RFC-ARC 5-Winter War-35 (Patreon)
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Kierra half climbs over me to see the paper better. âAggro?â
âThatâs the common name.â I take a deep breath. âTruthfully, youâre not supposed to say its true name. It hasnât been proven but most summoners think that it has some way of knowing when someone speaks it and can find you.â
âAre you scared, Lou?â
âNo, but I donât blame anyone who is. This is nothing like my unreasonable aversion to royalty. If you donât know what youâre dealing with, Aggro can be worse than deadly.â I take a deep breath.
âIâm only going to say itâs name once. Aggrababoleth the Many.â
After uttering the feared name, I focus on my senses, ready to detect the slightest change around me. I doubt anything could sneak past Geneva and Bell but the caution is deeply engrained.
âAnd what is this Aggraââ
âAh! Donât just say its name!â
She narrows her eyes.
I point a finger at her. âIâm serious. This thing is bad news. For anyone.â Hmph. I swear. Itâs gotten better but this elf has no respect for the art. If she werenât married to me, who managed to snag Geneva, sheâd probably think the lot of us to be a bunch of idiots yanking things they donât understand from places they understand even less.
âLook, Aggro isâŠwell, to be clear, no one knows what Aggro is. No one has ever documented its main body. What we know is that when someone forms a contract with it, it infects them with a worm-like parasite that we think is an extension of it. The worm allows the summoner to communicate with Aggro, who is smart. Dangerously smart. An idiot suddenly becomes a genius overnight because heâs got a millennia-old being whispering in his ear.
âBut thatâs not the scariest part.â I shiver. âAggroâŠthe parasite takes root in a casterâs core and feeds on their mana, growing larger. Greedy bastard takes everything. The hosts canât cast anymore, but in return, Aggro changes them. Makes them stronger. Makes them intoâŠsomething else.â
âAh. It lures them in with power and warps them to its own agenda.â
âNo. Aggro leaves their minds intact and never goes against their will. Thatâs why summoners continue to make contracts with the damn thing. All the changes he makes are at the summonerâs behest. They get to rebuild themselves however they want. Become handsome enough to have women falling all over them. Strong enough to crush a manâs head like itâs a rotten vegetable. Aggro just insists on one thing.â
I canât hold back a shudder. âHe takes one of their organs and turns it into aâŠthing capable of asexually creating more of the parasites. And those parasites infect others. Aggro only targets intelligent species and he doesnât treat those without a contract to it kindly. They become extensions of that creatureâs will, puppets whose only purpose is to continue spreading its influence.
âAggro is scarily good at blending in. He can read the memories of his hosts and imitates them. Itâs impossible to tell whoâs a meat puppet unless the changes are extreme. And they can get extreme. Misshapen fifteen feet tall abominations that come out when Aggro stops being subtle.â
âI am not hearing anything that sounds dangerous.â
âIt took over a city.â
She blinks at me. âA city?â
âMmhm. Fortitude, the oldest city in the kingdom. Infected everyone in it, built an army, and declared the city and its surrounding lands a sovereign state. The crown sent its royal knights of course and Aggro marched abominations to meet them. It was a blood bath. They blew the city to hell just to find that it had built a whole other city underground.â
âAnd your king simply let an invader claim a piece of his kingdom?â Her scoff clearly says what she thinks about this.
âThey had to assault an army of monsters in narrow tunnels. For every meter they claim, Aggroâs minions burrowed ten meters deeper. For every tunnel they collapsed, three more appeared. They tried burning them, it built minions immune to fire. They tried drowning them, it built minions that could swim. You see where this is going.â
Kierra licks her lips. âWhat an exciting enemy.â
âExciting? Thatâs one way to describe it. Things got a lot less exciting and a whole lot more scary when the creature drafted a ceasefire agreement. And a whole lot scarier than that when the crown accepted it. Before you go declaring all of humanity to be cowards, the peace came with several benefits. Aggro is a hell of a crafter, for one.â
âThat sounds like excuses.â
âIt is what it is. Keep fighting and we throw thousands of lives away to essentially clip Aggroâs toenails. Stop fighting, all those lives get to keep living and we get quality goods.â
âI would have thrown every single one of my soldiers at this creature if thatâs what it took.â
We stare at each other. Hm. Sheâs truly offended by this. I suppose it goes against everything she believes in. Everything her people believe in. Saints, another reason not to proclaim myself a diplomat. The elves will walk all over us. I donât mother-in-law is one for peaceful negotiations.
