The Empire took the time to carve a corridor in the Labyrinth tunnel. It looked like worked stone, but it was just the tunnel stone cut and texturized to look like worked stone. Talk about wasted effort.
We wouldn’t fight tonight. After parading for an entire day and going around the city like Apple maps were guiding us, we needed to rest. The entourage walked down the carved tunnel using magical lights from the generalist [Wizard] until we reached a large door. An enchantment on the walls kept the soul fragments away, stopping monster spawns beyond this door. The [Wizard] unlocked it with a spell and I caught the imprint. Might be useful later on.
Inside the large room, we had piles of metal cots, piles of metal chairs and tables on one side, and metallic tracks on the other. The servants started cleaning up the room, using rudimentary House magic to gather the dust in a pile and do away with it. The soldiers started to remove the metal cots from the pile while others unpacked mattresses from the beasts of burden.
The room was intended to be a campaign hotel. They affixed curtains to the tracks and separate the large room into smaller ones. The cots could be piled to make a bunk bed or attached side-by-side to make a double bed. They had tiny latches on the sides that locked together to keep the beds from splitting.
The pack mules were taken to a corner and a big room assembled on the other corner. I guess that one was for me as everyone else went for the bunk beds. The servants piled up three mattresses on a double bed and stretched a fine cotton bedsheet over it.
“Your Highness, where will your lady squires sleep?” The one responsible for assembling the cots asked.
I exchanged a glance with the girls, not sure which one was which. The obfuscation enchantment was working perfectly.
“They’ll sleep with me,” I said but before I could say “on separate beds”, the two squealed in joy.
some fairy doomsayed.
Ten minutes later, I was laying some enchanted silver rods on the ground to raise a Force barrier to keep us safe. I didn’t trust anyone in this expedition but M&M.
Once the barriers were in place, I made them mirrored from the outside and gave the girls permission to remove their equipment. They furnished the room with a changing area separated by a screen, a desk, a small round table for meals, even couches for relaxing. A red carpet covered most of the floor. The room’s transformation was amazing.
While they were behind the screen helping each other doff the armor, I swapped my own clothes for something more comfortable and sat on the couch to wait.
The two came to sit next to me wearing provocative silk nightgowns, probably woven by themselves. They preened and kept their backs straighter than normal, to give a full view of their developed bodies. I knew I was up the creek without a paddle.
Mona grabbed my arm and pressed it against her cleavage. “So, Percival… Did you like our nightgowns?”
“Yes, they suit you very well,” I replied as I phased my arm to go through her chest and hugged her back as I threw the other arm around Madge and pulled them both close to me. “But did you remember I had a little secret I had to tell you during our delve?”
I could tell Mona was mildly offended I evaded her advance. I squeezed her a bit tighter and kissed her forehead, giving Madge the same treatment afterward. I got only nods from the nervous young women. They looked up at me, causing my guilty feelings to spike.
“I’m going out now, to talk with the expedition commander. Tomorrow, we are going to leave all these people behind, delve by ourselves, just the three of us. After our first day of adventure, I’m going to sit down with you and tell you all the truth. Everything. I’ll also answer all your questions.”
It wasn’t the outcome they wanted. I knew they spent most of the last week talking to the maids about what to expect during this delve, and usually, my brothers would bring a bevy of women along to keep them entertained during their off-time. Which were most of the time. Suffice to say they usually returned to the surface with several bastard nephews for me in the oven. Well, not for me because I wasn’t born during the last delve, but anyone could get the picture.
So when I announced I would take these two with me to the delve, I was basically telling the world and themselves that I intended to…
… but not with my twin sister. I lowered my head. “Please. You know how secrets are, the longer they are kept, the harder it is to come clean. You two, Marion and Rhiannon are the most important people in Percival’s life.”
I actually shed a few honest tears. Mona didn’t deserve to grow up without knowing her father, but the burden of being a female daughter of the [Emperor] was too much for the girl.
“One day. Just one more day,” I begged, unable to meet their gaze. “I’m sorry, I know you put a lot of effort into these nightgowns, I am hurting you two now, and it pains me a lot.”
They could be statues so tense they were. I rubbed their backs but Mona wrested herself out of my grasp and stood up.
