Chaos god, p.23
Chaos God, page 23
I turned my focus to escaping the castle, and I knew I would come back again after my brain had a chance to replenish my adrenaline supply. Thankfully, the kitchen was lined with many shelves, storage hooks, and even a length of twine that reached to the floor. I hoped the length of twine was securely knotted around that nail in the stone wall, and I began to climb. It didn’t take long to reach the top, and I rushed to jump across the short distance to the shelf nearby.
I paused in the middle of the shelf where a small oval etching rested flat on its back. The copper-colored metal frame wasn’t much larger than an American half-dollar, and it was tarnished from age. The image etched into the small oval was the same image that marked the single gold coin I’d found on the shelves in my hut that first night. I suspected this bearded man with the eye patch was Odin Allfather, and I made a note to ask Wyn about it when I had the chance.
Then I raced behind the stacks of wooden mixing bowls and over to a long-handled spoon that hung down from a hook on the ceiling a few inches away from the small window.
I climbed up the spoon, and I took a deep breath before I launched myself to the window ledge. The force of my jump was enough to send the spoon knocking into the mixing bowl on the shelf, and all three servants turned their eyes to the sudden noise. I ducked close to the corner of the window, and I tried to make myself as small as I possibly could.
Then I held my breath for a second as the three people looked just beside me.
The man shrugged and went back to work, and the pretty blonde sighed heavily before she started to scrub the carrots clean. The older elven woman was a bit more suspicious, and she narrowed her eyes in my direction for another few seconds before she slowly turned back to greasing a dented loaf pan.
I breathed out, and I turned around to see where in the castle I was. I was near the ground, and the rear right corner of the outer walls was about ten yards away from my current location. I peered around in search of some way I could get outside of the fortress walls, and I found a small crack in the foundation.
I raced as fast as my short legs could carry me across the open distance and pushed myself inside the crack. The space was just barely big enough for me to squeeze my furry little body through, and I popped out on the other side about twenty yards away from where I’d first approached the front gates.
I didn’t waste a second, and I clambered up the mountainside as quickly as I could. I would have expected my legs to be exhausted after all this climbing, but my body felt warm and limber like a great workout.
As I climbed, my mind raced through everything I had learned. The Demon Lord clearly had enough food to survive without having to eat the people in the camp. It was like he was keeping them as his own personal cattle reserve like they were a fine veal that he ate only for the pleasure of it. Meanwhile, if all his meals looked like the one I had seen, he prepared and wasted enough food that could have fed the entire village and every servant in his castle. The injustice and entitlement of it all made my blood boil, and I longed to watch the life drain out of the Demon Lord’s glowing orange eyes.
I was going to kill that fucking bastard, one way or another, and if I played my cards right, he would be in a disastrously poisoned state before he ever laid eyes on me. I just needed to know a little more about the plant that Nestryn had identified, but I was fairly confident that it would give me a good leg up on the massive demon.
Once I returned to Elora and Ayen, we would gather as much of the plant as we could fit into one sack. Then I would need to bring the plant to the cooks in the Demon Lord’s kitchens and explain to them who I was, and my intentions to free them from slavery. I had a feeling that the young woman, Astrid, would take very little convincing. The older elf might need more persuasion, but I was confident that I could get her on my side once she saw that I had shifting magic.
I didn’t stop to rest until I climbed over the peak where Elora and Ayen waited for me. They sat silently beside one another, and Elora’s eyes studied the sun that was steadily sinking toward the horizon. It was then that I realized how long I’d been gone. After all, it took a lot longer to move around when my strides were significantly smaller than usual. I didn’t want to startle them, so I skittered over to Elora’s foot, and I nuzzled against her toes to get her attention.
“Hello, little mouse,” Elora murmured, and she held her palm out to greet me.
I placed one paw gently on the tip of her index finger, and then I scurried back several paces. I turned around, looked up at her, and took several long deep breaths to slow my heart down from its rapid fluttering pace.
