Chapter 31: Intermission – The World Turns
Down below the black mountain sat the alchemist's shop in Jaesowen Vale.
The aromas of sulphur and dried herbs and the sweetness of reduction compounds left to simmer for a long time on a low heat filled the room. Glass vessels lined every shelf, their contents ranging from murky brown to clear and luminous, each one stoppered and labelled in writing so small it required reading glasses to interpret. But these were just for her sake. Potions were traditionally identified by adventurers by the shape of the nationally standardised bottles and colours, rather than labels. It made them easier to use in a hectic situation. A fire burnt low in the stone hearth at the back, and a copper pot sat above it, barely bubbling.
The alchemist was measuring powdered root when the door opened.
Three of them. Young. The tallest one had new boots, which told her more than their fresh, unblemished faces.
"Heat resistance potions," said the tall one, already scanning the shelves with the bright eyes of someone who had made up their mind before walking through the door.
She set down her measuring spoon. "Uh-huh," she said with vague disinterest. "How many?"
"Three. One each."
She moved to the relevant shelf without hurrying. "Going up the mountain, are you?"
"Just exploring the region," said a second one, a girl with a blade on her hip that was slightly too large for her frame.
These weren’t even adventurers. These were just some dumb kids who heard about a way to get rich quick. She’d seen too many of them to have the energy left to try and dissuade them at this point.
The alchemist set three vials on the counter. "These will keep you comfortable." She looked at them over the rim of her spectacles. "They won't help you if the dragon breathes directly on you... or if you get near the lava. Nothing I stock will help you with that."
"We're not going to fight it," said the tall one, already reaching for his coin purse. "We'll just be in the outer dungeon territory."
She had heard this before. She had heard this exact sentence, with minor variations, more times in the past two months than there had been days within them.
"The outer levels are full of dragon whelps and goblin patrols," she said, not sure why she was bothering. Some part of her still didn't like the idea of such young faces going toward their death, presumably. "The goblins are organised and better armed than most city guards now. The whelps are territorial and fast. I really -"
"- We know," said the third one, who had been quiet until now.
She looked at him. He looked back, far more calmly than she would have liked him to be.
Stupid kids.
He had maps, probably. Had talked to other adventurers. Had weighed the risk and decided the reward outweighed it, the way young people always do when they haven't yet watched someone they cared about not come back.
She sighed and named a price meant to be a final dissuasion.
Proving their inexperience, they paid it without haggling.
Wanting to throw up her hands, she instead packed the vials carefully in padded cloth and passed the bundle across the counter. "Just stay out of the black gate," she said, as they moved toward the door. "And if you hear a roar, drop a few coins on the ground and run."
They thanked her, clearly not listening. The door swung shut behind them.
She doesn’t think they heard that last piece of advice. They were too lost in their fantasies.
The alchemist stood at the counter for a moment, listening to their boots fade down the street.
Then the door opened again. A man from the village council stepped inside, holding a small wooden collection chest under one arm. He was middle-aged and sensible-looking.
"Contribution time," he said. "Tribute."
She looked at the chest. Then at the coins she'd just placed on the counter from the sale.
"Is this really a sustainable system?" she asked. She wasn't hostile about it. Genuinely asking. "I feel like this is blood money. I sell potions to people going up the mountain. Some of them don't come back. The ones who do spend what they earned in town... and that money goes into the tribute chest, and the tribute chest goes to the dragon." She picked up one of the coins and turned it over. "There's something circular about this all that bothers me."
He set the chest on the counter and leaned against the frame beside it. "Look. I'm not going to pretend it's a perfect system," he said, his finger tapping the side of the box. "But I'll tell you what I told my sister. My nephews travel the road south twice a week now for the lumber trade. Before the dragon took over Parsmuth's territory, that road had bandits on it every other journey. Lost three loads in one season." He folded his arms. "My nephews haven't had a single problem in two months. Not one."
She thought about that.
