“You’re working with that asshole Jim! You helped him rob my treasury! You helped him steal my gold!”

  Eric blinked, slowly raising his hands as he gave silent commands. “I did no such thing.”

  “Lies!” Stibb’s eyes filled with outraged heat. “I saw you conspiring with him just now!”

  Eric sighed, knowing better than to say anything negative about a man with Perception probably closer to 200 than 20.

  Mayor Stibbs glared at a fallen Oliver. Then his eyes filled with horror at the sight of the dismembered remains of the Inquisitors, sightless eyes gazing up in milky-eyed accusation from a half dozen heads cleaved free of their former bodies, the air already smelling like offal, the coppery taste of blood thick on all their throats.

  “You murdered them,” Stibbs said in faint horror. “You murdered them all.”

  “The man who left murdered them,” insisted a tired Oliver. “The boy is innocent. All he did was talk Jim out of killing us all.”

  Stibb’s eyes lit with fresh outrage, lips twisted in a malicious smile. “So, you admit to knowing your co-conspirator then. Excellent! You are all under arrest for treason!”

  An exhausted Oliver blinked in disbelief, his gaze becoming one of horrified dismay when the town constabulary, far from coming to their rescue, were now pointing loaded firearms into their faces.

  “What is the meaning of this?”

  “Your terrorization of this town ends today!” A red-faced Stibbs roared. “Your twisted homunculus that you allowed to escape your control went berserk! He raided my treasury, Oliver! The scoundrel knew just what to claim before laughing in my face, making a mockery of my men and cavorting about the compound like a jester from hell!”

  Eric and Ivan exchanged the jaded glances of men who understood the connivances of lickboots and despots. It was obvious to both of them that Stibbs was using what had been his own humiliation after Jim had robbed him blind as pretext for a coup, to disenfranchise and vilify the only other power in this city after the Inquisition’s most powerful armsmen had been slaughtered and Oliver, the Enigmatic headmaster had been caught outside his sanctum sanctorum, clearly dazed, critically wounded, and more vulnerable than he had perhaps ever been before.

  “What are you talking about? That man just robbed us of our greatest artifact!”

  Oliver crumpled to the ground when eager ham fist punched his skull, the thuggish guardsman’s face alight with obvious glee.

  Eric’s heart lurched with dread, Oliver groaning in agony. And how damned lucky he was that the guard hadn’t pounded him in the chest and stomach after Oliver had been run through. Such an injury would be beyond Eric’s ability to heal without taking care of everything else here first.

  “Fuckers looking down on us all. So damned weak!” the man chuckled coldly.

  Agda paled, choking back a scream before her father’s furious gaze, his hand flashing in code Eric had no hope of deciphering.

  Eric’s heart pounded even as half the constabulary marched into the Enigmatic Sanctum.

  “Their wards are down! Their headmaster defeated! Now’s the time to end this farce!” Stibbs called out triumphantly.

  It was madness, Eric knew it. So utterly unlikely as to be absurd for multiple city conflicts to come frothing to a boil just when he entered town.

  But he wasn’t the only Contender here, was he? Or hadn’t been, until just moments ago.

  Another party had had plenty of time to shift wild probability in countless absurd ways that would naturally flow toward whatever outcome he most desired. And how humbling it was to be on the receiving end of another Contender, set adrift by the wild currents left in Jim’s wake.

  Eric blinked, fully in the moment once more and carefully measuring the attention and care that the half dozen guards remaining paid attention or glared his way, their muskets held at parade rest, cumbersome to hold in a rifleman’s stance at six and a half feet long with bayonet attached for any extended period of time, especially since they weighted considerably more than spears of equal length, so were instead held like polearms by at least half the men present as a groaning Oliver was roughly manhandled.

  “Stop it, he was nearly killed by the very man who robbed you! If you .wish an enigmatic’s curse dooming your soul, however, by all means. Continue to imperil him!”

  Agda’s desperate words earned hot glares from the pair of guardsmen looming over Oliver, before they traded looks and stepped back.

