Fortress Al-Mir

An orc with deep, almost red skin shot Arkk a dark look. Pausing his scythe-swinging, Arkk glared back until the orc averted its gaze.

Several under his employ were a bit unhappy with the situation. He recognized that mutiny might be near but this was something he wasn’t willing to budge on.

Harvest wasn’t a simple thing where one day everyone woke up and decided to harvest everything all at once. These things came in waves. Several crops overlapped; beets, oats, and barley all needed to be harvested within a few weeks of each other. Corn and beans would be a few weeks later. Winter wheat and sorghum came a few weeks earlier. Barley and oat fields were by far the largest, requiring the most work and the most effort to reap.

So, he had carefully explained to the orcs that, because they attacked his village, they would be paying reparations in service. Harvesting service, specifically. Although being hired as employees through the [HEART] required payment or some kind of promised exchange, they were not being paid for this specifically. Each orc was to receive one gold coin a month with special bonuses available for special services—combat if it should become necessary, blacksmithing, and Larry got a special stipend for his services as a butcher. Arkk was forcing every orc, even the likes of Rekk’ar and Olatt’an, to help with this year’s harvest if they wanted to remain employed. They were not receiving anything extra for it.

It wouldn’t be reparations if they were being paid.

Not his most popular decision. Still, no one had said no. Not after five of the fifteen orcs from the barrows had refused to join him. Those five had been sent in chains to the nearest burg where the Duke’s men would hopefully deal with them according to the laws of the land. No one was too keen on joining them.

Arkk sighed as he went back to sweeping the scythe over the ground, cutting the stalks of the oats. Things had settled into something of a routine over the three weeks that had passed since the barrows incident. He felt like he was starting to get used to his new life as… whatever he was. Owner of a magical fortress. Leader of a bunch of orcs. He preferred the former to the latter.

Honestly, part of the reason the orcs were sweeping scythes through the field was that he just didn’t know what else to do with them. It was easy for Vezta to say that minions would come in useful, but they couldn’t just sit around in the fortress all day every day, could they? They did seem content for now, especially after he had turned one of the rooms into a big pit for brawls with room for spectators and betting, but that wouldn’t last.

Looking around the field right now, Arkk decided that farm work was not an option. While they were doing the work, they were not happy with it. He had snapped at a few of them earlier who looked like they were deliberately sabotaging the harvest with wild and careless swings of their scythes.

No. Farm work would end up a disaster in some way, of that Arkk had no doubt. Was there other work they might be interested in?

Aside from Larry, working the kitchens and butchery, only one had stepped forward for a specialized position. Perr’ok. He didn’t talk much but did mention that his father had forged for the Duchy toward the end of the war with the Evestani Sultanate that ended thirty years ago. He took over a smithy that Arkk had constructed within the fortress. Aside from those two, everyone else was a raider. Warriors.

As much as Arkk hated the Duke, he did not want to start a war. If warriors weren’t to go to war, then…

Mercenary work?

That seemed like an idea. Now that it was in Arkk’s head, he couldn’t help but nod to himself in satisfaction. The orcs would likely revel in the opportunity. Maybe he could even use being sent on missions as a reward for good behavior.

Arkk talked with everyone who passed through Langleey Village. Several of those people were mercenaries. There was always work to be done. Sometimes it was protecting a merchant as they carried valuable goods between locales, hunting down criminals, taking out groups of highwaymen accosting travelers, and plenty of other martial matters.

Arkk didn’t need money with that gold mine still filling his coffers, so perhaps some could go to the village? Maybe even other villages, again as reparations.

As for the rest, the orcs needed some funds to bet on their fight clubs. A little income to gamble away would probably make morale soar.

