by Matthew Peed
I don’t know how long I sat there staring at my hands, but when I looked up, it was well into the night. The town was still illuminated in many places, such as bars and inns. Streetlamps kept the streets bright and welcoming, while the obelisks pulsed with power, the runes on their surfaces glowing with a soft blue light.
“Attend me!” I shouted toward the hallway, knowing that someone would be out there.
A little to my surprise, it was Sasori. She walked in with a small smile, as if she was trying to comfort me. Sure she had replaced one of the maids on duty for a reason, I just shrugged it off, then extended my arms so she could pull the blood-covered kimono off. It had started to dry.
She bowed, then started to pull the first layer off. The blood, already partially dried, made it stick together. She was about to use a pair of scissors to cut it off when I stopped her. She looked at me confused, as I’d never cared much about my clothes.
“I want to save it, as a memento of my decision.”
“Understood, my lady,” Sasori said with a bow of her head.
It took nearly thirty minutes, and I thought that was actually pretty decent time to get the kimono completely off. We moved into the bathroom before we pulled the last layer off. Even through twelve layers, the blood had managed to make it to my skin. Sasori removed the last layer, and I examined my snow-white skin, where new patches of red seemed to stain a snow field.
Sasori channeled mana into the faucet to get hot water to start filling the bath. I sat down next to the bath and started to scrub the stains I could get to, even as a part of me wanted to leave it on my hands to show I was no longer the caring princess that I once was. I turned the second faucet next to the bath on to let the blood flow into the drain.
“Princess, I’ll wash your back,” Sasori said after binding her sleeves back. I nodded.
Once all the blood was removed, I stood, then rinsed all the soap off me. We’d done some serious scrubbing, so my skin was still red in places, marked as if to remind me. I climbed into the tub and sank until my head was the only thing exposed. As I submerged myself, Sasori threw in a bath mixture that thickened the water, and I had the strange thought that it reminded me of blood. Sasori sat next to the tub. Whether because she had something to say or because she just wanted to keep me company, I wasn’t sure.
“I think I can handle the rest. Thank you, Sasori,” I said, a little more emotionlessly than I meant to.
Sasori stood up and gave a bow, then said, “I understand that the princess has had a . . . trying decision thrust upon her, but I just wanted to let you know that I will always support you. No matter the path you tread,” she finished, then backed out of the room before I could think of anything to say.
As I stared at the closed door, tears started to run down my cheeks. Tears for my mother, father, and what I had done. The water was long cold before I climbed out. I used healing magic to remove the swelling from my eyes. Before I left the bathroom, I hardened my heart. I would not lose any more of the things I cared about to these backstabbing, underhanded necromancers.
Chapter 5
Regan
Before my time was up with my rendezvous with Alara, I felt a message from Jarvis come through. He said it was urgent, so I had no choice but to leave. I turned to Alara, who was looking at me curiously.
“Sorry, my dear. I have to leave a bit early today. Something has happened.” She looked a little upset, but on her face, it was cuter than anything. “I know. I’ll make it up to you when I free you,” I said with a grin. I rested my hand on her cheek before I wove my way back through the intricate web of chains that surrounded her.
When I was back on my side, I turned to her and waved as my body faded from view. When my sight returned, I was aware of my dungeons. I quickly found Jarvis and moved over to him. He was standing in front of a cage that held several . . . people. I say “people,” but they looked more like animals with a human form.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Sir, one of our scouting parties that was extending the line encountered this group making their way through the forest roughly thirty kilometers in. They were attacked, and as they were outnumbered, the automata quickly retreated to gather reinforcements. When they found the group again, they worked to capture them instead of destruction,” Jarvis reported as one of his drones replayed the scene as a hologram in front of me.
“Remarkable,” I said honestly. The fact that the foot soldiers were becoming able to make such complex decisions on their own showed they were improving quickly. Soon, they might reach full sentience without me having to create them with the excess mana required. As well as the fact that something could survive in this wasteland made me impressed at how my children were developing.
I walked forward, and as I neared the cage, a few of the bigger ones started to react by throwing themselves against the bars. The group was composed of several beastkin that looked like Ren, only more wolfish, as if their beast half was taking over. Much more fur than was skin showing. I examined them with my senses and saw dense unholy mana fused throughout their bodies, but it was separated as well. Only their bodies were affected, not their mana pools.
“Pull the strongest-looking one out,” I ordered as I stepped back.
An automaton that I’d worked on during the month since the horde moved forward. Rather than a knight, it looked like a sci-fi soldier from Earth. Intricate plates formed his armor, and a shield was fused to his right arm that tapered into a point so it could be used as a sword. Several energy weapons were linked into the shield as well.
Instead of a mortal-looking head, it had only a single sensor orb that could examine a much wider range around it. This automaton was as powerful as any tier two mortal and could probably hold its own against tier three for a bit. These were the assault model robots that I had created to infiltrate bases that my bulkier robots couldn’t maneuver. A printed serial number on its chest designated it A4C2.
