Char and Declan had both gained levels and could move faster and walk farther without breaks. The changed animals of this forest no longer posed a threat. Even with a pause to fight off a pack of wolves that had bark in place of fur, they still made it to the mercado around lunchtime the next day. The day had been overcast and dreary, and the clouds were only getting darker as the day wore on.

  They perched in the limbs of a tree as close to the mercado as they could safely get without being discovered, with Lulu silently keeping watch below. Time was an issue, but Char wanted to watch for a while before they made contact. She’d expected to find a buzzing hive of activity, or maybe a mid-day meal being shared. Instead, they found a community going through the motions. There was a crew working on the wall, another digging a garden patch, and a third crew going out to chop trees for lumber. Armed men and women patrolled the cleared area around the little settlement.

  There was little conversation, and no laughter. The people looked thin and tired. It looked more like a work camp than a community pulling together.

  A few hours into the afternoon, a buzz started making its way through the community, a message being passed with worried looks left in its wake. About an hour later, a silent crowd gathered within the half-finished courtyard wall. Even the patrolling guards were pulled in. The somber mood was disquieting. It sent a chill down Char’s spine.

  At first, she thought that maybe they were having some sort of funeral or memorial service for someone who’d died, but as she looked closer, she realized that it wasn’t grief keeping the crowd subdued. The expressions she saw held fear, anger, dread, and in some cases, hopeless apathy.

  There were more than twice the number of people who had been here when Char and Declan had walked away. Most were gathered in a semi-circle around a low platform, waiting for something. Why had they spent the time and effort to build a stage when the wall was only half finished?

  Four people, three men and a woman, that Char didn’t recognize, stood behind the platform like guards. They didn’t watch beyond the walls for dangers to the community; they watched the crowd like prison guards, looking for any infractions among the inmates. It was a jarring contrast against the vivid, cheerful colors of the building and the hopeful energy of the group she’d left behind. How could things have turned so bad this fast?

  She spotted Mira Patel, the nurse, near the front of the crowd. She had a hand on Leigh’s shoulder. The younger girl looked stricken. She’d been getting better when Char had left, but now she looked hollow-eyed and lost.

  The door of the mercado opened, and Voss stepped out, flanked on either side by Gina and Loman. Voss’s face was all business. Unlike the drawn features and hollow cheekbones of the crowd, it didn’t look like he’d been missing meals. Gina’s features flashed with the hint of a cruel smirk before she dropped a serious mask in place. She and Loman didn’t look as worn or starved as the rest of the crowd, either.

  Behind them came two more people that Char hadn’t seen before. Between them, they hauled Anais Baptiste, her hands bound behind her, and a bruise purpling her cheek. Her head was held high, her face a stoic mask. Char’s gut twisted at the sight. Beside her, Declan hissed, ”Bastard.”

  Voss stepped up onto the platform. He started to speak before he even reached the center. As he spoke, his entourage followed him, arranging themselves on the stage like an honor guard. The ones holding Anais forced her to kneel before Voss. As her knees hit the stage, she spat on Voss’s shoe, then turned her face out to glare at the crowd, shaming them without words, her shoulders square.

  “When I give an order, it is for the good of this community. I’m doing my best to make sure we all survive. Sometimes that involves sacrifice. Food is tight. You all know this. You’ve worked hard. You’ve sacrificed.” He paused and scanned over the crowd, gratified by the quiet nods he saw there. “We can’t afford to feed those who won’t contribute to the community. When I order rations withheld from a freeloader, it is because someone working hard for our welfare needs that food. When someone steals food from us to give to those who don’t deserve it, she undermines us all.”

  While Voss gave his speech, Char used Assess Foe on him and his cronies. They all came back as Human, so there was no mind control or magical shenanigans they could use as an excuse for being assholes. Voss’ level showed as 23, and Gina and Loman were both level 21. Voss’ level seemed oddly high. She’d faced several bosses, challenges, and high-level monsters, and she was only level 26. Cory said they’d gone into the dungeon, but there had to be more to it than that.

  She looked over the guards and the crowd. The guards had levels between 16 and 19, but none had broken through the level 20 threshold. The highest level in the crowd was 14, and most of them were in the single digits. There was one man in the crowd that Assess wouldn’t work on, and Char tried to get a better look at him, but her attention was called back to the stage.

  Voss had pulled a longsword from his inventory and was holding it with its point down against the stage, both of his hands on the hilt. “This isn’t just about food. This is also about respect. About order. If one person can defy me and get away with it, then everything we’ve built crumbles. What happens if a guard shirks his duty? If a hunter refuses to hunt? Do you want chaos? Do you want monsters coming over that wall? That’s what you get if the rules aren’t followed.”