Elora’s eyes went wide for a second, and then her entire face relaxed into joyful relief as my body shifted back into my normal human form.
“Levi,” the beautiful elf sighed. “I should have known it was you.”
“Welcome back, friend,” Ayen said in an unusually quiet voice. “How did your mission go?”
“Good.” I cleared my throat. “I found out a lot, and I have a plan to kill the Demon Lord. I’m pretty sure it will work, but let’s get out of here first.”
“Good idea,” Ayen whispered, and he started to hike back down the way we’d come.
Elora gave me a quick kiss, and then she scooted across the flat area and followed Ayen down the mountainside.
I took one last glance over the edge at the castle fortress below to make sure there were still only five demon guards patrolling the outer walls of the castle. Besides the Demon Lord himself, those five guards were the only demons I’d seen in or around the fortress, and I gazed out into the distance to see if there were any demon armies camped out in the mountains. I couldn’t see evidence of any, and I thought that the Demon Lord was probably confident in his ability to protect himself.
Though he probably didn’t feel like he needed any protection. He seemed quite secure in his position of power, and I couldn’t blame him. The people were terrified, and they had absolutely no intentions of rising up against him until I’d shown up with shifting magic.
I smirked to myself, and then I followed Elora.
Elora kept glancing over her shoulder at me like she needed to make sure I was still there as we went. We hiked in silence until we reached the shift in terrain at the edge of the river.
“Will you tell us your plan now?” Elora asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “So it turns out that at least some of the sacrificed people are kept alive to serve the Demon Lord.”
“Goodness!” Elora gasped. “Who are they? Who is still alive?”
“I saw about a dozen people altogether,” I said as we continued to walk downriver. “The only name I heard was a young blonde woman named Astrid.”
“That is Azariah and Arlindra’s youngest sister!” Ayen said with surprise. “They will be very relieved to hear she is alive.”
“So that’s why she looked familiar.” I smirked and recalled that Astrid had the same nose and wheat-blonde hair as her older sisters, and the same fierceness, too.
“Do the survivors play a role in your plan?” Elora asked.
“Yes,” I confirmed. “Astrid and an older elf woman work in the kitchen. They prepare the Demon Lord’s feasts, and they were working on the feast for the full moon sacrifice.”
“An older elf,” Ayen repeated, and he looked over his shoulder at me. “Was she a lovely plump woman? With graying brown hair?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “She was. Do you know who she is?”
“I believe that was Ingrid,” Ayen answered.
“Okay,” I replied, “but who is Ingrid?”
“Goren’s mother,” Elora said with hope in her voice. “If she is still alive, Goren and Quintus will be ecstatic.”
“That’s amazing,” I murmured. So the people in the Demon Lord’s castle were from the camp. I wondered if they all were, or if my theory about other camps being nearby was true, but there would be time to figure all that out later. We had work to do.
“Levi!” Nestryn cried as we turned the last bend before the river’s outlet.
“Nestryn.” I blinked in surprise at the brown-haired elf’s intelligent face. “What are you doing here? You were supposed to go back to camp.”
“He would not leave without you,” Arlindra replied.
“Indeed,” Varian agreed. “Nestryn insisted on waiting for you all to return from your mission at the Demon Lord’s castle.”
“How did it go?” Nestryn asked, and his eyes sparkled with interest. “Did you see the Demon Lord?”
“Yes, that bastard is fucking huge,” I explained.
“How big is he?” Arlindra asked with a touch of anxiety in her voice.
“He’s about as big as that troll was,” I said. Then I walked over to the plant that Nestryn had been observing earlier, and I pointed at it. “But I have a plan.”
“Night lace,” Nestryn said in a curious tone. “What would you want with this?”
“You said it was poisonous, right?” I asked.
“Yes, if you consumed enough night lace, it would surely kill a man of your size.” Nestryn’s brown eyebrows knitted together with confusion, and it was clear he wasn’t following my train of thought.
