by Neven Iliev
The young emperor sighed. None of those dead men were going to help him calm down. If anything, they seemed to press down on him, increasing the already immense pressure on his shoulders. He secretly dreaded having all of his forefathers stare at him day and night, but wouldn’t dare suggest having the busts removed or the ceiling painted over. There were many in the royal palace who thought he was unworthy of succeeding his late father and should be replaced with a more capable regent.
I’ll show them, he thought. How dare that scum underestimate me! I’ve been preparing for this position my whole life! So what if it came earlier than expected? I’ll teach those cretins a thing or two about speaking out against the Emperor!
Joseph sighed again. Such thoughts were neither productive nor entertaining. He turned to the damnable booklet on his desk once more. He really did not want to read through it again, but he had to commit every last syllable to memory. His young mind had been schooled in the ways of politics and statesmanship ever since he was six years old, so there was no way he wouldn’t understand the grave significance of the event it was concerned with. That didn’t help his mood, though. Even if the logical mind understood he had to read it, his emotions demanded he burn the file and be done with it.
Just the title of it was enough to ruin his mood.
A report on The Calamity of Monotal by Spymaster E. G. Allen
He had heard about it, of course. Every soul in the Empire had by now, and the news would likely spread to the whole continent within the month. He flipped it open and started reading through it. At least Edward, the Spymaster, did not dress up the facts with pointless words and analogies like the rest of his court. Though perhaps if anything needed some flowerful language, it was this.
The city of Monotal is no more. Just as early reports had stated, the city was completely wiped out approximately two weeks ago, on the 8th day of this month. Nothing of the city remains, save for a large crater and an ever-swirling cloud of dust. The estimated death toll is at least 8,000 souls - the entire population of Monotal.
“Sweet Teresa’s tits…” mumbled Joseph.
Only when he was alone could he allow himself to say such thing. An Emperor blaspheming upon the names of the Gods was a good way to earn the ire of their faithful, after all. This common sense went double for the followers of Teresa the Hammer, Goddess of truth, order, justice and retribution. In all honesty though, who could blame the man? This report confirmed that the worst case scenario he dreaded with his entire being had indeed taken place. Four sentences in and he already felt ill, but he pushed on regardless.
The Calamity has also rendered all the soil within six kilometers of the epicenter completely infertile. The Druids and Shamans we consulted said restoration is impossible and the land will be left barren for centuries. Arcanium investigators say the cause is the same as the ever-swirling green dust cloud, a magical anomaly they’re calling the Rift. It’s playing havoc on the environment and poisoning the ground and the air around it with some unknown form of magic. Approaching the Rift causes one’s body to rapidly wither and decay, making it nigh-impossible for living beings to get near it. Arcanium investigators say they’ve never seen anything like it, but are currently following a lead that suggests it’s somehow linked to the fabled Calamity of Tol-Saroth.
No wonder they were referring to both events as calamities. According to the history books, Tol-Saroth was an elven Warlock said to have lived about four hundred and thirty years ago. The records claimed he was responsible for making an entire human fort disappear overnight through some terrible magic ritual. The exact details of the account had been mostly lost to time and the event mostly dismissed as being blown way out of proportion by historians of the past.
However, even lies had a hint of truth within them, and it was the duty of the organization known as the Arcanium to determine fact from fiction. If those eggheads claimed there was a chance that the two Calamities were somehow connected, then there was a good chance that may indeed have been the case.
Joseph shook his head to clear it of idle thoughts and turned his attention back to the report.
We have detained and interrogated 32 individuals who witnessed the Calamity from afar-4 hunters, 3 bandits, 2 merchants, 10 adventurers and 13 travelers. Their firsthand accounts all state they saw a bright white light coming at them from the direction of Monotal. Over half of them were rendered blind by the event. The Arcanium currently has them under quarantine, since the eyes of all victims glow with an unnatural green light, much like that of the Rift. Neither alchemy nor magic have been able to heal their sight.
