Chapter 37
“You’ve been ignoring me lately.”
Rys didn’t turn around. He stood in the warp gate chamber, deep in the Labyrinth.
The obsidian chamber had changed significantly since he had last been here in person—it was now a guard post and staging site for deeper dives into the Labyrinth. Supplies, weapon racks, and a roster occupied the far side of the room, opposite the portal that led back to the palace.
Today, Rys wasn’t interested in any of that. He was here for the dark stone plinth that channeled power from Castle Aion. Right now, the crystal dial atop it was set to only connect the warp gate to the palace.
Rys knew it could do much more. The golden wisp behind him had told him as such.
“I’ve been busy,” he said.
“I have noticed.” Orthrus hovered beside Rys. The beak and eyes within his form focused on the plinth. “But like the inevitable passage of time, you find yourself with a need to draw on my knowledge. Did I not tell you that we are each the keys to one another’s freedom?”
“Like I said, it hasn’t been intentional,” Rys said. “You haven’t gone out of your way to talk to me. From what I hear, you’ve been ransacking my growing library. You also prefer to avoid most of my new palace residents.”
“I find that life is like a diorama—interesting to look at, but frustratingly static and boring if you stare at it for too long. Just as humans do not like watching grass grow, I dislike watching the glacial passage of history in real time.” Orthrus clacked his beak in disapproval. “I desire results, and books contain much more of those than the present day.”
“Books only give you information that you can use to change the present, Orthrus,” Rys said. “Knowledge for its own sake is pointless.”
“Oh, I agree. But I can do little more than observe right now, can I not? One day, this knowledge will be power. I have all the time in the world to acquire it for now.” The wisp’s eyes seemed to glow.
Chuckling, Rys raised his hands in a mock surrender. “Fair point. But you’ve only proved me right, Orthrus. I left you alone because I didn’t have a reason to disturb you, and you seem to be happy when left to your own devices.”
“Perhaps. I did overhear something interesting in one of your recent discussions with your obsessive spymaster, however. You are investigating the mystic foxes, correct? They are a race that even I know little of, given they arrived in Harrium after I was sealed. Allow me to join you in your information gathering. I believe I can be of assistance.”
Given Orthrus had once told Rys a story about ripping the soul out of a harmless seal—the animal kind—something told him that this might make for an interesting partnership.
But Orthrus had been a researcher in the past, by his own admission. Rys would be foolish to deny his assistance.
“Once I have some research material, I’ll let you know,” he said.
Then Rys gestured to the plinth, “For now, my interest is far more mundane. You told me months ago that the warp gate can connect Castle Aion to the other islands. I need to go to Gorgria.”
“Can you not teleport? Your increased power should make it possible.”
Rys shook his head. “I’d still need to stop in the Malus League’s territory, at least briefly. The risk that they detect me, or that I trigger some sort of anti-teleportation ward, is high enough to look for an alternative.”
“That seems overly risk averse for you.”
“I underestimated the League to my own detriment. I had assumed that Avolar was their primary focus, because they couldn’t act openly. Instead, Avolar was merely one of Maliah’s schemes while he prepared this pact.” Rys scowled.
The fact that he had truly become the overconfident and arrogant overlord bothered him. He liked the act, as he had seen how effective it had been for Malusian, but it wasn’t supposed to be real.
“I see. So you suspect their magical ability is greater than you suspect. Or perhaps you don’t want them to realize how easily you can move around?”
“Both. Graem didn’t elaborate on who that ‘Varian’ was, and nobody knows the name. That suggests that the infernalist supporting Maliah is some sort of national secret of the Malus League. Or possibly old enough that he predates the memory of those working for me,” Rys said.
Orthrus asked no more questions. Maybe he felt that was enough of a reason. He might have also been remembering how to use the dial.
After several minutes of silence, the wisp spoke up again, “As I mentioned last time, this function will cause your palace to appear on the island of Gorgria. You will have some control over its location, but it will be limited to the general vicinity.”
“That’s fine. It will be a nice show of force. Although managing two palaces will be annoying. I’ll need to increase the number of guards,” Rys said.
