by Hugo Huesca
Kes’ words lingered for a long time while the three of them kept walking, only Ed’s drones making any sound at all in the ensuing silence.
Ed had no idea what his gloomy companions were thinking, but he was barely aware of them. He was only aware that there were ways to make a deal with the devil, and lose, without the devil ever telling you a lie.
This is Murmur’s gambit, Ed thought. There’s no need for the mantle to transform me to evil if the entire world is not willing to give me the benefit of the doubt.
Somewhere distant, far away from the realms of humanity, Ed could sense that a Dark and cruel being, unfathomably hungry and unfathomably vast, was laughing at him.
17
Chapter Seventeen
Extended Membership
They reached the part of the forest that hid Ed’s cave not long after, and the conversation had still not resumed. Kes was focused on the unconscious Alvedhra, who had now taken to whimpering and shaking in the grip of the drones. The Ranger’s skin had turned a sickly yellow in addition to her bloating, and Ed had little doubt she was suffering a terrible fever.
We need to get her to a doctor, he thought. He now understood the terms of Kes’ pact with him. By keeping the Ranger away from his dungeon, maybe she would escape the taint of being a Dungeon Lord’s hostage—and its consequences.
Unlike Kes, who was already doomed.
Unlike himself, and Alder, and Lavy, who had been doomed from the start. He just hadn’t known it. He had boasted to Kharon how he intended to join the Light’s efforts against the Dark god as soon as he was able to.
The boatman hadn’t been concerned back then, and now Ed knew the reason.
Ed bit his lip and closed his eyes. For a moment, he felt very alone, very small in a world that wasn’t his, a world he had naively thought he could tame by an effort of will. He had believed he could outsmart a god—that he could become someone who mattered.
He trembled, feeling like he was a little kid again, like he was standing in front of his uncle’s dead body, with all the morgue’s employees looking at him with cold eyes and faces hidden by masks. He wished his parents were still alive, that he could run back to them and hide.
Then, the moment passed. He clenched his hand into a fist. He remembered the dream he had had, of Murmur’s gigantic body, how the Dark one already thought he had won.
Fuck you, asshole, Ed thought. I don’t need anyone’s support to screw you over. I can do that by myself. I can tell right from wrong, and I don’t need no Inquisitor to tell me which one is which!
Murmur had summoned him to Starevos for a reason. It was clear the reason was related to Sephar’s Bane.
Perhaps, the spiders’ fears were right. Perhaps there was a mindbrood nearby. In that case, Ed would find it, and he would destroy it before it could damage anyone. He would ruin Murmur’s plans.
The forest was cold, but Ed wasn’t shaking anymore. By the cave’s entrance, at its edge, waited the cloud of batblins that he had faced on his first day in Starevos. It seemed like yesterday had been a long while ago.
The batblin cloud looked very different than the confident bunch that Ed had first encountered. They were slightly more than a dozen, about fifteen or sixteen of them, but Ed could’ve sworn last time there had been more. He could more or less recognize some faces although they were marred by fresh scratches and superficial wounds.
Lavy and Klek faced them all from atop the hill, guarding the entrance to the cave. They didn’t look worried, but Lavy’s face was as ashen as Kes or Alder’s.
She’s also worried about the mindbrood, guessed Ed.
He reached the cloud and looked their leader in the eye. It seemed that the portly Drusb was back in command. Unk was nowhere to be seen.
“Back already?” Ed asked them, focusing on Drusb. “Last time I went easy on you all; I hope you aren’t about to test my patience further.”
The batblin cloudmaster played nervously with his fingers while the rest of the cloud took a few steps back.
“We don’t want any trouble,” Drusb said. “We got enough trouble already! No, we want to serve Dungeon Lord Edward. We wish to join you!”
“This day keeps getting better and better,” muttered Kes. “Before you open diplomatic channels with the forest vermin, have your drones leave Alvedhra here. I’ll go find her medicinal herbs—just remember your part of the deal. No harm can come to her, Edward.”
“You can trust me,” Ed said, while ordering the drones to do as asked.
