Ingrid Sharptong requests a military alliance between the Dawn Riders and the Lightforge clan! Please note that breaking such a pact without waiting out thirty days will result in big morale, loyalty, and diplomatic reputation loss. Breaking a promise can also affect your righteous citizens and champions. Your actions matter! Agree?

The notification was hanging in there. The tension in the air was so thick, one could cut it with a knife. Horn felt both Ingrid and her rider's steel focus on him. He himself was pissed off.

From the beginning of the conversation, he had this gut feeling that it wouldn’t go as he wanted. That something terrible would happen, but he didn’t expect that. Ingrid, his first champion, just left the clan. Without as much as a word of explanation. Well, he could read between the lines, but it was still shocking.

“Here I am, trying to build something, and she comes and demolishes it all!? Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But still, what the hell?! The thankless…” He monologued internally. He knew his face was clearly stating his emotions, but he didn’t care. He let his emotions run high, several times almost declining the request on the spot. Yet, somehow it still hung in there.

A few minutes later, he managed to bark, “Why?”

Ingrid replied, with a small tear running on her cheek, “Pumpkin –“

“Stop! No more pumpkins, sweeties. You lost that privilege.”

“Chieftain Horn,” She began, “It’s as hard for me as for you, but you must understand. It’s best for both of us. The Dawn Riders, we were branded traitors to the dwarven kind, unfairly, but that was the verdict. The name is still spoken in hushed voices, our supporters few and far between. I’ve left that part of my life long behind. Trying to rebuild family’s name, but the past always catches up to you. Now I’m the grand mistress of the order, just like my grandmother.”

“The trident?” He asked quietly,

“Yes. It’s the symbol of Gaia, our goddess. She’s the one that chooses her daughters to serve.”

“Why can’t you remain in the clan? I don’t care what happened in the past.”

“You don’t, but your people do. It would end badly. But there’s another reason, once we were a part of a Kingdom, it ended with the destruction of the order. Since then, the remaining sisterhood decided that never again would Dawn Riders be a vassal of anyone. I can’t change that, but I can keep you as a friend and still work towards the betterment of the Lightforge.”

“I need to think about that,” Horn replied, turning away. His sight rested on Snouty, who was looking back at him. He saw in her eyes deep sadness like she understood what was happening. “Don’t look like that at me.” Passed through his head, and then to his surprise, an alien thought appeared, it was more like a feeling than a sentence, but he understood meaning “You’re acting like a piglet,”

A chuckle escaped his lips, and turning, he saw Ingrid jumping on Thumper, scanning the camp with a thoughtful look. She stopped her sight on Horn for a moment, and he saw another tear appearing in her eye. He knew that if he let her ride away, he wouldn’t ever see her again. Cursing and swallowing his pride, he accepted the request, shouting so the whole camp would hear. “Lightforge! From today Dawn Riders will march with us into a battle. I don’t care what happened in the past, who you think they are. That world had ended, we’re in the new Nexus, and these brave souls already showed us they can be counted on. They helped us defeat the undead scourge. They helped us through the whole tutorial. We have a debt of gratitude toward them, and we will stand by their side! Welcome with me their Grandmistress – Ingrid Sharptong!”

Horn saw Ingrid almost falling from Thumper, her head shot back at him. He couldn’t decipher the feelings behind that look – astonishment? Fury? Delight? He had no idea, but he could imagine it was a mix of all of them. However, his clan reaction surprised him. He either thought there would be outrage or neutrality. He didn’t expect a few cheers going out. Most of his people were indifferent to the situation, probably sharing his view that the past was in the past. However, a few of them began cheering. Sadly he noticed another group that ground their teeth. One saw the other, and they started quickly closing while shouting at each other. He made his way there to stop the unnecessary brawl. Thankfully Goran appeared on the scene, standing between the approaching groups. He shouted something towards them, and it seemed to cool their heads a bit. Grumbling, the dwarves dispersed.

