Valkyrie's Shadow

The Tiger and the Dragon: Act 2, Chapter 1

The Tiger and the Dragon: Act 2, Chapter 1

Chapter 1

“Today, we give thanks to the gods that beings like ourselves are still alive.”

…

“Today, we give thanks to the gods that beings like ourselves are still alive.”

…

Ehh…

“Thus do we offer our thanks,” Themis said.

After thanking the gods for merely existing, the Cleric of Surshana continued on to deliver a simple sermon. The admittedly wholesome – and boring – content that spoke of the fruits of righteous labour was at great odds with the hymn that the congregation sang before settling down, which sounded as if they were about to unapologetically destroy three or four countries.

It was apparently Ludmila’s favourite hymn, which didn’t surprise her, but it seemed that many highly favoured it. Since a sermon in Ludmila’s territory was an unprecedented event, they chose it because it was…popular? That was what Liane wanted to believe, at any rate. If it was instead purposely selected, she didn’t want to think about why that was.

Liane and Florine were not attending the noonday service, but since it was being held in a yard near where they were waiting, they could hear most of what was going on.

?Why do Clara and Ludmila have to attend? They already went this morning.?

?They’re Ludmila’s subjects, so why wouldn’t she go to attend a rare event with them? And I don’t think you need to wonder why Clara would be with her.?

?I guess…?

The whole construction camp had been informed in advance of the service, so everything was neatly put away before the labourers went to attend. There wasn’t a single person who didn’t go, so Liane and Florine felt that it would be more than a bit awkward to wander around on their own.

?I don’t get why they look so happy – she’s preaching about work, for crying out loud!?

?We both like our work. It’s not difficult to empathise with them. You’re just angry because your expectations were betrayed.?

Liane crossed her arms and hmph’d. Florine was right, of course. She wanted to hear some fiery preaching about the virtues of genocide and all the other things that common knowledge applied to the Faith of the Six. Ludmila always killed the crap out of everything and treated it no differently than doing paperwork.

Then again, Themis was preaching about work and killing the crap out of everything was Ludmila’s work.

?This religion feels more like a productivity cult. It’s hard to believe that the Faith of the Four came out of it.?

?Well, it makes sense that the Temples of the Four would try to come up with distinctive doctrines and culture to separate themselves from the old religion.?

?Sure, but this is way different.?

The framework of virtue and righteousness was entirely different in the Faith of the Six. Morality was practical; generally revolving around increasing the congregation’s chances for long-term survival. The culture that sprung out of it was a matrix of protocols that attempted to seamlessly optimise every aspect of society so that humanity might survive and thrive. Spirituality was paradoxically inseparable from temporal matters, and it was weird.

For instance, in the Faith of the Four, acts of charity were considered fundamentally good. To help those in need was something that enriched the soul. It made some people feel better about themselves and gave others a chance at life. Charity was a wholesome, moral act that was lauded by the Temples.

In the Faith of the Six, charity was an investment that generated societal returns. There was nothing about enriching the soul or feeling good or whatever. This investment went to temple staff who looked out for those who slipped through the cracks of society and allocated resources to them. These resources bought time for the Temples to nurture or rehabilitate individuals for the greater cause of keeping humanity from going extinct, filling roles that saw to the maintenance, development and growth of their civilisation.

Like many religions, all aspects of life were addressed by tenets of the faith. This created something frightening when one considered the temporal focus of the Faith of the Six.

Observing the tenets of most religions generated ‘spiritual’ returns. Being a good person in the Faith of the Four just meant that you were a morally good person but that morality did not necessarily bring success. Unscrupulous and cold-hearted individuals could be wildly successful and all ‘good’ people could do was console themselves with the notion that they were better off spiritually.

With the Faith of the Six, adherence to doctrine resulted in real and tangible gains that served to reinforce one’s beliefs. Their doctrines also resulted in an entirely different morality that was eerily out of phase or just wildly off. On the surface, many things might be conflated with the beliefs of others because it aimed to create what most considered a functional society. People were generally pleased with their lives and they all appeared to be ‘good’.

But they weren’t. Not in the sense that followers of The Four considered ‘good’, at least.

