"Servant of Empire" - Ch 12

We reached the Green quickly, the sound of people screaming coming from the direction of the wall ahead of us. The others were spilling out of the door when we arrived, and I threw my bags haphazardly in the door to one side. We all hurried towards the sound, locals streaming past us going the other way and casting frightened looks back over their shoulders.

A few moments before we reached the wall, a horn blew three short, quick blasts. I could see one of the guards on the wall pointing at something further South. Something high up.

A dragon.

I couldn’t make out a color at this distance, only a stocky neck and thick tail between the extended wings. As I strung my bow its wings retracted and it began a dive towards us. I felt a tickle of sensation on the back of my neck, quite apart from the fear I was keeping bottled up. Some kind of magic was at play here.

Nocking an arrow, I ducked to one side of a building to take a bit of cover in case the thing let out a gout of flame or something in a low pass. I whispered a quick prayer to the Raven, and began a Caern Jale battle-song under my breath.

I think it is worthy of mention that in the Caern Jale, officers were taught rhythmic enchantments that we used to enhance our troops’ ability to work together – each unit’s officers could bind our troops’ actions to the rhythm of our magic, enabling a far more effective team effort than simple training together could provide. It was this which gave us such significant advantage over our enemies, even before the Ascension granted my kind access to our share of the power of the Hells.

I felt the wave of power reach out from me and settle into the Wayfarers, and saw the almost imperceptible difference in pacing each one took. Footsteps started coming down together, movements began to dovetail.

In the service, I lived for moments like this in a battle. The old exhilaration returned, and my face took on a grim smile. Dragon or no, this beast was about to have a rude shock when it found us defending this town.

As it got closer, I saw its sides beneath its wings appeared lumpy, almost tumorous. It roared once, a sharp brassy sound that rolled over the terrain before it. I saw rock dust rise in response to the sound, and the tremor beneath my feet took on real significance.

This was a mountain dragon, not a fire drake as I’d first assumed. I imbued my arrow with a quick un-luck enchantment and released it in a high arc to intercept the creature’s dive.

Its wings flared almost presciently, broad pinions halting its dive and holding it some twenty feet above the wall. My shot flew beneath it, splitting the distance between its belly and the stone wall.

The dragon roared again, its grey scales reflecting wetly in the sunlight with an oily sheen. The sound was horrifying, and in a small, intellectually-isolated compartment of my mind I could tell there was a strong element of magic in this beast.

The rest of my mind simply froze in panic. I knew this was a result of some enchantment, but I was rendered powerless to do anything. My bow fell from my hand to clatter on the ground, and all I could do was stare dumbly at the beast.

Beneath its wings, what I had thought were tumorous lumps suddenly loosened and fell, each one on a ropy thread extending from its bulbous rear. Great black legs, crusted with spiny hair and tipped with shining claws, unfolded from each one as they fell. The light glinted from reddish faceted eyes as these man-sized spiders leaped down to the ground beneath their enormous draconic carriage.

One landed on a city guard, who had also been struck dumb with magical terror at the dragon’s roar. Four legs seized the man as the other four steadied its body, and the huge fangs sank deeply in the man’s collar. He may have screamed, I can’t say. His neck distended and discolored immediately from the injection of so much venom, and within a few moments the vile arachnid had whipped a blanket of green-hued silk around him and slung his twitching body over its back.

Something about the spider’s jaws was wrong…I’d seen specimens this large before, in the jungles of Arrak. These were strangely shaped, bulbous musculature overspilling the outer chitin. Their skin was also mottled, greenish blotches showing pustules of some strange excretion scattered over their bodies.

Another spider had engaged a second guard, catching him as he fled, and the strength of those jaws became evident as it ripped through his breastplate like so much jelly. As it pinned the man to the ground and pulled the armor aside, it reared its head back for a bite into the man’s undefended spine.

Whereupon a bolt of lightning seared through its head like the wrath of an angry god. Its eyes ruptured, spewing black ichor over its ruined carapace.

