Matthias Harlow
Orianna's Residence, Noble Quarter, Maribor, Temeria
1253
It was a couple of days after my conversation with Syanna that Orianna made good on her promise to call on me. Her home was different in the daytime, beautiful still but not in the fairytale-like way it had been when it was illuminated by all those floating lanterns. Although our acquaintance hadn't started on the best foot, I didn't want to make an enemy of her.
Her tastes aside, the Orianna I remembered from the games seemed... pleasant enough to be around. As pleasant as a child-rearing vampire could be, and as much as I had to remind myself how I was in no place to judge her, her appetite made it very hard to rationalize it away as a lesser but necessary evil. But that aside, I didn't see the need to make an enemy out of her; in fact, I hoped to form a bond with her. Because unless I chose otherwise, Orianna and the monsters like her would be the closest thing I would ever find to something like me.
I had taken the trek across Maribor on foot, cloaked as I often was against the midday glare. The stares from the local Temerian commoners were getting less and less these days; the people were finally getting used to seeing my silhouette in their streets. Still, walking the city without most of my gear left me with a distinct, crawling unease. I honestly felt naked without my armor, a silent reminder that I would need to pay my smith a visit soon to see how far along he was with the new pieces.
Stepping up to the sprawling estate, I was quickly ushered through the front door by a member of the household staff.
"If you would follow me, Master Harlow," the servant murmured, gesturing toward a sunlit wing of the manor. He eyed the heavy scabbard at my hip with polite but clear hesitation, clearing his throat as if to request I leave it at the door. I merely met his gaze, my hand resting deliberately on the hilt, making it silently but abundantly clear that I had absolutely no intention of parting with my sword. Realizing the futility of the gesture, the servant quickly looked away. "The lady of the house has been expecting you. Please, make yourself comfortable in the sitting area. Lady Orla will be with you shortly."
The servant bowed low and retreated, leaving me alone in a room flanked by tall, arching glass windows that overlooked a manicured courtyard. The name Lady Orla still sounded strange to my ears.
I paced the perimeter of the room, my boots clicking softly against the polished wooden floor. My eyes naturally drifted upward, drawn to the canvas frames lining the walls. Instead of the typical, rigid portraits of stern-faced ancestors or sweeping landscapes of rolling hills you'd expect in a feudal manor, these walls were covered in striking, abstract shapes, chaotic splatters of vibrant pigment, and distorted geometry.
I didn't know much about fine art, but I knew enough history to realize how bizarre this was. Back on Earth, during our actual medieval period, art was flat, deeply religious, and heavily shackled by tradition. Nobody was painting avant-garde, expressionist abstractions in Europe in the 1200s. Yet here, in the heart of a Northern Kingdom, an aristocratic salon was proudly displaying works that wouldn't look out of place in a modern 20th-century gallery.
It wasn't just the art, either. The deeper I got into the Continent, the more I noticed how weirdly, paradoxically advanced this world truly was. Medically and scientifically, it operated on a level that left Earth's dark ages entirely in the dust. Scholars at Oxenfurt and the mages of the Brotherhood were actively mapping out complex genetics, studying hereditary mutations, and conducting advanced surgeries that would have been deemed miracles or witchcraft back home. They understood germs, the flow of blood, and the literal building blocks of life, bypassing centuries of trial and error.
I could only attribute this rapid, unnatural acceleration to one thing: magic.
Magic wasn't just a weapon for throwing fireballs; it was a fundamental law of physics that local scholars exploited to leapfrog the timeline. When a single sorcerer can use a portal to travel across a hemisphere in the blink of an eye, or use telepathic xenovoxes to communicate across kingdoms instantly, the entire trajectory of human innovation shifts. They didn't need to invent the steam engine or the printing press to spark a renaissance; the Conjunction of the Spheres had dropped an infinite pool of cosmic energy right into their laps, forcing a brutal, primitive world to grow up far too fast.
I couldn't help but think about how much I wanted to interact with it. As chaotic and unpredictable as magic was on the Continent, it was a force I simply couldn't ignore. For one, it was one of the very few things in this universe that I knew could actually kill me. Plenty of things could harm me, break my bones, or dismember me if I wasn't careful, but magic was the one true elemental force capable of genuinely bypassing my defenses and unraveling me completely.
But it wasn't just about survival; it was about potential. The tiny, fleeting fragments of magic I could interact with right now simply weren't enough. I had a theory--a strong conjecture--that my unique gift could allow me to permanently steal and absorb magical abilities from the creatures of this world. To prove it, I needed a proper testing ground. I couldn't just guess; I needed to hunt down and kill more than one type of the same creature to see if the spark of their essence would truly transfer to me.