Living a moral life involved figuring out where one’s abilities lay, striving to do one’s best at their chosen vocation and thus contributing to the survival of their society. Even those who brought harm to society were weighed and measured in a pragmatic way. Criminals paid their debt to society, but, within the bounds of the law, efforts were also made to put them back on the right path – the moral path, according to their doctrines.

The ‘misguided’ were assessed and offered a chance to put their talents to work. A prolific thief was fundamentally a Rogue and their skills could be employed in beneficial ways. The same could be said for nearly everyone so long as their behaviour was not inherently problematic. Ludmila’s tale of throwing the bratty Clara Corelyn of old into the Katze River could be seen as an act of righteous anger that turned the Radiant Jewel of the Riverlands from a contemptuous moniker to a genuine one.

As for the one who had been subjected to that ‘religious experience’, Clara was often compared to an Angel nowadays. Those who knew her were hard-pressed to say otherwise. She was a paragon of good in her faith’s sense: a guiding light to her people whether it came to her benevolent and progressive rule or the fact that there were very few that she could not redeem. The irredeemable few would find less mercy in her than in the heart of a Devil.

Good and evil were all jumbled up, at least by the moral standards that Liane, Florine and the vast majority of the people in the north grew up with.

A shady organisation that performed acts of assassination, sabotage, and subversion would be considered a morally good organisation so long as its efforts contributed to the greater good of civilisation. If they followed the tenets of the faith and got really damn good at it, all the better. A known Assassin who had murdered countless people could walk openly into a cathedral, receive a warm welcome and be hailed as a paragon.

Soup kitchens that simply fed the starving without any efforts at guidance were considered wasteful at best and evil at worst. The same rationale went into pretty much everything: misallocation of resources was sinful conduct deserving of a level of castigation that made the offender seem like a mass murderer. Not the good ones – the evil ones.

Additionally, cultivating one’s bloodline by producing offspring with an appropriate partner was a moral imperative. This was where Liane thought she might finally find some point of contention between her friends and their faith…except they were infuriatingly practical about that, as well. In hindsight, it was an approach that shouldn’t have been a surprise as loveless unions to produce heirs was a normal expectation for noblewomen.

Across the way, the congregation filling the empty yard stirred, marking the conclusion of the midday service. Liane rose from where she had been seated on a partially-carved granite block, dusting off the back of her skirt. Ludmila and Clara came out to join them.

“Ready to take a look around?” Ludmila asked.

“No,” Liane answered. “I’m not done sitting here yet. Themis and Alessia aren’t coming?”

“They will join us once they have finished speaking with some acquaintances who migrated here from the city,” Ludmila replied. “Was there something you wanted to see first?”

“Hmm…”

The construction camp had everything one might have expected out of one in an undeveloped wilderness. Within a large palisade that separated the camp from the nearby forest was housed every industry required for construction and laying down infrastructure. The only thing that appeared to be absent was, strangely enough, a smithy. According to Ludmila, this was because raw materials for everything else could be procured from the nearby area and it was ultimately more efficient to produce the metalwork required at the harbour’s forge facilities.

This wouldn’t have been the case if not for the efficiency of transport in the Sorcerous Kingdom, which made for many unfamiliar new paradigms in industrial and economic thinking. Corelyn Harbour was probably the premier example of the changes wrought over the past year, but any urban centre designed for their new technologies would rapidly follow suit. Warden’s Vale was no exception: the only thing that was holding the frontier territory back was skilled labour, which no one had to spare.

Liane’s gaze drifted from facility to facility, then stopped at one that was uncharacteristic for a construction camp.

“Let’s try the Alchemist first.”

“That’s a weird choice,” Florine said.

“No,” Liane replied, “I’m choosing it because it’s weird.”

They strolled along a street laid with the prefabricated paving stones that were rapidly becoming ubiquitous to their territories. The street itself was divided into pedestrian and wagon lanes. Dividing the two lanes was a gutter that channelled rainwater to the nearby river.

The Alchemist’s workshop was located in the south-central area of the camp. In addition to the workshop itself, a large warehouse was attached to the back. Unlike most of the buildings around it, which were fashioned from timber, the workshop was constructed out of stone. Out of a sloped roof poked two sets of chimneys that streamed milky vapours over the storage lots nearby.

