An old elven joke, commonly grumbled in the halls of the Imperial Senate: When the ancient ancestors were wiped out by the calamity that reduced the world to corpses and rubble, the first Kerensil was there, offering loans for rebuilding. This was only a slight exaggeration.
Some of the world’s oldest surviving documents were held by the House of Kerensil: deeds and contracts between elven families that were still honored to the present day. Elven dynastic lines rose and fell based on whether or not they had the favor of House Kerensil.
They were an ancient house, who ran the oldest and largest bank in the world, with offices on every continent and diplomatic ties with every country and kingdom, no matter how small. You couldn’t transfer a large sum of money anywhere in the world without the Kerensils knowing about it and probably collecting a fee for the transaction.
There were, of course, frequent internal struggles between the different bloodlines, but because of thousands of years of carefully managed internal marriages, even when one bloodline pushed out another, they were all still Kerensils and the power ultimately remained in the same collective hands. Who exactly controlled the House didn’t really matter to the outside world.
Most of the time, the head of the House could comfortably step back and allow the business to run itself. The bank had its own laws, bureaucracy and structures in place that ensured it would continue to function no matter what happened to the Kerensils themselves.This normally made transitions of power remarkably peaceful. As long as the current family head had a clear heir set to inherit from them, there was almost never a problem.
Normally, Malthus woke just before dawn to begin his very busy daily routine, so he was startled when he woke suddenly in the pitch black of the night to the sound of a shrill bell jingling in his bedroom. What in the world was that bell for? The estate had many alarm bells for different emergencies such as fire, invasion, or political unrest, but Malthus had never heard this one before.
He’d only been the head of the House of Kerensil for ten years, which was hardly any time at all for an elf. His father had been the head of the house house for 234 years, and his grandmother for 320 years before that.There were still a lot of things Malthus had to learn and milestones for him to reach before he’d be considered an experienced businessman, especially because nobody had ever expected him to take on the burden of ruling. There’d never been a cripple like him at the head of the House of Kerensil before.
Elves abhorred a cripple much the same way that they loathed the ugly and feared the very old. They were all an unsightly reminder that old age, infirmity, and death would one day claim them, no matter how beautiful and perfect they’d been in their youth. This meant that the wealthy spent a large part of their riches on maintaining their looks and the illusion of their own youthful perfection for as long as possible. When the illusion could no longer be maintained, they withdrew into isolation. Many elven nobles who died of old age died alone, surrounded by indifferent servants, too ashamed and frightened of their own mortality to be seen by their friends and loved ones.
Those that no amount of magic or cosmetics could improve were locked away in remote asylums and forgotten summer homes, where they could live quietly without disturbing the rest of society, or bringing shame to their Houses.
Sitting up in bed, Malthus lit the lamp at his bedside with a spell, and tugged on the velvet rope that hung nearby, which would alert his chamber valet that he needed assistance.
The valet must have heard the alarm bell from his place in the corridor and been trembling in anticipation of being summoned, because he was at Malthus’ side almost before he’d finished ringing for him.
“What does that bell mean? I didn’t hear it during my training,” The servant asked, as he helped him into his slippers and brought him his dressing gown. His name was Vansh Malla, and he was a young man who’d only just started serving as a chamber valet a few months ago. Of course if Malthus had never heard this bell before the lad would have never heard it either.
“Well, it’s not a fire and we’re not at war, neither literally nor financially,” Malthus said, which seemed to reassure Vansh.
“Oh, well, that’s good,” Vansh said. “But then, what could it be?”
“I’ve no idea either, we’ll have to go to the office to find out,” Malthus answered, adjusting his arm into his forearm crutch before they began the walk from his bedroom to his home office.
Of course Malthus and Vansh weren’t the only ones that had heard the alarm bell going off. By the time they arrived, a whole fleet of servants were waiting for him there, including several security guards and Mr. Darun, his personal secretary, who was dressed similarly to Malthus: a dressing gown hastily thrown over sleep clothes. Unlike the guards and other servants who were part of the night shift, Mr. Darun had been asleep just like Malthus.
It comforted him somewhat that nobody else seemed to know what the alarm was for either. Clearly it had been so long since it had last sounded that nobody currently living recognized it.
“Sorry for making such a ruckus in the middle of the night,” Malthus said to everyone in general. He knew that he had no reason to apologize, and father and mother would have scolded him for lowering himself in such a way, but he felt guilty since the alarm was really only for him to concern himself with, and yet it was disturbing everyone else’s night.
He activated the passive spell embedded in the office door with a touch of one hand, and the doors swung open silently. Malthus stepped through and Mr. Darun and Vansh followed. Like every room in the Kerensil estate, it was beautiful, with high ceilings, marble floors, wall mosaics, big windows and heavy embroidered drapes.
But unlike most other rooms, it wasn’t particularly spacious. This wasn’t due to the room being small, but because there were so many things in the office that it couldn’t be anything but cramped. There were bookshelves lining the walls, as well as bookshelves in tidy free-standing rows, and all of them full of record books and legal documents. There was a small sitting area off to one side, comprised of two sofas and a coffee table for entertaining important guests. There was the entrance to the family vault, a massive metal door four feet thick that remained locked most of the time. Finally there was the corner of the room where Malthus worked, at his antique heirloom desk, with two chairs in front of it for visitors to sit in, and the family’s enormous map of all their property proudly displayed behind it.
The map was what Malthus had specifically come here to check.
It was a floor-to-ceiling tapestry featuring a complex enchantment that showed the position of all of the Kerensil holdings around the world, including banks, businesses, shipments en route on land and vessels out at sea. The buildings of course were stationary, but the things in transit moved around the map on occasion, giving a rough approximation of where they were in the real world.
Parts of the map were colored darker to indicate that it was night time in a given region. When a part of the tapestry changed, the weave of the colored threads rippled and shifted, as if the surface was being re-woven in real time by invisible hands with an invisible loom. It had a somewhat hypnotic effect, and Malthus was fond of watching it when it shifted from night time to day time in a region, or any other big change manifested.
The map loomed large in Malthus' childhood memories. He’d always been fascinated by it, while his younger brother had seemed entirely indifferent to its wonder. Mithrun of course had come and gone from the estate regularly, while Malthus had grown up almost completely homebound. The map probably didn’t seem as impressive under those circumstances… But to Malthus, it had represented a lot of things that existed out in the world that he might never see with his own eyes, even if the decisions his family made everyday controlled them.
