LE LION VERT, 2022
The crowd shuffled through the portal to Le Lion Vert, which shimmered like water when you approached it, and the feeling of passing through it was like laying in the middle of a large field and being suddenly overcome by its vastness. You could still see the scene before you, but it felt millions of miles away, and you felt millions of miles wide.
On the other side of the portal, the air was still. There were trees, but the leaves didn’t move. There were no birds or wind. It was frozen in time. I had read that time was a circle here and that the people who worked in the Inn experienced the same day repeatedly. I wondered if they knew they were trapped. I wondered if they remembered all the previous days. It seemed a special kind of hell.
The Green Lion, sometimes called the Argonaut’s Crossroads, was an inn that had stood since the Sceau Wesphalie in 1649 when the most powerful court sorcerers of the day had worked a particular seal upon the Eldritch Demimonde that obscured us from the mundanes. The inn from which they had performed this seal was pulled into a dimension of its own, where it was to stay for all time.
I can’t say I knew much about seals in specific; they are very old forms of Elder Magic, a sort of eternal contract with the Gods which brings a new law into existence. Seals required sacrifices to refresh them, some yearly, some every decade and so on. The function of sorcerers in the grand scheme of the world was to maintain the seals.
Some of those seals were physical laws, and some of them were karmic laws. Not all seals were made by sorcerers or maintained by them. Some Elder Gods made their own, and they were commandments that all had to follow or risk wrath from ancient and powerful beings that were more cosmic than earthly.
Outside the Inn, the smell of muck, hay, and sawdust shifted to the smells of hunger-inducing meat pies, fresh ale, mead, and mulled wines.
The Green Lion was medieval in every detail, lit by candle and lantern in the rough wooden interior. Great oak beams were laid across the tops of the walls to support the ceiling. The beams sagged with the weight of the first floor where the rooms were.
Inside the inn was the bustle of acrobats and six armed Gypsy jugglers. Or so they appeared to be. The bright colours of their outfits were set off by their oily skin and sun-wrinkled faces. All of them handsome specimens of their aged race with tawny complexions and sinewy muscles that transfixed the ladies and not a few of the men.
Damp-haired troubadours strummed baroque music as Persian slaves danced behind sheer veils. Perfumes of Frankincense, Lebanese Ceder, and Agarwood poured off the Persian dancers and mixed with the spicy musks of the Gypsies and a thousand and one other scents to ensnare the sensual impulses of the revellers. Their hips bumped and jerked to loud applause as they twisted seductively from patron to patron.
Drow, Human, and Dwarf wenches had thrown all chastity aside and clad themselves in the most seductive and varied outfits that accentuated their forms. An ebony Drow full in bosom had lost them entirely and wore nothing more than a breathlessly tight corset. Her fullness was much more than any satyr could bare. She had the most athletic thighs and gazelle legs.
A fire-haired Dwarf maiden, no more than a meter tall, had donned the traditional golden armour of her people, leaving out only those parts which would have protected her modesty. She flitted about the banquet hall on voluptuous and engreaved stumps, sternly keeping her peers in line and ensuring all orders were filled.
Philipe pulled me to a table bursting with stout men dressed in robes of red and white, members of Red Lion Court. They were all cordial but rowdy fellows, and the conversation soon turned to the portentous times in which we lived.
At the head of the table was Samson des Merveilles, a chevalier de L’Enclos, or that is to say, a descendant of the illustrious Knights of the bewitching courtesan Ninon de L’Enclos.
He was the definition of burly, with a well-kept onyx beard streaked with grey and deep brown eyes filled with violent mirth. He wore a boat keel of a cuirass in Unalloyed Silver, adorned with embossed edges and covered in small dimples, divots, and the odd scratch. His coal-coloured hair was short, luxurious and wild, giving him a look of the untamable.
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Samson led the topic with a toast to the coming war with the mundanes, something for which he was desirous.
“To war, to lament, to wading knee deep in the gore of your enemies,” said Samson lifting his tankard. There was a round of cheers for his toast.
“I for one,” said a rather square lion with a missing eye, “would tire too soon of their slaughter.” He gripped his shoulder and twisted his arm with a loud pop.