Looking up from his work, Arkk found Rekk’ar and Olatt’an not far away. Rekk’ar looked as if the ground itself had been stringing insult after insult at him, but Olatt’an had a relatively soft expression on his face as he carefully swung his scythe through the stalks of oats. The older orc was a mystery to Arkk. For someone the others all spoke of in hushed tones, someone who others called the Ripthroat, he was… surprisingly mellow. Given that he was by far the oldest orc around and Arkk lacked a real frame of reference for orc culture—or the culture of these raiders—Arkk had to wonder if aging had calmed a more violent youth.

Or if he was just good at hiding it.

Before Arkk could head over to ask their opinion on his new idea, he spotted something beyond them.

A carriage drawn by a pair of horses with a man in a black cap seated at the reins barreled up the path toward the village. It wasn’t just any carriage either. The glossy walls gleamed with a shiny black lacquer and it had glass windows. As it turned along the path leading past the fields, he spotted the blue and white striped shield that was typically used by official representatives of Duke Levi Woldair and the Duchy as a whole.

The only representative that passed through these parts was the taxman.

Setting his scythe down, Arkk started across the field. He did not rush after the carriage immediately. Instead, he headed toward the adjacent barley field. Most of the villagers stuck to this field, not exactly keen on being near a bunch of angry orcs. More importantly, Ilya worked in the barley fields.

He spotted her quickly. The large straw hat couldn’t hide her long silver hair. She had her head down, back to the path. Had she not seen the carriage?

“Ilya!”

She glanced back, keeping her head down. Her silver eyes, wide with alarm, met his beneath the straw hat. Carefully looking around, eyes drifting toward the path, she pressed her lips together. In a hurry, she tucked her long silver hair down the back of her shirt before readjusting her hat to cover as much of her hair as possible. As soon as that was done, she tucked her long ears up into the hat.

“They’re weeks early,” she hissed as Arkk ran up.

“No large carts following them,” Arkk said, looking back down the path. “They aren’t going to take any tax in that small carriage. And it was so nice looking too. Never had something like that visit before.”

“I don’t like it,” she said, pulling her hat down tighter. “Something is different and I doubt it is for the better.”

The carriage had disappeared behind the terrain and a few buildings for a few moments but quickly came back into sight as it climbed the slight incline of the path leading to the plaza. “I’m going to find out what they’re here for. Find Hale. She can get you to the fortress if necessary.”

“Hale?” Ilya’s silver eyes darted around. “Where is Vezta?”

“Back at the fortress, working on a… special project for me.”

In her worry over their visitors, Ilya didn’t question what that project was. She simply nodded her head. Arkk still hadn’t told her about Vezta’s goal. He kept meaning to, but how did one bring up undoing the Calamity? He had time to figure it out.

“What about the orcs?”

Arkk bit his lip. “They almost certainly saw the orcs already. It would be too suspicious if they just disappeared now. If we convince them that the orcs were just a traveling troupe assisting with harvest instead of where they came from…” His eyes widened as he realized just who the people in that carriage were most likely to speak with first. “I need to get up there and stop the Baron from opening his big mouth.”

Arkk took off without another word.

He wished he could simply teleport up to the village proper. Within Fortress Al-Mir, Arkk could move anywhere at will. He could also move himself and any of his employees to the fortress. However, the village was not part of his territory. He couldn’t teleport to it, only from it. The lesser servants had to claim territory for the [HEART] and, with the relatively large distance between the fortress and the village, Arkk had decided to have them focus on the gold mine rather than spend the time slowly crawling toward the village. The teleportation circle worked well enough.

The teleportation circle didn’t help now. It could only go from a designated point to a designated point. He couldn’t even draw one. Vezta tried to explain how to select the destination location but it had gone over Arkk’s head.

It took a few minutes to run up the path. Because of that, he wasn’t surprised in the slightest to find the carriage deserted save for the coachman, who was now fanning his face with his large hat. Ignoring him for the moment, Arkk crossed the large garden before Baron Gert’s manor and opened the door without bothering to knock.

Voices were coming from a sitting room just off the entryway. Arkk meant to listen in for a moment before barging right into the conversation. An extremely tall man with thick sideburns and thin glasses stood just aside the open doorway, fiddling with some whittled decoration the Baron had on a shelf. He looked surprised for a moment but put on a smile.

