by Elliot Burns
The silver transformed. A medley of colors bled into it; greens, deep browns, blues, and reds. They started to separate and move to various parts of the screen as though they were being guided there by a paintbrush. Second by second, glob by glob, they formed recognizable shapes. He saw mountains in the distance, with clouds hovering not far overhead. There were little houses dotted around, with crop fields a few yards away from them. Tiny little villagers walked to and fro between the houses and fields. South of them was the biggest structure of all; Castle Halberd.
He was looking at a bird’s eye view of his land. Whatever direction he stared at, the map swiveled to match. He found he could zoom in on certain sections just by willing it to happen. It seemed that he could manipulate the screen using only his mind. Experimenting with it, he zoomed in on a peasant house and saw a woman feeding scraps to a small dog. On the right of the screen was a transparent menu overlay that was tinted blue. Several options were listed:
Kingdom Building Menu:
-Structures
-People
-Military
-Stats
“This is where I build things, right?” he asked, without taking his eyes off the screen.
He heard footsteps, and a few seconds later he sensed that Elena was near him again. “Correct. Take your time, Lord. There is a lot to take in.”
“Okay, lemme try something.”
He wanted to build something and see how this worked, but a text box told him that he only had 179 flek to spend. He couldn’t afford to waste any, so if he was going to build something, then it needed to be useful. He guessed this was like an empire-building game. He’d played plenty of them, so as long as he got the hang of the controls he’d be fine.
He studied the map for a few seconds, allowing the view to swoop and swerve wherever his gaze went. He zoomed north of the houses, where he saw two young boys dressed in beige tunics and breeches, which were common amongst peasants in RPGs. The boys looked no more than eight years old. They each held a bucket in their hands, and the buckets were attached to leather straps that went around their shoulders.
It looked to him like the boys were fetching water from somewhere quite far away from the village. That didn’t seem to be efficient, so he knew what he needed to build first.
“Okay, got it,” he said. “Let’s see if this works.”
He selected the ‘Structure’ menu option. This time, the transparent menu filled his screen. It was like a catalogue. Dozens of little squares showed everything he could build, with descriptions and flek costs for each one. At the bottom of his screen were the words ‘Page 1/248’. That meant there was a hell of a lot of things he could make.
Unfortunately, his current flek count meant that a lot of the listings were colored gray, meaning that he couldn’t purchase them. He scrolled through some of the pages out of curiosity, and he realized that flek wasn’t the only thing he lacked. Building some structures depended on already having others; for example, it was impossible to create an officer academy without having a barracks.
It was better to go back to basics. He scrolled back to page one. Remembering the two boys who had obviously walked miles to a river to fill their buckets, Jack found something that could help.
Water Well – Cost: 20 flek
[Position wells to cut down on travel times to get water.]
[Effects: +1 population morale point]
He selected the well, clicked ‘Y’ to confirm his purchase and then dragged it onto the main map. Two blue squares swept across the map wherever he looked, to indicate where the well would go. He zoomed into the concentration of peasant houses and placed the well roughly in the centre of them all.
Water Well constructed
[20 flek deducted]
- +1 Population morale
- 20 flek lost
“Well done, Lord,” said Elena. “People will like actions like this. Just be advised; although something simple like a well can be crafted instantly, complicated structures take more time.”
“Okay. Just one last thing.” He said. He looked at the map. The well was constructed now. It was a gray cobblestone structure, with a bucket attached to a pully in the middle. The peasant woman nearby, seeing the well appear miraculously before her eyes, stopped feeding her dog and walked toward it. Over in the distance, one of the boys carrying water put his hand to his forehead. The shoulder straps held his bucket in place. He saw the newly-created well, looked behind him at the distance he’d already walked, and then kicked the ground. Can’t please everyone, thought Jack.
He cycled back to the menu, and this time he selected the ‘People’ screen. At the top of this was the current population count of his land.
Population – 25
Farmers – 17
Unoccupied - 8
Below this was another catalogue of sorts, but this one listed jobs that he could assign to the people in his land. If he wished, he could allocate some of the farmers to different roles, as well as setting the unoccupied peasants to work.
As he started to look at the different options, he heard a buzzing sound. It was faint at first, but as it became louder, a black mist began to gather on the screen. It spread out like smoke, billowing over the catalogue and clouding his vision. A sharp pain jabbed his temple as though someone had pricked him with a pin. He winced, and then the pain was gone. The fog lifted, and his screen was clear again.
“Are you okay?” said Elena.
“I’m fine, it just-”
“Jack?” said Mav.
He refocused. “I’m okay. I’m just looking at the people screen.”
