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Nero Walker, Book 3 Ch.99 (214)
🕑 Added 2024-08-12 22:29:54 +0000 UTCJerry Cordswith was a nobody. He knew that. Everybody knew that.
While some people were destined for greatness, he knew he was bound to be a disappointment. Granted, he’s had some successes, but in the grand scheme of things, his lifetime of mediocre accomplishments hadn’t lived up to the hope his parents had in his talents.
Currently, he was leaning against a wall on the 32nd floor of the mage tower, watching over the penal conscripts who’d been assigned to him. Like busy little bees, they were flittering around, hard at work. His charges were all mages, much like himself. Yet, as penal conscripts, they were currently being treated as poorly paid laborers.
It was his job to make sure they got through their assignments for the day, making sure they worked hard to pay back the societal debt they’d earned. Although they were all mages, as penal conscripts, they weren’t entitled to respect, or even achievement points toward their advancement. For all intents and purposes, until they earned back their freedom, they were simply workers without a name. Sometimes, he couldn’t help but envy them for their simple, uncomplicated lives.
Watching them painstakingly replace the worn-out crystal relays along the wall, he remembered why this was the kind of work reserved for penal conscripts. This kind of job required some specialized knowledge and ability, but despite that, it was boring and annoyingly repetitive. No mage of any significant ability would waste their time with this kind of thing. Instead, they’d rather spend their precious hours earning achievement points and accolades to move up through the tower.
That wasn’t to say there weren’t mages in the tower who managed the day-to-day affairs, no longer having any hope of advancement. ‘Mages like me, I guess,’ he thought to himself sadly.
He’d been in this position, this same dead-end job, for over 30 years. By this point, he barely needed to pay attention anymore while he ‘worked’. Not that it mattered, nobody would care enough to complain unless something went terribly wrong.
Glancing over at a group of particularly hard-working mages, he brought up their records on his link.
Snorting in amusement, he noticed that all five of the young mages were arrested and processed together. They were each currently serving a 2-year sentence for accidentally destroying one of the labs during a poorly prepared experiment.
Idly remembering a few of his own youthful indiscretions, he felt himself smiling at the memory of being so young and dedicated to his advancement.
‘How had it all gone so wrong?’ he wondered.
Without meaning to, he started thinking about the scene he had watched last night over a beer with his friends.
As a ‘member’ of the group dedicated to following the tenants of The Walker, he was able to get a hold of the memory engrams being secretly distributed throughout the tower. While he didn’t necessarily buy into the ‘greatness’ of The Walker, he could admit to himself that he was a fan. It was fun watching the anomaly with a soul and memories from some foreign and alien outer plane find his way through the world.
At the time, that’s why he had joined the group of fanatics.
Lately, however, he has been more interested in the memory engrams being produced about The Walker’s followers. Over the past few days, he’d truly enjoyed watching the hunter, turned assassin, turned penal conscript, Mike Harring. Something about the man just resonated with him.
Seeing him come into his own, gathering followers for The Walker, and giving speeches… was inspiring.
He remembered how Mr. Harring had stood up on a table, loudly declaring that The Walker was different from the nobles they’d gotten used to, and then explaining in detail how he had personally led them to victory… Even now, the memory was enough to have him involuntarily smiling. ‘That was an incredibly moving moment, wasn’t it,’ he thought to himself, imagining being in the crowd, witnessing and participating in that small city's history being made.
Suddenly, he found himself looking at the penal conscripts in front of him with new eyes. These men and women were people just like him. Maybe they’d made some mistakes, fallen off their path, but that wasn’t any reason to look down on them. After all, he’d been in their shoes once or twice over his long life. Who’s to say that he’s any better than them?
Recalling how The Walker stood tall over the penal conscripts, held up by his personally adapted ‘earthen wall’ spell, he found himself remembering the feeling of ‘humanity’ he had inspired during his speech.
Shrugging himself off the wall, he felt himself compelled to DO something.
Walking up to the group of young mages struggling with the installation of a particularly advanced part of the essence distribution system, he said, “Here, let me show you it’s supposed to be inserted into the attachment collar.”
