Valkyrie's Shadow

Empire in Chains: Act 2, Chapter 7

Empire in Chains: Act 2, Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Nemel barely lasted a half hour.

The Dragon was simply insatiable. Nemel was helpless – she could only respond to Dame Verilyn’s thorough exploration. The Frost Dragon in Elf form did not show even the slightest sign of fatigue, but Nemel was thankfully released with that same, enchanting smile that had captured her from the moment they had met.

Nemel wobbled over to her bed, but sleep was not so easy to achieve despite the night’s ordeals. One might have surmised that it was because she was sharing a room with a Dragon, but it was actually because they were sharing a suite with five giant rats.

She hated rats. So long as there was food and a place to hide, they somehow materialised like creatures conjured on demand by the world itself. They were dirty and left droppings everywhere. They made unsettling noises unseen and could appear anywhere. They got into the stores and devoured her precious potatoes.

This hatred for rats was to the degree that the very first spell she had learned was Magic Arrow at the age of eight. Magic Arrow flew unerringly to its target, passing harmlessly through any obstacles to deal enough force damage to kill the disgusting rodents. It was the perfect spell to slay rats, and Nemel Gran transformed into the fearsome arcanist who defended the grounds of Gran Manor.

Her valour was to the degree that she had even impressed her childhood friend: a boy that she still fancied to this day. They had attended the Imperial Magic Academy together, though he had enlisted with the Imperial Army’s ground forces with aspirations to knighthood.

Still, her ability to obliterate the filthy rodents brought little comfort; there were always more – more than a little girl had mana to deal with. It was a battle that she could never truly win, and eventually, they would have their revenge. As a child – no, even now – she imagined them sneaking into her blankets and nibbling away her ears and toes and fingertips while she slept.

Once, after a particularly terrifying nightmare where she fought against an endless tide of giant vermin in the dark places of the city, Nemel had awakened with a scream and ran tearfully to her father. When Lord Gran had finally coaxed an explanation out of her, he gave his youngest daughter the most incredulous look and shouted ‘Absurd!’

It’s not absurd, father. They’re real.

This was her final thought before her eyes closed to the sound of the Dragon’s beautiful voice.

Another voice stirred her from her sleep.

“Wife, there is a Human in my bed.”

“Mhm.”

“Why is there a Human in my bed?”

“Because she walked over and fell asleep upon it.”

Nemel opened a cranky eye and immediately regretted it. Not ten centimetres from her face was a nose with twitching whiskers and a face full of big, pointy teeth.

She leapt up onto the mattress with a shriek and pointed a finger.

“?Magic Ar–”

Dame Verilyn gently took Nemel’s hand in hers.

“Good morning, Nemel.”

And just like that, her spell was interrupted. Still, Nemel calmed at the sight of Dame Verilyn’s warm smile.

“Good…good morning.”

“Did you rest well?” Dame Verilyn asked, “I was perhaps a bit demanding of you last night. If it is required, you may rest a while longer.”

“N-no, it’s fine. I–”

Now more aware of her surroundings, she noticed the overcast skies through the window.

“What time is it?”

“It is three hours after dawn,” Dame Verilyn replied. “The early morning markets should be closing now, so Master Chiru’s apprentices should be readying his stand for the day.”

Nemel usually rose before dawn. Highway patrols started about an hour before traffic started moving, so she had to ready herself quite early. She had retired late last night and she had woken up even later. Her sleep had been strangely restful as well: with giant rats on the floor beside the bed, there was no way that could happen.

Unless...

She frowned, trying to recall what happened. The last thing she remembered was the comforting caress of the Dragon’s voice.

“…did you put me to sleep?” Nemel asked.

“You seemed to be having trouble,” Dame Verilyn answered, “so I decided to lend you some assistance.”

“But that’s…”

Illegal.

It was technically an attack. By Imperial Law, she could face a hefty fine for assaulting an officer of the Imperial Air Service.

“If it was unwelcome, I apologise…”

“It wasn’t exactly unwelcome,” Nemel withdrew her hand, “but it would be proper to ask first. Thank you, though – it really did help.”

“I see.”

Dame Verilyn turned around to usher the giant rat away – whose name was supposed to be something like ‘Zoo-Chi-Roo’ – and Nemel stepped down off of the bed, looking around for a mirror. The room did not appear to have one, but she found a Trooper’s Towel folded on the table. She looked over at Dame Verilyn.

“Did you leave this out for me?”

“You may use it if you wish.”

As she fixed up her uniform, Nemel slowly digested the meaning behind their exchange. She was a Noble, a Wizard, and a solider and she discerned many veiled messages in the Frost Dragon’s words and actions.

Nemel thought herself a fundamentally good person. She liked to believe in people; liked to think well of those with whom she interacted. If it was up to her, she would give everyone the benefit of the doubt. She knew better than that, but she still wanted the world to be a better place than it was.