It was easy to see what the alarm (that was still jingling incessantly) was for: a symbol for a building belonging to the Kerensils had appeared near Kahka Brud, and clearly something was amiss with it since it was glowing bright red. Malthus tried to dispel the alarm, but to his consternation it refused to obey.
“Why didn’t that do it?” He asked, his face creasing in confusion. "Mr. Darun?"
"That's very odd. Try it again, my lord?" Mr. Darun suggested, yawning into his hand as politely as he could manage.
Malthus took a deep breath, cleared his mind, and attempted to dispel the alarm a second time. Still, nothing happened.
"That's really quite strange," Mr. Darun said. "I'll quiet it until we can find the correct way to properly turn it off, my lord." The older elf gestured with one hand, and cast a silencing spell. The glowing red symbol remained on the map, but the chiming bell finally stopped its non-stop ringing. Malthus heard Vansh sigh with relief.
With the annoying audible part of the alarm taken care of, Malthus turned his full attention to the mysterious symbol on the map. “What is that? It’s in the middle of the water. We don’t have property in the gulf of Kahka Brud…”
Malthus brought a hand up to his face and cast a magnification spell, using his fingers as a sight around one eye as he got a better view of what the marker had written on it. “Mr. Darun, would you please consult the records to see what property 8326 is?”
“Yes, my lord,” Mr. Darun said, crossing the room to the home record vault. These mostly contained some of the Kerensil’s most important documents, and of course there was an entire warehouse in the city dedicated to the archiving of all the other documents they held. “Though if the property is particularly old, lost or abandoned we may not have a record of it here.”
“Yes, I’m aware,” Malthus sighed. “If that’s the case then we’ll have to ask someone at the main office to look it up.” He continued to study the map while Mr. Darun unlocked the vault’s magical security system and walked inside…
Wait. Wasn’t his brother somewhere near Kahka Brud right now? He remembered seeing his marker on the map over in that area…
When Mithrun had woken from his comatose state and rejoined the Canaries, Malthus had convinced his brother to allow him to place a tracking spell on him, so he’d know where he was at all times, since he couldn’t expect Mithrun to remember to write or call him. It hadn’t been hard to convince him, even though Mithrun had gotten much better, he was still shockingly passive these days, compared to the brother Malthus had known before.
This worried Malthus of course, he knew that he only had his younger brother’s best interests in mind, so it didn’t matter if Mithrun would do anything he asked… But there were plenty of less scrupulous people in the world who would surely try to take advantage of him. Some of those people might even be right inside of the Canaries with him, since two-thirds of the Canaries were criminals.
So Malthus had made a point to learn about all the members of his brother’s squad, and he made sure that thanks to his charitable donations to the Canaries, they always had the best ship, best food, best equipment that money could buy. He also paid them all a small extra monthly allowance to incentivise them into taking care of his brother. It seemed to have worked well enough so far.
So where was Mithrun right now? It seemed like he was quite near where the mystery property was, also in the middle of the water. Perhaps on a ship? Squinting at that area of the map through his magnification spell, Malthus could finally see that Mithrun’s marker, a unicorn with the letter M on it, was on top of what looked like a tiny island. The marker was actually larger than the island itself.
“Have you found it yet, Mr. Darun?” Malthus asked, dispelling his magnification magic. He sat down behind his desk and put his crutch aside.
“No, my Lord. Based on the number of the property, I believe any records we have would be in the larger vault at the main office, shall I--”
“Actually, I’d like to make a long-distance call with a fairy first. It looks like my brother is right there, he may be able to tell us what’s going on.”
“Certainly,” Mr. Darun said as he emerged from the vault, closing it behind himself. “You, boy,” he gestured at Vansh. “Go wake up the communications operator.”
“Yes sir, right away!” Vansh said, running off in a hurry.
It took twenty minutes to rouse Ms. Nikam, the on-call communications spellcaster, and for her to prepare the spell for a long distance call. Malthus spent the time getting properly dressed and then eating an early breakfast in his office. He didn’t imagine he’d be able to get back to sleep after all this excitement anyway.
The nice thing was, unlike the old days of drawing magic circles all over the floor, these days most of the preparation could be done in a notebook that the spellcaster carried around with them, a sort of blank spellbook that they drew their foci into. Malthus had never gotten a specialized magical education, but he knew enough to know that the things they could do these days were impressive.
Since they didn’t know Mithrun’s exact location, the easiest way to establish contact was to call his squad’s ship first, and have them find him and connect the call.
Ms. Nikam stood in the center of the office holding her spell book, and as she completed the spell the focus she’d drawn began to glow, and a small humanoid fairy materialized in the light above the open spellbook. Malthus saw when the fairy had connected to the other side because its expression changed, and it blinked up at Ms. Nikam.
“This is the Dungeon Investigation vessel Jatayu, in the uh… Former port of Merini Island?” The fairy said, with a very young sounding voice that had a strong southern accent. “Um, this is Lieutenant Sita of the House of Khaja speaking. Who am I speaking with, and how may I direct your call?”
“This is Hani Nikam, I’m connecting you with a priority ten call from the House of Kerensil,” Ms. Nikam said. “Please stand by.” The caster made a gesture with one arm, and the fairy fluttered its way over to Malthus, landing in his outstretched hand. He’d used fairies all his life, but he never got over how light they were.
“Hello Lieutenant Sita,” Malthus greeted. “You said the uh… former port of Merini Island? What did you mean by that?”
“I’m not sure myself, things have been a little bit crazy over here,” Lieutenant Sita replied. “Probably whoever you’re trying to reach will be able to explain it much better than I.”
“Right, yes, well, I’d like to speak with Captain Mithrun of the Silver Falcon squad. I believe he’s close to your current position?”
“Yes, Captain Mithrun is nearby. It’ll take me a minute to walk the fairy over to his location. Who shall I say is calling?”
“Oh! Right. Well, Lord Malthus Kerensil, Head of the House of Kerensil. I’m his brother.” Suddenly, the fairy in Malthus’ hand toppled over and he fumbled to try and catch it, cradling the artificial construct in both hands. “Oh goodness. Are you alright? Did you trip or something?” He knew the lieutenant was walking around while using the fairy and sometimes that could be disorienting to those that were unused to it.
