A month and three days before Wald’s arrival, in the Prisman frontier hub city of Wildspring, at the foot of the Fire Scales range…
The irritating droning buzz of a crowd of men and women, their noisy brats and their mangy beasts rose from the street, up to a glass window curtained in pink lace, on the second floor of the locally notorious Garden of Petals.
Inside the room, Edad the Merchant frowned at the curtain, angry—not for the first time—that this crappy brothel couldn’t even afford a decent soundproofing enchantment. Not even the contraband moonshade incense nor the copious amount of booze he’d inhaled could ease Edad’s constant, simmering annoyance. The Garden might have been the most upscale establishment in town, but in a shithole like Wildspring, that meant very little.
Teeth grazed against his semi-hard cock and snapped his attention back to the slave girl sucking him under the table. “Dammit, whore!” His fist angrily slammed the tabletop, startling her. “One more mistake like that, and you’ll get the lash!”
He reclined as her ministrations resumed, fearful gentle, and groaned in pleasure. “Ah, yes… Yes. That’s better.” Arousal finally managed to pierce the cloud of alcohol and drug to bring his tiny dick fully up. “Much better.” Edad snatched another bottle, shakily uncorked it, and then smirked invitingly at the man sitting across from him.
“Are you sure you don’t want one, Achi? I know these ain’t the capital stock you’re used to, but even these bumpkin bitches can be taught some tricks,” Edad chuckled. “Ain’t it right, love?” He possessively petted the fellating slave’s hair and started taking a swig of liquor, before stopping. “–Oh, sorry. It’s Lord Steel, now, is it?”
“Hahaha,” Edad’s tablemate laughed good-naturedly, his round potbelly jiggling. He smiled affably, rubbing his hands together. “Please, Ed, no need for such formalities between us old friends. And while I do appreciate the offer, very much so, you know I’m married now. Besides, my time is quite limited, I’m afraid. I only dropped by since I was in town. For old time’s sakes.”
“Right. To marriage!” Edad raised a toast mockingly. As if that whore wasn’t fucking half the capital lickspittles behind your back, you sorry sot. He downed a mouthful. His bloodshot eyes misted as the strong alcohol burned his throat. Guess the noble bitch got him by the balls. Eh. Sad. But that’s what happens when you let a woman thinks she matters!
Cackling meanly to himself, Edad considered the other man.
Dressed in fancy travel clothes, tailored around his round belly, with his blading spot carefully sheared, and greying hair meshed through his slickly waxed moustache and goatee, Achi– No. Lord Achibaldo Steel looked like an old decaying dandy. The sight was a far cry from the adventurous young merchant Edad remembered from their many nights out, touring the luxurious bordellos of the capital, women in each arm, fawning over their group of promising youth, as they dreamed of making it big without relying on their wealthy fathers’ hand-me-downs.
Edad wanted to puke. What a fucking joke. He swallowed another swig of liquor.
The young slave’s uncertain caress of his balls distracted him. The girl was inexperienced, a new acquisition of the brothel’s owner. But that was what Edad had paid extra to get. Unlike the high-class whores of civilised cities, the so-called “Petals” of Wildspring lacked the acting skills to hide their jadedness, and the merchant would take scared clumsiness over dead fish eyes any day. So even if the teen’s mistakes pissed him off, her fear at least was genuine.
Her moist lips pulled back, and delicate shaky fingers squeezed his shaft. Moaning, Edad took a swing of alcohol and grimaced. “What a cheap piss.” He pointed the bottle at Achibaldo, splattering droplets across the table. “You wouldn’t believe what they charge for this.”
“A very reasonable and thought-out price, I’m sure,” Achibaldo replied calmly, dabbing a drop off his jacket. “They do need to make a profit, and the service fees I saw listed downstairs were more than fair.”
“Of course, that’s your only angle,” Edad scoffed and took another large swig of the burning swill. “Nothing but the money, right?” Trice-damned bastard. Now he remembered. Even back then, Achi always tried to appear so disgustingly calm, so reasonable and above everyone else. Edad always hated the way he constantly rubbed his palms together, as if about to apologise or already washing his hands of their lowly company.
But Edad knew—oh, he knew—what greedy son-of-a-whore hid beneath that infuriating polite mask. Achibaldo was no better than them—no better than him! Just because the craven, fat, bald sell-out had married a cheating slut for her peerage and to snatch up his daddy’s inheritance, while Edad toiled in the butthole of nowhere to make hard, unforgiving rocks spit out some meagre coins, that didn’t mean… didn’t mean…
Fuck! Suddenly furious, Edad grabbed the whore’s head and held her down firmly to his groin. Then, heedless of her choking noises, he sneered at his old “friend”.
