Year 3043 AGD
Month: Preparation
Night of the Third Day
Continent of Terroval
Twenty-five miles north of Safeharbor
Shawnrik’s Camp (or Ashur’s, if you asked him)
Watching the moonlight filter through the branches of the copse of trees, the two veteran warriors turned their thoughts towards the future. Occasionally, they would turn their attention towards the mound on the opposite side of the fire, watching it rise and recede as the young man within slept contently. It was this young man that occupied most of their thoughts this night, as he would for the nights to come for quite some time.
Ashur saw in Shawnrik a younger, more innocent version of himself, and he swore he would teach the boy everything he knew so that the boy’s life would be easier to survive than his own had been. He kept telling himself these lies, but he knew deep inside that this boy would see things that Ashur wouldn’t even want to comprehend. That realization in particular was why he was more relieved than surprised when Dunnagan had decided to teach the boy as well.
Ashur looked at the old dwarf across from him with a look of respect that only comes about when men have faced the impossible together and survived. Dunnagan was loud, a habitual complainer, and could fight like a whirlwind while singing a dirge without missing a note. In short, he was a quintessential dwarf. The old dwarf hailed from the Deepvein Clan in the Shattered Hills to the northeast. Dunnagan was amongst the smallest members of his clan, yet average size, or even large, when compared to a dwarf from any of the other continents.
The mountain dwarves on the continent of Terroval—especially the Deepvein Clan and the Skyshatter Clan—were said to literally have the blood of the mountains flowing through their veins. Most of these Dwarves were by no means short, and anyone who had ever seen a six-foot-tall dwarf knows that they are at least twice as thick as any human blacksmith. An old Stroml’dier had reiterated this, saying that a man might fare better standing under a rockslide than facing a group of charging mountain dwarves.
Few could have predicted what would happen when the blood of the dragon was mixed with that of the dwarves. Those female dwarves that got pregnant by the Newcomers rarely survived giving birth. The children they had grew quickly, however, and produced children of their own at a pace that had never before been seen in dwarven society. Not only were the children quicker to mature, but having twins or even triplets was not an uncommon occurrence. Many of the females of the next generation died as well, and it wasn’t long before they discovered the cause was the children themselves. There was a reaction in the old dwarven blood that would create a toxin with effects similar to mercury poisoning, and the mothers would waste away quickly if there were no clerics around to disperse the poison.
So it was that those first few generations had more children than the dwarven people had seen in twenty generations combined. The oldest among them mumbled about curses or demon spawn until they began to notice how much stronger and faster—both physically and mentally—these children were. They tried to teach the children the same way as they had taught their young for tens of thousands of years, but the children were learning so quickly that it was no longer feasible. Soon, they began to know things before they had been taught, as if remembering from a previous life.
This phenomenon had spread, to a lesser degree, throughout the other races that the dragons had decided to live among. It didn’t take long for the men to greatly outnumber the women. There were long periods where there would be no births, until the next generation matured, when there would be a lot of births all at once. This trend continued for five generations, which ended up at half as long as they used to be—one hundred years between generations instead of two hundred. At this point, most of the females’ physiology had changed enough to survive their pregnancies. The only women left at this point over a hundred were the ones who had never married or were unable to have children, as well as the female Newcomers who assumed dwarven form and didn’t have any issues giving birth.
Seven hundred and fifty years after the Newcomers had come to live among them, their population was surging like no dwarven civilization had in history. Dwarves were the longest living humanoid race on the planet, and the life cycle of a dwarf had often been compared to that of a volcano: they both come into the world making as much of a commotion as they can. Both cooled down gradually over time, before suddenly erupting to the surprise of everything around. Just when it seemed they were getting ready to quiet down for good, they became more dangerous than ever before burning out spectacularly.
It was not long after the dwarven population hit numbers that no one ever expected that the warning came about the coming danger. Many of the older dwarves chose to fight or ignore the warning when the Newcomers told them they should hide below ground. What came to pass was hard for everyone, but especially so for the dwarven people. Five thousand of their oldest and mightiest left three times that number in the caves below what was then South Harbor in order to face the coming storm beside those that had come to their aid a thousand years prior.