“O-or something!” the fairy said in a high-pitched squeak. “I’ll get you to Captain Mithrun right away, sir! My lord! Your lordship!”
The lieutenant and the fairy she was speaking through said nothing for a while, but Malthus could tell from the expression on the fairy’s face that the lieutenant was running full tilt wherever she was going. Malthus waited patiently, settling back into his office chair and making himself more comfortable by propping his bad foot up on the cushion he kept under his desk.
The desk was a massive thing carved from oak, and had been carted around by generations of Kerensils. The family crest, a unicorn rampant in front of an orange tree, adorned the front of it, and the rest was decorated with wooden carvings of twisting vines and foliage. To be the one that sat behind it every day was a symbol of tremendous authority and power. He and Mithrun used to sneak into their father’s office as boys, and they would try to hide things in the drawers for him to find later. Notes, flowers, and on one particularly memorable occasion, a live frog.
Right now, Malthus idly opened and closed some of the hidden drawers just to make the time go by a little quicker, and to remind himself what was inside them. Ah. Paperclips. Oh, that was where his staple remover had gotten to…
Several minutes later, the fairy, panting along with the lieutenant on the other end, looked up at Malthus again. “Alright, I’m here. Let me hand you over. Excuse me--” this last part wasn’t directed at Malthus and he waited quietly as he heard only half the conversation. “Excuse me, Lieutenant Pattadol. There’s an important long-distance call for Captain Mithrun. Would you please take it to him?”
There was a brief shuffle as the fairy was handed over, and the expression on the fairy changed again as a new person took over controlling it.
“Yes, hello? Who is this?” Lieutenant Pattadol’s sweet, familiar voice asked him. Malthus had known Pattadol socially before she’d become Mithrun’s lieutenant; she was the younger sister of a friend of his. Malthus had known that Pattadol could be trusted to take good care of Mithrun, which was why he’d personally requested her assignment to the Silver Falcon squad in the first place.
He’d tried to make Mithrun promise that he wouldn’t let Pattadol get hurt, but of course his brother had only said something like “as long as she doesn’t get in my way”, but Malthus supposed that was the best he could reasonably expect to extract from him.
The only thing Mithrun cared about anymore was conquering dungeons. Anything that prevented him from that goal was either ignored or navigated around with ruthless, stubborn persistence. Malthus had learned to work with it, but it did make him a little sad to see Mithrun reduced in this way.
“Hello Pattadol, it’s Malthus. I trust that you’re well?”
“Oh! Lord Kerensil! Um, yes, yes I’m very well, uh, you’ve caught us at an odd time--Wait, what time is it in Maalinus?! Isn’t it the middle of the night?! Is something wrong? I’ll hand you over to the Captain right away--”
“No, no, everything is fine here!” Malthus said with a laugh. Before she’d joined the Canaries, when she’d been a little girl Pattadol had called him uncle Malthus, and he missed that, but he understood that she felt more grown-up when she used proper titles like this. Maybe someday, when she was no longer trying to prove something, he could be uncle Malthus again. “I was woken up by an alarm on one of our properties where you are, and so I wanted to ask Mithrun if he could check on it for me. I’m fine. I’m happy to hear that you’re full of energy as always.”
“A property alarm? Around here?” Pattadol said, sounding equal parts curious and confused. “I’m sorry that you were woken up of course, let me get you to the captain--Captain! Captain Mithrun, it’s Lord Kerensil,” Pattadol called out, and Malthus wondered where they were and what was going on, since all the shouting they were doing made it seem like it was very noisy and hard for anyone to hear what was happening.
“Lord! Kerensil! Keren-sil!” Pattadol repeated, even louder and with more emphasis, sounding frustrated. “--It’s your brother!” That seemed to work, since Pattadol didn’t shout again.
The fairy must have changed hands because the expression changed to one Malthus knew all too well: Mithrun’s flat, disaffected gaze stared up at him blankly.
“Malthus.”
“Hello brother, how are you?” Malthus said, ignoring the little pang he always felt when his brother greeted him without any spark of enthusiasm, or even recognition. Sometimes it felt like talking to a wall. “Have you eaten recently?”
“I just ate.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful. I hope it was a uh,” Malthus scrambled for a descriptive term that would work for Mithrun’s diminished state. He didn’t enjoy anything so it was futile to say things like that. “...Nourishing?”
“It was alright. What do you need?” Mithrun of course got right to the point. That was typical of their interactions these days, though Malthus always made an effort to ask a few questions and ascertain if Mithrun was being properly fed and taken care of.
“Something on the map went off,” Malthus explained. There was no need to explain what he meant by the map of course, Mithrun would know exactly what he meant. “Looks like it’s right next to where you are, on the island or in the water. I was hoping you could tell me if there’s anything unusual going on over there… You’re on the island, right?”
Though the map was an impressive feat of magical engineering, things that moved around were not always accurately represented, ships and caravans were normally within a few miles of the marker’s coordinates, but sometimes the map made mistakes.
"Not an island anymore."
Malthus paused, bewildered. He probably hadn’t heard that correctly. "What was that? I thought I heard you say it wasn't an island anymore--"
"Yeah. The continental shelf just rose up out of the ocean a few minutes ago."
Malthus set the fairy down on top of his desk and took a deep breath. He looked over at Mr. Darun and Ms. Nikam and they were both staring back at him with equally puzzled expressions.
“Oh. I heard you correctly, I guess. What do you mean, the continental shelf rose up out of the ocean?”
"The continental shelf rose out of the ocean," Mithrun repeated flatly. "There was an earthquake,” he paused, “Actually, it hasn’t really stopped shaking, so there continues to be an earthquake. It’s causing the land between the island and Kahka Brud to rise up out of the ocean. You'll probably begin to experience aftershocks in Maalinus in about ten hours. Kahka Brud looks like it’s flooding in all low lying areas. We can see it from our current elevation, which is gradually increasing."
“Thank you for the weather report,” Malthus said dryly, though he knew the sarcasm would be ignored by his brother. “Why is any of that happening, Mithrun?” Malthus tried his best to keep any sign of frustration out of his voice.
