First, Azza seethed, then she seemed to collapse in on herself and trembled.
“I should have died. I,” she hugged her knees, “I feel so powerless. What did you do to me?”
“After my brother killed you,” I started in a sincere tone, “your Soul left your Body to enter the cycle of reincarnation. Not even the Gods or Lords of Darkness can bring a Soul back after that.” I smiled with a bit more pride, “But my Law contains the power to grant new life even without the presence of a soul. Thanks to that, even though the Mind, Body, and Heart of the woman called Azza should have been abandoned in this world, you are able to live on. Well? It’s a miracle, isn’t it?”
Azza trembled and hugged her knees. “My magic, my skills, and my connection to the spirits are all gone,” She enunciated slowly, with a chattering jaw. “Am I supposed to leap for joy? You beasts are the reason I died in the first place!”
Azza rubbed her neck where it had been snapped through her mane, looking somewhat nauseous, and my heart thumped.
“Ahh, I’m so glad to see you like this, even though we’re meeting in person for the first time. See, this is how a person should react to their own death.” I crouched, rested my cheeks on my hands, and leaned in. “I’ve died before too, you know, but it wasn’t nearly this lovely to watch.”
Azza slowly dragged herself backward, looking at me with the eyes of a prey. “Wh, what are you talking about?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I waved one hand as if to clear the problem from the air. “I said I would clear up your confusion, didn’t I? First, my brother, the blonde-haired War Orc who killed you, he isn’t the Orc Lord. Second, the person you called his red concubine is our mother. The blue concubine is my blood sister. And I,” I hoped to give her a winning smile, “I am the Orc Lord you’ve been complaining about all this time.” I narrowed my eyes, and Azza’s jaw quivered, “My name is Vyra. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Azza.”
While I was feeling proud of my perfectly scripted self-introduction, Azza’s eyes rolled back until only the whites were visible, then she collapsed onto her back. It took me a minute to realize she was unconscious. I poked her gently on the abdomen to confirm it.
“Huh,” I mumbled, eyes wide and blinking from confusion. I looked over my shoulder at Durghan. “Was it too much?”
“It was frightening to watch,” he answered with some difficulty. His face looked quite pale, and his knees were knocking. I guess it’s disturbing to see someone long-dead return to life.
[[User has acquired the title
What? Ashtante wasn’t done spying on me yet? Out of curiosity...
[
… Well.
I tapped Azza’s face again. This time, when she saw me, she scrambled back frantically until hitting the wall behind her.
“I’m flattered, but we’re wasting daylight. I have a job for you here in my city. Will you do it before becoming my mind slave, or do I have to brainwash you?”
“W-what is the job?”
I grinned, “Magic instructor. You can’t use it anymore, but you were quite good at one point, from what I’m told. Now that Fiara is caught up in Magic Engineering, I’m lacking someone knowledgeable to train the fledgling Magic Casters. You’ll be fed, housed, and remunerated—as soon as our new currency gets circulating. If you perform well, I may gradually return your Magic Power. With that, your body won’t feel so weak, and you’ll be able to cast the spells you know from memory.” I gave her a winning smile, “Will you do it?”
“You brought me back from the dead,” she said tensely, “to teach magic to novice casters?”
I nodded with a bright smile. “Yes. Most of my people are lazy, and they won’t train if nobody forces them. All of my capable people will be otherwise occupied, so I had no choice but to recruit someone from outside.”
The Living Dead took a deep breath and finally seemed to calm down. She thought for a while, then nodded, “I understand. I’ll do it.”
Alright, that’s one group of citizens occupied. Last I checked, father had the women under control, and I already taught them to sing while they worked for entertainment. Alright.
I got a destination in my mind and made for it. “Come on,” I called to the hesitating Durghan and Azza. I was going to use the teleportation pad to go to the building intended as an academy, but I realized at the last moment that Azza couldn’t follow without any Magic Power.
There was a pretty easy solution. I just had her stand in position and used my own Magic Power to send her off. Two people can’t go together, but this seems fine. Durghan and I followed right behind her, and then I used
“Thanks for coming, everyone. This is Azza. She’ll be teaching you as much as she can about magic. Make sure to respect your teacher and don’t bully her, but if she behaves badly, make sure to let me know.” I paused for a moment to let that sink in. “Handling all of you would be a lot of work for a single person—especially one who’s had all her Magic Power confiscated—so I’ll need someone who can be her assistant teacher.”
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I looked around and saw a High Orc that I vaguely recognized. “What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Ranig,” he answered nervously.
“Ranig, help out Azza with whatever she needs and keep an eye on her. Also,” I quickly produced a handful of tablets and a stylus, “make a list of the students’ names and affinities.” I glanced at Azza, “You’ll need this to keep a grade book. Every week, meaning every tenth day, make note of each student’s performance: whether their ability is satisfactory or not and what kind of progress they’ve made. Those with exceptional performances will “graduate” and no longer be under your care. Those with consistently sub-par performances will be “expelled” and considered unsuited to being magic casters. They will be encouraged to pursue other talents.”
Azza and Ranig were clearly working hard to memorize all this information. I created another tablet and quickly jotted down Azza’s ten-day schedule. “From morning until noon, when the sun is directly overhead, you will teach these students. Split the time to devote roughly half to theory and half to practice. From noon until dinner, have Ranig teach you how to speak, read, and write in New Orcish. On the tenth day, there are no classes. Finish sorting your grade book before noon, and then enjoy your free time. You’re free to use any facilities in this building for classes, and the courtyard for practical training. If you’re lacking anything, I will provide it. Also, I’ll be reducing the time spent on magic classes once I have someone free to teach academics. You’ll have more time for your own matters then.”