What followed then was a transcription of all thirty-two interviews wherein they recounted that horrible day. Oddly enough, none of them had a direct line of sight to Monotal, nor were all of them looking in that direction. Indeed, three of them were adventurers exploring a cave in the wilderness, yet they still went blind despite being underground. It would seem the Arcanium believed them to have been within six kilometers of the city, and the facts supported this theory.
Of particular note is a bizarre scene my scouts found along the Imperial Highway. They found what appeared to be the site of a bandit attack, but a closer inspection revealed it was something more. A small crater was in the middle of the road, filled with dust and ash that we believe to have once been people. It is highly likely they were used as sacrifices for some obscure ritual.
Investigating the area around this site led us to an old fort that had been abandoned after the conclusion of the Great War some 400 years ago. The place was in ruins and looked to have been used as a base by a group of bandits. However, the keep’s central tower appeared to have been knocked down only recently and excavating the dungeon underneath it revealed a malnourished and badly injured human prisoner. He was barely alive and highly delirious, likely gone mad from the living hell he had been put through, but his interrogation still revealed some useful information before he was executed for his crimes.
This man had been a part of a small-time group of bandits that called themselves ‘The Redcaps.’ He admitted it was their group that initiated an ambush upon a merchant convoy on the day of the Calamity. They had engaged the adventurers protecting the convoy in battle and seemed to have the upper hand, but were interrupted by the appearance of a tall, green-haired, red-skinned, four-armed demon. It is my belief that this demon is the same one reported by the Hero. As for the final fate of those adventurers, it is clear they, along with the rest of the bandits, had been turned to dust.
The Spymaster then went on to describe what he believed to be the sequence of events that led up to that point. To sum it up, the bandits and adventurers at that ambush site were sacrificed in order to create a weapon of mass destruction, likely the same one used in the Calamity of Tol-Saroth. That mysterious red crystal was then escorted by its creator and a certain four-armed demon through the main gate of Monotal, where they encountered heavy resistance in the form of the Hero of the Hammer, Bernard Samson, and his four companions.
Emperor Joseph had met Bernard personally and had a favorable impression of the valiant adventurer. How could he not? The mantle of Hero could only be granted by the Gods, and that valiant young man had been chosen as the champion of the Goddess Teresa herself. He had been given the noble task of protecting the weak and bringing monsters, evildoers and criminals alike to justice. His ultimate task had been to become strong enough to lead an expedition into the Blighted Lands to the far north and destroy the terrible being that called itself ‘The Boneshaper.’ It was a Quest that would no doubt go down in legend.
And yet that ended abruptly thanks to the Calamity. Bernard was caught up in it and lost his life. He was able to resurrect at the Temple of Teresa, here in the capital, by the grace of the Goddess. Truly a miracle only a Hero could pull off. However, Teresa’s divine protection did not extend to his companions, who were now forever gone. In fact, Joseph suspected the Hero himself had never truly come back either.
The vibran
t, energetic person the Emperor once knew was gone. In his place was someone who had lost everything near and dear to him, a hollow, wretched man with eyes like a dead fish and no purpose in life. The monotone voice he used to describe the events of two weeks ago betrayed he truly wished he had died along with his childhood friends, and had reportedly tried to commit suicide at least twice since then. Humanity had lost a Hero that day, and from his testimony it was crystal clear who was at fault.
“Fucking twigs,” cursed Emperor Einhart, his young heart seething with rage. “This is all their doing!”
The prime suspect in this whole incident was an elven Witch, one who sacrificed dozens, possibly hundreds of people to create that horrible weapon. She had made her intentions crystal clear to everyone around them when Bernard had cornered her and was just about to subdue her. The crazy bitch then set herself on fire, cackling madly about how ‘The Elven Dominion shall rise again!’ while she burned alive.
“Those insufferable, inferior fucking terrorists! They’ll pay. They’ll all pay! Them and all their fucking kind!”
