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“How do you suppose the others are fairing?”

Olatt’an leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes. “Certainly a difficult question,” he said. “Idealistically, quite well. Realistically? The situation is pure chaos. Four different factions on two different sides, none of whom seem to trust their supposed allies, all likely believing they have tricks up their sleeves that the others don’t know about. All of whom likely believe they can deal with whatever tricks the others have come up with, leaving the tide turning in their favor.”

Ilya scowled. Her leg thumped against the ground in hasty, repeated nervousness as she chewed on the edge of her lip. “I wish we knew for sure.”

“Arkk can observe anything connected to him. Can you not do the same?”

Ilya opened her mouth but Vezta interjected first.

“Arkk is the Master while Ilya is a subordinate. He can observe her and anyone she is connected to, but the reverse is untrue. At best, Ilya can assist by teleporting some personnel or materials, but lacking the innate knowledge of those contracted to Arkk—those in need of teleportation to safety—her ability to do so from a distance is hindered.” Vezta paused, looked to Ilya with a small frown, then added, “My former master rarely made use of subordinates. Those few he had were all too eager to stab him in the back the moment they thought they had the upper hand, wanting his power for themselves.”

“I would never,” Ilya said, shooting a fierce glare at Vezta, daring the monster to disagree.

Vezta didn’t say a word. She simply resumed her position at Ilya’s side, clasping her hands at her waist while staring straight ahead.

“If only we had more of those crystal balls,” Olatt’an said, his tone turning to a low grumble. “Possibly the most useful object in Arkk’s possession and he hasn’t tried to get more.”

“Not true. He had a few minor expeditions to search out more. They’re just rare and hard to make…” Ilya trailed off, her words turning to a grumble of her own. “Would be useful though. I won’t deny that.”

“I have full faith in Arkk,” Vezta said. If Ilya had to put a word to the tone in the monster’s voice, it would have been pride. Ilya wasn’t sure if she was pleased with Arkk or with herself for selecting Arkk to be her master. Either way, Vezta adopted a fond smile. “He has overcome much. True, he has occasionally stumbled along the way, but when it counts, he can become quite clever.”

“Your opinion is hardly objective,” Olatt’an grumbled.

Though she didn’t wish to speak ill of Arkk, she agreed with the orc. Arkk got ideas in his head, set forth to implement them, and then abandoned them in the next thought as he came up with different ideas. He flew by impulse and instinct, his primary impetus being the protection of those he viewed as having a responsibility toward. Any appearance of cleverness was an illusion crafted in retrospect after succeeding because of luck.

Perhaps that was too harsh. Arkk had gotten them through several rough patches. If he relied solely on luck, it would surely have run out by now.

Ilya turned to the opening door. Modeled after the Al-Lavik command room, Ilya’s spire had a large seat from where she could direct the spire and all those who had recently contracted themselves to her. An ornate window with smoky panes of dark glass ran almost the full circumference of the circular spire’s top, giving her a view in every direction. Two depressions on either side of the war room table were there for supposed scrying teams to operate distraction-free… if she had any.

Couldn’t Zullie have come up with some way to bend the barrier of observation to see distant events, or some other nonsense involving her patron deity?

“Here we are,” Hawkwood said, stepping through the door. He was not alone.

Beside him, a tall man bearing the red and gold of Vaales and another, shorter man with a blue and yellow tabard of Chernlock strode in, their gazes sweeping around the room. Commanders of the armies Ilya had picked up, presumably. The Vaales commander narrowed his eyes in poorly concealed suspicion as he took in the room, only to narrow his eyes further to an angry squint as his gaze settled on Vezta, Olatt’an, and Ilya. Blue and yellow, on the other hand, looked more impressed than anything.

Ilya wondered what the Vaales commander knew—or thought he knew—or if he was just naturally suspicious. The look he gave Ilya went far beyond suspicion. Was it because none of the people standing before him were human? She had heard that Prince Cedric wasn’t kind to beastmen and demihumans. One had allegedly been responsible for the death of his bride years ago. It would make sense that he would surround himself with like-minded individuals.

Which was just another burden on Ilya. Another faction that was supposed to be an ally but one who Ilya didn’t know if he could be trusted.

Ilya’s eyes flicked to the guards on either side of the door. Most of the Black Knights were with Arkk, but he had assigned a handful here. There were no better bodyguards. Well, none better with the exception of Kia and Claire, but the two dark elves needed to remain where the demon was likely to show up.

“Everyone inside?” Ilya asked, looking at Hawkwood. While she already disliked the Vaales commander and didn’t know much about the Chernlock commander, she knew and liked Hawkwood. Her relationship with him wasn’t anything like what Arkk had, but all their meetings had been perfectly pleasant.

It was a shame he wasn’t the one in charge.

“White Company is accounted for,” Hawkwood said with a kindly smile.

“As are my men,” Chernlock’s commander said, stepping forward with an offered hand. “Roman. Sydney Roman. I am the lord representing King Lafoar and am in command of his soldiers.”

“Welcome,” Ilya said, accepting the handshake. If he was going to be polite, so would she. As soon as Roman stepped back, she turned her gaze to the red and gold Vaales commander.

His lips warred with his words, twisting and grimacing in obvious distaste. It was a bit much, in Ilya’s opinion. Even Mystakeen’s most vehement discriminator toward non-humans didn’t fly into a spittle-flinging rage upon being confronted with an elf.

“My soldiers are present,” he eventually said through terse lips. No introduction. No handshake. His hand did move, but only to rest on the hilt of his sword.

Ilya glared back, noting the flinches on all three of their faces as a faint red glow washed over them. Here she was, offering a free ride straight to Evestani’s capital. No walls could stand in her way, no army would give her pause, and as long as Arkk was distracting the avatar, they wouldn’t have to worry about facing something insurmountable. And this man had to fight himself just to remain cordial.

“If you have a problem, get out and walk,” she snapped, eyes flicking to the man’s sword. The red emission in the room flared as she spoke before diminishing to a faint color.

The orc guards at the door shifted subtly, their hands changing their grip on the scythes to better ready themselves. Likely an unnecessary movement. Vezta glided up next to Ilya, lightly touching her elbow. Vezta might not consider herself much of a fighter, but her presence was welcome. She could easily dispatch a single—or even a trio—of magically unenhanced men.

The commander stared a moment longer before sliding his gaze over to his contemporaries. Hawkwood, face set in a fierce scowl, gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Roman looked far too concerned with the change in Ilya to notice the glance the other commander was giving him.

“No problem,” the commander said. His lips remained tight but he dropped his gaze and removed his hand from his sword.

“Excellent,” Ilya said with a joyless smile. The last of the red light in the room diminished to nothing. “Then sit back and relax. Enjoy the ride. We’re not stopping until we’ve crushed to dust whatever hovel Evestani calls a palace.”

They could take command of the city from there. Ilya would leave them, returning to help Arkk—though she doubted the tower would make it in any reasonable amount of time. The Prince could head over to Evestsani, doing whatever he had done in Vaales over there, and leave Mystakeen to Katja and Arkk.

A perfect plan if ever there was one.

The plan was not going as perfectly as Arkk had hoped.

“Purple marble on the bombardment team’s desk. Charged glowstone quantity down to fifty percent.”

“Evestani army closing in on our position. They are setting up trebuchets.”

“Airships a-aren’t taking meaningful damage from our counterattacks. T-They knock away everything that looks like it will do d-damage and ignore everything else.”

The scrying orb flickered between scenes. The image within the glass changed faster than Arkk could blink. The scrying team had so much to focus on, so many things he needed updates on, that it was a wonder they could even comprehend what they were seeing before it flicked to the next intelligence target. Arkk couldn’t comprehend it, but he hadn’t trained with the scrying team. They were practiced in this.

Occasionally, for more important matters, the image lingered for a few moments longer. Those moments were the main way Arkk was getting his first-hand information of distant events. Closer to home, Arkk just used his localized omniscience. For everything else, he had to trust that his scrying team’s reports were accurate.

If only they had more crystal balls. There should have been two here for two teams to use, lessening the burden. One was currently in the possession of the bombardment team. That team was supposed to use the large windows in the ritual room to select and aim at their targets.

With the occasional shots making it through the protective magics from the airship, Arkk couldn’t take the risk of leaving open windows everywhere. The tower was fully sealed.

Some things were going well. His men, combined with his attentive efforts to keep them as safe as possible, forced the Eternal Empire back from the tower. They hadn’t done quite as much damage as Arkk would have hoped for. Nothing decisive. The Eternal Empire wasn’t fleeing in terror. They just took a step back to reevaluate their strategy in taking the fortress.

Allowing them time to plot wasn’t the best option he had. Still, he was making use of the reprieve. Besides ensuring everyone saw the healers in the infirmary, Arkk conducted a slew of repairs. Lesser servants were repairing damaged traps, building new ones, and narrowing certain passages to the point where he found it unlikely that bulky knights would be able to continue their invasion. That would let him focus on other matters.

“Trebuchets launching the first volley. Looks like Evestani is setting up magical bombardment as well.”

“As expected,” Arkk said.

He watched the crystal ball, following the trail the heavy stones arced through the air. They struck the shield, failing to penetrate. Instead, the swirling winds carried them off, throwing them to the side where they crashed down into the forest below. One of the trebuchets hadn’t launched a stone. A fireball exploded against the winds, doing little harm.

Arkk bit his lip. “Eyes on the avatar?”

“Center of the camp,” Harvey said instantly as the perspective flipped again. “Seems to be overseeing the assembly of bombardment rituals… He is staring directly at us with a heavy scowl on his face.”

Arkk clasped his hands together. The avatar was present but hadn’t launched one of those golden beams yet. Arkk assumed he wished to wait until the shield went down, just to ensure he did the most damage possible to the building. If Arkk had learned one thing about his opponent, it was that he was prone to rash decisions if he got frustrated. His encounter at Gleeful was proof enough of that.

If the shield managed to weather a few minutes of bombardment without apparent falter, the avatar would use his golden ray to destroy it. He had never used a large ray twice in a short timeframe, which told Arkk that he couldn’t use it too rapidly. So, he would only get one shot. Either destroy the shield or hit the tower. Not both.

Arkk dropped a white marble onto the bombardment team’s receptacle. Zullie’s hastily modified spell had better work.

“Another i-incoming attack from the airships!” Luthor shouted.

Clenching his teeth, Arkk pulled all the lesser servants off the exterior of the tower. Just in time.

Every cannon on the Empire’s airship fired as one, blasting a hole in the roaring wind of the shield. Several shots made it through, knocking chunks of the tower’s reinforced walls to pieces. But the real threat came after. Before the shield repaired itself, that whale ship vomited large globs of red, meaty mass.

Two splattered against the reforming shield, but four made it through. They struck the side of the tower, sliding down with long red streaks in their wake. He immediately felt the Heart tolling the alarm bells. The egg-like globs stuck to the tower’s walls, digging thin tendrils into cracks in the dark bricks. They wormed their way in, draining magic from him to use to fuel their growth. The eggs swelled, forming more tendrils to dig in and drain even more magic. A cascading effect of exponential growth.

If he hadn’t had Fortress Al-Mir, if this had been his only fortress, he would likely have died. The first one that got through shocked him. But now, he had a tactic.

Teleporting a lesser servant out to the side of the tower, just above one of the eggs, it swiftly constructed a small platform. As soon as the platform was stable, Arkk teleported himself.

The roaring wind filled his ears as his cloak flapped and fluttered in the gale. A misting of moisture dusted his cheeks. Had he been unprepared, he likely would have been swept off into the protective storm. Instead, he crouched down.

“Incendiary Explosio,” he intoned.

The egg below him shuddered, reacting to the surge of magic in the air. His spell ignited a brilliant blaze, a concentrated ball of flames that detonated on impact. A fiery shockwave rippled across the tower’s surface. The egg burst apart, its fleshy tendrils snapping and curling into ash as they were consumed by the flames.

Arkk barely paused to admire his handiwork. The three remaining eggs clung stubbornly to the tower, each pulsing ominously as they continued to siphon his magic. He didn’t know if there was more to them than he had seen so far. Their purpose could simply be to drain magic… or they could drain it in build-up to something worse. Arkk bet on the latter. Of everything he had faced so far, these eggs seemed made specifically to deal with people like him.

To deal with fortresses.

He teleported to the next platform the moment the lesser servant finished it. Another Incendiary Explosio ridded him of one of the eggs. Two more teleports and two more spells and the tower was clean. Every available servant moved to the tower’s exterior at his command, scurrying across its surface to repair all the damage.

A tug on the link had Arkk teleporting straight back to the command center. Out on the exterior, he was open and vulnerable. If the avatar fired off one of those beams while he was out there, he could kiss his life goodbye without a doubt.

“Report,” Arkk barked as soon as he reappeared.

“Evestani bombardment rituals are fully set up and staffed,” Camilla said. The fairy stared at the crystal ball with worry etched on her face. “I thought they were going to use them, but…they aren’t activating them. Waiting for something?”

“Maybe t-timing them with the airship bombardments?”

“Or the golden ray to take down the shield?”

“Maybe they don’t want to hit the Empire soldiers?”

“Doubt it,” Harvey said with a shake of his head. “Speaking of soldiers, the King’s Army is almost directly underneath the tower.”

Arkk flicked his gaze to the tunnels underground, noting the army. They were making their way through slower than Arkk had expected. Maybe wary of the noise and explosions above ground. “I’ll go speak with them. We should have a short reprieve before the Empire launches another volley at us. Alert me if anything notable changes in the situation.”

It was a bit concerning. Three times, those eggs had made it through the barrier. The first time, only one egg hit the side of the tower. It was a good thing too, given his delay in dealing with it. The second time, two hit. Now four.

It was a good thing he had managed to take out so many of those whale ships before the fighting even started. If there had been nine to fifteen of the things, he could only imagine how covered in eggs the tower would have been. Arkk doubted he would have been able to burn them off before dealing with them.

One was bad enough.

“Mags,” Arkk said, appearing a short distance in front of the Prince’s commander. Claire was at his side, as was usual when meeting with anyone from the Prince’s faction. He gave her a small hand signal while Mags stumbled back in exaggerated shock, letting her know that he was who he appeared to be. Just a little precaution.

“You—” Mags started, only for Arkk to interrupt him.

