Chapter 30 (261)

  Experience was a wonderful teacher, and he had always been a good student. Being alive for as long as he has been, King Oliver Oglivarch had learned how to shape things to his liking. Although it took him a few centuries, he’d managed to arrange most things within his sphere of influence into a pleasing symphony or order and support for his interests. Everyone who was anyone had learned to trust in his wisdom and planning, and every facet of his life both personal and kingly was running smoothly.

  At least until recently, that is.

  In many ways, he’d just been taking advantage of a situation as it developed. He’d wrung as much benefit out of the chaos as he could, and it had been working splendidly.

  The mildly interesting anomalous soul that had cropped up in his kingdom allowed for a wedge in the expected fate of one of the more historically interesting cities in his kingdom. Dorchester. It had once been on the rise before the city lord at the time had attempted to break away from his father’s control. The area of the strates in which it resided had nearly been lost from what he recalled. The resulting battles had disrupted the local essence flows enough to set the city's progress back 2 tiers. Oliver remembered his father being less than happy about it at the time.

  Now, the city had once again become a city of interest. A focal point that demanded attention. As a result, he’d put some pieces into play and started a game.

  So far, he’d successfully derailed multiple Greater House’s plans to grow in power by taking over the city before it renewed its profitability, utilized the area as a bargaining chip with the dwarves, eliminated a small but troubling house that had managed to survive his father’s purging, and best of all, used it decimate the intrinsic trust that the Tower of Fate had developed with his citizens.

  He’d known about Dorchester’s internal strife which would have left them wide open to the kobalds… whom he had also been well aware of. He’d predicted the early arrival of the density shift which he’d arranged to set in motion. He’d even managed to get Archmage Jennings out of the Tower of Magic so the man would finally begin training his successor.

  Numerous little nudges here and there on the scales of fate pushed things toward his desired outcome. Even after his wife and his consorts had found out what he’d been up to, he’d managed to keep them focused on the Tower of Fate and out of the grander plan to stabilize the region with minimal effort on the greater kingdom’s part.

  It had all been going so well.

  Stifling his growl of annoyance, he schooled his emotions and wiped his expression clear of any hint of his discontent. It wouldn’t be productive for people to question whether or not he’d seen this coming.

  Keeping his voice calm as a still lake in the winter, he turned away from the view from his tower and looked at the assembled nobles and aides who’d come to check in with him, and said, “I understand your concerns, and I believe there are protocols in place for occasions such as this. Rather than becoming panicked, I suggest you wait for things to progress at their own pace. There is no danger of having half the strates lost to another plane. Everything is already being taken care of.”

  The noble who’d led this little delegation stepped forward, his hands nervously rubbing his palms against each other like a coward. “Sire, I’m sure that everything is under control, as you say. However, the Tower of Fate has made it clear that someone has disrupted the necessary flow of events that would have kept this from happening. They’re claiming a demon or some other heretic has manipulated events to cause this catastrophe.”

  The man then went silent, not wanting to imply that the king had missed someone or something so significant in his kingdom. It would not do to doubt the king’s powers of observation.

  The king said nothing in response, merely waiting for the man to continue to ramble away. He would have preferred not even having this meeting, but some of the nobles that were here had ties to some powerful lords from grand houses. The idiot he was currently speaking with was even the great-great-grandson of the head of House Roventrus, while also being a lord of a house of his own. Therefore, he couldn’t just ignore them outright… despite how much he wanted to.

  Coughing uncomfortably into his hand, the man did indeed buckle under the silence before continuing. “You see, while we all know that the Fateweavers are not infallible, they’ve been aware of Dorchester’s downfall for years. But, they predicted it would fall to the kobalds and that it would have to be resettled… Not ripped away from our material plane and stolen. Nothing in the past 6 months has gone as they’d expected. Someone is clearly working to disrupt the natural progression of events that they’d predicted. Sire, we believe you might need to be more proactive in your deployment of the Populators. Events cannot continue to defy fate’s decree!” he ended in a zealous shout, revealing his true reason for being here.

  The king stared down at the man in disgust, the barest hint of his opinion of the man displayed in his glare. “Fate’s decree? I was unaware that the Tower of Fate was given the mandate to dictate the future of the kingdom. Since the time of its founding, the kingdom has been managed by my family and my family alone. As king, it is MY duty to decide the future of the kingdom. It’s fate MINE to decree. You would all do well to remember that,” he said coldly but calmly while allowing a whisper of his power to inundate the ether around them.

  The top of the tower they were on was mostly open to the elements, and it had only been due to the king’s grace that the wind wasn’t ripping past them. At the king’s discretion, that protection was lifted and the icy gusts of air cut through them like a knife, leaving them gasping for air. But it was his presence in the ether that truly took their breath away. While normally imposing, his presence surged like a wave crushing them under its might.

