The Goblin and the Empire

by JD Cole

  Just where in the world they all were now, he couldn’t even guess. Some kind of stone structure, a castle maybe. Richly furnished and decorated, and the residents were tall, white elves. Nothing like the short little guys who’d fought alongside the Colonel’s team in Nanortalik several weeks ago. They also were able to somehow speak in a way that he could understand, though he had noticed that their mouth movements did not match what he heard. Kind of like English-dubbed foreign films, but less funny.

  Apart from his radio, he had no inventory to speak of. Someone else might have a firearm hidden away somewhere; their captors had not bothered to search him, so likely had not searched anyone else, either. His last subtle command to the team upon their arrival here was to keep radio silence until he broke it. They had only been here for two hours, according to his watch. There was still plenty of time for Major Vox to make contact, if she could. Covert Defense, the group they all worked for, had tested her shortly after her recruitment by transporting samples of her pheromones to Greece, where she teleported back and forth effortlessly dozens of times from their hidden base in southern Alaska. Theoretically, she could teleport anywhere her pher was present.

  He remembered brushing against her a couple times as they loaded into the van. He hoped that was enough, and made a mental note to make sure the whole team got dosed from now on before an operation. Was “dosed” the appropriate term? “Smeared” sounded too gross, and she hated when her brother referred to it as “spraying”, like she lifted her leg to pee all over everything. Provided he got out of here, he’d come up with something official to call it. He got up and moved to the door, pushing his ear against it. The hall outside was silent, though probably guarded. He didn’t bother testing the lock, instead returning to the bed to sit down. “Major,” he whispered, “if you can hear me, I think it’s safe for you to pay me a quick visit.”

  A flash of light appeared before him, and in the blink of an eye, Samantha Vox was standing before him, fully geared and smiling devilishly. “I was just thinking the same thing, sir,” she saluted. She offered her hand, which he gripped and shook firmly. He could feel the hard tips between her knuckles, where her claws were retracted.

  ~

  Dufangen’s feline ears perked up, as did the two other mystics’ in Kelli’s room. “Did you sense that?” she asked. Something had just tickled the barrier that was shielding this wing of the castle from outside magic.

  “I felt it, too,” another confirmed. “But it wasn’t Ercianodhon. It felt benign, neutral.”

  “And it was not Undine,” Dufangen said. “I’m not leaving anything to chance today.” She and the other mystics left the room, concentrating and signing symbols of power with their fingers as they walked. The gems in their staffs began to glow.

  Brevha looked to her nephew. “Sorvir, go with them.”

  “Yes, aunt,” he answered, patting the sleeping queen’s hand, then bowing to her mother.

  “We should check the prisoners, first,” Dufangen said. “That is the biggest variable here.” A mystic beside her nodded, realizing it was needless for Dufangen to endure the strain of scrying in her weakened state. But when he scried the Colonel’s room, he bumped Dufangen’s shoulder with his palm and broke into a run. “Intruder!” he shouted. “Guards!”

  ~

  “Sitrep,” the Colonel ordered.

  “Tarfu, sir. The good news is, the others are all fine, aside from the bruised jaw you gave to Sergeant Lowe. For what it’s worth, he’s kicking himself for what happened.”

  “I’ll still need to kick him myself, when we get outta here. So, what’s the plan?”

  “Bad news is, I’m not here to break you out. It looks like you’re all okay for the moment. I’m just here to recon so we can come up with a proper rescue plan.”

  “You should hold off on that, Major. I want to see if we can talk to Kelli. She seems to be in charge here, it would be nice if we could get on her good side so she can explain things to us.”

  “You think that’s wise, sir? This isn’t exactly Kansas, as you Americans like to say.” He started to answer, but she interrupted. “Wait. There’s commotion… guards are coming. I don’t have much of a presence in the hall but… dammit, I think they know I’m here.”

  “How?”

  She spread her arms. “How is any of this possible?”

