Laryn walked over and sat down on a crate, rummaging through scattered supplies to find his medical kit. For the second time that morning, he worked to patch up his injuries from fighting voidlings. He wouldn’t be able to keep this up for much longer.

  He had to claim more tiles, and gain a stat point in constitution. He needed the benefits of the kingdom core. It was the only way to survive.

  Adi joined him, sitting down on the crate. She sat quietly while he worked, cleaning wounds, stripping bandages, applying salve, and patching himself up. Laryn appreciated her presence. The intensity of the fight had overwhelmed the coldness he’d been directing at her. This situation wasn’t her fault after all.

  Finally she broke the silence. “What happened this morning?” she asked. “I should have asked you before, but I was just so excited to be awoken…”

  “It’s been a bad day,” Laryn said, gesturing to the wreckage on the isolated beach. He played with the ring on his finger. Elena’s promise ring. “A bad month for me, really,” he said.

  “Want to tell me about it? My job is to help you, and I think that would be easier if I understood the situation we’re in.”

  “Where to start?” Laryn rested his head in his hands. “I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. I thought I could be a better [Ruler] than Yarin would be. I wanted to come out here and prove it. It’s clear I wasn’t thinking straight though, I was just so desperate to get away from Eltar before Yarin’s wedding and coronation.

  “I realize now that I shouldn’t have brought Keldin. He was my younger brother, and I was responsible to protect him.”

  Adi nodded, face serious as she watched him.

  “I thought that Master Alzar would join me in the wilderness. Help Keldin and I form a new kingdom. He was in charge of the guards that came with us; I thought with a dozen men, myself and Keldin, we could start a new kingdom. I never expected that…”

  He looked down at his torn and bloodied shirt. He couldn’t tell what blood was his, what blood was Keldin’s, and what blood was Alzar’s.

  Laryn gestured at the kingdom core. “A Conqueror’s Core. I still wonder where father found it. I thought it would make things easy for us.” He stared at the reflection of the silver obelisk, his mind considering things he didn’t want to be true. He felt like a failure.

  He took off the promise ring and held it up. “Elena gave this to me,” he said. A simple band of white gold, it shone in the sunlight. He looked through it. Once a perfect circle, it had deformed slightly into an oval shape.

  “I gave her one too,” he said. “Years ago. We grew up together, you know. I always knew that we’d be married one day. She was quirky, as a kid. She didn’t have other friends. Never really fit in, but I loved being with her. Maybe because I didn’t really fit in either.

  “What happened to her?” Adi asked, eyes wide. She placed a hand on his thigh. Laryn couldn’t feel the touch, but he appreciated the gesture. “Did she die? I hate stories where people die.”

  Laryn barked a harsh laugh. “She’s not dead,” he said. “She’s just fine. She just… grew into herself. Blossomed like a flower, as they say. Heads started turning in the street when she walked by, and she loved it. When she started getting attention like that… Well, I guess I just wasn’t enough for her anymore.” The words fell from his lips bitterly.

  “Yarin took an interest, even though he’s like twelve years older than her,” he said. “And he’s already got two wives.”

  Adi gasped. “Your brother?”

  “Yeah,” Laryn said. “My brother. I couldn’t believe it either, when she told me. She said we should probably take off our promise rings, but she still wanted to be my friend.”

  “Wind and stones!” Adi exclaimed. “Why… that… filthy, mud-slicked, stone-hearted, ice-veined, flea-bitten whore!”

  Laryn screwed up his eyes and turned away.

  “Oh,” Adi said softly. “You still love her.”

  “I hate her,” Laryn hissed. “I couldn’t bear to be in Eltar when she married Yarin. She acted all heart broken when I told her I couldn’t be there, like somehow this was all my fault. Like I was the one who betrayed her.”

  “So you came to Cataria with Keldin,” Adi said.

  “He always said he wanted to go goblin hunting. I offered to take him along, and it was just the excuse I was looking for. I never planned to return. I figured that if Keldin didn’t want to stay in my kingdom, he could go back once we got things started.”

  “I hope I’m not over stepping, but… isn’t it obvious?” Adi asked. “I mean, bringing a valuable kingdom core out to unclaimed lands isn’t something you do if you’re just planning to hunt goblins.”

  “I didn’t tell him about the core.” Laryn waved his hand. “He didn’t know I had it. I smuggled it out. Even Alzar didn’t know about it.”

  “Anyway, we made our way through the human populated parts of the land just fine. Until this morning.

  “Just after dawn, we crossed the river into the wildlands. We argued, because I wanted to press on deeper into the wilds and he said we should stay closer to the river, because that would be a better place to find goblins.”

  Laryn shook his head. He noted his own reflection in Adi’s large eyes. She nodded for him to continue.

  “In hindsight, all of this makes sense,” he said. “I was too absorbed in my own ambitions that I didn’t see how much danger I was putting us into. I knew the wildlands were dangerous. I just thought we could handle it. I didn’t expect to see void this far south.”

