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Nero Walker, Book 3 Ch.30 (145)
🕑 Added 2024-04-03 22:30:01 +0000 UTCThey were really there just like he said they would be,’ thought Mage-adept Catherine Newbanks, impressed with the king’s foresight.
To be able to see what others missed, from so far away, was no small feat. Even with the aid of the local mage tower, no one in Dorchester was able to pierce the illusion the kobalds had put up. The army would be heading into combat blind, a fact which no one on the leadership council was happy about.
However, that wasn’t her concern. She had a job to do. Technically, two jobs. Three if her duties in service of the arch-mage were to be included.
She was ostensibly acting as the local court mage, acting on behalf of Arch-mage Jennings. Her duty was to run the Mage Tower, oversee operations and streamline the communication flow toward the military and the council. She was also tasked with reviewing the conduct of the local mages, and maintaining day-to-day operations. As she has no local ties, she has no responsibility to aid in the coming conflict, but only to monitor and manage the local resources and information found through the efforts of Dorchester’s citizenry.
As the aide to the arch-mage, she is responsible for keeping him informed of local happenings, fulfilling his obligations to the local leadership council, and providing him with whatever he needs to do his work. As his current work is supposedly monitoring the local nobles to ensure their good behavior, she’s essentially in charge of running the espionage arm of the local Tower of Magic.
Yet her primary duty, the real reason she came to Dorchester in the first place, is her work for the royal family, the king himself.
As she headed back to her office after drowning the arch-mage in data, she reviewed her current progress with the task list she had been given.
The local religions have been fed the conflicting, and unverifiable rumors concerning both the Tower of Fate and the recently raised Lord Walker.
The local mages have been pointed toward where their attention should have been all along, and the influence of the nobles has been expunged from the entirety of the tower. It hadn’t been easy to dismiss, kill, or banish that many mages, but she’d done it.
Her most recent success was getting the local gossips to question the noble’s competence and desire to actually protect the local citizenry. Having subtly pointed out the few noble houses that had run for the hills after the density shift had been discovered, and the attack on the one new noble who was currently fighting on the front lines, the job had practically done itself. Overall, it had been easier than she’d thought it would be. It had only taken one dinner where she mentioned a few facts too loudly, and the local Thought-hub was already buzzing with questions.
Arriving at her office, she closed the door behind her and smiled at how things were going. When she’d spoken with the king, she wondered if things would actually turn out like he’d predicted. But seeing how the past few days have gone, she no longer had any doubt.
The arch-mage and the mage council was distracted with the Tower of Fate, and the kobalds were the primary concern of the local nobles. As long as she was careful, she should have no problem performing her duties, and steering things toward the desired path the king provided.
‘Even though in the end it won’t really matter, I still hope everyone will play their games as he predicted. Otherwise, things are going to get a little out of hand,’ she thought to herself.
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Nero watched as the walls sprung up around the camp. He tried to help where he could, but there wasn’t really time to waste teaching him how to be a carpenter. Everyone was moving with purpose, doing their part to get their camp ready as soon as possible.
Glancing to his left, he could see that even Rose was finding something productive to do. While straddling a log, she was using her axe to remove the bark and rough bumps that used to be branches. To Nero, she looked like she was on a rowing machine, stretching forward, then pulling back as long strips of bark curled up in front of her. There was a pile of those strips accumulating next to her, a testament to how much work she was getting done.
On the other hand, Nero hadn’t been doing very much of anything.
He’d been assigned strip a tree of its branches, and at first, he thought he was doing fine. After dragging the trunk over, he started ripping off the branches. Everything was going fine until he heard some sergeant’s voice he didn’t recognize shouting at him from 30ft away.
After being berated for a few minutes, he was reassigned to post placement, and warned to stay away from the lumber. How was he supposed to know that he was supposed to ‘cut’ the branches off and not just rip them out of the trunk? The chunks he’d taken out of the tree weren’t that bad as far as he was concerned.
He didn’t last long with the post placement team either. All they were supposed to do was make round holes for the support pillars to go in. They said 5ft deep, and 3 ft wide. So that’s what he did. If they didn’t want him to use magic, then they should have said something. And the explosion wasn’t that loud anyways. Did they expect him to actually DIG the damn holes? What’s the point of having magic if he couldn’t use it to avoid physical labor?
Now, Nero was acting as a hauler, reduced to dragging trees back to the work areas while everyone else was provided the skilled labor.
