My companions and I sat there silently for a moment after her introduction. We silently looked at each other then nodded. We proceeded to clap and gave our approval.
“That was an excellent greeting. I rate 9 out of 10,” One of my companions said.
“The dress just suits your bodyline. Well done. I like the shadow hands. 8 out of 10,” Sarjay said as he nodded.
“Impressive use of the scenery. 9 out of 10.” I clapped.
“Thank you, thank you all. You are all flattering me….Wait…..YOU ALL ARE MAKING FUN OF ME!” She puffed her cheeks in anger then stamped the floor a few times. Her dress slowly returned to normal, the shadow hands dissipated slowly and the atmosphere returned to normal. She crossed her arms then plopped back to her seat.
“Your minions are queer. Unlike most mindless undead, they seem to have a mind and personality of their own,” She noted as she waved her hands towards my companions, “I ignored them thinking they didn’t have their own selves. I am mistaken, it seems. I must ask, what are you to have minions with such independence?”
Well, since she knew I’m an undead, there was no point in keeping it a secret. Unlike her greeting, I simply stood up and bowed, “I’m a lich. Pleased to meet you.”
“A lich? No lich would have such...essence and ability to control minions so effectively.” She sat back then crossed her legs, “Are you lying?”
“If you want to know so badly, come and unmask me,” I challenged her with a snide tone. She sat quietly thinking about it, then once again got off her throne. She walked gracefully towards me, each step full of will. Was she trying to dominate me using her aura?
She stopped in front of me then looked up. She was at my waist height so I crouched down, until my eye level met hers. She slowly raised her hands, then placed her tender hands on my mask. She rubbed the mask with her thumbs, studying the dull and unremarkable mask before slowly lifting the mask off my face.
As I stared at her with my bare face, her eyes were wide with surprise. Silently, we studied each other more closely. The aura that she was giving off was getting more intense, and yet, I was not shaken. As she continued to give off more essence of death, the shadow on her face was starting to envelop her entire face. I could tell she was getting progressively pissed.
As we stared each other down, Daggerless was making annoying sounds like ‘Now kiss!’ so I blasted him with a high level spell and sent him flying to the wall. She sighed then handed my mask back, then proceeded to tiredly walk onto her throne.
She plopped onto her throne and clapped her hands once. A dwarven maiden came in holding a scaly lizard with small legs. From what I remembered, it’s one of those royal family animal, a korgi.
The dwarf gave the lizard to the queen then promptly left. The queen petted the lizard and it wagged its tail in happiness. She spoke in a calm tone, “For one thing, I know liches are not purely skeletal. You might be a skeleton, but I am terribly sure there is no such thing as a skeleton powerful enough to withstand the aura of a vampire lady. For the last time, I ask of you, what are you?”
I placed my mask back onto my face and fixed myself. I never liked this part. “I am an Archlich. I have reached the peak of the boundaries of life and death. Pleased to meet you.” I bowed once again.
“Impossible. There’s no such thing as an Archlich.” She didn’t even look at me as she continued to play with her korgi. The lizard barked and licked her hand. It wiggled its butt joyfully as she caressed its back.
“Since you are obviously not willing to tell me, how about some hints? What do you use as sustenance for your undeath?” She smiled at me. Though her smile was cute, it was menacing. It was like when Maven first cooked and she asked us what we thought of her dishes. When our answer was to make a sewage, she also gave us that smile. Most undead depended on something to sustain their life...well unlife. For example, most liches absorb the souls of young people. Fortunately for me, I’m an Archlich.
“I don’t need any.” I shrugged. Once again, she answered, “Impossible.”
“What about you? What do you need to sustain yourself?” I asked her. She looked at me briefly, then held the korgi with both hands. The korgi licked her face and she smiled at the lizard. But the smile lasted for only a second, her mouth stretched like she was trying to inhale a plethora of food. She started to inhale hard and the korgi started to dry up fast. You could see fog coming out of the lizard and being sucked by the dwarven queen - An act of eating the soul of a living being.
