“If I recall correctly, they’re called lizard folk, not turtle folk,” Sonya said. “So, why is this tribe the turtle clan?”
“I feel like we should not answer that question in mixed company. I also feel you shouldn’t ask them.”
Anthony leaned in. The beer was excellent. The company was better. He was so happy to drink from someone else’s keg he was three beers deep. That was before he realized how high his tolerance had become. He had a lot of skills that helped him heal and apparently those skills recognized alcohol as something that he should heal from.
It felt like bullshit, but that was part and parcel of being one of the Chosen.
The craftsmanship of the wooden mugs suggested a maker with a three-generation family legacy, inheriting their grandparents’ trade secrets.
He didn’t see any glass mugs, but that was probably because they were so far from any place with a reputable glasswork. The legion was always on the move. The entire setup for the tavern was modular, and apparently they could move it within a day to fit back into a wagon for transport.
That was a concentrated morale delivery package that he needed in his life. There would be conversations soon about shipping them home, and he knew that this would be work to move.
At least that’s what was told to him by the proprietor, in a middle-aged dwarf who was not actually part of the legion, just a contractor attached to it.
“You think this will look good next to my summer home?” he mused.
“Maybe we should ask some people that have been here about what they call themselves?” Sonya said.
“They call themselves ‘the people’,” Charles, the bar manager, said, handing Anthony a mug of water. “I don’t think you should call them that. Mostly because that’s not accurate and they ask us to call them turtles.”
“Well, when in the foreign lands of a lizard folk people with hard shells, you call them what they want to be called,” Sonya said, raising her own mug.
“I will drink to that. Cheers,” he said. “So, what is going on here?”
“We’ve been working through the problem the Peace Turtles have been having with these large monster spawns. They keep showing up at the worst time and the peace turtles, though they will fight, do not want to have to deal with it repeatedly. So they hired us for a quell quest. It’s mostly avians that we have to kill. Or rather that the legion is searching for,” Charlie said.
“Avians?” Sonya said.
“Picture a creature with wings the size of a human. Now make them shit everywhere and eat other animals raw and you’ll be close to what I’m thinking about,” the dwarf said, cleaning a mug.
“The Peace Turtles are not good at dealing with flying enemies, I take it?”. Anthony said.
Charlie sighed deeply.
“They can attack whenever they want, with impunity. It’s frustrating.”
Anthony wondered what cards they gave if they were killing him that many numbers, but he didn’t want to push the issue. They had to reveal the extent of the calamity several times that day before Cedric had just gathered up all the dwarves. Every dwarf now had a mourning band, and Anthony was not sure how they had gotten so many so quickly.
However it happened, and that impressed him. That spoke to an ability that they didn’t have. If he’d asked, Finley would have been able to get them uniforms.
It would have taken far longer one day. So either they had those bands already ready to pass out or they were and seeing as how they just gave us the news earlier that day in its unredacted form, he expected that they already had them.
In the front of the temporary building, Eugene and Valerie were whispering. They had taken a booth to themselves as they were going to discuss strategy. They had discussed the potential that there was another claim to the Royal line.
Valerie’s claim was tenuous at best and paper thin. If the commander of the legion had decided that she wasn’t a princess, then she wasn’t a princess. Her political power was only as good as the people who believed in her.
By extension, her appointing Gigi as the duchess of Gloucester and creating that entirely new duchy meant that she was going to have to live up to a lot.
“Do you think Gigi is ready to become a duchess? I mean, it’s too late if not, but don’t they have to send her to school or something?”
Sonya rounded on him.
“I feel like she’s great for the job. She works customer service for years and she knows how to deal with irate people asking for things that they will not get.”
Anthony considered her words.
“That’s about the truest thing I’ve ever heard,” Anthony said. “I like your customer service representative to a politician or royalty pipeline.”
Sonya flipped her hair towards him. The mousy brown hair which had once had been far shorter had grown in the months they had been together. Now she had to spend a bit of time every morning braiding it with his help. He valued that time and stared at the braids far longer than he should have. She was cute and braids kept her hair from being in the face with the possible exception of the tiny bangs that she kept. Even that was beautiful to him. It also kept her from cutting her own bangs.
“I mean, what is political power, anyway? It’s just people agreeing that you’re in charge. When the people stop agreeing with you, they are in charge. That’s when things change,” she said, tugging on her braid.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“What is it we keep saying? The people that are in charge want you to go through the system because they know it will not work for you? Yeah, go through the established channels, which will not help. Every single thing we’ve gotten has been through violent or non-violent protest.”
“And stabbing zombies in the chest?”
“I did not come this far to forget about stabbing zombies in the chest and how that feels,” Anthony said.
Sonya, finish your drink and turn to look at the two dwarves in the corner again.
“What’s it like being chosen?” Charlie said, returning to the bar.
“It’s like being fantastic at doing something that you don’t really want to do. But you have to do it because everyone’s relying on you,” Sonya said.
“That sounds rough,” the dwarf said, plopping two more waters in front of them.
“Should we be drinking so much water here?”
“You’re in a tropical climate. You’re not even recognizing how much you’re sweating because your body’s just gotten used to doing it,” he said.
“Oh! That’s my hyperhidrosis. My body has just decided that it wants to always be slick and semi sweaty,” Sonya said. “I am not thirsty.”
Bartender pushed the mug closer to her. Close enough that it touched her hand, and Anthony chuckled. They had talked at length about her condition. She had thought that it had driven people away before, but he found it adorable. It just meant that they needed a breezy bed, or that they had to wake up and take a bath together.
