Valkyrie's Shadow

Winter's Crown: Act 3, Chapter 14

Winter's Crown: Act 3, Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Ludmila made her morning rounds around the harbour village, quietly tracing her way around the residents and migrants awaiting the construction of the next village.

Chief Esess would not be seeing her today, as Lord Mare was scheduled to landscape the second village and its surrounding fields. Though she was now able to work through the night, there were still various things that needed to be addressed during the daytime hours, and she needed to get all of her responsibilities well out of the way before then. Her thoughts continually drifted to the upcoming appointment, however, making it difficult to fully focus on her tasks.

Over the course of the past few months, Ludmila had come to know Lord Mare and Lady Aura quite well, both through their association with Lady Shalltear and her own activities as a member of the Adventurer Guild. Lord Mare was something like the opposite of Ludmila’s brothers, who often tried to escape their responsibilities to pursue activities that they personally found more interesting: like hunting, sparring or patrolling the border. By contrast, Lord Mare was not only filled with passion for his duties, but he was clever and industrious as well. He was also mild-mannered and was a good listener – a little brother that any big sister would be proud to have, as she imagined Lady Aura must be.

He was quite the perfectionist, however. The foundation for the first farming village took two days as they figured things out, altering it again and again until he was satisfied. With the past in mind, she set aside the rest of her day and most of the next so she could accompany him as he worked. Those clearing the land were told to stay based out of their camps to continue working, and deliveries would be put on hold for as long as Lord Mare needed.

On the way back to her manor, she found the Linum family relaxing in front of their home.

“Good morning, Lady Zahradnik,” Wiluvien greeted her as she approached.

Roughly five months into their pregnancies, the two sisters appeared healthy and generally well. They were no longer able to conceal their growing bellies with loose clothing, but it seemed that no one was giving them any trouble over anything. Their mother, however, continued to remain in the same state that she had entered since separating her from Campbell Fassett.

“Good morning,” Ludmila replied. “How are you all feeling?”

“My sister and I couldn’t be any better, my lady,” Wiluvien answered for them. “Our mother, however…”

Throughout their brief exchange, Ilwé Linum sat and continued to eat breakfast, uncaring of the world around her. She never spoke or seemed to recognize anything beyond her personal routines, remaining uncommunicative even with her daughters. Ludmila had some confidence that, upon taking her in, the reinforcing effect that she had on her own vassals would help her the same way as it had with her daughters but. Thus far, however, there was no discernible change in her condition.

“There is no hurry,” Ludmila told them gently, “I was just making sure everything was alright with your family.”

“Thank you, my lady,” Lluluvien said. “I’m sure something will change, someday. If you…”

The chambermaid’s voice trailed off as her gaze went past Ludmila’s shoulder. Ludmila turned and found that Lord Mare had arrived. He looked around until he spotted her and made his way over, his golden hair and short, white skirts fluttering in the breeze.

“Good Morning, Lord Mare,” she greeted him with a curtsey.

“Good Mo–wah!”

Lord Mare jumped at a loud cry that issued from behind her, and Ludmila quickly pivoted around to stand in front of him. Wiluvien and Lluluvien had joined Ludmila in her greeting, but they were now staring down in shock at their mother, who had thrown herself to her knees, pressing her forehead to the ground.

“What happened?” Ludmila asked, “Is she alright?”

She scanned the nearby surroundings, looking for anything that might have attacked Mrs Linum. After several moments, she looked back. The Linum sisters were trying to help their mother up, but she wouldn’t budge.

“Um…we should go,” Lord Mare told her.

“Go, my lord?” Ludmila replied. “But she–”

Lord Mare’s gaze met with hers: he wasn’t wearing his usual, timid look. She let out a small sigh and nodded, following him back up to the potted tree he had placed near the manor. He motioned for her to step through, and she took one last glance towards the Linum family. Ilwé Linum was still in the same position, and her daughters looked about as confused as Ludmila felt.

Shaking her head, Ludmila walked into the tree, stepping out into the first farming village. Another tree of the same species was planted in one of the public gardens, allowing them to get from place to place quickly. Each of the planned villages would have similar trees, as would the other settlements in her demesne should they need them.