The soulless korgi was pale and thin, Ellysa threw the empty husk onto the floor nonchalantly. My companions all gasped at the act of cruelty. I pointed at her then shouted, “Oh God! You monster! I am going to call animal cruelty on you! I will assemble the largest anti-animal cruelty protest the continent has ever seen and make it march against your palace doors with picket signs!” A fire bursted at my head but Sarjay promptly put it out. Saying whatever divine being’s name in vain always caused that so he was used to it.
“Oh? Really now? You’ll bring me food at my doorstep? How nice of you.” She smiled at me as she leaned against the arm of her throne. The pleasantries are over, she’s making me mad!
“I’m also not dumb. You were the one that changed how the dwarves are, didn’t you?!” I accused her harshly.
“What do you mean? I brought civilization to them. Five hundred years ago, these so-called dwarves were mountain dwelling rats. Now look at them, the epitome of civilized people. It’s wonderful.” She shrugged and acknowledge herself.
“If you don’t like it, what are you going to do about it? Kill me? It’s not going to change the dwarves, you know?” She laughed at me.
I clenched my fist hard. She was correct. This evil bitch! I probably had to plan for 500 years to turn the dwarves back to how they were. Before I could start planning in my mind, she started to speak again.
“Instead of crying about the past, perhaps we could work together. There’s some trouble stirring inside the United Fortresses and I’d like you to find out what is it, and crush it,” She offered me.
“What’s in it for me?” I didn’t like her and she knew that. She laughed at me again, her voice echoing in the dark throne room.
“I am the queen of the largest dwarven nation in the continent. With a snap of my fingers, I could spread news about you and your undead band. In no time, a massive subjugation army would be set up to destroy you,” She threatened me.
“Oh, but I don’t always use the stick when I can give the carrot, you know? You wish to tour? Fine, I can help you tour. I will grant you special permission throughout the nation. You will be treated almost like royalty. Only if you help me.” She smiled as she waited for my answer.
If I refuse, she could ruin my entire tour of the world. If I accept, I would be able to do what I planned to do in the first place. As much as I didn’t like the queen, I would prefer not having beef with someone like her.
“Fine. We’ll help you, but after we finish one of our business here!” I begrudgingly accepted. The queen was rather amused with my answer, she had probably hoped I refuse and she would toy with me. Too bad, I ruined your playtime. She allowed my band to stay inside the palace. Though she said that it’s out of her ‘compassion’ towards fellow undead, I knew it was just to keep a closer eye on us.
As we left the throne room, Sarjay walked beside me then slapped my back once, “Come on, Boss. We don’t have to be pushed around just like that. We would have probably taken her down easily.”
“Firstly, you’ve probably noticed the dwarven maidens. They’re vampire thralls. When she said that she could bust us with a snap of her fingers, she literally meant it. She probably had thralls prepared to send letters all across the continent,” I answered as I scratched my chin and continued, “Secondly, killing the leader of a large nation is just a guaranteed to have us hunted down by everyone.”
“Well, Boss. On the bright side, the dwarves seem better off this way, don’t you think so?” Sarjay told me. Sigh, as much as I’d hate to admit it, these dwarves seemed to be doing better than the dwarves a thousand years ago. However, as I had lived for a thousand years, I knew that looks could be deceiving. I would have to avoid the vampire’s sight and investigate on my own if I wanted to get the full view of what’s going on in the dwarven nation.
Once our meeting with the queen was over, we picked Asha up to check our guest rooms. The rooms themselves looked rather normal. I had half expected that it would contain some kind of torture device or whatever vampires liked to put inside their homes. We all each had a room to ourselves, which was nice of the queen, at least. After we had unpacked, we left the palace to start our tour of the dwarven capital.
As we were guests of the queen, we were treated like nobility. The dwarves got us a larger carriage with fancier design. That dwarven Duke personally acquired them, or so I heard. He seemed to like to suck up to the higher ranks, it seemed. We headed straight to the capital’s smithy since we had planned on going there in the first place until the queen showed up. The smithy was just an hour away from the palace, but we enjoyed the ride since we get to sightsee some sceneries like dwarven architecture and rivers flowing inside the mountain.
