The Vampire & Her Witch

Liam Dunn thought himself to be a well traveled, worldly man. In order to pave the way for a more prosperous Dunn Barony that could transform into Dunn County, he'd been sent to one of the finest schools in Keating Duchy. It might not have been as prestigious as the Royal Academy in the capital, but for the son of a frontier lord, it was much better than anything he could have experienced if he'd attended school in Lothian March.

Keating Duchy was hundreds of years older than the march, and the grandeur and splendor of Keating City had left a deep impression on young Liam. Each summer, when he returned home to the frontier, he brought with him a host of ideas, and he gushed to his father for days about the things he missed the most from his school.

As he grew older, the desire to see the advancements of Keating Duchy take hold in the frontier never left him, but he gradually came to understand what it would cost to bring about such a transformation.

Public carriages pulled by a team of horses along fixed routes through the city were a tremendous convenience but without enough people who would pay for a ride instead of walking, it was a marvel that couldn't sustain itself. Likewise, the grand fountains and public displays of impressive statues were all funded by men who had more wealth than they could spend on their needs.

Despite his desire to see such things in the Town of Dunn, when his father asked him if he should build a new tannery or a grand plaza, the answer was all too obvious.

In a way, Liam's exposure to the finer life enjoyed by the well settled duchies away from the frontier was both a blessing and a curse. His desire to see his own home reach those heights fueled his ambition like lamp oil poured on a bonfire, but the realization of the enormity of the task to achieve his ambition burned him like a bonfire turned into an inferno.

Now, as he walked the halls of the ancient demon fortress on his way to dinner with Lady Ashlynn, he realized that the demons didn't just live as well as he had in Keating Duchy… they lived better lives.

"You said that they're rebuilding the city on a grand scale?" Liam asked Hugo as they followed a diminutive horned demon servant who had come to fetch them from their chambers. "Is it all going to be like this?"

"Better, if Lady Heila is to be believed," Hugo said, though he struggled to understand how a city could exceed the grandeur of the ancient fortress. The tapestries and paintings that hung in the corridors had clearly been created by Master artists, woven from the finest silks or painted with the richest, most intense pigments he'd ever seen.

More impressive than the art, however, were the functional elements that had been transformed into works of art in their own right. The gilded chandeliers ran on lamp oil with dozens of wicks and there were so many of them that even in the dark of night, the grand hallways were as brightly lit as mid day.

"Lady Heila," Liam said, rolling the unfamiliar name over his tongue as he sifted through everything he'd learned from Hugo and Carwyn since he woke in this strange place. "Lady Ashlynn's lady-in-waiting? The one they call the Willow Whip?"

"The very same," Hugo said with a nod. "She said that Lady Ashlynn was greatly inspired by a place called High Fen City where they used canals alongside roads to transport the vast amount of materials flowing through the trading hub."

"She was also inspired by another Eldritch city," Hugo continued as he repeated what he'd learned in the tour of the city that he'd been taken on. "Crystal Lake City is a place where a people called the 'Ancient Clan' bent and twisted their roads around the proudest, oldest trees and created a city that held tens of thousands of people but felt like it was a collection of small villages all nestled together instead of a single cohesive city."

"That… doesn't sound very practical," Liam said with a frown.

"Lady Ashlynn seems to think that these things help people live better lives," Hugo said. "Even Lady Heila didn't seem to understand it all but Master Isabell found it to be very impressive. She said that even the old countries across the sea hadn't been as ambitious about transforming their cities with new knowledge as Lady Ashlynn is."

"One thing is clear from all of this," Sir Carwyn added from his place walking half a step behind Sir Hugo. "Lady Ashlynn is spending a great deal of money on things that will only be useful if she wins her war against our people. I thought I'd see smithies hammering constantly on armor or fletchers producing arrows by the bushel, but she's building homes and roads and marketplaces…"

"Just because you haven't seen it," Liam countered. "That doesn't mean it isn't happening somewhere they haven't been willing to show you. They may have their forges somewhere deeper in the Vale, or suppliers on the other side of the High Pass you mentioned."

"Isn't that more frightening to consider, Lord Liam?" Hugo asked. "If she can spend so much wealth rebuilding Vale City in the image of the greatest cities of the lands beyond the mountains, and she still has enough wealth to set up foundries, forges, armorers and the like, or to import her arms from another nation… Isn't that a bit too much?"

The entire time Hugo had been in the Vale of Mists, he'd been counting. Counting soldiers when he saw them, but also cataloging their armor and weapons and how much it would cost to equip and maintain them. He counted horses in the stables, workers at construction sites, merchants setting up shops… he counted all of it.

Now, after touring not only Vale City but a few of the nearby villages as well, Hugo's tally had led him to an incredibly uncomfortable conclusion. The Vale of Mists had been slumbering for nearly a century but its foundation was much, much older than he'd ever believed and that foundation was stronger than the foundation of Lothian March by far.

A strong foundation was worthless, however, if there wasn't anything built on top of it, and that was the most uncomfortable thing that Hugo had realized. The Vale had a strong foundation but until recently, very little stood atop it. Now, however, vast sums of wealth were being spent at a speed that would make even a Duke's treasury bleed.

And from the comments Lady Heila had made, they were only just getting started…