Lord Memrot’s audience chamber was not merely a seat of power; it was a stifling sanctuary of avarice.
Every square inch dripped with gold, giving the impression that the walls themselves were sweating the precious metal.
In the sickly, flickering glow of hundreds of wax candles, the baroque ornaments cast long, twisted shadows across the floor; like grasping, arthritic fingers trying to snatch up every last crumb of space.
The air inside was so thick you could almost chew it; a cloying miasma of expensive musk, heavy southern perfumes, and exotic herbs burning in brass censers.
This suffocating blend served a single, deliberate purpose: to choke out the gutter stench of the town beyond the palace walls, and to mask the sour reek of fear radiating from the endless line of petitioners begging for mercy.
Yet, to the honed senses of the crew standing amidst this opulent display, the fragrance was just another layer of deceit.
It was as fake as the grand marble columns, which, beneath a thin veil of dust, were nothing more than cheap, painted sandstone.
Slumped upon a high-backed chair carved from larch; a piece of furniture whose sheer size and pretension made it a throne in all but name; sat the regional governor.
Lord Memrot was a man whose belly, a grotesque monument to years of unbridled gluttony, strained against the seams of a tight silk doublet dyed in bishop’s purple.
His hands; plump, clammy, and weighed down by gemstones so obnoxiously large they seemed to hinder his finger movements; trembled at the slightest sudden noise.
He attempted to mask this cowardice by compulsively smoothing the rich fabric over his broad knees.
Regarding the band of armed outcasts before him, the lord dabbed a lace handkerchief to the corner of his eye, executing the motion with all the cheap theatrics of a second-rate stage actor.
Even though his voice cracked in a perfectly orchestrated display of anguish, not a single person in the room; from the barbarian to the necromancer; could spot a genuine tear on his florid, bloated face.
“It is a tragedy…
a pure, unmitigated tragedy that has befallen my humble self and my people,” he blubbered, every word seeming to struggle past the layers of fat choking his throat.
“My beloved village, the jewel of my domain, Silent Bliss.
For an entire month, an unnatural, deathly silence has gripped the place, chilling the very blood in my veins.
No tidings, no messengers, no trade reports.
My heart breaks it positively bleeds!
when I think of the suffering of those poor souls, I consider my children.
Can you even fathom the darkness that has swallowed them whole?”
Lengos stood at the forefront, motionless as a statue carved from a forgotten, obsolete brand of justice.
He leaned heavily against his battered shield; scarred from countless blows and stripped of its crest; yet it still bore the faint echo of its former dignity.
The fallen paladin’s blue eyes, cold as the ice at the bottom of a deep well, remained fixed on the lord’s face, piercing right through the man.
He was a man in his prime, with short, coarse blond hair and a bearing that, despite a shattered moral code, still radiated the authority of his old holy order.
He despised fanaticism, but he despised lies even more.
“If your heart is in such a pitiful state, Lord Memrot, why was the bounty posted only now, when the bottom of your treasury is starting to peek through the last of your coppers?” Lengos asked.
His voice was frigid, devoid of empathy; the tone of a man who had seen far too much to buy into fairy tales.
“In times of plague or invasion, a month is an eternity.
It’s enough time to grind an entire region into dust.
The knights I once called brothers would have dispatched riders after three days of silence.
You?
You waited until you couldn’t afford a fresh cask of wine.”
Memrot flinched violently.
The lace handkerchief froze in his hand, exposing a fleeting flash of pure, venomous rage lurking just beneath the victim’s mask.
“Ah, Sir Knight…
hope is a cruel and deceptive mistress.
She forces us to cling to the best scenarios until the bitter end,” the lord replied, hastily slipping back into his martyr persona.
“I held onto the foolish hope that it was merely a mudslide on the mountain pass, or perhaps a passing bout of foul weather.
But when my brave guardsmen; the very flower of this region’s chivalry, men of absolute steel!; did not return from a routine patrol, I realized it was something far darker.”
“The flower of chivalry?” Perval scoffed.
The monk stood in the center of the hall, paying no mind to the palace chill or its strict etiquette.
He was a towering mountain of pure brawn, his heavy footsteps making the pristine floorboards groan in quiet protest.
Under the candlelight, his scarred arms and rugged frame looked wild and primal against the backdrop of delicate silks and velvets.
He casually adjusted the high, impeccable topknot holding his dark hair in place.
His smile was broad and disarming, though his eyes remained sharply vigilant.
“We both know, my lord, that you sent a pack of common thugs in shiny breastplates to forcibly collect the tithe you haven’t received in thirty days.
Your ‘heart’ beats only to the rhythm of clinking gold coins.
The fear you’re feeling right now stems from one simple fact: your tax collectors vanished, and they took your money with them.”
Lord Memrot suddenly sat up straight.
The mask of a loving patriarch shattered, revealing the vicious features of a predatory loan shark preparing to strike.
His gaze swept over the monk’s rugged appearance with sheer disgust.
“Coin is the lifeblood of this region, you insolent monk!