When we got off the carriage, the first thing I noticed was the large amount of guards outside of the smithy. Statues lined the outer walls of the smithy, all of gentlemanly dwarves. I immediately had a bad feeling about the place but I still forced myself to get inside the smithy. The closer we walked to the large building, the more we could hear how busy it was inside.
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The doors were as large and tough as the palace doors, but it wasn’t as expensive looking. I reckoned that the capital’s smithy was also treated as a line of defense, or a castle, to fend off invaders. The queen’s words must have spread fast since the guards opened the doors without saying a word. As I entered, I observed a massive open space with lots of workbenches and furnaces. The massive workshop had trails of lava going to the furnaces, with massive pauldrons of ores above slowly moving down through a steel line towards a stockpile. The blacksmiths all worked without noticing us, hammering down unfinished weapons and constructing gear of quality. There wasn’t a need for light sources since the lava provided a lot of light, enough to brighten the room. There were oil splatters all over the dirty stone-tiled floors, indicating that the blacksmiths had been working nonstop. All around the workshop were dwarven guards with steel plated armor.
The place looked as expected of a mighty dwarven smithy. The only problem - All of the blacksmiths were goblins. What. The. Fuck?! I looked towards Asha and tried to check what was her reaction but she didn’t seem fazed.
“Asha, why the hell are the goblins working the forges?” I whispered to her. She looked at me quizzically, furrowing her brows.
“What do you mean? The goblins had always been working the forges for the dwarves,” She replied.
“No, no, no. That’s nonsense. The dwarves works on their own forges. They have natural blood when it comes to smithing!” I rebuked her.
“They have natural blood when it comes to ores, that’s why the mayor could tell it was mithril. But the dwarves are not smiths. Besides, do you think those arrogant people would be willing to take anything but the pen or sword? They’re too prideful to do such menial and sweaty work,” She answered as she headed straight to a noble looking dwarf giving our instructions to some goblins. This was unexpected. The dwarves weren’t the craftsmen? I needed to dig deeper in this.
“Greetings, Foreman Smithson,” Asha greeted the red-headed dwarf. He turned to her with a surprised face, then bowed. “What a surprise, Asha of Follis, the young master of metal. Greetings and pleasant blessings to you,” He greeted back. The dwarven foreman led us to his office, offered us seats, then, as usual, offered us tea. His desk looked like the governor’s office back in Azkator. I wondered if all the government offices were built by the same architects.
“I am glad you are well, master smith. However, I am sure you did not drop by just to have tea. Let’s skip the pleasantries, what’s so important that you had to come to the capital personally?” The foreman asked. Asha took out of lump of mithril and placed it onto his office desk. At first, the foreman didn’t understand what was on the table, but after examining it closer, he was taken aback with wide eyes.
“My word, that is mithril!” He hurriedly fixed his monocle. He studied the mithril just as the Azkator’s governor did, but he did it so with more care and precision. It was probably because he was more experienced with handling ores than that governor. Once he was done, he took a sip from his teacup and asked, “Why have you brought this here?”
“I’d like to know if I could use the forges here to smith some weapons,” Asha explained. The foreman had a greedy tint in his eyes then answered, “You could forge the weapons. But the weapons would belong to the United Fortresses.”
“What? That can’t be….” She looked at us for help. Heh, watch and learn, little girl. I cleared my throat to get the foreman’s attention. “I know you are aware that we are Her Majesty’s friends. So, why are you trying to steal from us? That’s the same as stealing from her! That’s traitorous!” I accused the foreman.
“Er...no! I mean….ugh….I didn’t mean it like that! Of course! You can use the forge as you liked!” The foreman tried to appease us as sweat started to drip from his forehead. I leaned back on the chair I was sweating back and smiled to myself. Asha looked torn between giving me the ‘Thank you!’ look or the ‘Are you serious?’ look.
