RavensDagger

  Chapter Seventeen - A Rich Land

  52nd Day of Spring - Year 1758 of the Golden EraThe shores of Yellowfield, the Sapphire Ocean, Draya Calyrex

  Maldrak had had many enemies throughout his life, but the most persistent of them, and the one that always won, was time.

  He was worrying about that foe now while looking over a map of the Yellowfields. The space was quite rge. Enough to be a nation onto itself, albeit a small one. The Yellowfields were so named because they were covered in a sea of wheat for much of the year.

  With dragon dung as fertilizer, the locals didn't need to rotate their fields at all, and their wheat grew so quickly that it wasn't unheard of for farmers here to harvest three times in one year. There was a legend of a year with five harvests, when Aurynth the Golden blessed the birth of a human noble born into the family of his dragon lords. Though that legend was several hundreds of years old.

  The truth was simple, however. The Yellowfields produced enough to feed an empire. The nd was retively vast, fertile, and had been civilized for a long time. Vilges were spread out a half-day's ride from each other across the pteaus and the taxmen of the dragon lords passed to collect the harvest twice a year.

  It was enough wheat, once turned into bread and the like, to feed a hundred million souls. The estimated popution of Draya Calyrex as a whole. Perhaps it was an even greater number, actually.

  The nation had a history of growing too rge on its own richness, at which point it would form grand armies to scour neighbouring kingdoms and pilge their way across the world. It happened every few hundred years. Long enough for retions to stabilize and for enemies to believe that they were friends once more.

  But that was history.

  What was happening now would be history as well, but it was history in the making.

  The door to his office opened, and three puppets toddled in. He looked up at them, then chuckled. The three were in gambesons, with steel-pted caps upon their heads. The equipment was ill-fitting, meant for rge sailors, not rather petite puppets, but that was fine.

  "Welcome," he said before gesturing to three seats across from his desk. "Sit, please."

  "Thank you," the green one---Viridian, was it?--said. "Report?"

  "No, this is the opposite, in fact. Tomorrow, at the break of dawn, you will be leaving for your second excursion onto the mainnd. I believe that this is as good a time as any for us to outline some objectives."

  The three perked up at that. "What will we be doing?" Lazur asked.

  "Your st excursion had two set objectives. You completed one, and for good reason, failed the other. This time... hmm, perhaps I should approach this from another angle." He leaned back into his seat and stared at the map on the desk. "My objective in this specific region is to establish a beachhead. A safe port of recall. There are other factions currently pushing into the mainnd, no doubt pilging as they go, and they will certainly be doing the same. I don't want to have to go through them to do as I please."

  "We're making a port?" Viridian asked.

  "We're taking one over. The vilge you explored. It's small, but the location is strategically sound. The bay hides us from view, and it's well known as a location of unimportance. Anyone seeing us here may well dismiss our presence. The frequent fog may help as well."

  The puppets nodded. It was smoother than it had once been, he noted.

  "Now, here's the overall pn. I want you to clear the vilge as a whole, then march up to Shorefarm itself. The town will need to be... cleansed of anyone who has fallen too deeply into the madness that blights this nd. There are also several points of interest that I want secured. A mine for tin and iron, the farms around the town itself, and perhaps most importantly, the lord's mansion and the local mage's tower. That st is paramount to my future pns."

  "What are your future pns?" Lazur asked.

  "We'll see once we get there," he said. "For now, trust me when I say that I'd rather have things be loose but flexible rather than take any great risks pushing for something untenable."

  "What will happen once we... sec...secure all the pces?" Viridian asked.

  "The Gentle Tidings will dock. We have supplies onboard for quite some time, and we can decontaminate some soil and water to grow more. The houses and buildings of Shorefarm will be requisitioned. It's not as though there's a governing body ruling over them any longer. Any citizen in good health will be drafted to assist us as we rebuild. The goal, in the short term, is to establish a secure location to work from. After which we will be communicating with some companions using long-ranged magic to inform them of the location and its safety."

  "How long is this going to take?" Lazur asked.

  "Months," Maldrak said. "It will take months. By that time, the news will have spread further still, and even those slow to act will be rushing here to grab what they can. They will likely be unaware of the dangers, and unprepared. Make no mistake, Draya Calyrex has fallen, and with it millions have died, but the st toll of death has yet to ring on this nd."

  "Enemies?" Carnel asked.

  "I have few," Maldrak said. "But our efforts might create some. Some will desire what we have and what we create, others will simply want less competition in the race to pilge the nation. There will be locals as well. There are lords whose madness will take different forms. Some will do unspeakable evil, others will rage, but still others will be cold and calcuting. Draya Calyrex had one of the rgest standing armies in the world. Some of its cities had more guards than other nations have soldiers. They will be roused, and they will try to reconquer their own nd in the name of new warlords."

  "We will fight," Carnel said.

  "And you will grow stronger," he replied. "To that end, one of the purposes of this beachhead is to create a space for you as well. Artisan Artificer Magus Woodbone will be setting up a workshop early on. One which you may be entitled to use for your own needs. Your forms are human-like, but they need not remain that way."

  It was interesting to see that the three had gained some amount of body nguage that was readable with the shift in their bodies. Viridian was uncomfortable with the idea, Lazur didn't seem to care, but Carnel was eager.

  "You leave at first light. Are you ready?" he asked.

  The three nodded, but then Viridian paused and shook her head. "Not strong enough, yet," she said.

  "We can fight," Carnel disagreed.

  "The lord of the vilge was strong. He felt dangerous," she said.

  Maldrak nodded in turn. "The man, did he have any particur decorations about him?" he asked.

  "Robes. A sash," she said.

  "Then he was likely a lesser lord. Beneath even the baron who rules over Shorefarm. More of a mayor than anything. Yes, he would have some amount of draconic favour, but he is likely a third-son of the baron's family. Not that that indicates too much with regards to his personal strength."

  Leaning back, Maldrak rubbed at his chin while thinking. Could they take something like that on? Perhaps. With trickery and deception and luck.

  Was the risk worth it?

  "I will be giving you a tool to assist you, then," he replied after some consideration. "It will kill or weaken the lord at no cost to you."

  "And the vilgers?" Viridian asked. "There were many."

  He frowned, but conceded that they could likely not take on so many. "Speak to the ship's alchemist. He's a young man, Alchemist Magus Discipulus Mossthorn. In fact, let me call him now."

  It was a simple matter of ringing a bell and instructing the manservant who answered to fetch the young magus. Some scant minutes ter a young man stumbled into the room, seeming wide-eyed and disheveled.

  "Ah, sir Magus, how can I assist?" he asked. He was a youth, not yet thirty summers old, with unruly hair and his face and skin marred by alchemical burns.

  "Alchemist Mossthorn," Maldrak said. "We need your assistance. These three will be going ashore tomorrow, to face some strong odds. How many vilgers must you subdue?"

  "Two... three dozen?" Viridian said. "With mad eyes. Slow, but magical."

  "Oh, I see," the alchemist said. "Ah, and these puppets... they don't require breathing, yes?"

  "They do not," Maldrak confirmed.

  "Well... in that case, I'm certain I can help, Magus Maldrak, sir."

  Maldrak smiled. At least some things were coming together. He just hoped to resolve enough matters before his oldest nemesis caught up to him.

  ***