This broke my trance, and I looked over to see Nix pumping his fist in the air in a victorious gesture. Further away, I saw Sered cleaving the legs out from under one of the charging abominations.

I grabbed my bow again, and resumed my rhythm while pushing a new resolve into my charm of unluck. I raised my aim, and let fly at the dragon. As I did, it turned its gaze directly to me. The arrow hit and pierced through between the shoulder of its leg and the base of its right wing, shaft protruding from between two scales.

I saw the creature flinch back a bit from the hit, but it gave no other sign that the injury concerned it in the slightest. I caught a glimpse of something under its wing, but had no time to peer for more detail. Its lips retracted from its teeth – huge, wide, and sharp – and I barely had a moment to roll behind the building as it spewed a gale of scouring fragments across my position. The face of the building behind me lost a large proportion of its surface, and I could see perforations scoring all across it where the tiny bits of rock had penetrated and embedded themselves in it. The smell was overpowering, splintered rock and dust choking the air.

I could see no sign of Nix, though I thought I could hear Rendo shouting from somewhere. Once the dragon had focused its attention away from me, I rushed across the intervening space to the fallen guard. The man was strugging to get to his feet, but the ripped iron breastplate had his arms jammed at odd angles. I drew my dagger and slid to him, slicing at the leather straps that held the clamshell pieces together.

He scrambled to his feet and took off at a run.

I slammed the knife back into its sheath and rolled my bow off my back, looking up at the immense shadow of the dragon.

In length it was probably forty feet from nose to tail, much shorter than a classic drake, its wings probably spanned sixty in breadth. It was racing along the wall like a cat on a fence, batting off guards as it reached them and biting down at the ones on the ground. Its fat tail wagged to and fro in a gross imitation of a puppy. Around its neck, a steel chain was draped – and along its length huge eyes were attached, ripped tissues still clinging to them. I could have sworn I saw them swiveling independently.

I was about to nock another arrow for it when a glimmering orange flare leapt out from behind a building to impact on the stone drake’s side. As it did, I saw a bright green flash, and across its skin three sigils glowed green for just a second before dissolving into smoke that drifted off on the wind. “What the fuck!?!?” I heard Nix shout over the din of the fight.

Wards. The beast had a magical ward on it. Or at least it had had one, it appeared to have been expended in nullifying Nix’s assault.

I drew and released, to watch my arrow spark off one of the rocky scales. After a short curse, I noticed a strangeness by my feet. The black, sticky blood of the spider Nix had destroyed, was moving.

It was slowly withdrawing back into the body of the giant arachnid. As I watched, the legs began twitching spasmodically, and one of the eyes bulged back out from its collapsed cavity.

It was regenerating.

I whipped my sword out, throwing the bow to the ground, and began hacking furiously at the thing. The Voruscan steel bit deeply into the creature, and I heard it expel air from its abdominal lung. I gave it six or eight whacks, severing four of its legs and putting deep cuts in its body.

“Nix! Rendo! Burn the spiders!” I shouted. “They’re growing back!”

I saw Sered’s head snap into my direction, registering what I’d said, and he looked back at the beast he’d felled. Immediately, he began to swing at it again, and I looked about for Wynter. No doubt he knew where to get some pitch or oil quickly in this town.

The dragon meanwhile had reared back on its haunches, wings spread wide, and roared. At first I thought it was an unintelligible sound of fury, but I began to distinguish words in its voice:

“This land belongs to Dorad! Leave or fall beneath him!”

I saw him finally, on a stair leading up to the top of the wall. Directly in front of the dragon’s charge.

He leveled the bolt straight at the dragon, and cut loose. Glittering in the sun, the quarrel left his crossbow and flew in a beautiful arc directly into the dragon’s left eye. With a spray of brilliant ruby blood it reared back, clawing at the injury with its foreleg and roaring with elemental fury while shaking its head in a frenzy. He immediately began to re-draw the bow and was placing another bolt on the groove, glancing up at the dragon again.

