Vigils wrath a litrpg ad.., p.7
Vigil's Wrath: A LitRPG Adventure (Vigil Bound Book 4), page 7
Now wait just a goddamned minute.
Ionia had overthrown her husband and taken the crown of Oblivion thirty years ago? Why was this the first time I was hearing about it? That seemed like a vital piece of info that someone probably should’ve shared with me before now. Although it was distinctly possible that it was such common knowledge that no one had bothered to tell me about it because they just assumed I knew. That was one of the shitty things about being an Inkarnate—there were holes in my knowledge wide enough to drive a semi through, but other people often didn’t realize that.
“There’s a reason why Sir Jeffery sent me into the forest,” Drusk continued, “knowing full well it was a death sentence. My failure to kill the Vigil will not be met with impunity—and I will not bear the consequences alone. She will find a way to kill me, of that there is no question, and if that alone was the consequence I would embrace it readily enough. But Ionia is vindictive. Mark my words, she will find a way to punish our people for my shortcomings. We can’t crawl back to her with our necks stretched out in supplication. We will find no mercy in her embrace.”
“Is it really better to ally ourselves with the likes of him? A Vigil?” the other mantoid ambassador hissed. “He is brash. Reckless. Just look at the way he so openly displays his emotions. It is unseemly. Besides, the Vigilant have hunted our kind not for decades but for centuries. They kill the fae indiscriminately. Raguel is a butcher. He is far more cruel, monstrous, and vindictive than Ionia could ever dream of being—”
“And yet this Vigil spared me,” Drusk insisted, cutting her short. “You weren’t there, Irukki. The strength of my mind and the power of my magic had both failed me. I was his enemy. I was at his mercy. Yet here I stand, alive. You heard the Pookah, this one is an Inkarnate, he is not as the others. Perhaps he is overly emotional, but if we aid him with our logic and insight, it will dramatically increase our chances of victory. The Vigil is right. We need not be friends, but as allies, we might finally be free of Ionia. It is a risk, but I would rather us reach for freedom and die than settle for a life of certain oppression and perish anyway.”
The soft-spoken mantoid, Irukki, was quiet for a time, her antennae quivering as she thought. Finally, she nodded, the movement long and exaggerated by her slender neck. She turned buggy eyes on me.
“Very well,” she said, “we will ally ourselves with your court, but there are conditions. We will not be lesser, is that understood? I refuse to trade in one cruel master for another.”
“If we do this,” I said, “we’ll do it as partners. Equals. I’ll treat you just the same as I treat Princess Melwyn, and you have my word that I’ll never ask you to do something I wouldn’t be willing to do myself.”
Irukki nodded again, mandibles clicking. “This is acceptable to us, but good will alone is not enough. Unseating Ionia will benefit everyone present, but should we succeed it will benefit you above all else. We need compensation. Selitrium Ore. We want a quarter of whatever you take from the ground in payment.”
I grabbed my sides and laughed in her face.
“Let me see if I have this straight,” I replied once my mirth finally faded. “Unless I’m misreading the situation, you’re caught between a rock and hard place and I’m your only viable option forward. True, you’re helping me eliminate Ionia, but I’m also helping you eliminate Ionia—who apparently has it out for your entire species. But on top of that, you want a quarter of all the Selitrium Ore that my workers are risking their lives to excavate? You have no skin in the game, no operational overhead, no transportation costs or taxes to pay.” I stood my ground and folded my arms across my chest. “That’s gonna be a hard pass. How about you try again.”
“You’re smarter than you look,” Irukki said.
“I could say the same about you, since you look like something that lives beneath a goddamned leaf,” I replied.
“Monthly Selitrium shipments,” she said, ignoring my dig. “We will pay, but at fifty percent below market rates.”
“Make it twenty-five percent below market rates and we’ve got a deal,” I shot back, knowing I had her on the ropes.
“Thirty percent,” she offered. “Any lower and I will consider it an insult upon my honor.”
