Empire Builder 1: Breed, Populate, Conquer by Dante King (free e books to read online txt) 📕

Fuck it. Time to make an executive decision.

Ben channeled what little energy he had left into his hands and focused on the emotional strands of the nymphs. Their anxiety caused a chaotic rainbow of emotional strands. Fortunately, he was getting better at cutting out all the noise in the signal.

Their fear was deep purple hue. He latched his magic onto the strand of fear in each woman, and pulled it into himself. The bitter flavor of fear filled his mouth.

Oh crap. He’d forgotten about this bit. His own fear increased immensely. He’d underestimated how terrified these women were.

Ben collapsed to his knees, overwhelmed by the negative emotions racing through him. His stomach turned over, and his limbs trembled. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

The nymph women now appeared horrifying to him, as if he’d inhaled Scarecrow’s fear toxin. Their faces were distorted out of all proportion as they leered at him with hate in their eyes.

Melody rushed to his side and held him. “What happened?” she whispered.

“These women …” Ben groaned. “They are monsters.” His vision swam, and he felt sick in his gut.

Then Melody’s eyes lit up with recognition. “You drained them of their fear. You have taken too much of it.”

Ben focused his attention on her face, the only place he could look without being overwhelmed.

“What can we do?” Melody asked herself. “You are helpless in this state.”

She muttered to herself, searching for a solution, while Ben tried to hold it together.

“I know what you can do, Benjamin,” she said at last. “Give me some of the fear. It will be less for us both that way. But here, take my wand first, I wouldn’t want to do anything dangerous in such a state.”

Ben took Melody’s wand, then summoned what remained of his mana, which again was more than he expected. He pushed the fear he felt into Melody. Thankfully, much of it dispersed into the air. That was one advantage of the attrition of his spell, he supposed.

His fear dropped significantly, until he was able to get to his feet again. His strength quickly returned, making his legs throb as the blood flowed into them. He stood straight and faced the nymphs once more.

Melody let out a whimper and pressed herself against him, the whites of her eyes growing larger in her fear. But she did not appear to be overcome. Ben kept the wand close, not wanting to risk handing it over to Melody should her fear overtake her.Instead, Ben held her and comforted her as he looked at the other women. They all seemed relieved now that their own emotion was reduced.

Ben looked down to their ankles. They were barefoot. The woman on the left, with the blue hair, appeared to have webbed toes as well. There were so many questions about who and what these women were, but they would have to wait a little longer.

Then Ben noticed that each woman had a circular metal band around her right ankle.

“What are those bands on your ankles?” he asked. He looked down at Melody, still cradled into his shoulder. She swallowed back her fear as she peered at the ankles of the women.

Melody gasped. “Those are null locks. How cruel!” Her concern now outweighing the fear Ben had given her, she rushed forward and knelt to examine the ankle of the blue woman.

The woman stepped back nervously.

“What are you doing?” asked the woman in the middle.

“What are null locks?” Ben asked.

Then he noticed how the women were growing increasingly agitated. “Please, all of you, stay calm.” He held out his hands placatingly. “Like I said, we are here to rescue you. Melody, can you explain to me what null locks are?”

Melody turned her head and looked up at him. Her tail was swishing rapidly. He suspected that this was a sign of strong emotion in her.

“Null locks are a device used by the Xurian Realm to nullify a person’s magic,” she explained. “They are mostly used by slavers and prison wardens to control people from the magical races.” There was a bitter note of disgust in her voice.

“How can we remove them then?” Ben asked.

He tried to imagine what it would be like having his newfound magical abilities taken away from him. It must have been like being forcibly strapped into a wheelchair while your legs were still perfectly functioning. Such helplessness would be degrading. He felt compassion for these women, who had been enslaved and then had their power removed from them.

“Are you sure you want to remove the lock?” The blue haired woman spoke up for the first time. Her voice sounded agitated, but also belligerent. “I have a lot of anger stored up, and I can’t promise I will be able to control it.”

“You will control it, Lulu.” The white-haired woman with no pupils spoke. “I will help you, sister.”

“Imogen is right,” the woman in the middle said. “I think we need to trust these people. It’s not like we have much choice.”

“How do we remove these locks then, Melody?” Ben repeated.

“You need the keys,” Melody said. “There is no other safe way to remove them.”

“I don’t know if I can do this,” the blue haired woman said. She sounded very agitated this time. Ben would need to watch her.

“Where can I find the keys then?” he asked. “The mountain ogres must have had them if you were their slaves, right?”

The woman in the middle nodded. “The big man, the leader, who was the one who controlled the keys. You should find them on his belt.”

Ben thought about how that man had locked these women up as property. The alpha was lucky he was dead or Ben would have killed him again.

Ben dashed outside and went over to the dried-up corpse of the giant. On the corpse’s belt, there was indeed a set of keys hanging on the inside of his trousers, probably to stop any of the other mountain ogres from stealing