I smiled encouragingly. “Tonight at dinner, I’ll provide a document outlining all of your responsibilities, obligations, and liberties, for both of you. You can just figure it out yourselves from here. Come on, Durghan. On to the next stop.”
We left the academy crew to sort themselves out and walked over to the Colosseum. From there, I used
“Did some of you come over during the last battle?” I wondered aloud.
The closest War Orc nodded. “Yes. We was too late for join battle though.”
No kidding. They haven’t even updated to New Orcish yet; they must have just arrived.
“In that case, welcome to Babylon,” I smiled. “I was told by a previous chief of yours that War Orcs will feel troubled if there’s nothing to fight and that you’ll turn against your own.”
Nobody answered, but there were plenty who looked downcast, troubled, and even ashamed. It was enough to validate the information, not that I’d doubted it.
“Relax. You’re here because I spread word that I had a solution for that here, isn’t that right? I promised that there was a way for you all to fight every day and still live peacefully.” The eyes of the group started to brighten, and they readied their postures as if we were going to throw down right here. I held back a chuckle.
“The building you see behind me is called a Colosseum. It’s a place specifically for displaying feats of strength and staging combat. First, follow me inside.”
Obviously, the interior of a colosseum is mostly empty space. It’s pretty unimpressive on its own, but the War Orcs were already evaluating it as a place for combat, and they looked pleased.
“The ground here is the same as the rest of the city,” I called out. “You can tear it up as much as you like, and it will return to this state. Anyone is welcome to come in here and do battle whenever they like, as long as both sides agree to it. You can have a deathmatch if you want, but I’ll ask you to have a third party as a witness and that both parties sign a document to show their consent. If you kill a fellow citizen outside of an official deathmatch, the circumstances will be evaluated. You’ll likely be killed, enslaved, or have all of your Magic Power confiscated as a punishment. Possibly all three. Is that understood?”
There were some terrified faces and enthusiastic nods among the crowd.
“Good. If it’s not an official deathmatch, you can go as far as you’d like without killing the opponent. Later, I’ll see about getting some healing magic tools installed so any injuries can be cured on the way out, but there aren’t any yet, so you might want to play it safe for now.”
I held my hand out and created about a dozen Earth Golems. “Lastly, if you want to fight, and nobody wants to fight you, I’ll leave some Golems lying around. I’ll program them to spar anyone who challenges them to battle, so just get your hands on a magic core and stick it inside of them, then have fun until they need to recharge. Does anybody have any questions?”
Someone shouted from the back, “What when we break the Golems?”
“They’ll recover their wounds with Magic Power. When they’re fully recharged, they should be in perfect fighting condition. Oh!” I remembered something important. “When you’re done fighting a Golem, tell it so. Otherwise, it will continue to fight as soon as it’s done recharging.”
“What when all Golems is already broke or fighting?” somebody called.
“In that case, please wait patiently for your turn. I’ll leave more than just twelve of them here though. Anything else?”
The War Orcs looked around at each other and shrugged.
“Good.” I raised my hand for effect and created another thirty-eight earth Golems, so there were fifty in total. That should be enough for the short term. I’ll probably have to make better-quality ones when I decide to get serious about this Colosseum. I’ll have to play around with them a lot more before that.
“Alright, have fun,” I turned and waved, leaving that group where they stood. This time, Durghan knew to follow me without my telling him so.
“All that’s left now are the male Orcs and the High Orcs who aren’t magic casters, right?” I asked over my shoulder.
Durghan blinked and furrowed his brow. “Aren’t there the women, Goblins, and Fomors as well?”
“What, are they bored too?”
Durghan shook his head and fixed his expression. “If you put it like that, I guess I’d say they’re low-priority. Lord Vyra?”
“What is it?”
“Are,” he frowned slightly, “are you just putting the unsatisfied people where they’ll be busy, so they don’t bother you?”
I raised a fiery eyebrow at him and reflected a bit. I searched the clouds, as if there would be an answer there, then looked back at my former martial-arts teacher. “Yes,” I decided.
He shrugged at that, but something still seemed to be nagging him. “Lord Vyra, you seem a little bit different from usual today. Are you feeling alright?”
I chuckled and gave him a pat on the shoulder. “Do you want to counsel me? That’s usually mother’s job.”
Durghan blinked. “Mother?” he asked, looking bewildered.
“Is something wrong?” I tilted my head to the side, then righted it and smiled warmly. “Is it still strange for you that your sister is a parent? I can understand that.”
Are we done yet? This is wasting valuable time, and I have things to do.
He shook his head back and forth. Looking a little bit pale-faced. “You know, I think the men can wait. Let’s go find Oolga and go somewhere private.”
I chuckled again. “Are we having a family meeting? Should I invite father as well?”
Actually, it might be good to touch base with that group. Especially father is a good person to help me disperse information to the citizens. Very well. I can set aside a few moments of time for this. Afterward, maybe a meeting with Fiara. I’m sure she’s still busy. I wish I could just clone the two of us; there isn’t enough time in the world. Hm? Could we enchant a room so that time flows considerably slower inside?
Before I noticed, Durghan had grabbed my wrist and started dragging me away, succeeding in dragging me out of my thoughts while he was at it.
Bothersome. Alright, let’s quickly get this over with.