by Pirateaba
Of the six Prognugators, only three apparently ‘survived’ the end of the war. Klbkch the Slayer, Wrymvr the Deathless, and the Small Queen Xrn were sighted after the First Antinium War and even during the Second Antinium War*. It is speculated that their repeated deaths or perhaps their failures to secure victories may have led to their demise at the hands of their Queens. Other theories include a limit to the number of times the Antinium are able to revive such individuals, but whatever the case, the eventual death of half of the Prognugators led to a far more cautious approach in their deployment.
*As of writing, Klbkch is the only Prognugator confirmed as still living – he resides with the sixth Antinium Hive in Liscor after the peace treaty following the end of the Second Antinium War.
And yet, the damage caused by the Antinium’s second advance brought even the combined Human, Gnoll and Drake forces to a standstill. The Antinium fought desperately to keep the armies from taking even one Hive, and eventually the true power of the Antinium began to tip the scales of balance back in their favor.
Antinium Soldiers, despite their weaknesses, were extremely efficient and impossible to break from low morale. Exhaustion did not seem to be a factor for the Antinium; some fought until they literally died of exhaustion, but the same could not be said of the non-Antinium forces.
Sheer exhaustion from continuous battles wore down the Drakes, Humans, and Gnolls, leading to repeated defeats as weary soldiers faltered under the ceaseless advance of the Black Tide. Suddenly, even the advantage enjoyed by the three races began to erode as more and more Antinium marched out of their Hives each week, a consequence of their high birth-rate.
The battle lines stabilized once again, but this time it was to the detriment of the Drakes. Sserys grew increasingly worried as more and more defeats occurred among his armies, writing in his journal the fears he refused to share with those under his command.
“Again, and again they come for us. Are they endless, or do these ‘Queens’ bear children so quickly that they can replenish their armies in weeks?
The Humans fight far more bravely than I would believe, but even with their army, we cannot keep fighting as we have. In a month—perhaps less—we will lose this war.
That is unacceptable. We must act decisively to end the war now or resign ourselves to death. It is time again to gamble with the fates and risk all or nothing. If need be, I will lead the charge myself into the heart of one of their Hives. If we must sacrifice an army to take the life of even one Queen, it may be worth it.”
Sserys’ proposal to launch a suicide attack was unanimously rejected by the war council, but it became clear that without some decisive action, the war would be lost.
Nine months after the beginning of the Antinium Wars, the true weakness, the crucial weakness of the Antinium was discovered by chance in an engagement with a patrol of Humans that found themselves ambushed by over fifty Antinium Soldiers and Workers.
The ambushed Humans quickly fell to the Soldiers, but one [Hydromancer] cast a [Rain] spell in desperation. She perished, but a relief force found that the area the patrol had been ambushed in – a natural valley – was filled with not only the corpses of the lost patrol, but all the Antinium. They had drowned attempting to climb the muddy embankment and sank beneath the waters.
This development largely went unnoticed until the [Strategist] assigned to the army reviewed the patrol’s report. She quickly sent a message to the highest-ranking mage in the army, and the experiment was duplicated on a larger scale the next day.
The results were immediately apparent and decisive, and it led to the Antinium army’s eventual complete defeat and the changing of the entire war. It was a simple discovery, yet vital, and it was this:
The Antinium cannot swim. They are unable to float, and despite being able to hold their breath for an extended duration, they perish of suffocation like any other species.
At first, General Sserys dismissed the reports coming from the Human army as impossible, an error in judgement. He and other Drakes had to see the Antinium drowning in person before they would believe.
In retrospect, the Antinium’s weakness appears obvious, but not so to those who had fought against the Antinium at the time. In Rhir, the Antinium had battled the Blighted King’s armies with little places that were located next to water, and their departure across the sea tricked the world into believing they were able to swim. What sane creature would travel across the oceans without the ability to even float?
Yet the truth remained: the Antinium could not swim. And with that discovery, their endless numbers suddenly became not only manageable, but a weakness.
The Drake and Human armies suddenly pulled back from their offensive charges and adopted a wholly defensive formation. They placed heavy groups of pikes and defensive soldiers towards the front, all to buy their [Mages] enough time to cast [Rain] and other weather-related spells to flood the battlefield. [Geomancers] and [Diggers] built floodwalls to contain the water, and formed natural valleys to drown the Antinium in.
This general strategy required constant adjustments as the Antinium armies actively tried to avoid just such a scenario, but the results were dramatic. Entire armies of the Antinium perished, and they found themselves unable to advance into certain areas for fear of being drowned out. The Drake armies even created artificial lakes to halt the Antinium’s progress in some areas.
While the Workers could drain the waters given time, the ability of the Drakes and Humans to set the battlefield forced the Antinium on the defensive. In the course of weeks, the Antinium had been pushed back all the way to their Hives by the attacking armies, and there, for the first time, the Queens were finally in direct danger.
