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[b][u][center]The Greatest Ambition

Part 3

For Nataraj

By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]

There were none that called the Queen of Air and Darkness friend, least of all Euphorion. For all that the Fae had once knelt before her as it had before Titania and the Summer Court, the gesture had been a matter of survival, and no more. Her arrival through a portal long thought dead shattered the belief that the rest of Euphorion’s days might be led in silence and loneliness, as horrible as they may be, and reminded the banished Fae of far worse fates.

The Queen stepped through with the first north wind of winter, and brought with her the Dimness, that vanguard of darkness that spoke to mortal hearts and warned them in wordless tones to seek shelter, to hide, to wait, lest that which waited in the dark take them. Euphorion heard more, as the hissing creep of the Dimness spread upon its lands, and the wind howled with the cries of the Queen’s servants.

With great shame, the Fae ran, pursued at all turns by the invisible beasts and winged servants of the Queen. Names of servants and slaves alike were spent, calling them to service to buy the self-named ruler of a court of one a second, a step, a leap, a momentary advance. Each fell, broken beneath the Dimness or those that walked within it.

The land itself withered beneath Euphorion’s feet as it ran, the earth twisted, the roots drying, the many-colored boughs sagging and falling in the grip of winter. The Dimness sapped the very color from the world, and with it, life.

Even the clothes of the fearful Fae were not spared, and the glimmering red and green and yellow of summer were drained, grayed, and eventually darkened, with only the gloss of the fabrics remaining. Clothed almost as a raven, Euphorion fled to the borders of its court.

And there, at the edge of the great mushroom ring, the Dimness surged, leaping forward to catch the Fae by its ankles and yank it back before the Queen…

#

Jazak woke the next day irritated but rested. He sat up in his bed, one knee folded to his chest, and he stared out the window along the side wall. No sun yet peaked over the walls, but the light of morning glimmered in the distance regardless, like a small fire had been set to the sky by children and refused to be ignored. The orc shook his head, rolling himself out of bed. He stretched, feeling the boards beneath his feet, the sheet clinging to the back of his leg, and the sweat on his back.

A bath, he decided, was required.

The orc took the bucket from his wall and walked out of the room, walking bare from the waist up as he made his way from the inn to the well down the street. Despite the early hours, many people still crowded the roads and paths of Al-Shazar, their heads down and many carrying ill-gotten goods from the night before in their hands. Some of them were quick to look away from him and hurry on, while others eyed him as a potential mark.

They were quickly disabused of the notion. A flex of a muscle and a steely glare – the latter a lesson of the monasteries as much as the training of the body – told them to seek their targets elsewhere.

Jazak shook his head as he reached the well, plunging the bucket into its depths and seeking his wash water. The fact that such a city still had such problems with the criminals within spoke volumes to the problems of the world. There were too many that sought to take what belonged to others…

And yet, there were too many that had need, as well. The law was what it was; it was meant to defend those that had no recourse, no force of arms to defend themselves, a common thing to lift all to a common standard. And yet, so often it failed, or was flouted and ignored by the very people that were meant to be protected by it…

[i]As too many that do not need it abuse it for their own ends…[/i]

Shaking his head, the orc pulled the water up and returned to the inn. He was melancholy, and that only so that he wasn’t irritated. It was a coping mechanism, one that he often turned to when he was at risk of doing something stupid. As an orc, he had been warned against that time and time again in the monastery, to avoid the stupidity and the anger that his blood called him to, and to allow other things to take its place.

It was a very lonely sort of lifestyle. To choose between anger and sadness as a state of mind and little else was hardly a choice at all.

He returned to his room, placing the bucket on the chest that held his belongings. A quick wash got rid of most of the night-stink, and the rest of it was something that he had long-since learned to live with. He wiped his face down and put the bucket aside, pulling out one of the few items of vanity that he carried with him. It was a small bottle of oil, and it had no purpose but to groom his beard.