An imperial aristocrat could not afford this kind of thinking. Neither could a member of the Imperial Air Service. Every day, her work revealed people for what they were.

Many would lie if they thought it would benefit them in some way. Some would do anything if they thought they could get away with it. Every time she was called in by ground patrols to inspect a wagon or investigate a group of travellers, the story tended to be the same.

They feigned ignorance; pretending innocence before the ground patrols composed of regular infantry and scouts. Then they saw her Hippogriff descending and she could see their masks break as they realised that their bluff had been called – that a mage armed with the spells required to inspect their manifests was on her way. One that could dispel their flimsy attempts at deception and communicate with distant authorities to investigate their identities and activities.

Nemel knew that most people were fine – that the ground forces only called down an air patrol if they had good reason to suspect and expend mana to confirm those suspicions – but she still felt sad every time it happened. Sad and disappointed.

Despite the politics and scheming of those with power, the Empire was a good place for its citizens. The Imperial Administration worked hard to make it work. As did the Imperial Army, the ministries and all of the other institutions. People worked hard and if only the few bad apples would make an honest effort, the Empire would be an even better place.

As such, Nemel wanted to believe that Dame Verilyn was a good person. She was a Knight who was gentle, beautiful and kind, just like the ones from the minstrels’ tales. It was true that she had broken the law, but she had done so with benevolent intent.

It might have even been because she was from a place that had adopted the laws of Re-Estize. Everyone – be they members of the Academy, the Army, or the Nobility – was disparaging of the Kingdom on the other side of the Azerlisia Mountains. Her instructors would always say things like ‘their nobles can’t even tell the difference between a Flare spell and a Fireball’ but was that even possible?

Surely not. The Imperial Magic Academy tried to instil their students with a sense of pride in the Empire, but Nemel didn’t think that it was nice to tear others down simply to prop oneself up. The Empire had plenty of real achievements to be proud of.

Dragons were known to be wise, powerful creatures who used magic as simply as breathing, so that might have been the reason. Something like sleep magic to knock out Nemel Gran was probably child’s play to a Dragon strong enough to wipe out the entire Imperial Air Service.

This thought brought her to the other, darker side of things that she didn’t like. Everything that Dame Verilyn did could be interpreted as an exercise of power. She was an official from the Sorcerous Kingdom: a nation of monsters ruled by an Undead sovereign.

Nemel had heard the stories. Of the Sorcerer King and his spell that had massacred the poor Royal Army of Re-Estize. That same Sorcerer King then went to fight the Martial Lord in the Arwintar Arena and won – he was an arcane caster just like her, dammit! The Emperor had capitulated shortly after, and now the Empire was a client state.

The Sorcerer King and his representatives were absolute: this was a matter of Imperial Law. A commoner might turn around and say ‘Dame Verilyn isn’t representing the Sorcerer King’ but it didn’t work that way. In any nation, an official was an individual invested with certain powers. Those powers ultimately stemmed from the head of state or governing body, so an official of the Sorcerous Kingdom represented the power of the Sorcerer King. It was not a relationship that any Noble in their right mind would take lightly.

Dame Verilyn might have broken the law to see what the Empire would do about it, and Nemel didn’t know what the correct answer was. If Nemel didn’t arrest her, it would make the Empire look weak. Not weak in terms of de facto power, but weak in the sense that they would be seen as a nation that did not possess the will to uphold its own laws. It would be a blow to imperial prestige and the Empire would fall in the Sorcerous Kingdom’s estimation.

If Nemel did try to arrest her, Dame Verilyn might transform into a Frost Dragon right inside their room saying ‘Hoh…it seems the Empire doesn’t take its subservience seriously’ and fly off to destroy the entire nation. Dragons were known for their pride and it was entirely possible. Nemel Gran would be responsible for the destruction of the Baharuth Empire and the death of over eight million innocent souls.

This was too big for her. What did General Ray expect her to do? Well, no, that much was obvious. The General wanted to ingratiate himself with the Sorcerous Kingdom, and he expected Nemel to do ‘her part’. If the Sorcerous Kingdom’s representative had been a man, General Ray would have even ordered her to go so far as to seduce the representative and get herself pregnant with his children to create a tangible connection.

Children with a monster. Could that even happen? Not that it mattered. She would be told to try and try and try again until she was ruined and discarded. Nemel had no way to resist – House Gran was a minor house and they couldn’t oppose an Imperial General. She didn’t have any powerful allies to rely on.

Many of her classmates were already manoeuvring themselves under one faction or the other, but Nemel disliked intrigue and thought to stay out of any power struggles if possible. ‘The only way to win the game was to not play’, she thought, but, as she was finding out right now, all that did was make her powerless.

Fine, be that way. I might not like it, but I can play that game, too.

General Ray probably thought her the perfect pawn: noble born with no connections of note. But he had screwed up. There was a connection right in front of her – one more powerful than anything in the Baharuth Empire.