With a grimace, Nero hefted the base of a tree onto his shoulder and started heading back toward the center of the encampment. ‘This is bullshit. Why don’t they have spells for this. There has to be a way to just pull up rock from the ground and manifest a castle or something,’ he thought.
At the edge of his perception range, he felt something catch his attention.
Pausing, he turned his head to look back over his shoulder into the forest, his eyes narrowing in with suspicion. Something wasn’t right.
Looking back toward the camp, he saw Nick waving his hands around, probably giving a lecture to some poor bastard on the history of this particular configuration of wooden walls. Reaching out, he tried to connect with the man.
Feeling the connection stabilize, they looked in each other’s direction, too far to really meet each other’s eyes.
Before Nick could say anything, Nero’s voice was full of urgency, “Nick, tell someone in charge that there is something in the forest watching us. I can’t see what it is, but it’s like a fake essence signature like that illusion mage used when we were ambushed. It’s not exactly that, but it’s like that. I can’t explain it any better, but part of the forest behind me isn’t really forest.”
Even while Nero was rambling, Nick was quick-stepping toward a group of sergeants who were squatting over some contruction plans which had been laid out on the ground. Nero watched as they all looked up to listen to what Nick had to say. It was too far to hear what they were saying, but even at this distance he could see Nick pointing off in his direction and animatedly passing on his message.
From the looks of it, the sergeants didn’t seem very interested in what Nick had to say. So, it wasn’t surprising when they all stood up in unison and glared in Nero’s direction. One of them took a step forward and waved Nero over with an angry arm pointing at the dirt directly in front of him. The bastard looked like a soccer mom demanding her kid get his ass in the car.
Sighing, Nero dropped the tree he was still propping up on his shoulder, and mentally took one last look at the lying section of the forest behind him. ‘Yep, it looks like someone is holding up a big painting of a forest. This is like this world’s version of using a photograph to fool a security camera,’ he thought.
Forcing himself to not look back with his eyes, he jogged toward the group of sergeants, trying to make it seem like he wasn’t in too much of a hurry. But, he couldn’t stop his heart from beating in his chest like a bass drum. If whatever was out there wasn’t hostile, it probably wouldn’t be hiding. Unless it was some weird fantasy beast that was both curious and completely stupid… he’d seen that trope enough times not to discount it.
Arriving in front of the sergeants, Nero was greeted with harsh stares and dismissive attitudes.
Some sergeant he didn’t know said, “What’s this about you seeing something in the forest that isn’t forest?” His tone was subdued, trying not to be insulting while simultaneously letting Nero know that he didn’t believe a word of what he was hearing.
Nero looked up at the tall man and replied, “It’s like this, I’m good at seeing stuff with my essence field. And I can see pretty far with it. In fact, I’m getting better with it every day. And what I saw isn’t forest. At first glance, it looks like every other part of the forest, but it’s just a false image.”
Cocking his head to the side, the sergeant replied, “So, you identified an illusion?”
Nero didn’t want to say it, but he did anyway, “Not really. I’ve seen an illusion before, and this isn’t it. I don’t know what I’m seeing. I haven’t come across it before. All I can tell you is that something is out there, and it’s hiding behind a picture of the forest showing an image of that exact area without them in it.”
The sergeant turned away to share a glance with all the other men who’d been looking over the construction plans with him. Each of their eyes made their disbelief as clear as day. Nero could even feel their individual skepticism in the ether building off each one anothers in some kind of weird group-think. ‘Man, are people really this dumb? Just because one person doesn’t believe something, does everyone else have to feel justified in their doubts? OK, stupid question, trying to convince a group of naysayers is just as impossible here as it was back home,’ he told himself.
Nero looked around for options, ignoring whatever the idiot in front of him was saying. It was a skill he’d learned under a particularly useless manager he had when was working retail in a mall when he was in high school. He’s had years of practice at it, and if it were a skill, it would probably be master-level.
Across the way, he could see Specialist Howard standing next to Captain Angelton. They were doing something at the communications tower which was currently being assembled much faster than the walls.
Turning back to the useless sergeant, Nero interrupted the man, “Excuse me, I’m going to go over there now.”
Walking off, Nero ignored Nick’s voice which was currently wasting it’s breathe apologizing for him. Suppressing a chuckle at his friend’s attempts to politic with the critics, he jogged over to the two people who might actually listen to what he had to say.
