H - 134: I Hate You the Least (Patreon)

“—did not come to this ludicrous den of nonsense to listen to—you! Finally!”

Shadrach was mid-rant when Kaln arrived, and had apparently been at it long enough to build up a good deal of inertia. He broke off, rounding on Kaln, who nonetheless took a moment to glance around and make sure everything was okay here before addressing the cranky portal mage.

Vadaralshi was grinning, so she had definitely been making things worse, but as no blood appeared to have been shed, Kaln decided he’d better count his blessings. Percy and Rafaela were the other people present, which was interesting; he had to wonder how that had come about. Rafaela looked furious, which was the customary reaction to Shadrach in one of his moods. Percy just seemed…bored and mildly confused. Kaln couldn’t be sure if that was because that was how she felt, or because he still wasn’t great at reading her. Even after gradually getting more acquainted over time, Percy was still the most opaque person he knew.

“Good morning, Shadrach,” he said brightly, putting on the big smile he’d used for the most cantankerous and unreasonable patrons of the Royal Archives. “I’m sorry to say you just missed breakfast! But I can have something brought out for you right away, Zhiiji always keeps fresh snacks on hand.”

“Don’t start with me!” Shadrach barked. “Do you know what you’ve done, Zelekhir?”

Kaln glanced pointedly around at the city, with men and women now doing physical exercises on the plaza clearly visible from them across the lake, and several groups of ghosts actively excavating the lower levels.

“It’s been a busy few weeks, I’ll need you to be a lot more specific.”

“I am being…” Shadrach grimaced, baring a full double row of absurdly perfect teeth, and inhaled a long hissing breath through them. “Pestered.”

“You mean…right now? Because you came here—”

“At my home!” the mage roared. “All day, every day, idiots climb my mountain and bang on my door demanding a slice of my time and attention! And do you know what they want, Zelekhir? I’ll give you a hint: it’s your fault!”

“Were they…impressed by your work on my behalf at Boisverd?” Kaln asked innocently. “Because you definitely earned it, that was some excellent portalmancy. Nobody’s actually asked me yet, but I’d be glad to give you a recommendation.”

“Did you just say portalmancy?” Shadrach said incredulously. “That’s not even—no, you know what, screw you, I know what you’re doing. They want you, Zelekhir! All day long it’s ‘oh you must know the Dragonlord’ and ‘oh you’re his neighbor, you must talk’ and every asinine notion in the same vein. It never ends!”

“Sorry to hear that,” Kaln said with a kind smile.

“Don’t apologize to me, fix it!”

Kaln blinked once, and tilted his head to the side. “How?”

“How the hells should I know? Your fault, your problem!”

“Shadrach, with all due respect, this is the first I’ve heard of this and it doesn’t seem to have affected me at all. That sounds like the very definition of your problem.”

“Oh, yes, because heavens forfend the wise and mighty Dragonlord be troubled to clean up his own damn mess!” Shadrach ranted, spreading his arms and tilting his head back to shout at the heavens. “The very mountains were placed here to be his personal stomping ground! The sun itself is a glistening bauble suspended from the skies by the gods of eld to shine out of his ass!”

“Um, excuse me,” Percy said in clear annoyance, “but our sun is a class two yellow dwarf.”

Everyone turned to stare at her in silence—Vadaralshi grinning more than ever, everyone else momentarily confused.

“Yes, I recognize that you were employing poetic language,” Percy continued with the same mild asperity. “I just find that inappropriate, and I wish people wouldn’t. Cosmologically speaking, it’s an extremely unremarkable star. Quite unimpressive, in fact. It’s a pet peeve of mine.”

“Percy,” Shadrach said in perfect, even calm which alarmed Kaln more than all his stomping and shouting, “out of all the people I’ve met, you are…approximately as annoying as everyone else. But I find, somehow, that I hate you the least.”

Percy blinked twice. “I…have…no idea how to respond to that.”

“Then allow me,” Rafaela snarled, whipping out her rapier, its runes glowing ominously in the morning sunlight. “You are in the presence of royalty, oaf. Were you not taught a modicum of respect at the stable in which you were born?”

“That’s really not necessary,” Percy said hastily.