I considered it for a handful of tense seconds, but it was all just for show. “Yeah, fine. Thirty percent below market rates.”
“Excellent,” she replied with another bob of her head. “I’ll have my signatory draw up the accords.”
I clapped, a smile stretching across my face. One down, one to go.
I turned toward Bogen CrowEye and the peacock ambassador.
“Oh, is it my turn?” the peacock asked. “Well, let me introduce myself properly.” He stood, the chair whispering as it slid backward across the floor. “My name is Higvandor Balorius, perhaps better known as Higvandor the All-Seer or Higvandor the Thousand Eyes.”
“Gee, I wonder where that last one came from,” I muttered, unimpressed.
The reactions from the rest of the assembled guests were quite different. The mantoids went stock-still and Melwyn rose to her feet with a gasp, then dropped into a low curtsy.
“Primark Higvandor,” Melwyn said, “forgiveness. It never crossed my mind that you might attend such an informal negotiation in person. Had I known, I would’ve had the staff prepare a traditional Saoimu in your honor. Boyd”—she shot me a nervous glance—“Primark Higvandor is the high monarch of the Sibylline. Their king,” she added, in case I missed the whole high monarch part.
“You humble me, Princess,” Higvandor said, before brushing aside her apology with a feathered hand, “but how could you have known, hmm? I think we can all agree that my presence here is rather unorthodox. And do not fret that your champion doesn’t know who I am—he is an Inkarnate, not born or bound to this world, which is part of the very reason I decided to attend this meeting in person.”
“Gotta be honest,” I said casually, “that seems like a really bad idea on your part. What’s to stop me from killing you here and now?” I summoned my axe. The blade gleamed in the light of the chandelier and looked hungry for violence.
“Because even though you do not know me, I know something of you, Boyd Knight,” Higvandor said smugly. “You pretend to be a monster—and you have done monstrous things, of this there can be no doubt—but in your inner being, you are a hero. A man of virtue. Unlike the rest of my contemporaries, I do not view Raguel as a monster. Although I am a creature of the Wylds, my gifts lie along the lines of the Celestial, so I know many things about the god you serve. He would not have given you the mark of justice were you not worthy to wield the calling.”
Damn it. He’d called my bluff. I dismissed the axe and rolled my eyes.
“Fine, you’re right,” I muttered, “I’m not going to kill you, not unless you force me to.” I paused and locked eyes with the peacock. “But, just so we understand each other, if you force my hand I won’t hesitate for a second. I’ll cut you down and sleep like a baby when I’m done.”
“I would never dream of forcing such an unfortunate confrontation,” Higvandor replied, preening. “As I said, you may not know me, but I have seen a great deal about you. Including what happens to those who underestimate or cross you. I suspected as much before, but now I know it for truth. That is, in fact, the very reason why I came myself, even though I knew there was risk in it. As an Inkarnate, not tethered to this world, you are an anomaly. I needed to see you in the flesh for my rather particular set of gifts to work properly.”
“And what gifts are those?” I asked.
“Do you know, Boyd Knight, why we are called the Sibylline Court?” Higvandor said, deflecting my question. “Because we see far.” His numerous tail feathers blinked as one as though to emphasize his point. “It is the way of our people. Just as you are a creature of two natures, easily moving between the Etheric and Material realms, my people are also of two natures—we exist both in and outside of time. There are those among the fae who call us the Time Lost, because we have the ability to see both what is and the shadow of what is to come.
“The future is never certain, of course, and the farther the future stretches into eternity the more clouded it becomes. Some futures, however, burn brighter than others. They shimmer with greater possibility. Greater likelihood. Your arrival, though, was a ripple I could not account for. You are a void in the pattern. A hole in the fabric of what may or may not be. Yet, even though you are hard to see, for one who knows how to read the tapestry of fate, there are other patterns that may be discerned. When Ionia called the Hunt, I peered through the time stream and saw the first flickering shadows of her downfall.
