Chapter 5 Night time Shennanigans

AN: Sorry about short chapters I'll definately make them longer once the weekend comes around. Anyway, enjoy.

Later that night Moca fell asleep by a campfire that they had set up back at the forest surrounded by the body of Talavernax. He stayed up thinking of his next step.

The town itself was quite well off. Situated on the border of the nation of Dancor the mountainous barrier had made it impossible for either side to wage a winning war against each other, which eventually had devolved into an alliance that made trade possible between the two countries. The presents of ore veins not including bronze that the town guard had alluded to made the towns mining industry quite profitable and along with the presents of a fertile Forest with an abundance of wild animals and natural edible plant life made this location prime real-estate. He could also see unused grassland to the west in the direction of the capital and further west the ocean was present. If a trade route could be secured then bringing fresh seafood in wouldn't be a challenge. Further north past the mountains was apparently a warzone but this place was too far away to be affected by it other than the odd conscript that was forced to join.

Honestly he was impressed by how the nobles had managed to suck this place dry like a savage vampire. The town had around a population of four thousand people almost a third of which had been magically enslaved and owned by about 2 dozen rich or noble families. This gave them a monopoly on every hunter, gatherer, and miner in the region. They would also send pompous soldiers like the ones at the gate to 'collect' taxes from the farmers and small hamlets in the region, taking almost everything they had including women and children and sometimes even the clothes on their back. This loss in labour and security caused monsters, bandits, and beasts to run wild. Curiously though, lately the farmers have had a small reprieve from those threats, thanks to the recent appearance of one Very. Big. Lizard.

He smiled. "This is going to be easy." He only needed a couple things to take over this place. One was wealth, enough to bribe officials and guards alike which he obviously had enough of. Flooding the market though would cause the economy to break. The other thing he needed were supporters and he had almost a third of the population to help with that. And the last was a symbol of his power. He himself looked nothing but evil he couldn't deny it or change that fact. In the past he had been labeled a tyrant by the world, his people marked as worshippers of death itself causing the entire world to fear and rise against him. He leered at Moca once more through a half opened eye causing her to shiver in her sleep. Then as the moon reached its peak the golem of blood that had been laying in the dirt by the fire suddenly shined purple and morphed into thousands of small black snakes that slid into the abyss.

They crossed the fields and trees and sped along to the broken walls and drunk soldiers. Most of the snakes passed through unnoticed, though one had stayed behind and crawled into one of the guard posts turned drunk tank. It was a two story wooden building with a lookout tower on the top with some sleeping guards on the top having a poker game not noticing the small army moving through the city.

Once the little snake had managed to climb up to the second floor of the tower it found the guard from that morning sleeping soundly with an empty bottle of liquor in his hand. He was snoring loudly; completely unaware of the fangs that had sunk into his neck depriving him of life.

Then a few of the snakes made their way into the slave shops of the merchant district and began absorbing slave contracts, land permits, legal bindings and all matter of dealings that had either bankrupted or enslaved the unlucky. The snakes quickly made their way through the town. They started biting all of the 1% and other random peasants. He did this to simulate the spreading of a plague. He was able to synthesize from his blood various toxins, venoms, and poisons that would show symptoms of heavy fevers, vomiting, nausea and delirium. It was a slow acting poison that he had made to last for 2 weeks before becoming lethal. But some of the ones administered to nobles would be faster acting.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Eventually though they had found the mercenary building that contained the slavers he had been searching for. These were even worse cutthroats then the guards and were basically a government run bandit house. For these men they had one more symptom given to them with their bites. Nightmare paralysis they would probably be the first to die. Not from the poison but because of the horrors they would experience at the hand of this drug. Every victim in their memory would come back to haunt them and stab and prod until they would voluntarily commit suicide to stop it all. Any actual decent people wouldn’t experience these visions so it was a good way to tell sinner from saint. The ones who had chased Moca through the woods though, never awoke. They were discovered the next morning with frozen faces, depicting gut wrenching terror.

Then after combing through the city administering blood along the way, they had made it to the noble’s district. After squirming through the nooks of the wall and making it inside; they began to systematically paralyze every guard in the compound. Once that was finished they had a look inside the homes. With 24 mansions in all it was quite a luxurious site. Made in classic medieval style stone and mason work the houses were adorned with fancy metal work trim made of polished gold, silver, Iron, bronze and every other metal you could think of showing that this town had a lot of useful ores being put to waste magnificently.

Without the presence of skilled artisans or construction workers it looked very tacky with bits of metal stuck to the outside like crappy hood ornaments. The insides had the odd statue or piece of art but were again mostly decorated with metals and or expensive weapons. All of the furniture was made of fine leather from monsters and other large animals. The layouts of the houses were mostly the same with slave quarters in the basement containing all the beautiful women in the region acting as sex slaves and servants. The ground quarters had large foyers, kitchen, living, and ballrooms with the rare guestroom mixed in. The top floors were the most furnished though with furs and other expensive items adorning the walls and family rooms.

All of these houses needed to be demolished and salvaged for parts. Being a dragon he could understand the need to hoard valuables but he was old enough that he had gotten over the need for shiny things. The gold and silver needed to be circulated into the economy for trade and there was enough copper, iron, obsidian, mithral and other magical metals that could outfit an entire army. He even had the idea to making diamond tipped spears and swords, considering how many jewels were in the safes of these people.

Talavernax couldn’t kill any nobles yet. He could have merely blown the houses to smithereens and indoctrinated the people. However that would only breed fear towards him as a new tyrant and devil. That was the reason for the fake plague. Then once the city lord and all the nobles had been bitten the snakes all vanished into puffs of smoke along with all the slave contracts they had.

“Yawn.”  Moca had woken up the next morning, rubbing her eyes to get the sleeping dust out. Her mouth was dry so she reached out next to her searching for her travel bag, What she touched though was a smooth surface that was hard like metal but it seemed to have a little bit of elasticity that stretched as she applied pressure. Confused she finally opened her eyes to look at this strange material next to her. And staring back at her was a large purple eye the size of her head staring at her not a palm length away from her face.

“AAAAAAAA!!!” She screeched and jumped away before remembering the events of yesterday and the fact that she now had an immortal dragon as a companion. “I told you to stop doing that!” She came back and started hitting the beast on the snout causing more damage to herself then him.