Muck POV
As Muck watched thousands of slimes with eyes spill out of the teleportation ring, its non-existent eyes twitched. It had asked for eyes, but this was ridiculous. Eyes with x-ray vision, eyes with three-hundred-and-sixty-degree sight, true sight, even eyes that could see ultraviolet. Bionic eyes, mechanical eyes, implanted eyes—every kind of eye on every kind of slime.
And the lich still wasn't satisfied. Muck even spotted a slime with a dragon eye implant. It should probably warn the others; otherwise, the lich would research this topic endlessly.
It opened the Forums of the Damned.
DeathKnight_01: Muscle is power! Get out of here, lich!
Righteous: Why is there a forum of the damned in existence?
WeAreHere: @Righteous We didn't choose our birth nor death. We simply are.
FrostWightDuchess: Have some of the marvelous mycelbrew the lich developed, @Righteous.
Righteous: How can a horse cart with no horses nor ability to move make mycelbrew or drink it?
SleepLover: @Righteous Sleep it over.
Looking over the ramblings in the Forums of the Damned, Muck almost lost the will to live, not that it was alive or anything.
It closed the general page and opened the private channel where access was restricted, then started to type.
BallofLiquid: Sum'gial went overboard with the eye project. @ElegantGoblin @FrostWightDuchess
ElegantGoblin: How so?
BallofLiquid: Sum'gial created at least five thousand slimes with eyes…
FrostWightDuchess: How is that a bad thing?
BallofLiquid: There are at least a hundred different choices in front of me now. There are slimes with drow eyes, dragon eyes, elven eyes, even void stalker eyes. Where did he get a chaotic creature like a void stalker?
ElegantGoblin: He installed a void stalker's eyes into a slime? Gob…
FrostWightDuchess: A transcendent creature like a void stalker is hard to find.
BallofLiquid: The problem is there are too many slimes with eyes now. He basically dumped all of them into Slimewood Forest.
ElegantGoblin: How is that a bad thing?
BallofLiquid: The problem is that with this many slimes appearing in the Slimewood Forest, the adventurers nearby will start to investigate…
FrostWightDuchess: Well, adventurers were going to find out about your existence anyway.
BallofLiquid: Easy for you to say, with a spell like Eternal Winter backing you up!
ElegantGoblin: Why not have Sum'gial make you a warding spell? @TheLich @BallofLiquid
FrostWightDuchess: Stop complaining and man up! Or slime up?! :P
TheLich: I have an idea, but you will need to bear the expenses yourselves, @BallofLiquid.
ElegantGoblin: Oh?! You were paying attention to the Forums of the Damned? @TheLich
TheLich: I finally found a way to silence that muscle-headed DeathKnight_01… By the way, @ElegantGoblin, come to the Tower of Bones for a while to start experimenting on the new warding models.
BallofLiquid: What do you need to set up such a spell?
TheLich: Well, a lot of living druids for starters. And I am assuming you need to be in control of this spell? If that's the case, I will need to put the druids' souls into the slimes… How I would do that I have no idea…
BallofLiquid: I know how to stuff souls into slimes. I will take care of that.
FrostWightDuchess: By the way, if you are ever rude to me one more time, I will stuff your liquid into a dragon's xxx… @BallofLiquid =)
ElegantGoblin: Scary… Gob…
BallofLiquid: I am sorry, my temper got the better of me, orz @FrostWightDuchess.
ElegantGoblin: How can a slime prostrate? =P
BallofLiquid: I am going offline to place the other eye-slimes into the Slimewood Forest.
Muck closed the chat group and started to work, rolling and splitting and oozing to place the excessive number of eye-slimes deeper into the forest. It could already foresee the future of Slimewood: even stranger and more biologically diverse slimes would emerge one by one.
The adventurers would love it. Or die horribly. Either worked.
Sum'gial POV
Sum'gial started to work on the armaments that would slow enemies, his skeletal hands moving with relaxed precision over mithril, runes and half-finished frames. The trick to making armaments was invoking the magic network. A wizard used his internal magic to resonate with the natural magic or energy, to create more powerful spells. Non-wizard armaments, however, had fixed magic formulas inscribed onto them that couldn't be adjusted by the user.
As such, a control device had been created; goblins and dwarves had worked together to make an on/off switch that did the work of a wizard. However, artificers and wizards had different understandings of the magic network. Artificers didn't have high-level access to the magic network.
Wizards aimed for sophistication, while artificers tried to keep things as simple as possible, considering easy repair and low-level access to the magic network. Sum'gial was aiming for modularity while keeping as much sophistication as possible.
The armament-related experiments should take at least half a month before he could prepare for mass production. After all, there were only five and a half months left before the E'nathyr invasion.
He relieved Ahr'zel of his duties in the library and made him steward of the Tower of Bones. The throne room would be taken care of by Ahr'zel as well. Galileon would take over the library. Leonora, despite her physique, was to take care of the laboratory. Dantae would be singing to the vault.
Ahr'zel asked rudely, "What are you thinking?"
"I am thinking of enemies, and their plans for the Tower of Bones," Sum'gial replied.
Ahr'zel folded his many-jointed arms, eye-flames narrowing. "Forty thousand drow and a hundred thousand slaves marching in a straight line, shouting battle cries and prayers. Very original."
"Numbers are just badly disguised fractions," Sum'gial said. "They look impressive until you start dividing."
He raised one hand. Soul fire flared from his phalanges, using a magic formula. Lines of cold light formed a map of the Underdeep and the lands above: nodes for cities, pulsing points for shrines, thick cords where caravans and food moved. E'nathyr glowed like a swollen heart, fed by veins of trade and tribute.
"These are their constraints," Sum'gial said. "Food. Faith. Air. Courage. If we cut one vein, they bleed. If we cut several, they panic."
