Karl was led to a room where he was sat down across the table from a feathered Demon, with some sort of magical device between them.
“This is a lie detector. My species reacts subconsciously to lies. If you speak, one of the lights will glow. Do you understand how this works?” The Demon asked.
“Yes.”
The green light glowed steadily as Karl spoke.
“Good, it seems to be working. Now, we will start on the basic questions before you are sent before the Oracle. This is just for his safety, and we would hope that you don’t take it as a personal slight.”
[That’s why there are Overlords at all three doors to this room.] Rae laughed.
“Of course not. The Oracle sounds like someone important, you can’t just let random strangers see him in person without vetting them first.” Karl agreed.
The green light glowed, and the Demon nodded.
“You don’t seem as surprised as most are to hear that the Oracle here is male. But let’s keep on track. Were you sent here to spy, gather information, or otherwise obtain information about the Newbon Empire for another nation?”
“Nope.” Karl replied, and the green light glowed.
The Demon looked confused, then continued his questions.
“Did you come here at the behest of someone outside the Newbon Empire.”
“No.”
Both light glowed, and Karl tried to keep a straight face as the Demon growled.
“If I rephrase that to ‘did you arrive in Newbon at the behest of someone outside the nation’ does it change the answer?”
“Yes.”
The feathered Demon made a happy chirping noise.
“I see the issue here. You arrived in the city of Bethoke because the local guards requested it, and that was not what I meant, but it was a valid answer.”
Karl nodded, and the Demon continued. “Did the person who sent you here wish for you to harm anyone within the Newbon Empire?”
“No.”
The green light glowed, and the Demon sighed.
“What did they send you here for?”
Karl considered how to answer that for half a second.
“I was sent here to deliver a present that would help the Newbon Empire for many decades to come. I have already done that, and when I met your guards, I was intending to take my group to Clifnal to sell the tools that we are carrying and restock with whatever they had suitable for trade to the east down the road.”
The light remained a steady green.
“So, you haven’t harmed anyone, and you came here just to deliver a present? Is that what I am to believe?”
Karl chuckled. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. I’ve actually killed a fair number of people since we arrived here. But none that I would feel guilty about. Bandits, mostly.”
The Demon frowned. “That’s the job of the guard patrols.”
“But it’s more fun when I do it. Besides, we got a rather handsome payment for delivering a group of orphans to the driver from Halsearing.”
The Demon smiled and began to relax, but from the other side of the door, one of the Overlords that Rae had detected asked the important question.
“Ask him how the children became orphans.” The deep voice demanded.
“I killed their parents, of course. They were bandits, and there was a bounty on them.”
“Dark Gods, what sort of monster are you?” The Demon sitting across from Karl gasped.
“The sexy kind.”
The red light glowed so brightly that it drowned out the dim white backlight in the room.
“Well, that was rude. It didn’t have to glow that bright.” Karl mumbled, and the red light glowed again, though not as brightly.
“How many monsters have you killed in your life?” The voice from outside the door demanded.
“I don’t keep an exact count. A couple or ten,” the red light began to flicker. “Thousand.”
As Karl finished his sentence, the green light came on, faint but steady.
“Would it be closer to two or ten thousand?” The deep voice asked.
In Karl’s mind, Rae did a quick mental calculation of the bodies they had collected.
[Definitely closer to two than ten, but not for much longer.]
[You guys are a bunch of gluttons.]
Karl noticed that the red light flickered as he replied to Rae, though he hadn’t spoken out loud.
“Closer to two, I would say.”
The green light glowed as the door opened, and a delicate looking Lamia slithered into the room with a terrifying look on her face, followed by a cream scaled Naga warrior with four arms, and Overlord Rank power.
[Oh, tall, pale and sexy. Keep that one alive, I want him.] Remi insisted.
[I think he’s already taken.] Karl reminded her.
[I am Queen, though. I’m sure he will see sense.]
His small snake was coming of age, and Karl wasn’t sure what to do about her newfound attraction to Naga Warriors.
