“Shoo,” he said, refusing her bait. “Go delegate your work. I need to talk to Fei, Ciana, and Anna.” He clicked his tongue. “Shit, I’ll also need to let Vera know that her Bastion training will be delayed. And Sen needs to change her training and—”
“We get it. You’re busy.” Narime rolled her eyes and pushed him toward the wireless in the corner. “Go tell your distraught harem how much you’ll miss them for the next few weeks.”
“I’ll miss you, Narime,” he said flatly.
Her tails slapped him in the back of the head as he walked away. He considered annoying her more, but realized she might not use her tails next time.
An hour passed while he spoke to everybody over the wireless. He realized that he could spend hours more handling everything and ended up delegating a lot of affairs to Sen and Anna. Fyre could protect Anna from any schemes while he was gone, although he hadn’t found the opportunity to check on her mind again.
Sen knew how to handle the portals. She still acted a little awkwardly around the knights, but maybe being placed in overall command while everyone else was away would improve matters. At the very least, she hadn’t complained when he put her in charge.
Not about that, anyway. Her complaints about not getting any sex had been loud enough that half the castle probably heard her shouting over the wireless.
Cheeky minx.
Afterward, he joined his Champions in a horseless carriage. Sureev had a carriage of his own, plus a mass of heavily armed and armored dark elf escorts. Like the rest of their military, these dark elf soldiers covered themselves from head to toe in heavy plate and covered every inch of their skin in metal or cloth. Dark elves hated sunlight.
“Are you sure you’ll be fine, sir?” one of his beastkin knights asked him for the thousandth time. Her tail dropped behind her as she stared at him with wide eyes.
“The Spires aren’t the place for knights or soldiers,” he said. “I’m taking Captain Fei and my most powerful Champions. You and the rest of the knights need to focus on supporting Sen and Sunstorm. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” she said sullenly.
The knights snapped off a noisy salute as he boarded the carriage and set off for the Spires.
Between the distance they needed to travel and the terrain, the trip took a few days. The Spires sat on the opposite side of Forselle Valley, which split the northern and southern sections of the Gharrick Mountains. The valley itself contained the Forselle River and countless tributaries to it. Fording such a massive river was dangerous, so they took a longer path to use a bridge.
Fei spent most of the trip staring at the countryside. Ciana did her best not to appear excited to visit the Spires, but eventually gave in and joined Fei with a wagging tail. Narime and Seraph alternated between verbally sparring with each other and questioning Nathan about whatever was on their minds.
He made a mental note not to travel in the same carriage as the both of them ever again. He only imagined how obnoxious things might be if he was sleeping with Seraph. The two women were competitive to an obscene degree.
Sleeping turned out to be difficult. Not for physical reasons, but mental ones.
“You don’t want to return to the Spires,” Narime said to him on the final day of the trip.
They were approaching the Spires themselves. Yesterday, their shapes had been vaguely visible in the distance. Today, they saw the majesty of some of the oldest structures on Doumahr. The Aurelian Spires predated the Anfang Empire.
Dozens of sandstone towers reached for the heavens. Legends said that if Omria descended in the Pearlescent Canyon, then she ascended in the Spires. The height of ordinary mage towers were a feeble imitation of the true power of Omria’s chosen people.
Or at least, that’s what the faeries told everybody. They had built the Spires long ago, supposedly. Back when they were known as the First Peoples, rather than just faeries.
Beneath the towers was the sprawl to end all sprawls. Doumahr contained many metropolises. Aleich was one of them. But the Spires contained the entirety of the dark elf race inside these towers and the urban rat’s nest beneath them. Even more dark elves lived in the mountains that the Spires were built beside. Millions of people lived here.
In Nathan’s world, millions had died here.
“No, I don’t want to come back here,” he admitted, voice low. “My memories of this place are almost uniformly negative.”
Fei dropped down from the window. Her nose looked slightly squashed after hours of pressing it against the glass. She wagged her tail nervously while staring at him, and the other Champions matched her expression. Ciana had stopped sightseeing some time ago, after the carriage jumped and she bumped her horn against the door.