Shadrach, meanwhile, slowly looked Rafaela up and down with an expression of such intense contempt that Kaln felt singed by proximity. After a moment the mage turned back to him. “And what is this meant to be?”

“Countess Rafaela is Percy’s lady-in-waiting,” Kaln explained. “It’s a Vale custom, I’m still working out the details.”

“Does a lady-in-waiting customarily carry a sword?”

Kaln shrugged. “It’s a runeblade. She’s a mage.”

Shadrach curled his lip derisively, and it was extremely annoying how he managed to look mouth-wateringly perfect even while doing that. “Can’t be much of one.”

“Shall we test that?” Rafaela barked, pointing the rapier right at Shadrach’s heart. “Step onto the field of honor with me, unless juvenile insults are all you have!”

“Rafaela, no!” Percy exclaimed.

“I don’t even know what you just said,” Shadrach snorted.

“She challenged you to a duel,” Vadaralshi chimed in helpfully.

“Ugh.” Shadrach rolled his eyes and made a dismissive gesture with his staff. “Sure, fine, you’re on. Anyway.”

Rafaela first yelped when she plummeted into the hole that appeared around her feet, then shouted something most unladylike as she continued to fall through the same space—into the portal placed at ground level, and out of the one directly above in an infinite loop.

“Oh, that’s considerate,” Vadaralshi said merrily. “Look how wide he made them! That’s a nice touch. You never want to clip the edge of a standing portal—of all the ways to lose a finger, that’s gotta be the most painful.”

Rafaela abruptly ceased her flailing with an alarmed squawk and tucked her limbs in closer as her eternal fall continued.

“That’s why the permanent ones are always in a physical housing,” Vadaralshi continued.

“ANYWAY,” Shadrach repeated more loudly, “what do you plan to do about the mess you’ve made?”

“Well…what is it you’d like me to do?” Kaln asked.

“Fuck, I don’t know! Who cares! Just get your various followers and hangers-on to leave me alone!”

“Shadrach,” Kaln said gently, “I think you’re aware that’s outside my power. You have to be aware; you’re too intelligent not to be. Nobody who answers to me is bothering you, or ever would. By definition, anybody who’s poking around you looking for answers about me doesn’t have direct access to them. And while I am sorry for your inconvenience, genuinely, the only thing I can think of that would dissuade everyone from approaching your tower would be to do what Atraximos did and make myself so universally terrifying that nobody dares approach the vicinity of Dragonvale for any reason. I hope I needn’t explain why I will not be doing that.”

Clenching his fists so hard that his staff visibly vibrated, Shadrach inhaled so deeply that he began to swell up like a bullfrog.

“There is also the matter,” Kaln pressed on before he could explode, “that a portal mage of all people is readily capable of removing unwanted visitors from his vicinity. Even if I did try to help with your…dilemma, I can’t think of anything I could do that would be a fraction as useful as what you already can.”

“That is not the point,” Shadrach hissed. “I am dealing with this non-stop cavalcade of annoyances because of you! Countless hells, Atraximos was a less irritating neighbor!”

“That’s really unfortunate,” Kaln said mildly. “Though since you bring it up: I have to wonder where someone who sets up his residence a five-minute flight from the home of Atraximos the Dread gets off complaining that it’s an undesirable neighborhood.”

“It used to be undesirable in a way that kept everyone away!”

“Change is the only constant in life,” Kaln said with a beatific smile.

A moment ensued in which he was certain the only reason he didn’t get teleported into outer space was that Shadrach retained enough presence of mind not to pick a fight with Emeralaphine.

“I don’t mean to be unsympathetic, Shadrach,” he continued, “but I’m really not sure what you’re expecting to happen, here. You know I have no control over what the various interested powers of the Evervales do, otherwise I’d already be exercising it. Did you…just want to visit? Because you know, you’re welcome to come hang out any time if you’re lonely. You’ve done fine work on behalf of this family, and at least one person here actually enjoys your company.”

“What?” Percy frowned. “No, I don’t.”

“I meant Pheneraxa.”

“Oh!” She slapped her forehead. “Of course, obviously. I’m sorry. I’ve just learned I’m Shadrach’s favorite person, and I am struggling to process that.”

