image [https://i.imgur.com/1jgYQhG.jpg]

Yula treated the imperial camp like a crime scene investigation while I crossed my arms and hung back with Jasper. If Sherlock Holmes unraveled clues by smacking around witnesses, then I played the Dr. Watson role, marveling at the process from afar. My participation would have bruised egos, and my companion needed no help to elicit compliance.

Since I couldn’t be sure if Uproar lurked about, I kept Presence active and performed spot-checks of Detect Stealth and Detect Magic. With Lady Havoc in his employ, he wouldn’t be the first to attack from Stealth.

I petted Jasper with Gladius drawn as a gesture that I wouldn’t get involved in tribal politics. The posturing worked, and we avoided unnecessary altercations. The orcs respected the blue squiggle of light and aimed nothing at me but glares. With the blade drawn, I understood their language and eavesdropped on the stragglers picking through the war’s leftovers.

Remarkably, none of them held grudges against Hawkhurst. Instead, they bickered about clan politics, for none but the emperor had a stake in the siege or allegiance to Veegor.

Some remarked on Yula’s lack of clan uniform and shed their imperial symbols. Most seemed glad to rid themselves of his rule. No one objected to her shaking the truth out of their compatriots.

Slurping sounds caught my attention. Mugsy had found an overturned table whose edible treasures lay unclaimed in the grass.

After getting answers, Yula approached me, switching to Common. “Veegor profanes his people.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Seven months ago, he digs like goblin. Goes mad when takes new crown. Zees ees what you will destroy, yes?”

I nodded. “Does anyone know of his whereabouts?”

Yula spat. “He still has followers. Two bugbears and fifteen loyalists. Zey head for pier. Will return to homeland.”

“That doesn’t work for either of us.”

Yula seethed at the predicament. If Veegor reached the Doublespines, we’d be back to where we stood before the siege—on the outside, looking in.

I raised my voice and spoke in perfect orc, conjugating verbs particular to the Redbone dialect. “My name is Apache, and I’m Hawkhurst’s rightful governor. Who is the highest-ranking officer here?”

The orcs exchanged looks, and I followed them. Most eyes rested on a lanky officer with trimmed, white facial hair. His nameplate bore the name Captain Gruter. I urged Jasper over to him and addressed him without ceremony.

“Captain Gruter. If you wish to prolong this conflict, I’ll use my powers to sink every canoe and raft midstream. If you’re strong enough to survive the upriver currents, you’ll do so only by shedding your arms and armor. Who among you wishes to return home without your weapons?”

My audience gripped their gear possessively and exchanged looks.

“You may fight well on land and probably better in the mountains. But many of you can attest, I own the water.”

Before tempers flared out of control, Captain Gruter spoke. “A human who knows Redbone. It is a day of precedents. What will you have of us, Chief Apache of Hawkhurst?”

“If Veegor crosses the Orga, you will not.”

While Gruter considered the situation, the orcs regarded the plunder left behind in the imperial tent. Some carried ceremonial weapons, trophies, silverware, and fine furniture. They had more to lose than dignity.

Gruter smiled. “We’re finished with Veegor anyway.” He turned to a pair of smaller orcs behind him. “Relay Chief Apache’s terms. If he wants the emper—if he wants Veegor, he can have him.”

The two orcs bolted to a drum and pounded out a series of sounds that meant nothing to me, but Yula seemed satisfied by the rhythms when distant drums echoed the sequence.

Yula spoke in orc, losing her harsh accent. “One more thing. Greenside belongs to me. I will return and claim my mountain. The Stone Ring Clan will begin anew.”

Gruter laughed, and for a moment, I expected Yula to throttle him on the spot. He approached her and thumped her hard on her sternum. “If you can tame it, it is yours, young Stone Ring.” He turned and barked into the imperial tent. “If you dogs touch the silver torch holders, I’ll break your thumbs.”

The assembly watching us returned to their business. The looters competed with one another.

Yula pulled herself onto Jasper behind me as I scooched forward, making room. She lowered her voice and spoke in Common. “We must go to pier now. Veegor will not take refusal of passage lightly.” She punctuated our departure by calling Mugsy’s name.