Its roar became a fierce growl I could feel through the ground, and it took two steps on its hind legs towards him. He raised the bow again, too late. It brought its bulk down behind its forelegs, both front claws together coming down like an avalanche.

Directly on top of Wynter.

His body was flattened almost completely, only one arm sticking out from under the claws of the dragon, its fingers grasping frantically. Something like blood oozed, but it was nowhere near as fluid as a living body would have spilled. The crossbow skittered across the top of the wall and toppled to the ground.

The dragon swung its wings wide, and in a rush of air took to the sky. Still scratching at its face where the bolt had pierced its eye. It flew off, into the distance, to vanish behind the treetops to the North.

I found Nix and Rendo around the side of another building, with three of the spider corpses burning fiercely before them. Sered was calling for oil to burn the corpse of the spider he’d felled, and Nix was igniting one that had fallen to the collective efforts of four guardsmen. I hacked my own several more times and shouted for fire, which was quickly delivered by a peasant in the form of a bottle of rum and a torch.

Once we were certain the spiders would remain down, Sered and I went to inspect Wynter’s body. It was laying half on the wall and half on the stairs, broken in so many ways it was hard to imagine he had been whole so recently. Only the one arm that had escaped the crushing weight of the dragon remained strangely intact, and that still moved with a deranged animation. It grasped and fluttered with a will of its own.

“Hellfire,” I muttered. “That’s awful.” My tail started twitching of its own accord.

He nodded.

“He’s still in there.” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“He was already dead, right? His soul was sticking to the body to keep it going, wasn’t it?”

“Oh lord’s justice,” he whispered. I hadn’t thought he could get paler.

“Will it repair itself?” I looked it over. It was gooey, and flies were beginning to appear. “Has he been able to reconstruct himself after damage?”

“Never anything so bad.”

“But it did self-repair? Like trolls regenerate?”

“Over time, though the worst parts tended to require sewing.”

“This is beyond me. I can do field healing and bandages, but this…” I let it trail off.

“What do we do here?” He asked.

“I don’t know. If we burn him, we unlock him from the body, and then his soul moves on. If we leave him like this, he’s trapped for maybe years, maybe decades, depends on how long the body takes to rot away. It’d be a hazard to others as well, as he’d probably go insane. This is one of the reasons why we outlawed undeath.”

He glanced at me sidelong. “One good law doesn’t make your Empire redeemable.”

“Didn’t intend to imply that, but we’ll have that discussion another time.” Rendo strode up the stairs to join us. “I think we should burn it. Even if he was benign, undead are unpredictable. We’re taking a big risk to leave it.”

“Holy shit,” Rendo said when he saw what we were looking at. The hand continued to spasm.

“Yeah,” I replied.

Sered straightened up. “Let’s load him into a cart and get him off this wall. We’ll give him a day and see how much, if any, repairs itself. After that, we burn the body if it shows no sign of recuperation.”

I shook my head. “Poor fucker.”

Nix jogged up the stairs, out of breath. “I just finished burning those spiders, guys. I think they were..aghh!” She caught sight of what was left of Wynter, and immediately hunched over, gagging. I tried not to watch her vomiting. Bad enough to do it in public, one doesn’t need an audience for that sort of thing.

We found a small hand-cart beside the inn and borrowed it, loading the remnants of Wynter’s corpse onto it. I cut the damaged armor’s fasteners to free up the body in case it was going to re-inflate or something, and left it to whomever thought they’d do the pushing. Sered produced a tarp and covered Wynter up with what sounded like a prayer. Rendo put Wynter’s crossbow on top of the tarp to keep it in place. I hadn’t noticed before, but the bow was a real work of art – gold filigree up and down the stock, and the bow itself appeared to be constructed of lacquered steel. From the runes I could see engraved on it, it was probably enchanted to some degree.