  “You need to get out of here.” He looked down as she plucked several little vials from one of the collection ports on her suit. He nodded and pocketed them, then put a hand on her shoulder. “You’re our ace in the hole, Flashback. Just sit tight and keep an eye on us, okay?”

  “Roger that. Use my codename when you want me to ‘port back in, if you need my firepower.”

  “Let’s hope not, but keep your ears open.” She nodded, then vanished, leaving behind little firefly lights that sparkled and evaporated in her wake. Moments later, the door opened, but more calmly than the Colonel would have expected. Three guards entered, followed by a richly dressed albino elf; then three tiny elves, smaller and weirder looking than the ones he’d met in Nanortalik, having cat-ears instead of elf-ears. Lastly came the Hood and that large black fellow who’d also been in Nanortalik. In the hall, he could hear that other rooms were being entered, likely the rooms where his men and Dr. Valentine were being held.

  One of the little cat-eared elves said something, and then the unarmed albino translated. “Where is the intruder that was speaking with you a moment ago?”

  The Colonel attempted to play dumb, making a show of looking around the empty room as an answer.

  ~

  Sorvir narrowed his eyes and looked at the mystics. “You cast a null shield over this room. How could she have jumped through the etherways?”

  “That was not a true spell she used,” Dufangen replied. “The woman was jimani. Human blood twists magic in ways we do not fully understand.” She looked at the human prisoner, who was playing ignorant about the jimani’s presence. “Tell him,” she ordered Sorvir, “that we know about the woman’s presence. If he persists in denying her, we will become less pleasant hosts. Tell him this is not our dungeon, but we would be happy to transplant him there.” She saw no need to waste precious energy weaving language spells at the moment.

  Sorvir looked sternly at the man. “Our queen was just attacked, nearly killed, and now you try to keep secret an infiltration of our castle. I would suggest you turn your efforts toward honesty, human. My people are fair, but just, and liars are not looked well upon. I ask again, who was the woman, and where did she go?”

  “Take my advice,” Derek added, “and tell the truth. If you want help against the alien threat, now’s the time to start fostering some good-faith.”

  Marc sat in contemplation for a moment before answering. “She was one of mine. Sounds weird, but she can teleport wherever she wants. We heard you coming, so I ordered her to leave.”

  “Why was she here?” Sorvir asked.

  “We’re captives against our will,” Marc spread his arms. “Our people want us back.”

  “She has wind magic in her blood,” Undine whispered into Derek’s mind. “She communes with the ether, and if my sense is correct, she can spy through the sweat she wipes on you.” Derek looked at his glove where he’d shaken hands with Sam. “I took the liberty of cleansing your uniform of her filth,” the elemental assured him.

  “Thanks,” Derek replied silently.

  “Shall I cleanse this man, as well?”

  “No, the last thing we need is to spook his backup. Can the mystics sense her spying?”

  “Only if they think to feel for her presence, which they have not, yet. I only knew to do so because of our encounter with her.”

  “Fine. So long as Sam can’t spy on me personally, let her keep an eye on her friends.” He gently put the back of his hand on Sorvir’s stomach. “Let me handle this. These are my people.”

  Sorvir looked down at him, then at Dufangen. The faeries briefly mindspoke to each other, then
Sorvir nodded to Derek.

  The Hood stepped forward. “You know why you’re here?”

  “Not exactly. I don’t even know where ‘here’ is.”

  “I can’t give you an approximate location, but they call it the Faery Realm. Feralmen are descendants of faeries,” he motioned to the sprites and mystics.

  Marc raised his eyebrow. “Faeries.”

  “Faeries. Some of the images your mind is conjuring from that word are accurate, but most won’t be. I’m betting nobody can tell you how your soldier can teleport the way she does? I can. It’s magic.”

  Marc’s eyes rolled, as did his head. Then he began chuckling. “Okay. So I’m in Disneyland. Pass me the pixie dust.”

  “My reaction was pretty much the same as yours when I was told. But these faeries here can teleport just like your metahuman can.”

  “All right, I’ll call it magic. Makes as much sense as anything else I’ve seen. So what now?”