Kes gave him a distrustful glance, and she went her way back into the forest, this time in Burrova’s direction.
“You’ll just let her leave?” asked Lavy, quite loudly, from her place atop the rise. “She could bring Gallio and the entire guard with her!”
“She’s a minion now,” Ed said. Besides, he believed that Kes wouldn’t do anything that could place Alvedhra at risk. For the moment, he could trust the mercenary to behave.
“What?” asked Lavy. “You were out of our sight for less than ten minutes! It’s a miracle enough that you’re alive, how did you manage to recruit Kessih of Greene while being chased by the spider Queen herself?”
“Klek—I—told you Lord Edward can do anything,” Klek said proudly, causing Lavy to roll her eyes. “You see, Drusb? Lord Edward can protect the cloud! We just killed half of Amphiris’ cluster and no one died, thanks to him! And I’ve earned so much experience, I’m very strong now!”
He was definitely overselling the truth. Ed had no idea if Klek actually felt that way about him, or the batblin was merely playing the others.
But whatever Klek was doing, Drusb ended up looking to Ed with big, desperate eyes.
“Please,” the cloudmaster said. “We are sorry for attacking you. We can be useful to you, you know? We were telling your Witch all about it, but she wouldn’t listen. We can forage for you, raid for you, we can find weapons and armor for you. And we know the forest like no one else.”
The farm equipment that the cloud was carrying with it let Ed with little doubt about what Drusb meant by “finding weapons and armor.” Still, he did need those. He had no money and only a dagger as a weapon, and his companions were similarly equipped.
On the other hand, there was something more urgent than thinking of loot.
“What changed?” Ed asked the batblin. “Yesterday, your cloud was happy to attack me, and now you’re begging to become my minions?”
Drusb recoiled in horror, raising his hands to protect his face, “Please, don’t take revenge on Drusb! We were only playing, we meant no harm!”
“Like hell you were,” said Lavy. Then, to Ed, “Want me to fry them?”
He motioned at the Witch to hold on and then tried to calm the batblin. “What has you so scared, Drusb?”
“It’s the hyena-men,” said Drusb after glancing nervously about. “There’s this cackle of hyena-men that makes camp near the forest, when winter comes. They arrived early this year, and they’re angry. They’ve been coming into Hoia, attacking my cloud for no reason. They have no mercy, and there’s a lot of them. Between the horned spiders and the kaftar, there won’t be any batblin left by winter!”
Spiders, batblins, and now kaftar, thought Ed, grimacing to himself. Low-level mobs in Ivalis Online were proving to be a lot of trouble in the real world. What else? A marauding army of gelatinous cubes?
“I see,” he told the batblin. “What else do you know about the kaftar? How numerous are they? What do they want? Who leads them?”
Drusb’s gestures became more frantic. “Drusb doesn’t know! Many? More than my cloud, and they want to kill us! They’re hunting batblins, attacking the spider clusters of the deep forest, listening to no one.”
An ugly suspicion nested in Ed’s mind. Kes had just told him about the Inquisitor’s way of dealing with Sephar’s Bane—how they had had to purge entire populations just to be sure the infestation was over.
Amphiris had said that she could smell the min
dbrood in her forest. That, by itself, was strange enough. If the mindbrood could be simply smelled, it made little sense they were so hard to detect. Just buy a sense-enhancing talent. Ed made a mental note to ask about this, later on.
The kaftar wanted to kill all the batblins and all the spiders in the forest. Both were intelligent creatures, with big enough brains for a mindbrood to feed on. Perhaps, the kaftar knew about the mind brood and were preventively trying to deal with the infection by denying it of sustenance.
It stood to reason that the entire cloud in front of him could be infected. A time bomb, ready to go off.
Ed imagined a slime-covered slug inching its way into his own ear while he slept. He shivered and shook his head.
“It seems that I have a lot do to,” he muttered. The battle with the spiders had left him exhausted, and anxious to jump into a bed. But he wouldn’t sleep well until he knew he was safe, and right now, he and his companions were very low on the food-chain of Hoia.
