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“Don’t you think you should investigate? You’re here, and this way you would get all the XP, I mean, you’d find out everything that is going on at once. You wouldn’t have to have it relayed to you.”

She has a good point. Not about the XP, whatever that is, but about investigating this myself.

“It’s just a kobold den,” she says. “It’s nothing to you. But I’ll probably level up two or three times while we are in there. It will be so good. I won’t even have to touch anything and I’ll get the experience.”

“The experience of seeing a dozen more of these creatures die?”

She frowns. “Does it have to be so terrible every time? Is there not a better way?”

I sigh. “Yes, of course there are better ways to kill a creature than by accidentally impaling it in a way that is very nearly not even fatal and letting it bleed out over the course of a heated discussion.”

“So. There,” she says. “You could teach me how to do that.”

Minutes ago, I was fucking her senseless over a tree, and now she is talking about doing the very thing that got her into that situation in the first place. She is absolutely resistant to learning the greater lessons I am trying to teach.

“The seal. I bet it is a very big deal,” she says. “I bet if they have it, you would be better off with it. I bet whatever Lord Janessa wants it for is bad for you. Who is Lord Janessa?”

“He lives in the icy climes.”

“Oh. Well. There you go.”

“There I go what?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying to remember the lore. I think I heard about a Lord Janessa. It’s hard to remember the starting quests. All the low-level bosses, oh, my god, Lord Janessa. He’s an ice naga?”

I make a mental note to kill Equinox. “Yes, he is an ice naga.”

“An elite too. He drops a sword that you can’t beat for like, twenty levels. That thing is always on the auction house for more than any newbie could ever afford to spend. If I got that…”

She has gone from regretting her first kill and very nearly letting herself be taken out by others for the sin of it, to planning the coldblooded murder of a lord in order to take his family heirlooms. The things humans play at for fun are truly twisted.

I am concerned that the fifth seal is on the move.

The seals were all distributed among the leaders of the various factions.

They are a promise of peace. The notion of one being moved, let alone lost in a kobold den is unthinkable.

I will have to go and retrieve it. And I will have to take her with me.

“This is easier when you have quest markers and a mini map,” she says as we walk, speaking in a form of arcane gibberish I cannot begin to decipher, and yet must attempt to do so anyway.

“I wish I could get some macros, though I don’t see how that would work.

One click magic in a world with no clicks? ”

“You will have to explain this to me when we are no longer in the forest,” I say, in an effort to get her to stop saying things that make absolutely no sense and merely clutter the air with reminders of my nephew’s treasonous activities.

Melissa

Ornix is wound kind of tight, but I guess I understand why. I’ve been nothing but trouble since I got here. To be fair, that is very much on brand for me.

He is leading the steed I stole, a creature that must be far too small for anybody his size to ride. Unless it is magical, but even if it is, he would look absolutely ridiculous perched atop it. I do notice the way the horse nuzzles him affectionately, though.

“You’re too big to ride him, but he stays saddled and bridled?”

“He was saddled for a reason, and the reason was not to be stolen. Some of the younger whelps wanted riding lessons today. That will have to be delayed.”

“Wait,” I say. “Was Otto your horse when you were a boy?”

“Of course not. I am over a thousand years old. The horses I used to ride when I was small are dust now. Otto is something more precious.”

“Oh?”

“No buck, bite, bolt, or rear,” I say, as if intoning a near religiously significant set of auspices. “This is a horse rarer than any in the kingdom, worth his weight in diamonds. There are those who would steal this horse, and would be destroyed for it.”

“Oh. I guess I’m lucky to be alive then.”

That’s precisely the wrong thing to say, because it brings his eyes toward me with vicious swiftness.

“You are lucky to be alive. The fact that my archers missed you is a miracle of the kind I cannot begin to describe.”

“I was probably out of range and their aggro probably dropped.”

His eyes narrow at me. “I do not know what any of those terms mean, but I can always tell that you are talking about that infernal blasphemy.”

“You really don’t like computers or games, huh?”

“They are irrelevancies that humans busy themselves with when they do not want to live their lives. This is a real place. There is real magic here. The notion that some of it has been distilled into the human realm is…” He does not finish the sentence, but his upper lip curls with obvious disgust.