"The beast has its watch-things out there," he continued. "On the roads, in the forest. Anything that tries to prey on travellers gets eaten. It's not pretty, but it works." He tapped the chest again. "I'd rather pay tribute to her than lose my nephews to a roadside knife."
The alchemist was quiet for a moment.
Then she sighed and set the coins down into the chest, one by one. The exact coins she'd just earned. The irony of it sat in her chest, despite the fact that she agreed with him.
"You're right," she said.
He nodded once and picked up the chest. "We'll send the cart up soon. Same as last month."
She watched him leave, then turned back to her simmering pot.
"Same as last month," she said to herself.
The nave of the regional church in Durinas could comfortably hold six hundred people.
Today it held more than that, the overflow standing along the side aisles and pressing in from the doors at the back, where the morning light came through in pale shafts. The air was thick with candle smoke and the collective breath of a worried congregation. Stone columns rose on either side of the central aisle, carved with the traditional iconography of the faith, figures with outstretched hands and upturned faces.
At the front, the regional bishop stood at the pulpit.
He was a good man with a careful voice. He had been speaking for thirty minutes. The congregation had been with him for most of it, their expressions proving that they wanted very much to be reassured.
"- The divine does not always arrive in the form we anticipate," he said, his hands resting on the pulpit's edge. "We prepare for light, but we are given a fire that burns our house. We pray for protection, and we are sent a guardian who inadvertantly crushes our walls." He paused, letting that settle. "The twin saintesses were the most devoted and capable servants our faith has produced. Following Heaven's will, they tested the beast. They proved its intentions to the rest of us, as was their sacred charge."
A woman near the front raised her hand. "And they submitted to it," she said, not accusatory. Rather, she sounded genuinely uncertain. "A dragon, Bishop." A murmur went through the crowd.
He gestured with his hands for calm. "As one should. If an angel fell before you, would you not fall to your knees?" The bishop asked gently. People looked at each other, uncertainly. "As the prophecy described, a power sufficient to usher in a new age has arrived. We are entering a new world and Barjuchne will carry us there on her divine wings." He looked across the congregation. "Would you doubt the judgement of the twin saintesses? Of Heaven?"
Silence.
The reputation of those two was not a small thing. They had walked through plague villages without illness. They had stood between armies and ended battles of thousands of frothing men. They had been the faith's most visible and celebrated figures for years. Doubting their judgement, even now, required a particular kind of courage that most people in the nave did not feel they possessed.
They were, after all, walking miracles.
The uncertainty didn't vanish in the crowd. But it softened.
Slowly, like ice at the edges of a fire, it began to give way.
“Let us pray,” said the bishop. “And thank Heaven for sending us its avatar.”
Meanwhile, in the capital city, the streets were busy with the usual morning crowd when the priestesses appeared.
There were perhaps a dozen of them, moving in pairs along the main commercial avenue in their street outreach. Each one carried a stack of printed sheets, the ink still sharp on cheap paper, bearing a rough woodblock image of a dragon shape above a horizon line.
"Have you heard the good word?" one of them called, holding out a sheet to a man carrying a basket of vegetables. He took it out of reflexive politeness and then looked at it, confused.
"The holy dragon Barjuchne has come to save us from damnation!" announced another, her voice carrying well in the open air. She pressed sheets into passing hands with the cheer of someone who believed completely in what she was distributing. Fanatical.
"Please, spare a small donation for her coffers!"
"It's what Heaven wants!"
"Repent! Or your soul will burn in her casting of hellfire!" said another priestess, cheerfully clenching her fists together with a smile entirely unfitting to that promise.
The city's morning crowd reacted the way crowds always do to hawkers and peddlers. Some people took the sheets and kept walking only to politely throw them away immediately out of sight. Some stopped to read them with furrowed brows. A few asked questions, and the priestesses answered each one with the patient, detailed enthusiasm of fresh converts who were eager to prove themselves.
— After all, they all wanted the dragon they could see in their thoughts and dreams to spare them some of her attention in reality too. So, maybe, if they collected enough gold for her, they would get it.
