With Valda in tow, I hurried back to the castle. Not that I had to do much towing. The lizard-folk woman was as excited as I was to get more information.

  The strange dagger that I’d bought ended up tucked into my Dimensional Pocket for now. After alerting me to the fact that the dagger was DSR-issued, the System had remained oddly quiet. Which was reassuring. When the inter-dimensional supercomputer wanted something, it didn’t hesitate to tell me as much.

  While we hurried back to the castle, Valda took the opportunity to ask me several questions about my Shape-Shifting, specifically suggestions for the form of it that I was lending her with Grant Power. It was entirely unsurprising that the serious woman’s mind immediately went to the combat applications. She was already the kind of person to chit-chat while doing cardio workouts, so the fact that we might be getting sent out on yet another mission by the queen easily sent her mind into practical applications of the power.

  The guards at the gate only stopped us long enough to get our names before waving us through, and even then I knew it was only because they were required to do so. Valda and I were familiar faces to the guards after the last several weeks.

  Rieka had passed along where to meet them while we were heading back, so the two of us headed to the outer edge of the family wing. It still surprised me that we were allowed into this portion of the castle, since my knowledge of the customs from Earth said that literally only the family and very specific servants were allowed here.

  Might have a bit more meaning to it than I’m ready to deal with, I thought grimly as we hurried down the corridors. The implication that Gemma views us—and specifically me—as family already can’t be discounted. Which would make my promises to the girls that much easier to achieve.

  I briefly let my mind wander over the multiple insinuations and outright demands from my girls to give them children in the future, but was snapped back by a familiar voice calling out to us.

  “Lady Valda, Traveler Liam, this way please?”

  Lorelai, Reika’s personal maid, had just turned the corner and spotted us from further down the corridor. The wolf kin maid immediately dropped into a curtsy before beckoning us to follow.

  “Lead on, Lorelai,” I replied, not slowing my pace until we were right behind her. Valda matched me without comment.

  The maid, obviously sensing the urgency, picked up her pace to a dignified but quick walk, the fastest I’d seen her move yet.

  Thankfully, we didn’t have much further to go. It was barely a minute later when Lorelai stopped in front of a door that I knew led to the queen’s strategy room. She knocked twice, paused, then knocked again once, paused, then opened the door.

  “Lady Valda and Traveler Liam, as requested,” Lorelai said, bowing to the room and stepping to one side to let us through.

  Out of habit, I gestured for Valda to precede me into the room. The lizard-folk woman shot me a small smile, the green scales speckled on her face gleaming in the light of the silver lamps in the hall, before she stepped past me and into the room, steadying her sword out of habit with one hand.

  I followed behind Valda, only my intense desire to find out what was going to happen next kept me from appreciating just how tightly her pants clung to her muscled butt.

  I had given up on not enjoying the sight of my girls months ago. Between Kassandra’s teasing nature urging them into lovingly harassing me and their own beauty, I felt privileged to get to enjoy time with the girls. Not to mention the number of times they hauled me into the bath with them like some kind of pool floatie. That still didn’t stop me from appreciating how beautiful they were, I just did my best to make sure it was always respectful and consensual.

  The meeting room was absent its normal appearance of ordered chaos. Reports were scattered across the table haphazardly, with a large map of the north-western part of the queendom spread across one half of the table. Small markers in the form of red or black stone towers were scattered over the territory, some taller than the others. Looking closer, I noted that the markers had interlocking bases to allow for them to be stacked on top of each other.

  Must be tracking the sightings? I wondered before my girls stole my attention once more.

  Rieka was standing nearest the door and must have had her back turned when Lorelai announced us.

  My wolfish princess had turned at the waist to look our way, hands braced on the table and back arched showing she’d been studying the map. Now she was smiling at me, her ice-blue eyes glittering with affection while her fluffy, platinum-blonde tail whipped back and forth behind her, the black tipping the pale appendage looking like she’d accidentally swiped it through some ink. She was dressed comfortably in tan riding pants and a white blouse, but the jeweled choker that I’d made for her shone on the lightly tanned skin of her neck, making the simple outfit regal with its presence.

  “Sorry to call you two back so quickly,” Rieka apologized, completing her turn to hold out a hand to Valda.

  The lizard-folk woman accepted a warrior's forearm-grip from the wolf kin princess, giving her a soft smile in return.

  “It is no matter, Rieka. We all have been eagerly waiting for more information on this subject, so there is nothing to apologize for.”

  Rieka accepted her reassurance with a nod before turning to me. The gentle wagging of her tail picked up speed while the pointed tips of her wolf-ears wiggled happily from where they poked up out of her platinum-blonde hair.

