When Benjamin summoned Prince Agadrian again, the young man appeared with his characteristic sneer, but that faded into a look of real concern as he surveyed the bloody scene he’d been summoned into. It was dawn now, and after journeying back down into the depths to make sure that all of the stone children were okay, Benjamin and Raja had spent hours staging this scene to make it look even worse and had hauled up quite a few goblin corpses while Matt had tracked down a few live ones for what came next.
“Well, this is certainly something new,” the phantom said disinterestedly. “At least I don’t have to smell what you’re doing here, though I do have to wonder why you picked now of all times to call me.”
“The feeling completely mutual, man,” Benjamin said disinterestedly as he fussed around with some ritual elements that didn't actually do anything but looked suitably impressive. “After doing more than a few experiments on your fellow mages, though, I think it’s finally time that you and I have it out once and for all.”
When Benjamin finished speaking, he dropped several burned-out amulets not so casually on the ground between them and read off their names as best he could remember them. “Lord Tormund. Lord Galfree. Lord Pauciss,” Benjamin lied, picking a few names out of the hat at random. “I learned a lot from all of them, both from what they told me and from what I did to them, and now I think it’s your turn.”
“I’ve already told you,” the Prince scoffed. “Destroy my backup whenever you like. At this point, they’ve already revived me from an older copy of myself they keep in the palace vaults, and if there’s any justice in the universe at all, that version of me is already hunting you down.”
“I’m not going to kill you, Your Highness,” Benjamin smiled. “I’m going to give you a new body. After a little trial and error, I’ve worked all the kinks out, and—”
“You cannot be serious!” the Prince roared. “You think that if you upload my mind into yours, you’ll, what, learn my secrets? We’d both be driven mad by such a ham-handed attack and even if we wouldn't, I would never want to touch the flesh that ruined mine so casually. Do you know how hard it’s going to be to find a new vessel half as perfect as my old one?”
“Oh, no, that’s not going to happen.” Benjamin laughed, “I’ve got enough negativity in my mind. The last thing I want is a prick like you in my head.”
“Then what are you planning? There’s no one else…” The Prince’s words trailed off, and for the first time, Benjamin could see that he had the man, or at least the ghost of the man, off balance. A moment later, the cocky expression was back, but it was a fragile mask, and Benjamin had seen behind it.
“An amusing jest,” Prince Agadrian said finally, “But the souls of men can’t be put into the bodies of animals. I should know. I’ve tried. It would have made for excellent sport for slow days at court.”
“It’s true,” Benjamin agreed. “I’ve tried as well, and the ending is… very messy. Luckily for you, Goblins aren’t animals. They are just high enough on the food chain to be considered people, as it turns out, and thanks to the sacrifice of some of your peers, we know that—”
“They are not my peers!” The Prince Snapped. “No one save for another member of the house of Rhul could ever be considered my peer.”
“Well, for now, maybe,” Benjamin smirked, “But in a couple of minutes, when I transfer you into your new body, you’ll have hundreds of peers in this warren.”
The Prince looked at him with contempt but said nothing, and Benjamin continued setting up the ritual he was setting up. Then, after a few minutes, he placed the amulet into a slot on the altar where it intersected the bloody circle, and placing his hands on either side, he began to concentrate.
Then, very slowly, the ring began to light up. It started in a ring around the amulet, and a number of status screens and indicators sprung into existence, ran their prompt, and quickly closed again at a speed that was almost unreadable. Benjamin obviously didn’t even try to read them, though. Instead, he kept his gaze fixed on the ghostly Prince as the light slowly spread across the larger circle and started moving toward the goblin.
As it went and more status screens appeared and disappeared, the Prince began to grow visibly nervous. “Listen, if you want to talk, we can talk but know that this won't intimidate me. Not only will it not work, but…”
“Oh, you’ll talk plenty in a moment when we get you back in a body, Your Majesty, and when we’re done, I’ll take that polluted soul, rip it out, and put it back in this amulet for your family to find,” Benjamin smiled evilly. “Hopefully, they try to reincarnate you and see what a monster you truly are.”
Benjamin even managed an evil laugh at the end of that, and though he wanted to believe that was what finally broke the man’s spirit, he was sure it was the glowing ring around the bound goblin. “Stop this, and I’ll tell you whatever it is you want to know!” the Prince yelled finally.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Benjamin waited a moment longer, and then, with a big show, he canceled the spell. Of course, the only spell he canceled was lesser illusion he’d programmed into the altar before he summoned the Prince. The truth was that he had no idea how to upload a human soul into another body, but he doubted that the fop did either. Benjamin was sure that before a new soul was uploaded, the old one would have to be purged somehow, and if he knew that, he’d be halfway to fixing the damage to his own soul.