As we all walked (in Sered’s case, limped, as he’d sustained an injury to his leg which I wasn’t able to completely heal) back towards the Steaming Green, we took stock of the attack. Nine dead, not including Wynter. Three of them were guards, six were just common citizens.

“What the hell was that?” Rendo asked.

“Stone dragon,” I said. “Would have been a lot worse for us, but Wynter popped it one in the eye. It took off after killing him.”

“And it resisted one of my fireballs, completely ignored it.” Nix added.

“Yeah, I saw that.” I said. “It had a ward on it, absorbed the spell, didn’t just resist it, it was totally neutralized by the ward and the ward seemed to expend itself.”

“Wait a second,” Nix said. “Dragons don’t do that. Do they?”

“Never heard of it, but I’ve only dealt with one before, and the topic didn’t come up.” I replied.

Nix shook her head. “Don’t think so.”

“So maybe someone put it there, cast the ward on it?” Rendo asked.

“Well, yeah, someone did,” Nix said. “But who? And why? And did you guys see those spiders?”

Sered looked at her while pushing the cart. “Yes, you were going to say something earlier. What about them?”

“They were…changed. Modified. They were growing back like a troll.”

“I saw that too,” I said. “And they were strong. One of them ripped through a guard’s armor without any effort at all.”

Nix scratched her ear. “Those spiders were changed. On purpose. I’d bet someone infected them, or transplanted parts of a troll on them, or something. They didn’t get that way naturally.”

“And they sure didn’t just climb onto a dragon to get a ride by accident,” Rendo added.

“And let’s suppose the same person capable of that sort of alchemy or wizardry is also able to cast wards.” I said. “Did you see that chain around the dragon’s neck?”

Nix nodded. “Yeah, what was that?”

“It had eyes on it. Like, real eyes. Looking around.”

Rendo grimaced. “What the hell?”

“We find out who made that necklace,” I said. “Then we have the agent behind this. But the dragon said Dorad – that didn’t sound like it was talking about itself.”

“And the town has already been assaulted directly by trolls.” Sered pondered.

“So,” I said. “We’ve got a village destroyed by giants working with trolls. We’ve got a town attacked by trolls, and now by a dragon, with magical wards, working with trollish spiders. So we’re building a picture here of a set of skills, but we’re no closer to an identity.”

I overheard Rendo muttering to himself. “This is so fucked up.”

“A diviner would come in mighty handy here, to find out where this Dorad is.” Sered said. He cocked his head a little to one side. “There’s no way those spiders were meant to take over the town, there just weren’t enough of them. The dragon maybe, but it left.”

“Wynter shot it in the eye, I saw the hit.” I said. “Maybe that dissuaded it from continuing.”

“It came for us,” Nix said. “Those spiders, the dragon, they were meant to kill us.”

“But why? How would they even know we were here? We just arrived.” I scratched the base of my right horn.

“It might be a retaliatory strike, getting back at us for what we did to the giants.”

“There were trolls there, too,” Rendo mused.

“Better not say that too loudly, folks, or we’ll be rather unwelcome here.” I said. “Even more than already. Besides, we don’t know that. This thing basically laid claim to the town, and it never talked about us. This was a message to the people of the town.”

“Yes, that’s true. Let’s assume we are a secondary concern to them.” Sered said. “The common thread here remains trolls – these spiders have been treated or imbued with some kind of troll essence, the trolls at the giant’s hall, the trolls that attacked the town a while back. But are they really that social, that forward-thinking, that they’d continue to pursue a goal for this long?”

Nix shrugged. “They’re supposed to be smart, like a child or a really smart dog. They live forever unless they get killed, so I assume they have some level of memory. They aren’t slimes, there are brains in there, even if they are weird.”

We kept talking on the way back to the Green, where we rolled Wynter’s remains onto the tarp and wrapped him up in a big grotesque bundle.

“I still think we should burn it,” I said.

“We’ll lock it up in his room for the night and check in the morning.” Sered said.

I didn’t push the point.