First things, first.
He examined the batblins, scratched his chin, and told Drusb, “Are these all the members of your cloud?”
“Eh…” The batblin’s mistrust was evident. It seemed that the Dungeon Lords’ reputation preceded them.
“No,” said Klek, instead. “The women and children don’t join our hunting clouds. They are hidden, waiting for Lord Edward’s response.”
Drusb looked at Klek like he was the worst of the traitors, but the other batblin just shrugged, and added:
“Drusb will have to trust the Dungeon Lord if you want him to trust you.”
“It’s fine,” said Ed. “I was mostly thinking aloud. See, Drusb, there’s this…sickness…that may have taken root in the forest. A very dangerous one, and I’m wary of catching it. Before I let your cloud become my minions, I must make sure you’re healthy.”
Alder, who had mostly watched the exchange with polite interest, inched near to Ed at hearing that and whispered to him, “You don’t have any scrying magic, Edward. How do you plan to do that? Open their skulls and look inside?”
“Nothing so violent, I hope,” Ed answered back. “I was thinking of Kes’ pact, and yours, by the way. Do you remember them?”
“They’re the common terms of any minionship contract. What about it?”
“Perhaps this won’t work,” Ed said, “but I don’t think there’s any risk in trying it. You lived with Dungeon Lord Kael before, haven’t you, Alder? Could you stand by me as I try something and tell me if it’s a good idea?”
The Bard nodded, and smiled tentatively. “People trying new ideas with magic always make for the best stories later on. Either they blow themselves up, or they make someone else explode.”
“I’m glad you’re having fun,” Ed said. He turned to the cloudmaster.
“Here’s my pact,” he said, activating his Evil Eye and summoning the mist that surrounded him during the pact-making process. “You’ll become my minion on the condition that you’re truly—and only—Drusb Cloudmaster, batblin, and not someone or something else either pretending or believing they are Drusb Cloudmaster, or part of him. This is not an offer that I extend to Drusb Cloudmaster, mindbrood, for that matter. As for my other conditions, listen to my orders and be loyal, as long as it’s reasonable to do so. Also, don’t be an asshole.”
At hearing his words, both Alder and Lavy cursed loudly in surprise, and the Witch made her way down the slope.
Drusb appeared confused for a moment while he ruminated on Ed’s words, perhaps looking for a trap in them. He ended up shrugging and accepted the offer, making a stipulation that sounded very close to what Lavy and Alder had asked in the first place: he accepted on the condition that Ed spoke the truth, and that he held no ill-intentions to Drusb or his cloud.
Ed held his breath, trying hard not to think about what would mean if the mist failed to create the pact. Would he have to strike the batblin down on the spot?
But in a blink, the mist had connected them. Ed let out a satisfied sigh, and Drusb smiled in triumph. The batblin turned to his cloud and announced, “Our cloud has found a Dungeon Lord! We are going to be rich, boys! Rich and powerful!”
The fifteen other batblins cheered loudly, shaking their ragged weaponry about. Ed recalled the hundreds of batblin mobs he had mowed down while playing Ivalis Online and smiled nervously.
Either rich, or very, very short-lived.
“Edward!” said Lavy when she reached him. “What the hell was that? Pact magic is supposed to be a protection layer between a Lord and his followers, not—not to be used as a divination tool!”
“It was unexpected,” agreed Alder. “But—”
“But, nothing!” she went on. “The Objectivity is not a toy! Abuse it and you’ll have bigger problems than the Dark or Light coming for you. Magic regulates itself, and it regulates itself explosively.”
Ed raised his hands, trying to get the Witch to calm down. “Wait, Lavy. First of all, isn’t the Objectivity supposed to be unbreakable? That’s its first rule, isn’t it? So, if I wasn’t supposed to be able to use the pact conditions in that way, nothing would have happened in the first place. Second, I’m not divining anything, I’m using a pact to protect myself and my minions. That’s what it is for, right? If I wasn’t supposed to make strange demands like this one, the pact would just be the same every time, with no room for nuance.”
