana surges from him that she’d wait until Shayma came by. While she wasn’t going to start demanding Blue bow to her wishes, she wasn’t going to allow herself to do the reverse. While she had to admit that ultimately he was more powerful than she was, especially with Yamal still unconscious – in a coma, Blue said – she was only willing to cede him equal status.
Fortunately he’d stated outright he had no desire to take over Tarnil. Unfortunately, paying for his help was probably going to end up bankrupting her, with what little of the treasury was left. Waging a war was difficult with effectively no resources, a fact that her tutors had made painfully clear when teaching history. The reality of it was even worse than the lessons. If it were a conventional invasion she’d have been forced to surrender long ago, but with the mage-kings there was no such option.
“Shayma is here to see you, Your Majesty.” One of her guards announced it, which was half-surprising. Blue had the habit of putting Shayma directly into the room, though Iniri’s office was a little small for that.
“Show her in,” Iniri told him, gladly shoving aside the detritus of governance for a moment. The job of who needed to be held accountable versus those who were merely victims in Meil was an unrewarding slog. Not to mention an ongoing one, as there were still some who thought they could exploit the devastation for their own aggrandizement. Essentially the entire legal and economic infrastructure had been destroyed, and it was only thanks to Blue that wasn’t true for the physical infrastructure as well.
Shayma bounced in, looking entirely too happy and energetic for that time of day. She also seemed to be a little more solid, and squinting at the fox girl through her mana sight Iniri realized that she’d probably evolved to her next tier. Already. Admittedly the early levels came quick, and it was really the end of the second tier or beginning of the third where most people stalled out, but Shayma was moving fast even so. Especially considering she wasn’t doing long-term delves like most early adventurers or prospective Classers.
“Good morning!” Shayma said cheerfully. She nodded at the cubes to the side of Iniri’s desk, where her hand still rested. “Is everything working with them? I know it’s an Artifact but it’s been hundreds of years.”
“It seems to be ready,” Iniri said. She couldn’t help but smile back; the girl’s cheerfulness was infectious. “It’s just not a good idea to activate it inside a city. From what I understand it needs a good amount of mana, too, which is something I hope Blue can help me with. In fact, while you’re here I have a few questions for him, if he’ll indulge me.”
“Certainly.” Shayma cocked her head, ears twitching. “Blue’s certain you’ve noticed some oddness recently, is this about that?”
“Yes.”
“Mostly he decided on the Companion specialization. Not entirely on purpose — he was trying to pull me away from Tor Kot..” Shayma stopped, blinking. “Oh wait, you don’t know about that because Cheya left first.”
“...I do not know about that.” Iniri’s eyebrows tried to climb into her hair and she glanced over at the [Spymistress], who was sorting her own pile of paperwork. The woman inclined her head to Shayma with some respect, but apparently didn’t have anything to add. Shayma had confronted Tor Kot himself, and still managed to escape? It would be too much to ask that Blue had worked some miracle and managed to actually do to him what he’d done to Vok Nal, but she could hope.
It didn’t take long for Shayma to sketch out what had happened, since the clash hadn’t lasted but a minute, and none of it sounded good. Tor Kot was obviously smarter than Vok Nal had been, and even though Shayma’s little trick had startled him it wasn’t like she’d done any real damage. Between nearly killing one of Shayma’s companions and finding out that Meil wasn’t under mage-king control, she had to say Tor Kot had come out unambiguously ahead.
“Anyway, the new Companion stuff he got includes the ability to send you guidance, supposedly, but he can’t send anything in particular. It’s just on or off, more or less. Your Companion rank also increased which means he can Transcribe your Skills, so he wants you to stop by the core room.”
That explained some things, at least, and not in a good way.
“I don’t much like having Blue’s ‘guidance’ shoving my head around.” She frowned at Shayma.
