“He cheated!” Awe was replaced by indignation as another random cry was heard from the Tyrant’s camp. Outrage spread among their number, headed by a declaration by the transmutation Cleric Rodrick.
“We will bend to no Tyrant, duel or no. We will never be slaves!” This was directed to Murdon.
The Commander looked to those surrounding him, Lograve and Quala, then turned to address the Cleric. Though they had rejected the outcome of the duel, it looked as though his opponents were at least giving him a chance to speak. “There is something everyone here needs to know. First, it is you that are under the influence of a Tyrant. Heldren Storm.” Hearing this, Gadriel’s head turned quickly to Murdon, though he said nothing. His eyes moved from the draconoid to settle on Lograve. Murdon ignored this and continued. “Now that he is incapacitated, there is knowledge I believe will assist in breaking the effect on you.”
“Everyone knows about the dragon. We did what you should have done immediately and told the people.”
“Roost’s Peak has been destroyed by a fire dragon.” Silence followed. They still looked to Murdon in disbelief, but also with broken hope. They were following the same plan the garrison at Roost’s Peak had. “Tell them, Alost.”
“It attacked early into the morning yesterday,” The archer said, having been brought close to the front of their formation during the duel for this very reason. “Yedra, our acting headwoman, as well as most of our people died. Kob is dead. The ballista are destroyed, and many of the buildings are ruined. We didn’t even kill the dragon.”
Murdon was about to speak again when Lograve tugged on his arm. Wordless conversation passed between them for half a minute. Hidden by the helmet, no one saw Murdon’s eyebrows raise in surprise and caution. He turned back to the Tyrant’s forces, inspecting everyone he could see. The reactions were varied. Some appeared to be in the process of breaking out of the influence, whereas others stood mute in an attempt of continued disbelief. Theoretically it shouldn’t matter, the snowball effect of the Tyrant’s influence falling off should occur as Lograve had predicted once enough came out of it. But this new information changed things.
“I am taking Quala to tend to Gadriel and Heldren. We will take the Tyrant as a prisoner.” Quala, already mid-stride to attend to the now faltering Hero, briefly paused as Lograve warned her as well.
There was no resistance to their approach. Some people were shocked still as they realized the truth, generating small scuffles between them and the more recalcitrant. Some were hurt, but no one else died. Those who had undone the influence and were not involved in a brawl looked to Murdon for guidance, but he was busy.
“Are you sure?” Murdon whispered to Gadriel.
Gadriel coughed for a few moments before he could respond, his body further deteriorating. “It was clear from the first moment of our duel.”
“Quala. Wake Heldren but do nothing more.” The Cleric was attempting to eliminate the necrotic energy from Gadriel’s two wounds. She might have protested. Heldren was merely unconscious whereas Gadriel was actively dying, but she understood why this was important.
Heldren opened his eyes to find Murdon had appropriated his shield. As for his sword, that was tossed away from his reach. What’s more, the massive weight of the draconoid was pressed firmly on his chest through his knee. “You could not have been a part of this without knowing. Why?”
“Commander.” Both were speaking quietly, voices not carrying too far. Murdon had even removed his helmet in fear of being overheard. “You know why.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You would have gotten us all killed,” Heldren said simply, and with enough strength to keep his voice even. “With or without Kob, we could not defeat that dragon. Better to take the people to Roost’s Peak. Fortify, and hold out until the other regions relieved us. They would have sent aid, even if it took a year. We could have done it.”
“Who told you about the dragon?”
Heldren looked away, behind Murdon’s head, guilt creeping into his expression. “Lograve and that Beastmaster were not the only ones to survive.”
The other survivors, of course! Murdon remembered the report of three others who had fled from the dragon. Only Tlara had returned, and the belief was the rest had been discovered by a monster and killed on the way back. Maybe they had, either way.
Heldren continued explaining, resigned to his fate. “I had yet to be assigned to the team departing for Roost’s Peak, so I took it upon myself to patrol the outskirts of the village. I found them, the others. Heard their warning.”
“Killed them.”
“Yes.”