Smiling widely at their surprised faces, he felt a sense of pride at being able to teach them something. “Don’t feel bad about not understanding the schematics. The Tower of Magic’s technologies are the finest in Oglivarch.”
He kneeled down right next to them, pointing out the crystal harness, and began his lecture, “Thousands of years ago, this right here was the pinnacle of essence collection and distribution technology. If you look right here…”
Jerry Cordswith then went on to spend the afternoon teaching these young mages everything he knew about the tower’s systems. For the first time, in a long time, he felt the burning desire for life igniting in his center.
All the while, he felt the memory of Mr. Harring and The Walker watching over him in approval.
—--
After finally getting to bed, Nero suffered from a poor and troubled sleep. Images and scenes of kobalds running screaming down darkened tunnels assaulted his mind like sledgehammers.
He watched as groups of more intelligent-looking kobalds spoke to each other in hurried tones, debating how they should respond to their failed assault on the surface. Seeing them in their caves under firelight, eagerly planning their campaign against the smoothskins, made Nero’s body toss and turn under the covers.
Down deep underground, large portals to another plane stood tall and imposing. Kobald troops scurried back and forth through them like ants, ferrying supplies and food by the wagonload. Strange and exotic lizards of various sizes and shapes were being used as beasts of burden and mounts.
Nero felt the difference between the kobalds he had fought, and these more intelligent and less wild enemies. It was obvious on a visceral level that these were the true kobalds… the masters and source of the invasion.
In a cold sweat, still asleep, Nero clutched the sheets in panic at the sight of the birthing rooms. He saw impossibly large caves filled with lines and lines of eggs being watched over by hunched kobalds, spraying them down with steaming liquids that he ‘felt’ smelled as terrible as they looked.
His viewpoint flew across the caverns, seemingly pulled toward the source of the eggs. The feeling of humid fog and slime clung to him as his vision burst into a central chamber.
There, in the middle of the cavern, he saw large, bloated kobald mothers hooked up to some kind of unholy combination of technology and ritualized magic. Glowing black and red crystals pulsed with light as the kobald mother’s bellies swelled before expelling their eggs out by the dozens. To Nero, it felt like he was witnessing a horror movie.
But in a way, it was more like he was watching a nature documentary, understanding and empathy were being pumped into him as if he were being forced to learn how the subject of the docuseries lived.
He understood that this was how kobalds battled. They forcefully birthed their soldiers for the invasion, infusing them with life and essence, giving them a destiny that amounted to nothing more than grunts and sacrifices. It was both inhuman and incredibly practical.
So many cliches of clone armies and survival of the fittest flickered through the dream as his mind struggled to understand what he was seeing.
Having no control over the visions, he felt himself being pulled out of the chamber, flying back through the tunnels toward the portals. Somehow, he just knew that there he would find the answers he sought.
Like a wraith, he flew through the air over the uncountable hordes of kobalds, heading toward one of the towering portals. There, at the moment he was about to pass through, he felt himself jerk awake in his tent, cold and shaking, struggling to hold on to the memory of what he’d just witnessed.
Feeling his heart racing, he could no longer deny what had just happened. ‘OK… that was definitely not just a nightmare. Holy hell that was intense,’ he thought to himself in shock as he rubbed his hands over his face to fully wake himself up.
Forcing himself out of bed, Nero felt a little wobbly on his feet as he wiped himself down with a damp cloth.
Now clean, he turned to stare at his reflection, seemingly looking for answers from his doppelganger.
“You need to talk to Nick about this. Probably Jennings too,” he decisively ordered his reflection, glaring at himself in the mirror.
After calming himself down, he pulled out his armor and some clothes, intending to get dressed so he could start his day. Unfortunately, he hadn’t realized how badly his armor had been damaged. Despite having been protected by his mage armor, it looked like the several knicks and scrapes that had gotten through had been enough to turn his respectable leather armor into a patchwork of scraps being held together by a hope and a prayer.