“Why are you really here, Achi? You wouldn’t have crawled this far away from your castrating shrew without being neck-deep in knoblin shit.” A sly grin split his reddened face. “So what, are the rumours true? Did the Lord of Iron lose all of his daddy’s precious wealth?”
“Edad, please, I–” A knock on the door interrupted Achibaldo’s answer. “Come in.”
Golden blond hair poked in, belonging to a young man too handsome for his own good. The newcomer’s eyes quickly took in the scene inside the room, lingered for a moment on the suffocating slave between Edad’s thighs, before meeting the merchant’s glare, and shifting to Achibaldo.
“Lord Steel,” he said deferentially, “the men are ready to depart.”
“Thank you, Diruku, my boy.” Achibaldo smiled congenially as he stood, his paunch wobbling. A thoughtful hand rubbed his goatee, golden rings glittering on his pudgy fingers, and he looked down across the room. “Truth be told, Edad, I did come in the hope of including an old friend into a new business venture of mine. But I can see you are ill-disposed. So I won’t bother you any longer.”
He started to turn away, then paused as if remembering something. “Oh, and, Ed… you might want to ease off this young lady. I hear Madam Serena takes badly to damage done to her investments.” He plucked his coat and feathered cap off a wall hook, donned them, and offered a courtly bow. “Have a delightful evening.”
The door had only just closed behind the old dandy that Edad’s bottle shattered against the panel. Screaming, he kicked both the whore and table away.
He was still shouting insults ten minutes later, as he was escorted out of the Garden of Petals by two stone-faced rhino demi-monsters. “Get your filthy paws off me, you animals!” Without a word, the demis threw him down into the muddy street, pants down at his ankles, under the laughter of passerby’s, their noisy brats and their mangy beasts.
♦ ♦ ♦
Later that day, nursing his anger, a black eye and a nasty hangover, Edad the Merchant was racing on horseback towards the mountains which towered over Wildspring.
The Fire Scales marked the northern border of the Prisma Kingdom, a barrier against the Holy Tarjan Empire’s expansionist hubris. And while the heights of the range belonged to rabid, fire-breathing, man-eating dragons, the feet of the giant peaks were pockmarked with mines dug by humanity… or, well, by humanity’s slaves.
Under normal circumstances, leaving the safety of the city wards without an armed escort was dangerous.
With Darkday just a few days away, it was suicide.
However, Edad’s mine was close enough to fall within Wildspring Guard’s patrol zone, and the area would almost certainly be devoid of monsters for at least the next couple of days.
Probably.
Possibly.
Edad was too pissed to care—not to mention drunk, and high from residual moonshade fumes. He might have been concussed too. Just a little. Those demi bastards, he fumed. Besides, the message he’d received stated the matter was urgent—if he understood correctly what his barely literate foreman had tried to convey.
Half an hour later, surprisingly unmolested, the merchant arrived at the stockade defending the entrance to his copper mine. Slowing his horse, he was annoyed to spot no one in the watchtower ready to open the gate for him. He glared up, shielding his eyes from what little sunlight filtered past Nixe’s giant blue disc in the sky and the tall wall of the Fire Scales. “HEY!! OPEN UP!!”
To his mounting fury, he had to shout for several minutes before the foreman himself pulled the door back. Edad’s muddy riding boot greeted the big man’s shaved head as he guided his horse in. The sight of the empty enclosure beyond the fence did nothing to improve his mood. At least a dozen slaves should have been busy gathering and sorting minerals. Instead, all he saw were abandoned tools and workstations.
“What is going on here?!” His bloodshot eyes snapped back to the burly foreman, who was picking himself off the ground, rubbing dirt off his forehead. “Where is everyone?! What’s so important you didn’t include it in your letter?!”
“Err, that is…” the man drawled slowly.
“Ugh. Goddess! Speak, imbecile!” Edad wondered what he had done in a previous life to be saddled with such incompetents!
He bet Achibaldo fucking Steel didn’t have to suffer this kind of cretins!
Frowning dully, the foreman reached inside his dusty jacket. “Well, earlier, one of the miners came out with this.” He opened his large, calloused hand and exposed a small crystal pebble. In the dim daylight, the rock shone like a solidified chunk of rainbow.
Edad’s bloodshot eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.
He was off his horse in a heartbeat, snatching the rock from his employee’s big hand. “This is…”
“Yes. I mean, I think–”
“Don’t!” Edad stopped him, his gaze still transfixed by the tiny crystal. It was warm in his shivering hands. “I don’t pay you to think. Did you send everyone down to mine more?”
