Finley counted how many boxes they had. Then he counted again. Getting the same number he counted for a third time. And it was only apparent to him he was avoiding any other work. No, no one else was watching him do this. He was all by himself. And he was okay with that. Because, if he was going to run a world-spanning cartel shipping things across continents, he needed to get the basics down right first. First. So many tinkers had thought that they were going to make big money doing things that made absolutely zero sense and the elders had to tell them otherwise. Now he was the elder of all tinkers. He had already thought about how he was going to take the option of other tinkers and turn them from a caravan society into an airship society.
After all, the only thing that was keeping them from going out in the airships before was not having them. Wouldn’t have airships change so much?
It was something he pondered daily. He didn’t want to take people under false pretenses. Like sure, he was going to still have the Caravans for those that want to be traditional tinkers. But he was also going to figure out a way to rig up a system of pulleys and levers into a balloon so that if they needed, they could fly their caravans.
Finley was just imagining horses with wings pulling flying caravans across the countryside and how much fun that would be. Then he remembered how terrifying it would also be. And remembered that he didn’t have to be the one doing all this. If he was just the guy at the hub, he could travel whenever he wanted. Just as they had already dispatched the airships to the Elven Capital. Sophie and Zan were leading the charge while they had left. Sonya and Anthony back at home to arrange things for what everyone really hoped was the final big battle. They were going to do a very large, wide scale mop-up effort afterwards, but once the big undead threat was gone? Things could go down to a more manageable pace.
Anthony and Cedric had talked to him to death about the importance of Gloucester as a central part of the continent, becoming a new trade hub, and he agreed. Though he hadn’t been a Gloucester before their initial time there, he knew it was now the most important city. When they liberated the city of Heirisburg, after the Elven Capital was down, that might become a secondary site for them. Either that or the training camp. Seeing as how they already had established gates throughout the Elven kingdom, commerce could flow freely around those trade nodes. But the hub of trade? Gloucester? That was going to be his area.
With the duchess Gigi as his bestie, he was going to stand the test. Seeing as how. The Princess General or Queen to be was also going to be staying there. There would be a lot for trading partners to do. The only question for him was who was going to be there for them to trade with? And long-term, they were not going to repopulate that quickly. But what they could do would be to have a strong policy of migration and then offer those migrants prominent positions in temperate landscapes around the continent. The leadership was already talking about a combined parliamentary system where each of the races had their own representation and the prior kingdoms just merged. He wasn’t sure if that was going to happen. And it was definitely not going to happen if there was any substantial amount of Elven influence left, but it intrigued him. As a tinker, what he wanted was a safe place to traverse.
Everyone was going to be flush with cash after this. So he needed to bring up the industry. Everything that the Dwarven legion was doing was helping, but eventually every single dwarf in the legion would retire, hopefully to be replaced by a younger dwarf, if there ever were any. Any. One thing that really upset him was that besides the children of the camp followers of the Dwarven legion, there were few children about. Finley loved children. They were all new to the world, and this played out in their demeanor and how they played, and it was just lovely to see them interacting.
The sad fact of the war is that so many children had died after becoming zombified now. The kingdoms were going to have to face the fact that they were only so many Dwarven women and orcish women willing to bear children. Even if they all gave birth to three children each, they would take years for them to repopulate the entire continent. For this reason, he was thinking of what it would be like.
“Gigi, what do you think it’s going to be like after all this?”
“What do you mean, after all this?” She said, sipping on her tea.
As the appointed duchess of Gloucester, she had a commanding view of the town below, as well as a villa next to the city itself. This Villa was where she did at work for the day. Although she had enough people helping her with the minutiae,. She wanted to make sure that everything looked good.
“What I mean is, what are all the refugees going to do? What are we going to do?”
“Well, let me answer the first question first. We’re going to do whatever the f*** we want. I died. I’m doing What I want. What I want. Those refugees? They can stay as long as they want. I offered most of them citizenship.”
Finley nodded.
“But unless a female has two or three children, there’s not that many people here. And there won’t be,” he said.
“I don’t see why that’s a problem. If women want to have two or three babies? We’ll welcome that. Dwarfs have long lives.”
“Were you thinking about having a child yourself?”
She turned to face him, raising her glass.
“You know I really wasn’t before? But as a duchess? If I can get the help, I’ll, it’ll be a heck of a lot easier. I wouldn’t have been able to do it on my salary working at the pub, but now...”