Ornix

Fortunately I will not be subjected to this babble much longer, because the kobold den is not far away. There is a fairly clear track leading to it made by the feet of dozens of kobolds coming and going.

“How are we going to do this? Do you want to tank? And I can do damage? I mean, I guess you’re really a tank, a damage taker, and damage dealer. Oh, my god, what are you doing?”

What I am doing is tying her up so I can stash her somewhere out of the way. I do not want her in the kobold den. I do not want her to kill another creature and make a complete hash of it and traumatize herself, and the rest of the kobolds as well.

“Stop! What the fuck! I can help you!” She whines and complains as I wrap rope around her limbs and body, trussing her up very securely to a tree. “Ornix! Don’t leave me here!”

“You’ll be safe enough,” I tell her. “Though, do try not to scream too loudly, it might attract predators.”

“ Ornix! ” She hisses my name as I turn and walk away, feeling no small sense of satisfaction at having finally contained her.

I walk into the kobold den quite casually, unworried about the guards.

I’ll let them attack me if they feel the urge.

They cannot actually damage me and a good portion of them scatter the moment they see me.

If I had Melissa with me, they would all attack her.

She would seem like prey dressed in mismatched armor.

“It’s Ornisius, Destroyer of Worlds!”

The chief of the kobolds is in his room at the very end of the den. He is sitting on a tall chair cobbled together with bits of junk salvaged from various excursions. He is slightly taller than the other kobolds, and wearing a crown made from smaller, shinier junk.

I can understand the urge to collect. It is ingrained into my psyche as well. But where I sit upon a horde of handcrafted precious jewels, this poor creature must linger in the dirt with garbage facsimiles.

“Where is the fifth seal?” I intone the question.

His eyes glitter with glee as he realizes he is going to have the opportunity to lie. Kobolds love to lie. “Fifth seal? Fifth seal? We don’t have any fifth seal.”

“There was a package with some couriers. A letter indicating the transportation of the fifth seal.”

I look around the room. I feel it, but I cannot see it. The item thrums with power, of course. It is here. Undoubtedly. I close my eyes for a moment and I let my senses do the work for me. One of my kind always knows where something precious is.

It’s behind me.

I turn around. There is nothing behind me besides the door I just came through. Strange. And then I see it. The oversized handle that doesn’t fit the door properly.

The fifth seal has been painted with beige paint and stuck to a door in the form of a handle.

“Nice, isn’t it,” the chief cackles. “It makes my hand hurt when I touch it.”

“You are lucky it did not blow your head off completely. It must have taken pity on you. It is an artifact of great power, and it belongs to me.”

As my fingers close around it, I feel a rush of that same power I just described.

It is like warm sun flowing through my veins, a beautiful, rich, intoxicating feeling that makes me want more.

I have one of these of my own, of course.

No leader is supposed to have two, but this cannot sit down here, a powerful artifact being used as cheap, ugly decoration by those who do not recognize its power.

The kobolds do not try to stop me as I leave the den. It is almost anticlimactic, and yet fascinating. The fifth seal belongs to Bjorn Birna, the shape changer. It bears claw marks across its faces to represent him—or at least, it did, before they were filled in with paint made from mud.

I wonder if something has fallen Bjorn, if he has been bested, or if this was stolen from him. I will have to send envoys immediately to uncover the truth. If someone is moving the seals around, there may be trouble ahead.

I have an uneasy feeling in my gut, even as the power of the seal surges through me in slow pulses. I put it in a pocket, my summoned clothing having multiple places to put precious items in such a manner that they cannot be removed without my knowledge.

This matter is not over. This is just beginning.

I leave the kobold den, and return to Melissa, who should be neatly bound to the underside of the tree limb where I left her.

She is not there.

The way my entire being hitches when I realize she is gone cannot be described.

Otto is still ground tied where I left him grazing on the grass around the bushes. He seems unbothered, which confuses me. He is no guard animal, but he is also not usually entirely immune to the effects of a struggle or a murder.

“Melissa?” I lift my voice.

“Help!”

I direct my eyes down into the bushes. The very same ones Otto is eating around. As it turns out, they do not only contain grass. They also hide my mate.