Scowling in annoyance, Nero tried using some of the basic repair spell forms he’d read about. From what he knew, these kinds of spells used the target’s identity as a pattern to reinforce and rebuild what had been damaged. As a household spell from one of the first books he’d ever studied, the slight variations were good for broken plates and simple furniture. He was pretty sure they should have worked well enough for clothes and armor, but apparently, he must have misunderstood something. Despite how much effort he exerted, regardless of how much center he poured into the spells, nothing happened… not just nothing… decidedly NOTHING. It was infuriating.
Speaking of center, he noticed that the soul stuff in the ether had practically disappeared overnight, having broken apart and rejoined the essence flows. Even though he hadn’t seen it happen, he guessed that the world had reappropriated all that floating potential to reinforce the material reality all around him.
Now dressed in some simple clothes that he’d ‘borrowed’ from his time in the center, he stepped out of his tent humming the tune of ‘Circle of Life’ and doing a poor rendition of that incomprehensible chanting.
“Kaaamaaaana-heyaaaa!” he muttered with a smile as he looked around the central portion of the tent.
Happy to temporarily put his disturbing dreams behind him, he focused on the buffet set out for the commanders. While picking up some random bits of meat and fruits, he mentally thought about how comedically ‘wrong’ it was to be eating Simba and that warthog whose name he could never remember.
Sitting alone at one of the tables, he held up a fork of what he assumed was some sort of eggs, and said, “I thank you for your sacrifice. Your life has served a grand purpose… my breakfast.”
While enjoying his food and washing it down with some type of fruit juice, he couldn’t help but empathize with the vegans and PETA back home. It really is kind of an asshole thing to do to eat meat.
“But on the other hand… BACON!” he said while holding up a strip of some unidentifiable animal and ripping off a big bite with his teeth.
Accepting that he was, and always has been an asshole and that life was nothing more than a harsh, competitive fight resulting in only two things… winners and losers, he was just happy not to be currently serving as a kobalds breakfast this fine morning.
Right as he was about to put his empty plate with the other dirty dishes, he paused for a moment in contemplation. ‘Why don’t they just clean up after themselves when they are done?’ he wondered.
Looking around, he saw various tables of commanders and other soldier types chatting away with each other, enjoying their food. No one was paying attention to him, or even close enough for him to ask them what he thought was such an obvious question.
Turning back to the pile of dirty dishes, cups, and utensils in the box in front of him, he decided that his karmic balance could use a boost. Perhaps it was the fact that he’d just eaten a bunch of meat after having contemplated the circle of life, or maybe it was due to him having spent the previous few days massacring kobalds, either way… he decided to try out another one of the household spells he’d memorized.
Setting his plate back down on the table, he held out his hand and carved the spell form from memory. Designating the plate as his target, he completed the spell without issue, watching with a smirk as the last bits of his breakfast flaked away into the air like ashes floating away from a fire. ‘Magic is so fucking awesome,’ he said to himself, appreciating the moment.
Suddenly he realized that he had just been itching to use magic, and the philosophical crap he had just been thinking about was all just to make himself feel better. Shrugging off the predictable realization, he placed his now clean plate back where he found it while leaving his utensils and cup for the dishwashers. ‘Taking away someone’s job so that I can absolve myself of any guilt I have for eating Bambi is too stupid… even for me,’ he said to himself.
Walking out of the tent, he mentally changed gears and reached out to find anyone he recognized. While he could probably find the communication channel his unit had been using, he didn’t feel like doing that. It was easier to just find someone he recognized and ask for directions. He really wanted to sit down with Nick and cover all the crap they needed to talk about.
Surprisingly, he found that the tent he’d just left was either shielded or enchanted to stop anyone from looking inside it. Raising his eyebrows in surprise, he looked over at the guards standing near the entrance. ‘They’ll do,’ he thought to himself.
Walking up to them, he offered them a small wave and a smile before asking, “Hey guy. You wouldn’t happen to know where Nick… I mean, Lord Verena-Salvatore is, would you?”
He watched as one of the guards’ eyes went a little blank, obviously communicating with someone through a communications link.