  I didn’t speak, just holding out my arms to her. Rieka’s smile widened so far her eyes squinted while she hopped into my arms for a hug.

  Cradling my princess to my chest, I scanned the rest of the room.

  Rieka’s mother, Queen Gemma Coldeye, sat at the head of the table. The older woman smiled faintly as she watched her daughter snuggle into my arms, her normally stoic demeanor melting away to show a contented mother for a moment.

  Kassandra, my dwarf lamia lover, was on the far side of the table with my other two girls. The redheaded troublemaker was bouncing on her coiled tail, grinning like a loon as she watched Rieka get her hug in. I knew that it was only the presence of the queen in the room that was keeping Kassandra from throwing herself at me in demand of a hug.

  Her affectionate tackles had started as something of a joke, but had rapidly become her unique way of greeting me. That had only gotten worse as Kassandra realized that I was not against giving her all sorts of cuddles when she needed them due to her cold-blooded nature.

  Shayla gave me a shy wave, my moth-winged summoner clutching a drawing pad to her ample chest with the other hand while her fluffy antennae stroked the air like a ballerina’s hands.

  Beside her, Jane was mirroring Kassandra’s excited bounces, but I could tell that it was more due to the information in front of her. The mousy scholar loved learning and the detailed map before her was probably something she’d never seen before, and if she had, she’d not gotten to study it this closely.

  The last person in the room was also the only other male and Gemma’s husband, Jonas Coldeye. Due to the power structures in the Coldeye queendom, Jonas wasn’t acknowledged as a ‘king’ simply because he was married to the ruler. He was instead the ‘prince-consort,’ a title reserved for when a male married into the royal family. The stoic wolf kin man didn’t seem to care that he was placed well below his wife in rank, and instead focused on supporting her to his utmost while taking the opportunity presented to spoil his children and spend time with them.

  “Thank you for coming so quickly,” Rieka murmured into my chest before pushing back far enough to look up at me. “We have been going over the initial reports but that has just been organizing the information. I wanted you here before we dug into the meat of it.”

  “I’m happy to help however I can,” I replied, leaning forward to bump Rieka’s pert nose with my own gently—as close to a kiss as she had shown willing to go with her mother present. Rieka had been working through her resistances to public displays of affection, but there were still some holdouts to fight past.

  An amusing habit for someone who has so many exhibitionist tendencies, I thought with a grin. Though it does make sense. If she has all those urges but has to remain a ‘proper princess’ it would be very easy to over-correct. I’m just glad she’s shaking them off now.

  Pushing that thought aside, I gave Rieka one more squeeze that made her squeak and laugh before releasing her. Instead, I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and urged her back toward the table.

  Valda hadn’t waited for me to greet Rieka. The lizard-folk princess had instead proceeded directly to the table and began studying the map with the others.

  “So, what information do we have?” Valda asked, her lips continuing to move after she spoke in a fashion that made me think she was counting the markers.

  Gemma let the soft smile fall off of her face, replacing it with the thoughtful determination of a ruler with purpose. She gestured toward the scattered reports, most only a few sentences on a page in a tight cypher with the translation scratched into the parchment below it.

  “Half a dozen sightings in the course of a few days,” Gemma said with a sigh before patting a larger stack of parchment covered in more cypher-script beside her. “I have a more detailed description of the creatures here, which Lady Silverscale has already confirmed matches those constructions you have previously encountered.”

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  “Which ones?” I interjected, looking at Kassandra.

  The dwarf lamia visibly put aside her desire to pounce on me now that I was closer and gave herself a shake. This caused her cascading mane of bombshell curls to bounce and shimmer in the bright light coming through the windows, as well as other parts of her anatomy but I did my best to ignore those and focus on the moment.

  It’s not my fault that these girls were gorgeous and distracting.

  “The humanoid-statue ones,” Kassandra answered only a moment later. “The quadrupedal war-golems haven’t made an appearance yet, but even these bipedal ones can be very dangerous. After all, why would there be two guarding that storeroom otherwise, right?”

  “Very true,” I replied with a nod before looking back at the map.

  There were far more than a half-dozen markers there, and the two different colors had me curious, so I gestured toward them and asked.

  “What are these for?”

  “The red ones are places that we have heard rumors of them appearing, but were unable to confirm by the spies I sent,” Gemma answered. “And the black ones are the sightings that one of the spies confirmed themselves. Taller markers indicate groups. If it’s two tall, then two to five were spotted there, and if it’s three tall then up to twenty were spotted in the area. And these are all confirmed individuals, not just seeing the same one multiple times in the same area.”

  “And what about on different days?” I asked next, to which Jane leaned forward to tap the top of the towers with the end of a wooden pointer.