The foreman quickly lead us to a work area. Like all the other work spots, it had a large furnace connected to lava, and tools lined on a workbench. I studied the spot, then looked at the foreman with a shadow over my mask. “Is this the best you will give to us?! How dare you! This is a direct insult to the queen! I know you have an enchanted forge somewhere here, show us or have your head be chopped by the royal executioner!” I threatened him.
“Bu..but...the queen forbid anyone from entering the blue forge and..if we go, we’ll-” He excused before I grunted at him. He squealed then quickly led underground, and the number of workbenches and goblins started to thin. The place started to get darker and only torches shone the path. He led us to a very long hallway leading to a door as great as the entrance door. There were two guards standing outside and they didn’t look very enthusiastic about their job in the boring darkness. The foreman quickly ordered the two guards to leave and to make space for us. We had mentioned that we were going to use it under the queen’s permission so they shrugged and left. The forge inside the room was grand, and blue. On its sides were two metal ancient dwarven statues. How did I know they were ancient? Simple - They had beards.
I looked behind me and noticed the dwarf wouldn’t enter the room. I sighed and told him to scram and he happily did so. Along the room was lava flowing in large glass tubes, heading towards the blue furnace. Along with intricately designed tools stored inside golden glass cases, there were also large metal cylindrical containers. I opened one of the containers and a stench flooded the room immediately. It was the smell of dwarven wine that’s aged for centuries.
“This is…!” Asha was wordless and she looked at everything in the room. Some of my companions were taking photos of the room, some were just tinkering with all the tools and objects sprawled across the golden workbenches. “How did you know the dwarves have something like this?” Asha looked at me like I had the answers to everything in my pockets.
Well, I know for a thing that dwarves always had a massive enchanted forge in every major smithy. I’m not sure if it’s superstition or not, but I heard that the dwarves always built one in cities because they believed that it brought luck and would naturally improve the quality of goods made by normal forges near it. I didn’t care about that, I only cared about the forge. But judging from how dusty the place was, it really seemed that queen had this place barred away.
She probably had this place closed off because of signs of the old dwarves. That nutjob! She’s really trying to get rid of the heritages of the old dwarves! One of the possible reasons that the quality of the equipment was not as good as a thousand years ago must be the fact that the damned dwarves weren’t even forging. ‘Handling metal with majesty and pride’ my ass! That governor in Azkator was full of crap!
Asha started working on the greatsword that Sarjay wanted as soon as she finished setting up the place. We helped her around with fixing the temperature of the furnace and fetching her tools. We weren’t really knowledgable when it came to smithing. I knew some of my men were, but they were not in my tour group. I wondered how they felt when they realized that mithril was rare.
The enchanted forge slowly sucked in mana from the environment the more she used it, and in turn, the mana diffused into the lump of mithril. It was like the mana was trying to bond the mithril together tighter, but the enchanted forge used more energy to break the lump down to turn it into its molten state. She threw in some more materials like coke and iron, trying to make an alloy which was stronger than pure mithril.
Once she was satisfied, she had one of my companions to cast the molten ore into a mould of a greatsword as she cast some spells directly at the sword. I wasn’t sure what exactly was the magic, but I could tell it was to make it durable whilst making it more malleable. She allowed the molten sword to solidify a bit before placing it onto a workbench. Using a hammer provided in the room, she started to hammer the shape of the sword. I used magic to keep parts of the blade on certain temperature.
Using magic was really useful in everyday tasks. Technology and magic went hand-to-hand, but why invent something when magic could do that same? Most people could learn some form of magic. I know that everybody at least learnt basic elemental magic. However, learning higher tiers of magic required more and more sacrifice. When you throw a ball of water around, you’ll just get more tired. But for tiers of magic such as those I used, it literally rots the brain to the core. Luckily, I didn’t have a brain!
