Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1598  Official Decree

Thordak Ironfold was having a bad morning.

The quarterly supply ledger was wrong again, the eastern tunnel's ventilation shaft had collapsed for the third time this season, and the foreman responsible for the repair had sent a runner with a note that read, in its entirety, 'Shaft's busted. Need gold.'

Thordak set the note down on his desk, placed both palms flat on the stone surface, and breathed through his nose until the urge to have the foreman reassigned to latrine duty passed.

He was the Lord Warden of Kharn Moldur, a border fortification carved into the belly of the Greymount range. Seventeen thousand dwarves lived and worked within its tunnels, from the barracks on the upper levels to the ore processing chambers three hundred meters below. The fortress had stood for over six centuries. It had repelled five sieges, an earthquake, and a particularly stubborn infestation of rock crawlers that had taken four months to purge.

It was, by any reasonable assessment, among the most defensible positions on the Alliance's eastern border.

A knock came at the door.

"Enter."

His adjutant stepped in. A young dwarf, beard still patchy, armor freshly polished in the way that told Thordak the boy cared more about looking like a soldier than being one.

"Lord Warden. Priority dispatch from the Council." The boy held the sealed scroll at arm's length, as if the urgency in the red wax might be contagious. "Marked for all border garrison commanders."

Thordak took the scroll, cracked the seal, and unrolled it across his desk.

He read the first sectionline and stopped.

By order of the Joint Council of Elvardia, Myrasyn Ael'vyrn Queen of the Elven Throne and Co-Ruler of the Alliance of Elvardia, is under formal investigation for high treason against the Alliance. Ratified by majority vote, twelve to three.

Her sovereign authority has been suspended pending the outcome of the inquiry. All decisions and decrees issued under her name are frozen until further notice. Any citizen acting on orders from the suspended queen without Council authorization is to be detained on sight.

Thordak set the scroll down.

"Those bark-fetishists," he muttered. He reached for the flagon of ale on the shelf behind his chair, poured himself a generous measure, and took a long pull. "I told Grennik. I told him five centuries ago. 'You don't ally with people who live high in the trees, that's psychopathic behavior,' I said. 'They've got sap where their loyalty should be. How can we trust women who refuse to wear boots?' Did he listen?"

The adjutant said nothing, because he'd learned that when Lord Warden Ironfold asked questions in that tone, he wasn't looking for answers.

Thordak wiped the foam from his mustache and picked the scroll back up.

Furthermore, the Council has classified the following individual as a continental-level threat to all Alliance territories and holdings.

Designation: The Primordial Villain.

Physical identifiers: Human male, young adult, dark armor of unknown make, piercing red eyes.

The following capabilities have been confirmed through direct battlefield observation and post-engagement analysis:

Elemental Mastery. The subject commands seven elements - Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, Ice, Lightning, and Magma. His control operates at a depth that exceeds any Elemental Sovereign on record. He does not rely on conventional casting. His elements respond to movement and will alone, with no observable gestures or incantation.

Necromantic Abilities. The subject is capable of harvesting the dead and raising them as combat-ready constructs within moments of death. These constructs retain the combat abilities they possessed in life. He has further demonstrated the ability to strengthen these constructs beyond their original living capabilities. The upper limit of the forces he can raise is unknown.

Enslavement. The subject is believed to possess an evolved form of the Slave Master class that operates without any known precedent. He requires no collar, no binding artifact, and no physical medium of any kind. Subjects under his control obey commands issued while unconscious.

All border garrison commanders are hereby ordered to raise defensive readiness to full alert. King Ragnar believes the Primordial Villain will seek reprisal for the recent engagement. However, the subject sustained catastrophic injuries during the battle, including the loss of both arms, severe mana depletion, and internal damage. Military intelligence estimates a recovery window of no less than one week. All border fortifications are to use this period to reinforce wards, fortify chokepoints, and prepare evacuation corridors for civilian populations.

Do not engage the Primordial Villain with massed forces. Every soldier below level 60 sent against him is a soldier added to his ranks. Numerical superiority is a liability, not an advantage. If contact is made, fortify, delay, and report. Reinforcements will be dispatched from the capital.