It moved into the cage and bodily grabbed the largest man inside by the scruff of his neck. One of the other prisoners rushed forward to get around it, but it brought its free hand around in the form of a fist and punched the prisoner so hard that he flew into the other side of the cage, managing to bend the bars. The automaton finished dragging the struggling man out of the cage and held him in front of me.
I rested my hand on the top of his head, then tried to pull out the unholy mana. The man screamed bloody murder. I quickly stopped, as I could sense that the unholy mana was ripping his body apart. Even if I’d managed to pull it out without killing him, I would have turned him into a vegetable. I released him, and he would have collapsed to the ground if not for the A4C2. I waved, and the A4C2 dragged the man back into the cage.
“Let the research team work on this, but cause no more harm than necessary! I don’t want a repeat of the undead treant,” I ordered critically.
We were trying to convert the treants back to pure nature, but one of the experiments that a goblin had done had caused one of the things to explode. Which would have been fine, explosions occur on an almost regular basis here, but it exploded with enough force to level a three-hundred-meter radius, killing several dozen other samples we’d taken from the undead forest.
“As you command, sir,” Jarvis said, then teleported away.
I examined the prisoners for a bit longer. They looked like a small community, as there were quite obviously family units. Even in their feral state, they were grouping together. I ordered the assault automatons to bring them food and blankets. This made me curious about something. I decided that it would be faster to just test it than to wonder.
I moved to Robia’s tower, where Ren was staying. She said she was just happy to be away from the north, so she was staying with Anna and helping her out. I shook my head. The shop had been popular due to the cultivation stones before. Now I had people coming just to look at the beautiful elf and wolf girl. Not my words, mind you, the customers’.
I walked down t
he stairs so as not to frighten the pair. I didn’t really feel like waiting, so I switched the sign in the window to say “Closed,” then vocally told the ones in the store to get out. One person was about to argue until he turned around and saw who’d told him to leave. He quickly sucked in his breath and ran outside.
“I would like to borrow both of you,” I said. While Ren was the one I wanted to see, I figured Anna should come too, to help keep the girl calm.
“Yes, sir!” Ren answered immediately. I liked Ren. She acted her age, as a young and straightforward woman. It was quite impressive, considering what she’d been through. Anna bowed in answer.
“Gray! You too!” I called outside. He was a good emotional support for the elf, and I’m not sure what her eyes would see in the undead forest.
“Umm, Mr. Regan?” Ren asked sheepishly.
“What?”
“Is . . . is it ok if I see Echo?” she asked with a blush.
I quickly found Echo in the dungeon and moved him to where the prisoners were, then nodded to her. Her innocent smile lit up the room.
“Alright, I’m moving us to a place that might be uncomfortable for a bit, but I need to ask you what you think about this.”
Their faces grew serious and they nodded. I teleported us to the north.
They both looked around to reorient themselves. When they focused on the cage in front of them, they both gasped. As Anna was blind to the physical world, I knew it must be for different reasons. I waited for them to calm down.
Echo made its way over from the side, and Ren quickly changed her focus as she climbed up his frame and settled herself on his shoulder. Gray also put a supportive hand on Anna’s shoulder, and she gazed at him with appreciation. Finally, when I felt it had been long enough, I strode up to the cage.
“So, do either of you have any insight on this?”
“They are the cursed,” Ren said from her perch.
“The cursed?”
She pointed at herself, then said, “They are like me, only much further along.”
“You’re going to have to explain a bit more,” I said with patience.
“About fifty years ago, the beastkin started to . . . change. It wasn’t much at first, but we would gain more fur than our parents or even compared with others of our kind. Our animal tendencies grew as well, some becoming more vicious or timid based on our animal. Finally, that happened,” she said as she pointed toward the caged group, “as if they had lost all reason. And now, they are an animal in human form.”
“Then why aren’t you like them?” I asked. I had just thought she was a hairier version of a wolfkin. Though, I had barely seen over ten thousand people, which is in no way a big enough sample to examine the world.
“My family, and others like us, went a different direction. Instead of losing ourselves, it was like we grew more in tune with our animal. We started calling ourselves werewolves, as we could still maintain our reason.”
This information, while seemingly not really important, led me to one very obvious truth. One of the necromancers in the north was definitely doing live human experiments. As I looked at the group in the cage, then back to Ren, I couldn’t decide which was the failure and which was the success. Ren was intelligent and strong for the conditions she’d suffered through while growing up. While this group would have been powerful if they’d met a group of mortals, once I brought just a bit of force to bear, they were handled easily, mainly due to them having barely any intelligence.
I figured I would have to find the person responsible to learn the answer. I nodded to Ren, then turned to Anna. While I could see a tremendous amount of information with my dungeon senses, it never hurt to have a second opinion. She might be able to see something I missed.
“Well, what do those eyes of yours see?” I asked.
