Hyperion Evergrowing-Chapter 208: Rewards of Duty

Silas’s words left Leif feeling… strange. Most of the information the fallen noble had told him meant little, names of houses he had never heard of or simply didn’t remember. But house Vin was his house, and the Lord Regent was his grandfather. They even had the same name.

Leif had hoped that he would be able to reveal himself to his sister, and maybe father, but if they were as involved with the country's current politics as he feared…

“I see.” He said finally. “What you’ve said has been… informative. Thank you.”

Silas grunted. “I’m not as informed as I would like to be, but that was just a quick summary of what I know. If you want more specific information there’s a good chance I could help.”

“No, that’s enough for now.” Leif said, holding up a hand. “But your request, what exactly do you have in mind?”

The older man crossed his arms and looked skyward. “There’s a lot wrong with this country, with the world, really. And I’m not delusional enough to think I can change it all. But there are three things I intend to destroy before time claims its due.” He grinned sardonically.

“Three people?” Leif asked.

Silas laughed, a bitter and hollow sounding thing. “Gods, wouldn’t that be easy. Though in truth, knocking out the leadership of the factions I’ve taken issue with wouldn’t harm my cause.”

“You intend to wage war against three groups? Respectfully, I don’t plan on pitting myself against any organisations, the risk is too high.”

“Yeah… Trust me kid, I know. But I don’t need your help, if you leave and move on I wouldn’t blame you. But at least listen to what I have to say. I don’t want to recruit you for some righteous crusade against injustice, just having somebody of your strength aware of what’s killing this kingdom is enough for me.”

“Fine, tell me.”

Silas let out a long breath, then his eyes sharpened. “The first group on my shit list is a Lashivite doomsday cult masquerading as a charity. They’re not so influential down here near the border, but they’ve been growing in influence at an alarming pace in the more populated parts of Varan. They’re called The Bloodied Hand. They’ve been around for centuries, but they just so happened to receive a massive windfall right after the war. They’re Lashivites, but they take the usual fetishising of suffering to an extreme. They offer charity to those in the most need, then turn around and demonise those who accept their aid, demanding they join the faith. The Bloodied Hand believes that suffering is the only way to fight back against the inevitable end of the world and the tyranny of the system.”

“End of the world.” Leif mused, finding the idea absurd.

“Mhmm, but these aren’t the usual ‘humanity going extinct’ believers. They think the planet itself is going to crack apart, that all things will come to an end. How they fathom that the struggles of mortals will in any way protect them is beyond me. But their beliefs aren’t what matter, even if they are nuttier than a tree full of squirrels. The problem is their attacks against those they call ‘Unearned’. Those who have somehow stolen power they don’t deserve, or so the cult says. It just so happens that these ‘Unearned’ are independent farmers and businesses that survived the war largely unscathed.”

Silas spat to the side and continued. “It's too complicated to get into fully, but after the war the remaining noble houses and merchant families bought devastated land for extremely cheap. Farms and mines that used to be owned by the families that worked them had no choice but to sell themselves and their land, it was that or starve or go homeless. The estates were rebuilt, but they no longer profit those who work them. It was a disaster, is a disaster. Our kingdom is being pillaged by the same people who were supposed to rule it, and the price of food has been steadily climbing ever since. And now the Bloodied Hand are attacking and burning what few estates aren’t being exploited for everything they earn.”

“So it's a religious organisation acting as attack dogs for those who stand to profit? And I suppose that this group are being funded by the noble houses wanting to buy up the land.”

“I don’t know if the cult’s leadership actually believe what they preach, but whatever the truth, it's contributing to the death spiral of Varan. Desperate people will reach for any helping hand that gets offered, and then they go off and deliberately create more desperate people. It makes me sick.”

Leif considered what he had just heard, and felt a grim resolve settle onto his shoulders. A part of him had hoped that Silas had picked his enemies poorly, or that he was wrong about the state of the kingdom. “And this is just the first of three groups?”

“It gets worse.”

“Of course it does.”

Silas shrugged. “The second group is the noble adventurer’s society. Frankly I don’t want your help with them. I have a personal, long standing hatred of the guilds, and I’ll gladly see the whole corrupt system burn to the ground.”

“I take it that they’re nothing like the guild’s of Ahle-ho?”