Sserys led the first attack on an Antinium Hive. He recorded the battle in his diary:
“That first assault was the most harrowing experience I have ever gone through. Antinium filled the tunnels, fighting savagely in that confined space. The tunnel walls kept opening up around us as the Workers tunneled around to hit our flanks and rear, and they came at us without pause, desperate to defend the Queen that must surely lurk below.
…We cannot face them. No. I have pulled my forces back and ordered every mage in my army to cast as many water spells as possible. We will flood the monsters out.”
That was exactly what Sserys’s army did. For four days and four nights, the mages cast endless [Rain], [Downpour], and other related spells, flooding the Hive with water.
It is believed the Workers in the Hive labored desperately to drain the water into side-tunnels and other passages, but even their efforts eventually failed them. The Antinium launched constant attacks on the Drakes above, but by the end of the fourth day the water had reached the mouth of the Hive entrance, and after three more days of waiting, [Divers] were sent in. They found the Hives full of dead Antinium and the drowned Queen deep below.
One Hive had fallen, and the continent celebrated. Yet the cost of that battle did not go unnoticed or unwarned of. Mages specializing in water magic warned of the effect the spells would have on the weather, and Sserys himself banned this tactic except as a means of last resort.
“Dead gods, I have never seen such horror. The entire Hive is dead. We know that now. All within are drowned and rotting—over a hundred thousand Antinium, possibly twice or three times that number. All dead.
We burned the ground to ash, and then filled their tunnels with water. We made it rain until the world seemed as if it were naught but mud and rain. And the cost has taken its toll.
I remember this land. It was green and lush, but now the ground is a swamp of death and the sky is cloudless. The mages tell me that this magic has interfered with the weather. It will not rain here for decades. While it is a flooded place now, soon this will become an arid wasteland, fit only for the dead we have entombed.
Never again. Not if I can help it. This war has made me sick, and I am tired of it. Let us finish this once and for all if we must.”
True to th
e mage’s predictions, the site of the Antinium Hive has since become a dry desert, and both vegetation and wildlife have died out in a fifty mile radius around the place of the former Hive.
And yet, this victory over one Hive was not only decisive, but the first chapter in the final saga of the war. Emboldened by the destruction of one of the four Hives the Antinium had built, the Walled Cities and Human alliance decided to form a grand coalition army – dubbed the First Unified Army – to assault the main hive of the Antinium and end the war in one quick stroke.
Almost every commander and leader was in support of this plan, as every side had grown weary of this ongoing war. Sserys himself volunteered to command the army, and only a few dissidents opposed this strategy.
Among them was Zel Shivertail. The second-in-command argued that the Antinium were too dangerous to fight, even with their weakness exploited. But his voice was lost and overruled by Sserys himself, and the First Unified Army set out towards the Antinium Hive nearly one year after the Antinium Wars had started, one of the largest armies to ever march across Issiysil.
It was at this moment that the Antinium did something unprecedented. They attempted to sue for peace. Antinium [Workers] bearing white flags approached armies en-masse. While they were often cut to ribbons, many survived and the letters they bore were all identical. The Antinium Grand Queen – a position that was entirely new to the Drake and Human leadership – requested an immediate peace treaty between the Antinium and the rest of the continent.
These terms were unanimously refused by the leaders, who felt that they now had the upper hand. Rather than make peace with the Antinium, it was infinitely more preferable to destroy them all at once, and so Sserys’ army was given complete authority to dispose of the Antinium in any way they saw fit.
[Couriers] and [Mages] kept the army in almost constant contact with the other cities as the army approached the main Hive where it was believed the majority of the Queens and the Grand Queen of the Antinium resided. Only a few Antinium forces challenged the army, and they were quickly destroyed.
Sserys encircled the Hive with his army and made camp, assuring the cities that they would destroy the Hive on the next day. His forces settled in—
And were all gone by the next day.
It was an almost completely silent night, punctuated only by a few [Message] spells that seemed to have been cast by accident. But as the Drake and Human leaders waited for Sserys to report in as dawn broke the next day, they found that no mage in the army could be reached, and none of the [Couriers] sent the night before had returned.
Many spells have been attempted, witnesses interviewed, and even the Antinium have been questioned, but to this day, there exists no record, no evidence of what transpired during the night. No spells were cast, and no alarms were raised among the cities. But every member of the army, including non-combatants like [Cooks] and [Porters] disappeared without a trace, leaving behind neither bodies nor clues to what had happened.
Only one record remains of that night. General Sserys’s diary. The latest entries record the First unified Army settling in, Sserys’ proposed tactics for beginning the siege of the Hive, and a final entry.
“This is the hour of my death.
We have been attacked in the night. We were prepared, although not for the amount of Antinium that emerged. But our defenses were solid, and we fought them back and began the siege early.
The Antinium came at us, limitless numbers of Soldiers and Workers, but we destroyed them by the thousands.
We met them in the tunnels and pushed them back. Soldiers and Workers both emerged…we melted them, blasted them apart…we were winning. I believe it was just past midnight when the Antinium pulled back and we believed they were making a final stand.
