The Empire Overnight
The Empire Overnight
Adventurer guild buildings often doubled as taverns.
People said it was for convenience.
It made it easy for an adventurer returning from a job to shrug off a wet cloak, set down gear, and knock back a mug of beer while confirming he was still alive that day. It made it easy for a client to snag an unfamiliar adventurer and haggle over terms, for a traveling merchant to spill rumors from distant roads, and for rookies to stare at veterans’ scars and imagine, just a little, what their own futures might look like.
That was true enough.
It wasn’t wrong.
But those who had worked at the guild for a long time knew there was another reason as well.
Because only when drunk adventurers forgot their place and charged into jobs far beyond them did a certain amount of natural culling get done.
Adventurers were strange creatures.
A man who, sober, would carefully drop to a crouch at the mere sight of a wolf’s track would, after three mugs of beer, declare that even the lord of the mountain range could be taken down if you just aimed for the knee joint. A fellow who had bawled for half a day after a goblin’s stone cracked his forehead would, once into the rum, start debating the precise location of a troll’s heart. A man who had scrambled under a cart at the mere shadow of a wyvern would, as the night grew late, announce, “A wyvern’s just a lizard with wings in the end.”
And for the most part, the guild did not stop them.
If the man still owed money on his equipment, they would. Dead men paid no debts.
But beyond that, they left them alone.
The forest taught. The swamp taught. The mountain taught. If luck held, the lesson came at the price of a broken bone.
If luck failed, only a name tag came back.
The ones whose name tags never returned were simply marked missing in the ledgers.
Missing was a rather kind word, in guild terms.
It meant they hadn’t even found a body.
That was what an adventurer guild was.
A place where bravado swelled with drink, and where reality stomped that bravado flat under its boot the next morning.
People grew strong here.
Or they grew fewer.
One or the other.
The guild’s tavern was noisy again that night.
Oil lamps hung from every worn wooden pillar, and logs burned red in the hearth. It was a night that smelled of rain, and damp wind slipped through the cracks in the windows. The scents of wet leather, roasted meat, cheap beer, and liquor long soaked into the old wooden floorboards all blended together. The clatter of dice, bursts of laughter, curses, and the knock of mugs against mugs kept colliding beneath the ceiling.
And high on the tallest wall of the tavern hung a job posting that had not come down in a very long time.
Right at the top of the request board.
A height you could barely reach even with a ladder.
A spot where the dust was wiped away every day, yet no one ever took the parchment down.
There, a single sheet of yellowed vellum was fixed in place.
The paper was old, but the letters remained sharp.
It had been treated with a preservation enchantment.
The red wax seal still clung to it as well.
The eagle stamped into that seal no longer belonged to any living nation’s arms.
The Empire had vanished long ago.
So long ago that children these days learned of it more as a monster from old stories than as a real country.
The old stone-paved roads remained.
The ruined gates remained.
The black-glass fused ruins of the imperial capital remained.
But the Empire itself did not.
The emperor, the imperial house, the Ministry of War, the legions that had marched without end—all of it was gone.
The world called those remnants ruins.
Called them relics.
Called them danger zones.
No one called them the Empire anymore.
And yet a job posting stamped with the seal of that dead nation still hung on the guild wall.
Through hundreds of years.
Subjugation of the Dragon Witch.
The rank was black.
A color that no longer existed on the guild’s current ranking chart.
The reward line listed three hundred thousand old imperial gold coins.
That money wouldn’t cover an inn stay today.
You could melt the gold down and sell it for something, but neither the imperial house nor the Ministry of War that was supposed to pay it still existed in the world.
A job posted by a vanished nation.
A reward funded by a vanished nation’s coin.
The name of someone that vanished nation had wanted dead until the very end.
That posting was no longer a job anyone could accept.
It was closer to a warning nailed to the wall.
And still the rookies always asked.
What is that?
Why is it still hanging there?
Then the old adventurers would laugh.
And say:
“If you want to live long, just read the words.”
That night, the guild door opened.
Creeeak.
Damp wind came in first.
After it came the smell of a cloak that had not yet been properly rained on, and the scent of newly oiled leather boots.
The person standing in the doorway was young.
More precisely, a young man trying hard to hide how young he was.
His hair was mussed in the style of a traveler, yet comb marks still showed. The leather armor had not yet fully molded to his body, and the scabbard at his hip bore not a single deep scratch. A pack rode his back.
