Fortress Al-Mir

“Master Arkk. Might I ask why you’re out here?”

Arkk glanced back. He wasn’t quite sure how Vezta found him. To the best of his knowledge, the employee link was one-way. He could look in on his employees at any time but the reverse was not true. Then again, the link he had with Vezta was slightly different than what he had with everyone else. Well, everyone except his two prisoners.

And wasn’t that a topic.

He didn’t want the two elves working for him. They didn’t want to work either. Thus, an employee bond couldn’t form. Instead, upon being ‘captured’ in his and Ilya’s grips, they had become prisoners. A similar status to an employee in that he could see them but he couldn’t move them on their own, only in the grip of one of his employees. Or himself. They didn’t contribute to the magical power of the [HEART] the way his employees did and they couldn’t open doors on their own. They were…

Prisoners.

Even though Arkk didn’t really want that either.

Shoving the thought aside—he had enough on his plate at the moment to worry about investigating the strange magic of the [HEART]—he looked back to the newly constructed tunnel.

“Working on a project,” Arkk said.

“There are several wings of Fortress Al-Mir that are going unused. Making an entirely new wing and so far from the rest of the fortress is entirely unnecessary.”

“Ah, but it can only be far away. It would defeat the purpose if I started this little construction project closer to the Heart.”

All twelve of the lesser servants were scurrying about, moving their pulsating and vile bodies against the dirt walls, eating them away to extend tunnels and carve out rooms. Some of them followed along behind the others, claiming territory by stamping down those compass-rose tiles with the glowstones in the center. Arkk followed after those ones, pulling gold from the treasury to place down rooms in every corridor and newly constructed room.

The appearance of the tiles didn’t change too much. The stone cracked. Bits and pieces disappeared entirely. Spider webs formed in corners and an unpleasant musk filled the air. He had gotten used to it.

Vezta wrinkled her nose, running her hand along the wall. Bits of the wall crumbled away under her touch. Dust clung to her fingertips.

“You call this construction? The schematic you are using is faulty. Where did you discover it?”

“Asked Zullie. She said she doubted that she would be able to make a more advanced room on her own but the work she did with you on the temple gave her enough of an idea of how to do this. And this is exactly what I intended,” Arkk added, kicking a small bit of rubble off to the side of the corridor.

“You intend to deface Fortress Al-Mir with such shoddy work? This looks like…” Vezta trailed off, eyes narrowing as her golden suns turned on Arkk. “This looks worse than the dilapidated fortress at Darkwood.”

“Exactly!” Arkk spread his arms wide, spending gold to ruin this new section of the fortress. “Inquisitor Vrox wants to find ruins? He’ll find ruins.”

“A decoy?” Vezta said, frowning at one of the torch-holders dropping its torch as the new schematic overwrote the pristine wall.

“If he can’t find anything, he’ll expand his search. Don’t want him to expand it to the point where he discovers the trap doors. So, we give him a little something. Hopefully what he expects to see. I did some scrying on the Darkwood fortress. Not much left. Looks more like dirt tunnels than how this fortress did when I first arrived, but I did copy the layout here.”

“They likely killed the [HEART]’s Keeper and sent the [HEART] into dormancy,” Vezta said, her tone pained. “Fortress Al-Mir was merely lacking a master when you found it.”

“Well, we don’t want that to happen here, do we?”

“No.”

“Hence the ruins,” Arkk said.

Vezta knelt, plucking a cracked glowstone from the floor. That might have normally destroyed the magic of the room but, since the room was a cracked and withered version of the regular tile, the actual tile was underneath, shrouded in magic. Or so Arkk guessed from everything he knew.

“You went to Zullie for help with this schematic?”

Arkk hesitated at her question. She spoke with the same pristine calm that she normally used. Something about the way she stared at the glowstone without any of her eyes flicking up to him made him think there was more to the question than the surface words would indicate.

She… wasn’t jealous, was she?

“The idea came to me after I went to bed last night. Following yesterday’s meeting, I couldn’t sleep much. Too busy thinking.” He shook his head, moving on. “I woke up early and thought to find you. When I did, you were in the temple room. I’m not sure if you were meditating or praying. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“I exist to serve Fortress Al-Mir and its master.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to do everything. You can take a break too. Zullie was awake—I’m not sure living underground is good for her; it seems like she has no sense of a sleep schedule—and I asked her. As I said, making a more advanced room would have likely been beyond her capabilities.” Arkk motioned to one broken-down wall. “This wasn’t.”

