Law of Consequences- Chapter 8 and 9 (Patreon)

Chapter 8- Magic Fruit

When we got back, I gave Josie a quick kiss and then said; I was going exploring in the city. I just wanted to be around the people and see what we were building up.

“Don’t suppose it would do any good to insist that you need a guard.”

I smiled at her. “Of course it would. You’re my Mistress of the Wall. If you say that I need a guard, then I’ll wait, at least for a little bit, for you to grab guard.”

She smiled at me. “Just checking. Nah, go have fun. My people, Nimeera’s people, and the deputies will all be making sure you don’t get in too much trouble. Just promise me that if anything attacks you, even if you can handle it, that you’ll call for us.”

I kissed her again. “Promise.”

Blink Body

Then I was outside our house and waiting in the market. I knew the city well enough to materialize in a quiet alley behind one of the shops. I had a smile on my face. Blink Body was quickly becoming my favorite conversation. A quick way to get around was a huge advantage.

I still needed to process my gains so far. It wasn’t that I needed to do anything as much as get a better understanding of what I could do now. For the moment though, that would wait and I definitely didn’t want to stay and home. Had I done that, I knew I would have been sucked into some meeting with the newcomers.

Now, instead, I got to wander Yonderton. People regularly stopped and said hello or just waved, but no one seemed to want to engage in a prolonged conversation. I took that as a great sign. If people had been upset, I’m sure I would have heard about it. I’d need to check the city interface to see if it showed anything about morale. Based on just my observations it should be going up.

After an hour of wandering, I felt a strange sensation. I was still adapting to my improved Soul Projection and yet I immediately felt something off. There was a presence in the city that wasn’t normal. It wasn’t any of the other races, as I could now pick them out with my eyes closed.

With a quick glance to make sure no one would be hurt, I raced forward until I came up on the Ki-Infused Yombai tree. It only had a few fruit on it but each one was a treasure in many ways. Regular citizens of Olimero had no way to exceed their stat caps. Since each fruit could add ten stat points to a single stat, they were a great boon only limited by the one fruit per year and one fruit per stat limits.

The tree was breathtaking in some ways. It had grown tall and was more than fifty feet tall and had branches which spread out over top and around the nearby buildings, which had all been finished. The crews were really doing a great job here, but none of that was what caught his attention.

Instead, it was the slender woman looking at the tree. She gently held her hand against the tree trunk and almost seemed to be stroking the bark while she stared upward at its branches. That might have been odd, but certainly not enough to pull me here.

I studied her. She had long, chestnut brown hair cascading down her back. One of her ears stuck out where her hair was tucked back. It was slightly pointed, but nowhere near as much as an elf. I’d call it somewhere between human and elf. More than any physical appearance, though, I reached out with my soul and felt how she pulsed with a rhythm that echoed all around me.

She couldn’t be human, but neither could she be any type of native creature. My first thought was that she was a goddess, but she was far too… I wasn’t sure what the right word was, simply that she was far less than what I’d expect from a goddess. Perhaps she was the servant of one of the gods. That brought back the memory of Her, the fiendish servant of Old Scratch who I had been forced to destroy.

That got my guard up again.

“Who are you?”

She spun around as though shocked. She had an amazing gracefulness which put even my highly skilled wives to shame, yet at the same time she seemed shocked by everything. It took her eyes a moment to settle into me.

“Oh, I didn’t know anyone was behind me.” Her voice was musical, and it brought back another memory. What I was sensing here couldn’t… or shouldn’t be possible, yet it was the only thing that made any sense.

“Sativa?”

She smiled, but not with any type of recognition. “I’ve heard that name, but isn’t that a goddess?” Then she looked at the ground before stepping towards me.

Ki Aura flared around me.

“You must be him.”

“Him who?”

“The sheriff, or do you prefer the lord of Yonderton?”

Her statement was made in a matter-of-fact manner, implying there was no doubt in her mind.

“What makes you say that?”

Now she looked down again. “It’s just that I can always sense people. Something about them, I know whenever someone gets close to me. Each day the sense seems to expand so that if I focus now, I can feel everyone within a block around me, but not you. No, you’re like a blind spot in my vision.

“Lady Lina told me this isn’t normal, but that it must be a special gift I have. I just don’t know what to think.” Then, as though changing the subject she looked up at the tree again. “You made this too didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did, but before we talk about that, I need to understand a bit more about you.”

