Chương 32: Chapter 31: Gatecrashing

As we left the inn, we began to make our way towards the keep in relative silence in the cool morning air, only the movement of cloth and the clink of armor or weapons to be heard above the birdsong. The town was more or less empty at this early (or perhaps late if you were undead) hour, and only the occasional stable shade or skeleton crossed our path or watched us heading towards the fountain.

The group of adventurers stared a bit the first time they saw a skeletal blacksmith hammering away in his ruined forge, or when the shade of a librarian floated through a wall and only then remembered that books wouldn't come with her, panicking and heading back through said wall, but after that they seemed to get the idea. Scary though such scenes might have looked, this place was a surprisingly normal, if badly damaged, town picking up the pieces.

"Huh. They're not even a little threatening, are they?" Roxala commented, and Torch grunted.

"No... they seem to be cleaning up. Remember how it looked out here yesterday?" Fel asked, and Roxala grunted in response, nodding a bit.

"What's going on? Did more citizens of Lambstock become like you? Stabilized?" the wizard said, turning to face Gelidia as he walked backward a few steps. Gelidia smiled"Lambstock is rising from the grave, Wizard." she explained, and went on"The people have indeed Stabilized now, almost all of us." she said, and my Wolf-Ren let me see the way her eyebrow lifted as she kept an eye on the town around us, regarding it incredulously.

"We will probably be the first monster city." Gelidia said, and Fel smiled, shaking his head.

"I would never have believed it unless I'd seen it myself." Roxala's deep voice rumbled, and Fel nodded, turning back to face forward.

"I suppose we will seek to join the Republic as well, seeing as how we come from common stock. It makes the most sense. Did many of the Noble families survive from Stormwrack?" Gelidia asked, and Fel shook his head firmly.

"No, the Demon War slew the king and his line." Fel said "Most of the Great Houses of the old kingdom went extinct. Only the Duke Kingsmarch really still holds a title. At this point, the Republic has a membership of semi-equal city-states working together for trade and mutual defense." Gelidia blinked at that"The Kingsmarch family survived? And the royal family did not? How did that come to pass?" she asked incredulously Fel simply shrugged.

"Duke Kingsmarch lived well away from the heart of the kingdom - his land was undesirable, and inhospitable even to an army of demons. Personally, I figure he survived simply by being an undesirable target, and by being quite capable at defending his own lands." Gelidia sighed, shaking her head a little.

"It seems so surreal... he was the weakest among us, and he was the only survivor." and a thought seemed to occur to her.

"... oh! You're probably correct. That family utilizes Earth magic extensively. That's why they were given that swampy hole to colonize in the first place."

"Wait, I have a question real quick" I said, and the two of them looked at me as Roxala groaned a little bit.

"Is his name Kingsmarch… or is that the land?" I asked, and they briefly glanced at each other before saying, in unison"Yes." This lead to some measure of bafflement on my part. Gelidia smiled"This part of the forest was once called Windbinder, because it is a natural barrier against the ocean's storms further to the West." she explained.

"The Furious Sea is well-named." she went on.

"My family was named Windbinder, after the land, when we earned our title as a reminder to us from where our authority truly comes - The land, and its people." That didn't sound so bad!

"Kingsmarch was named because the Marches were the King's favorite lands to hunt upon. Him giving Duke Kingsmarch that name and title was an act of deep friendship - perhaps even romantic love, according to the stories." Felorikaan said with an almost wistful sigh.

"Imagine... giving the person you love the land you love most, so they are one and the same?" Roxala had apparently had enough.

"ITS A STINKING BOG" she shouted, throwing her arms and shields into the air as she shouted at the sky, her voice bouncing off the buildings, earning more than one pair of glowing spectral or fire-mote eyes from skeletons and shades annoyed that their daylight rest was interrupted. Gelidia, Fel, and I giggled together softly.

"According to the stories, that's exactly what happened - and it was exactly the first Duke's reaction as well! They did NOT stay together after that, because the keeps the Duke kept trying to build kept sinking into the bog. The king kept funding it, but it only stayed up in the end because they'd sunk enough stone into the mud that it made solid ground!" Gelidia said, a laugh in her voice"How many times did he have to build it?" I asked, blinking, mouth agape"Eight times." Fel and Gelidia said together.

"Eight times, the eighth stayed up at last." Fel explained.

"... Wait, why did the king love a marshland?" I asked, thoroughly at sea "I mean, if it stinks so bad there?"

"Oh. The king was Saurian. He and the royal bloodline were, all of them, descended from a dragon called Kadjatysel the Green, a dragon who lived, long ago, in that swamp. It was the homeland of the Royal Family, and-" Felorikaan began, and I got the impression he was about to lay down some wild lore about this world when Roxala interrupted. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

"Wait, the king was a LIZARD?" she said, incredulous!

"Saurian? He was a 'Lives in the muck, carves stone tools, growls like an alligator?' SAURIAN?!" she asked, stopping dead and staring.

"Oh yes!" Gelidia chuckled"For four hundred years before his son inherited. It is said the king could get a bit... stroppy if he didn't get his spiced meat." she said, and waggled her eyebrows. Roxala blew a fuse. I could see her mind racing.

"but... the Duke... I've seen paintings of him, he was human!" she said"A tiny thing! Big glasses! How could he ever... I mean... how... How?" Fel pat Roxala on the arm.

"Earth and Water magic share.. certain disciplines that the Courtesan find useful. Ever wonder why the Wizard of Earth heads the Courtesan's Guild?" he explained, and Roxala and I both blushed. Gelidia just cackled!

