Chapter 7
Morning arrived. Rys and Grigor had long since gone their separate ways.
Grigor surveyed the area outside the castle, sending a messenger back to Rys every so often to inform him about of what he found. Which was a lot of nothing, but Grigor knew that Rys valued knowledge.
Knowledge was power, and power was everything.
Rys cloistered himself inside the control room. Earlier in the night, he had spared some time to summon some imps. They were a servile species of infernal that helped with menial labor. Normal demons would probably put holes in a wall if they tried to clean it.
The glowing blueprint of the castle hovered over the dais. It shifted and changed according to Rys’s will, and he muttered to himself as it did. Every so often, part of it changed from blue to red.
Hours of experimentation had taught Rys many things about this method of castle construction.
First, he had a hard limit on how much space he had access to. Orthrus had hummed when this pointed out, then said something about how the castle had seemed much bigger when he was around.
Assuming the glowing orb hadn’t become senile, that likely meant that Rys needed more slates to use all the space around the castle.
Second, he had the ability to freely transform the terrain within that space. The clearing around the castle almost certainly wasn’t natural. He’d found a nearby spring within the mountain, but he doubted if it even that belonged here. Everything about this place seemed off.
Rys felt as though he had found a lost artifact of a god and was now fumbling about without any awareness of the damage he might cause. He’d never been this concerned about what he might be able to do with his power before. The world had a knack for putting itself right.
Magic was called magic because it didn’t belong in Harrium. Magical energy and anything created by it was forced out of the material realm over time. Rys knew techniques to slow that process, but he considered no magic to be truly permanent. Given the chance, the world would banish the magical creation back to wherever it came from.
Castle Aion didn’t care about the rules of the world. It did the magical equivalent of beating the world into submission, then simply did whatever it wanted.
The third thing Rys found out was that he could lock the castle’s design into place. Ordinarily, he changed things with a thought. Created new furniture. Extended a room. The castle defied spatial norms, he learned. A room could be larger on the inside than it was on the outside. But once locked down, Rys needed to unlock it in order to alter anything. Anything locked down glowed red in the blueprint. Blue meant it had been altered. Presumably, a white glow meant it had been unaltered, but nothing was white anymore.
Finally, the fourth thing was that there was an overall limitation to what he could create within the castle itself. The power slate appeared to be an immensely powerful source of energy, but the single one he had powered a lot of the castle. Rys suspected the other hollows were intended for slates that powered other aspects of the castle.
He didn’t know what the other hollows did. Which bothered him. The castle felt like an extension of his mind. Shouldn’t he know what each power slate did before he put them in? Something to worry about later.
For now, he redesigned the castle.
Now that Rys knew a little more about his immediate surroundings—thanks to Vallis’s map—he knew what attributes he needed to balance out.
Namely, he had to choose between building a defensible and intimidating fortress or something that blended in and felt welcoming to the locals.
When he had been a general in the Infernal Empire, Rys had built a gargantuan fortress into a mountain. It had oozed the atmosphere of an evil overlord. But that worked at the time, as he both had the power to back it up and the responsibility to keep the local elven and draconic rulers in line.
Gigantic obsidian towers that poured lava down their walls might lead to swift downfall. Better save that for later.
Rys decided that blending in worked better for now and chose to construct a manor house. The closest nation on the map had been a hundred miles away. The nearby towns weren’t much of a threat. Grigor and his demons could likely handle any bandits or debt collectors.
The final design he wanted was far more grandiose than what he could currently build. He recalled some of the fancy manor houses in central Gauron that had doubled as offices. They had been shaped like hollow squares, with a large central courtyard. Each side of the building stood as a separate wing, and people could swiftly move between wings using the central courtyard.
Efficient. Rys liked efficiency in his designs.
Most castles and manor houses had lots of winding passages and odd corridors to confuse intruders and spies, but he wouldn’t need those. Once he grew in power and summoned succubi, they would be able to detect unwanted guests instantly.
For now, Rys built one of the manor wings. It had two levels and was opulently furnished. The blueprint had some additional capacity, so he built a small, detached building at the rear. It might prove useful for guests, or maybe even Fara.
Rys leaned away, looking up the finished blueprint. The entire thing glowed red.
“It will be a few weeks before everything is complete,” Orthrus said, startling Rys. “With only one power slate, it will be spread thin building such a large design.”
“And here I thought I was being restrained,” he said.
“I’m surprised that it let you do so much so fast,” Orthrus muttered. “I expected we would need more slates.”
“That sounds like a good reason to get more then,” Rys said.
But first, he needed weapons and armor. That meant a forge. Rys had cleaned up the sub-levels and added furniture to most rooms already, but now he converted one into a forge. The castle’s power let him create forging materials as well, but he wasn’t entirely certain if they’d last outside the field.
“Orthrus, what happens if I create something in here and take it outside?” he asked.
The wisp chuckled. “Ah, thinking of crashing the local economy with wagons loaded down with precious metals, are we?”