In fact, my mind was already making a plan. As soon as I heard whatever request Orianna had for me and checked on the progress of my new armor with the local smith, I intended to head straight down into Maribor's lower quarters. I'd find a crowded notice board, pick a few contract slips, and do some proper monster hunting. Maybe I'd get lucky and find exactly the kind of prey I needed to test my limits.
A soft, rhythmic rustle of silk cut through my thoughts, and not long after the subject of my thoughts entered the room through a set of doors.
"They are fascinating, aren't they?" Orianna's voice drifted into the sitting area. She glided past me toward one of the more chaotic canvases, her elegant posture radiating the casual confidence of an elite aristocrat. "I secured this from young prodigy, an artist from Toussaint, both of our homelands funnily enough. The critics in the north find the style distressing, but I find a certain honest beauty in the chaos."
I quietly took a seat on one of the velvet armchairs, doing my absolute best to maintain a relaxed expression. It wasn't easy. The moment she entered the room, a sharp, metallic aroma hit my nose, the unmistakable, perfectly fresh smell of human blood radiating from her, suggesting she had fed recently... reminding myself of my goal to build a bridge rather than a pyre, I deliberately ignored the scent and let the air settle between us.
"Toussaint is certainly a long way from the muddy streets of Temeria, Lady Orianna," I said instead. "I imagine the climate here takes some getting used to."
"Oh, the weather is a minor inconvenience compared to the local company," she murmured with a faint, amused smile as she sat down across from me, smoothing out the folds of her pristine dress. She leaned her head back, her green eyes locking onto mine. "Tell me, Master Harlow, in your travels across these kingdoms... what is it you know about monsters? About vampires, specifically?"
I leaned back, adopting a slightly thoughtful, unbothered expression. I needed to play my hand carefully, acting entirely ignorant would make me look foolish, but revealing exactly how much I knew from the games would instantly turn her defensive.
"Vampires?" I said, offering a casual shrug. "I know what most inhabitants of this world know, I suppose, like the rest of us, they are refugees. Post-Conjunction arrivals trying to carve out a living on a Continent that wasn't originally theirs. Beyond the standard tavern gossip and the terrifying fairy tales the peasants tell their children, I can't say I know much else about their true nature."
Orianna's smile widened just a fraction, her eyes gleaming with a quiet, dangerous amusement as she evaluated my response. Orianna's smile widened just a fraction, a quiet, dangerous amusement gleaming in her eyes as she evaluated my response. She leaned forward, resting her chin elegantly against her hand, her eyes entirely unblinking.
"Refugees...a remarkably civilized word for a Nordling to use," she murmured, her voice dripping with a smooth, hypnotic cadence. "Most humans would not put it so kindly, but I suppose you're affliction would leave you more empathetic then most, although you are closer to the truth than they could ever comprehend. If you look past the standard peasant folklore, you would find that vampires are quite like humans. We share the same fundamental needs, the same intricate wants, and the very same appreciation for the finer things in life; be it music, wine, or a beautifully painted canvas...we crave companionship, order, and a place to call home. Our appetites are merely a biological reality, no more evil than a wolf hunting a deer to survive."
She paused then, she tilted her head, her gaze piercing right through my calm exterior as she delivered the hook.
"Tell me, Sir Harlow... since your own curse took hold, has that not remained true for you as well? Have your human desires truly vanished, or have they simply been forced to adapt to a new, heavier skin?"
She shifted slightly in her chair, her dress whispering against the velvet as she leaned just a fraction closer. "Do you not still find joy in the music you play, or the fine things you see?" she murmured, her tone carrying a curious cadence. "Or perhaps have you simply not found the right kind of companionship to share them with? It must be terribly lonely, walking through a world of cattle when you are something else entirely."
I shifted slightly, meeting her intense gaze with a quiet, measured honesty.
"There is a gap," I admitted, my voice steady. "I won't deny that but it doesn't come from a place of looking down on them, or viewing them as cattle, as you put it. It comes from the exhaustion of the theater. Every interaction, every casual conversation, requires a lie, you constantly have to mask your true nature just to keep the peace, and that alone builds a wall."