âDo you want to hear about the last one?â
âHmph. Perhaps not. It seems humanity will quake before a sparrow that chirps at them too strongly.â
âI can name three elementals that look like common birds that can kill a man in under ten seconds.â My wife isnât impressed. âWell, youâll like this next one. Another ban I completely support. Only crazy people form contracts with drakkons.â
Kierra sits up quickly, jumping to her feet. âThere are people who have dragons as servants?â
Oh, this is the first hint of worry sheâs shown. The parasite that enslaves you to an ancient abomination is nothing but a flying lizard terrifies you? Donât get me wrong, Iâm reasonably afraid of the sky sovereigns myself. My gripe is that no elemental should be underestimated.
âNot dragons. Drak-kons.â I sigh. âLike I said, only crazy people contract them. Theyâre powerful. They donât have the pure affinities all dragons have but theyâre larger and stronger. Thereâs a sure way to tell a drakkon from a dragon. Dragons have horns, drakkons have whiskers.
âIt wouldnât be a problem if they were just powerful. That thing you said earlier? Nothing could be further from the truth. Drakkons donât have masters. They contract servants. Worse, the damn lizards are hellbent on conquering any realm theyâre summoned to.â
Dragons are born strong. The uncontested apex species in the world. They have incredible amounts of mana, powerful bodies, and are highly intelligent. Because of their lofty position amongst the races of the world, they donât socialize, or even communicate, with the other races of the world. They may be powerful, but no one needs to be afraid of them. Even during the Great War, it wasnât the dragons that caused the upheaval, but their lesser draconid cousins.
Drakkons are the exact opposite. They live to subjugate weaker races and claim new territory. Like a dog that canât help but growl at every mutt it sees and piss on every street corner.
âBy the way, the dragon Dunwayne killed was actually a drakkon.â Which makes it a lot less impressive but thatâs not the reason the story was changed. Who could sleep easy knowing that anyone with the right knowledge could summon a magical behemoth bent on conquest?
âA drakkon hasnât been summoned that could be reasoned with. Tivorex is the only one someone managed to kill. Normally, someone finds the summoner and kills them.â I rub my face, feeling a wave of exhaustion. âIf Fen is right, one of these is the real target. Golden hens are bad but can be contained. No one cares about the damn snake. Theyâve been dealing with succubi for years and weâve backed off them. Aggro is horrifying but a known entity.â
I pop to my feet, feeling a sudden urge to pace. âThe only one that makes sense and that could prompt such drastic action is a drakkon. Thatâs a kingdom-ending threat. Perhaps a threat to all of humanity. But this still doesnât make sense.â
âI agree.â My wife takes advantage of my vacant seat to stretch out. Not even the tantalizing sight of her dress riding up her supple thighs is enough to distract me from my troubling thoughts. âDunwayne already slew one of these fake sovereigns.â
âIn the prime of his life. I donât doubt heâs powerful but heâs not the spry young man he used to be.â A legend he may be but in the end, the Harvest Hero is still human. Heâs still mortal. âThere are plenty of strong casters throughout the kingdom. The problem is that drakkons fly. It takes someone with a powerful wind or null caster to counter its wings. All the power in the world is useless as long as its stuck on the ground.â
I continue to pace in front of the couch, thoughts whirring. I wondered why this decree came out of nowhere. Maybe it hadnât? Maybe the crown drafted this decree, targeting a specific group, and used it to threaten them. A group of summoners? If so, a drakkon is a great counter threat. This decree would give them the excuse they need to go in swords drawn.
But who? There are no independent groups of summoners powerful enough to make themselves that kind of threat. Thatâs my whole problem! Summoners are rare beasts, a dying breed. Who is it? Who could it possibly be? Why have I never heard of them?!
âThere is one more letter, Lou.â
âDonât remind me,â I snap. Saints know what could be in the last one. I almost donât want to find out but if itâs anything like the other two, I canât afford not to read it.
Letting out a deep breath, I pick up the last envelope.