Orthrus cackled. “No, no. You misunderstand. There can only ever be one Castle Aion. It will merely be in two places at once. Even more, once you activate the rest of the warp gates. You will understand the true magnificence of the Creator’s work after this.”
“That sounds like spatial manipulation beyond what even the angels managed,” Rys said. “When I besieged the Last Retreat, the angels could rearrange the entire city in real time. We would be charging toward the next gatehouse through the labyrinthine walls of their city, and then find ourselves running out the front gate. If this is greater than that, I don’t understand why the angels left it alone.”
Then again, the angels did something here. They relocated a fortress and several islands here after the Cataclysm. So why did they leave this place alone, given how much power dwelt here? Not to mention that Rys appeared to be sealed here and had possibly come here himself in the past.
“You will see,” Orthrus said.
Rys gave up on conversation. Instead, he followed the wisp’s directions to fully activate the warp gate.
This involved turning the dial farther and pushing even more power from Castle Aion into the warp gate. Rys felt the reserves flow into him.
More importantly, he felt more of that strange presence in his mind open up. He was more convinced than ever that there was something alive within the Labyrinth. Whatever he was doing here, it was disturbing that existence.
Rys made a note to use his next power slate on that Labyrinth module in the control room. He needed to investigate this presence, before it caused him too much trouble.
Once finished, Rys looked around the room. It appeared identical. The portal back to the palace’s sub-levels was unchanged.
A strange feeling lingered in the back of his mind, however. As if he had unlocked more of Castle Aion’s power. It felt like an extra limb, but one that he didn’t know how to use.
By now, Rys had a lot of extra limbs, metaphysically speaking. He could cast multiple types of magic, sense energy in different planes, control the physical reality of the palace, and had the lingering sensation of the Labyrinth in the back of his mind.
Managing them was exhausting. He suppressed the feeling of this one and put it in the same box as the rest of the castle’s power.
“We must return to the surface to see the effect,” Orthrus said.
Once there, Rys looked around. A handful of guards wandered around.
“Everything looks the same,” he declared.
“Oh? You can’t feel it?”
Rys frowned. He reached for that new limb of his. The more he explored it, the more Rys realized that it wasn’t a limb.
It was closer to a portal.
He stepped through it, mentally speaking. The process was closer to flicking a switch, and feeling his magical essence be pushed through an intangible and invisible portal.
The sky changed in an instant. Clouds moved. Trees vanished. The eastern mountain range vanished and appeared to the south, and appeared to be much smaller. Even the sun changed position.
But nothing inside the palace changed. To make matters more confusing, nobody else reacted.
“Orthrus…” Rys began to say.
“You are now on the island of Gorgria,” Orthrus said, barely able to hold in his laughter.
“I guessed. Why does nobody else care?”
“Because they are still on Kavolara. As I said, there is only one Castle Aion, and it is in two places at once. You have displaced yourself to Gorgria, but the palace itself is entangled in both locations. Everybody inside it sees the palace, and whatever island they are currently on,” Orthrus explained.
Rys remained silent.
Entangled? He remembered a general conceptual theory about that idea.
Devils had theories about Gifts that could enable beings to exist in multiple places at once. The idea was that if something existed in multiple locations at once, then all existences were identical. There would be no way to tell them apart, after all.
The problem with the theory was that it shattered the present understanding of how planes worked. Almost every living being had souls and magical essences, and those were tied to specific bodies.
If somebody had a body in two locations at once, did that mean their soul was tied to two bodies? Or did they need two souls? Or did any entanglement also need to entangle the soul?
The idea had been given up on due to the complexities involved. Not even Kauros had worked out the solution, although he had created a self-sustaining vampiric curse in the process. Rys hadn’t been interested, and the research predated the Cataclysm, but he did remember reading about it.
To think that the solution already existed. What would Kauros think if he found out the truth? That his efforts had been a waste?
“You seem fascinated by what you see,” Orthrus said, pulling Rys from his thoughts.