Few know any of the actual details about what happened to those that stayed above ground, but the time below ground thinking about it changed many irrevocably. A yearning came upon some of them, a longing that had never before been known to the dwarven people—a need to see the open sky. The few remaining elders conferred and led their people into the newly formed Shattered Hills once the city of Safeharbor was secure. They had hoped that being among the mountains and among their own people would suppress the urges that some of the younger generations were feeling. For some, it seemed to work, and they once again began to hear the call of the earth, moving deep within the mountains as dwarves had done since time immemorial.
For every dwarf that went back to live inside the mountains, however, there were three who could no longer stand the confining embrace of the earth. Of those that stayed above ground, there were many who found themselves stretching their hands to the skies above them. For the first time ever, dwarven children began to imitate birds, running through the hills with arms outstretched, feeling the wind whip through their hair. This play brought the children a familiar contentment, yet also a deep sadness when they once again realized that they were bound to the earth.
One dwarf, who noticed not only these feelings but the increased activity on the border to the east, decided that the best way to deal with both problems would be to put the younger generations to work. From these thoughts came the Wardens, a border patrol well trained in hit-and-run tactics. In the beginning, this force was made up completely by dwarves, but over the course of the organization’s life, many other races had been accepted into the fold. It began with orphans who had no other place to go, and before they knew it, people were knocking on their doors asking to join. Seeing a kinship with many of these people who just wanted to feel like they had done something useful with their life, few were turned away. Soon, they became an official military branch of the Protectorate, only answerable to the office of the high commander.
It was from within these ranks that Dunnagan had been produced. His mother and father had both been wardens, and he himself had been on the path to be inducted into their brotherhood. What happened instead was something few could have foreseen.
His training platoon had been coming through the area when their forward scouts noticed increased movement from a particularly nasty tribe of orcs called the Crimson Flight. The platoon arrived at the settlement the Flight was heading towards with barely enough time to place a few minor defenses before the attack began.
For half a day, Dunnagan and the other trainees repelled nearly two hundred orcs—five times their own numbers—from the settlement’s walls. Nearly half of his platoon was wounded, oversized arrow shafts sticking out of many, and they had only taken perhaps fifty of their enemy out of action. There appeared to be two dead, and another had bled so much that Dunnagan didn’t know how she was still conscious. Things didn’t look good for them, and the Crimson Flight knew it. Even though they had lost many in their attacks, the orcs could feel victory at hand. This drove many of them into a bloodlust that their leaders were not willing to attempt to restrain. As the orcs were preparing for their final push, the path of Dunnagan’s life would change forever, as he began a prayer for the souls of those with him, and the people they were trying to protect.
The reports of what happened next are now legend amongst the wardens. One human—who is long dead now—described a bright light that began to emanate from Dunnagan, and the air seemed to crackle with energy as the light grew brighter. He said that the light began to radiate off of Dunnagan as he finished his prayer and hefted his axe. The whole world went white in a blinding flash, and when the man’s sight was restored, he saw Dunnagan racing across the battlefield yelling that the orcs would only come closer over his dead body. The human’s first thought had been that it was a brave yet futile gesture, but it would be an honorable death. The man had said he could hear some of the orcs laughing, right before the ground erupted below their feet.
There were only a few individuals on the field that knew what was happening, and even they could not believe their eyes—mainly because only moments before several of them had been near death. One of them had been dead. It is said that if a person has a strong enough bond with their deity, they have the ability to bring the dead back to life. The spirit must still yearn for life, but there was nothing that those dead dwarves wanted more than to heft their axes and get back into the battle, so the effort wasn’t as draining as it could have been. Everyone who was in sight of the walls looked around in amazement; where there had been gashes, cuts, and bruises only moments before there was now unmarked skin. All eyes were drawn to the battlefield as the first pillar of flame appeared outside the walls.
The pillar of cleansing fire erupted within the ranks of the orcs that were the most lost in their bloodlust. The next two pillars replaced any remaining bloodlust with fear. Those that were unaffected by the pillars of flame either ran for the hills or died at the axe of a dwarf deep within the thrall of his goddess’s power. It was over in moments, and Dunnagan stood in the center of it all surveying what he had wrought.
The orcs that remained were on their knees crying and looking at him as if he were Ragnós given form. For a second he was confused as to how exactly he had gotten so far from the wall. He turned to see his platoon and many of the townspeople on the wall looking in his direction, and then the last few minutes flashed through his head with crystal clarity. A silent prayer of thanks was all that he managed before the world went black.
