Rimelion: The Exploiter

Katherine was already pulling us in a new direction, her grip on my sleeve insistent. “A farmer?” I asked, stumbling slightly as she tugged me along.

“Yes!” She didn’t elaborate, just kept walking with determined purpose.

I sighed. “I guess we can try.”

I turned to Lucy, who was following with her usual swagger. “Are you... also going with us? To the dungeon?”

Lucy grinned, adjusting her hat. “Yeah! Why not?”

I shrugged. It wasn’t the plan, but it worked that way. One more person wouldn’t hurt, and Lucy was high-level enough to handle herself.

Katherine led us toward the edge of town, where the maintained buildings gave way to scattered farmsteads. The path turned from cobblestone to packed dirt, and the air smelled more of animals and tilled earth than smoke and bread.

We found the house easily enough, a weathered structure with a sagging front porch, where an older man sat in a creaking chair. He looked up as we approached, his expression immediately turning sour.

I stepped forward before Katherine could charge ahead. “Excuse me, what’s wrong? We heard there’s been trouble.”

He scoffed, leaning back in his chair. “Trouble? That’s putting it lightly.” He gestured vaguely toward his fields. “Had something come to my farm. Started digging and digging, tearing up the soil as if it was looking for something. I grabbed a guard from town, and we made it run away, but...” He shook his head. “Damn thing ruined a good section of my field.”

“Can you describe it?” I asked.

The farmer squinted at me, clearly debating whether we were worth his time. Finally, he grunted. “Well... weird black thing. Almost like it was made of metal, vaguely humanoid? I don’t know.” He waved us off. “Go away. I’ve got work to do.”

“Got it!” Katherine grinned immediately, already turning on her heel.

I nodded to the farmer. “Thank you. We’ll look into it.” He just grunted again and went back to staring at his ruined field. We followed Katherine as she strode confidently away from the house.

“What do you think?” Lucas asked, falling into step beside me.

“It’s a waste of time?” I answered, though my tone was uncertain. “But maybe not. Maybe it was the thing from the mines.”

“It’s been here for decades,” Frozna pointed out. “Why would they attack now? It was surely something else.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe something changed. Maybe they ran out of resources underground. Maybe—” I stopped. “I don’t know.”

Katherine led us out-of-town proper, following a barely maintained path that wound into the hills. The terrain shifted quickly; what had been relatively flat ground near the river turned rocky and uneven, dotted with large stones that jutted out of the earth like broken teeth.

The path was nothing more than packed dirt, rutted from years of disuse. Grass and weeds encroached on both sides, and in some places, the trail nearly disappeared entirely.

Trees surrounded us, tall pines mixed with hardy oaks, their branches creating a canopy that filtered the sunlight into shifting patterns on the ground. The air was fresh, carrying the scent of pine needles and damp earth. Birds called to each other overhead, and somewhere in the distance, I heard the faint trickle of water.

It was nice. Peaceful, even.

Frozna’s wolf bounded ahead, suddenly unleashed, running in wide circles as it explored. Lizzie took flight from her shoulder, soaring between the trees with graceful swoops.

“Stay close,” Frozna called after them, but she was smiling.

Katherine set a quick pace, her boots crunching on loose stones. Lucy hummed some sea shanty under her breath, occasionally adding pirate-flavored lyrics that made no sense. Lucas walked with his hands in his robe pockets.

The path climbed higher, winding between rocky outcroppings and stands of trees. The hills rolled out around us, covered in patches of farmland interspersed with wilderness. I could see why people settled here once, good soil in the valleys, water from the hills, decent protection from the terrain.

But it was isolated. Hard to defend. Easy to abandon when times got tough.

After about twenty minutes of hiking, the farm came into view.

It was a proper homestead, a solid house with a barn and several outbuildings, fields stretching out in careful rows. Whoever lived here had put work into the place. Fences were maintained, crops looked healthy, and animals grazed in a nearby pasture.

But in the middle of the largest field, there was a hole.

Not a small hole. A hole, maybe six feet across and just as deep, surrounded by mounds of freshly turned earth. The soil was dark and rich, scattered in piles as if something had dug frantically, throwing dirt aside without care.

We approached slowly, and I stared down into the excavation.

“This is weird,” I said.

Katherine crouched at the edge, peering down. “Ya. Very weird.”

The hole was too uniform to be natural, but too rough to be human-made, deep gouges in the packed earth.

Frozna’s wolf approached cautiously, sniffing at the disturbed soil. It let out a low whine.

“Something was definitely here,” Frozna confirmed.

Lucas knelt beside the hole, examining the dig marks. “Metal, the farmer said?”

“Vaguely humanoid,” I added.

Lucy leaned on her hammer, studying the scene with uncharacteristic seriousness. “And it was digging. Looking for something, or trying to get somewhere?”

I looked out across the field, then back toward the distant mountains where the mines waited. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I have an idea.”

The moment we reached the edge of the hole, I felt it.

A slight electrical buzz, faint but unmistakable, prickling at the edges of my senses. It was the same sensation I’d felt when I visited the farms back in Altandai, that strange hum of magic woven into the soil itself.