“The dungeon here is in the process of collapsing,” Mithrun said. Malthus felt a ray of hope pierce his heart, if the situation was about dungeons he could count on Mithrun to give him complete and accurate information. “A thousand years ago, the dungeon lord had the dungeon swallow up the kingdom of Merini, and now that the dungeon is collapsing, the land is breaking through the shell of the dungeon and rising up through the water. The country that used to neighbor Kahka Brud is returning to its original location.”
“I’ve never heard of Merini,” Malthus said, though he knew it wasn’t the salient point of all the things Mithrun had just told him. An entire kingdom, sucked under the earth? Sounded like something dwarves or gnomes would do…
“It’s a tallman kingdom, so it was only a few hundred years old before all this happened. Before it was Merini it was the elven colony of Lucani. Before that, it belonged to the dwarves,” Mithrun replied. “And I hadn’t heard of it either until I started researching the area for my mission. As I said, it sank underground a thousand years ago, and everyone eventually redrew the map with the gulf of Kahka Brud in Merini’s place. I’m sure the local dwarves and gnomes know more about it, but it’s not a topic of everyday conversation.”
Malthus turned his gaze to their own map. It was a couple of thousand years old, but by its very nature it was changeable, and it was regularly repaired and updated. If Malthus went digging in their records, he was sure he would find some information about whatever had happened in the gulf, and how they’d rewoven that part of the map at the time.
"Well then, if that's the case, I can easily guess what happened,” Malthus said with a sigh. “We must have had a branch office in Merini. When the country sank into the earth, we lost contact with the office, and it was removed from the map... And now it's back again. Of course, the map doesn't know how to interpret that information. So it's setting off alarms to let us know that something's broken…”
Malthus sighed again. “...We’re not able to turn the alarm off from here. Mr. Darun’s silenced it, but it’s going to keep messing up all of the maps if we don’t turn it off properly. That means someone needs to go to the office in Merini, find the beacon that’s communicating with the map, and deactivate it."
“Mm,” Mithrun made a disinterested noise to let Malthus know he was listening, but had nothing to contribute. Unsurprisingly, Malthus would need to ask for Mithrun’s help more bluntly if he wanted to get his cooperation.
Malthus and Mithrun had an unusual relationship. Though Malthus was the elder brother, for most of their lives everyone had assumed that he would never lead the family because it seemed obvious that he was an illegitimate child. He didn’t look like anyone else in the Kerensil family. However, even though mother and father ignored him and kept him out of sight, they’d never formally disowned him, not even when it became clear that he’d never walk without a cane or a crutch to aid him.
Mithrun, on the other hand, had seemed like the perfect candidate to take over the House: Able-bodied, silver-haired, silver-eyed and good at handling people, he was an ideal Kerensil. Father and grandmother had trained him with the expectation that he would lead… But then an accident during his military service destroyed Mithrun’s mind, and left him a catatonic wreck.
Malthus had watched helplessly from the sidelines as bloodthirsty relatives closed in on his parents and brother like sharks drawn to a dying seal. Mother and father were too old to have another child, Mithrun had been their last, desperate attempt to produce a backup heir when Malthus had fallen ill.
Whether his parent’s line continued wouldn’t matter to history, but Malthus knew that allowing their relatives to take over meant that he and Mithrun would be at the mercy of their uncaring family, like cousin Vimala or uncle Skanda.
They likely would have left Malthus alone to molder away on the estate, ignored and forgotten. Nobody wanted to be wed to a homely, unsociable cripple, kept around out of pity, who might not even be a proper Kerensil.
Mithrun was a much bigger risk. Even if he’d never move against other family members on his own, he could be used as a pawn. Their parents could wed him to someone from either of their bloodlines to produce grandchildren that would obey them, or an enterprising woman from a lesser branch of the family could find a way to impregnate herself and seize control through the offspring. Mithrun would likely make no effort to stop either thing from happening, as long as it didn’t prevent him from exploring dungeons.
Malthus had been certain that if their bloodline lost control of the House, Mithrun would either be castrated or locked up in an asylum somewhere, possibly both. There were spells and restraints that could hold him if he became uncooperative, as long as one was not concerned with his wellbeing or comfort… And if he became too much trouble to keep alive, obviously an accident could be arranged.
Mithrun wasn’t necessarily happy, but he’d recovered enough that he’d been able to rejoin the Canaries. He had an obsession with dungeons that Malthus couldn’t even begin to fathom, but allowing him the freedom to pursue that obsession felt like the only happiness Malthus could grant him anymore, so of course he wanted to protect Mithrun’s freedom at any cost.
Because of all this, Malthus had decided that actually, he rather fancied the idea of being family head whether anyone else wanted him to do it or not. So when father passed away, instead of shedding tears, Malthus was ready with paperwork and a small army of lawyers. No one had expected him to do it, so no one had taken any precautions against it.
This led to an embarrassing, but thankfully brief court battle where uncle Skanda and his cohorts had tried to prove Malthus was illegitimate so that Mithrun could be installed as a figurehead instead. But Malthus’ lawyers had ended up proving that not only was Malthus legitimate, but Mithrun wasn’t… Because uncle Skanda was Mithrun’s biological father.
All it had taken was testimony from their mother.
She’d been absolutely furious at uncle Skanda for publicly humiliating her, and it had been easy for Malthus to convince her to set the record straight. Uncle Skanda should have known better than to upset such a hornet’s nest of secrets and lies. Assuming that mother wouldn’t speak up to defend herself and Malthus had been his last mistake. Mother pressed charges afterwards, and had uncle Skanda jailed for the damage her reputation had suffered. Malthus of course banished him from the House as well.
Sometimes Malthus wondered how the old Mithrun would have reacted to finding out he was the illegitimate brother. Would he have felt guilty for the times that he’d been cruel to Malthus when they were boys? Would he have been relieved? Humiliated? Angry?
Malthus supposed it didn’t really matter. The new Mithrun didn’t care about such things. He’d been dragged before the court during the trial, and spent the entire time irritable and uncooperative because they were preventing him from exploring dungeons. He’d left as soon as he’d been able, without a single word to him, or their mother.
“Mithrun, could you go check on it for me?” Malthus pleaded. “I know you’re probably very busy with the continental shelf moving about and the dungeon collapsing, but it would be a big help.”
“Sure,” Mithrun answered, unexpectedly cooperative for a task that wasn’t dungeon-related.
“Oh! Wonderful! I’ll get a map of the area from the archives, have it copied and shipped to you--”
“I’m going right now. We aren’t doing anything important anyway.”