When Dunnagan next opened his eyes, he saw the faces of several exceptionally surprised clergymen. No one had actually believed that someone unused to channeling energy could harness so much at one time and survive. All of the things that the clergymen and other healers of the wardens had tried had produced no noticeable effect upon Dunnagan’s prone form. It became obvious that if he was going to survive his ordeal, it would be by his body’s constitution and his strength of will. Two eightdays had gone by, but Dunnagan had aged nearly ten years in that time. Every clergyman can tell you there is a price that must be paid to wield a god’s power. If you heal a wound, you feel some of the pain. If you reconnect a spirit with their mortal shell, it requires life to complete that process—how much depends on many factors. To gift life to two of his comrades and several villagers, Dunnagan was lucky that the cost had been so apparently low.
As usual in such a situation where there is really no way to express the magnitude of the service Dunnagan performed, he found himself accepting medals, and he became an official member of the Wardens before he was on his feet. Unfortunately for the now slightly less young dwarf, the only thing in more demand than a warden was a cleric, and the wardens had little say when the temple let it be known that Dunnagan would be trained as a cleric henceforth. No matter what the temple thought, however, Dunnagan was a warden at heart. So it was that after a decade under the thumb of one clergyman or another, Dunnagan found himself patrolling the frontier with the wardens once again. No one ever complained at having him along, and over the next three hundred years, only a handful of wardens weren’t able to say that Dunnagan had saved their lives at one point or another.
The Wardens tried promoting him several times, but Dunnagan always felt that there were better men for such jobs than himself, and he never let them promote him higher than sergeant major. As life tends to do, it was the work he loved that put him in a situation that would cause his eventual departure from the wardens. On the same ground that his connection to Cypheria had been so spectacularly established over three hundred years before, Dunnagan’s patrol came upon a band of dracair assassins disguised as a merchant caravan. Once the party had been defeated—which was no easy victory—the platoon found an unfortunate young woman inside the carriage the group had acquired. One of the men in the patrol took a fancy to the young woman, and after it became apparent that the Dracairei had used her poorly, he offered to marry her and take her somewhere far away. Soon, the woman would give birth to Nimus Theromvore-Mithriannil, and the world would never be the same.
Twenty years later, Dunnagan would find a young man with dracairei eyes on his doorstep who went by the name of Nim. Dunnagan retired from the Wardens shortly after, at what the brass said was the rank of lieutenant commander. None of the things he had experienced in his three hundred and seventy-five years of life could have prepared Dunnagan for the adventures that would follow. It was during these adventures that Dunnagan realized the wardens were only dealing with a small portion of what the enemy could unleash. The real evils were coming, and it wasn’t going to be pretty. He had always thought that Nim would be the one that would lead the battles against the coming storm, but recent events had given him doubts about such thoughts. A part of him knew that Nim would have a hand in the events to come, but he suddenly knew that it was the boy who lay bundled up by the fire and his mysterious friend that would truly shape the war to come.
Dunnagan looked at Ashur across the fire. Meeting his young friend’s eyes, Dunnagan realized that their thoughts had been running along the same course.
“It’s gonna be one hell of a fight,” Ashur said quietly.
“We’re gonna need to push him to learn all he can. It’s gonna be harsh, and he may hate us at times, but if this lad you talk about is anything like Nim, he’s gonna need it,” Dunnagan said in return.
“Aye, he’s a lot like Nim, but…” Ashur looked down at his hands and then around him as if the words he was trying to find were lying around somewhere nearby. “He’s so much more, Dunnagan. I remember when I first met Nim, I knew at that moment that if I wanted to truly live, I should follow him. This boy Victor, though, it makes that feeling I got from Nim seem like we had only been playing this whole time. It’s a feeling that says every turn has new possibilities. I feel like I’m just a kid seeing things as they are, or could be, for the first time!”
The look Dunnagan gave him was skeptical, and Ashur chuckled. “Yeah, just wait till you meet him, you’ll see what I mean. He has this energy about him, and this look that tells you that everything you thought you knew is wrong. It’s not a condescending look or anything, it’s just like he’s lived everything a thousand times before... I’m not sure which scares me more, the fact that I feel like an eight-year-old boy knows more than I do, or the fact that it feels perfectly natural that he should. Nim had that kind of look about him, but he always had the excuse of having draconic eyes, which lent him that certain something. But this boy, his eyes are different. You can see hints of the draconic in them, but they are sharp, and grey around the iris, like a well engulfed by a storm cloud. You can see the power crackling in his eyes, sometimes, and I’m not ashamed to admit that it’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen older casters work Shapings to get that kind of effect, but this boy has it innately. I think that is what drew Shawnrik to him. Victor is like a magnet for powerful people. He drew Nim and us into it, too, I think.”