“They were faint,” he continued, “little more than improbable ghosts. Yet now those ghosts have turned into something more… solid. Even though you lost the first hunt, somehow you managed to solidify your victory—a thing that staggers the imagination. Ionia may yet crush you and grind us to dust for our betrayal, and even should we succeed, darkness lingers on the horizon of infinity. On the off chance you survive this contest, you will wield power beyond imagination and become a herald of ominous portents. A harbinger of weal or woe, though which I cannot say. Still, the risk is worth the reward.”
“And let me guess,” I said, cutting him off, “all you want for your help is my firstborn child? Or maybe my left nut?”
Melwyn’s face turned bright red and it looked like she wanted to disappear through the floor.
Higvandor cocked his head and glanced at Melwyn. “Nothing so sinister as that, though it is not beyond the fae to ask for such extravagant gifts. No, what we want is far less costly, and you need only pay the price if we win the day. Many years ago, when Queen Ionia ascended to the throne, she took a parcel of land from our people. An ancient site of worship, which contains a powerful religious relic. The Seer Stone, it is called. When she unseated Elomir, she called upon me to read her fate. I did as she asked and spoke the truth. She was… displeased with my predictions and, as punishment, she stole our land. Should we win the Hunt, all we want in return is what was taken from us.”
I didn’t know enough about court politics to know whether Higvandor’s request was a reasonable one or not. From my own experience, I knew that land could hold tremendous value far beyond its relative size. The Strait of Hormuz was a nine-mile strip of water, yet it was also one of the most strategically important choke points on Earth. It was the only sea passage that connected the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world and, as a result, countless lives had been sacrificed to secure that unassuming bit of land.
For all I knew, Higvandor was asking me to hand over a critical piece of fae territory. Even with Master Mentalist, the peacock king was impossible to read; the guy was a closed book, locked inside a safe, buried at the bottom of the ocean. It was possible he was shooting straight, but it was equally possible he was using my ignorance to take advantage of me. I glanced at Melwyn who just grimaced and shrugged. She didn’t seem to know either, and Renholm seemed bored by the negotiations more than anything else.
Giving him what he wanted was a risk, but if I didn’t survive the Hunt, making a bad deal wouldn’t matter one way or the other.
“Yeah, alright, that seems fair,” I replied with a nod.
“There is also one other small thing,” Higvandor said slowly. “You must accept the crown and ascend to the throne…”
You could hear a pin drop in the wake of his pronouncement. Every eye was staring at me now, and I could see shock painted on every face. It was clear that none of them had known until now—not even Melwyn. Still, there was only one possible explanation.
I swiveled and locked my eyes on Renholm like a homing missile. “Goddamn it, you miserable little butt munch,” I barked, hands balling into fists. “What happened to giving me time to decide?”
“How dare you think I’m capable of keeping a secret.” The Pookah stood, puffing his chest out and planting his hands on tiny hips. “Honestly, what in our long and complicated history would lead you to believe I can keep anything to myself? It’s like you don’t know me at all. With that said, I am not responsible for telling Higvandor. I just assumed you would say yes—because you always say yes—then put it out of mind. I had better things to think about, like the trio of sexually ambiguous tree nymphs who recently joined our cause.”
“Peace,” Higvandor said, raising a hand. “The Pookah is not to blame for this revelation. I am not called the All-Seer without cause, Vigil. When I turn my many eyes toward the future, I can see the specters of what might be, and your ascension burns as brightly as the Azure Star on a clear summer eve. I can see your doubts, your reservations, but it is crucial to our victory. Along every path where you reject your destiny lies failure and death. Like it or not, young man, but we are all creatures of destiny and you were foreordained for greatness.”
I took a deep breath and let Arturo’s words play through my mind. “Why not you, Boyd? When it comes down to it, I’m sure you’ll make the right choice. Not necessarily the smart choice, but the right one…”
I gritted my teeth, already hating myself a little, and nodded.