“Good.” I nodded. “Let’s collect as much of it as we can carry.”
“I do not understand,” Nestryn said. “There are no beneficial uses for this plant…”
“Yes, there is,” Elora corrected, and her eyes lit up with understanding.
“We’re going to use it to kill the Demon Lord.” I smirked.
Chapter 16
If you’d like to see a map of the area around the encampment, you can find it on my Patreon (search Google for ‘Patreon Eric Vall’), or you can find it in my Facebook group (Search for ‘Eric Vall’ in Facebook Groups). It’s also linked on my website at www.ericvall.com
“You intend to poison the Demon Lord with the night lace,” Nestryn murmured, and his face went from confusion to understanding to doubt in quick succession. “I do not believe this plan will work as you hope, Levi.”
“Why not?” I asked, and I was suddenly very glad that Nestryn and the others had decided to remain at the river and wait for us.
I didn’t want to waste my time collecting a plant that was going to end up being useless, but I still had a gut feeling that the night lace would be helpful.
“Night lace is processed through the blood,” Nestryn explained. “If the Demon Lord is as large as you say, then even a strong dose of the poison would at best give him a state of intoxication as if he had consumed a large amount of strong ale. His stomach would likely not absorb the poison and spread it through his body fast enough to kill him. The heat of his body may burn off the poison before it has enough effect.”
“Alright.” I nodded and thought for a moment. “So, what if we get the asshole’s heart beating faster? That would pump his blood faster, and harder, which would push the poison through his body faster, right?”
“Then it will have more time to take effect before his body burns it off,” Elora continued.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” I confirmed. “We don’t necessarily need the poison to kill the Demon Lord. We just need it to fuck him up enough to give me the upper-hand.”
“That sounds logical to me.” Ayen shrugged. “What do you think, Nestryn?”
“This plan has potential,” Nestryn murmured thoughtfully. “If you could get enough of the night lace into the Demon Lord’s system, and then get his heart racing quickly enough, it would make him disoriented, weak, and confused. But how do you intend to get the poison into his system?”
“That’s where Ingrid and Astrid come into the plan,” I said.
“Astrid?” Arlindra gasped at me, and her blue eyes went wide. “You saw Astrid? Are you certain it was her?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “She looks a lot like you, and the other woman called her by name.”
“That is incredible,” Arlindra clasped her hands over her mouth as her eyes started to shine with tears.
“He saw Ingrid as well,” Ayen added with a victorious expression.
“Oh!” Arlindra grinned. “That is wonderful news, were there others as well?”
“Yes, I saw at least a dozen people acting as servants to the Demon Lord,” I confirmed.
“Then we must free them all,” Varian declared.
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said. “So after we collect all the night lace, I can shift again and bring it to them. Then I can explain who I am, that I’m with their families, and about our plans to kill the Demon Lord. I got the feeling that Astrid would be more than eager to help me take that bastard out once and for all, and I think I could easily get Ingrid on my side.”
“And then they could cook the poison into the Demon Lord’s meal?” Varian asked, and he scratched his brown hair as he pictured the plan.
“Exactly.” I nodded.
“Hmm,” Nestryn hummed, and he walked over to the spiny-looking plant. “Perhaps I could reduce the leaves down into a more potent concentrated form.”
“Would that help?” I asked.
“It may very well,” Nestryn confirmed. “The poisonous oil within the leaves has no taste or smell of its own, but the leaves have a distinct smell. If I can extract the poison out of the leaves and reduce it, it would be much simpler to mix in with the Demon Lord’s feast. This would also give Ingrid and Astrid a much more potent poison to work with. They would need to be very careful in handling it, but I do believe the risk would be well worth it.”
“Let’s do it, then,” I said, and I glanced at each of the people around me.
“Very well,” Ayen agreed, and he pulled an empty sack from his leather belt. “Let us stuff this sack full of the deadliest leaves we know.”
“Sounds good to me,” I chuckled.