“It doesn’t really surprise me, though; Nim has always naturally drawn those with power to him as well. I never knew how he did it, but from the moment he knocked on my door it just felt right to follow him. I’m just kind of glad that someone can affect Nim in the way he’s been affecting us for all these years. A little bit of divine justice, eh?” Both men broke into laughter at that point, which caused Shawnrik to stir slightly. The men brought their voices back down to a near whisper.
Both sets of eyes were on Shawnrik’s sleeping form as Dunnagan spoke again. “I think he can take whatever we can dish out, though. Call it a hunch.”
Ashur nodded again. “Aye, I think he’s already stronger and quicker than I am, or ever was. Victor taught him to read, too.” Dunnagan raised an eyebrow and let out a puff of air. “You may not believe it fully yet, but that boy is everything I’ve said. I think Shawnrik is going to be a participant in the life of that boy whether he wants to be or not, and I think he does.”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“Aye.” Dunnagan nodded as he thought about the pledge that Shawnrik had made earlier. “I think Cypheria wants the lads protected, too. I’m pretty sure it was her influence that made me talk to Shawnrik about it today, and he may have a closer connection to her than m’self. Where are we going first?”
“I thought we’d go up through the Fields of Gold and stop at the town of Lakeshire, and then continue northeast along the Scarlet Road up into the lower foothills and Stalwart.”
“Alright, that’s a good area for the trainin’ that needs to be done—if the trip doesn’t kill him first. Either way, we need to get started afore sunup, and that’s not too long from now. Rest up, I’ll stand watch for a bit,” Dunnagan said, turning away from the fire in order for his vision to adjust to the night, something that doesn’t take very long for a dwarf.
“Sounds good, wake me in a few hours; you need some rest, too.” With that, Ashur checked his bedroll for any unwanted guests before climbing into it and quickly falling asleep.
City of Safeharbor
Royal Quarter
“When you said I was supposed to wear this thing, I thought you were joking!”
Nim looked down at Victor—who was wearing clothes that had even more frills than his own—with a mixture of mirth and mock sympathy. “Now Victor, we’re going to a ball at the castle; you can’t look like a street urchin.”
Victor looked at Nim incredulously while fingering one of the frills that flopped down over his wrists. “You really expect me to believe that? Those clothes you had made for me are mostly silk. What kind of street urchin has silk?”
“You’re right, you wouldn’t look like a street urchin normally, but these people wear silk every day—they even sleep on it. If you go in just basic silks, they may think you’re a serving boy. That can be good for hearing conversations and not being seen, but you would still stand out too much for that.”
Victor didn’t understand what Nim meant; he didn’t think there was anything special about him, really. He then looked at Nim’s outfit and scowled again: it wasn’t half as frilly as his own. “I think I’m sure to stand out in this outfit, did you ask the tailor to drown me in this stuff?“
“Well, Victor, that’s the plan. I figure since you’ll stick out like a sore thumb anyway, we might as well make people stand up and pay attention while we are at it. Remember, you need to act like these people are a simple annoyance to your day and not worth your time, except for the royal family, of course. You need to look upon them as your equals, or at least as near equals. I don’t want you gaping, so control your body and keep your mind on the task at hand. We are here to gather information and to acquaint you with these kinds of people. It’s too bad that this ball is the one we have to start you on, but there’s no getting around it.”
There certainly was not any getting around it. The invitations for the ball had been hand-delivered earlier that afternoon to those parties deemed worthy enough to attend. Nim told Victor that those with enough power who lived elsewhere would have been notified with just enough time for them to be able to pack their things and begin traveling. Of course, many of these people had Shapers in their employ that could warp the distance, so it wasn’t uncommon for those people to be notified at the same time as everyone else. Victor remembered Shaylyn commenting about the different ways in which such a thing was possible, but as time progressed, he was finding it harder to recall specifics from his time with Shaylyn. He had commented on this fact to Nim, who had told him that it was something that happened when you got older. Old memories compress and make room for the new ones to come. The important things that you learned will have been ingrained into your mindset, whereas the things that seemed trivial tend to end up becoming fragmented and floating away in order to store all of the new information.