While Sered carried the ugly burden up the stairs, the rest of us sat down in the main room of the Steaming Green. Rendo fetched beers for us – I saw several ill looks cast my way from the innkeep behind the bar – and we all tried as best we could to relax.

“If that thing has some kind of arcane assistance, there will likely be a quick way for it to get past its injury.” I said. “It will be back.”

“And that puts the whole town at risk, again.” Nix added.

“How did it even know where we were?” Rendo asked.

“Fairly simple, I imagine, for a decent diviner.” I replied.

“These people can’t handle that kind of hostile attention,” Nix pointed out. “We shouldn’t be here if we’re going to attract that sort of business.”

“I’d rather think about ways to prevent a future attack – we need to strike back at the source. Defenses will always fall to a long-enough siege.” I said.

“But where do we strike?” Rendo asked. “We don’t know where to go.”

“We know trolls are a common thread. Trolls generally lair underground, or under constructions like bridges, they like stone over their heads.” Nix said.

“You think it’s trolls doing this?” Rendo asked.

“This king Dorad, yeah, I think he’s behind it. For some reason he’s warring on our people here on the surface.” Nix cocked her head, thinking. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. He’s in charge of the trolls, maybe even is some kind of smarter troll, maybe just more ambitious.”

“Okay, so we know his name and we know he’s king of the trolls. What else do we have?”

Silence.

“Do we even now what he is?” I asked. “Could be some kind of wizard, or a giant, what?”

“We don’t know,” said Sered. “Might have even been the dragon itself, though I doubt that.”

“Okay,” I said. “Regardless, we shouldn’t stay here in town if we’re endangering them.”

“We don’t know if that thing will be back. We cost them their spiders, they may not want to bother.” Rendo offered.

“If Dorad wants this town, we’re in the way. If it isn’t the dragon, something will be back.” I thought it over for a bit. “What about that castle, the ruin where you said you dealt with some bandits?”

Rendo perked up. “There were some good tunnels under there, very dry.”

Nix looked at him askance. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

He sank down. “Oh yeah, the hole.”

I was confused. “Hole? What hole?”

Rendo didn’t look up. “There’s a hole right in the central courtyard, goes down – way down.”

Sered wiped his mouth with a napkin. “We think it connects to the tunnels of the Deep Elves. At the very least, it’s a hazard.”

“Did anything ever come up from it? If bandits were in there, they didn’t get bothered did they?” I took a swig off my beer.

“No, I guess not.” Nix replied.

“How’s the structure itself?” I asked. “Can it be repaired?”

Sered nodded. “Yes, I suppose so.”

“Is there an easy trail or a road up to it?”

He nodded again. “Yes, the bandits were using a trail that led from the main road up there. You could drive wagons up, I suppose it was the old road when the castle was still intact.”

I thought it over. “How much money do we have? I have what we were paid by Orandor, that’s it.”

Nix looked over. “I thought you were a noble?”

I nodded. “I am. I was,” I pulled out my purse and showed a couple of the Suns of Vorus I’d been granted at my discharge. “I was a Count of the Empire. If it still existed, just one of these would be enough to buy or build this town.”

Nix lifted her eyebrows a bit, and Nix caught a breath.

“May I see one of those?” Rendo said quietly.

I slid one of the big coins over to him. The rings of different palladium and gold glinted, the flattened star-gem center subtly glowing. The carved design on each side locked the three together and was the binding for the enchantments laid upon Suns when they were made.

He held it up to the light, turning it side to side and watching the beams penetrate the center gem.

Nix gently brought his hands down closer to where she could see. “Is this a soulstone?” She asked.

“Yes, that’s right.”

Rendo looked over to me. “What’s a soulstone?”

“They are made in Hell; a soul can be stored in one.”

He frowned a little. “Why would you?”

“Would I what?”

“Stick a soul in there?”

I shrugged. “I suppose they’re easier to transport that way. They wander about otherwise. Never really gave it much thought.”

Nix looked over to me. “Is there one in there now?”

