Loria hadn’t expected it to look like sludge, or to smell so rancid.
“Are you sure you got it right?” she asked, eyes locked on the oozing material.
The short trader glanced up at her with a smirk. “It ain’t no classy type, I’ll give ya that. But it be real, no doubts there.”
Loria nodded. She could fuss all day about it, and maybe she’d do so later, but she’d already paid the trader, and she wasn’t turning back. She took a good long breath before reaching out to touch it.
The mud-like sludge was warm and reactive, smoothing out at her touch, conforming to the shape of her hand. Loria closed her eyes and pushed down on it. The material covered her hand and a bit of her lower arm. The warmth spread through her and grew hottest where the sludge met her skin.
Then came a painful sensation, a thousands of pinpricks on her hand made her shutter and grind her teeth. It was exactly the experience she’d been promised, but it was so real. She pulled at her hand instinctively, but it was stuck in the sludge.
Loria wasn’t sure how long it lasted, but the pain eventually subsided and her hand came loose. With a sigh of relief, she ripped it free, breaking apart the now dry sludge.
After massaging her hand, Loria held it up before her eyes, inspecting it carefully. Nothing appeared different about it, but she could feel a difference. There was a weight there, a dangerous implication attached.
Loria turned to the trader. “I would like to test it.”
“Figured as much, me lady.” He led her to a corner of the room. There he moved a small, false door, no bigger than a necklace case.
Loria crouched down by it. “Here?”
The trader nodded. “No one will notice it.”
Reaching out with her affected hand, she placed her palm on the ground in the niche. She wasn’t sure what to expect, only that she would recognize it.
As soon as her first finger touched the surface of the ground, she drew a sharp breath from a new sensation. She felt the ground there, in a way she could never explain. A wave of attachment to the land beneath her hand started. It was more than just a hunk of earth now, it felt real to her. And that small piece of the world was hers.
And it was growing too, she could feel more and more of the space around her fingertips joining it, unifying into some mass in her subconscious.
“Enough there lass. Ya satestified?”
Loria gasped and lifted her hand off. She hadn’t wanted to remove her hand. It was so… refreshing, enlivening.
“By the look of it, ya got what ya wanted. Now ya better hurry off. Lucky lass I’d bargain with, ya ask me. I ain’t too fond of a ladyship ove’ me land, but anythin’ better than that ol’ Harnigan. Ya got me right on that.”
Loria smiled at the little man. After so long looking, she’d finally done it.
She was a Kingmaker.
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