Victor was trying to recall all of the different ways that a person could move a Shaper from one place to another when he realized that they had entered the Royal Quarter. Many of the greater nobility had built manors around the castle so that they could be nearby when conducting business with the royal family. This meant that the entire district was strictly off limits to anyone who wasn’t of “noble” blood, or who didn’t possess vast sums of money and influence. Victor laughed quietly to himself when he realized he had neither. Because this area was so well guarded, Victor had never seen the castle from closer than the rooftops of the stores near the Southern Gate.
“It’s amazing,” Victor whispered, finding himself suddenly short of breath at the sight. The grandeur became apparent as the coaches began to enter the courtyard. From the light that the lanterns along the path provided, Victor deduced that manicured gardens made up much of the grounds out in front of the castle. Looking closer at the lanterns, Victor realized that they were simply spheres of light, floating in the air of their own accord and giving off a radiant glow. He would have loved to be able to approach one and see how it was made, but today would not be such a day.
Victor and Nim had to sit in their coach on the cobbled path, waiting as each coach ahead of them offloaded guest after guest. Victor could only call the pace plodding, and Nim assured him that it would be quite improper to “hop” out of the coach to go stare at one of the lights. It had only been an hour, but to Victor it seemed like they had been sitting there the entire night when they finally pulled up to the path that led to the gigantic front gates of the castle. Between their position and the gates was a beautiful fountain. Positioned some ten paces behind the fountain appeared the statue of a man wearing a simple crown who held a goblet in his hand. From that goblet emerged a stream of water that shot towards the top of the fountain and trickled down each of the seven tiers of its marbled surface, each tier making the water turn a different color. Victor then noticed that there were two other sprays of water coming from either side of the fountain that met with the stream of the crowned man. These other two streams were more difficult to notice at first glance because much of their water was diffused along their path on each side of the fountain. This caused a soft mist to rain down for several feet overhead before it reached some sort of barrier that channeled the water towards the fountain in soft waves, leaving the ground and the guests completely dry.
Nim noticed Victor watching the fountain with an expression of awe on the boy’s face and frowned slightly. “That is the fountain of the Protectorate; the three powers of the Protectorate are represented in it. The gentleman we can see clearly wearing the crown was King Dalton, the first king of Safeharbor, whose lineage makes up a large portion of the royal family to this day. The gentleman who has his back towards us on the right side of the path was Leodric Skyhammer, Tetriarch of the mages at the time of the rebuilding.
“Last, but certainly not least, we can see the profile of the lovely lady on the left side of the path. Marisa Windsbane was King Dalton’s cousin and his second in command of the Knights of Terrazil before he was given the kingship. She then assumed command of the knights, and rightfully so; it is said that she was twice as deadly as she was beautiful. The king faces east, guarding his castle against any enemies that would and will come, while the other two face their king and their respective academies. The king holds the Goblet of Peace, while High Commander Windsbane holds the Sword of Justice, and Tetriarch Skyhammer holds the Scepter of Power, each coming together to symbolize the creation of something wondrous and beautiful. At least, that is the general idea. Now then, we will be entering the castle shortly, so I expect you to control your features as I have taught you to do. Look upon things like this with respect or indifference—no gaping. And keep your mouth closed!”
It took a moment for the last of Nim’s comments to settle into Victor’s mind, as he was still considering how the fountain had been made and the deeper meaning behind its construction. Victor quickly centered his mind into the cool and collected thought process that Shaylyn had taught him years before and that Nim had honed. He silently assumed the role that Nim had laid out for him: a noble-born child whose parents had died who was now being raised by Nim as his adopted son. He was to ignore the fact that the servants even existed, which was the worst part of the whole affair, in Victor’s opinion, and he was to affect pompousness and superiority akin to that which Nim was infamous for. Stepping out of the coach with his head held high, it was difficult for Victor to constrain himself in full view of the awe-inspiring beauty of the fountain, but one did not learn to Shape without an impressive amount of control.
Looking upon the statues with outwardly feigned indifference, Victor knew two things: First, the statues had obviously been made by skilled Shapers with a craftsmanship that would be hard to duplicate today; second, the statues had been made not only to capture the images of their respective persons, but to also draw on everything that had made that person who they were. Victor knew from looking at those statues that these people had been powerful and inspirational leaders. Looking at the faces of the people milling about, he quickly realized that not many of them would leave the confines of their own personal issues long enough to achieve that level of understanding. When he looked into Nim’s eyes, however, he knew that at least one other person there understood what he did.