  “He needs to be in chains!” Stibbs hissed.

  The closest guard sighed. “He’s harmless, sir. Mik gave him a good poundin’ to his noggin. He knows what happens if he gives us lip. Don’t ya, mage.” he then wiped his hands. “No offense, Governor, but we could do without a mage’s death curse. Let the fool who stabbed him pay that price, not us.”

  Stibbs glared, but was a savvy enough man at five foot nothing to know that his power was as much prestige and position as it was anything else, and trying to intimidate his men would be a surefire way to them losing all respect for him.

  Eric held back a smile, realizing that as perilous an ally as the Inquisitors had made, with the half fanatic Edwin beside him, no guardsman had dared think twice of contradicting his orders. Yet now with that perilous threat removed… Stibbs was far safer from an Inquisitorial noose, but his ability to control his own men now lacked the unspoken threat of before.

  Yet he was no fool, happy enough to take the guardsman’s recalcitrance in stride.

  Stibbs gave a curt nod, rubbing his hands together. “Excellent thinking, Jib. Let that damned thief pay for the headmaster’s demise. Our hands are clean, and shall be all the cleaner, once justice prevails and we cleanse our fair city of the blight before us! Now to squeeze sweet cider from rotting fruit.”

  He turned to peer at their way as Eric positioned himself, noting the sloppy stance of men more interested in the college than the intimidated individuals before them, though a couple were glaring at Eric’s once more statue-like hounds.

  Eric frowned, hating the feel of Governor Stibbs oily gaze. Did the man see Eric as a potential trading partner? Or a too handsome tool to use for other purposes? It wasn’t a comforting thought, and he’d make damn sure that his enemies wouldn’t even live to regret it if they dared go to far, pretexts be damned.

  “Guards, secure the family! We’ll take them back to the holding cells first. Separate from the treasonous fools threatening our fair city!”

  “No, you aren’t touching my baby!” Agda screamed, glaring at the pair of oversized men looming over her. The closest man before her flinched, a wedding ring upon his finger, his eyes filled with the weight of a man knowing there was no going back from the dark path he walked.

  Time seemed to slow, even as Stibb’s beady eyes glittered at her defiance, perhaps seeing this as the place to emphasize his authority, his potency, after being rebuffed before Oliver.

  “Do it!” Stibbs snarled at the pair of men curling fists that looked a heartbeat ready from tearing free her child and pounding her into submission.

  Only to blink as they looked down the barrel of the gun Ivan had pointed at them.

  “Put your musket down, now!” Roared multiple guards drawing a bead on a furious and now fully armed Ivan who understood just how perilous their situation had suddenly become. Because no matter how skilled he was… his rifle only had one shot.

  “You’re making a mistake,” Ivan barked, even as he complied. “We already did as you asked, Stibbs.” He glared at the man. “Exactly as you asked.”

  Strangely, Stibbs didn’t even flinch, forcing Eric to wonder: Was the man even aware of the explosives and cyanide that the Inquisitor head had been planning to use on them all?

  Instead, he smiled.

  “Good. That will make things much easier.”

  Of course Ivan was lying. But Eric suspected the man wanted to know just how deeply Mayor Stibbs was involved. Just how assuredly he needed to die.

  “Just come peacefully, Ivan. Things will calm down by the morrow. Then I’m sure you’ll all be free to leave,” said the taller of the two men drawing a bead on Ivan, gaze almost pleading.

  “After braving the frozen steppe together, you would stab me now, brother?”

  The soldier flinched at those words, his voice almost pleading as he spoke in their mother tongue.

  Stibb’s eyes lit with outrage. “No speaking in foreign tongues, Nathaniel! As for you, Ivan, you’d best have kept your word! Or you’re entire family will be swinging on the gallows before first light!”

  Agda’s eyes widened with horror. “No. No, you can’t do this, we did nothing!”

  Stibbs chuckled coldly when a distant scream and the bark of a musket could be heard from inside the building that a full half dozen constabulary had entered.

  Oliver crumpled. “Why! We’ve never opposed you, why are you doing this?”