As the words left my mouth, a subconscious wave of judgment colored my thoughts. Looking at her pristine dress, smelling the lingering, copper sweetness of the blood still fresh on her lips knowing it probably belonged to a child... I couldn't help but notice the stark difference in how we viewed the world. She saw a clear evolutionary hierarchy; I just saw a deeply lonely, exhausting existence. I didn't want to get pulled into a philosophical debate about the ethics of her diet, nor did I want to dance around her subtle flirtations any longer.
It was time to cut to the chase.
"But I doubt you invited me just to diagnose my loneliness, Lady Orla," I said, leaning forward. "Half the reason I took the walk across Maribor today is because you mentioned a reward. You said you had a task that I could assist you with I'd rather we talk about that."
Orianna's lips twitched into a sharp, appreciative smile, whatever intimate pretense she was attempting to build evaporating instantly. She leaned back, her fingers gracefully weaving together over her lap.
"Straight to the heart of the matter I can respect that, Master Harlow," she said, her voice dropping into a smoother, business-like register. "Tell me... what do you know of the sorcerer Alzur?"
I kept my face impassive but internally something snagged, the name catching on something half-remembered. "Alzur," I repeated slowly. "I know very little, honestly." And I wasn't lying the name sounded familiar, both to me and to whatever fragments linger in these stolen memories of mine. "A powerful sorcerer, I assume?"
"An understatement," Orianna murmured. "Alzur was arguably the most brilliant, cataclysmic mind the Northern Kingdoms ever birthed. Centuries ago, he walked the very streets of this city. In fact, he was born right on the outskirts of Maribor. He is the genetic architect who engineered the mutagens for the Trial of the Grasses, the very man whose research created the first witchers. But his true obsession lay in the architecture of the Conjunction. He spent his life testing the boundaries of the Spheres, shattering the walls between them to pull entirely alien life forms into our world."
She stood up, pacing slowly toward the large glass windows, looking out over the courtyard.
"His final, grand experiment took place right here, in his private laboratory tower beneath Maribor," she continued, her back to me. "He attempted to cast a spell of unprecedented scale. to bridge a localized rift to an entirely different realm, it backfired spectacularly. The casting birthed the Viy, a colossal insectoid horror that tore out of the earth, flattened half of Maribor, and slaughtered Alzur where he stood before escaping into the Riverdell forests. Because of the sheer devastation and the volatile, residual magic choking the site, the ruins of his tower were completely sealed away. They could never be properly looted, for centuries, his life's work has sat undisturbed beneath the foundations of this city."
She turned back to face me, the sunlight catching the sharp angles of her aristocratic mask.
"Through Uldrins connections, I have recently acquired the rights to the land sitting directly above those subterranean ruins, " she said, her voice almost dropping to a low, conspiratorial whisper. "And I want you to help me excavate them."
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Tholin Cran
The Anvil and Oren, Craftsmen Quarter, Maribor, Temeria
1253
I spat a dark glob of tobacco into the bucket of slake water, the hiss of it barely registering over the ringing in my ears as I gave three rhythmic taps of the ball-peen against a copper rivet. Clack. Clack. Clack. The metal collapsed perfectly, pinning a deliberately thin, scored leather clasp to the reinforced collar of the left pauldron.
A tearaway latch. I wasn't about to leave a standard heavy iron buckle on the shoulder to become a structural liability. If some conniving human git got smart in a street brawl and grabbed the knight by his cape, the clasp would simply snap under tension, the cloak would flutter away harmlessly, and the big pale bastard would be free to do whatever it was big pale bastards did to people who grabbed at them. Which, based on what I had seen of this particular client, I suspected was something considerable.
No human was going to ruin a Cran-stamped set on account of a lazy design choice. Not while I still had a name to protect.
Reworking a custom rig was never just a matter of banging out dents. It was a gruelling, miserable process of reshaping and retemperating, the kind that only looked simple to people who had never done it. The pauldrons had needed the most attention, the original articulation points set for a man built differently across the back and shoulders, and I'd had to use a careful hearth-annealing to soften the rigid alloy just enough to adjust the pivot plates without introducing micro-fractures before oil-quenching the whole assembly back to its proper hardness. The couters had been simpler, a matter of reshaping the elbow guard's inner curve and replacing the cracked leather hinges at the articulation. The vambraces had been practically undamaged, needing only new strapping and a slight adjustment to the inner padding channels. The greaves had been the best of the lot, barely touched, fitted with new buckles and fresh boiled hide lining and done in an afternoon.
All of that had been the straightforward part.
The demi-plackart had been the interesting problem.