“I’m currently standing in two places at once, hundreds of miles apart. The possibilities this could allow are practically limitless.” He laughed. “Although this might have more of an effect on the Royal Gorgrian Kingdom than I expected.”
Orthrus explained to Rys how the process worked, as well as how he could allow others to move freely between the islands. Apparently, when somebody left the palace, anybody on the other island would think the person had vanished.
That boded poorly for defenses. If all of Rys’s guards watched the Kavolara side, they wouldn’t see an attack coming on Gorgria, or vice versa. He would need to increase the number of guards and explain this to Grigor and Terry.
For now, he found Leth inside the palace. The Haunt stood in the foyer of the palace, drinking a seemingly bottomless cup of tea that Rys doubted contained any actual liquid.
“Are you ready, Lord Talarys?” Leth asked, raising an eyebrow.
“In a moment.”
Rys reached out and gave Leth the authority to move between the two islands. Then he forcibly moved the Haunt.
Leth froze. Once he relaxed, his smile turned sharp.
“This is new. Quite the surprise,” he said.
“Welcome to the island of Gorgria. I plan to meet Queen Faeris, and I want you to clear out her guards on the way into her palace,” Rys explained.
Looking out the window, Leth stared at the changed sky. “This sort of exciting experience is precisely why I am so delighted to serve you, Lord Talarys. But don’t rulers usually arrange formal meetings? I doubt you need my assistance to meet your peer.”
“I could meet her normally, but where’s the fun in that? I want Queen Faeris to understand what sort of relationship we’re going to have.” Rys grinned.
Leth grinned back.
The two of them left, with Rys teleporting them north to Gorgria. This time, he got the distance right.
The capital of the island of Gorgria was a city named Gorgria, which was inside a country called the Royal Gorgrian Kingdom—which most people helpfully called Gorgria as well, or sometimes the RGK.
Rys would complain about the name, but he had named his kingdom after the island as well. There was power in naming your nation after the region. The RGK ruled maybe a third of Gorgria, but they might as well control the entire island as far as anyone was concerned. They were Gorgria, and their name reminded everybody of that fact.
But Rys still found the name annoying. Similar problems had been occurring lately with Anceston and Avolar, as the cities and regions had the same names.
The city itself was a sprawling metropolis in comparison to Anceston. That was a low bar, however. By the standards of the Empire, the city was a large town. Rys had accidentally vaporized cities larger than it.
“You seem unimpressed,” Leth said.
“It’s a reminder that I’m in the middle of nowhere. I saw the current state of Ahm in my knowledge Gift, and you could drop Gorgria in there without even noticing.” Rys sighed. “Is New Ahm any bigger?”
“Bigger? No. It is more developed however.” Leth cast a hand across the city before them, which sprawled across flat plains. “Gorgria is like a lethargic adult stretched out across the land because it knows how things work, where New Ahm reaches for the skies like an overambitious child that doesn’t know that they can’t yet touch the stars.”
“That’s some commentary there, Leth.”
“I’ve kept an ear to the ground and done some reading.” The Haunt tapped his nose. “The RGK has gone nowhere since Queen Faeris’s husband passed away. Perhaps she thinks of it as a shrine to him? I understand that the king was the driving force behind its expansion.”
“Curious. But you think the League is a child?” Rys asked.
“Mages who fled Gauron because they disliked the restrictions of the mage towers, or who hated the status quo there. It is a story as old as time. Hell itself runs on similar principles—many speak of merit, but connections are everything. But those who break away and seek to start their own kingdom rarely cultivate anything other than ashes.”
“Do you think that of me, Leth? Because I’m splitting off from the major players of the Eternal Game and creating my own little playpen.” Rys stared at the magnanimous devil next to him.
Leth merely smiled and tipped his bowler hat. “Perhaps your efforts will result in little more than a footnote in history. That is what happened after the Empire collapsed, after all. But you are different from most.”
“Any other intelligence on Faeris? I know that she has a daughter, and a royal guard composed of draconic demihumans,” he said, returning to the primary topic.