A true monk might have, perhaps, trimmed it or completely shaved it. There were no laws among the Order of the Iron Fist that one must keep a clean-shaven face – though most monks did, regardless – but he had received many a look from the human monks that passed by. Those that were of the warrior variety were keen to whisper about the beard being a weak point, something that someone could grab him by and break him with.

Jazak smiled as he dabbed the beard with several droplets of oil, spreading it down the braided strands. He’d like to see someone try; he would drag them back for far worse punishment.

As he groomed himself, he found his thoughts slipping again, going back to E, or Lord, as he had decided to call himself this time. No lord there, Jazak imagined, merely someone that had come into money and decided to throw it around. Why he would want something like the Stave of the Two Courts, the orc didn’t know, but he imagined that it was not for anything good.

A staff that could banish, after all, might be repurposed to summon, and a man that had sent so many to their deaths already could not be trusted. Not so far as one could throw them.

“That boy…”

And to him, Alarik was a boy, a young boy that had little experience with the world regardless of his tutoring at the bardic colleges. One only had to look at the young man to see that he had no understanding of the world, not yet, not truly. The way that he gazed about the city like someone seeing anything like it for the first time marked him out as someone that should not be let off the apron strings just yet.

The fact that the boy had taken E’s offer of weapons only further entrenched him with that opinion. It was a risk to take anything that the human offered, regardless of how it might help them. It was entirely possible that this was a trap, that the weapons were enchanted against them, that it was meant to lead to their deaths.

He sighed, capping the oil bottle and putting it away. A single stroke confirmed that his beard was properly oiled, and he knew for a fact that he was putting this off. He was good at that. Too good at that.

Jazak dressed quickly and left his room. With his pack over his shoulder, he went down the hall and knocked on one door after another. By the time he reached the third, Alarik was up and groaning, a bleary-eyed face poking out the door. The third, Rosalind’s, opened shortly after he knocked, the elf looking out with eyes clear and surprisingly rested.

“Is something the matter?” she asked.

“We’re leaving.”

“Now?”

“Now. We’ll eat on the road.”

“That’s, um, a trifle sudden, isn’t it?”

“I’m not losing daylight.”

“We barely have any as it is,” Alarik complained, rubbing his eyes. “And I was warm and comfortable.”

“Need I remind you of the stakes here?”

The orc’s voice was tighter than he meant it to be, and he sighed, shaking his head.

“I will give you twenty minutes. Pack and meet me at the front of the inn, or I will come and help you.”

And he did not plan on ‘helping’ gently.

#

In short order, they passed through the Grand Plaza and took the Southern Road, following it through the city once more. They were in the golden hour, before the new traffic came in for the day and after the traffic leaving for the morning had already gone. The merchants that wished to avoid the worst of the tax guards would have left shortly after the gates had opened, before everyone was completely alert. Those that were left were those like himself and the rest of the group, heading off on their own business or the well-paid business of someone else.

Jazak stood in line behind two oversized Goliaths, the warriors muttering in their own tongue to one another as the rest of the group yawned. Alarik poked Rosalind’s shoulder.

“Don’t suppose you have the spell of ‘Conjure Coffee’?”

“I-I’m afraid not, no,” the elf said with a barely-disguised titter of laughter.

“If she did, I’d have asked for it already,” Therwyn groaned. “Gods…do we have to be out before the light?”

“The light is out, as you’ll see when we’re past the walls,” Jazak grunted.

“And you’re the cheerful one, are you?”

“No, merely the focused one.”

“Says the man that’s staring so hard that you’re about to miss a pickpocket.”

He swept his hand out, seizing the gnome that was going for his pockets before he could get anything. The little man squirmed, gasping and groaning, and Jazak restrained himself from throwing the little troublemaker halfway down the street. He limited himself to putting the gnome back down and giving him a hard shove, sending him stumbling into the nearest alley.

But he was more observant after that, and thanked Therwyn with a nod.

They reached the gate without further trouble, and the guards waved them through as soon as they didn’t see any gear or cargo. And with that, they were outside of Al-Shazar once more.