He didn’t have time for games. “The tower is under attack on all sides. We’re holding strong for now,” Arkk said, truthfully, though perhaps downplaying the situation somewhat. “Evestani’s forces have set up in a bombardment position a short distance away. Their army is primarily made up of normal men and women with only their avatar as an exception. Their army is likely the only part of the conflict your army can meaningfully contribute toward. So, I have taken the liberty of extending the tunnel out behind their forces. You’ll be able to emerge with an advantage.

“Deal with them or cower here,” Arkk continued, speaking a little louder to perhaps spur on some of his men. He still wasn’t sure if Mags was the demon. Given the shapeshifting ability, Mags might be real sometimes but might also be a demon at other times. Arkk could never be certain with whom he was speaking unless they were an employee. “I don’t believe they’re going to play a consequential role in the current battle regardless.”

Mags narrowed his eyes, twisting his pudgy face into a frown. “What of the avatar?”

“I have a plan to deal with him. Though… he is undoubtedly an enemy of the Prince,” Arkk said, watching how Mags reacted carefully. “Perhaps I should leave him for you to deal with.”

Mags didn’t give anything away, one way or another. “I’ve read the reports. Your reports. You expect regular men to deal with a monster like that? Preposterous!”

“I believe someone in your ranks stands a chance against him,” Arkk muttered. Taking a breath, he spoke louder. “As I said, I have a plan to deal with him. Ideally, he’ll be dealt with before you arrive. Realistically, I’ll use the chaos you create to ensure he goes down. In the latter case, I hope to do so before your forces suffer too many losses.”

“Thank you for your generosity,” Mags said with a sneer.

Arkk just raised an eyebrow. “Is this not what you wanted? Is this not what you came here for? This army was on the verge of mutiny against both you and me because they were being sidelined. Now is the time for you to step up. The blood of Prince Cedric’s enemies awaits spilling.”

A small smile spread across Mags’ face. “That it does,” he said. Turning, he raised his voice. “Well? You heard the man! We’ve got heretics to slaughter!”

Arkk raised his other eyebrow, shooting a glance at Claire. The dark elf shrugged, her afterimages copying her motions. “I’ll leave you to it then,” Arkk said. “Just follow the tunnel. You can’t miss the exits.”

He and Claire teleported away before Mags could argue further. If he was the demon, hopefully he would keep himself busy for a while and not interfere with Arkk. If he wasn’t the demon, his distraction would still have value.

Another tug across the link hit Arkk just as he reappeared in the command center. He felt a moment of panic, snapping his gaze to the scrying team, only to realize it hadn’t come from them. It came from afar.

Agnete was back home once more. This time, with a caravan of mechanical soldiers at her back.

Arkk took in a deep breath, relishing in the one note of good news he had seen in the last hour.

 

 

Dakka stood back, watching with narrowed eyes.

The legs of the walking fortress were equipped with magimechanical defenses, a joint venture by Perr’ok and Morvin. There wasn’t much to them. Metal wheels attached to a magical array that made the wheels spin. The large scythes attached to the wheels turned them into defenses that should have sliced-n-diced any human who dared to walk into it.

It worked. The first of the invaders stopped short, not daring to move forward. A few at the front tried disabling the trap by slamming their swords down in the way of the scythes, only for those dark blades to slice through the metal like it wasn’t even there. All the while, the men and women at Dakka’s back launched their assault on the invaders.

The black-armored soldiers had allegedly shrugged off siege magic. Dakka wasn’t sure what a few dinky lightning bolts or balls of fire were supposed to accomplish. Unlike the gold version of these soldiers, they couldn’t even splash acid into their helmets. They lacked the grated visors, instead having a smooth front with a wide visor of glass letting them see out. Dakka had no idea how they breathed. Her own helmet felt stuffy and it was full of small gaps and holes to try to alleviate that.

That didn’t stop the battlecasters from trying. They threw everything they had at the intruders. Flickering lights in a myriad of colors dazzled around Dakka’s peripheral vision. Green fire, black-and-purple bolts of shadow, an alchemical bomb flung over the spinning blades, an illusory sword jutting out of the ground before shattering into a thousand violet fragments… Someone even whipped out one of the counter-demon spells.

A black void filled with distant stars drifted past the barricades with almost lazy effort. It started small. A faint star in the middle of the air. Halfway across the room, well away from its caster, it erupted into a wide orb of night sky. Crackling tendrils jumped out from it, latching onto the ground, walls, the barricade, and even passing spells. The reinforced elements of the fortress ignored the tendrils, weathering the void. A lance made from ice fell in as it tried to shoot past. A pair of fireballs ended up swirling around and around until one of the tendrils absorbed them. Then they fell in as well.

The surge of spells from behind Dakka slowed. She could feel the collective bated breaths at her back, waiting to see if that void accomplished anything or if the assembled knights trying to figure out a way past the trap would just shrug it off as they had ignored everything else.

The Eternal Empire backed away, but they couldn’t go very far. One man would have had plenty of time to descend the steps and cross over the traps they had already disabled, clearing the path, were it not for one small problem. They were packed in. The stairs in the tower legs were large and wide, spacious enough to facilitate transporting those walkers, but trying to cram a few thousand people up one leg?

It wasn’t that the Eternal Empire were idiots. They weren’t. They had left themselves plenty of space between units to avoid exactly this. It just wasn’t quite enough.

Dakka imagined they were used to fighting in wide open spaces, outdoors, rather than inside the tower’s confines. She and the rest of her men had trained for the opposite since building the tower.

The closest of the knights didn’t back far enough away. He raised his shield, huddling behind it. Made from the same material as the rest of his armor, Dakka half expected him to ignore the orb.

A tendril lanced out, curling around the shield. While the thin void fizzled out after a moment, the effect remained, picking the shield up and dragging it toward the central orb. The knight fought against it, planting his feet as he tried to pull back. The brute force was relentless, a gravitational hunger. The knight slid closer, his boots skidding across the smooth floor of Fortress Al-Lavik with sparks in their wake.

Deciding the shield was a liability, the knight pulled at a strap, letting it free to fly off toward the orb. But it was too late. He got too close. More tendrils snapped out, licking at his boots and gloves. The sparks of his boots disappeared as his feet left the ground.

That cosmic predator pulled him ever closer. His form began to distort in the eerie light. The process was subtle at first, a slight elongation of his limbs as he tried to swim through the air back to his companions. It was as if he were being stretched on a taffy puller’s rack. One of his fellows tried to reach out, grabbing hold of his arms, only for the tendrils to lick him as well.

The distortion grew more pronounced as the screaming began. Both knights weren’t pulled toward the orb so much as they simply fell into it. As they fell, the elongation grew. Their limbs stretched out like molten glass dripping off a punty. The screaming stopped at some point. Dakka wasn’t sure when. Somewhere between knight and thin filament.

They didn’t get a chance to fall into the orb, however. Not like the spells and shield it had eaten. Too early, it splashed against the back wall, dissipating into thin wisps of void before snuffing out completely.

The thin strands of metal and flesh clattered to the floor, still wiggling and twisting as if the two knights were still alive, thrashing against their newfound fate.

Dakka hoped they weren’t, for their sakes.

A brief silence fell over both sides of the battle. She wasn’t sure that anyone had seen something like that before. Not even the spellcaster who used it. Arkk had explicitly warned everyone against using such spells unless they were up against something truly insurmountable. Hardly anyone even knew them, as far as she knew. The few battlecasters trained to use those spells obviously hadn’t used them against anything living.

Two people behind Dakka collapsed. One, Dakka knew, was the caster. Based on the wobble before the fall, she pegged the fall as magical exhaustion—another reason not to use those spells. The other, one of her orcs, wasn’t a spellcaster at all. Brann’on just fainted.

Both vanished, whisked away to elsewhere by Arkk.

That broke whatever stupefying spell everyone had fallen under. The Eternal Empire let out a collective roar of anger before charging forward.

It was only when they started moving that Dakka realized the spell had taken out more than just the two soldiers. The trap that had been keeping them at bay now sat twisted and broken off to one side of the room.

“Ready up,” Dakka barked, fingers gripping tight around her scythe’s haft. “They go no further!”

Dakka swung her scythe, leaving a trail of darkness in its wake.

Arkk concentrated, eyes closed, upon his throne in the command room. Leaning forward, he covered his face with his hands and watched through his omniscience of his territory.

A sword slipped through a thin gap in an orc’s armor. It didn’t make it far. Just enough to draw blood. He pulled the orc back, leaving the enemy knight falling forward with the sudden lack of resistance. Two others were on the unstable knight immediately. The shadow scythes didn’t easily slide through the Eternal Empire’s armor, not like they did with just about anything else they touched, but they still cut. A few heavy hacks to the same spot and one of the shadow scythes punctured through, its tip diving deep into the knight’s spine.

In another part of the fortress, the Shieldbreakers engaged with their group of opponents. Enchanted weaponry crashed against enchanted armor, both nullifying the other’s effects. Brute force won out there. Aya and Viola were both a hair away from getting a sword to the face. Arkk moved them a step back, opening a way forward for the taurus Ellen to slam down a massive battle axe.

Richter led a team of soldiers, backed by his battlecasters and several gorgon. Unfortunately for the latter, the helmets of the Empire didn’t let them effectively utilize their caustic venom, nor could they petrify any of their targets through those reflective visors. Their entire group was losing ground. Arkk kept everyone out of danger to the best of his ability, moving anyone too injured straight to the infirmary, but he needed to do something about the situation before the Empire broke through fully. A shuffling of the combatants…

Arkk threw Kia into the mix. She had been warned that she might be teleported abruptly, so she barely flinched before dozens of afterimages drew her two-handed sword. More effective than the shadow scythes, she cut their armor with ease. If something required two swings, there were two afterimages in place. A dervish of death, she spun through the enemy, buying Richter some breathing room while Arkk tried to find a more permanent solution.

She was, after all, only one person.

Claire was at Arkk’s side, ready for surprises. Arkk wasn’t expecting the demon to pop up and take his head off, but he couldn’t discount anything at the moment.

Dakka’s team was losing ground as well. They had spellcasters but not as many of the Shadow Knights, too few compared to what was needed to fully hold back the onrush. Arkk teleported Dakka directly in front of his seat, her arms already in mid-swing, and cast a haste spell on her. In less time than it took to blink, she was back in the fray. Her super-speed enhanced swing easily lopped the head of one of the knights off. The spell wouldn’t last forever, but it would give her a temporary edge.

Arkk moved his focus to the next—

“Sir! The airship! It’s plummeting out of the sky.”

Arkk threw Vissh into the infirmary as he looked up. For just a moment, he felt a spark of hope. Whatever fire his lightning bolt caused must have damaged some critical component of the airship. Maybe a ritual array that kept it afloat, maybe some structurally important piece of wood. Whatever it was, it crashing to the ground would rid him of at least one problem.

One look at Luthor’s face and that hope snuffed out.

“It’s coming straight for us,” the chameleon beastman said. “And it isn’t a-alone.”

Arkk clicked his tongue as he repositioned Franna out of the way of an enemy sword, leaving her with a clear shot at the soldier’s side. “Not alone?”

Harvey, crouched over the crystal ball with large floppy ears hanging back over his head, looked up as Luthor looked back to the ball. “One of the whale ships is coming down as well. No idea where it came from.”

If it turned invisible before positioning itself overhead, they never would have noticed. Annoying. Arkk reflexively checked on Lexa. The gremlin was on her way back to the tower, mission presumably accomplished. He would have to keep an eye out and make sure to teleport her to the tower the moment she came in range. “But they’re both visible now? And they’re both coming in range of our siege magic?”

“Yes and yes.”

Arkk dropped several colored marbles for Lelith to decipher. At the same time, he dropped Maria into the infirmary and moved two battlecasters out of the way of an enemy spell.

Why come closer when it puts them in range of magic? The airship had been maintaining its bombardment from high up just fine earlier. They could have protective spells of their own. Arkk expected it, even. But a bombardment would wear down the spellcasters eventually and with his reserve of glowstones, he could power offensive magics far longer than he imagined any spellcasters could last. Even a highly capable inquisitor like Sylvara would wear down eventually.

Speaking of, Arkk couldn’t teleport Sylvara around as she hadn’t actually joined Company Al-Mir. She was a powerful spellcaster and adept with a blade, but he was still reconsidering his decision to let her join in the fighting.

Rather than teleport her away from danger, Arkk teleported in an alchemical bomb—one of the smaller ones—directly behind the soldier attacking her. The explosion wouldn’t harm the soldier through his armor but it would knock him around. It wasn’t a trick he could pull too frequently. Mercury was in the lab making more, but they were still limited in quantity.

“Counter a-attacks on the airships underway,” Luthor said as a bright green flash lit up the narrowed windows of the command center.

Arkk nodded his head, refocusing on making sure as many of his men survived this as possible. For as careful as he was being, for as quickly as he maneuvered people out of danger, he had already failed two of his men and the fight was only beginning.

“Bombardment having trouble hitting the ships. T-They’re moving too fast. No sign of them slowing.”

“Do they intend to ram into us?” Arkk asked, teleporting a few dozen lesser servants onto the exterior of the tower. Most of the windows had already been sealed up or reduced in size. The last few gaps were nothing more than a liability at this point.

“It will only be a few moments more if they—”

The protective spell around the tower started up again, swirling the wind around into a mostly opaque barrier. It formed just in time to avoid something… strange.

Arkk cast his gaze over the crystal ball, frowning. The whale ship tried something. It opened up, roughly where he presumed a mouth would be on an actual whale, and spat something out. A large glob of reddish-purple meat hurtled downwards, moving even faster than the ships. The gale of the protective dome sheered it apart, sending a splattering of red mist off into the distant parts of the forest.

“Didn’t get a good look at whatever that was,” Luthor said after a moment. “More are coming down. Doesn’t look like they’re getting through the shield spell.”

“They’re finally slowing down,” Harvey said. The flopkin opened his mouth to say more, only to hesitate as his eyes widened. “Cannons underneath the main airship are deploying. They’re going to bombard us again.”

“The bombardment team will handle it,” Arkk said, hoping he was right. With the army outside the tower, he couldn’t exactly go out there and try to lightning bolt them off his back again. Maybe he could stand atop the tower, but that would just put him closer to their cannons.

“T-The whale ship doesn’t look like it has defenses, but the other ship is keeping close. Some random wind keeps picking up right when a spell is about to hit them.”

“Not random then,” Arkk said. He shuffled around a few groups in active combat, ensuring the ones who had been fighting since the start got at least a brief moment of reprieve. “The other ship has some way of defending the whales.”