“Almost?” Seraph asked.
“There are a couple of bright memories, although most end up bittersweet.” He sighed.
“You never went into detail about how things got so bad in your timeline,” Narime said. “It’s hard to imagine.” A pause. “Nathan, what happened?”
“A lot. I guess that goes without saying,” he said. It was his turn to stare out the window, now that Fei’s ass wasn’t in the way. “When the Federation collapsed, demons poured across the Houkeem Desert. At the same time, a succubus Messenger invaded Arcadia. They were in the depths of civil war. All civilization east of the Gharrick Mountains collapsed, just like that.” He snapped his fingers for effect.
Seraph and Narime closed their eyes. Unlike Fei or Ciana, they had lived through the destruction of their homeland. They knew firsthand the terrifying speed with which demons tore apart nations.
“Trafaumh dealt with the succubus. That meant Falmir needed to hold off the hordes of demons pouring across the former Federation. One of the largest defensive operations you can imagine and the Spires were in the middle of it. They didn’t survive it,” he said.
Seconds passed in silence.
“None of them? Out of this entire metropolis?” Narime asked in disbelief.
“A lot of dark elves fled, but the military and Council didn’t,” he said. He shrugged. “It’s a bitter pill to swallow, now that I’m older and wiser. If the dark elves had pulled back en masse, they could have rebuilt. But without the defensive power of the Spires, we probably couldn’t have held back the demons.”
He fell silent again and simply glared out the window.
“That’s why you know Astra,” Narime said flatly. “She fought in the last stand.”
“Yes. She’s the legendary trigem Champion of the Spires. Her power allowed me to win, more or less.”
“And?” the fox pushed.
He clenched a fist. “I’m not a stupid, young idiot anymore. I don’t intend to be protected. I’ll do the protecting.”
“That’s better,” Seraph said with a smile. “It’s fine for you to be haunted by your past. We understand that better than most. But what makes you so attractive is that you never stop moving forward.”
Narime and Fei agreed. Their tails curled around him, and the temperature in the carriage rose several degrees. Their hands wandered across his legs.
A cough interrupted them. “Perhaps you can wait?” Seraph suggested, raising an eyebrow.
“Hush. It’s not my fault you haven’t done anything,” Narime said, her hand firmly on Nathan’s crotch.
Ciana glared at Narime while Seraph rolled her eyes. Someone might think the horsegirl didn’t agree with Narime’s assessment.
“No, I think I agree with Seraph,” Nathan said to a pair of whines. “We’re close enough to the Spires themselves that I don’t want to explain this to anybody.”
“We won’t take that long,” Fei whined.
“No, but you’ll smell afterward. There’s no shower in the carriage,” he said.
They stared at him. A moment later, they pulled away from him.
“Yes, I think you’re right,” Narime said. “Let’s wait until we settle into our rooms.”
“Yup,” Fei chirped.
Seraph shook her head in amusement while Ciana looked relieved.
The carriage pulled into the city. A massive highway stretched over the nest of hovels in the sprawl. Countless carriages ran back and forth along it. Not a single dark elf could be seen out in the sun.
But Nathan saw humans and beastkin. Smaller roads and highways split off from the causeway they were on. Handcarts and cheaper carriages that relied on manual labor rolled along these roads, and these needed drivers. Naturally, they weren’t dark elves. Bulky collars hung around the neck of almost every human or beastkin visible.
Just as the human nations enslaved beastkin, so did the non-human nations enslave humans. The Aurelian Spires was infamous for the fact that it allowed slavery of any race except dark elves. Arcadia only allowed human and beastkin slavery, and many humans lived outside of slavery anyway.
Visiting the Spires was a reminder that the world could be a very unfriendly place.
Dark elves lurked beneath the shadows of the roads and buildings. Cloth canopies ran between rooftops and over storefronts to block out the sunlight. Most of the dark elves dressed very conservatively, often covering up their entire body. The exceptions stood out, with ostentatious piercings through their exposed body parts and extravagant jewelry adorning their body.