What was left of the original breastplate after the forktail had finished expressing its opinion of it had been, charitably speaking, a challenge. The upper section was a loss, the metal deformed beyond what honest reworking could save, compressed and cracked in ways that would have left a rebuilt plate with structural weaknesses I would not have put my name to. But the lower section, from the bottom of the sternum down to the waist, had survived better than the rest. Good Toussaintois steel, properly tempered, built by someone who had understood what they were doing even if they had not anticipated a forktail specifically.
I had cut it free from the ruined upper section and spent the better part of a day working out what could be salvaged. Flattened the deformation. Checked the integrity of every inch of remaining metal. Reinforced the edges where the tearing had weakened the border. Added a secondary plate of my own forging to compensate for the coverage lost at the top, overlapping it with the salvaged lower section and riveting the join with twice the standard count because if this man fought the way I suspected he fought, I wanted to be confident in every single one of those rivets.
The result was not a breastplate. A breastplate it could never be again but the demi-placard that had come out of the salvage was a solid, honest piece of work, covering the abdomen and the lower chest, articulating cleanly at the waist, and built to take a punishment that the original had, by the evidence of what the forktail had done to it, not quite managed to prevent.
Whether it would do the job the man needed it to do was between him and whatever he intended to fight in it. My part was to make it as good as the materials allowed. I had done that.
I picked up the demi-plackart and turned it over in the forge light, running my thumb along the rivet line of the join. Clean. Even. Not what the original had been, but honest work done in honest time for a price that had suited neither of us and would serve both of us well enough.
The workshop door rattled on its iron hinges, a sudden draft cutting through the sweltering heat of the forge. I didn't look up from the workbench, my attention still on the rivet line, as a heavy shadow fell across the floor.
"Back already, are we?" I grunted, wiped my brow with the back of a soot-stained sleeve, and finally turned to look at him. "I was about to send the boy fer ye. Wipe yer boots, Ser Knight. I'm just putting the finishing touches on yer tin collection."
Matthias walked into the heat of the forge, pulling off his heavy dark cloak and setting it over the stool near the door, the fluid quiet of his movements still doing the thing it had done on his first visit where it reminded me of something I could not quite name and had decided not to think about too carefully. His attention went straight to the demi-plackart on the bench, tracing the rivet work and the fresh plate join the way someone looked at a thing when they understood what they were looking at.
"Hello to you as well, Tholin," he said. "I am glad to see it finished. I hope it was not too much to do in too little time."
"If it were too much I wouldn't have agreed to the job, long-legs," I muttered, tossing the ball-peen onto the rack. "The demi-plackart gave me the most to think about. Had to cut the salvageable section free from the rest, reinforce the borders where the tearing had compromised the edge, and forge a fresh upper plate to cover what the forktail had ruined." I lifted it off the bench and turned it so he could see the join line. "The rivet count on that join is double standard. I want ye to know that before ye start treating it like it isnae there."
He looked at the join at the rivet line with the focused attention of someone actually assessing it rather than just appearing to.
"This is excellent work Thorin," he said.
"Aye, it is," I agreed, setting it back down. "The pauldrons and the couters I had to re-articulate, the pivot points were set for a man built differently across the back. The greaves and vambraces were mostly strapping and lining, new buckles, fresh boiled hide is what it mostly needed."
I picked up the left pauldron and held it out, pointing to the tearaway clasp at the collar attach. "This is new. Standard iron buckle there becomes a structural liability in close work, something grabs the cape I'm commissioning for ye, and suddenly the shoulder plate is working against ye instead of for ye. This snaps clean under tension, cape goes, you stay mobile."
He looked at the clasp, his brow furrowing beneath his pale hair. "Cape?" he asks.
"Aye, how else are people going to know I made this?" I barked, waving a thick, calloused hand at him. "Were you going to scream my shop's name after every tilt? Ye know what...that's a good idea, do that too. Anyways, I'm reworking your kilt into a cape, with my store's logo on it."
Matthias opened his mouth, his jaw tightening as he prepared to immediately shut the idea down. "Tholin, I am absolutely not walking into a crowded arena looking like a walking handbill for—"
"That was the deal sir," I interrupted, pointing a blunt, soot-stained finger right at his chest. "You came in here with a torn-up set of high-born armor and a pouch that couldn't even cover the raw charcoal I burned fixing it. That forktail hide is fine and well, but that cape is my interest on the debt. It's clean, it hides the ugly seams, and when you're knocking some wealthy Temerian git off his high horse, every lord in the stands will see the Cran anvil on your back. Consider it a mutually beneficial partnership."
