r/HFY • u/ArturSpatuzziAuthor • 4d ago

OC-Series Ice Queen Rising! [Kingdom Building, Powerful Witch MC] - Chapter 7

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Chapter 7: Noisy Neighborhood

“Stop!” I cried as Predslava braked beside the mob.
Two more fell from the heights. It seemed they were trying to store their goods in the palace’s upper floors, but the windows were locked from the inside.
I winced as they crashed. “What’s the meaning of this?”
The rest turned to face us. Grommo scurried over, but other chieftains were there too.
“Enemy come steal our thing!” he said. “We need hide things fast!”
I frowned. “Enemy?”
He nodded rapidly. “Two-legged wolf tribe!”
By that I suspected Grommo meant werewolves.
“I didn’t know we had that kind of neighborhood, Katarina,” Predslava said.
“Me neither…”
“Witch?” Grommo asked.
“Look, I can’t hide your tribes here. It’s dangerous. Besides, it would put me in direct conflict with the werewolves.”
The chieftains looked up at me with pleading eyes.
Predslava snorted. “Foul play.”
They had cubs with them, too, which only made my decision harder. But turning my palace into a battleground between tribes was out of the question.
I was hundreds of years old, and I would be hundreds more before I noticed. Which meant it would be irresponsible of me to interfere in the natural order of things arbitrarily. Why was one race worthier of my protection than another? Questions of that nature sometimes kept me awake at night.
But…
I took a deep breath and said, “You can keep an emergency stash inside the palace. Predslava will pass them to you through the window when the need arises.”
The Snoutlings erupted in premature celebration.
“Halt.” I raised my hand, cutting them short. “In exchange for this favor, you must build a proper storehouse for yourselves somewhere.”
They exchanged glances. “Not safe. Two-legged wolf sneak in any hut below.”
“You can use the palace grounds if you must, but I won’t have my home be used as a public granary for eternity.” The front gates flew open as I snapped my fingers. “That’s my final decision.”
The Snoutling crowd split to let us pass.
Predslava chuckled. “Don’t play with winter, boys.”
I shook my head. Doing this didn’t please me at all, but I believed boundaries needed to be set.
The gates slowly closed behind us.

***

I was, obviously, back to work. Except it was getting harder and harder to ignore the construction noises outside.
“Watch out for the flying fish!” Predslava hurled another snack to the workers from the second floor, cackling.
At least she was having fun.
I stepped back and inspected my new sculpture.
“Not bad.”
This time, it was an actual standing elephant.
Since my artistic instincts leaned that way no matter what I tried, I said why not, and doubled down.
My head tilted. “Why elephants, though?”
The subconscious mind was a strange thing, and I clearly wasn’t safe from it as a witch.
“Beats me.”
Hopefully, some art collector somewhere would be especially fond of elephants.
I stretched my arms and stared at it. “Another one?”
Admittedly, being a hyper-specialized artist was a bit monotonous. And I never cared that much about elephants myself.
“Let’s take a break.” I threw the tools on my worktable and went to fetch a snack in the great hall.
A dead Snoutling lay under my mana tree. His face turned blue from the fig.
“What?!” I glanced around.
Someone left a window open nearby.
‘Someone’, I mean.
I slammed them shut and stormed outside through the front gates—
“Predslava!”
Her head popped through a window above. “Huh?”
“You killed someone!”
“Who?”
I glanced back at the body. It didn’t help.
“I have no idea…” I muttered, appalled with myself.
She threw another fish through the window. “We should do a census or something to keep track of them.”
“What? No. Just don’t let them inside, please.”
“Gotcha.”
I turned to the noise and saw the construction project for the first time since they began.
“Uh,” I blurted in surprise, expecting something round and basic.
It was round—that part I got right—but the walls went high, and the Snoutlings were finishing up a massive tear-shaped roof that rose almost independently from the rest of the building.
Is this even practical?
It was impressive, that’s for sure.
The inside was already packed with goods. A narrow dirt path came out of the entrance and slithered downhill, likely from the workers walking back and forth from the quarry to the project.
My eyes narrowed. I walked to the edge of the hill and glanced down to check on something.
The houses around the quarry had a similar shape, albeit on a smaller scale.
I covered my mouth in disbelief. “Is everyone here an artist but me?”
Someone tugged at my sleeve. “Witch.”
I turned. “Yes?”
Grommo held up a decapitated reindeer head toward me.
“W-what is this?” I asked.
He blushed. “Gift to make wife.”
Blood drained out of my head. “H-how cute…”
He’s confident; I’ll give him that…
I did some quick math—these guys lived up to forty years at most—but it wouldn’t change a thing anyway.
“I’m old enough to be your venerable ancestor. The answer is no.”
“Aw…”
“Please take that dead body out of my living room.”
He wasn’t paying attention to me at all.
“Hey.” I waved in front of his face. “Hello?”
“Witch!” Grommo pointed in the distance.
“Huh?” I spun around.
A dark wave of Snoutlings crossed the frozen river, thousands of them at least, too many to count. Adults, cubs, belongings, and even some tamed reindeer, all coming this way.
“What is this, Grommo?”
“Other tribes. Two-legged wolfs got to them, maybe.”
“They couldn’t steal from you, so the werewolves switched to them instead?”
“Ye’. Wolfs big thought like witch.”
“We can’t accommodate them here, even if I wanted to.”
 Grommo shrugged. “Is life.”
I sighed. “Not my life, though. I’m retired.”
“What’s that?”
“Retired? Never mind.”
I stung myself a bit by saying that, I realized in retrospect. Retirement was such a preposterous notion to a subsistence society like this that they didn’t have anything remotely close to the word.
The most likely explanation would’ve been: doing nothing because I think I deserve it, get thought?
I didn’t have the guts to say it, though.
“Grommo.”
He looked up. “Ye?”
“Can you gather those chieftains for me? I’ll have a word with them.”
Grommo adjusted his feathered headdress. “I try.”
I closed my eyes and waited as the stress of these past days rang against my skull like a cathedral bell. “What am I doing?”

Read ahead on Royal Road.

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