“Let us move into the interior of the castle without too many interruptions, Victor; these people do so bore me.” Nim said this while raising to a level of pompousness that Victor had yet to see him achieve. His statement had been said loud enough so that all of those around the fountain heard it, which brought more than a few glares in their direction. Those who had a bit more practice in such things chose to ignore the comment, though Victor could see them standing straighter than they had been moments before.
Affecting the same mannerisms that Nim had used, Victor looked around and through the people positioned around the fountain, acting as if they weren’t even there. “Aren’t there any important people here, Father?” Even those more schooled at keeping their emotions in check visibly shook at the comment from this young unknown boy in front of them. The two of them flowed through a flurry of conversations, which contained a surprising number of quiet curses untouched by the storm.
The pair assumed arrogant stances that said they couldn’t be bothered to notice that these people even existed. Victor knew that soon, most of the minor nobles as well as the well-to-do merchants would hear about the comments that were not usually voiced in public. They would then spread to more people, and the rumor mill would inflate what was actually said and it would take on epic proportions. Nim told Victor that when the rumors had increased to where they had killed a noble by the fountain or some such nonsense, it would probably continue onto the higher ranked nobles, and probably even the royal family.
The royalty, of course, were used to these inflated rumors and the members were adept at finding out what had really occurred. Of course, they couldn’t go so deep as to seem interested; petty things like that were below members of the Royal Court. There were a few members of the royal line that were a bit more verbal about such things, however, so if the right people heard about it, it would quickly spread to the entire line.
There were those present from the merchants’ guilds in Safeharbor who had dealt with Nim before, so these comments wouldn’t elicit much conversation amongst that faction. Yes, some had seen the young boy by Nim’s side at a few business meetings in which Victor would occasionally clarify a point that either party involved had not stated fully or had left out entirely. The fact that the boy had called Nim “Father” would elicit much more conversation and speculation by this faction. Their conversations would of course compound upon the other rumors going about through the nobles.
Nim had explained the effect in grueling detail to Victor earlier this evening. Victor thought the plan depended on the fact that people would gossip about such a thing, but he agreed that it made sense in theory; just like a pebble rolling downhill, it would gather others and soon you could have a rockslide. Nim gave Victor his wait-and-see smile, which told Victor that Nim thought those assembled would have more important things to talk about.
As they approached the massive golden gates of the castle, the outfits were becoming grander and the jewelry more expensive and extravagant. Victor hated to admit it, but the outfits had also become frillier, just like Nim had said they would, although Victor noticed that Nim’s outfit easily matched the level of frilliness of even the wealthiest of the guests. It took all of Victor’s willpower to stop from frowning as he realized this fact. They slowly walked up the granite stairs that led to the entrance hall. Entering the castle, Victor thought that the building exemplified the opulence in which the royal family was supposed to live.
The floors were a beautiful grey marble, and the pillars that ran the length of the hall on either side were crafted from blue marble. Looking up at the ceiling, Victor was amazed to see what appeared to be a battle in the clouds. It, like the Symbol of Safeharbor in Nim’s mansion, was an illusion created by a Shaper that gave it depth that no artist could hope to duplicate on a flat surface. Victor thought that the mage who had created this image had to have been an artist in his own right, however, maybe even the one that had done the symbol for Nim.
There were doors spaced at equal intervals along the sides of the hall’s considerable length. The hall itself ended in a grand staircase of white marble with a golden balustrade running along both sides. Victor knew that anyone standing at the head of the stairs would be able to see the entire hall, and from the dull roar that could be heard he knew that whoever stood there would also be able to project their voice throughout the hallway.
Nim had given Victor a detailed layout of the castle a few months earlier, along with several other important structures in the city. None of the side doors were open, so that left everyone to mill about in the hallway, conversing as servants walked around with drinks and appetizers. Victor knew from the diagrams that if he were to open any of the doors on the right side of the hall, he would find a dining area four times the size of the one in Nim’s mansion. If he were to open the doors on the left side, he would find the grand and immense ballroom in which Nim had noted that a large portion of his residence would fit inside of comfortably. After seeing the immensity of the entrance hall, Victor no longer thought that was an exaggeration. Having been informed of the artwork that covered the walls, Victor was prepared enough not to gape at everything, even though he felt the descriptions had been highly inadequate.