Standing upon the road again, he felt better. They were taking steps, finally, rather than listening to meaningless talk. The philosophy part of the Order’s studies had never been his strong point. He had been able to read, to understand the way that they believed and how they were supposed to live, but listening to someone talk about it…

Jazak shook his head.

“Let’s start.”

“We’re not getting there tonight anyway,” Alarik pointed out. “It’s a three-day journey south.”

“Then we’d best cover as much as we can in one day, shouldn’t we?”

#

The first two days passed without anything eventful happening, and all four of them had hopes of the same happening on the third day. They were, of course, incorrect.

Jazak spotted them first: wisps coming from the edges of the road, following the iron posts sticking out of the ground but never coming past them. The orc glanced at them once and immediately looked away, holding up his hand to grab everyone’s attention.

“Wisps to the left. Eyes forward or on me.”

“Wisps? Where?” Rosalind said, and he could all but hear her turning –

Clang.

Only for her to whimper, groaning. That clang sounded suspiciously like Therwyn’s shield, and Jazak smiled despite himself, imagining that the elf had started turning her head, only run her face right into the shimmering metal wall of a raised shield.

“Thank you, Ms. Great Willow.”

“Pleasure, big guy.”

“So…” Alarik stepped up beside him, keeping pace with him. “What’s the plan?”

“That…is something I’m still considering.”

The easy option would be to ignore them until night fell and they had to make camp, and hope that the wisps were bound to a particular chunk of the road. However, there were two problems.

The first was that the sun was already low in the sky, falling towards the west and already half-gone. They would have very little daylight left, and while the iron chains that marked the road would be sufficient to keep the wisps on the other side, there was no guarantee that the wisps were not hunters for some greater ghost or spirit.

The other was that there was no guarantee that the wisps would not affect them at night, calling to their dreams or their sleeping selves, and if they had come from the ruins that E had marked out…

Well, it would be dangerous not to deal with them. He shook his head.

“We fight.”

“With what?” Alarik asked. “Have the monks of the Iron Fist learned how to punch ghosts?”

“We have. [i]Ki[/i] is quite powerful, after all.”

“Well, that’s marvelous. Quite marvelous, as a matter of fact. And the rest of us?”

The orc gritted his teeth. The questions were…fair, but he did not appreciate them in the slightest. They were here to do a job, and the questions were getting in the way of getting the job done.

“Figure it out.”

“We [i]can[/i] try the weapons that Lord gave us.”

“You know his real name,” Jazak muttered.

“Yes, I do…but he still wants something. And better that we try this away from the ruins than it, right?”

Another fair point, and another thing to dislike. He would have preferred to toss the ‘gifts’ out of their packs several nights back, but the others had out-voted him, even Alarik. Being unable to explain why, he hadn’t been able to persuade them out of it.

Now, he’d either be proven right in a fight where they were already at a disadvantage, or proven wrong. He didn’t know which he hoped for.

“Alright. Fine. We’ll do it your way.”

“Splendid!” Alarik smiled. “And for my next trick –”

The bard whipped his hand out to the side, and a cold-iron dagger that Jazak hadn’t noticed flew from his fingers. It struck one of the colorful wisps dead center, sinking into the glowing light for a moment before sagging to the ground. The light died, and the wisp itself faded into nothing more than colorful gasses before they, too, disappeared.

“…It worked,” Jazak admitted.

“Heh, perhaps this ‘E’ has something that he actually wants us to get, instead of dying again.”

“Or he’s send us to something different than the others.”

“Are you that suspicious of him?”

“I do not have words for how little I trust him.”

“Are you sure that you’re not just a little bit offended from your new name?”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“Perhaps, but mine’s nicer.” Alarik smiled, taking some of the sting out of the banter. “Come on. Let’s take care of this.”