The pack was new too.
The waterproof cloth was clean, the straps still stiff.
He paused for a moment in the doorway.
Because the sound, the smell, and the eyes of the tavern had all hit him at once.
Rookies usually stopped like that.
They believed they had thrown themselves into the world, yet the moment the world’s smell reached their noses, their feet checked first.
A few gazes in the tavern turned his way.
Old adventurers spotted that sort at a glance.
New gear.
Straight shoulders.
Money from home still nestled in the inner pocket.
Hope not yet fully cracked behind the eyes.
And the thoroughly healthy delusion that he would somehow be different from the rest.
The young man walked to the reception desk.
His stride was bold, yet his eyes kept dropping to avoid the old scars in the floorboards.
The woman behind the counter lifted her gaze from the ledger.
“Registration?”
“Yes.”
The young man cleared his throat.
“Leonhardt.”
From one side of the tavern someone muttered low:
“Even the name sparkles.”
The man beside him jabbed an elbow into his ribs.
Leon pretended not to hear.
The clerk pulled out the forms with practiced ease.
“Age.”
“Nineteen.”
“Weapon.”
“Sword.”
“Magic.”
“I learned a little basic support magic.”
“Combat experience.”
Leon paused a beat.
“I’ve taken down a wild boar near the village.”
From one corner of the tavern came the sound of someone spraying beer.
Leon’s ears went red.
The clerk’s expression never changed.
She saw this every week.
Rookies who claimed they had killed a boar were common. Whether that boar had actually been a boar or just the neighbor’s pig that got loose usually didn’t matter.
“Start with porter jobs or local gathering.”
The clerk said.
“Herb collecting in the southern woods, warehouse sorting, canal rat clearing—things you can take at Rank Four here.”
Leon looked at the board.
His eyes lit up.
Every rookie who first walked into a guild looked at the board.
Because the world hung there.
Bandit investigation on the northern road.
Strange noises near the mine.
Subjugation of a feral wolf pack.
Exploration of the cellar under the old fort.
Just reading the words made the heart race.
Leon’s gaze climbed from the bottom upward.
And stopped at the very top.
Subjugation of the Dragon Witch.
He tilted his head a little higher.
Lantern light wavered in his pupils.
“That one…”
The clerk’s quill paused.
Several people in the tavern stifled laughs at the same time.
Leon pointed at the posting.
“What is that job?”
As if he had been waiting for the cue, an old voice rose from a corner table.
“Young man.”
An elderly fellow with a steel brace on his left knee was holding a beer mug.
His name was Doran.
He had once been a rather swift spearman; now he was the retired adventurer who talked the most in the tavern.
Doran jerked his chin toward the posting.
“That isn’t a job.”
Leon turned.
“It’s a job posting, isn’t it?”
The one-armed man sitting across from Doran laughed.
His name was Bark.
His left arm was gone from the shoulder down; the empty sleeve was tied off with a leather thong.
“The world has warnings that come in the shape of job postings, too.”
Leon looked a little flustered.
“A warning?”
“That’s right.”
Bark lifted his mug with his right hand.
“If looking at that makes your heart race, it’s a warning that you’re still a little short on the qualifications to stay alive.”
Laughter burst around them.
Leon’s face reddened.
He squared his shoulders, refusing to be pushed back by the laughter.
“Isn’t the Dragon Witch a figure from legend?”
Doran set his mug down.
“She is a figure from legend, yes.”
“Then she might not even exist anymore.”
Bark nodded.
“True. She might not.”
Leon’s eyes brightened a fraction.
“Then why all the fear—”
“Or she might.”
Bark’s reply set off another round of laughter.
Leon shut his mouth.
Doran dragged his chair a little closer.
“Come over here and sit.”
“I’m still registering—”
The clerk folded the papers.
“Sit.”
Leon looked at her.
The clerk’s face was calm.
But there was a strangely hard-to-refuse force in the word.
In the end Leon went to the table where Doran and Bark sat.
Someone shoved a chair over with a foot.
Leon sat awkwardly.
A beer mug was set in front of him.
“Drink.”
Doran said.
“Grown-up talk goes down better when the throat is wet.”
“I’m not very good with—”
“Then you’ll need to listen even more carefully.”
Bark said.
“A man who can’t handle liquor but still looks up at dragons usually doesn’t live long.”