If a dark elf could wear something on a part of their body, they’d put a hole in it and try. That was how Nurevia had described it to him. She lacked piercings herself, due to her position. Public-facing dark elves such as Champions and ambassadors weren’t allowed piercings, as they knew that other races disliked them.
But in the Spires, piercings were a sign of prosperity and wealth.
“Do they all have so many things through their ears and noses?” Fei asked.
“Most will,” Nathan said. “Don’t bring them up.”
“They usually like it when you do,” Seraph said.
“It depends how you bring it up. They know that we don’t like piercings. In Aleich, putting enough wealth to buy a castle into your actual head makes you look like a punk. Here, it’s a sign that you’re so rich that you can wear your wealth. It’s a way to show off,” Nathan said.
“I never thought of it like that,” Narime said. “They’re basically saying that they are so rich they can afford to never use it, and show it off like that, right?”
“Yes. If a piercing vanishes, it’s supposedly socially damaging. It means you likely sold off something or were weak enough to be robbed.” He shrugged.
“I heard that piercings were important in dark elf culture, but this is more extreme than I imagined,” Ciana said, eyes wide as she pressed herself against Fei. The two struggled to stare out the window at the passing city.
They pulled up outside the largest of the sandstone towers. This was the Jormun Spire, the central spire that housed the Council of Aurelia. Its exterior was surrounded by a steel and sandstone canopy that blocked out the sun.
When they exited, they found themselves standing in a courtyard the size of Gharrick Pass itself. Not a single civilian was in sight. A solid wall of armored dark elf soldiers blocked off the entrances, including the one they had taken. A crowd formed past them, consisting mostly of humans and beastkin, who jumped and shouted as they tried to see what was happening.
More guards crowded around Nathan, although they kept their distance. The dark elves eyed the gems of his Champion’s cautiously.
“Um,” Fei said, eyes wide.
Ciana clung to Nathan, pulling his cloak around herself with wide eyes. Despite her terror, Nathan gave her a push on the back. She needed to show strength here.
“Ignore them,” Nathan said. “Follow me and Sureev.”
Narime and Seraph gave him a sharp look, but said nothing.
Sureev walked up with both hunters behind him. Nathan stepped up to him, and they fell into step as they walked toward the Jormun Spire’s entrance. More soldiers stood out front. They stepped aside as Nathan approached.
“They’re scared of us,” Narime said.
One of the dark elf hunters looked at her and rolled her eyes, as if to say “duh.”
Sureev grimaced, and nearly stumbled mid-step, but continued walking.
To cover for himself, he began talking. “It’s been a long trip, so I’ll see you to your rooms and let you settle in. Once the Council is aware of your arrival, we can arrange for proceedings to begin. The Bastions will want to know you are here as well, so I’ll be busy meeting with them shortly.”
Nathan raised an eyebrow. Had the Council expected him to take longer to arrive?
Before he could ask, they reached the entrance. The doors didn’t open automatically, and Sureev clicked his tongue. The guards watched nervously from nearby. Shouting reached them from the rowdy crowd beyond the lines of soldiers.
“What are the interior guards doing?” one of the hunters muttered, speaking for the first time.
She stepped forward and slammed her hands into the doors. They stood several times Nathan’s height, and were built from solid stone. They ground open, and the noise overwhelmed the crowd. Nathan winced at the noise. Fei, Ciana, and Narime covered their sensitive ears.
“What is she doing?” Sureev said when the doors opened, eyes widening.
Inside the lobby of the Jormun Spire stood Astra, her three opal gems shining from her collarbone. She smiled at Nathan.
“Nathan, good to see you,” Astra said in her brusque manner of speaking.
Chapter 18
Astra wore a figure-hugging set of dark armor with a violet cape. It was more conservative than Nurevia’s stripper outfit, but showed a lot more skin than the hunters and guards. Her luscious dark thighs peeked out between armored greaves and her breastplate, and she showed some hefty cleavage. White hair was tied in a short ponytail behind her head.