“Ah,” he said, “it seems we have a visitor.”

“Visitor?” the Baron said, stepping into view. As soon as he saw who was there, he started beaming. “Arkk! I was just telling them! This is the hero of Langleey Village.” Stepping out and grabbing hold of Arkk’s arm, the Baron led him into the sitting room.

Two others were inside, both unfamiliar. The first was a rather small man with a tablet of papers he was looking at. He wasn’t that small, but next to the man with the sideburns, he looked tiny. When the man looked up from his papers, he started squinting as if he couldn’t see Arkk well at all.

The other person in the room was a woman with wild black hair. She stood near the window, apart from the others, and stared out. She must have seen Arkk coming, though she didn’t bother looking his way. Even without her turning toward Arkk, he could see several thick scars running over her face. The skin around her eyes was dark like her skin had charred or she had rubbed black ash on her face.

“The hero of Langleey Village,” the tall man said, drawing Arkk’s attention back to him with a clap of his hands. He stepped closer to Arkk, towering over him. He had to look straight down while Arkk craned his neck up. For a human, he was extremely tall. Maybe taller than Ilya, though only by a small bit. However, if he was trying to be intimidating despite his smile, it wasn’t going to work on Arkk.

After all, every orc was as tall if not taller and ten times as muscular. After dealing with them every day for the last few weeks, a skinny tall guy standing a bit too close was kind of annoying rather than unnerving.

“The dear Baron was just regaling us with tales of your heroic deeds.”

“Exaggerations, I’m sure,” Arkk said, not taking a step back. “I’m just a farmer. And sometimes I go out hunting.”

“Oh?” the tall man said, stepping past Arkk to look at a portrait on the wall. A painting that Gert’s wife had done of the river. Probably. It wasn’t that good of a painting.

“Arkk! You’re too humble. He fought off a hundred orcs that day and all their goblins too!”

Arkk closed his eyes. “Definite exaggerations,” he said with a sigh. “I only killed between five and ten orcs. And several goblins. I wasn’t exactly counting at the time.”

“Still quite impressive,” the tall man said, picking up a small wooden horse from the Baron’s mantle. As he spoke, he turned it over a few times like he wasn’t quite sure what it was supposed to be. “I know several proud knights who would have balked at facing even a few orcs.” Sharp brown eyes met with Arkk’s eyes. “How did you do it?”

“I’m a spellcaster with some proficiency in lightning magics.”

“Ah, a fellow sorcerer?” He set the horse back down on its side as he stepped closer to Arkk again. The Baron slipped behind him to right the horse. “Where did you study? Hollens Sorcery Academy is my alma mater. Lovely trees around Hollens.”

Arkk’s eyes widened as he shot a glance around the room, wondering if all of them were spellcasters. They all wore a uniform of sorts. Long black coats with two columns of silver buttons down their front, holding the vests of their coat together with thin straps. Each had a small pin on its collar, a little metal depiction of an eye, except instead of a pupil, it had a vertical bar, adorned with a few notches, touching both the top and bottom of the eye. The shorter man seated on the couch was scribbling things down, looking more like a scribe than anything else, and the woman still had her back to the room as she faced out the window.

Realizing that the taller man was still waiting for an answer, Arkk shifted uneasily. “Didn’t have any formal training,” he said. “Our town is sometimes visited by passing mercenaries and other travelers. I learned from the books of any who were willing to show them to me while in town.”

“Self-taught? And you’ve managed a lightning spell with some degree of success?”

“It is my best spell.”

“Anything else?”

“A handful of minor, beginner-level rituals. Most blow up in my face,” Arkk admitted. When he did so, he couldn’t help but notice the tall man and the short man making eye contact for just a moment, leading to a bout of furious writing from the scribe. “Are… you not the tax collector, sir?”

The tall man looked back to Arkk, teetering backward for a moment before letting out a brief breath; the start of a laugh. The laugh ended before it could get going as the man realized that Arkk was serious.

