Fayd

  I am Fayd, the overseer in charge of operations within the kingdom of Cara and the Three Principalities. I wasn't currently at my usual base within Cara. Rather, I was in a secret location known only to the Circle of Thirteen and their most trusted subordinates - the Mastermind's lair. Yes, it was time for my routine report. I was filled with a sense of dread; in addition to a fierce temper, the Mastermind had a fearsome intelligence, capable of looking an alarming amount of steps ahead - it was he who had formulated each of our great plans, and it was he who had methods of gathering information that beggared belief. Being but a mortal man, whose family had served the cause for generations, I had not personally witnessed his most daring and ambitious plans come to fruition: but they were the stuff of legends, the sort of schemes that re-wrote maps and brought ancient dynasties to ruin.

  The mastermind wasn't omniscient, of course, and I do not think that he was capable of seeing the future; his methods were special, for certain, but there were things that even he did not know. Nay, not future sight, but at the very least I could tell that he had a frighteningly good sense for humanoid behavior - he knew who would do what in which situation and it never went astray. For example, he predicted correctly that the fourth princess of Anaura would stop to help the sick when confronted with a multitude of them - as a matter of fact, that was one of the things that I had come to report on. My messenger had reported to me that every person in Kennie had been cured - the disease was eradicated, which meant that the princess had done her part in sealing her fate.

  The Mastermind would be most pleased to learn that the princess was on her way to her doom. Once a war broke out between Cara and Anaura, that is when our friends in the north would launch their own attack against Hylaria which would force the elves to either abandon their ally, or split their forces and become embattled upon two fronts. Either way, there would also be untold devastation across the three principalities as well; so many lives lost, so much despair and misplaced hatred. Men and elves once allies would fight each other thinking that they were in the right - oh it made me tingle all over with anticipation.

  My fellow circle member, the one tasked with disseminating the Mastermind's strategies to the other chapters of our order, greeted me with a curt nod, under that hood of his, as usual; he was far more formidable a spellcaster than myself, and I had a great deal of respect for him. As ninth seat, old Wain held more authority than I, as eleventh seat.

  For this mission I was partnered with the thirteenth seat, a talented necromancer: Wylt. We split our combined forces into two teams: one to incite the elves, and one to incite the kingdom of Cara. Wylt accompanied his team personally, but I preferred to remain in the shadows - after all, as overseer I was also tasked with recruiting new members.

  Recently I'd landed a rather large fish - someone important to the cause. I even had him inducted into our order; so full of delicious despair, so full of darkness. But of course I knew that; he was weak and vulnerable, and I exploited that, used psychological tactics to bend his mind even more than it already was - which made it easier for me to convince him to give us the information we needed. Just as the Mastermind had envisioned; in fact it was the Mastermind himself who gave me a satisfying helping of delicious information that I used to wicked and tremendous effect.

  Lying is a subtle art that often requires grains of truth to be twisted by the vicissitudes of perspective and pedantry. Being such a kind and trusting old bat, the Queen of Cara would never suspect that a member of her royal court would be her undoing. That's right. We had a conspirator's pot of gold. My latest inductee was an inside man; a trusted member of the royal court with access and authority. That foolish hag would learn her lesson to keep better counsel on to whom she grants secret information; right before a spear pierced her heart, of course.

  I entered the mastermind's chambers, dimly lit by blue light as usual. I knelt before him and basked in his infinite glory, reveled in knowing that his wisdom had brought to ruin so many nations. I was unworthy.

  "FAYD," called his booming voice, a wind blew back my hood, "STATE THY REPORT."

  "All is going according to plan, Mastermind. The fourth princess left the town of Kennie and by now the much vaunted Valyrian should have discovered her body."

  The very ground shook and the air trembled "SHOULD? SHOULD?? DO YOU THINK SO LOWLY OF ME THAT YOU ONLY SAY SHOULD? DARE YOU QUESTION THE INFALLIBLE PERFECTION OF MY ANALYTICS?"

  I groveled, "forgive me, Mastermind, it's just a figure of speech."

  There was a pause, "UNDERSTOOD. REMEMBER: THE ODDS OF THIS PLAN FAILING IS APPROXIMATELY 302,545,804 TO 1. STATISTICALLY, THAT MEANS FAILURE IS IMPOSSIBLE. WHAT OF THE INSIDE MAN?"

  "In position," I said, "he has told us all we need to know, and as we speak, my men are getting ready to rendezvous with the queen and annihilate her. We even managed to secure an appropriate commander who looks the part."

  "GOOD…GOOD…" he said with sadistic glee, "YOU ARE DISMISSED. THE HOUR OF OUR GOD'S REBIRTH DRAWS NIGH"

  I smirked, and bowed, "yes, Mastermind."

  Very nigh indeed. The pieces are all in place, our allies in other regions across the continent are diligently working their own machinations. Soon king chaos would reign supreme across these lands and civilization will once again dissolve into a slurry of blood and ash. After that, yes, after that - when we can see our god incarnate, then we shall serve him as he devours the world - and there is no one who could possibly stop us!

  Victor

  I sneezed. Weird. For a couple of hours we took the same road that I'd seen going the opposite way just a few days ago, and we passed by the spot where I'd first met the princess - oh, there were some laborers building something around that carriage. Ah, I remembered, the king said that he was going to build a tomb here; it was already taking shape even after just a few days. We paused for a moment, at the princess' urging. My gilly sheet had actually been folded up and put to the side. The laborers were kind enough to put it in my trunk for me while the princess and I paid our respects to the fallen. The princess laid a hand on the whitestone wall, and gazed upon the plaque that had already been erected - their names were embossed in a silver-like metal, prettier than silver, actually. I recognized one of those names, for the princess had told it to me before.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  She said, tears in her eyes, "Goodbye, Elice. You did it. You bought me enough time. Thank you."

