Published at 3rd of October 2023 12:02 pm

Chapter Bonus 9: In Which the Scout Commences Counter Revolutionary Activities

This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml

She did not need to watch the conclusion of the fight to know what would follow. Everything was clear to someone who knew how Lord Seiji operated as soon as the first goblin turned his slingshot on the Void witch. He would walk out of there with an entire new gang of followers. That was just what he did.

It was just as well, because she was in no position to see that part. Velaven had silently clambered and vaulted across the tiny footholds provided by the cavern’s rough ceiling and irregular stalactites, taking a position on the opposite ledge from which to shoot if an opening occurred. None did; the Void witch was protected from the power of her artifact bow, and apparently even against mundane arrows. She was stuck in the same position as the rest of the villainous and heroic teams, forced to watch the Champions fight a battle in which everyone else was useless.

At least, until the goblins resorted to overwhelming firepower. Then she was forced to retreat from the explosions and falling rock as first the entire ledge and then the tunnel access collapsed behind her.

Behind them.

Hoy escaped, the wretched little beast. Even for a detestable Void witch, this goblin was one of the most repulsive specimens she had ever had the misfortune to behold. Nothing to him but vulgar brutality, neither the most basic social graces nor even a rudimentary attempt at tactics. He knew nothing but fury and thuggish forward attack—a pitiful reflection of the same deeply-seeded rage she had seen to drive Lord Seiji, with none of his mitigating virtues. It offended her that a creature like Hoy presumed to command others. He was the living opposite of everything leadership meant.

Hoy kept running even once he was out of range of the disastrous tunnel collapse, spitting curses at no one under his breath with every step. Velaven followed, deeply shrouded in her gift—invisible, silent, leaving neither scent nor footprints, so strong was her Goddess-given grace. The artifact bow on which she had come to so depend might be useless against his own Void craft, but that mattered little. As she padded along silently behind the goblin, her left hand reached under her cloak to grasp the handle of the dagger sheathed at the small of her back.

It would be so easy. Neither his spell nor his Void craft would protect him from a slit throat. She should do it, both to advance Lord Seiji’s cause and because this repulsive creature ought not continue to stain Ephemera with his presence.

No. No, in fact, those goals were in opposition. She had allowed herself to become separated from the Dark Lord, and had to make the most of the opportunity inherent in this misfortune. Ending Hoy’s miserable life would advance Lord Seiji’s agenda, to be sure… But there was a greater opportunity here. She’d made too many mistakes already. She had to manufacture a real success out of this.

Velaven released the knife and silently followed the oblivious Void witch. Once he led her back to the Goblin King’s new lair, she could still end him. In fact, doing it there would have a greater effect on enemy morale.

The tunnel opened onto the Kzidnak version of a street, this one currently deserted. Even ledges lined both walls of another subterranean canyon, this one with glimpses of light from the bottom suggesting there was an opening to the core deep below. As befit the path which led to the front door of one of Kzidnak’s most prosperous companies, the tunnel emerged onto a wide space, where the ledge both jutted outward and was carved into the wall, creating a kind of plaza in front of the tunnel mouth.

There was a dead goblin here, and clearly not one of the random casualties who currently littered the scene of the goblin civil war. This victim wore the green armband of one of Jadrak’s loyalists, and there was no destruction or other sign of struggle near him save the pool of his own blood in which he lay.

Wet blood, still warm and too fresh to be properly sticky. The fatal wound was a curious pattern, a gash ruining the throat and three more crossing his shoulder and upper chest in a cross-shaped pattern.

Hoy crossed the bridge directly outside the tunnel and turned left, hustling down the ledge-street, and Velaven stayed invisible and silent on his heels, her lip curled in loathing and forcibly repressing the urge to stab him in the back and hurl his still-flailing body down the canyon. That scene told a story as clear as if it had been written down. This contemptible wretch had “solved” a morale issue by executing one of his own followers to intimidate the rest.

He couldn’t be dead soon enough.

The little monster led her to another tram terminal, where to her surprise he had a vehicle waiting.