“How rude of me,” he said, entirely taken aback. “Introductions slipped my mind.” He motioned his hand to the shorter man. “Chronicler Douglas Greesom.”

The shorter man kept writing for a moment but looked up to Arkk with a squint before dipping his head in something that might have been a greeting.

“Purifier Agnete,” he continued, moving his hand toward the window.

The woman finally looked toward Arkk. Arkk couldn’t help but suck in a breath. Her eyes…

They reminded him of Vezta’s eyes. Not quite the same. This woman’s eyes were more human, but the whites of her eyes had gone dark. Not completely pitch-black slices of the night sky, just gray, but still. And her irises… Vezta didn’t have irises or pupils, just burning golden suns, but this woman’s irises had a luminescent yellow quality to them, though that might have been the light from the window.

She didn’t nod a greeting or otherwise react. After that brief glance shocked Arkk, she simply turned back to continue gazing out the window.

Some long-lost relative of Vezta? Arkk doubted it. Although her eyes were odd, she was human. He couldn’t quite explain how he knew that, he just did.

“And finally,” the tall man said, moving his hand to his chest. “I am Master Inquisitor Darius Vrox.”

He maintained his gaze through his thin glasses. The way he stared and the way he dipped his voice a bit deeper than he had been speaking made Arkk think that he expected some sort of reaction to his unfamiliar titles.

Whatever reaction he had been expecting, it probably wasn’t a sigh of relief. “So, you aren’t the tax collector?”

Vrox—or Darius; Arkk wasn’t sure if both were his name or if one was a continuation of his title—stared a moment before letting out a barking laugh as he clapped his hands together. “Oh, I can’t say I’ve ever been mistaken for a taxman before.”

“Not many others visit bearing official seals of the Duchy,” Arkk said. “Figured you were a collector wanting a report on the village’s yield for the year. That’s why I rushed over. I’ve been working in the fields these past few days and feel I have a pretty strong grasp on what we’ve got. If you aren’t the collector… uh, sorry for interrupting your meeting? Nice to meet you,” he said, slowly backing out the door.

Arkk didn’t know exactly what an inquisitor was, but he talked with everyone who came through the village. He had heard of them before, usually in hushed whispers. They somehow worked for both the church and the crown, hunting down the most dangerous individuals in the greater Kingdom of Chernlock, of which the Duchy was a member state.

Although he didn’t know what they were here for, not being present felt like a much better option all of a sudden.

“Mister Arkk,” Vrox said, tone polite yet slightly less pleasant. “We had a few more questions regarding recent events in the area.”

Grimacing, Arkk stopped. He shot a glance at the Baron. This was his job, wasn’t it?

He got a helpless shrug in return.

“The demon summoning. Tell us what happened.”

Although the Baron paled at the mention of demons, Arkk sighed in relief. Of course they were here for that. Not him, Vezta, or Fortress Al-Mir. They probably heard about it from the captured orcs Arkk had sent to Smilesville Burg.

“I’m not sure what to say. There wasn’t a demon summoning. We stopped it.”

“With the orcs now tending your fields?”

Arkk nodded, even though far fewer of them had helped to stop it than were present. “They warned us of the summoning and helped us fight their old chieftain and the orcs loyal to her. After all was said and done, those surviving orcs who refused to assist were sent to Smilesville Burg for the Duke’s men to deal with. The rest agreed to help with the harvest as reparations for attacking in the first place.”

“And the orcs were fine with you sending several of their number to execution?”

“Yes.” Seeing Vrox’s raised eyebrow, Arkk elaborated. “Their old chieftain was not popular, to put it simply, nor was anyone who willingly followed her.”

“I see…”

Arkk shifted his weight from one foot to the other, fully expecting a barrage of questions to follow. What were the orcs going to do after? The orcs had likely raided other villages under their former chieftain, should they not face the consequences of their actions? Why weren’t these orcs going to the Duke’s men for judgment following their reparations? What authority had Langleey Village to determine the fates of these orcs?