“Why?” Heldren didn’t answer, so Murdon took the opportunity to ask another lingering question. “The other headmen claimed Jonus survived. Lograve saw him die. Did you disguise yourself as him somehow? An illusion power?” The man kept his silence on this point. “Roost’s Peak is gone! Why continue with this? You are not just a victim, but with your plan in shambles you must see mine is the only way to survive!”
“Without Kob you have no chance. Maybe a small group could find shelter and wait long enough. But not everyone,” Heldren conceded. His face was a mask of defeat, feeling the consequences of his loss. Strangely, though, Murdon didn’t see regret there. “I stand by my actions. I maintain that I have not strayed from my path.”
“Yes, you Heroes have a knack for justifying atrocities,” Murdon mused, before glaring down into Heldren’s soul as he asked the most important question. “Who is it?”
“I’m not sure you’ll ever know. Or that you’ll ever want to know.”
“Tell me!”
“No.” Heldren closed his eyes. “I have sworn myself to a cause. I will not and can not break that oath. You will get nothing of importance from me. Will you kill me for this?”
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“That depends. Whose idea was it to have Lograve’s team assassinated?”
Heldren nodded, eyes still closed. “Mine. I think you’d agree it was the correct decision. From a tactical perspective.”
Murdon stood, taking his knee off of Heldren. He looked down at the prone man, still too weak to move. In one moment he felt all of the weight that had been put on him, all the misery and heartache that was in part due to this man. He thought of Ashier, who had died along with the other people sheltering in his home when it had burned down. Those torn apart by the monsters he’d stabled so close to them. That pain was still somewhere in the jumbled mess of all the emotions he suppressed for the sake of everyone else. Worse still was the question he asked himself. What would he have done if Lograve had died? The thought of becoming a Tyrant had seemed so impossible to Murdon until he pondered that reality.
Murdon looked at the man below him and in that moment could not find mercy within the storm of his soul. “Your Tyranny dies today,” he said, loud enough for those nearby to hear, as he drove his heel down into Heldren’s skull.
…
The brutality of the act made Daniel look away, catching Thomas wincing and Evalyn nodding slightly. Khare was just there. The gestalt had said only a handful of words since the dragon attack. The only one they truly conversed with had died there.
“Hmm. Good riddance,” Evalyn said.
“Death to the Tyrant,” Thomas nodded, but there was a conflicted look on his face he explained. “That looks bad for Murdon, though. Right after he says he’s taking him alive, wham! I mean, I don’t, aah-” Thomas grunted in pain as he moved his shoulder. The bleeding had stopped but the wounds hadn’t healed. The Cleric still lacked his Focus, and now Daniel did too. “Guy, we need to talk about Hunter.”
“You’re alive aren’t you?” Daniel asked bitterly. Thomas hadn’t even apologized, all he’d done was complain.
“He almost bit my arm off!” That was fair. During the escape, Hunter had been given a task and few ways to accomplish it. If Thomas could understand him he might have been able to hang from the ringcat’s neck or even ride him to safety. The latter option would have left Daniel eternally jealous. Instead, Hunter decided speed was more important than manners and had carried Thomas in his jaw like a kit. One of the long fangs had scratched him deeply by accident.
“Yeah, but you didn’t lose anything did you?”
“I almost lost my arm!” Thomas shouted. “Do you know how hard it is to get limbs regrown?”
Evalyn looked away from the remains of the duel and raised an eyebrow. “How much effort does it take to be that oblivious?”
“What?”
“You destroyed his Focus, you idiot.”
“What? Oh. Oh, right! I’m sorry Guy.” Thomas rubbed his shoulder slowly. “Think it’ll be hard to remake?”
Daniel didn’t know. If he had to make one fully from scratch there was no way. Maybe with magic and the chunk of enriched metal? “I’ll have to ask Lograve.”
“Why?” Suddenly, Thomas was more worried about someone other than himself.
“I didn’t make the first one.” What he couldn’t say was it had been a birthday gift, back when the Brant family was still whole. Then, after it all fell apart, he couldn’t afford to replace it even if he wanted to.
“Guy I’m-I’m sorry. Hand, the kids I, when we were just doing nothing I couldn’t stand it.”
“I wouldn’t take you for someone with anger issues,” Evalyn said.
“I don’t- ahh,” Thomas sighed as he provoked his shoulder again. He stopped talking after that.