9
Ghost Hunter Interdimensional
The visiting dignitaries had departed hours ago, and I should’ve been doing something productive. Crafting armor. Checking the perimeter for breaches. Shoving my boot up Renholm’s tiny ass. But instead, I found myself pacing restlessly back and forth in my office, drinking more than was prudent, watching the light of the day fade away and darkness spread across the sky like an ink stain. We still had a couple of days before Queen Ionia and the rest of the Fae Nobles showed up on our front stoop for the party of the century, and there were a thousand things left to accomplish before that happened.
Thanks to Higvandor’s dire predictions, I’d begrudgingly decided to ascend to the throne. I wasn’t happy about it, but if the Marine Corps had taught me anything, it was that the mission needs always came first.
We were going to announce the decision publicly at the party, but I still needed to read the Ruler of the Thrones Scroll. My first experience with cracking the pages of a Legacy Scroll had been traumatic, and my second experience had been worse than dry humping a wasp nest—a totally real thing I’d watched a lance corporal once do. That lance corporal? Cal. Since the Ruler of the Thrones Scroll was Fatemarked, it probably meant some cosmic deity was going to pluck the brain from my head, then use it to play high-intensity table tennis before cramming it back into my skull.
I wanted to put that off for as long as humanly possible.
Besides, at the moment, all I could think about was the fact that there was still no sign of Cal. I wasn’t sure what in the hell Jeffery had done to him, but there was a queasy feeling growing inside my gut that something was wrong. Really wrong. Cal had never taken so long to regenerate and he wouldn’t willingly stay away this long—not unless there was something that was actively preventing him from returning. I wasn’t aware of any magic that could do something like that, but the things I didn’t know about this world could fill an Olympic swimming pool.
If that kind of magic did exist, I was willing to bet Ionia and her thugs would be the people to have access to it. After all, they were Fae. Masters of the Etheric Realm.
But I was thinking there might be a way to find Cal using one of the spells I currently had at my disposal. The plan I’d concocted after my sixth glass of bourbon—or what passed for bourbon around these parts at any rate—was dangerous. Maybe more than dangerous, even. Maybe closer to suicidal. Thing was, suicidal or not, there was a good chance it would work. And doing something stupid was far more palatable than sitting around with my thumb up my ass while something bad happened to my best friend in the whole world.
There was a catch, though—I was going to need help to pull it off. Melwyn would never approve and Pascow would likely rip me a new asshole for even considering what I had in mind. But there was one irresponsible, degenerate kleptomaniac who would gladly give me a hand. He also happened to be the only one who knew what had actually happened to Cal, since he’d witnessed it firsthand.
I needed to know everything if my plan was going to work.
I found Renholm passed out in a bush near the lake. His fancy cloak was ripped to shreds, he was missing his peg leg, and there were grease stains covering his mouth and matting the fur that ran over his chest. In the dirt beside him was a pile of chicken bones—I hoped they were chicken bones—that reached up to my knee and several glass bottles, all lying empty on their sides. There was also a small pile of vomit and what appeared to be a pair of enormous granny panties wrapped around a melon with a suspicious hole in its center.
Just what in the Kentucky Fried Fuck had happened here?
I didn’t know, but I was sure of one thing: he had definitely had sex with that melon. Not that I was going to ask. I found it was best to just ignore things like that.
I also spotted a ball of orange and white fur curled up at the base of a nearby tree. Jacob-Francis. A lopsided grin pulled at the corner of my lips as I had my second-best idea of the night. I tiptoed over to the sleeping feline, then oh so carefully lifted him into my arms. In three quick steps, I was standing above Renholm’s snoozing form with the cat held out directly above him. Then without a word of warning, I dropped Jacob-Francis directly onto Renholm’s face.
The startled squawk and the cacophony of ferocious hisses that followed were like a chorus of angels to my ears. It was the sound of sweet, sweet justice.
“That was extraordinarily unfunny.” Renholm glowered at me once he finally extracted himself from beneath Jacob-Francis’s bulky form. There were several deep scratches littering his chest and arms, and though I should’ve felt bad, I didn’t.