Before she could answer, a deputy came running up to me. “Sheriff, I’ve been sent to bring you back to the office.” She was panting, showing just how hard she’d been running to find me. Then she blushed. “Not that I mean to tell you what to do. It’s just your wife or wives, really all of them, said you needed to come back.”

I waved her concerns away. “You’re just doing your job. Don’t worry about me getting upset about that.” I glanced back at the strange woman. She was already ignoring me in favor of the tree. I supposed I could find her again if I needed to, and my wives must have really wanted me to come home.

Blink Body

As simple as that, I was back home. I almost didn’t know what to think of my home as now, but my wives would have felt my return immediately through our soul bond. Fortunately, I picked a place to appear where I could meet with them without there being other guests, the kitchen. It was still my second favorite room in the house.

I sat down at the table amidst the squeals of surprised clerks. I soothed them but a moment later, Nimeera, Josie, and, Daria were in the kitchen. They all gave me a look.

I threw my hands up. “Glad to see my lovely wives. Who wants a kiss first?”

Nimeera shook her head. “Nope, you don’t get off that easily. You ran away twice. We need you for these discussions. There are things that only the city lord can do.”

“Okay, so Nimeera doesn’t want a kiss. What about you two?”

Daria said, “Rava was very clear that we were supposed to come back with you. Josie’s in almost as much trouble as you are with her.”

I laughed. “Fine, fine. What going on? Sit down and fill me in.”

Nimeera sat down at the table and didn’t resist when I grabbed her hand. “You’d know if you’d been attending the meetings.”

“That’s why I have wives who are more talented than me. Just tell me. If the refugees are being rude to you, then I’ll kick them out myself.”

Nimeera said, “They aren’t being rude. They’re being desperate.”

Daria continued for her. “The situation in the east seems to be far worse than we thought before. At least three cities have fallen and the undead are spreading everywhere. Most of them are weaker than a skilled warrior but they are very difficult to kill and if we believe some of their more outlandish estimates, there could be millions of them headed west.”

I thought about it for a moment and allowed the limited number of zombie movies which I had actually seen run through my head. That one with Brad Pitt came to mind. They had spread as some type of virus. Actually, now that I thought about it there were quite a few of those, but I didn’t think that was what was happening here.

“How could there be that many? Don’t tell me they’re spreading.”

Nimeera got a confused look, “Spreading?”

I thought about it. Sickness and disease were virtually unknown here on Olimero, so that would be a foreign concept to them. “I mean, like if one of them bites someone does that someone turn into a monster too?”

My three wives exchanged looks and Josie said, “It’s probably some Earth thing.”

Daria nodded, as though that made perfect sense. “Why would they bite you, though? Most of them apparently use weapons except I guess there are few beasts who were animated. It has something to do with the magic used to animate them. They keep fighting even if you hack their bodies to pieces and only by crushing the skull can you free them.”

Nimeera said, “Korkanis hasn’t told me anything about them, but I got the sense that even he is revolted by them.”

“Well, that isn’t good, if the god of shadows finds them unpalatable. So, millions? Are you sure?”

“Betsy returned from scouting. She personally led a mission to Westerton. There are many of the unliving there. Most though are the weaker shorts, the skeletons and such, but even though Centrum hasn’t fallen yet, there were still tens of thousands of the creatures to the west of Centrum,” Josie said.

I knew that my foxkin wife was good friends with the cowkin. Just thinking about her reminded me that it was a problem I’d been kicking down the road. Although in the face of millions of undead or unliving, as they called them, my woes about potentially having to take an eighth wife was a small matter.

“Was she okay?”

Josie nodded. “Yes, she managed to get back with everyone. I got the feeling though that she wasn’t telling me everything. She acted a bit odd.”

“Fine, I guess I can’t put it off any longer. Take me to our guests.”


Chapter 9- Plans

Nimeera held up her hand. “One last thing. There’s clearly something different about you. You’ve made some more gains. Care to share?”

“I’ll share what I’ve gained, but also what I can give you soon enough. You all finally got me to agree to sit down with the leaders of the refugees. We probably shouldn’t stall before I find something else to distract me.”

She shook her head. “You were the one who invited the human here.”

“Right, and if it had just been him, I probably would have relaxed. But as I understand it, there’s a room full of people wanting to talk to me and even more military forces waiting outside Yonderton.”

Nimeera smiled. She didn’t bother to ask how I knew. They were growing accustomed to me being able to sense more than they expected. “Fine, I’ll lead the way.”