“Blue says you’re the one who agreed to be a Companion,” Shayma replied, which made Iniri blink. Then check herself before she said anything further, because Shayma was absolutely right. She had made a deal with a Power and everyone knew what that meant. There was no use complaining about it or even being too annoyed. Objectively, he was the only reason she still had a hope of retaining a kingdom or even her head, and while all the worries she still had made quite the hefty pile it was ungrateful to be so churlish.
Iniri took a long breath. Clearly she needed take a while and think things through. Considering how her relationship with him, and Tarnil’s, kept evolving, she needed to start considering Blue in a different way. It was no longer just her as a queen and Blue as an unknown and dangerous thing. He’d earned better than that.
“You’re right. I apologize.” She said, rubbing her forehead. “I have excuses, but I did agree to it, and I’m going to have to ask Blue for still more help before this is all said and done. I’m fortunate he’s not taking me to task for trying to shirk my own responsibilities.”
“For what it’s worth, Blue’s turned down the guidance for now. It’s pretty worthless if he can’t use it to tell you specific things, especially when I can just come and tell you if he needs something. He says he also knows how frustrating it is to have external compulsions on your behavior and he doesn’t want to do that to you.”
“I appreciate that.” Iniri rubbed at her temples. “Could it wait until this evening? I have an absolute pile of work and the core room is admittedly relaxing. I’d like to just…” Iniri paused, remembering how nice the water was. Not to mention how nice other things were, though she shoved that aside. “Just stay there for a while,” she finished. Shayma laughed.
“Of course, Blue says it’s not that urgent, he’s just really curious. It’s a shame you’re at rank four, because at rank five he could transcribe Skills back to you.”
“That would be interesting,” Iniri admitted, almost in spite of herself. “Though I hope that I’m not in the middle of battles in the future. I doubt it’ll be as useful for me as it would be for you. Besides, when would I find time to work on new Skills?”
“I suppose that’s true,” Shayma said. “But, new Skills! I know I’m a little excited.”
“Speaking of which, are you officially a Classer now? You look like you hit your second tier.”
“I did!” Shayma beamed. “[Noble Trickster]. I’m not entirely certain why it sounds like I’m going a nobility path but I got some really nice evolved Skills.”
Iniri chuckled. It had been some time since she’d talked adventurer-shop with anyone, and seemed longer since it was before the invasion. It was an unexpected slice of nostalgia, which was nice even if it wasn’t much contributing to getting work done.
“You represent Blue, and he’s practically a sovereign nation, which makes you practically royalty. That may be a bit tenuous but I’m sure its something like that. The gods have strange ideas sometimes, but I think calling you nobility is reasonable enough.” Shayma made a face.
“Does that mean I’ll have to start wearing court dresses?” She asked, then suddenly laughed. “Well thank you, Blue, but I still don’t want to spend too much time in them.”
“I’m sure you can wear whatever you like.” Iniri assured her. “Now, so far as Blue supplying the mana for this,” she added, tapping the cubes, “does he want to wait until tonight to discuss it? Or does he have something in mind now?” Her ears flicked for a moment.
“He’ll have to think about it. He’d been figuring that you’d need his help to fuel it, but he’s a bit worried about the size of the Waste and what that means for mana consumption.”
“If legends are to be believed the Waste is the result of more than just the Fortress,” Iniri pointed out. “I don’t want to ruin what’s left of Tarnil, that’s for sure. It doesn’t feel too mana-hungry, though I’m not sure how long the ambient mana around here could sustain it. Some place like Wildwood could probably have it operating almost permanently.”
“Well he’ll consider how he wants to handle this for now. It’s not like he doesn’t have his own investment in getting rid of Tor Kot, especially now that he knows Blue isn’t part of their little cabal.”
Iniri nodded. She didn’t blame Blue for not providing free assistance, but at least he recognized when there was common cause. Or when he was responsible, like with Meil. It sounded like whatever he came up with was likely to be on the inexpensive side, so far as prices went, though what exactly she had that was of value to him anymore was a good question.
“For the moment— ” She stopped when Shayma raised a hand, listening to Blue.