Leon lifted the mug.
He took a swallow and immediately coughed.
Laughter rippled through the tavern again.
It was teasing, but without real malice.
At least for now.
Doran looked toward the posting.
“Do you know when that job was posted?”
“I heard it was the imperial era.”
“That’s right.”
Doran nodded.
“Back when the Empire still thought it was the center of the world.”
Bark said.
“When a man thinks he’s the center of the world, he starts thinking the sky belongs to him too.”
“Did the Empire believe it could give orders even to dragons?”
Leon asked.
Doran looked at him.
“No.”
His voice dropped a little.
“It believed it could kill them.”
The laughter in the tavern thinned.
A log in the hearth cracked sharply.
Doran went on.
“There was a war in the north back then.”
“Ah. The Haireden War?”
“You’ve studied quite a bit.”
“A little.”
“Wars learned from books are usually clean.”
Doran stared into his mug.
“Arrows on a map, dates, winners and losers, and a conclusion at the end.”
Bark looked at his empty sleeve as he spoke.
“There’s not much of that on a real battlefield.”
“Then what is there?”
Leon asked.
Bark answered.
“Sound.”
Doran said.
“Smell.”
The clerk quietly added from behind the counter.
“And names that never come back.”
Leon closed his mouth.
Doran looked at the posting again.
“The Empire pushed into Haireden, and a legion vanished on the northern front.”
“Because of a dragon?”
“They say it was just one.”
Bark said.
“A black dragon.”
Leon looked up at the posting.
“The dragon the Dragon Witch commanded.”
Doran raised a finger.
“That’s the problem with the wording.”
“What is?”
“‘Commanded.’”
Doran was silent a moment.
“People call everything they don’t understand something they can command.”
Bark nodded.
“Whether that woman commanded the dragons, or the dragons followed her, or they were simply family—no one knows now.”
Leon tilted his head.
“Family?”
A few of the nearby adventurers snorted.
There was less lightness in the laughter than before.
“That’s right.”
Doran said.
“Some of the newer records even call her the Mother of Dragons.”
“Mother of Dragons…”
Leon repeated the words slowly.
As if rolling them around in his mouth.
Bark drank his beer.
“The Empire called her a witch.”
“Haireden’s records called her Mother.”
Doran said.
“The survivors wrote ‘savior,’ the burned wrote ‘catastrophe,’ and the scholars—what was it again?”
The clerk, still looking at her ledger, said:
“Central personage of a transcendent dragon-host ecosystem.”
The tavern went quiet.
Doran wrinkled his face.
“You could kill a man with words like that, too.”
Bark nodded.
“That’s why scholars are terrifying.”
A short laugh passed through.
Leon still could not take his eyes off the posting.
“So why did the Empire put up that job?”
“Because they lost.”
Bark said simply.
Leon looked at him.
“They lost, so they posted a job?”
“The Empire was that kind of country.”
Doran shrugged.
“A country that couldn’t stand the word ‘lost.’”
Bark set his mug down.
“Bec Chereson, the Empire’s Best Sword, lost to the dragon.”
At the name the tavern quieted a little more.
Bec Chereson.
The name had remained even after the Empire vanished.
In the heroic tales the Empire left behind, Bec was said to have blocked the black dragon’s claws three times and, at the end, offered his own neck to try to end the war.
No one knew how much of that was true.
But the records of his head falling in the imperial capital survived in many places.
Doran spoke low.
“Bec’s head fell in the capital.”
Leon swallowed.
“Is that true?”
“There are plenty of records of it.”
Bark said.
“Right in the middle of the palace square, they say.”
Doran continued.
“A warning went with that head.”
“Withdraw the Empire.”
Bark said.
“If you send another legion, more than the legion will burn.”
The tavern fell quiet.
Leon swallowed dryly.
“Then did the Empire withdraw?”
Doran and Bark looked at each other.
And gave short laughs.
There was no humor in them.
“If they had, the Empire wouldn’t have fallen.”
Bark said.
Doran pointed with a finger at the dead seal below the posting.
“Even after receiving Bec’s head, the Empire did not surrender.”
Leon’s face showed he did not understand.
“Why?”
“Authority.”
Doran said.
“Face.”
Bark said.
“The legions.”
The clerk said.
“That special brand of male pride.”
The four words dropped onto the table.
Doran went on.