“Only the name is the same. If you saw how the guild’s operate in the Empire, it’s a hundred times worse here. At best they’re hired thugs, a bunch of completely useless bastards. At worst they’re actively suppressing the growth of those who live within Varan. They extort and bully, cripple and kill, all the while being backed by the authority of the noble houses. It didn’t used to be like this, the adventurer guilds used to be institutions of integrity, but it's been a steady, gradual decline ever since the creation of the society, and I hate it.”

“Sounds like a personal grudge.” Leif commented. “How many within the subjugation force were guild affiliated?”

“Only a dozen or so. But the ones who did arrive were almost useless. You saw those sunflower adventurers?”

“The ones who ran from battle?”

“The same. One of their members has decided to make the lives of some of my kids miserable. It’s a tragedy that the guild’s backing is too much for me to deal with him personally.”

“The three you brought into the dungeon are being targeted by an adventurer?”

Silas nodded.

“I’ll handle it.”

The old man pressed his lips together tightly, and he almost succeeded in hiding the upwards twitch of his mouth. “I see. Thank you.”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“And the last group?” Leif asked.

Silas sighed and fidgeted with his sleeves. “One of the noble houses. Yerl was given royal dispensation after the war to deal with… undesirable members of society. They have several forced labour camps, most of which border Epidor or the mountain range that leads to the northern pass. It turns out that when you burn through most of the kingdom’s traitors and prisoners, you start to… become creative with the people you put to work.”

“Sounds like slavery. That’s disgusting.”

“Yeah, it is. Its industrialised slavery with the crown’s seal of approval. Any crime, no matter how mundane, risks being put to work out on a plantation or down in the bowels of the earth digging for rare metals.”

===

“There’s a town two day’s from here.” Silas said from the back of the cart. “Most of the subjugation force will be heading there. It's the one your apprentice went to to warn us of the dungeon.”

They were moving along as the rear of a procession of other carts and groups, the last of the convoy having departed the mountains only an hour prior. The path was little better than packed dirt with the occasional stone, and according to Silas, the state of most of the southern roads were in poor shape.

The old man kept shooting confused looks down at the cart he was riding in, his brow furrowed. “Hylon, is this really ours? You didn’t accidently steal somebody else's vehicle?”

“Nope, it’s ours.” The boy said from where he was driving the cart. “What's the matter?”

“The matter is that my ass doesn’t hurt.”

The boy glanced over his shoulder and looked at Leif, the Scion was easily keeping pace beside them. “Maybe someone fixed it?”

Silas barked a laugh. “Who would do such a thing? We both know you didn’t do it.”

“Tell him nothing.” Leif telepathically sent. “It’ll be funnier if you don’t tell him.”

Hylon’s shoulders tensed with surprise, but quickly relaxed. Leif could sense the boy trying to focus on sending back a reply, his intent sharpening clumsily.

“It’s one way, unfortunately.” Leif continued. “Two way telepathic links are fairly obvious and are intuitive to use.”

Hylon nodded, but Silas had half turned and saw the action. The old man started grilling the boy about what he was doing, and Leif left them to it, walking up the convoy to where Lucia was perched on the back of a donkey that was completely unaware of her presence. She had her wooden sword across her lap, her legs crossed, and was balancing atop the beast with little difficulty.

“You’re getting better. It feels like your aura control jumped leaps and bounds.” He told her, speaking out loud.

Lucia shrugged, and he could tell that her eyes were closed even with the mask she was wearing. The donkey swayed with every step, but she countered each movement with instinctual precision to not fall off.

“Probably due to all the people you’ve encountered. I have some exercises I can teach you once we get to our destination, ways to move a crowd around you.”

She perked up, bright orange eyes locking onto him. “Teach me.” Lucia said excitedly, but her distraction made her steed suddenly aware of her presence. The donkey bleated in alarm and started bucking, alerting its owners who were walking ahead of it. Lucia dismounted by rolling off to the side, vanishing off the path and into a nearby crops of short gangly trees.

Leif calmed the startled animal with a hand on his back, then apologised on Lucia’s behalf. They hadn’t even noticed she was there, which was a testament to her growing skill. He fell back to Hylon’s cart, and Lucia materialised out from behind a shrub. She fell in step with him, and Leif tutored her for over an hour, the girl periodically dashing off to test what she had learned.