I was gazing out at the bright light being given off by the furnace that I didn’t realized that Asha was finished. I noticed that she was about the quench the sword in oil when I interrupted her, “Hold on, why not use the dwarven wine?”
“What? Why the hell would I do that?” Asha asked me whilst still holding the blade atop the barrel of oil. Sarjay was curious as to what I was planning so he personally requested it to dump the sword in wine. Since he was the customer, she had to listen. Asha sighed then quenched the sword in a nearby barrel containing wine.
Smoke started come out of the barrel, then followed by bright blue lights coming out from the wine. Asha was taken aback slightly but noticed the change. She lifted the sword then stroked the blade with her gloves.
“What the hell? It got stronger...but how?” She muttered to herself, but she was obviously trying to poke us for answers. She turned to us but we simply shrugged. I heard rumors but I didn’t want to believe it. It was said that some dwarven wines used to be brewed from fermenting...mithril. How they did it, I had no idea. I don’t want to test it out by dumping a piece of rock in water and hoping it would turn into beer. If it was the case, every single person out there would be making beer from dirt. Mithril was a complicated ore, and don’t get me started with the other ores.
Asha continued working on the blade, fixing the edges, adding the hilt to it and other things required to transform a slab of metal into a greatsword. Once she was done, she ran her finger on the blade with white light coming out underneath it. She was trying to inscribe a rune onto it using magic. However, what she was writing interested me. She was writing Sarjay’s name on it. The white light slowly turned into red as she continued to write his name, and the edges of the sword started smoking.
“Uh…”
“Shhh!” Sarjay silenced me as he watched the sword making with great curiosity. The closer she got to finishing his character, the more the sword started to burn from the edges. Not only that, even Sarjay’s helmet started to have some smoke coming out. Oi! You idiot! If you start catching fire, you won’t be able to hide that we’re a bunch of skeletons!
As soon as Asha finished with her runes, a blaze of fire burst from the blade. With great pride she lifted the sword up, not afraid of the fire. In fact, she seemed mesmerized by it and was unscathed by the fire. Sarjay took the sword from Asha and swung the sword around. My companions were going ‘Whoooaa’ and ‘Ooooh’ like Sarjay was part of the tourists spots in Londonius. Despite having a helmet, I could tell Sarjay was happy, even though it wasn’t made from heavenium.
The sword was very elastic, you could probably use the sword as a mini-catapult. The edges were sharp and the flames that covered it did not affect the overall integrity of the sword. I wanted one like that! But I didn’t use weapons usually and I had Fatebinder. I patted the sword on my hip as I felt like it got a bit jealous.
“Ha ha, Boss. We should celebrate Sarjay having a new sword with a feast. I’ll use this furnace as a cooking oven!” Maven happily announced. Our group cheered except for Asha who went like, ‘You idiots are using a powerful forge for cooking?!’
However, a black blob slammed onto the floor from the ceiling. We took out our weapons in a hurry and turned toward the Maven’s history-like enemy. I felt like I got chills on my back when I mentioned that. Slowly the blob took shape and stood up, now looking like one of the palace guards.
“This one with greatest shame must apologize and inform you that this one must interrupt your plans for celebration.” She bowed.
“Whoa! What the hell was that?!” Asha took out her hammer and held it tightly. The maiden looked up and had a ‘Oh shit!’ face when she saw Asha. Undead minions aren’t exactly known for their intelligence, I supposed. Vampire thralls were smart, but not too smart. The vampire thrall looked to the side and started to sweat. How that piece of meat was even sweating, I wouldn’t know.
“Er...that’s...dwarven magic,” I lied.
“Eh?!” “Eh?!” Not only from Asha, even Daggerless responded. I even forgot this idiot existed.
“Nevermind that, why are you here? Did you follow us the entire time? Oh damn, I knew that bitch was up to no good.” I angrily walked up to the dwarf and looked down on her.
“As your lordship may have guessed, this was sent by Her Majesty to watch over you. As for the reason why I had interrupted you, it was because the capital smithy is under attack,” She replied monotonically.