"Let me guess," Ahr'zel said. "Malvek gets the trade veins, Jacob gets the courage vein?"
"Close enough," Sum'gial said. "Malvek will pull at their food and coins. Jacob will walk among their pride and make sure it crumbles at the right time."
He flicked two fingers. Several lines brightened—Malvek's usual routes, the Slimewood, Selithrae's domain.
"I am still not sure I approve of you giving Malvek this much leverage," Ahr'zel muttered. "Transcendent merchant or not, he smells like profit."
"That is why he is useful," Sum'gial said. "Some wars are won with swords, some with logistics. This one will need both."
"And Jacob?" Ahr'zel insisted. "He is still only one undead-obsessed, slightly traumatized son with a contract hanging over his head."
Sum'gial's soul fire pulsed in amusement.
"Jacob is already inside their city," he said. "They just do not realize yet that every week they hesitate is a week cut from my claim on him."
He closed his skeletal hand. The five-dimensional map folded into a single point of light and vanished.
"Send a message to Malvek," Sum'gial said. "Tell him he has five and a half months to turn a march into a famine."
"And if he fails?" Ahr'zel asked.
"Then we test how many drow bodies my new armaments can handle at once," Sum'gial said calmly. "Either way, the numbers will go down."
Ahr'zel snorted. "Very reassuring, my lich."
Sum'gial tilted his skull slightly.
"And if you have free time between steward duties," he added, "try to come up with three ways E'nathyr might attack us that we have not thought of yet."
"You mean three ways you have not thought of yet," Ahr'zel said. "Fine. I will be creatively paranoid in the throne room."
Veyn'dor POV
The council chamber of E'nathyr glowed with cold fungus-light, blue and violet spores drifting lazily from the chandeliers. The stone floor was carved with concentric circles, each ring etched with the names of houses that had once mattered. Some of those names had been filed away, chiseled out or painted over.
Baey'Ra's circle was freshly scrubbed, a pale scar in the stone.
Veyn'dor stood slightly behind his mother's obsidian chair, hands folded into his sleeves, eyes lowered just enough to be respectful and just high enough to be able to watch everyone.
"Let the record show," Bael'sha d'Veyn said, voice smooth as old poison, "that House Baey'Ra is dissolved. Their slaves are redistributed. Their priestesses were assigned. Their estate is now allotted as operational quarters to the foreign mercenary envoy of the Tower of Bones, until the end of the coming campaign."
The scribe in the corner scratched the decree into a thin sheet of mushroom-paper, the quill whispering like an insect.
Across the circle, the First Matron of Haet'Ra clicked her tongue.
"A foreign male kills a noble male line, turns them into undead, occupies their estate, and still breathes our air," she said. "This is not a precedent I enjoy."
"The Queen did not punish him," Bael'sha replied. "Baey'Ra had already lost Her favor. They were rotting. We simply… scraped them away."
"The surface lich sent his own blood to do it," another Matron said. "That, at least, should concern us. An archlich with the confidence to send his son to break a house in our city is an archlich who does not fear us."
Veyn'dor did not flinch. He had already read Jacob's reports, dissected his methods. Jacob had been efficient, ruthless and very deliberate about sparing females. Legal. Barely.
"If we flayed him now and sent his skull back to the Tower," the Haet'Ra Matron went on, "it would send a message."
"It would send a message that we ignore the Queen's silence," Bael'sha said. "And that we kill a useful weapon before we have used it."
Veyn'dor decided this was the moment to speak.
"Mother," he said, inclining his head. "Honored Matrons."
Seven pairs of red and violet eyes turned toward him. He felt them like knives.
"Jacob of the Tower has already shown us two things," Veyn'dor said. "First, that he can turn a house's military strength into our undead fodder in a single night—under our laws. Second, that the Tower of Bones is willing to risk him. That is either arrogance or preparation. Possibly both."
"So your recommendation?" Bael'sha asked.
"We keep him," Veyn'dor said. "On a short leash. We use his talents against the surface when the march begins. We watch what the lich does with him."
"And when the Tower falls?" Haet'Ra's Matron asked.
"Then we decide whether his skull looks better in your hall or as part of a new gate," Veyn'dor said politely.
A few faint chuckles rippled through the chamber.
Bael'sha's lips curved. "The invasion," she said, shifting topic with the ease of long practice. "Reports."
"The musters proceed," a war-captain said from the outer ring. "Forty thousand soldiers pledged from the noble houses. A hundred thousand slaves for fodder and labor, as you decreed."
"Six months to complete preparations, five and a half to be generous," another priestess added. "Then the march. Two weeks to reach the Tower of Bones if the tunnels hold."
"Which they will, unless certain dwarven merchants decide to be… difficult," Haet'Ra's Matron said. "We have already had one caravan delay. Grain prices rose in the lower markets yesterday."
Veyn'dor's fingers tightened inside his sleeves. One caravan delay was a coincidence. Two would be design. And there had been quiet mentions of a certain half-breed merchant, Transcendent by rank, passing through the deeper routes.
"Malvek," he thought, but did not say.
"We will address the merchants," Bael'sha said. "If the caravans hesitate, we remind them that the Queen's favor feeds more mouths than their ledgers do."
She tapped one long nail against the arm of her chair.
"Still," she added thoughtfully, "it might be prudent to have someone in the lower city and in the ex-Baey'Ra estate watching for… unusual economic shifts."
Veyn'dor bowed his head. "I will see to it, Mother."
"And keep our foreign dog pointed outward, not inward," Haet'Ra's Matron said. "If he bites, I expect to hear it first."
Veyn'dor inclined his head again, but said nothing.
He already knew the problem with dogs: the clever ones could tell when the house was on fire long before their masters did.