The next morning, Drake found his new agony bracelet—a black wristband with ominous red skulls painted at equal intervals—and its instructions waiting outside his door, with his breakfast. At this point, he barely batted an eye at the torture device. This world was his life now, and a magical bracelet that inflicted agony was just another part of his day.
After he enjoyed a delicious meal of delicious sausage, yummy eggs, and fresh fruit in his master bedroom (being a manor lord continued to rock in regards to breakfast) he read the bracelet’s directions. Which, of course, involved blood. It was always blood with these people.
Still, binding the bracelet to his will was as simple as dripping a few drops of blood on it, which he obtained by poking his finger with a letter opener. Each bracelet could only be bound to a controller one time, which meant he was lucky Dickcheese hadn’t bound the bracelet ahead of him. This also prevented subjects from binding the bracelet to themselves.
Now that he controlled the bracelet, according to the directions, he had four commands. Touching the bracelet and saying “lock” would lock it around a subject’s wrist. Touching the bracelet and saying “remove” would open it.
He tested those commands, and the bracelet, on himself with some trepidation. Once on his wrist he simply could not get the bracelet off. It tightened physically when he attempted to pull on it. Fortunately, “remove” snapped it open without issue.
Finally, there were two spoken phrases he had to set manually, one to inflict pain and one to stop it. Neither of these required touching the bracelet and also, for obvious reasons, suggested using combinations of words he wouldn’t often use. After some consideration, he settled on “By the power of Grayskull” to activate it, and “Stop” to stop it.
He wasn’t worried about stopping the bracelet by accident. He wanted stopping it to be as easy as possible. And unless he started quoting episodes of He-Man randomly in casual conversation, there was little chance he would rat out on accident.
There was, of course, another problem. He wasn’t quite sure how he’d say “stop” as a dire rat. Could rats even speak? Still, he could figure all that out once they arranged the field test. If it worked, perhaps he could find a more reliable way to activate his rarity.
Shortly after he finished fiddling with his agony bracelet, there was a knock on his door. Lydia, of course. When he opened the door, she offered a curious look.
“Landon just came by and said ‘The project is finished’. Did you give him a project, lord?”
Drake grinned as he remembered his command from several days back, one he’d given when he was bored and between murder attempts. “Oh, you bet I did.”
“What was it?”
“I’m not telling you.”
Lydia nodded. “Of course, lord.”
“But I’m going to show you.”
She cocked an eyebrow.
“Follow me.” He tucked the bracelet into his pocket for safekeeping and led her into the manor. He’d been studying the floor plans as well.
He was pleased when he led her down to the cellar without issue, and shortly after, the grain room he’d set aside for his special project. As he led Lydia toward a closed wooden door, however, the sound of fresh slipper falls echoed behind them.
“Loooord! I’m ready for my shift now!”
Drake sighed. Emily must have heard they were coming down here, so of course she’d wanted to tag along. He could ask her to do something else, like clean the windows, but that would be just petty. Besides. She, more than anyone, might enjoy playing with his new toys.
Emily had just joined them when Lydia opened the door and ushered him into the small room beyond. It had been an old grain storeroom, and as Drake looked around, he found it thoroughly swept out. His folks had been busy.
The only furniture in the room was a single table, square and large enough to sit down people on each side. On that table was everything he’d asked for. Perfect.
When he’d learned that Landon, one of his male blood thralls, had a rarity for shaping wood, and that Gregor, another of his male blood thralls, had the rarity that easily bound objects together, he’d immediately realized he had an opportunity on his hands.
An opportunity to have his manor’s people build him a scale diorama of his manor.
He approached the table and model and looked it over. While it had no interior—he hadn’t requested one—it was easily recognizable as Gloomwood Manor. It didn’t have glass windows, but Gregor or Landon had painted the structure as if it did.
He could see the main road, the front gate, the walls, the stables and the hedge maze and... everything. This diorama was perfect. If offered a bird’s eye view of the land and structures he owned, giving him a firm grasp of his manor’s tactical situation.
He started at the main road. His people had created a short stretch leading due south that, in real life, was wide enough for a wagon. That, he knew, was the only road that led through the silverwood, the tangled and near impassable mass of towering silver trees that surrounded his manor.