“Yes…” The orc reached back, pulling out the pair of iron knuckles that he’d been given. They were cold, still, even with being in his pack and so close to his skin all day. It was not needed, but if they were to be tested…well, better to test them against something that would not harm him over-much if he were to fail. “Yes. Let’s.”

#

The battle was over swiftly, and in their favor. Knife, sword, and knuckles had ripped through the wisps off the side of the road, and none survived, though there had been an awkward moment when Therwyn had been caught by no less than five of them at once.

“Ugh…”

The paladin groaned as she sat down by the fire, glaring over her shoulder at the dinged-up bits of metal that were all that she had managed to drag out of the mud after the ambush. The wisps had surrounded her, taken her mind, and before the rest of the group could get to her, she had been made to strip out of her armor. Jazak had no idea what the wisps would have wanted with that, but the very fact that the armor was now so damaged and dirtied meant that it would be far less useful during the rest of the mission.

Therwyn tossed a twig into the campfire, shaking her head.

“I can’t believe I let myself get caught like that. Hardly befitting my reputation.”

“You have a reputation?” Alarik asked.

“Heh, why, you think that I’m just some fresh-faced paladin?”

“No, I just didn’t hear of you before.”

“Well, you’ll hear more of me after this.”

“Any further injuries?” Jazak interrupted.

“Heh, only to my pride. And my armor.” Therwyn shook her head, the smaller halfling woman leaning her head back, a bra all that kept her modesty above the waist covered. “I’m going to have to pay greatly to get that fixed.”

“Should we come through, I will see to it that it does not cost much.” Jazak nodded. “It was my order that caused the problem, and I will see it taken care of.”

“Honorable, very honorable. And thank you.”

He nodded, looking to Rosalind. The wizard looked away, clenching her fingers around her own staff. She’d been jumpy and jittery since they had left the city, and he didn’t understand why. Alarik had vouched for her, said that she would be useful, but so far, he had seen little sign of the sort of wizard that they needed. Someone that managed to cast spells that would boost the abilities of others was certainly helpful, but clerics did that, and they did it better. A wizard should be casting great spells that rent the enemy apart, dealing such damage that they were gone before they realized that they’d been harmed.

Instead, she cast lights. And winds. And the occasional bolstering spell upon the rest of the group. It was…irritating, particularly as she hung so far back from the rest of them during the fight, not even leaving the road.

She didn’t meet his eyes. He didn’t force it.

“Alarik?”

“Hmm?” the bard asked.

“What are our odds of being overtaken by other spirits tonight?”

“Probably not that high. The wisps don’t gather when there’s lots of bigger, worse undead around. At least, not according to the stories.”

“Unless they are outriders for a greater force,” Rosalind muttered.

“Hmm?”

“There are tales and histories of the wisps serving greater masters. They could be spread out, following orders.”

“Well…that’s true, but it takes a lot to get a wisp to pay attention to anything. They’re not exactly smart, are they?”

“How likely is that?” Jazak asked. “Rosalind.”

“W-why me?”

“Because you spoke up about it first. How likely is it?”

“Um…not very…maybe about twenty-five percent? Maybe thirty?”

“So, a third of a chance.”

“Well, no, that’s not exactly how it works, but –”

“Stop.”

Jazak’s growl shut the elf up right then and there, and he rubbed his forehead. Much as he would have liked them all to get a good night sleep so that they could be fresh for the ruins tomorrow, that sounded like a bad idea. The wisps were not dangerous so long as they could be harmed, and so long as they didn’t come in force; their powers over the mind could be resisted, so long as you were prepared. But if they had a master, a wight or worse…

No, it was too risky. He sighed, rubbing his face.

“I’ll take first watch. Then Therwyn. Then Alarik. So, get to sleep. You’ll need it.”

“And…me?” Rosalind asked.

He looked at her. That was all. She managed to look back for nearly a minute before having to look down and away. The elf sighed, sliding off her seat and rolling out her bedroll before taking her place inside it.

