Half a week had elapsed since Dimitry sent his workers to Malten, and on the third of the five long days, a royal messenger had reached his outpost with the news: the city’s response to free food was overwhelming.
Citizens rushed to trade their organic waste to an enchanted processing facility on Malten’s outskirts for preserved fish, and despite supplies running out, they continued to do so to get priority on the next delivery. Barn and stable owners within the city and in nearby villages were no different, agreeing to convert the floors of their animal holds into vast toilets, which would accumulate rich reserves of nitrogen for the long-term production of black powder.
Once Jesco and his apprentices had collected sizable compost reserves, Dimitry would send chemists to extract the potassium nitrate contents and return to the outpost with mounds of purified product for use in explosives and firearms. Commerce as well, when Dimitry had enough.
While potassium nitrate was crucial for killing heathens, the luxurious preservative had an equally important role as merchandise. Even small amounts could purchase impressive quantities of metal and vol and clothes and livestock and grain—resources his outpost desperately needed. To peddle the versatile chemical, Dimitry sought to establish trade routes.
He considered a horse-and-magic-powered wooden track between here and Malten, but building the project would be costly, lengthy, and there were other trading partners nearby. Many of them. The myrmidon, the other kingdoms of the former Gestalt Empire, and perhaps even the Sundock Confederacy at the continent’s southern peninsula. Dimitry could reach them all and Malten by sailing along the coast and its adjoining rivers.
His idea wasn’t novel. With ready access to the ocean, the Gestalt Empire was once a maritime economy teeming with shipwrights and sailors, but after a decade of heathens roaming the shores uncontested, the market waned, and many had lost their jobs and their homes. He recruited dozens of such refugees while assembling the army, and more would arrive when Ignacius returned from the north. Dimitry would put them back to work.
But his ambitions weren’t so simple. To build a harbor and a trading fleet, Dimitry had to fortify the coast. And to fortify the coast, he needed firepower. An army of undisciplined halberdiers wasn’t enough.
Fortunately, he wasn’t without options. Today, he tested a weapon that could secure the waterfront much sooner than anyone had expected.
Standing on a rocky pier, Dimitry rested his elbow on the knee of a bent leg, whose sole planted into a boulder protruding from the sea. A cold and salty gale caressed his chin stubble as he looked towards a deep blue horizon. At his side and beside him, sorceresses chattered, the youngest among them giggling with anticipation like misty-breathed schoolgirls. They’ve been fans of explosives ever since the Night of Repentance.
On the shore and the other piers, which had formed from the half-sunken rubble of a long-collapsed heathen barrier, crowded hundreds of hospitallers. Without Angelika keeping them in line, they shouted and shoved to catch a glimpse of the coming demonstration.
A stone ellipsoid core swam closer. It approached from fifty meters away, the bright blue circuits etched into its gray exterior lengthening as it surfaced. A crawling devil. The victim of today’s experiment. Six sharp legs crept unseen across the ocean floor as the heathen neared Naval Mine Mk-1—a submerged barrel full of black powder kept afloat by a second, empty barrel drifting on the sea. Two men on the shore tugged an attached rope to align the device with the crawler’s path.
Dimitry leaned in. He was unsure of what to expect. Cast iron bombs worked well because their rigid casings accumulated pressure before an explosion, but watertight barrels lacked the same structural integrity. Could they breach a heathen’s core? Hopefully, the answer was yes.
When the crawler brushed up against the mine, he glanced at the aging sorceress beside him. “Now.”
Greta’s graying braids swung in the wind as she flicked her wrist, palm forward, and chanted the spell that had ignited bombs on the Night of Repentance. “Ignia.”
A muffled roar groaned from the deep as an explosion plume shot from a watery crater, showering onlookers with salty mist. Only scattered whispers could be heard as the tumultuous currents calmed. Thick blue blood coated the ocean surface and surrounded a crawler’s core, which toppled sideways and sank within its leaking innards.
Hoots and hollers sounded all around—the vengeful war cries of men and women who, through their efforts, obliterated a representative of the menace that had taken everything from them.
