by Matthew Peed
We hurried outside, where I quickly mounted Lucifer. Wrakras mounted a similar wolf, and we rushed to the Thonaca gate. The town was in a panic as news spread that a force from Thonaca had come. Soldiers and adventurers alike rushed to get geared up for whatever was to come. As we passed the central district gate, Iveta joined up with us. She was a major under Ezal now and had been put on patrol.
“How’s the town?” I asked as we kept up the pace.
“It won’t be good if something doesn’t happen. The adventurers are mainly keeping their distance, though a larger number than I expected have joined with us,” Iveta reported.
“Damn it. If it’s not one thing, it’s another,” I growled, sparks starting to pop off my skin.
I happened to glance toward the sky and saw Ezal fly by. She was riding Feuer like a mount with a trail of flame behind her. I spurred Lucifer on, and we sped up to catch up with her. We couldn’t let the pregnant woman do all the work. A large crowd of people was gathered at the gate, and Ezal was quickly whipping them into formation from the air.
“Everyone, to their stations! Adventurers, get assigned a group, then stick to it like a slime. No one attack until the situation is confirmed!” Ezal shouted from where she floated.
I generated a field of energy around me and floated up next to her. “What is the situation?”
“Still unconfirmed, my lady. We sent a messenger, but they have yet to return.” She shook her head.
I sensed a surge of mana from out beyond the gate. A burst of wind gusted around us, but I didn’t feel any threat from it. I noticed that something was being tossed in the wind. Ezal reached forward and grabbed it before it could hit her. Blood splattered over her as we took in what it was.
“I guess that answers that question,” she said, lifting the head to close its eyes.
“The messenger?” I asked, anger growing in my chest.
She frowned. “Unfortunately, poor kid.”
“I guess we should respond?” I smirked evilly.
“Of course. If someone says something, it’s only proper to reply.”
She floated down and handed the head gently to a messenger, ordering the man to make sure his name was recorded and honored after the battle. She returned to me a moment later. I reduced how much mana the armor Regan made for me was taking so that my senses would increase.
I made out a large force. There had to be at least a thousand soldiers present. From the distance, any flags were unreadable, so I wasn’t sure if it was the king’s doing or some other lord. Needless to say, I didn’t give a fuck. I searched for what I thought would be the commander. Usually, it was the idiot that had the most armor and metals on him. Sure enough, toward the rear I found a middle-aged man with a self-important smile on his face like he had just scored the best deal of his life.
“Toward the back. Like the coward he is,” I told Ezal.
She sighed. “Why can’t the other nobles be honorable like Lord Val was?”
“Bragging about your man?” I snickered—then stopped, remembering he was dead.
“Of course. When my child is born, I will brag about their father until they get sick of it,” she said, looking straight ahead. I still could see the red coloring her cheeks.
“Then, let’s welcome our guests,” I said.
Ezal formed a massive ball of flame. In a blink of an eye it condensed until it was only the size of her hand, then turned a pure white color, giving heat off that affected even those on the ground nearly two dozen meters under us. I pointed Helios at the ball and added my own touch.
I generated an electrical field around it, and it condensed even further until it was only a finger-sized ball. The heat was gone, contained by the field, and it was a purple color. It pulsed gently and would almost have appeared benign to an onlooker. Ezal looked at me and I nodded. She flicked her wrist as if waving off an annoying pest.
“Try not to kill them all,” I said.
“Really, my lady?” she asked, surprised.
“Need people to question, after all,” I answered. It looked like Regan’s mentality was rubbing off on her. Well, myself as well. I don’t mind destroying my enemies, but we still needed to know who and why they were attacking us.
The ball hovered in front of us for only a moment before it flashed and vanished with a streak. A few seconds later the streak reached the enemy lines. It impacted the enemy leader and incinerated him instantly. The ball collided with the ground, and the next moment it turned to day.
~~~
Trido Guill
I couldn’t believe that right after I was hired on as a soldier, the lord decided to go wage a war. Luckily, I was assigned to rear left flank. I was so far from the potential combat that I wondered why they’d even brought so many soldiers in the first place. As it was, I was more of an errand boy.
After two weeks of marching, we finally made it to our target. It was the new dungeon town that I had heard rumors about from the adventurers and other commoners like me. Apparently, the new dungeon gave gold like a river. To be honest, I was tempted to come here, but I had family that I couldn’t afford to leave, and they couldn’t travel easily with me.
“Hey, they sent a messenger,” one of the soldiers whispered in front of me.
“Oh, this will be good. The lord likes to send them back . . . in pieces.” Another soldier laughed gruffly.
“Isn’t that against the law?” I asked.
“Ha! Like that matters to a noble.” He laughed harshly again.
I reluctantly nodded in agreement with the older man. Generally, nobles played by whatever rules they felt like at the current time. Our lord in particular liked to treat himself like a king.
Sure enough a few minutes later, there was a boom as wind magic was used to fling the body back over the walls. The messenger’s body was ripped apart before it even left my line of sight. Laughter rose up from all along the line as the “veterans” found it hilarious. I couldn’t help but wonder what the enemy would do in reply.