  Stibb’s eyes widened with mock outrage, before his lips curled in a sneer. “How dare you accuse me of doing anything, filth! I was never blind to your designs to turn our beloved New York into your own little fiefdom! Did you think me blind to the arrogant disdain you treated me with? The subtle threat you dared impose? Only now we find it was all illusion. All a lie!”

  The mayoer’s lips curled in a malicious sneer as he struck the trembling man, the opportunity to exert his wrath upon a target weak and wounded that his soldiers nonetheless feared was clearly worth the risk or courting arcane doom in his coldly calculating mind. “The inquisitors were right, and you will pay with your life, for those that fell to your twisted homunculus. All your power is tainted and worthless before upright men of virtue!”

  “Now, master?”

  “Wait.”

  “Hey, Stibbs!” Eric roared, jolting the gnome-like mayor out of his furor.

  He flashed a cold smile. “Thought you could hide in plain sight, did you, gnome?”

  The tiny mayor froze, dismay turning to alarm. “How dare you insult me! You know nothing, you pathetic half-elf!”

  Quickness Check success!

  Iado skill-check made!

  You have unlocked the Fast-Draw Skill! Fast Draw Quantized at Rank 3.

  Eric winked. “Pot and kettle,” he said, hoisting up a completely unprepared mayor from behind. “Anyway, before your men finish swinging their ten pound six foot long bayoneted muskets our way, maybe they should take a good look at my ‘wolf hounds?’”

  But all Stibbs could do was gasp and tremble, terrified by the four inches of blazing hot steel at the end of Eric’s deadly blade. The mayor cried out, even if it was only the forte of the blade against his neck, several feet from the tip that kissed his flaccid flesh, but it was more than enough to make the gnome tear up and sob with terror, Eric having no problem lifting the short mayor up like a body shield with his left.

  “Put they mayor down now, boy!” Roared the closest soldier.

  Eric smirked. “Or what, you’ll shoot me by blowing apart the mayor?”

  The largest and most burly of the town guard furrowed his brow.

  “Now!”

  His lips curled in a smile. “No. We’ll just kill your woman and gut your chil-NO!—”

  His word cut off when Eric’s wolves sprung forth and tore the weapon out of the oversized bastard’s hands. The man fell to the ground, terrified at the fiery-eyed two hundred pound wolf revenant glaring down at him, but suffering no worse than a bruised rear and existential dread.

  In the blink of an eye, it was over, the air ringing with the howls of panicked men as muskets were torn free of their owners grips, breaking a few fingers and thumbs if not outright tearing them off, faster than they could blink.

  Eric traded a look with Agdelina, wise enough to keep herself so silent as to be utterly invisible, she alone still benefiting from the concealing mist… even as she slowly made her way to Agda’s side, the rose hedges just feet away.

  Her nod filled him with unexpected relief.

  He hadn’t gone too far.

  A few broken fingers was hardly the same as another life taken.

  The weight of his revenants hadn’t doomed this fragile realm.

  Not yet, anyway.

  “It is done, Master.”

  Eric dipped his head as the thug that had dared to threaten Agda crashed to the ground, cradling his broken fingers as a collection of muskets, three damaged beyond repair, plopped in a pile by Eric’s feet upon the cobblestone road where he stood.

  “No, no, this cannot be!” Stibbs sobbed. “You’re no trader from the mainland! You’re an outsider!” He seethed. “You’re not supposed to be here. You’ve ruined everything!”

  Eric sighed bitterly. “I hate it when I pop in the middle of a quest chain. I don’t even know how Jim got this mess started.” He glared at the college from which shouts for compliance and sobs could still be heard. “But I know how this is all going to end.”

  “You won’t get away with this!” Stibbs roared even as he struggled in Eric’s grip, before he froze when blood trickled from the cut on his neck. “You will rue the day you crossed me!”

  “The only thing I rue was not running you through the very first time I saw you. I should have fucking guessed you were a gnome.”