“Fine!” She said between grinding teeth. “One day, Percival.”
> Dear Matriarch, how can I make this stupid Prince understand my feelings?
She prayed on the spot.
> Do you understand his feelings? Look at him and know he carries the burden of a world on his shoulders. Tomorrow, you’ll know everything. And you’ll hate him. The three of you will be hurt by the secret but it will be necessary to move forward. Exercise temperance.
I replied on the spot. Mona sobbed. Madge empathically reciprocated her sister’s feelings. With Mona’s overbearing personality, she usually remained the quiet and passive one. I gave her one more kiss on the cheek.
“Tomorrow. I’m so sorry. I’ll go talk to the commander now,” I stood up and walked away.
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“You cannot, Your Highness!” The lead knight, Sir Barristan, told me once I manifested my wish to move forward without an escort. “The scouts will search monster packs and evaluate if they are safe to fight.”
By that, he meant “the scouts will see if there’s any valuable monster to be poached out of anyone’s sight, then bring the trash here for you to kill.” Because the Labyrinth was closed for days before we delved, a lot of precious creatures could’ve spawned from the floatings soul-fragments in the magic-rich tunnels.
I pinged Detection and searched for people in the tunnels. Truly enough, a group was outside, fighting monsters.
“Who let people out of the encampment on the first night?” I roared at Barristan. “It is not protocol!”
“No, Your Highness! There’s nobody outside, I guarantee!” He lied.
I cast an illusion of me overlayed on myself and gave it a few instructions. “Fine, Ser Barristan. You know better. I’m going back to my ‘room’ now.”
The illusion moved back to the room as I turned invisible and checked to see if any spellcaster noticed my use of magic. The Labyrinth’s mana density and the number of spells running in this large chamber should be enough to mask it but I could never be too sure. Once nobody reacted and even Barristan went back to take care of his business, I dashed down the hall, phasing through the heavy enchanted doors and into the tunnels.
I found the group of interlopers a few minutes later. They’d just finished killing a monster pack and I took a bit of time to assess them. Truly enough, they were one of our expedition’s scout teams.
“What a haul! These Kilrodos are worth two gold each!”
One of them crowed victoriously over the corpses of the dead monsters. Kilrodos were terrier-sized geckos with nasty claws laced with a hallucinating poison. The poison sacks could be used to make a recreational drug.
I didn’t even bother checking their levels. The [Dead Thinblade] sang as it crossed the air and claimed their heads. I collected their bodies, loot, and a locked storage ring that was keyed to freely accept things in but not allow stuff to be taken out except by the owner, which was none of the now-dead scouts.
I questioned the souls whether Barristan knew they were out here and they replied affirmatively. They had dummies in their beds, to fool people into thinking they were sleeping to leave first thing in the morning to scout. I bound the five of them to silk dolls and moved around the tunnels, collecting a few monster packs for the girls. I killed the monsters and trapped their souls. Later, I could bring them back to life sparingly for a controlled fight.
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“The scouts deserted us!” Sir Barristan cried in outrage as everyone prepared to go about their day in the base camp.
“Oh, really?” I stared at him. “How?”
“I don’t know, Your Highness! They placed dummies in their beds and slipped past the guards last night! I don’t know where they could’ve gone!”
I poked his breastplate, pretending to be angry, “I will hold you personally responsible for this sabotage! Or are you in cahoots with these traitors? By the [Emperor], I swear this will not end well!”
The whole expedition froze to the sounds of my shouts. Barristan knew he was screwed. He did what any honorable citizen of the Empire should do in such situations. He passed the blame on his subordinates. Fuming, he barked more orders.
“Knights! Round up the gate guards!”
The knights' metal sabatons clacked against stone as they marched to basically slaughter the gate guards. Which were not innocent, by the way. They were a loose end on Barristan’s poaching scam as they let the scouts out and could give him grief if they decided to talk.
“{HALT! Nobody moves!}” I issued a {Royal Order}. The knights stopped dead on their tracks. “{Gate guards, come and kneel before me!}”
With how high my Charisma and [Leadership] Proficiency was, it would take a dragon to resist my commands. The guards obeyed.