Anna took a breath before she turned away from the cage and buried her head in Gray’s chest. I couldn’t help but wonder if that hurt, as he was still quite solid even with the new material that made up his body. I gave her another moment, and she pulled herself from Gray.
“Sir Regan, this . . . this is a perversion of life . . . of nature,” she said with anger and sorrow leaking through her tone. Elves cared more about nature than their own lives at times. Their race was one of the rarer ones, at about one to every six humans. Mainly due to the fact that their homes were in the forests, which most monsters called home as well.
“Yeah, I figured that out,” I said as I nodded. “Is there anything that you saw that might be able to . . . I don’t know . . . fix them?” I asked.
“Whoever did this started decades ago. It is woven into the deepest parts of their body. Even the slave curse that is common pales in comparison to the level of maliciousness it took to make this happen. The curse seems to make them little more than animals, and it’s woven so deep into them that I can’t see a way to remove it without killing them. Even if you did remove it . . . I have a feeling that they would be little more than children once freed.”
“That was my conclusion as well. I could handle them being forced down to basically children, but if even you were unable to see a way to remove it without killing them, then we have hit an impasse for the moment,” I said as I rubbed the back of my head.
“What do you plan to do . . . do with them?” Anna asked nervously.
“Well . . . They are giving me mana, and it’s possible being in a cleansed aura of clean mana might reduce the effects after a while. So, for now I will house them in the dungeon until something new happens,” I said after a moment of thought.
Anna cheered up. As an elf, she had a connection with life and hated to see it end. At least, that’s what I assumed from what I knew about elves. Ren hopped down from Echo and made her way over to the cage. I warned her to stay a few meters from it, as they were still quite dangerous.
When she reached it, the beastkin inside did not act as I anticipated. A few of them whimpered and backed away from her, while others bristled as if trying to issue a challenge. It looked to me like they were actually exhibiting a pack mentality and saw Ren as a potential rival for the leader position. If I could get Ren to become the leader, then dealing with them would be much easier going forward.
“Ren, could you do me a favor and defeat the leader in battle?” I asked. I wasn’t overly worried, as she’d survived at least ten years in the wilderness of the north by herself. If it came down to it, I wasn’t afraid to help a little.
“If that will help them in the long run,” Ren answered.
I noticed she wasn’t too excited about the prospect. I was glad, however, she was intelligent enough to see what was happening.
“Bring out that one,” I ordered one of the assaults, pointing toward the beastkin at the forefront of the pack that was obviously upset. Half a minute later, the beastkin was standing in a circle made up of assaults. He was a tigerkin from the looks of it. I mean, it was hard to tell with how dirty they were. Wicked claws that must have been at least sixteen centimeters long extended from his hands.
He roared at Ren as she stood opposite him. I pulled Ren’s great sword from the tower and handed it to her. Then I stepped back into the ring of automata, joining the circle that naturally formed, and settled in to watch the fight. With his fur standing on end as he growled at Ren, the tigerkin charged. Ren readied her sword and charged as well.
The tiger brought his claws around, trying to impale Ren. She brought her sword up and met the claws with the flat of the blade and was forced back a meter from the impact. She twisted her blade and used the momentum to swing around. The blade made a full circle, coming back to strike the tigerkin’s shoulder.
The fur was thicker, or at least denser, than regular fur. Ren managed to cut him but not nearly as deep as I felt she would have liked. The tigerkin roared in anger and used his claws to slice at Ren. A pulse of darkness spread from her in the shape of an orb, which pushed the tigerkin away.
He roared in return, then flames gathered aroun
d him. For the next few seconds, they attacked each other with vigor, each trying to take out the other. Back and forth they traded blows, each managing to score a few scratches on the other. Blades made of shadow gouged furrows in the ground while it was being scorched by the tigerkin. My automata activated their shields a few times due to stray attacks.
Finally, Ren managed to bring him down with an attack much like Noir had used during the competition a few months ago. She fused with the shadows, then burst from behind the tigerkin, leaving a rather nasty-looking gash along his back. He collapsed to the ground, roaring in pain from the gash.
I clapped as the fight ended. The other beastkin inside the cage had also been watching the fight intently. Ren stared at the cage. The prisoners watched as if expecting something. Ren tilted her head to the sky, then howled. She infused a bit of mana into her voice, which caused the sound to ripple out for quite a distance. The beastkin in the cage howled along with her.
The pressure of her mana grew denser as I felt links between her and the other beastkin. She didn’t tier up or anything, but I saw that her pool was definitely deeper now. I’d noticed the same thing happen to pack-related monsters. I scratched my chin at the possibilities that this could mean.
“Very well done.”
Chapter 6
Louella
Lucifer, the wolf automaton I got from Regan, growled as a random person tried to pet him. We were making our way through the town to check up on Ezal. She hadn’t complained once, but I wanted to get out of the castle for a little bit, and this seemed like a good excuse. We were crossing the bridge that led to the castle, which had quite a few people who came to rent land for shops or houses.