Vol 8, Chapter 14

Flash. A second of disorientation. The thick smell of alcohol. A tavern? Yes, that's what it was. Concrete arches, chairs woven from blackwood. Several tables overturned. Sticky traces of dried alcohol and snoring bodies on the floor. Everything swam before my eyes, I had to rub them properly.

"You're ba-a-a-ack!" Asha greeted me from the floor, saluting with an empty mug.

"What are you doing here, shouldn't you be recovering?"

"What do you mean? I am recovering, see..." She shook the mug, then added: "And at the same time I was keeping an eye on you, in case you lost it and started wrecking everything here. I'd have stopped you."

"Yeah, right, more likely joined in," I said skeptically, glancing around the tavern littered with bodies of those who had fallen in unequal battle with the the bottle. "Anyone still on their feet? I need a report."

"Weekly report," came Tamilla's voice from behind.

Her table, standing in the far corner, was perfectly in order and, as always, covered with papers. If anyone had truly been working while keeping an eye on us, it was her.

"Thank you," I replied, accepting the stitched stack of pages. "I'll read it, but first tell me quickly in your own words... what have I been doing all week?"

"Drinking, eating, boasting."

"Boasting?"

In response, she rustled around and pulled out a small notebook.

"I kept records."

Setting the report down on the beer table, I began leafing through the notebook.

Three barrels of ale, each holding 150 liters; 28 bottles of wine from the Count's personal stock; 6 bottles of liqueur; between 40 and 48 liters of moonshine (the exact count uncertain due to lack of standard containers); total expenses for four days — twenty-two gold and thirty-five silver coins, not including the spike in alcohol prices caused by shortages...

So, she was apparently counting how much this binge had cost the treasury, but... Seriously? Physically impossible to drink that much. Even for a demon. Probably...

"You know counting money spent on a drinking bout is bad manners?"

"Bad manners would be if the treasury overpaid for it," she parried.

Sighing, I opened a random page from the middle of the notebook.

"...and what brilliant tactic did you use to win? (The Ashiran girl is slurring, deduct alcohol costs from her pay.)"

"I charged head-on, leading the army... but not all of it, I left a reserve!"

"You left a reserve? (Issue Til a disciplinary note for abusing liqueur.)"

"Exactly, no one expected me to think of that. It was genius. I am the greatest commander of the Abyss!"

"Let's drink to that! (Reprimand Dorvan for encouraging the continuation of the binge.)"

"By the One, let this end soon," was scrawled in slanted handwriting in the margins.

Snorting, I returned the notebook to its owner.

"Agreed. I'll do my best to forget this as a great disgrace, and advise you to do the same."

"By all means," she smiled, but immediately returned to a serious expression. "However, you should look at the reports."

"Then tell me straight away, on which page are the undead?" I asked, lifting the stack of papers from the table.

"Page three."

"Really?" I was surprised, since I always asked for the most important matters to be on the first page. "Why?"

"Frosts. Falcon noted they covered a third of the distance we expected. The cold slowed them heavily. Luckily for us, winter starts earlier in the north... if we're fortunate, we might not see them at all before spring. Unlike the First Duke's army — see page two. Spies report he not only passed Datzig with the Second Duke's permission, but also established a supply base there. They'll definitely be on the move this winter."

"Not a problem, I've already sent Len and his men into the First Duchy."

"I don't mean to doubt you, but I don't think a few hundred men will accomplish much against all that. Funds have already been allocated for building forward defense lines, but... I'm still worried about the treasury. Or rather, not the treasury itself, though that too, but about the price decline in several goods that isn't tied to any economic prerequisites. I think people see prices dropping and are holding onto their money, waiting for a better moment. That's also on page two."

I quickly turned the sheet to look over the figures, written in a small column broken down by month.

The prices weren't just stagnant, they were sliding downward. Good news for the people, not so much for the government.

"Unpleasant, but nothing more. As long as we can sell goods to other domains, it won't matter much. But keep your hand on the pulse and let me know if the situation worsens." With that, I finally returned to the first page of the report.

As expected, it contained information about the destabilized core. Quite brief, only half a page. Short survey results that revealed no one had seen anything; fruitless searches...

Well, I hadn't expected them to find it. The only thing that bothered me...

"Astarot didn't help you?"

"He… demanded that they find him a 'treat' and bring it, but all he did was drink and make merry. We couldn't find the magical bomb; it's probably outside the city."

"Good. Listen to my orders. First of all, I need all metal mages stronger than a Lesser Adept. Pete's team will be disbanded and reformed."

"But they're already in the final stage…"

"We'll finish it personally with him. The rest will be divided into groups by skill in manipulating metal. Also, tell the foundries that we'll need the best steel we can produce."

"If we gather everyone, then those versed in mechanics…"

"…will end up in the same pile with the others. That no longer matters. Right now I need their hands, not their brains. I'll send a message to Erin asking her to send everyone she can, and you try to hire people in the Fourth Duchy."

