[Beastborne: Tower of Blight] Chapter 34

The tiefling Bard, Altres, leaned over the cooling body and wiped his rapier on the fallen man’s clothes.

Another noble down.

He tsk’d. Why did they have to be so stubborn?

It was as if the Trinic Call woke them up, and not in a good way. The nobles suddenly realized how far Murkmire had fallen from the “good ol’ days” and began instituting the three T’s of tyranny: taxes, tariffs, terror.

Altres shook his horned head in disdain. His lilac pupilless eyes glowed with anger.

What was even worse, they were taxing their own citizenry into poverty! Not just people like Altres who, technically speaking, wasn’t a citizen. No, the nobles were making out like bandits, squeezing every citizen from the richest merchant to the poorest laborer while avoiding fellow council members who ruled the city alongside them.

It was the most obvious pyramid scheme Altres had seen in decades, and he’d been around long enough to know where this was heading.

Talk of rebellion had gone from a few whispered conversations in darkened corners to outright shouting in the streets. Half the damn Murkmire Watch had quit when they were forced to fire upon their own countrymen.

Of course, with those deep pockets, the council had been able to hire mercenaries who cared little for the people of Murkmire and were only too glad to stomp some faces into the street.

The Devil’s Due became a haven of crime and villainy of a different class. People who truly believed in building a better Murkmire suddenly saw the koblins as their allies instead of the weird and quirky neighbors they had been so far.

Thanks to Hal’s intervention, the Koblin District couldn’t be directly divested of its ownership, and the council couldn’t levy a tax on them without also taxing everybody else.

Altres had mistakenly thought that would be enough to dissuade their heavy-handed approach.

He had been very wrong.

Now all businesses were getting taxed to the tune of 55% with more raises coming during the next council session after their adjournment for the winter holidays.

Because, of course, the lazy pieces of shirt would take off for the holidays while everybody else had to work.

Without Leis around, Altres was free to be the person he had once been so long ago. The smiling, unassuming assassin that brutally wielded [Peace] and [Quiet], his telltale rapier and dagger.

His cruel mistress had raised him well, and now that he knew she was coming, he needed to work quickly. She would topple Murkmire like it was a house of children’s blocks.

If the true Founder—that was Hal—could take back Murkmire, then it might forestall her reaching, greedy hand. At least that was Altres’ hope. His mistress would be deeply interested in where that Trinic Call came from, and once her interest was roused, it was not easily dissuaded.

She would come for her prize.

Sooner or later, she would come for Hal.

Altres had to prepare.

The killings were nothing special. Nobles hired guards and body doubles, but to the practiced Bard, they were pathetic attempts at defense.

Murkmire had allowed itself to grow fat and rotten at the top, while promising a land of riches and glory to any craftsman that could wield a tool or any business owner with an ounce of acumen.

Perhaps it had once been that way, but no more.

With a sigh, Altres hauled the body away from the window and flopped it into bed. Then he walked over to the wardrobe where a faint whimpering could be heard.

Even if the occupant wasn’t cowering, the smell of fear running out the bottom of the wardrobe certainly couldn’t be missed.

After pushing his dark hair back, Altres flung open the doors and put on his most winning smile. “Councilman Dantra! How good to see you! Come, come, let’s have a little chat. Just you and I.”

Giving the portly older man no say in the matter, Altres slung a muscled red arm around his neck and guided him over to a chair near the bed with the slain council member in it. A truly nasty piece of work named Lord McSomething or other. Altres didn’t care to commit the names of those he killed to memory.

There were more deserving souls to be remembered.

“Now, Councilman,” Altres said, forcing him by the shoulders into the chair where Dantra would have to stare at his very dead best friend. “I see you have a lot on your mind.”

It had been pathetically easy to find a time and location to plan this out. Dantra and his best friend had… specific tastes.

Altres wasn’t one to kink shame, but the late councilman had a darkly adventurous side and his best friend liked to watch. It wasn’t much work to bribe the right people and make sure the two young women in question were amenable to some extra time off tonight.

“Now, as you can see, there are going to be some very difficult questions about tonight,” Altres said, motioning to the blood-stained sheets. “They can be very troublesome, or they can be very sad and very unfortunate. Mercenaries who thought they could take the whole coffer rather than the pittance your dearly departed friend was offering.”

“What do you want?!” The Councilman demanded, eyes wide with terror. Sweat poured down his many greasy jowls. “Out with it, you filthy demon!”

Altres gasped and put a hand to his chest, feigning a wound. “Your words dear sir!” Then he leaned in, his face so close he could smell the rank breath of the old man. “They sound like a man who does not wish to live to see another dawn,” he snarled.

That got Dantra’s attention. He quivered, let loose a little extra liquid fear, and stood very, very still as Altres laid out his options.

After Altres fled the manor, he reflected on how simple it all was when you really got down to it. The Councilman could go along with the lie, get at least one of the major mercenary companies kicked out of Murkmire, and live to see another day, or he could tell the truth.

Altres would become a hunted man, and the dear Councilman would be very, very dead. Normally, Altres didn’t like extortion or blackmail. They were too prone to emotion and wherever emotion was involved, people made stupid mistakes.

There was a certain advantage to unleashing death upon a target no matter where they lived, or how far they fled. Said target could never be sure they would ever be safe again, and so they rightfully feared the Bard’s ultimatum.

