On the way out of the human city, Vorgor Stonebarrel kept silent as the rest of his brothers and sisters nattered away over their communications array like a bunch of children. He wanted answers just as much as they did, but who was he going to ask? Why were they expecting him to just ‘know’ everything?

  ‘Stone below take me, I hate being in charge,’ he thought to himself.

  Glancing out from under his helmet, he glared at the back of the impressively armored human in charge of the Populators. He, along with every other dwarf, knew of the human’s achievement in enchanting mithril to flow like liquid silver and was sufficiently impressed by it. That didn’t mean he had to respect the humans wearing it though.

  Putting the sounds of his companions arguing aside for the moment, he mentally went over everything they’d just experienced.

  Their orders had been straightforward and had made sense at the time. They were supposed to have stopped the anchor from being set. And if they couldn’t do that, then they were to see if they could close it by taking over the remains of the ritual that powered it. Bergram had made it clear that in the event that it was already open and they couldn’t close it, they’d have to hold the portal closed until such time as a team of runic priests could be called in to handle it.

  He could hear Bergram still going on about the lad who apparently was the one responsible for closing the portal… by himself. The stupid dwarf was waving his staff around like a lunatic while they were all walking in what the humans should have been assuming was silence.

  Over the communications array, Vorgor shouted, “Bergram, calm yerself. Making it obvious that we’re talking to each other defeats the entire purpose of you setting up the array in the first place ye idgit!”

  Ignoring the dwarf’s heated reply, Vorgor concentrated on his recollection of what he’d witnessed. Those beleaguered humans who’d gone in despite the odds to handle the anchor themselves, and the lad who’d led them. They were true warriors, one and all, but he still wasn’t sure how he felt about the lad himself.

  He’d watched the lad rebuild his body out of nothing but ephemera and essence like a monster pulling itself out of the ether. It had been unsettling. And he still wasn’t sure he believed that it was actually the same lad who they were saying it was. Although the evidence they’d presented was hard to refute.

  Glancing over at the Populator who’d promised him answers, he couldn’t stop himself from hatefully glaring at the man or woman hidden inside that mithril armor.

  After the archmage had shown up and taken the lad, the Populator had demanded that they leave. It had almost come to blows before one of their subordinates offered a compromise.

  The lad’s method of how he’d closed the anchor would be freely given, and teams of mages from the capital would be sent to work with them on perfecting it. All he had to do was allow them to take the lad back to their capital and forget about him. Considering that he’d be getting the only thing that mattered, he’d agreed immediately.

  But now, here he was being escorted out of the city without having gotten his answers, and without the lad in his hands. If it weren’t for the fact that the archmage was back there protecting the lad, he’d probably have begun leveling the city to its bedrock by now.

  He’d heard tales of the infamous human archmage who’d been around for a millennia, but he’d never met the man before. It was an experience he’d remember, that’s for sure. The man’s presence had been awe-inspiring. It reminded him of how he’d felt as a young dwarf meeting King Mithrilstrike for the first time. Well, not the current King Mithrilstrike, the boy's grandfather. That dwarf had been a worthy king.

  Finally having arrived outside the city, Vorgor turned to the Populator and said. “Alright, yer going to start talking, or we’re going to have a bit of a rumble. Ye won’t be enjoying it, I promise ye that.”

  As expected, the humans arranged themselves behind the Populator like good little boys and girls trying to look intimidating. He heard his companions quieting down over the array as they took up formation behind him in turn.

  The Populator met his glare with one of their own from their faceless helm and replied, “I must apologize for not being able to honor our bargain. But you can rest assured that this is not over. Our kingdom wants answers just as much as you do. How the boy managed to close the portal, how he came back from the dead… we’ll get our answers one way or another.”

  Angrily retorting before the man had even finished his sentence, Vorgor shouted, “And how’d ye expect to do that? From what I gather, yer own laws are preventing ye from doing anything to the lad.”