“He just shot down a mantis monster that was flying over Meil,” she reported. Iniri leapt to her feet.
“What was it doing? Why didn’t any of my Classers spot it? For that matter, how did Blue ‘shoot it down?’” She’d seen some of Blue’s weaponry before and while it had been alarming in its own way, it wasn’t anything that could threaten anything in flight. Clearly she hadn’t seen everything. Iniri glanced over to Cheya, who was staring over at Shayma with a rare look of alarm.
“I didn’t see anything,” Cheya said. “None of my Skills did. I didn’t see how he shot it down either. Did he use that light weapon you had?”
“Exactly,” Shayma nodded to Cheya, which at least answered that question. “It was camouflaged, but Blue can see through that. It seems to have been bearing a message, though given that it was a level forty stealth monster he suspects it was meant to do more than that.”
“I would imagine so,” Cheya said. “If one, why not send more than one? Are there any others?”
“Blue’s keeping an eye out, but so far nothing.” Shayma tilted her head, eyes unfocused as she concentrated on whatever Blue was sending her. “He says there’s some spellwork on the message cylinder and he’s afraid it might be some sort of trap so he doesn’t want to just deliver it to you.”
“I see.” That was unusually paranoid thinking, when Blue seemed very often naive about the interplay of power. She made a motion to one of her guards. “Send for Keel,” she instructed, since of her two court mages he was slightly better at reading spellwork.
“Blue’s going to put up a quarantine room,” Shayma said, and Iniri nodded acknowledgement. She just would have had Keel take it into the basement – well, some other building’s basement – but whatever Blue decided to build would be a far better option. Though if it was just on a message cylinder it wasn’t likely whatever-it-was could be all that dangerous. If she were to bet, she would think it was a divination anchor. Keel appeared a few moments later, ever so slightly out of breath, and Iniri nodded to Shayma.
“Blue has a message cylinder that needs to be vetted. Just in case.”
“He can just teleport you there when you’re ready.” Keel made a face at that, no doubt still jealous at how casually Blue treated spatial workings, and nodded.
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“Any time, then,” he said, and vanished.
He was back only a minute later.
“Divination anchor,” he said, confirming Iniri’s suspicions. “I deactivated it but whoever’s on the other end probably knows that someone found it.” He handed it Cheya, who cracked the seal and unscrewed it carefully, checking it for more mundane traps and poisons as she unfurled the scroll inside. When she was finally satisfied, she handed it to Iniri.
Queen Iniri (or someone close to her),
While I regret the damage that must be done along the way, I have a clear duty that I must pursue. After a conversation with one of your agents, I have found out that the Meil core is no longer under control of even our rogue elements. While I cannot logically begrudge your actions against Vok Nal, I also cannot allow a core to unmanaged and uncontrolled for longer than it already has been. I certainly cannot allow the possibility of it being destroyed.
To that end I have dispatched a certain force to regain control of it. If you wish to cede control of the core without issue I will certainly not pursue the point. Unfortunately, if you do wish to contest control of the Meil core I have ensured this force is well-equipped to guarantee our success.
If you are reading this it is entirely likely you have disposed of the messenger. I admit that is not unreasonable; it was supposed to take certain reconnaissance of the city, which is something you would prefer not to allow. I do not have significant hopes that this monster will manage it, however, given the capabilities demonstrated by your agent.
It was signed Tor Kot, the writing neat and precise.
“Can’t catch a break, it seems.” Iniri passed the letter onto to Shayma. “At least we have the Fortress, though I don’t think we intended on using it here.”
“It’s my fault.” Shayma grimaced. “If I hadn’t given away all of that to Tor Kot…” Iniri intervened before she could blame herself further. Frankly the whole mission had been done on a wing and a prayer since they couldn’t get any information or take the time to investigate. The fact that it had gone as well as it had was amazing.