A bell chimed as a Death Knight footman held the door open for them.

“Welcome~” A young woman looked up from her mortar and pestle, “Oh…L-Lady Zahradnik.”

“Good afternoon, Miss Pam,” Ludmila smiled. “Hm…have you decided on a surname yet?”

“Er…not yet. Whenever I think I’ve finally settled on one, I change my mind. I guess I’ll be stuck with just Pam for a while.”

Pam set down her tools, wiping her hands on her apron before placing them on the counter.

“Is there something I can do for you, my lady?”

“We just came around to take a look at how things are going in the Upper Reaches,” Ludmila said. “How do you like your new workshop?”

“It’s great,” Pam replied enthusiastically. “It’s twice as big as Miss LeNez’s workshop in E-Rantel! But it might be a bit too much for someone like me…”

“Miss LeNez’s reports indicate that you are making the most out of it,” Ludmila replied. “So it seems to me that it suits you just fine. You have come a long way in the past few months.”

The Alchemist blushed slightly, her lips twitching up into a little smile as she fidgeted at Ludmila’s remark.

?I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ludmila do this before. Is she flirting with this girl??

Florine shot her a look.

?She’s just complimenting her! Why are you saying this all of the sudden??

?I dunno, ‘cause she’s like that. What she said after she caught me the other day made me all squirmy inside.?

?Squirmy? Liane, you’re not–?

?I’m not!?

She wasn’t. Ludmila was just Ludmila. Once one got over how scary she was, Ludmila was powerful, stoic and gallant, just like Ludwig from Dreams of Red.

Wait a minute…

?This is probably your fault.?

?Hah??

Ignoring Florine’s perplexed look, Liane wandered deeper into the workshop. A row of shiny new alchemical burners lined the wall behind the counter. Shelves stocked with curatives, industrial substances and magic items stood opposite the counter to them.

“You make magic items here as well?” Liane asked.

“No, they’re imported from Warden’s Vale,” Pam answered. “I’m just an Alchemist. Well, an apprentice Alchemist. Three-quarters of the Alchemical goods you see in stock here are imported from there as well. I can’t make those yet.”

“What do you make here, then?”

“First-tier healing potions. Our inventories are full up and it’s the most valuable thing I can brew for export. The price for them shot up over the winter so the company’s profits have been crazy.”

“Don’t I know it,” Liane grinned. “It was because the Imperial Army snapped them all up.”

House Wagner’s companies had made a pretty penny on the Empire’s winter campaigns. House Gagnier and House Corelyn had made off like bandits as well. It was an obvious, yet little-considered benefit of being a Noble of the Sorcerous Kingdom: when their nation moved, so did the markets. Being privy to the affairs of the nation and the members of its hegemony was an extraordinarily lucrative affair.

Ludmila frowned in her direction. Liane ungrinned.

“Do you mean to say that you have been profiteering while I was running around all over the place?”

“Uh…why wouldn’t we?” Liane replied, “If someone’s gonna profit, it may as well be us.”

“You should have spoken with me about it first.”

Liane furrowed her brow.

“Why?”

“Because Merchant companies from the Sorcerous Kingdom suddenly doing something like that en masse is suggestive of what actions our country might take in the future.”

“Wait, how can you be so dumb about Merchant stuff yet notice something like this?”

“Because it’s a strategic concern,” Ludmila told her. “In this case, it gave you an edge over your competitors, but imagine what would happen if there were other nations involved.”

“We’d squash ‘em? Besides, it’s not a bad strategy. Governments are usually at least a degree of separation away from their Merchants so their ability to read and react to changes in the markets stinks. We, on the other hand, have Merchants who are part of the government and it’s an advantage that we should exploit.”

Once the Sorcerous Kingdom developed enough economic clout, it could force countries to capitulate without shedding a drop of blood on the battlefield. This felt far more productive than wrecking everything with Death-series servitors.

“We have allies to keep in mind as well,” Clara said. “As well as any wider effects to other parties. The potential magnitude of what you are suggesting goes beyond upsetting the economic balance of a single country.”