  Gesturing with his axe at the group of humans in front of him, he added, “First, ye show up after everything is over and stick yer grubby noses into our business. Then, ye stand aside as we handle saving yer people from being massacred like rock rabbits. Only to then claim that the lad is under yer protection as a citizen of yer kingdom, but apparently out of your control. What good are ye? What good are any of ya? That lad may be the most important human in the history of yer kingdom, and he doesn’t trust ya. Nor do I for that matter.”

  The Populator replied cooly, “If it weren’t for us, you’d have killed the boy the moment he rebuilt himself a body and came back from the dead.”

  Bergram, ever the helpful dwarf, shouted, “The humans got ye there, Vorgor! Ha!”

  Tossing the annoying dwarf a glare over his shoulder, shutting him up quite nicely, Vorgor turned back to the human and replied, “That’s beside the point. Ye saw the same thing I did. I thought he was an invader. How was I s’posed to know he was the one who’d shut down the anchor?”

  Before the Populator could reply, Vorgor went on to add, “Stone below, none of that matters now. All that matters is that the boy is protected. With that archmage there, I don’t believe I have anything to worry about on that front. But, yer to stay away from him. I don’t care a whit about how he managed to come back from the other side, all that matters is that he can close portals. I’ll be speakin’ to me king about it and ye can expect to hear from him directly.”

  The Populator stepped forward to argue, their tone no longer so congenial. “There is no reason to halt our partnership. If you were to ask your king to request confirmation from the capital that the boy is who he claims to be, I can arrange for a team of scientists to dispute the archmage’s findings. We can all get what we want if we work together.”

  Gesturing harshly with his axe, Vorgor harrumphed before turning away. “Bah! Yer politics and sly words aren’t going to get ye what ye want. Ye lost. Move on. I’ve got an overland run to get to and a report to make to me King. Pray to yer gods I don’t see ye again, because the next time I do, I’ll be pealing that armor off ye and leavin’ ye bloody. Count on it.”

  Without another word, he took off for his city with his companions following close behind him.

  —--

  After Vera sent both the dwarves and Populators off packing, she’d immediately exerted her authority over everyone in the lab, corralling them all into one of the attached conference rooms. Without even thinking about it, Nero allowed himself to be led away from the monstrosity he’d been strapped to with a grin on his face. His current level of trust with Vera was bordering on fanatical. She could have asked him for his Netflix password and he wouldn’t have batted an eye and just given it to her.

  After taking her seat at the head of the table, she said, “All right, before anything else. Let’s start with some clarifications. Lord Walker, if you would please walk us through the events of your expedition through the upper city. Start from the time when you and your forces initially arrived and continue on until you explain the events surrounding your recovery by the archmage.”

  When she mentioned the archmage, she gestured across the table to Archmage Jennings who’d taken a seat at the table next to Nick and who was currently embroiled in a whispered, but intense, conversation with his fellow magical science nerd.

  Nero snapped out of his good mood the moment he realized the archmage had somehow managed to tag along.

  Seated around the rest of the table were Vera’s lawyers, who were clearly recognizable by the fact that they were wearing House Walker’s colors. Across from them were the lawbringers she’d brought along. Or at least that’s who Nero assumed they were based on the patches they were wearing. Then, near the end of the table was her husband, his buddy, Nick. How Nero had missed that Jennings had inserted himself into their little group, he had no idea. But now that he’d noticed him, he couldn’t take his eyes off him.

  Nero was self-aware enough to know that some people might describe him as a bit… shameless. He knew that he’d long since adopted the concept of all truths being relative as a foundational pillar of his entire personality. Things like ignoring inconvenient facts and consequences had, over time, become something of a reflex for him. One he took pride in.

  But seeing Archmage Jennings sitting there, having so completely disregarded any sense of responsibility he might have felt for being the one to physically kidnap him, stunned Nero to his core. The man was acting as if he had every right to be here, as if he hadn’t done anything wrong. Nero didn’t know whether or not he should be offended, or incredibly impressed and taking notes.

  After a second or two to consider the situation, he settled on feeling confused. Having been so caught up in the fact that Vera had gotten him out whatever that testing apparatus was that he’d been in, he hadn’t spared any thought to who all these people actually were.

