by Logan Jacobs
“Like Tevian,” Dar interrupted.
“Like Tevian,” I agreed, “then even from their position up on the hill, they probably heard the war drums and the elven battle horn that signaled their surrender.”
“So you think they’ll be prepared for us?” Clodia asked.
“Oh, I didn’t say that,” I snickered. “They’ll be prepared for an assault on their walls and at their front gate, but they sure as shit won’t be prepared for anyone to come up through the floorboards of their city and take them by surprise.”
“Then let’s do it!” Leif clapped his hands together to make a sound like thunder.
“We will,” I promised, “just as soon as I get everything organized here. In the meantime, I want Ava and Leif to get the troops ready to move out. We’ll take the Elite with us, obviously, but I also want to take two of this city’s guard units with us. The rest can stay here to keep the city in order while we’re gone.”
“Yes, my king,” Ava and Leif both responded at once before they turned and went to carry out my orders.
“Clodia, go check all the elven prisoners for any signs of magic,” I said, “and if you find anyone with magic, then make sure they can’t use it to escape or to hurt anyone.”
“At once, my king,” Clodia said with a small bow of her head toward me.
“Can Penny and I do anything for you?” Dar asked.
I was about to tell him and Penny that they could just stay by my side until we were ready to move out, but then I saw the nervous look on my halfling friend’s face and remembered what he had told me right before we charged out into the street. He had met a halfling woman and brought her here to fight in the revolution, and so he must be damn near beside himself with worry about her.
“Go find your woman,” I said with a smile. “Melia, right?”
Dar nodded but didn’t say anything.
“Make sure she’s okay,” I said, “and then meet me before we move out to the Blood City, understand?”
“Thanks, Wade,” Dar said with a grin. “I mean, my king!”
“Ah, go on,” I said as I rolled my eyes.
As soon as Dar hurried off into the crowd of human guards to find his woman, I linked arms with Penny and started toward the principal commander of the human guards in the City of Slaves. He would have to keep charge of everything while we were gone, but I had hand-picked him myself, so I knew that he would do a good job and that he would enforce all the rules I had just set.
Once I made sure that he was clear on his responsibilities and what needed to happen next, I climbed up the highest wall of the garrison with Penny so we could look over the edge of the City of Slaves and all the way up at the Blood City on top of the hill in the distance.
There were no signs of any soldiers on their way from there to here, so I figured that it had played out how I’d expected it to. The elves who were still alive wouldn’t know who had poisoned them or who had attacked the City of Slaves, but since there were so many unknown factors, they wouldn’t just charge out of the safety of their own walls to come fight an unknown enemy… especially not when they had already heard their people sound the horn to surrender and raise the white flag over the elven garrison.
“Looks like they’re a lot more concerned about how to save their own asses than about how to help their friends down here,” Penny said.
“Lucky for us,” I said with a smirk. “Are you ready for what’s next?”
“Hell, yes,” Penny said as she placed a hand on her stomach. “We both are.”
“You don’t feel too tired, do you?” I demanded. “I don’t want to push you, so if you need to rest for the sake of our baby, then--”
“I’m fine,” the redheaded pixie interrupted me. “I promise I am. In fact, I don’t think I’ve felt this good in weeks.”
“Our child must be quite the little fighter,” I said with a smile.
“Well, it is our child,” Penny said, “so it’s bound to be pretty feisty.”
“Fair enough,” I laughed, and then I turned around to descend back down to the courtyard.
As Penny and I walked through the ranks of the Elite, I shook hands and clapped soldiers on the back to let them know what a good job they must have done in the Capital. I couldn’t wait to see them in action myself, and it seemed perfectly appropriate that the human capital city was the first town that had fallen under my control, and now I would use that same Elite force to conquer the elven capital city.
When we reached Leif and Ava at the head of the Elite, Dar was already there, so I hoped that meant good news.
“Did you find her?” I asked.
“I did, yes,” Dar said with a grin. “Melia is absolutely fine, and apparently, her commander said that she was one of the best fighters in his unit.”
“Who the fuck is Melia?” Penny asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” I laughed, “but I’ll give you a hint. Dar thinks he might be in love.”
“What?” the pixie thief demanded. “Why the hell didn’t you bring her over so we could all meet her?”
“Oh, that’s exactly why,” Dar replied. “She was already intimidated at the idea that she might meet the king, so I decided not to subject her to all the rest of you at the same time.”
“Hey!” Leif said. “I take offense to that.”
“Sorry, not you, big man,” Dar said. “And not really you either, Ava. I mostly just meant Penny.”
“Ugh, that’s fine,” the redhead huffed. “But sooner or later, I will meet her, thank you very much.”
“Today’s probably not the best day, anyway,” I chuckled. “We do have another city to conquer, after all.”
“She’ll be here when we get back,” Dar said with a nod. “Thanks for letting me go check on her.”
“You don’t have to thank me for that, my friend,” I said. “Now let’s go kick some more elven ass.”