Nim leaned down to Victor and whispered in his ear. “Recognize any of these people?”
Victor’s first thought was, “How am I supposed to recognize anyone?” As he started looking around however, he realized that the descriptions he had been memorizing for the last few months were coming alive before him. He looked at Nim and nodded.
“Good,” Nim said in a slightly louder voice, straightening as he headed towards the nearest set of people.
“Duke Wellington, so good to see you. And Elizabeth, how are you?”
“Why, Nim Mithriannil, it has been awhile. I was sorry to hear about your uncle,” the grey-haired man intoned as his wife held out her hand for Nim to kiss. Nim’s description of the man had been incredibly accurate, right down the way he stuck his left hand into his waistband and the small scar under his right eye. The duke would say that the scar was from a hunting accident, but Nim’s notes said that it actually came from something that his mistress had thrown at him years before.
“Well, he died more than a year ago, and he lived a long and full life. One can’t ask for more than that,” Nim said, with more of a mournful inflection in his voice than Victor thought he actually felt.
Duke Wellington said, “Hear, hear,” and took a drink from his glass as he looked down at Victor.
“Why, Nim, who is this darling young man?” Elizabeth Wellington asked in a tone that made Victor feel like a kid. After a moment of thought, he had to grudgingly agree with her treatment of him; no matter what his experiences had brought him, he was still only eight and a half. He still hadn’t learned a drop in the bucket of what he would someday know.
Nim affected the look of snapping out of a deep thought rather well, Victor noted. He looked around like he was wondering what she had been talking about before his eyes settled on Victor. “Oh, yes,” he stated simply. “This is Victor Deus, my son.”
It was very simply stated, but it couldn’t have been phrased any other way for better effect. The Wellingtons looked at Nim as if he had gone mad, and then at each other at the thought that maybe they were the ones that had gone mad instead.
“We hadn’t heard that the Mithriannil line had a new benefactor!” the duke stated. His blustering tone was one that his wife seemed to agree with.
“Ah yes, that is because there has yet to be a new Mithriannil born.” Nim said this in a somber tone that Victor knew wasn’t false before resuming in a normal voice. “Victor is my adopted son, and I couldn’t wish for better from my own offspring.” At the end of the statement, Nim had affected a cheery tone and put his hand on Victor’s shoulder, which Victor knew was his cue to take up the conversation.
“Victor Deus, at your service, sire.” Victor made a stately bow before turning to the Lady Wellington. “And my lady, my father has told me that your beauty was renowned, yet he failed to mention your stately grace,” Victor lied as he took her hand and kissed it. Nim had detailed her beauty, her grace, and some of the other habits she seemed to share with her husband. Though she had grown older, the vibrancy of her youth still shone through.
“How are your children faring? I had heard that Peter Wellington II is now training with the army and will soon attain the rank of captain; quite an accomplishment for one so young.” Victor stated this in the most serious tone he could affect. By all of Nim’s accounts of Wellington Jr., he was a simple-minded man who was good with a sword and would rise to captain mainly because of who his father was. However, nothing his father could do or say would ever get him a promotion beyond that. On the opposite side of the coin, there was Katlyn Wellington, who was by all accounts as lovely as her mother had been twenty years before, and according to Nim she was twice as intelligent as either of the Wellingtons. Nim had left a side note in his papers saying that he believed that she was actually the daughter of the high magus, who leads the mages guild. “I also hear that Katlyn has been accepted into the ranks of the mages, and after only fifteen years of study—since the age of ten, I believe.”
Nim’s hand on Victor’s shoulder became a little firmer, in what Victor knew as the equivalent to a ‘good job’ from his mentor. The Wellingtons could only stand there gaping at Victor.
The next forty-five minutes continued on in much the same manner. Nim would take him to a group of nobles, merchants, or dignitaries and nobility from other cities and wait until they mentioned Victor, at which point he would allow the conversation to go into his student’s capable hands. Victor knew that it was all a test, and he was determined to pass with flying colors.
Everyone who was to arrive at the ball would have done so by now, and the guests had been given time to mingle. It was no surprise to Victor when the trumpets blared the royal call to arms. He and Nim quietly turned towards the staircase, which they had discreetly positioned themselves in front of only minutes before.