“Hoy?” asked the slingshot-wielding goblin who had clearly been left to guard it, peering around in confusion. “What happened? Where’s—”

“It’s Lord Hoy!” he snarled, landing a savage kick on her hip in passing. Before Velaven could react, the goblin went over the ledge with a shriek. Light streamed up from below these tracks; that was a bottomless drop.

She wouldn’t have reacted anyway. It was definitely not time to reveal her presence. But still. Fear and murder were important tools in a ruler’s arsenal, but they were tools of specific and starkly limited utility. Were these really the only measures this obscene little clown of a man had?

“Ow,” came a voice from below. “Uncalled for!”

Hoy had already hopped onto his vehicle, which gave Velaven pause. She would clearly have to board it to follow him, but… This was going to be far less comfortable than perching on the engineering seats of Sneppit’s trams, which was really saying something. Hoy’s contraption was clearly not a Sneppit Company machine, but something he’d cobbled together (or, far more likely, had some of Jadrak’s craftsmen build) in a hurry. Really, there was not much to it but a seat hanging from a wheel fixed to the tram track by a long metal pipe. It didn’t even have a floor, just a wide panel of metal just below the wheels to protect the rider from sparks. There were gears and mechanical contraptions attached to the seat and the panel whose function she couldn’t even guess, but it had no apparent means of propulsion.

This was going to be tricky.

With no time to dither, she boarded it after him, a maneuver which demanded all her skill. Velaven had to get on without causing telltale shifts in the precariously hanging machine, then grasp the metal shaft suspending the driver’s seat from the wheels and hold on, wedging her toes into tiny ridges of metal where the seat was attached to the shaft. She swiftly and carefully gathered up her cloak and wrapped it around her waist, tucked into itself, to keep it from flapping about in the wind she knew from experience would blast her once this thing was moving.

In the process, she observed that the space below the tram platform was completely blocked off by a metal grate, a sensible safety precaution if goblins were normally crowding around this space. The woman Hoy had kicked off was just clambering to her feet, wincing and rubbing her hip.

Then Hoy began turning a wheel attached to his chair, and the entire thing—chair, vertical shaft, and spark-shielding panel—began to rotate around. Velaven had to move very adroitly to avoid having her fingers or toes pinched.

“What—is wrong—with this—HEY YOU!” the Void witch yelled down at his mistreated subordinate. “Why is this so stiff? What the fuck did you do, you little shit?”

“I didn’t touch it!” she protested shrilly, holding up both hands. “Nobody has touched it! You said to make sure nobody bothered it, so that’s what I did! Nobody’s even been in here!”

“Then why the fuck is it so stiff?!”

“Maybe because it’s a piece of junk you had the engineers slap together in a couple hours while they were trying to evacuate?”

He snarled wordlessly, continuing to yank on the wheel until he’d turned the entire apparatus around, facing the opposite direction from which it had begun. Then he yanked a lever, and part of the shield folded downward until it hung at an angle, blocking part of Hoy’s (and all of Velaven’s) view forward. One more lever caused latches to clamp firmly into place, securing the panel in its new configuration.

“Force Wave!” Hoy shouted, blasting the panel in front of him with the spell. The entire thing rocked violently, but began moving forward on its well-lubricated wheels.

Oh. That was actually sort of ingenious. He definitely hadn’t thought of it himself.

“Yeah, sure, I guess I’ll just fuckin’ walk home!” the goblin below shouted as they began accelerating down the track. There was room on the seat for a second goblin, but it was best for her purposes that Hoy had decided to abandon his subordinate in a fit of childish temper. This thing was already struggling with just her own added weight; another goblin and it might not function at all.

As it was, Hoy was clearly frustrated with the slowness of its acceleration, having to repeatedly blast the metal quasi-sail with Force Wave, but if he was suspicious about the reason for the craft’s under-performance, he gave no sign. The other goblin’s explanation probably catered more to his preconceptions than the idea that someone might have done something so risky as board it along with him. Still, Velaven eschewed watching where they were going to keep her attention divided between hanging on for dear life and watching Hoy in case he suddenly turned to investigate her position. It wasn’t as if she could see forward, anyway.

The ride was not pleasant.