  “Wait, what do you mean the first time you saw me? There’s no way you can know about what’s coming. No way! It will be centuries before—” The little man trembled. “Wait, this doesn’t… no. This doesn’t make any sense. I’m here too soon!”

  Eric’s smile grew wide and wicked, no matter how Agda flinched as Eric slowly turned the horrified gnome to meet his gaze. “I see you’re aware of how things really work. Or should. And if you’re half as savvy as you are devious… you should know what it means.”

  The tiny man whimpered, eyes widening. “Oh no.” He looked all around him in growing horror. “You’re a Contender, aren’t you? I can smell it on you! Which should be impossible, because this planet won’t ascend for centuries! Not unless…”

  Eric winked. “Unless it already has.”

  “But then that means… no! Please! It can’t be! I’m more than just a shadow!”

  It broke Eric’s heart, the spike of dismay he sensed from Agda and her grandmother both, even as he caught Oliver’s horrified gaze.

  “Grandmother, what are they saying?”

  “Hush, child. Our Eric but weaves a tale fit to fool our foes.”

  “Please, I’m more than a figment, I’m real!” Stibbs sobbed.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Eric nodded. “True. You are. Or were. I even know the town you were assigned to. The good-natured idiots you so easily hoodwinked… but we’re all wiser now.”

  Stibbs trembled in his arms. “Please, I’ll do anything. Anything!”

  Eric’s words were cold and hard, demanding answers even as he raised his voice, catching the devastated Enigmatic’s gaze while Ivan pulled rope from somewhere and began hogtying the half dozen guards under the growling watch of the wolves.

  “I know you want to claim this college. I know about the Dragon’s Eye that another Contender already claimed. But that’s not what I’m here for.”

  He locked eyes with the terrified-looking Stibbs. “Tell me what you know about the golden key.”

  The mayor began to hyperventilate. “No. You can’t know this. You don’t even belong here. None of this is—Mercy!” He screamed when Eric’s blade flashed, a 4000 degree tip caressing the man’s boot for a heartbeat, where it abruptly flared with smoke and fire as Stibbs jerked and screamed.

  “Next time, I won’t just set leather ablaze. Next time I will stick my white-hot poker all the way through your foot. Then your intestines. Shall we try that again?”

  “I don’t have the key!” Stibbs screamed. “I’m not the one you should be asking, fool! Your woman wears the mark of a queen! Are you blind to what’s right in front of your eyes?”

  Eric frowned at those words. Agdelina had implied as much… but before things drew to a close with Stibbs, he had to be sure he wasn’t burning an irreplaceable bridge. Yet the way Agda flinched, eyes wide with horrified dismay… it was clear that Stibbs was right, and that Agda knew exactly what they were talking about.

  “Please, Eric! Please, please don’t—”

  Eric deliberately turned away from her, hating the thought that she might fear him now. He glared at the mayor once more.

  “One question answered. Good. If you answer the rest without fail, you get to live. If you don’t?”

  He turned to the closest wolf, now swelling its chest as it glared at the mayor who was squealing in desperate panic, futilely trying to break free of Eric’s grip.

  “Should falshood part your lips before my master, then this maw will be the last thing you ever see!”

  The wolf’s quiet threat shivered through Eric’s bones. "Awesome."

  Stibbs turned green as the stench of carrion washed over him before the revenant’s dire threat, tears streaming down his blotched cheeks.

  Even if it was a complete bluff, Eric having absolutely no intention of using the revenants for anything save terror and disarming his foes.

  He was quite capable of killing just fine with his own two hands, without triggering any doom whatsoever.

  “Please! I’ll answer everything! The Inquisitors recently arrived from the Continent. They seek to purge the new world of the Enigma’s influence for all time! They wish it so desperately that they will happily put every man, woman, and child to the torch and recolonize the new world with proper pilgrims who know their place!”

  Eric sighed, shaking his head. “Fucking psychopaths. Why am I not surprised?”

