Book 6: Chapter 46 - Confirmation (RAW) (Patreon)

Chapter 46 - Confirmation

“Then you have heard only the truth, though I know not why I have been gifted so by the Goddess. Perhaps, it is all part of Her great and divine plan?”

- Attributed to Gelgor Badawi of the Crows.

Finally, a mundane dream. A dream of some half-remembered other life and with it the canned laughter of television, leaking through thin apartment walls from some vapid program that existed only to fill silence. Simple things. Honest things. The kind of weightless, ordinary comfort I had taken so thoroughly for granted that I hadn’t even realized it was comfort until it was gone.

There had been more magic in that cheap laughter behind a screen of glass than in this entire world combined.

Waking was… pleasant, in a way I had come to trust. Estaza made a small sound when I shifted away from her, a sleepy murmur of protest that quickly softened into contentment. She stayed curled in the blankets like a cat that had claimed its place, warm and stubbornly peaceful, as if the day could not touch her so long as she refused to acknowledge it existed. I left her to it.

Outside, the camp was already awake.

Not awake the way a village woke—slow, drowsy, with yawns and gossip and the smell of bread. This was the sharp wakefulness of purpose. Of people who lived by the edge of steel and measured time in watches and patrol rotations. Men who moved through the camp and smoke with practiced urgency, armor straps being tightened, leather creaking, canvas snapping in a restless wind. Fires hissed. Horses snorted. Someone shouted numbers—inventory, rations, bolts, arrows, coin—and someone else answered like they had been drilled to do it until the words had lost meaning and simply became a part of this Dragon’s overall function.

For a heartbeat it looked like a military renaissance faire with a serious budget—bright banners, polished mail, tents in neat rows, a blacksmith’s hammer ringing like a bell. Then memory caught up, cold and precise. This was not pageantry. This was not performance. Nobody was going home after the show or day was done.

This was my life now.

I saw them almost immediately: the elven twins. My unwanted spoils of war, dragged into my orbit by a man who had thought himself worthy of the Mantis Mark—as if wanting was the same thing as earning, as if reaching was the same thing as taking. They were off to the side in a relatively quiet space, close enough to be seen, far enough to feel unsupervised. They had claimed a patch of trampled ground and made it theirs, turning it into a little arena of sharp, bright movement.

They were playing games with swords—if you could call it a game. Too quick for children, too reckless for soldiers. They darted and spun with their pieces of sharp steel that were their weapons. All elegance and speed, too fast too see perhaps for mortal eyes and beautiful in their own way. The way a fine sword blade is beautiful.

But underneath it all, I could see the real game. They thought the weapons were keys. That steel could be a shorthand to true mastery and power. That if they held the right shape in their hands—if they moved like me, if they copied me—then something of my power would leak into them through sheer proximity, through mimicry and imitation, through the cruel logic of superstition.

They were wrong. Of course they were. Oh, so terribly wrong.

The key to my power was not in the quality of my blade, nor the skill in which I wielded. The key was uglier and more honest than that: ruthless planning. A character build so focused it bordered on monomania. A ladder of choices, one after another, each rung chosen not because it was pretty or heroic, but because it made me harder to kill. Harder to stop. Harder to end. And therefore, of course, basically unstoppable.

In the crude language of that other life; Min-maxed and purpose-built. The kind of thing you made when you did not trust the world to be fair. WAAC, win at all costs.

It had made me almost unkillable.

Almost being the operative word—because “almost” was where the danger lived. A single decapitating strike would end. It was a good thing my gorget was Adamantine.

For a moment I felt the familiar tug of paranoia, that itch under the skin that begged me to check my status, check every attribute, grind every skill until there uncertainty was left no breath.

But I did not, because I chose not to.