“Um,” a small voice came from the counter. “At the risk of sounding rude, who are you? Why has my shop become a place to plot the downfall of countries?”

“We don’t plan on destroying any countries, Miss Pam,” Florine said reassuringly.

“Not yet, anyw–ouf!”

Florine’s elbow found her ribs.

“I apologise, Miss Pam,” Ludmila said. “I did not mean for our discussion to go in that direction. As for who they are…I wanted to avoid a commotion, but this is Countess Corelyn, Countess Wagner and Baroness Gagnier.”

Pam’s eyes grew wide and her mouth fell open. She visibly shrunk in on herself.

“I-I…I…I-I’m so sorry!” The apprentice Alchemist lowered her head multiple times, “Please destroy as many countries from my workshop as you wish! Tea…tea…I should get some tea. But I only have beakers…”

Liane wondered how people would feel if their countries were overturned over tea. Not that something like that would ever happen.

“There is no need,” Ludmila told Pam. “As I said: they just wanted to take a look around. Speaking of which, how goes your cataloguing of local resources?”

“Um, there’s a lot of stuff,” Pam appeared to settle down somewhat. “There’s plenty of what the Ranger kids brought in when I was working in Warden’s Vale, plus all sorts of other things. The warehouse is still filled with inventory to catalogue.”

“Anything valuable so far?” Liane asked.

“It’s hard to say whether any one thing will be valuable in the long run, my lady,” Pam replied. “At least when it comes to products for export. Reagents harvested in wild areas tend to be more effective than those cultivated in gardens and such. The problem is that they’re wild, meaning the best you can probably find are patches of them here and there. On top of that, there are dangers that come with going into the wild and a business would have to hire someone to retrieve it or hire an escort if they were doing it themselves.”

“Which adds to overhead.”

Pam nodded.

“Not only that,” she added. “It takes time if you do it yourself. If you spend a week harvesting herbs in a forest somewhere, that’s a week you’re not in your workshop making potions. It’s a waste of mana unless there’s a shortage of reagents. On top of that, a small workshop might be able to find enough reagents to make their own special potions, but a big company like ours wouldn’t.”

“You have the whole of the Upper Reaches,” Ludmila noted. “Development will be minimal here so there is a huge area to collect those wild reagents from. Once you secure the cooperation of the local tribes, you will have what you need.”

“Miss LeNez mentioned something like that, my lady,” Pam said. “But, well, we haven’t been able to secure any kind of ‘cooperation’ yet. The tribespeople stay out in the woods. Maybe the closest they’ve come are those camps that they’ve made on the far side of the lake.”

“Those are just the ones that you can see,” Ludmila told her. “They are likely much closer than you think.”

Yeah, okay, that won’t give her nightmares or anything…

A part of why Ludmila was so scary to others was in how she made casually horrifying statements. It was to the point that people just assumed everything she said had some dire implication. Unlike her, most people did not have wills of highly-enchanted adamantite alloy.

For some reason, they left the Alchemist’s workshop on that ominous note. Themis and Alessia were standing nearby, looking up and down the street. The Paladin tapped the Cleric on the pauldron when her gaze crossed over them.

“We were about to cross the bridge to see if you were on the island,” Themis said. “I know that the camp is not very large, but the surroundings feel so vast that one might get lost.”

“I left my footman outside,” Ludmila replied. “Well, I suppose they are hard to distinguish from one another if one is unused to them.”

“You can tell the difference between them?” Themis asked, “What do you use for reference?”

“Hmm…the general feeling that they give off? My subjects seem to be able to tell them apart as well. I should probably add something so visitors know who is who.”

What would they do with that knowledge? It wasn’t as if people regularly interacted with Death Knights anyway.

They continued their tour of the construction camp, which mostly used ‘old’ technology created out of conventional crafting techniques. The only machinery from Liane’s workshops could be found in the wagons hauling cargo and the two Undead-powered mills that processed timber and stone. Overall, the ‘camp’ was more of an industrial village that resembled those that House Wagner employed before the Sorcerous Kingdom.