“You’ve got those loyal retainers.”
“What about you? We haven’t met that many elves.. are you thinking about having children?”
His eyes went wide. He might like kids, but he couldn’t...
“You know I can’t have kids, right?” He said.
She waved them away.
“I know. I know you’re not really an elf. Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I wouldn’t mind taking care of someone else’s kids.”
“See, now there’s a deal. I can deal with that. If I’m going to have kids? Then maybe Uncle Finley will show up.”
“You know what I do like that name. Uncle Finley has a kind of ring to it. But maybe... Maybe we don’t tell anybody about that. Okay?”
“We’re on the eve of battle here. I’m going to tell whoever, whatever I damn please,” Gigi said. “And I’m going to sleep with whoever I damn please as well.”
“I saw you looking at that Cedric guy. Is that happening?” He said.
“In a manner of speaking. He has no recourse to say no to me at this point in time. But it’s not like Anthony and Sonya. They’ve known each other for so long, and I have to fight for his attention.”
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Finley had suspected something like that, but he wasn’t going to ask. He’d fended off several propositions. Not that he wanted anything in particular. If anything, he was trying to save their feelings. He didn’t want to do anything with anyone. Maybe if the right person walked into his life one day, he might settle down with them in a friend’s way. But he had thought that he was going to have that with Gigi. And she wanted more. That was okay because they were clearly talking about what they wanted and what they wanted in each other. So now? When she told him about what she was doing with Cedric potentially, he was happy for her. After all, he had room for more friends.
---
“After all this time, you think that they’re going to show up, then try to save the day or some shit?” Stella said.
“If I know them, then they’re going to be pushing to be here as soon as possible.”
The morning after they landed and set up camp, the three monks had appeared on their radar. Since they didn’t have an actual radar, the monks had to actually show up in their field of vision and since all three of them had a wind-bending card; they were using these hang gliding kites in order to reach where they were.
To Bob, it looked exhausting. It would have them to head up at a time using a flow from a different one. But he wasn’t in charge of the three of them. Anthony had sent them clearly, and he wasn’t going to make it easy for them.
“Are you sure you don’t want to lower down a rope or something?” Stella said.
“No, we can let them approach. It looks like they are going to be here shortly, anyway. And why ruin a good thing? How often do I get to watch martial arts jackass?” He said. “Good call on the hot chocolate, though.”
It was very close to martial arts jackass how slowly they moved and how it took them forever to get to most of the way up. If they weren’t trying to bring their flyers up, then? Perhaps they would have been a little faster. Or perhaps if they weren’t carrying what had to be a month’s worth of trail rations, they would have gone faster. Either way, Brandon was the first one to land.
Before saying anything, Bob offered him a hot chocolate, the steam rising into his nostrils. If the monk refused, he would have no problem taking that off of his hands.
“Thanks,” Brandon said before sitting down against the side of the skiff.
“I suppose you’re here because you want to save the world or something?” Stella said.
“Or they wanted us to track you down and stop you from doing something stupid,” Brandon said.
“That seems reasonable,” Stella said.
“You guys really should have left a note.”
Stella gave Bob the most earned side eye of his career. He expected it. He deserved it and he was over it.
“I’m just... We’re not going back,” Bob said.
“Understood. And we’re coming with you,” Brandon said.
“This isn’t some Lord of the rings moment. We’re not taking the one ring to Mordor. You don’t have to be here. We’re not even sure if we can sneak in and hit the death knight, what with all the dragons and shit.”
“Dragons?” The monk said.
“They were five dragons that were circling what we think is the elvish capital. Something’s up,” Stella said.
The other two monks arrived. Quickly, Stella offered them the last two mugs on the skiff.
“You’re saying that there're dragons here? That’s not a... How are there dragons here? That’s a thing from the flesh. Weaver, right?” One monk said.
“We think that the flesh Weaver is pulling a fast one on us. Nobody was expecting more dragons. Especially no one but me. But it makes sense for them to have done this already,” Stella said.
Stella explains their theory that the flesh Weaver had swapped spots with the Elven death knight. She went into detail about how it was even possible that the flesh Weaver was leaving a false positive, having detached a part of its body and potentially divide itself into two to cover both areas.
“So what you’re telling me is that there’s a strong possibility that we could face two death nights here? And the undead scourge has tried a feint maneuver?”
