The first Tuesday of fall, I sat with my horde swarming around me, almost time to return. I stopped one short of my capabilities for the day, and now had 111 Skeletal Laborers. Indeed, their numbers had increased exactly at the rate anticipated, but having that many for real was an extremely gratifying sight. My white locusts descended on now gloppy flesh, stripping away the putrid muscles, delivering their future brethren to me at a breakneck pace.

Sweeping over the battlefield, by stopping the bugs for ourselves, we seemed to have invited the scavengers back. It became a little troublesome recalling a few skeletons when returning, but it seemed the sudden appearance of animated bones when trying to get a meal promptly scared them off again. Clearing a path, thousands upon thousands of goblins had died, but the pickings were starting to become sparse. With large numbers, and efficient—though grating— micromanagement, the bony workers cleaned up over a thousand bodies each day.

Letting the Skeletal Laborers hide away, I looked at the remaining undead. To my right, Clavi and Hans und Freunds played about. Minus Manny who calmly waited by my side, as I idly scratched him with light touch of death energy. Zog and Rosie lay on the ground dumbly, staring at each other. The hand spider didn’t even have eyes, how were they doing that?

Haldi, Ru Xi, and Ter practiced sparring with each other. They weren’t exactly capable of learning this way, but think of it as a mental exercise—despite the fact they didn’t really think. Their ‘connection’ with movements grew stronger when repeated, so they would be able to execute moves faster. They were unable to learn anything further from each other, or try anything new though, and blandly clashed their swords against one another, dinging and denting the weapons. Well they were just trash I picked up, so that was okay.

In front, 14 imbued Skeletal Elites stood at the ready. They were really just lined up though. I can't say it wasn't a pleasing sight; not to the extent of the bones I used for Clavi, they were still composed of sturdy materials.

That meant aside from the Skeletal Laborers, I had 26 undead minions. I wasn't going to be able to fit anything more into my Inventory. A mere 100 slots with no expansion lattices in sight, carrying around even just the higher quality undead was becoming less feasible.

Dropping my other items would technically free up space, but the value of each minny wasn't so great I was willing to take the hit of variety. That random stone helped me save Vamp during the battle, and even the rags showed their use. Would having another Skeletal Elite really be worth the trade off? I was already trying to keep them out of sight and have a low profile, there weren't many times they could be used yet.

Saddened, in the end I left my Skeletal Elites, Zog, and his personal hand spider to hide with the Laborers. The Freshmen were at a slightly higher level than the Skeletal Elites, due to multiple refinements per bone, I kept them by my side. Leaving 127 minnies to hide among the shrinking charnel ground, I returned to the village.

Surprisingly, Rion showed himself, detached from his usual contingent. Tagalong Girl, in the true spirit of her name, managed to stick by his side, exceptional as always. I know I wanted him to feel a bit more familial responsibility, but he looked downright dour at the moment. Rarely do I believe in moderation, but this was definitely one of those time. Rion’s shift to a serious temperament showed that something happened while I was out.

“Alric, where have you been?” Aaand his petulant and whiny voice cancelled out the dire mood. I cut him some slack since he hadn’t hit puberty.

“Every other day for over a week, I do the same thing...Alright, things do seem a little serious, what’s up?” Tagalong Girl’s eyes were narrowed into a half-glare as well, the other half made up of expectation. Rion never came complaining before either, so I cut the jibes.

“Paladins!” Rion managed to whisper and shout at the same time. The boy was a wonder. Hey wait, that did sound pretty important. “We saw some paladins while you were out today! They usually don’t come around until after we’ve finished harvesting. Dad and you said that we can’t let them find out about Ria right?”

“Oioioi, calm down, take a breath.” I held my hands up, trying to keep him from hyperventilating. “Are the paladins in the village or did they just pass by?”

“They...they just passed through. But they’re still coming through? Who knows when they’ll visit the village! They might find Ri, and, and…” I whapped him on the back of the head.

“Calm down. Then, explain the situation.” Having knocked some sense into him, Rion settled down to inform me in a more paced fashion. There was not actually an immediate threat of being discovered, so there was time to do things in an all-encompassing manner.

I will lead with the conglomeration of knowledge that I had gained on the tax season up to that point. There are a few foundational premises to recount before beginning though; as Derriad and the world it existed in is vastly different than Earth. Vast being one of the more important points.

Before experiencing it, such massive scales are hard to understand on a personal level. While space travel may be a thing, the featureless void of space and incredible speeds make it a poor comparison. Instead, I would recommend one of the first VR games, Excelsinas. Level cap is a bit low, and mod compatibility is low, but it does a marvelous job dealing with epic scales. Of course you peasants readings to this as a historical document—or who am I kidding, a work of fiction—probably aren't interested in playing archaic video games. Your loss.

The Meskian-Derrish border stretches around 50,000 miles; large does not do it justice. Warfare is the gradual process of claiming the enemy’s territory, and with such swathes of land, defending is an untenable strategy. The game is to take what your enemy hasn't protected, and protect what your enemy tries to take. Given just how much everything there was, a few continents worth of land would be ravaged in the process, but that wasn't much in the grand scheme of things.

Taxes could always be raised to recoup the costs.

This is where the idea of sacrifice for humanity(i.e. The church) comes into play. In general wars were infrequent, as it could take a year to reach the border, not exactly something many want to put up with. Yet the majority will, and with the numbers these mega-countries possess, that is enough. Pillage, then burn, is the church’s way to deal with dissenters. A hundred thousand towns existed for every one burned down, and in the isolated chambers of each territory revolution was unable to gain enough momentum to face the hammer of the Grand Cathedral.