They arrived as we were pushing towards the central hive. Our night scouts reported sounds and then—silence. Slowly, all the camps around my headquarters stop reporting in, even forces with tens of thousands of soldiers. But even as I sent [Runners] and mage spells demanding reports, I received only silence. No one returned.
Something is moving in the tunnels. Something is underneath us. They are waiting, systematically destroying my army in the cover of the night. Already they are attacking the edges of the camp.
I do not know what kind of enemy we are facing. I only know that they are Antinium, but of no kind we have witnessed before. They are some new breed of Antinium, some secret weapon of the Queens.
Thus far we have not recovered any bodies intact for me to describe. To destroy these new varieties of Antinium, our soldiers and mages have had to dismember them. They do not stop.
Zel must be told. There are more Antinium types than just Soldiers and Workers. We cannot defeat them. I hear my warriors fighting and dying. We will make a stand here, but I know that I will not live to see the dawn.
I regret leading these good soldiers to their deaths. I only hope that we will do enough damage that the Antinium will continue to sue for peace.
…I am tired. I can hear them coming for me.
Alas, this is the place where I part ways. If I could go home once more—but no. Goodbye. Let my death have meaning. I will die as I lived: a soldier.
‘Oh sunfilled skies, let me ride again on the fields of battle in another life. To Liscor, and the world, fight on. May we one day know peace.’
—Sserys of Liscor
High General Sserys’ journal and his corpse were both found in the remains of the First Unified Army’s encampment twenty four days later. After the initial loss of contact, the allied city-states waited with increasing concern until, seven days later, it became clear that the Unified Army had been destroyed, and no survivors remained to bear word of their defeat.
After the city-states accepted the fact that Sserys and his army had been lost, they immediately began organizing a second, even larger army to investigate the site of his demise. This second army, entrusted to Zel Shivertail, was given explicit instructions not to attack the Hive, but only to gather information and immediately retreat. Constant, 24-hour contact was maintained between the army and the city-states as they approached the seemingly inactive Hive.
The Second Unified Army found the encampment of the first mainly intact; no damage was reported to either the fortifications or even the tents established. Indeed, even high-level [Scouts] could only detect faint signs of violence and tracks leading into the Grand Hive.
No soldiers of the First Unified Army were found besides High General Sserys; speculation abounds to this day as to their fate, but it is most likely the soldiers were first killed then processed as supplies within the Antinium Hives.
Only General Sserys’ corpse remained, lying in his command tent, fully armored, sword still grasped in his hand. The [General] had died fighting, with traces of Antinium blood upon his sword. His cause of death was a single strike to his heart which tore through both enchanted armor and bone to reach it.
The Second Unified Army collected Sserys’ corpse and his diary and immediately retreated. The city-states argued and debated what to do in the face of this new information and mysterious new breed of the Antinium. It was feared a third offensive would drag this war out even further, but it never came to that.
To the great surprise of all, the Grand Queen of the Antinium still sued for peace despite the massive losses suffered by the Southern Alliance. [Strategists] speculate that this was a pragmatic move; although the Antinium may have destroyed the First Unified Army, the Second would doubtless cost more lives and resources, and leave the Antinium prey to another attack if the Human Coalition entered into a combined assault.
Whatever the case may be, the First Antinium Wars ended with a signed accord by the Walled Cities, the Grand Queen of the Antinium, and the Human coalition led by Magnolia Reinhart. Further hostilities would be limited to a few instances of adventurers straying too near to the Antinium Hives until the famous Goblin King’s rampage coincided with the assault on Liscor and the surrounding area by t
he Necromancer Az’Kerash—
(At this point, Ryoka Griffin stopped reading. She left this book behind to journey to the High Passes, and has since not reopened it.)
2.32
She slept on the way back. Somehow, Erin found she was extremely tired after her meeting with Magnolia, and despite it being only dusk she slept like a baby.
She woke up as Reynold slowed the coach next to her inn. Erin blinked, looked around wildly, and realized she was home.
Home. It was an odd thing to say, and even odder that the sight of Toren’s skeletal frame standing in front of her inn was reassuring, but there it was.
Erin was home.
It was the work of a few minutes for Erin to extricate herself from the carriage. Not because she was that slow; Reynold insisted on helping her pack up the huge meal Lady Magnolia had sent with her. It was far too much for Erin to eat, but she suspected Lyonette might enjoy the rich food.
“Thanks so much for driving me out here, Reynold.”
“It was my pleasure Miss Solstice.”
“Erin. Um, will you come in for something to eat? Or I could make you up a bed. It’s getting late.”
The [Butler] smiled.
“I fear I must decline. I will return to Lady Magnolia’s dwelling soonest, but I thank you for the offer.”
“Oh, it’s no—if you ever have time, come by and I’ll treat you to a meal on the house, okay?”
“It would be my pleasure.”
Erin watched as the man climbed back in the carriage and the horses began to gallop. She looked over at Toren as the skeleton walked down the hill. He stared at her. She stared back.
“Hi.”
He nodded. Erin looked at him for a few more seconds.
“Is Lyonette here?”