  Adi nodded. “What… what is void, exactly?”

  Laryn’s brow creased as he looked at her. “Everyone knows about void,” he said. “You’ve never heard of it? Even in Eltar we have to deal with voidblight and spores. We’re far to the south though so it rarely lands in the kingdom. I didn’t expect it to be a problem here either, since it’s not supposed to be common until much further north in the wildlands.”

  Adi shook her head. “I’ve never heard of it before. It must be a new thing.”

  “Void has been a problem since my great-great-grandfather’s rule in Eltar,” Laryn said. “How long have you been trapped in that core?”

  Adi looked sad, but didn’t say anything.

  “Void is a disease, that grows somewhere north of the wildlands of Cataria,” Laryn said. “It infests tiles with the blight. Void spores grow into gigantic void blooms, which suck the essence out of the land and leave everything grey and dead. They spawn voidlings to protect themselves, until they can send off spores to decimate some other part of the country. You’ve really never heard of void?”

  “Never,” she said. “I guess it’s been a while since my core was deactivated.”

  She seemed distressed by the possibility, so Laryn moved on with his story.

  “Anyways,” Laryn said. “We were attacked by voidlings almost immediately after crossing the Ebil. And there is clearly void on this island too, so it can’t be that rare.” Laryn rubbed his brow.

  “All of these decisions seem very reasonable,” Adi said. “It’s not fair to judge your decisions with the benefit of hindsight. You have to learn to make the best decision you can with the information you have on hand.”

  Laryn rolled his eyes and let out a sigh. “You sound like the priest advisor. Something was telling me not to cross the river, and I ignored it.”

  Adi shrugged. “Just trying to help. So what are you going to do?”

  “Look, I know I’m not supposed to judge decisions in hindsight, but… this morning, when we were swarmed by voidlings, Keldin was injured as he fought them. I helped him into the wagon. The horses ran away. We got caught up in the current and now…” he gestured at their situation.

  “I don’t see how that disqualifies you from being a ruler,” Adi said.

  “Because I was weak!” Laryn snapped. “The one thing I’m supposed to be good at is fighting! Keldin was hurt, and I felt scared. Maybe things would have been better if I had stood my ground and fought, instead of trying to run. The worst thing a ruler can do is decide based off of fear and self preservation. If I had made a better choice this morning, Keldin would probably still be alive.”

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “I see,” Adi said. “So what will you do?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t go back to Eltar. Maybe I’m just going to sit out here and be a ruler over this beach until I die.”

  “Are we far from Eltar?” Adi asked.

  “Very,” Laryn said. “We traveled by ship across the sea, and then more than three weeks over land to get here. Nobody is going to come from there to find me. Maybe the guards, in Townshold, will come looking. If they find Alzar’s body.”

  “So you really are alone.”

  “And I can’t leave you behind,” Laryn said. “I can’t go look for a coresmith. and leave the core exposed and vulnerable to voidling attack. Someone could steal the core, and if it’s destroyed…”

  “You die,” Adi said. “No special abilities there. The [Ruler] dies when a core is destroyed.”

  “Is there no way for me to escape?”

  “You could stay,” she said. “You could build up a kingdom large enough to go back and save your brother.”

  “That sounds impossible,” Laryn said. “There’s no way to claim enough tiles quickly enough. I’ve already wasted hours. Every second that ticks by is another tile that needs to be claimed… How can I build a kingdom with no subjects, no access to trade?”

  Adi shrugged. “It’s just an idea,” she said. “The kingdom must grow.”

  “What other options do I have?”

  “You could find another to take your place,” Adi said. “Someone else could become [Ruler] in your stead, and then you would be unbound from the core.”

  “But then they would control the core,” Laryn said. “I would have to give it to them.”

  “We could establish a contract. A core enforced geas, that would force them to turn the core back over to you when you returned.”

  “Ah,” Laryn said. He’d dealt with geas before; magically enforced agreements that bound people within kingdoms. He turned the idea over in his mind.

  “That’s risky,” he said. “I wouldn’t be around to make sure there were no loopholes to exploit.”

  “It would be best to find someone you trust.”

  Laryn liked the idea. “Then that will be my goal,” Laryn said. “Find someone in the wilderness to watch the core, while I go find a coresmith. Then I can try again, perhaps.”

  “That is a great goal,” Adi said. “Having a clear goal is one of the first things I recommend new rulers do.”

  Laryn looked at her out of the corner of his eye. She didn’t seem to feel his desperation.

  “The big problem with that,” he said, ”is finding a person. Who am I going to find out here to take over?”

  “I also think we need to do something about those voidlings,” Adi said. “They are dangerous, and you can’t have them roaming around your kingdom.”

  “I know,” Laryn grunted. “I have to find and destroy the voidbloom, somehow. With the strength from the core, I might be able to manage it.”

  “I’ve honestly never heard of any void or voidbloom stuff before,” Adi said. “What exactly is it?”