I exhaled, slow, and let the camp noise fill the space where the itch wanted to grow. I was strong enough now to stop treating the world like a hostile spreadsheet. Strong enough to live inside the “story” without constantly trying to break it over my knee. Strong enough, finally, to let myself look at people as people, not as variables that could kill me if I forgot to account for them. Strong enough to enjoy the narrative that the world existed for.

You had to live in the moment, after all.

Even if the moment smelled like smoke and horse sweat and oiled steel.

Walking through the camp and living in the moment, it did not take much effort to find Cordelia.

She was impossible to miss—red hair like a thrown torch, a voice that carried cleanly over noise without needing to fight for it. She moved through the camp like she belonged to it by divine right, chin high, posture straight, expression bright with certainty. Around her, a small following gathered: men who liked being told what to believe, women who liked believing they were part of something larger, and a few who simply liked the warmth of conviction when the world about them was filled cold uncertainties.

Cordelia was giving her full sermon.

She spoke of the glories of her Goddess—Avaria, hated by me, but adored here in Aranthia. Cordelia’s words wrapped devotion in honey, turning worship into a kind of music. She painted Avaria as inevitable. Necessary. She spoke as if the Goddess were not an abstraction but a presence you could feel leaning close, listening.

And threaded through it all, woven so naturally it almost sounded like humility, she heaped glories upon me.

Not just praise. Reverence. The kind that tried to make a man into a symbol, because symbols were powerful things that men would die for.

It was a strange thing, to live in a world where gods sometimes walked among mortals and people treated that fact like weather—terrifying, undeniable, and ultimately just another thing you planned your day around. Here, faith was not only a matter of belief. It was an observation. A living history.

And the men of the Dragon… even the ones who did not believe in my divinity, those who still clung to the idea that I was merely a man, however monstrous, most certainly believed in my power. You did not need a temple to understand the difference between a story and a force. It was the greatest of ironies that I am was an atheist in my own church.

These men, well, they watched me the way you watched a storm forming on the horizon.

***

The land rolled past us in a slow, steady tide as I sat astride Theodore, his lumbering gait strangely relaxing. Each step was a deliberate thump through the packed earth, each breath a warm huff that carried his lizard scent. The monster I rode was the very picture of a creature that had decided the world could do its worst and it would still keep walking.

Ahead and behind, our column stretched like a scar across the countryside: wagons creaking, harness leather squealing, iron-shod wheels grinding over stones, men calling out to one another in rough voices that rose and fell with the terrain. Somewhere in the baggage train, a mule brayed in protest, answered by laughter and a muttered curse. The Mercenaries had settled into the rhythm of marching life—an easy, practiced thing.

In one of the wagons,  Larynda was playing with her Water magic. Not playing, exactly. Not in the way a child splashes in a stream. It was play the way a duelist plays—testing, refining, learning the limits. I watched her through one of the open shutters for a time from Theodore’s back, amused and confused in equal measure. She sat cross-legged amid blankets and crates, hands hovering over a shallow bowl, her expression drawn into a small, fierce concentration. The water obeyed her in silken threads: a ribbon that rose, twisted, collapsed, and rose again. A sphere that formed perfectly smooth, then dimpled as she introduced a controlled disturbance, then smoothed itself at her insistence. At one point she coaxed a thin sheet into being—so thin it caught the light like glass—and then folded it into layered petals that spun slowly, each rotation controlled, each flutter corrected. It was the shape of her Path, it the definition of her Control. 

The countryside, for lack of a better description, grew less wild now as we traveled. More thoroughly claimed. Nature here had been compelled into submission with the same relentless patience Theodore used to put one hoof in front of the other. Hedgerows and moss-lined stone walls stitched the land into neat parcels like a quilt.. The woods we passed were not woods as I would know them in stories: not sprawling, untamed forests with mystery beneath every bough. They were managed things, coppiced and pruned, their undergrowth cleared, their shapes purposeful. Even the trees looked resigned.