  Without another word, they all began racing for the stares. Pausing only long enough to beg his forgiveness for wasting his time and promising that they would trust in the kingdom’s excellent services to handle things. Meanwhile, the king had already mentally dismissed them from his attention.

  Turning away, he returned to his observation of the capital and the rest of his kingdom.

  ‘How did the hells be damned kobalds manage to develop a ritual to create a planar anchor?’ he wondered to himself.

  He’d been watching them working toward a planar invasion for almost a century, and they’d not shown any capability of doing anything close to this level of planar magic. Obviously, someone on the other side of their portals must have stepped in, attempting to seize the opportunity just as he had.

  It wouldn’t be enough to have the Tower of Fate proven wrong, they must be proven wrong in a way that turns out beneficial to the kingdom. Therefore, Dorchester must NOT fall, and they must do so on their own.

  ‘I’ve done all that I can for them at the moment. Now, we’ll just have to wait and see if the pieces I’ve arranged will be enough to contend with this new hidden opponent. Worst comes to worst, I’ll just cut my losses and allow the city to be resettled with friendlier houses. The fateweavers have been discredited to a degree, and the campaign against them is progressing smoothly. And who knows… they might end up succeeding. I might end up having to reward that anomalous soul more than I was already going to,’ he thought to himself.

  Yet, over the years King Oliver had also learned to plan for all eventualities. Especially the most likely ones.

  Regardless of the consequences of violating the laws that kept the kingdom running, he’d have to step in if the anchor was successfully placed. Therefore, his agent would have to pressure the local council of leadership to request the kingdom’s aid before it was too late. Violating a city’s legal autonomy would cause issues well beyond what he was willing to deal with. So, the legal necessities had to be handled promptly and properly.

  ‘Still….there’s time enough to give them a chance,’ he decided to himself.

  —--

  While he rushed through the tunnels with the rest of the Wackos, Nero had plenty of time to analyze how his mind was functioning. Or, more accurately, disfunctioning.

  It took a minute or two, but he eventually got a handle on things.

  He found distancing himself from the emotions of the people around him both somewhat complicated but relatively easier than he’d expected it to be. It essentially came down to first recognizing what was happening, and then deciding to stop it.

  The fact of the matter was, his control of his own mind was something he’d already grown used to managing at a metaphysical distance. At best guess, it was either an ability or a talent that he’d become able to do as a result of his soul commandeering the body he was using, and not something he was consciously making an effort to learn.

  The sensation of slipping into the emotional groupthink of those around him was eerily similar to how he could let himself get lost in the Thought Hub. Which, in its own way, made sense. Both the resulting fields of overlapped essence from those around him and the crystals that made up the Thought Hub were based on the same thing. The book that Nick had ‘forced’ him to read had explained it well enough for Nero to understand the concept well enough to recognize the similarities.

  Basically, the software that ran Thought Hubs was the accumulation of mind imprints from the people using them. So, they were pretty much the same thing as a bunch of people imprinting their feelings onto the essence flows in the ether while just lacking the purpose that was inherent in a mental imprint.

  So, Nero dealt with it the same way he had when he found his mind falling too deep into the Thought Hub… he just took a mental step back and looked at the situation logically. Which he could do due to the fact that his ‘mind’ wasn’t so much his mind as it was a projected aspect of the ‘mind’ that was housed in his soul.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  ‘Just thinking about this is giving me a headache,’ he thought to himself.

  Regardless, it worked, and he was once again feeling more like himself. And rather than dwell on it, he did the same thing he did with all the other weird aspects of his new life. He simply set it aside for the moment and mentally reminded himself to put it on the list of things he’d eventually have to look into when he got around to it.

  Since they were moving at a jog, Nero felt a little uncomfortable trying to hold a conversation, but he felt like he needed to mentally change the subject. So, he caught Merrick’s attention by huffing, “Hey man, I get that we’re using the kobald tunnels to move up through the floors, but these don’t look like kobald tunnels.”

  Merrick, while jogging alongside him, replied, “This section isn’t a kobald tunnel. We’re cutting over to another one in a bit. If you look up at the ceiling you can tell.”

  And Nero could in fact ‘tell’, as there were essence lights occasionally still working made that abundantly clear to anyone who bothered looking up. But that hadn’t been what he had been getting at. Instead, he was curious why there was so much dirt, grime, and general gunk all over the floor they were running across.

  “Yeah, I kinda already guessed that much. I’m just wondering why this tunnel is so much different than the ones we’d seen back on the lower floors,” Nero asked.