Vezta stayed staring at the glowstone for a long moment before it fell from her fingers. Clasping her hands together in front of her navel, she stood and nodded. “I understand your reasoning. Please don’t fear disturbing me in the future.”

Arkk pressed his lips together. “If it makes you feel better, I will need your help with some other rooms. First, let me tell you the rest of my plan.

“I’ll dig a few access points to the surface and scatter around some debris. Nothing too obvious, but enough to draw attention. Might have the orcs stomp around to make it look like the entrances are in use too.”

“We draw them in and bombard them with traps? Collapse the entrances around them and trap them inside? Collapse the entire wing on top of their heads?”

Arkk stared for a long moment, surprised at the hostility in her voice. “I… was thinking more along the lines of letting them destroy it.”

“Master…”

“This wing, I mean. Not the whole fortress. This is what I need your help with. I want to make a fake Heart. We put up a token resistance but eventually let them in. They destroy the fake heart. We decommission the whole wing then, collapsing parts of it until they start running away. The inquisitors leave, thinking they’ve finished their objective. The main Fortress Al-Mir is unaffected and we carry on as usual… except you and I need to take care not to be seen around the area. Maybe we go on a road trip to the other side of the duchy to make them think we’re starting a new base of operations out there.”

Vezta drew in a deep breath, looking around with a frown. “That might work. They might come back later once they realize the extent of your duplicity.”

“Hopefully we have the portal open and the Pantheon’s help by then. Or whatever is on the other side.” Vezta had tried to explain a few times but… it felt like one of those things that had to be seen to really comprehend.

“We’re just buying time then. I understand. You would need to make at least some parts of this place look lived-in. The inquisitors are aware that you have several orcs working for you.”

“Good point,” Arkk said, looking through his plan for the new wing in his mind’s eye. “We’ll have a few proper rooms closer to one of the entrances. A dormitory, kitchens… Maybe a library if it will generate books on its own the way Zullie’s bedroom did. Otherwise, I don’t want to lose our books.”

“We’ll have to adjust them to look more worn down to match the aesthetics you have in the rest of this place.”

“Adjusting existing schematics shouldn’t be too hard, right?”

Vezta shook her head. “I shall get started on the task immediately.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”

Vezta dipped her head, bowing. She started to turn away, only to pause and look back. “As servant, advisory isn’t my forte—”

“Just say it, Vezta.”

“The fortress requires contiguous territory. Some small tunnel must connect this place to the real [HEART] if you wish for your ploy to succeed. That introduces a vulnerability to the real [HEART].”

Arkk frowned. He had been planning on collapsing the main tunnel he had used to build this wing far to the north of the actual fortress. The fact that it would all fall apart if he did so had slipped his mind. “Any suggestions?”

“My former master had a method of hiding passages. Doors that were indistinguishable from walls. I do not know how to create such defenses.”

Arkk didn’t think that was very useful to point out if it couldn’t be done. He didn’t voice his thoughts, however. “What about smaller tunnels? When the lesser servants dug out to find the Darkwood fortress, their tunnels were much smaller,” he said, holding his fingertips together in a circular manner. “Too small for people, but large enough to count for contiguous territory.”

“As long as they are large enough for the servants to claim the area, that might work.”

“We could put several of the tunnels around in every room. Have a few loop around on themselves, others lead to nowhere. Only one would be a real tunnel. Even if they found a way to investigate the holes in the walls, they surely wouldn’t investigate them all. All could be filled with grates to deter any exploration if they do find a way.”

“Still a vulnerability. I suppose that cannot be eliminated with this plan. Very well. I shall consider other complications and deliver my thoughts on the matter when I deliver the altered schematics.”

“Sounds good. I’m going to keep working here. Do you want a quick transport back?”

“To the library, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

It wasn’t any trouble at all. With a thought, Vezta disappeared.

Arkk peered into the crystal ball on his table, frowning at what he saw within. The mines of Silver City were maze-like and expansive, containing even more ground than Fortress Al-Mir. The network of tunnels followed the veins of ore—silver, which was where the settlement got its name, but also lead and copper. Tools, carts, shoes, and hats had all been left behind. Most looked untouched but the gorgon in the caverns had taken an interest in some of it.