Horn knew it was just postponing the troubles. Down the road, he would have to face the consequences. However, that was his choice. He wasn’t ready to scratch off Ingrid yet. Speaking of the devil, he saw her approaching, a question was thrown into the air, “Pumpkin, why?”

“I’m not done bothering you yet. Also, I heard I might be a slow one, I need someone to keep me straight.” He said with a smile,

“I think you’re completely right. That might have been the stupidest idea you had so far.” Ingrid replied with a tearful smile.

“Good to have you back, now let’s claim that damn Soul Well.” He said, turning away.

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The next three days went by quickly. The caravan was making good progress. The timer was counting down, but as they approached the foot of the mountain, there were still three days left. During these few days, Horn was keeping himself busy. Between reading through the mind attribute book, and training his days were full. He took Sigrid’s advice to heart and spent each day a few hours, firstly working on his spells, then sparring with Goran and other warriors. There were already some gains with his Flame strike increasing to the fourth level, which decreased casting time by two seconds. Similarly, his Combat proficiency rose to the fifth level, changing the stamina bonus to moderate, similarly with combat instinct and knowledge of weapons. The change was surprising; one moment, he was fighting as usual, and the next, he just knew he was making half of his moves completely wrong.

Knowing about the three different ways to advance in skills was a game-changer. He already discussed that with Goran to implement through training of the warriors, of course, that was already given, and as Goran explained, it was the reason he sparred with them so often.

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Horn took some time to get to know his new arrivals. He finally had time to meet the innkeeper, Brismar, and his family. They were at the sidelines during most of the fighting, but they participated in the final defense, one of Brismar’s sons died that day. The man was a cheerful dwarf with a large red nose, he claimed it was running in his family, but Horn was sure it was from the amount of ale consumed. He met his wife and three daughters. One of them and the wife were brewers, while the remaining two served the bar and cleaned the place. Well, at least that would be once they have a place up and running. They quickly joined the clan after a short agreement that they’d be free to build an inn and that taxes wouldn’t be too high.

Which brought another subject he discussed with his champions. The taxation and commerce. Using Essence as a motivator for questing was one thing, but using gold as money was utterly another. For now, the barter system, or rather communism, was fine. But as the clan grew, they would need to introduce currency. Horn saw the gleam of greed in their eyes as they talked about gold. He himself was strangely excited, but as they said, one couldn’t be dwarf if he didn’t love gold.

Horn also had some time to get to know the late Yellowrock pupils. They were a strange bunch, quiet, calm, deeply focused on their studies. Each of them was an aspiring geomancer, knowing a few simple yet for Horn extremely useful spells. They could launch rocks with astounding speed, mold stone creating seamless blocks, even had some kind of detection spell that could find specific types of stone or metal. They had to have a sample of what they were looking for, and the distance wasn’t impressive, but it should help a lot. With their master gone, they also joined the clan under a provision that they would be allowed to continue their studies. Horn had to wrangle a few hours a day for clan usage and a mandatory call to arms request, but overall he was pleased with the result.

Finally, he recruited Grom and his crew. The strange architect was happy to join for the position of the head builder of the clan. Horn didn’t have any issue with that. The dwarf proved his worth, demolishing a keep within several hours. If that wasn’t a feat of knowing buildings, he didn’t know what was.

All the newcomers pledged a smaller oath. It wasn’t as restrictive as the one Sigrid and Goran made. It just proclaimed them loyal to the clan and working towards its wellbeing. Also, it wasn’t for life. They could quit at any time. Still, Horn was pleased with these small victories.

On their way, twice there was an encounter with other tribes. Or rather a sighting of them, groups moved through the plains, but either they ran at first sight of his riders or were too numerous to chance an encounter. He saw beacons disappearing during the night, thankfully none too close to them, but he knew that the colonization had already started. The closer they came towards the mountain pass, the more surprised by its scale he was.