Instead, Vrox clasped his hands behind his back, taking a few steps forward to loom over Arkk once again. “You have neglected to mention the facet of this incident that I am most interested in, Mister Arkk.”

Arkk nervously swallowed. “And that would be?”

“The horror from beyond the stars.”

Arkk didn’t have to hide his confusion. Although he tensed, knowing they were talking about Vezta—she had said that she came from the [STARS]—he was still taken aback by the phrasing. “Horror from beyond the stars? I…” He trailed off, glancing around the room. All three of the inquisitor’s group were staring at him now. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come now, you’ve deliberately avoided mentioning the presence of that creature. You well know what I speak of.” He wrinkled his nose, all traces of good humor absent from his features. “I could smell its presence draped over you from the moment you walked in.”

“That’s… probably sweat from working in the fields. Sorry, sir, but it is hard work.”

“Black and gold eyes. Blue skin. Appears solid, yet made of slime. Numerous tentacles.”

“Oh!” the Baron said, raising a finger. “Vezta. You’re talking about…” He trailed off, looking between Arkk and Vrox, perhaps realizing that he shouldn’t have said anything at all.

“So you do know it,” Vrox said, the corner of his lip twitching into an unpleasant smile. “I do not appreciate being lied to.”

“She’s not a horror,” Arkk said, mind racing. “She helped the village in a time of need. How were we supposed to know who you were talking about before you described her?”

Vrox moved back from Arkk a step, turning slightly to look at the chronicler. “Where is it now? I would love an encounter with the creature.”

Encounter. Not meeting. Arkk didn’t like this man’s choice of words.

Vrox turned back to Arkk after his question and stared for a long minute, eyes boring into Arkk’s as if he could detect a lie through willpower alone.

Maybe he could. Arkk didn’t know that much about magic.

“She appeared just in time to help fight the initial raid on the village and stuck around until the demon summoning was successfully stopped. Vezta hasn’t been to the village in at least a week,” he said with a shrug, picking his words carefully. He was telling the truth in full. It wasn’t his fault if the inquisitor took it the wrong way.

After another minute of uncomfortable staring, Vrox’s smile snapped into place. The same perfectly polite, friendly smile he had first used when Arkk walked in. “Shame. If it has moved on, nothing to do about it I suppose. Agnete, Douglas.”

The shorter man stood immediately, offering the slightest bow to the Baron before hurrying out of the room. The woman seemed much more reluctant to leave. She lingered at the window, staring out with a stony expression on her face.

“Agnete,” Vrox said again.

That was enough to get her to turn aside. She strode across the room with rigid movements, hands clenched into tight fists that made the leather of her gloves creak.

Away from the sun in the window, Arkk noted that her eyes didn’t glow nearly as much as Vezta’s did. However, the thick scars that marred her face did glow. Faint yellow-red lines at the deepest crevasses in her scars made her look like she didn’t have blood under her skin, but hot iron straight out of the smithy furnace.

She stopped in front of Arkk, locking eyes with him. Her lips, darkened much like the skin around her eyes, parted ever so slightly. “You feel… empty…” she whispered, voice barely carrying to Arkk’s ears. It looked like she was going to continue, but ended up turning and leaving the room instead.

“Your cooperation is appreciated, Baron of Langleey,” Vrox said with a shallow nod of his head. Stepping away from the Baron, he stopped at Arkk again. “You should visit the local Abbess and request a purification ritual.”

With that comment, he turned and left the room as well. The front door to the Baron’s manor clicked shut behind them.

Arkk let out a long sigh, stiff back turning to putty.

“I thought they would stay a little longer,” Gert said, obviously disappointed.

Arkk just shook his head. They had stayed quite long enough, in his opinion. He wasn’t sure if Vrox had believed his implication that Vezta wasn’t around anymore. Regardless, he had a feeling that Vrox would be back one way or another.