Chapter 207.5 - Prelude of Storm III

“What in Vella’s name?”

Fausta crossed her arms as she took a long look at the devastated campsite laid out in front of her. Half of its tents were completely destroyed. The provisions contained within were spilled all over the temporary base. Many of the sealed containers were broken open, pierced with arrows, stamped with hooves, or cleaved with blades. Whatever the case, the artifacts were ruined. The magic circuits that kept their insides refrigerated relied almost entirely on the continued existence of their closed loops.

Their weaponry was much better off. While there was certainly the occasional broken spear or shattered shield, most of it was still usable if not pristine. The men themselves fell closer in line with the state of their sustenance than they did that of their equipment. Just over twenty were dead, fallen to the foe that had caused all the chaos. Of the two dozen corpses, four could be made out, but the others were impossible to identify, mangled far beyond the point of recognition.

“Welcome back, Lieutenant. It pains me greatly to report that we’ve unfortunately encountered a minor setback in your absence.” Her third in command, Baron Germanus of House Belen, greeted her with a crisp salute. “I have prepared a report detailing the incident, should you find yourself with a moment to look it over.”

“I can’t be bothered. Give me a quick summary.” She grabbed the papers and tossed them overhead, leaving vice commander Nero to receive them in her place.

“I’ll look over them shortly. Thank you, Sir Belen,” he said.

“You’re very welcome.”

The troops that had accompanied the two officers on their expedition murmured to each other as they looked over the ruined tents. Some began mouthing off theories, but they were immediately silenced when Fausta stomped a hoof into the dirt. Even though they stood at two to three times her size.

“So? What happened?” she asked.

“We were handed a prisoner roughly four hours prior. Nymphetel Blackroot.”

“The one the boss was asking for?” Fausta crossed her arms and voiced a number of internal complaints about the elf and her tiny ears.

“In the flesh.”

“And? What happened after?”

“She broke free from her bindings less than an hour after her arrival,” stated the soldier. “We mobilized the camp in an attempt to subdue her, but met an unexpected degree of resistance.”

“That tiny elf caused this much damage?” Fausta raised a brow. “That doesn’t seem right. I know the general’s good at seeing potential, but I doubt she’s even cleared basic training.”

The pony closed her eyes and briefly recalled the days she had trained at Augustus Manor herself. It was far tougher than anything the Marquis’ troops experienced. There was a time when she was no different from the elf. She too had been stuck in a rut, unable to progress through her development and awaken to the potential that the general had seen.

“She pulled out one of her trump cards when she realised that we had her cornered,” said Germanus. “Section 2-3 should contain everything we saw of her abilities. They largely appear to be centered around the manipulation of some sort of strange magic. It was a blade of ice, perhaps sourced from some sort of blessing, given its disproportionate lethality and remote operation.”

Though excited at first, the tiny centaurian commander deflated almost immediately upon hearing out the details. “Ice? Why the hell’d it have to be ice?” she said with a sigh. “Elves are supposed to pick wood, or maybe fire or water if they’re feeling spicy.” Pressing a hand against her forehead, she threw her hair back and breathed a sigh. “Whatever. At least it’ll be easier to catch her.”

“Catching her doesn’t seem like the best of ideas,” said Nero, as he skimmed through the documents. “It isn’t worth it.”

The pony scoffed. “Where’s your ambition, kid? We catch her, the boss gives us one hell of a fat bonus, and we all go home happy.”

“At the cost of how many lives?”

The young stallion’s glare was met with a chuckle. “Standing up and thinking for yourself is good, kid, but you’ll have to do better than that,” Fausta grabbed the recent hire by the uniform and pulled him down to eye level. “Listen up kid. Real warriors don’t fear death. We court and tease it, we play with it until it goes soft, and then twiddle it in our thumbs some more.” The analogy was less than appreciated, but she ignored his distaste and pointed behind him. “And it’s probably worth mentioning that the men don’t appreciate your concern nearly as much as you might think.”

A quick look around confirmed the older centaur’s claims. The gazes fixed on Nero’s back were cold, judging. He was not just a coward, but a coward that had insulted their pride.

Though it was not uncommon for a family of noblemen to force a child or two to join the military, Cadria had never once in the past thousand years endorsed the practice of conscription. Its armed forces were made of volunteers, warriors that had chosen to stand upon the battlefield of their own volition. And while none hoped to be needlessly sacrificed, each sought a chance to prove himself on the battlefield, to rise above his foes triumphant even when the tides were against him. Such was the tale of many of their revered—the heroes that emerged from within their ranks and saw to the deaths of their greatest foes.

“Yeah, I know,” said Nero, with a grimace. It was not as if he was unable to understand them. He was Cadrian too. “But it’s an officer’s job to make sure that their men’s lives are put to good use.”

“Nice one.” Smiling, the tiny pegataur stepped up onto a broken shield and thumped the younger centaur on the back. “For the record, it’s not like I don’t get what you’re trying to say, but you really need to keep using that head of yours.” Fausta tapped the shieldlance strapped to her back. “If the men can’t do it, then we’ll just have to wrangle her ourselves.”

___

From his place in the heavens above, Glarchst observed the mortal realm with a careful eye. It had been many long years since his first dungeon was last invaded. The fault, he knew, was largely his. Skyreach Spire was one of the few stains on his otherwise perfect record. The veil he wrapped it in was a fault from its very inception, a flawed design whose filter deterred not the wind mages he had hoped to intimidate, but rather all manners of mortals with flesh too brittle to break through the storm.