“They must have thought, If one Sword Saint lost, then we simply throw more than a Sword Saint at the problem.”
Bark’s eyes darkened a little.
“There are even records that, claiming to defend the cities, they tried to line their own people up as a defensive perimeter outside the walls.”
Leon’s face hardened.
“Their own people?”
“It was the Empire.”
Doran lifted his mug.
“Once you’re dead, everything becomes a report.”
A low silence settled over the tavern.
The posting on the wall caught the firelight and glowed yellow.
Subjugation of the Dragon Witch.
The title began to look a little different.
Leon asked carefully.
“And then the capital burned.”
Bark nodded.
“They say a black dragon came down from the sky that day.”
“And on its back rode a woman in black robes!”
Doran said.
“The palace, the barracks, and the defense towers all burned.”
“The heart of the Empire stopped that day.”
Bark added.
Leon could say nothing for a moment.
He looked at the posting.
The first time he had seen it, it had looked like legend.
Dangerous but magnificent, distant, a story someone might one day challenge.
It looked different now.
The letters written on that paper seemed like the dried traces of old blood.
“Then…”
Leon opened his mouth with difficulty.
“Is the Dragon Witch evil?”
Several people in the tavern looked at him.
Doran did not answer at once.
Bark only toyed with his mug.
After a moment Doran said:
“If that were an easy thing to say, would that posting still be hanging up there?”
Leon closed his mouth.
Bark looked at the posting.
“The Empire called her a witch.”
He spoke slowly.
“Because she burned them.”
Doran took it up.
“Haireden called her Mother, because she saved them.”
The clerk said quietly.
“Some records call her a monster. Some call her human.”
Bark lifted his mug and held it to the light.
“Probably both.”
Leon caught on the words.
“Both?”
“A human can become a monster, and a person with monstrous power can still try to remain human.”
Doran’s voice lowered.
“What matters is who reached for that power first.”
It took a little while for the tavern to grow noisy again.
Someone coughed awkwardly; someone else lifted a mug.
Outside, rain began to fall.
First a drop or two.
Then it spread into a rapping against the windows.
Leon looked toward the posting once more.
“Still…”
Doran looked at him.
“Still?”
Leon hesitated, then said:
“I think someday someone will go to find out the truth.”
Bark let out a deep sigh.
“You’ve been looking like that someone since earlier.”
“I’m not saying I’ll take the job.”
Leon said quickly.
“I’m just… curious.”
“That curiosity is the most dangerous thing of all.”
Doran said.
“It sends a man into the mountains faster than a sword ever could.”
“But if that is a warning, shouldn’t we know exactly what it means?”
Leon gazed at the posting.
“If she is a witch, why the warning.”
He spoke slowly.
“If she is a catastrophe, why send Bec’s head first.”
The noise in the tavern lessened a little.
“If she is a monster who commands dragons, why give the Empire a chance to stop.”
Those questions were hard to brush off as tavern jokes.
Doran looked at Leon for a long time.
Bark was not laughing either.
For words coming out of a young mouth, they struck a little too cleanly.
Doran set his mug down.
“Those are good questions.”
Leon’s eyes widened a little.
“But if you carry those questions all the way to the canyon, you die.”
Leon’s eyes settled again.
Bark shook his empty sleeve.
“There are things in this world it’s all right to wonder about, and things you must never go confirm.”
“So we just leave it that no one knows?”
“It isn’t that no one knows.”
Doran looked up at the posting.
“The records remain, the storytellers chatter, the scholars invent difficult words, and the drunks talk.”
“Is that the truth?”
“It might not be the truth.”
Doran smiled briefly.
“But it is a shape the survivors can live with.”
The words were strangely heavy.
Leon could not ask more.
Doran leaned back against the chair.
“Listen well, rookie.”
His tone shifted a little.
The drunken bravado of earlier had thinned; what remained was the voice of a man who had lived a long time.
“That posting was not hung so anyone would take it.”
Leon quietly lifted his head.
“Then why leave it up?”
Bark answered for him.
“So you’ll ask, just like you did now.”
Leon looked at the posting.
“So I’ll ask?”
“That’s right.”
Doran pointed at the wall as he spoke.
“Because if there isn’t some kindly drunk like us nearby… that happens.”
On the wall were the scrawled resolutions of countless people and weapons melted or shattered, wrapped in white cloth.
“So don’t go to the canyon, young friend.”
If you value your life.