Explorer of Edregon

Vin continued staring at Golrim, his already-tired mind struggling to comprehend precisely what the man had asked him. For his part, Golrim merely sat there, patiently waiting for his answer. Eventually, Vin managed to get his wits about him somewhat, and he sighed as he shook his head.

“…Do I even want to know how long you’ve been there?”

“Slightly before you and Theodore got here,” Golrim admitted, his sly smile widening just a hair. “I had people watching Terra’s entrance, ordered to notify me the moment you returned. You and Theodore took a winding path to avoid the crowds. I ran straight here.”

“I’m not sure if I’m more concerned about the fact that you have ‘people’, or the fact that it sounded as if you were legitimately asking me if I wanted to rule over Terra,” Vin said, looking pointedly at the man sitting across the table from him. “I thought your days of scheming were at an end?”

“Whatever gave you that idea?” Golrim asked with a chuckle. “I’ve been honest with you from almost the very beginning, Vin, I’ve never hidden my intentions behind joining Terra. I want to transform this town into a legitimate powerhouse. The strongest city on Edregon, one capable of withstanding anything the Gods might decide to throw at us. I never put my faith in your supposed council. I put my faith in you.”

“Golrim, I’m tired, and hungry, and just got through with a really exhausting ordeal, if I’m being honest,” Vin said, scrunching up his eyes and praying that when he opened them, he’d be sitting in his own apartment rather than a hidden safehouse tucked beneath the town park. Yet when he opened them, all he saw was a former advisor, smiling at him from across the table. “I don’t care how much work you’ve done to benefit Terra at this point. If I figure out that this whole cult thing was your doing…”

Vin was too tired to come up with a legitimate threat, so he left it open ended, hoping Golrim would come up with something far worse than anything he could think of. Yet rather than look worried, the man merely laughed.

“No, I can honestly say I had no part in the origin of this. Now, I may have had a slight role in convincing Spur and the rest of the council to let things play out until you got back rather than put a stop to things earlier on, but you could argue just as easily that my intentions were pure. There almost certainly would have been unrest and violence if the council tried to curb things with a heavy hand.”

“Thank goodness we had Saint Golrim watching over everyone,” Vin drawled. “Like I said, I’m tired, and Theodore will probably be back with the council any minute now, so let’s get this over with. You seriously think I’d have any interest in taking over Terra for myself and what, overthrowing the rest of the council? I thought you knew me better than that.”

“I think you haven’t fully considered the possibility is all,” Golrim explained, holding up a finger. “Your greatest hang up around responsibility is that you do not wish to be tied down, but that is why you have underlings to rely on. Just as you’ve appointed Theodore to handle your duties as the head of the Foreign Branch, you could just as easily appoint Spur as Governor to handle the daily goings-on within town, or whomever you so chose. Honestly, not much would change with you in charge beyond you being better able to shape the town in your image and better prevent tragedies from occurring in your absence.”

“Even if I had the slightest interest in ruling over Terra, that’s not exactly enough to risk me spearheading a coup,” Vin said, shaking his head. “I’m not about to purposely do anything that would result in people getting hurt.”

“To be frank… I don’t believe many people would get hurt if you took advantage of this opportunity and pushed for total control of Terra,” Golrim admitted, giving Vin pause.

“What do you mean? You don’t think Abby and her guards would put a stop to things? Or Phil and his combat classes wouldn’t fight back?”

“You still don’t understand just how popular you are, do you?” Golrim asked, raising an eyebrow. “In under two weeks, a fifth of the entire population of Terra has declared themselves followers of you. And those are just the fanatics. I’ve run the numbers, Vin, you have a higher approval rating than any king or queen I’ve ever seen in history. Yes, Terra is small compared to most kingdoms, but percentages don’t lie. After everything you’ve done during these past monster waves, your display of magic in the courthouse, word of mouth about your deeds… It all begins to add up after a while.”

“You’ve run the numbers? Checked my approval rating?” Vin repeated, unable to believe what he was hearing. “The more you talk, the more I’m finding it hard to believe your earlier claim that you had nothing to do with this.”

“Just because I had nothing to do with this, doesn’t mean I haven’t been entertaining the thought of you taking control of Terra,” Golrim grinned. “A good advisor plans for every possible angle. To be fair, my original plans assumed that Spur and Phil would end up going up against an epic monster too powerful for them and get themselves killed. I wanted to have something in place to ensure the entire power structure of Terra wasn’t thrown into shambles, but still, plans can be adapted.”

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“Plans can be scrapped as well,” Vin said, deciding he’d entertained Golrim long enough. “Let me be clear. I will never try to push for myself to become some sort of ruling king of Terra. If something horrible were to happen to the other council members, I’d uphold the spirit of the council. We’d elect new representatives, fill the vacant seats with new faces, maintain the balance of power as best we can. I don’t think any one person should be able to do whatever they want when there are thousands of lives depending on them to make the right decision.”

