Long Live the Emperor: Chapter 17 (Patreon)

Finding Clover’s hut proved to be quite the challenge. All Alvin had to go by was a verbal description and Clover’s own unreliable description. Fortunately, the two of them didn’t mind riding hard, and Mable had already scouted the area surrounding East Water prior to her force’s invasion, so there were only a few places to search.

They eventually found a hut that vaguely matched what Alvin thought it should look like. The trail was too narrow for the horses, so they left their mounts standing along the edge of the road and headed in on foot.

“This looks like the place,” Alvin said. Mable nodded in silence. She’d been quiet since Alvin told her where they were really going.

The hut itself was a tiny round thing sitting against a large sheer rock that formed one of the walls. The rest of the structure was wattle and daub, though it must have been put together years ago. It had been painted white once upon a time, but the moss had long since spread from the rock to the rest of the structure, and now some vines from the nearby forest had joined it.

The garden nearby had also been left to run wild, though the vegetables and berries growing there were flourishing surprisingly well despite the chaos. Alvin thought Clover might have something to do with that.

“Wait.” Alvin held up a hand as they entered they approached the hut. There was something wrong with the ground here.

“What is it?” Mabel asked.

“I’m sensing magic.”

“Is it your demon friend?” Mabel’s hand darted to the hilt of her sword, and she placed her other hand on the scabbard so she could draw it at a moment’s notice.

“No, this is something else,” Alvin replied.

He took a knee near the grass, and the moment he did, something as thick as his wrist and made of wood jumped from the ground, lunging straight for his throat.

“Aldrich, look out!” Mabel shouted. Her sword was in her hand, and she swung at the thing that had just attacked him.

Scrambling backward, Alvin realized it was a vine. The very same vine that had sprawled along the hut moments before.

“Demon possessed!” Mabel yelled. “Grab my spare dagger, Aldrich. We’re going to have to fight our way through!”

“I have a better idea. Just buy me a moment to focus,” Alvin said. He closed his eyes and did his best to slip into the Dreamrealm. If falling asleep had been hard when his hand throbbed in pain had been difficult, this was on an entirely new level. He had to focus, despite the danger.

“Aldrich, what are you closing your eyes for? Aldrich, we need to--“

Alvin shut the world out, and everything faded away. A sheet of black like the night replaced it all, and Alvin’s mind struggled to push through. Like parting a veil, the Dreamrealm opened up to him again.

He wasn’t standing around the ruined castle anymore, but instead kneeling in the grass around a hut that looked surprisingly similar to the one he remembered from the waking world. The structure before Alvin looked like what the hut might look like if it were abandoned and left for nature to reclaim for a hundred years. And after that, the plants had simply decided to start growing into the shape the hut had once taken. The supporting pillars had been replaced by living trees, branches interwoven to build walls. Moss and flowers covered the roof instead of thatch.

And crawling over it all was that same vine. Only here in the Dreamrealm, it didn’t look like it did in the waking world. Here the vine was covered in eyes and scales like it was some elongated snake, but instead of a body, every bit of it was comprised of heads.

It was grotesque and fearsome all at once, and like in the real world, it was wrapping itself around his throat here as well. In fact, in the Dreamrealm, its grip around his throat seemed even tighter. He would need to do something about that soon.

Nearby, he felt a shadow of a presence looming over him. At first, it was just a phantom sensation he could barely perceive, but the more he focused, the easier she came into clarity. That was Mabel standing there, hacking at the demon-possessed vine there in the real world. She was so distant from the Dreamrealm that she seemed hardly here at all, but Alvin could see her, and the demon vine was wrapping itself around her legs just as it was wrapping itself around his throat.

Alvin reached up with his hand. The demon was softer here in its native environment without a body as tough as wood and bark. He might be able to tear through it, given time. He tried that at first. Tearing and tugging brought the demon’s full attention to him, and it seemed angrier than before. He tried gnawing on it with his teeth and tasted blood in his mouth. More of this, and he could cut through the thing.

But there was a faster way. He’d started a fire and burned the last demon out of his hand. He didn’t have tinder or a lighter this time, but Alvin remembered the burning sensation he’d attacked Aldrich with when they fought. Then he remembered the feeling of hot flames licking over his hand right here in the Dreamrealm. He could make that happen again. Something instinctual told him that if he called, the fire would come.