  “The tops here have markers for what day they were seen, and I’ve got a list here confirming which ones count for exactly how many.”

  Staring at the map of the Icefang lands, I felt my stomach do an uncomfortable turn in my body.

  There were easily three dozen sightings here, with fourteen being confirmed by the spies, regardless of how many of the constructs there actually were.

  “Okay, that doesn’t look good,” I said quietly, using the arm still around Rieka’s shoulders to squeeze her to my side.

  The princess let out a long sigh of agreement and nodded, one pointed ear brushing my cheek softly as it passed.

  “And this was over how long?” I asked next.

  “Ten days,” Gemma answered grimly. “They probably have more records by now, but prepared the reports to send back when they confirmed over a dozen different sightings of the creatures. The unsubstantiated reports are there to see if we have a pattern, something that Miss Carsan suggested.” The last part was said with a smile toward my mousy scholar, who blushed furiously at the compliment.

  “It just makes sense to take it all into account,” Jane murmured softly, but gaining confidence as she continued to speak. “I appreciate not wanting to trust in rumors but even with some outliers, they can’t all be false sightings, right?”

  “Exactly,” Jonas said, speaking up for the first time from his spot standing behind Gemma’s chair. “Which is why I was quick to grab the red markers when you suggested it.”

  Jonas made a tossing gesture over his shoulder and I glanced past him to see a large cabinet sitting open with hundreds of the little markers in a dozen different colors.

  They really are well prepared here, I thought, the idea rather reassuring.

  Being a Traveler, I had to be careful what information I was bringing between worlds. The last thing that I wanted to risk was something like a firearm falling into the wrong hands and touching off a massive arms-race that obliterates the native culture. So I tried to be careful about what I introduced until I really knew the locals. Gemma had been impressing me so far, which was why I’d made the business offer to her son, a self-styled merchant-prince named Thomas, to bring over a printing press to help boost the people’s literacy.

  So seeing her well prepared for thoughtful planning even in times of war was very reassuring to me.

  Though it could also go the other way, I thought grimly. Being so well prepared might be a sign of someone who thirsts for conquest. But that’s not the feeling I get from Gemma at all. I’d put better money on it being because she’s got uneasy truces with some neighbors and war with others. Still not giving her guns, I promised the girls that.

  “So what is the news?” I heard Valda ask, and glanced over to find her flicking between two sets of parchment reports. “Most of these I’m seeing are just simple sightings. Do we have any confirmation as to what they are doing or why?”

  “Harvesting local resources,” Gemma answered with a grim look. “Wood, stone, ore, plants, and animals. They are usually sighted alone and single-mindedly focused on a task. Whether that is to gather stones or cut down one specific tree and haul it away.”

  “Or hunt down a specific animal,” Jane added when the queen paused, glancing over another sheet filled with her own careful script. “I’ve got three listings of them pursuing a particular animal in a herd or flock and only leaving when they have it. Usually alive, but one of the three had to kill the deer to stop it running away.”

  “Which begs the question of ‘why,’ ” Kassandra said. She gestured to the map with one hand, using the other to remove her silver-rimmed spectacles so she could rub her nose ruefully.

  “If it were bandits, I’d assume they were building a camp,” Valda said, her brow wrinkling as she continued to study the map. “I see that many of the red markers along the trade roads and lanes, which meshes with the rumors we initially brought to you, Queen Gemma.”

  “Yes, and as far as my spies can tell, they aren’t building a camp. Not anymore at least,” Gemma said next, frowning.

  “Wait, what? You didn’t mention that before,” Rieka exclaimed, stiffening against me.

  “That’s part of the reports that I was waiting to share until Liam and Valda arrived,” Gemma said tiredly. The queen flipped through the stack of parchment at her side to find one that she had been looking for.

  “The constructs haven’t been sighted going near it, but the coincidences are too high to not assume they are involved in this,” Gemma explained, holding up the particular report.

  “Don’t tease them, dear,” Jonas chastised his wife gently, earning him a smack on the thigh from the queen. I caught what he was doing though from the faint smile that I caught before Gemma hid it behind the report in her hand.

  Lightening the mood with a bit of humor to keep her spirits up, I thought. Good man, I knew I liked Jonas for other reasons beyond the fact he clearly loves his family and enjoys embarrassing Rieka, just like any good father would.

  “This report details a particularly suspicious sighting,” Gemma explains, still holding up the paper. “I’ll boil it down for you, but you are welcome to read the full report yourselves. A group of Icefang soldiers were spotted moving along an interior road with a prison wagon. They were moving east from the area that was previously lands held by the former Lady Josephine.”

  Gemma paused and studied the page once more as if confirming something before she continued speaking.

