The First Lich Lord
Chapter 40

“No, I don’t blame this guy,” Maxwell said as we headed toward a small estate that served as a home for a group of settlers that ran cattle. The estate was located almost two days travel from Omark. It was more than just a home, more of a compound for several families who worked together in tending several large herds of cattle-like creatures.

“I hear you,” I agreed. “But if they continue their rebellious attitude toward Olattee it will cause issues for the region.”

I eyed one of the creatures they raised. They were a cross between cattle and yaks, and were much stronger and smarter than cows, though not as troublesome to control as a true yak or bison. They had shaggy fur that varied from brown to black, and long, forward pointing horns.

The creatures were tough and it took a strong personality and individual to control them. It made sense the group of people in charge of these magnificent beasts were the ones to speak up the most against Father Mathis.

Several people watched as we approached the low fence surrounding the estate. They came with looks of anger and fear. I ground my teeth in frustration. Mathis had done a great job of spreading exaggerated tales of how we forced people into alignment.

A big man greeted us at the gate leading to the compound. “What do Mathis’s goons want?”

I let out a long sigh. “We’ve been sent here to speak with Richard Falk.”

“I am he. What do you want?” Hostility dripped in his voice. This was going to be a hard conversation.

“Good sir,” Maxwell said smoothly. “May we come in so we can discuss this like gentlemen?”

“No,” Richard said flatly. He had hard brown eyes, and a sternly set jaw covered in a short beard. His skin was slightly tanned the sun of early spring still growing in strength, and he crossed powerful arms over his broad chest. “I’ve heard of you two, and I will not let you in to intimidate the people who work for me.”

“Would you believe me if I told you the stories about us are greatly exaggerated?” I asked.

“No.”

“We’re here with a simple request,” Maxwell said, speaking carefully. “News has reached Father Mathis of your grumbling about his new leadership in the temple. We are here, on his behalf, to ask you to stop.” Maxwell’s voice was strained as he finished.

“We have plenty of reason to grumble about your boss,” Richard said.

Something shifted inside me. A feeling I’d felt before—Ilore had repaired a new emotion. By this point, I’d experienced containing the surge of emotions that came when an emotion was returned to me. This was one of the minor ones we’d hunted down outside the volcano in my mindscape.

As I tuned out Maxwell and Richard’s starting argument, I wondered what the new emotion would be. What I hadn’t expected was for the emotion to be so powerful—later I came to realize it was because it was something I was naturally feeling at the time. Such a connection greatly amplified the effect.

The frustration and general annoyance I’d been feeling about Father Mathis turning us into his own miniature goon squad boiled over.

“Look,” I snapped, cutting Maxwell off as he was trying to convince Richard to listen to us. “I hate that bastard too. He’s a petty, self-righteous, arrogant bully who sees Omark as his own private fiefdom.” Maxwell and Richard visibly jolted in surprise. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about it. He wields too much authority, and unless we can get word back to a large city, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“You okay, Zeke?” Maxwell asked, looking all the more worried.

The danger we could be in if my little rant made it back to Mathis was substantial.

“Yea… yea, fine,” I said. Then to Richard, “You wouldn’t mind keeping that to yourself, would you?”

Richard gave me a long, hard look. “How about we make a deal. The reason we’ve been complaining so loudly about Mathis is that he has refused to send help to take care of the den of feral werewolves that’s appeared in the area.”

“Why would he do that?” I asked. Mathis was an ass, but I figured he would still fulfill his role as leader of the temple. Feral werewolves were one of the few creatures who could attack the powerful livestock raised on this ranch.

“He made some excuse that his people were too busy to spend the time to come out and deal with them.” Richard glared at me. “Yet somehow he could still send you.”

A glare of my own furrowed my forehead. “I think—no, I know—from the way he worded his order, he wanted us to make an example out of you to keep the rest of the dissidents in line.” I shook my head in disgust. “When did the werewolves show up?”

“Several weeks ago,” Richard said. “I think they were run out of a nearby region. At least there doesn’t appear to be high werewolf with them.”

There are two different kinds of werewolves. The feral ones were turned by high werewolves and normally remain under control as long as they stayed within a pack with a high werewolf. High werewolves were the offspring of other high werewolves—no one really knows where the original werewolf came from.