While the road remained clear in peacetime, one order from him would have his vero close the woods. In a matter of minutes they could turn that single road from the only path through the forest to a mass of branches, roots, and brambles. They could bring the jaws of the forest in on either side of invaders, and Drake would hate to be those guys.
Next came the front gate. It looked to be simple wrought iron, but Lydia had assured him the bars and lock were made of ferrocite, which, in this world, was a magic-proof metal that was almost impossible to melt. Zarovian smiths smelted ferrocite near volcanos, since natural forges were the only ones that got hot enough to work with it.
The nearly indestructible gate could only be opened from a gatehouse on the inside, and only by one who knew how to operate a complex locking mechanism. The combination was known only to his battle maids. Even the zarovians did not have it, which was interesting. It suggested old Dickcheese had not fully trusted his army of lizardmen.
A tall stone wall stretched out on either side of the gate and completely enclosed the manor grounds. While it did not have barbed wire, since that did not exist here, it did have poisoned spikes. There was also no back gate. Only one gate existed, a security measure, but he had his secret tunnel in the kitchens to get outside if he needed it.
The stables were located midway between the gates and the manor, and there were several other buildings as well. He’d need to learn their purpose, but at least he knew those buildings were there. His people had created everything to scale just as he’d ordered.
Beyond the gate and stables was the garden/hedge maze he’d seen when he first arrived, where he had confronted the Proudglade knights. Beyond that was the manor itself. It sat in the center of the table. His manor grounds included a lot of empty space.
The walls that enclosed the manor grounds stood a long way from the manor. Between the manor and the wall was a huge, flat, open space without any trees or even bushes. That meant even if assassins somehow got over the tall wall with poison spikes on top of it, they would have nowhere to hide as they approached the manor itself.
This scale diorama also made clear Gloomwood Manor was not a perfect rectangle. While the manor was mostly right angles, there were a number of places where rooms bulged out or sank in. In the center of his manor was another entire courtyard.
He’d given a speech in the courtyard before and walked through it, but he’d seen it from the ground. It was neat to see it to scale. Based on his observations in person and what he saw below, the inner courtyard was about the size of a football field.
His manor surrounded the football field, and unlike the outer silhouette, the inner portion was a true rectangle. The manor itself was also far thicker on the south side—the “front”—and north side—the “back”. The back was where the zarovian barracks sat.
Thanks to Lydia’s patient explanations, he knew the side stretches of the manor included many rooms as well, including bedrooms for his employees. This model, of course, didn’t include all the cellars and tunnels beneath the manor since they weren’t pertinent.
This was awesome. He loved this. Gregor and Landon must have worked all day and all night for days. He would definitely give them a bonus.
Emily gawked, wide-eyed, and then walked slowly around the table with her jaw hanging open. “It’s a mini-Gloomwood Manor!”
He grinned her way. “You like it, huh?”
She looked as thrilled as a child seeing her first dollhouse. She even leaned dangerously over the scale trees to point at a painted window on the manor. “Lydia! Look! That’s my room right there! Can we paint a tiny me right there?”
Lydia simply sighed. “This is what you requested from Landon?”
“And Gregor. Is it accurate?”
“Highly accurate, lord. I cannot say if it is entirely to scale, but I have no doubt it captures the details in excellent relation to each other. Do you plan to...” She seemed at a loss.
“Play with it?” Drake’s grin widened. “Oh yeah. But not in the way you think.”
Lydia appeared nonplussed. “Of course not, lord.”
He looked at Emily. “Hey, murdermaid.”
She snapped to attention. “I love that title!”
“Good, because it’s yours now. Is there a box underneath the table?”
She dropped down and peered below. “Found it!”
“Pull it out and put it on the table, but only the part that’s not green.”
His people had recreated Gloomwood Manor and its grounds out to 100 paces into the trees, but not further than that. Given the size of the table, that left just enough room for Emily to place the box on the table. She settled it there.
“Now open it,” Drake ordered.
She opened the box with hopeful eyes. However, she frowned as she peered inside. “I don’t know what these are. Puzzle pieces?”
“Take them out and place them on the table. Line them up by visual types.”
She nodded with fresh determination, then began to pull flat “pieces” out of the box. In no time at all she had assembled eight red triangles, five small white cylinders, a single standing black rectangle, and ten different small green squares, like dice.
