1.3 In Which the Dark Lord has the Run of the Place

1.3 In Which the Dark Lord has the Run of the Place

Who the fuck is this guy? the one with the bloody sword shouted, straightening up and pointing it at me. Howd he get inhey, you!

He musta been with the peddler, said the other one, who looked more nervous. How come you didnt see him come in?

You were supposed to be watchingyou know what, never mind, doesnt really matter.

Whats thathey, what kinda animal is that?

Biribo darted around behind my head, which I ignored, my attention being on the apparent murderer, who now started around the table toward me with a determined expression I did not like at all. I looked at him, at his companions slightly more uncertain face, at the freshly-slain corpse, and found my mind was a complete white blank. Never in my life had I even imagined being in a situation like this.

So I cant explain what happened next, and I certainly wont take the blame for it.

HALT! I thundered, my voice echoing almost painfully in the cramped stone chamber. Drawing myself up to my full height, I threw out one hand in a dramatic gesture, ignoring the jibbering voice in the back of my head demanded what I thought I was doing. Insolent swine! You dare raise a weapon to the Champion of Virya? Kneel before the Dark Lord, and perhaps you shall find memerciful.

They both stopped, staring. I must say Ive always had a good stage presence, even when I dont know what the hell is going on.

Aw, Kasser, hes just a crazy guy, the nervous thug said, reaching over to pull his companions sleeve. Do we really have to

A rich crazy guy, Kasser retorted, eyeing me up and down. Rich? I didnt know where he was getting that; I was still in my store uniform. It doesnt matter. Rocco said no intruders.

But

You know this is why were always stuck on guard duty? Kasser burst out, rounding on him. You know that, right? You and your bleeding heart!

The second guy frowned reproachfully. You always said you liked that about me.

I like it, but you know what the gangs like about weakness! What if Rocco decides to make some kind of example out of you and Im not there, huh?

You guys seem like youre in the middle of something, I heard myself say. Sorry, was this a bad time? My mistake, Ill just come back later.

They both turned on me again.

Uh, boss, whatre you doing? Biribo hissed in my ear.

Good fucking question.

Well talk about this later, Harold, Kasser said, drawing in a deep breath and stepping toward me again, bloody sword at the ready.

I did the only thing I could come up with and kicked a chair toward himnot the one with a body in it. Unfortunately that worked out poorly for both of us. The room contained the table (currently strewn with scrolls of paper and a spreading bloodstain) and two chairs, all of which Id taken for wood at first glance. It was not wood. I had expected it to bounce toward Kasser and hopefully tangle his legs; instead the thing rocked forward abruptly, being much heavier than Id expected. Its back tipped to catch him in the stomach, which doubled him over with a whoof as the breath was driven from his lungs. I didnt come out of it much better, yelping and limping backward with a foot suddenly throbbing with pain.

Was that thing made of stone? No, it wasnt that heavy, not quite. I didnt have any time to mull the question, being fully occupied with retreating on a foot that I was only mostly sure wasnt broken.

The room had two doors, I saw upon frantically looking about for them. Maybe a more experienced Dark Lord would have cased his exits immediately on arrival, but Id been pretty distracted what with one thing and another. One door was past the two thugs, the table, and the corpsethe other, behind me up a short flight of stairs which followed the arc of the curved wall. My injured foot throbbed harder at the prospect of climbing that at speed, but I didnt hesitate; getting past them wasnt really an option.

Fortunately Harold stopped to make sure his friend was all right before chasing me, so I made it to the top before either started after me again. His distraction was the only reason I managed it; quite apart from the fresh pain in my right foot, I discovered my entire body still ached too much from Viryas recent handling to climb stairs in a hurry. All my joints screamed in protest and my entire back, which had been flexed far more than it was meant to bend, sent twinges of pain through every part of me with every step. I may have emitted an undignified sound as I climbed, but I climbed anyway. It was that, or get murdered.