When I walked into the meeting room they had set up, a wolfkin exclaimed, “Finally, he honors us with his presence.”

There was some more grumbling, but I noticed that neither Lord Casper, the other human in the room or his foxkin wife said anything.

“Yes, there are always matters to attend to. It may be of interest to you that I’ve just added the Untamed Lands to my territory and will be formalizing a contract with the three outposts there next week. They will become my vassal towns, so to speak.”

Another outburst came from a few in the room. Too many of them were clearly politicians. I grew weary of it in a moment. Looking at the stress on Rava’s face told me that there had been a great deal of this so far. Even Lina looked annoyed. I couldn’t read Sema’s face but was pleased to know that my fairy wife was here helping.

I clapped my hands loudly using a bit of ki and caused a minor shock wave which shook the tables and blew over stacks of paper. More importantly though, it got all of their attention.

“Introduce yourself by city, name, and rank. Then let me know who the spokesperson for your city will be.”

Lord Casper took the lead this time. The beastkin and elves with him all seemed willing to defer to him. That much was good at least.

The second group introduced themselves as being from Lupon with the vocal wolfkin, Timothy, being their leader. Plenty of the other tried to speak but once Timothy was named as the one in charge of their delegation, I released some of my ki aura. As before, I was able to infuse a portion of my emotion into it. It was like the killing intent that I read about in those cultivation novels back on Earth.

Needless to say that got them to shut up quickly.

The third delegation was from Bovas. Despite the name of the city, its leader was a monkeykin. He did have two cowkin wives, which was a sort of imagery, I wasn’t sure I wanted to let my mind wander to so I focused on him. He identified himself as Asorian.

Sometimes the biggest joke for me was that I was dealing one time with Tim and the next with Asorian. How they came up with names here was quite the oddity. Then again, the names of the gangs were enough to make me laugh, so why should this be anything different?

“Everyone is dismissed except for William, which was Casper’s first name, Timothy, and Asorian.” My voice didn’t leave any room for dispute. A couple of the wives tried to cling to their husbands, but they were assured it would be for the best. The irony here was how the wives were trying to protect their husbands rather than acting fearful for themselves.

It was a very Olimeran moment.

My aura on display a few moments before must still have been in their minds because despite some talking amongst themselves, no one protested to me. When the groups were leaving, I looked at my wives and said, “That includes you too. This is going to be a meeting between city leaders only.”

They clearly wanted to argue with me, but one by one they all stood up. Kissed my check and bowed their heads in respect, although Lina just had to add in a quick pat on my backside.

Once we had the room, I sat down. “Okay, so one by one tell me what it is that you want from me.”

They all looked at each other, but Casper was the first to speak, “Truthfully, I’m not even sure where to begin. I have some particular requests, but those are more of a personal nature. I’d like to know where you came from and so on. We can discuss that afterward, though. As for my city, for the short term, I’m looking for a refuge for the citizens. They are still coming in, but within a week there will be sixty-thousand of them and perhaps two thousands of my army.”

It occurred to me then that I had no idea how big the eastern cities had been prior to whatever happened. “What percent of your population is that?”

For a moment, Casper looked like he was going to cry. Then he got it together and said, “Felipes was home to over two million people if you consider the surrounding villages, what we would have called suburbs, back home.”

“Only 60,000 out of 2,000,000?”

He nodded. “There are more survivors I’m sure. Many fled to the southern cities, which were still standing when we left. Many spread out, trying to find a quiet corner of Olimero and hoping that the goddess would save them or some such thing. I surely couldn’t. My army was forty-thousand strong before this happened and it has been decimated. My guess is that no more than one fourth and more likely one fifth of the citizens and soldiers managed to survive.”

Timothy broke in and said, “That isn’t the worst of it. Lupon is where this started. Nearly ninety percent of our population was killed and most of my military. We tried to fight those unliving terrors, but even our own dead were raised to fight against us. It was horrifying.”

I could feel for them. As the leader of Yonderton, I would have taken it very personally if something like that happened to my people. “I’m terribly sorry for your loss and what your people have experienced. “I turned to Asorian, “What about Bovas?”

He looked up to the sky and said a whispered prayer to Sativa. I grimaced, because if what I was suspecting was true, then those prayers wouldn’t be answered anytime soon.