Next on their tour was an island raised by Lord Mare in a lake that had also been created by the Dark Elf Druid. Lord Mare had widened a section of the river at the confluence of two of its tributaries in the south-central portion of the highland basin. The new lake filled the valley where the old road to Warden’s Vale crossed over to ascend the pass to the Slane Theocracy in the southeast. This made the new island – with its bridges that connected the far shores – the strategic and logistical centre of the Upper Reaches.

The stone bridge was wide enough to accommodate three wagons side-by-side, as well as a pedestrian walkway. It stretched roughly three hundred metres across their side of the lake to an island which was about two kilometres long and a kilometre wide. Liane eyed the barren stone as they made their way across.

“You must have something for rocks surrounded by water,” she said.

“I like rocks surrounded by water,” Ludmila replied. “So does Lord Mare, apparently. Do you not think they are nice, safe and defensible?”

Ludmila’s tendency to turn everything into a strategic or tactical matter only seemed to get stronger as time went by. Or maybe she was always like that and now felt comfortable enough to openly show how different she was from everyone else.

“That might be true,” Liane said, “but everything you do is a lot more expensive than necessary. It’s not as efficient either.”

“It might seem that way,” Ludmila told her. “But time and positioning are paid for in blood when things are not so peaceful.”

“I have no idea who in the world would attack the Sorcerous Kingdom given how powerful it is.”

“We do not need to imagine who would attack the Sorcerous Kingdom,” Ludmila said. “We need only understand how powerful they would be.”

Liane didn’t understand exactly how powerful that was, but she did understand that moats and the defences that they could construct didn’t stand a chance if something that could actually challenge the Sorcerous Kingdom came along.

“It seems kinda pointless,” she said. “Even if you fully fortified this island, someone like Lady Shalltear could sink it into the lake in five minutes.”

“Well, it is harder than you think to sink an island, but she might be able to flatten every structure on the island in five minutes.”

“Same difference,” Liane said. “What’s the point?”

“The point is as I said before,” Ludmila told her. “Time and positioning. Five minutes spent dealing with a fortified position is five minutes purchased for our side to act. There will be other fortified positions, too. If each delays an invader by an additional five minutes, how many millions of lives will that save in the interior in the future?”

“…sorry.”

Liane looked down at the paving stones as they walked on in silence. Even with so much power and wealth now at their disposal, Ludmila remained a Frontier Noble who sacrificed herself for duty. The way that she thought always put everyone ahead of herself, almost as if she was cursed to do so. This may as well have been the case, as Liane didn’t think that part of Ludmila would ever change.

Profits and economic efficiency occupied a distant fourth place on her list of priorities. Foremost was the defence of the realm. After that came the well-being of her subjects. Third was any development she could manage with what she had left over. In the past, Liane would have thought this sort of person a special breed of idiot. Now, she could only consider anyone who thought the way she once did an utter ingrate.

Much like the future city in Warden’s Vale, the island was fashioned into distinct sections meant to host different districts. They walked a circuit around the perimeter, watching the construction crews raise the first of the settlement’s buildings.

“Hmm…I cannot quite figure out where everything goes,” Alessia said. “That raised part will be for a citadel or something, yes?”

“It is,” Ludmila nodded. “It probably makes more sense if you realise that the island is oriented from southwest to northeast. The southwestern third is the citadel where the army and local administration will be based. The remaining two-thirds is divided in half lengthwise, with the southeastern half allocated for industrial use. There is also a stretch in the northern part of the island at water level, which is where the harbour will be.”

“How many people will live here?”

“Not many, at first. I just do not have enough people to go around. For now, it will serve as a trade hub for the Upper Reaches.”

“If that’s the case,” Florine said. “You should be able to populate this island with Demihumans.”

Liane gazed across the lake towards the Demihuman settlements lining the eastern shore. If that happened, the island would look more like E-Rantel’s Demihuman quarter.

“I would like for that to happen,” Ludmila’s head turned to face the distant shore as well, “but they seem to be very shy at the moment. I could probably bring some Goblins in to start with, but, at the same time, I want them to do things their way. We will be occupied elsewhere for the next good while so it is probably better to let developments occur naturally.”