“Aah! Captain! Wait, it could be dangerous! I should come with you!” Malthus heard Pattadol’s voice faintly coming through the fairy.
“Yes, listen to Pattadol, you shouldn’t just tear off on your own, brother, it’s not safe.”
“Fine,” Mithrun replied, with the flat inflection of someone who does not actually think anything is fine. “Who else are we taking, then?” This question appeared to be directed at Pattadol, so Malthus held his tongue.
“Um, Cithis--”
“There won’t be any people down there, Lieutenant. What would Cithis do, use hypnosis on the seaweed?”
“Tha-that’s true! Well, what about Fleki--”
“I ate too much,” Fleki’s voice piped in from somewhere nearby. She sounded uncomfortable. “If I try to use my familiar I’m gonna blow chunks.”
“Um, then Lycion--”
“Do I haaave to?” Lycion whined. “I ate a lot too, and if Fleki’s not going I don’t wanna go either.”
“Quit acting so spoiled! Aren’t you guys supposed to be soldiers?!” Pattadol shouted.
“What would I even do?” Lycion asked, “There won’t be any monsters to fight, the water would have washed them away or drowned them.”
“Um, perhaps you could take Otta?” Malthus suggested politely. “She’s a geomancer, isn’t she? There might be traps, or terrain issues that she could help you get around.” His words were met with a moment’s silence.
“We’ll take Otta,” Mithrun agreed. Malthus wondered why he’d even asked Pattadol for her input, as he was sure Mithrun had realized from the beginning that Otta would be the most useful for their errand. Maybe he was trying to give her opportunities to practice leading? It’s what a good captain would do… Of course, Mithrun wasn’t known for being a good leader these days. He was more like a reliable weapon that the empire could aim at their problems, and his team was mostly there to make sure he didn’t get himself killed before he could complete his assignments.
“Alright, well, if you give me half an hour, I can get a map of the area and guide you to the office,” Malthus offered.
“Okay,” Mithrun responded. “It’ll take us at least that long to climb down from this mountain to where the city is.”
“I’ll call you back once I have the map.”
Due to his bad leg and overall weak constitution, Malthus did a lot of his work from home. When he did go into the elven capital, it was either an hour-long carriage ride, or an instantaneous jump through one of the teleportation scrolls that linked the estate with the main office, or the family’s townhouse in the city.
So even though all the archivists were still asleep at home, that meant it was no great ordeal for Mr. Darun to go through the teleportation scroll to the main office, and get a security guard to let him into the archive. After that it only took twenty or so minutes for him to locate information on the property in Merini, as well as a map of the city that included the location of the branch office.
The sun was just beginning to rise when Malthus had Ms. Nikam call Mithrun back. Now that she’d had contact with him and had an idea of where he’d be, resuming contact through the fairies was easier, and there was no need to call the central communication hub on one of the ships.
“We’ve just breached the city’s outer wall,” Mithrun said, in place of a more polite greeting.
“Ah, well, as I promised, I have a map. Where are you in the city? North, south, east or west?” There was a long pause, and Malthus remembered, with a rush of embarrassment, that Mithrun had lost his sense of direction since his illness. “Oh, I’m sorry--”
“We’re to the south,” Otta said calmly. “Everything seems really well-preserved for a city that’s been abandoned for a thousand years.”
“The dungeon lord probably did some amount of maintenance in that time,” Mithrun commented. “And rising out of the ocean would have swept away any lingering dirt or debris.”
“If you’re to the south, you’ll want to head northeast,” Malthus told them. “You’ll eventually walk through a major road that we have labeled as ‘Market Street’. It looks like it’s wide enough for wagon and carriage traffic in both directions… But I’m not sure what sort of street signs they’d have in Merini, or in what language they’d be…”
“Either simplified elvish or the same dialect of dwarvish they speak in Kahka Brud,” Mithrun replied confidently. “Possibly both. I’ve seen many cities with bilingual street signs.”
“Oh, that would make sense,” Malthus said quietly. He’d never been outside of the capital city, let alone the North Central Continent, so the idea of bilingual street signs hadn’t even occurred to him as a possibility.
Malthus was sometimes envious of the freedom that his brother had to travel the world and see far-away places. Of course, Mithrun had long ago lost the ability to enjoy his travels…
“We’ve reached Market Street,” Mithrun announced, bringing Malthus’ attention back to the present moment.
“If you turn left, that should have you heading northwest, towards the center of the city. Eventually you’ll reach Castle Street, which runs along the wall that surrounds the castle.”
Malthus studied their route on the map while the Canaries walked in silence for a while.
“Once we find the bank, how are we going to get inside?” Otta asked.
“The door should recognize Mithrun as a Kerensil and allow him entrance,” Malthus replied.”Though if the enchantment’s worn off or just doesn’t work, I suppose you could physically manipulate the mechanism.”
“I know some lockpicking spells,” Otta offered. “So either way we’re golden. Worst case scenario I break down the door, or go through a wall.”
“That’s easier said than done,” Mithrun said. “Kerensil properties are heavily fortified, and enchanted against geomancy and teleportation. Since we’re in the Eastern Continent I suspect we’ll encounter reinforced metal and stone, like in a dwarven bank.”
“Shit. Well, what do we do then?” Otta asked.
“I can break the enchantments, and then we’d be able to reshape the walls, or teleport inside… But that will take a few hours at least. To save time, I might be able to teleport the door off its hinges or teleport an object into the door to break a hole through it, but it depends on how good the mage setting up the spell was, and where exactly they put the boundary lines.”
“You don’t need to find out whether or not you’re better than the person who set up the enchantment,” Malthus said with a tired sigh. Even without his desires, Mithrun was still competitive about certain things, and this wouldn’t be the first time he tried to do something just to “test his abilities”. Malthus was always worrying about Mithrun hurting himself with his reckless use of teleportation magic. There was a reason nobody normally used it the way his brother did.
“Hn.” Mithrun replied indifferently, but Malthus knew that deep down, his brother was probably disappointed that Malthus was getting in the way of him showing off. It was one of the few things Mithrun still seemed to find pleasure in. Malthus had caught him smiling once or twice over the years after he’d finished obliterating his training partners at the sparring grounds.
“Let’s just hope you’re able to get inside the simple way,” Malthus said, “And we’ll worry about other methods once those have failed.”