  “Ah, I understand, my lord. Those floors had already been gone through by teams removing the kobald’s influence. The sweeper teams went room to room removing anything that the kobalds had left behind and scoured the floors with magic to return them to order. Although the areas were still technically under kobald control, they were prepped for us to take over,” Merrick explained in broken speech while trying and failing to keep his voice level while keeping up his pace.

  Nero, latching on to the term ‘influence’ asked, “When you say influence, do you mean anything more than just the crap on the floor that they left behind? Like, had they imbued it with their ‘kobaldliness’ or something?”

  Despite them both having tried to keep their voices relatively quiet, multiple people must have been listening in because Nero heard a wave of laughter erupting all around him.

  Merrick, sounding somewhat amused replied, “In a way, my lord. The sweeper teams were led by soldiers but they no doubt had a few mages with them. If you look at the essence flows in the area, you’ll understand.”

  Nero, figuring that he might as well just humor the man did just that, and then immediately understood what Merrick had been talking about. The essence flows where they were felt ‘tainted’... for lack of a better word.

  It was just like when he’d been near an essence disturbance. While the essence flows were mostly the same as they always were, there was just something ‘off’ about them. In many ways, what he was feeling now was worse than what he’d experienced in the wilds. Instead of feeling like the essence was warped, or twisted, it was like the essence was foreign.

  He felt like an invader. This wasn’t a place where he should be.

  Frowning in thought, Nero wondered if this was anything like a zone of control for the kobalds which they were skipping past without taking over. The kobalds had been here for a long time, and their presence likely imprinted itself on the local flows, making this kobald territory in the eyes of the world. Nero had to wonder how the mages that ‘recovered’ the areas that had been under the kobald’s control had done it.

  It was probably something similar to enchanting or imbuing. Yet Nero had no idea how to begin to go about something like that. Up until now, he’d mainly focused on combat magics. Sure, he’d dabbled with scrying and some other stuff like that. But, even when he’d been sleep delving he hadn’t really had any idea what he had been doing.

  “So, we don’t have to do any of that if we’re not going to be taking over the area?” Nero asked.

  Merrick replied quickly, “No, my lord. This is essentially a raid. We’re going in, stopping them from opening the portal, then leaving… I think. Honestly, I’m not really sure what our exit strategy is.”

  Nero chuckled for a moment before noticing that Merrick suddenly looked a whole lot less calm about what they were doing. All around him, he could feel the other soldiers’ essence fields becoming a little less enthusiastic and uniform as well.

  Not wanting to be responsible for ruining the cohesive vibe they all had going on, Nero replied, “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure Cath… I mean Battle Leader Averett has it all figured out. Worst case scenario, we just kill all the kobalds and wait around for those sweeper-mages to show up and clean up the mess after we’re done. Besides, as long as we’re the only ones left standing, then who ‘owns’ the place doesn’t really matter, now does it?”

  Nero could feel that his point was well received, as everyone once again felt like a solid field of essence pointed forward down the tunnel toward their enemy.

  “I suppose that’s one way to look at it, my lord,” Merrick replied before going silent in thought.

  Not wanting to inadvertently chip away at their confidence any more than he already had, Nero decided to shut up as well and focus on something else.

  While the gunk and whatnot under his feet were somewhat interesting, and the odd essence flows that metaphysically reeked of kobalds were worth some attention, he instead chose to focus on his link with the Battle Hub to check in with how the overall plan was going.

  He’d known that the upper city was huge, and it would take them a while to get where they were ultimately heading, but he also knew that the team he was with wasn’t going to be the first ones attacking. So, he wasn’t surprised when the moment he joined the command channel he began hearing shouted updates on what was happening with the currently fighting assault force.

  While having access to all the command channels was cool, Nero tried to focus on the one that dealt with the force his team had joined. Surprisingly, or not, it was being led by Knight Angleton.

  Nero took a quick moment to check in with some of the pings he’d left on his Thought Hub account to look up the man’s name.

  ‘Harold? Seriously? The dude does NOT look like a Harry. His parents should have named him Duke, or Axel or something,’ Nero thought to himself before closing out the roster Cathleen had sent him and returning his attention to the command channel.

  Listening in on what they were saying was surprisingly boring. While in the background the feed from the assault force updates continued unabated, Harry was constantly requesting his own updates from the scouting teams that were paving the way for the rest of them.

  Nero would hear someone report a kobald patrol, and then Harry would reply with his acknowledgment before ordering someone to alter their path up the tunnels. This process repeated itself for what felt like forever. The entire time, Nero and the rest of the Wackos around him continued forward, occasionally taking different tunnels as they unerringly made their way further up the mountain city.

