Chapter 444 - Sabotage (Patreon)

Gripping the balcony banister, Silik gazed across the Residential District of the Crimson Tower, pleased with the progress they had made since leaving the caverns beneath Min Ferilik. They had come so far that he scarcely remembered the person he had been back then, but one thing he knew for certain was that, without Ak-Toh, none of it would have been possible. Indeed, without his intervention, the budding civilization of kobolds would have been consumed by the monstrous Blood Wraith.

But that was why Ezekiel was Ak-Toh. He was their Savior, and he held a position in kobold society that rivaled that of the Mother herself. She had given them life and intelligence, ushering them to the point of near sapience, but Ak-Toh had given them purpose while pushing them to heights none of them had ever even considered possible. If the great wyrm who had dragged them into the light was the Mother, then there was a good argument that Ezekiel was their Father.

Or perhaps god and goddess were better terms for the two.

Whatever the case, Silik was grateful for the day that Ak-Toh had taken the kobolds under his wing, and for the first time in his life, he was looking forward to the future. Of course, it wasn’t so long ago that the concept of time had been a muddy, unclear thing. Now, though, he saw everything with disturbing and fascinating clarity.

“What will the future hold?” he asked without glancing at his mate. He could feel her standing there next to him so clearly that he didn’t need to look at her.

Kianma placed her hand over his and answered, “The survival of our people. Then, we will follow Ak-Toh in his ascension.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Not as a people. Individually. Do you ever feel…hollow?” he asked. It had been on his mind for some time. He had everything a kobold could want. He served his people as well as their Savior, and he had the companionship of a mate who was both powerful and entrancing. By all accounts, he was the pinnacle of what it meant to be a kobold, and most looked up to him as an example of what could be accomplished. Of what everyone should strive to be.

Yet, his life felt thin, as if it was merely a collection of roles, rather than something substantial. It was maddening because it made no sense to Silik.

Kianma reached up, placing her hand gently on his shoulder. “You are becoming more,” she said.

“More?”

“The journey to sapience is not one that can be completed overnight,” she said. “It takes a lifetime. You feel hollow because you are beginning to understand the life you’ve led thus far, and you find it thin. Inconsequential. You have begun to think about the future, and not in terms of simple events, have you not?”

“I wonder for the fate of our people,” he said. “But it is more. This…war has made me think of the consequences of our actions. I look at the people we have killed, and though I know they were terrible, that they deserved it, I still regret the necessity of ending their lives so abruptly.”

He let out a hissing sigh and hung his head before continuing, “Death never troubled me before. Now, I think about it often. About the futility of existence and how quickly it can all end. I wonder what comes next. I wonder what came before. I know the answers to none of my questions, and yet, I can not stop myself from asking them.”

“You should not stop.”

He turned to look at her, and for some reason, the sight gave him some small degree of comfort. “It is unpleasant,” Silik stated.

“Yes. But necessary.”

Silik was in no position to argue. Regardless of how those thoughts and questions made him feel, he could not escape them. He had tried to refrain from giving them thought, yet that had been impossible. The more he wanted to think of something else, the more insistent his questions had become.

“My mind –”

“It is not just your mind,” Kianma interrupted. She tapped a claw against his head, saying, “That is but a part.” She pointed to his chest. “Your heart is another. But together, they are your soul.”

Silik had seen the readout for his soul on his status, yet in the context of Kianma’s statement, that didn’t seem like what she was talking about. So, he asked for an explanation.

She said, “The soul is a verifiable part of your status, and it affects your spiritual limitations. However, the word also refers to what separates a monster or beast from a person. You are a person. Sapient, but with the self-awareness of a child. Grappling with your mortality as well as your place in the world is part of embracing your new nature. It will not be a comfortable process, and yet, it is necessary.”

“When will it end?”

“Never. It is an ongoing state, and you will struggle with it for the rest of your life. At times, it will be easier. At times, worse. Yet, the journey of self-discovery is, as I said, a necessary one that will help you understand your place in all of this,” she said. “For what it is worth, I believe that we can all adjust and that you will help lead us to our destiny.”

“Ak-Toh leads us.”

“He does, and yet, he does not. He forges head, but it is up to us to follow, lest we be left behind. How we do so is not his concern,” Kianma explained. “Kobolds must be responsible for our own fate. You are the leader we have chosen to follow.”

The ridges of Silik’s brow furrowed as he stared at the city spread out before him. What Kianma had said made some sense. Ak-Toh rarely asserted his power regarding specifics. He simply told them a goal and expected them to figure it out for themselves. And sometimes, he didn’t even give that much guidance.

In that way, he was less of a leader and more like the deity he seemed to be. That left Silik and Kianma to occupy a place similar to the position of Rasa Tomaki, the Mistress of the Herd, held with the centaurs. She was distinctly inferior, from a societal standpoint, to Ak-Toh, and yet, she held sway over the entire herd of centaurs. Perhaps Silik could emulate her and do the same.

Or maybe he already had, without even knowing it.

The pair of kobolds remained silent, both lost in thought as they contemplated their nature as well as the future before them. And it was like that that a juvenile kobold found them some time later.

“Yes?” asked Kianma upon the small kobold’s approach.

“Need general and spiritweaver,” he said, bowing his head in submission. It was an unnecessary holdover from their more monstrous days, yet it had been impossible to get the juveniles to abandon the shows of deference. Perhaps one day, they would get past it, but for now, it was an unavoidable expression of what they once were. “Problems with the new people.”