She finished fixing up her appearance and turned to Dame Verilyn with the perfect poise of an Imperial Noble.

“Dame Verilyn,” Nemel said, “would you like to continue from where we left off last night?”

“That would be wonderful,” Dame Verilyn replied, “but it will have to wait. There’s a whole day of work ahead of us.”

“Of course,” Nemel nodded. “Might I ask where we are headed?”

“The market plaza in the southeastern quarter.”

The forge plaza…but why?

In this region of the world, the wind blew from north to south. Thus, every city had industrial quarters somewhere on its southern end. Nemel recalled the stated purpose of Dame Verilyn’s visit. The more she thought about it, the more suspicious it seemed. There was no reason for a Dragon to be interested in logistics, economies and all that. Also, the Sorcerous Kingdom was so unfathomably powerful that the Empire’s meagre offerings would hardly be of note.

The powerful preferred agents who were attentive, discerning and discreet. It wouldn’t do for Nemel to keep asking questions. For now, Dame Verilyn appeared to have accepted her as the ‘attaché’ that General Ray had dispatched to attend to her. She could figure out what was really going on as time passed and she proved her worth.

She followed Dame Verilyn and the ratman down the stairs and out of the inn. Puddles covered the streets of Engelfurt, but the rains had subsided to a bare drizzle. Things were as busy as one could expect out of a city that had been stripped of half of its livelihood, and the chilly weather made the citizens’ movements brisk.

A half dozen steps down the street, Dame Verilyn held out her hand. Nemel stared down at it uncomprehendingly.

“You’ll lose track of me otherwise,” the Dragon Knight explained. “Also, I believe you have an Invisibility item.”

“I do,” Nemel replied, “but why?”

Were they already on their way to spy on something? She wasn’t sure how far she could go with this…

“I would like to observe the people of this city and their usual behaviour,” Dame Verilyn said, “but this is decidedly difficult when the entire street is staring at me. I will be concealing my presence and you will look very strange holding your hand with nothing.”

Did that make any sense? Maybe it did. She was a foreign agent that needed to learn the behaviour of the locals so she could blend in…but if she could already conceal herself she could find out anything she wanted and go anywhere she pleased…

Nemel resisted the urge to scratch her head in confusion. She was a Wizard, not a spy. The closest thing to spying that she did was cast Divination-school spells.

She gripped Dame Verilyn’s hand tightly and activated her Invisibility cloak. They slowed their pace until they trailed ten metres behind the ratman. Passers-by gave the Demihuman a wide berth while eyeing him curiously.

Is she seeing how people react to Demihumans? Checking what sort of reception the Sorcerous Kingdom’s minions will be exposed to by using this one as a test subject?

Was that a mean thing to do? No, they were probably working together. The ratman didn’t seem to defer to Dame Verilyn at all, so maybe he was a Knight, too. A ratman Knight. Or maybe a ratman Lord?

They continued southwards. Nemel found herself praying that nothing bad would happen to the ratman even though she hated rats. Her nervousness rose whenever they passed a knight patrol. Some of the men she knew as she often stayed at the Engelfurt garrison while going back and forth on her patrols over the Katze Marches.

Knights on garrison duty were civil enough, but would that civility extend to nonhumans? It wasn’t as if nonhumans were prohibited from being in the Empire, but they still weren’t treated the same way that Humans were. That he was a race unknown to the city was fortunate since it probably earned him more curiosity than anything else: if he were a Goblin or a Skeleton wandering the streets, the knights would have definitely attacked.

Fortunately, they made it to the plaza without incident. He came up to the stand where his fellows were working.

“Master Chiru,” one of them asked, “where is your wife?”

“Eh?”

Master Chiru spun around, his beady eyes looking every which way. Dame Verilyn released Nemel’s hand and the ratman turned towards them.

“She is right here?” Master Chiru said.

“She was not here when you arrived,” the apprentice told him.

“Do not be silly,” Master Chiru waved a paw, “she has been with me the whole time.”

Nemel glanced at Dame Verilyn. Rather than saying anything or putting on some innocent expression, the Dragon walked away and started to circle the tent behind the stand. Nemel stepped quickly to catch up to her.

“What’s going on now?” She asked.

“I am making sure the tent is set up properly and the surroundings are secure.”

Was there something important in the tent? The stand appeared to have precious ores and gemstones on display, as well as mineral reagents for alchemy and enchanting. It was honestly a nice setup: highly visible with a touch of class that managed to not be out of place for a market in an industrial quarter. There was a degree of comfort to it that made other merchants at their stalls look on with envy.

The only problem was that it was being run by ratmen. Any interest that the stall attracted was immediately cancelled out by faces that still made Nemel itch to smack them with a shoe.

When Dame Verilyn finished her inspection, she seemed to collect herself. Nemel tensed. It appeared that her real work was about to begin.