  Seeing Nick not paying attention and completely engaging the archmage in a conversation about science or some other such nonsense wasn’t all that much of a surprise. But, glancing around the room, nobody else seemed to be questioning Jennings’ inclusion in the meeting either. Even Vera didn’t seem to care about him being here.

  Propping his elbows up on the table, Nero half-pointed a finger over at the man while looking over at Vera questioningly. “You all know he kidnapped me, right? Strapped me into a chair and began experimenting on me? He was about to break out the anal probes right before you got here.”

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  The archmage in question paused his conversation with Nick to look over at Nero with a somewhat surprised look of shock on his face as if he were offended at the accusation. Meanwhile, the entire table turned to look over at the man with varying expressions running the gamut from scared to indifferent.

  ‘Who in the hell are these people?’ Nero wondered.

  Vera’s voice was as calm and collected as ever when she replied, “You’re free now, and your identity has been confirmed. That’s all that matters. What the archmage, temporary court mage, and head of the council of mages did or did not do, along with his reasons for having done or not done so, are not up for discussion at the moment. If you’d like to make a formal complaint with the Tower of Law at some point in the future, we can discuss that after you and I have had a chance to speak in private. For now, let’s limit our focus to what happened in the upper city and how your house’s forces are currently doing.”

  Seeing the smirk on the archmage’s face at how Vera was choosing to handle the situation, Nero was about to…

  “Nero!” Vera said loudly.

  Hearing her tone, Nero snapped his eyes back toward her and met her glare with one of his own.

  Softening her expression, she said, “Lord Walker, please start at the beginning. When and how did you and House Walker’s troops arrive at the mountain? Where were you stationed?”

  Seeing her silent plea to let his current issues with the archmage go for the moment, Nero took a calming breath before leaning away from the table and sinking deeply into his chair. After running both his hands through his hair and closing his eyes with a sigh, he did as he was told. He didn’t know why Vera was choosing to ignore what Jennings had done, but he trusted her enough to know that she probably had a good enough reason for him to temporarily indulge her.

  As requested, he began at the beginning. While he didn’t consider himself much of a storyteller, he still did his best. He covered their brief meeting with the five dwarves that had tagged along near the beginning of their little foray into the mountain, how they were all bunked together in a big ass cavern with a ton of tunnels leading off into the rest of the upper city, and how they’d passed their time there.

  When he got to the part about the illusionary tunnels they’d found, Nick took over and began recounting his part of the story. Nero got to finally find out what the man had been up to, and how the military and Tower of Magic had worked together to create a… something… to overcome the kobalds’ magic. Nero understood maybe one sentence out of ten of what he’d heard, but he followed along well enough to recognize that whatever it was that they’d done was likely very impressive.

  Then, when Nero began explaining how they’d all decided to close the portal themselves, one of the people who was NOT dressed in House Walker colors leaned forward and began asking questions. Despite how nice the man’s robes were, Nero could clearly see the little patch on his chest which he recognized as having something to do with the Tower of Law. Considering the man was sitting next to Vera and she wasn’t interrupting him, Nero figured he was likely someone important. So, he answered what few of them he could.

  However, a lot of what the guy wanted to know, Nero had no clue about. Specifically, which commanders were working with him, and who’d been making the decisions were not things Nero had paid much attention to. He mentioned various commanders by name, along with referencing orders and protocols Nero had no recollection of. And while Nero could have just given the man a copy of the battle plans Cathleen and the people in charge had sent him, as he still had them saved on his link, he didn’t know what the guy was after. Erring on the side of caution, Nero decided to plead ignorance and kept his answers as brief as possible.

  ‘Are they not here to get me out? Is this some kind of investigation?’ he thought to himself as he glanced to his left and right at the people he’d thought to be his lawyers sitting alongside him.

  Seeing the unsatisfied glances being traded between the people from the Tower of Law, Nero moved his story along as quickly as he could. He relayed how their battles had gone, and how they’d fought their way through the upper city all the way to the throne room. Considering how much he’d glossed over, he wasn’t surprised to see their expressions becoming more and more unhappy the longer he went on.