To her credit, Lavy actually paused to think Ed’s words over. She calmed down, but not completely.
“You can’t break the rules of Objectivity, but you can bend them,” she said. “Abusing the wording of your talents and spells, things like that. It’s the first thing you’d learn not to do, had you studied magic like all spellcasters must. Bend a rule too much, and it will snap back against you, Edward. If we’re close to you when that happens, we’ll get caught in the blast.”
“You’ll have to teach me, then,” Ed said with a sharp smile, “about these things I must know about magic. But later. I’ll have to put my foot down on this. I don’t feel like I’m abusing the pact, and it is a great way to use it. Aren’t you happy? It means you probably aren’t infected with a mindbrood, either, since I made a pact with Lavy, human Witch, not with a parasite standing in as her.”
“Oh, now you really don’t want to go there,” said Alder. “Trust me, Edward, the Objectivity really doesn’t like it when you try to retroactively change the interpretation of past spells.”
Lavy nodded her agreement. The way the Witch looked at the sky, like she was waiting for a lightning bolt to smite Ed where he stood, did more to convince the young Dungeon Lord to drop this line of thinking than anything she had said.
Mental note, he thought. Wait until at least you have a couple ranks in a spellcasting skill before trying to revolutionize the way people use magic.
“Noted,” he said aloud. “In that case, we’ll have to keep an eye on each other. See if anyone starts behaving strangely. I don’t think we’re infected, but I could bet those were the last words of many actual infected.”
“You’re already strange,” Lavy said, which Ed found ironic, coming from her. “So, if you start acting like a normal, rational human being, I’ll start to worry.”
Ed flashed her a smile and returned to his most recent minion and the cloud.
“I extend the same pact to all of you,” he told the ragtag bunch of batblins. “I accept the same conditions your cloudmaster already extended, so unless you have something new to add, just say ‘I accept.’ ”
Fifteen or so calls of “I accept!” followed, and as many tendrils shot forth in the blink of an eye. When it was said and done, Ed had added an entire cloud of minions to his follower list.
“Great,” he said in satisfaction. He dusted his hands on his trousers, which were just as dirty themselves. “Now that that’s done, how about we make a real dungeon out of that cave? I feel the sudden urge to create a lair, build myself a real big stone throne, and start brooding until a bunch of heroes show up lookin
g for trouble.”
He was joking, of course, but Lavy nodded in an approving way, then said with her best formal voice, “Well spoken. That’s the proper way. I may yet make a decent Dungeon Lord out of you, Lord Wright.”
He left the bulk of his minions by the slope of the cave’s entrance and brought Lavy and Alder with him to the Seat room, followed by Klek, who didn’t feel comfortable being alone with his former cloud. Since the two humans had been Kael’s minions before, they would be more helpful than the batblins in pointing out what elements made up a good dungeon.
Besides, he had ordered the cloud to stand watch over Alvedhra, who was still delirious with fever. He hoped Kes would return soon, and that she would know what to do about the Ranger, since Ed had little knowledge about first aid and didn’t even have fresh water to offer the pair.
“We need a hideout,” said Ed while he eyed the Seat room. “Somewhere we can muster our strength, plan ahead, recover from our wounds, gather intelligence. A base of operations is what I have in mind. What do you think?”
“You need to build epic fortresses, brimming with secrets and treasure,” said Alder. “That will make people talk about you, go mad with curiosity, and your fame will grow. You’ll attract more powerful followers that way, as well as the attention of gods and spirits. Songs will be written about you, and you’ll shape the face of history.”
“Build a laboratory,” said Lavy, “where spellcasters can study the secrets of Objectivity and share them with you. You’ll become a powerful Lord this way, and people will fear you and respect you, and pay tribute to you.”
“I would like a hiding spot where Klek—I—don’t have to fear getting eaten by monsters every night. Somewhere safe, filled with traps, and perhaps food. Maybe it can be warm,” Klek said, his eyes glinting with hope.