“Tyrant,” Khare said, breaking the pause. Evalyn opened her mouth to respond, but the vines were still moving. A few seconds later, the word, “Pass?” followed.
Daniel scratched his head. Heldren was dead. He couldn’t confirm it with an aura, but no one survived what Murdon had done to him.
“He’s dead, Khare,” Evalyn said matter of factly. “Broken into so many pieces there’s not anyone in the region that can put him back together.”
“Dragon.”
“I think Murdon’s dead set on abandoning the place,” Thomas added. “And there’s no way I’m going back into the mountain.”
“Next!” There was irritation in Khare’s voice. Frustration from not being understood. Until now the language barrier hadn’t been much of a problem.
“Oh.” Evalyn looked to the south. Everyone deflated as they finally took the gestalt’s point. “You’re right. That will be a problem.”
Thomas flushed. “Crest, Khare. You couldn’t let us go one hour after we got rid of the Tyrant without reminding us there’s a dragon even bigger than the one we couldn’t kill standing in our way?”
Khare’s pseudo-shoulders just shrugged.
Order was quickly restored following the death of Heldren. Most were too shaken to do anything but follow orders. From what had happened, it was clear that at least some had knowingly acted in accord with the Tyrant. Beyond the absent avianoid that had revealed the undermining camp rules, none were known.
The ground was still saturated, making everyone miserable as the mud was kicked up to stain their clothing. The villagers had brought most of the remaining food stores with them, ruining whatever couldn’t survive immersion and keep.
Scattered amongst the mortals were the corpses of the sparkbats. So many, and so many of their spines. There were those destroyed beyond use, including a few dozen that had been neatly bisected by Gadriel. The precision was unmistakable, seeing as he was the only one who could aim a ranged sword attack to that degree.
Still, Daniel should have wondered what he could do with the spines that were left should he be able to salvage them. He just didn’t feel like digging through all those bodies for them, especially after what happened to Hunter. And if he did, there was nowhere to store the bodies. None were going to be carried by Hunter, that was for sure. But jeez. There are so many here. I might have been able to unlock more stuff in the Encyclopedia. Would that help? It might tell him why coming down on lightning made them far stronger, but Daniel already had a guess as to why that was.
What I need is formulae. I’ve got a chunk of rock and nothing to do with it. What am I supposed to do, just fumble around until something works? Stick chunks of stone on crossbow bolts and hope for the best? That didn’t seem right. It didn’t make sense!
For something so fundamental to his class, there had to be some way for him to get formulae that didn’t involve blind experimentation since that didn’t give him any ‘real’ formulae. There wasn’t a reason Daniel felt this way, and there was no rule that said he should be given formulae for free, but how would Artificers do it in general? It was a chicken and the egg problem otherwise.
There should be something. It was like Daniel had gone back home, walked into his room, and saw that his bookcase was missing a book that he could only remember the blank outline of. So what was it? Nothing in the Encyclopedia said anything about gaining formulae. Stupid Encyclopedia, Daniel thought. Even at level two, you’re just a glorified fetch quest for lore.
Now, what would be useful was if it gave him an idea of which parts could be used in crafting. Analyze Material could do that when he could use the ability, but he’d have to somehow know which random bit of a monster was useful. It had taken a great deal of pain for him to discover how the lightning spines worked. If the Encyclopedia entry on them had just told him about the lightning spines off the bat, well, he still would have been in as much pain. Formulae, that’s what he needed. But there was no way to- “Wait, what if, oh fuck!” Daniel threw his head back and slapped his face. Of course! The description hadn't said anything about formulae, but-
“What is it?” Thomas asked, but Daniel was already running towards Lograve. There was a grim expression on the Arcanist’s face that only lightened slightly as he saw Daniel approach.
He seemed to guess something out of the ordinary was going to happen. In a contrarian kind of way, Lograve welcomed it, sure that it couldn’t be the worst thing that had happened today. “Daniel, I warned you about this,” he said softly, leading into a joke as if to counter the expected melancholy. “No more absurdity until we’re back at the village.”
“I need you to have everyone collect the sparkbat corpses. As many intact ones as you can.”
Lograve sat down, then cursed as he remembered the ground was muddy. “Why!?”