  The mayor swallowed. “Yet the Inquisition has fallen before Jim. Fucking weasel purchased rights to seize prizes of war with honest coin… then had the gall to rob my treasury of everything except for the actual golden eagles he gave me, as if that alone redeemed his word!” The man flashed a supercilious smile. “You’ve already won, Contender. You and your partner both!”

  Stibbs expression contorted even as he forced a conciliatory laugh. “I could use someone as skilled and effective as you on my counsel. How about we chalk this all up to a test of your character… and a ten gold crowns per annum wage? Ivan can join as well. With the Inquisition now defanged here in New York, none will accuse you of witchcraft again and the farm is yours once more!”

  The mayor licked desperate lips. “So, what do you say?”

  Eric smirked. “I think I’ll pass.”

  Oliver’s dazed stupor turned to a look of furious condemnation. “You damned fool! You actually sold rights of claimance to that bastard, allowing him to slip past his own oaths!”

  He jerked a furious finger a flinching Stibbs’ way. “You’re the reason why our greatest treasure was stolen! With it, we could have opened the gates to Arcadia! Were it not for you, we could have left this doomed colony that grows ever colder, our summers ever shorter, our doom all but written in the clouds. We could have left it for paradise!”

  His words cut off when the other half dozen men emerged from the collegium, with no less than two dozen men, women, and adolescents wearing uniform robes and haunted expressions before them.

  “College is clear, save for children—master!”

  “Kill them!” A desperate Stibbs shrieked. “Shoot them dead… no!”

  His plea became a panicked howl when Eric punted the mayor at the stupefied guardsmen even as he roared. “Get down, NOW!” To the dazed scholars while the half dozen men tried to maneuver their clumsy spear-length muskets before jerking them back as the mayor crashed into them… just as Eric’s hounds formed a bulwark between Eric, a crouching Agda, and her father and grandmother.

  But the soldiers were clearly experienced, turning their focus and pointing their muskets Eric’s way once more, then filling the air with clouds of smoke as all their muskets all went off simultaneously.

  Agda screamed.

  The air rang with the thud of musket balls perfectly capable of ripping a man’s head clean off at close range, tearing into the bulwark of Eric’s carefully positioned revenants.

  Yet not single lead ball broke through

  Eric’s heart roared as he desperately looked to Agda, grateful to find that she was intact and whole, as was her child. As was Ivan, though his eyes had grown cold as ice as he calmly aimed his still loaded rifle and fired, his bullet ripping through the closest of the half dozen guardsmen as the other five roared and charged, now wielding muskets like spears.

  Time stretched ever so slightly as Eric roared his challenge in turn, fiery blade raised in high hanging guard as he charged forth, circling around to close with the leftmost wing of the guardsmen so that only one guard faced him at a time even as the cluster grew disorganized, several turning towards him as the other three raced toward Ivan who was savvy enough to claim another one of the still loaded and intact rifles that the revenants had piled and fire it point blank into another constable who crashed to the ground with half his face blown off.

  The guard before Eric roared and thrust his bayonet so slowly, stumbling forward half off balance as Eric’s hands moved with preternatural grace. His armored left forearm effortlessly parried aside the bayonet while he flicked out with his epee-like blade and tore out the man’s throat in a spray of arcing flame and steaming hot blood, the man’s mouth bursting open to expel a blast of lung-searing steam as the dying man stumbled to the ground, spasming his life away as the guard behind him lurched back in terror.

  The second constable’s weapon was in no position to strike Eric and he didn’t give two shits, making damn sure it would never be again as he lunged forward, ramming his blazing sword right through man’s eye.

  Bursting it instantly just before 4 inches at 4000 degrees caused the entire skull to explode, frothy blood gushing from the neck stump and shattered jaw still attached as Eric furiously wiped away the scalding hot mess of brain and blood that had half blinded him and caused a Medium Wound, and none of that stopped him from racing forth with a roar, ramming the point of his blade right through the back of a man raising his bayonet to club a shrieking Agda… just before her grandmother jerked her and her great granddaughter into the hedge maze.

