Long Live the Emperor: Chapter 22 (Patreon)

Far from East Water, sitting on an isolated hill atop a lush valley, sat a monastery with towers that stretched taller than the highest castle. The walls were made of sturdy stone and weren’t the sort of thing any ordinary prince or lord in the lands could create. It had taken many Spirit Masters and their bound demons centuries to craft these halls.

And that ancient legacy was shown on every wall. Though the monastery forbade its members from using their spirits to conjure gold for spending, it was perfectly reasonable to create a few decorations here and there with it. And so, the monastery was more richly decorated than the palace of the wealthiest noble.

Anyone else sporting that kind of wealth would just be asking for bandits and thieves to come for a visit, but that wasn’t a problem for the Spirit Realm Monastery. They were home to some of the most powerful masters of mystical forces in the known world, and they had thousands of demons bound to their service. No matter how greedy or foolish, no bandit was willing to risk a fate worth death by stealing from the monastery.

After the empire they were founded to protect dissolved into little more than a band of feuding city-states run by largely independent lords, the monastery had stayed strong. These days, they liked to think of themselves as one of the few pillars maintaining the peace. Though they’d lost their imperial charter, they never came close to running out of funds. After all, the restriction on selling gold created with magic only applied to the individual spirit masters, not the monastery itself.

Yes, with the imperial throne not nearly as powerful as it once was, the Spirit Realm Monastary found itself free to do as it pleased. The various lords of the land were more willing than ever to curry favor with the monastery in the hopes that they could secure a bit of magical power for themselves, and in doing so, they gifted the monastery just about everything it could possibly need. The Spirit Masters lived a good life filled with rich food, plentiful luxuries, and even the occasional gift of a few beautiful women.

Abbot Finnwolf had been enjoying himself with such a woman just moments ago. A lord to the north had conquered his longstanding rival at last, and after defeating her, he sent her to the monastery along with a hefty sum of gold as a gift for the monastery’s help in breaking through her castle walls. A noblewoman was a rare treat, even for the Abbot, since most of the time, lords only gave them a few spare peasant girls caught stealing bread.

“Abbot, sir, there’s a problem.” A nervous young initiate from the order swung the abbot’s door open without warning, and the abbot had to pull his trousers up in a hurry. Sometimes the special incense they used just wasn’t enough, and ancient, sacred techniques needed to be used to stimulate the mind.

“What is it, initiate? And what have your teachers told you about knocking?” The Abbot grumbled. Moments ago, he’d been dreamwalking. He’d been having these terrible premonitions as of late. There had been whispers of plots within the monastery to have him removed and replaced as Abbot.

It wasn’t terribly surprising. As much as they pretended they weren’t, the monastery had every bit as much internal politics as the courts of the most powerful lords. Perhaps more so.

“A-apologies, Abbot! I’ll knock.” The young man closed the door and proceeded to knock, which only annoyed the Abbot more.

“Out with it! What’s so important that you need to disturb me after the evening Dreamwalking meditation?”

“Sir, one of the soul lamps has gone out,” the young man nervously replied.

“Which one?” Abbot Finnwolf’s anger subsided. This truly was an important development. A soul lamp going out could only mean that one of their Spirit Masters had died while afield. They lit the soul lamps in the Dreamrealm, and they would burn for a year at least, only going out if something endangered the life of the one it was tied to.

The soul lamps were one of the ways the Spirit Realm Monastary stayed active in a dangerous and chaotic land filled with many feuding factions. There were assassins aplenty, and though the Spirit Realm Monastary often liked to portray itself as aloof from mortal affairs, they were involved enough that their agents should have likely ended up as the targets for plenty of assassination attempts. The soul lamps had been a method devised by their ancestors to protect their people from such a fate.

Knowing when an agent in the field was wounded or dying would usually provide enough clues to figure out what had happened. While it wouldn’t always lead to identifying the guilty party, it was enough to let them bring the full might of their power and influence down upon whoever was plausible enough as the culprit to serve as a scapegoat, ensuring the Spirit Realm Monastary remained feared enough that no one would dare slay one of their members.