“Wait!” Nestryn cried, and he sounded a little bit panicked at our eagerness. “We must be very careful in handling this plant, the oil can cause skin irritation and even blindness if one is careless. Do any of you have a set of gloves perhaps?”
Arlindra, Ayen, and Elora all shook their heads, but Varian smiled confidently as he reached into one of his pockets.
“I do,” the brown-haired guy said.
“Excellent,” Nestryn replied. “Elora, if you cut the leaves down at the base of the stalks with your spear, it will make it much easier to collect the leaves.”
“I can do that,” Elora confirmed, and she pulled her spear out and sliced effortlessly through a bushel of the night lace.
“Allow me to help,” Arlindra offered, and she pulled her sword from its leather holster and began to slice through another bush of the spiny leaves.
“Wonderful,” Nestryn said with intellectual satisfaction. “Levi, will you hold the sack open for Varian?”
“Of course.” I took the large burlap sack from the scholarly elf’s hands.
Varian tugged his leather gloves up to the middle of his forearms, and I walked over beside him. I held the sack open as he bent down and carefully picked up one leaf at a time and laid them gently into the bag.
“I shall try to be helpful,” Ayen said, and he pulled his bow from his shoulder. “Perhaps I can find another rabbit.”
“Sounds good,” I agreed. “Are there any other animals that you might find in this area?”
“I found a small wild boar once,” Ayen answered with a smug smile. “That was a very good day.”
“Maybe we’ll have another very good day,” I chuckled.
Ayen stalked off quietly toward the untouched bushes and moved silently forward in the hopes of finding something good to hunt.
Elora and Arlindra worked together to cut down all of the night lace plants we could find, and we all remained quiet to keep from scaring away any potential prey animals that Ayen might come across.
After a while, Ayen had walked around the bend in the river, and the rest of us had collected all of the night lace we could find. The burlap sack was about three-quarters of the way full with the leaves, and Nestryn nodded appreciatively at the haul.
“This should be sufficient,” Nestryn murmured. “I should be able to boil it down into a rather potent concentrated poison.”
“Awesome,” I said, and I turned in the direction Ayen had wandered. “Should we go after him?”
“I will--” Varian began to offer, but a celebratory holler in the distance cut him off.
“Huzzah!” Ayen’s voice bounced off the boulders on either side of the river, and a moment later he came jogging back around the bend with a fat feathered creature in his hand. “It has been a very, very good day!”
“Marvelous!” Arlindra cried. “Is that a wild cockerel?”
“It is indeed,” Ayen said smugly as he jogged the last few paces to stop beside me. “Is it not a fine beast?”
I studied the bird in Ayen’s hands, and I had to agree it was a fine specimen. The bird looked like a North American wild turkey with muted-brown feathers and a meaty breast. The bird’s head was a slightly longer shape than the wild turkeys I was familiar with, and it had a bright blue spot on the base of its beak.
“Excellent hunting, Ayen.” I gave him the best clap on the shoulder I could manage.
“Thank you!” Ayen laughed, and he returned the slap to the shoulder with a much firmer one of his own. “Are we finished here? I would very much like to return to camp and begin defeathering this beast!”
“We are all sorted here,” Elora confirmed. “I am becoming weary, let us return.”
“Hear, hear,” Nestryn sighed with exhaustion, and he carefully slung the sack of night lace over his shoulder.
The rest of us picked up all our supplies, the two wild rabbits, and all the sacks of plants and vegetables, and we walked tiredly to the end of the river and around the bend toward the sand dunes.
“So, Levi,” Varian began a few minutes after we passed into the rolling dunes. “What is your plan beyond using the night lace poison on the Demon Lord?”
“Yes.” Arlindra nodded in agreement. “There must be more to this, surely there are dozens of demon guards in that place.”
“Actually, I only saw five,” I corrected. “I need to go back and have a more thorough look around the castle. There’s got to be more guards around that place. Even if the Demon Lord is some super strong, cocky bastard, I don’t want to risk underestimating him.”