Of course, he could have easily weakened the winds or perhaps forged a path through them, but he chose to keep the abject failure exactly as it had been on the day that it was made. Whenever he sought to create another dungeon, he would first look back upon his prior mistake and remind himself of the oversights that he would do well to avoid. The only alteration he eventually made was to its location. Plucking it from its original place, he lifted the dungeon high into the skies so another could make use of the real estate it consumed. There, above the clouds, it was left to its own devices, freely drifting along the aether with the wind its only guide. And for a while, that was how it remained. Completely devoid of all life, save for that of which was born within.

From his blunders, the second of the seventeen plague gods learned a series of valuable lessons. The hundreds of dungeons he spawned, following his first, were much more carefully crafted. Known for his infamous attention to detail, he was sung praise by those that survived his tests, with some even placing him within the divine collective of muses upon deciphering the layers he put into his work.

Farenlight’s Den, his three thousandth and fourteenth creation, was intended to prove itself one such multifaceted masterpiece. But alas, it was not meant to be. He had known for three years that its demise was inevitable. Flux, the goddess of the flow, had divined its path and informed him of the matriarch's removal far in advance.

He knew that it was a consequence driven by her hand, but chose not the path of confrontation. He owed her many favours, and while he certainly did have high hopes for the ikaretts and klimgors, the den was not a dungeon to which he had any particular attachments. It was just another one of the many that had been sealed by the locals; its development was stunted, and the martiarch’s growth delayed by a six digit factor. He hadn’t quite lost interest, but neither did he find it worth his constant watch.

He likely would have seen his spark reignited upon returning to it in a few centuries, but the enjoyment he would have derived trailed far behind what he had gained in its place. Because Flux had run her predictive algorithms and confirmed with near absolute certainty that his ambitions for Skyreach Spire would finally be fulfilled.

While certainly somewhat conflicted, given the sheer time it had spent as his deterrent, the plague god gave in to his urges and overloaded it with changes aplenty. The shoggoths, for one, were removed from the first eight floors. He left only a single individual so that the more intelligent amongst his guests would be wary of the horrors that awaited beyond the second last gate.

Still somewhat concerned that his tuning was off, he sent his followers far and wide, so that he could measure his challengers through their eyes and better adjust the monsters in his domain. Misunderstanding his directive, as mortals so often did, many priests and acolytes found their premature ends at the hands of those they were meant to tail, but the former sewer rat was unbothered. Such fates often befell fools, and those that practiced his worship were not always the most intelligent. To deny the natural order would be to deny the path that he had taken to godhood, and he was not so ignorant as to be blind to the countless corpses he had left in his wake.

While his faithful had proven themselves relatively useless, he had at least gleaned from their observations the relative power of some of his foes. The average combatant appeared to hover in the range of level three hundred. Some were more powerful, and others less, but for the most part, the range appeared fairly strict. Save for a single individual.

The raid’s organiser was a centaur over 700, and one that proved every bit as powerful as the numbers may have suggested. All the worshippers he sent to spy on the man were promptly eliminated, with not even the veterans nearing level 500 lasting for more than a few seconds.

As an organiser and creator of dungeons, he saw the man as a pain in the neck. It was impossible to correctly balance the encounters with the overpowered horse in the fray, and outright removing him by way of a level limit went against his principles. Glarchst had always scorned the gods that employed such mechanisms as careless and inattentive. He was not about to take from their books.

That was why he had tested his chosen champion and rewarded her with the perfect tool to see the centaur eliminated, an all powerful relic blessed with the might of the god himself.

At the time, it appeared as would the perfect idea. But in retrospect, he would find that it was an unnecessary precaution and a complete waste of divinity.

For he was not Flux. And the future was as mysterious to him as it was to any of mortal flesh.

___

It was a summer day no different from any other. When Virillius stepped through the castle’s halls, his heavy steps bounced off the thick stone walls and returned to him in the usual manner. Equally as static was the way the blazing sun filtered through the stained glass windows. Each pane featured an original masterpiece produced in a land long conquered, their artists' names as lost to time as the political commentary illustrated therein.

The rest of the castle’s cast was going about their everyday business. Maids, butlers, and knights were wandering through its halls, attending to whatever matter their masters ordered. Some stopped to greet or bow, but none dared to stop the general with a lengthier conversation.

It was every bit a perfectly normal day.

Even though the grand magus had submitted her resignation earlier that morning.

Like the letter in Virillius’ hand, Allegra’s declaration was not one that would immediately find its recipient. King Ferdinand was still far away from his throne. His cross-country journey was scheduled to take him to every major settlement, but chances were, he would soon throw his itinerary to the wayside and return to the capital. His spymasters were sure to bring him news of the unsavory developments unfolding within Valencia’s walls.

News of the duel, for one, had spread like wildfire. In just a day, all of Valencia had learned that Virillius and Allegra had encountered a difference of opinions and subsequently resolved it in the very same way that any two warriors would.

Of course, it was impossible for the citizenry not to know. Allegra’s massive spell had caused a disturbing amount of damage. While none had outright perished in the attack, many were injured, and an even greater number saw their property at least partially destroyed.

The state footed the necessary bills as usual, and repairs were already underway. The freshly retired Grand Magus was among the workers, doing her utmost to fix the things that she had broken. Virillius had tried to speak to her, to bring her into his cause, but the cottontail had refused, stating that she would never see him again lest he vowed not to follow through with his plans.

And follow through he did.

When Ferdinand returned, he would find that his nephew had voiced a claim to the throne.

A declaration that could only be met with a vow of submission or a duel to the death.