Second Skin Omnibus

by M Damon Baker

  Her implication wasn’t lost on me. Insleí was referring to the Deathless and other reprehensible prisoners that I’d wreaked havoc on and ultimately slaughtered. If I stopped to consider that they too might be redeemed, my prisons would soon be overloaded with potential projects—one’s I’d never be able to save.

  “No,” I sat back down beside her momentarily while I replied. “I’m certain that you were a one-time exception, Insleí. I should have killed you myself, but something made me spare your life. Should another Tári ever come to me the way you did, I’m sure that something else will stay my hand once again. Until that happens, I won’t hesitate to do what’s necessary.”

  Insleí seemed to be satisfied with my answer, and her fingers trailed softly against my arm when she released me from her grip. I smiled back at her mischievously as I invoked Merge and stepped seamlessly into the shadows that surrounded me. Instead of being surprised by my sudden disappearance, Insleí only smiled and stared at the spot where I vanished as I watched her for a moment before leaving.

  The short journey back to my room was uneventful, and the guards took no more notice of my passing than they had before. Merge was clearly a powerful Spell, one who’s limits I would have to explore, but one thing became clear to me immediately; the clandestine meetings I’d been having with my Tári just became a whole lot easier for me to manage. With the ability to move unseen through the shadows, I could easily visit them without having to drag dozens of my guards along for the trip. I’d still need to be mindful of not betraying the trust of my protectors, but not having to make them complicit in my secrets was a relief.

  After canceling Merge, I slipped back beneath the covers beside Líann. The long day and its aftermath had taken its toll on me, and I fell asleep almost the instant my head hit the pillow.

  11

  Much to my surprise, I woke up early the next morning and decided to make the most of it, getting dressed quickly while Líann slept soundly. She didn’t share my Deathless benefit of waking up refreshed every day, so I let her sleep as late as she needed. We’d be seeing very few late mornings once we left the fortress to resume our campaign against the Dark Lands, and she’d earned every precious minute of rest she could manage to get.

  We had a meeting scheduled for that afternoon, both to review the battle and to begin the planning of our next steps. But before then, there was something else I needed to do. As I headed downstairs, my guards formed up around me, led by Rhal, who’s new sword hung at his side.

  “It suits you,” I said, glancing at the blade.

  “I’ve only had a little time to familiarize myself with it,” he smiled broadly, displaying his disconcerting canines as he patted the hilt. “But I can tell that we’re going to be good friends.”

  We walked the rest of the way to my destination in silence, but there was no mistaking the proud bearing in Rhal’s step as we continued down the stairs. Once we reached the cells below the keep, I looked over the roster of prisoners we’d taken after the battle.

  We’d only bothered to capture the most valuable of our enemies that had survived our onslaught. Between the massive detonation that had begun the day, Bane’s devastating attacks from above, and my Army’s subsequent assaults, there’d been few of the enemy left for us to pick through once it was over. As a result, there were only three prisoners that had been deemed worthy of interrogation; a paltry number considering that the forces against us had numbered over 40,000 at the start of the battle, but it was all I had to work with that day. I started with what I thought would be the shortest conversation of the three and stepped inside the cell where a lone kobold lay tied up on the hard stone floor.

  The little creature looked quite pitiful, bundled up with cords of rope and shivering on the cold ground. Its filthy, matted fur was a ragged mess, and I could see the outlines of a few fresh wounds that had only been healed enough to ensure that he survived. The reek of damp fur and worse filled the small room when I entered, and I almost took pity on him, but the short note I’d read regarding his capture prevented me from having any sympathy for his plight. He’d been taken while feeding on the corpse of one of our own, a young soldier that the Kobold had stabbed in the back.

  I didn’t bother with Compel, choosing to cast See Truth instead. I figured that I could probably intimidate the truth out of the little creature if I really needed to, but even that tactic proved to be unnecessary.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Zeff,” he quivered in fear, trembling despite the ropes that bound him tightly.

