NOVEL ONLINE FREE 284. Far Enough
Ruby flew. The landscape rushed by, so fast Ike could barely perceive it. After a while, he had to look away. Her speed was simply too dizzying, even for him.
Instead, he looked at Scar. "So… you come from the same region as us?"
Scar nodded. "Yes, originally. Or rather, I come from the region just past yours, in the opposite direction. Hundreds of years ago, I was born there, in a little city called Ellerton. You wouldn't know about it, because it hasn't existed for hundreds of years. Long ago, it was wiped out… by an army of puppets."
"Yep, I think I'm picking up what you're putting down," Ike said, nodding. "Lord Brightbriar, right?"
"He was called something else back then. Rosecinder, I think. I don't think it's his real name either. He swept in from somewhere else. Offered us a solution for all that manual labor we didn't want to do, and provided deeply needed entertainment. We were weak. We'd just suffered through a brutal war, and the mana root near us was slowly dying. We accepted his offer without much thought. And then…"
"I get it, yeah. We've seen his playbook play out," Ike said, nodding.
She nodded. "You know the danger he poses. I don't know why he's made himself king of your little city. He usually plays the role of the simpering merchant."
"Llewyn," Ike replied.
"Right. He's merely one of Lord Brightbriar's puppets, of course."
"Yeah, we know. Dangerous-ass puppet," Wisp chipped in.
"As I was saying, we don't know why he's playing lord in your city instead of out there acting personally as Llewyn. Maybe he tired of the road. Maybe he's playing some other game that we aren't seeing. But one way or another, he's incredibly dangerous, and needs to be stopped. Do you know how many regions he's swept through, with that playbook of his?"
Ike shook his head.
"At least two," Wisp offered.
"We've counted six. Six barren regions, full of nothing but puppets. Those six regions entirely encircle yours. If he wanted, he could pour it full of puppets and crush it in an instant."
"Holy shit," Ike muttered. The situation was way worse than he'd thought. Six regions full of puppets? How was he going to take care of that?
The image of himself empowered by King's Reign flashed into mind. Ike forcibly rejected it. He couldn't handle that skill yet. It might be a hundred years before he fully mastered it. He couldn't rely on powers he didn't have.
"But he hasn't," Scar continued, breaking into Ike's thoughts.
"And you don't know why," Ike finished for her.
She nodded. "We don't know why. We, of the Fallen Dragon, seek for answers. How to slay Brightbriar, of course, but more vitally, what he sees in this region. Why has he left it relatively untouched for so long? When he came to my region, he blew through it like a scouring desert wind. He toppled city after city, each one silently, maintaining all communication with the next city as though it weren't conquered, until the last one fell. One after another. Within a decade, he had the region conquered."
Scar paused, looking around at her small crowd for effect. Ike waited, a tolerant smile on his face. Wisp propped her head on her hand, vaguely bored. Mag watched the sky, whistling birdsong to himself and paying her no mind at all. "But your region? He's installed himself there for centuries. It's been hundreds of years. Nearly half a millenia. My region was the last to fall before he entered yours, and he's barely conquered any cities yet… for him, anyways.
"Recently, he suddenly started conquering cities once more, but only took over those closest to him, then stopped. Why did he start? Why did he stop? Is there something he fears? Some weapon hidden here that can defeat him? Some prophesy he risks triggering? Some hidden expert whose power eclipses his own? We don't know."
Ike furrowed his brows. "But… he's only Rank 4, right?" In the area behind him, there had been experts who far exceeded Rank 4, plenty of Rank 5s and even one woman who had peeked over the lower edge of Rank 6, at least to Ike's untrained eyes. Surely they could enlist one of them to conquer Lord Brightbriar.
"No one knows for sure. We suspect he's at least Rank 5, if not 6. Regions nearby, such as this one—which was saved, despite technically bordering your region, by the vast desert that intercedes it and your region—are afraid to send their high Rank mages to face him, because if he comes after them, they'll need their experts at home to fight him back. Basically, if they send someone to fight him, they might send their most powerful experts off to fight a puppet, while the real Brightbriar infects their city with puppets."
Ike frowned, then nodded. "Yeah, that sounds like that bastard. He'd totally do that."
"It's happened before," Scar ensured him. "He can make puppets at Rank 5, if he really needs to. He doesn't do it often, so we suspect it costs him, either personally or in some precious resource, but… well, Llewyn is only Rank 4 because he's a salesman. An agent. He doesn't need to be stronger, not because that's the limit of Brightbriar's power."
"Ah… you know, that reminds me. Back when I first got this ring, didn't the letter call you guys, 'Those Who Oppose Llewyn? But you sound like you're opposing Brighbriar," Ike pointed out.
Scar paused, her mouth open. Her brows furrowed. "Why the fuck would he… no, hold on. Did he know you knew about Brightbriar?"
Ike spread his hands. "The guy who gave me the ring? He saw me fight Llewyn. I don't know if he knows about my connection to Brightbriar."
"That's it, then. He didn't know you knew Brightbriar, and didn't want to confuse you. But yes, Llewyn is only an agent of Brightbriar. We oppose them both, but… that's like saying we oppose the day, when what we oppose is the sun."
Ike nodded. "I get it."
She leaned in. "Our goals, then, are twofold. Find out what Brightbriar fears, or what he's brewing, in your region. And two, simpler. Kill Lord Brightbriar."
"I'm in. Who else is part of this group?"
Scar grimaced. "Well, that's the thing. I don't know. None of us know, except for… that guy with the snowy owl. After all, if Brightbriar captures one of us and turns us into a puppet, one person could expose everyone in our group, and we wouldn't even know they'd been transformed."
"What about that guy, then?" Ike asked.
She shook her head. "He's powerful. Aside from that, it's a risk we have to take."
"Not the greatest system," Wisp muttered.
"Didn't seem that powerful to me, either," Ike muttered back. Stay updated via My Virtual Library Empire
"It's all we have," Scar said, exasperated. "We're struggling. We're the underdogs. Brightbriar is winning. We're scraping together everything we can. Of course we're not perfect."
Ike shook his head. "No, I don't expect you to be perfect." He frowned, thinking for a moment. The real head-scratcher here was why Lord Brightbriar had settled in his hometown. Not only that, but sat around for hundreds of years and waited for… something. Had he just gotten tired of conquest? Or was there something nefarious to it?
We won't find out if we don't go looking. Ike sat back, letting the wind blow through his hair. "I'm in, I guess. Let's take him down."
"We can't undo what he's already done, but we can stop him from taking over any more regions," Scar pledged. She offered her hand.
Ike took it. He didn't know how reliable she and her group would be, but it was better to have allies than to lack them. He couldn't trust anyone who didn't travel with him to not get replaced with a puppet, but he couldn't search the entire region, stone by stone, on his own. He'd have to count on Scar and the rest of them to also be cooperating to end Lord Brightbriar.