Suddenly from the other side of the wall there was a huge fireball. From where I was it had to be at least ten meters in diameter if not bigger. The soldier in front of me gasped and took a step back.
“Fuck! That had to be tier three at least,” the mild one said.
“As if such a frontier town could pull a high-ranker like that,” the crude soldier said gruffly. “See, it’s already shrinking.”
“Oh, you’re right. Must’ve been a show,” the mild one said, shaking his head.
They were right. The fireball quickly shrank until it was a size that I couldn’t see from my spot in the rear. I was called at that moment to help secure a horse that was spooked by the flame. I ran after the horse, which had managed to break its lead, and caught it right at the edge of the forest line. Right when I turned to head back, I saw a streak of purple.
The horse jerked me like it sensed something bad was coming and pulled me even farther into the forest. Before I could calm it, the night became day. I screamed in pain, my entire body feeling like it was burning. The pain was punctuated by a blast that sent me flying into a nearby tree. Another wave of heat flooded around me. The metal parts of my armor felt like they were about to melt. I couldn’t even breathe anymore. The air burned my mouth and lungs as I pulled in desperate gasps.
I thought it was over finally when the heat died down a bit. I could feel everything burning, but certain parts were numb. I tried to open my eyes, but I couldn’t see anything, and laid there in pain, unable to move. In the middle of the pain-filled misery, I wondered if I was going to die.
“I found one!” I heard a voice. It was as if from a long tunnel. Then I felt, as if it were an echo, something touch me.
“Welcome to Robia Valley,” I heard, the words spoken harshly. Something flowed into me and I quickly lost consciousness.
Chapter 11
Regan
After giving Izora her mission, I quickly upgraded her airship. It would get nearly ten times t
he speed it had before, which was probably already the continent’s record short of my own vessels. I could have installed a warp drive like the ship I’d sent to inspect the solar system, but that felt like overkill. Besides, I didn’t know what she would be walking into and didn’t want to give a potential enemy access to that type of technology. I was fully prepared to pull Izora back to the dungeon if I had to.
Her pendant served as a mini core. While it was a pendant, it would be dormant, but I could still keep tabs on her. If I pushed a decent amount of mana through it, I could teleport her back to the dungeon. I couldn’t wait to get access to the tech at the gnome capital. Their historical archives, to be particular.
Thinking about the scout ship, I actually grew worried. They should have reported in by now. The first target was the moon, after all. It should have made the journey in a few hours. I could only assume that something was taking longer to examine. Many of my machines tended to be completionists. The captain wouldn’t leave until he was confident that he had all the information he needed.
I teleported to the north. As planned, the army was nearly done arriving at their positions. The air fleet stood at the ready at the first dryad in the encirclement. The ground forces were ready to begin tightening the noose. Reports came in that the massive swarm around Alara was moving, but it appeared they weren’t sure where to send their main force and were keeping the bulk of it back around her dungeon entrance.
The resistance my forces received was almost pitiful. I was using my top-of-the-line children, sure, but the undead being steamrolled so easily almost made me laugh. I made sure to watch for anything that might be a trap, but nothing happened. Sitting in my throne on the bridge of Alpha made me feel like I was playing an RTS. I shrugged it off and turned back to the information feeds.
The readouts for the space above the area showed it was a hive of activity. I was aligning half a dozen ion cannons for each dryad. I wanted to take them all down in an offset-timed attack. That would give Anubis time to perform the ritual but keep the necromancers off-balance.
Finally, after a day had passed and everything at my disposal was deployed, we were ready. “Sir! All units are in position. Just awaiting your orders.”
“Very good,” I said and stood up. “Bring up all lines.” The screen flashed, and several hundred more screens opened that showed all the command units. The soldiers without screens would have an audio feed. “Good afternoon. It’s finally time to stamp out this nuisance. As a dungeon core, I find it very offensive that some slime has taken one of my kind as a slave. We will teach them not to mess with me or mine,” I said, making a fist.
“In ten minutes, we will commence the operation. I have only one order for everyone. Destroy anything that gets in your way,” I ordered and thrust my hand forward.
Everyone showing on the screen saluted. They pressed their fists to their chests and tapped twice. I wasn’t sure how it had started, but the soldier types had begun giving this salute a while ago. The screens focused, showing only the areas of importance.
Ten minutes ticked by slowly. Finally, the clock chimed. To the far north roughly a hundred kilometers from the shore, there was a flash of light. I felt mana drain from the station core as it powered the matrix of ion cannons above the dryad. We were viewing the feed from the commander on that site. Similar to the last dryad, this one went up in a burst of flames. The mana wave hit the commander’s location, and the feed flickered for a moment.
“Anubis, two minutes,” I said to him standing next to me. I had made heat-resistant plating for him. It couldn’t withstand the heat levels at impact of the ion cannon, but it could after the impact site had cooled for thirty seconds. It took him anywhere from one to five minutes to perform the ritual, so we had to brace for that.
