Long Live the Emperor: Chapter 5 (Patreon)

Any red-blooded man would feel blood flowing from his brain to elsewhere at the sight of a naked woman on his own bed. Alvin felt his hands creeping up his sides and a smile coming to his face.

But then he heard a little voice shouting in the back of his mind, several voices, really.

Some told him to pounce on her right then and there. But another more sensible series of voices told him to hold on. This wasn’t his body nor his world. He needed to do the smart thing, and sadly, in this case, the smart thing to do was to politely decline.

“If you want to be punished, you’ll have to seek out my guards. Maybe they can issue you a fine or something,” Alvin chuckled.

The young woman pouted. Alvin picked her dress up off the ground and tossed it to her.

“Aww.”

Alvin rolled his eyes. “A word of advice, if you don’t mind. This is the sort of thing you do after you’re going steady with a guy. As it is, you’re just breaking and entering.”

In a blink, the young woman was on her feet and dressed again. He didn’t even see her put the clothes on. It was like they’d simply materialized around her.

She shook her head sadly as she headed for Aldrich’s window.

“I thought you would be more fun, but you’re just as boring as your other half...”

“Don’t jump out there! We’re two stories off--“ Alvin rushed to the window, but the young woman ignored him, unlatched the glass-laden shutters, and dropped right down to the flower beds below. Alvin was afraid to look for fear that he’d see a limp and broken pile of bones and flesh where a beautiful woman had fallen moments before, but instead, he saw nothing.

Nothing at all.

The flowers swayed gently in the breeze. Beyond them, the grass rustled, and past them, the trees shook free a few more seeds. There was no sign of a young woman passing through, falling from his window or not.

Alvin looked back and forth, but there was still nothing. Even when he went outside to get a closer look, there was no sign of her.

“Huh...” Alvin scratched his head.

Something irked him, and he remembered her last words.

You’re just as boring as the other one.

He ran his fingers through his hair. She knew Aldrich, and she knew he wasn’t Aldrich.

That meant she was in on the secret. No, this was bigger than that.

There was no logical explanation for her suddenly vanishing. Which meant she’d done something that should be impossible.

In other words, she’d done something magical.

He combed through the flower beds one last time, hoping for a sign of the young woman. He only had a few theories, but she could confirm a lot of questions for him if only he’d thought to ask them.

Judging by the three books in Aldrich’s library, he couldn’t have learned his Dreamwalking magic from them. If she had any powers of her own, she'd be far more useful to him than any pile of dusty books.

He would have to walk around town again and hope to see her again then. Maybe he could ask around to find out who she was and where she lived.

To that end, there was one other person in the manor he’d been meaning to see.

Finding his maid proved rather difficult. He found signs of her work all over. All the guest rooms were clean and tidy. He didn’t know if there was anyone staying in them, but they’d still been dutifully dusted and cleaned just in case that changed.

The floors had been swept clean of any dust or dirt, and the only debris on the floor was what Alvin himself had tracked in when he ran outside to look for a nearly naked woman in his flowerbeds. He felt a bit bad about that, so he picked up the long rug spanning the hallway kicked swept everything under that.

As though detecting him making a mess, his maid from earlier appeared right at that moment with a broom in hand.

“My lord, please drop the rug. I will take care of it,” the maid said as she jumped out from behind him.

Alvin did his best to avoid jumping out of his skin.

“Ah, you! Right, I was just looking for you. Where would your mother happen to be?” Alvin said.

“Mom? She should be in the kitchen preparing lunch like usual. It will be fish again. If you want something else, I’m afraid it’s too late for lunch. You might be able to change her mind for dinner, though!”

Alvin thanked her for the help, still feeling a bit embarrassed at being caught sweeping dirt under the rug. The maid took it in stride and swept her simple bundle of straw along the floor to guide the mess to the nearest door.

***

Alvin followed his nose to find the kitchen. The smell of hot food in the oven was distinctive enough to lead him where he wanted to go.

He found the cook to be a larger woman who otherwise looked much like her daughter, the maid. She was knuckles deep in a pile of dough the size of Alvin’s head when he saw her, and she was considerably less shy than her daughter about insisting on Aldrich’s help.

“Ah, Lord Aldrich. Grab a pinch of salt for me, would you? It’s in the jar over there. I would do it myself, but my hands are covered in dough,” the cook explained.

Alvin found the jar full of salt. It was the coarsest, roughest stuff he’d ever seen, and getting a pinch of it first involved bashing a picking of it off a chunk the size of his palm. With a few tips from the cook and a nose pointed at the mortar and pestle, he soon succeeded in obtaining a pinch of salt and tossed it in the dough.

“Something seems off about you today, Lord Aldrich,” the cook said suspiciously.

“About that... how much of my recent affairs are you aware of?” Alvin asked. “Specifically, about my affairs.”

“Ah, I see. That damn blasted shrine maiden talked you into getting possessed by a demon. What’d it do to you while it possessed your body? Did it stick something up your ass? Demons love to go for the ass. If there’s something up there that isn’t supposed to be, then we can call--“

“There’s nothing up my ass!” Aldrich cut her off abruptly. Screw this. He had to just come out and say it. “I’m not Aldrich! I’m Alvin, the person he switched places with.”

The cook backed away a few paces, hands reaching behind her to cover her ass.

“Y-you’re a demon?”

“No, I’m a human from another world, and I need your help to figure out how to avoid getting Aldrich in trouble while he’s using my body and I’m using his.”