"Ohhhh that's priceless!" She sneered"Ohhh I just bet that would just make the old prudes in the High Visionary twist in their graves, may their bones burn green!" she cussed, with a vindictive edge I'd never heard there before. Roxala blinked"Who?" I shared the sentiment wholeheartedly! This is the most lore I'd heard about this world I'd been thrust into yet, and it was the interesting kind, not the stale, chaste kind of stuff I'd read in history books back in school!

"The High Visionary were an order of elemental Sages that acted as magical and moral authority in the old Kingdom. They were famously prudish." Fel explained.

"Prudish is one way to put it..." Gelidia said darkly.

"... Another way you might say it is 'sanctimonious, manipulative, murderous, and stuck so far up their own asses that they could eat their dinner twice like a cow.'" she growled, and the other three of us in the immediate group sputtered at the mental image thus conjured.

"How come I never heard of them?" Roxala asked curiously, after the GUH wore off.

"You're... a busy woman, you can't know everything." Fel said diplomatically, and pat the huge woman on the arm. She chuckled.

"Are you saying I'm a woman of narrow horizons?" she asked, and Fel smiled - I could see it with my Wolf-Ren, and so was the shield-maiden.

"Oh, not at all. You're very interested in the arts of war and battlecraft in all its forms." Fel said "We all have a part to play, and things to know - I would not know an Epee from an Estoc, and you don't know terrible arcane secrets of the deepest reaches of the ocean." he said.

"That's society for you." When we reached the fountain, we found Torch perched upon it like a gargoyle, crouching with his elbows on his knees and grin painted on his face.

"All clear up to the gate." he said"Any idea if it is locked?" Roxala asked, and he shook his head.

"Nope. Just huge and heavy and rusty as shit." he said. Roxala grunted.

"that's a problem..." she growled, and Torch shook his head.

"Nah. We have a handy dandy Goldtail to convince the gate for us!" the scout said quite cheerfully.

"Should have seen her yesterday - she lifted a bulk of timber that had to weigh at least a thousand kilograms!" he said! Roxala glanced at me with a kind of respect, and nodded.

"Alright, will you do that for us?" She asked, looking back to me, and I nodded easily.

"Very well, we can try that. Fel - will you also use your magics to assist?" Fel nodded "I know just the spell to ease this labor." he said, and rubbed his hands together as if in anticipation! I rolled my shoulders. The huge door loomed over us. It really was intimidating - it was clearly meant to be, with huge stone gargoyles looking down from on high in the frame around the wood and steel door. It was open maybe six inches, and it looked absolutely borked, like something had hit it at a heck of a speed.

Something had - I remembered about the shards of poisonstone.

"The architect and the enchanter" Gelidia began"... Really did actually do a phenomenal job on this door." she said thoughtfully.

"... this really is a quite-sturdy door. If they were alive, I would shake them by the hand." she said. She sniffed.

"Shame about the poison fog." she commented off-handedly about her own death. I stepped up, and squared my shoulders as I glared up at the huge door. Then I sank my fingers into the gap and hauled at it. Nothing happened. All I got was a tremble in my arms as I pulled - it didn't even creak. Fel murmured softly as he raised his hands, and a black oily stuff began to seep into the cracks at the edge of the door, and still nothing happened. Alright, fine.

I looked inside me to the well of strength of my Wolf, and I felt a kind of question in my body as I touched the mirror inside me. How much? Mana surged into my muscles as I gave it five... then ten... then twenty. Thirty. The door began to creak and my muscles bunched, sweat beading on my brow. The door made a horrible noise, but still I hauled at it. Forty. At this point my vision was a narrow tunnel, and I snarled wordlessly, the sound wholly inhuman. The door still didn't open. It buckled.

The ancient wood and iron shodding bent and split, and the whole thing fell out of the frame with a crash that shook the earth under my feet and... well, the door was open anyhow.

"WORLD ALIVE" Roxala thundered as dust flooded over us, and obscured our vision. Oops! Gelidia stepped daintily through the opening, and looked up as she did, little bits of masonry clattering down around her as she did so.

"Oh." she said.

"... It was a portcullis. It was meant to... lift upward." she said, amused more than anything else. I panted and steamed, the stinging dust getting in my lungs and making me cough a little as I did so, shirt straining around my arms as I fought for breath! I'd never moved anything that big before! I couldn't even speak! Had I really just torn out a door like that? Something made of thick wood and iron?!

It'd taken me almost all of my mana to do it, too, cranking it up slowly as I had had involved spending each sum of mana in full as I asked for it. STUPID DOOR IS NOW STUPID FLOOR I finally looked up at Roxala, Torch, and Fel. All three of them were staring at me as I coughed and fought to recover. Roxala's mouth was hanging open in awe. Torch was grinning - he'd actually seen me do this kind of thing before! Fel was clearly doing math, and found the answer to be worrisome! Torch recovered first.

He came right up to me and clapped me on the back!

"See? I told you. Wicked strong, our Goldie."

"That had to weigh about... a hundred times what you do, Emily." Fel said, and he sounded like he'd swallowed a frog.

"Did you... spend a resource to do that?" he asked and I nodded at him.

"Almost all of my mana" I wheezed "To be fair... I didn't actually open it." Roxala shut her mouth, and shook her head, saying"Woman, you are not a person. You are a siege weapon." as she clapped my shoulder and stepped past me with Torch. Looking up at Gelidia, I saw her staring down at the door beneath her feet.

"S-sorry about your door..." I said, and she shook her head, turning to me at last. She had a grin on her face that was frankly frightening!

"Not at all, not at all. I think I'll keep this wreckage here. Rather an..." she kicked a bit of masonry, still grinning.

"... effective demonstration, this." she said. I wondered what she meant! She took my hand in hers, and linked fingers, leading me onward towards the home she'd grown up in.