The animal whined, not understanding why we would abandon so much food. Mugsy doubled his efforts, eating as much as possible before reluctantly trotting behind us.

When I suggested she unsummon the animal, she dismissed the idea. “Mugsy must exercise. Ees getting fat from everyone feeding him. Ees too soft for wilderness. He will keep up.”

I urged Jasper toward the riverbank, the same goblin trail Charitybelle, Fabulosa, and I once followed to the goblin mine. After hundreds of orcs took it both ways, it had widened into a muddy road.

Veegor had a head start but hadn’t reached the pier yet. The drums would have tipped him off that his arrival wasn’t welcome.

He’s used his powers against a few orcs near his tent, but I didn’t see hundreds of Scorches. Evidence of restraint was a good thing.

The number of surviving orcs made me doubt he’d muscle his way onto the pier. Unless Veegor risked Reverb, he couldn’t use Scorch at the pier, and Fireballs would destroy the very modes of transportation he needed to cross the Orga.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

While horseback was faster than walking, the ground wasn’t even enough to open up Jasper into a run. The army had turned the path along the riverside into a muddy road, shouldered by swathes of trampled foliage. Orcs had littered the ground with discarded artifacts, broken crates, and pottery shards. After hours of riding, we nearly arrived.

I checked the group chat to see whether Uproar responded to my taunts.

Audigger Whoa! Kid and Jawbone are gone. It’s a big day today.

Duchess We’re down to the top nine. Whoo-hoo!

Audigger I guess it’s one of them good-news bad-news situations. Toad, was this you again?

Toadkiller Maybe.

Duchess Toad’s demon has been busy.

Bircht And now he has their equipment.

Audigger Yeah, that’s what worries me the most. Even without his demon, T has way more equipment than us.

Toadkiller That’s two more opponents we don’t have to worry about. Grats to us for making the top ten—oh, wait—the top nine.

Flagboi Who said it was his demon doing all the work? Are we sure it’s a demon?

Bircht Pixie said Sweetbread saw him use it.

Audigger But both are gone.

Bircht I believe it. Duch, check your mail.

Flagboi Horay for us. Can someone please kill Toadkiller now? He obviously has a target on his back.

Bircht What do you mean?

Flagboi That’s 18 knockouts for him. He’s the odds-on favorite. We need to ally against him. A call-to-arms sort of thing.

Duchess You mean like how Kid and Jawbone teamed up?

Audigger I bet some of you are working with him.

Duchess Using a demon is a bit unsporting, T. You have to admit it.

Flagboi We ought to form an anti-demon league. Does anyone know anything that works against demons?

Fabulosa Bah. Demons aren’t that bad, except they give no experience. But they can respawn through a summoning circle. Patch, was that a rune?

Audigger Respawning monsters are the worst.

Apache It was a rune, but probably not something you want to monkey around with.

Bircht There’s truth in that. Toad is taking a big risk, but there’s sense in it. If he’s the last person in the contest, the devil will never get his due. I bet that’s why Darkstep keeps off the grid. He’s waiting for Toad’s critter to catch up to him.

Audigger I wish I knew a way to contact Darkstep—he hasn’t opened a single one of my letters.

Duchess He should know it’s not nice to spy on girls. His eyeballs give me the creeps. I don’t bother popping them anymore.

Flagboi Wait, are you a girl, Audigger?

Duchess LOL

Audigger Duh!

Toadkiller It’s in her name, dufus. Au is the abbreviation for gold. Gold digger. Get it?

Flagboi I didn’t know that. LOL. Sorry!

I avoided getting pulled into the conversational rabbit hole. Besides, I had demon problems of my own. Still, sharing information about killing demons made sense. If I could destroy this last relic, I’d engage in the dialog.

I verified the knockouts through the contest interface.

9 Players remaining

The Book of Dungeons Closed Beta 0.71b

Contestant names

Apache, Audigger, Bircht, Darkstep, Duchess, Fabulosa, Flagboi, Toadkiller, and Uproar

Kidviscious and Jawbone were gone. It wasn’t a reason to mourn, but it reminded myself that Uproar lurked nearby.

I spammed my detection spells whenever their cooldowns ended.

We passed small groups of orcs along our passage. My glowing blue blade deterred any would-be robbers from taking the initiative against the odd couple passing by.