“There are various kinds of “people” you can create, Lord,” said Elena. “Though, some of the more advanced ones, officers for instance, require a barracks. “
As with the structures, much of the ‘People’ menu was grayed out. He was looking for a militant role of some sort, since his land sorely lacked defenses. As Elena had said, creating officers wasn’t possible until he had a barracks, and he didn’t have anywhere near enough flek for that. On the first page of the catalogue, he saw something that might work.
Watchman
[Watchmen patrol your lands and maintain order. They can rally peasants in times of crisis and bestow a +1 attack and defence bonus on friendly units in their vicinity.]
Cost: 1 unassigned person, 25 flek
Attack rating: 4
Jack spent some flek and bought a watchman.
Watchman created!
[25 flek deducted]
Population: 25
Farmers: 17
Watchmen: 1
Unoccupied: 7
He closed the menu and looked at the liquid map, marveling at the newly-created watchman who now walked down a dirt path with a club in his hand. He set off on his patrol, casting his gaze from side to side as if he expected trouble at every turn. Jack smiled. His land had its first protector, and the roads were a little bit safer.
He began to see a strategy unroll in his mind. He pictured towering walls at the borders of his lands, with archers patrolling every twenty meters. He saw infantry marching in file, swords swinging from sheaths, and with officers behind them bellowing instructions. With enough time, and flek, he could build an army.
“Well, Lord? Do you understand now?” asked Elena.
He tried to nod, but his head was held in place. “I do. I think I’m going to enjoy this.”
He meant it, too. There was something addictive about the building process. It was like solving a puzzle, in a way. He had a limited amount of flek, and he needed to balance his resources in order to build his kingdom.
“I can’t wait to earn more flek and build more stuff.”
No sooner had he said the words, then the buzzing sound returned. It was like someone had plucked a guitar string next to his ear and then let it ring. The black mist spread over his screen again as if it was smoke from a fire he couldn’t see. More and more of it seeped across his vision until everything was black. He h
eard banging sounds, one after another, like fists trying to break down a door. A stinging pain stabbed him again. This time, it was so sharp that he cried out. It was joined by another stab, sudden and painful as if from a phantom hornet. Then, he heard a voice.
He heard the slow, whispered words of a foreign tongue. They seemed far away, but they got closer and closer until they snaked their way into his ears. The words circled around inside his mind in a spiral of echoes until they were all he could hear.
“Someone’s trying to get into my head!” he said.
“Get him out of the chair,” said Elena, urgently. “Now.”
He heard movement, but it was drowned out by the uttering of a strange language inside his brain. The banging went on, an unrelenting clatter, one after another. More black mist gathered. Jack started to feel like it was actually pouring into his mouth and down his throat. He heard someone grunting in front of him. “He’s bloody heavy,” said Mav.
He felt himself being lifted off the chair. When his vision cleared and the throbbing in his head subsided, he saw that he was on the floor, with Mav leaning over him. Mav offered him his hand, but Jack got himself to his feet without help.
“What the hell was that?” he asked.
Elena put her hand on his shoulder in what he supposed was meant to be a reassuring gesture, but she was pinching him tightly. Personal contact was obviously not her forte. “You need to build up to using the chair for longer periods,” she said. “Your mind isn’t accustomed to it.”
“It felt like someone was in my head, Elena.”
A worried look crept on the tacher’s face. It was the first time since getting here that he’d seen anything but confidence in her features, and it made him concerned. “Tell me what’s going on,” he said.
Even Mav was at a loss for words now. They both waited for Elena to speak. “You aren’t the only one with a chair like this,” she said, finally. “But I had hoped this wouldn’t happen on your first brief sitting. We will need to prepare your mind.”
“Was it…Lord Veik?”
“Maybe. You aren’t the only one to possess such a chair. It could have been him. Some have used Emperium chairs much longer than you, and they have learned to sense the presence of people who are like them.”
He didn’t know what to think. He looked at Elena and Mav. He couldn’t help but think that the tacher was holding things back from him. As for Mav, well he was a self-confessed thief. By all rights he should have gotten far away from them both, but what choice did he have? Not only was he in a strange land, but it turned out that he had a mortal enemy. Until he had better options, he was just going to have to trust them.
“Listen, thanks for the help. Elena, I’m glad to get any help you can offer. And Mav, I’d appreciate it if you stuck around for now, too.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” said Elena.
Jack noticed that she had a book in her hand. “You managed to find one, then?” he asked.
She nodded. “It’s an adventure book. The Builder and the Princess.”
“Sounds right,” said Mav. “Jack’s the Builder. Does that mean that I’m the princess? I look good in a dress.”
Jack laughed. He was starting to feel better about things. As well as that, he felt overwhelmingly tired. Tired, but better all the same. There was still a hell of a lot to do though.
