The Raven felt every bump of the wagon, through shields and all. He had been grounding his teeth at all the delays since they started up the muddy path out of Ebolt's valley. It had rained the previous night, a chill downpour that meant everything had slowed to a crawl in muck, stuck between the steely sky and a dark brown line of crud. Someone had gave his sex crazed cultist bad wine last afternoon, so his usual method of dealing with stress had been cut off. He took a toothpick and gently felt near his gums for plaque, giving a side eye to Rupert asleep on his feet with a single eye half open, and his Half-Elf maid who was glaring at him while fixing him tea on the gently rocking cart. He had to think of a good name for her since she refused to say hers.

He was thinking about deploying drones to help The Dark Camp find his renegade shooters, but it turned out that cheeky group with the guns was back and had mowing down whole heaps of his horsemen out on the plains. One survivor claimed that there was a shadow rolling across the ground, and he had seen dark hands extend from it like vines. The description from another group said that a single line lanced five men and their mounts, killing them all without a scratch in the blink of an eye.

So, gunner, pilot and maybe a lancer or two, then one of them is a water mage, and another a shadow mage? Well, NOT on his watch! It was time to get the local team rallied, lest he have to stroll up there and blast them with the light of his phallic artifact.

He had lots of resources. It was another nice part of being a ruler who was immune to all the common methods and some of the less common methods of assassination. Surviving a power play often meant you could take all the stuff from the people trying to kill you without anyone batting an eye. He was rich off-world and nearly as rich in play-world terms (relatively speaking, of course, a single orbital bombardment flight-group was worth several years of this entire planet's production) so he could afford the Adventurers Guild's rates. The best part was that a large chunk of the ones who had stuck around after the war were the sort of bastard mages and warriors and thieves he needed. The irony that he had to purge the clergy of 'The Cleanser' was not lost on him, but even surrounded by men (and a few very dangerous women) of the same mindset as him, it was a shame in his company of kindred spirits he didn't have good healers.

Anyway, he pulled out the magic sea-shell he could use to ring up his accountant back at the city. Well, the accountant's body guard, one of Goule's permanent pets. He didn't trust his staff in the capital without some supervison. And ah! Those wonderful pets Goule could summon! That was a trick he needed to learn, as the humaniod monsters could follow directions and were as smart as any given person, but also could harmed and maimed and killed and instead of making a mess, they would return to wherever they came and could be summoned again, whole and hearty! He would master magic, find a nice haughty succubus princess, and see where that took him. The thought distracted him, making him wonder if he could make a sort of magical dynamo using The Dining Table? He salivated a little bit, and reached into his glove and pulled out his breath mints. His teeth were clean, but the seeing all the mud caking everything not elevated above it made him feel dirty.

So, he crunched on a mint, then made the call and arranged a few more 'friends' to show up. Warriors and mages and rouges skilled at tracking. No investigators, sadly. He suspected that there was an element in the guild that had diverted all the more exotic classes and non-divine healers away from his kingdom as he was cementing his power. The money spoke and told him that it was the work of a cabal of people who acted under the name 'Corky D. Rotwieller' which was an obvious fake name if he had heard one. The money also spoke and told him this 'Corky' was real. And the money spoke and said that it was an alias for a real being, a venomous old dragon who ran the adventurers guild as a perverse way to protect it's own horde. No he was a beholder. No, he was a she and was actually the White Elephant Princess, who was running it with the bird-child she abandoned...

The only agreement was that Guildmaster Corky had strings he could pull and had done so quietly. Or perhaps it was that he HADN'T pulled different strings, and what's the fucking difference when the end result was The Raven was doing a lot of creative labor solutions to solve various problems that a ruler here usually had a mage solve... instead of twenty engineers and untold carts, wagons, and horses that should be hauling gravel to try to tame the mud. The bridge and roads especially were time consuming to source stones for... what he would DO for more and better earth shapers! He had, in fact, dipped back into a few weirdos on Tripic who thought this was a VR game and had no idea that they had been committing insane crimes onto 'life-like NPCs'. If he had been willing to get to know them better, he might see which ones would be more driven to do even more terrible things if they knew that the people on a 'Play-world' were real.

He saw rain start to patter on his shields, and the entire enterprise slowed down even further. He saw his maid looking up at the shield's top then over at the poor sods walking along the wagon.

“Ah! Finfally-”

Rupert muttered “Finally.” without stirring otherwise.

“Finally you see zee benefits of being near me?”

The woman put a hand on her chains and said something that was likely 'eat shit and die'. The Raven looked to Rupert, who nodded. “She told you to eat shit and die.”

“Oh! Perhaps some refreshing rain will help clean up your potty mouth?” He directed his shield to shrink to only cover his throne.

Amusingly, the Elf just forced her chin up as the freezing rain hit her. Rupert, on the other hand, actually looked a little annoyed at her as water started to soak his hair. While he saw dark grey clouds, The Raven enjoyed a moment of sunshine!

