by Akella, G.
Hell, what did I have to lose?! For a woman like that, I was more than prepared to bash some heads in! What was another quest in an already overflowing quest log? History was filled with women that men deemed worth dying for—I didn't know about any of them, but this one... Somehow even death seemed a fair price to pay for her love and devotion. And why shouldn't I have my very own Helen?! My memory bank immediately obliged with a timely reminder of a thousand Greek ships sailing for Troy on a courtesy call, and how that whole story ended, but I didn't care. Put on a ring, and it turns into a wedding band, I thought with amusement. Yes, this was madness—I had no illusions about it, and yet... I looked at my future wife.
"Swear it... And tell me when I must do..."
***
You've accessed the quest: Splendor of Primordial Chaos.
Quest type: hidden, unique.
Kill three soul catchers, loot from their corpses three shell fragments of Jaelitte dar Rakata's soul, and combine them on the ring, Splendor of Primordial Chaos.
Reward: experience, Jaelitte dar Rakata's soulstone.
Attention! By accepting this quest you have embarked on the path of Splendor of Primordial Chaos. From this moment and until your quest is completed, you cannot unequip the ring, Splendor of Primordial Chaos. Furthermore, until the first shell fragment of Jaelitte dar Rakata's soul is activated on the ring, the chance of it falling into inventory in the event of your death is increased to 100%.
You've accessed the quest: Splendor of Primordial Chaos I.
Quest type: hidden, unique.
Kill Belvert dar Ha'ar the soul catcher, loot from his corpse a shell fragment of Jaelitte dar Rakata's soul, and activate it on the ring, Splendor of Primordial Chaos.
Reward: experience, customization of the ring, Splendor of Primordial Chaos, unknown.
Primordial Chaos favors those who embark on its path, shielding its followers from danger. You've learned a unique passive skill: Psychic Thorns. From now on, no creature of the Realm of Arkon or any related realms will be able to take you under mental control. Any mental attack directed at you will cause the attacker to lose 30% of their health, and a repeated attempt will cause their demise.
Your reputation has increased. Sentient creatures of the Netherworld plane relate to you with respect.
As usual, my consciousness returned abruptly. Jaelitte's words were still ringing in my ears when my back began to register the rough and sun-warmed surface of the stone floor.
"He's alive! I think..."
I took several deep breaths, then sat up and surveyed my brothers- and sisters-in-arms gathered around me. Salta, Vaessa, Gorm, Elnar, Reece... Practically everybody had climbed onto the donjon's roof, the deep concern on their faces gradually turning to relief. Accepting a flask from Reece, I took a few big swigs, winced and to rose to my feet, stretching my back and limbs which had grown numb.
"The prince is alive! Everything is fine!" Elnar shouted down below, waving both arms over his head. This was followed by the jubilant roar of several hundred gullets that sundered the silence hanging over the fortress.
Hart! Everyone seemed to have been genuinely worried for my well-being... I felt moved. Even though the citadel had already been captured, and there wasn't anything else they needed me for, they still cared. I wondered if any of them had tried to get Gloom up here...
"What did I miss?" I grinned at Reece, handing him back his flask. "Are you finished with all your chores?"
"Don't joke like that again, Dark One," Vaessa frowned, clearly still shaken. "You've been lying here for five solid hours, barely breathing. We were beginning to fear you'd never wake up..."
Five hours? I looked at the sun, which had nearly vanished beyond the horizon. Strange, but my internal clock had measured a lot less time than that.
"I really am all right," I assured her. "You know that these things sometimes happen to me..."
"Sure, except each new time ups the ante!" exclaimed the magus. "At least I've never noticed a winged shadow over your body before..."
"A what shadow?"
