Archeologist Warlord: A Dungeon Core Epic

by E. M. Hardy

  Martin nodded and hummed in agreement. “I guess this is why you had such a violent reaction when you first learned about what I could do, huh?”

  Uhi nodded before Martin even finished talking. “Exactly. You mentioned before that in your previous life, back in your home… what was it called again?”

  “Home? Ah, yes—Earth.”

  She shook her head. “What kind of people call their world ‘dirt?’”

  Martin chuckled. “Guess people called it as they saw it—a gigantic ball of dirt. The name pretty much stuck.”

  Uhi chuckled as well before she remembered what she was supposed to be asking. “Right, you mentioned that you could talk to the dead back in your world?”

  “Not much talk, as listen to. They were only ever angry, but they couldn’t do anything more than rage. I learned to ignore them for the most part early on, back when I was a child. One visit to the psychiatrist—a healer of the mind—and I learned pretty quickly to pretend I can’t hear those voices. Those happy pills she gave me made me feel less happy and more like a walking, floating bag of jelly.”

  Both Uhi and Prince Suhaib nodded, not bothering to point out the words that didn’t quite make sense to them. Martin tended to insert a lot of words they didn’t comprehend when he was talking about his home, so they just let them slide without much fuss. They were, after all, more interested in learning about the shayateen as Martin experienced them.

  “Now the voices, they generally ranted and raved about the injustices done to them. Dozens of them talk at a time, so it took a lot of concentration on my part to ignore them. Once in a while though, the voices drop hints that are actually useful. Where they died, how they died, who killed them—stuff I can note down. It was hard enough letting their words wash over me, but it was much harder singling out the voices that do matter.”

  The walker looked to the side, stroking its chin while it did so. “Huh. Maybe that’s why it eventually got easy for me to split my attention with all these walkers.”

  Uhi saw her chance to butt in, and took it. “Do you hear the shayateen now?”

  “Thankfully, no. I only hear them start up again when I suck—ah, when I absorb souls. I don’t hear them at any other time.”

  “Very strange,” Uhi said as she crossed her arms in thought. “You say that you’ve been hearing the shayateen whispering to you for a long time now. If that were the case, then you should surely have encountered the risen dead and possessed vessels back in your home world?”

  “And that’s the thing: jinn, the sahar that Suhaib and other sorcerers tap into, the Chi of the Ren, these constructs I control—we never encountered anything of the like. Even the machines that the builders made were far more advanced than what my own people had… err, have.”

  Uhi stared at the walker for a few more moments, then spoke up. “So your people cannot see souls?”

  Martin hesitated for a second before answering. “I’m not entirely sure. I never saw them back when I was alive—only heard them talk. I’ve heard of others who share the same abilities, but I never met any of them. We do, however, have legends and religions that revolve around an immortal soul, but we’ve never actually seen anything of the like. Even now, I can only see souls when they’ve been separated from their original bodies.”

  “The same goes for us, the jinn,” Uhi said. “We can only see the souls of humans when they expire. As for the shayateen, we can only see them when they have already possessed a vessel. Malice roils from them, a dark miasma that threatens to engulf all things living. As for you…” She stared at Martin’s walker though, shaking her head very so slightly in confusion. “Your aura is as it was when I first saw you possessing one of those floating spheres of yours: a muted, gray mist that clings to all your constructs. This was why I was thoroughly alarmed when you admitted to manipulating the shayateen. I thought you were a new kind of shayateen, one that knows how to hide its rage underneath a façade of friendliness.”

  “Correction,” Martin interjected. “I’m not manipulating any shayateen. I just absorb sou—ah, do my thing—and they just come in to possess the corpses like vultures flying over dead bodies.”

  Uhi just looked blankly at Martin. Suhaib did the same. They stared his walker down until Martin backed up and swore silently. “Okay, okay. So I know the shayateen come in after I do what I do. Point taken.”