Chapter Eight
He didn’t know if time passed differently in Royaume, but the next two days flew by. He spent them getting to know his castle, and he found that although the place seemed lonely, there were glimpses of uncle Alfie everywhere. Metal tankards sat on tables collecting dust, and books lay abandoned on shelves, some with pages folded down to mark Alfie’s progress. He spent hours looking through every nook in the labyrinthine hallways, finding a new room at each turn, a new passageway every few feet. On and on it seemed to go, vast and endless, so much that after hours of exploration he began to feel like the castle was spinning fresh halls to meet his feet and that there was no logic to the room placement, to the structure, to the very castle itself.
On the ground floor, all the corridors and passages looped back to the inner antechamber near the drawbridge. He assumed this was where people once gathered. The upper floor, accessed through a choice of three spiral staircases with footfall-beaten stones, held the bedrooms. There were so many that if he chose to, he could have furnished over fifty rooms with beds. He began to think he should forget all this lord business and open a hotel.
On the second floor was what he had dubbed the ‘command wing.’ This wing had a room full of crystal memories like the one Mav had given him (that he still hadn’t watched, he suddenly remembered), the kingdom building room, and a meeting room. Once he’d explored the castle, he decided that it was time to get out and meet his people and start being a lord, whatever that entailed.
It was a chilly morning on the third day of his stay in Royaume when he made something resembling a plan. He and Elena were in an open courtyard in the centre of the castle. The castle walls surrounded them on each side. Soon, Mav joined them.
“Morning Mav,” said Jack. “How are you doing today?”
“Oh, you know. I woke up staring into the dark chasm of eternity, wondering if there’s anything but an all-encompassing vacuum of light and life waiting at the end of it all. But anyway, what’s for breakfast?”
“We’ve already eaten. I take it that this is the stables?” he said.
Mav looked at him as if he was stupid. “Look around, dung-for-brains. What do you think?” he said.
“Fair point, but rudely made.”
It was a curious place to put a stable, but here they were. There were eight horse stalls, with four occupied and the others empty. In two of them, the horses were lounging on beds of hay. In the other two, the beasts poked their heads out of the door. One chewed hay and watched him.
In honor of Jack’s plan for the day, Elena had dressed in cream gamashes that were so tight that they looked like they would snap if she bent her knees. She wore black boots that reached to her thighs, and a tight-fitting shirt with a looser surcoat on top. She looked like the epitome of a horse rider. Mav, on the over hand, wore his over-sized matted coat and a grey shirt. For him, it was an all-purpose outfit. Either that, or he didn’t have much of a wardrobe. He’d at least tucked his trousers into his black boots.
Mav looked around and took a deep breath. “Ah, the fresh smell of hay and horse crap. Can’t beat it.”
“It grows on you, after a while,” said Elena. “When I first came here I hated feeding the beasts, but it came to be my favorite chore.”
“If it’s the smell of horse shit over petrol fumes, I know what I’d choose,” said Jack.
“Is your delicate rump used to a saddle?” asked Mav. “Or am I going to have to teach you? I’m sure there are a few training ponies we could find. You know, the kind they teach infants to ride on.”
Ignoring Mav’s sarcasm, Jack walked over to one of the stables. The chestnut-colored horse shuffled back at his approach, but it calmed down once Jack stroked its mane. He opened the gate, took the horse by its reins and led it out onto the courtyard.
He picked up a saddle from a pile Elena had brought out. He tested its wither clearance by putting his fingers between the saddle and the horse. Satisfied that it, fit he secured it and then climbed onto the horse in an effortless motion. He made it trot around the stables. The horse seemed to relish its exercise, and Jack enjoyed Mav’s astonished stare.
Mav clapped. “Fair enough,” he said, and then laughed.
“This isn’t your first time riding, is it?” said Elena.
“I used to go riding when I was a kid,” said Jack. “One of our neighbors had a field just outside of town. When Mum had one of her…episodes…Mrs. Yates would take me to the field with her daughter and saddle me up. Well, put a saddle on the horse and let me ride it, I mean. That came out wrong. I think she was trying to take my mind off things. I’m not an ex
pert, but I can get on a saddle without falling on my ass.”
“You’re more competent than me,” said Elena. “Still, are you sure about riding out today?”
Jack led the horse in a circular trot, keeping his eyes fixed on Elena and Mav. “I need to see the people who live around here,” he said. “If I’m really the lord around here, then they need to know it.”
Elena scratched her chin. “It might be a good idea to wait a while before you meet the peasants.”
“You sound like you’re trying to put me off. Come on, Elena, spit it out. If you’ve got bad news then say it, I’m not gonna cry.”
“It’s just that peasants don’t like having a lord around.”
“In other words,” said Mav, “they’d rather kiss a goblin’s balls than meet you.”