The Lamia gave Karl a smile that conveyed no happiness at all. “The Council of Overlords believes that you might be a direct threat to this fortress. I suggest that you take this seriously.”
“If they thought I would be a danger to the fortress, wouldn’t it have been smarter to just leave me in the wilderness instead of bringing me inside?”
The Lamia glared at the glowing green light, but the Naga Overlord smirked.
The other two doors opened, and an older Troll came in on Karl’s left, while a young-looking woman with bark on her skin entered on his right.
His first thought was that she was a Dryad, but there was blood on her lips, and her body seemed to be filled with some sort of living smoke.
The Naga Overlord reached into his coat and took out a piece of paper. On it was a drawing, an excellent facsimile of Karl.
[Is this you?] The Naga Overlord asked.
“It looks like me. But I have no clue who they had in mind when they drew it.” Karl replied.
The Lamia was about to translate, but Karl had received the live feed from Remi in real time, as she understood him just fine.
“What other languages do you speak?” The demon across the table from Karl asked.
Karl shrugged. “I’m not bad with Troll and Orcish.”
The green light glowed, and the Overlords began to look impressed.
“So, the reason that you weren’t concerned about going across the wilderness is because you speak Orcish? We read the report from our guards, and they say that you broke up the fight and your clerics minimized casualties on both sides.” The Troll asked with a heavy accent.
Karl made a noncommittal gesture. “The Orcish tribes aren’t bad guys if you act properly. But mostly it’s just that the odds of running into a nomadic tribe in the middle of nowhere are actually pretty low.
Compared to the chaos near the main travel routes with feral beast and monster spawns, plus the looters that are drawn to that sort of misfortune, it’s just safer in general.”
“What other spawns did you encounter?”
“Undead yesterday, and Copper Drakes with Sand Yeti a few days earlier.”
The Demon across the table from him was baffled by the answer.
“What is a Sand Yeti?”
“They look like yeti, but light tan, and they use sand element attacks, not ice.”
“Oh, I understand now. Desert Howlers.”
“That name sucks.”
The green light glowed with Karl’s answer, and the Naga Warrior chuckled quietly.
[Can you guess where we got this picture of you?] Naga asked, bringing them back on track.
“My guess is that the Oracle drew it for you. The quality is pretty good. It’s a bit more slender than I am, but that could just be perspective.”
The light glowed green, and the Naga shook his head.
“Do you know a Minotaur named Morrisa?” The Trollish Overlord asked.
Karl thought for a second.
“That name sounds familiar. I’m sure I heard it not long ago. Was that the matriarch of the farm herd that I traded with outside Oakhamping?”
The green light flickered faintly, reflecting Karl’s confusion.
“No, she is an Overlord. Does that ring a bell?”
Rae giggled in his mind. [I bet she would murder someone if they suggested that she wear a bell like a common cow. That’s the Minotaur that wants to bang the catman.]
Karl snapped his fingers in realization and burst out laughing.
“That’s the one with the beastkin fetish. The Overlord who wants to marry the Golem Mage Ahmad, the one with the golden cat ears.” He explained.
The light glowed bright green, and the room went silent.
“For the good of your health, I suggest that you never say those words out loud again, and certainly not in her presence.” The Troll muttered.
“She’s still mad, is she? I don’t blame her. I heard he shut down her marriage proposal without even taking a night to consider it.”
The odd tree woman moved so fast that Karl almost lost track of her in the corner of his vision. But she didn’t attack, she took a seat across from him, and shuffled the demon interrogator over to the end of the table.
“Tell me all about it. How did you learn of it? Was he as cute as the Oracle says he is? Are his ears fluffy?”
“He’s a very handsome man. When I first met him, I thought that he was a human. But when he came over to introduce himself, he was excited. His ears were lifting his hood, and eventually, he just gave up and took it down.
The Nature Clerics who were with me at the time had been baking cookies all morning. He’s got a huge sweet tooth, so if you want to shoot your shot, you should try bringing sweets with you.” Karl explained.
“But the ears.”
“As fluffy as anyone could hope for. I think his cat side is a rag doll or something similar. The fur is long and looks very soft.”