“Bovas was smaller than either Felipes or Lupon, but still had a population just under a million. Thankfully, because of our role as a trade depot, we were able to keep a smaller military and our people were not as likely to stand and fight. I believe that half of our population escaped thanks to warnings from Lupon. About half of those headed west and half went south. So, over the next week or so, I expect that nearly a quarter of a million of my citizens are going to be coming here.”

“That raises lots of concerns and I’m not just talking about the logistical ones. You know that the undead army has apparently arrived at Centrum and is sieging the city, or will be soon? At least that is what my scouts are reporting.”

“So quickly?” Casper asked.

Timothy added, “They should have taken longer animating all the dead in Felipes. In Lupon, it took them months to do it.”

I shrugged, “I only know what my scouts have told me, although I suppose, I could go look for myself. What I’ve been told so far though is that most of the undead, sorry unliving which are at Centrum are skeletons. From what I’ve heard, that means they are older corpses who were already animated.”

Asorian nodded. “That’s accurate based on what we know. The unliving come in a number of types. The weakest but most numerous were initially skeletons. Those display the least thought and almost act like…”

He seemed to be searching for a word, so I said, “Robots?”

Both Timothy and Asorian stared at me while Casper laughed. He finally said, “Don’t worry, it’s a human thing.”

I chuckled too. Damn, it was good to be able to use Earth terms and have someone understand. “Go on, sorry for interrupting you.”

“Well, yes, the skeletons are incapable of much free thinking and seem to only carry out simple tasks. They are still very difficult to destroy, though. Then after that are the zombies. Some of the mages have said that they have more complete souls. The zombies can take more complex commands but are still fairly simple. They display a great deal of hatred for the living and are constantly moaning. It is rather unnerving.”

“You want unnerving, you should tell him about the ghouls or some of the advanced undead,” Timothy said.

They then went on to describe a number of different types of undead. Some had different abilities, but there was a clear connection with many of the fantasy stories from Earth. It seemed that after the fall of Lupon whoever created these monsters was able to start forming new types of unliving.

Those included ghouls which had a paralytic bite and would consume their prey while still alive. There were also what they called abominations which were made of parts from multiple bodies and the bloated which were some type of exploding corpses. There were also rumors of what they called liches, which were skeletons with the ability to cast magic. There were however actually unable to confirm the existence of that type, though they hinted at rumors of other types including some incorporeal unliving.

I figured that some of this would just require me to take a look for myself.

After a moment of thought, I said, “As I see it any plan we have needs to have three stages. The first one is pretty obvious. I will scout and then we will prepare a joint response based upon what I discover. Our top priority will be getting the rest of citizens around Centrum and Westerton which are both being attacked. If we see an opportunity to strike, then I’ll consider the risk to reward ratio.”

They were nodding, so I continued, “The second stage is harder. Yonderton simply isn’t that big yet. Last I checked, we hadn’t hit 100,000 yet, but we have been taking in refugees for a while. So, not everyone will be able to fit into the city and this is going to be a logistical nightmare. We can work on expanding the walls to the west, but we will also have to build up a ton of housing.

“We have excellent crews who are well trained in this, but your people will be expected to help. I will make room for anyone who wants to live in Yonderton. If they want to become citizens of Yonderton, then I’ll work to provide them permanent housing, if not then we can discuss temporary. They will also be able to go further west and work on settling the Untamed Lands if they want.”

Timothy asked, “So you expect all of our people to simply become your citizens?”

“Those that want to and what’s more, I expect your help with the transition. I am creating a city council to advise me, and I’ll offer each of you a position on the council.”

Timothy snorted. “Why should you be the lord of this combined city? My refugees even as small a part of the city as they are will nearly equal your entire population. The same goes for Casper and Asorian’s will nearly match the other three of us combined.”

“Remember what I said before. This is not a negotiation between equals. This is you coming to me for something that only I can give you. I am well into A rank and am the only one of those other than the elder dragons. If you think you’ll get a better deal from them, then be my guest. But if you are coming to my city to eat my food and clutter up my streets, then it will be on my terms.

“Which, since we’re talking about the hard stuff, I might as well get this out of the way. If you want my protection, it comes with a price. Each of you will swear fealty to me and after we defeat the unliving, I will help you reclaim your cities. But you will each still be my vassal. You’ll rule your cities much as you did before, but you will pay a tribute to me and will answer my calls when I give them. At the same time, you will be entitled to my protection, whether that be against the unliving, the southern cities or any of the gangs.”

There it was. I had just essentially announced my intention to take over the world.  I felt a strange urge to bring my pinky finger to my lips and laugh maniacally.