Leif’s prodigious aura control was both a mix of his relentless training, but also the fact he was cheating with the raw attribute amounts monsters got from their classes. His [Charisma] stat was obscene, and it had gotten to the point where it was as much a deadly weapon as any other abilities he had access to.

They passed through an old forest, the trees reaching up on either side of the path to arch over the heads of those below. Sunlight filtered down through the canopy in small patches and tiny clusters of glowing mushrooms lit up the most shadowed corners of their surroundings. There were creatures in the woodland, but they were wise enough to keep their distance.

Well, most of them were. A pair of juvenile foxes scurried up to Leif, paying no heed to their surroundings as they wove between his legs. Several of Silas’s children were overjoyed at the sight, but their excited shouting and pointing finally made the foxes realise that they had run into a band of humans. The beasts fled, but Leif was soon distracted by the barrage of questions as to how he had lured two foxes, and if he could do it again.

He demonstrated to a little boy and girl with muddy brown hair and the same squinted green eyes how he could beckon to a songbird, the small creature fluttering down from a nearby branch to land on Leif’s finger. The life he emanated would attract life in turn, but using the ability made him miss home. Bam, Lani and the other animals were back at Far-Reach, and not a day went by that he didn’t miss them.

He couldn’t see a world where he didn’t leave on his journey, but he did regret the necessity. He wondered how they were doing, how everyone was doing. It had been the better part of a year since he had left and much had changed. Did the domain tree still stand, he assumed that it did, the connection to the plant he had left behind was as stable, if distant as ever.

They did not breach far into the forest, the path curving to bring them up over a ridge, then down into a gully between two hills. A ten minute march later the tree’s became sparse, and rolling fields lay before them. Leif turned and looked back, the Varan mountains towering over the forest, the foothills now several dozen kilometres away.

He was back in Varan, the place where his old life had both begun, and ended.

===

Banners fluttered in the wind, held aloft by four armoured figures mounted on horseback. Two neat rows of fifteen soldiers lined the road leading up to the distant town, its earthen bulwark teaming with easily a hundred locals spectating the scene taking place outside of their home.

It was a humbling, dignified sight. Or it would have been, but the subjugation force was so spread out on their return that its members awkwardly trickled up to the town, then were made to wait off to the side for everyone else to arrive.

A quartet of officials worked their way through the waiting adventurers, volunteers and soldiers who had participated in the dungeon raid, taking notes and gathering accounts. It was likely because of this that when Leif and Silas finally arrived, a man in flowery, colourful clothing rode forward to meet them, two banner holding riders flaking him on either side.

The man cleared his throat for several seconds longer than was necessary, puffed out his chest, then yelled in a shrill voice. “As his lordship, Duke Narell of house Wrest’s herald, I hereby deliver a message and summons to one Silas Forde, and… unnamed masked stranger. Please step forward!”

Leif gave Silas a look, which the older man met. He looked like he had just bitten into a lemon, and he was clearly fighting hard to push down a growing scowl. Lucia materialised by Leif’s side, looking up at the peacock on a horse, derision and wariness spooling off her mind in palpable waves.

“Did you never share my name?” He sent to her, and she shook her head. “I may need to pick a new one, Leif is a potentially foolish name to go by, especially considering my last name.”

“Where were all these soldiers when we needed them?” Silas muttered as he stepped forward, lowering his head in the shallowest display of respect possible. “And why are they being led around by a clown?”

The herald sneered, his angular features scrunching up as if an invisible hand was pinching his nose. Leif bowed deeper than Silas, though only barely. “You’re the one who assisted the subjugation of the dungeon?” The herald asked him.

“I am.”

“Good. I was getting tired of waiting. As too, I’m sure, is my lord.” He gave a disgusted look at Silas, but turned back to Leif. “You are hereby invited by Duke Narell to a feast in celebration of our victory over the dungeon. Attendance is mandatory, and it is there that rewards will be doled out based on contribution. Your dedication to the defence of our great kingdom, and the duty you have performed are to be recognised.”

“What’s the dress code?” Leif asked. At the same time Silas hissed.

“Our?”

The herald sneered again. “Just don’t show up naked.”