He leaned back and closed his eyes again, diverting all his attention elsewhere. He kept the battle in a constant place in the back of his mind, maneuvering people around as needed, but he quickly refocused on the lesser servants trying to destroy the ritual holding the tower in place. Much of the enemy army was still outside the tower. He doubted all of them could make it inside, not before the stairwells ended up filled with bodies. If the tower were free, however, he would be able to crush the army and end the siege all in one move.

With the ritual active, he had to break the circle or force the magic to redirect in order to disrupt it. Or kill whoever was maintaining it. With such a large ritual circle, he had no clue where its operators could be. Thus, he had been working on damaging the circle itself. It was more resilient than he had initially thought. It kept… repairing itself.

Which did make an unfortunate amount of sense. It was designed to capture his tower. If the tower walking across the ritual circle broke it, it wouldn’t have been very effective. It had to have a way to withstand or otherwise regenerate the extreme forces of the tower’s legs coming down on the ground.

While several lesser servants continued to eat away at it—maybe its regeneration component would break under the continued strain—he had even more servants out looking for whatever was powering the circle. He guessed a minimum of eight people were out there, standing in designated spots to fuel it. Maximum of twelve. It was a large ritual but it couldn’t possibly be as strenuous as blowing open a hole in reality to meet with a deity.

Not one of the servants had detected a human out there yet. Nor any glowstones that might be powering the ritual. He had scoured a quarter of it already, which meant he should have found between two and four people, but there was nothing. Either they were all concentrated in one spot… or they were using the Eternal Empire’s cloaking ability to hide away. If the latter was the case, he wasn’t quite sure what the best option was.

“Sir. E-Evestani is marching out of Woodly Rhyme.”

“After all that effort in setting up their defense, they’re going to come out to play?” Arkk scoffed. “Couldn’t stand to be showed up by the Empire, huh?”

He was significantly less concerned with them at the moment. The only thing they had going for them was the avatar. The rest of their soldiers would die to bombardment or conventional weaponry much easier than the Empire’s knights. In fact…

“Where are Mags and his men? They should be in the tunnels behind us, right?”

Harvey and Luthor both leaned over the crystal ball. Normally, that was something he would have looked into himself. Keeping an eye on every little bit of fighting going on was taking too much concentration, so he left them to it while Arkk occupied his time continuing the same thing he had been doing for the past twenty minutes, making sure his enemies died and his friends and allies didn’t.

The flopkin leaned back, nodding his head after a short moment. “Yes, Sir. They’re moving forward. Looks like their pace has slowed because of multiple branching paths and narrowed tunnels, but they’re headed toward us.”

Pausing his focus on the battle for a brief instant, Arkk removed the lesser servants from the tower’s exterior and set several to digging proper tunnels while one other plopped down right in front of Mags. The portly man didn’t flinch. For a moment, Arkk thought Mags was going to attack it, but the servant doing its best to beckon Mags forward made him rethink his actions.

“Check in on the tunnels occasionally. It isn’t a priority. Alert me when they get underneath our rear foot. In the meantime…”

If the golden avatar was on his way, Arkk had a present for him.

Unfortunately, his original plan of having either Priscilla or Agnete deliver it was not an option at the moment. Priscilla was unconscious and Agnete was directing a small army of her own toward the Anvil’s portals. She would be through shortly, but in time?

He wasn’t sure. Maybe. Maybe not.

One other entered his sphere of influence right as the thought crossed his mind. Reaching across space and time, he teleported the short gremlin directly in front of him. With her came a stench. She was covered from head to foot in some kind of tar that smelled of fetid offal. Taken aback by the sudden smell and her appearance, he didn’t even get the first word in.

Lexa tensed, drawing her blades in surprise at the sudden relocation, only to look up at Arkk with a look of surprise. Squelching that surprise, she shuddered. “That thing was horrid. You would not believe—”

“Sorry,” Arkk said. “We’re under attack. No time for a proper debriefing.”

“But—”

“Not under imminent threat of attack. The battle is ongoing. The Eternal Empire has trapped the tower and we’re fighting off their army.”

Lexa’s eyes widened before she clenched her fists around her daggers even tighter. “What do you need of me?”

“Have you ever considered the profession of a diplomat?”

“What?” Lexa cocked her head to the side. “Are you mixing me up with Edvin?”

Arkk shook his head, teleporting a dozen more of his men around during the short action. “No. You see, I have a gift for the leader of the enemy army. I’m sorry I can’t give you time to rest after your successful mission, but I think you might be the only person who can deliver it.”

“A gift… A gift,” she said, slowly grinning. “For the avatar?”

“Just a little something between opposing commanders. Wouldn’t want him to think I never thought about him.”

Lexa’s grin turned especially vicious. “How soon can I go?”

“Soon.”

 

 

“It’s good to see you again.”

Ilya nodded her head, clasping hands with Hawkwood. She had wondered where White Company’s leader and its remnants had gone. The last she saw of him, he had been playing attendant to Prince Cedric. A fairly concerning position given the Prince’s reputation. When he dropped off the face of the world, Arkk had feared the worst. It was nice to know that fear was entirely unfounded.

“You as well,” Ilya said. “Shame Arkk isn’t here. He would have been relieved to know you’re alright.”

Hawkwood’s neatly trimmed mustache twitched. He looked much better than he had around the time of Elmshadow’s assault. Like he had actually managed to get some rest in the last few weeks. Thinner, probably from the constant marching and war rations, he still managed to jiggle his stomach as he chuckled. “You thought something happened to me? I can’t die yet. Too much work on my desk.”

“It’s just that, with the Prince, we weren’t sure…”

“Ah. I understand,” Hawkwood said, frowning as he rubbed at his chin. “To be honest, I’m not sure what I think of Cedric. At times, he acts the ruthless man his reputation portrays him as. Five minutes later, he offers a more gentle hand, caring for his men and his country. Regardless of his current mood, I don’t believe he would be one to throw away subjects both loyal and useful as White Company are.”

Ilya pressed her lips together, wondering if that demon of his took on even Cedric’s guise on occasion. It would explain the discrepancies in his actions. Or he was ill in the head. The latter had empirical evidence. No one with their head on straight would consider summoning a demon, let alone go through with it. Even Vezta, a monster whose thoughts didn’t align with those of anyone normal, found the very prospect loathsome.

Rather than voice her thoughts on the Prince, Ilya let the subject change. It wasn’t productive at the moment to start whining about the bastard.

“So you’re leading the charge into Evestani?” Hawkwood asked, cocking an eyebrow. “A Swiftwing reported that we would have allies, but I never expected you to be our reinforcements. This isn’t the same tower that retook Elmshadow, is it?”

Hawkwood took a step back, turning his head back and forth as he looked around the main entryway which was currently flat against the ground for ease of access. His logistic personnel rushed back and forth, carrying boxes and supplies inside around him. The soldiers marched inside in twin single-file lines, taking stairways up to the barracks levels. It was obviously not the same tower. The walls were far more shadowy than brick-like, the architecture was more akin to a church—especially one of those temples in the Underworld—and it was far, far smaller. Still huge for a giant walking building, but not that big relative to Arkk’s tower.

“We built another one.”

“The fact that you can build more than one is… alarming. Didn’t Arkk say it required a rare magical artifact? The kind that simply couldn’t be found anymore.”

“We found one more.”

“If you’ve found two of these relics in such a short amount of time, I imagine you have a third somewhere else. Perhaps more?”

They hadn’t. Not unless Arkk was keeping something else from her. Ilya didn’t think he would do so. Not after he had come clean about his undead army. But with so many moving parts within Company Al-Mir, it was possible that he had simply forgotten to mention something like that. Either way, “I don’t think I’m at liberty to say.”

With a knowing nod, Hawkwood smiled. “Of course not. I’d expect nothing else. And if our invasion of Evestani goes as smoothly as the retaking of Elmshadow because of this tower, I shan’t complain.”

Ilya wasn’t sure that retaking Elmshadow had been smooth. Plenty of people perished, including a significant fraction of White Company. But, she supposed that compared to a more conventional battle, it likely felt smooth. “We won’t have any of the specialists,” Ilya said. “No dragonoids, inquisitors, or purifiers. On the plus side, we aren’t likely to have to face anything like that either. I imagine Evestani’s avatar is a bit preoccupied at the moment. Near as we can tell, the Eternal Empire is also focusing the entirety of their forces on Arkk.”

A long moment of thought-filled silence passed. Hawkwood’s expression shifted from pleased at hearing that to a dour frown. “Two full armies plus that avatar?”

“Before you suggest we turn around to help him, we are helping him.” Ilya turned to the entrance of her tower, knowing exactly how many men were still meandering outside while waiting for the queues to move. They were almost loaded up. “As soon as everyone is inside, we’re setting out.

“Today is the day Evestani falls.”

Whatever else happened, the Eternal Empire’s airship backed off. That was an opportunity that Arkk couldn’t ignore. Before he even got to his feet, the tower was moving once again.

He had not been idle during the delay. Weathering the bombardment gave his lesser servants time to burrow ahead, digging long and narrow tunnels poised to receive the legs of the tower. It would let them move rapidly, much as they had when first marching out of Elmshadow, at least for a short distance. It wouldn’t be as fast as if they had marched unimpeded, but it would let them make up a little lost time.

They had to be ready. The airship could begin bombardment again at any moment.

At this point, Arkk had no clue where the deserters had ended up. There were only three real possibilities. Either they had fled and deserted for real, they had gotten lost somewhere in the forests and Arkk had passed them, or that airship had spotted them earlier and already wiped them off the face of the planet. Whatever the case, they were nothing more than figurants in the conflict going forward.

Arkk hoped they survived if only to keep the Prince off his back. Otherwise, he couldn’t care less.

The engagement had begun. Whether or not he found them, he could only follow through in ending this.

“Coming up on our opponent’s reinforcements,” Rekk’ar said.

Arkk peered out the window, using his one remaining hand to hold up a spyglass. His left eye didn’t have the dark line through it that his right eye did, but he still brought the spyglass to his right eye before having to correct himself. His vision wasn’t perfect, even in his left eye, but it was good enough to see.

The reinforcements weren’t more flying ships. Nor were they the whale ships. Of the latter, the one that had taken to the skies was still unaccounted for while Lexa was ensuring one other couldn’t take off. Best he knew, the third was still grounded, though Arkk doubted it would remain so for long after what happened to the second.

No, the reinforcements were down below. Where Evestani had erected their barricades and began reinforcing Woodly Rhyme, the Eternal Empire’s army marched forward. It wasn’t their full reserves. Roughly a hundred score of their black and white armored soldiers stood in a wide field. The ordered rows and columns held fast with no sign of panic or chaos. Each step of the tower sent a jolt through them, but not one turned and fled.

Arkk wasn’t sure of the wisdom of splitting their army. Both inter-army divisions between Evestani and the Eternal Empire as well as the latter sending only two thousand to meet with him. They certainly had some kind of plan. Arkk almost hoped they did, or else the tower would crush them underfoot as easily as it crushed the trees.

The soldiers were alone down there. No trebuchets or siege engines. He didn’t even see any sign of magic among them, both in terms of rituals and battlecasters.

“Spot anything?” Arkk called out, turning to move backward.

A flat-clawed hand thumping against his chest stopped him with more force than he expected. “Stop moving,” Hale grumbled as she worked his flesh with her favorite spell. She was in the process of regrowing his arm. Already, he could see scales forming around his shoulder, roughly similar to those of Priscilla and Hale.

It itched.

“Sorry,” he muttered as the scrying team responded.

“No heavy weaponry or glowing tents,” Luthor called back, confirming what Arkk saw through his hazy eyes. “Just a bunch of soldiers. Most carry longswords.”

“Enemy airship maintaining their increased distance,” Drek said right after. “Looks like they put the fires out. I’d expect them to move forward again.”

Arkk flinched. “Not what I want to hear.”

“Thought you ought to know anyway.”

He had a point, but Arkk wasn’t sure what he would or could do if that thing started attacking again. He had just about killed himself the first time around. Zullie, Savren, and the rest of the research team were working full-tilt on some kind of extreme-range solution for him but he didn’t know when or even if that would bear results. He could try to hit it with a lightning bolt again. Maybe with a few more precautions.

He had a feeling Rekk’ar might not let him. The orc’s eyes kept drifting over to Arkk whenever he thought Arkk was occupied with something else. It was a little touching, if Arkk were being honest. There was genuine concern in Rekk’ar’s constant glances. Knowing Rekkar, the concern in his eyes was probably more for his own sake than for Arkk’s, not wanting the one in command of the tower to pass out and leave everyone stranded, but it was still touching.

Rekk’ar didn’t have anything to worry about. Arkk knew he had been injured. He could see the lack of an arm clear as day. It didn’t hurt. Not even a little. Even jostling his shoulder only felt strange in that he was expecting a familiar weight there. Hale had done good work numbing him.

Except for the itch as new muscle and sinew spread out beneath her fingertips.

Under lighter circumstances, Arkk would probably have been freaking out about now. He had lost an arm! But, at the same time, he was cognizant that it wasn’t the debilitating injury it should have been. Not with Hale. He had almost turned her down, thinking he could always go to Agnete. Even before visiting the Anvil, Agnete had built a set of mechanical legs for Katt’am that worked well enough. But Agnete was busy and Hale wasn’t. Arkk was nothing if not practical.

He could always chop it off again if he decided to go the machine route. And wasn’t that a strange thought to float through his mind.

Even outside of knowing he could replace the arm, there was something else suppressing the panic. His arm just felt too… small to care about. It was a strange thing to think, given that his arm was practically a fifth of him, but the feeling remained. An arm was just an arm. It wasn’t like he lost his Heart.

“I don’t like this.”

It was Arkk’s turn to look to Rekk’ar. The orc glared through the small hole in the window, staring down at the army assembled ahead of them.

“Something bad is going to happen. I’d be browning my pants if I was ordered to face down this fortress with nothing but a sword and shield. They ain’t even flinching.”

“Could they carry enchanted weapons that they think will cut the reinforced stone?”

“And what?” Rekk’ar said, turning on Arkk. “Hope to bring down the tower by nicking the legs? Even if their swords could cut stone like a knife in a bucket of lard, only the most delusional would think they stood a chance at harming the tower before it stomped on them.”