There were also a number of larger squares in different colors. He hadn’t been sure what color dyes Landon had access to, so had simply instructed him to use a variety. Drake spotted orange, purple, yellow, and an odd pink. His thralls had cleverly used colors that didn’t exist on the more detailed pieces to make them easier to distinguish.
He was once again satisfied with the work of his people. He would add more pieces as he recruited more soldiers, but for now, these would do. He walked around to where Emily had placed the pieces and pointed at the two neat rows of red triangles.
“Zarovians,” he said.
Emily followed the direction of his finger, then gasped. “These are tokens!”
“That’s right.” Next, he pointed at one of the five white cylinders. “Battle maids.” The cylinders were unmarked, but he would add letters to them later. One for each maid.
Emily grinned in delight. “So that white cylinder is me?”
“One is.” He pointed at a single black rectangle. “And that’s Sachi.”
Lydia cocked an eyebrow. “Do you mean a feral, lord?”
“Nope. Just Sachi.”
Lydia smiled.
“And here? These little green cubes? Vero.”
“We have many more vero than that,” Emily said. “And what happened to the rest of the zarovians? Are they all dead?”
“Some of our forces have so many units I decided to approximate them. One of those red triangles could represent two zarovians, or five, or whatever we decided for our war game. Same with the green cubes for the vero. We can figure it out.”
“But each battle maid gets her own token! Or... do you plan to recruit more?”
“Maybe? But not right now. Right now, you five are one of a kind.”
Emily grinned wide. “This is why you are my favorite lord.”
“This whole construct is very interesting,” Lydia said politely. “As are the play pieces. However, perhaps you could finally tell me what it’s for?”
“Sort of.” This was the fun part. “Now, Lydia. We’re going to play a game.”
Author's Note: Next week, Drake ends up with a hangover.
Have a great weekend, folks! A new free short story How Much Would You Like This to Hurt? is now up on the Patreon. It details how Valentia (with a little help from Sachi) escaped her Redbow captors before they met up with Drake, Anna, and Jeremy.
Read Ahead on the Patreon
Chat on the Discord
The next morning, Drake found his new agony bracelet—a black wristband with ominous red skulls painted at equal intervals—and its instructions waiting outside his door, with his breakfast. At this point, he barely batted an eye at the torture device. This world was his life now, and a magical bracelet that inflicted agony was just another part of his day.
After he enjoyed a delicious meal of delicious sausage, yummy eggs, and fresh fruit in his master bedroom (being a manor lord continued to rock in regards to breakfast) he read the bracelet’s directions. Which, of course, involved blood. It was always blood with these people.
Still, binding the bracelet to his will was as simple as dripping a few drops of blood on it, which he obtained by poking his finger with a letter opener. Each bracelet could only be bound to a controller one time, which meant he was lucky Dickcheese hadn’t bound the bracelet ahead of him. This also prevented subjects from binding the bracelet to themselves.
Now that he controlled the bracelet, according to the directions, he had four commands. Touching the bracelet and saying “lock” would lock it around a subject’s wrist. Touching the bracelet and saying “remove” would open it.
He tested those commands, and the bracelet, on himself with some trepidation. Once on his wrist he simply could not get the bracelet off. It tightened physically when he attempted to pull on it. Fortunately, “remove” snapped it open without issue.
Finally, there were two spoken phrases he had to set manually, one to inflict pain and one to stop it. Neither of these required touching the bracelet and also, for obvious reasons, suggested using combinations of words he wouldn’t often use. After some consideration, he settled on “By the power of Grayskull” to activate it, and “Stop” to stop it.
He wasn’t worried about stopping the bracelet by accident. He wanted stopping it to be as easy as possible. And unless he started quoting episodes of He-Man randomly in casual conversation, there was little chance he would rat out on accident.
There was, of course, another problem. He wasn’t quite sure how he’d say “stop” as a dire rat. Could rats even speak? Still, he could figure all that out once they arranged the field test. If it worked, perhaps he could find a more reliable way to activate his rarity.
Shortly after he finished fiddling with his agony bracelet, there was a knock on his door. Lydia, of course. When he opened the door, she offered a curious look.
“Landon just came by and said ‘The project is finished’. Did you give him a project, lord?”