“We would have had a few more months, at best, but not much would be different.” It wasn’t much of a shock at this point. She’d already suffered enough kicking from the mage-kings that one more thing wasn’t going to make a difference. Besides, between Blue and the Fortress they actually had a chance at fending the monsters off. It wasn’t like Blue hadn’t destroyed an massive number of monsters before. “But I’m going to have to start with divinations now if he’s actually sending an army.”
“Speaking of divinations.” Shayma pulled another face. “It’s not that urgent considering all this, but Haerlish is still putting together some sort of strike team. Apparently they’re not planning on trying to take Blue over, just sit around and extort a bunch of materials from him for a bit. Well, from me.”
“Mmm. I don’t know how much more strongly I can put my diplomatic protests, considering I don’t exactly have much standing to work with.” Not to mention Haerlish was only one future point of trouble. The rumblings coming out of Nivir were not much better than Haerlish, though it wasn’t surprising that the nearby kingdoms would look to be a bit expansionist under the circumstances. She would be, if Nivir collapsed into anarchy.
“You can tell them Blue is not amused and if they come they’ll probably all die,” Shayma said bluntly. “Though it’s looking like they mostly think I’m the one in charge of things.”
“The trouble is that Blue isn’t really known yet,” Iniri sighed. “Kingdoms – or empires – are founded by fifth-tiers, who are pretty famous by the time they get there, and whose abilities are not in question. I don’t know what happens with new Powers but I doubt anyone just takes their word for it that they can do things. I expect right now people like The Hurricane view you as part of Tarnil, and in the state we’re in we can’t do much to fend off that sort of mercenary behavior.”
“I don’t know, we might have to,” Shayma said, speaking to Blue. “He suggested that I go to Haerlish and let him sink the palace into the sea.”
Iniri nearly choked. Keel made some sort of strangled noise before cutting himself off. Cheya just sighed, and Iniri exchanged a look with both her advisors before responding.
“That’s a bit extreme. Well, perhaps not,” she amended. “I shouldn’t be telling Blue his business. Can it wait until after we deal with Tor Kot?”
“Probably,” Shayma admitted, ears flicking. “They’re still going through rounds of meetings and waiting on people to free up schedules and such.”
“For once, bureaucracy works in our favor,” Iniri murmured. “I’m going to start the divination then. Keel, get Joce and meet me in the ritual room.”
“Your Majesty,” Keel said, bowing before he hurried out of the room.
“Blue’s curious what exactly the divining ritual will tell you,” Shayma reported.
“What we want is to be able to directly scry the area. That’s not likely; it doesn’t take much mana flux at all to disrupt that kind of direct viewing. Barring that, find concentrations of monsters or spikes of mana, or area where there’s a particularly strong opposition to the scry. Blue’s [Warding] is strange, by the way, because it just suppresses the ability of a divination to find an anchor point. I’d like to figure out how that works, especially since Tor Kot might be using the same thing.” Shayma listened intently, nodding at intervals
“If I get divination from you maybe I can learn to do it too,” she said, startling Iniri. Despite the fact that Shayma had mentioned Skill transcribing more than once, she hadn’t ever thought of it as such an immediate thing. It didn’t seem entirely fair, either, considering how much time Iniri had spent on Divination to get a Skill that wasn’t part of her primary Affinity. One of the benefits of dealing with Powers.
A benefit she had access to, even if she’d dismissed it earlier. Or would soon enough, assuming Blue was willing to offer her the service when she made the next Companion level. Whenever and however that happened.
“Maybe so,” Iniri agreed. “The ritual room is across the hall.” Since it was mostly used for divination rituals, it didn’t need the reinforcements that most people put in when dealing with more explosive Affinities.
Shayma looked around the room curiously, though she’d seen Iniri deal in rituals before, and moved herself out of the way. Joce and Keel arrived bare moments after they did, bowing to her before taking up positions on the other side of the runes set in the floor. She’d carved them herself, days ago, when she’d been trying to get into contact with whatever towns and villages were still intact and nearby.
