Published at 3rd of October 2023 12:04 pm

Chapter 4.23 In Which the Dark Lord Sponsors a Team Building Activity

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We all stared at the slime.

I made an unnecessary hand gesture and directed it to slither out from the pieces of the corpse, causing everyone else to retreat a few steps. I couldn’t blame them; even aside from the visible filth and decay swirling in the slime’s interior, its neon green color screamed “poison.” I didn’t need the weakened connection from the spell, which was barely giving me a mental hold on it compared to normal slimes, to let me know something was very badly wrong with this one.

“That’s a common enough spell,” Harker commented. “Didn’t realize it let you just…mind control animals, though.”

“Really?” I said incredulously. “That’s your first thought right now?”

He shrugged.

“Anyway, it only works like that with slimes. They’re just…animated goop, barely even animals. They don’t have brains or nerves. Even crawns can’t be controlled this way.”

“I’ve certainly never seen one that glowed,” Harker acknowledged, tilting his head and studying our new specimen. “Or was that color.”

“The color is new,” Dhinell said quietly. “I have seen a glowing slime before, however.”

Rhydion’s helmet shifted slightly toward me, but he said nothing.

“Yeah, this is a pretty novel experience in terms of slimes,” I agreed. “Obviously the witch has done some major jiggery pokery with this thing—a slime in any kind of normal state can’t just…get into a body and control it. They don’t have the physical strength, or the ability to interface with the nervous system; it would have to be doing at least one of the two to make a corpse move around. That’s pretty clever, using it as a substitute for blood and letting it take over the body like that. We’d need a master alchemist to even start figuring out how it works, though. I’ve got no ideas.”

But I did have a master alchemist. If I could get a sample of this into Youda’s hands… Rapidly considering my options, I was forced to file that away for a future project. I did have goblin scout teams under the surface in this general area under orders to unseal the tunnel entrances and be ready to move at need, but not a reliable way to communicate with them and avoid Rhydion’s notice. I could send Biribo, possibly even without the others noticing if I was clever about it, but with us going further into undead territory I wasn’t willing to have him separate from me.

Rhydion seemed to be thinking along similar lines, which was becoming a running theme with the two of us.

“This must be studied further. After returning from the forest I will seek the aid of skilled alchemists and see to taking one of these undead intact enough to extract its inner slime for analysis. None of that can be done here and now, however. For the moment, we had best press on.”

“This is as far as I go,” Vylkher stated. He’d already stepped further back from the group and now knelt on the ground, setting his pack in the snow in front of himself and rummaging therein. “Closer to the witch and I risk drawing her attention to my tribe. Continue forward from here and you will reach a stream; follow that up the current for around a day and you will find her lair. The stream does not go to it but it passes by close enough you will see it. Here.”

He had pulled out a big handful of what looked like ropes and leather straps, and now handed this to Aster. She looked nonplussed, but accepted it.

“Harnesses,” Vylkher explained. “You will have to camp overnight. Do not sleep on the ground, not even posting a watch. The undead are too clumsy to climb khora; find one with enough space up top and sleep there. Strap these on, pound the spikes into the shell, and they will stop you rolling out in your sleep. Very few khora are big enough on top for a fire, so also take these.”

Again, he picked Aster to be the recipient; she had to awkwardly tuck the bundle of harnesses under her arm to accept the package Vylkher now handed her.

“Warm sticks,” he said tersely. “Alchemical. There are big ones and small ones. Break them in half and the pieces will be hot for a few hours. Nearly all night if they’re kept stifled away from open air, which is how you use them. Two small ones and one big one per person; put the halves of small ones in your shoes and gloves, prevent frostbite in the extremities. Those you can put on the skin. Bigger ones are to heat your body; they get too hot for that, so tuck them between layers of your clothes.”

“Your generosity is deeply appreciated, as is that of your tribe, Vylkher,” Rhydion said. “For all the help you have given, we are in your debt. If I am able to aid you and your people in the future, I will do so.”

“Hum.” The squirrelman smiled vaguely. “Perhaps you will have the opportunity; perhaps not. Life is endless surprises. It’s as you said to the chief: travelers should help travelers in the forest.” He shifted his eyes to me and his smile widened fractionally. “What kind of world would it be if no one helped anyone? Best to be the one who offers first, I think. Travel carefully. I wish you luck with the witch.”

“May the Goddess watch over you,” Rhydion said solemnly.

Vylkher’s fluffy tail twitched twice, and his ears once.

“Your goddess has never helped us before—nor has the other one. I would be very surprised if they start now. Keep believing in people, paladin, they’ll serve you better.”

Having thus snatched the last word, he turned and swarmed up the side of the nearest khora with astonishing speed. In seconds he was bounding away through the bare branches, which looked a lot easier than it would have been in a tree forest given how big most of them were.