  “Nobody knows exactly, but it comes from somewhere to the north. It’s like a mix between a bug and a plant. It shoots off these spores, which land and sprout, growing into voidblooms that spread blight and create monsters, like the voidlings. There must be a voidbloom on this island. And if I don’t do something about it, it’ll just keep sending voidlings.”

  “That sounds like a good goal to me!” Adi exclaimed.

  “Would you tell me if you thought it was bad?”

  “I’d gently nudge you in a more positive direction,” she said. “If it was really obviously bad. But your job is to come up with the goals. My job is to help you achieve them. And on that note, I think you should sift these voidlings and replenish your core essence.”

  Laryn nodded in agreement. “You said that if my… the kingdom’s average influence is less than one, we’ll start losing tiles? That would be bad. If I’m going to build things up, I have to start somewhere.”

  He got to work, dragging the voidling bodies over to the core. He started with the smaller creature, grabbing it by one leg and pulling. The body, nearly in two pieces, slid across the sand easily. Adi walked alongside him. He tried to suppress his sense of annoyance.

  “You really can’t help with this?” he asked.

  “Nope,” she said. “And asking me that repeatedly isn’t going to change things.”

  “How close do I have to get to the core?”

  “Close enough that you can get the essence into the core before it evaporates,” Adi said. “So… about this close if you’re willing to sprint,” she said.

  Laryn dragged the carcass closer to the core. When he reached it, he sifted the body. A single green sphere formed in his hand, which he immediately pressed into the core.

  “Just one?” he said.

  “Unlucky,” Adi said. “But most things have a range of essence they’ll normally provide to you. Maybe you’ll get more with the next one.”

  Laryn wanted to experiment with how far he could transport essence orbs, but he didn’t want to do it with the Voidlings. Maybe he could sift a barrel of water when he was done.

  The bigger voidling was more of a problem. The creature was huge, and must have weighed nearly a ton.

  “This is not what this is intended for,” Laryn said, recovering the sword and drawing it. “But desperate times call for desperate measures.”

  He got to work, hacking the voidling into smaller parts and carrying them over to the core. As he butchered the beast, he wondered if voidling meat might be good to eat. The smell, however, discouraged him from pursuing that line of thinking any further.

  It took him a while, but he eventually moved the whole voidling over to the core. [Sift]’s cooldown had reset, so he cast it on the voidling corpse.

  The legs, meat, and carapace shimmered and swirled, dissolving into essence. The elemental power flowed to his hand, solidifying into two spheres; one grey, one blue. Laryn admired their beauty for a moment, but they shrank as he watched them, essence flowing into the air like steam. He pressed them into the core.

  It would have been a lot easier to sift the voidling and carry the essence over to the core. He really needed to experiment with that and see how far he could actually carry the orbs.

  “Great work,” Adi said. “You’ve pushed your influence up above one.”

  “My average influence?” Laryn asked.

  “Yeah, but normally we just call that influence,” Adi said. “If I mean total influence, I’ll say total. Which, by the way, is at eight.”

  “Great,” Laryn said, wiping his brow. “That should make it harder for voidlings to disturb us, right?”

  “Everything is easier for you and harder for them now,” Adi said. “Want to sift some more water? Your core essence is slightly unbalanced.”

  “It is?”

  “You have three life, five water, and one stone in your core, compared to seven of seven tiles being water. It’s not affecting you yet, but the equation for calculating the debuff would be—”

  Laryn waved his hand, cutting her off. “That’s fine, I don’t need to know the equation. I’ll just check it in the interface. It’s not a problem yet?”

  “Nope,” Adi said.

  “I’m going to take a breather, then I need to find the voidbloom. If it keeps spitting out voidlings, I’ll be overwhelmed. I can’t wait around for that.”

  “Have you fought a voidbloom before?”

  “No,” Laryn said. “But I’ve heard about them. They’re guarded by a kind of voidspawn called a voidlord. And if you cut down the bloom, the whole thing dies. So that’s what I’m going to try to do.” He cleaned his sword off with a strip from a tattered sleeve, then returned it to his sheath.

  “Are you sure you can do this?” Adi asked.

  “No,” Laryn said. “But I’m sure that if I don’t do it, I’m going to be killed by voidlings before the end of the day.”

  “Before you go,” Adi said, stepping up to face him. “Let me link our minds. So that I can come with you. In case you need help?”

  Laryn balked at the idea. She had been helpful at times, but she’d also been distracting. “I don’t know…”

  “I promise I won’t be a bother,” she said. “But if I can see what you’re seeing, I can help better.”

  “You’ll see what I see?” Laryn exclaimed. “For how long?”

  “As long as you allow it,” Adi said, recoiling. “But you can block the link whenever you want. It’s totally up to you.”

  “Fine,” Laryn said. “Why not?”

  Adi grinned and placed her hands on his temples. Her antennae stiffened and the top of Laryn’s spine tingled. She released him.

  “All done!” she said.

  “You can see what I see now?” he asked.

  “Ooh,” she said, striking a pose. “I look good!”