The steps curved up the side of the rounded wall with no railing and terminated at a door which Id first taken for wood and learned to my regret was the same heavier-than-wood-but-lighter-than-stone material as the furniture when I rammed into it with my shoulder. It opened, allowing me to stumble through, but I gained a fresh bruise for my trouble.

I slammed the door behind me, turned to take stock of my new surroundings, and had to pause and stare.

It was a fortress. A medieval stone structure that couldve been plucked from anywhere in Europe. It was also falling apart, the stonework broken and cracked in multiple places, the crenelations on the wall right next to me worn down to rounded nubs. Id just come from a squat corner tower and was standing now on an outer wall of the fortress, with exterior stairs down to a courtyard below on my left and a door into what looked like the central keep just a few meters straight ahead. The courtyard was strewn with junkpiles of hay in the corners, parts of two broken wagons, various detritus I didnt take in too clearly because most of my attention was in the other direction. To my right, outside the fortress, was a forest.

Sort of.

There was nothing green. There were no leaves, no trees. Staring out across a panorama of multicolored nonsense I felt a wave of vertigo that had nothing to do with being on top of a wall; for a second my brain couldnt make sense of the shapes I was seeing, but then perspective snapped into place and I realized that this forest resembled nothing so much as a coral reef. I could see segmented dome-like structures covered in pulsating growths, colossal upright plates and fins of some hard material whose edges trailed feathery fronds that swayed too languorously to be propelled by the wind, branching structures of spikes and blunt curves which also had growths of living tissue emerging from strategic apertures It wasnt coral, obviously, as most of these things were bigger than trees and werent underwater, but that was a closer analogue than a forest of wood and leaves. The colors preponderated toward blue and violet, with accents of yellow, green, and pink, and a heavy mixture of enormous spiky vines of vivid red that looked thicker around than I was twining over a lot of the other structures.

It was the first moment Id had to catch my breath since landing on this ridiculous hell planet; it figured all I had to breathe was ancient stable funk. Adrenaline thrummed in my body, muting the pain and urging me to move, to do something, despite the fact that what I needed to do right now was stay put and hide. I began creeping forward toward the open front doors, stepping as carefully as I could in the darkness and wincing at every crunch and rustle underfoot, mostly just to keep in motion. Adrenaline was a great thing while it was up, but once it faded the crash could reduce a person to a helpless, blubbering wreck. Id only read about that and was not looking forward to the firsthand experience.

The courtyard outside was mostly as I remembered it from my previous brief glimpse, I observed as I crept closer. Dim, strewn with trash I hesitated, pressing myself against the wall next to the door, listening. I could hear Kasser and Harold stomping and shoutingsomewhere? I had no sense of the layout and the echoes were confusing. Another thought intruded: my hand was pressed against the wall and it felt weird. It wasnt wood, or stone. Now that I thought about it, Id not been paying much attention to the architecture for obvious reasons but I had vague impressions of the walls and rafters of the areas Id passed through being oddly colored. The doors and furniture were made of something that resembled wood at a glance but was heavier. What the hell were these people building with?

Boss!

To my abject embarrassment, I shrieked like a girl when Biribo zipped around the corner and almost smacked me in the face. He dropped the scroll hed been holding and by sheer reflex I grabbed it, fumbling and nearly dropping it into the muck at my feet before getting a grip.

Yo, maybe keep the volume down? he suggested, flittering back around the door frame to check outside. Were sorta tryin to be discreet, here.

Thanks for the tip, asshole, I growled, holding up the scroll. It was a simple roll of what looked like parchment, bound with a thin red ribbon. In the darkness of the stable, though, I noticed a faint lightness about it, a glow which hadnt been visible in the tower. Or maybe Id just been too distracted then to take note; it was pretty subtle. Okay, hows this thing work? How do I get the magic out?

Youve got the Blessing of Magic, so all you gotta do is read it to learn the spell.