Dimitry was no less impressed. Though naval mines needed a self-ignition mechanism to sell them to the myrmidon and curb his army’s reliance on sorceresses, their raw, destructive power exceeded his expectations. And they would only grow in potency.
The royal messenger from three days ago had also mentioned that a caravan with the blacksmiths, masons, and prisoners that Dimitry had requested would arrive by tonight. An expedited delivery resulting from ‘unforeseen developments that were best discussed in person’.
Dimitry didn’t know the full implications, but armed with expert craftsmen, he hoped to produce iron-hulled naval mines that could lay siege to carapaced devils and the whale-shaped carriers that launched fliers from the horizon every night.
Gradually, the thrill of victory petered out, and countless gazes twitched to Dimitry. The eyes of an aged woman and her bulky husband watched him with industrious intensity as if demanding their next task.
While Dimitry appreciated subordinates with eager hands, his followers had been building and digging and chopping since they arrived. They needed a break. Besides, what use would his army be if they labored themselves to death before the caravan had arrived and the real work began? This was a moment best used for lifting morale.
Dimitry looked across a sea of hopeful faces and cleared his throat. “Though today’s triumph may have been born from Zera’s wisdom, it is through you that her will was made manifest. The cooks, the launderers, the fishers, the hunters, the laborers, the chemists, the coopers, the fellers, the carpenters. Everyone. It is you who have created the tool that will conquer the heathens!”
The cheering resurged, louder than before. A man raised his halberd above his head while the woman next to him knelt in prayer.
“Soon, we will optimize it, produce an aegis that shields us from the corruption without relying on vol or ignia so that even the most common man may wield it. But tonight, we celebrate. Go spend time with your loved ones. Eat your fill. You’ve earned your rest.”
Buzzing with glee, the Hospitallers returned to their settlement of tents, bonfires, and the oaken frames of future homes.
A combat sorceress ran up to Dimitry. Arms curled to her belly and looking up at him from waist height, the fifteen-year-old sniffled runny snot back into her nose. “Without vol, Your Holiness? How about fliers? Are you gonna throw barrels at them?”
He chuckled. “I’m sure there are better ways to deal with them than that.”
“Like wha—“
A hand snapped forward to grab the girl’s red hood. Katerina’s onyx eyes gleamed with the power-tripping delight of an adoptive big sister as she dragged her away. “Don’t bother the archbishop, Ella.”
“I just want to ask him a question!”
“You asked three.”
“The first two were prefatory!”
“Stop squirming before I throw you off the rocks.”
Dimitry looked on as Ella returned to her friends—two equally young girls that praised her as if she had just talked to a movie star. His smile vanished, and pity took its place.
“We didn’t always send them out so young,” said Greta, the leader of the sorceress expedition defending his outpost.
“I wasn’t passing judgment. I was the one that asked for their help.”
“Forgive me, Your Holiness. I just assumed. The Church had always sent lambs to the front lines, and since there’s not one child among your militia...”
“They’re taking refuge in Malten for now.”
Greta shot a somber glance at her babbling sorceresses. “I hope they may someday do the same. I’ve long grown weary of seeing children die.” She lowered her head. “I pray your divine contraptions can cleanse the corruption such that the only corpses needed on the battlefield belong to old crones like I.”
It seemed even those who commanded powerful spells couldn’t magic away their guilt. Dimitry beamed her a reassuring smirk. “Well, when we do cleanse the corruption, think twice before becoming a corpse. I can think of a thousand ways to make good use of your talents.”
“If that day comes, I’ll consider it.”
“It will. You’ll see.”
A soldier darted across the pier, taking care not to bump into any of the sorceresses between him and Dimitry. “Y-Your Holiness!” He knelt. “The royal knights are here!”
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Today’s visitors weren't ones Dimitry expected to see.