***

Unfortunately for Altres, he had misjudged Councilman Dantra’s resolve. Severely. Dantra wept over his dead friend, holding his lifeless body. He vowed with a string of spittle running down his lips that he would see the demon tortured to death.

He didn’t care about Murkmire or who he had to hurt. He would see that the red devil paid for what he did.

Emotion, as Altres had remarked, made for stupid decisions.

***

Far below Murkmire, a pair of koblins were bickering over a small box. Dressed in their typical koblin attire, small leather suits with leather masks and black smoked-glass lenses, there were only two things exposed to the air on a koblin. Their long, droopy, green-furred ears.

Before Hal–whom they called Havior and regarded with the utmost respect–had saved them from near extinction, they would have had much more fur showing.

You could be forgiven for thinking they were goblins, just not by the koblins themselves. They were about the right size, right shape, and even talked somewhat similarly.

However, you couldn’t be further from the truth.

Koblins separated themselves from the goblins by being good. They had honor and were more than mere monsters.

Slyrox and her brother Slyrix had both laid claim to the magical box they had found deep in the bowels of Murkmire.

It had been a great find, something worthy of the Havior, and both koblins wanted to present the gift to him. Altres had informed them that he was due back in just a few short months.

How the man knew was anybody’s guess, but the koblins had learned to trust the tiefling with their lives. He was as slippery as a greased-up eel, but he was their friend and he looked after them.

The problem was, the Havior was far away in the Shiverglades, far from Murkmire and the Koblin District they called home.

The box was obviously magical, that much they could tell with what little skills they possessed between them. They had intended on having Altres look it over. He seemed good with magical artifacts and might better tell them what it could do.

All to give the Havior the best present possible. Hal had said he would return, and the koblins trusted his word above all. He was, in many ways, a living god to them. Like a parent to a small child, his word was law, so of course he would return.

When Altres told them he would be coming soon, each koblin scrambled for a suitable gift to give the Havior.

They would make sure Murkmire shone like a gem for Hal.

“Slyrix Quickfingers?” Slyrox, his sister, snarled. “More like Slyrix Slowbrain! Need hand-lending to win a tug-a-war with your sickly sister?”

The other koblin lost his mittened grip on the box and tumbled to the floor of the dilapidated tunnel. One of several running beneath the towering Sanctum of Murkmire.

Murkmire had been built into, on, and through a small mountain. The people who called it home were constantly digging into each other’s attics and/or cellars based on which direction they were going.

This particular section had fallen in at some point and the koblins were busy shoring it up, but there was still a large hole in the middle of the room that they were curious to explore once Sparkspox came back with rope.

“Is a magical box!” Slyrix said. “Pssh-koh, you have no claim, sister! You cannot even eye-peek the magic spell!”

Slyrox looked at the wooden box. It seemed to have more sides than a cube should have. Every time she counted them, she came up with a different number.

That was magical enough for the koblins, but what truly made it the perfect gift for the Havior was the writing along the edges.

They had seen it before. It was in-gleesh, the language the Havior spoke before coming to Aldim.

The koblins, of course, couldn’t read or write in-gleesh, but they recognized the strange characters all the same. The Havior had tried to teach them with what time he had, but none of them could read the strange text.

That alone made this in-gleesh feel mystical and magical, just like their Havior.

Slyrix folded his arms beneath his armpits and sulked. “I’m not wanting it, anyway. Is for little babies!”

“Is not!” Slyrox said, stomping her comically large clown-shoe-sized boot.

“Is too.” Slyrix, said. Then, quick as lightning, her brother suddenly snatched for the box, but his sister was faster. Despite being born weak and sickly, she was surprisingly quick for somebody who needed constant medicine and protection.

She pulled back, lost her footing on some rubble, and tumbled into the hole. Slyrix ran to the edge and called after her, but it was too late.

The koblin tumbled into the darkness.

She was not afraid, however. She had the magical box with its in-gleesh. This was a sacred relic of the Havior. It would keep her safe.

She was only sad that she had to use it.

Slyrox will give Havior a muchly better gift! Slyrox promised herself.

Though she couldn’t have guessed at what she was doing, koblins were remarkably good at fiddling and tinkering. If you could give them a v12 engine, they would have it disassembled before afternoon tea.

By dinnertime, they would have upgraded it beyond recognition to run on banana peels and grass clippings.

So it didn’t take Slyrox long to figure out how to open up the magical box.

A bubble of expanding light rolled over her. There was a distant sound like a foghorn and then a sudden feeling of rapidly increasing speed.

The box, now emptied of its magic, continued its descent until it smashed apart at the bottom of the hole, minus one koblin.

Had the koblins been able to read the writing on the box, they still wouldn’t have understood what it meant.

The lettering read: One (1) portable Truck-kun. Property of the Hero Delivery Service (HDS).

In an instant, Slyrox vanished, leaving her grieving brother to call out her name and search fruitlessly for her remains. His only solace was the empty box which contained the fabled in-gleesh.

Slyrix knew his sister was alive out there somewhere. The Havior’s will had protected her. He would give the box to the Havior in her memory, and together they would bring her home.

“One day, Slyrix will find you again, sister,” he said to the empty box, fervently wishing he went with her. She was so weak, so frail, she needed her big brother… and he had been so mean to her trying to take away the box they had found.

Slyrix was so distraught, when he spoke, he hardly sounded like a koblin, “I miss you already…”