From a distance it almost could have been idyllic. But I could not forget the invisible cost. Every hedge trimmed, every wall stacked, every field kept from reverting to thorn and scrub—backbreaking labor, unending, year after year, in a society that acted as if iron and muscle were still the peak of human ingenuity.

Technologically backward. 

But, what struck me most, though, was the color. Not the green of fields or the gray of stone, but the human kind. The peasants we passed were not all drowned in drab browns and muddy grays as if the world itself mandated misery. There were blues. Reds, even, in scarves and stitched hems. Greens that had been dyed and re-dyed. Patterns on sleeves. The occasional bright ribbons in hair. It was a truth I had not expected. They were people with the stubborn human desire to be seen as more than a pair of hands.

Some watched us with the wary, tight-eyed look of those who had learned early that soldiers were storms: you did not argue with the sky. A man leaned on a hoe and spat as we passed, his expression hard and unreadable. But there were others, bolder or simply more foolish, who offered greetings. A raised hand. A nod. A cautious “Good day, sirs,” delivered as if speaking too loudly might turn us from travelers into raiders.

A few more enterprising sorts brought pitchers of local brew, walking along the flank of the column with the practiced air of men who knew how to profit from danger. They called out offers in voices that were half sales pitch, half prayer. Soldiers at the tail end, those with coin and thirst, bought cups and drank greedily.

No garlands were placed upon our heads. No cheering. No songs. But the general non-hostility certainly defied my expectations.

It intrigued me.

I reined Theodore closer to a knot of mercenaries and picked out one I had noticed earlier: a weaselly-looking old fellow in armor that sat a size too big on him. His helm was hooked on his belt; his hair was thin and greasy; a chipped front tooth made his mouth look permanently apologetic. He had the posture of someone who survived by staying just useful enough to keep around.

I leaned down slightly. “This is not the reaction I thought people would have to an army walking through their lands.”

He blinked at me, then looked to his left and right as if confirming it was truly him I was addressing, and not one of his brothers-at-arms. When he realized there was no escape, he swallowed and gave an awkward half-bow from the saddle.

“Milord—sir—Gilgamesh,” he started, nervously piling titles like a man stacking sandbags against a flood. “Beggin’ pardon, but… the Mercenaries got a good name. No rapine, loot, or ravage, on lands we ain’t contracted to attack, sir.”

His eyes flicked toward the nearby wagons, and he jerked his chin at the pennants that adorned the baggage train—cloth banners snapping softly in the breeze, their symbols visible even at a distance.

“The flag, when it’s up,” he continued, voice gaining confidence as he settled into familiar explanation, “that means we ain’t spoilin’ for a fight. Means we ain’t here to make a mess for free. To them folks ‘round here…” He spread his hands, palms up, as if showing there was nothing hidden. “We be like an opportunity.”

“An opportunity,” I repeated, tasting the word.

“Aye, sir. Soldiers got coin. Coin buys bread. Buys ale. Buys a night’s room, if there’s an inn, and if there ain’t, buys a shed and a blanket. If there’s work to be had that means shoes to mend, straps to stitch, a cartwheel to fix… well. They’ll take it. An’ if the flags up,” he added quickly, as if anxious to reassure me we were civilized beasts, “then the lads don’t go takin’ what ain’t theirs, ‘cause they’ll get their hands broke for it.”

I snorted, half amusement and half disbelief. It was a good enough explanation, and more importantly it made sense in its own ugly way. To me, an army was an army—an organized expression of hunger and violence—and if I were a peasant, it was a thing to flee from. Here, the distinction between “armed men passing through” and “armed men arriving to ruin you” was apparently as clear as a banner on a wagon.

It seemed I had yet to fully embrace the logic of this world.

In this manner we continued until the sun sank low and the sky turned to the confused colors of dusk and twilight filled with bruised purples and washed-out gold. 