All he had was a flare for the dramatic and an understanding that the Prince would do anything not to be dirtied in the way that Benjamin had described. Unfortunately, this little act scratched the topic of soul transfer off the list, lest he tip his hand and reveal his ignorance. Instead, he stuck to safer targets and started with the most obvious and urgent first.
“Tell me about the priority override you used to take control of me through my firewall,” Benjamin snapped.
“Those are secrets of the Royal Family,” Prince Agardian explained. “I can’t just…” His words trailed off as soon as Benjamin reached for the amulet once more.
“I won’t let you waste my mana twice,” Benjamin answered. “If I start the process a second time, your soul will forever be mixed with a goblin, and when I finally conquer the capital and bring those shining towers down, I will make sure that this copy of you is the only one that survives.”
“You’ll never conquer the—” the Prince started to say, but Benjamin interrupted him with a laugh.
“You have no idea what I’m capable of. I started a revolution, I broke your hold over me, and right now, my allies and I are winning a continent-wide war even as your friends drop goblin-filled mountains on us. We’ll win with or without your answers; I just want to spare as many lives as possible. So you can either tell me the ports and commands you use, or I can turn you into a goblin and let you watch the whole thing play out from a cage.”
“I can tell you about the barriers and the accesses, but it will do you no good. Your system is literally built not to see them,” the Prince said.
“I knew it!” Benjamin crowed. “You have a completely different setup from us, don’t you.”
“Of course,” the Prince smiled. “Sadly, yours is unupgradable. I can’t help you with that, even if I wanted to. It was decided a long time ago that though we needed the help of other humans, they should never have more than a fraction of our power.”
“Must be pretty humiliating that you got beaten by someone with only a fraction of your power, then, huh?” Benjamin gloated, stepping away from the altar. “Of course, a slave with a lesser system was probably never supposed to delve this deeply into rune magic, were they?”
“That you survived your own death speaks to the shallowness of your mana pool,” Prince Agardian sneered. “If the same command had been executed while I was still breathing, half the room would have been burned alive before the tower collapsed on my murderers.”
“I’m sure,” Benjamin said, making a note of that. “We’ll discuss that awful little command later. Right now, you’re going to tell me every nasty little surprise I can expect from these blind spots, and if you spill your guts to my satisfaction, I may just let you stay unmolested in your cage.”
. . .
The Prince spent the next several hours answering Benjamin’s questions, and by the time he stumbled back to Raja, who had been making sure nothing hostile interrupted their conversation, he was out of mana and so low on hitpoints that by the time it was all said and done, Benjamin was pale, and he felt faint. Toward the end, he’d even drained the life from the captive goblins just to keep the conversation going a little longer and been forced to suffer the flood of grisly memories that came flooding into his mind along with their life force.
It had been worth it, though. Their conversations had ranged from system interface blindspots and secret protocols to self-destruct commands and system versions. Apparently, the Prince had a lesser version of Benjamin’s codex built into his system, but the man had no idea how to use it. Since he had full access to a complete spell list, he simply picked what he needed.
“Learning is for slaves and sages,” the man had told him arrogantly when Benjamin had tried to dig deeper into that. “The nobility have too much to do to waste time learning.”
Of course, living in a society where skills could simply be uploaded made that excuse a ridiculous one, but Benjamin said nothing and merely continued to question him about the nature of demons and how a given Summoner chose their pet before they moved on to discuss the defensive measures of the cities that would be their next targets.
It was there that Benjamin thought he'd detected the man's biggest lie of the night. “Those cities are centuries old,” the Prince bragged, “You have no chance to breach their defenses. After all the attacks they’ve suffered, they are ten times better protected than anything you found in Arden.”
At first glance, the words were compelling, but it was the only time in their entire conversation that the man volunteered details without being pressed. He went on at length about the size of their garrisons, the thickness of their walls, and the strength of the arc cannons. In the end, Benjamin decided that the other man was laying it on just a little too thick, and it had to be a lie, which made sense if you thought about it.
After all, those lands had been completely conquered for decades. It was the frontier they were fighting through now, which was where the defenses would be concentrated. As he walked back down into Lasthome with Raja and explained all of this to him, Benjamin was actually pretty sure that those places might be nearly undefended compared to some of the other places they’d attacked recently. At least that’s what his gut told him after that conversation, and as he told Raja about it, his friend nodded along, and seemed to basically agree with his assessment.