Skulduggery 8: Building a Criminal Empire

by Logan Jacobs

  “What about their main city?” Dar asked. “Don’t get me wrong, I think we can use this playbook on all the rest of the cities, but the elves don’t let any other races even visit their capital-- well, unless they’re slaves, of course.”

  “No, you’re right,” I said. “We won’t be able to sneak into the capital and set up a whiskey business there. They would never let a bunch of free humans and a halfling just walk around their precious capital city.”

  “So the Gold City will be our model for all the cities except that one,” Penny said. “And I guess we’ll just figure out the capital when we get there.”

  “Oh, I’ve already got a plan for that,” I said. “That’s when we start phase two of our operations.”

  “And, um… what does phase two involve?” Leif asked.

  “That’s easy,” I laughed. “That’s when we overthrow the elves.”

  “Oh!” Penny gasped. “Oh, I like phase two.”

  “Their main city will be the last one on our list, anyway,” I said, “so then by the time we get there, we’ll have armies of humans set up in every other city.”

  “So then we’ll take the capital with our swords,” Dar said, “instead of with our whiskey.”

  “That’s the idea, my friend,” I said with a grin. “We’ll be unstoppable.”

  “And then?” Penny asked. “Once we have armies everywhere, and once we establish our business in all the rest of the cities, then what? I mean, what does that look like?”

  “Oh, you know,” Dar said. “We’ll just march up to the capital and take it from them.”

  “You mean just take the whole city?” the redheaded pixie asked.

  “No, not just the whole city,” I said.

  “Not the--” Dar started.

  “We take everything,” I said. “We take everything from the elves that they’ve ever stolen from us: our lands, our magic, our money, and our freedom. We take it all back.”

  “And then?” Leif asked.

  I glanced out at the lake again and thought about the vision that I’d seen in the portal room. By the time we were through with the elves, we would make their fields run with their own blue blood. We would knock them out of their elven towers that they had built off the sweat of our backs, and we would burn them to the ground. And then when the smoke finally cleared, we would take everything back that they had stolen, and we would build something better.

  “Then, my friends,” I said with a smile. “Then, we make the rules.”

  End of book 8.

  End Notes

  Thanks for reading Skulduggery 8! I’ll start working on book 9 when this hits 100 reviews, so please leave me a nice review here. Thank you!

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Logan Jacobs