Our camp began to take shape with the speed of practiced routine. Stakes were driven. Fires sparked and caught. The sounds of the day shifted: marching gave way to hammering, to the low murmur of men settling into their smaller evening selves. Somewhere a man started a tune—off-key, stubborn—and was shouted down by one of his peers.

I found myself drawn toward the command tent.

Not out of obedience. Not out of reverence. Out of the simple need for answers—or rather, a schedule. If I was going to be the blunt instrument in Damien’s hand, then I at least wanted to know when he intended to swing it.

I dismounted Theodore, the beast knew well enough to stand still and wait. The guards outside the tent knew not to even consider challenging me. Their posture stiffened, not in aggression but in recognition; they moved aside with the quick efficiency of men stepping away from something that might bite their head off at the slightest provocation.

I lifted the flap and entered.

Warmth hit me first—stale heat trapped under canvas, carrying the smell of oil, sweat, damp wool, and watered wine. A Zajasite lantern hung from the central pole, its unflamed light fluttering slightly with my entrance. Maps were spread across a table, weighed down with knives, coins, and a chunk of rock. In the corner, a small brazier smoldered.

Damien looked up and he looked weary at first glance. The kind of weary commanders wear like armor: eyes slightly bloodshot, shoulders held in the deliberate way of men pretending fatigue is irrelevant. But beneath it was a nervous energy, well-hidden and well-practiced. It sat under the surface like a tight wire. The impression he gave was layered—so layered it became difficult to tell which layer was the disguise and which was the truth.

I suspected that was the point.

“Gilgamesh,” he greeted, his voice smooth enough to qualify as hospitality. He leaned back in his chair and drank from a canteen, making a face that suggested the contents were wine that had been murdered by water. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

“Just wanted a quick update,” I said, letting my tone stay light. “When are we arriving at our destination?”

Damien’s laugh was brief and mirthless.

“At this pace,” he said, tapping a finger on a map as if the paper itself had offended him, “we will be entering my father’s lands in a week—if the banner of peace holds and the Guild doesn’t decide to make an example of us.”

His eyes flicked up to mine. There was a pause then, small but heavy, pregnant with implication.

“And,” he added quietly, “should we fail, we will be persona non grata.”

“However,” Damien continued, voice turning practical, “should we succeed, there should be enough gold in my father’s treasury to buy the Guild off.” He made a helpless little gesture with his hand, as if waving away the moral weight of bribery. “I find that such decisions often become… flexible in the presence of sufficient coin.”

“Well,” I said, forcing some steadiness into it, “I suppose we’d better win then. Is there a plan?”

“A plan?” Damien repeated. And there it was, a flicker of something between amusement and despair. “You, my friend, are the plan.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“We have neither the men nor the engines to prosecute a standard campaign,” he went on, voice settling into the cadence of someone explaining a disaster they have already rehearsed in their mind. “No siege towers. No proper artillery. No months, nor men, nor enough supplies to sit outside stone walls and grind them down. If we try to fight like a conventional force, we will be routed and fail.”

He dragged a fingertip along the map’s edge, tracing a route, then stopped over a marked point.

“We will have to take my ancestral home by trickery,” he said, “or by your force.”

He did not say it with flattery. He said it the way one acknowledges the existence of gravity.

“Tomorrow, I’ll send Aranthians to scout ahead,” Damien de Savant continued. “But the people are a close-knit folk. They know faces. They know strangers. Even those who look like them.” His gaze hardened. “If my father has prepared a trap, it will not be a crude thing. It will be a trap made by someone who understands the land, the roads, and the habits of those who travel them.”

“At the very least,” he finished, quieter now, “I owe it to us all to know what sort of teeth we are walking into.”

“The teeth of traps break, Damien,” I said, offering it with a shrug, as if it were a casual. “They break, or they are pried open.”

His eyes held mine for a moment. The nervous energy under his exhaustion twitched, like a man flinching without moving.

“Let us hope,” Damien said softly, “that they do indeed break… before they cut to the bone.”