“{If my next question is true, you’ll raise your hand and say it out loud, then keep your hand raised}, did you knew the scouts left camp last night?” This time it was a {Royal Geas} as well.
“Yes, Your Highness!” The scouts, half of the knights, and Sir Barristan answered and raised their hands.
The other half of the knights and everyone else in the expedition gasped as Sir Barristan fought to resist the geas and screamed in pain.
“With everyone else as witnesses, I brand these men traitors of the Empire and strip them of their status, titles, and position!” I Hollered. “{All traitors, come and kneel before me!}”
Most of them fell to the ground, trying to fight the geas. The others came to kneel before the gate guards, like sheep to the slaughter.
“Drag Barristan the Traitor before me,” I told the knights that weren’t in the poaching scam.
“Yes, Your Highness!” They quickly snapped to attention, aware of the shift in leadership.
Barristan was foaming from the mouth. I removed the scouts’ special storage ring from my pocket. “{Do you recognize this ring? Answer!}”
He gasped, grunted, groaned, foamed, suffered, and finally bit his own tongue off.
“Hold his head,” I said as I grabbed the cut mouth tentacle and shoved it in his mouth with a healing potion and a little help of my Flesh magic. The muscle fibers on both sides grasped each other and healed the wound. Then I blunted and trimmed his teeth down so he would only be able to chew on his tongue inefficiently.
“{Do you recognize this ring? Answer or you’ll die in contempt of Royalty!}”
His eyes almost popped out of their sockets as he glowered at me, resisting the third geas in a row, losing HP like crazy. He would soon expire but I needed him to confess and probably give me the name of their sponsors. So I considered touching his forehead and breaking one of Snowdrop’s commitments. I took my hand back at the last moment. The temptation to abuse this power was strong but I had other venues to extract a confession. Once Barristan expired out of sheer stubbornness, I could question his soul. All I had to do was misdirect people about the origins of the effect.
I took a woven dreamcatcher and placed a dummy enchantment on the spot. “This is a soul weaver trinket from the Silk-People from Auvanini,” I said, capitalizing on the fact that the cloth folk was considered a sort of legend here in the Empire. “Even if you die, it will materialize your specter and then we’ll have a conversation. It is your choice, Barristan the Traitor.”
He chose death as he resisted until the last drop of his HP pool. I placed the dreamcatcher against the corpse’s forehead and materialized the ghost using Silverstreak’s [Spiritualist] perks. People gasped as they saw a ghost, trauma long ingrained into the Empire’s Imaginarium from when a fairy led a revolution of the dead. Souls didn’t have the same attachments as their incarnate selves. Barristan the ghost cared little for what Barristan the man worried about.
“Whose ring is this?”
“It was mine when I was alive. Not it is yours.”
“Who carried it before me?”
“Probably the scouts.”
“Did you give this ring to them?”
“Yes.”
“For what purpose?”
“To store the corpses of monsters they hunted in secret.”
“For whom they hunted monsters in secret?”
“For my House and myself.”
House Barristan was in deep trouble. With a hundred witnesses, it would be impossible to silence everyone.
“That’s all, you are dismissed. May the Gods have mercy on you.”
The ghost vanished but didn’t depart. The knights executed all the traitors and stood at attention, waiting for orders.
“Who among you is brave and honest enough to take command?” I asked them. One knight took a step forward.
“Sir Emerson Emrys, at your service, Your Highness!” He shouted.
“Is there anyone among Sir Emrys who objects his command? Speak up now.”
“All hail commander Emrys!” One of the other knights shouted, and his peers answered loudly.
If this was due to them accepting Emry's leadership out of respect or them dumping the trouble on the young knight out of spite, it was anyone’s guess. In the Empire, it could go either way.
“By my authority as an [Imperial Prince], Sir Emrys, you are promoted to commander of this expedition. Your orders are to keep everyone in base camp in good health and in working order, control the use of supplies, and not allow anyone to either leave base camp or contact the surface without my express permission!”
“Yes, Your Highness, Sir!” He barked back.
I grinned and waved to M&M to come closer. They were wearing the cumbersome plate armor. “Now, I’m taking my two aides out to hunt. Have a nice vacation!”
I walked to the gates with the two girls by my side. The gates opened seemingly on their own and slammed shut behind us.