Glory to the Brave (Ascend Online Book 4)

by Luke Chmilenko

  “I’m sorry, you did what to destroy the slave-king?” Garr demanded, his mouth having dropped open as I finished explaining that final battle.

  “I jumped into him with the annulment sphere,” I repeated, that particularly reckless choice having featured in my thoughts rather often in the last few weeks. “In hindsight, I was close enough that I could have just thrown the artifact into him, but—hang on, are you okay? Did I say something wrong?”

  “No—yes, I’m fine,” the gronn replied, shaking his head while holding a hand up to ward off my questions. “But allow me to gain clarity on this. You jumped into the creature while bearing an ancient artifact that devoured mana, which had been placed directly on a ley line tap for an untold number of centuries by the Irovians, without somehow overloading or failing. Am I understanding this sequence of events correctly?”

  “Yeah, that sounds about right,” I said a bit sheepishly, offering the man a weak smile. “Though when you put it that way, it sounds a little crazy.”

  “Because it was,” Garr stated, giving me an incredulous look, his gaze sliding off me just long enough to scan over the group before returning. “Regardless of that, however, you said earlier it was after your leap into the slave-king with the artifact that your body changed further and that you gained your mana draining ability?”

  “It was,” I confirmed with a nod. “I lost consciousness for a short while after I jumped into him, but once I woke up, I was like this.”

  I lifted my bony hands to show the gronn what I meant, going as far as to take the glove off one of them. “It was when I awoke that I first felt this hunger inside of me, which, in turn, gave me the ability to drain mana, and well, a couple other things too. Though those cases were accidents of a sort.”

  “Other things?” Garr asked, his eyes moving to briefly glance at my hands, then back towards my face. “Such as what? The corruption?”

  “Well, that came much later on, but yes. The first situation was when I absorbed some sort of…power from one of my comrades,” I said, recalling Lazarus’s and my brief scuffle atop the ridge overlooking Crater Lake, during which I’d absorbed a portion of the energy he used for his Sigil of Rage ability. I didn’t know it at the time, but after watching his feed, I’d learned that it hadn’t been mana that I’d absorbed and said as much to the man.

  “And what was the second time?” he asked me after I finished speaking, his curiosity seeming to grow with every word that I spoke.

  “Well, that case…was a bit of a special incident as well, and I have a bit of trouble recalling exactly what happened,” I started to explain, my mind recalling Carver’s ambush when we’d been returning from the Irovian tower with the æthertouched iron. “The reason for that, I think is from a side-effect from my ætherwarping, which happens if I ever completely run out of mana—and why you all saw me acting strangely during the ritual.”

  Continuing to talk, with the campfire still crackling between us, I explained to the gronn the details about my ætherwarped condition and my dependency on mana, lest my body shift into a ghoul-like state. From there, I outlined the events of the tower ambush and how Carver’s familiar, or spirit companion as I now knew it was, had drained enough of my mana to trigger the change.

  “Once that happened, I lost all control,” I said, recalling the events more from having watched the feed of my transformation, rather than the experience of actually living through it. “Everything after that…was pretty much a blur. I went completely wild with hunger as my body started to consume itself and tried to find any mana I could to drain, but without any luck. I fought and fought, but eventually, my injuries caught up to me and well…”

  I ended my statement with a shrug, the inevitable conclusion to that sequence of events being obvious.

  “Let’s just say that coming back to life that time was a bit more of a shock than it usually is and convinced me to make sure that I never lost control again.”

  “I see,” Garr said softly, leaning back as my story finally came to an end, one of his hands reaching up to scratch his head in thought. “That is…remarkable. Beyond remarkable, truthfully. That you all can just…snap back into existence so easily after death. And this tale is only the beginning of what you have to share with us, yes? If so you have all had quite the journey so far. More than anything I could have imagined.”

  “Oh, you could definitely say that again,” I agreed with a morbid chuckle. “And yes, there is quite a bit more to go still.”

  “Then I would certainly wish to hear the rest of it,” Garr replied, his expression half lost in thought as he spoke. “But to go back for a moment, after you awoke from destroying the slave-king, what happened to this annulment sphere that you used? Do you still possess it?”

  “We do,” I said, my mind shifting to the aftermath of that particular battle. “But after the battle, it was broken in two. We still have the fragments somewhere back in Aldford, but whatever ability it had is gone now though.”

  “Are you certain about that?” Garr asked eagerly as he looked at me with a variety of emotions that I couldn’t quite identify.

  “Uh,” I grunted, caught off guard by the man unexpected intensity. “As much as we can be? Why do you ask?”

  “Because of what you just said,” Garr stated. “You awoke with a new hunger unlike any other within you. Did that hunger come from the changes in your body due to the exposure to more æther? Or did you somehow absorb this hunger from the sphere itself? Or even perhaps the sphere granted you the ability through some sort of unknown spellcraft.”