It took a while convincing the cook that he wasn’t after either her ass or Aldrich’s. She only stopped guarding her behind when he held his hands up at his side innocently, though she still swept the rolling sitting on the counter out of his reach. Only then was she willing to answer his questions.

“How about the basics first,” Alvin began. “Who are you? The maid? Aldrich? Anyone I should know in the manor?”

“I am Bertha, your cook, head maid, and Castillian. The whole manor is rather empty, what with the war on and all,” Bertha the cook explained.

“War?” Alvin asked.

Bertha clapped a hand over her mouth. “Did I say war? Haha... I meant... boar! Yes, boar! Everyone went on a boar hunt last week and died. It was a terrible tragedy.”

“A boar hunt?” Alvin raised an eyebrow skeptically.

“Yep! A terrible, terrible boar hunt.”

“Really? And everyone died?”

“It was a great tragedy. Aldrich is still in mourning. We only barely managed to put the beast down in the end.”

Alvin looked around the room. “I don’t see any boar meat around the kitchen.”

“We ate it all that day.”

He sensed Bertha wasn’t going to tell him any more, but that was alright. He had plenty of other questions to ask her.

“What about the rest of the people in the manor?” Alvin asked, and Bertha wiped the sweat from her brow at the change of subject. The tension in her shoulders eased considerably.

“My daughter’s name is Ella. He’s been cleaning up after Aldrich for the past couple of years. She’s a sweet girl, and truth be told, she’s always had more than a bit of a crush on Aldrich, so don’t you go using his body to break her heart! The poor girl knows she can’t marry into the peerage, so there’s no point in raising her hopes. As for people outside the manor, you shouldn’t worry too much about them. The town was actually just a tiny village before Aldrich came to power. All the traders, merchants, and craftspeople who’ve settled down in the last few years came because Aldrich removed all taxes and pretty much let them do whatever they wanted. It was rather impressive how many people were flocking to East Water. Much longer, and we would have had to start calling the town a city! Alas, after the war began -- ah, that is to say, after the boar hunt began, many grew disheartened and flighty and abandoned East Water for wherever they’d come from.”

“Sounds like they were happy to take advantage of a good situation, but they didn’t really plan to stay. They probably just declared East Water their temporary headquarters to take advantage of the low taxes,” Alvin ran his hand along his chin.

“Exactly!” Bertha nodded vigorously. “I told Lord Aldrich that those merchant guilds were just taking advantage of him! Those massive shipping and merchant guilds were the best customers in town, though, and them buying up land from the lord was our greatest source of revenue. Sadly it means the baron’s holdings are considerably smaller than they used to be. The town is looking nicer though. The best buildings in East Water were built by those merchant guilds. Sadly the only ones that aren’t empty these days are the ones waiting for Aldrich to repay his loans to them. Everybody else fled.”

“After the boar hunt.”

“The terrible, tragic boar hunt.” Bertha clasped her hands and closed her eyes as if in prayer.

A long stretch of silence passed between them. Eventually, Alvin sensed he wasn’t going to get any more out of Bertha. He turned his attention to someone else he wanted to know about.

“I wandered the town for a little while and came across an odd young woman carrying a flower basket. She acted like she knew me, and when I returned to Aldrich’s bedroom, I found her waiting there for me. Does Aldrich know her?”

“Ah, Clover! She’s made a nuisance of herself here in the manor before. She is the only one of the townsfolk who doesn’t mind her manors. She’s gotten a bit too personal with Lord Aldrich if you don’t mind me saying so.” Bertha shook her head, and her closed fist pounded into her open palm.

“So Aldrich does know her?” Alvin asked.

“I’ve looked into her and can’t find out where she’s staying. It’s rather odd. She just seems to pop out of nowhere now and again.” Bertha shrugged.

“Does anyone in town know her other than Aldrich?”

“Oh yeah, she’s some sort of herbalist dreamwalker. She doesn’t charge for her services either, though she’s unreliable about handing them out. A lot of us think the poor girl is touched in the head. She doesn’t quite act like a normal person. Hells, maybe she’s demon-possessed. It’s more likely than succeeding as a dreamwalker, after all.” Bertha leaned in close for a whisper. “Rumor is that her real name isn’t even Clover. It’s Agatha. She just makes everyone call her Clover.”

“I see...” Alvin nodded. He would have to find this Clover girl again and ask her a few questions himself. That would call for another tour of the town. “What was it that Aldrich had in mind for me while he was using my body?”

“Ah, that! Come along after me. He had something planned to occupy your time.” Bertha dusted off her flour-covered hands and headed for the door, beckoning for Alvin to follow her.

Note:

Alright, you guys didn’t fall for my sexy babe trap, so I have to re-outline the next couple of chapters!

It’s okay, though. I’m still getting a feel for this story and its characters. If this became a book, I’d probably condense all this stuff into two chapters or so. But it’s okay to sprawl a bit and go in circles for a while when we’re just having fun. This is a good break to take my mind off more serious work.

I have plans for the story still, but I’ve kinda lost my path from here to there.

Anything you guys want to explore in the manor/town right now? The next big plot point happens in about three days in the story, though I might accelerate that if it feels like things start to drag. Or maybe just do a timeskip and jump ahead to the next main plot point.

There are two specific scenes I want to write for this story before setting it aside to work on AA, so I'm going to get us at least to that point.