And so he called to it, and it replied.

It’s you! I knew it! You’re back!

Her voice was light and cheery, though Alvin didn’t recognize it. It faded as quickly as it had come, until Alvin could hardly be sure the voice had come at all.

Then his hand burst into flames. He cried out in pain as the fire hurt just as much as when he’d burned out Magus Terrance’s curse. But he gripped the demon vine wrapped around his throat all the same and let that fire run along its length.

As though sensing his intentions, the fire tore across the demon spirit’s body like it had been thrust into a forge. The hungry, lapping flames devoured everything in sight, and for a moment, Alvin was certain he heard the same quiet voice as before, giggling just behind his ear.

The demon vine howled in pain, half its length devoured in an instant. Almost as abruptly, Alvin felt a hollow feeling deep in his chest, almost as though he’d gone a week without food. The feeling tore him from the Dreamrealm and into the waking world once again. When he opened his eyes, he saw Mabel looking down at him with an expression halfway between amazement and fear.

“Aldrich! You... you didn’t tell me you were a spirit master! How? Where did you train?” Mabel gushed, eyes wide.

Alvin realized he was holding something in his hand, the very same one that had been coated in flames back in the Dream realm. He opened his scorched fingers to find a fistful of ash, which soon blew away in the gentle breeze.

“I’m self-taught. Please don’t tell anyone,” Alvin replied.

“Of course. No wonder you wanted to save this demon! She’s yours, isn’t she?” Mabel sighed in relief. “You know, you really should have just told me you were secretly a spirit master right away! For a moment there, I was horribly worried you’d been possessed by a demon or something. You haven’t acted quite as I expected you would these past few days. But it turned out it was all because you were hiding a secret like this! Imagine that! You’re not only one of the greatest swordsmen to walk the Divine Empire, but a spirit master as well!”

A dreamy smile covered Mabel’s face, stretching from ear to ear. Alvin was glad to see the concern she’d worn for the past few minutes gone. For a while, he was starting to worry letting her in on his secret had been a mistake.

“I know a bit of magic. Nothing major. That’s how I could see the curse Magus Tarrence was trying to place on you,” Alvin explained.

“I should have guessed!” Mabel thrust her fist in the air, still giddy with herself. From the exultant look in her eyes, it almost seemed as though she’d been granted magical powers herself. “You’re amazing, Aldrich. Now, let’s go get your pet demon before Magus Tarrence steals her from you!”

Alvin chuckled softly. Clover was certainly no pet. She came and went as she pleased and did whatever she wanted. But if it made Mabel more comfortable to think that Clover was a demon under his tight control, he was happy to live with that. It wasn’t like Clover was going to complain. After all, she was the one always calling him master. Perhaps she knew they’d run into this problem eventually and that to evade factions like the Spirit Realm Monastery, she’d need to feign being under his control.

Alvin detected a few more tricks standing between him and the hut. There was a patch of tall grass that looked suspicious, and the nearby stream had a few blurry blobs in it he couldn’t make out. He wasn’t willing to risk going anywhere near either, so Alvin directed Mabel around the corner to the shutters and avoided the front door entirely.

Mabel boosted him over the ledge, and once he confirmed there was nothing demon possessed within arms reach, he pulled her over to follow him. The room they arrived in held a large cauldron, but whatever had been, it went dry long ago. It had probably belonged to the herbalist before Clover took over her body. Now that both the hut and body were under new occupancy, Clover had little need for it, and so the pot was left to rust. The entire room must have served as her medieval equivalent to a laboratory.

Shortly after entering, the entire earth around them shook like they were aboard a boat, and Mabel stumbled as Alvin helped her into the hut.

“What was that?” Mabel asked, eyes frightened.

“Felt like a minor earthquake.”

“What’s an earthquake?”

“Maybe not then.”

Alvin didn’t know how the tectonic plates lined up around East Water, but if they were on a fault line, earthquakes would be a common thing. Perhaps this was just a rare circumstance when an earthquake happened despite the lack of a fault line nearby, but someone he thought otherwise.

“We should move quickly. I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this.”

The two of them took in their surroundings and assessed the situation. They were in a cramped room with a workbench and glassware scattered about. The shelves were lined with jars labeled in writing that were crammed full of as many words as would fit on each tiny label, and several of the jars held two bundles of dried leaves or bones separated by a piece of parchment, like the herbalist who’d lived here was trying to make the most of limited resources.