"Over your body, dar," Reece grunted. "The guys noticed it from down below, and nearly soiled their trousers," he winked to Elnar, the latter looking a little flustered. "We rushed up to the roof, but couldn't get anywhere near you—neither we nor our new friends here," he nodded toward Saverus and Kan Shyom, both of them standing a bit ot the side with contemplative expressions. "A reddish mist covered the floor around your body, no less than fifteen feet in diameter, and she was standing knee-deep in the mist... We thought it was Setara at first, since the two of you are buddies, but while the goddess had feathers in her wings, this woman didn't... You couldn't quite make out her face—the rest of her, though..." the mage gave a dreamy sigh. "The rest of her was exactly as it should be. Sure, she was at least three times taller than any one of us, but we're all the same height lying down, am I right?!" he winked at me conspiratorially and spread his arms like a proper clown.
"Idiot!" Salta barked at him. "Why don't you—"
"What was the shadow doing?" I interrupted the tiflingess.
My mind instantly recalled the phrase once uttered by Dara about my shadow... But how was it possible?! I'd been a big fat zero back then, a nobody... Was my path truly visible to somebody up above? No, it can't be, I reassured myself. The succubus must have guessed at one of at least several possible scenarios. At least I desperately hoped that was the case, for living while knowing that your future was predetermined—I wouldn't wish that upon my worst enemy. After all, if that were true, there would be no point in anything. No point in fighting, in carving one's path...
"It wasn't doing squat," Reece gave another grunt. "What was there to do with you just lying there on the slabs? It just stood there with wings outstretched and arms folded."
"I cannot be certain," Saverus spoke contemplatively. "But I did get the distinct feeling that we were visited by one of the Netherworld's Seven Lords."
"Maybe you geniuses want to stop guessing and just ask the man?" the necromancer's daughter interjected, then shifted her gaze to me and continued, with a touch of irony in her voice. "Well, Dark One? Tell us what you've gotten yourself into this time."
"Oh, nothing too terrible," I mused, gazing up at the sky, where the moon's contours were starting to come through. "I did kind of get married..."
"To whom?!" everybody seemed to exhale the question in unison.
"I'm not really sure myself," I shrugged, looking around the long faces and slacked jaws of my officers, then at the ring sitting snugly on my fourth finger.
"What in the... I can't begin to imagine how these things keep happening to you..." the necromancer's daughter mumbled in total bemusement.
"It just kind of happens. I'll fill you in once I figure it out myself," I said with a wink to the magus while petting the muzzle of her bone dragon pet that had somehow made it up to the roof, then made for the staircase.
"I suppose marriage isn't the worst thing that could happen to a man," I heard Reece's contemplative voice behind me. "I do wonder, though, with the bride being three times as tall as our commander..."
To my dismay, no other voice hushed the scoundrel!
So she's got wings in addition to everything else? I thought on the way to my tent, which my soldiers had erected at the center of the courtyard, now fully cleared of corpses or debris. Strange, I saw neither horns nor a tail in my vision. But then, demons of her rank probably had plenty of trappings to brandish on a whim. It might not have even been her visiting me, but her esteemed mother...
The next moment I'd nearly paid dearly for my absentmindedness as a black mountain squealing with glee nearly flattened me to the ground. But of course! I hadn't seen my trusty boar since morning, and he must've missed me terribly... Either that or he was terribly hungry. Even though, with all of his fat reserves, the razorback could probably survive without food in the Arctic somewhere for a full winter, like a hibernating bear. But no, that wasn't fair—for al
l his ravenous appetite, Gloom didn't look overweight at all, but every bit the lean, mean fighting machine that he was. Nearly seven feet at the shoulder now, and still growing—in my human form I couldn't cover his muzzle in an embrace if I tried... "Easy now, you overgrown hippo," I growled amiably at the oinking monstrosity. "How will you look my officers in the eye if you trample their commander into the ground?"
Gloom had his own way of interpreting my words, tumbling to the side and turning his snout to me in a way that made it easier to scratch him behind the ear. At least he doesn't wag his tail like a dog—that would be just too funny, I thought with a chuckle, leaning back against his bristly side and commencing with our daily procedure. It wasn't anything the boar couldn't do without, but I had come to really appreciate these ten-twenty minutes I would spend with my four-legged friend and partner. And besides, it wasn't like I was pressed for time.