“We’ve reached Castle Street,” Otta said.
“What are the two nearest cross streets?”
“Uhh… First street and…. Second street, shocking.”
“Go along First Street,” Malthus said, “When you reach Bank Street, the office will be right there. It’s not far.”
“Oh, there it is!” Pattadol said a few minutes later. “I think we’ve found it.”
“Looks like one of our banks,” Mithrun agreed tonelessly. “The flag outside is still intact, though the color has faded.”
Malthus waited quietly while Mithrun, Pattadol and Otta worked on getting inside. Thankfully it didn’t take them long. Mithrun’s presence and Otta’s lockpicking skills were enough.
“We’re in,” Mithrun announced, with no fanfare. “We’ll start searching for the alarm beacon.”
“It’s remarkably well-preserved, the carpets feel brand new,” Pattadol said.
“Well, nobody’s walked on them in ages,” Otta pointed out. “The fibers have had time to spring back up.”
“I was expecting it to look more… Outdated?”
“It’s only a thousand years old,” Malthus said with a smile. “We don’t refresh our decor that often. Especially in a remote little office like that. It’s not like the locals would have cared about cutting-edge elven interior design.”
“That’s true!” Pattadol agreed with a shy laugh.
“So… There’s not any money left inside here, is there?” Otta asked.
Malthus could hear the hint of prurient interest in her tone, and though he wasn’t about to let Otta get away with anything, he could understand why it would be tempting for someone like her. A forgotten bank vault’s worth of money could be quite the windfall for a Canary prisoner to just stumble into. He was sure Otta’s train of thought was that all she had to do was trick or convince Mithrun, Malthus and Pattadol that there was nothing in the vault and then she could snatch the contents for herself. And that Mithrun and Pattadol might be easy to trick, while Malthus was an ocean away and could just be lied to.
“Sorry, our last record--” Malthus shuffled around the papers in front of him to find the information he was looking for, “--From the twenty-third of Quintillis, in the fifth year of the reign of the dwarven king Ox-Cleaver I of Kahka Brud, says the bank was holding approximately six-hundred gold and two-hundred silver Kirita, and one-thousand copper Korona, the local currency. The bank vanished the next day. So I expect the money should all still be in there, though the people it belongs to are probably dead. That means it belongs to the bank, unless any descendants turn up.”
“Not that it’s a lot of money from the bank’s point of view,” Mithrun commented. “If it vanished nobody would notice. We lose more money annually to inflation than what’s in this vault.”
“Don’t encourage her, Mithrun,” Malthus muttered, intensely aware of the fact that of all the members of the Silver Falcon squad, Otta was the only one that was actually skilled at criminal enterprise. Cithis relied heavily on mind control, and Lycion and Fleki were both just petty criminals that had gotten caught up in the merciless processes of the elven courts. “Anyway, getting in the front door is one thing, getting into the vault will require more than just basic lockpicking spells. I’ll have to send one of our people to deal with emptying the vault and transporting the contents…”
“Don’t,” Mithrun said, much to Malthus’ surprise. “Maybe you should re-open this location.”
“Really? Why?”
“They’re going to need a bank here. Next time I see him, I’ll tell the new king that you want to provide banking services.”
“They’ve already selected a new king?” Malthus asked, incredulous. “Didn’t the city just rise up less than an hour ago? I know tallmen do things fast, but that’s ridiculous. What did he do, pull a sword from a stone?”
“Technically he caused the country to rise out of the ocean,” Mithrun said, “So yes, something like that.”
“Unbelievable,” Malthus muttered. “Supernatural occurrences are not a good basis for deciding matters of governance.”
“Captain Mithrun, I’ve found the alarm beacon. It’s in the manager’s office.” Pattadol said, and Malthus gave a sigh of relief.
“Finally. Once we’re done with this, you can get back to whatever you were doing before I called and bothered you, Mithrun.”
There was a moment of silence as Pattadol presumably led Mithrun to where she’d found the beacon.
“It was in a hidden compartment in the wall,” Mithrun announced for Malthus’ benefit. “Should I dismantle it completely, or just shut off the alarm?”
“Well, if we’re reopening the branch, just shut it off, and refresh the security enchantment when you leave so the building remains secure. I’ll send a team to deal with it properly on the next ship to the east.”
“Alright,” Mithrun said. A moment of silence, then: “It’s done. How’s the map?”
Malthus craned his neck around to look at the map behind him, and was pleased to see that the symbol for the bank location was no longer glowing. It was still in the middle of what looked like a large body of water though.
“You did it! Thank you so much, brother. I’ll have to send a survey team as well, to redraw the map, if you think the change to the coastline is going to be permanent?”
“Permanent enough.”
“Alright. Um… What about Merini’s port? Is it still functional?”
“Unlikely. I can’t see it from here, but the elevation where the village and the port were located is now far above sea-level,” Mithrun explained. “Additionally, Kahka Brud's gulf port has been destroyed, and the country is now landbound on its western border. Of course, Merini will need to open a new port… They should be able to construct a rudimentary dock in the time it takes your ships to make the crossing.”
“Alright, I’ll explain the situation to the ship’s captain,” Malthus said. “Wait, wouldn’t all the Canary ships have been in Merini’s port? What happened to them when the land rose up?”
“It’s a mass stranding event,” Mithrun said without a trace of humor. “I haven’t had an opportunity to personally inspect our vessels, but they’re no doubt badly damaged.”
“Good lord! And how many ships were docked there? Hopefully a few were still out at sea?”
“The, um… The entire Eastern fleet…” Pattadol sniffled in a small voice, like she somehow thought the situation was her fault.
“Oh, well, uh… It’ll be alright!” Malthus said, rapidly swerving into attempting to reassure the young woman. “They’re only wood and metal after all, my dear. And you’re just a lieutenant! It’s not like you were the one that made the call for such a large number of ships to dock in Merini.”
“Actually, in my absence Pattadol--” Mithrun started to say, and Malthus spoke over him in a rush.
“The important thing is that no lives were lost!”