  Some tunnels were like the regular ones he’d gotten used to, ten or twenty feet wide and obviously human-made. Others were kobald tunnels with steeper inclines that were both dark and much tighter on the sides. It wasn’t what anyone would call a comfortable or consistent trip.

  Over and over again, he’d find himself in a tunnel with plenty of room to spread out only for the one right after it requiring him to squish himself between Merrick and the Wacko on his left, making him feel like he was a hairs-breath away from tripping over himself like a drunk asshole waiting in line at the bathroom.

  But no matter how far they traveled, there was never any combat or anything to make the trip remotely interesting. There wasn’t even anything worthwhile to see as every room they passed was wrecked, and every tunnel they used was filled with the stench of kobald. Nero was forced to just keep jogging and trust that eventually, they’d get to do something productive before time ran out on their mission.

  He didn’t want to be sent to another plane of existence. He sort of liked this one. It was weird and filled with people and concepts that made his head spin, but he’d sort of gotten used to it. Granted, killing an entire plane of kobalds would be fun, but the idea of killing them on their home turf felt different than wiping them out when they were the ones invading.

  Nero did not like the idea of having to be an insurgent.

  Shrugging off the errant thought, Nero told himself that it wouldn’t matter as he had no intention of letting the damned portal connection anchor thing open. He and his Wackos would stop it… and that would be that. Another successful adventure in the books for him, and the first of many for the Wacko’s of House Walker to come.

  ‘I just didn’t realize that the frickin’ thing was so far away,’ he thought to himself before pepping up at the sound of Harry’s voice coming through over the command channel for the group he was with.

  “All right people, prepare for combat. We’re approaching the central corridor for this level and we’ll be running into the enemy soon. Remember, our goal is not to engage in prolonged combat, we’re to rush the exit as soon as possible and move on to our goal. Stay in formation and follow the soldier… or Wacko… in front of you. Mages, keep our shields up. Keep your footing, and don’t get left behind!” he shouted, sounding every inch the badass he was.

  Nero, however, couldn’t help but chuckle to himself. Something about knowing the guy's first name was Harold just undercut the seriousness of the moment for him. The thought of being led into battle by ‘Captain Harold Angleton’ the hairiest knight in all of Dorchester was enough to send his meme-brain into overdrive.

  By the time the mages had the shield overhead up and running, Nero had already mentally created multiple t-shirt ideas and catchphrases for the ‘Hairy Knight of Oglivarch’.

  Luckily, his mental hijinks were interrupted by the sounds slowly getting louder from the tunnel in front of them. Despite how far away they were, he could already tell that they were heading into a meat grinder. It was oddly invigorating to feel the combat getting closer with every second.

  The essence in the ether was humming right along with the essence fields around him, the overwhelming sense of anticipation was rising to a crescendo as they got closer and closer.

  Like the roaring sound of a rock concert slamming into him, Nero felt it as much as he heard it when he and the rest of the Wackos around him shot out of the tunnel they were using. If it weren’t for his perception field, he’d have no idea what was going on. Luckily, with his improved range, he was able to witness ‘Harry the Hammer’ slam into the kobald defenses like a freight train.

  The kobalds had set up walls of stone ten feet high right in front of the tunnel exit, having attempted to make something like a kill box for anyone coming out of it. Unfortunately for them, they’d been too focused on the fighting going on across the massive chamber and hadn’t been paying close enough attention. Those few kobalds who had noticed their arrival hadn’t been able to do much more than scream and hiss their warnings before ‘Knight Harry son of Furball’ arrived like the judgment of Catnip and wrecked their shit like an unhousebroken kitten lacking a scratching post.

  In no time at all, the front of their formation was through the wall and making their way through the kobald encampment. Meanwhile, Merrick and the other mages were maintaining their shield on the off chance some shaman or other enemy caster managed to notice them. As he watched it all happen, Nero grinned like an idiot and began mentally preparing himself to do as much damage as possible on his way through the enemy’s territory.

  ‘They’ll remember the day Knight Harry and his Harriets paid them a visit,’ Nero promised himself with a dark chuckle.

  Pausing for a moment, Nero took mental stock of himself to see if he was being affected by the excitement and fervor in the ether. Were his various mental depictions of Harry a result of his being influenced?

  Nope, he decided. He’d always found comfort in cutting down larger-than-life people within the safe and protected confines of his own psyche. Finding out that an intimidating man like Knight Angleton was named ‘Harry’ was always going to end up with Nero privately mocking him to ruin. That was just who he was… and he was OK with that.

  While letting part of his mind ruminate on the imaginary heraldry of the great Lord Harry of House Angleton, Nero began condensing some essence and anchoring some spell forms so he could rain down terror on the poor kobalds that were unlucky enough to be in range as he and his Wackos ran by.