"All right." She gave a short reply, quickly scribbling in her notebook. "Anything else?"

"Plenty. To start, send a text to the criers: tell them to shout, 'I found information.' Word for word. I don't think our blackmailer watches posters or reads newspapers."

"Understood. I'll do it."

Only the core itself remained. I'd thought long about what to do with it, but the demon's suggestion to simply feed it to him—I firmly rejected. Even if he didn't burst from that torrent of power, overfeeding him wasn't in my interest. He'd already stuffed himself enough during the last battles.

"Tami, what about the ores? You've been pushing for opening a quarry for a while."

"We're still working on it. The calculations are finished. The workers have drilled about sixty percent of the blast holes and weakened the vaults according to plan. It's reflected in the report under 'the problem of insufficient ore output,' on pages five and six."

"Good. We'll solve that problem soon. Start evacuating all equipment from the mines."

"We don't have ore reserves. The furnaces might stop."

"Then make sure they don't, but no one and nothing should remain in the mines. Also, every window in the area has to be dismantled or sealed somehow, otherwise restoration will cost us a fortune. And I need more gold."

"When was it ever otherwise… How much?"

"Ten kilograms should be enough."

"Kilograms?"

"Yes, for the ritual circle. There's no way around it without proper focus, unless we want to blow ourselves up. If everything goes well, I'll even return the gold to the treasury. Questions?"

"Plenty, but I'll withhold them until everything's organized."

"Excellent attitude," I praised, and bent down to pick up the half-conscious Asha from the floor.

"Hey!" she protested sleepily.

"Up you get. You'll have to do some work too, since you've 'recovered'."

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◆ Black Forest, Some Time Ago ◆
​

In the Black Forest everything proceeded in its own way. From the moment the black tendrils of the forest interwove, sealing the passage, a week had passed. Then two. Then three.

Spider-like ents patrolled the borders, relentlessly moving their wooden limbs. New buds on the Tree transformed into leathery caterpillars. Sinking their chelicerae into tendril-like branches and hanging from them in garlands, they slowly sucked the rubbery sap, while their hides gradually hardened. Larger ents curled up near the roots, growing slowly under the soft magic of tree-singers. Those injured in battle closed their wounds little by little. Despite the apparent tranquility of the process, for the elves this was frantic, almost desperate preparation.

Yet no invasion followed. No one attempted to break inside. The black vaults of interwoven tendrils were disturbed only by the wind and the distant smoke from human hearths.

Once they were sure nothing dangerous or urgent was happening, the elves, as expected, turned to their favorite pastime.

Politics.

Malicious tongues whispered that the heirs of the Mage-Imperium, the Commonwealth, had copied their system of governance from the elves. That was a great exaggeration, for they were still very, very far from the long-lived ones.

Sending a scout into the outside world promised great glory for the family whose candidate would be chosen. Many centuries had passed since the elves withdrew into complete isolation. Thus, the one granted the honor of breaking that isolation had to be acceptable to all members of society, to prevent grievances and conflicts.

And for immortal beings, whose stubbornness rivaled only their longevity, reaching agreement was exceedingly difficult. Especially when nearly a thousand of them had to come to terms among themselves.

It seemed the solution was simple: hold a tournament and determine who best fit all the requirements.

But the word "simple" was not part of the elven vocabulary.

The moment the tournament was established, council members immediately lobbied to expand it, arguing that the number of trials was insufficient, and that the candidate should not only know the human language, history, and their primitive magic, but also be well-versed in elven culture, able to play the flute, and recite all elven ballads from memory.

And even when the natural question arose "Why on earth was all this necessary?" — a natural answer was given.

The scout would be representing their entire race, and therefore had to be the best representative possible. That the council member who had pushed this decision was once a teacher of the noble art of flute playing, and still had favorites among his pupils… a mere coincidence, of course. Just like the fact that one of those pupils was a participant in the scout selection.

The number of trials then began to grow at a geometric rate… and always under noble pretexts, naturally.

Candidates competed in tournament after tournament, their scores now exceeding tens of thousands. It could be said with confidence that their small sanctuary had entered its groove. Even the Elder Maiis dozed peacefully, paying no attention to the candidates demonstrating their skills before her…

But one evening their tranquility was broken.

It began with a bright flash. Then the ground shook. The branches of the Tree cracked as they struggled to contain waves of hot air. Stones fell from the sky. A cliff collapsing into the sea raised a massive wave that easily overcame the dam of black tendrils and burst into the city, drenching the council building in a salty flood. One might say, a bucket of cold water was dumped on their sharp ears. Literally.

Barely crawling out of the Tree-grown building and spitting out seawater, they all immediately called for action, and even attempted, timidly and awkwardly, to carry it out.

Soon news arrived: observers reported that a mountain nearby had simply vanished, as if it had never existed. The mountain range surrounding their world had been brutally breached. New stone islets had appeared in the Dead Sea.