  “The army you were with is gone, Zeff,” I reminded him pointedly. “What I need to know from you is how many more troops are left in the Dark Lands.”

  “Zeff doesn’t know this,” his voice wavered as he replied. “Zeff would tell the witch queen if he did.”

  I was about to ask him who this ‘witch queen’ was when I realized that he was referring to me. I guess from his perspective, it was probably a fair description, so I let it slide. Besides, the fear I obviously provoked in him was working to my advantage, as all his answers had flowed out in hues of light blue so far.

  “I need you to think, Zeff,” I glared at him with just a hint of menace. “Because unless you can give me some idea of what I’m up against, I have no more use for you.”

  I let the full meaning of that statement hang in front of him while Zeff contemplated his answer.

  “Dark Lands are empty now,” he responded after a moment. “Everyone run when called. Only few left behind to protect. Some stay back, not many.”

  Back when Bane first came to me, his speech had been very limited, and thanks to my experience translating Bane’s early rudimentary communication, I was able to piece together the meaning of what Zeff had told me: The Mistress of the Dark Lands had summoned her servants to repel our attack. Most had answered that summons, and only a very few were left behind to guard their settlements and outposts. But based on the many locations Logan had indicated on the map for me, that still left a vast number of enemies yet to be conquered. If they stayed divided among their numerous villages and fortifications, that shouldn’t prove too difficult to handle; we’d outnumber them at every meeting. But if they consolidated their forces instead, my Army might very well find itself at a disadvantage yet again—without the element of a surprise trap to save us from annihilation.

  I unrolled the map once more, with the marks Logan had indicated still present and asked Zeff to show me the locations of any additional places he was aware of. The little kobold seemed more than willing to aid me and was soon chittering away, helpfully telling me everything he knew, and I was surprised by just how much that was.

  It seemed that his kind roamed fairly freely about the Dark Lands, lurking unseen for the most part as the least among the servants of their shadowy Mistress. Zeff was aware of a great number of goblin and orc settlements; areas his kind considered to be good for foraging, and I marked down each one as he pointed them out to me—his words always tinged with blue.

  “You kill me now?” Zeff began trembling again when he ran out of things to tell me, and I began to roll up the map.

  “Should I?”

  “No, Zeff is good kobold!” He protested. “Zeff promise—never hurt anyone again if witch queen lets Zeff go.”

  For the first time, his words flowed out in a sickly shade of green, indicating the lie that he’d just told me. Despite the way he’d been captured, I wanted to believe that he was capable of something more, but even Zeff knew that wasn’t the case. There was simply no way I could release him, and keeping Zeff imprisoned in the tiny cell for the rest of his life would only prolong his misery. Still, after how helpful he’d been, I found it in my heart to at least offer him some small sense of mercy, so I cast Slumber on him, putting Zeff quickly to sleep before slipping my dagger into his skull. It was probably a far better end than he deserved, but ultimately, I just couldn’t bring myself to make the pitiful creature suffer anymore.

  I l
eft Zeff’s body in the cell and returned to the guard station down the hall. After having one of the guards retrieve a pair of unmarked maps for me, I returned to the cells and entered the second occupied chamber, where a goblin lieutenant was being held. He was bound just like Zeff had been, and although I saw the fear in his eyes when he looked at me, there was something else in his glare as well. Hatred. Hatred and the unmistakable desire to kill me if only he could.

  According to the note I’d read at the guard station, the goblin had been taken captive after a brief skirmish on the outskirts of the battlefield. The small band he’d been with had been trying to flee the scene of their army’s defeat, but a group of our cavalry had intercepted them. The goblin soldiers had fought bitterly, and almost to the last man, but when a few of our cavalry troopers recognized this goblin as their leader, they quickly subdued him and took him prisoner. The goblin clearly resented his capture and was seething with rage as he lay bound and prone on the stone floor. It was obvious to me that he wouldn’t be quite as cooperative as Zeff had been, so I didn’t bother questioning him under See Truth and went straight to Compel instead.