“Ready, gentlemen?” At their assent she poured mana into [Lesser Divination], using her [Ritual Leadership] to run the Affinity through the runes, allowing Joce and Keel to add their own mana and Affinities to the spell. While she only had [Lesser Divination], the ritual working boosted the potency enough that she could cover most of Tarnil with it, at least for the simplest sort of search. She didn’t need quite that scope at the moment, narrowing it down to the band below Meil and sweeping south toward the border with Tor Kot.
Most of it was sparsely settled the depredations by Vok Nal, but there were still pockets of people similar to the first one Shayma had found. Most of those of which were in nominal contact with Meil by that point. Tor Kot’s land was, by contrast, far more populated and far better kept, but even with the very vague sweep she was doing she could tell there were a good number of monsters mixed in with the humans and demihumans. From Cheya’s description of Duenn, Tor Kot had inserted his monsters into everyday life, so that sort of thing was to be expected.
Not far from the border due north of Duenn, the Divination returned something a little different than the usual small specks of life, monster or otherwise. In fact, it was barely on their side of the border, in the lands that Vok Nal used to claim. She frowned and focused on the area, finding the usual sort of interference that came with potent monsters or Classers gathered together, only the scale of it…
Joce and Keel caught her intentions as she shifted the divination, helping her adjust the mana flowing through the runework. Instead of vague impressions, the divination sharpened to give concrete information. There didn’t seem to be any particular protections against the scry, but she almost wished there were when she got the impression of thousands of monsters. Tens of thousands, and none of them seemed to be under level twenty.
She flipped her hand, making a construct of light over the runework and letting the divination spell filter into it. What resulted was a swarm of pinprick lights covering the solid plane of the ground, with even more specks flitting about above it. Keel whistled.
“That’s a lot of monsters,” he said.
“Here I thought Vok Nal’s army was big,” Joce added.
“How did he get so many monsters that close to us so quickly?” Iniri wondered aloud, then shook her head. “Of course. If Blue can do ridiculous teleporting, I’m sure Tor Kot can too. I suppose the question is why he didn’t decide to move a giant army even closer than that.”
“Blue had trouble doing dungeon things close to Duenn,” Shayma said. “Tor Kot would probably have issues close to Blue, though it may just be that he can’t reach much further. He had all sorts of spellwork along the roads, but it did stop right at the border.”
“At least that means he can’t completely overrun us without warning. Though this is bad enough. I’m not sure how fast they’re moving but we probably only have a few days.” Iniri took a deep breath, rubbing her temples as she stared at the divination. “I suppose we’ll have to try the Fortress sooner than we expected, unless Blue thinks he can handle this. I know our Classers can’t.”
“Um, he could probably take care of a lot of them but he doubts that Tor Kot’s army is going to be as easy to deal with as Vok Nal’s. How many are there?”
“It’s difficult to say, but I think at least forty thousand on the ground,” Keel answered. “Something over five thousand in the air but some of them keep going down and others come up.”
“That is a lot.” Shayma looked daunted, which was slightly underwhelming compared to the slow horror creeping up Iniri’s spine. The size of the army was beyond absurd; even if they were easy to kill, which she doubted, the sheer numbers were enough to overwhelm her kingdom even at its peak. Even Blue’s sheer ground-scouring weaponry would have issues making a dent in a force like that.
“We’re going to have to find a good defensive point between here and there, otherwise they can just go around the Fortress,” Iniri said.
“How does the Fortress work?” Shayma asked. “If they’re coming to Meil anyway, can we just put it right on top?”
“I suppose that’s possible, but I’d want to evacuate the city if we do.” Clearly she’d been working herself too hard if that possibility didn’t occur to her first. Not that evacuating was a simple matter. If nothing else they needed somewhere to evacuate to, and the only option for that…
Everything came back to Blue. He had such enormous power, both to project force and to support logistics, that nothing she could summon from the remaining scraps around her compared. In many ways he was the only power she had, given how few Classers she had left and how tattered the governance structure was. Considering it, she should really be more grateful that he had been so helpful.