Of course he knew blaming this calamity on the entire elven race was ludicrous. Attributing the acts of an individual to an entire people was something only a madman would do. Granted, Joseph was mad, but it was more of the ‘I want to break something’ type of mad, rather than the ‘I’m going to make my horse a Baron’ mad. He never liked those elves. Even while his father was alive, he kept hearing of their so called ‘freedom fighters.’ It was always his suspicion that those fucking twigs were somehow responsible for his father’s untimely demise. Truthfully, he had wanted to invade their pitiful country and wipe out their entire race ever since he became Emperor, but his advisors and nobles were firmly against such action.
“Well. We’ll see how those geezers feel about our ‘neighbors’ when they find out exactly how much we lost thanks to them.”
Things had always been uneasy between the human-dominated Lodrak Empire and the Ishigar Republic that lay on its northern border. It was only natural considering the latter was the last remnant of the ancient Elven Dominion, which had fallen apart as a direct result of the Empire’s efforts. To say these two nations and their people had bad blood between them would be an understatement, and there was always some nasty incident or another to deal with.
But this unforgivable act of terrorism went beyond petty territorial or trade disputes. The elf-spawned Calamity had caused the death of over 8,000 men, women and children. It left behind a stretch of poisonous, barren wasteland that was nothing more than a festering wound in the heart of the Empire. It also left humanity’s first Hero in over fifty years as a shell of his former self, a man who openly wished he was allowed to die with his loved ones.
The aftershocks of this catastrophic event would probably be felt for years, decades even, and there was only one way the young emperor could interpret it.
“This is a declaration of war, isn’t it?”
Afterword
Hello, dear reader! I’m glad to see you’ve made it to the end of the book! Unless you skipped to the end, in which case - shame on you. Either way, I do hope you enjoyed it. The whole thing started off as an in-joke that was made in somewhat poor taste and was written almost entirely off the cuff. The original idea I had for the protagonist was that of a piece of shit warlock with no morals going on realm-hopping adventures in search of power. I eventually settled on a professional chest impersonator after coming across the following D&D anecdote:
The barkeep asked why we carried weapons into his bar. I said ‘Mimics.’ The party laughed. The barkeep laughed. The table laughed. We killed the table. Good times.
The setting and progression system borrows a lot of inspiration from various role-playing games, both of the tabletop and video variety, as well as some webcomics and a pinch of anime. And by ‘borrows a lot of inspiration’ I mean to say ‘ripped off and stitched together like some kind of Frankenstein’s monster of a book.’ However, I have confidence that the seams were not noticeable. Taking various elements from different sources and cramming them together in a way that works and makes logical sense is a skillset I’ve developed as a programmer. My day job is also why I’m very particular about the wording when it comes to the various game elements.
Ambiguity regarding game mechanics is something you do not want in your RPG, after all.
The main character’s personality is something I like to think of as ‘a toddler with a gun.’ That’s why its actions seem to go from oddly adorable one second to incredibly horrific in the next. It is also what lets me keep readers like you guessing as to what it would do next. And in case you were wondering, the creature most definitely does not become ‘humanized’ later on in the story. Its goals and motivations vary somewhat, but the pursuit of tasty and/or shiny things remains a constant. There is no ‘redemption’ to be found here. Just an incorrigible selfish bastard of a box that follows its own agenda and tramples over anything or anyone that gets in its way.
That’s not to say it doesn’t have a positive impact here and there, though. You’d be surprised at how tasty bandits can be. Boxxy also has no qualms with performing a public service or two if it pays well. But how does a murderous chest with an appetite for man-flesh blend into a civilized society? Not very well, as you might imagine! However, it does give it its best shot, which you can be witness to if you read Volume 2 of the series, which is coming to Kindle Soon™.
In closing, I think I did pretty good for my first published book, though it’s by no means my first work of fiction. That being the case, I’d really appreciate it if you rated it and left a review on Amazon. Stuff like that really helps new authors like myself gain traction, and would encourage me to publish more of the series.
If you enjoyed this book, please be sure to check out Life Reset by Shemer Kuznits. What it lacks for in the large chests department it makes up for in monster-kingdom building, and it even has a hot goblin babe!
Well, that’s all I had to say. I wish you many shiny days and tasty experiences in the future, dear reader. And please, do be wary of carelessly approaching large chests.
Toodles!