And I would advise you to dress with some dignity; this is a throne room, not a public bathhouse!” he hissed, his voice suddenly hard as iron grinding against stone.
“Without coin, there are no roads, no border patrols, no palaces to hold back the untamed wilds!
Something is keeping them there.
Some force has made my men forget their master.
It is a void that is swallowing my resources.”
In the shadow of a grand pillar, away from the glaring candlelight, stood Figlin Smarsson; ‘Figi’ to his friends.
He let out a loud, drawn-out belch, entirely disregarding royal protocol, which elicited a deep grimace of disgust from the lord.
The dwarf swayed slightly on his feet.
It wasn’t from drunken stupor, but a lingering side effect of his accursed “land sickness”; an affliction that made solid ground feel like the pitching deck of a ship during a gale.
Only a steady stream of alcohol could anchor his equilibrium.
From the depths of his thick white beard, intricately woven into tiny braids, a small red crab peeked out.
It snapped its pincers aggressively toward Memrot, as if eager to add its own two cents to the argument.
Figlin narrowed his eyes in skepticism and ostentatiously cupped a hand around the dented brass ear trumpet jammed into his ear.
“A void?
What’s he mumbling about?
The void in his belly?” Figi croaked, taking a deep, hearty swig from his mug.
“Your indigestion doesn’t move me, fat man.
But my ship, the Ebony Wave, is in dire need of new planking and a few good yards of canvas.
Since you’re throwing around coin purses, I’m all ears.
But mark my words: if I find lead instead of gold in my cut, I’ll march right back here to see exactly how much fat I can render from your bones for my lanterns.”
A sudden metallic clash rang from above.
Duria, a vampire whose short, white hair was buzzed short on both sides, vaulted down from the balustrade where she had been balancing with an unnatural grace that seemed almost insulting to gravity.
Her very presence was a blatant provocation.
She was clad in exotic lamellar armor; hundreds of tiny, blood-red lacquered plates laced together by purple silk cords that shimmered in the gloom.
A black-hilted katana rested at her hip, its tsuba shaped like a blooming chrysanthemum.
Her crimson eyes gleamed with the characteristic mix of amusement and profound boredom peculiar to an ancient being.
“Baka…
(Fool)” she whispered, landing soundlessly.
Her voice was sharp and precise, much like the blade she carried.
She smiled, baring her fangs in a grimace that promised violence.
“This little spectacle of yours is tedious, my lord.
Silence in a village called ‘Bliss’ sounds like a wretched joke, or the opening act of a bloodbath.
I am quite eager to see what induced your guardsmen to abandon their avarice.
Perhaps they found something far tastier than your silver, ne?
(hmm?) I shall go and investigate before I wither away in this suffocatingly gilded town.”
Zedora stepped forward, proudly flaunting a body crisscrossed with tribal tattoos.
Her meager armor of scales and fur offered a stark contrast to the silks of the hall, and her clenched fists betrayed a patience hanging by a thread.
The two hand-axes strapped to her back seemed to throb in time with her rising anger.
“One thousand gold crowns.
Not a copper less, with half paid upfront,” she snapped, cutting off any potential debate in a voice that brooked no argument.
“And spare us your lies about saving your subjects.
We are going because you are paying, and because a foe worthy of our blades might be waiting there.
If you have lied about the threat, we will come back.
And your entire guard won’t be enough to save you.”
Memrot’s gaze shifted to the hitherto silent Yerga, who stood slightly behind the others, idly twirling a lock of her green hair.
The necromancer smiled at him in a way that sent a distinct chill down his spine.
He sensed instinctively that something monstrous lurked within her shadow.
At her feet, its bones clicking softly against the stone floor, prowled her familiar; a complete feline skeleton devoid of flesh.
The green witch-fire burning in the cat’s empty sockets stared intently at the lord’s plump fingers, seemingly appraising their crunchiness.
The creature rubbed against Memrot’s leg, leaving a smear of graveyard dust upon his purple silk, causing the lord to recoil with a faint, undignified squeak.
Beside Yerga stood Neira, a priestess with violet braids whose curled horns and serpentine tail betrayed her demonic lineage.
Her aura emanated a strange, soothing warmth that made Memrot feel, despite his terror, a bizarre desire to agree to whatever they demanded.
“So be it,” the governor croaked, mopping his brow, trying his best not to look at the dead cat.
“Half upfront.
But bring me proof.
I want to know what happened to my gold.”
“You’ll get your proof, fat man,” Yerga retorted, giving him a theatrical wink.
“Just pray that you like it.”
“And…
and where is your…
that monster?” Memrot stammered, glancing nervously around the corners of the vast hall.
“I have heard whispers of a black knight.”
The necromancer’s smile widened, and her eyes flashed dangerously.
“Bregg?
Bregg dislikes crowds.
He only appears when absolutely necessary.
Or when someone is boring me.
But make no mistake, my lord; he is here.
In every shadow.”
Fate’s Outcasts turned as one, striding toward the great double doors.
They left behind the cloying scents of perfume and deceit, stepping out to greet something that smelled vastly sweeter; and vastly more lethal.
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