Drake grinned as he remembered his command from several days back, one he’d given when he was bored and between murder attempts. “Oh, you bet I did.”
“What was it?”
“I’m not telling you.”
Lydia nodded. “Of course, lord.”
“But I’m going to show you.”
She cocked an eyebrow.
“Follow me.” He tucked the bracelet into his pocket for safekeeping and led her into the manor. He’d been studying the floor plans as well.
He was pleased when he led her down to the cellar without issue, and shortly after, the grain room he’d set aside for his special project. As he led Lydia toward a closed wooden door, however, the sound of fresh slipper falls echoed behind them.
“Loooord! I’m ready for my shift now!”
Drake sighed. Emily must have heard they were coming down here, so of course she’d wanted to tag along. He could ask her to do something else, like clean the windows, but that would be just petty. Besides. She, more than anyone, might enjoy playing with his new toys.
Emily had just joined them when Lydia opened the door and ushered him into the small room beyond. It had been an old grain storeroom, and as Drake looked around, he found it thoroughly swept out. His folks had been busy.
The only furniture in the room was a single table, square and large enough to sit down people on each side. On that table was everything he’d asked for. Perfect.
When he’d learned that Landon, one of his male blood thralls, had a rarity for shaping wood, and that Gregor, another of his male blood thralls, had the rarity that easily bound objects together, he’d immediately realized he had an opportunity on his hands.
An opportunity to have his manor’s people build him a scale diorama of his manor.
He approached the table and model and looked it over. While it had no interior—he hadn’t requested one—it was easily recognizable as Gloomwood Manor. It didn’t have glass windows, but Gregor or Landon had painted the structure as if it did.
He could see the main road, the front gate, the walls, the stables and the hedge maze and... everything. This diorama was perfect. If offered a bird’s eye view of the land and structures he owned, giving him a firm grasp of his manor’s tactical situation.
He started at the main road. His people had created a short stretch leading due south that, in real life, was wide enough for a wagon. That, he knew, was the only road that led through the silverwood, the tangled and near impassable mass of towering silver trees that surrounded his manor.
While the road remained clear in peacetime, one order from him would have his vero close the woods. In a matter of minutes they could turn that single road from the only path through the forest to a mass of branches, roots, and brambles. They could bring the jaws of the forest in on either side of invaders, and Drake would hate to be those guys.
Next came the front gate. It looked to be simple wrought iron, but Lydia had assured him the bars and lock were made of ferrocite, which, in this world, was a magic-proof metal that was almost impossible to melt. Zarovian smiths smelted ferrocite near volcanos, since natural forges were the only ones that got hot enough to work with it.
The nearly indestructible gate could only be opened from a gatehouse on the inside, and only by one who knew how to operate a complex locking mechanism. The combination was known only to his battle maids. Even the zarovians did not have it, which was interesting. It suggested old Dickcheese had not fully trusted his army of lizardmen.
A tall stone wall stretched out on either side of the gate and completely enclosed the manor grounds. While it did not have barbed wire, since that did not exist here, it did have poisoned spikes. There was also no back gate. Only one gate existed, a security measure, but he had his secret tunnel in the kitchens to get outside if he needed it.
The stables were located midway between the gates and the manor, and there were several other buildings as well. He’d need to learn their purpose, but at least he knew those buildings were there. His people had created everything to scale just as he’d ordered.
Beyond the gate and stables was the garden/hedge maze he’d seen when he first arrived, where he had confronted the Proudglade knights. Beyond that was the manor itself. It sat in the center of the table. His manor grounds included a lot of empty space.
The walls that enclosed the manor grounds stood a long way from the manor. Between the manor and the wall was a huge, flat, open space without any trees or even bushes. That meant even if assassins somehow got over the tall wall with poison spikes on top of it, they would have nowhere to hide as they approached the manor itself.
This scale diorama also made clear Gloomwood Manor was not a perfect rectangle. While the manor was mostly right angles, there were a number of places where rooms bulged out or sank in. In the center of his manor was another entire courtyard.
He’d given a speech in the courtyard before and walked through it, but he’d seen it from the ground. It was neat to see it to scale. Based on his observations in person and what he saw below, the inner courtyard was about the size of a football field.