“Yes, because that won’t attract a fleet full of mages from the continent.” Rys rolled his eyes. “Vallis thinks we can manage with the Labyrinth artifacts. I just don’t want to create weapons or armor, only for them to vanish when we leave.”
A long pause.
“While it is possible, anything created using the castle’s power will be a permanent drain on it.” Orthrus said. “Any created objects will turn back into magical energy without active support from the castle.”
Rys raised an eyebrow. “The castle was still standing when I got here, despite being unpowered.”
“But a power slate was active in the Labyrinth, was it not? As are many others. Plenty to keep the castle running in maintenance mode.”
“So the castle and Labyrinth are connected? That’s interesting. I wish you’d said that earlier,” Rys said. He crossed his arms. “Hmm. But that means the power of the castle isn’t limited to this blueprint.”
He gestured to the glowing image in front of him. When he had built the castle, he hadn’t been able to build farther than a certain distance away from his current location.
Orthrus made a noise. “I’m not sure I follow.”
“The castle’s power runs through me. I had figured that the construction power being limited to a certain radius meant its power was restricted in distance.” Rys smiled. “But if the castle is connected to the Labyrinth, then doesn’t that mean I should be able to project its power across the entire archipelago, at the very least? That means I might be able to use that power to escape this stupid seal. I just need to find a way.”
“Oh? I am exceedingly curious to see what you come up with,” Orthrus said, followed by a hollow chuckle.
For the time being, Rys raided Vallis’s supplies for anything he might be able to use for forging. No dice. It made sense she wouldn’t have brought anything that heavy.
The merchant wandered past him while he poked through her crates. She let out a yawn and stretched her arms.
“After some food?” she asked. “Pretty sure the demons moved those crates somewhere else.”
“More like something I can use to forge some weapons and armor,” he said.
Then something occurred to him.
“You said that artifacts sell to the continent, right?” he asked.
“That’s right. Pretty much everything pulled out of the Labyrinth gets shipped to Tarmouth, then to either Pharos or Gauron,” she said.
“Tarmouth?” He recalled the name from the map. It had been the town furthest to the west on the map, on an island just off the coast of Kavolara.
“It’s the largest port in the archipelago. The ships from the continents hate sailing into the archipelago, so they stop at Tarmouth. Smaller ships ferry everything between ports on the other islands to Tarmouth,” Vallis explained. “Tarmouth is run by a collective of independent trade guilds and mage towers. It’s probably the only place with real influence from Gauron. They don’t want their trade partner to run into issues.”
Rys made a note of that knowledge. Angering Tarmouth might be a bad idea, at least in the foreseeable future. But they could be a great source of wealth.
“So the artifacts leave the archipelago without any trouble? For that matter, what do you even mean by artifacts? We wandered down to the Labyrinth and didn’t see much of interest,” he said.
Vallis scowled. “I knew you went down there. And you didn’t bring anything back. Fara refused to say what happened.” She huffed. “Artifacts are anything interesting that is clearly from the Labyrinth. Stones with strange markings or sigils. Weapons made of odd metals. Pots and vases that glow in the dark. I think a lot of the monsters are fashioned into jewelry as well.”
“So it’s just random crap from there,” Rys said flatly. “But the Labyrinth creates that stuff out of magic. It should…”
He trailed off. Anything made by magic should vanish once it loses its supply of magical energy. If that wasn’t happening to Labyrinth artifacts, didn’t that mean they lasted longer than anything made by the castle’s power?
That damned wisp. While anything the castle created was a permanent drain on its power, the same wasn’t true of the Labyrinth. The two were connected, but one was far more powerful than the other.
Rys had known he couldn’t trust Orthrus, but this reminded him of that fact.
Vallis stared at him, and he waved her away.
Confronting Orthrus wouldn’t help, but Rys knew that he could secure a permanent supply of materials from the Labyrinth. Maybe he could melt down weapons that he found?
For now, he created some steel ingots using the castle. The drain was tiny. He had experimented with creating fancier metals, such as magically active ones, but they drastically increased the burden on the castle. Retrieving those from the Labyrinth was far smarter.
Rys whiled away the morning forging himself a set of equipment and crafting runes into it.
He kept his weapon simple. His Gift of strength converted any weapon he carried into a magical implement of destruction, capable of cleaving through steel and flesh. So he gave himself a simple battle-axe.
His armor was steel plate and heavily enhanced with runes. He removed the shine, as he had always hated the look of new armor. The runes he added made it far more durable and lightweight, as well as resistant to heat. He sewed some protective runes into a padded gambeson that Vallis had brought with her.
Compared with his old equipment, this was rather pathetic. Grigor’s axe and armor was unchanged from the old days, and far better. Rys had forged them himself. But the knowledge and ability to create equipment that powerful were sealed away for now.
Frustrating.
Rys felt ready to head into the Labyrinth now and let everybody know the plan for the day. He ordered Grigor to send the demons to the Labyrinth entrance.