“There’s a magic field here,” I said, turning in place. “Same as back home.”

Frozna tilted her head, considering. “And those machines in the mines felt it disturbed and came to investigate?”

“Probably.” I nodded, staring down into the hole. “The only way to check is to actually dig.”

Katherine’s face lit up. “More damage!”

I groaned. “How else do we check?”

“Kill things!”

Everyone except me laughed. Even Lucas cracked a smile, the traitor.

“We have to dig it out,” I said firmly. I raised my hand, and frost spiraled down into the hole, crystallizing into a rough staircase that descended into the excavation. Then I shaped five shovels from solid ice, the handles thick enough to grip comfortably.

I handed them out one by one. “You wanted a side quest. You will dig.”

Katherine took hers with enthusiasm, testing its weight. Lucy accepted hers with theatrical reluctance. Lucas just stared at his like I’d handed him a live snake.

Frozna looked at the shovel, then at her wolf, then back at me with a hopeful expression. “Can wolfie dig instead of me?”

I shoved the shovel into her hand. “We. Dig.”

She sighed but didn’t argue.

We descended the ice staircase single file, boots crunching on frozen steps. The hole was deeper than it looked from above; the walls packed with dark, rich soil that smelled of minerals and rain.

“Alright,” I said, pointing at the walls. “Expand outward. Look for anything unusual.”

Katherine immediately drove her shovel into the dirt with enough force to crack stone. “Ha! Easy!”

“Pace yourself,” Frozna suggested mildly.

“No!”

Lucy planted her feet wide, gripping her shovel like it was a boarding pike. “Arrr, this be familiar work! Many a time I’ve had to dig me way out of a scurvy prison cell!”

“You’ve never been to prison,” Lucas said flatly, scooping dirt with minimal enthusiasm.

“Aye, but if I had been, I’d have dug me way out!” Lucy drove her shovel in dramatically. “With nothin’ but me bare hands and the fire of freedom in me heart!”

“You have a shovel,” Frozna pointed out.

“Details, landlubber!”

I started digging on my section, letting the buzz guide me. It was stronger in some directions than others, like a pulse that seemed to throb beneath the earth.

Behind me, I heard Katherine grunt with effort. “Dirt is... stubborn!”

“That’s what dirt does,” Lucas muttered. “It sits there. Being dirt.”

“Rude dirt!”

Lucy had somehow turned her digging into a performance, each shovelful accompanied by shanty lyrics. “Heave ho, dig below, down to where the treasures grow! Heave ho, break yer back, or the captain’ll give ye forty whacks!”

“That’s not a real shanty,” Lucas said.

“All shanties be real if ye sing ‘em with conviction!” Lucy threw another load of dirt over her shoulder, narrowly missing Frozna’s wolf.

The wolf gave her a deeply unimpressed look.

“Sorry, beastie!”

Frozna had adopted a methodical approach, each scoop of earth placed carefully to the side. Her falcon-cat circled overhead, occasionally diving to inspect something before losing interest.

“This would be faster with magic,” Lucas grumbled, wiping sweat from his forehead.

“Ya think?” Katherine laughed. “Use magic!”

“I’m a lightning mage, not an earth mage. Unless you want me to electrocute the dirt.”

“Would that work?”

“No.”

“Then why ya say it?”

Lucas opened his mouth, closed it, and went back to digging with renewed frustration.

I tuned them out, focusing on the buzz. It was getting stronger as I dug, a low vibration that seemed to resonate in my bones. Left. Down. A little more to the left.

My shovel hit something solid.

“Found something,” I called out.

The others gathered around as I knelt, brushing away dirt with my hands. The soil came away in clumps, revealing something that definitely wasn’t rock.

It was a box.

Dirty, caked with decades of earth, but unmistakably artificial. The material was strange—see-through but not quite glass, with a slight iridescence that caught the light. Through the grime, I could see something inside.

A crystal.

I pulled the box free, wiping it clean with my sleeve. The crystal within was pale blue, roughly the size of my fist, with facets that seemed to shift and shimmer even in the dim light of the hole.

“This is one of the emitters,” I breathed. Shad had described them exactly like this; the anchors that maintained the agricultural magic across the field.

But something wasn’t right.

I looked around at the dirt walls surrounding us, at the rich, dark soil that should have been corrupted if the focus point was damaged or disturbed.

“This is weird,” I said. “The soil isn’t corrupted.”

Katherine peered at the box. “Is good, ya?”

“I don’t know.” I turned the box over in my hands, studying the crystal. “If the focus point is fine, why did the golem come here? Why dig?”

Frozna crouched beside me, examining the excavation. “Maybe it wasn’t trying to damage it. Maybe it was trying to... protect it?”

I stared at the crystal, watching the light dance across its facets.

“Hey!” I heard a familiar voice. “Criminals!”

I set the box down where I’d found it and climbed out of the hole. Up top, the farmer stood with two guards flanking him, all three glaring at us with varying degrees of hostility.

“Wait here,” I told my team and walked toward him.

“You ruined it even more!” he complained, his face red with fury. “Shoot her down! It were her beasts!”

The guards drew their bows.