His manor surrounded the football field, and unlike the outer silhouette, the inner portion was a true rectangle. The manor itself was also far thicker on the south side—the “front”—and north side—the “back”. The back was where the zarovian barracks sat.
Thanks to Lydia’s patient explanations, he knew the side stretches of the manor included many rooms as well, including bedrooms for his employees. This model, of course, didn’t include all the cellars and tunnels beneath the manor since they weren’t pertinent.
This was awesome. He loved this. Gregor and Landon must have worked all day and all night for days. He would definitely give them a bonus.
Emily gawked, wide-eyed, and then walked slowly around the table with her jaw hanging open. “It’s a mini-Gloomwood Manor!”
He grinned her way. “You like it, huh?”
She looked as thrilled as a child seeing her first dollhouse. She even leaned dangerously over the scale trees to point at a painted window on the manor. “Lydia! Look! That’s my room right there! Can we paint a tiny me right there?”
Lydia simply sighed. “This is what you requested from Landon?”
“And Gregor. Is it accurate?”
“Highly accurate, lord. I cannot say if it is entirely to scale, but I have no doubt it captures the details in excellent relation to each other. Do you plan to...” She seemed at a loss.
“Play with it?” Drake’s grin widened. “Oh yeah. But not in the way you think.”
Lydia appeared nonplussed. “Of course not, lord.”
He looked at Emily. “Hey, murdermaid.”
She snapped to attention. “I love that title!”
“Good, because it’s yours now. Is there a box underneath the table?”
She dropped down and peered below. “Found it!”
“Pull it out and put it on the table, but only the part that’s not green.”
His people had recreated Gloomwood Manor and its grounds out to 100 paces into the trees, but not further than that. Given the size of the table, that left just enough room for Emily to place the box on the table. She settled it there.
“Now open it,” Drake ordered.
She opened the box with hopeful eyes. However, she frowned as she peered inside. “I don’t know what these are. Puzzle pieces?”
“Take them out and place them on the table. Line them up by visual types.”
She nodded with fresh determination, then began to pull flat “pieces” out of the box. In no time at all she had assembled eight red triangles, five small white cylinders, a single standing black rectangle, and ten different small green squares, like dice.
There were also a number of larger squares in different colors. He hadn’t been sure what color dyes Landon had access to, so had simply instructed him to use a variety. Drake spotted orange, purple, yellow, and an odd pink. His thralls had cleverly used colors that didn’t exist on the more detailed pieces to make them easier to distinguish.
He was once again satisfied with the work of his people. He would add more pieces as he recruited more soldiers, but for now, these would do. He walked around to where Emily had placed the pieces and pointed at the two neat rows of red triangles.
“Zarovians,” he said.
Emily followed the direction of his finger, then gasped. “These are tokens!”
“That’s right.” Next, he pointed at one of the five white cylinders. “Battle maids.” The cylinders were unmarked, but he would add letters to them later. One for each maid.
Emily grinned in delight. “So that white cylinder is me?”
“One is.” He pointed at a single black rectangle. “And that’s Sachi.”
Lydia cocked an eyebrow. “Do you mean a feral, lord?”
“Nope. Just Sachi.”
Lydia smiled.
“And here? These little green cubes? Vero.”
“We have many more vero than that,” Emily said. “And what happened to the rest of the zarovians? Are they all dead?”
“Some of our forces have so many units I decided to approximate them. One of those red triangles could represent two zarovians, or five, or whatever we decided for our war game. Same with the green cubes for the vero. We can figure it out.”
“But each battle maid gets her own token! Or... do you plan to recruit more?”
“Maybe? But not right now. Right now, you five are one of a kind.”
Emily grinned wide. “This is why you are my favorite lord.”
“This whole construct is very interesting,” Lydia said politely. “As are the play pieces. However, perhaps you could finally tell me what it’s for?”
“Sort of.” This was the fun part. “Now, Lydia. We’re going to play a game.”
Author's Note: Next week, Drake ends up with a hangover.
Have a great weekend, folks! A new free short story How Much Would You Like This to Hurt? is now up on the Patreon. It details how Valentia (with a little help from Sachi) escaped her Redbow captors before they met up with Drake, Anna, and Jeremy.
Read Ahead on the Patreon
Chat on the Discord