I reached for the ribbon but before I could touch it, the red strip suddenly came undone, allowing the scroll to partially unfurl and causing me to hesitate, but only for a moment. Automatic opening? Made sense for a magic scroll, but I could hear my pursuers approaching and didnt have the luxury of thinking this through step by step. I yanked the scroll fully open, almost hard enough to tear it, and beheld lines of text in shimmering ink set against a faintly luminous surface.

I didnt have a chance to start reading; the words immediately lifted straight up off the parchment, glowing brighter, and the scroll itself disintegrated under my fingers into motes of light. The text seemed to loom huge in my vision, as if my consciousness were narrowed down to a pinpoint focused upon it, and I felt a strange pressure inside my head. All around me existence lit up, as the filthy stable vanished and for one brief moment I was alone inside a world of light, cocooned within a sphere of radiance upon which were meticulously arranged symbols I couldnt read, obviously forming some intricate message or recipe. Even if I wasnt able to consciously parse the text, I could sense its purpose, the crucial part of it burned directly into my mind so that when the entire thing vanished a second later, leaving me blinking in the dark, stinky stable, with a brand new magic spell lodged in my consciousness:

Heal.

I turned incredulously to Biribo, blinking. Are you fucking serious? A healing spell?

His tongue flickered out. You asked for the most powerful spell in the batch, boss. That was it. By, like, several orders of magnitude.

What the fuck am I supposed to do with a healing spell?!

Is He tasted the air again. Is that a trick question?

Here we are, getting chased by armed bandits, and instead of fireballs or lightning bolts, this idiot brings me a scroll of Heal. Of all the Well, on second thought, it wasnt like I didnt have a use for it.

Ugh, fine. How am I supposed to cast it?

Oh, its super easy once youve learned the spell! he said, now darting back and forth in enthusiasm. Just takes focus! Focus on your target and focus on the spell in your mind, and the rest is magic! Most Blessed will say the name of the spell out loud to cast it, vocalization helps with concentration. As the Dark Lord you should be powerful enough to cast mentally, but verbalizings a good practice to start with till youve got the hang of it.

This felt idiotic, but it wasnt like I had many options. And I could focus on it better than I wouldve expected; the spell had a weight in my mind that felt distinct from my own thoughts. All I had to do was think about it and it was there. I suspected this would remain constant, unlike normal memories which degrade every time you recall them. Concentrating on my own aching body and the foreign presence of the spell inside my brain, I could feel it pushing at me. Something wanted to break through, to bridge the connection. I gave it a final shove.

Heal!

Vivid pink light burst around me, regrettably illuminating the squalor of my decomposing surroundings and causing a horde of alarmingly multi-limbed shapes to scamper away back to the shadows, but this time I wasnt paying any attention to that.

I was actually sort of amazed that it worked.

There was a rush of cool, tingling sensations, concentrating on my back, my joints, my heavily bruised foot and other areas that had recently been abused, and thennothing. No pain. In fact, I felt really good, though at least part of that was probably the adrenaline still buzzing in my system. Apparently Heal didnt get rid of that.

All right, I said aloud, invigorated despite myself. I rolled my shoulders and flexed both my hands. Now were talking.

See? Tolja that was a great spell, Biribo enthused, doing a complete loop around my head.

I snatched him out of the air and clamped my other hand over his face, listening to noises from behind us. It was muffled by the intervening not-stone wall, but as it drew closer the shouts became more distinct.

like it came from over there!

The old stables?

Shit, I muttered, tossing Biribo outside and dashing after him, on legs that suddenly worked perfectly. Fixing the damage Virya had done to my body improved the odds, but I was still stuck in this moldering castle with bandits trying to kill me. I was still unarmed, completely ignorant of everything on this planet, and possessing only one Ephemera-related skill, with zero offensive utility. The only real advantage I had was that casting magic was stupidly easy, now that I had the trick. If I could Heal anything, instantly As long as they didnt manage to lop my head off in one blow, then if nothing else I could stay alive and outlast them.

Well, I said aloud as I jogged toward a tower which I hoped was the one with the spell scrolls in it, I guess I know what Ill be doing for the entire rest of the day.