“If that is how you feel, then I will stop asking,” Golrim said, getting to his feet and giving him one last smile. “Though I won’t apologize for putting together contingency plans, and I mean what I said, Vin. In my personal opinion, you are the key to Terra’s prosperous future. Like it or not, you may have to make some tough decisions down the line all on your own.”

“Then I’ll tackle that when we get there,” Vin said, motioning toward the trapdoor. “Now would you get out of here before the others arrive? I seriously don’t need you complicating things any more than they already are.”

“As you wish,” Golrim said, giving him a slightly too-deep bow before stepping back and vanishing from view. The sounds of the trapdoor opening and closing once more signaled Golrim taking his leave, and Vin sighed, banging his forehead on the table as he let his head drop yet again.

“…If there’s anyone else hiding inside this safe house with some sort of morally dark-gray plan they want to run by me, now would be the time.”

Thankfully, the safe house was silent, and Vin let his eyes close for a moment. While his body was still a bit tired, his mind was anything but, and he realized he wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep. Racking his brain for ideas on dealing with the current problem, he was startled out of his brainstorming by the trapdoor opening yet again, followed by three familiar faces climbing down the ladder.

“Glad I didn’t have this built for nothing,” Witherson said, nodding toward him as she took her seat. “Welcome back, Vin.”

“I still think you guys should have let me rig this place with traps,” Alice argued, grinning and punching him on the arm as she took a seat beside him. “Causing problems even when you’re not here, same as always.”

“The point of a safe house is a safe place to retreat to in the event of an emergency,” Spur sighed, shaking his head as he sat across from Vin, in the very seat Golrim had occupied only a few minutes ago. “This wouldn’t be a very safe place if we blew up the moment we opened the trapdoor. Though I think seeing Vin get hit in the face with a bag of flour might improve my mood at the moment.”

“No Phil?” Vin asked, realizing the intimidating man wasn’t following behind the others.

“Nah, he’s busy helping Abby maintain the peace. Speaking of which…” Spur said, giving him a rather pointed look as he leaned forward in his chair. “…Theodore filled you in on the situation?”

“Yeah, I know the gist,” Vin admitted. “Any ideas how I can help get things back to the way they were?”

“We’ve been discussing ideas since the very beginning,” Witherson explained. “It’s risky, but we think the simplest solution would be to gather all of them up and have you speak to them. Explain how this isn’t what you want, and what they should do instead going forward.”

“The problem with that idea is that there’s really no knowing how fanatics are going to react to their idol telling them to shove off,” Spur continued. “This kind of thing has happened on Earth a lot more than you think, what when you factor in devoted celebrity groups or cult leaders scattered across the globe. The biggest difference of course being that you actually are pretty much everything they claim you to be. It’s not some sleight of hand or mental trickery, you not only can cast magic, you can do a hell of a lot with it.”

“I don’t know, there’s still that rumor going around that Vin is a literal God come down to monitor our situation,” Alice grinned. “Saying he is all they claim might be a bit much.”

“Obviously we’re not factoring in the more absurd rumors,” Spur frowned. “What do you think, Vin? How are you when it comes to public speaking? We can always try and act with a bit more of a heavy hand, tearing down your posters and banning gatherings of more than a dozen people. But that probably won’t go over very well.”

“How did my life turn into this?” Vin asked nobody in particular, leaning back in his chair and staring up at the ceiling. “I just want to wander around and enjoy all the cool things Edregon has to offer. Can’t I just go fight a new epic monster or something?”

“Give it some time, the next one is coming soon enough,” Spur reminded him. “We’re only a few weeks away from the battle for wave seven.”

“Thanks. That makes all of this so much better,” Vin said, shaking his head as he fixed the Commander with a hard look. “I’ll do what I can to calm them down, but I’m not promising any miracles. I don’t know a damn thing about politics or swaying the people. You’d better have some sort of contingency plan in place in the event I make it all worse.”

“You leave that to us. We’ll make sure nobody burns the town down,” Alice promised him. “Need any help with your speech? Golrim offered to give you some pointers once you got back.”

“I don’t doubt that he did,” Vin drawled, imagining Golrim’s sly grin still sitting across the table from him. “I’ll figure it out on my own, or ask someone else for help. Maybe one of the town Writers is available to offer suggestions. Do I have a deadline?”

“I mean, the sooner the better,” Spur said. “These people aren’t necessarily causing too many problems, but that could change in an instant if Grant decides to start preaching something different. Crowd mentality is a dangerous thing. All it would take is for the man to start shouting that you told him elves were secretly evil, and we might very well have a few hundred people marching off to war with the Scared Forest.”

“I’ll start now then,” Vin sighed, nodding his thanks as Witherson slid him a pen and a sheet of paper.

“Great! In that case, we’ll get things prepared to gather them all up in one place,” Spur said, getting to his feet and shooting Vin a toothy grin. “I bet they’re all beyond excited to hear from their glorious leader!”