“That we know of,” Mithrun corrected him again. “There are still some people missing, a number of individuals who are in the process of slowly dying while the mana from the dungeon dissipates… And of course, a great number of people died and had to be revived with magic.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Malthus said dismissively. Malthus wanted to comfort Pattadol, not make her feel worse. “But what matters is that none of that was Pattadol’s fault. You’ll make sure that she doesn’t get blamed, won’t you, Mithrun?” Malthus took care to put extra emphasis behind his words, knowing Mithrun needed to be told directly if he expected him to actually do something.
“...Sure,” Mithrun said.
“Good, good. But anyway, that means you lot are trapped there until you can repair your ships, or the Western Fleet gets to you!” Malthus exclaimed, changing the subject. “I don’t know how long the repairs will take, but the fleet will have to sail around the horn of Vestra and cross the entire Great Western Ocean before they get to the Eastern Continent. The ships I’m sending will get there first, since it’s coming straight from Maalinan… Is there anything you or your team need, Mithrun? Food, supplies, personnel?”
There was a moment of silence before Pattadol realized Mithrun wouldn’t answer and that she would need to do so in his stead.
“I can consult with the other officers and the local people and see what’s needed,” Pattadol said, and Malthus was proud of how confident she sounded. “There’s a lot of work that needs to be done here… An entire country is being rebuilt… It’s not normally the sort of thing we do, but we’ve been ordered to keep helping out until we’re able to leave.”
“Alright,” Malthus said. “Call me back once you’ve determined what your needs are, and I’ll take care of everything.”
“Lord Kerensil,” Malthus could hear the way Pattadol’s voice was wobbling, and he thought she might be crying. “You’re so good to us.”
“Oh, it’s really the least I can do. You’re a good girl, and I know I can trust you to handle the situation for me.” Malthus said fondly.
“Malthus,” Mithrun said, once again interrupting the conversation. Malthus sighed, leaning over his desk and rubbing his temples.
“Yes Mithrun, what is it?” Malthus knew he probably sounded short-tempered now, but after being woken up so early and all the shocking information he’d had to take in about Merini… He was tired, and starting to reach the limit of his patience.
“... I’ve been thinking a lot.”
Malthus waited silently, not sure what he was supposed to say to that. Congratulations? Keep it up?
“... I’m sorry, and thank you.”
“Sorry for what? Thank me, for what?” Malthus demanded, bewildered.
“Everything. I’ve not been good to you, and you’ve been taking care of me for such a long time now… I’m grateful.”
“Pattadol, is my brother alright?” Malthus asked, staring blankly at the map on his desk, shock making the words and lines there look like gibberish.
“I’m fine,” Mithrun said insistently. “Pattadol did the resurrection spell correctly.”
“Resurrection spell?!” Malthus yelled at the fairy on his desk, panic hitting him in the chest like a cannonball. “You died?! You’ve never died before! Are you okay?!”
“Yes, I just told you, she did the spell correctly. An exemplary casting.”
“R-really, captain?” Pattadol asked, sounding delighted. “You’ve never told me that I’ve done something well before…”
“You’re a good lieutenant. I’m sorry I never said so.”
“Captain!” Pattadol cried, and now Malthus was sure she was actually weeping.
“Excuse me, what in the world is going on?” Malthus asked, “You’re acting… Unlike yourself, brother.”
“...Malthus, I want to get better.”
“...Get better at exploring dungeons, you mean?” Malthus asked hesitantly.
“No. I mean… I want to try and live again. I met some people… I had some experiences in this dungeon and… It made me want to try a little harder. I’ll tell you all about it when I come visit you.”
“You’re going to come visit me?” Normally Malthus was the one that did all the visiting. He tried to check up on Mithrun every five years, but it had maybe been six or seven since the last time they’d met. Their schedules just hadn’t lined up… And Mithrun had never proposed to come see Malthus before. He’d assumed Mithrun didn’t care about seeing him, just like he didn’t care about anything else.
“I’d like to. May I visit you at the estate when I have the time? I’ll tell you about everything that happened. It’s a bit of a long story to give through the fairies, or to write in a letter.”
“Yes, yes of course you can come visit!” Malthus exclaimed, overwhelmed with emotion. “Or should I come to you? I can get on a ship just like anyone else and go east to see you, I’d be there in three weeks with good weather--”
Malthus had thought he was already as shocked as he could possibly get, but then he heard Mithrun laugh. Malthus wondered of course if he was just mistaking someone else’s voice for his brother - but Mithrun had a much deeper voice than both Otta and Pattadol. So it had to be him. Laughing! Malthus hadn’t heard his brother laugh since before he’d joined the Canaries the first time.
“No, no, that’s alright,” Mithrun said. “It’s a very long voyage for you to take, just to see me. I’ll come to you. But thank you for everything, Malthus.”
“I, well, you’re welcome, of course!” Malthus stammered, taken completely off-guard.
Once he’d said goodbye to his brother, Pattadol and Otta, Malthus ended the call and dismissed Ms. Nikam and poor Vansh, who was working long past the end of his normal shift.
“Take tomorrow off,” he told the lad, as he tapped the stack of Merini paperwork against his desk to get the papers aligned together, slid it back into its folder, and then handed it to Mr. Darun.
“Thank you, my lord. I hope all goes well with your brother,” Vansh said, before bowing deeply and leaving the office.
“I’ve moved all of your appointments for today to later in the week--” Mr. Darun said, as he ushered a maid into the office to deposit a tea tray on Malthus’ desk, complete with hot tea, biscuits, and egg and cress sandwiches. “--Except for your dinner tonight with Ms. Ramin from the Foundation. I knew you wouldn’t want to cancel that.”
“Thank you,” Malthus said absently to the maid, before turning his attention to Mr. Darun. “And thank you, Mr. Darun. I suppose I’ll work on some correspondence for the remainder of the day, then, if I don’t have anyone waiting to see me…”
“You’ll stop and have tea first, sir,” Mr. Darun said, politely but very firmly. Malthus didn’t have as close of a relationship to Mr. Darun as he’d had with his childhood valet, Aelfred, but Mr. Darun had been trained by Aelfred, and did his best to look out for Malthus’ well-being. Even though that meant sometimes pushing back and insisting that Malthus rest and take breaks, even when Malthus didn’t want to.
“Yes, alright,” Malthus agreed with a quiet chuckle. “I ate a very early breakfast and I am famished.” Ordinarily he had breakfast at sunrise, tea at midday, lunch at two, and dinner between seven and nine… It wasn’t quite midday yet, but Malthus’ stomach was growling.