“Aldrich, are these the books you were talking about?” Mabel asked as she gestured to a shelf.

A few thick tomes printed on heavy parchment sat on a shelf near the only workstation in the cramped room. One of the books detailing a recipe for incense was already on the table. Looking at it, the recipe looked like one of the incense sticks Alvin had seen in Aldrich’s books. Only this one wasn’t just an advertisement for overpriced ingredients. This had the list of ingredients themselves listed right there on the page without a bunch of blatant self promotion.

The book gave exact ratios and advice on mixing and heating too. In a way, it looked more like a cookbook than a book on magic, but Alvin knew this was exactly what he was looking for.

“Perfect!” Alvin said as he tore through the books. He wanted to leave something for Magus Terrance to burn when he finally found this place, but at the same time, he couldn’t bring himself to sacrifice any of the books. He would have to hope the mage would assume there were no books after all.

Alvin looked around for a bag but found nothing. He should have known to bring one. Grimacing, he grabbed the cauldron and flipped it upside down to let the dried crust of whatever had last been brewing in there tumble out. Presumably, the jars of things on the shelf contained either valuable ingredients or final products, so he swept those into the cauldron and then piled the books n on top of them. The things he wanted to take barely fit, but Alvin managed it.

“That’s going to be heavy. And very noticeable if you try to bring it back to the manor,” Mabel noted.

“We won’t. I’ll bury it in the woods, and we’ll come back to it after Magus Terrance leaves, and things have calmed down,” Alvin replied.

“Oh, like a treasure hunt! That sounds wonderful. Maybe you and I could run around the barony slaying bandits together with nothing but our swords and each other for company,” Mabel swooned. “That sounds terribly romantic.”

It sounded terribly bloody and suicidal to Alvin, especially since he wasn’t the master swordsman Aldrich was. But he’d leave breaking that news to Mabel for another day.

The hut was a tiny thing, so there was only room for one other room in the entire structure. That room turned out to be a bedroom, and thankfully the two of them spotted Clover in it.

“She’s here.” Alvin breathed a sigh of relief. If they hadn’t found Clover here, he wouldn’t have known anywhere else to look. Beads of sweat ran down his face as soon as he entered the room. With the wave of heat, Alvin expected a fully stoked fireplace, but there was none there. “Whew, this room is hot.”

“Good, let’s grab your demon and... uh...” Mabel stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Clover sprawled out on the bed.

The blankets were scattered around the room, so Clover lay on top of the bed of straw naked and curled in on herself for warmth, which was odd considering how hot the room was. The sun through the room’s only window ran down her lovely hair, tucked neatly beneath her despite hanging loose. At first glance, she was extraordinarily beautiful, but at second glance, she was more than that. Every part of her had a carefully sculpted look that was too perfect to be real, like she was an artist’s rendition of a sleeping beauty rather than a living woman.

“Come on, we need to grab her and get out of here,” Alvin said as he knelt by Clover’s bed. He grabbed her shoulder and shook it gently as he tried to wake her.

“Aldrich, that’s not a demon. That’s a naked woman. I think we’re breaking and entering,” Mabel whispered.

“This is Clover,” Alvin said in reply, speaking in a normal tone.

“Why is she naked?” Mabel asked. “I mean, I guess it’s her business what she does in her own home, but...”

“She doesn’t seem to like wearing clothes much.” Alvin shrugged. He leaned in close to her head and listened for her breathing. Each breath came slow and steady. She was just fast asleep.

Mabel crossed her arms. “Fine. Wake up your pet demon that just happens to look like an incredibly beautiful woman.” She curled her lip, and from the look on her face, she wasn’t happy about this development. She must have expected Clover to look like that vine thing that attacked them or some other creature.

He’d have to smooth things over with her later. But for now, Clover needed to wake up.

“Clover. Clover? Clover! We need to get you out of here,” Alvin said.

Clover didn’t stir.

“Looks like she’s a deep sleeper,” Mabel said as she loomed over the two of them. “Is she normally like this?”

“No, when she was in my room, she hardly slept at all.”

Mabel scowled and raised an eyebrow. “Really? Do tell me more.”