  Rather than a debrief, he was beginning to feel like this was an interrogation.

  And when he finally got to the part in his story where he’d gone off on his own and began massacring kobalds with his particular brand of magic, Archmage Jennings joined in on the conversation.

  “While Lord Walker believes he’s using ‘soul stuff’ to empower his spells, I believe he’s actually using what the dwarves refer to as ephemera,” he said while leaning over the table and glaring at the man whom Nero was beginning to believe was not some random lawbringer. The longer this went on, the more Nero was convinced he was some sort of investigator.

  Nick, ever the scientist, completely derailed the conversation by adding, “From what I understand, both the ritual magic the kobalds use and the magic Nero… I mean Lord Walker… Um… the point is, they both rely on some form of sacrificial magic. I haven’t been able to study the specifics of how they’re doing it, but based on what Lord Walker has told me, I believe it may be a variation of some kind of soul magic.”

  Nero’s eyes glanced over at Vera who was now scowling at Nick hard enough for Nero to wonder if the poor guy would be sleeping on the couch tonight.

  Archmage Jennings turned to Nick and replied with a scoff, “It’s not soul magic. Not technically. Well, what Lord Walker is doing isn’t soul magic at least. The kobalds, that is unquestionably soul magic. You see, the kobalds along with many races have studied the soul quite extensively. While you haven’t been given access to most of what the kingdom has discovered, you should have sufficient sources of knowledge to allow you to extrapolate how the soul breaks down after it separates from the body. Haven’t you taken the opportunity to read Nigelbane’s treatise on soul death? It -”

  Interrupting him, Vera said loudly, “While I’m sure you and my husband might enjoy discussing the particulars of the ‘how’, all we are concerned about for the moment is the ‘what’. Namely, ‘what’ happened. So, if you would please refrain from scientific speculation for the moment, we can move on.”

  Leaning forward over the table like he was trying to loom over the entire room from his chair, the man from the Tower of Law asked the archmage directly, “Before we do, are you certain that the method Lord Walker was using to cast his spells was NOT soul magic?”

  Nero could see Vera gritting her teeth as she had to force herself to allow the archmage to answer the man’s question.

  Not looking all that intimidated, the archmage carelessly replied with a wave, “I’m sure of it. It’s simply not a form of magic you’ll see that often around here. It requires a great deal of skill in essence resonance and manipulation, along with a fair bit of knowledge of planar dynamics. I very much doubt anyone in this… city… would be capable of it. Likely, Lord Walker discovered the technique by observing how the kobalds cast their rituals. Interestingly, many magical discoveries are due -”

  Turning away from the archmage, the man from the Tower of Law said loudly, “That’s fine. It’s not soul magic. That’s all I needed to know.” Returning his attention to Nero, he added, “You may continue. But if at all possible, please try and keep your answers clear of your interpretations and stick to the facts. What happened next?”

  Nero, now realizing that this WAS an interrogation, glanced over at Vera. Someone must have accused him of doing illegal soul magic or something. Maybe someone from the military? Either way, Vera had borrowed on the fact that the Tower of Law had wanted to speak with him to leverage their presence against the Populators and the dwarves. Once again he found himself impressed at her ability to layer multiple situations together to arrive at an outcome she had carefully engineered into existence.

  ‘What a scary woman,’ Nero thought to himself.

  He was reminded that a lot of what had been happening in the background may be things he was unaware of. All he could do was trust that Vera had it handled and continue to do what she’d told him to do.

  Picking his story back up, Nero regaled the table with his efforts to meet back up with the rest of House Walker’s forces in the throne room. He had to state multiple times that the portal had already been opened when he’d gotten there, only to have the man finally accept what he’d been telling him after Archmage Jennings confirmed it himself.

  Getting somewhat annoyed at how the man kept interrupting him, Nero tried to rush through the final parts of the story without getting bogged down in the details. The longer he talked, the more he spoke in generalized terms that made no sense to anyone in the room and instead raised the levels of stress in everyone who was forced to listen to him.