“It only makes sense like that if you’re thinking about how death knights are made. If you need a corrupted chosen to become a death knight, then it makes sense for them to secure some of us.”
Once the monks got situated, things became a bit more tense. Bob could sense that they wanted to go back. He could also sense that they were specifically not mentioning it. He didn’t know if that was worse or better.
“Look guys, I’m not mad at you. I’m just- This is the last thing I’m doing for the Caravan- And if I take a few days to get situated with Stella here, then we’re fine with that. We’re just not going to go head back and report on this,” he said.
“Yeah, that makes sense,” Brandon said.
“I know what you guys want me to do. I’m not heading back. I didn’t even know if we’re going to survive this and if we survive this, we’re heading someplace else,” Bob said. “The three of you are welcome to join us. I’m not going to stop you. It’s a free continent. But if you’re going to be here, it’s scouting rules.”
“Yes, observe and report. Do a Recon before you make any big moves. We learned your scouting lessons.”
“Then I need you to either drop the act in the pout face or figure out a way to help us out. We’ve got enough food for the two of us for a while. We did not count on having an extra three mouths to feed.”
Brandon slumped. As the leader of the three men who had chosen the monk class upon their reincarnation, they were deferring to him. Bob was hoping dod the monks would by proxy all defer to Bob. At the very worst, if they just showed up and didn’t do anything, he would call it a win. He didn’t want to have to go back just to tell the Caravan that somebody had died on his watch.
He could deal with Stella and himself. And if it was somebody who wasn’t chosen? They would have been right out. The only reason that he was considering it was the amount of dragons and their relative strength.
“All right, guys. I have a few ideas I want to run by you. Then. We’re going to spend a day or two scouting up to there and then we’ll make a plan. But I need to you all to understand that right now. What I need is for someone to provide a large distraction. If you can do that, I would appreciate it.”
Brandon smiled.
---
It took them nearly two days to get to the top of the mountain that overlooked the Dwarven capital. Mindful of the fact that they could be seen if they poked their heads up, they moved under the cover of the treetops. They had specifically picked a mountain range to the west of the Capitol as that had no small villages nearby for them to get caught up in. As they got closer, Bob was more able to find zombies within range. Every time they found a zombie with Bob’s Pathfinder skill, they went around it.
The zombies that had been there had clearly I’ve been working on something. Once they got to the top of the ridge and figured out a way to cover themselves so they wouldn’t be visible. It was very clear that there were at least five dragons and that the zombie elves in the area had been building up. Something incredible. Zombified elves had clear-cut a large area and established camps there to build siege weaponry from the trees they felled. In fact, it looks like a proper army was ready to be on the move.
Bob cursed.
“This is the power of a death knight. A whole army aimed towards what?” Stella said.
“They already conquered the continent. I know that the capital is close to the quiet sea, but could they be preparing to expand?” Brandon said.
The group shuttered at the idea. It made sense for the zombies to accomplish the goals set out by the superiors. They would work tirelessly day and night.
In the middle of the field, several ships were being built. Seeing the design, Bob realized they were making a better version of their airship. Of course they were. Once the flesh Weaver saw what they had made, it had so much more resources to do anything with. So it just made sense.
“It’s making airships. It’s going to invade someplace?” He said. “It makes little sense any other way.”
He just wished that there was a way for them to destroy all this built up industry. If they killed the death knight that the zombies that have been working would not turn into mindless zombies and therefore keep doing what they were doing. Nobody wanted to think about that. It had always been the case that if you kill a death knight, then the zombies that it wasn’t controlling around it. Whether it’s innate, Powers would revert to their normal zombie state. But now, seeing the intense work that just one of the death knights had put in, Bob was uncertain.
They were going to have to burn it all down. And now he was thinking about ways to keep the burn from spitting, because they were in a mild climate with little humidity and that if some of the wood caught fire, then it might all just go ablaze. That would mean that thousands of miles of forest would just be subject to a giant fire.
He could only hope that his fire bending abilities would be up to the standard that might stop them all from blowing up.
“All right. I think we have enough here to plan a plan to sabotage this. If we can do this without getting noticed, then we can destroy their industrial base and once the war is over, acquire a improved. How does everybody feel about that?”
A round of nods was his answer.
“Great. Let’s make it happen,” he said.