They made their way out of the gate and walked up through the fields being harvested by the Farmers and their skeletal farmhands. After some time watching her tenants at work, Ludmila decided to ask Lord Mare about the strange incident.

“Do you know what happened back there, my lord? Mrs Linum has been mostly unresponsive to anyone for months, and I haven’t seen her react to anything so strongly since we found her in Fassett County.”

Lord Mare looked up at her for a moment, then his gaze went back to the road ahead of them. After they had gone a short distance, he licked his lips before giving a tentative-sounding reply.

“It’s…it’s a weird thing. The Elves around here react to big sis and me really strangely – especially the slaves.”

“I wasn’t aware that there were other Elves enslaved around E-Rantel,” Ludmila said.

“The ones that came in weren’t from E-Rantel,” he told her. “They were from someplace to the south. Maybe Merry can explain it better?”

“Merry…you mean the Ranger from the Adventurer Guild?” She furrowed her brow, “I had no idea she acted like that around you.”

“She doesn’t,” Lord Mare said, “not like that, anyways. At first, it wasn’t really there but, after a bit, her behaviour changed. When she’s around big sis and me, it’s like she’s caught somewhere between acting that way towards us, and being wary…or scared. We didn’t want to ask; we weren’t sure if she would end up like the others.”

Something to do with Elves…Ludmila didn’t know the first thing about them beyond their long lives and other telltale traits. What was important here, however, was that Mrs Linum had reacted with more life than Ludmila had witnessed from her in months.

“These Elf slaves you came across, my lord,” she said. “If you don’t mind my asking, what happened to them?”

“Since they were slaves that were forced into what they did,” Lord Mare replied, “Lord Ainz said to not hurt them. They ended up in our service…but they’re pretty annoying.”

“…annoying?”

“Un,” he nodded. “They’re all aggressively servile, and they won’t leave us to do our own stuff at home. They try making me wear pants, and they keep encouraging big sis to wear dresses as well…what’s wrong with them? Seriously…”

“Lady Aura dislikes dresses?”

“She doesn’t hate them; she’s just more comfortable wearing what she usually does. B-but they won’t leave you alone, you know! They try to dress you up and feed you, and they hang around you all the time commenting on everything. Lord Ainz said that we’re not allowed to get rid of them, either.”

“They sound a bit like Aemilia,” Ludmila smirked. “Out of curiosity, are they ‘those women’ Lady Aura seems to always grumble about?”

Lord Mare nodded silently, and Ludmila pondered over what she had been told.

“At the least,” she said at length, “they’re doing better than Mrs Linum. I suppose I’ll have to see what Merry knows about this…are you certain it isn’t some sort of Elf secret? I don’t want to anger her by asking.”

“We have no idea what it is, really,” he said, “and the Elves serving us don’t want to say anything about it. They’re always more concerned about ‘taking care’ of us. Maybe they’re actually like Merry: there’s something that scares them, but they’re scared to even say what it is…”

Ludmila couldn’t imagine what they could possibly be so fearful about. She would ask Merry about it at some point, but it appeared that she would need to be careful about it.

They reached the first section of cleared forest. Overall, the work was now well past the place where the fourth town would be. The arrival of the Golems sped things up immensely, both with harvesting trees and transporting them to the timber yard on the flats. Each of the prepared sections covered roughly the same area as the first farming village and its surrounding terraces. A strip of forest one kilometre in width divided each: stretching all the way from the forests further up the valley slope, to the edge of the floodplain below.

Lord Mare stopped and reached into his inventory, pulling out several sheets of parchment.

“Hmm…has anything changed since you came up with this?” He asked as he looked through them.

Ludmila looked down at the parchments with him, confirming that the maps and the changes detailed upon them were current. The terraces of the first farming village would continue up the entire valley, running through the strip of her demesne allocated for cultivating agricultural crops. The sections of forest between them would be mostly left as they were, save for slight modifications to ensure that runoff would flow into a brook going down the midst of each.

“It looks accurate, my lord,” she said after they examined all of the pages.

“O-okay, be careful where you stand…actually, would you like to come with me?”

“Where are you going?”

“I’ll be working from above,” he said, “so you can fly up with me and make sure things are going the right way.”

“Is there anything special that I need to do?” She asked.

“N-no?” He answered, “I’ll just cast the spell and you can follow me around.”