  “Oh, you mean that,” I replied, slightly adjusting my mental train of thought at the gronn’s array of questions. “I’m afraid I don’t know the answers to any of those questions. I guess it’s possible that I might have absorbed something from the sphere when it broke or maybe was cursed by it. But at the same time, the side effects were only the intensification of my previous ætherwarping symptoms, so I’m not sure. We just don’t know enough about either the sphere or what it means to be ætherwarped to even form a theory of what happened.”

  “But one of our lorekeepers might,” Arcturus interjected. “Perhaps they would have an answer for us if the fragments were brought to them.”

  “Perhaps indeed,” Garr agreed, excitement coloring his expression as he glanced over towards his friend and nodded.

  “Sorry, lorekeepers?” I queried, seizing the opportunity to ask a question of my own, especially since it seemed that we’d been left behind in the conversation. “I think you might have lost us there.”

  “Ah, my apologies, Lyrian,” Garr replied, turning his attention back towards me. “Lorekeepers are those among our people who have made a study of the ancient ones’ magic along with the ruins and few bits of artifice they have left behind.”

  “And by the ancient ones, you mean the Irovians and the Nafarr,” I stated, watching the pair, along with several of the other gronn around the fire, nod in response. “Okay, why don’t we backtrack a little bit more then. How is it that you all know so much about them? From what little we’ve been able to discover ourselves, they seemed fairly localized to this region here, but then you’ve also found more of their ruins closer to your home to the north?”

  “Much, much farther north from here, but yes, we have,” Garr replied, his face tightening as he nodded in response to my inquiry. “But nothing as grand or intact as what you have described thus far and nor as recent as your adventures. Any such ruins belonging to the ancient ones that my people know of were found and either sealed or destroyed by our ancestors centuries ago. As you’ve no doubt discovered firsthand yourselves, they can be quite dangerous if left to their own devices.”

  “Just a little,” Caius stated as a series of snorts passed around the campfire at his gross understatement.

  “Indeed,” Garr stated before continuing. “But as for how we know of the Nafarr in particular, it is because we share a dark history with them. For many centuries ago—long, long be
fore their fall—my people were once counted as their slaves.”

  “Wait, you were?” I exclaimed incredulously. “I-I had no idea! I didn’t know that they’d enslaved any others aside from the orcs and goblins.”

  “They most certainly did,” Arcturus assured me in an eager tone, speaking up before Garr could answer. “During their reign, all who were not Nafarr themselves were either enslaved, or if not, hunted to exile or extinction. They were absolute tyrants without remorse, and it was not in them to tolerate any rival or challenge to their supremacy.”

  “Until the Irovians stood up to them,” I guessed while processing what the gronn had said. For as much as we’d discovered about the Nafarrian ruins so far, we’d only been able to catch brief glimpses at their actual culture. To be able to have a firsthand, or close as we were going to get, perspective of what they’d been like was practically priceless.

  “You are correct,” Garr acknowledged. “We do not know how their war started, but it was they who tipped the Nafarr off balance and eventually brought about their downfall when the slaves began to revolt. At least all the slaves other than the orcs and goblins.”

  “They didn’t rebel?” I asked curiously, moving slightly so I could hear him better over the crackling fire.

  “They did not,” Garr answered. “According to the histories that have been passed down, it has been thought that their two races were the first that the Nafarr had enslaved. Supposedly an age before they encountered and did the same to us. To be under the Nafarr’s domination for so long, I cannot help but wonder if they’d simply lost their understanding of freedom and chose to stay with their masters out of habit, not knowing that there was another choice available to them. And also why they continue to venerate them even now, long after they’ve passed into memory.”

  “That’s possible,” I replied, leaning back with a sigh. “I mean, beyond fanaticism, I can’t think of a reason either why they would have spent so long trying to recover Eberia. To fight for so long and throw so many lives away with so little gain, I just can’t understand it.”

  “Neither can any of us,” Garr said, matching my sigh with one of his own. “But with everything that has happened in this war thus far, we are far past the point of understanding. Survival is all that matters to us.”

  “That I can understand,” I said, knowing firsthand just how difficult that simple goal could be.

  “Yes,” the man agreed, nodding sadly towards me. “I believe you would. This is why I believe that it might be best if we took the reins of this conversation for a time. Both to recall the trials that have brought us here and why we have such an interest in this artifact and your ability to shrug off the corruption so effortlessly. I believe it would answer all of the questions that I see forming in your eyes as we speak.”

  “That would definitely help, I think,” I replied, nodding eagerly towards the man, seeing several of the others do the same out of the corner of my eye.

  “Good,” Garr stated, his already downcast expression falling further and a tinge of emotion entering his voice as he continued to speak. “Then we will begin our story with the simplest words that could best describe our plight.

  “What you see here before you, along with those who escaped into the Fens with Aryana, may very well be all that remains of the gronn people.”

  Chapter 49

  The forest was almost perfectly silent as we all absorbed Garr’s words, only the faint sounds of rustling leaves and distant creatures echoing out in the distance. Promptly after his cryptic statement, Garr had paused for a handful of seconds as if to consider his next words, his head slowly shaking from side to side.