“Excellent. Lunch will be ready at the usual time, but let me know if you’d like it sooner.”
“Thank you. I’ll eat this and then I’ll get to writing correspondence.”
“Very good, sir. I’ll leave you to your tea, but please summon me at once if you should need anything,” Mr. Darun said, before excusing himself politely, leaving Malthus alone with his snack and his thoughts.
For the first fifty-odd years of his life, Malthus’ only playmate had been Mithrun. They’d been tutored together since they were only five years apart in age, and Malthus had started his education late due to his poor health.
Mithrun had obviously been much more sporty and physically active, running around the estate and getting into all sorts of mischief. However, he’d learned to slow down so that Malthus could keep up with him on his crutch, he’d helped Malthus any time he fell down or got stuck somewhere. He was always coming up with games that they could play together. They’d been tremendously close.
That had changed when Mithrun was sent away to boarding school. When he came back that first summer, he’d started ignoring Malthus, and every summer thereafter they grew further and further apart. By the time they were in their sixties, he was actively pushing Malthus away with cruel taunts and harsh words.
“The only reason mother and father haven’t disowned you is they’re too ashamed to admit you’re a bastard. You’re a dim, ugly cripple that nobody wants. Being a Kerensil is the only thing you have going for you, and they feel too guilty to take that away.”
In hindsight, Malthus could look back on those years with a cool head and guess that being at school with other children had taught Mithrun just how broken and lacking Malthus was. Of course that meant he’d wanted to push Malthus away. Being too close to him would contaminate Mithrun in the eyes of others.
When Mithrun had come of age, their parents had thrown a lavish ball to celebrate, inviting all of the eligible young elves to mingle and network, and to begin the decades-long process of finding Mithrun a suitable wife or husband. Malthus was allowed to attend, but of course nobody paid him any attention, and no one had asked him to dance. Not that it would have gone well if they had, he’d never been taught how. There’d been no coming of age ball for him.
But he’d never been able to hate his brother, not even when Mithrun was at his most cruel, because Malthus knew deep down that no matter how much their parents ignored him and favored Mithrun, his brother had never been truly happy. He’d grown into a neurotic, overachieving perfectionist, and lived his life in constant fear of losing their family’s highly conditional love.
Then all of Mithrun’s worst fears had been realized. The dungeon broke him, and the family discarded him just like they had Malthus. The only one that still loved him, of course, was Malthus. Because he’d never stopped in the first place.
After that, Malthus had spent the next thirty-five years taking care of his brother, and he’d given up hope for any major improvement. It was true that Mithrun had gotten better with time, but Malthus had thought they’d already reached the limit of what was possible.
In the beginning, Mithrun hadn’t even been able to get out of bed, he’d frequently tried to harm himself, and he’d needed nurses to watch over him every hour of the day and night. He often didn’t notice he was hungry or thirsty until he was fainting from it, and he neglected his bladder and bowels because he didn’t notice when they were full. It was a far cry from the type of life he’d had before, as the most admired and eligible bachelor in all of the United Empire.
Eventually it got to the point where Malthus could cajole him into going for a daily walk together, but the rest of Mithrun’s time was still spent laying in bed, asleep or staring at the ceiling. He didn’t go out, he didn’t read, and he almost never spoke, except when someone asked him a direct question, and even then, more often than not, he would simply stare past the questioner and fail to respond.
But once the promise of visiting dungeons had been dangled in front of him, Mithrun hadn’t just regained his old strength, he’d surpassed it. Malthus had watched, worried and a bit horrified, as Mithrun worked himself to exhaustion every day in the family gymnasium, exercising like a man possessed for months on end. Malthus had tried to ask him once why he was exercising so much, and all Mithrun would say was “So I’m ready.”
“Ready for what?” Malthus had asked him.
Mithrun hadn’t answered him.
By the time he left home, Mithrun was all hard muscle stretched taut across bones, barely contained by scarred skin. His gaze was blank and indifferent, and reminded Malthus of a shark. It was as if he didn’t really see any of the things happening around him, and it was always startling when he did react, since it was never clear where he was looking, or what he was thinking.
Malthus had visited Mithrun a few times since then. He’d seen how he only needed a little prompting every day to remember to take care of himself… Though Cithis confided to him that there were still occasional accidents, especially when he was inside a dungeon. For whatever reason, when his brother was inside a dungeon, he lost all self awareness and became singularly focused on getting to the depths. Nothing short of unconsciousness would stop him, and he’d let his squad mates die on several occasions when he felt they were “holding him back” or “getting in his way.”
It was a bit unnerving, when Malthus thought about it too hard. It was some kind of dungeon-induced mania. What was in the dungeons? Why was Mithrun drawn to it? Why was it able to motivate him into such a frenzy, when nothing else could? He didn’t know, and Mithrun wouldn’t, or couldn’t tell him.
Yet despite all of that, today, for the first time in over three decades, Malthus had heard his brother laugh. He hadn’t thought Mithrun was capable of that anymore. He hoped Mithrun would make good on his promise, and come to see him soon, so he could hear him laugh in person. Maybe then he’d be able to really believe it.
Even now that he was the head of the family, Malthus felt anxious about going out in public. He’d become accustomed to the idea that it was better if no one saw him, but he was slowly training himself out of that mindset: going out more often to meetings, to the theater or the hippodrome, wearing more attractive and daring clothing, rather than hiding himself in the most shapeless robes he could find. His tailor was constantly trying to talk him into shorter and shorter dresses, as was the fashion, and Malthus tried to not let his fear of revealing his withered leg stop him from trying new things. It was an ongoing battle.
Plenty of their ancestors had just let the complex social machinery of the bank run itself. However, unlike any of those ancestors Malthus had something to prove: he wanted to show everyone that they’d been wrong about him, show that not only could he run the family, he’d do it better than anyone else ever had.
Thinking of Mithrun, Malthus decided that once his position as family head was more secure, he would try taking a vacation. He’d leave the North Central Continent, and he’d take Mithrun with him. “Tell me about this city,” he’d ask, and Mithrun would tell him everything he knew, and maybe it would be without hesitation or enthusiasm… Or maybe he’d surprise Malthus. Either way, they would be doing something together, and Malthus thought that was long overdue.
After all, if an ancient country could rise up out of the sea, maybe his brother learning to live again wasn’t so impossible after all.