  “Now, you have a choice. You can make friends with them, obey their laws and respect their wishes, or I guess they’ll just toss you in the dungeons for the rest of your lives.”

  “Why’d they bring us here?”

  “Kelli is their queen. She’s also my friend. She saw you attacking me, and wanted to know why. Our world was not the safest place to question you, so she brought you into hers.”

  “Another world? Like what, another country? Another planet?”

  “You’re not ready for that yet. All you need to know is the sprites,” he pointed to Sorvir, “are the only ones who can send you back. I’m guessing your metahuman can’t teleport people, otherwise she’d have taken you all with her.”

  Marc looked at them all for several seconds, then focused on Sorvir. “We mean you no harm. Do I have your word my people are in no danger?”

  “They’re not the bad guys, Marc,” Derek told him.

  Sorvir nodded. “We do not harm anyone who is not threatening us or our allies. But you need to state your intentions toward Derek.” Unknown to anyone but Undine, Derek winced as the sprite so casually tossed his real name out. “The queen will not allow any harm to come to him,” Sorvir finished.

  “That was a misunderstanding,” Marc answered quickly. “I think it’s fair to say we were all on edge. We sought… Derek… to ask him for information about an enemy of ours. Nothing to do with, uh, faeries, as far as I know. Unless it was a faery that kidnapped Kelli, then I guess we both have the same enemy.”

  Derek looked at Sorvir. “They’re hunting creatures like the one that kidnapped Kel-uh, the queen. This guy claimed to help me and Her Majesty in the forest when we first escaped.”

  “He was there,” Marc pointed at Lumina. “I was wearing environmental headgear, so I doubt he’d recognize me.”

  Derek looked at the Paladin, switching to Gine. “Were there human soldiers who helped us in the forest?”

  Lumina nodded. “Yes. They wore black armor and helmets. They took us prisoner, and tended to you and the queen professionally. They were quite confused by my presence, and even more so with the rangers. But when the drone-soldiers attacked, the elves and I were allowed our weapons to engage in the battle. They were very efficient warriors; as I recall, one of them wore a massive, mechanized suit of armor equipped with heavy kinetic and optical weaponry.”

  “Really?” Derek shook his head, shelving his curiosity about ‘mechanized suits of armor’, and switched back to English. “Okay Marc, here’s the situation. You’re here because your shooter’s an idiot. There was no reason to fire at me, riot-ammo or not. Something tells me Kelli would never have revealed herself or her kingdom to you if she didn’t think I was in danger.” Derek paused. She had probably sensed Undine and come to him because of the elemental; he knew that Kelli knew he was fully capable of handling non-magical problems. At least he hoped she thought that highly of him. He brushed that thought aside and continued. “Valentine laid out the basics of what you want from me. I’ll disclose everything you need to know about the alien, but first you need to answer Sorvir’s questions, then you’re going to help do me a favor. It’s actually all related, when you come down it. Helping us is helping yourself.”

  Marc adopted a cautious expression. “What kind of favor are we talking about?”

  “I’m assuming you have access to more military hardware.”

  “Maybe.”

  “My ass, ‘maybe’. No NGO would bother sending a team to hunt me without a stockpile of gear and weapons to back them up. That crap Dr. Valentine painted me with is proof of that, not to mention those hi-tech rifles and armor your guys use. So here’s the deal. If the sprites are convinced you can be trusted, your people are going to help me rescue Kelli’s dad. I won’t lie to you, it’ll be dangerous, but no more so than most other missions you’ve had, I’ll bet. But I can promise you you’ll have one humongous advantage in this fight.”

  “What’s that?”

  “These enemies have never heard of a sniper rifle or anti-tank rockets. The downside is they use all kinds of magic spells you and I can’t even comprehend, so I’m thinking we ought to hit them before they know we’re here.”

  “You gotta be kidding me.”

