Chapter 72

"Azel, After The End," I read aloud.

"I found it near what used to be a library," Sarah Redrock explained. She was one of the hundred-odd archaeologists I'd taken with me to Carmine, and it was very likely her name was going to go down in every archaeology textbook that ever got written on this planet from this point onward. "The original copy was inside a wooden case with a good, water-resistant finish on it, which is how it survived four centuries of being buried in the mud. I made a bunch of copies of it, one of which is the one you're holding."

"Good work," I said. "I don't suppose you've had the time to read it, have you?"

"I skimmed the first copy I made, and then I realized there was a lot in here that was worth reading," she continued. "I can give you the short version, if you don't have time to read it yourself right now?"

I hummed quietly. "...I'll make time to read it later, so right now... You've got five minutes to hit the high points."

"So, after the collapse of the old Empire with the Elven Epoch, one of the surviving immortal elves came to the western coast of Azel, and integrated herself into one of the local human clans," Sarah said. "Her name was Carmilla Vega. She was powerful, and became their king almost immediately. And as their king... she took concubines, and sired heirs. Her goal was simple, but ambitious: rebuild a breeding population of immortal elves, and restore the old empire, but better. The trouble was, due to how crossbreeding works, every child she sired had only a one in sixteen chance of being born as an elf. And yet, those human half-elf heirs she produced still had to be cared for, and allotted some sort of inheritance. So she started marrying off those human heirs to other nearby clans- only a few of them had inherited any Traits from her at all, but the other clans didn't know that, and in the end, it wouldn't matter.

"After about five hundred years of this, long enough for a modern elf to die of old age, she finally received a great boon: a clutch of sixteen unawakened wood elves without family trees, from a dungeon gate. The start of a breeding population. She ceased taking human concubines, and instead focused on her elves, breeding them like racehorses with the intent of finally rebuilding the elven people she once knew... and her vassals weren't happy with this. See, to them, the immortal king taking concubines and siring high-blooded heirs to lead them was the basis of their system of prestige, hierarchy, and politics. When the immortal king stopped doing this, when she silently declared that they were no longer worth her time...

"...there was a rebellion. The king was killed. The rest of the elves were devastated, and only a small handful of survivors managed to escape. These survivors settled in the Red Forest, at first just hiding, but then, under the leadership of Scarlet Carmine, the very first Red King of the Carmine Elves, they fortified it into one of the toughest defensive positions in the known world, and then expanded to control the entire Red Forest, pushing out the warriors of Clan Vega who'd kept up the hunt."

"That's..." I paused, grasping for words. "I..."

"That's where Vega's rivalry started," Sarah said. "It was, initially, just your typical dynastic succession war, which simply... never ended, because the Wood Elves had the temerity to assert themselves as a people rather than simply roll over and die."

"Holy shit," I muttered.

"The story Vega tells themselves about why they continue the war against their ancestral foe is probably different," Sarah said. "I wouldn't know, I've never been there, and besides, you won't find a single knife-ear in this entire forest who'll admit under torture to giving half a limp-dicked handjob about what anyone in Vega thinks. But... This, right here... this is where it started. And... as it so happens... there's records of some of the early crusades from Vega in here, too- the first one, starting fifty years after the death of Carmilla Vega, was fought with the stated goal of 'reclaiming Vega's rightful inheritance from those who stole it.'"

"...The hell?" I asked. "That's... oh. Oh, I think I understand it. If they see the wood elves as usurpers, then... It's very likely that they also think that their 'rightful inheritance' was for House Vega to have all of those classic wood elf Traits- Long Lived 3 and Extra Class Slots 3. I know for a fact that House Vega maintains the Extra Class Slots 1 Trait among at least some of its royal line."

"Early on, at least," Sarah said. "The record states that a great many captives were taken- many warriors fielded by House Vega kidnapped wood elves to take as breeding stock. But... well. In recent wars, what records we do have tell us that House Vega's stopped with the kidnapping and wife-stealing. They just kill everyone."

I grimaced.

"Alright, well," I said, quietly. "Whatever the reason House Vega is doing this, whatever story they tell themselves about why what they're doing is okay... That doesn't matter, because what they do is not okay. The arc of history, long and winding as it may be, has finally curved towards justice."

"You're still involved with the Red Army, right?" Sarah asked, then continued as I nodded. "Give 'em hell, and put their bastard king's head on a pike. My sister deserves at least that much."

I reached out and patted her on the shoulder; one of the worst surprises that the wood elves could spring on you, what with the whole 'looking mid-20s until the age of 150' thing, was the 'fun' personal factoid of having personally survived one or more of Vega's crusades. It didn't do great things to a person's psyche, especially if they kept surviving those crusades, which were usually spaced anywhere between twenty and sixty years apart.