  The soldier wheezed and collapsed to his knees as Eric yanked his blade free, boiling blood spurting from ruptured lung as the doomed soldier crumpled in a dying ball and then Eric was facing a final constable, bristly mustache and mutton chops doing nothing to hide the man’s raw terror and fury as he plunged his bayonet into Eric’s belly in the heartbeat he was extracting his blade...

  The first and only blow to connect…

  A blow that clanged off the armored waistcoat Eric had never surrendered as he spun and struck, his blade whipping forth in a double zwerch to rip open the final guard’s throat in a spray of crimson death.

  Eric leaped back, taking a shuddering breath as wild, furious eyes took in the battlefield, noting with some relief the near two score of terrified mystics and their wards who had by some miracle not been shot or killed… or perhaps that was their subtle arts in play, Eric’s mind ringing with fresh messages as he locked gazes with an equally panting and wild-eyed Ivan.

  “Sword against spear is a fool’s match, yet you bested them all. You fight well, boy!” The man flashed a fierce smile, nodding his head in respect at the bodies Eric had torn through.

  Eric flashed a fierce smile, glowing from more than just moonlight as his muscles tingled with a sudden burst of power, his superficial injuries rapidly healing in full as the night sky grew a little crisper, the moonlight a bit brighter, his steps more sure as his muscles thrummed with added vigor.

  “And I actually earned a cultivation level for it. No more than one, though. My blade is kissed by flame and one of the assholes actually hit me. Had I performed a flawless victory… fuck. Maybe I would have earned two levels.”

  He blinked in the odd silence. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you, Ivan?”

  Ivan smirked, shaking his head. “Not a clue. But I know your skill, and that’s enough. More than enough.”

  Ivan took a shuddering breath, the pair of them now gazing down at the doomed Stibbs.

  The gnome was looking at the massive spurting hole in his chest with horrified disbelief as he slowly collapsed to the ground, eyes closing as he gave one final gurgling whisper. “I’m not just a dream. I’m not! I’m—”

  “The town council has betrayed us, Oliver!” An elderly white-haired man wearing the college’s robes declard. “Mayor Stibbs and Lord Hatson both!” The man’s eyes glared with conviction. “And they have fallen. Both of them. Just like I predicted, should this day actually come to pass. And it has! You know what it means, Oliver. You know what we now must do.”

  Oliver’s gaze hardened. He turned to the glare at the guards now trembling before the fearsome killing aura of a dozen wolves that could move so fiercely, strike so quickly, death coming in the blink of an eye.

  “Indeed I do. The competing powers have shattered before the bedrock of fate. A new lighthouse must rise upon the shoals of New York’s folly so that the way may be illuminated for all.”

  Eric smirked. “So now its time for the College of Enigma to make its move?”

  This earned a wry grin from Oliver. “My dear student was wise to choose such a savvy champion for her cause.” He then turned a measuring gaze to the half dozen bound guards, gazing wide-eyed at both revenant hounds and a handful of Enigmatics who showed themselves to be quite competent at loading powder and shot and aiming muskets in addition to whatever other arts they had at their disposal.

  “Heaven’s mercy. They’re going to kill us all, now!” One guard sobbed.

  Oliver flashed a hard smile. “As if you hadn’t planned for the extermination of our entire school.”

  “Of course we didn’t!” Declared one of the irate guards on the ground. “Did we shoot anyone? No. We were just followin’ orders, obeying our oaths, as we swore to do!”

  Ivan frowned at this, even as Oliver snorted. “Really!?” he hissed. “Even though it quite clearly says in the charter that inquisitors are forbidden from persecuting free colonies and that the College of Enigma and its peoples are to be treated with the liberty and dignity of noble representatives!?”

  The guard blinked at this, flushing slightly. “Beggin’ your pardon, mage, but…” He cleared his throat. “We can’t read.”

  The others nodded. “We just follow orders. Stibbs said our doing was righteous, and we had no cause not to believe him.”

  “But you all swore an oath to hold the town’s charter on the bible itself!” Oliver wheezed in outraged disbelief, earning a solemn nod in turn.