It's a very inelegant way of dealing with the population, but what works, works.

How this all ties back to the matter at hand, is that for the church, when collecting taxes even though they expected coin, it didn't matter if it came back with a little blood on it. The paladins and priests set out to bless homes, but mostly it was door to door racketeering.

You'd think that with such vast resources at their disposal, they could skimp out a little on bleeding the smallfolk dry. I suppose that in their minds it was more along the lines of penny pinching by the billions meant $$Profit!$$.

What I gathered from Rion was get ready to jump at shadows, or get ready to run with them on my heels. They would be very thorough, and not only those in charge of extorting the towns, but those that passed through before and after. With my knowledge of the posssies that formed in the Temple, and how tight knit at least some circles seemed to be, they likely cross-referenced with each other.

Some guy show up after he ‘left’ the village? Of course the paladins didn't see him, he ‘left’ isn't that what you said?

The large majority of malice I could expect to come from individual and not institutional greed. Like how the Poran came in unquestioned, real members of the church had domineering authority. Were they to overstep their bounds and destroy the village out of greed, there likely wouldn't be any repercussions. They weren't a golden goose so much as a normal chicken. At the very least this meant they didn't expect much and rarely went overboard.

Those passing through couldn't be kept off for long. It was a low chance individually, but over the course of harvest season, they would inevitably check the shack where Ria and I lived. They may have just been passing through today, but I needed to proceed with caution.

“*Urgh, this is going to be a real pain to deal with*. Rion, how often are these groups going to come by?” Feeling exasperated, I needed to know if my departure date needed to be moved up, or if we could get by a little longer by being more careful.

“Twice a week usually, but this time’s different, they're here a lot earlier than usual!”

“I hear you, I hear you.” Moving to the stone seats to sit, it became a nice area for me as the others avoided it. I pondered some more before responding. ”Things...should be fine for the next week at least. That’s when the village is actually expected to pay taxes. This isn’t a place paladins would want to stay very long, it’s rather lacking in *amenities*. So long as nothing too out of the ordinary happens here, the chances are extremely low that they’ll find your sister before next week.”

The members of the church were definitely the demanding sort, but you don’t ask a dog for eggs. Unless one of the two theoretical groups had some sadistic troublemakers, everything would be fine.

“But what about after? Then where will she go?” Ah yes, the curse of knowledge. I suppose I’d been a little too dismissive of Rion and forgot to properly evaluate his knowledge base; I hadn’t told him of the plan, and Pan didn’t see fit to tell him either. He was still a kid after all.

Actually I hadn’t told Tagalong Girl when we were leaving either.

Or Ria.

At all.

…

…

Get it together man! This stuff doesn’t just happen, no one else is trying to pick up the slack!

Freezing my face into one of contemplation, I wondered how to break it to Rion. He had just recently started to care more for his sister again; getting over the whole disappearing brother act together. Then again, this was more for her well being so it would be more understandable. I felt like I should inform Ria first, but then again there weren’t really any other options. I suppose we could make our own little Golgatha, but I’d rather not. Rion could just learn about it first, and since Tagalong Girl was here as well, hey, I could save some time.

subtly tugged at her sleeves as a heads up. If she broke her facade in shock, that would be hard to explain. My ability to plan ahead was not very consistent.

“Mmm, yes about that…” Trailing off a little, I dropped Tagalong Girl a hint, and spoke slowly to give Rion time to grasp the situation. “I have discussed the matter with Pan. Thing is, the village doesn’t really have what’s needed to cure her. The academy I came from might have some clues, and at the very least would be a safer place for her.” Alric, you lying liar that lies. At least the intimation slowly brought forth the plan, and would settle his heart some. “Staying in the village is too risky, especially with the paladins mucking about. Finding temporary refuge until they leave isn’t feasible in the long run.”

“Wait, you mean she has to leave? You’re leaving?” Saddened confusion, there was only emotional damage control.

“Ahh, don’t give me that look, brat. Ria’s not going to get better here now is she? You were just saying how dangerous it was with the paladins. It’s not a safe place.”

“Y-yeah, but…”

“Don’t be depressed kiddo, things happen, you have to move on. It’s in her best interests to move on, it’s not a sad thing.” I tried to say conciliatory phrases, but mucked it up a little. “Well, it is sad, but it’s the better thing to do, so there’s no need to feel regret.” I didn’t know if I was really explaining it in a way that a kid could understand. “Don’t worry too much, we won’t be gone forever. There’ll be a time when your sister comes back eventually. Be patient, things work out.”

I ruffled his hair a bit after standing up, and he was feeling too down to avoid it like he usually did.

“I do like it here and wanted to stay longer, but you have to move when the time is right. We’ll probably be here for one more week, make the most of it. Not tonight though, you should go collect yourself so you don’t come up to your sister blubbering so much.” Also so that I had a chance to tell her the plan. But what I said aloud counted too.

As Rion gazed towards the ground, Tagalong Girl looked my way. Nodding in affirmation, I made a few gestures to indicate we should meet up soon. There was still time to change her mind if she wanted to, but I doubted she would. For the most part I needed to make sure that she was on top of things as well.

She accompanied Rion back home. I was left to my evening duties of feeding Ria.

A/N:AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

By 'beginning of the end' I mean we are now about 3/4s of the way through the opening paragraph. Then we have to do a bit more exposition, introduce the second main character, and then we can really get started! I hope you like words. Since you're over 150k into this I would assume you are.

Daaang, at least nine of you read the unedited thing. And I thought I moved pretty quick for being on a phone