By the authority of the Joint Council of the Alliance of Elvardia.

Signatories: King Ragnar Stonehelm, Sovereign of the Dwarven Throne. Captain Aelindra Ael'vyrn, Commander of the Royal Elven Guard. Lord Grennik Deepforge. Lady Fenris Ashroot…

Thordak set it down again.

He stared at it.

Then he laughed.

It started as a snort, built into a chuckle, and ended as a full belly laugh that shook his chest and made the ale in his flagon ripple. He slapped the desk with one meaty palm and leaned back in his chair until the wood groaned.

"Elemental mastery deeper than Elemental Sovereigns." He took another drink. "Necromantic abilities that defy logic. Slave powers that work without a collar." He wiped his eyes. "Has the Council gone senile? Grennik's finally lost his mind, hasn't he? The whole lot of them, sitting up there in their chambers, jumping at shadows."

He tapped it with one thick finger.

"One man. They want me to fortify Kharn Moldur, a six-hundred-year-old mountain fortress, against one man." He shook his head.

"The lad's missing his arms and they want me to panic." Thordak drained the rest of his ale and set the flagon down with a satisfying thud. "Write the acknowledgment. 'Dispatch received, readiness protocols initiated,' whatever keeps the Council happy. And tell the foreman if that ventilation shaft isn't fixed by sundown, I'll send his firstborn son to the front and take his prettiest daughter as a concubine."

The adjutant saluted and left.

Thordak leaned back in his chair, laced his fingers across his stomach, and allowed himself a moment of peace. The rock around him was solid and old, here before the dwarves carved into it. He could feel the mountain the way every dwarf could, a comforting weight, a blanket of granite between him and whatever the world decided to throw at him.

The torch on his wall flickered.

Thordak glanced at it. The flame steadied and he looked away.

It flickered again.

He frowned. The ventilation in his office ran on a separate system from the eastern tunnels, fed by a dedicated shaft that hadn't failed in thirty years. There was no draft. No reason for the flame to-

The fire died all at once, as if something had pressed a thumb over it, and the office plunged into darkness broken only by the faint luminescent moss that lined the ceiling.

Thordak stood.

Something was pressing against his skin. He couldn't name it. Every dwarf who'd spent their life underground developed a sensitivity to pressure changes, air shifts, the subtle signs that the mountain around you was doing something new. It was how you survived cave-ins. It was how you knew when a tunnel was about to give.

This felt like the mountain had gone still.

Thordak's hand found the warhammer displayed proudly on the walls.

The stone beneath his boots trembled.

A deep, resonant vibration that he felt in his teeth, his marrow, the base of his skull. He'd lived through earthquakes. They were chaotic, directionless, the mountain shaking itself apart. This had a source. It was coming from above, pressing downward through the full depth of the Greymount as if the rock meant nothing, as if the fortress that had survived everything the world had thrown at it was just... stone.

Somewhere above him, muffled by rock but sharp enough to reach his ears, an alarm horn sounded.

Then another.

Then a third, from a different sector, and a fourth, and the horns kept multiplying until they blurred into a single wailing chord that filled the tunnels.

Thordak ran.

He reached the stairwell at the end of his corridor and took the steps three at a time, his armor clanging against the walls, his hammer in his fist. Other dwarves were pouring into the stairwells from every level, soldiers, miners, engineers, all of them moving upward because the horns were coming from the surface and every instinct in a dwarf's body said go toward the threat, not away from it.

He hit the surface level and shouldered through the blast doors into the observation hall, a wide chamber with narrow windows cut into the mountainside. Daylight streamed through them, bright and cold, and a dozen dwarves were already pressed against the openings, staring out.

Nobody was speaking.

"Out of the way." He shouldered between two soldiers who didn't react to being shoved by their Lord Warden. Thordak crossed the hall and reached the nearest window.

The sky above Kharn Moldur had gone dark.

A figure stood in the sky above the fortress, motionless, arms at its sides. Dark armor that drank the morning light. A black saber hovering near his back without anything holding it there.

Red eyes, burning in the shadow of the sky, looking down at six hundred years of mountain fortress the way a man looks at an anthill.

"No…" Thordak shuddered. "Impossible…"

He was here.