Samson laughed. “Aye Roth, dismemberment is a thing for younger men.”
“I doubt it will take long to submit the mundanes,” said Philipe. “There are a lot of them these days, even billions, I hear, but they have no real power.” Several lions agreed with a nod and salute to Philipe for his addition.
A bespectacled young man at the end of the table spoke up. “Are their flying machines any less than a conjured dragon? Their bombs and staffs that shoot a thousand deadly balls of lead in a minute?” He was gaunt and long with stout and hairy arms. He had the air of a warrior scholar who wins by strategy more than the force of arms. His name was Claude de Mornay, the prodigal son of the very well-known Felicité de Mornay, a fashion celebrity.
“Don’t be daft,” said Philipe, “we could exterminate the lot of them with a single spell. Conjure a disease or plague. Destroy their crops, salt their fields, and they would starve like always.”
“True,” said Claude, “the black death was a very effective means of controlling the population and the Spanish Flu, however, with pestilence, you run the risk of killing everyone. Those were the results of massive campaigns of suspicion and superstition, though. You can’t just kill non-Eldritch with a spell; they have to suspect it properly first, even with diseases. The gods would never allow a sacrifice on that scale unless rules were strictly followed. Ours is not the first cycle of life in this world. I am sure there were conversations like this among those ancient races, and perhaps the choices they made led to their own downfall and even extinction. ”
“What do you mean?” asked Philipe.
Samson leaned forward. “You’re a fine young man bastard, might even make a proper soldier of you, but all this serves a greater purpose. And when you serve a greater purpose, well — failure leads to punishment.”
“Punishment?” asked Philipe.
Roth bellowed a laugh. “Aye, young Master, punishment. If the gods don’t think they’re getting what they deserve, well — they might decide to start fresh.”
Samson nodded in agreement. “We all serve something for the privilege of existence. That is the way of things, young lad. That is why we need to be out in front of it. We can’t wait till things get bad, till the mundanes attack us. Force us to make a mistake. Never let them choose the place nor the hour of battle.”
“It won’t come to that,” I said, “surely?”
Samson slammed down his tankard of ale, and the foamy drink spilt out onto the table. “Aye, young halfling, pray that it will. Pray for glory and battle; life is sweetest in the graveyard or sweeter still in the abattoir.”
I paused for a moment. “We have too many options, glamors to conceal us, and all the Eldritch beasts would fight with us. The mundanes couldn’t be that stupid. To attack us? They don’t even know about us—”
Samson laughed and reached across the table to clap me on the shoulder.
“Listen well, my very young lad. Always bet on stupidity when it comes to any man, mundane or sorcerer. You say we are well hidden? That they don’t know our strength? When a man finds weakness, he will submit it to his whim, and if it doesn’t submit, he will destroy it. Maybe it’ll be our secrecy that brings us to glorious battle! The mundanes are always on the cusp of understanding the world. It takes a lot of work to keep them busy.”
I felt cross for a moment but regained my composure and forced a smile. Samson raised his tankard of ale, and we all joined him in another cheer. I did so with less enthusiasm.
With the death of Charles-Francois, there was a feeling throughout the world that it was time for a change, and that part of that change was emerging from the shadows and exerting greater control on the mundanes. Our world saw the mundanes as more like cattle than people. They served a purpose in the world, but part of that purpose was as a source of power and maintaining the order of the cosmos. Their sins and suffering fed the Elder Gods. Some Gods wanted pain; some wanted lust, jealousy, or avarice. Most of the Gods wanted a bit of variety.
For the first time, I got to see things up close, to feel the opulent atmosphere that surrounds the powerful. I had mixed feelings about it all. It was one thing to read stories about sword-wielding knights who carve their way through hundreds of foes, and quite another to be sitting across the table from someone who had spent the better part of a seventy-year career perfecting the art of mass slaughter.
I don’t mean to suggest I cared about the deaths of mundanes at all. I quite like eating steak, but I’m not sure I could stomach a career in a slaughterhouse. It takes a special kind of man, a very respectable kind, who can make a vocation of killing — especially killing other men