“Maybe they think they can rush the doors and get inside before the legs—”

“Large-scale magic array!” Drek interrupted with an alarmed shout. “Dead ahead!”

The legs of the tower slammed down, stopping its forward momentum instantly. Glowing white lines surged through the forest between Arkk and the army, forming a massive ring with several crisscrossing lines. Arkk recognized some parts of it instantly. An entrapment array. There were some added bells and whistles that he didn’t understand, but its main purpose was to keep whatever was inside from moving.

Whatever was inclusive of the two tower legs that were stuck inside.

“They’re holding us in place,” Arkk said, pulling up the spyglass again. The army wasn’t standing still any longer. They were advancing. If they stepped on the ritual circle, they would become trapped as well… but of course, the army setting up the trap would have some countermeasures.

“You might have been right about them rushing the doors,” Rekk’ar grumbled. “We fight them out there?”

Arkk shook his head. “I have full battlefield control within the tower. Not enough land claimed outside it to be effective. It also funnels their army into tight corridors, taking away their number advantage.”

“They would know that. They must have a plan.”

“Well, you think on that. My plan is to get us unstuck as soon as possible. I’m having the lesser servants eat their way up to the surface to try to disrupt the ritual. And…”

Arkk dropped a yellow marble into the slot down in the bombardment team’s chamber. In less than thirty seconds, a rain of colorful fire cascaded down on the ritual array. Boulders fell from the sky. A dark cloud welled up, lazily wafting around the tower’s highest point. Black rainfall started, first as a drip, as if it were water wrung from a filthy rag. It quickly accelerated, becoming a monsoon of black. Trees withered and dried out, the grass and bushes of the forest below first turned an unhealthy yellow, then dried out to a crispy brown, before finally turning to black necrotic plants, dead in every way that mattered.

The Eternal Empire didn’t care. They marched forward. An acid-yellow flame hit the ground ahead of one of their units, but the soldiers marched through. The caustic fire licked their armor but did nothing more. The black rain just made their armor glisten, doing nothing to stop them. Only the house-sized boulder crashing down did any damage. For all Arkk knew, the soldiers it hit were still alive, just pinned underneath.

It was like an entire army outfitted with that golden knight’s armor.

The shadow scythes could stop it. The magic in those dark blades ruined whatever enchantments had been on that armor. They cut through with some resistance, but easily compared to anything else they had tried.

Arkk idly wondered who had copied who. Had the Eternal Empire captured some of that golden armor? Or the other way around? If the Empire outfitted all their soldiers with indestructible armor, it certainly lent credence to Rekk’ar’s report of them never losing battles back in their homeland.

“An army that doesn’t know defeat,” Arkk mumbled to himself as he lowered his spyglass. “Guess I’ll have to deliver their first. Rekk’ar, I’m moving you to the orc barracks. Inform them of the goings-on. Organize a defense at positions six, eight, ten, and fourteen. You have command. Tell them, Dakka especially, that the enemy equipment may act like that golden knight’s armor. She’ll best know how to explain it to everyone else.”

“You don’t think you’ll stop them from reaching the tower?”

“I’ll certainly try. But, as we expected, they had a plan. Best to prepare for the conclusion of that plan.”

Rekk’ar grunted, nodding his head. He was gone before he could finish.

Arkk stayed where he was, narrowing his eyes. He found himself trying to blink away the dark streak that ran through the right side of his vision. Useless. “Alert me immediately if anything about the situation changes,” he said, looking to the scrying team. With no further preamble, he teleported to the bombardment team.

He grimaced at the slight flare of pain once outside Hale’s presence, but the activity in the ritual room provided a distraction.

“—ignoring everything—”

“Focus the forward groups!”

“Can’t maintain circle three any longer. Necrotizing rainclouds dissipating. Replacement glowstones required.”

“Focus on disruption, not destruction!” Lelith barked. “More boulders. Quit with the flames. They’re useless.”

“Circle four deactivated. Circle one already instantiating boulders as rapidly as possible.”

“Would the siege shield stop them?”

“With how they’re ignoring everything else? Doubt it.”

The entire room was in such chaos that nobody noticed his arrival. Igvile, Bertram, Lelith, and Kassa rushed around the room. Lelith reconfigured rituals, rapidly altering their targets, while the others hurried around activating them. Igvile kept up with the regular status reports and Bertram seemed in charge of the glowstones. Their movements meshed together perfectly even as they argued over possible solutions to the enemy army.

“Circle thirteen prepared. Circle seven deactivated.”

Arkk found he had little to add to the situation. His suggestion would have been to add more boulders to the lineup, given that the boulders were the only thing he had seen that had worked. But his team was more than capable of coming to that conclusion on their own.

“Activating the—”

Arkk teleported away, reappearing in his research team’s library. They were engaged in a flurry of activity as well, running about. Zullie called out for notes from passages to be read aloud while Savren and Morvin rapidly exchanged papers between them. Unlike the bombardment team, they noticed his arrival. Zullie first, then Gretchen, then the others.

Zullie grimaced. “You aren’t here to change our project again, are you? We’ve switched focus three times today alone. Nothing will get done if you keep doing that.”

The exasperation on everyone’s faces at the prospect of another shift in their priorities was evident beyond Zullie’s voiced annoyance. Arkk looked around with a small frown. “No,” he said, leading to a collective sigh of relief filling the room. “Everyone continue as you were. I just have one question for Zullie. The project you called the Maze of Infinite Paths—”

“I believe your orders were to never bring that one up again.”

Arkk forced a smile. “The fun thing about being the boss is that I can change my orders whenever I wish. In this case, I’d like to deploy a small instance of the project directly ahead of the tower. Preferably in the next… three minutes, maximum.”

“Three minutes?” Zullie balked. “I’m all for breaking the rules of reality, but in…” Pausing, she frowned to herself. “How small of an instance?”

“Let’s say the size of one of the fortress legs.”

Zullie clicked her tongue three times inside her mouth before turning. “Gretchen, fetch me the book on the third shelf—No, not that one, the one you have to reach outside the library to grab.” Adjusting the rectangular glasses over her nose, Zullie turned back while Gretchen hesitated, wiggling her fingers in nervousness as she stared at a small black void on one of the bookshelves. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” the witch said with uncharacteristic concern in her tone.

“Me too… Me too.”

 

 

Frying the bastards was easier said than done.

Arkk stood out in the gale caused by the tower’s defensive spells, staring up at where he thought the enemy craft should be. He couldn’t see it. Even if the twisting winds weren’t there, he doubted he would have been able to see the ship. It was just so far above them that his pitiful human eyes couldn’t see more than a black spot that the rest of the sky bled over.

Electro Deus didn’t like not having a target. On the rare occasions he had tried to use the spell without anything around, such as the attention-drawing lightning bolt during his and Vezta’s defense of Langleey Village, he could force it eventually, building up the magic until it had to go somewhere. He was hoping that, with a target up above, it would naturally gravitate toward the ship despite his inability to see or aim clearly.

Lightning sparked around Arkk, branching out from everywhere on him to the ground and the tower’s walls. They were far from the tower, but stray bolts of lightning seemed especially attracted to its stone walls. He could feel each as a tickle, as if they were grazing his own skin. But the tower’s magical reinforcement took the energy of the bolt and just channeled it straight back to him.

He had chanted the incantation two minutes ago and had spent the intervening time holding it in and building it up. He was trying to prevent as much lightning from escaping him as possible. Unlike at Langleey Village, he wasn’t trying to blast it off the moment he could.

He needed more.

Every scrap of power he could muster.

His hair stood on end. A spark jumped from his fingers to his thigh. It pinched, hurting more than it hurt when striking the tower; the magic of the spell still reentered him, joining with the rest of his pooling power. It did, however, burn a small hole through his trousers.

A larger bolt escaped, crackling through the air as it struck a nearby tree. Splinters of wood exploded into the air, showering down around Arkk and the others while the rest of the tree went up in flames.

“Keep it steady!” Rekk’ar shouted in perhaps the least encouraging tone he could manage. “Igvile, get these flames out.”

The syren nodded his head and promptly started a much longer incantation than Arkk’s usuals. He conjured up a small stream of water, drenching the ruined wood with a loud hiss barely audible over the swirling winds and crackling lightning.

“Lelith,” Rekk’ar barked. “Status?”

The tower’s resident geometric dark elf gave the orc a withering look. “Based on the levels of magic around Arkk, I’m not sure we’re back far enough.”

Arkk’s defenders, watching for any even minor failure in the shield, ready to defend him with knives that sliced through reality—the same ones he had used against the Eternal Empire’s attack on Cliff—had once been standing at his side. Then they took a step back. Then another step. Now, they were distant enough that Arkk could only hear the louder arguing that went on between them.

And it was apparently still too close.

“Not what I was asking.”

Lelith ground her teeth together. “I don’t know, alright? Can Arkk damage it? No idea. What is it made out of? Does it have any defenses? Any magical reinforcements? If it were a regular ship, I would say try now. But it isn’t. The only thing I know for sure is none of this should be possible.” Her red eyes flicked to Arkk. “Human bodies can’t contain that much magic. He should have exploded by now.”

“We’ve done a lot of impossible things,” Arkk shouted back. His tongue tingled as he spoke. He was positive that lightning was jumping around between his teeth.

He swallowed, somewhat nervous all of a sudden. How much magic could a human body hold before it turned into a spray of chunky red mist?

“But maybe we’re ready to try,” he added with a nervous flick back overhead. “Is the ship still in place?”

Following a quick consultation with her crystal ball, Lelith nodded. “Hasn’t moved relative to the tower. Oddly, the volleys have slowed down. Half the cannons haven’t fired in the last minute or so. Running out of magic or alchemical munitions?”

“More like they’ve realized they aren’t doing any damage since Zullie altered the shield spell,” Rekk’ar said, softer and barely audible over the crackling and the distance. “Now they’re just keeping us pinned.”

“Or they’re about to change tactics again,” Arkk said with a scowl. He did not want to deal with whatever they were planning. “Now or never. Lelith, I’m sending you back to the ritual room. Give us sixty seconds to prepare. Then take down the shield the moment it looks safe enough. Between volleys, if possible.”

“Understood,” the dark elf said, disappearing the moment she finished speaking.

“Igvile, Bertram,” Arkk continued, addressing the two members of the bombardment team who were here to assist in defending him. “We’re about to be vulnerable. You know what to do.”

The syren and the goose beastman nodded their heads in turn. Only Igvile moved, returning to his position after having extinguished the burning tree. Both were much closer than Lelith and Rekk’ar’s position further out. Bertram had one hand on a ritual circle meant to protect from Arkk’s lightning and another hand on a smaller version of the large shield that enveloped the tower. If anything got through, he was to activate the shield.

Igvile, on the other hand, stalked closer, clearly wary of the lightning that was practically cascading off Arkk at this point. His scales, seemingly freshly polished, reflected the dazzling light of the lightning back at Arkk in a million different directions, faceted and diffused. While his purpose was to act as a backup for Bertram—being the one holding the void blade—he also had one important task.

A ritual circle under Arkk’s feet, designed in haste by Zullie, should provide something akin to a tunnel for his lightning to travel through. It didn’t extend to the airship, only just above the tower, but it should keep the lightning from veering off and striking the tower. As long as Zullie hadn’t made any mistakes in its design.

He couldn’t activate it himself, not without sending all his accumulated magic straight into it, likely blowing it—and him—up.

Thus, Igvile.

Unfortunately, with the lightning cascading off Arkk, getting close was a hazard. That hadn’t been in the plans. Arkk watched as Igvile muttered the incantation for a variant of Zullie’s spell, one designed to counter magic rather than projectiles. With all the magic and lightning coursing through his veins, Arkk wasn’t sure it would be enough.

He teleported a flat sheet of metal from the armory. One of the scrap pieces meant for Perr’ok’s walkers. It appeared just at the edge of the ritual circle, partially embedded in the ground. It wasn’t much, but it would hopefully take the brunt of any stray bolts of lightning. The spell Igvile had on would protect from anything else.

Igvile huddled behind it, barely reaching out with a scaled wing to touch the ritual circle under Arkk’s feet. Most of the lightning flowing out of Arkk went to the makeshift shield, as he hoped. A few stray sparks jumped to the syren, but Arkk felt nothing from the employee link to indicate pain—just a tense worry.

The ritual activated. Nothing visibly happened. No additional shields or tornados of wind. He felt a slimy, slick presence in the air around him, though that could have been his imagination.

Arkk cast his gaze back to the skies. The swirl of the dome would stop in a moment, as soon as Lelith saw an opening. He had to be ready.

Sixty seconds felt like an eternity. The bombardment team was one of the few teams in the entire fortress that could even measure seconds, having a fairly precise sandglass. It was needed to make full use of Lelith’s geometrics. Most of the rest of the fortress used water clocks which reset every hour. Because of that, he knew that she knew how long sixty seconds was.

But it still felt like forever.

Then, all at once, he felt it. A few last bright spots appeared overhead, the last shots in the airship’s volley hitting the shield dome. Before the final spot faded, the entire dome collapsed. The swirling winds slowed to a stop and the taste of magic in the air dropped.

Arkk didn’t hesitate. He squinted, spotting the dark smudge in the blue sky, adjusted the aim of his arm, and released the tension in his stomach.

Magic flooded from his fingertips in an unbridled fury. He stood his ground for a fraction of a second. A sudden, violent explosion erupted with a sharp, searing crack, as if the air itself was shattering to pieces. The sound was immediate and overwhelming, a deafening roar that engulfed Arkk’s senses.

He wasn’t quite sure why he was flying through the air. One moment, he had been standing in place, the next, he found himself flung off his feet and into the sky. Pain erupted in his mind, both his own and some from an employee link. Almost automatically, subconsciously, he moved Igvile to the infirmary for Hale to handle. Bertram and Rekk’ar followed him, both in some level of pain that was mostly concentrated in their ears.

His back clipped one of Fortress Al-Lavik’s legs, turning his soaring arc into a nauseating spin even as a fresh blast of pain raced up his shoulder and down his arm.

A teleport righted himself. He stood, inertia reset, atop one of the legs. Half his shirt was gone, torn off from the impact. Blood rushed down his arm from a fresh gash. He was pretty sure something back there was broken.

But he paid it little mind.

Not yet. Pain could be dealt with in a moment.

Now, he squinted, trying to see up into the sky.

The black smudge on the sky was… larger? It was hard to tell. Almost like a dark cloud had spread around the original dot. Smoke from a fire?