“They are still going to have to get used to Humans if you plan on starting trade with the Theocracy,” Clara said. “The old road goes through tribal territory.”

“You’re gonna have traders from the Theocracy?” Liane frowned.

She tried to imagine what would happen if people from the Theocracy had to enter a town full of Demihumans, but her imagination failed her. It was definitely something she didn’t want to miss.

“I suspect that it will only be Merchants from the Sorcerous Kingdom going back and forth between here and the Theocracy,” Ludmila said. “The current route from the Theocracy through Corelyn County is already logistically optimal. There is no compelling incentive for foreign Merchants to visit a tiny territory like mine.”

Ludmila’s population might amount to a tiny market, but her territory was huge. It was all the more reason to avoid it, as Merchants had to travel for days to get to those tiny populations. It just wasn’t worth it and exporting goods from Warden’s Vale to outlets in Corelyn Harbour and E-Rantel was ultimately cheaper for foreign Merchants because the Sorcerous Kingdom’s internal logistics were so efficient.

“Economic considerations are not the only ones that come with making this route available,” Themis said. “It will make pilgrimages easier as well.”

“That is true,” Ludmila nodded. “My expectations are not very high to begin with so any beneficial outcome seems fine to me.”

“It is over a hundred kilometres from this settlement to the city on the other side,” Alessia noted. “Are there places along the way for people to rest overnight? Normally there is a town every day’s travel, but this is almost pure wilderness.”

“I still have to work out the problems with that,” Ludmila admitted. “Something to the order of a fortress monastery can be built at the top of the pass and our wagons can get from here to there in two hours or so. The problem is how people go from there. Even if they are just drawing passenger wagons, we cannot invade the Theocracy with Soul Eaters.”

“Maybe my work across the border will open some doors by then,” Clara offered. “In the worst case, we have to build a road over to my territory at some point anyway so they could go from there.”

They headed back over the bridge after completing their circuit of the island. Along the way, Alessia peered at something in the west.

“There is another road over there, yes?” She pointed with a gauntleted finger, “Where does that go?”

“It follows the river west,” Ludmila said. “Up to an ancient pass between those two peaks. I am actually not sure why that old road exists or who built it. There is no evidence of Human habitation past this point in the Abelion Wilderness.”

“If it is wilderness, you will be claiming it?”

“For the foreseeable future, only up to the large river on the other side. I believe that the river leads down into the Theocracy so it will be an ideal location to build another harbour. West of the river is a large grassland, but I want to make a study of it before deciding what to do.”

“A study?”

“Yes,” Ludmila nodded. “I think we see grasslands as convenient for agricultural development, but there might be someone living there already. It seems obvious in hindsight, but all of our open plains are developed for agriculture. Other races that live in those environments cannot exactly trample over Human fields so we have to reserve a place for them.”

“Hmm…”

Alessia scratched her chin as they went along, looking thoughtfully towards the mountains to the west. Ludmila’s background made her more conscientious when it came to other races, but other followers of The Six were not so broad-minded. Those from the Theocracy were notorious for being outright belligerent.

They returned to their passenger wagon and embarked on their return trip to Warden’s Vale. As the landscape swiftly rolled by, Liane’s eye couldn’t help but be drawn to the snowy mountain dominating the landscape.

“Is it going to stay winter there all summer?” She asked.

“I have no idea,” Ludmila answered. “Everyone says that it looks nice and it is Dame Verilyn’s territory to do with as she pleases, but, at the same time, she had some expectations of revenue from her holdings.”

“Revenue from what?” Liane frowned, “Shipping snow?”

“It was the same as every other peak around it before,” Ludmila said. “So I suggested that she contract Rangers for land management and export natural products…uh oh.”

Liane froze. She couldn’t imagine what would make Ludmila go ‘uh oh’.

“Wh-what is it?”

“Dame Verilyn did pick up some vassals from the Empire,” Ludmila explained. “They are supposed to help develop the territory along the river into farmland.”

“Ah,” Liane nodded sagely, “so she’s gonna ship snow from her snow farms.”

“Shouldn’t you let her know?” Florine asked.

“I could tell her,” Ludmila answered, “but I doubt it will help. She will have to experience things for herself when she gets back.”