The mood in the captain’s cabin was tense, and Adarin paced in front of the map table, his officers standing in a semicircle. He looked them over: Duchess Viola, distant-eyed as she juggled settler affairs; Commodore Ashfield, brow knotted in fury at the slaughter of his sailors; Devon, tinkering with some contraption from the project Adarin had commissioned; Liora, shivering and pale after hours of healing; Gavin, bound and sullen in the center; and finally Francesco, nervous and fidgeting.

  Adarin slammed a manipulator three times against the floorboards. “This. Is. A. Disaster.” He shot a manipulator toward the “gifted” treasures displayed on the table.

  Francesco smiled slightly and tilted his head. “The knowledge we were given is invaluable. I don’t quite see how—”

  Duchess Viola shook her head. “Do you not understand, boy, that the vampire slaughtered senior Crusaders in our name, and that, use it or not, we have made mortal enemies of one of the most cohesive military forces in the Holy Land?”

  Commodore Ashfield nodded grimly, and then Adarin gestured to the last member of their assembly, who was trying to hide in a corner. “Lieutenant Krislov, your opinion?”

  The hulking man looked from side to side, expression almost comically uncertain. “It is bad,” he ventured, then rallied. “Sir, the fallout is serious, but we need to focus on what’s in front of us.”

  Adarin nodded. “The first sensible suggestion I’ve heard in here. Now the big question is: how fast do the Dragonblooded get here? And do they know we have their package of secret knowledge?”

  Francesco stroked his goatee. “Yes, yes. If you could get this to Portguard, it would be a coup. But until then, it is a danger, of course.”

  Adarin turned to him with a sharp motion. “How long until the warding array is done?”

  Francesco pressed his lips together. “If we work through the night, then maybe by tomorrow noon.”

  Adarin stopped and turned his head. “You haven’t been working through the nights yet?”

  “It is complicated work.” Francesco took a step back. “Our men need rest. Otherwise there might be errors that need to be corrected, which would take more time.”

  Liora chuckled darkly in her chair. “And of course, missing a single night with your darling slut would shatter your fickle little heart, Francesco.”

  Adarin pressed his avatar’s eyes shut. “Have you let her off the ship? My expressed orders were—”

  Francesco frowned. “That I do not enter the ship she is on. She disembarked alongside the other settlers.”

  “So of course,” Liora finished with a sweet smile, “he moved her into his personal quarters and has been having fun every night since.”

  Not now. Childish games. Is anyone here taking my authority seriously? He looked at Gavin. He dismissed several more thoughts until he settled on something he could actually say out loud. “We’ll talk about this later, when we are back at Rüdiger’s. Until then: you will work through the night and not see her until the work is done.”

  He took a deep breath. I need a break from this shit show. He turned to Mage Lieutenant Krislov, and the young officer gave an account of what had happened in the genius loci: the meeting with the spirits of the beeches, their explanation of the enemy. Then he turned to Liora. “You will organize your healers to thoroughly inspect every soldier and settler. The ones who were bitten—”

  Liora’s face grew grim. “I already had them detained. One of the older medics talked about curses and myths, and I did it to placate them, but they are chained to their beds.”

  “Good. I want everyone who even has a hint of a bite mark detained.”

  Francesco had shuddered several times during the descriptions and grown paler. Adarin turned to him. “Do you understand now why we need security, and why orders must be followed so we can rely on each other?”

  Francesco swallowed hard. “Yes. Yes, I’m— I will take care of the wards.”

  Not an apology, not an admission of guilt, but at least he is moving forward. Adarin gave a curt nod and turned to Commodore Ashfield. “Commodore. Draw all the vessels into one large flotilla at the main confluence. Ensure you have proper firing arcs and wardings active at all times. We’ll stop any traffic between the encampment and the fleet until we have a safe base behind the wards and have ensured that we have no thralls among us.”

  Commodore Ashfield nodded grimly.

  “Now—Krislov: you are hereby promoted to the Captain of the Druid Circle. I want reports on the abilities of all the new druids, and you will command that unit. In particular, I want to know what exactly you can do for us.”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Francesco gulped and looked at Adarin. He noticed tight expressions on the Duchess’s and the Commodore’s faces as well.

  “Sir Adarin,” the Duchess spoke up, “druidic magic—it has a…” She swallowed. “Certain reputation. Its closeness to the world tree. And what we are doing—”

  Adarin slammed his manipulator on the floor. “Any actual objections? Anything that might bite us in the ass within the next three days?”

  Duchess and Commodore exchanged looks.

  “No, I believe not,” the Duchess ventured hesitantly, and the Commodore shook his head.

  “Good. I shall leave the broader matter to the Archmagister Rüdiger.”

  Finally, he and everyone else turned their attention to Gavin. Adarin studied the shifting goblin. And now the big pile of shit we have to shovel. I hope you stewed lively, you damned little— “Gavin. You went against my expressed orders and abducted—”

  The goblin raised his nose and hissed, “I bought them.”