  Okay, that earned her a chaste hug, for which she thanked me. After she dried her tears, we continued. After we reached that spot it was just 8 miles to the edge of the forest and we were within sight of a small town - actually this was the first human settlement I'd even seen, now that I thought about it. I'd skipped straight to the big elf city at the very beginning which kind of felt like going out of order in terms overall scale and scope. It actually seemed pretty cozy and from where we were driving, kind of down a smooth grade, I also saw that there were outlying farms away off in the distance.

  I saw that at some point a river had issued from the forest, and this town was built near the northwest-ish bank of it. Ah, this must have been the same river I'd seen by Tor Anaura- apparently it had its headwaters in the Alps-like mountains east of the city, which I had come to find out were called the Great Titans. Then it then flowed vaguely southwest before spilling into these lands where it trended more south, reaching a body of water they call The Narrow Sea. Across the narrow sea was a peninsula connected to the Southlands, where Valyrian had told me that I could find corn. I heard the palace chef was from that peninsula, actually, though I didn't get many details at the time.

  "Kennie town," said the princess, "this is…this was the place that was full of sick people. It wasn't a hard disease to cure with magic, but it was important that I did because it was rather debilitating and had a tendency to be lethal."

  She looked at me, a pained look on her face. Gah! An ounce of pain in those eyes was the last thing I wanted to see.

  I said, "you wanna stop and check on them?"

  She nodded, "yeah. I think I do."

  So of course I parked the car just outside of the town, and we got out. The first thing I saw was a huge lumber mill, carts full of wood, mules pulling tremendous logs. As a matter of fact, I saw a lot of these things almost as though this place's main industry was-

  "Don't tell me. No way."

  "Huh?" The princess tilted her head

  "This is a loggin' town, right?" The princess nodded, "and it's called Kennie?" She nodded and I started to snicker a little.

  She furrowed her brow, "you're doing it again. Come now, Sir Victor - we mustn't tarry."

  Well okay, at least in this case I was actually in a good position to show her what I meant; yep, I checked the CD wallet and confirmed. We didn't stay for very long and there really wasn't much to do. It was just your standard country town you might see in movies about the medieval times except not covered in dung, because that trope is bullshit. There was apparently a charcoal burner a ways away from town, too - made sense that they'd wanna keep those far away. They would send logs and charcoal down the river, and down the road towards the next town and so forth all the way to the sea.

  When the townsfolk saw the princess they showered her with gratitude and praise, and there she was asking pointedly if everything was all right. Once she was certain there was nothing wrong, she returned to me, smiling, and bade us continue - yeah her mood had improved significantly after that stop. Well, the coffee was helping too I figured; coffee and breakfast food are mother nature's best medicines don't you know.

  Incidentally, I also purchased a decent-sized bag of charcoal for obvious grilling related reasons. I had intended to buy charcoal for my camping grill at that famous gas station, the same one I was fixin' to get a brisket sandwich at. What? Not all Texans are obsessed with propane! Y'all watch too much TV! Anyways, once I put the proper song on the princess suddenly got the joke and from then on whenever someone mentioned the town of Kennie, we'd look at each other and say "danger zone!"

  The next town was about twelve miles or so - a larger town, a mercantile hub called Midbrook. Ah, I see why they called it that: a river ran through the middle. This was a different river, also jind of going southwest-ish too but more south than west, probably from the same mountains that other river came from, judging by the directionality. I had been periodically stopping to use my compass to see where exactly we were heading. Let's see, I bet that these two rivers would eventually converge given the angle, but where? Eh I'm no geologist or whatever discipline handles rivers.

  Midbrook was a walled town, through which ran several roads in all directions. It was within the Kingdom of Cara, under the dominion of the aptly titled "Duke of Midbrook." I guess I would liken the architecture to one of those towns I'd visited on my trip to France that had been around since medieval times. Anyways, we stopped to rest for a bit longer; for one thing I had to hit the head and reckoned I'd like to try what food they were selling. It was actually a really nice place; I'd bet dollars to donuts it was lovely at sunset. We found a carriage house to park the Cadillac and then made their way on foot.

  It was like walking through a movie taking place in medieval Europe as it was a more grounded town than the fantastical Tor Anaura. The roofs were painted a bright red, the people walking about town wore vibrant colors, and the streets were paved with cobblestone. Okay, okay, so it was actually nothing like a movie because those always had a color-muting filter and everything was brown and gray.

  I couldn't help but take in the scenery; I mean I'd been to places with similar architecture but to see it without all of the modern contrivances was a completely different sensation. In fact I would compare it specifically to Dinan in Brittany only surrounded by a wall, and bigger too, but with the same sort of overall charm. So much greenery, too, even more so outside the town proper; a long wooded hill ran along the southern span of the river and the portions of the river that ran through the town were equally verdant. Man, I am really glad grandpa took me on that pan-European road trip, it's really coming in handy for describing things here otherwise I'd be lost.

  The princess met my gaze and smiled brightly, "finally!"

  "Huh?"

  "That's the look of wonderment I was missing. The night we met, you had the same look on your face when gazing at the moons. Then after that it's been nothing but you showing me things to be amazed at and you've been alternating between serious, confident, and goofy."

  I guess I had a major tell when I was in awe, or was that her elf senses? Ah no matter, I liked that she understood me so well.

  "Well then as long as this world keeps offering me new experiences, I'll keep showing it off for ya, princess."

  "I am looking forward to it," she did a little spin and curtsied, I bowed in kind.

  I was in my element and ready to explore!

  What is better for yelling?