Patiently waiting, he thought about how much of a pain in the ass long-distance communication was without the Central Thought Hub available. Communication links like the guard was using needed to be manually set up and maintained like a hive mind. It was basically the fantasy equivalent of handing out hand radios.
Of course, his conjecture was immediately disproved by the fact that he could see the link lighting up on the side of the guard's temple. ‘Oh… right. They probably brought in one of those battle-hub things while I was sleeping. I could have just used that. I’m such a dumbass.’ he thought wryly.
“Lord Walker, your house has been given a tent near section C12. You can find directions through your link. Your authorizations are still valid. I’m told Lord Verena is currently with several of your adherents in the tent’s communal room. However, that can’t be verified at the moment. You can be sure that somewhere there will know where he is, though,” the guard said stonily, quite obviously trying to sound as serious and professional as possible.
Grinning at the guard's cliched display, Nero nodded in appreciation before thanking the man and walking off.
Using his mental presence to reach into his pocket and connect himself with his link, Nero sighed at how many pings were waiting for his attention. “It really never stops with these people,” he muttered, his tone making his annoyance clear.
Before anything else, he flipped through the various menus until he found a map of the encampment the army had set up in the recently acquired massive chamber. Looking at how they’d laid out their tents and temporary buildings, Nero couldn’t help but chuckle at how similar it looked to how the kobalds had set theirs up.
He knew he shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, how many ways were there to organize this many people? But he still couldn’t help but find the similarities a little amusing.
After locating where he had to go, he altered course and headed off toward his house’s tent. Surprised at how far away it was, he chuckled at the mental image of Cathleen arguing with some soldier about House Walker’s image if his house’s tent were so far away from the army’s power structure. ‘My trailer is supposed to be directly across from the buffet!’ he thought to himself sarcastically, imagining himself as a snotty Hollywood star demanding his due as the battle’s lead actor.
Deciding to take advantage of the walk, he started going through the pings he had waiting on his link.
He nearly stumbled when the first one he opened was from Natalie Keening, complaining about the disrespect being shown to House Walker by the army due to his tent’s placement. She requested leave to assign one of the wackos as a community liaison. The person’s job would be to create what sounded like a video blog which would be posted over the Thought Hub. The intention was to promote House Walker’s ideals and let the people of Dorchester know about what Lord Walker, his house, and the Walker Adventuring Company were up to.
According to her, most houses had a community liaison, and the fact that he currently doesn’t is simply unacceptable. She made it clear that the first videos to be released would discuss the battle, how poorly the army had acted, the disrespect they’d shown him after his single-handed defeat of the enemy, and character profiles of the high-ranking members of his house.
Not knowing how he should answer, he set the ping aside and moved on to the next one.
Even though it had been a while ago, after having spent a full day with Vera forcing him to go through his pings, Nero had gotten better at assimilating the information quickly. When interacting with the link, it wasn’t exactly like reading or watching the television. It was more like allowing the information to sink into your brain and then absorbing it.
As a result of burgeoning skill, he was able to move through the pings rather quickly.
There were a bunch from his wackos. Apparently having been given access to the battle hub, they’d taken the opportunity to send him personalized messages, thanking him for allowing them to join House Walker. Nero could practically feel their loyalty oozing off their messages as they recapped what they’d covered during their interviews. They spoke about their lives, what they wanted to accomplish, and how much he’d inspired them. Concerning the battle, they’d thanked him for leading them to victory, praising his selfless act of hurling himself into danger to save them from the same fate of the soldiers who’d died at the hands of the siege wyrms.
Nero found himself shaking his head in amusement at their fan letters, because to him, that’s what they were. What they were saying barely made any sense. He’d spent most of the battle in the back of the lines, thoroughly protected from any danger.
Even when he was in the fighting, it was as a mage. Mostly he was playing with his magic, trying out different things and experimenting. Hell, the only reason he got involved at the end was because he couldn’t stand how stupid the army was being. The last thing he wanted was the roof coming down on his own head because he was too busy letting everyone else fight his battles for him.
Yet, the pings did bring a little warmth to his heart. How couldn’t they? It was surprisingly nice to get so much positive feedback.