The next few days saw successes. They had fully repaired the wood bridge and would have the wide bridge finished in a week or so. The rain had stopped as they hit the road climbing into the plateau. His riders had managed to catch some of the people fleeing south including a fat merchant who had overloaded his poor donkey team. Throwing coins to his men and having some fresh barrels of very good wine, spirits were high despite the worryingly empty stretch of scrub grass they were on.

Eleven days since he took Ebolt, and he was at the top of the world, standing in a thicket at the edge of The High Plains. No obstacles and no cover for a thousand miles. There had been an attempt by the Imperials even to harry some of his forces, and they got flanked by his untold hordes of riders. Yes, he was missing fifty of his outriders, but what was the worst a few scattered rats could do to him, with his untold armies, his pick of silver and gold ranked adventurers, and his weapon able to erase anything he pointed it at?

It was day twelve when The Raven had to host an upset Dark Camp leader at his tent when he appeared just out of shield range. As it turns out, two of their best men were wounded, and six of 'The Accepted' were killed by 'The Shadow'. The leader of his assassins even was muttering it was the return of The Wanderer.

“There are three of them. One of them, I am sure, is an Imperial Princess. I threw a poisoned dagger at her-”

The Raven felt himself stand up. “Princess? Take her ALIVE!”

“Please, I know my orders but you of all people should understand that sometimes you see a fool standing out in the open and your hand just moves on it's own.” The assassin looked embarrassed but The Raven DID understood. The man had been killing so long, it was sort of just a thing he did.

“I love killing too, Mister Grim.” The assassin looked annoyed, but The Raver really got it. Who couldn't resist just REALLY killing someone who was so open? Sometimes you just felt like splatting something!

“Right, so containyou... containyun? Continue! That's the word. Where the hell is Rupert when I need him?”

His memory jogged to giving Rupert some of the poisoned wine since the man had been drinking too much of the good stuff. “Nevermind, he'll be at the privy all day. Keep on it.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“She had a glimmer on her ride like your own paling.” He had to translate that from primitive speak to 'the guy had a shield belt, too'. No wait, the PRINCESS has one? The assassin looked tired as he went on, “My dagger fell to the side harmless. Her allies were a shadow of death that I could not see...”

“Was it like a blur? Like a stream moving through the air?”

“No, how can I say it... I'd know he was there after he moved because he left a trail and a body, then I'd try to look for him and he'd kill the next person. He fought along side type of golem or elemental I have never fought before, blue like clear water and able to use weapons and magic like a skilled warrior. Our toxins were useless, our blades passed through her, and she commanded the fury of unseen waters that battered and drowned us. The shadow killed one with his black arms, then another with the strange repeating not-crossbows you, yourself, have used, and a third who tried to get close was set apon by the dark figure and dismembered in the snap of a finger as it moved to it's next hiding spot.”

“Where the hell do you hide? Out there?” He gestured, and turned at the Assassin was gone.

The Raven raised an eyebrow. A shadowcaster with a machine gun? There were houses who fought like that, but most of them had piss-poor advancement and didn't, as a rule, spend time on mere 'Play Worlds'.

A few moments later there was a cough and The Raven turned and nearly pissed himself so see Grim standing next to him again. “What I do to you, he did to me, which is a hundred times harder for a brother trained against his own brothers.”

“Very funny. Point taken. What did he look like? Did you see him?”

“He had an object that blended into the dirt, and made him hazy even when he pivoted. I suspect he is tall, based on the blur we saw. Even as far into The Mysteries as I am, I would give my right jewel for such a treasure that would let me move like him.”

“Oh, great. You going to write him love ladder?” The Raven poured himself a shot glass of mouth wash and swirled it, smelling the cinnamon. A flavor he didn't enjoy as much, but he was trying to broaden his horizons and the local dishes in the south supposedly used a lot of cinnamon, so it was sort of a tourist thing to do. In elevating himself to a very different idea of vacations, he had come to see that it was more fun to play along sometimes.

Grim kept his response flat, “When someone survives, they establish that their will to live was greater than our will to kill.”

The Raven gave him a single raised eyebrow. He needed to find a way to do that and smile with his teeth but not look deranged. “

“Yes, I was impressed with his movement.”

“No shame in it, my tsundere assassin pal! I think my little shadow is quite cheeky, and I hope we can take him alive somehow so I can figure out who he is. Perhaps he'd go in half-and-half on carving up the empire with me?”

The Raven sometimes felt lonely, truth be told, that he didn't have like minded fellows with him, enjoying everything and anything one could while slumming it. It wasn't as easy as a VR campaign but with the right investments it was almost as comfortable and always more satisfying. There were things that the programmers of those games couldn't or wouldn't properly translate. Of course, he wouldn't take any old pleb or barbarian as his friend. It would have to be a fellow noble who appreciated what he was doing. There was an art to it! A magnificent work that spoke to human nature, and his nature too.

The assassin continued his report and The Raven focused back on him.

“I called off the strike, we had lost two brothers in shadows-”

The Raven held his hand up. “I thought you said there were six dead?”

The assassin sighed. “Six accepted. Twenty two initiates.”

The Raven couldn't help himself and whistled. That would put a dent into his Dark Camp. They would not be... oh how he wished he could resist his penchant for wit... they would not be happy campers! He bit off laughter and smiled at the man.