I turned to face the joint forces of the Elite and the human guards from this city who would join our assault on the Blood City. They looked more excited than they looked nervous, and since Leif said they already believed that I had magic of my own, I decided to give them just a little bit of a show to whip them up into a battle-frenzy.
“My friends!” I called as I leaped up onto a stone bench. “Are you ready to take back what is ours?”
“Yes, my king!” the soldiers all shouted back to me with one voice.
I pulled the Opalstone amulet out from underneath my chainmail and let it rest against the top of my armor. It started to glow bright blue before I even asked it to, so I knew it must have read my mind. At the same time, I saw Clodia appear from the entrance to the jails, and she spun a small sphere of fire in her hands, as if she wanted to throw it toward me so I could use it.
I had a better idea.
“Are you ready to fight for a new world?” I shouted. “For a better world?”
The moment the crowd called back their agreement, I let the entire courtyard freeze around me for the few seconds it took me to race up the steps to the top of the wall just above the garrison gate.
“Then let us go to war!” I shouted, just as I let the whole crowd regain consciousness.
At first, there were only gasps and excited whispers at how I could have moved so suddenly from one place to another, but then the soldiers all seemed to remember their training as they pounded their fists against their chests.
“We hear, and we follow!” the Elite and the human guards called out.
I jumped back down from the wall, landed in a squat, and then hoisted both my sword and my shield in front of me as I led the charge forward. Of course, I didn’t think we would run into any trouble between here and the portal, but I wasn’t about to take any chances.
The Elite all fell into line right behind me, the human guards followed behind them, and my core people moved into an instant formation around me. Ava fanned out ahead of me to the left, Clodia fanned out to the right, Leif watched my back, and Penny and Dar march
ed forward on my left and right.
As we headed toward the portal in the City of Slaves, people slowly started to come out of their houses to see the source of all the noise. A lot of people had joined in the fighting at first, of course, but there were still plenty of citizens who had been too afraid or too uncertain about what to do or who was in charge now.
But as they watched a crowd of mostly human fighters march down the streets, led by a human king, they began to come out little by little, and when they saw the bodies of all the poisoned elves, they began to cheer a little louder and louder, so by the time we reached the hollowed-out tree that served as the portal into the catacombs, the whole city seemed to roar behind us like one gigantic wave.
“To the Blood City!” I shouted, and then I stepped into the hollowed-out tree.
The moment I stepped inside it, I was only surrounded by blackness for a second before I stepped out into the portal room beneath the human catacombs in my hometown. All I wanted was to run up to the surface and breathe in what it felt like to be free in my home city, in the human Capital, but I knew that would have to wait for the moment.
Right now, we still had to conquer the elven capital.
I greeted the door to the portal room, but she understood that I was in a hurry, so she had already activated the portal to the Blood City for me. I had no idea where it came out or what we would find on the other side, but we were as prepared as we could be.
My army had started to follow me from the City of Slaves, but I knew there wasn’t enough room inside this stone chamber to hold all of us. They would just have to pour through one portal and then through the other like a continual stream, but that would only happen if I led the way.
With Dar and Penny right beside me, and with Ava and Clodia right behind them, we finally took our first steps through the archway and into the Blood City.
I almost laughed when I realized where the portal led.
We were inside the abandoned museum in the elven capital, and more specifically, we were inside the room where we had found all the trophies from the last human king and from the human capital city. That included the armor that I wore, the shield that I carried, my sword, and even my crown, so somehow, it made perfect sense that this was where the portal led.
I wondered if the elves had built the Blood City on top of some sacred ancient human site, or at least maybe they had built this museum on top of something like that. They might have wanted to erase all traces of anything human here, so that humans would forget what we used to have, but in reality, all the elves had done was forget about something this important themselves, so they had left their own back door wide open for us.
“I’ll take the marbled part of the city first, and I want Ava, Penny, and Dar with me,” I said, as soon as my friends had all come through the portal behind me.
“Where would I be most helpful to you?” Clodia asked.
“I’ll get to that,” I said. “Leif, I want you to task half of the Elite and the human guards to stay with me, but I want you to go ahead and deploy the other half of both forces toward the main gate of the city. Clodia will show you the way, and she’ll eliminate any magic casters on your way there.”
“So you want us to cut off any chance of escape that the elves have?” Leif asked.
“Exactly,” I replied. “But remember, if the elves surrender, accept it and just take them as prisoners.”
“I do not think many elves will surrender in the Blood City,” Clodia said, “but perhaps I am wrong.”
“Tevian sure as shit won’t surrender,” Penny said, “so watch out for him.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Clodia said with a smirk. “I’ll keep a special eye out for Skeevy-an Tevian.”
“I hear you, Wade,” Leif added. “We won’t stop until the elves are all dead or until they’ve all surrender to us.”
I nodded and started toward the front of the museum as more troops spilled out of the portal into the room behind us. Just as we were about to burst out the front doors of the museum, I felt Clodia lay her cool hand on my arm.
“One more thing, my king,” the night elf purred. “Be careful when you get close to the temple.”
“Shit, they have a temple here, too?” Penny asked. “I thought there was just one in our city.”