  “So, there were a bunch of the little ones who were coming from side tunnels. I’m guessing those tunnels were originally built for servants or maybe just led off to the Royal kitchens. I’m not sure about that. But there were a ton of them… little kobalds I mean… not the tunnels. But there were a lot of those too. Which is why there were so many of the kobalds… the little ones that is. The big ones were coming through the portal, which as I said… was open. Things got hairy pretty quickly, and everything became nothing more than a mosh pit. I once went to a Pantera concert and it felt just like that. Not that I’m a fan of heavy metal, or mosh pits, or battle. They all involve a lot of screaming. Too much screaming if you ask me,” Nero added helpfully.

  Considering that this was turning into an interrogation, Nero had begun falling back on his old standby of being as unhelpful as possible. Where before his answers had been intended to get his point across, now he was doing everything he could to annoy the man. And it was working. The problem was, the man was like a dog with a bone and wouldn’t let go.

  He was constantly interrupting Nero to clarify the things he’d said. He wanted detailed accounts of numbers, positions, and to understand the exact flow of events and how Nero had responded to them. It was just as infuriating to Nero as his answers were to him. And Nero was about to finally lose it when the man asked for the third time a variation of the same exact question he’d just asked him over and over again.

  “While your house’s forces were being overrun after ‘the big ones who looked like humanized lizards’ attacked the front, you decided… entirely on your own… that you would sneak off from the fighting and attempt to close the portal yourself? You weren’t trying to save yourself or avoid the fighting?” the man asked, sounding as skeptical as a man hearing that his new girlfriend’s male roommate was ‘just a friend’.

  Archmage Jennings of all people was the one to save him, as he loudly declared, “I was able to utilize the Tower of Magic’s scrying array to watch the battle. I can confirm what Lord Walker is saying. If you’d like, I can forward you a copy of the recording.”

  The man’s head whipped around fast enough to give multiple people in the room whiplash by proxy. Narrowing his eyes at the archmage, he said, “We were told that the ritual powering the portal disrupted our ability to observe the area in the throne room. Why is this the first I’ve heard about this?”

  Archmage Jennings shrugged before replying, “Probably because the local mages here couldn’t manage it. If you were listening closely, I said that ‘I’ was able to use the Tower of Magic to scry the area. I’m sure you’re aware that I cannot divulge techniques and technologies that your city hasn’t managed to discover for themselves just yet. That would be path interference, and would be illegal.”

  Interested in what Jennings was saying, Nick asked eagerly, “Did you perform an array modification? Or were you manually stabilizing the interference yourself? How did you overcome the sheer issues with the multiplicative essence streams? Were you using -”

  Clearly unhappy, but apparently willing to let it go, the man said loudly, “Enough! We’ll get back to that later.” Turning back to Nero he commanded, “Continue.”

  Not liking the man’s increasingly abrasive tone, Nero replied, “That’s about it. After that, I closed the portal. Then I killed a few kobalds, along with myself kinda, then I woke up to this guy…” Nero gestured across the table with an accusing finger before continuing, “And the dwarves and the Populators and everyone else staring at me in all my glorious nakedness. More than a few people were impressed. I could tell. However, you should know that nobody even offered me the pants I asked for. Asked for multiple times I might add. You should write that down for the record. No pants! After that… well, then I got teleported here, which you already know about. Then that’s it. The end.”

  Nero had used up what limited amount of his patience he had with all of this. Whoever this guy was, Nero wasn’t going to be answering any more of his questions. And considering that Jennings had been sitting on a recording of everything, he honestly couldn’t see the point in any of this. While he was sure there was one, he was also sure he had no idea what it was.

  ‘I’m going to need to either start learning more about how they do things in this city or finally have Vera hire some kind of social interpreter who I can pay to follow me around and explain things to me. Nick clearly hasn’t been doing the job I’ve secretly assigned him well enough. I should try and remember to secretly fire him at his next performance review,’ he thought to himself.