Watching the gorgon was a strange experience. The Smilesville garrison had a small treatise on various beastmen and demihuman races. Their writings on the subject of gorgon left much to be desired, unfortunately. It seemed as if gorgon were rare enough that there wasn’t much information about them. Or perhaps few people made it back from an encounter alive. What was known was little more than what Hawkwood had mentioned back in Cliff. The serpentine beastmen had coils strong enough to crush even hardened steel, they had glands in their upper mouth that allowed them to project a kind of venomous acid from their fangs, and their gaze could turn someone to stone.

Their most infamous ability was on full display inside the mine. Not all the miners had made it out when they moved in. Detailed statues of fearful humans stood around the tunnels, silently watching forevermore. Arkk had been somewhat nervous about scrying on them, not sure if looking at their visages would turn him to stone even through the crystal ball.

That particular bit of magic required direct eye contact. Thankfully.

They also looked at the so-called Hope Killer without ill effect, implying that it took an active choice to turn someone to stone rather than passively turning everything they saw to stone.

Arkk wasn’t sure how much Savren was controlling them. When he wasn’t in their vicinity, they went about their day as normal. Mostly spending the time lounging about or eating—Arkk had discovered that they could undo their stone transformation, returning petrified persons and animals to their fleshy forms for consumption, which made their infamous ability far more practical as a hunting tool than Arkk had initially thought. From his morbid observations, he decided they liked animals—mostly rats, though he wouldn’t be surprised if they would turn to the frozen humans if they got too hungry—and ate nothing in the way of grain, fungus, or fruit.

Which made Savren’s consumption of the latter items curious. The mind magic he used must have made them ignore it.

Some of them had to go hunting for Savren. They brought back vermin for the most part. Sometimes one or two would venture out of the mines for fruit or mushrooms foraged from the nearby forest. From the way they moved within the mines and the way they moved outside, Arkk doubted they enjoyed those tasks much. It was almost like they were frightened of the open air.

Savren himself spent most of his days deep within the mines. He avoided the gorgon for the most part, choosing to isolate himself with a shelf full of books. Arkk tried to peer over his shoulder and glean what the man was reading but he flipped through the pages so fast that Arkk barely had time to read a few sentences. He couldn’t tell if the man was actually reading or just skimming through in search of something. The only clear thing was that the books delved into mind-affecting magics.

That was the biggest problem point. Even more so than the gorgon. So far, his only plan for dealing with that possibility was bringing along Vezta and hoping that her killing the man would remove any spells.

He might not have much of a choice. According to Zullie, people capable of fulfilling the corner spots of their ritual didn’t grow on trees. The ones that did exist would almost certainly have been swept up by the academies and would be both harder to access and less willing to help. His only real choices were criminals like Savren or unknowns like Hale. While the latter was more appealing, he didn’t know how to go about finding such people beyond testing every single person he came across.

Savren, though less appealing from a purely moral standpoint, was at least a known quantity already.

Known quantities could be planned around to an extent.

He just wished he had a better plan.

“Vezta, are you ready?”

“Master,” Vezta said, standing from the table, “is it wise to leave the fortress at this time?”

“We have eight days before the inquisitor commences his search. The new wing is almost finished. There isn’t much we can do here besides sit around and twiddle our thumbs. If this works, we get someone else who might help defend should the inquisitor find the real fortress.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“We escape and we’re back where we started except we know not to waste our time on Savren.”

“And leaving a trail of magic circles for them to follow?”

Arkk waved his arms around the dilapidated fortress. “That’s the beauty of doing this here. We want them to discover this place. If they don’t stumble across them, great. If they do, great! No matter what, we win.” Arkk reached down to the table and adjusted the basket. It contained bread, fruit, and fresh meat. A peace offering. Or bribe. He had some raw poultry dangling from ropes tied to their ankles in the hopes that throwing them at the gorgon would make them less likely to try to eat him.

The raw poultry had a little surprise with it as well. He wasn’t sure that it would work but he was willing to try just about anything at this point.

Vezta walked over to a clear section of the floor and, after a short scrying session, used her tendrils to scrawl out a teleportation circle. “Very well,” she said. “I shall protect you as best I am able.”

“That is all I ask. Let’s go.”