“There are two main temples in the empire,” Clodia replied. “One in the human capital and one in the elven capital, and they are quite similar. The priestesses and priests in both have a lot of magic, so if you break into the temple, then make sure you watch your backs.”
“Eh, we might just lock them in there and starve them out,” I said with a shrug. “But thanks for the heads up, Clodia.”
“Of course, my king,” the night elf said.
Then, finally, I pushed open the front doors of the museum and led my army down the steps into the Blood City. As I heard Leif bark out orders behind me to lead half of my forces toward the main gate of the city with Clodia, I rushed down the marble steps into the marble streets at the heart of the elven capital.
At first, there wasn’t a single living elf in sight.
There were plenty of elves, of course, but every damn one of them had purple throats and bloody eyeballs, so it looked like they had all toasted each other at the exact same time, so they had all died of the nightshade poison at about the same time, too. There were bodies in every direction that we looked, and for just a moment, I wondered if the city might already be ours just by default.
But before I got too hopeful about the fact that we might be able to take the city without another drop of blood, I heard the unmistakable sound of elven boots from somewhere close by.
“Get into formation!” I hissed to the nearest man, and instantly, my soldiers passed the order down the line quietly and fell into their ranks.
While Leif and Clodia left with half of our forces to cut off any chance of escape, my half of the troops all moved into position. They didn’t just line up and wait for the elves to come to us, but instead, they fanned out to stand in smaller units all across the open courtyard in front of us. This way, they would be able to attack the elven forces from all sides, and they would be able to cut them off from any possible reinforcements.
It didn’t take long for the elves to appear and put our plan to the test.
When elven soldiers marched around the corner straight toward us, I knew they must have heard some noise to alarm them, but they clearly hadn’t expected to come face to face with armed humans in the middle of their own fucking capital. For just a second, the elven commander looked so stunned that he just stood there, so I raised my sword and pointed it at him.
“Surrender now,” I said and then pointed my sword at a cluster of elven corpses on the ground, “or die like your friends here. The choice is yours.”
“We will die first!” the elven commander shouted, just before he signaled his soldiers all to attack.
Of course, they were so focused on me and the troops right around me that they completely failed to notice the human soldiers who were hidden on all the streets that surrounded the marble courtyard. I held my sword at the ready, but I didn’t swing it or launch myself forward just yet, so neither did any of my troops.
I could feel Ava’s eagerness to unleash a volley of arrows onto our enemies, just like I could feel Dar and Penny ready to leap into action right beside me, but I forced myself to wait before I gave the signal. I watched as all the elven soldiers poured into the courtyard, waited until I could see the last of them stream toward us, and then just as the elven commander flung his spear directly at me, I made my move.
I froze the whole crowd of elves at once, but I left my own troops fully conscious. Instantly, they moved toward the elven soldiers to surround them from all sides, while Dar leaped forward to grab the commander’s spear out of the air. The halfling flipped it back around to face the commander himself, so when my magic wore off just a few seconds later, the elves found themselves surrounded by more armed humans than they ha
d ever seen before.
Of course, I doubted that they had ever seen any at all before.
My sword was pointed toward the sky, so the moment the elves came back to consciousness, I dropped the point toward the ground to launch the attack. As one, we all ran forward into the elven force, and the moment our swords met the elves’ weapons, everything became a blur, and every movement came from pure instinct.
As I severed an elven soldier’s hand from his arm, I fixed my gaze on the commander behind him. I expected the commander to push his way forward to fight me himself, but instead, he ducked back into the crowd to hide in the middle of his own soldiers, and I felt my lip curl at what a fucking coward he was.
He would get his rightful reward soon enough.
I flung my shield up to block a spear thrown in my direction, and a second later, I saw the elf who threw it as he dropped to the ground with one of Ava’s arrows through his throat. I nodded my thanks before the blonde assassin disappeared into the crowd again, and I noticed that she seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at once, but in every direction that I looked, her black arrows had found homes inside the eyes and throats of countless elves.
When I swung my sword at the next closest elf, he jumped back a little too quickly for my weapon to damage his armor. I didn’t want to let him get away in the time it took for me to swing the sword at him again, so instead, I just lunged forward and slammed the hilt of my weapon into the middle of his chest.
I hit him hard enough that he gasped to recover his breath, so then I slammed my shield into the side of his head to knock his helmet loose. As soon as his helmet toppled to the ground, I brought my sword back up and sliced his head clean off his body.
The king’s sword really was incredible.
Again, I wondered if the sword had magic all on its own that let it slice right through elven armor like it was butter, or if it was just my own magic that made that possible. I felt capable of just about anything at the moment, and when the head of another elven bastard tumbled off his shoulders, I grinned and moved deeper into the fight.
As I launched myself toward my next opponent, I saw a flash of Penny’s bright-red hair just behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder just long enough to make sure that Dar was beside her so they could cover each other’s backs. They moved together like a furious tornado, and any time one of them paused or slipped, the other one was there to back them up, so they looked like they were doing just fine.
