I trudged up a few switchbacks that fell into bushy ravines on their sides. I have always liked the arts of fortification.
Another delusion justified by my misanthropic observer of Italian statecraft.
I had always suspected Napoleon had read Machiavelli. That must’ve been the reason everyone hated him. He was too lovable.
A steel door at the base of the tower was unlocked and I opened it. Just beyond a second door. Steel as the first.
I entered with confidence for fear could never leave me but the second door was locked.
Almost at once, a voice I could not see apologized for the inconvenience. With a hurried. “At once, my lion” and some clear fumbling the steel door ahead of me swung open latches undone.
I stepped from the little murder chamber I must’ve occupied because the doors both locked from the outside.
The same way I would’ve built a secure tower.
I had always liked the idea of a building where every door locks from the outside.
When your assailants enter lock them inside and deploy homemade chemical weapons.
This security measure requires sleeping outside, like a dog. So there are risks but I have never read of anyone else doing it so I’m sure it would be effective.
An unapologetic old man greeted me upon the first floor of the tower which resembled a sort of library.
A few bespectacled individuals still clad in that blinding white now dimmed by the heavy dark age lack of electricity were observing scrolls and tomes. The few I could see were filled with hand written spreadsheets.
I had stumbled into my own internal revenue service. Or something like that
Figures I should be lucky enough to have a wife who did my taxes. Figured I'd be lucky enough to make money when my taxes are done.
The old doorman was putting on a show of great concern claiming he did not know that I was coming.
“I am looking for my queen, my Dove” I told him.
Nervously he gestured up the stairs.
I pondered his fear, and begin up the stairs.
He coughed.
“Your permission king, to remove the canine?”
I looked down and the little dog was at my feet panting contentedly, her wild and currently unthinking eyes looking first at the man who spoke to me. Then as I looked down at the mutt, uneasily at me aware it was subject of the attention of the great apes.
“Let me get the critter.” I said.
I picked up the dog who politely complied and carried her back down the stairs and out the door I went with the dog.
I put her down outside and she looked back at me wondering as to the game.
It wanted to follow me back inside however.
We played dog and door, a timeless game.
I shut the outer door behind me in the dogs face, then the second one outside its vision. Gave the old door man a “good day sir.” And bounded up the stairs.
That was a poor way to train a dog, if I wanted it not to follow me into buildings perhaps I should trap her in one.
The dog, the idea was, would get bored and associate the idea of following me into dark places with being trapped and lonely.
But perhaps I wanted a dog to follow me into lonely dark places. They were much quicker to react than I could ever be.
Up three flights, nothing but books, nerds and the odd suspicious looking traveler/merchant type.
I thanked the lion for having the good sense to avoid the viziers of flowered language. This tower seemed like the sort of place they belonged. No sycophants approached to shower me with praise.
At the top of the tower a few content birds of varied species sat around my queen, lawfully beautiful women in fantasy carry an aura of peace among species, did you not know? A pile of mail and packages sat beside her on a bare marble tiled floor. The construction frame up here was wooden. I had just looked.
It was as if the backrooms and Minecraft had a baby. Tranquility in paperwork. Minimalism overburdened. Raw sunlight illuminated the room, creeping in from the gap between the tower below, and a roof suspended above by redwood pillars that did not quite dominate the empty room.
Redwood? Genuine redwood?
The top of the tower was roofed, yet open, a giant canopy held by four pillars. The floor consisted of only one desk. And a brilliant orb of light. A few small but voluminous potted plants decorated the fringe of this floor.
The room would be dim but for regular sunbeams. Courtesy of a ring of mirrors focusing inward. A glance at the ceiling told me it was nearly eighteen of forty.
That wasn’t right, time was built to be divisible by two three six, fifteen and dubiously five and ten. Sixty a perfect number.
Forty was divisible by two four, eight, five, ten and perhaps twenty. No threes…
My uncanny Queen herself sat at a glass desk near the center of the room, and as each envelope floated up to the desk and opened itself, the internals slid across the glass desk. Under a magnifying glass, in front of a mirror, under a magnified desklight, magical in nature.
It was not the true lamp of the room, which appeared a crystal orb resting on a dais in the very center that contained a dim and only slightly viewable sun. The shadow of the orb was a soft glow upon the vaulted spiral roof. Reminding anyone in the room that it sat in the laser of a mirror focused upon the sun.
“My dove” I called out “what business do you do? Who is your pawn?”
She jumped, startled at my voice.
She would have been so cute if she had some baby fat. Or wasn’t a three dimensional meat puppet.
Instead her face was lean, narrow, hawkish. Her giggle practiced, calculated. I was doomed to never know tranquility. Not that it was ever in the cards.
“You were so slow to arrive O lion, I had given up on your visit.”
“Explain to me this endeavor.” I pointed to her pile of mail.
“Nothing to explain, just mail… it’s so dull. I communicate with many agents of radiance, but most of it is just pleasantries and philosophy.”
“Mind if I read a few?” I asked.
“Tis thy kingdom o Lion, of course.” She smiled at me, I had never really liked cosplay. I didn’t even know who my queen was cosplaying as, perhaps herself. But I nodded and with curious smile examined a few letters.
It wasn’t English, but i could read it somehow.
My queen interrupted before I could read.
“I manage the radiant order, as opposed to the reflective shadow. These are sort of placeholder names to the real allegiances which are more fluid.”
I nodded as if I understood.
“Anyway the first step of our war involves me getting in contact with the radiant.” She finished, and I finally read the first letter
To the Dove of Radiant White, we have received your signal and move to the town of Dalton Quaton’
“That town rhymes.”
My queen laughed, I tried my best not to overthink it and grabbed another piece of mail.
“Tis a shame we shall endure a cycle, I have commenced a purging of casual adherents until the war is over, hopefully it is over soon, the realms beyond may have a more serious trouble our claimant war seems so small comparatively.”
Claimant war? As in… I was in competition for an inheritance? Figures… “Which of us is related to our opponent? Is our opponent related to us?”
My queen frowned, “That’s right, you have forgotten… The Black Panther is your half brother, your father, Brilliant tiger had taken a queen of one of his victories, in his will he required that the two of you fight a proper war. The winner inherits the kingdom. It’s a tradition in your family if you were unaware…”
The implication was that I would, even in victory eventually find a second queen and do the same thing as the the presumably late Brilliant Tiger… which maybe explained my own queen’s dislike of the subject.
“Is there a good family tree I can review?”
“What happened to you?” My queen asked,
“I was hoping you knew.” I guess the Lion wasn’t normally this interested in history and affairs of state.
“Well you seemed like you had a bad dream last night.”
“I have a lot of bad dreams. I used to write them down.”
“Really? Tell me one of them!” The queen seemed like a young girl. Some part of me said she was too old to act this way.