  “That we did, yer mageness, and Stibbs swore he’d explain to us everything we needed to know about the charter, and that we were best off learnin’ how to shoot straight and thrust with our bayonets without bending them, and let him worry about the mysteries of the written word.”

  Another guardsmen on the ground nodded solemnly. “Every man has his place, and every man should know his place.”

  Ivan glared at the fallen men. “Those men charged to kill. I see blood on at least one bayonet!”

  “That’s because they killed Jenna. She was too afraid to move!” Sobbed one of the still huddled children.

  Another guard gazed pointedly at the half dozen that had fallen. “Those men weren’t part of the original town guard. Stibbs brought them on from the neighboring town. They keep to themselves, and Stibbs made it clear that we’re to mind our own affairs.” He gave the sobbing child a pitying look. “If it were me, I woulda’ gotten the girl on her feet and forced her master to carry her, but none of us would have stabbed a child for the terror any man would feel before half a dozen muskets.”

  Ivan traded a bitter smile with the pair of men who had the same thousand yard stare he did.

  “Such paltry schemes, my friends. I’m surprised you got caught up in them.”

  The one Ivan had called brother flushed. “It was all by wildest chance, Ivan. There was no brilliant multilimbed strategy behind it. Just a cocky thief and a too-clever mayor who thought he could use his unexpected loss to his immediate advantage, blaming his opponents for what we had no chance of stopping.”

  Ivan sighed. “Did you know about the explosives in the bag?”

  This earned a troubled look. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Ivan, and I don’t think I want to.”

  “Do you know anything else about the pies Stibbs had his fingers in?”

  The bound man shrugged. “I know only what I overheard before your prince tossed him to his death. That, and rumors about the prizes that the Enigmatics were holding so dearly.

  Ivan stiffened at those words. “You call him prince.”

  “Really, Ivan. Just look at him. The way he glows, larger than life. What can he be, but a prince? Russian, Scandinavian, some rich earl’s son eager to carve a little fiefdom for himself.” Knowing eyes locked with Ivan’s own. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you wouldn’t serve under him when the time comes.”

  Ivan traded hard smiles with the pair of men. “The question isn’t whether or not I’m his man… the question is whether you will take the oaths yourselves.”

  “Aye, we will!” Assured the closest fervently.

  The second nodded. “I can vouch for most of the full-time guard, but the boy will need to win the townsfolk over if he wishes the support of the militia farmers and craftsmen. And he’d be a fool not to secure it.”

  Eric felt his cheeks flush, and a warning pressure start to well up within him. Yet he knew better than to deny anything when things were in such perilous flux. When he had but a mortal body and any number of men might be able to bring well-cared for but hardly used muskets to bear.

  He could only make a promise to himself.

  Fortunately, that was enough.

  Agda gave Eric a haunted look, before turning to care for her sobbing child, clearly distressed by the peril and bloodshed even she could sense.

  Eric swallowed his regrets, focusing on the wheezing Oliver, bruised and battered but still very much among the living. “What, exactly, are these rumors about the prize Jim claimed?”

  Oliver gave a bitter chuckle. “You mean besides our hope that it could unlock the mysteries of Arcadia and bring about a new golden age?” He sighed and shook his head. “That the Dragon Eye was tied to an ancient oath between wizards and dragons. That in the right hands, it would serve as the key to unlocking incredible power.”

  He gave an offhand shrug even as Eric’s heart began to pound.

  “Absurd rumors. But what we studied was the composition of the crystal itself. Such insights. Such marvels! It has already aided in the creation of lensed telescopes with far better magnification than anything we’ve ever made before! Telescopes allowing us to align our calenders to the stars and deduce the perfect date when the planets align and the eye will finally reveal the path through the hedge maze directly to Faerie!”

  Eric stiffened at the pleading look in the man’s gaze… though he quickly declined the blinked Interface message pinging against his soul.

  He wasn’t accepting any quest to cross Jim in his current weakened state. None even for the mysteries of Faerie.