He could only hope.

The tower rocked, knocking Arkk off the leg. Fresh impacts struck it all along its front side, blasting bits of brick off. The protective dome returned, slow wind picking up speed as it blocked the remainder of the volley.

Arkk teleported himself from his fall straight to the bombardment room.

“Did it hit?” Arkk called out.

Lelith turned to him, eyes widening as her gaze traveled over him. She opened her mouth, clearly speaking, but Arkk could only hear ringing. He tried to wiggle a finger in his ear, only to find he couldn’t raise his arm at all.

He looked down at his arm with a grimace.

“So that’s what hurts,” he mumbled, wobbling in place. Overwhelming lightheadedness hit him in a sudden rush. He staggered, vision swimming, and fell into Lelith’s arms. “Hale…”

Lexa beat a hasty retreat. Her hands, moist with sweat, clenched the cloak of darkness around her. If she never had to enter one of those Light-forsaken whale ships again, it would be too soon. Just considering the slimy, fleshy walls of that creature’s heart chamber made her ears ache. The blank faces of the people, merged with the meat of the walls… The bright red tendrils of flesh pulsing, swelling, and deflating, within their noses, mouths, ears, and even eyes.

Lexa shuddered.

She wasn’t quite sure about their opponent. Evestani, obviously, was under the control of the Heart of Gold’s avatar. There was no doubt about that. But the Eternal Empire, unless something had changed recently, was supposed to be involved with the Almighty Glory’s avatar. Nobody was quite sure if that avatar was present in person, if they used a similar possession ability to keep themselves safe like Evestani’s avatar, or if Evestani had only called in regular soldiers for aid and left the other avatar at home.

The whale ships didn’t feel like something the Almighty Glory would use. Granted, Lexa was far from an expert on any god. She never once attended a sermon with the Abbey of the Light or any other organization. Outlaws like herself weren’t typically welcome in such environments.

But the Almighty Glory, to the best of her knowledge, was the god of pride, strength, and power. Lexa couldn’t begin to imagine how meat ships piloted by people fused to the walls could possibly represent pride. Vezta might know better, but at the moment, Lexa was wondering if they had the wrong god. If one of the Pantheon hadn’t disguised themselves as the Almighty Glory… or if the Almighty Glory wasn’t what everyone thought they were. His domains did seem to overlap with those of the Red Horse, the only major difference being the swap of pride with war.

Then again, she hadn’t questioned it before, but it seemed a bit strange for gods to constrain themselves to categories that could be summed up in a few simple words. A handful of concepts.

What were gods?

Lexa shook her head, continuing her run. The topic of theology was far beyond her pay grade.

At least, out here, she could breathe in some fresh air. It didn’t have that tang of iron-filled meat that the entire interior of the whale ship possessed. There were still two of those things intact. One in the air—which she wouldn’t be able to do anything about unless she suddenly grew wings, thank… whatever. Another one was still on the ground. Arkk might want her to try to take it out, but she would have to return for more bombs.

Lexa used up everything she had on the one she was trying to distance herself from. When Mercury, a relatively newly hired alchemist, had first loaded her up with the bombs, she had thought it would be overkill. Enough to blast apart a keep if all the orbs had been placed strategically enough. It wasn’t the overwhelming explosion the larger clay jars were capable of, but a single one would certainly have demolished stone brick load-bearing columns with ease, plus all the surrounding walls and pillars.

And she had placed every last one of them around the heart of that whale.

Lexa paused her running and looked back over her shoulder.

It should be right… about…

Lexa had heard about real whales. Sailor tales. Who could tell if they were true, exaggerations, or outright fabrications? But she had heard about the massive creatures swimming in the depths of the ocean. Some of the larger haulers even managed to fish them up. But the story she remembered at this moment was that whales, when they surfaced, tended to blast up a spray of water through holes in their tops.

The top of the whale ship ripped open, filling the air with thick, meaty chunks of flesh that flew higher than the tops of the surrounding trees. A red mist followed the chunks, coating leaves, grass, and the several workers outside the whale all in a glistening sheen. The noise of the blast rocked Lexa back, hitting her just after she watched the whale ship fall apart, collapsing in on itself in the wake of the explosion, which was quickly followed by a long, droning whine.

That whine made every nerve in her spine tingle. It could only be the sound of the whale ship, hopefully its dying breath.

If it survived that…

Lexa shook her head. The workers outside the ship, some of whom fell to the ground following the blast, were now scurrying about. Lexa stayed where she was, watching for a moment. Could the workers fix the ship? She had half a mind to run down there and stab them all in the backs of their necks. Just in case.

Best not to leave matters up to chance.

Lexa took a step.

The loudest crack of thunder that she had ever heard hit the trees with enough force to rattle their leaves and needles. A long, shaking rumble in the air followed, coming from almost directly opposite the whale ship. Lexa whirled around just in time to catch a fat beam of lightning fading out high in the sky over the tops of the trees.

That had come from the direction of Elmshadow. Of the walking tower.

Something was going on back there?

Lexa threw one glance over her shoulder, frowning at the workers even as her eyes roamed over the ruptured hull of the whale ship.

Could they fix it in the time it would take to march the tower forward?

Was she needed back at the tower?

Lexa bit her lips, gnawing.

She had been assigned a mission. And that mission was to ensure that as few of those whale ships took to the skies as possible. Arkk and the others could handle whatever was going on back home. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind about that.

Lexa drew the blades from under her cloak and stalked back toward the whale ship, hoping she wouldn’t have to enter it again while dealing with the workers.

“Welcome back.”

Arkk blinked, trying to clear up his fuzzy vision. A long streak of jagged darkness ran from the top to the bottom of his vision, making everything within harder to see. It happened occasionally when he fired off lightning bolts. Usually, a few moments would have the afterimage burned into his eyes fade away.

He blinked a few more times, frowning at its continued presence obstructing his vision.

“I think I can fix that, but you might not like how.”

Arkk blinked again and focused on himself through his connection to the fortress rather than through his own eyes. Blackened skin marred part of his face. Long lines of burned skin that fractaled out in jagged streaks. It ran down his neck, down his bare chest, and curled around his left arm. Judging by the thickness of the lines, it must have actually started at his right arm, then moved up and down him from there. He couldn’t tell for sure, however.

He didn’t have a right arm.

“I can fix that too. Much easier, even, though it would be faster if we could recover your arm.”

He adjusted his focus, finding Hale seated across from his bed. Her black twin-tails were tied back to keep them out of the way.

She had taken off the cloak she had been wearing since returning from Leda’s tower. That left her shoulders and arms bare. They were… far more muscular than they should have been. Scaled as well. Draconic. Yet she seemed perfectly at ease, relaxed in the chair as she looked over him.

“Did I hit the ship?” Arkk asked.

His tongue felt too big in his mouth. Was he slurring his words? Was that from Hale’s healing or him hurting himself?

“I heard that you did,” Hale said, not having any trouble understanding him. “Scorched it all along its side. Didn’t destroy it but you did enough to get it to back off. Temporarily, I presume. Once they realize that you won’t be able to do that again…”

Arkk ground his teeth. All that and he hadn’t destroyed it? He supposed he should count himself lucky that he had hit it at all. But…

“Actually,” Hale continued. “I think you could do that again. Again and again, even. All we have to do is rearrange your insides a bit, make you a bit more resistant to electricity, and maybe even put in something akin to a dragonoid’s elemental crucible.” She tapped a claw-like finger to her own chest. “Something that acts like a magical capacitor. Could even do a few of those big lightning bolts in a row if my ideas work out. I put a crucible in myself—based off Priscilla, so it is a bit colder than I would like—but I think I can modify it to work better with your lightning—”

“I hear talking. He’s awake?”

Arkk shifted his focus, moving it to encompass the rest of the infirmary. It was mostly empty—no fight had yet broken out. Rekk’ar marched through the open door, scowling down at Arkk.

“Sorry,” Arkk said, trying to enunciate as best he could. “Should have been more careful with the lightning.”

“Don’t care. It worked. For now. But we need you up and ready. Reinforcements are here.”

Arkk tried to push himself up, only to stumble as his right shoulder pivoted uselessly without an arm attached. He wasn’t in any pain, likely thanks to Hale, but… “Agnete?” he asked, using his trembling left hand to push himself up. “She made it?”

Rekk’ar scoffed. “I wish,” he mumbled. “They ain’t our reinforcements.”

A sinking sensation settled into Arkk’s heart as he processed those words.

 

 

It was a rather novel experience to ascend a set of stairs without moving one’s legs. To be more accurate, it was the stairs that were moving, lifting up into the upper reaches of the factory before, through some sort of magic or machinery, returning to the bottom to continue the unbroken staircase. It wasn’t the first time she had ridden such a contraption but this was the longest.

“I have received a report.”

Agnete turned to her side, looking over Who with a mild frown. The construct, during their relatively brief foray back home, decided that she deserved some attire of her own. Which, at the moment, was one of Agnete’s many spare inquisitor cloaks. Long, black, and with several silver buttons holding straps across the chest. Agnete had more than enough of them to spare, having her entire wardrobe full of them. It wasn’t the best clothing for any engineer and would get in the way of her using tools, but Agnete supposed it didn’t matter much. If she needed to use her tools in a hurry, damaging the cloak wasn’t a big deal.

They weren’t expensive to produce. The silver wasn’t real silver and the fabric was made cheap. As everyone expected them to be burned away the moment Agnete got a little hot, both the inquisitors and Arkk elected for the cheap route.

“Thirty-two transport vehicles, each of which contains sixty-four automatons. Two hundred fifty-six voltcoil wyrms. Sixteen swarms of furnace scarabs. And… eight Ironmongers.” Who paused, her mechanical innards clicking in what Agnete decided was genuine surprise. The clicking stopped and she adjusted her head to face Agnete. “There are an additional two vehicles loaded with service personnel and spare materials.”

“Odd numbers,” Agnete mused.

“No. Quite normal. Low, perhaps. If you had filled out the proper forms well in advance, we could have had two to the sixteenth transport vehicles and equivalent increase of other units. Unfortunately, this was as many as we could allocate within the specified timeframe.”

Agnete looked over Who with a deepened frown, wondering about the creature and whether or not she had made any mistakes in construction. Two to sixteen vehicles sounded like far less than the thirty-two they had, unless she meant in addition to the ones they had. “Spending two weeks filling out an elongated form only to have to wait several months for the form to be processed would take planning so far in advance that it borders on prescience,” she said, tone flat. “We’ll have to settle for what we’ve got.”

It sounded like a fair amount. The automatons were, much like Who, roughly humanoid personnel with black-box cores. Within the Anvil, they were charged with resolving any problem that could not be resolved through the factory’s autonomous means. The voltcoils, the flying lightning serpents, were relics from ages past. Allegedly, their duties involved soaring through the smoggy and stormy skies, charging internal capacitors with natural lightning strikes. Once fully charged, they would relocate to a power station to discharge, powering the factory.

The factory had grown too large to utilize voltcoils effectively, but they were still produced and still carried out their duties.

Furnace scarabs, small beetle-like machines, carried out repair and maintenance in cramped and confined locations within the factory. They carried a plethora of cutting and welding tools and possessed the unique ability to pull material through space from stockpiles. Agnete wasn’t sure if that last feature would work in another plane, but the cutting torches would still function.

And the Ironmongers… They were effectively miniature walking factories. Not nearly as large as Arkk’s walking fortress, but still quite bulky with an array of assembly machines, processing plants, and furnaces to rapidly construct practically anything.

Anything except more black boxes. To the best of Agnete’s knowledge, only the Burning Forge itself, and her by extension, could perform that task.

“I have a question for you,” Agnete said, only to frown again as Who twitched.

“I’m sorry,” the machine said before Agnete could ask. “I’m not sure why we have no gearstriders, titans, or roko basilisks. Torchwings were evaluated as being unhelpful in the current situation and magnetrons are too integrated with the Anvil to leave—”

Agnete held up a hand. If she were being honest, she hadn’t even thought about any of the other creatures roaming the factory. The army granted to her was more than she had dared hope for.

“I was going to ask about the reports you get. Or any other knowledge, for that matter. When I first put you together, you hopped off the table and immediately knew where to go, how to speak, and so on.” It was one of the areas in which Arkk was lacking. He could see afar, but he couldn’t speak afar. Or hear. If they could learn what magic allowed such communication within the Anvil, his effectiveness would drastically increase.

“Ah… This is not my first casing. My original casing was damaged. Thus, a great portion of my knowledge is legacy. However, current information is disseminated—Oh! There. Did you hear it?”

Agnete paused, hand on the railing that moved along with the stairs. The Anvil was noisy. A cacophony of whirring gears, hissing steam, clanging metal, and all manner of other sound. But that was all it was. Noise.

Who had been getting better at reading the expressions on Agnete’s face. “It was like a chittering… a ticking clicking… hmm… I wonder if I could verbalize it at an audible frequency range.”

Gesturing for Who to go ahead, Agnete listened.

It began with a high-pitched whistle, akin to the shrill call of a distant banshee, followed by a series of rhythmic chattering that sounded like a particularly angry group of crickets engaging in a feverish debate. With a tilt of Who’s head, a low rumble started mixed with sharp, intermittent screeches. It ended with a long roar of wind through a narrow tunnel, lasting several seconds, before Who suddenly stopped.

“There,” Who said, straightening the shaft in her spine in pride. “That was the notice that just went out.”

“That was a notice? It sounded like…” Describing that in one word seemed impossible without simply calling it more noise. That seemed to be the theme of the Anvil. Noise upon noise upon noise. For some reason, she doubted Arkk would be able to replicate that noise. Even if he could, she doubted it would be useful.

It certainly hadn’t helped her.

“It was an alert that the combat force has been fully mobilized. They await ahead, ready for the Burning Forge’s hand to command them.”

The escalating stairway reached its peak as Who spoke.

Agnete stepped off onto a balcony, wide and impossibly long. It overlooked a large platform—hastily assembled—with a ramp leading to the portal.

Though she had heard the numbers from Who, seeing it in person was overwhelming. Her breath caught in her throat as she stared out over the smog-filled horizon. The transports rumbled in place, jittering and shaking as plumes of black smoke flowed from tall pipes at their rears. One transport looked to still be loading, its side flipped up into an opened position while a series of automatons shuffled inside, taking seats along the walls. The blue-painted transports were large enough that scraping against the portal would be a hazard once they started moving.