  Char had seen enough. She tapped Declan’s shoulder and motioned for him to climb down. They needed to get closer. This didn’t feel right. Anais hadn’t struck her as the sort of person to steal without a good reason, and Voss didn’t seem like the best person to be deciding who got to eat and who didn’t. Char wanted to be in a better position to intervene if things went the way she feared.

  They moved carefully. Char kept an ear on the speech and the crowd as they picked their way closer to the wall. The woods had been cut back some around the building, but not as far as she would have cleared if she’d been in charge. It was easy enough to get to the wall without anyone inside spotting them, just by moving from tree to tree, then approaching from the completed section of wall. There was no one in the makeshift guard tower to spot them. The narcissistic idiot must have insisted that all eyes be on him for his show trial.

  He continued to speak. Char caught snippets, but she ignored most of what he said. It meandered through the normal themes of petty dictators, “…Parasites will drag us all down if I let them…” Char was torn between being sick to her stomach and rolling her eyes.

  As they got closer, she could hear occasional mutters from the crowd. It sounded like they were split between supporting what Voss was saying and seeing through it. If he had the crowd buying into his rhetoric, it was going to be harder to shake him loose; more like getting rid of a tapeworm than pinching off a tick.

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  Declan had the easiest time getting into the courtyard. He just stepped sideways outside the wall, then slipped back into the real world at the edge of the crowd, his arms crossed like he’d been standing there the whole time. Slowly and carefully, he eased through the crowd, trying to get closer to Mira and Leigh without causing a disturbance.

  The first half of the wall, jutting out from the left side of the building, was strong and well built, but it was pretty obvious where the job had been when Cory left and had taken his expertise with him. The newest section of the wall had gaps where the half-logs hadn’t been planed down properly to fit together. Char watched the proceedings through one of these gaps. She sent Lulu around the back of the building to wait just out of sight by the right corner of the building.

  The crowd was between the gap in the wall and the stage, and it wouldn’t be easy to get to the stage in a hurry. The guards watching the crowd would see her as soon as she rounded the wall, though, so easing in like Declan was doing wasn’t an option. She’d need to go in dramatic. Besides, an unprovoked attack would make her the bad guy, and she couldn’t afford that if the crowd was split and scared. She’d have to call him out. Make him hit first.

  She considered covering herself in sparking electricity, but too much shock and awe might cause panic. She decided on something a little more subtle and symbolic. With the dull overcast, it should work especially well.

  Voss was saying something about sacrifice and how everyone needed to carry their own weight, and a woman near the back of the crowd scoffed. She muttered just loud enough for Char to hear, “Ain’t no excuse for starving a child. Anais doesn’t deserve this. She’s done more for us than he has.”

  The man next to her shot her a glare and in a low tone he hissed, “You shut your mouth. He keeps us safe. That girl’s just a useless mouth to feed. You’ll be next if you don’t watch what you say.”

  Char wasn’t the best at reading people, but even she could hear the fear under the man’s words, the rote way he parroted the party line. She recalled Cory’s words about Voss killing people, and her gut turned to ice as she suddenly had an idea why Voss’ level was so high and no one else, besides his loyal hench-people, was over level 20. It was only a suspicion. She had no proof. She couldn’t shake the idea, though, and she checked Anais’ level. She was level 19. Damn. It still wasn’t proof, but it made it even more likely that Voss was using these people as an experience farm.

  Char pulled her eye away from the gap and turned her attention to the hoodie she’d pulled out of her inventory. It was just a simple dark blue hooded jacket made of sweatshirt material. It was meant for someone larger than she was, and would be baggy on her, but it would do the job. ‘Too bad I don’t have a holocaust cloak and a wheelbarrow,’ she thought, then snorted to herself and added, ‘Hell, Andre the Giant would come in handy right now, too.’

  She opened the hood and used Rune Scribe on the inside of it; a little bit of theater to clear a path and create an image that would hit deeper than words. She hoped.

  It wasn’t hard to inscribe the Light rune inside the hood, then hold it just short of activating while she pulled on the jacket. Once she had the hood up, she sent Lulu an image of Leigh and Mira and the idea that she should protect the innocent people once things kicked off.

  They hadn’t had much of a plan going into this, so she could only hope that Declan would pick up on what she was doing. He was smart, though. He’d figure it out. She swallowed down a lump of nerves. She couldn’t leave Anais to be executed; that wasn’t an option, but if she did this, if she walked in this way, she’d be taking charge, and she couldn’t walk away from it this time.