  “Hrm, and after those starting words, I now find myself at a loss of how to even begin,” Garr said, his voice still heavy from his earlier statement, something clearly weighing on his mind. “Perhaps, Arcturus, if you are willing, you could begin the tale of our people and how our war with the orcs began? You are much better at telling than I am.”

  “Only because I’ve seen at least a dozen more winters than you,” the grey-furred gronn replied with a snort, his voice then turning gentler. “However, I would be honored to share our story with our rescuers.”

  Shifting in his seat, the older warrior paused to gather his thoughts for a few seconds, eventually glancing over towards us as he began to speak. “Looking back over my memories, I believe that it would best to begin our tale ten…or possibly eleven moons ago, just before the harvest, and long before we were forced to flee our homeland.

  “Originally, we gronn settled a land far to the northeast from here, our people divided amongst various territories and clanholds,” he explained, his eyes taking on a faraway look as he spoke. “Some of these clanholds belonged to a single clan, while others were communal, hosting many separate clans at once. I myself came from one of the oldest and largest amongst my people, one named Kata.”

  “I would not pretend to say that our people did not have conflict between themselves,” Arcturus continued. “Wars between clans and even entire clanholds occasionally consumed us throughout our history. However, we were always unified against any orc incursions into our territories.”

  “Did that happen often?” I asked, listening with rapt attention as the man spoke. Already, right off the bat, it sounded to me that the gronn nation—or maybe better, civilization—had been a fairly large one.

  “Yes…and no,” the grey-furred gronn replied, his eyes turning to look towards Garr. “And that is what cost us our homeland.”

  “Hm? What do you mean?” I asked, following the man’s gaze.

  “It is how Arcturus said,” he replied, breathing a sad sigh. “We were always unified against any orc incursions. Until they stopped coming altogether.”

  “You mean because of our war,” Constantine stated from amid our group, understanding suddenly passing through each of us. “The orcs had their attention focused on Eberia for nearly forty years.”

  “And left us to our own devices for two generations,” Arcturus said, offering me a grim nod. “It pains me to think that the only reason why my people remained unified was because of the constant orc threats we faced. But I lived to see it firsthand.

  “At the beginning, we rejoiced for the first summer that the orcs did not appear to raid our settlements, making use of the peace to prepare for the next,” he continued. “Then when the second summer came with no sign of them, we began to fear that they were massing for an invasion, as they’d had tried before in the past, and we began to search for them.”

  “And you didn’t find them,” I said, already getting a feeling for how events played out.

  “We did not,” Arcturus affirmed. “We ventured out into the orc lands as far as we dared and found no sign of them. It was as if they’d all vanished into the wind. Their settlements had been pulled down or left to rot, and all their slaves had been taken with them. Confused and afraid of where they could have possibly gone, we called on the spirits to tell us, only then learning that they had rushed to defend one of their fallen masters’ ruins.”

  “What did you all do after finding out?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Arcturus stated bitterly, several of the other gronn behind him growling out in sympathy. “At first, the elders amongst the clans were paralyzed with fear at the sudden action the orcs had shown. Then as the years wore on, they became convinced that the orcs would never return. Our society began to shift, what unity that we’d had in the face of keeping our lands intact as a people, fragmenting into clan-based loyalties.”

  “Which then, in turn, led to a new generation of clan wars as many attempted to expand their territories into the lands that the orcs had abandoned,” Garr added. “Or so they had all thought.”

  “Until the orcs came back,” I said, getting a feeling of where this story was heading.

  “Until the orcs came back,” he affirmed. “When they returned, they returned with a fury unlike anything we’d ever seen, reclaiming their lands with littl
e effort and pressing onwards without pause. The grudges that had formed over the decades that the orcs had been gone made clans slow to come to one another’s aid, fearing betrayal or an attack from a rival. Because of this, the orcs carved deep into our lands before we could muster a force large enough from the still-unified clanholds to meet them.”

  “Once we did, however, we fought for months with no end in sight, the winter doing little to slow the orcs assault,” Arcturus said, switching once again with Garr. “And every month we were forced to give more and more ground, lest we be overwhelmed. Where in the past our elders and veteran warriors had said the orcs to be brash and reckless, they were now cunning and disciplined. It was as if we fought an entirely new enemy that’d we’ve never seen before.”

  “Why were they so committed to the fighting?” I asked, the thought coming to mind as I mentally pictured how fighting in the snow and ice must have been. “I can understand the orcs wanting to reclaim their lands, even retaliating in kind to some extent. But to wage such a war on your people right after they had been forced to abandon one against Eberia, I don’t see why they’d take that risk.”

  “Nor did we. At least, at first,” Garr replied, shaking his head. “However, as the war unfolded, the orcs eventually made it clear that they were looking to subjugate us entirely, to take us all as slaves. Or failing that goal, ensure that not a single free gronn remained alive to resist them.”

  “And was that different than what they did in the past?” I queried, this time looking towards Arcturus.