A coin dropped into a collection box at the corner.
Then another.
The throne room of the royal palace was not cold. It was heated well, the fireplaces large and attended, and the stone floors covered with expensive carpets. But the king sat on his throne with the stillness of a man who had succumbed to a deep chill regardless.
His advisor Reinhold stood a respectful distance to his right, hands folded, expression carefully neutral.
"The Holy Church..." the king repeated, as if hearing the words again might make them make more sense. He pressed one hand against his forehead, his elbow on the throne's arm. He was not an old man, but he looked older than he had two months ago. "Is this madness? Am I the one who is mad?"
Reinhold said nothing. It was not the kind of question that wanted an answer.
"My people," the king continued. "My church. Even my only daughter." He looked up at his advisor, and his expression held something Reinhold had not seen there before. Genuine helplessness. "They have all fallen for the dragon's spell. Every one of them." His eyes widened. "Am I mad, Reinhold? It feels like they're all under an enchantment that I alone am not bound by. But does that not mean that I am the one who is afflicted?"
"...I cannot speak to your sanity, my lord," Reinhold replied carefully, maintaining his usual distance. "This matter is indeed either proof of your clarity or of your isolation. Possibly both."
The king stared at him.
"What am I to do?" He rose from the throne and began to pace, slow and heavy. "At this rate, the kingdom will die. It already has fractured. It is only a matter of time before our rivals come to feast on our weakness. Already there are reports of the eastern border being probed more often by hostile forces. Feelers. Testing whether we can respond." He stopped. "Which we cannot. Not properly. Not with a church that prays to a monster and a population that sees the beast eating us alive from within as what has come to save them."
Reinhold chose his next words with the care of a man crossing an iced-over lake. It took a while to form. "The armies of the southern regional lords have failed to contain the dragon. But your personal host moves well. Their vanguard should reach the mountain within a fortnight, my lord."
"And if they fail to stop the dragon?" The king's voice came out flat.
Reinhold was silent.
"We're done for, Reinhold." The king turned to look at his advisor directly. "Say it. Don't spare me. If the royal host fails, we're finished."
The silence stretched.
Then Reinhold looked at the floor for a moment. When he looked up again, something had changed in his face. A shadow that had been sitting behind his expression came forward.
"There is... another way, my lord," he said. "The old way."
The king went very still.
"We don't use that anymore, Reinhold." The words came out quiet and firm. "Our ancestors made that decision generations ago. They made it for good reason."
Reinhold lowered his head. "Yes, my lord."
The room settled into silence.
After a long moment, the king turned his head nonetheless. His eyes moved across the throne room, past the banners and the carved stone, to the far side of the room where an old altar stood against the wall. It had not been used in living memory. The stone of it had darkened with age, and the iron fittings had rusted at their edges. And sitting in the altar's cradle, cracked from crown to base with a fracture that had split it nearly in half, sat a bell.
Dull black iron. Enormous, even if broken. The two halves were held together by the grime of age and a crackling of rust and perhaps nothing else. It looked like it was made aeons ago, like a relic from a forgotten age. That's exactly what it was.
The king stared at it for a long time.
"...We haven't summoned a true hero to our world in centuries, Reinhold," he said quietly. "Not after what happened back then. Besides. Who knows if the ritual still even works?"
The silence in the room felt older than either of them.
Reinhold did not respond. There was nothing useful to say about what had happened back then, because what had happened back then was the reason the bell sat broken and ceremonially retired on an altar that nobody dusted anymore.
"Perhaps your legion shall accomplish the task, then," Reinhold offered.
Both of them knew what those words were worth.
The king sat back down on his throne. He rested his face in his hand and looked at the fractured bell from beneath the shadow of his fingers, and the firelight moved across the iron in slow, orange waves.
Outside the palace windows, somewhere in the city streets below, a priestess was calling out in a bright and certain voice about how a single small donation to the dragon could change one's life forever.
The king listened to her and said nothing.