He stared at me for a long, heavy moment, that eerie, motionless calm of his settling over the room, as daunting as it was, I didn't blink eventually, the corner of his mouth gave a tiny, defeated twitch, and he let out a short, quiet huff of air.
"Fine," he muttered, crossing his arms. "But if the fabric catches on my scabbard, I'm throwing it into the river."
"If it catches, it means you don't know how to move your bloody hips," I retorted, turning back to the bench. "Anyways, again the demi-plackart isnae a breastplate," I said, because I preferred to say these things before the customer had a chance to decide they were disappointed about them. "It willnae give ye the upper chest coverage the original did and I'll not pretend otherwise, but with a shield it should be enough to get you through the tilts." I looked at him steadily, letting the youthful sarcasm drop for just a second. "Whether it holds together under whatever else ye tend to get up to... well, that's a conversation between you and yer own judgement, Ser."
A very faint expression crossed his face that might have been amusement.
"I've rigged the whole harness so ye can manage it without a squire standing by," I continued, tapping the redesigned breastplate mounting points. "Spring-pins and simple toggles. Ye can get yerself into it alone if ye have to, though I'll tell ye plainly that it goes considerably faster if someone else hauls on the main straps to get the fit tight against yer ribs. Chainmail between the skin and the plates, as I told ye from the start, and mind the gap at the upper chest. That is where ye're relying on the mail."
I hoisted the demi-plackart and held it out toward him, the metal catching the forge light warm and steady.
"Well?" I said, with a sharp jerk of my chin toward the clear space near the anvil. "Don't stand there like a monument in somebody's graveyard. Come on and try the bloody thing on. I'm no' letting ye walk out of my shop until I've seen how it sits when ye move and I'm satisfied the articulation is right." I jerked my chin again. "Come on then. I'll help ye hitch the main plates together and we'll see what we've got."
He set the demi-plackart down and crossed to the clear space near the anvil without further prompting, which I appreciated. Some clients needed convincing to simply stand still and let a craftsman work. "
Arms out," I said. I got the gambeson on him first, the quilted linen sitting close against his frame, and then the chainmail hauberk over the top of it, the rings settling in a rolling cascade of properly linked work. He was broader across the shoulder than one would expect, bit I was glad to see my measurements held true.
I worked from the legs upward greaves first, buckled snug at the calf and knee, the new strapping sitting clean. Then the vambraces, which fitted better than I had hoped, the fresh lining doing the job of taking up the small differences in forearm dimension that the original padding had not been accounting for. Then the couters at the elbows, the re-articulated pivot points moving with a freedom that the original had not offered, and I allowed myself a small private satisfaction at that because it had been finicky work and it had come out well.
The pauldrons next, settling over the shoulders, the tearaway clasps sitting at the collar attach exactly where they needed to sit. I checked the clearance at the neck and the range of motion at the shoulder, moving his arm through the arc to see where the pivot plates resisted and where they gave.
"Move it forward," I said. "Like ye're reaching for something."
He reached.
The articulation held clean through the full range. I grunted, which for me constitutes high praise, and moved around to check the same motion on the other side.
Last came the demi-plackart itself, buckled at the shoulders and the sides, the spring-pin closures engaging with a satisfying click that meant the tolerances were where I had wanted them. I checked the join line one final time by pressing two thumbs hard against it, feeling for any give in the rivet work.
I produced a length of chainmail sleeve from the bench, a purpose-made addition I had run up in the spare time at the end of the first day, long enough to cover from the shoulder to the wrist and close-linked enough to offer something honest in the way of protection. I fixed it to the inside of the left pauldron at three anchor points and let it hang, filling the gap between the vambrace and the shoulder coverage.
"That covers the upper left where the plackart doesnae reach," I said. "Right side is the same." I fixed the second sleeve and stepped back.
He stood in the clear space beside the anvil and I looked at him the way I looked at everything I had made, a critical roving eye looking for any flaws, when I found none.
I said what I saw.
"It looks like half-done shite," I said.
"It is half-done shite, technically speaking," I continued, gesturing at the gap where the lower breastplate should have been and was not, the exposed throat of chainmail above the placard's upper edge, the absence of the full chest coverage that a proper harness would have provided. "The demi-placard sits right, the pauldrons are good work, the articulation is better than the original. But the silhouette of it is a journeyman's rig on a knight's frame and any man worth his steel at that tourney will see it."
I rubbed the back of my neck.