Knights adorning enchanted steel and sorceresses in thick, courtly robes rode along the eastern edge of the outpost. They entered through a rift between tents and dismounted their warhorses, massive beasts draped in plate armor and gold banners depicting red-winged dolphins—the heraldic crest of the Pesce family.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
As if a royal visitation was the grand finale to their evening of celebration, over a thousand hospitallers cramped into a half-circle. They neither shoved nor screamed, only waiting with bated breath to bask in the glory of exaltation.
A muscular horse exhaled warm mist down Dimitry’s nape as he waited to greet his guest. Warnfrid and Angelika stood beside and behind him. When he stepped forward, they did, too.
“Is it her?” Angelika asked.
Warnfrid glared at her, his mustache brushing up against flared nostrils. “You represent His Holiness. Quit running your mouth.”
“Yes, sir!”
He straightened his back. “Humph!”
“Jerk,” she muttered under her breath.
Hang in there, Angelika.
A white horse pranced closer across a deforested plain. The rider took off her helmet, revealing waist-length raven hair and cold, indigo eyes. With a sweep of her slender leg, Saphiria slid off a still-moving Dorothy’s back and seamlessly transitioned into a brisk walk through ankle-high snow.
“Her Royal Highness, Saphiria Pesce!” announced Leandra, one of two court sorceresses. She stepped aside to make way for the princess.
The urge to clap welled within Dimitry, to congratulate the girl on a theatrical entrance, but while they were close friends in private, in public, he was a vassal and she was his liege. He knelt.
Taking his cue, the troops that weren’t kowtowing already dropped to their knees. Angelika looked around, and upon seeing Warnfrid lower himself further, she did as well.
“Rise,” Saphiria’s command echoed under a red sky, sparing her admirers frozen ankles and frostbite. She marched closer. “Archbishop Dimitry. How goes the coastal reclamation?”
“There has been progress, Your Highness.”
She gave him a probing stare. “I came to inspect your work.”
Her grave tone and the suddenness of her visit hinted at more pressing concerns; perhaps the ‘unforeseen developments’ that not even a royal messenger could be trusted to retell.
“There’s a lot to show,” Dimitry said. “Should we go now?”
“Stay your haste. There is something I must bestow upon you.”
“What’s that?”
“Leandra!”
The court sorceress mounted her horse. She rode into the woods, and when she emerged, ox-wagons followed, rolling out from between the trunks of barren oaks. Spades and hammers peeked out from under canvas tarps. Chisels, mallets, anvils, and heavy axes. While some wagons carried tools, any tool a budding outpost could ever need, others hauled planks and iron ingots. Thousands of them. They stacked into glimmering pyramids within domed, metal-framed bonnets. Most wonderful of all were the clay contraptions atop wheeled platforms—mobile forges and kilns. They trailed behind a pair of draft horses like a splendorous conga line.
Dimitry held his breath. It took the entirety of his self-control not to hug Saphiria and hoist her into the air. She had given him a gift more exhilarating than the first video game console he had received as a kid—beloved despite his father having bought it at the end of its life cycle from a flea market—and her generosity did not end there.
Next to emerge was a horde of artisans whose muscular silhouettes were born from the trades they plied. Two guildmasters took the lead: Elias, the broad-shouldered blacksmith the queen had employed to craft muskets for Dimitry, and Moritz Stein, a stout mason whose lats and triceps bulged out from under a dense winter coat. Armed with plentiful iron, workers, and tools, they could assemble firearms and industrial facilities with ease.
Behind them was a knight tugging along shackled men and women. Most prisoners were refugees that had attacked the hospital on the Night of Repentance. Poverty had driven them to desperation, and incitia pushed them off the edge. Their crimes weren’t theirs.
Though Dimitry derived no pleasure from forcing unwilling criminals into labor, he always needed workers, and they would have otherwise died on the streets or in an unsanitary, freezing castle dungeon. At least here, by the coast, they could earn their freedom and build homes for themselves through hard work.
Joining them was the small group of alchemists, doctors, and ‘surgeons’ that had threatened Dimitry while he searched for a plague cure. While their medical skills were worthless, they had demonstrated vast chemical knowledge through the production of industrial reagents like aqua vitae. What else could they make besides ethanol? Analgesics like nitrous oxide? Laxatives like glycerol? Chemical precursors for other, more valuable drugs?