I held up my hands, keeping my voice calm. “Please, let’s not be hasty. Me and my team came to investigate—”

“RUINED my field!”

I glanced back at the hole.

It was... significantly larger than when we’d started. Maybe ten times larger. Katherine’s enthusiasm, combined with everyone else’s digging, had turned a six-foot excavation into something resembling a small quarry.

I turned back to him, heat rising to my cheeks. “I apologize.”

“Sorry?” He took one step forward, arms gesticulating wildly. “Not enough! Pay up. Now. Hard enough to make coin with soil intact, this is disaster!”

I let out a suffering sigh. “When I return to Altandai, I’ll make sure—”

“NOW!” he screamed, voice cracking with hysteria.

On one hand, I understood him. We’d ruined maybe a third of his field. For a farmer in a declining town, that could mean the difference between surviving the winter and starving.

On the other hand... I was a queen. And some elven pride, that thing that had been growing inside me since I’d accepted what I’d become, wanted me to make sure this man knew his place.

I fought back the urge.

“I. Will. Make sure,” I started, keeping my voice level. “I’m a Queen, and—”

“Shoot the dog!” He pointed at Frozna’s wolf, who had climbed out of the hole and was watching the confrontation with alert eyes. “Or pay!”

Something snapped.

I let out the restrained energy inside me, filling my voice with the weight of my title and power. It was only a fraction of what I could summon when I’d exploited those potions, but I was still a Legendary Queen.

“On your knees.”

All three fell.

The guards hit the ground first, bows clattering from their hands, their faces pale with shock. The farmer followed a moment later, his legs simply giving out beneath him. He stared up at me with wide, terrified eyes.

The silence stretched.

I heard Katherine whistle softly behind me. Lucy, for once, said nothing. I took a slow breath, reining in the power. The pressure in the air eased, but none of them moved to stand.

“You threatened my people,” I hissed. “You threatened an animal under my protection. That was unwise.”

The farmer’s mouth opened, but no words came out.

“However.” I crouched down to his eye level, letting some of the frost leave my expression. “I understand your anger. We did damage to your field. And I am sorry for that.”

He swallowed hard, some color returning to his face.

“I am Charlie, Queen of Rimebreak Kingdom, and the current ruler of Altandai.” I watched his eyes widen further. “When I return, I will ensure you receive compensation for the damage. Triple the value of what was lost. You have my word.”

“T-triple?” he stammered.

“Triple.” I stood, offering him my hand. “But if you ever threaten my companions again—any of them, including the wolfie—we will have a very different conversation. Understood?”

He took my hand with trembling fingers, and I pulled him to his feet. The guards scrambled up after him, keeping their eyes fixed firmly on the ground.

“Y-yes, Your Majesty,” the farmer managed. “I... I didn’t know. I thought you were just...”

“Troublemakers?” I suggested.

He nodded weakly.

“We are troublemakers,” I admitted. “But we’re troublemakers trying to help. There’s something buried in your field. Something important. Something that might explain why those metal things have been attacking farms.”

His fear shifted into confusion. “In my field?”

“A magic crystal. Part of an old magical system that is inactive now. Or at least, our trouble back in Altandai could trip something here.” I gestured toward the hole. “We need to understand it. And when we’re done, I’ll have someone come to repair your field properly. Better than it was before, and the yield should quadruple.”

The farmer looked from me to the massive excavation, then back to me. Whatever calculation was happening behind his eyes, it apparently came out in my favor.

“I... thank you, Your Majesty.” He bowed awkwardly. “I apologize for my... for threatening...”

“Apology accepted.” I nodded to the guards. “You can lower your weapons. We’re on the same side.”

They didn’t have weapons anymore, they’d dropped them when they fell, but they nodded frantically anyway.

The farmer retreated with his guards, glancing back several times as if expecting me to change my mind and freeze him solid. Once they were out of earshot, I let out a long breath.

“Well,” Lucy said from behind me, her voice surprisingly subdued. “That was somethin’.”

I turned to find my team watching me with varying expressions. Katherine looked impressed. Frozna had moved to stand protectively near her wolf, one hand on its head. Lucas’s eyebrows had climbed nearly to his hairline.

“He threatened wolfie,” I said, as if that explained everything.

Frozna smiled softly. “Thank you.”

“Ya scary when ya want,” Katherine said approvingly. “Good Queen scary.”

“I’m not scary,” I protested.

“Yer Majesty,” Lucy said, her pirate accent creeping back, “ye just made three grown men fall to their knees with yer voice alone. That be the very definition of scary.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but thought better of it. “Fine. Maybe a little scary.”

Lucas shook his head slowly. “Triple compensation, though? That’s generous.”

“He’s struggling,” I said with a shrug. “And we did destroy his field.” I looked back at the crater we’d created. “...Enthusiastically.”

“Was good digging!” Katherine defended.

“It was a lot of digging,” Frozna corrected.

I sighed and started back toward the hole. “Come on. We still need to figure out why the golem was here.”

As I descended the ice staircase, I heard Lucy mutter to Katherine: “Remind me never to threaten the wolf.”

“Ya never threaten wolfie,” Katherine agreed solemnly.

The wolf’s tail wagged once.