  “As I was saying,” Uhi continued, “those that try to manipulate the shayateen find themselves killed or possessed by the same entities they wished to control. It is extremely unusual for the shayateen to just ignore you like this, much less allow them to be used in such a manner.”

  The walker hung its head low in thought before whispering in a quiet, subdued tone. “So you can see no kind of taint on my soul? No visible sign that I’ve been corrupted in one way or another?”

  Uhi narrowed her eyes as she looked closer at Martin. “No… not that I can see. I still see the same gray aura as before. You’re still you, whatever you are.”

  Martin’s walker nodded, then grunted. “Great. Just… great.”

  “What is this really about, Martin?” Suhaib interrupted. “Dancing around like this does not become you. Speak up your mind, friend, that we may help you however we can.”

  The walker looked carefully at Suhaib, then to Uhi, then back to Suhaib—lingering a moment before making up his mind, deciding to once again trust Suhaib. “It was the ruins deep in the Bashri, the ones you pointed out. They housed a Custodian, an entity left by the Builders to oversee their hidden facilities. It ignored me at first, but then went hostile the moment I touched one of its constructs.”

  “Yes, survivors tell us that this happens,” interjected Suhaib. “Swarms of beetle-like things boil out from the ruins once they touch the wrong thing. It’s why people tend to avoid the ruins in the first place. But talks of this ‘Custodian?’ That is new.”

  “Yes, well, this Custodian wouldn’t even try to listen to any of my overtures for peace. It said it ‘saw’ the taint on me, of how I had absorbed human souls, and it thought I was one of the invaders.” The shoulders of the walker drooped as he said that.

  “But that’s not the way things are, are they?” Suhaib said, trying to coax out an answer from Martin.

  The walker turned its blank face toward Suhaib, its shoulders perking up slightly. “What do you mean?”

  Suhaib turned around conspiratorially before smiling an uncharacteristically gentle smile. “These invaders of yours, they are like the cartels. They only care about furthering their own powers, about making themselves stronger. They would use anything, do anything, to achieve that goal—even destroying time-honored pacts with the jinn by enslaving their bonded partners. You… you’re not like them. You put yourself in harm’s way to help those in need. After all, I have not forgotten how we first stumbled upon one another.”

  That finally got through to Martin, as Suhaib saw the walker proudly straighten up.

  It was Suhaib’s turn to sigh and shake his head though. “Bah. Now if only the cartels would turn their pet armies away from our lands.”

  “Ah, about that…” Martin injected. “I think you should be good for the time being.”

  Both Uhi and Suhaib turned to the walker with puzzled looks on their faces, then to one another, and then back to the walker.

  “What are you talking about?”

  The walker leaned once on the rails of the balcony and looked up at the moon that was high on the night sky.

  “I managed to talk the cartels out of invading Ma’an… finished up our negotiations just now.”

  Chapter 28

  A few hours ago,

  A few hundred miles away from al-Taheri, the capital of the Ma’an Emirate

  Martin watched with curiosity as a dozen riders moved at a sedate pace with their desert-hardened horses. Behind them trotted four other riders, each bearing a colorful banner of his own. If he remembered correctly, those riders
were representatives from the De’em, Sulba, Ramal, and Far’eh—the four emirates that had formed a coalition targeting the Ma’an Emirate.

  Oh, and they also rode ahead of an army about 40,000-strong.

  The vast majority of that army was comprised of infantry, 20,000-strong marching steadily toward al-Taheri. 5,000 other men walked behind them, though these archers carried bows instead of pikes and swords. 2,000 horsemen trotted alongside the foot soldiers, followed by a train of squires leading mules loaded with heavy armor, lances, and bows. These were the heavy cavalry, whose job was to ride down enemy formations with their armored and powerfully-bred warhorses. Another 2,000 horsemen followed them, though these men were dressed in the familiar disk armor and light lances that Martin recognized as belonging to the akinji, and were playing the role of light cavalry supporting the main army. And then there were 1,000 men, who guided wagons that appeared to be full of logs and wooden machines. These were probably meant for heavy siege weapons that were to be constructed on-site, and there was only one bastion in the vicinity that would warrant such heavy weapons.