“Hey cap, Howie, we got a problem,” he said loudly, causing both men to turn and look over their shoulder.
Arriving in front of them, Nero was about to speak when he heard Specialist Howard demand, “Don’t call me that!” His voice completely devoid of humor.
Nero held up his hands and said, “Sure thing boss. But let’s put a pin in that for now. I was near the tree-line when I saw something through my essence field that you need to know about.”
While Captain Angelton maintained his blank stare, Specialist Howard corrected Nero, “You mean you perception field.”
Confused, Nero turned to look up at the war-mage and replied, “Yeah, sure, whatever. Listen, there is something in the forest over there that is watching us. It’s covering a pretty good chunk of space and it’s hiding in a way I don’t really understand. It’s like an illusion, but it’s not. It looks like forest, but it’s not. I know that sounds bat-shit crazy, but it is what it is.”
Captain Angelton turned his head to look at Specialist Howard, and he raised one eyebrow as if he were waiting for the man’s opinion. In response, Nero watched the war-mage’s eyes go glassy and just stare off into the distance. Seconds later, the man frowned and shook his head.
“I don’t see anything out of the ordinary,” he said.
Captain Angelton still didn’t speak, he just turned back to Nero and looked down at him from his massive height, waiting for what Nero had to say in response to Specialist Howard’s findings.
Nero didn’t want to argue, as he kind of respected them both. However, he knew he was right.
“I get it. I’m just some fresh recruit that is only here because of some weird political crap that’s been shelved on account of an actual war with the lizard people. You’ve got more important things to do than to listen to what I have to say. But look at me when I’m telling you… There is something there. I don’t know how I can see that the forest is wrong, but I can. Can either of you think of a technique, spell, skill, or ability that can hide someone like that?” asked Nero, doing everything he can to will them to believe what he was telling them.
The two old soldiers turned to look at each other, having a full conversation with their eyes. ‘Maybe they’re actually talking to each other? Nick and I can do it, so it wouldn’t surprise me,’ thought Nero.
“It can’t hurt to check it out,” Specialist Howard said, breaking the silence.
Nodding once in agreement, Captain Angelton raised his head and looked out into the camp. Turning around, Nero saw several people perk up and look over at them. It was like seeing a bunch of cats hearing a tuna can open. After a few seconds, they all started moving at the same time. Like a basketball team heading for their coach at a time-out, they converged together and stared at their sergeant who was looking particularly annoyed.
“Where exactly did you see this… false forest?” asked the Captain, speaking for the first time. His voice was calm, seemingly not having an opinion one way or another on whether or not Nero was correct in his conclusion.
Nero took a step to the side, but didn’t point. He just faced toward where he’d left the tree he’d been carrying and said, “You see that tree laying in the middle of the cleared area? It’s about 30 yards past that and a little to the left.”
Nero didn’t see it, but the use of the word ‘yard’ caused both the war-mage and the captain to look over at him with surprise. The meaning of the word came across, so they understood what he was saying, but it was still one of the few words Nero’s lexicon that didn’t have a direct translation to something they were used to hearing. While Nero always spoke English, if they weren’t paying attention, they didn’t really notice. Although his word choice was always a little odd, they just chalked it up to him being a foreigner. However, when he said something that didn’t exactly translate, his odd language became apparent.
In particular, Captain Angelton chided himself for not realizing that Nero had never been speaking the local language, or any language he’d ever heard. People using different languages wasn’t particularly uncommon, so most people don’t bother to pay attention to what words are being used. But the captain was still not happy that he had missed it. In a way, it was central piece of the puzzle that made up this strange young man. One he should have noticed immediately, back when he’d first found him in the middle of a caravan massacre on a road outside Dorchester’s walls.
Nero didn’t know what was going through their heads, so he just stared out into the tree-line, trying to reach out to see if he could perceive anything at this distance. Unfortunately, it was just too far.
Rather than head directly there, the team that had been assembled sprinted off into the forest perpendicular to the area Nero had indicated was suspect. Confused for a second, Nero didn’t understand what they were doing. ‘Oh, duh. It’s not like they’ll run right at whoever is out there. Think, man! This is no time to be an idiot, shit’s about to go down,’ he chided himself.
Comments
Ocean Breeze
Great chapter. Fyi, I noticed some going back and forth between past and present tense.