In your typical Medieval world without visor, night clubs or the Internet, all of a soldier's free time was spent on training, food and tending to their horse. That was my view of it, at least. As for me, thanks to my singular build my rotation was so absurdly simple that I'd feel like an idiot practicing it on a training dummy. On the other hand, the very idea of commanding a legion gave me the willies. Sure, I was learning on the job as best I could, but I was still hopelessly behind even Elnar, to say nothing of Gorm. Schen was rocking a picture-perfect memory of which item lay on which shelf of which storeroom, all the while keeping both the clan's warehouse and financial ledgers. This is all to say that, were I to end up not here but actually in the Middle Ages, I'd make a real lousy "progressor." My life credo being that everyone ought to do what they do best, and completely lacking any useful skills myself, I'd have no option but shoot for a leadership position. So was the case here: my responsibilities amounted to attending two command meetings a day, nodding approvingly and with an air of intelligent authority to my demons' proposals, and going my merry way while everyone else got down to actual work.
Hearing my heavy sigh, Gloom raised his head off the slabs and gave me a suspicious sideways look with his yellow eye. After verifying that his master wasn't in any immediate danger, my four-legged mood detector gave a comforting grunt, then screwed his eyes shut and plopped his massive muzzle back down on the pavement, pleasantly warmed by the sun. At that point I noticed that the ten-foot-tall wall had been fully repaired by the mages during my nap on the roof of the donjon, and whistled appreciatively. Now back to Gloom... Good thing the beast can't talk, or I wouldn't hear the end of his lecturing, telling me to keep my chin up and whatnot. Or scolding me for being lazy, though I'm quite content with my role in this army. Of course, if this were the real world back in the Middle Ages, my role would be a lot more prominent, if only to keep my troops motivated and disciplined to avoid or at least minimize desertion, skirting of duties, ravaging captured settlements and raping captive women, and a plethora of other challenges faced by military commanders of that age given the moral fiber and emotional intelligence of your average Joe being somewhere on the level of a spoiled kindergartener. But for as long as I was here, my troops would fight to the very last drop of blood, like King Leonidas' famed 300 at the Pass of Thermopylae. Even with morale as low as ten percent, they would not desert the field of battle. And even if I fell, something told me that they still wouldn't run, but follow their leader into the Flame just like those valiant Greeks had fought and died over the body of their fallen king. Rage, cunning and cruelty run alongside wisdom and fearlessness, I recalled the words from the Demon Grounds patch notes. I would argue that my people had inherited rage, fearlessness and wisdom—or perhaps it was their shared hatred of the blight that had ravaged the princedom that shaped their character? Whatever the reason, I liked them just the way they were, and didn't intend on messing with anything. "As for you, Gloom, buddy... I'll always have time for you," I smiled, running a hand over the coarse bristles of the sleeping razorback, and sprang to my feet. Besides trusty war horses, weren't Medieval kings also supposed to have rivers of wine and women? I had no issues with the former; as to the latter, there appeared to be some movement, at last—the proverbial light at the end of a tunnel. I attempted to send a mental message to Jaelitte... Hearing no answer, I shrugged and nodded to my bodyguards, waiting patiently to the side, and made for my tent. The undead were unlikely to attack in force before sunrise—they still needed time to assemble and pull up to the citadel—but I had plenty on my mind I needed to process.