  Adarin took a step forward; his manipulator crashed into the floor again, silencing the goblin and making everyone take a step back. “You think it makes it better that you bought your experimental subjects instead of abducting them?”

  Gavin looked hesitantly across the room. “…Yes?” he ventured.

  Adarin nearly screamed and was moving before he realized it. Francesco stepped forward, blocking Adarin's path. “Well, the circumstances of the affair do not matter in my opinion, only the results. We have been given a valuable opportunity—”

  “Silence,” hissed Adarin at the young magus in his oh-so-elegant clothes. “You too, especially, should be very careful about what you say after defying my direct orders.”

  Francesco opened his mouth.

  “Getting clever with the wording of your superior’s orders is defiance of orders. Is that clear?” Adarin nearly screamed. He called his avatar's fists until the bite of the fingernails brought him back to sanity. I need time to decompress. I'm almost unfit to command this band of morons.

  Francesco opened his mouth again, but Adarin hissed once before more idiotic sophistry could spill forth: “Is. That. Clear?”

  Francesco swallowed hard, ran a hand through his black hair, then nodded. “Yes... sir.”

  “Good. Gavin.” Adarin considered his scope for punishment. Francesco had had prestige and influence and would have become a political problem if he had him whipped in public. Gavin… Gavin is merely a favorite of Rüdiger’s. I could have him flogged. But do I really want the enmity of a powerful and semi-insane alchemist who apparently has neither moral qualms nor boundaries? That sounds like a good way to get firebombed in my sleep. He ground his teeth and observed the books, letters, and ingredients. “If you follow the procedure suggested, will your test subjects survive?”

  Gavin nodded eagerly. “Oh—eight will survive. Two are too far gone. I should have acted sooner, but we can still save eight. They’ll be useful, and soon.”

  Adarin took a long breath and looked deliberately around the room. “Opinions?”

  The Commodore spoke first. “If we can figure out how to make Dragon-Blooded warriors… the value of that—” He shook his head. “I’ve seen those maniacs in combat. It would increase the survivability of my marines and your musketeers by a lot.”

  Liora shook her head. “It was wrong to take them, but letting them die feels wrong as well. As a healer… if there were a way to save them without transforming them into monsters, without them losing their humanity—”

  Gavin pounced, turning around. “No, there isn’t. Maybe one I could flush clean of the substances, but I think they would most likely die in the attempt. The vampire made sure the experiments were irreversible.”

  Liora swallowed, tiredness and tension warring on her face. “Then… then I agree. We need to go ahead.”

  Duchess Viola visibly ground her teeth. “This—this is what I was afraid of when the Order came to Portguard. Grabbing poor peasants for unregistered research. Committing atrocities like this.”

  Francesco cleared his throat, voice tinged with a sneer. “Research on consenting subjects can hardly be called an atrocity. Also, the families were compensated for those children. Speaking from a utilitarian perspective, they will likely have much better lives now in the service of the Order than they—”

  Adarin slammed wood on wood. “Enough. I believe you are saying you are in agreement with letting Gavin continue his experiments?”

  “Yes,” Francesco said simply.

  The Duchess pressed her eyes shut and let out a long-suffering breath. “Do it,” she muttered, shaking her head.

  Finally, Adarin turned to Mage Captain Krislov. “Mage Captain, what is your judgment?”

  The man looked around the room again, visibly tense and looking like he wanted to be anywhere but in a command conference. “I… well, personally speaking, I don’t think being transformed by magic is that bad. I’d be kind of a hypocrite arguing against them, wouldn’t I?”

  Adarin nodded and looked at Devon. The kobold waved a clawed hand, barely looking up from the artifact he was tinkering with. “Yes, yes. Turn them, turn them—whatever.”

  Adarin took a long breath, feeling heat roiling in his stomach—disgust warring with determination. “Very well. Gavin—finish the transformations.”

  The goblin jumped up and down and pumped his bound fists in the air. It took all of Adarin’s discipline not to strangle the little green gremlin. “Get out,” he hissed, and Gavin scrambled, a wide smile on his face.

  He looked over the rest of the conference. “Everyone else out as well. You have your assignments. Get to them.”

  Late evening turned into night, and Adarin patrolled the encampment while keeping in regular contact with Commodore Ashfield and his subordinates. Everything was tense. Settlers were still digging trenches; cannoneers were on guard; already the new druids were experimenting with seedlings and sprouts; and the warding arrays construction continued into the morning hours.

  Adarin settled down near the pagoda. Finally, a few hours of memory consultation. My mental state… He exhaled long and suffering. Fucking hell.

  He settled into a long, relaxing meditation, his mind slowly defragmenting and reordering itself. He dimly noted the artificial blue morning fading to yellow. Maybe… just a few hours of rest.

  Just as the thought finished, screams erupted again—this time from the direction of the main temple.

  “Fucking hell,” Adarin hissed as he brought his body back online.