Chapter 26 – In Castle.

I wasn’t going against Halim’s plans as I didn’t know what were aims and goals of his. But as an official of Ministry of Defense even as an intern I was able to get more information about what was happening around the kingdom. I was attending roundtables held by different ministries. The most important of these meetings was with the officials of the Ministry of Finance. In short, the economy of the kingdom has improved so much that the well-established paradigms of millennia were changing and evolving in few years in different extremes. The root cause of the problem was the king himself who had established the kingdom. He was not young anymore, actually he was not attending anything at all. I would even question his sanity. Halim felt as if he should continue King Dar’s legacy and he was involved in matters of daily life to foreign affairs and education. King was like a puppet who signed what was brought to him. The greatest thing about Halim was that he knew if he didn’t act now, there will be no chance later after King Dar dies. He was doing everything what he was capable of building the kingdom by making sure that the people of different tribes were transforming to be the citizens of the kingdom. I would totally back him up if he could do that but there was a problem. That problem was our tribe, Kali’s tribe. Most of the warriors and mages who protected this kingdom either in south or north were from our tribe and King held the title of Elder of the Kali tribe. Now, without our tribe, nobody would listen to the king. But with our tribe involved in the process, kingdom was not a real kingdom. As a monarchy (at least Tat’s of the east did so), the position of king was passed to the crown prince. In our case it was Halim. Though if he was crowned as the king and the next elder of the Kali tribe went against him, he would be the king without the crown. Now back to the economics; Halim was making sure that less warriors and mages stayed back in the original village established by Kali and moved to different areas of the kingdom. They would be given positions of power in different parts of the kingdom according to their reputation back in the village. The rest or most of who was left were on posts guarding the kingdom. They didn’t work anymore. In sense, they were so involved in matters of guarding and power held in different positions they were accustomed to free money that Halim was paying to them. Tribesmen thought they were doing what they like but actually Halim was intentionally degrading them by paying them more and more each and every year.

In a decade or two, I thought there would be no more tribes around. There would be citizens of the kingdom. If he was going with this plan, I wouldn’t support him but I didn’t have enough power to stand up to him. So I thought I would follow the path which destiny has engraved for me for now. I could take over the position of the elder if I felt so in the future; demon knight’s mentioning of the dragon had more importance to me than these tribal matters.

There was an exchange of the mail with the demon lord. Halim told that in a matter of few months there will be an envoy sent to demon lands and I will participate in it. I was being a good boy for now, and waiting for my chance to come.

I never let go of the training. I would run daily. Push-ups and pull-ups were part of the training program. 5th of Elaisis came again, and I turned 16. I grew in height to 5’ 8’’. I would go once in a while to academy to meet Mariette, Roia and Elise. I did meet Zara whenever I was going to Ministry of Finance. There were some very beautiful girls at Ministry of Defense, but I did my best to stay away from them and keep everything at workmate level.

I was regularly writing to my mother. My father had gone a level up in drinking and was troubling my mother but I assume she was happy with him. Lei was engaged to a guy from a normal family like ours. She had written once to me about her choice. She wrote that she wanted to marry the guy because she loved him. I wrote back that I would do my best to attend their wedding, in case I would be in demon lands I would give her an expensive gift. In my mails, I told them that I may be months away from them but if they thought they need my help I would go to them even if I had to massacre the whole continent.

13th of Arkam we left to 3rd bridge. The people who will be representing the Kingdom of Kali consisted of me, Ule (commander of 3rd bridge), Araxis from the ministry of foreign affairs, Elana of Magi Vallis, Dralan of the Ministry of Defense and Anthon from King’s apparatus.

Our group met Ule at the 3rd bridge. We passed 3rd bridge in 8 days. Anika the succubus was waiting for us on the other side of bridge. We met her and began our journey towards the castle where the Demon Lord was residing.

We walked more than two weeks in the desert. Desert ended and we went through barren lands. The cities were different in design to the usual ones that we had in our kingdom.

Demons had their way of life which was similar in a way to what we had. They were still living in a tribal manner. There were large and small demonic tribes. On our way, I met Karan who was the leader of his tribe which had 40 members only. We chatted with him for a bit and left to castle.

Anika told us that there is not that much left to castle. We arrived in castle in 2 days after leaving Karan’s tribe. I still do not know why we didn’t take balloon ship with us for ease of travel.

The weather got so hot at some point that we took most of our clothes up from the waist. Anika wasn’t sweating a bit. We came to a place which was boiling with lavas. The land was in cracks in many places all around and lava was streaming through the cracks. The castle of the Demon Lord was surrounded by those lava streams. We entered the castle. It was still hot. I wondered what kind of being the Demon Lord is to live in a place like this. Anika began to sweat too.

We went through many rooms and arrived in a large hall. It had many doors side by side inside it. There was a large double-door on the opposite side. The castle overall had a magnificent design. It was made only out of rocks but they were carved in an interesting way with almost live pictures of hybrid animals, demons and other creatures.

Anika showed us the massive double-doors and told us to wait and enter to Demon Lord’s presence after the doors opened. She left us. Both doors had dark angels carved on them so realistically that you could mistake them for real ones. The doors opened and we entered. The room was carved in red carpet. The room was massive. 15 meters or more in height. There was a throne and the demon knight which we had met near the 2nd bridge.

[Knight]: Welcome to demon lands. I’m Kimbra the Demon Lord who rules the southlands.

Each of us introduced ourselves in respective manner.

[Kimbra]: You have travelled a lot and you must be hungry and tired. Eat well and sleep. I’ll meet you all tomorrow.

Anika appeared behind us and we went to eat. Later on she showed us to our rooms. I was given a big room. I think there was not a small room in the castle.

Next: Chapter 27 - Ignis Tribe