“Well,” I said, turning from watching his exit back to Rhydion. “What should we do about this? I don’t specifically know what could go wrong from leaving a corrupt zombie slime roaming around, but it feels like a bad idea. Slimes’re tricky things to kill, though, if you’re not willing to stop and douse it in whatever asauthec we’ve got left…”

Harker nocked an arrow, drew, and before I could demand to know what the hell he was doing, fired it straight into the green slime point blank. Instantly I felt the connection in my head terminate, and the slime itself collapsed. All its cohesion gone, it was suddenly just a puddle of vile, viscous goop seeping into the forest floor.

“There,” Harker grunted, retrieving his arrow and a rag from his belt pouch to thoroughly wipe the head. “That good enough for you?”

Interesting. The arrow was nothing special, I could tell at a glance; was that bow able to insta-kill magical creatures? Or magic in general? Surely it couldn’t be an anti-slime bow, that would be a very weird enchantment to make and not something Harker would bother carrying around. Well, he wasn’t going to tell me, but I could ask Biribo as soon as we were able to talk again.

“Good enough indeed,” said Rhydion, nodding. “Thank you, Harker. Come, friends, let us not delay.”

We found the stream easily. It was frozen solid, making “up the current” impossible to determine, but it wasn’t hard to tell which way was headed toward the southwest. Off we went, moving through the cleared channel carved by the small waterway.

The forest itself didn’t discernibly change, but now that we’d finally encountered one undead, more began to appear with increasing regularity. None of them posed a threat; based on how they performed in combat, I didn’t figure they would unless they managed to take us by surprise. Biribo’s presence made that prospect impossible, but even so I never had to be the first to call a warning. Harker had the sharp eyes and ears you’d expect of a man who made his living hunting monsters in the deep forest, and Rhydion…

Rhydion spotted as many distant zombies as Harker did. More and more I wanted to learn about the capabilities of that armor of his, and in particular the helmet, but something told me I was going to be disappointed in that hope.

Most of the undead we saw before they saw us, which meant we took them out prior to any actual combat. Aster and Rhydion always moved to the fore, but only had to swing their blades a few times. Dhinell, Harker and I felled them with spells and arrows much more often. And indeed, one arrow from his artifact bow was enough to instantly kill a zombie.

Rhydion declared a halt almost an hour before dark when we stumbled across a perfect campsite, declaring that a measure of security while we slept was better than faster progress which brought us to the vampire’s doorstep bedraggled and tired. The frozen stream bent fully around a particularly wide khora structure which featured a flat space on top, ringed by spiky protrusions which in other seasons would sprout very pretty fronds, but at the moment made for surprisingly serviceable battlements. Up there we had room for not only all five of us to lie down, but enough space to make a small fire in the center.

It was tricky enough for us to get over the spikes and onto the top; no way could those awkwardly shuffling zombies manage it. Also we wouldn’t need to use Vylkher’s harnesses, given how the raised edge prevented anybody rolling off.

Taking my cue from Rhydion’s judgment that the fire was an acceptable risk as we were unlikely to meet the witch herself this far out and nothing else wandering around here was smart enough to respond to our out-of-reach presence, after everyone had finished their share of travel rations, I began carefully unwrapping my lovely new guitar from the weatherproof bindings the squirrels had given me for it.

“Really?” Harker asked wryly.

“It’s cold, we’re all tired, we’re alone deep in zombie country and tomorrow we’re facing off with a monster out of nightmare,” I said, plucking the gut strings and carefully twisting the pegs to tune it. “Shit’s fucked, is what I’m sayin’, and it’s not like I can heal stress. If ever there was a time for some medicine for the soul, this is it. How about it, Dhinell? You’re up first.”

“Excuse me?” she demanded, her eyebrows shooting upward.

“Pick the first song,” I explained, grinning. “I know a fair amount of Fflyr music by now, but you might have to teach me. That’s fine, I’m always glad to learn new tunes. As I recall, you have a fondness for church music?”

“It certainly wouldn’t surprise me that you don’t know any proper hymns,” she sniffed. “What exactly is it you think you’re up to, Lord Seiji? This effort to pretend you enjoy my company is less convincing than you seem to think.”

“I have been asked to make an effort to get along with everybody,” I said, winking at Rhydion. “You might recall; you were there. I am a firm believer that everybody does not need to be friends, so long as everybody can be professionals. If we all act with basic respect it shouldn’t matter how well anyone gets along. Besides…”

I was plucking experimentally at the strings now. Unless I’d tuned it contrary to its designer’s intent, the string pitches were the same as a normal guitar, minus the upper E. Okay, I’d have a more limited range, but I could work with that. The finger spacing was a bit wider; that might trip me up, but the difference wasn’t enough to be too awkward.