Except now, someone had.

“Magus Terrance, Abbot.” The young man shuffled from foot to foot, clearly jittery at having to deliver such grim news.

“The younger brother of Duke Bramon?” The Abbot frowned. He’d been part of the monastery for a decade now, and he’d been a rising star among the Spirit Masters. He’d been growing influential enough that the Abbot would have been forced to give him a position of influence somewhere in the monastery. He’d been an object of mild but growing concern to the Abbot, since he hadn’t expressed any personal loyalty to the Abbot himself.

So Abbot Finnwolf greeted news of his death with mixed feelings. For one, it was good to know a potential personal problem for him had been snuffed out. But at the same time, Magus Terrance had undoubtedly been an important member of the monastery, and losing him meant losing a non-trivial asset. The Abbot had sent the man away on some fool’s errand to get him out of the picture, but he hadn’t expected the man to go and get himself killed. What a headache.

“What mission was he on?” Abbot Finnwolf asked, heaving himself to his feet.

“That’s just the thing, Abbot, sir. He was on the retrieval mission for the demon the Dreamwalkers detected. The one who they claimed was related to the demon king!”

The Abbot froze. The Dreamwalking specialists of the monastery had been prattling on about some ancient evil rising in the world again. But that wasn’t the first time they’d made such horrible predictions. The Abbot had thought it was just another trick of theirs to rally more support behind themselves and eventually oust him as Abbot and replace them with one of their own.

But now that Magus Terrance was dead, not taking their threat seriously would cast doubt on his entire style of leadership. If the Abbot didn’t play his cards right, the dead man could even end up as a martyr to rally the entire monastery against him.

The future he’d been trying to perceive was starting to make more sense. Walking the confusing maze that was the Dreamrealm was difficult enough, but divining the future required communion with some rather special spirits the monastery had locked away in their private vault long ago for just that purpose. Those bitter, hateful spirits always spoke the truth, but the visions they showed were woven into convoluted riddles even a man like the Abbot had trouble making sense of.

But he’d caught flashes here and there. Flashes of him sending an army to a distant barony and slaughtering everyone there, only to be betrayed from within the monastery and losing his position through betrayal.

But he’d also seen visions of him doing nothing, and that ended nearly as poorly. The others in the monastery questioned his valor for simply shrugging off the death of one of their own. That leverage was enough for one of the other factions to topple him and reduce him to nothing more than another elder.

This would require a measured approach. He couldn’t send his loyalists for fear of weakening his position at home, but he could use this opportunity to rid the monastery of the elders who were assembling to challenge him for his position. Yes, that would be the move. He would strip the monastery of its dissidents and send them to look for Magus Terrance’s killer. Perhaps he could get rid of a few of those pesky Dreamwalkers who insisted on constantly crying about their ancient threat and the end of the world. Besides, they were the ones who liked Terrance. They should be the ones to avenge him.

What could possibly go wrong?

Note:

Here’s a little glimpse into the Spirit Realm Monastery! It’s a bit of a shorter chapter, but I don’t really want to drag this interlude out any further. In fact, I have already trimmed it up a bit. I went back and forth on including it, but we’ve caught up with my backlog and other than some scraps from Amazon Apocalypse and some female POV writing exercises I’ve been doing this week, I’m out of content! (Don’t worry. I’ll make sure to write at least three more chapters of this over the weekend. Promise.)

I’m not sure if this is going to make it into the real story, but I figured it would be worth it to flesh some behind-the-scenes stuff out. But basically, the Spirit Realm Monastary is filled with politics behind the scenes, and their trouble will probably intersect with Alvin’s troubles soon!

I do want to include some alternate POVs in the story, since that’s really the big benefit of using third person. But I think I’ll edit those in during the next draft rather than work on it now. I’m trying to keep this version short and sweet.

Also, I’m starting to think I may have to leave all the stuff planned for the maid for the next draft as well. All the stuff she was supposed to do was related to the empire building plot lines, which are kinda non-existant in this draft. Maybe I’ll write them after we reach the end of this version in another ten chapters or so.