“I’m ready,” Anubis said, flexing his chest.
Exactly two minutes later, he teleported off the bridge. The ground forces in that area were rushing forward, getting as close as they could before they overheated. Ents, zombies, skeletons, and several other monsters were torn apart quickly. It appeared there weren’t any supporting necromancers in the area, though there probably were on the gnome airships.
There was a flash of golden light, which signaled Anubis had finished his ritual. All that remained was to create the guardian treant. That ritual took even less time to complete, and I sent the order to prime the next set of ion cannons. I wanted to reach Alara by this afternoon. If I had to lose a few soldiers, so be it.
Anubis reappeared on the bridge, smoking slightly. “Father, it is done!”
“Good. Fire the next one!” I ordered.
A similar scene took place as the six beams sliced through the atmosphere. Right before they hit the dryad, one of the necromancer barriers formed over it. This barrier was on another level than the last, being at least five meters thick. The ion beams collided with the barrier, the force from the descent alone managing to cause cracks over the surface.
I watched as the dryad literally shriveled in real time, fueling the barrier. Before ten seconds passed, the barrier shattered. The dryad was barely a husk at this point. A moment later there was another firestorm from the attack, and the area was lit up. The timer started for Anubis, while the ground forces inspected the surrounding areas to make sure nothing could interfere.
For the next two hours, we rinsed and repeated. I would have thought the necromancers would have thrown everything they had at me, but after the first hour, I could only assume they'd decided to cut their losses. With the last dryad, there wasn’t even an attempt to create a barrier. I still kept my guard up in case they tried to play anything funny. With all the dryads “helped,” my forces were able to move within a hundred kilometers of Alara’s dungeon.
The forest was completely gone from an area about a hundred and fifty kilometers in diameter around her. The main discerning feature was black wasteland. What looked like low-tier undead mulled around the wasteland without any direction or reason. They were likely created by the ambient undead mana in the area. As none of my forces possessed flesh and blood, they were basically ignored by these mindless undead. We still destroyed them as we moved, just to be safe.
The mana drain to keep my forces from corroding was at a decent number now. The unholy mana was so dense, it was almost a physical force at this point. Even with the Anubis metal masks, they were fighting a constant battle with the mana. I would need to do something about it soon or risk trouble down the road. I could feel the foreign presence peering at my army even now. I hoped it liked what it saw.
“All command units link up!” I ordered through the comms.
All the command units connected to a mana stone that was scripted to act as a quantum conduit. It required a large amount of mana to create and use, but I could funnel mana into every section at the same time using this method. The stones would burn out afterward, thus I only planned to use this method when I needed to preform magic that spanned hundreds of kilometers.
With all the command units linked to Alpha, I activated the magic script program. Hundreds of thousands of lines of magic script flashed over the main monitor of Alpha’s command bridge. I moved my mental eye outside where a magical matrix that was composed of hundreds of magic circles and runes formed over the floating city.
When the magic was completely charged, roughly enough mana to fire the ion cannons thirty times, the spell activated. A barrier that stretched into the sky formed around the massive hundred-and-fifty-kilometer area. Having an open-ended barrier spell like this maintain its strength would require more mana than I possessed, so I had the barrier link up with some low-orbit satellites that would feed mana into the spell.
I only needed it to last a few days. The moment the barrier was complete, I felt a massive wave of rage from the presence, then a vague sense of something being pulled from the center area of the barrier and ripped back to the east. I tilted my head at that, as I would have figured some type of space magic would have been involved if it was
the Celestial that controlled the necromancers.
Either way the first objective of the barrier was a success. I knew Celestials couldn’t manifest in this plane thanks to Duilin. The mana required was some number that felt imaginary when said aloud. Of course, I took everything Duilin said with a grain of salt. There were times when he appeared to slip into a madness of sorts. Though, that might be my fault for keeping him locked in a box. Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t checked on him in a while.
The next objective was to contain what I was about to do. I didn’t want to cause half the continent to be wiped from existence, after all. I made sure everything was working properly, then moved to my main station. Exactly overhead of Alara’s dungeon, I prepared the next weapon that I was planning on using.
While the ion cannon was good for surface targets, there was little in the way of ground penetration. It left a pretty crater, but that was about it. I needed something that would dig deep and fast before the necromancers ordered Alara to fortify her dungeon with mana. Not only would it carve a path, but it would burn off some of the mana she’d built up over the years.
Even back when I’d first become a dungeon and the goblins had forced the entrance to open larger, I knew that I could prevent it. Many experiments found that there was a reducing mana cost the closer the invader got to the core. In other words, I could penetrate the upper floors easily, but the farther down I went, the less it cost to make the floors stronger, durability-wise.
Alara was still in tier two even after all this time because she refused to break through. That, and she needed a purer mana to do it. It would be quite easy to siphon off mana into places so that she didn’t reach critical mass. The instructions would have to be precise for the necromancers to control every drop of mana she had. I was more worried that if she broke through while producing unholy mana, she might not be able to recover.