“Besides,” I continued quietly, staring into the fire, “music is…everything. Music heals and uplifts the soul like nothing else. Faith, love, loyalty, all of that shit will fall apart in the end, but music will still be there for you. Everyone deserves to be able to hear the music they love. Doesn’t matter whether I like them; doesn’t matter whether I like their musical taste. That’s sacred. No one should have to go without listening to the songs that move their hearts.”

I strummed a few chords, having found the shape of it, and raised my eyes to look expectantly at Sister Dhinell. Her eyebrows were drawn together in an expression of consternation, or maybe puzzlement. She finally answered, though.

“Do you know Auch Dhewlryrth?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell. Can you hum it?”

Dhinell’s pale cheeks colored slightly in the firelight and she averted her gaze. “Never mind, it doesn’t really matter.”

“Hmmm mmm hm hmmmm hmm hm,” Aster hummed. “I like that one too. Actually I think you will also, Lord Seiji, it’s complex. The melody sounds all bright and happy by itself, but the chord progression is in minor key. You’re supposed to alternate it, doing just the melody and then the full harmonies, back and forth with each verse. Sounds totally different each time.”

“Ooh, interesting! Walk me through it?”

It was indeed a hymn, apparently; the lyrics were a bunch of piffle about Sanora’s grace in times of suffering, but I bit down my aversion and sang once I got the melody. I was dead serious about what I’d said. Sanora might be a bunch of bullshit, but her contamination didn’t make the music itself any less sacred. If it uplifted and helped heal the spirit, it deserved to be heard. In fact, I found I rather liked the tune myself.

I’d expected Harker’s request to be some kind of bawdy drinking song and was fully prepared to bite my tongue again and oblige, but to my surprise he wanted to hear a Fflyr folksong which I happened to have learned already, a wistful ballad about an adventurer who never returned from a dungeon and the girl he left behind. And I already knew Aster’s favorite song, an upbeat dancing tune which was in minor key but managed to leave an overall cheery impression even if you didn’t listen to the lyrics about flowers and spring rains. She’d mentioned previously that it reminded her of her dad, in a tone which did not invite further questions.

Everyone sang along with every piece, including Rhydion, to my surprise. He had a decent baritone; the echoing effect of his helmet added an odd layer to the sound but it wasn’t unpleasant.

“What about you, boss?” I asked after we finished the third song, looking at him and strumming expectantly.

“I think… I would like to hear a song from your home, Lord Seiji.”

“Hey, no fair jumping ahead,” I chided, grinning. “You’d better believe I wasn’t gonna skip my turn. Come on, everybody gets one.”

“In uncertain times, I find it gives me more comfort to look beyond myself into the wideness of the world than back at what is familiar,” he said quietly. “It’s a mindset a mentor of mine taught me, long ago. Our problems tower over us when we stand before them, but if we only pull back, see the true, vast scope of the world and how little of it you truly know, gain some perspective into the real breadth of creation… Then, even the mountains seem small. We are tiny in the vastness of life, and so are our troubles.”

“I’m…”

“More prosaically, we should sleep soon. Tonight is unlikely to be restful and we must face tomorrow at our full strength. So, one more song. Indulge me if you would, Lord Seiji. I am eager to hear something from beyond my own experience.”

I had been idly strumming and plucking while he talked, and kept doing so while I considered. Something from my home? In fact I knew quite a bit of proper Japanese music, and suddenly felt a prick of nostalgia for it. My father had insisted I learn the shamisen in return for indulging my pursuit of rock, and though I refused to let him know it, I had come to really enjoy the instrument and its traditional music. I missed having one. Still, when I thought back to what gave me comfort…

My definition of “classic rock” is much looser than most people’s, encompassing large swaths of everything that came out of America between 1955 and 2005 or so. I had decided early on that what moved you, moved you; labels were for hipsters and other useless people who existed only to be poked at because of the amusing noises they made when upset. I knew what touched my soul, in all the broad range of it, and I felt no particular need for it to be categorized.

And now, while I mulled, I belatedly noticed what my fingers had been plucking the intro to.

“I’ve heard there was a secret chord…”

Maybe it was the sacred music from earlier… Maybe just the melancholy of our scenery and situation. It was hardly one of my favorites, and probably wouldn’t have been even had it not become so overplayed in popular media in the last couple decades. I’d been spared the worst of that as I didn’t go out of my way to watch Western movies or shows. I knew the song, though, and in that moment it was all about the mood. Wistful, solemn, bittersweet.

That is music. It doesn’t matter why. You can mull that after the fact if you’re interested in theory. In the moment, you just experience it. You go where the notes take you.