  Derek whispered to Undine his mind. Until Kelli and her family were safe, he was going to take full advantage of Veylsa. He’d worry about the binding later… not to mention trying to explain his absence to his parents. Maybe it was time he came clean with them? Whatever, now wasn’t the time to think about it. The elemental partially manifested herself behind him, the upper half of her white Hood guise shimmering like a ghost with her arms curled over his shoulders and across his chest. “Do I look like I’m kidding you?” the Hood asked. Marc’s eyes widened, as did Lumina’s.

  Marc took a heavy breath. “Do I have to answer now?”

  “You have to answer him,” Derek jerked his head toward Sorvir. “I’m gonna go talk to Valentine again.”

  Dufangen peered at Derek from the corner of her eyes. The young human was incredibly assertive; he acted like he owned this castle and everything in it, and his charisma was such that even the faeries fell in line with him.

  The Hood nodded to Lumina, and together the two humans walked into the hall as Sorvir and Marc began their conversation anew.

  Undine, Derek thought to his mental roommate, can that metahuman still spy on us out here?

  It was a moment before she replied. I do not sense her presence... it seems to be concentrated around the human prisoners.

  Derek sighed, looking up at the Paladin. “How much of a headache would it be to organize a rescue party at Tirapan?”

  “Organizing one will take no time at all. It is the debates beforehand that will consume the hours.”

  “What exactly happened while I was unconscious?”

  “The Goblin King broke through the sprites’ defenses, and opened an ethergate on the balcony where the queen and her family were visiting. Brevha Moniscii had just brought me to join them when the king’s first assault began.”

  “First assault?”

  “Do you know of necromancy?”

  “Undine explained a little-”

  “Undine? That was the apparition I saw back there! How did you acquire Veylsa? Legend says it has been lost for ages!”

  “Fatal attraction, long story.”

  “Why did you not use it to rescue the queen from the Chek’than?”

  “It’s kind of a new development, the sword only intruded on my life after the whole Chek’than affair. I can tell you about it later, it has to do with the dream trial the sprites put us all through the first time we came here.”

  “I see. And the sprites, they allow you to keep it?”

  “Far as I know. I mean, they’re letting me walk around free, right? Anyway, what about necromancy?”

  “Unbelievable,” Lumina shook his head. “The king, yes. From what I could discern, he was trying to steal samples of the queen’s blood, using mosquitoes.”

  “For his magic?�
��

  “Indeed. The queen inadvertently thwarted him, destroying the insects. I can only guess that caused a significant backlash, because not long after that he attacked in person. That is a historical event, and the Dominion will not take that lightly.”

  “Why’zat?”

  Lumina looked at Derek in amazement. He had learned Gine but a month ago, and here he was, instinctively creating slang and contractions that, while not existing in Paladin vernacular, were easy to understand if sounding completely uneducated and lazy. Gine, while originally a mash of several slave tongues, was today a language spoken with strict grammatical rules, with few contractions or other slang, yet Derek was molding the tongue to conform to his own idea of expression. The boy has to be a Khorev, Lumina thought. The “perfected ones” were legends, heroic myths invented by the Sen’giza refugees of old as they fled across the cosmos to escape the Chek’than.

  Yet Derek exhibited many of their capabilities. He pushed that assumption aside; it could be pondered later, once the crisis had passed. “The Goblin King,” he explained to the youth, “never leaves the Shadowlands. Not since the great migration, after the Sen’giza war. His hatred of the sprites is well-known, but he has never exposed himself to get at them before.”

  “Undine says she helped you stop him?”

  “Yes. I thank her for her aid, if she is listening-”

  “Trust me, she’s always listening.” Derek heard the elemental giggle at him in his mind. Either be a bitch or be cute, he thought at her. Just pick one, you schizo.

  “I know you are, but what am I,” she whispered playfully, and he sensed her sticking her tongue at him.

  Lumina refocused his attention. “We were the only ones who could come to Queen Kelli’s aid. The other faeries had no choice but to flee, and many of them died anyway. I was not affected by his power, and I suspect that the queen’s human blood and Birthright are the only things that sustained her that long. As close as she was to the king, she would have died had she been a pure-blooded faery.”