It was doubtless bad enough for Hoy, who at least had a place to sit. Even he had to grab a provided handhold with the hand he didn’t use to gesticulate with each cast, and braced both his feet against convenient bars obviously placed for that purpose. With every impact of Force Wave against its shield, the little craft lurched violently forward, and if the cast was even slightly off-center (which they all, inevitably, were) it would swing to the side.

Just holding on required all of Velaven’s athleticism. Had she been as malnourished as a few weeks ago, she probably would not have succeeded; this was only possible because Lord Seiji had taken to feeding her. That she had no choice but to accept his charity did not rankle any less for being even more critical now.

She had to elevate herself, redeem her failures and approach him as a peer. That he was aware of her motivation did not change that reality. Any dark elf—any Viryan—would understand her situation at a glance. He was not Viryan, not truly, and she hardly needed to have listened in on his conversations to know his patience with her was rapidly running out. After her gambit with the cat tribe had so horribly backfired, her timetable had become terribly unforgiving even as she had to find a way to impress even more than before she had introduced herself by way of dramatic failure.

He would take her in even so, she knew. But she could not approach him as another of the waifs he liked to collect. The man somehow found and gathered them up, then handed out weapons and authority and Blessings, binding them to his service. He was generous, yes—but on his own terms, in a way that commanded loyalty and positioned himself in firm control. It was a strategy she respected, but Velaven could not—would not—settle for being just another of his lieutenants. If she could not come to him as a peer, all of this would be for nothing. There was so much more at stake than the Viryan pride his familiar had warned him of. No Dark Lord would return her to her rightful place unless she proved herself worthy of it.

Lord Seiji was the only hope she had of reclaiming what was hers. Unless she truly impressed him, he would simply take it for himself. Velaven would not even begrudge him that—she would do the same in his position—but she had not suffered so much and come so far to fall just short of her redemption at the end.

Finally, mercifully, the interminable ride ended much the way it had begun: in a series of faltering, barely-controlled shudders. Hoy’s infernal contraption creaked to a stop in a stretch of corridor that didn’t seem to have been a formal tram station, though there was a cleared area with a ledge conveniently at disembarking height, and heavy mechanical equipment positioned at one end which suggested this had been placed here originally by tram workers for servicing purposes.

He had stopped hammering the spell-sail with Force Waves some distance back, and the rickety cart creaked to a halt a little bit short of the landing zone, but there were goblins waiting on the ledge to assist. Two of them, one of whom tossed a rope which Hoy caught and tied around the cart’s central hanging shaft, forcing Velaven to arch her whole body out of his way to avoid the risk of him brushing against her accidentally. The pair on the landing then pulled them the rest of the way into place.

Hoy hopped onto the ledge, heedless of the gap below. Beneath this stretch of tunnel there yawned nothing but daylight and swirling mist, further evidence that this was not a regular stop of the tram service. Velaven disembarked with more care—not out of fear of the drop, as it was an easy distance for her to jump, but it was tricky to make the leap gently enough not to set the cart suspiciously rocking. Especially given the need to avoid bumping into one of the three goblins now crowding the ledge. She lit deftly on the rock floor and swarmed in perfect silence up to perch atop one of the convenient banks of machinery while Hoy checked in with his subordinates.

“Welcome back, Ho—uh, Lord Hoy! How’d it go?”

The Void witch bared his teeth and made a slashing gesture with one hand. “Where is he?”

“Uh… You mean King Jadrak?”

“Who the fuck else would I mean? Does anyone else in this dump matter?”

“Course, sorry. He’s in the old…that is, the throne room. He’s set up in what used to be a storage bay, for security’s sake. Two chambers in a row, only one door in, easy to defend.”

Velaven pursed her lips in displeasure. That was unwelcome news.

“It’s mostly a straight shot down the main corridor that branches off from this access tunnel, you need me to take you—?”

“Never mind, I’ll find it. How’s his mood?”

The two goblins glanced warily at each other.

“Hard to say, H—Lord Hoy, it ain’t like we hang out with the Goblin King. We’re up on the news, though, and…well, there’s good and bad. I dunno what kinda mood the whole of it’ll put him in.”

“I, uh, I guess it’ll depend on what extra news you’ve brought him, boss.”

“News?” Hoy demanded. “Well, spit it out already, I haven’t got all fucking day!”