Silik and Kianma shared a look, then agreed to follow the juvenile. He eagerly led them through the Pillar, passing hundreds of kobolds, beastkin, and even a few centaurs who’d taken up necessary administrative positions. There were precious few representatives of the other races, largely because their populations were so small. Hopefully, bringing the human peasants into the Crimson Tower would help diversify the residents as well as the people in positions of relative power, but their inclusion was too new to have had an effect.

After leaving the Pillar behind, they traversed the Residential District. For the most part, it hadn’t changed much of late, though there had been some small shops that had opened so that the residents wouldn’t need to go all the way to the Merchant’s Floor to buy necessary goods. The presence of those shops was still scattered, but they had been successful enough that Silik expected more to come.

Otherwise, the district was much the same as it had always been, though he’d only recently begun to notice the transformation of the architecture. Indeed, it wasn’t until after he’d left the dungeon with the Mirror Lord that he’d even recognized those sorts of details at all. Kianma had explained it as part of his natural development, but it had opened his mind to all sorts of new concepts like art and other expressions of individuality that had never before occupied any of his thoughts.

The Residential District had also grown in terms of scope, so it took some time before they reached the area assigned to the human population. There, he found a scene of some horror.

“What happened?” he asked the first ranger he could find. As he looked at the dead bodies, he couldn’t help but wonder how they had died. Silik didn’t bother counting, but there were dozens of them, all covered in vomit and blood, and looking as if they’d been dead for quite some time.

“Poison,” the ranger stated without preamble. “We thought it was a plague, but the spiritweavers detected some residual mana. It is thought to have originated with tainted food, though we have yet to find the source.”

“What is your name?” asked Kianma.

The ranger looked a little surprised to have been asked that question, but he hid it quickly and answered, “Trak.”

Normally, kobolds didn’t care much about names. Castes were different, and classes were vitally important. However, most had never cared about individual names. Yet, those labels had taken on some degree of import of late. Silik expected it had something to do with the budding sense of individuality that had been fostered within the kobold population. He’d felt it for some time, but his people had lagged a little behind. They seemed to be on the verge of catching up, though.

He wasn’t certain if that was good or bad.

Perhaps it simply was, without being either.

“There were other occurrences,” said Trak, idly scratching his brow ridge. “Seven instances, each with multiple deaths. This was the most deadly, we think because of the low levels involved.”

Silik nodded, then stepped forward. Kianma and the ranger stayed behind while he crossed the distance to the corpses. There were almost a hundred of them, and the deaths hadn’t been confined to adults, either. There were children there as well. Men and women. No patterns he could think of, save what Trak suggested.

Finally, Kianma approached from behind, and he asked, “Why?”

“What do you mean?” she asked. “It was an act of war.”

“But I do not understand. These people were slaves. We saved them.”

“Peasants. The distinction is important,” she said. “They knew nothing but their old lives, so they have no idea what it lacked. Sasha called it brainwashing. Manipulation on a grand scale.”

“To what end?”

“Control, and not via brands or collars. Instead, they use this…propaganda, painting the Knights as heroic saviors. Instead, they are brutal killers,” she said.

“Were they stupid?”

“No more than you or me,” she answered, resting her hand on his shoulder as he knelt next to one of the bodies. It had been a child. Now, it was nothing more than another corpse. “They simply do not know any better. It is our task to teach them that there is another way, that they deserve more than what they have been given.”

“In the meantime? Will we see more attempts at sabotage?” he asked.

“That is likely.”

“Then we must expel them from the Crimson Tower.”

“We cannot,” Kianma stated.

“Why?”

“Ak-Toh forbids it,” she answered. “He wishes to help them as he saved us. And it is our calling to assist in that endeavor.”

Silik let out a frustrated hiss. Yet, he did not voice his displeasure. He wasn’t fit to disagree with Ak-Toh’s rules. Of course, Ak-Toh would have told him otherwise. He would have encouraged Silik to speak his mind, to disagree if that felt right to him. Silik had never done so, but there had been times when he had been tempted. This was certainly one of those instances, and perhaps, it would be the first time he succumbed.

“What do you believe?” he asked Kianma.

“I believe as Ak-Toh believes,” she answered. “Not because I must, but because it is right. These people need help, and he has taken them in. As such, they are now our people. Our responsibility. We must support them and endure the pain of their transition. To do otherwise would tarnish us.”

“I…understand,” Silik lied. To him, it seemed far easier to simply expel the former peasants. However, he was not yet ready to oppose Ak-Toh’s orders. So, he said, “Then the way is clear. I must discover the saboteur.”

“Yes,” Kianma agreed. “That is the way forward. Perhaps in doing so, you will discover something of your own nature.”

Silik wasn’t sure of that, but he did feel a sense of relief at the idea of saving people’s lives. Maybe that was the point.

After that, Kianma excused herself and headed back to the Pillar. Meanwhile, Silik and a few legionnaires and centurions began collecting the bodies for disposal. There were a few people nearby who were obviously family or friends, so Silik let them know that the bodies would be treated with respect and given the same funeral rites as the kobolds. That meant that they would be cremated on a communal pyre.

“It is how it has always been,” he told a dirty young woman with long, auburn hair. She had lost a father. Then, without listening to her response, he went back to the gruesome task of gathering the corpses and piling them onto carts.

As he did so, he started to think of how he might perform the investigation with which he had been tasked. So, when he finally finished, he had a good idea of how to proceed. Still, he was not looking forward to it.