None of them understood a word, of course; I sang in the original English. But there was that Wisdom perk I’d unlocked early on, the deeply affecting, almost hypnotic impact I could create by singing in a language the listeners didn’t understand. Dhinell’s eyes shone in the firelight; Harker’s usually guarded expression had finally relaxed, and he stared pensively out across the darkened forest. Aster smiled at me the whole time, a sad little expression that seemed to offer forgiveness for some offense I didn’t even recall committing.

“…hallelujah.”

Full dark had fallen, and the dead were on the move below us; Rhydion was right about the need for rest before whatever came tomorrow. On that note, we turned in.

Vylkher had slightly underestimated our pace; we discovered the witch’s lair well before noon the following day.

Our path was blocked by a small cliff, down which the stream fell in front of us in a waterfall that was currently frozen solid. That made for a very pretty spectacle, but our attention was focused on the wide gap in the khora to our left, giving us a view over a downward slope south. In the distance stood a large mansion.

It was in the Fflyr style, designed around the huge pieces of khora shell from which it was constructed, giving it flowing lines and an overall organic shape. More of the windows than otherwise were either boarded over or gaping empty, and even from this distance the masonry between the big shell pieces was visibly crumbling, but overall it was surprisingly intact for being out here in the wilderness.

“What the hell is that doing here?” Harker demanded, neatly summing it up.

“The political landscape of Dount was dramatically changed by the Dark Crusade,” said Rhydion. “Many old ruins dot what is now the beastfolk territory of the western forest, where entire settlements were left behind by the civilization which previously existed here.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen, uh, one or two of those,” I said, thinking of North Watch itself, and the ruined village in the poison khora grove. “They looked a lot worse off than that place.”

“Indeed,” he said, nodding. “That is approximately the condition in which I would expect to find a place that size which has been maintained for a century and a half by a single person who knows nothing of masonry or construction. It would seem we have found our quarry.”

“How should we approach, then?” Aster inquired, absently reaching up to grip the handle of her greatsword. “A frontal charge doesn’t sound like a great idea if vampires are as dangerous as Lord Seiji says they might be. Most of this group isn’t really great at sneaking, though.”

“Remember that attack is not our purpose here,” Rhydion said softly, gazing at the distant manor. “We will fight if the vampire attacks. Whatever transpires, remember that our goal is to gain information, not to destroy our target. We must live, and return to Fflyr territory with what we know.”

“Okay,” I said, “but if a golden opportunity to take her out arises, ideally before she sees us coming…”

“Then pass it up. If at all possible, I would like to talk to her.”

We all turned to stare at him.

“If she came here with Yomiko,” I pointed out, “she probably doesn’t wanna talk to you.”

He nodded. “As I said, we will fight if pressed. But do not take this for a mission of destruction. I want to learn the true scope of the threat, and bring that knowledge back to the Clans.”

“Excuse me if I’m missing something,” I retorted, “but you’re making it sound like you’d rather do that than actually take out the witch.”

“Precisely.”

“What the fuck?”

Rhydion turned to face me.

“You have repeatedly commented on the political situation on Dount and throughout Fflyr Dlemathlys, Lord Seiji—specifically, on the one and only strategy the Clans use to control the people. Designate a target, and redirect their subjects’ justified anger against it. They are using the weaker version of this gambit, by picking on imaginary enemies who are too vulnerable to defend themselves. The method is far more effective against a legitimate threat. Tell me, Lord Seiji: in your plans to forestall the abuses of the Clans and intercede on behalf of the people, have you ever considered how much you might be able to accomplish, if you could only force the Clans to turn in unison and face a single foe—one other than yourself?”

I stared at him, completely gobsmacked. He was unreadable as always behind that damned visor, but the others… Harker was making a visible effort to conceal his thoughts, and Dhinell a somewhat less successful one to keep her own consternation under control. Aster looked about as dumbstruck as I felt in that moment.

“…huh,” I finally grunted. To my immense embarrassment, that was all I could come up with.

“I begin to be concerned, Lord Seiji, that in my efforts to dissuade you from rash and destructive actions, I have given you the impression that I do not see the urgent need for action of some kind to rescue this country from itself. That is very much not the case. If one’s actions will determine the fates of countless souls, the time for bold movement is when one has a large measure of control over the situation, and a reasonable certainty of success. And if one does not have those things, one must begin working to create them. Carefully and quietly, so as not to draw the wrong kind of attention. Flailing at your enemies in unthinking outrage will only feed them opportunities to vanquish you. Strike with purpose, in a time and place of your choosing, where they cannot see the trap until its jaws close upon them.”

I blinked, twice, and finally remembered to close my mouth. Not a moment too soon; the cold air had really dried it out.

“Come,” said Rhydion, turning and walking into the gap toward the long descent that led to the vampire’s mansion. “Let us visit this witch, and learn the truth of what we face. If the Goddess smiles on us, she will be deadly indeed.”

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