The voltcoils drifted overhead, lazily maintaining a vague formation that seemed to break apart and reform with every passing moment. Lightning raced across their skeletal forms, jumping from pylon to pylon on their backs. Occasionally, lightning made the longer jump to another voltcoil if two drifted too close together.

Swarms of scarabs looked more like a dust cloud clinging to the rest of the army. However, the dust cloud moved and surged in sixteen smaller groupings. Agnete was too far away to distinguish the small, insect-like machines individually, but as a whole, they gave her a slight sense of unease. Dust shouldn’t move like that.

The Ironmongers stood at the rear. They were… smaller than expected. And far less bipedal. More like flat blocks of machinery and random bits of metal, all crammed together to sit atop long treaded platforms, each standing no higher than the large transports but easily twice as long.

“They wouldn’t fit through the portal if fully deployed,” Who explained, once again demonstrating an increased awareness of Agnete’s expressions. “Rest assured, their efficiency won’t be diminished as mobile construction vehicles. The only problem will be terrain. But if it proves too rough to cross on treads, they can take time to reconfigure themselves into proper walkers.”

“I see. How fast can the army as a whole move?”

“Voltcoils are the fastest, followed by the transports. Mobile construction vehicles are the slowest by far, but they shouldn’t be placed on the front anyway.”

Agnete swept her eyes over the army once again, noting the final transport had finished closing up. The logistics of moving the army was going to be an issue. The vehicles were all far too large for a teleportation ritual. That said, she had seen the speed at which some vehicles moved in this world. The trains in particular could cross vast swaths of land in mere moments.

No sense delaying any longer, she thought as she stepped forward to take command.

Perhaps she should ride atop one of the transports.

“How long can we maintain the shield?”

Arkk took his eyes off the crystal ball—only one was in the command center at the moment, the other was being used for targeting spells. Rekk’ar stood at the window, looking upward. Most of it had been bricked over by the lesser servants, reducing the potentially vulnerable points in the tower. All other windows in the fortress had been fully sealed. Although reinforced with the fortress magic, glass was still weaker than stone. All that remained here was a small gap.

He couldn’t see anything. Neither could Arkk without the aid of the crystal ball. The swirling gale that was the defensive shield was like a tornado in a heavy storm, blocking the view of everything. Every so often, small parts of it would brighten. White blotches on the surrounding winds. Zullie had done something to tweak her spell to better block the specific type of magic. It wasn’t her impenetrable god-derived barrier, which wasn’t yet ready—Arkk had been forced to move her onto a different project before she could finish it—but it at least kept the worst of the attacks away from them.

“Until the glowstones run dry,” Arkk said, stepping away from the crystal ball. “We can maintain the shield for about one day without resupply. I have sent the first batch to be recharged in the Underworld, but they take longer to charge than they do to deplete. We’ll run out in a few days.”

Rekk’ar grunted, taking his eyes off the window. “I imagine they will change tactics before then. This clearly isn’t working the way they wanted anymore.”

“I’m not so sure. Evestani’s army is on the move. Although obscured by fog, I can see enough golden light to presume the presence of the avatar. Although the bombardment isn’t going to kill us, they may wish to hold us in place until the avatar arrives.” Arkk, stepping alongside Rekk’ar, peered out the window. A futile action, he knew, but he stared up at the swirling shield with his own eyes anyway. “However, I would prefer if we changed tactics first. I’d rather not give them the initiative.”

“I was about to say the same thing,” Rekk’ar said with a self-satisfied nod of his head. “You have a plan?”

Arkk folded his arms, watching the repeated lights strike the barrier as the airship’s bombardment continued. He didn’t respond right away.

He had a few ideas. He didn’t know that they quite broached the concept of a plan. Attacking the airship directly wasn’t possible with their current repertoire of spells. The boulders for the bombardment spell manifested just below the flying ship, almost like they knew. Which, given that Arkk had used the spell before and that it had originally been an Evestani spell before he stole it, made sense. They would know its capabilities and how to protect themselves from its effects.

If anything, Arkk bet that hovering just a sliver above the boulder manifestation point was a taunt.

Zullie was off the defensive project and on to finding anything that could hit the ship. If Priscilla were up, she could have punched a hole in the side of the ship or coated its underside—and cannons—with ice to weigh it down. Her recent injuries and current unconsciousness were making that solution nonviable. Agnete might have been able to use her increased control over her flames to mimic the golden avatar’s destructive rays. He wasn’t sure if that was possible, but he had seen Agnete use narrow beams of flames since her return. He just wasn’t sure of her range. But she was in the Anvil at the moment, collecting the reinforcements the Burning Forge promised her.

From a quick check-in over the link, it looked like she was succeeding. He was tempted to tug on her link to urge her back sooner, but if it meant bolstering his army, he could wait a short while longer.

Apart from those three, Arkk didn’t see many options. They hadn’t been prepared to fight something that could attack from so far away. Kia and Claire couldn’t fight what they couldn’t reach, the weaponry they had developed to counter a demon was also meant for closer range than this, and while he did have a select few fliers in his company, sending even a quartet of harpies and a pair of syrens against an entire battleship sounded like a good way to lose his fliers without accomplishing anything in turn.

There was only one thing he could think to do. Something only he could do.

“I have something of a plan,” Arkk said with a frown. “You aren’t going to like it.”

Rekk’ar huffed, looking down at a leather-gloved hand. “I can count the things you’ve said that I liked on one finger. Perhaps two. That hasn’t stopped you in the past. And if it gets us out of being pinned down…”

Arkk drew in a breath. “Do you recall the first time we met?”

Looking up from his hand, Rekk’ar raised a brow. “Outside your village?”

“That and before that, actually. Technically, we didn’t meet.”

“You’re talking about the attack on the village,” Rekk’ar said with a sudden nervous shift in his demeanor. It was subtle, mostly coming across in his eyes, but he did take a small step away from Arkk as he repositioned himself to fully face Arkk.

Come to think of it, had Rekk’ar ever once apologized for attacking the village?

Arkk wasn’t sure he had. Though at this point, he wasn’t sure it mattered.

“At the time, you called me something. You requested a meeting with someone particular when you came to the village.”

Rekk’ar winced, turning aside. “In my defense, the others described a monster of lightning and darkness. Dakka, especially. I didn’t see you personally, though I did see some lightning bolts flying around. That was enough evidence for me to just repeat what I was told. I now realize Vezta was the darkness and you…” He looked Arkk up and down. “You are you.”

“I feel I should be offended.”

“Didn’t say anything untrue,” the orc said with a casual shrug. “But I recall one thing in particular from that day. One thing beyond two people managing to fight off a hundred goblins on their own and our chieftain’s rage at everyone’s incompetence. The one thing I did see with my own eyes. A lightning bolt, larger than any I have witnessed in nature, striking the sky itself. The one thing that made me think there truly was some kind of beast of lightning in that little village.”

“My magical power increases with expanded territory and numerous employees. At the time of that, I had a handful of rooms and a few connecting corridors under my control. Now?”

Rekk’ar’s eyes widened ever so slowly. “You think you can take out the airship entirely on your own?”

Arkk shrugged. “No idea. Not like I tried. But I’d say it is worth a shot, wouldn’t you?”

“It certainly is… but I’m not hating this plan yet. Where is the problem?”

The walking fortress shuddered as the bombardment continued. Something got through the shield, but not enough to truly rock the tower. Just enough to make everyone in the command center freeze for a brief instant, bracing themselves, before they resumed their duties.

“I cannot channel such a vast amount of power in an instant. And I need open access to the skies.”

“Out there?” Rekk’ar snapped, making apparent just how much he didn’t like the part Arkk knew he wouldn’t. He curled his lips away from his tusks as he sneered. “Are you mad?”

“I did warn you.”

“Can you not charge up—or whatever it is you are doing—then teleport yourself at the last moment?”

“Tried that in a little experiment earlier. Tore apart the room I vacated with a blast of wild and uncontrolled magic.”

Rekk’ar took on a stormy look at that admission. It only lasted a few moments before he straightened his shoulders and nodded to himself. “I see. The solution is simple then.”

“Oh?”

“We just have to protect you from anything getting through that shield until you’re ready. Then, you fry the bastards.”

 

 

As expected, Walking Fortress Al-Lavik lost most of its momentum once beyond the pre-claimed territory surrounding Elmshadow. Not wanting to lose contact with the ground cost him speed, but not as much as he had assumed it would. It was true that lesser servants couldn’t outpace the tower on the ground, nor could they spread out fast enough once the forwardmost leg planted itself on the ground.

But Arkk had a workaround to the issue. A teleportation ritual and a truly copious number of servants allowed him to send them forward to dig the tunnels—by far the most time-consuming aspect of claiming new territory—and have them all in position ready to begin claiming the moment they had connected territory.

That little trick he had come up with let him barely outpace Mags and the Prince’s rallied army.

The Prince said to put them on the front lines. Arkk still doubted their ability to survive contact with anything but the most base conscripts in the enemy army. As it was, the tower marching ahead would take the majority of the enemy’s focus. It was large and notable, too much to be ignored. Hopefully, that would take some of the pressure off the regular soldiers.

At the same time, Arkk hoped they would take the brunt of the worst conventional fighting. Although he had heard murmurs about his bleeding heart nature—not that he thought wanting to keep people safe was a bad thing—Arkk didn’t necessarily agree. He wanted to keep his people safe first and foremost. Whether that be through a demonstration of overwhelming power to potential enemies or sending them to their deaths as a distraction, he would do so without hesitation.

Or, in this particular circumstance, he would allow them to rush to the frontlines on their own. It wasn’t like he had direct command over the army.

A sudden ping of alarm through the link pulled his attention from his thoughts. Arkk quickly honed in on it, hoping it wasn’t Lexa, only to find the source of the alarm only a few paces away from him.

Camilla, the young fairy on the scrying team, wavered in her seat and crashed to the floor, unconscious.

Drek and Luthor both, in the same scrying pit, jolted in shock. The gremlin cried out in shock, leaving the crystal ball to check on Camilla. Luthor recovered his wherewithal a little better, taking over the crystal ball. An image of a blue sky shimmered into its glass.

“Airborn ship sighted,” the chameleon beastman said in a surprisingly calm declaration.

“Whale ship or the other one?” Arkk asked as he teleported himself a few paces into the pit. He quickly checked on Camilla. Information through the link indicated she was alive and healthy, if unusually drained. Drek stood over her, fretting. He tried to pat her cheeks to wake her up.

Arkk teleported them both to the infirmary. Hale’s specialties did not include recovery from magical exhaustion, unfortunately, but she would be able to reassure Drek that Camilla was alright.

Had that been an attack just now? On his scrying team? Or had Arkk been pushing them too far lately?

“Other one,” Luthor answered. “Looks like a b-big sea ship.”

It certainly did. Tall, black and white sails bulged with the wind, carrying the wooden vessel through the air as easily as its water-based equivalent would move through an ocean. Wood panels, rather than the metal of the whales, gleamed in the morning light, reflecting as if they had been polished just last night. Ports along its underbelly were open, letting three rows of short cannons protrude.

Arkk took control of the crystal ball, scrying closer. The moment the perspective crossed beyond a short distance from the deck, the interior of the glass ball turned black with a drastically increased drain on his magic. Similar but not quite the same as the way the inquisitors hid themselves from scrying so long ago.

The drain must have been what got Camilla. Not an attack then, at least not directly, but a defensive measure against unwanted observers. That was a small relief.

“Do not attempt to scry inside that ship,” Arkk said, raising his voice loud enough for the team in the opposing scrying pit to hear. The whale ships lacked defenses like that. Or did they have them and he hadn’t paid enough attention?

Something to check on later. For now, the airship warranted his full attention.

Pulling the perspective back, he scanned around it, trying to get an idea of where it was.

It was high above the ground. So high that trees in the forest below looked like mere dots. A river, the same that ran through the Elmshadow valley, looked more like an oddly colored hair stuck to the crystal ball than a river flowing with fresh water from the slowly melting mountain snow. And his tower… Arkk had thought his tower was one of the tallest things he had ever seen, mountains aside. Yet in the perspective of the crystal ball, it was nothing more than a small coin placed among the dots of the trees and the line of the river.

He couldn’t even imagine how high up that airship had to be at the moment.

With a start, Arkk’s eyes flicked to the tower once again.

It was overhead. Directly overhead.

The underbelly cannons began to glow a bright white.

The tower lurched hard enough that even the stabilizing magic wasn’t enough to prevent people from stumbling. All six legs planted into the ground, giving it as much support as Arkk could.

Arkk flicked his eyes to the army trailing after the tower. They were too far away. They would be caught out.

Arkk didn’t hesitate.

He teleported a large red marble directly into the center of the ritual magic room. Lelith, sitting at the table in the ritual room, stared at the marble for a full second before her eyes widened. The dark elf whirled around, shouting alarm. Arkk couldn’t hear what she was saying, but he knew the protocols. He watched, teeth bared in a tense grit, as Kassa rushed to the defensive circle. Charged glowstones were already in place. All it took was the orc slamming her hand onto the ritual and pulsing her magic to get it going.

The tower lurched and rocked as impacts struck along its side and top. Each exploded in a perfect sphere, uncomfortably reminiscent of the detainment Tybalt, avatar of the Jailer of the Void, had used under Inquisitrix Sylvara’s command. Unlike Tybalt’s magic, they did not obliterate the contents of the circles. The tower was intact, if strained. He could feel the tower’s Heart warning him of the attack.

Although it had been mere moments since sending the red marble to the ritual room, it felt like hours before the protective dome began to form. A swirling and obscuring rush of magic similar to the spell Zullie had demonstrated upon his first encounter with the witch.

The bombardment from above continued. The shield caught the attack, though it wasn’t perfect. If two impacts struck the dome at the same spot in rapid succession, some of the magic of the second would make it through, enough to strike the tower, albeit in a much less powerful strike than the first volley.

If their attacker noticed those holes and had the accuracy to lay down concentrated fire, the situation could turn dire.

Arkk teleported himself out of the command room, reappearing in the bombardment room with the crystal ball in hand. Lelith jolted at his arrival, only to take a breath. The few other members of the bombardment team were running around, ensuring all the rituals were fully operational and ready to be used. At the moment, only Kassa was actively maintaining a ritual, doing her best to keep the defensive spell going.