“Her daughter is called Princess Alaretta, but almost never appears in public. She’s tremendously shy, and considered to be so beautiful that men faint in shock upon seeing her.” Leth laughed at his own words. “Faeris herself was once a powerful adventurer from Gauron. She personally slew the previous Grand Magister of the Tower of Black Cognition, a man called Elias.”
Rys almost asked what that was, but then the name popped into his mind.
Mave and Graem’s tower. Faeris had slain Graem’s predecessor. Rys vaguely recalled being told about Elias, but not the full story.
“So I’ll avoid picking a fight with her,” Rys said.
Leth tipped his hat again. “Shall we go, then?”
They slipped into the city. The sun rode high overhead and the city bustled. Nobody paid them much attention. Leth had shifted his illusion to one of a merchant, and while Rys drew a few stares, most people had work to do.
Two keeps faced one another in the city—one on the outskirts, and another next to the palace itself. A wall protected the palace itself, and was connected to one keep. Rys and Leth circled around to an entrance far from the keep.
“I sense mages on patrol,” Leth noted.
“Spellblades?”
“I cannot tell. But they seem capable enough to be dangerous. Let us wait a moment.”
They stood outside an entrance gate to the palace for several minutes. This time, nobody paid them any attention at all. Leth had used his infernal sorcery to force people to ignore them. Haunts excelled at misdirection and suggestion.
If somebody looked at them, their eyes would glide right over them. Their memories would be fuzzy, and fail to recall anything other than the possible existence of two men, if even that. They wouldn’t even remember hearing Leth and Rys, even if the person stood next to them.
Eventually, Leth raised his hand. Rys saw Leth’s eyes fill with shadow. A moment later, the gate opened. The guards stepped inside. Raised voices erupted, and soon a brawl broke out between the men who were supposed to be dedicated to defending their queen.
Rys and Leth slipped right past the soldiers who were slugging it out. They walked up the paved path to the gorgeous palace building, which was a huge four-story mansion built from steel, granite, and stained glass.
Guards charged past them to break up the growing fight below, but were pulled into it. Shouts rose up, and soon it sounded like the palace was under attack. Bells rung out and alarms blared.
“I shall remain out here and find a safe place to watch the proceedings,” Leth said. “I believe Her Majesty is on the second floor, reclining on a sofa.”
“Does she have company?”
“Guards outside the door. Their armor is too well crafted for me to easily intrude on their minds.”
Rys nodded. Then he strode into the palace itself. Leth’s magic remained in effect on him, but it would wear off quickly enough. He was in a place he didn’t belong, and the guards were panicking.
Fortunately, Leth had presumably cleared a path. Many of the palace guards had left, and only scared servants remained. Some stared at Rys, confused. Maybe some thought he belonged here, given how confidently he walked through the hallways and rooms.
In truth, he barely had any idea of where he was going. The palace wasn’t massive by his standards, but was large enough that getting lost was easy. Leth’s directions had allowed Rys to sense Faeris—her magical presence dwarfed everyone else in the building by orders of magnitude, and something about it felt oddly familiar.
“You there! Stop! Intruder!” someone shouted.
Rys turned and saw two armored demihumans with draconic horns running toward him.
Raising his eyebrow, Rys waited for them to get close. He recognized their armor and regalia from the Labyrinth. These were members of Faeris’s royal knights. No wonder Leth hadn’t been able to influence their minds.
Once they were close enough, he said, “I’ll make this simple. I am King Talarys, and I am here to meet with Queen Faeris. You can take me to her, and this ends peacefully, or I’ll find her anyway.”
The guards stiffened, reaching for their swords.
Rys didn’t let them draw them. He raised a hand. An orb of blood red hellfire appeared in it, dense with magical energy and powerful enough that even the guards should realize what would happen next.
“I won’t repeat myself,” he said.
Glaring at him, the guards kept their guard up. But they didn’t draw their weapons.
Rys noticed that their hands moved, and he sensed them use the tiniest amount of magic. Sendings, most likely.
After several seconds, the guards stood at attention. “Her Majesty deigns to meet with you, King Talarys. Follow us.”