  “No civilians were seen associated with the group of ten soldiers. Eight mounted on horses and two driving the wagon. Their supplies showed that they were not equipped for long travel, so the spy noted it down as the next village was still several days by horseback at the pace they were traveling. They pulled off the road into a concealed cutoff that he assumed they were camping in despite the early hour, until they unloaded a string of prisoners in chains. Those prisoners were led up into the hills—leaving two guards behind for the horses and the wagons. Since there were no records of keeps, prisons, or villages in that area, the spy who wrote the report abandoned his post to follow them.”

  Gemma moved to set the report down, but instead handed it to Jane when the mouse-eared woman made a requesting gesture. Jane immediately began scanning it, her long, tuft-tipped tail wiggling in the air as she skimmed the decoded report. Gemma didn’t wait for her to finish and instead kept explaining.

  “The scout followed them up along a game-trail that he notes showed signs of relatively regular passage by people. The trail terminated at a small stone keep tucked into the mountains. The construction of the keep is consistent with modern styles, but appeared to be abandoned. He did not risk getting close, as the guards from the prison wagon emerged shortly after without their prisoners. They then returned to the wagon, mounted up once more, and rode away as if this was a regular practice for them.”

  “That totally doesn’t sound like some kind of illicit operation or hidden political prison,” Kassandra growled as soon as the queen stopped talking. “Maybe an off-the-books mine or something?”

  “Aye,” Gemma said with another sigh and a shake of her head. “And it is well done, because nothing my spies in other places could gather mentioned anything about it. If they weren’t watching the area because of previous sightings of the constructs, then we wouldn’t have noticed at all.”

  “Do we think this is linked to the reports of disappearances in the area?” Shayla asked quietly, her antennae balling up in concern.

  “Possible,” Gemma answered quietly. “But hard to say. The sighting of the prison wagon occurred at such a distance that they couldn’t confirm who was being led away. The fact that they were bound hand and foot, and that the guards did not return with the chains in hand, tells me that they are likely violent prisoners, probably captured criminals. Which, if that is true, then what they are doing isn’t exactly illegal. There are more than a few mines that use prison-labor as a means of punishment, but those are also clearly documented for tax purposes.”

  “And why do we think it’s connected to the constructs?” I asked.

  Jane was actually the one to answer, not Gemma. The mousy scholar’s ears popped upright like signal flags and she answered without looking up from the report in her hands.

  “The scout who saw them take the prisoners in tried to approach the keep since it appeared to be abandoned. He got within what he believes to be a hundred yards of it before an oppressive feeling hit him, like the world around him was holding its breath and waiting for something. Not trained in magic, he decided not to risk detection and backed off to send the report.”

  “That sounds awfully familiar,” I muttered, and Jane looked up to meet my eyes.

  “Like the ruins we’ve been in before?” she asked. “Yeah, it definitely sounds like that. Though that feeling only kicked in once we were deep underground.”

  “So that means we believe we’ve found the source of the constructs, and it seems that someone is either working with or for them, maybe Josephine herself,” I said, using my free hand to rub my chin thoughtfully.

  “That is… doubtful,” Gemma said with a slow shake of her head. “Josephine’s mother was very insistent on the fact that she had punished her daughter and that Josephine was under house-arrest. She would not be able to act without her mother’s knowledge or consent.”

  “Unless it was something she’d already arranged and was operating without her oversight,” Kassandra interjected. “But something like this? I am sorry to disagree with you, majesty, but someone is directing this. There’s no way that soldiers in the Icefang livery would be doing something this suspicious without direct orders.”

  “Which is why I am asking you to look into it,” Gemma said, her gaze turning from the map in front of her to land on me, then skipping to Rieka. “I am requesting that Rieka go to the Icefangs to speak with the spies and scouts. Update yourself on what they have seen and decide from there. I am authorizing you to speak on my behalf under the aegis of ensuring that the dispute with Josephine from the tournament is handled properly. Find out what you can, confirm if this is actually a problem or not, and gather information. I cannot move against one of my nobles without concrete proof. I have enough to judge Josephine, but I want to implicate her mother as well if possible and roll up the whole nasty batch. Liam, I’m trusting Rieka to you.”

  The edges of my vision flashed and text scrolled. It surprised me that the System had decided to present me with a mission from what Gemma was saying, but I understood when I read it and the second mission that flashed into place over.

  That’s definitely going to make this interesting, I thought grimly.

  Protect your companion, Princess Rieka Coldeye, during this critical mission to uncover potential treachery and earn her position as Crown Princess.

  Bonus Reward: Uncover the source of the strange constructs in the countryside and report back to your contracted, Queen Gemma Coldeye.

  Reward - Guardian Skill Unlock

  Bonus Reward - 5000 SP

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