The demons murmured excitedly as they gathered, talking about their first battle in Harrium.
First battle, huh?
Rys pulled Grigor aside. They watched the other demons head downstairs. Fara and Vallis were down there already.
“These demons are green, aren’t they?” Rys said.
“They are veteran warriors by the current standards of Hell,” Grigor replied. “But that says very little. Very few infernals remember the Empire. Many of us have been lost to either machinations in Hell or wars here. Even my oldest comrades have fought beside me for mere decades.”
“The noble demons?”
Grigor nodded.
Rys bumped a fist against Grigor’s massive arm. The demon prince looked down at him in return.
“Comrades are comrades. I guess I was surprised at how they reacted to the idea of their first time fighting here,” Rys said. “I still remember when you first rocked up here. All of six years old. A tiny little Kashlovian, all eager to serve the glorious Empire.”
“Tiny,” Grigor said, his eyes receding to tiny dots. “I recall towering over you even back then.”
“You were like half your size back then,” Rys said with a grin. “Relatively tiny.”
Grigor shook his head and returned the grin. “Do not tell the others that story.”
The two of them headed down the stairs and joined everybody at the Labyrinth entrance. The noble demons stood shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the repaired steel door, bodily blocking entrance to the Labyrinth. The other demons glared at them.
“Such troublemakers,” Grigor muttered and wandered into the mass of demons to keep order.
Vallis and Fara stood to one side. A conversation took place between Vallis and one of the demons, so Rys joined them.
“I’m not going in there, Terry,” Vallis told the demon. “But it is interesting to see all of you together.”
The demon grunted and crossed his arms. He had a birdlike appearance, deep violet skin, and wore bulky iron armor. His eyes shot over to Rys for a moment, before returning to Vallis’s and pretending his summoner wasn’t standing next to him.
“Didn’t think you were,” the demon grunted. Vallis had called him Terry, but Rys knew his proper name was Terrailin. “But you shouldn’t stay here alone.”
Vallis scowled. “The little demons are here.”
“Imps aren’t demons. I wouldn’t trust them to fight off a baby throwing a tantrum,” Terry said. “You mentioned something about people trying to kill you over breakfast. Doesn’t seem safe to leave you alone.”
Rys raised an eyebrow. Terry was a greater demon and from one of dozens of bird strains, which put his intelligence well above most demons. But this was surprisingly astute for a demon.
“Is there a problem?” Rys asked.
The muscles in Terry’s arms and legs strained as the demon held in his panic. He looked down at Rys, his beady black eyes blinking in surprise. The demon stood at some eight or nine feet tall, but his terror showed in his body.
“Uh,” Terry tried to say.
“The demons bitched about breakfast after those… imps, I think they’re called?” Vallis said, giving Rys a questioning look. He nodded, and she continued, “The imps burned breakfast, so I was going to hunt down a chef in the closest town, Anceston. Figured it would be a great opportunity to find some contacts to sell artifacts to.”
Terry remained silent but his expression spoke volumes.
Rys sighed. “And what’s your opinion, Terrailin.”
The demon coughed. “Uh, I think she needs guards. I want to try some of this human food out, but not if she gets herself killed. Dunno if we can take her into town, though.”
Vallis opened her mouth to say something, only to let out a cough as Fara jabbed her in the ribs.
“You’re right,” Rys told Terry. “And not just about protecting her. We need to leave guards behind here. From now on, you’re in charge of castle security and report directly to Grigor. Talk to Grigor and work out how many demons you think you need.”
Terry’s beak fell open. He snapped it shut a moment later. “I… Thank you, boss!”
The demon slammed his fist into his chest, but then paused and looked at Vallis.
Rys wasn’t finished. “Vallis, wait until we’re back before heading into Anceston. Like it or not, you nearly died yesterday. You need guards, and I’ll need to organize some that can blend in.”
“Alright,” Vallis said, a small pout on her lips. “But bring back some artifacts. If I have some merchandise, it’ll be easy to find some contacts.”
That dealt with that matter. Terry spoke with Grigor, his hands moving excitedly while Grigor rubbed his maw. Fara and Vallis remained in the corner, watching the antics of the demons.
When Rys approached the Labyrinth entrance, the noble demons separated to let him through. The other demons cleared a path around him, careful that their roughhousing didn’t get in his way.
“I can sense the power conduits below us,” Orthrus said, suddenly emerging from the other side of the door.
Rys grimaced and held back his annoyance at the wisp. “Multiple conduits?” he asked. The noble demons would hear him, but he didn’t care about that.
“Yes. The design of the Labyrinth makes it difficult to know where they are for certain, or how far away they are.”
Lovely. “What about the slates?”
“Those are easier to detect. One isn’t too far in, and I can sense more even deeper,” Orthrus said.
That worked for Rys.
He turned around and raised his axe in the air.
The demons fell silent. All of them stopped whatever they were doing or saying and turned to face Rys.
“Gather your weapons,” Rys said. “It’s time to loot this place and kill everything that gets in our way.”