So, what did we have? Splashing three fingers' worth of the world's most ancient soporific into a glass, I downed it in one shot, then reached for my pipe. What we had was a freaking unbelievable ring and an even less believable lady friend confined to it. And until said lady friend escaped the ring, there was no way for me to remove it. A curious condition, to be sure. Even more interesting—and concerning—was the fact that until I tracked down and killed the first foe, anyone could kill me and simply loot the ring from my inventory, which I would consider a real bloody tragedy. The other option—breaking the trueblood oath and losing Jaelitte—was likely fraught with serious consequences of its own, but I would never know them. If I swore an oath, trueblood or not, I meant to abide by it, though I shuddered to imagine what this realm had in store for oathbreakers beyond that unseen line. All things considered, there wasn't much planning I could do now beyond finding and slaying the first target, one Belvert dar Ha'ar. Exhaling the smoke, I took in the surroundings of my temporary dwelling, deep in thought. Hadn't I heard that name before somewhere... Hart! But of course, the prick was the apprentice and assistant to Vaessa's father, Master Diarten—the very one who had arranged the Twice Cursed bastard's arrival into the princedom! In that case, the scum had more than merited to die by my hand. Pouring myself some more cognac, I saluted to my reflection in the wardrobe mirror: "Cheers!" The one giant plus to all this was that the scum in question was most likely in Sarykas, the capital of Rualt, where I was due to deliver the jewelry case from the Derelict Temple to some other character I'd never met. The one giant minus—and, naturally, there had to be a minus to counteract any pluses—was that the city's location wasn't at all apparent, with only the general area of the map highlighted yellow, and no clue as to where within that general area to search. But I didn't sweat it—a necromancer from Craedia of that caliber had to have left a trace, and I was going to find it. First by asking around—nicely—then by flashing a bit of gold to seal the deal. Just as in the old world, gold remained the surest means of loosing stubborn tongues. Neither did I doubt my ability to smoke that sucker. Firstly, in the absence of an alternative, doubts were foolish almost by default; secondly, I still had three vials with the elder demon's venom; and thirdly, I had enough gold to hire a small army of mercenaries, should the need arise. And now that I was a prince, I could do so at whim. Yep, the man was as good as dead—the first in a series of steps that would lead me to my goal. And at the finish line—I poured myself another shot, then gazed into the contents contemplatively—waiting for me at the finish line was the most beautiful woman in this whole damned world. I smiled and tried to contact Jaelitte once more. Silence... Hart! She had said that she should be able to hear me address her... Or was it all just a dream? Stress-induced delirium? Taking my eyes off the glass, I gazed into the brilliant spark glimmering in the green gemstone on the ring...
What do you need? the sudden voice in my head gave me a start.
Damn, that voice alone could drive a man mad...
I've missed you, I grunted. And I wanted to hear your lovely voice.
If you've missed me, you can summon any one of the females in the vicinity, or all of them at once, the demoness replied coolly. I'm not a human, and I don't give a damn about that. And another thing, dear husband, you may want this thing or that, but don't expect me to cater to your caprices. I swore an oath of fidelity to you, but there wasn't a word in that oath about love. So get that through your head.
But—
We've made
an agreement, she didn't let me finish. And I have no interest in you beyond that. So do me a favor and try not to bother me for no reason.
What the!... I gnashed my teeth, fighting to keep down my rage, took a deep breath and downed the remains of the cognac in my glass.
In that case, you can take your hoity-toity attitude and go stuff yourself, I spat back the standard phrase for such a situation.
I expected nothing less out of a half-breed human and a lower one with a month-old lineage, she rapped off with an added layer of ice in her voice.
I don't give a rat's ass what you think about my lineage, and even less about my manner of speaking. Take a hike, dear wife, this conversation is over, I replied in a matching tone, then took a few deep drags while scolding myself mercilessly. What an idiot! Getting into an argument with a woman... I wouldn't have even summoned her if not for the cognac. Then again, had I any right to expect anything else from her? I'd known what I was getting myself into in advance, and I shouldn't be so surprised by her attitude... Still, my mood had most certainly soured by the exchange.
Lest you be worried that I forget my oath, she spoke in the same tone, paying no attention to my attack, don't be. As soon as I regain my material shell, I shall perform my marital duties with all due diligence.
Was I hearing things or was there a hidden threat in her voice? I felt a sudden fit of laughter. How did I even end up in this ludicrous situation?! Along with the standard set of hardships that must accompany any hero, somehow I'd been laden with things I'd long stopped dreaming of even back in my past life...
I can't wait for those happy days to come, sweetheart, I had to try pretty hard to keep my tone serious. And I'll do everything I can to make it happen sooner rather than later.
I never did like these domestic squabbles, so pointless and silly that I couldn't help but feel like a complete idiot. But if push came to shove, I'd make sure to get the last word. Was it foolishness? Immaturity? Maybe, I didn't give a damn! I wasn't going to change anytime soon, so wifey had better get used to it...