Dimitry would extract everything they knew and use it to jump-start his science facilities.
Last was a woman in mangled black robes—the sorceress that had incited violence on the Night of Repentance. She stumbled forward, eyes devoid of life. When Dimitry had interviewed her, Precious confirmed that her loyalty lay with whoever paid her. Good enough for him. Thaumaturges were rare. She would help Angelika pick up the slack once the Sorceress Guild had left his outpost.
Excellent.
At long last, everything was in place.
Dimitry looked at Saphiria and knelt once more. He pressed the girl’s gauntleted hand to his forehead. “I don’t have the words to express my gratitude, Your Royal Highness. Your gift exceeds the bounds of my imagination.”
“You are not the only one carrying the burden of Zera’s will.” She pulled his arm up. “Come now, there is much to discuss. Let us speak in private.”
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The swift delivery of workers and resources now made sense.
As they strolled down a sandy shore, a black forest on one side and dark waves crashing on the other, Saphiria told Dimitry about what had happened. About the Church and their plan to doom his rise to power with previously unseen magic. How Tylo acted as their proxy and united Malten’s gangs against him. It was a matter of such gravity that, even as the city’s northern gatehouse lay in disrepair, demolished by a carapaced devil on the Night of Repentance, Saphiria and the queen sent Dimitry their blacksmiths and masons, hoping to deter war by expediting his production of weapons and defenses.
Everything transpired as Kajla had forewarned. The woman in the dark hall spoke of an inevitable conflict with the Church, but Dimitry’s enemy wasn’t across the continent as he had hoped they would be.
They were in the same kingdom.
Her gold-plated armor rattling with every pensive step, Saphiria ambled beside Dimitry. She went from seashell to seashell as though treading on the inches of sand between them would cast her into a subterranean abyss.
Walking with his arms crossed over his chest, Dimitry broke the silence. “How many troops does Tylo have?”
Saphiria looked up from her steel sabatons. “Alone, perhaps two hundred knights, thirty sorceresses, and two thousand militia. If the southern vassals side with him, four times as many.”
“Nine thousand. That’s quite a few.”
“Indeed.”
“I thought nobles served the queen. Why would they rebel against her to serve a marquis?”
“Because they are tenants on Tylo’s land.”
“Not your mother’s land?”
“It is not so simple.” Saphiria pointed at an imaginary map. “Imagine you are a baron living on the southern border.”
“Alright,” Dimitry said. “I’m imagining.”
“Your barony consists of two villages of a thousand serfs each, a small stretch of forest, and because I am generous, a moderately sized border town. Your knights number twenty, and a sole sorceress defends your keep and often makes your wife jealous.”
“A bit specific, but go on.”
“Surrounding your barony are the fiefs of the other southern vassals, all in service to the queen, yet answering directly to Tylo. You and they depend on him to enact favorable local laws and taxes so that your land may turn a profit. Your knights and sorceress might leave if their manors become unprofitable.”
“So he can bankrupt my subordinates if he wants to disarm me?”
“That is not the worst of it,” Saphiria said. “If another kingdom attacks or if a swarm of gargoyles bombards your property, your meager defenses will not hold. You rely on Tylo to assemble an army to protect you.”
Gargoyles—Dimitry had heard of them before, but he didn’t inquire further. An angry marquis posed a bigger threat. “Basically, if a southern noble angers Tylo, he can ruin them economically and militarily?”
She clenched her fist. “Normally, it would not be so, but with Mother and Richter’s armies scrambling to defend Malten and the northern border, she cannot afford to antagonize Tylo. The filth can do more than oppress his tenants if he so wishes.”
“Then I’m fucked?”
“No, you are not fucked. Once I uncover his unsavory alliance with the Church, the kingdom will turn on him, and I will cut him down myself. None wish for another war. This incident will end with only one death.”