[i]If you can’t do your job, how am I supposed to trust you to do another?[/i]

Shaking his head, he watched the others do the same. He leaned back against the rough stone behind him, one leg pulled to his chest, and looked towards the heavens. The stars glimmered in the distance, and he started naming the different constellations to take his mind off the task at hand.

When the time came to hand the watch to Therwyn, he almost told her to go back to sleep. The paladin had come out of her sleep with a groan, muttering to herself almost as if still dreaming. Something about chains and masters, of those underfoot and those not.

Yet, when he asked her about it, she was confused, claiming that he must have been hearing things.

Jazak nearly told her to go back to bed, but he could admit when he was tired. Too tired to be of much use if he took two shifts of watch before morning. The orc nodded at her and laid himself down, hoping that his instincts were wrong and that there was nothing to be worried about. Nothing at all.

#

They were right.

“Up, up!”

Alarik’s shout dragged him from sleep, and he whipped his head up to find some creature of green light and brown body embracing Therwyn. The halfling was off her feet, her eyes wide and glowing with the light of the creature’s magic, and she was embraced from the waist down with great brown tendrils, cracking like old wood.

The orc didn’t think. He acted.

With a great roar, he kicked off the ground, his fist pulled back. Golden light burst from his fingertips as he channeled his [i]ki[/i] down his arm, and the creature turned to him. Its green eyes burned with light, and for a half-second, he felt its claws pulling at his mind, reaching for the depths of his soul –

And then they collided. He punched through its face, and the creature went down, hitting the earth with a shattering crash.

“Ah!”

Therwyn fell, landing on her feet and gasping for breath. The green light faded from her eyes as she lunged for her own weapons. She pulled her sword out, then slowly lowered it to the ground once more.

“What…was that a –”

“I don’t know what it was.” Jazak shook his head, kicking the shards of its wooden head around. “But it’s dead now.”

At least, for all he knew, it was, and the others were not contradicting him. The orc monk knelt in the wreckage – for that was all that he could think to call it – of the wooden thing that had attacked them. It must have come in silently to avoid both Therwyn’s watch and waking him up, for he had not been sleeping that deeply.

The head was shattered, but the body was not. It was lean, too slender for a man, and looked almost more like a sapling in size and heft. It was perhaps three times the width of a good quarterstaff, with many roots coming from below that were longer than they should be. The top of the tree, where the head would have been, was shattered and splintered.

But there was something left behind. Jazak cocked his head to the side, waving Alarik forward. The bard knelt beside him, and the orc whispered.

“Do you see that? That mark?” he asked, pointing to a point where the bark within had gone gray, even dark compared to the rich wood life along the outside.

“Yes…it looks almost familiar.”

“Do you know it?”

“I might…but I cannot call it to mind. Rosalind?” Alarik said, standing up.

[i]Yes. Call the one that knows nothing and is too scared to commit,[/i] the orc thought.

The elf slid from her bed, creeping closer. As soon as she laid her eyes on the creature, however, her mouth fell open.

“A nymph…”

“Surely not,” Jazak said, snorting. “They’re not this aggressive.”

“Not the Seelie nymphs, no…but this…”

She knelt beside the body, holding her hand near the mark. She did not touch it, but she came close, hovering her fingers above it and shaking her head rapidly.

“This one was possessed by the Unseelie.”

“Someone care to tell me what happened?” Therwyn groaned. “My head’s all funny.”

“You were almost kidnapped,” Jazak said. “And possibly worse.”

“How could it get worse?”

“You don’t have your pants on.”

“…Son of a –”

As Therwyn stopped herself from swearing more and instead muttered to herself, Jazak turned his attention back to the matter at hand. He waved to catch Rosalind’s attention, nodding down at the creature before them.

“This will not come back to life?”

“N-no, the spirit that animated it is gone.”

“Then we are safe for the night?”

“Um…yes, we should be…”

“Good. Now. What did it want?”

“That, well, um…the nymphs have all kinds of motivations, and the ones that work with the Unseelie Court are, well, a [i]trifle[/i] more malevolent than the other ones. But there’s no forest around here, nothing that it would have been defending. It shouldn’t have had a reason to come after us.”