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, Martin counted nearly 10,000 jinn floating alongside their bonded partners. Most of them brandished weapons: swords, shields, spears, bows, daggers. However, quite a few of them bore no weapons and wore the same type of shimmering dress that Uhi wore. These numbered a few hundred, but he realized how dangerous these apparent magic casters would be. These jinn floated alongside men and women wearing richer, more elaborate attire than the rugged company of the soldiers in the company. These were probably sahirs—practitioners of Bashri magic that could unleash all sorts of spells that Martin still knew very little about. If they were anything like Suhaib with his control of earth and stone, they would be a major pain in the neck to deal with.

  At least they were not like the people of Ma’an, who had such a close relationship with the jinn that every man, woman, and child had their own boded partner. That already-imposing army would look downright horrifying if every soldier had his or her own jinn to call upon.

  Martin had been expecting such a force to march upon the capital of the Ma’an Emirate for some time now. This was why he had 4,000 walkers formed up on the sands just outside Ma’an territory. All of them were armed with pikes and swords, as well as having a healthy supply of ceramic javelins on hand. That was only half his army, though. He had another 4,000 more buried in front of the massed walkers, ready to spring out and ambush the attacking forces from behind. His plan was to pull in as many of the enemy as he could to attack his walkers, and then bring the rest of the walkers into play—creating chaos by striking from behind. Martin had far more forces available to him, but he would not repeat the mistake of leaving his pyramids unguarded. He kept a healthy reserve of 5,000 walkers in the Qleb Sierra Pyramid, as well as another 4,000 walkers near the mountains that bordered the edge of Ren territory.

  He also had 2,000 cow-boxes that were eager to butt heads yet annoyed that they were just standing around doing nothing. However, the invading army was beyond the effective range of the cow-boxes; they could only operate a dozen miles from an active obelisk, while the walkers and eyeballs could function more than 150 miles away from one. The dolls were slowly but steadily setting up obelisks toward the intended invasion route, but they weren’t going to make it in time for the cow-boxes to intercept the army. These delays were made worse due to teams of akinji harassing them at multiple obelisk sites, slowing down construction efforts. The cow-boxes were doing a good job of chasing them away, but there were simply too many raiders and too few constructs to cover all the obelisks. And even then, a few teams of akinji would strike obelisks further in the rear—meaning that the dolls had to be pulled back to plug holes in the web of obelisks that Martin had set up.

  Despite all these measures though, Martin did not want a repeat of Leizhu Swamp. No, he was not worried about the actual fighting. It was the ‘high’ he got from absorbing souls that really unnerved him. This many men and women, each housing a succulent soul for him to pick apart when he pierced their bags of fleshy meat? Martin wasn’t sure if he could control himself a second time around, not so soon after denying himself the feast that could have been back in the swamp.

  He did not want to have to fight the very people he wanted to protect. This was why it was a good sign that these people were sending representatives to meet with him, for it meant they were willing to negotiate. Maybe things would end up for the best this time around.

  ***

  Or maybe they wouldn’t.

  “So… this thing is what the supposedly fearless akinji were pissing their pants about? Doesn’t look like much, to be honest.”

  “It has the potential to look good in my gardens, among the ferns and cacti, though I think I need to cut its head off first. Need to find a good pose to strike, too.”

  “Hah! I’d rather have it and its kind ground down to dust and carted off to the brickmakers. They look like they’ll make for passable bricks when fired in a kiln.”

  “Watch out you don’t slip and hit your empty head on that brick, Haafil.”

  The heavy-built man wearing thick chains of gold and silver on top of his blood-red kaftan shot an angry glare at the woman, who in turn looked over her jeweled nails with all the innocence of a snake hiding in the grass. “Worry not, my dear Lubna,” he spat, turning his attention back to Martin’s walker. “With the quality of the clay I see, I believe the brick would crumble before I could even feel the blow. Your head, on the other hand, would probably pop like an overripe grape if you so much as tapped it with your soft, feeble body. Or maybe one of your little baby boys would slip and pop his head on the bricks. A little accident on the side, maybe because they’re playing too much, hmm?”