“How do you know he’s with the Church? What if he’s just afraid of me getting too much power? Could also be his hatred of religion like you said.”
“No sane vassal, no matter their lust for power, would ever think to strike at you. If you fall, so too does this kingdom and its territories. Who else but the Church and their thralls could benefit from our demise?”
Dimitry saw her point. He started a rival religion. The Church wanted him dead, and the kingdom that took him in to burn. An agreement with them was the only way Tylo could profit from Malten’s collapse. “Alright,” he said, “but if Tylo’s with the Church and we take him out, wouldn’t the Church come to finish the job?”
Saphiria shook her head. “They would look pathetic to send an army to dispatch an ailing kingdom, and you would become a martyr. They must kill you without rousing attention.”
“That’s a comforting thought.”
The silence returned, and their stroll continued. One could hear only the rustling of leaves, the shrill howling of some distant animal, and the whistling of a carrier devil, bright blue circuits illuminating its rectangular physique in the dead of night.
“I often came here with my father,” Saphiria said at long last.
“The coast?” Dimitry asked.
She nodded. “It was customary to send troops on a Night of Repentance, even if the Church didn’t need us. Perhaps to remind us of their power.”
“Your dad brought a young child to the battlefield? Sounds irresponsible.”
“How else was I to learn of my duty? Besides, Kite was always with me. He protected me from fliers whilst Father and his men patrolled the barrier.”
“One of your royal guards?”
“My eldest brother.” Saphiria closed her eyes. “I can see him still, one hand floating a heater shield over my head while the other flips through a moonlit tome. He would fill my head with tales of dungeons and sea explorers throughout the night.”
“Sounds nice.”
“It was.” Her eyes opened. She looked up at him with stalwart, indigo irises. “And I believe it can be so again. Such that my people and I may make gentle memories once more, we mustn't falter, no matter if we face nobles or the Church. I wish to see the day you and I may bask here in the light of a full moon, safe under the eternal vigilance of the Hospitallers.”
Eternal. The word gave Dimitry pause. What they were building, the legacy they would leave; Dimitry had always known it conceptually, but it wasn’t something he had ever imagined.
He glanced back, and from the darkness of the forest rose a sprawling coastal city, soldiers marching through broad streets, myrmidon and faeries passing schoolchildren as they returned from their studies in clinics, laboratories, and workshops. Citizens watched from third-floor windows as bullets shattered flying devils to bits, the remnants falling a safe distance from the innumerable frigates and sloops of a vast harbor.
It all began here. With a barrier.
What was one marquis?
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Dimitry said. “That caravan. You expedited it for me, didn’t you?”
“It was not easy.” Saphiria retrieved a small pouch from under her breastplate, gold coins clanging within. She lowered it onto Dimitry’s outstretched palm. “This is all that remains from the gifts my vassals wished to give you. I’ve taken the funds from your supporters in secret and converted them into many of the tools and supplies you have seen today. But not the iron and vol. Those come from me.”
“There’s vol, too? That sounds expensive. Won’t your mother get mad?”
“She better not. I’ve labored well in rebuilding the mines. You received the excess born from my efforts. There is no doubt in my mind that you will use it better than some Ontarian merchant.”
“You’re right. I know a weapon that’ll make Tylo shit his pants when he sees an army of ‘serfs’ wielding it. I don’t know if he’s planning a war, but if he is, he’ll change his mind real quick.”
“The flintlock? I thought Elias could not manufacture it.”
“I have a simplified version in mind. It’s technically not a flintlock, but it’ll work just as well, and it’ll be much faster to mass-produce. I should have the prototype ready by tomorrow. Combined with land mines and hand grenades, I think a simple show of force on the Night of Repentance will rob Tylo’s men of their will to fight.”
“What manner of show?”
“The details are still up in the air, so maybe we can figure something out. That is, unless you have to go back to Malten.”
Saphiria’s gaze shifted to the east. She bit her lip, and after a prolonged stare in the direction of the city her responsibilities lay in, she turned back. “I can stay.”