That was what Jazak was afraid of. He shook his head, turning back to Alarik.

“You noticed it?”

“Hm? Oh, the warning shout. Yes,” the bard said, nodding. “I was just waking up and saw the light. I knew we didn’t have anything with that shade in our lamps, so I knew it had to be an intruder.”

“And why were you awake?”

“I…had a dream.”

“Prophecy?”

“Noooooot precisely.”

The tone was enough to tell him not to ask further. Jazak shook his head, stepping away from the body. Therwyn continued to complain, and it was clear that both Rosalind and Alarik were more interested in the body and the magic inherent in it than they were in anything else. Nobody else would be getting any sleep tonight, he was all but sure. However, it was too dark to set out for the ruins yet, and he would prefer to at least attempt to get some sleep.

But there was something that he [i]could[/i] do.

As he sat further from the tree-body, he removed the iron knuckles from his pockets. The cold-iron was still quite chilled, despite being pointed at the fire all night. He turned it over, looking at the indentations for the fingers, and then turned it around again, looking at the part that pressed against his palm.

There, pressed right into the iron, were two symbols. One, he did not know. The other, that of a whispering wind crossing a darkened moon, matched the symbol that was all but burned into the trunk.

[i]Whatever this is…E is part of it.[/i]

To the orc, there could be no other explanation. How, why, what, and who could be answered later, but that much was obvious. This E, this Lord, had clearly developed something to send adventurers to their deaths. So far, they had survived. It would remain to be seen if it continued that way, or if there was some greater surprise further on.

He wanted to say something, but what was there to say? Even to him, the symbol was circumstantial evidence of Lord’s guilt, at best. Even if the same marks were on all their weapons, it only half-matched what the symbol on the tree was, and it could be common. Rosalind was too scared to stand up for herself, and Alarik was too fascinated with the story that they had found themselves in to want it to come to an end too soon. Therwyn was too out of it, which left only him.

Only him.

Jazak sighed, putting the iron knuckles back in his pocket before laying himself back on the ground. What little plan he’d had – to expose E and prove that he had been sending monks and more to their deaths – had not been entirely scattered. They were, however, far more complicated. The orc told himself that they were searching for evidence, that they were seeking out proof of the evils of this manipulator of the system. He even believed that, to some extent, though only to a limited one.

However, there still remained the point that they were traveling to somewhere else, to a place that was likely not occupied – strictly speaking – by what their employer had told them was there. If E had lied about his name, if he had lied about what they would find, then he could easily have lied about any number of other things.

Jazak did not believe the truth would out, not without the help of a great many other factors. However, he knew that he was one of those factors, and that gave the truth a helping hand.

“Get some sleep, if you can,” he said.

“Now? After that?” Alarik asked.

“Yes. After that.”

“But –”

“We still have a job to do tomorrow. And we will do it.”

There was quiet, then shuffling. He could hear Rosalind sliding back into her bedroll, but there was something else going on further back, a whispered conversation between the bard and the halfling. Try as he might, he couldn’t strain his ears quite hard enough to pick it up, and it went by without comment.

Jazak told himself that it was fine. They were all working together for the same cause, under a common goal. So long as they remained united, so long as they were all focused, they could come through the other side fairly unscathed.

And whatever had happened to Therwyn, it could be made better.

It could.

It could.

[i]The law of the world circles back on itself. The system cannot hold without help from those within it. We can make it better…if we try.[/i]

E had made it worse, as far as Jazak was concerned. If he could bring E down, if he could do something to remove him from the system so that he paid for the things that he had done, then the orc would be happy.

And the world would be better.

[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]

Summary: From Jazak’s point of view, on the road.

Tags: No Sex, Partial Nudity, Tree Spirit, Wisps, Ghosts, Fighting, Argument, Orc, Human, Elf, Halfling, Implied Hypnosis, Series, Fantasy, Magic,