  Not when it risked him getting killed by a man who presently had ten times his attributes, and could sense, it seemed, the social status and significance, and perhaps emotional or even killing intent of anyone he had ever come into contact with.

  Eric took a shuddering breath.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me about the Dragon’s eye?”

  Oliver’s face lit up with memory, a slight flush coming to his cheeks as he cleared his throat. “When first ascertaining its province and origin after our former… associate helped us triangulate it and retrieve it from Regio, we were ahem, aided by an expert with ties to the school. Most especially one scholar from the mainland who visited quite recently. She seemed exceedingly interested in the province of the artifact, even bequeathed us an honorarium for the purposes of research and study.”

  Eric nodded before stilling as the significance of those words truly struck home.

  It was one thing to be an idealist, an egalitarian. But that did nothing to take away or mitigate the ruthless and imperious nature that threaded through so much of human history. It was odd enough for scholars to dare the world in any but the most civilized of regions and eras without some form of bodyguard or multiple porters and assistants. Even odder for a female. But what really set the alarm bells ringing in his head was the fact that this was a closed pocket of shadow. Unless it was somehow part of the tale of this place… they should have no access to any outside resources at all.

  Not unless it was someone from a neighboring pocket realm, like Luigi Firebeard.

  Or someone from the outer world. And he could think of only one person who had shown any interest in scholarly pursuits tied to this realm.

  Eric tried to keep the sudden surge of tension he felt out of his voice. “I don’t suppose you recall this scholar’s name, by any chance?”

  Oliver frowned, slowly shaking his head. “As much as it shames me…”

  “Maybel,” whispered one of the female Enigmatics. Eyes flinching at the horrors all around her, the woman’s voice was little more than a whisper that Eric could barely hear above the sudden roaring in his ears.

  “Maybel Dracha, I think?”

  “Drachen,” Eric softly corrected.

  She smiled. “That’s right! Maybel Drachen.”

  Her grin turned to a look of dismay. “Wait, you don’t think…”

  Eric sighed, nodding his head. “I do.”

  The woman’s eyes flared with sudden heat, tears streaming down her face. “That bitch! We lost our greatest treasure and nearly our lives to that conniving, foul, fork-tongued…”

  Eric could only nod, thoughts racing as he recalled so well Maybel’s earlier words.

  Swearing that she had no means of crossing into this region, needing strong, powerful classers or better yet, Contenders, who would secure those keys. Keys with which she could free her ‘dear friends.’

  Yet it appeared that she had been able to travel to these shadowy realms just fine, and had known about them long before she revealed her sources to Eric, no matter that she had claimed to have just discovered the whereabouts on the very night Eric had showed up.

  How oddly fortuitous.

  “She didn’t need a Contender’s gifts,” He muttered to himself. “She just needed a warm body willing to risk his life in a suppression zone! And that crystal figurine had nothing to do with any golden key...”

  He clenched his jaw, doing his best to reign in his sudden flare of paranoia.

  Lies… deception… trying to coax him with the prestige of his background. But maybe there had been good reason for her approaching the matter the way she had. Maybe she had wanted to keep Natasha from jumping in and claiming the lion’s share unexpectedly. Or maybe there was a reasonable explanation as to why she had felt the need to lie to him about the time of discovery, or decide not to inform him of the crushing weakness within this layer of regio that had suppressed most of his Cultivation base and the entirety of his System Classes.

  Maybe

  But he couldn’t for the life of him believe it.

  Not if she had truly been acting in any sort of good faith at all.

  “Eric?”

  He spun around fast enough to catch Agda off guard, forcing a gentle smile upon his features. “Hey Agda, what’s up?”

  She bit her lip, exchanged a look Agdelina’s way, her grandmother’s stern features revealing absolutely nothing before she took a steadying breath and met Eric’s gaze, reaching out to squeeze his hand. “Come with me into the maze? There’s something I want to show you.”

  Check out my Patreon, where you can read Battleforged 50 Chapters ahead!

  Gold membership also includes Silver Fox & The Western Hero, where I currently have books 9,10, and 11!)