“If we take care of your pest problem, will you keep your grumblings down?” Maxwell asked.

“Yes, for now,” Richard agreed. “I can’t guarantee it will last forever, but I can do my best to talk my people into keeping their opinions to themselves.”

“That works for us,” Maxwell said. “Now, where can we find these pesky werewolves?”

***

“You sure you’re okay?” Maxwell asked as we walked through a pasture following Richard’s directions.

“Ya,” I sighed. “Just had an emotion restored and it caught me by surprise.”

“Emotion restored?” Maxwell asked. “What do you mean?”

“Have I not told you about this?” I gave him a sideways look.

“You might have mentioned it, but I didn’t know what you meant.” Maxwell stepped around a fresh-looking pile of shit.

“My mindscape was messed up by my transition.” Maxwell nodded, having heard this before. “I lost all my emotions in that process. They became corrupted by what I saw and how it affected me. As I’ve been restoring them, I’ve been slowly regaining the ability to feel. I’m not normally a cold and aloof person. I only act that way because of the lack of emotions. When one is returned, there’s like a, surge of that emotion. I’ve learned how to control them, but in this case, said emotion was very well fitted for the situation and it caught me by surprise. I wasn’t able to control it.”

“I take it a feeling of indignation or something like that popped up?” Maxwell suggested.

“More or less,” I agreed.

“How many of the emotions have you had returned?” Maxwell asked.

“One primary emotion and maybe a dozen lessers,” I explained. “The process is starting to accelerate. Ilore, one of my mental assistants, is getting faster at figuring out how to restore them.”

“So, you could be an emotional wreck?” Maxwell chuckled.

I glared at him. “No—at least, I hope not. I should be able to handle them as long as I’m not in the middle of something else when they’re returned.”

The area that they ran the dinze on, the domesticated yak-cattle creature, was large. The place Richard pointed us to in search of the werewolf den was in the far corner of this area. They’d tried to keep the livestock away after they noticed the remains of a couple of their beasts, knowing there wasn’t much that would prey on dinzes.

Fortunately, the man who first investigated and found the den had escaped without the werewolves seeing him. It was located in a small grotto in the middle of a densely forested area.

We crossed over the open meadow, thick with stubborn grass pushing up lush, green vegetation now that spring was in full swing.

Ahead of us, the forest line neared, and I gripped my staff with growing nervous energy. Fights in this world felt so much more real. Yes, I could die and come back, but it wasn’t the same as being a player. We pushed our way into the thick forest, the heavy canopy filling the sky above. The light dimmed, and almost right away I began to catch sight of things moving in the shadows.

Maxwell produced a set of goggles that had taken him quite some time to procure. They gave him night vision, and with both of us able to see clearly in the darkness, it made night hunting much easier.

A distant howl sent a shiver running up my spine.

In a blur of movement, a werewolf with long, powerful arms, a powerful body, and a vicious snout rushed out from behind a tree right for me. It tackled me as I was bringing my staff into a guard position, dismissing the sheath around the blade. I managed to block his gnashing teeth with the shaft while its strong hind legs tore at me.

I wasn’t the weak skeleton I’d been in the beginning, and was able to hold my own. A pulse of sonic energy from Maxwell sent the werewolf stumbling backward, and in a blinding slash, I brought my blade down. The cut wasn’t lethal, but it left a deep gash across its chest, and immediately began to fester with a necrotic disease. The werewolf snarled and lunged again.

I dove to the side, my high agility giving me an edge over the creature. As it landed, I whirled my blade-staff and cut through one of its legs at the knee. With the werewolf crippled, the fight became easier, and it wasn’t long before I cut its head off in a spray of blood.

“That was exciting,” Maxwell said.

“This is going to be a tough fight,” I said. “I didn’t get much of a sense of it, but the werewolf was likely the same level as us.”

That meant tackling this den was going to be a challenge. Encounters like this were normally scaled for parties of four. Though I was stubbornly refusing to walk the path of a Lich, I knew I shouldn’t let my own hubris put Maxwell in danger. I just couldn’t bring myself to resort to raising creatures to serve me during the fight.

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