Closer to the pier, booted feet had trampled the ground into a broad smear of mulched vegetation.

Under dictatorial rule, the army had taken a week to the Orga. While fewer needed to return, I couldn’t fathom what a disorganized retreat might entail. Baskets and broken crates cluttered the area, but some showed burns. Upon closer inspection, I spotted orc bodies.

I still couldn’t see the pier upriver, and this wasn’t the area where I’d deflected Veegor’s Fireballs. Someone had blackened wide tracts of mud and foliage.

Yula dismounted from Jasper and rolled over one of the wounded orcs. She cast Restore. “What happened here?”

The wounded orc rolled over, coming face to face with Mugsy, who promptly licked him. After spitting and wiping his lips, the orc answered in Redbone dialect. “Veegor attacked when guards blocked his passage. Our high-ground snipers hit him with arrows until he withdrew.”

I spotted two dead bugbears in the tall grass—the remains of Veegor’s bodyguards.

Yula shook his shoulders. “Where did he go?”

As the orc pointed up the mountainside, Mugsy started barking, and a dark shadow fell upon us.

Yula’s Anticipate triggered with a soft chime, rocketing her away thirty yards.

Time slowed while I Slipstreamed to safety as a flatboat fell from the sky. The lumber landed so hard it sounded like a barrage of cannon fire. The impact turned the vessel into a twisted mass of splintered wreckage. Some timber broke free, splashed into the river, and quickly caught the current.

The flatboat crushed the wounded orc and dispelled Mugsy and Jasper.

No siege engines or giant monsters appeared on the mountainside. If the flatboat worked the same way as the dreadnought, he might have used a sling to launch it from the mountain above us, much like my Boulder Bullet attack on the docks.

My ears rang while the wood rumbled to a stop, and new messages appeared in the chat group.

Uproar How do you like that? It’s not so fun getting giant things thrown at you, is it?

Apache Turnabout is fair play, but you missed.

Uproar Don’t worry. Veegor won’t miss with what he has in store for you. I can’t wait until you see it—it’ll knock your socks off.

Apache What? What’s coming next?

Uproar didn’t reply. I scanned the hillside with my Eagle Eyes but couldn’t see anything.

How had he thrown an entire flatboat at us? The dreadnought grew to size when placed in water. Uproar had obviously wetted another sailing vessel before launching it into the air. When the calamity and noise ceased, the birds returned to chirping, and the Orga River burbled as if nothing had happened. No further attack came.

Earlier in the day, we might have had a better warning, for a flatboat over our heads would have created a sharper shadow. But as the evening drew near, we already stood on the shadey side of the valley.

If that had been Uproar’s ace in the hole, it wasn’t impressive. But it meant he stood only a few hundred yards away. I saw nothing in my Eagle Eyes. The late afternoon light gave poor visibility, especially looking uphill. I saw only skinny trees, bushes, and reddish soil.

Reddish soil.

This wasn’t any mountain. Iremont had been Sune Njal’s home. Veegor and Uproar would not attack us. They ascended it to reach the dungeon.

Orc scouts would have gotten inside after the dungeon stopped smoking and given the emperor intel on its interior. Perhaps they learned how to access the control room.

The dungeon’s octagonal bunker featured screens with outside views of the surrounding terrain. I’d accessed the observatory only after heating metal rods. A relic bearer could heat those rods in seconds. The emperor could pick us off the mountain by shooting spells from the control room. Veegor could cast primal spells without worrying about Reverb.

All the observatory screens showed vantages from the mountain’s base, so we needed to reach a higher altitude.

“Yula! Get to the top of the mountain!” I downed an agility potion and pumped my legs up the slope as fast as possible.

Yula did the same without asking why and charged up the hill after me. She buffed both of us with Full-Blooded, an effect that prevented us from getting Exhausted while running. It helped with the slog uphill.

If Veegor could access new screens or change its views, Yula and I would be in great danger. And if the observatory’s throne worked like a gunner’s chair, I tried not to think about what range and damage bonuses a mountain might give.

I remembered admiring the view of Hawkhurst from Iremont’s plateau. At such a distance, our settlement seemed so small.