“Right, well, the good news is Fallencourt’s secure, mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“The revolutionaries haven’t swept every nook and cranny, that’d take years, but there’s no significant or organized opposition. Everybody who’s not supporting King Jadrak has been pushed to outer Kzidnak. With Fallencourt itself settled and those damn adventurers chased off, our people’ve been able to recruit more from the folks who were sitting it out to see who won.”

The word “recruit” was doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Velaven had to wonder whether Hoy was politically astute enough to pick up the implications. Or whether he cared.

He grunted, making an impatient gesture. “And the bad?”

Both goblins grimaced, glancing at each other again. “Trying to settle the North Watch issue is a bust, boss. Somehow the Dark Lord being absent has not made that a softer target.”

“Way I heard it, those butts managed to turn Maugro’s old joint into a damn fortress. The whole tunnel outside is a mess of traps, barricades, and archers, and they just keep adding to the defenses. The bastards smashed every group sent at ‘em; it’s really looking like the only reason they’re not advancing further into goblin territory is they haven’t been ordered to.”

“Yeah, rumor is King Jadrak wanted them dealt with fast for that reason, before Lord What’s-His-Name could come back, but the way things are lookin’ it’d be faster and easier to bore a new tunnel up to the fortress.”

Hoy growled uncannily like a wild dog and spat a few disjointed curses. “All right, I’m gonna go talk to him. You pull my carriage off the tracks and either fix it or get the engineers to do it if you can’t.”

One of his lackeys turned to squint at the vehicle. “Fix it? What’s wrong with it?”

“How the fuck should I fucking know?” Hoy spat, taking a swipe at him. The man stoically accepted the slap across his head, a sure sign of someone who knew the consequences would be worse if he tried to dodge. “That’s your fucking job! Everything’s gunked up, the gears are all stiff and something’s caught in the track wheels slowing it down. Figure it out!”

He stalked off up the corridor, leaving them behind.

“Well, great,” one of the pair muttered. “How’re we supposed to even get this thing down from the tracks?”

“That’s why it’s parked here, one of these contraptions is a tramcar servicing crane. We should be able to attach it and pull it loose.”

“Hey, what do you think happened to his hat and staff? He loves those, where’d—”

“Shh! You wanna get Force Waved into the core, dumbass?”

Velaven hopped lightly down from her perch as the two goblins began unfolding it out from under her, extending a mechanical arm toward Hoy’s cart, and padded down the tunnel after him.

Matters went from bad to worse after that.

For the next hour, Velaven lurked outside the Goblin King’s inner sanctum, having been stymied in her pursuit of Hoy by the first effective anti-stealth measures she had encountered since her exile. The chambers Jadrak had chosen for his headquarters were, indeed, secure, being accessible only by a single (goblin-sized) door, which was guarded at all times. Worse than the guards were the bead curtains, each string with a small metal bell at the bottom, and the sandwalk in the first part of the chamber beyond, where a second pair of guards were positioned with rakes and apparently the sole duty of keeping the sand smooth and standing by to raise an alarm if footprints should inexplicably appear in it.

This was…troubling. There was little contact between Kzidnak and Shylverrael, just some very occasional trade in metalwork, alchemy, and ingredients thereof. Being concerned above all with their own security, the Shylver had always kept the goblins at arm’s length; unlike the various beast tribes which could be safely suborned, goblins interacted too much with the Fflyr for any closer relations to be an acceptable risk. Of course, the goblins were aware of dark elves, but even the big company bosses in Kzidnak had never bothered with such specifically anti-stealth security measures before.

Why now? None of the possibilities boded well.

The best case scenario was that Jadrak was simply paranoid. If he had more specific reason to be on the lookout for shadow scouts… Had she inadvertently revealed her own presence at some point? Perhaps his devil ally had tipped him off?

The worst possibility was that he was reacting to the activities of other shadow scouts. Shylverrael’s attention was currently turned completely inward thanks to the political upheaval surrounding her ouster, and Velaven had expected it to remain that way for months more at least, well into the winter. She had counted on it, in fact. If Lyvien had conjured up an unexpected wellspring of competence—or been counter-usurped by someone more dangerous—then not only were her own plans in ruins, but Lord Seiji’s campaign was in immediate danger. Only massive distraction on the part of the dark elves had kept them from noticing the rapid buildup of forces at North Watch, and the nascent Dark Crusade was not yet prepared to repel an earnest attack by naga, much less shadow scouts in force.