  “The army you came with has been wiped out,” I began my interrogation. “How many more soldiers remain in the Dark Lands?”

  “Many thousands,” he growled, protesting the words even as they flowed out from between his jagged little teeth.

  “I have been told that they are spread very thinly, protecting many different locations. Is this true?”

  “Yessss,” he hissed back at me.

  “Do you know where many of these places are?”

  “Yessss,” the goblin bristled with rage as I forced the answer from him.

  After laying the map out on the floor in front of him, I got the vile creature to disclose every defended location he knew of. It was a difficult process since he resisted me every step of the way, only yielding the bare minimum bits of information that Compel forced him to reveal. But when I was finally done with him, there were a number of spots on the map that neither Logan nor Zeff had indicated. I had no sympathy for the goblin, and as his hateful eyes glared at me I cast Life Drain on him repeatedly, and his guttural screams of anguish echoed throughout the entire prison while the magic drained his body of every last shred of vitality.

  I’d hardly used the Spell before, and never to completely siphon off the health of a creature. As the goblin’s strength gradually dwindled, not only did he experience excruciating pain, but his body showed obvious signs of the havoc I was inflicting on him. While the foul creature’s life was sucked out of him, my own health bar grew slightly, displaying the relatively small boost to my own Health that I was receiving by draining away the goblin’s vitality. His already gaunt form became increasingly emaciated-looking, and when he finally expired, there was little more than an empty husk left behind—it was a particularly cruel demise for a particularly cruel creature. Although it had been an appropriate ending for him in my mind, invoking the Spell had also served two other purposes.

  First, not only did I need to improve my proficiency with the Life Drain Spell, but I also needed to increase my Shadow magic affinity. Killing the goblin in the way that I did had helped me on both those counts. My second reason for doing so related to the final prisoner I was going to interrogate that morning—an orc sub-chieftain.

  The short comments on his capture indicated that he’d fought fiercely and only been captured after his right arm had been sheared off by a cavalry trooper’s saber. The grievously wounded orc had tried to fight on but lost consciousness due to severe blood loss. The soldiers who’d defeated the orc sub-chieftain recognized his high rank, and once he’d been restrained, they quickly healed him using the crystals I’d provided them. While the power of the crystals had saved his life, they weren’t able to restore his severed limb; it was now lost to him forever. I assumed that the orc would be despondent over both his capture and infirmity and hoped that hearing the brutal demise of his fellow prisoner might add to his discomfort enough to make the sub-chieftain somewhat more cooperative. He was the highest-ranking prisoner we’d taken, so he was also the most likely to have real information for me—I just had to get it from him.

  The orc sub-chieftain sat waiting for me, but unlike the other two prisoners, he was sitting on a cot that had been provided for him. Not only was he not laid out on the floor as both Zeff and the goblin had been, but his legs were unbound, with only his one remaining arm tied tightly to his side. The orc had an almost regal bearing about him, and even though I caught a trace of fear in his eyes, he met my gaze and held it when he spoke to me.

  “Am I to be killed next?”

  “That’s entirely up to you,” I replied, somewhat surprised by his calm tone of voice.

  “And what price have you put on my life?”

  “All I want is some information,” I told him as I unfurled a clean copy of the Dark Lands map. “I need to know where the rest of your forces are, and their numbers as well.”

  “You’d ask me to betray my people?” He replied indignantly.

  “Only the ones who seek to kill mine,” I glared back at him. “I’m willing to spare any who choose to live in peace with us.”

  “Ha!” He laughed mirthlessly. “I won’t be deceived by your lies. I’ve already heard about your slaughter of the Black Hand. You spared no one—mothers, infants, and children slain in the dead of night by your soldiers. You speak of peace but bring only death to my people.”