"Ancestors, if I had more time I'd fashion ye a proper set from scratch. Something worth putting my name to in public but needs must and all that." I turned to the rack behind me and pulled down what I had been keeping there since the previous afternoon, when the problem had presented itself clearly enough that I had started thinking about solutions. "So here."
I held it out to him.
A surcoat, long enough to fall to the knee, heavy linen faced in a deep red that was close enough to quality to read as quality from any distance a tournament crowd would be watching from. I had sourced it from a fabric merchant two streets over who owed me a favor.
"Put that on over the placard," I said. "It covers the gaps, gives the silhouette something to work from, and stops every other knight in the qualifier from doing their own count of where yer protection starts and ends." I reached behind the rack again and produced the helmet that came with the armor. "And this."
I held it out.
"Between the surcoat and the closed visor," I said, "most of what they'll see is a tall man in red who moves like he knows what he's doing. Which is considerably more useful than a tall man in an incomplete harness who moves like he knows what he's doing." I looked at him steadily. "The rest is up to you, Ser."
He looked at the deep red linen in my hands, then up at my face, a slow, incredibly irritating smirk spreading across his pale mouth.
"You know, Tholin," Matthias said, finally breaking that eerie quiet of his as he reached out to take the surcoat, putting it on over the chainmail, and strangely under the plackart. "I seem to remember you being a great deal more respectful the last time I walked through that door. Polite, even. What happened to the fine craftsmanship of customer service?"
"What happened," I barked, snatching his helmet before he could don it, "is that I spent five days breathing in coal smoke and oil fumes to unfuck a piece of Toussaintois theater, all while realizing my client is a proper mystery who carries an enchanted bloody sword on his hip but counts his pennies like a starving clerk! The last time you were here, I still thought you were actually going to pay me like a proper lord."
Matthias let out a soft huff that was undeniably a laugh. "I did pay you," he pointed out, his head popping through the collar as he adjusted the fabric over his shoulders. "I gave you a remarkably rare piece of draconid leather and apparently--" He gestured loosely to the empty clasps on his shoulder. "--the privilege of wearing your signboard on my back, when I win this tournament, you'll be so swarmed with high-paying knights wanting 'The Cran Special' that you'll have to hire a whole set of apprentices."
"Aye, a hide I have to spend my own sweet time treating, scraping, and haggling over with some bloody merchant from the lower quarters just to see a single oren!" I grunted, stepping up to haul the surcoat straight across his chest to check the alignment. "And a grand promise to win the biggest tournament the Northern Kingdoms have seen in decades. If you actually manage to tilt all those wealthy Temerian lords into the dirt wearing my anvil, I'll treat you with a bit more bloody respect, fuck it, I'll carve your pale face onto a rune stone and bow whenever you walk past the forge!"
I handed him back his helm thrusting it into his chest with enough force to make the chainmail clink. "But until that day comes, Sir Knight, I'll treat how bloody well like."
"Well, I'll keep you to that promise," he replied, his tone dripping with a dry, easy sarcasm. He adjusted the leather belt around his waist, checking how the surcoat sat on his frame. He looked down at himself, rotating his torso from side to side to feel the friction. "Though, I suppose I can't complain about the tailoring. The red is a nice touch. Very... ostentatious."
"It hides a naked target, which is all I care about," I muttered. "Put the bucket on, let's see if you can see through the slits, or if I've accidentally given you the tactical advantage of total blindness."
He took the helm, turning it over in his hands. "You know, for a young dwarf, you have the bitter, cynical soul that I've only ever seen in the elderly."
"Aye," I snapped, crossing my arms. "And if you keep chatting instead of strapping, I'll have the gray beard to match before you're out of my shop. Put it on, long-legs."
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Authors Note: Bit of a filler chapter this one, I know, but the plot needed moving forward and sometimes you just have to do the groundwork before the interesting stuff can happen.
Someone over on Patreon mentioned they wanted Matthias to be more proactive about building his power base, and this chapter was the segue to that. Next chapter he goes monster hunting, specifically to see what happens when he feeds on enough of one magical creature in concentrated succession.
The other option I considered was having him raid the morgue to see if the gift works on corpses. I decided to save that for later, once he has made enough connections in the city to actually investigate who those corpses were in life.
As for the chapters leading up to the tourney, I want to experiment with more varied POVs to build the political intrigue properly before we get there. I think seeing some events from different angles, will make the tourney itself hit harder when we arrive at it.
Let me know what you think of that direction in the comments. As always likes and reviews are appreciated and criticisms are welcome, the comment section is not just for compliments.