  Martin used every trick he knew to keep himself from scuttling the negotiations before they even began. The emirs had done nothing so far except sneer, insult, goad, and slur him with as much contempt and scorn as they could muster. The only thing worse was that these four ‘allied’ emirs spent just as much time sniping at one another as berating him.

  Just as the muscle-headed emir was about to say something else, the veiled advisor standing behind him coughed discreetly, covering his mouth with a fist while doing so. The trousers, chemise, and outer robe were thick and long, covering the rest of his bodily features. The emir looked up, scowled, and shook his head. “Fine, fine. I’ll play nice, you insipid cartel dogs.” The man huffed out the latter part of that sentence, mumbling under his breath.

  Judging from what he saw, these were the emirs that the cartels got their hooks into. Those were the same cartels pulling the strings to crush Ma’an—the last symbol of true resistance against their new order. Or at least that was the story that Suhaib and his father Emir Rifaah were selling to him.

  Martin couldn’t help it; he groaned through the walker and didn’t bother to hide it. “Does this mean we can finally start talking about something more constructive other than this walker’s apparent inferiority or its use as a decorative item?”

  All the emirs ceased their bickering and stiffened at the man’s words, along with the guards protecting them. The emirs turned to the walker as one, their eyes widening for just a split second before they schooled their expressions back to haughty and snobby. The advisors standing behind the emirs did the same, their lips pressed together into half-frowns.

  “Sorry if I spoke out of turn. It’s just that I’m not used to these kinds of meetings where everyone craps all over each other. I’m also not a really good diplomat, so there’s that. Right! So, uh, why don’t we—”

  “HAH!” bellowed the big emir, his female counterpart wincing as she clicked her tongue in annoyance. “The clay man speaks as if he were equal to one of us, the Great Emirs. Are we testing your patience? Are we hurting your feelings? Are we taking too much of your valuable time as we deign to grace you with our presence?”

  Martin looked at the preening, chest-thumping
male in front of him and just cocked his head to the side. He knew he should have been more patient with a leader like this, that he should slow down and take a more measured approach. He wasn’t feeling it though, especially after all the setbacks that had made his last few weeks so miserable.

  “Okay. That’s about enough. The four guys standing behind the emirs… you’re from the cartels, right? Why did you call me out?” The ‘advisors’ ignored Martin, who in turn tuned out the sputtering threats of the emirs and emiras. “You’ve got a big army that outnumbers my forces more than fifteen-to-one, and I very much doubt that you brought me out here for the emirs to simply engage in simple smack talk. I mean, you could just roll over me if you wanted to, so what purpose does all this serve?” Martin exaggerated the numerical advantage of the cartel army, failing to mention the walkers hidden under the sands as well as the other walkers already running along the road to Ma’an.

  They didn’t budge. The advisors were immutable as stone, silently watching and judging Martin from behind their veils.

  “Fifteen to one? Aha! We must thank you for this valuable piece of information, clay man! Perhaps you should just get out of our way now, save us the trouble of dusting your fellow toys, yes?”

  Martin’s walker shifted its gaze away from the advisors and turned to the gloating emir, the muscle-headed one. “Sorry, what’s your name again?”

  The man bristled—literally. The hairs on his beard puffed out while his face turned bright red. “You DARE! You… you…!”

  “I apologize for my feeble-headed compatriot,” giggled the other emira as she cut in. “He’s Haafil Ramal, the Emir of Ramal, and he has a tendency to forget his name every now and then.” The other two emirs laughed with a cutting meanness while the big man fumed in his seat. “You really ought to listen our heralds when they announce our presence, you know. It’s rather unhealthy for most to forget the names of people who hold their lives in the palms of their hands.”