It was a win-win for him. This, combined with the cleanse card, meant that for the first time in her entire life, she could take a break from being covered in wetness.
“We need to talk to someone from the tribe. This campaign is going to take a lot. We are wondering if you know anyone that might help us address these issues with the lizard folk here,” Anthony said.
“Are your hiring mercenaries or are you getting more people to add to the legion?” He said.
“Does legion recruit lizard folk?” Sonya said, tipping her glass back.
“The legion will recruit your mother if she so desires to sign up.”
In one go, Sonya doing her entire mug of water. Charlie grabbed her empty mug and returned to pour some more water into it. She had apparently been thirsty, but just didn’t want to inconvenience him.
“You got to ask for what you want, Sonya,” he said.
“I was thinking about that. I think I’ll have another beer.”
---
The commander of the seventy-sixth legion called his small council together. Because he was back within the tribal lands, he only had some of the support specialists on staff and the people that interfaced with the population at large.
“You’ve heard the story about what’s going on at home. I’m going to call for a rapid pullout of our deployed companies, returning the legion back to here so that we can assess where we can go. It’ll be a very far distance to get back to the country and the chosen have a way for us to get there quickly. I need to hear your thoughts about what we need to do with the legion next to make it ready to move.”
The transportation officer in charge of the movement of food and water spoke first. This was the first tour of the lieutenant and his five-year commitment would have been over already had Lieutenant Gray just went home. But he was enjoying himself too much.
Cedric trusted Gray with his life, and, more importantly, his beer. As beer was washing down the front lines, the lieutenant could deliver exactly what was needed at the right times. There was only so much that the legion could carry on its backs without having to use a large staple of pack horses, mules, and carts.
“I hope you’re curious to see how they want us to get back to the continent. They only have one airship which might hold 90 dwarves at most. I think that there’s something else going on that they haven’t told us yet. Given that they are Chosen? It’s almost a certainty,” Lieutenant Gray said.
“Sir, how do we feel about the Chosen? Are we going to ask them to lead some companies?” Captain Ewing, the commander of Fox company said. “They might have some magic that we are not familiar with yet.”
Fox company was to get everything out to the legion. Nearly one hundred support dwarves made up the physical plant that moved wherever the legion went. Their only job was to get all the supplies that legion needed, where it needed to go.
“We’ve already sent the runner, having most of our forces prepared to return,” Cedric said. “I don’t think that we’re going to ask the chosen to lead our companies directly. The leader of the chosen, Anthony, has told me they have a method of getting us out of here quickly. This reminds you, they want to park their airship closer.”
He leaned over to the Lieutenant on his right.
Lieutenant Gray nodded. It would be done. Cedric was glad to say they could count on the dwarf to manage things on his behalf without ever worrying. Once he had resolved the internal issues with his people and then they would go talk to Anthony about his claim that he was bringing a princess and a duchess to meet with them.
What he didn’t know was if anyone from the Royal Line had survived. He wasn’t familiar with Valerie Lightfoot. Her appointment of a duchess as well as creating a new duchy gave him pause. He had been to Gloucester before. The legion had departed out of there the last time they came home.
He didn’t know that it merited it being reclaimed by the duchy, but he didn’t know the situation on the ground. It sounded dire.
He was going to have to ask his people to go there.
“Do you think we could recreate their design for an airship in time?”
The assembled dwarves all looked at each other as if someone was about to say anything resembling anything an answer. Instead, all he saw were dwarves more puzzled than he was. At least I’d answer that question for now. That the chosen had been pretty forthcoming information, and he didn’t think that they were going to hold back on them on any account. He wanted to work with them, but they were humans. If what they were saying was true and he hoped against hope that it wasn’t, then he was going to have to do a lot in the near term.
That any Chosen had shown up at all gave credence to their words. Perhaps it was just ignoring the inevitable, trying to deny things. He remembered his training and thought about the scout mindset. He would have to send some scouts out. They would give him the actual situation on the ground and he could make an educated decision.
“Do we have any scouts back here?” he said.
“I’ve got my scouting squad, sir. They’re ready to go if you want me to have them spun up?” Captain Ewing said. The dwarf almost never wore his full plate armor as it impeded his actual work, fitting in with his soldiers. It had initially worked for Cedric, but then he tried it himself and had grown accustomed to things just being different from where the supply trains started.
“Send them,” Cedric said.
“Sir? If I may?”
“Go ahead, Gray.”
“If you’re sending scouts to investigate, and I’m guessing they have a gate spell available, I would like to head out with them.”
Cedric turned to his sub commander. Captain Ewing nodded his ascent.
“Granted. Paint us a good picture, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lieutenant Gray kept her chain mail on unless she was loading or unloading boxes or doing extensive manual labor. She has a spark inside of her that Cedric wanted to turn into a roaring flame. One day, she might rise to take his position, and he wanted her to be ready then.
“Anything else before we speak to the chosen as a group?” Cedric said.
Seeing nothing, he sent a runner. They received some time to get accustomed to life here. He had put them up at the bar while he assembled his people. He wanted the time to give this moment the gravity it deserved. Any legion member would take the chosen as one of the greatest days of his time in uniform.
The tent flap wrestled, and every single dwarf in the command tent stood. Five chosen walked in. Twenty fists hit twenty chests, saluting. The rough semicircle welcomed them in to the center. As they were chosen, they would be the one leading in the discussion. The gods had handpicked them to save their country.
Cedric had never felt more like he did the first day of the academy at that moment. These people were so much more powerful than him, he could sense it. They crackled with power as they saluted back.