Among the most common things it did to someone's psyche was engender a deep, ravenous hatred of the Kingdom of Vega, or at the very least its armies of warrior-aristocrats who earned their glory by slaughtering your people wholesale. Now, I personally was not particularly bloodthirsty, when I was calm and not in immediate danger. I had the opinion that a state should never have the right to kill someone, not even if convicted of a serious crime.

However, here in the Red Forest, I found myself forced to make an exception:

"If King Vega didn't die in battle," I began, "then when the next war does inevitably come, I will arrange a very public trial on charges of genocide, atrocity, and general crimes against humanity. And when the preponderance of evidence proves King Vega's guilt- because she is guilty, beyond a shadow of a doubt- I will sentence King Vega to death, and I will put her bloodied head on a pike where everyone can see it."

Sarah nodded grimly.

That, and no less, would be the price of keeping the Red Army from mutinying and destroying the entire Kingdom of Vega, drowning every city and fortress, down to the last village and farmhouse, in bullets and bombs. We would make a vicious example of the Vegan Army and of King Vega... and then we'd install a puppet on the throne, and make sure we would never get another crusade ever again.

"Hey boss, we found something!" Lisa called from across the city, her voice carried by magic.

"Alright, well," I began, handing the book back to Sarah.

"Keep it, I've made a thousand of 'em," she said, shaking her head. Thank god for that paper factory I made. "Go deal with the latest discovery. I'm just glad I could fill you in on my own."

When I got back to my private tent, it was to find my four Familiars going through the big stack of books we'd copied from the vault's library.

"This is so cool," Lisa said, looking up from the book she was reading. "The Empire used to have something called power armor. It wasn't just regular armor that was enchanted to make you stronger, it was armor that was enchanted to move with you, to move even when you couldn't move, burning magicka in the place of stamina. It gave their Warriors a big edge, not just because it let them save more of their stamina for class abilities rather than movement, but also because power armor had these big, integrated potion engines that'd be impractical for a regular soldier to carry on their person, but which were just fine for the power armor heavies."

"With those potion engines," Lucy added casually, as she clearly already knew all of this, "the Warriors also had far greater magicka resilience, and could practically use far more magicka-hungry equipment, ranging from recovery enchantments to ranged energy weapons."

"Energy weapons?" I asked.

"I've been filled in on your work with firearms," Lucy said. "Good work, and those are pretty good weapons, but while energy weapons are more expensive to manufacture, the fact they don't need bullets makes them far more logistically practical, on top of generally packing a bigger punch than equivalently-leveled firearms."

"You... may not have been filled in all the way, then," I said. "I've developed a variety of potion engine that can fuel a magicka potion factory and produce more magicka potion than it consumes, thus birthing an infinite-magicka dynamo. Between those, spatial expansion charms, and some compact Miner/Blacksmith/Alchemist factories, the firearms I manufacture these days are self-contained units that produce their own ammunition ex-nihilo, faster than it can be fired. So, logistically... I don't have to supply my soldiers with barrels of magicka potion to keep their weapons and armor working. I just have to give them the one gun, and they're set until the end of time."

"...Ah," Lucy said.

"So," Ariel added. "You already know the most valuable of the Emperor's secrets?"

"Apparently so," I said, shrugging. "And apparently unlike the Emperor, I've accepted the fact that giving everyone their own enchanted Horn of Plenty such that none shall know deprivation means I can't use mere gold to compel them to work for me. It's no big loss, and I have faith in my ability to convince people that my ideas are good ones. Anyhow, what other secrets did the Emperor have?"

"We don't know," Anzerath said, frowning. "These books are still sealed, and as much as I might have functionally infinite magic energy to try dispelling the seals, I still haven't succeeded, and I'm pretty sure the Emperor was, fucking. Level 20 or something."

"...Weird," I murmured. "Well, I guess we'll just-" My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I sighed. "Oh, how I wish I had the foresight to appoint and train a secretary." I pulled it out, and... ah, shit.

"You look like you bit into a lemon," Ariel remarked.

"I am, apparently, being summoned back to Dornhelm to speak with King Dorn, effective immediately," I said. "Nicky, Akane, and Nel are also all officially being summoned back to Dornhelm to attend that meeting, along with any Familiars any of us may or may not have." I sighed. "Well, I guess we're gonna have to appoint a new Chief Archaeologist and get back on the plane."

"You have airplanes?" Lucy asked.

"I do, yes, but I had to reinvent them first," I said. "They're not exactly a widespread phenomenon yet. Hell, I don't think the Red Army has an air force yet either, come to think of it."

"So... if the King of Dorn expects you to take as long as a boat takes to get back," Lucy began. "Then... I might have an idea for something that'll be a bit more subtle, and maybe won't let that cat out of the bag."

"...You've got the length of the car ride back to Industry Central to convince me," I said. "Pack it all up, girls, we gotta move."