“Very well, my lord.”

“?Fly?.”

Lord Mare cast the spell, then cast it again on her. She watched him fly upwards, then she looked down at her boots, which were still planted on the ground. Lord Mare floated back down to her.

“Um…I’m not flying you,” he told her. “You’re flying you.”

“How does that work, my lord?”

Lord Mare leaned over from where he was floating, extending a hand towards her. Ludmila reached out and clasped it. His grip tightened.

“Ei!”

Huh?

The sky and the ground were taking turns entering her vision. The fact that he had hurled her with one hand sent her spinning through the air like a clay shingle as she rapidly ascended over the Vale. Her entire body had turned as stiff as a wooden plank, not even allowing a breath to escape. The scenery continued to whirl around her as she tried making sense of what was going on.

Does this qualify as something ‘weird’? Maybe I should mention this to Lady Aura…

The first thing she needed to do was relax and start breathing again. Secondly, she needed to stop spinning before her breakfast came out. Fortunately, the mere thought of control started slowing her. She was slightly higher than the western crest of the Vale by the time her ascent levelled out. Her head continued spinning long after she stopped. Catching her breath as she stood stationary in the air, Ludmila looked around.

What she saw wasn’t all that different from when she looked down at her home from the ridge of the valley, which was vaguely disappointing. The idea that she had some sort of strange control over her movements through the air seemed to prevent the sense of vertigo that she might have normally had from looking down off of a cliff.

As she tested her mobility, a patrolling Bone Vulture glided past, eyeing her bobbing and weaving movements curiously. Ludmila stopped and eyed it back.

“Wait,” she called out, “come back.”

The Bone Vulture wheeled around, coming to an awkward-looking hover before her. She scanned the landscape below before issuing an order.

“Go down to the road and await further instructions.”

The Bone Vulture dove to the ground, alighting on the road near the untouched strip of forest.

?Fly along the edge of the woods.?

The Bone Vulture did as it was told, flapping its way up along the forest. She directed it to several other places before sending it back on its patrol, musing over her findings.

"A-are you stuck?" Lord Mare called up to her.

Ludmila looked down at this voice, finding that he was looking up directly beneath her. She drew her skirts tightly around her knees before willing herself downwards. When she tried to stop at Lord Mare’s altitude, she plummeted straight past him. It wasn’t until she had descended another hundred metres or so that she finally reversed direction to fly back up beside him.

“Flight spells have a maximum regular speed,” he told her. “They also have a set acceleration, but, if you’re going down, you can carelessly add to your falling speed. You have to control yourself going down or you might hit the ground before you can stop.”

“I’ll remember that from now on, my lord,” she said. “How high can one go?”

“I’m not exactly sure, but if you go too high the air gets thin, so you’ll suffocate if you’re not paying attention.”

“Is there a way to tell before you reach that altitude?”

“Hmm…” Lord Mare looked around, then pointed to the southwest, “about twice as high as this mountain range, you might start finding it hard to breathe. It gets colder, too. If you keep going up, it just gets worse, and you’ll die before you drop back down to a safe altitude. Some things can fly really high without problems, but species that live at regular altitudes or underground will be in big trouble. I-I guess if you have a spell or magic item that lets you breathe up there you’ll be okay? Also, something that will keep you from freezing.”

“I probably won’t have any reason to fly that high,” she said. “I was just curious.”

“I see…well, don’t forget that just because you’re a certain height off of the ground, your altitude is the same. We’re a few hundred metres above the ground, but we’re still not as high as these mountains nearby. You might fly over some high mountains thinking that you’re only a few hundred metres off of the ground, but you’d actually be at a risky altitude.”

“Thank you for the warning, my lord.”

Lord Mare pulled out the maps again, flipping through them slowly. Ludmila couldn’t help but compare them to the view below.

“Does Lady Aura make her maps like this?” She asked him, “By flying overhead, I mean.”

“Sometimes she’ll find some high spot to get a general view, but she usually does it from the ground. Rangers can trailblaze and map out terrain without needing to do this.”

Ludmila supposed that was true. Even the maps she personally made and provided to Lord Mare were nearly identical to what she saw below them.

“A-anyways,” Lord Mare told her. “I’m starting now. Let me know if something looks off.”