Taking up a perch high on the rough tunnel wall within sight of the entry to Jadrak’s chambers, she watched and listened for an hour, gradually gaining more intel. These measures were new and the goblins on guard duty—and the various servants and others who came and went on business with the Goblin King—didn’t understand the point of it all, but were not inclined to complain out of respect for Jadrak and fear of Hoy. They certainly hadn’t been warned that there might be invisible dark elves about, nor coached in operational security in general, given their eagerness to stand around in the public halls gossiping.

Velaven silently cursed her own mistake—her most recent one. She should have slit Hoy’s throat as the rail carriage was coming to a stop, then silenced his two flunkies while they panicked, and dumped them all into the core.

Lord Seiji needed to be the one to end Jadrak, or have the Hero do it, whichever outcome best suited the situation as it had developed by the time that became possible. For all his failings as a ruler—and she had often found herself itching to burst out of stealth and begin educating him in statecraft over the last several weeks—he possessed a tremendous innate aptitude for political theater. Really, it would never have occurred to Velaven to bring a minstrel of all things across the stars to serve as Dark Lord, but clearly Virya did not remain the Goddess of Evil without knowing her business. Jadrak had to live, for now, so the time and manner of his demise would best serve Lord Seiji’s plans.

Hoy, though, was worthless and a source of nothing but trouble. No one in Jadrak’s camp would mourn him; they would only be frightened at the presence of an enemy who could destroy him. And Velaven had squandered a golden opportunity to settle the problem. One more mistake to add to her ever-growing pile, one more precious chance to redeem herself transformed into another condemnation of her worth. A defeated corner of her spirit was starting to wonder if it might not be best to just approach the Dark Lord with knee and neck bent and accept whatever crumbs he deigned to offer her.

She could still deal with Hoy, though. That was just one of the things she could do here—one of the tasks she had to make a priority. But not here, or now. Eventually he would come out; at some point, he would be alone. No matter how paranoid, a person would always be vulnerable eventually, especially those overconfident in their own power, like Hoy.

Not the only task, though. She was here, no longer shadowing Lord Seiji, and there were many ways to disrupt the enemy from within their headquarters. After an hour, Velaven decided that Hoy was not coming out any time soon, and that she had gleaned all there was to learn by eavesdropping on the chatty goblins outside Jadrak’s chambers. Hoy would emerge eventually, and it would not be hard to find him. Learning of his routine would make his later comeuppance easier to arrange, as well.

Slipping away, she started off in the direction from which the patrols of guards came, reasoning that some central organizing facility would lay at their source, but paused at the mouth of a familiar passage. Raised voices were echoing from the discreet side landing where Hoy had parked his carriage.

Interesting. Sensing opportunity and determined not to let another slip through her grasp, she turned and glided back to the tram tunnel.

“I am telling you, there is nothing wrong with it!” a raised female voice insisted from up ahead, clearly on the edge of cracking. “I’ve been over every cog and bolt, I tested the moving parts myself—you both stood there and watched me do it!”

“Yeah, we watched you not change anything from how it was when Hoy left it here!”

“Because there’s nothing to change!”

“Hoy said there was. You calling Hoy a liar? You want me to go get him so you can say that to his face?”

The only answer to that was the shuddering gasp of someone on the verge of tears. Velaven emerged around the bend to behold the scene outside just as the other Hoy loyalist chimed in. It was the same pair as before, currently looming over a third goblin.

“Hoy is not happy with his carriage, Zeckl. Whatever was wrong with it is still wrong with it, because you didn’t fix it. If he comes back and is still not happy with his carriage, you better believe it’s gonna be your green ass. I’m not takin’ the fall for this.”

Zeckl lowered her head, clutching a wrench in both hands so hard her fists trembled, and muttered something so indistinct Velaven couldn’t make out the words.

“Aw, you gonna cry now?” snorted the first of the duo, reaching out and giving her shoulder a rough shove. “Speak up if you got somethin’ to say, I don’t have time for your—hey!”