“Ah... well...” Alvin realized he’d have to answer this question very carefully. “She’s been teaching me Dreamwalking. Remember how I spotted Magus Terrance’s attempt to curse you? That was because Clover showed me how.”

Some of the tension between Mabel’s brows eased, and Alvin knew he’d said the right thing.

“Let me wake her up,” Mabel said as she saw Alvin’s constant nudging of her shoulder was accomplishing nothing. Alvin saw the scowl on her face turn into a sly smile, and she pulled Clover’s arms aside so she could grab either of the sleeping girl’s nipples. “Up you go, you little slut!” Mabel said as she dug her fingers in and pinched.

But Clover didn’t stir in the slightest, even from that.

“Huh. I know that would have woken me up,” Mabel said as she pulled her hands away.

Alvin grabbed Clover’s head in his hands and shook it gently. “Come on, Clover. Wake up!”

“You don’t have to be so gentle with her. Here.” Mabel grabbed Clover’s side and rolled her onto her belly. Then she jumped on top of Clover’s back and slapped her palms against Clover’s bare ass like she was beating a drum.

“Up you go!” Mabel shouted as her hands left a pair of red marks on Clover’s ass. “Hey, this is kind of fun. But heavens above, your pet demon knows how to sleep. Let’s just throw her over your shoulder, and you can carry her off like some sort of captive thrall. That sounds like fun.”

But Alvin shook his head. If Clover wasn’t waking up, there was probably a reason. “Something must be wrong. I have to enter the Dreamrealm again. Maybe I can find her there.”

“Okay. I’ll watch your back.” Mabel drew up her sword and took up a position by the door.

Alvin placed a hand on Clover. When he caught Mabel watching him out of the corner of her eye, he shifted the hand up to the small of her back. Mabel tried to scowl at him, but he saw it turn into a giggle just before she turned away.

Alvin closed his eyes as he knelt behind the bed. He focused on calming himself once again. With so much practice, slipping into the Dreamrealm came quicker than ever before.

He was sitting inside the same cabin he’d seen before. Or at least, he assumed it was the same cabin as the one he’d seen before. Things had changed since his last visit, though. In the scant few minutes they’d spent tearing through and looting the laboratory, someone had knocked down the walls, and now fire raged in all directions. The earth rumbled and churned beneath Alvin’s feet, and it seemed as though something large and hungry was trying to devour him.

In all directions, fire raged and clawed at what remained of the once-great trees that had made up the walls of the hut. Already there was little left of them but hollowed-out trunks. The flames burned so hotly that instead of great licking tongues of fire, there was simply a great hazy orange mass filling the air all around him. Alvin could feel his flesh beginning to singe and blister after mere moments of standing in the inferno. He wasn’t even at the center of it all.

But there was someone at the center of it all. Clover stood on her bed. A giant sunflower the size of her entire bedframe shot out of the ground, and she stood atop it, desperate to put some distance between her and the licking flames.

Nearby, a voice called out.

“Give it up, little demon! Surrender yourself to me, and I won’t have to destroy you!” Alvin recognized the voice. That was Magus Terrance. Of course, he was here. Alvin’s initial thought had been to look for Clover in the Dreamrealm. Since the Magus was an even more experienced Dreamwalker than Alvin was, it stood to reason that he would have come to the same conclusion.

“No!” Clover said. “My master wouldn’t like you.”

“Soon, I will be your master!” Magus Terrance snorted. “You can’t hold out much longer! Fire and earth are the bane of life. Your powers are of no use now.”

“Clover!” Alvin shouted. “I’m here!”

“Master?” Cover turned to Alvin. Her eyes lit up when she saw him. “Master!”

Note:

Had to cut it here, sorry! Otherwise, this would have been a super long chapter. I do have some fun stuff planned, though.

The voice Alvin heard will be important very soon. I know you guys are probably wondering about that.

Anyway, how are you guys feeling about the characters so far? Like them? Hate them?

Who’s the best girl so far? How do you guys feel about Mabel? Like her, hate her? Ambivalent?

Somebody said Mabel sounded like a cow name, so I might change her name in the novelization (next draft). I’m not sure if that was a criticism of the name or of the character as a whole.

In other news, we'll be at three a week until further notice. It'll be Long Live the Emperor chapters this week and maybe next week too..