What if he’s a body double? I mean, I have no idea what their king here looks like in the first place, so it’s a possibility. Still, I wonder what he does to his hair? Do they have shampoo here after all? Maybe I could produce and sell all-natural shampoo. What about other cosmetics? I bet I could. When I want something, I seem to be able to recreate it pretty faithfully, even if I have no idea how the original thing worked. That’s why I can enjoy things like chocolate and coffee. If I want to create a machine that could process fruits into shampoo, I bet the dungeon would magic it right up. I should try that out later. Oh, it looks like the king wants to talk.
I approached without my guards and he did the same. It seemed he didn’t want to pass through the gate, and I didn’t blame him. Once he was through the outer gate, we’d have been able to trap him inside; he’d have been at our mercy until we opened either the outer or inner gate to let him out. Similarly, I would have been up against their whole army if I went outside the gatehouse. So we basically stood on either side of the opened outer gate. (The gate, by the way, was the kind you raised and lowered. There were sharp points at the bottom, so it’d have been really bad if it got dropped on you.)
There sure were a lot of old bearded guys around the king. Were they wizards? Scholars? Santa Claus impersonators? Okay, probably not the last one. Maybe they were his advisors, or something like that. Anyway, there weren’t a bunch of people pointing weapons at me, so we were definitely off to a great start.
The king put his hand over his heart, and spoke.
“Savla Doma.”
Was that a greeting? Did Savla mean king? Maybe Doma meant king, and Savla was his name. Maybe the whole thing was just his name. What if it was just a greeting? I really need to learn this language. Whatever, I’ll just respond.
“Lilac Grimwood.” I put my hand over my own heart as I introduced myself.
He moved like he was going to lower himself to my eye level, but the old guys freaked out. I immediately realized the problem: A king shouldn’t lower himself before anyone. So I deployed my wings and gently lifted myself to his eye level. Everyone except my guys just stared in shock. I guess this was the first time I’d ever really shown any humans my wings. It must have surprised them.
I still wasn’t confident in my language skills, so I decided to try speaking the old language I’d learned from Redimir. I hoped that they would be able to understand it better than my broken modern speech, since I was more fluent in the older tongue.
“Could you please state the purpose for your visit?” It was a relatively harmless question, and I spoke slowly, to be better understood. To my surprise, one of the old men came forward and spoke to the king. Then the king replied to him, and the old man spoke to me.
“We have journeyed here from the royal capital of Doma in order to meet with you, Lilac of Grimwood,” he said.
An interpreter! The king had brought along a guy who could understand the old language! I could have kissed him! We could finally have a real conversation. I was super stoked to have my first actual chat with a human in this world.
I was a bit confused by his wording, though. “Is Grimwood a place?” I asked.
“Are you not named for the forest in which you dwell?”
“Wait, is that huge forest called Grimwood too? What a coincidence. I had no idea.”
“So you do not claim to be the sovereign of the Grimwood region?”
“Well, I am the ruler of my people, and we do live there now,” I mused. “So I suppose I am sort of claiming it, but only because I figured nobody else wanted it. I mean, it’s crawling with dangerous monsters, right? I figured I could set up a safe path through the woods, and charge a toll for passage.”
The interpreter was doing a great job, this conversation was going really well. Seriously, this guy was my new hero.
“Currently, the border between our nation and the countries to the north is the river that flows through the Grimwood,” he explained on the king’s behalf. “We would like to negotiate with regards to how the borders will change.”
“I’m happy to negotiate,” I said. “I’m thrilled just to be able to carry on a normal conversation. Before that, though, I’d like for something to be done about the local lord.”
“Ah, yes, we heard there was some sort of incident. We came to verify the truth for ourselves.”
I told the whole story. Well, at least the parts that involved humans. At the end, I showed the king the video of the local lord making a grab at my goods via my tablet, and he was visibly upset. I still couldn’t understand what the local lord was saying, but I guess it was pretty bad. After all, look what he tried to do after he said it.
“Is that enough evidence?” I asked.
The interpreter paused instead of relaying my message to the king right away. “Ahem, the ‘local lord,’ as you call him, is actually the king’s brother, Duke Finlaud,” he said to me. “Please understand, this puts His Majesty in a very difficult position.”
What a nice old man. After that aside, he passed what I’d said to the king, and gave me his response: “On the strength of this evidence, and your testimony, we will arrest Duke Finlaud for high treason.”
“Treason?” I asked. “Not sexual assault?”
“Before he tried to grab you, he alluded to plans to become king. In other words, he was plotting treason. It’s a far graver offense.”
“Oh, I had no idea what he was saying. I’m much more comfortable speaking this ancient language than the more modern one derived from it.”
“The modern language we speak is called Ausbarlian, named for the continent of Ausbarl,” the interpreter said. “Are you interested in learning it?”
“Yes! Absolutely! I won’t always have such an excellent interpreter available, after all.”
The king said something to his interpreter, who turned to me and said, “His Majesty has offered to lend me to you for a while, so that you can study Ausbarlian.”
“Really?” I turned to the king. “You’d really let me learn from him?!”
“Yes, that’s how much His Majesty wants to win your favor.”
“Then, can we wait to negotiate about the border until I’ve learned to speak the language properly?” I suggested. “I won’t build any new towers until then, and I’ll stop taking tolls from people that pass through this gate as soon as the duke has been arrested.”
“You have yourself a deal.”
The king and I shook hands, and I followed his forces into the city. I set up a folding chair I’d conjured up, and ate popcorn (or a close cousin, courtesy of a fruit with some very interesting properties) outside of the duke’s mansion as they dragged him out, kicking and screaming. He yelled and gestured at me as soon as he saw me, but I remained composed and dignified... Right up until the moment I stuck my tongue out at him, and pulled down my lower right eyelid.
“Blehhh.”
Serves him right. The creep.
The king was true to his word, and I was able to borrow his amazing interpreter. The old man’s name was Worgin, and he was a scholar who studied languages. That king sure was smart to have brought him along. I learned later that the king had gathered as many capable scholars as he could in the hopes of being able to communicate with me. Mission accomplished, I guess.