“Anyone would,” Vadaralshi said solemnly.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Kaln, turning back to Shadrach, who appeared to be on the verge of a rage-induced stroke, “I’m certainly not averse to helping you out, if you can actually come up with some specific course of action you’d like me to take—that I actually can—and make it worth my while.”

“Worth your while?” Shadrch snarled.

Kaln just smiled benignly back. “Come on, you know how this works. Have I ever once sought out your help without making sure you were well-compensated?”

Once again, the mage inhaled sibilantly through his teeth, barely clinging to the shreds of his restraint. “Fine, then. What do you want?”

Kaln shrugged. “Nothing, honestly. I can’t think of anything else someone in my position could want. Is this really so surprising, now that you’re on the other half of the equation? It’ll be just like old times—think of something specific and actionable you want, and something I would want in exchange, and we’ll talk.”

He kept up his smile. Shadrach’s fingers were twitching as if his free hand wanted to go for Kaln’s neck.

“Drop by anytime!” Kaln said brightly. “My door is always open to old fr—”

The portal mage vanished with a thunderclap that made all of them except Vadaralshi—and Rafaela, who couldn’t—wince and step backward.

“That was entirely gratuitous,” Percy complained. “We’ve seen him teleport enough to know he doesn’t need to do that. What a needlessly unpleasant man.”

“That was weird, though,” Kaln mused, rubbing at one ear. “It doesn’t seem like him to leave the privacy of his cozy little tower without a very specific plan. He came here with…basically no possible chance of getting anything he was yelling about.”

“I think you were half right, Pants,” said Vadaralshi.

“What that he was…lonely?”

“Exactly!” She nodded her great reptilian head emphatically. “Except…half. I think he just wanted to vent. Yelling at the walls of your cozy wizard tower isn’t nearly as satisfying as yelling at someone you can sort of blame for your problems.”

“Hm…you have a point. That does seem more plausible.”

“Why is this still happening?” Rafaela complained shrilly, still falling continuously through the same stretch of space between the two portals.

“Huh. I figured he’d take that with him when he left,” Kaln said, planting his fists on his hips and studying the spatial apertures as if there was anything he could learn by looking. “If nothing else, I thought Shadrach would be careful not to leave booby-traps lying around where Emeralaphine might be annoyed by them.”

“Oh, this is actually really neat work,” Vadaralshi said merrily. “See, he’s keyed it directly to Rafaela’s life force. Once she’s removed from the loop, the portals will dissipate on their own. Being this broad and close together, it probably won’t even cause any physical backlash when they collapse. That guy sucks, but you can’t say he’s not good at what he does!”

“Help!” Rafaela demanded.

“There’s no rush,” said Percy. “This is educational.”

Kaln gave her a wary sidelong look. That was altogether more cold than he was accustomed to hearing her.

Catching his eye, the princess elaborated. “Dragonvale is…at least to an extent…open, now. We’ll inevitably be getting visitors—important, powerful ones, whose primary shield against being chomped by dragons is our reluctance to kick off the chain of consequences that would cause. I cannot be followed around by someone who responds to affronts to my dignity by sticking a sword in them. As a noblewoman of Vale stock, Contessa Rafaela understands this as well as anyone and better than most. It seems her outlaw years have instilled some bad habits that must be unlearned.”

“You’re right! I apologize! I’ll do my best!”

Rafaela was usually more loquacious and articulate than that; Kaln surmised that falling repeatedly through the same patch of space too fast to maintain eye contact with anyone was really throwing off her rhythm. Which was fair, that seemed like it would strain even his communication skills.

“Vadaralshi,” he said, “can you get her out of there, please?”

“Hmm…” The dragon lowered her head to squint at Rafaela’s eternal descent from up close. “Are you sure, Pants? This is a pretty short gap, so I’d have to move fast, and she’s definitely hit terminal velocity by now. No matter how careful I am, we’re looking at the likelihood of cracked ribs, bruised organs, and fractured limbs. At least.”

“Just do it!” Rafaela squalled.

“Are you going to stand there and tell me,” Kaln said severely, “that you, a hundred-year-old magical being with functionally bottomless energy reserves, don’t know any simple levitation spells?”

Vadaralshi blinked owlishly at him, then raised her head and tilted it to the side like a confused dog. “I… I don’t understand. How would that be funny?”

“Vadaralshi.”

“Fine, fine.”