“Yeah…” The foreman scratched his bald head. “I thou– I mean, it was better to gather as much as possible before Darkday… Right?”
“Yes. Yes.” Edad nodded, finally able to tear his eyes away, gold coins shining in them. “Let’s go.” Then, without waiting, he headed for the mine’s gaping entrance, leaving the foreman to hurriedly shut the gate and rush to catch up.
Marching into the darkness, Edad snatched a magic lantern off the wall. Those were expensive, but mundane flames might cause explosions if the miners hit an underground gas pocket. Such an incident would cost the merchant weeks of excavation, not to mention buying new workers, and most painfully, he would have to pay fines—fines!!—for getting the previous batch of slaves killed.
Fines! They’re just slaves. Stupid king and his stupid ‘progressive’ laws. “Bah! Haha… Hahaha…” Despite his irritation, Edad found himself snickering. With the ludicrous wealth this new discovery would soon net him, he could finally move back to the capital.
Goodbye mud pit, cheap whores, and high-priced vinegar!
Then, maybe he would campaign for election on the Commons’ Council!
Councillor Edad. Yeah. That has a nice ring to it. This way, he could start bringing some sense back into his country. He would retake power from the heretics and the traitors who wanted to turn Prisma into a slave heaven, where the collared rabble held the whips and honest, free, well-born folk like himself toiled the fields.
Yes. That’s it! Heretics, all of them! This made so much sense to a devout man of the goddess like Edad. After all, if the king wasn’t a heretic, why would he refuse to support the Faith’s holy crusade against the pagan elven filth?
Following the mine cart tracks, the vindictive merchant descended deeper into the mountain’s bowels—deeper and deeper. He knew the way well, as he did everything he owned.
Every branching path of the mine, his only claim to wealth, was engraved into his brain from hours spent glaring at its map and pacing throughout these tunnels, praying, begging for a sign, a divine inspiration that would direct him towards a vein of great fortune.
Therefore, even drunk as he was, Edad only tripped and fell twice.
He also spotted the new tunnel right away and was immediately confused. “How in Caelista’s cunt did they did dig so fast?” He stared into the narrow crevice, sinking into the wall, about the width of an adult man’s shoulders.
“Ah, that’s because they didn’t, boss,” the foreman answered from behind. “The miner who found the gem broke through into a cave system that was…”
But Edad had already stopped listening. A faint rainbow glimmer had caught his eyes from the depth of the crevice. “Hold this.” He shoved his lantern at the foreman and walked towards the radiance. His slight frame slipped in easily, while the other had to squeeze in.
The passage twisted and turned, clearly naturally formed. In places, the walls narrowed, and the jagged ceiling and the uneven floor closed in uncomfortably. However, the shimmering glow grew with every step, as did Edad’s drunken visions of riches and power. Until, suddenly, after a sharp bend, he stopped, eyes opening wide.
He stood under the starry night sky.
No.
He was still underground, and besides, it was too early for the night to fall. Instead, he’d entered a vast cave whose entire walls were covered in specs of rainbow crystals, mimicking the stars glittering against the blackness of space. “So many…” he whispered in a trance as he crossed the dark expanse on shaky legs. Wherever he looked, there were crystals embedded in the walls—all his for the taking!
He was rich! Rich!
Edad stopped in front of a particularly massive gem. It approached his fist in size, protruding from the stone wall at eye-level. Reaching up, Edad caressed the warm crystal with more love than he’d ever showed any woman. The rainbow light danced between his fingers, mesmerising.
“Finally…” he whispered to himself. “They’ll have to take me seriously… I’m not a joke anymore… They’ll all take me seriously!”
Had Edad been soberer and less lost in daydreams of vengeful triumph, he might have wondered about all the slave miners who should have been hard at work in the cave, about the faint smell of blood, faeces and sex hanging around, or about how the steps coming up behind him were too heavy to belong even to the big-bodied foreman.
Warm, humid, stinking air blew down on the back of his head, accompanied by a drizzle of spittle.
“Ew!” Edad gasped, pinched his nose, and started to turn. “Don’t stand so close to me, you dunce! And when was the last time you… bathed…” As the merchant pivoted, then looked up, the words died on his lips.
His eyes expanded in horror as they took in the enormous creature basked in rainbow light.
But he didn’t scream. He was too shocked to raise his voice.
Instead, a chagrined grimace twisted his face. A single tear dripped from his eye, and a plaintive whine was all that managed to blow past his chaffed lips.
“That’s not fair.”
A gigantic grey hand swiped out of the darkness.
Then Edad the Merchant could speak no more.
. . .
Hope wald is ok
FIngers crossed.