  His depraved accusation took me by surprise. Clearly, the Mistress of the Dark Lands was using disinformation, at least in part, to further motivate those who fought for her. And after millennia of conflict between the races, there was little reason for anyone to doubt her deceit. But I had the truth on my side, and even more importantly, I had someone very special with me that morning.

  With a quick gesture down the hallway towards the guard station, Rhal came forward and joined me in the now-crowded cell. The orc sub-chieftain appeared shocked to see Rhal’s burly form standing beside me—dressed in Dwarven Steel mail covered with Khelduin plates—and even more so when I had Rhal answer a few questions.

  “What tribe did you belong to before you joined me, Rhal?”

  “I was of the Black Hand, Empress,” the sub-chieftain’s eyes flew open in surprise.

  “Did my people slaughter yours?”

  “No, Empress,” Rhal shook his head slowly in regret as he spoke. “We attacked you.”

  “Did I take you prisoner—force you to serve me?”

  “No. After our defeat, we came to you seeking asylum, and it was I who requested to join your army,” Rhal began to understand the purpose of my questions when he responded.

  “What is your current position?”

  “I am a lieutenant in your personal guard, Empress,” he recounted with no small amount of pride.

  “You have been lied to, but not by me,” I stared at the orc sub-chieftain meaningfully.

  The orc captive didn’t look back at me—his eyes were still focused intently on Rhal. Seeing the conflict raging inside the sub-chieftain, Rhal spoke to him directly.

  “She will either be your doom or your salvation,” Rhal held the orc’s gaze while he spoke. “The choice is yours, just as it once was mine.”

  Then, after a quick glance back to make sure that I no longer needed him, Rhal returned to the guard station to await me. The sub-chieftain sat silently for a few moments, and I gave him the time he needed to absorb what Rhal had told him before resuming my questioning.

  “I can force the answers from you,” I confessed to him. “But it will be easier for both of us if you cooperate.”

  “This… cannot be true,” the orc spoke his doubt out loud.

  “I’ve united the Realms beyond your borders into one Empire,” the orc appeared stunned when I took a seat beside him as I replied. “Although most joined my Empire willingly, I was forced to conquer the four human kingdoms that resisted me. My ultimate goal is to unify Arrika, t
he Dark Lands included, so that all its people can live in peace. Rhal told me he expects that a great number of your people will choose to fight me and that I will have no choice but to kill them—I fear that he is correct about that, but I will welcome those who are tired of these endless wars, no matter how few they may be.”

  “What your lieutenant has told you is true; not many will throw down their weapons to join you,” the orc addressed me with a sense of respect that had been absent before. “We know little beyond warfare, Empress, and the mistrust we have for your kind runs far deeper than the falsehoods that may have been told about you in particular. You may be able to pull the answers you want from me, but I cannot willingly betray my people.”

  I’d cast See Truth on him while Rhal had been speaking, and I’d already gotten a great deal of information from the other prisoners, so I was willing to try a different path with him.

  “You have a sense of honor about you, and I can respect that, so I won’t ask you to divulge anything that would harm your people,” I began, channeling my Charisma into the words as I spoke, hoping to sway his answer. “But perhaps you’d be willing to tell me about some different locations? Those protected by others besides your fellow orcs?”

  He wasn’t aware of too many places fitting those limited criteria, but the sub-chieftain told me of the handful he did know about. They were mostly goblin strongholds, and he took obvious pleasure in disclosing the secrets of his bitter rivals. Although my invasion may have forced their unity for a time, the races of the Dark Lands were almost constantly engaged in open warfare with each other, one of the few factors that had prevented them from wreaking even greater mayhem on the surrounding Realms. When we were finally finished, I rolled up the map and walked out of his cell, leaving the orc still alive as I made my way back to the guard station.

  “See that he isn’t mistreated,” I instructed the jailors. “He cooperated at least somewhat with me and may not be beyond redemption.”