The hills seemingly were endless, a massive range cutting through the plain. They also noticed that the closer to the objective they were, the more the terrain changed. The green, fertile plains became more and more hilly, the grass turning from green to yellow. The temperature also seemed to rise a bit the further they went.

Finally, they arrived at the foot of the mountain. The beacon shined from somewhere behind the pass ahead, the first one they’ve seen in many miles. The slope leading to it was quite steep but smooth enough for wagons to easily climb it. As the caravan climbed, Horn looked at the scenery behind them. Only now, being higher, he noticed the changing biomes. The plains they appeared in bordered with steeps on one side and a massive forest on the other. The mountain pass they were climbing was just on the border of the former two. He saw remains of some old buildings throughout both biomes, and in the distance, he was almost sure of some kind of movement. Either another passing caravan or someone was settling down. It was worrying about having neighbors so close, but that was a worry for another time.

As they approached the top of the slope, Horn mounted Snouty and rode at the front, joined by his champions. Earlier, his scouts returned, leaving only Ingrid and her Valkyries riding the picket. He expected trouble, so the caravan compressed, doubling down with the wagons. Everyone had a weapon at a ready, and his riders were just in front of first wagons, prepared to charge to help the front or support the rest of the clan.

There was a mix of anticipation and worry about reaching their destination. Horn only hoped to find a suitable place to build the settlement, especially since the food situation became direr every day. With them on the move, foraging was limited, and they were burning through reserves quickly. However, his train of thoughts was interrupted as they reached the top. He was surprised to find Ingrid and her riders there, just over the edge, but seeing what they found, he didn’t contempt them.

The pass in that place was around a hundred yards across, with steep stone walls snuffing any hope of scaling them. Across it was a massive but ruined wall with a pair of gateways, each easily capable of passing three wagons side by side. Four collapsed bastions slightly pulled out of the wall had to protect the pass and the traffic. The gateways were empty, with their wings long gone, and behind them, he could see a large valley overgrown by thick forest and surrounded by high mountains. At least a mile further, another mountain pass was blocked by similar fortifications at the far end.

Horn took in the view. It seemed a dream come true. A massive, judging by forest, fertile valley with two defensible choke points. The beacon was clearly visible now. At a side of the valley just next to the mountain, there were other old ruins and from there emerged the golden pillar of light.

“We’re home,” He said, smiles around him confirming he made a good decision. With ten riders in total, they approached the gateway.

As they got closer to the wall, it became evident that it wouldn’t defend anything in its current state. It had a dozen substantial gaps in it, and the stone looked very brittle. What, however, worried him was a large web in one of the gateways. It was massive, easily thrice his height in diameter. He wondered what kind of spider could make it. The answer he came up with wasn’t very optimistic – a ginormous one.

Just as he was about to say something, Ingrid spoke, “A sword spider? Or a rock weaver?”

“The stone isn’t melted, sword type, I believe,” Goran replied calmly.

“You know what did it?”

“Ay, it looks like a sword spider's web. The size is right, and see these holes in the stone?” Ingrid pointed toward one of the walls. As he focused, he noticed that there were a foot deep, sharp holes in the wall. “The sword spider’s legs are extremely sharp. Some even used them as blades for swords. The beasts grow to five, maybe six feet long and are quite fast. They aren’t the most common creature in the mountains, but there’s quite a few of them. If we’re lucky, it's only a few. If we’re unlucky, there might be a small horde of them.”

“They also like being on the border of outside and caves or tunnels. They sleep at day and hunt at night. They’re dangerous, but a manageable threat, well, if they don’t have the brood mother around.”

“Brood mother?”

“The spiders are semi-intelligent, alone or in small groups - they act like beasts. But if there’s enough of them, and they’re lucky enough, a brood mother would be born. She’s intelligent and cunning and able to order her smaller kin around. If such infestation appeared anywhere, we always sent a company of soldiers to clear the threat, rarely all of them returned.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure we’ll face one. The claiming of the Well is supposed to be another challenge. We have to prepare.” Horn summarized, his voice changing from hopeful to worried.