He had to step back as the engineer lashed out, swiping with her wrench. It was an inept attempt, easily avoided, but she brandished the tool at him, now wide-eyed and baring all her fangs.

“I said fuck Hoy and fuck you! I hope the Dark Lord finishes him off proper, and you two goons with him! Ever since the uprising assholes like you have done nothing but throw your weight around and pick on people just tryin’ to work. We were all better off without a Goblin King!”

She snapped her teeth shut, eyes suddenly widening as her expression switched to terror, but the damage was done.

“Well, well,” drawled the second henchgoblin. “Tads, did I hear what I think I just heard?”

“If you think you heard this jumped-up little plumber spouting treason against the Goblin King, Nekko, then I’m afraid so.”

“You hate to see it,” Nekko said, shaking his head mournfully. “Guess we gotta core her now.”

“No,” Zeckl whispered, backing up. She came up against the chair of Hoy’s carriage, which was blocking most of the ledge, having been lifted down from the track and set there for repair.

“Oh, well,” Tads said with a shrug. “What was it Hoy said about the engineers?”

“Ah, yeah, I remember. He said Sneppit has better ones anyway, and we’ll just take them on after that bitch is dead.”

“No great loss, then,” Nekko agreed, drawing the long knife—a human-sized akornin knife of Fflyr make, practically a short sword in his hands—from its sheath at his belt.

Opportunity.

And risk.

Velaven could practically feel the weight of her next mistake hanging overhead, just waiting for the thread of fate to snap so it could fall and finish crushing the life from her. Was this the error of the cat tribe, where an aggressive action would cause deadly repercussions? Or the error of an hour ago, where excessive caution would cost her a chance that would not come again?

There was no time to dither. Both goblins thugs were advancing on the terrified engineer, weapons out.

Inaction, her favorite tutor had told her, was also an action—and only the right one when it was specifically the right one. To be inactive by default was to err, every time.

The silvery artifact longbow had no string, but when she put her fingers to the place where one should be, she could feel it. Feel the weight as she pulled it back, and the bow flexed, the wing-shaped blades affixed to its curve arching backward. A silver arrow materialized, nocked and ready to fly.

Velaven shot Tads straight through the skull; his body thumped against the rail carriage and bounced off. Her second shot took Nekko right in the eye a second later as he stared at this in confusion.

For the first time in front of another living person since she had fled her home, she let her stealth fall away entirely. Zeckl turned to stare at her, stupefied.

Velaven stepped past the stunned engineer, raised one foot, and kicked the vertical shaft of Hoy’s carriage. Awkwardly balanced on its seat with the big metal shield and sail overhead, it was ludicrously top-heavy and tipped over with barely any effort. Over the side it went, tumbling down into the vast depths with nothing between it and the distant fires of Ephemar’s core.

No more quick and easy travel for Hoy.

Silently, she kicked both bodies, sending them after it. There were still bloodstains here, but that could be remedied. Goblins always had alchemical solutions about, especially cleaning agents. They were an admirably fastidious people.

Velaven turned to look down at Zeckl, who flinched at the sudden regard and backed up against the crane apparatus.

“Who else knows you are here?”

“Please don’t kill me,” the engineer squeaked. “I’m having a really rough day.”

“As are we all. The question is, what are you willing to do about it?”

Zeckl stared at her. Velaven gave her a moment for her thoughts to catch up. There was time; no one was coming, she had not ceased to be attentive to sounds in the corridor the entire time she’d been out here. The goblin looked down at the bloodstains, then at the ledge, then back up the tunnel, and finally up at Velaven again.

“You’re with the Dark Lord.” Her voice, when she finally spoke, was calmer, her eyes intent. Good. Velaven couldn’t fault a civilian for cracking after having been bullied for an hour by a pair of thugs, but she couldn’t do anything with a contact who was going to panic and lose all ability to think under stress. It would be a shame and an irony to have to silence her after all this.

Velaven nodded once. “I am. Are you?”

Zeckl drew in a deep breath, again clutching her wrench like it was a security blanket, then deliberately steeled her expression as she exhaled, and nodded. “What did you have in mind?”

And that was one. Only one, but that was how it always started.

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