“You re-engaged?”

The assassin shook his head. “We retreated to a mountain path, using cover and used our mind-seeker abilities to shroud ourselves, our woodsman craft to fade into the brush, our small cantrips to become shades, and other tools such as gas, tanglefoot bags, slime-pots, caltrops... the shadow was hunting us though. He who has become death. The mind benders have not reported back, and their brothers of the sightless ways say they died without knowing what killed them. The shades were caught by arms that would come up from where he was, the only signs we saw before he would slip away. He moves fast, fast enough that I could not keep track of him when he was moving in a circle thirty foot wide. In the hills where there were trees it became a slaughter. He would fan gas back at us. Caltrops didn't seem to penetrate what he was wearing on his feet. The tangle-foot bags vines started growing strawberries rather than ripper thorns, and the slime-pots... the acid slimes parted for them.”

The assassin paused. “I wounded him then, with signs of his passing. A dagger with the worst poison I could scrape together, but he pulled it out of his neck and drank a potion and it only slowed him enough for me to escape. The rest of the men we left in the forest who were slower, they are all dead.”

The Raven thought about this. “Do you reject the contract then?”

A real pro, the assassin held up his hands. “I can call for the elders to form a hunt. But it will take time, and they might demand more tokens. Or they will wish to take him alive and find out how he made us look like trained monkeys rather than 'The Blade Even Kings Fear'.”

The Raven was not new to the whims of powerful. Everything about the assassin at that moment suggested that the fear of failure or death was dwarfed by the prospect of the fear he had for trying to convince his superiors. Either way, it was his problem to sink or swim. A man who can't find opportunity in failure is doomed to keep failing.

“Same as you, I may make some calls. I have... special Sky-Knights I was saving for a bout with the Imperial elites or the adventurer's guild's Platina.” Could he fuck that dragon too? He wished he had more non-lethal tools at his beck and call. The chances of being able to fight her into submission with what he had was almost nil. He had heard her human form stern valkyrie thing going on. New goal: Fuck that dragon.

He saw the assassin looking at him with a dour expression and The Raven beamed at him.

“Do not look so glum, the greatest challenges offer the best sport!”

He scrubbed his teeth madly after the man did the usual vanishing when he wasn't looking. A shadow beyond shadows then? Pah. You didn't get darker than a raven. Well, a raven and his friends and minions and tools. He'd call his own cheating eyes in and figure out what was going on at the high plains.

Day thirteen.

Something was hunting his drones. He had posted a few men to watch them too, equipped with binoculars. They didn't see anything when the feed died. The drones would just be flying and keep flying, and vanish into the horizon then never come back. Which was impossible, as they were slaved to his inner-brain network. Slaved, encrypted, and with fail-safes to find him, or just flat out turn around when they lost HIS signal. He grabbed one of his anti-mage drones then, one with a plastic casing full of pink anti-arcanite gel. The goop was insanely expensive and only one noble house sold it. Even then the assholes would cut it with strawberry jelly, it was the best sort of material on the market. It was widely accepted that they held onto the purifed form for their own uses, or perhaps buyers who made even his unfathomable wealth look like two pissed-on pennies. Not that the gel was cheap at all, no no no! It was a month of his passive interest to make one drone, an amount that could buy any given country on a boring farming world.

So, his anti-magic device went, and started flying, and the signal cut off... then it made a little adjustment to something after it had lost the signal.

The good news was that his bands of men had reached and taken a town out on the plains that would offer him a place to fortify, restock on water, and start attacking the other settlements that were out there. His general had suggested a soft hand for the early birds so that they could get info on both the lay of the land, and tell them what the hell you ate when on the High plains, aside from the crappy oversalted rations dragged a few hundred miles by carts.

“You don't know? Don't they herd goats?”

“We think they have other protein and grain sources that farming doesn't cover.” The General said, trying to tip-toe around The Raven's own solution to such a problem. One that was catching on with a few of The Raven's most loyal men, but not so much his most important men. One must learn to chew before they swallow, lest one chokes.

“Oh, so we have starving bandits?”

The General nodded. “We missed a few meals before we took the wall and the city. It's why we might have to delay pushing too far in here. Even the imperials hate moving material across the high plains, because you have to carry a store of food in with you. A million men, even spread out, we'll be eating boots in a few weeks. If we had boats in port, I'd suggest we go the naval route. Might work for fishing... There's inlets where you can walk on the water there's so many fish.”

The Raven considered it. “Why don't we attack along the coast then? I'll call the pirates.”

The General shook his head. “There's two parts of the coast line that are so steep, we couldn't get anyone but maybe the insane fur wearing mountain men to tackle it. The paths around those spots would put us trying to take Gygol pass, and you'd need to be blasting with your glass toy all day to try to kick the dwarves out.”

Why couldn't they be stone elves? He could figure out a tactic to break a bunker-like dwarven city clear, but... Dwarven women might have beards. A risk he wasn't willing to take. “You are right. Not worth it. So we stay the course. Three people are not enough to stop an army!”