I hadn’t considered it. “I guess so, yes. It’s what keeps the enchantments on them going.”

She set it back on the table, gently, and slid it back to me with a look of distaste. “That’s awful,” she said.

“I guess so, but it’s what was contracted – they made their contracts, whoever they were.”

Sered frowned. “There is no justice in that.”

I set my mug down. “I get that you follow that path. But let me ask – what is justice? Isn’t it what is decreed by the law? In my lands, the law says that when you bargain away your soul, the owner gets to do with it as they please. If it is worthwhile, you are given form and might advance among the Legions. If it is not, it will be used as the owners see fit. It’s a binding agreement, the justice is in the enforcement of the agreement.”

“That’s not so,” he said. “Justice is in the living fairness.”

“That’s not what your god says,” I countered. “Tyr the Mighty enforced our justice then just as he does yours now. It is the law of the land, the laws handed down by the gods. Even disregarding my empire’s laws, the King agreed to be ruled by the very same justice. If this were not just, wouldn’t Tyr disavow it?”

He just frowned, silent for a moment. Then, “What if they were coerced?”

Rendo and Nix were quietly chatting while we spoke. I wanted to ask them to order some food, but I was too tied up with Sered.

I tilted my head at Sered. “What do you mean, coerced?”

“I mean, suppose someone held a man’s child over a fire to get him to consign his soul?”

“I would think Tyr would not enforce that agreement, that would have been unlawful in Vorus.”

“Alright. Now suppose this – instead of a fire, his children are starving to death. He sells his soul to guarantee they are fed. Is that valid?”

“I suppose so, why not?”

He put his hand on my shoulder. “Suppose the kingdom, or the empire, or wherever the government resides, suppose it has arranged for the law to push a great many of its people into desperate poverty. What then? Their children are starving, going to bed hungry and crying. Would a mother not do anything to fill their bellies? Would a father not kill to get food for them? Would they not sell their souls to see their children escape the grindstone under which they lived?”

Now it was my turn to frown. “It isn’t like that. The people have choices, they have options. We didn’t starve our people.”

He shook his head. “Perhaps not, but you made slaves of entire races. Your own people were brought up from childhood thinking that this was the accepted order. Even if there was food, was there freedom? Would not a parent take any step it could to ensure a better future for its children?”

“We offered many options for this. One could enter military service, earn a grant of land, even a title. Even common bakers were rewarded, there were many ways to get ahead.”

“But never to be equal to your own people, yes?”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense. They could never be equal.”

He smiled thinly. “And that is why it was not just.”

I couldn’t answer, I was just confused. How could they have been equal? They weren’t Shadrim. It was like saying I couldn’t be equal to an apple.

He pulled his hand back. “I don’t mean to discomfort you. No, wait – I do. What I do not want is to make you feel that I hate you. I don’t. I hate what your empire stood for, and I have fought for most of my very long life against those things. You seem to have a very strong sense of conscience, which I find very redeeming. I am trying to widen your perspective to see that you were unwittingly participating in a system that was not just.”

I felt a smoldering anger in my belly, but I stoked it. Now was not a good time to start a fight. “I don’t agree with you, but I appreciate your intent. I will consider what you’ve said, but don’t hold out a lot of hope that I will come around to your side.”

“I don’t expect you to agree with me,” he said. “At least, not yet.”

I shrugged. I pulled my coins back and put them away. When I looked up, I saw Nix looking straight at me. “Talk later,” she said, with a nod towards my purse.

Her eyes almost immediately darted to the entrance. Mine followed, and there I saw at least four guardsmen, two with swords drawn and two with spears standing outside the door. I saw them squint as their eyes adjusted to the dim room, scanning all the patrons. Their gaze landed upon our table and locked on us.

The first of the two marched up and halted at the end of our table. “You will come with us. Now.”

(All content here, outside of those elements attributed otherwise, is copyright (2025-) Thomas Theobald. With the exception of AI training, personal use with attribution is granted.)