Candidates in the tournament suddenly began to falter, missing targets and forgetting the words of well-known ballads. Of course, this had nothing to do with the fact that no one wanted to go to the one who could turn mountains into a smoking pit in just a few minutes.

The council members clutched their long ears, and the tournaments turned into a theater of absurdity and a source of shame for all the families.

Awakened in the rudest way she had ever experienced in her endless life, the Elder raged furiously.

In the end, discussion and final preparations were completed almost instantly… by elven standards. The candidate was chosen by lot, so no one would feel slighted, and swiftly, though with honors, sent into the outside world.

This happened in record time for elves. From the explosion of the mountain, only a month and a half had passed.

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◆ Black Forest, Scout Lariel POV ◆

Lariel until the last moment was unsure whether winning the lottery had been good luck… or misfortune. But when the cheerful instructor led her to the equipment depot grown deep underground, she made up her mind.

It was most definitely misfortune.

Had she been smarter, she would have realized this earlier from the instructor's cheerful face, since it was his son who hadn't drawn the lot…

"So, we need human clothing, right? Unfortunately, our tree guardians don't take much care in preserving it. We'll have to take something from earlier times… I think I had something like that. Here!"

He laid out before the elf girl a pile of crudely sewn, stinking hides.

"Um, this is…"

"This is absolutely human clothing. A couple of centuries ago my father personally shot the one who tried to wander through our forest in this. Don't be shy, put it on, while I look for weapons."

"Was he trying to disguise himself as a beast?" the elf asked into the void, but the quartermaster had already disappeared into the winding, hollow corridors of the Tree.

A bear's head landed heavily on her hair and pressed uncomfortably on her rounded ears, still aching from the operation. The hide was slimy and disgusting. How could humans wear something like this?

"You put it on over your clothes?" the instructor asked upon returning. "My son told me their customs involve dancing naked around a fire. You could be exposed."

"I hope that's not true…"

"It is, it is, he showed me engravings. Anyway, I tried to find weapons, but all the human bows and crossbows are completely unusable. So here."

He handed her a green-patinated bronze dagger in a sheath rotted by centuries.

"According to the legend I'm a huntress, but with this weapon…" Lariel said doubtfully.

"Can't help it. I've got no bows or spears, only bone tips. Just say the beast ran off with your spear."

"Don't humans use iron?" Lariel tried to scrape the green patina from the blade with the hide, but achieved nothing.

"Don't worry, I'm sure no one will notice. Their smithing is so underdeveloped that they pass blades down from generation to generation. Just say that your… hmm." He hesitated and began counting on his fingers. "Right. If a human lives a hundred years, and this blade is six hundred years old… then… yes, say that your great-great-great-great-great-grandfather gave it to you on his deathbed and told you not to trade it for an iron one. Enough polishing—let's go. It's time."

Lariel thought there was something off about the instructor's logic, but he gave her no chance to dwell on it. Taking her hand, he led her out of the Roots and straight to the border. Quite a few young elves had gathered around; though they didn't point fingers at her, their looks spoke volumes. Some pinched their noses and shook their heads sympathetically. From shame Lariel wanted to sink into the ground, or at least hide among the Tree's roots. Seeing this, the instructor snorted and tried to distract her.

"Let's go over everything one last time to fix it in memory. What do you need to do?"

"Find the castle and enchant the lord so that he willingly begins to cooperate with us," Lariel rattled off.

"Good. What is a castle?"

"It's the largest building made of stone, in which the vile oppressor of other humans flaunts his power and wealth taken from others."

"If you meet a dwarf, what do you do?"

"Don't let it show. Don't scream. Leave quickly without raising suspicion and immediately return to the Forest."

"How do you identify a dwarf and distinguish him from a human?"

"He's very short and smells of beer."

"Excellent. How do you tell a human child from a dwarf?"

"Uh… umm…" she mumbled. To be honest, Lariel hadn't studied humans very well. She hadn't even participated in the tournaments. The fact that she became a scout was purely by chance. That was how the lot fell.

"He… doesn't smell of beer?" she guessed uncertainly.

"He has no beard," the instructor prompted.

"All right, but… but what if it's a dwarf woman?"

"Don't worry. According to our engravings, they have beards too," the instructor reassured her.

"But what if she shaved it off? It's ugly to wear a beard. I wouldn't wear one."

The question stumped the instructor. For the rest of the way to the border he thought hard, but in the end only said:

"Uh… then just run if you meet one like that. Now go! May the Moon be with you."

Black tendrils, obeying his magic, unraveled, opening a gap just wide enough for the elf girl to squeeze through.

"And most importantly, don't confuse ordinary humans with goblins, they're a completely different subspecies of humans! Those racists hate their green relatives!" the instructor shouted after her.

The forest closed behind her, leaving her alone with the snow-covered field, beyond which a colossal fortress wall loomed.