“Blue says it’d probably be easier to just relocate the city.”
“Easier. To relocate the city.” She blinked at Shayma.
“Because it’s part of him,” Shayma confirmed. “Mostly he doesn’t want to have to worry about rebuilding it again, but it would probably be faster, too. He can put it back when we’re done.”
“Right, then.” Iniri nodded at the light constructs. “Joce, get anyone with travel Skills and start evacuating everyone who’s in the path of that. Pull them all back to Meil. Keel, get everyone with any transport Skills to start pulling in stockpiles. If Blue’s going to sequester the city we ought to be ready for it.
The two of them let the ritual drop, bowing before they hurried out the door. She dissolved the light construct, cutting off the mana to the [Lesser Divination]. An in-depth analysis of movements could come later, hopefully after she’d scrounged up someone with a talent at tactics and strategy.
“Under the circumstances, Blue is willing to provide the mana infrastructure for the Fortress without recompense, though he’ll have to discuss moving Meil. He does want to leave it at some point, after all.”
“If we ever make it past the current crisis,” Iniri sighed. “That doesn’t seem very likely, sometimes, and I don’t blame him for wanting out.” Even if they managed to hold against Tor Kot’s army, they had to deal with the mage-king himself somehow. This could drag on for years more, and she was selfishly grateful that Blue had become himself an enemy of the mage-kings. If it weren’t for that, she didn’t imagine he’d want to stick around.
“Before he starts trying to shift the whole city, is it possible to see what the Fortress is like? Or is it something that you can only deploy once and then wait until it decides to turn back into cubes?”
“I actually don’t know,” Iniri admitted. “I need to activate it with [Shield of Tarnil] first, and I really don’t want to do that inside. Best case, I’d probably take off the top of the manor.”
“Blue says you should try it out on his land, so he can watch himself and determine the best way to supply mana when you deploy it against Tor Kot.”
Iniri hummed, considering it. Even if they couldn’t move the Fortress afterward, which she didn’t think would be the case since it was supposed to be mobile, if Blue hid away Meil it’d still be the only point the army could assault. In fact, considering that Blue was the real target they wanted, even if they didn’t know it, something that protected him directly was absolutely worth it.
“Let me take care of things here and we’ll go.” Despite all the emergencies, she still needed to take care of some things so they wouldn’t have food shortages and people didn’t riot. There was even a death order to sign for a pair of low level Classers who thought they could get away with some casual rape and theft while out on the Queen’s business. One reason she didn’t like to use anyone under level forty for official business was to keep out the riffraff, but she didn’t have the luxury at the moment.
“Sure! I’ll go and visit mom and dad until then.” Iniri nodded, pursing her lips at the reminder. She didn’t know the Ells very well; before Shayma had appeared at her doorstep she hadn’t heard of them at all. Not unusual, considering they were apparently only in the upper second tier when hostilities broke out, but she thought someone would have brought a void Affinity user to her attention. Now that they were in or near the third tier, and considering the impression they made, she would have no qualms deputizing them.
Assuming Blue didn’t get to them first. She was sure Blue would trust Shayma’s parents well enough and it wasn’t like Shayma would recommend against working for Blue. Considering the gifts he could give out in terms of Sources and material, it probably wouldn’t take much convincing either. So far he was lacking any source of void Affinity for Sienne, though upon consideration that might be for the best. A Power that could generate seemingly infinite mana having access to void Affinity was a terrifying thing to consider.
Shayma disappeared out the door again, and Iniri shook her head. She probably didn’t realize it herself, but the girl had completely lost all her awe at Iniri’s rank. Or anyone else’s rank, for that matter. She was guilty of starting the process herself, of course, but Blue had finished it quite decisively.
Iniri crossed over to her office and got back to work. She’d have to send a few runners to make sure everyone knew about today’s emergency, but if nothing else she was looking forward to seeing how the Adamant Fortress worked. If she was really honest, she was most looking forward to a few hours in the hot spring, hidden away from the world.