“Sir, defensive shield in place and holding. We’re prepared with a second to take over when the glowstones start to wane—”

An impact slipping through the defense thundered against the reinforced walls, cutting her report off. A momentary strain crossed Kassa’s face. The ritual circle brightened as the glowstones dimmed. It was just a flicker, returning to a steady glowing hum as the barrier sealed itself back up.

“Good work,” Arkk said. Although he thought she could have been a little faster in getting it going, he wasn’t about to harm morale by berating her in the middle of combat. He made a mental note to increase training among his ritual team in the future. For now, Arkk held out the crystal ball. “Our target is high overhead. Have we got anything that can hit it?”

Lelith squinted into the crystal ball with a slowly deepening frown on her face. “May I?”

Arkk handed over the crystal ball. “Do not try to scry inside it. It has some kind of active defensive spell preventing that.”

“Noted,” she said, lightly tapping the crystal ball to take over its perspective.

She didn’t try to look inside. Neither did she look closely. Instead, the view in the crystal ball zoomed about near the ground. It looked upward at the dot in the sky, checking its position from several spots, usually with the tower in view.

Arkk knew what she was doing, roughly. He had seen her do so before. She was trying to measure distances. The known height and size of the tower provided a reference for her to use. Most casters had a mind for geometry—a trait Arkk attributed to the circles and geometric lines drawn out for rituals—but Lelith was one of the best at rapidly estimating exactly how far something was with nothing more than a glance through the crystal ball. It was one of the reasons the dark elf was in charge of the bombardment teams.

This time, however, she was taking longer than normal. The growing frown on her face didn’t fill him with any amount of reassurance.

The tower shuddered as a pair of shots made it through a small gap in the barrier. The magic of the fortress kept them mostly steady despite it rocking backward a few degrees. It was still enough to jolt them.

That jolt got Lelith talking. “The distance between us and the airship is approximately equivalent to the distance between Hemlight Village and Cliff City.”

Arkk closed his eyes, trying to place the village relative to Cliff. While he had heard of it—he was fairly certain he, Ilya, and Dakka had passed through it on their first visit to Cliff—it hadn’t been in any way notable. On their horse-drawn cart traveling casually a bit over walking speed, it had probably taken them two hours to reach the city walls.

Not an insignificant distance.

They had specially prepared long-range spells and even practiced hitting aerial targets—with Priscilla providing the target. But none had been so far. That was well beyond his expectations. Nothing they had could hit a whole village away.

“The only thing we have that might hit them is the boulder ritual,” Lelith said, making Arkk raise his eyebrows.

While a traditional trebuchet could hit something about a thousand paces away and the boulder drop spell could target maybe double that, that wasn’t anywhere close enough to target the airship if her estimate was correct. “How so?” he asked.

“It manifests a boulder at extreme altitudes then uses simple gravity to destroy whatever is underneath, but I am not exactly sure how high. Unfortunately, even if it does manifest high enough, we would still have to target the ground underneath the ship.”

“Target us, you mean. The tower can take hits from the boulder ritual.”

“It isn’t precisely overhead, but again, I am not exactly certain where the boulder manifests. To hit the ship, we may have to aim around us. Fine if we’re aiming to the west, but if the manifestation event occurs on the opposite angle…”

Lelith readjusted the view of the crystal ball, displaying the swirling whirlwind around the tower and, down toward the ground, the panicked King’s Royal Army as they sought cover from the handful of stray shots that may or may not have been deliberately aimed in their direction.

Arkk pursed his lips. It was one thing to leave them out in the open. It was another thing entirely to deliberately target them, even if it was to strike at the airship. If he did so, he had little doubt that a demon would pop into their midst and obliterate them all.

“Target us or ahead of us. If the boulder manifests below the ship, it won’t be worth pursuing further and we’ll have to come up with something else. If we have to target the army to hit the ship…”

His eyes flicked to the army again. They were trailing behind the tower. Because of that, they were directly over the tunnels he had been making to keep connected with Elmshadow.

“Try to hit the ship, but do not hit our allies. I’ll handle getting them to—”

The tower rocked under a series of impacts. The airship figured out the trick to focusing their shots. Arkk grimaced, grasping at the table to keep himself upright. Lelith jolted backward but managed to keep her balance with a single step.

Kassa wasn’t so lucky. The orc maintaining the defensive ritual slid as the floor inclined, falling to her backside. Without her in position to maintain it, the entire ritual circle flickered and failed. The swirling protective barrier collapsed around the tower.

Another group of shots, fired at the same spot to punch through the no-longer-existent shield, all struck the tower as one. The Heart cried out in alarm as chunks of shadowy stone blasted off the side of the tower. One of the tower legs, hit at the higher joint in the spider-like configuration, cracked and broke from another impact, causing the tower to lean slightly in that direction.

Arkk teleported himself to the defensive ritual, flooding it with magic the instant he arrived. The defensive swirl started up immediately, coursing around the tower to block another follow-up volley.

He immediately teleported a swarm of lesser servants out to the tower exterior. They didn’t even need to be told that repairs were needed.

“Sorry,” Kassa said, voice a bare whisper as she hurried back to her spot.

“Lie on your stomach,” Arkk said instead of the first, more acetic response that came to mind. “You’ll be less likely to be knocked around if that happens again.”

It was his fault anyway. The magic of the tower kept them from feeling it moving, so he figured there wouldn’t be a problem, but that clearly was not the case for sustained, heavy fire. The moment they had a reprieve, he would be figuring out how to get harnesses in place for anyone maintaining the spells. Or rather, he would be delegating that task to one of the crafters.

For now, he made sure that Kassa had control over the defensive ritual circle again before he stepped off it. “Lelith, try to hit the airship with the boulder. Don’t hit our friends.”

“Unders—”

Arkk teleported away before she finished.

He reappeared in the tunnels beneath the Prince’s army.

Lesser servants swarmed about. He practically had to wade through a knee-deep layer of the slime-like monsters just to move. But they were working and they were working fast. A hundred of them could get a great deal of work done, especially when they weren’t trying to outpace a walking fortress.

The tunnel widened around Arkk, deepening, lengthening, and forming into more of a grand hall of sorts. It wasn’t fancy. It was still a rush job. But it grew to a big enough size to at least temporarily house several thousand troops. He wouldn’t be able to maintain such a wide tunnel the entire way, not if he wanted to move at even a sedate pace, but for now…

Large ramps, angled upward, breached the surface. Arkk didn’t even need to venture above to call the troops in. As soon as something that looked like shelter appeared, the soldiers were all too happy to rush straight toward them. It could have been a trap for all they knew, but it wasn’t out in an active siege zone. That was all that mattered to the soldiers and their horses.

Arkk was about to teleport away when he noticed one particular figure bustling through the crowd of soldiers. Mags, normally dressed in fine clothes ill-fitting of war—in Arkk’s opinion—decided to adorn himself in a regalia of mud and dirt. Either that or he fell off his horse. Arkk was not surprised, but he was disappointed he had been focused on more important matters and had missed the incident.

“What—I say, what manner of sorcery is going on here?” Mags blustered as he approached.

Arkk stared at him, long and hard. Mags barely seemed to notice, too busy patting himself down in a futile attempt to clean up his clothing. “I did warn you,” Arkk eventually said. “Your army is not prepared to fight this war. Do you still wish to continue? Do they still wish to continue?”

Mags looked up with narrowed eyes. He opened his mouth, about to say something, only for Arkk to feel another warning alarm from the Heart.

“Excuse me,” Arkk said, teleporting away before Mags could voice whatever he was about to say.

As an afterthought, Arkk got the swarm of lesser servants to construct several heavy walls between the tower and the tunnels. There was a demon among that army and Arkk had no patience for doppelganger-induced panic to spread among his crew at a time like this.

He had a war to fight.

 

 

“They’ve noticed us.”

The alert from Harvey sent a jolt of tension through the shoulders of everyone inside the command room. Arkk quickly moved over, peering over the flopkin’s shoulder.

Although that misty fog still covered Woodly Rhyme, blocking most of the burg from view, a deluge of activity flooded out in the visible surroundings. Evestani forces wheeled out large ballistae and catapults, preparing them behind tall palisades that dozens of workers carried out and assembled ahead of the burg. Soldiers hurried back and forth, dipping in and out of the fog as they worked on their preparations.

Arkk stared at the activity with a curious frown. Palisades? Really? They were set up as if to protect the siege weapons from a conventional army. What did they think they were going to do against him? His tower towered over the trees. Each step sent out tremors that sent men to their knees and fractured buildings. And the ballistae and catapults? When he first built the tower, he tested such weaponry against its walls. The magically reinforced stone didn’t care about anything short of an avatar’s magic. Why bother…

There had to be something more to it. “Morvin, Gretchen,” he called out to the two members of the research team. Zullie and Savren were preoccupied with other matters. “I want an analysis on the defenses they’re setting up. If you need anything, ask. Just find out if those ballistae are throwing anything unexpected at us.”

The two, standing close enough to see the crystal balls as well, leaned forward in perfect mirrors of each other.

“Long-range analysis,” Morvin hummed with a frown.

Gretchen murmured something back to him, earning a nod from Morvin. She leaned back and looked at Arkk. “Would you move us to the lab?” Gretchen said.

They were gone with barely a thought as Arkk took control of the crystal ball to focus on the Eternal Empire.

Evestani’s allies weren’t camped out inside Woodly Rhyme. Paralleling Arkk’s relationship with Cedric’s army, Evestani kept their ally at arm’s length. Or perhaps it was the Eternal Empire that didn’t take kindly to their current ally. Either way, the Eternal Empire was concentrated outside the burg. Outside the fog. The Eternal Empire had its own methods of protecting against scrying, but only rendering those whale ships or their flagship invisible left the majority of their army out in the open for all to see.

Eternal Empire knights, adorned in their black and white painted armor, were rapidly organizing. Large groups formed, together yet separate. Squads of a few dozen led by commanders with a plume of white feathers trailing from their helmets. Their forces lacked any conventional siege weapons. Given their flying ships, Arkk figured a trebuchet would just be redundant. A waste of resources to both carry and supply.

He couldn’t glean much from their preparations other than that they were aware of his approach. Unfortunately, those ships, despite being visible on the exterior, weren’t easy to see inside. He had already tried scrying their interiors. Some areas, usually those occupied, were lit well enough. The rest of the ships were cloaked in darkness. Arkk couldn’t say whether that was a spell or if the rooms simply lacked a light source.

Arkk took a step back, mentally checking in on Lexa’s progress. She moved about in a dimly lit corridor within one of the ships, likely using a spell to enhance her vision in the low light. Although clearly being cautious, she didn’t appear in any immediate danger. So, Arkk focused his attention on other matters.

Teleporting himself down to one of the barracks levels, Arkk took in the flurry of activity. Walking Fortress Al-Lavik, being a tower rather than a traditional squat keep, didn’t have enough space on any one level for all the forces under his command to congregate. Dakka and the orcs were split across two levels, the Shieldbreakers and the battlecasters shared a floor, and Richter’s men took up a full seven floors on their own. He spent a few moments with each, ensuring there were no problems with their gear and that they had no concerns about the upcoming operation.

There were. Plenty had concerns. Their defensive position at Elmshadow had been strong, so why abandon it?

He had already informed the commanders of his reasoning. His opponents were growing stronger in their waiting while Company Al-Mir’s growth curve had flattened out. They had to act before the disparity became too great, if it wasn’t already.

Arkk left out that last bit in his explanations. No need to sew doubt when he didn’t actually know where he stood in comparison to his opponents. His enemies had a numbers advantage, undoubtedly, but he had countermeasures in place for almost everything else they had demonstrated.

Speaking of…

Arkk teleported himself down the tower to a room with no windows and no doors. The entirety of the level was solid reinforced brick. Every glowstone within was specially tempered to emit as little magic as possible. It took a long moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim light level. Within, there was a simple stone table and a pair of chairs made from the same reinforced bricks that made up the rest of the walls.

Zullie sat in one chair, rectangular glasses hanging off the end of her fingers while she rubbed her brow with her other hand. Savren sat opposite, wearing his usual dark clothes with a high collar. The bright white flower pinned to the front of the collar gave him a slightly more flamboyant look for the day.

Between them, atop the table, was a small golden effigy of a man held between thin metal clamps. The finished countermeasure. Gone were the gaps showing off the fibers and flowers within. Gold coated the entire thing, making it look like a small figurine or idol.

As soon as Arkk laid his eyes on it, he wobbled in place. All of a sudden, he felt like maybe his employees with concerns were right. Maybe they should call this whole thing off. Fighting sounded… so tiresome. Besides, why fight when he already had the greatest treasure around? The upcoming days would be nothing but pain and trial and effort. It would be simpler to head back to Elmshadow, plant the tower again, and just wait for the inevitable—

“Sir?” Savren said. He slid sideways, snatching a simple silver half-sphere from south of his seat. He swiftly slipped it over the statue, shielding it from its surroundings. “You shouldn’t show up so suddenly.”

Arkk shuddered, shaking his head. Lethargy slowly faded as he took in a clipped breath.

Zullie sat upright as well, reacting as if shocked. She quickly slid her glasses over her empty eyes and turned her head around like she was surprised to wake up here.

“Are we ready?” Arkk asked.

“Final testing is within the degree of magnitude we expected,” Zullie said, her voice slow and slightly slurred. “Right? No problems on your end?”

Savren’s frown faded. “Haven’t had a hunch of hebetude.” Meeting the metallic clasp maintaining the flower’s position on his mantle, he merrily moved it to the table.

Zullie snatched it up, placed it under her nose, and took a brief sniff.

It was one of the flowers from the Silence. In their natural state, they caused immediate drowsiness so intense that most people testing it fell asleep standing. But this particular one wasn’t natural. Zullie, using Xel’atriss magic to shift the boundaries of its concept of sleep, had worked with Savren to modify it into working almost exactly the opposite.

It now worked as a mental stimulant. One powerful enough to stave off the feelings incurred by the gold effigy.

“Good,” Arkk said. “If everything is in order, I’ll have it ready to be used. In the meantime, Evestani has deployed catapults and ballistae—”

“Against us?” Zullie asked in an incredulous tone.

“My feelings exactly. I have Morvin and Gretchen looking into it. Unless you have a better task to occupy your time…” Arkk trailed off, looking between Zullie and Savren.