Not wanting to send out a form letter reply, he instead set the pings aside so that he could address them later.
Next, he got to Cathleen’s predictable after-battle action report. Some of it he didn’t understand, as he couldn’t comprehend how many people had signed up to follow him into battle. Along with a casualty report, she included their unit's current roster. He saw sections for the wackos, Captain Angleton’s soldiers, and two sections for penal soldiers who’d come under his banner.
Curious, he looked into the penal forces and saw that there was an attachment listing who wanted to join House Walker and who had only signed up for the battle.
For those who’d just signed up for the battle, Cathleen had already sent in the paperwork to command listing their accomplishments and their earnings toward their sentence with the Tower of Law. Looking closer, he could see details concerning how many kills each person had and whether or not they participated in any particularly dangerous maneuvers. It was all very thoroughly done, and Nero had absolutely no idea how she’d accomplished it.
The other section for the penal soldiers had their profiles along with individual requests to join his house under either a life-oath or temporary assignment. Frowning in confusion, Nero saw that he had 37 people waiting to sign their lives over to him. Others had contract requests for between 50 and 100 years. One even had a societal debt of over 300 years for murdering an entire family that he wanted to serve under House Walker.
Unable to help himself, Nero dug further into the story, like a true-crime enthusiast entranced by the promised drama.
The guy's name was Clarance Ferguson. His wife and two daughters had been killed during what was assumed to be a bandit raid. However, the poor guy found out that a merchant in charge of a shipment had wanted to pad his books, so he had arranged for all the citizens accompanying the caravan to be killed off in some kind of complicated scheme with the help of his brother who owned the guard company employed to ensure the caravan got to its destination. When Clarance found out, he went all John Wick on their asses and wiped out their entire family. By the time the city guards arrived, it was all already over. He then turned himself in without complaint, taking his sentence like a man, a sentence he’d been serving for 33 years so far.
Whistling softly in appreciation for the tale, Nero reminded himself to track this guy down and buy him a beer. ‘Dude was a trained furniture maker who took the law into his own hands. I’d read that story,’ Nero said to himself with a smile.
Moving on, Nero glanced at the formal request sent by Captain Angleton on behalf of his troops. The man gave an alarmingly long explanation of why he was requesting to join Nero on his adventures, and extolling Nero’s many virtues.
Unable to bring himself to read the confused man’s ramblings, Nero closed the ping quickly. The image in his head of Captain Angleton standing tall, like a real-life action figure came to mind, contrasting sharply with what he’d just read. ‘If that man ever learns what I’m really like, he’s going to shove my head into something thoroughly uncomfortable… like my ass,’ he warned himself sternly.
Setting that future problem aside for the moment, he returned to the main menu in his link. Seeing that the last few pings were from Army Command, that grandmaster guy, Archmage Jennings, and some dude named Commander Gallegos, Nero felt like sighing in relief at this hell almost being over.
Just when he was about to open the ping from Jennings, his attention was caught by someone shouting his name. Blinking his eyes a few times to clear his head from the autopilot he’d been running on, he looked around to find who was calling out for him.
Seeing one of the wackos jogging toward him with a disgustingly happy smile on her face, Nero felt like he’d possibly made a big mistake in coming here.
“My Lord! You’ve already recovered from your injuries! I told Charlie that you could do it! Come, everyone is waiting for you!” she said excitedly, nearly ripping his arm out of its socket as she led him toward what could only be his tent.
Hanging off posts on both sides of the massive entrance were his house’s flags. The stupid ass symbol he’d arbitrarily decided on glared brightly on the enchanted fabric, the teal lettering proudly declaring this tent House Walker’s. In the center of each flag, floating over a book, he saw the evil smiley face he’d proposed. The glowing orange and red balls of what looked like spellfire were both grinning widely, clearly mocking him. Even worse, his house's words now looked much more prominent and douchey than he remembered. “Game. Win. Repeat.”
While being pulled along like an unruly child who’d gotten himself lost at a street fair, Nero couldn’t stop himself from groaning in annoyance at what was coming. ‘I should have stayed in bed,’ he thought to himself grumpily.