And, of course, she had three gems set into her collarbone. Three iridescent opals. They were the same as in Nathan’s world, which relieved him. Astra hadn’t changed that much.
She stood in the center of the tower’s lobby. Every guard kept their distance from her, which made the lobby appear almost empty. A monogem Champion quivered in the far corner.
Nobody near Nathan moved. Sureev looked at his hunters, but they refused to even look at Astra. Nathan’s own Champions clustered near him, their bodies tense.
Trigem Champions were on an entirely different level from monogems and duogems. They were exceedingly rare, with only a small number active in the world at a time. The raw power within their bodies allowed them to match weaker Champions without even using their gems. They possessed incredibly powerful gem enhancements and abilities, too.
Nathan had seen the power of trigems firsthand. Astra’s power allowed her to surpass the limits of immortality. Jafeila had been granted the power to fight Messengers one-on-one in his world. Narime gained the power to cast sixth rank spells and lower almost instantaneously.
Which is why Nathan took the first step forward and smiled at Astra.
“Your name’s Astra, isn’t it? Sureev didn’t mention your title the last time we met. I’m amazed that you not only share the same name as the legendary Astra, but are also a trigem Champion,” Nathan said, feeling as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. “It’s such an amazing coincidence.”
Every eye turned to him, and most weren’t friendly. Nathan felt that the hunters wanted to rip him limb from limb. Even the dark elf guards glared at him, despite their fear. Sureev stared at him in shock, his eyes attempting to escape his skull.
He had made fun of their legendary Champion. Maybe not the best idea.
Astra raised a hand to cover her mouth, but he heard the muffled giggle. So did everybody else. The glaring stopped.
After several moments, she regained her composure and said, “You made fun of me. It’s been so long. Centuries, at least.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Tell me, Nathan. Where do you find your confidence?”
Sureev remembered that he was supposed to be in charg
e and interrupted, “Grand Marshal Astra, I believe your duties require your attention elsewhere. Bastion Nathan has had a long journey, and I will lead him to his room now.”
Astra shot Sureev a look, then ignored him. Although the ambassador fumed, he remained silent. Unlike last time, he wasn’t in command of Astra, and she wasn’t pretending to be a mere hunter.
After clearing his throat, Nathan said, “I’d be dead if I wasn’t confident. Our enemies don’t care about decorum.”
“True.” Astra nodded, but her eyes remained narrow. “Am I an enemy? Are you avoiding death now?”
“I don’t know. Am I?” he replied, meeting her gaze.
Her green eyes pierced his. As always, there was something chilling about her eyes. He had always found her uncomfortable to be around. Originally, he had thought that was because she simply looked down on others, like her brethren. His memories of Astra were that she valued power over all else.
Now, he wasn’t so sure.
“We should fight,” Astra said suddenly.
The air split with the surprise of everyone around him. Nathan simply rubbed the bridge of his nose. Confused, Astra looked around herself.
“You mean that we should fight together, don’t you?” he said. “You can speak properly. Why not use more words?”
She thinned her lips and gave him a haughty look. “You understand me. Why use more words?”
Each of Nathan’s Champions glared at her. They didn’t appreciate being told they didn’t matter.
For his part, Nathan found himself frustrated. He didn’t understand Astra that well.
“Because you’ll create misunderstandings. Like you are right now,” he said. Then he sighed and bowed. “Grand Marshal Astra, it is an honor to meet you. But I am terribly busy. Perhaps we can speak again later.”
Astra glared at him, then at Sureev, who took a step backward.
“Fine,” she ground out. “But we will fight. I want to see you shatter demons.”
She turned and strode out of the lobby.
Sanity returned shortly afterward. The guards pretended that Astra hadn’t been here, and that they hadn’t abandoned their posts. Sureev’s glare suggested that wouldn’t fly, and the hunters pulled at their hair in embarrassment.
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