  She pulled in a deep breath and squared up her shoulders. This wasn’t going to be easy, but Voss was a bully. She just had to make him do what bullies do. She completed the spell and let the rune flare to life.

  “The things out there would give you nightmares,” Voss was saying as she rounded the wall and walked forward. “If it wasn’t for me and my men keeping you safe, do you think you would make it? Do you think you could survive out there with the monsters?”

  Pure, white light streamed out of the hood, back-lighting her head and making the hood glow with an inner light. The light stood out, seeming to cut through the dim, overcast day. It messed with Char’s vision a little, so she pushed mana into Wyrdsight.

  People around her started to mutter and move away. She heard gasps, and Voss cut off his speech. She angled her head to shine the spotlight effect on Anais; her bruise was already fading thanks to faster healing, but there was enough left to stand out starkly on her defiant face. The kneeling woman didn’t look away from the light, but faced it head-on, letting everyone get a good look at her.

  Char grabbed the moment of silence. She dug out every bit of advice she could remember about projecting her voice and imbued it with as much authority and confidence as she could muster to call out. “The monsters aren’t at the wall, Voss. The only monster I see here is on the stage.” She continued to walk forward, the crowd parting for her.

  Voss’s features cycled quickly through surprise, then fear, then anger before he schooled them to a tense smirk. “What’s this? A little theater to brighten our day? You think glowing tricks and loud words make you more than a frightened little girl? Who are you, stranger, to question what I’ve done for this community? Where were you when we were fighting monsters and starving?” He was loud, theatrical, his words carefully chosen to puff himself up and belittle her.

  Char pulled down the hood to reveal her face, letting the light shine upward around her head like a halo. Someone in the crowd said her name with a little gasp of recognition.

  “I’m the one who saved you on the tundra and led you to this place with its food stores. I thought I left you in good hands, with Anais’ organization, Mira’s medical skills, and Cory to build defenses. If I’d realized you were such an asshole that you’d let children starve, I would have done things differently.”

  There were gasps and murmurs of recognition from the original group who’d been there when she’d saved them from the crystal mosquitoes. She heard whispers as people explained who she was to the newcomers. One lone voice even cheered her on.

  “But you did leave. You left us to fend for ourselves, sneaking away like a coward, and we’ve done just fine without you.” He made a subtle hand motion to the guards behind the platform, and they moved forward to form a line at the front of the stage.

  “Fine? This isn’t what fine looks like, Voss. You’re about to execute a good woman for doing the right thing. In what world is that fine?” Char kept walking, ignoring his accusations. The people who had been here knew the truth. Getting defensive would only play into his game.

  “I’m doing what I have to do to keep this community going. It’s a hard world, and that means making hard choices.” He stepped forward, anger making his jaw clench and his voice tighten.

  “Choices like starving children, or like making up excuses to kill your own people for the experience points?” She didn’t have any proof to back up that claim, but judging by how his face paled, she was pretty sure she’d hit the nail on the head. He went from bombastic confidence to wide-eyed desperation in a heartbeat.

  She flicked a glance toward Declan. He was still making his way through the crowd, but faster now. He was almost to the front, only a few people away from Mira and Leigh. She could see his eyes flick back and forth across the guards, and to Gina and Loman, sizing them up, calculating. He was watching for an opportunity, and he hadn’t been recognized yet. So far, so good.

  The crowd backed away farther, pressing up against the walls and leaving a clear space around her. The muttering turned to angry outcries. They could see the truth on his face as well as she could. Her eyes stayed on Voss. She could feel him gathering mana for something and braced herself for an attack. He didn’t send the spell at her, though.

  The threads of fate shifted as the invisible ball of mana struck Mira. “Put your knife to the girl’s throat and bring her up here. If Char attacks me, cut her throat,” Voss snarled.

  Char’s veins turned to ice, and she felt the prickle of lightning crawl up her spine.

  The crowd went utterly, horribly silent.

  Dominion will be taking a 1 month hiatus after the epilogue is posted to give me time to get the second book plotted and a chapter backlog started. I have another project, Thief of Echoes, that I want to focus on for a while as well. I started posting Dominion without enough of a backlog, and I don't want to make that mistake with Thief of Echoes, or book 2 of Dominion. Having a bit of deadline pressure keeps me from procrastinating too much, but too much time pressure means I'm rushing for quantity and letting quality slide. I'm still trying to find the balance.

  Thief of Echoes is about, the early chapters are available to subscribers on my .