Neither looked exactly happy at the prospect of being assigned to such a relatively mundane task. Zullie truly only cared about unusual magics stemming from the various Pantheon deities. Savren also preferred a specific type of magic, that which dealt with his mental specialty. Given the situation, neither would reject an assignment they didn’t like. Not now.

But if they had more valuable ideas to research that would produce results in the next few minutes, Arkk was perfectly willing to listen.

Some kind of silent conversation passed between the two of them. Neither really moved and neither spoke, but he could see it in their eyes. Or Savren’s eyes, anyway. Zullie gave a slight nod of her head.

“Actually—” “Actually—”

They both spoke and stopped as one. Savren, raising a hand, gestured for Zullie to speak first.

“Earlier, we were discussing the problem of those airships and the kind of ordinance they might dispense upon us.” Zullie lightly patted the stone table, fingers tracing the faint maze-like pattern on its shadowy surface. “I do not doubt that the fortress can handle a casual stone or even alchemical explosive…”

“Given the guidance of the gleaming avatar, claims of gouging the ground in grand guerre…”

“We were concerned that they may be able to deploy more esoteric effects.”

Arkk crossed his arms, looking between the two. The Light’s avatar had said that these ships—or perhaps whatever weapons or magic they carried—were banned because they were so destructive. Having seen the alchemical fire rained down upon his undead army, he hadn’t been too concerned. But now that it was brought up again, he couldn’t help but feel a welling of unease in the back of his mind.

“Do you have solutions?”

“You recall the gauntlet of trials we put the Evestani army through on their way to Woodly Rhyme? Testing out various magics and their reactions to them?”

“Of course,” Arkk said with a nod of his head.

“One of those was my plan—”

“Several were your plans,” Arkk corrected. “I seem to recall that most ended in… Well, ineffectively, to put it kindly.”

Zullie huffed. “That’s not kind at all,” she said, turning off to the side. “But one was listed as an Impenetrable Cube. Which is a gross oversimplification of principles beyond which you could possibly—”

This again, Arkk thought with a mental sigh. “Zullie.”

“I’d like to revisit the project. This time in a defensive capacity.”

Arkk took in a slow breath, considering the idea. He had nothing better for her to work on in the immediate timeframe they were working with. “Do you think you can make progress on it now when you were unable to with far more time earlier?”

“Yes. Savren had a few… a very few number of worthy ideas that might assist.”

Savren didn’t bother to hide the way he rolled his eyes. If anything, he exaggerated for effect.

“Then do it. Contact me if you need anything.”

“Drop us off in the small library.”

Arkk did as he was asked, leaving him alone in the dim room. He stared down at the silver dome that shielded the rest of the room from the effigy. Reaching out, he rested his hand on the dome’s small handle, only to shake his head and pull back. If he ended up enthralled by its effects, only Ilya would be able to access this room and she was out at the other walking fortress.

Still, he didn’t like leaving it alone. Something about it just… unnerved him.

But there was no choice for the moment.

He teleported back to the command center to resume preparations, wondering how Ilya was doing on her own.

“I hate this.”

“I truly do not comprehend the issue.”

“Of course you don’t,” Ilya groaned, fingers tense around the armrests of her seat. “You’re some kind of monster that can reform yourself from a puddle of goo. Like an advanced slime creature. You probably don’t even have a sense of balance.” Her feet were curled around the legs of the chair, pinning her in place. Eyes closed and abs taut, she tried to keep herself as still as possible.

It didn’t help. She felt like she was swaying back and forth, wobbling through the world like a drunkard after binging at a festival. Back and forth, back and forth. Her heavy footsteps slammed down and created even more shaking. Jostled about, Ilya felt sick.

“That is a little rude,” Vezta said, her blasé tone indicating that she didn’t care about being compared to a slime in the slightest. “I don’t believe I have ever seen someone with your problem. You are completely stationary relative to the room.”

“The Light-damned room isn’t stationary!”

Ilya, seated in a small room at the highest tip of Leda’s… her tower, tried not to lose her lunch as it trudged across the arid plains of south-western Mystakeen. Her head hurt, her stomach hurt, her eyes hurt. She had been stabbed through the stomach repeatedly at the Duke’s party and she was fairly certain she would rather go through that again than continue moving the tower.

“Arkk reported no such issues any time he has moved his tower. Neither did the fairy, for that matter.”

“Fairies fly around, they probably have immunity to anything that might make them dizzy. As for Arkk…”

Arkk had far more experience with this kind of stuff than she did. He hardly needed an excuse.

“You didn’t have this problem when Arkk moved his walking fortress to Elmshadow.”

“I could barely tell that we were moving. It’s different now. Like I am the one out there, moving while utterly massive. I can feel each step the tower takes like I’m taking it with my own feet. Yet here I am, seated in a chair at the top.” Ilya pressed her mouth closed, forcing herself to swallow, before finishing. “It is beyond disorienting.”

“You are focusing on the entire tower? All at once?”

“Of course I am,” Ilya snapped, opening her eyes just a sliver to glare at the monstrous servant.

Not that she needed to open her eyes to see Vezta. She could see everything. Every single tile in the high room, every scrap of food in the storehouse floor, the sparsely occupied barracks level, and even the five hulking machines Perr’ok had been working on that Arkk gave her for this operation. She could feel the legs of the tower as if they were her own legs, lifting them up, moving forward, then placing them back down. Even the wind rushing past the tower felt like a breeze against her skin.

She had known Arkk had a lot of control over Fortress Al-Mir and knew roughly everything that occurred inside it, but she hadn’t realized that it was on this level of thoroughness. Ilya could peer into even the most private of rooms with the occupants none the wiser. The few employees she had directly under her contract rather than here because of Arkk were much the same, even if they were outside her territory.

It was like her body had grown massive and she could look in at every little speck of blood running through her veins on an individual level.

“I don’t have personal experience,” Vezta said with a serious frown, “but I think that sounds like the wrong way about doing things. You can’t stop focusing on everything?”

“How can I stop? It has been like this since accepting this position.” Did Arkk not constantly look into everything in his fortresses? Did he not feel the tower as it moved?

Humming, Vezta frowned further before voicing the same thing Ilya had just been wondering. “I wonder if Arkk is… Ah, but he would have Fortress Al-Mir to ground himself. He might not be aware of the movement on the same level that you seem to be operating on because of that.”

“You’re saying that I need to go find a main fortress somewhere just to make this feeling go away?”

“It couldn’t hurt.” Vezta looked away from Ilya, approaching the observation window. As Ilya’s spire was narrower and more peaked at the top than Arkk’s tower, the window bulged out a bit, allowing someone to stand on the glass to see directly below them. “And it would probably help in other matters a great deal. However, for now, you could take a short rest. Too much further and we’ll end up trampling the guests we are here to meet.”

Ilya’s eyes popped all the way open in surprise. They weren’t supposed to reach there anytime soon. The motion of the tower jerked to a stop as Ilya planted her legs into the ground. As soon as the tower stilled, she stood, legs wavering but steady enough.

Perhaps she would have to thank Vezta. The conversation must have distracted her from the actual journey.

Approaching the window alongside Vezta, Ilya pulled out a spyglass, using it to peer downward. A relatively small bivouac, adorned in the blue of the Kingdom of Chernlock—with a bit of Vaales-aligned red and gold mixed in on a select few of the tents—was on the ground perhaps ten paces ahead of them. Ten tower paces. Several hundred human paces. A short distance away in another small camp, the black and white of White Company’s banners flew proudly.

The soldiers of the bivouac were in the process of scattering, fleeing as fast as their feet could carry them. A few horses, riderless, were further away, running hard enough that Ilya doubted they would be able to be recovered anytime soon.

“Think I scared them a little,” Ilya said, wilting.

This operation was off to a great start.

 

 

Agnete stood in front of the crystalline archway.

It was the same portal she had originally come through when entering the Anvil. The Anvil was a truly massive world—Agnete didn’t have the slightest idea how fast their trains moved over the terrain, only that they moved far beyond even the swiftest horse. That made comparing it to Mystakeen or even the Greater Kingdom of Chernlock somewhat difficult.

As it turned out, the portal wasn’t all that far from her workshop. Which, she supposed, made sense. She had ridden atop one of the conveyor belts to reach her workshop the first time around, not one of the high-speed trains. Arkk had avoided this one while gathering crystalline shards for her smaller portal frame due to the active watchers—and also because he hadn’t wished to damage the portal frame they knew was functional. Had he directed her toward it, she could have simply come in person, but there had been communication issues.

Arkk hadn’t thought she was allowed to wander the Anvil freely.

Now that the communication issues had been solved, Agnete had directions directly to the portal.

“You couldn’t have brought me here yourself?” Agnete asked with a mild frown.

“ᛊorry,” Who said as the cogs on her hitched in a nervous stutter. “Central Operations denied me the information.”

“I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore.” Agnete looked over the crystalline archway, honing in on the central point high above.

The archway loomed before her, a near mirror of the portal at Fortress Al-Mir, as well as both portals she had seen inside the Underworld. It was as if the universe had a blueprint for these portals, one that cared little for the precise shape of the arch as long as they adhered to the general form. The only thing perfectly replicated were the runes scrawled up and down the arch’s surface.

But, at the top center where the keystone should be, there was nothing but a vacancy.

A large mechanical arm, currently dormant, perched off to one side of the portal’s platform. Behind it, an array of crystals were meticulously organized, each piece a perfect fit for the keystone’s vacant throne. Every last one bore a unique rune, glowing faintly as if eager to fulfill their purposes. There was a hum in the air beyond the drone of the Anvil’s factory that set Agnete’s hair on end.

None of the other portals they had found, including the one in the Necropolis that Agnete had yet to visit, had anything like that. There were a few vacancies in the storage bank, perhaps the keystones had been lost or perhaps they had never existed in the first place.

Arkk wanted all of them eventually, but at the moment, he wanted aid more.

Agnete had instructions from Zullie on how to reconfigure the runes in this portal to get it to connect to Fortress Al-Mir’s mirror. Most of the runes could be turned or rotated or removed from their own slots entirely. But if she was unable to activate this portal, she could still take the keystones back through the small gateway she had fabricated in her workshop.

As soon as she took a step onto the portal platform itself, a warning horn wailed and several lights began to flash. One of the large overseer gantries slid along its tracks, rushing straight toward her. The mechanical eye, lowered from cables, descended to Agnete’s eye level and stared.

“ᚠᛟᚱᚷᛖᛗᚨᛊᛏᛖᚱ, ᛊᛏᚨᛏᛖ ᛃᛟᚢᚱ ᛁᚾᛏᛖᚾᛏᛁᛟᚾᛊ.”

“I intend to reopen the portal and use it to deliver some of my constructions to assist my allies on the other side.”

“ᛁᛗᛈᛟᛊᛊᛁᛒᛚᛖ. ᚢᚾᛊᚳᛖᛞᚢᛚᛖᛞ ᛁᚾᛏᛖᚱ-ᛈᛚᚨᚾᚨᚱ ᚨᚳᛏᛁᚢᛁᛏᚣ ᛁᛊ ᛈᚱᛟᚺᛁᛒᛁᛏᛖᛞ. ᚠᛁᛚᛖ ᚠᛟᚱᛗ ᛈᛚᛏ-ᛖᚹᛖ-ᚨ ᚨᚾᛞ ᛊᚢᛗᛒᛁᛏ ᚱᛖᚳᚢᛖᛊᛏ. ᛖᛉᛈᛖᚳᛏ ᚱᛖᛊᛈᛟᚾᛊᛖ ᛁᚾ ᛖᛁᚷᚺᛏ-ᛏᛟ-ᛏᚹᛖᛚᚢᛖ ᚹᛖᛖᚲᛊ.”

“Twelve weeks? Unacceptable,” Agnete said, continuing forward with a slight pivot around the overseer. There was no way she was submitting a form and waiting eight to twelve weeks. She might have been willing to wait a day under other circumstances. But today?

She was in a bit of a rush.

The gantry rolled forward. The overseer eye lifted over her head before dropping down directly in her path once again. Its deep, reverberating voice took on a far more hostile tone. “ᛁ ᚹᛁᛚᛚ ᛒᛖ ᚠᛟᚱᛊᛖᛞ ᛏᛟ ᚷᛖᚾᛖᚱᚨᛏᛖ ᚨᚾ ᛖᛗᛈᛚᛟᛃᛖᛖ ᛁᚾᚳᛁᛞᛖᚾᛏ ᚱᛖᛈᛟᚱᛏ ᛁᚠ ᛃᛟᚢ ᚳᛟᚾᛏᛁᚾᚢᛖ ᚹᛁᛏᚺ ᛃᛟᚢᚱ ᛊᛏᚨᛏᛖᛞ ᚨᚳᛏᛁᛟᚾᛊ.”

“Be my guest,” Agnete said, sidestepping the eye once again. “I’m not afraid of your incident reports.”

Another horn blared at her, ruffling her hair with the force of the noise it generated. Agnete paused, turning, and raised a single brow at the overseer.

“ᚹᛖ ᚳᚨᚾ ᛊᛏᛟᛈ ᛃᛟᚢ.”

Agnete turned up the heat. A thin beam of flames surged from her with barely a gesture, swirling around one of the gantry’s supports. The overseer started making all sorts of alarmed noises even as a few of the flying voltcoil wyrms circled overhead, responding to the cries. She didn’t need to defend herself from them.

They wouldn’t attack her. Not without higher authority than the overseer possessed.

The wheels of the gantry spun against the tracks, trying to get some distance from her heat. But it was too late. It had been too late by the first few seconds. The sudden attempt at motion just revealed the mess that had been made of the gantry’s leg as it buckled and collapsed.

A reinforcing bar snapped under the strain of the rest of the gantry, flying directly toward her. The heat bubble surrounding her turned it into a metallic vapor well before it hit. Her control was so precise these days that she didn’t even leave molten footsteps in her wake as she stepped forward.

The mangled mess of the gantry melted away before her, leaving her a clear path to the immobile but still swiveling overseer eye. It darted around in a panic until she got close enough. Then, it locked onto her.

“Try to stop me and I will turn this entire sector into slag. Think of the efficiency loss.” Agnete leaned over the eye, making sure her point was made. “There is only one being who can stop me. And I doubt THEY will. Us fighting would probably turn this entire realm into a puddle of molten waste.” Agnete paused a moment then added, almost as an afterthought, “Besides, I was promised aid.”

At least, she thought she had been promised aid. The conversation with the Burning Forge had been… a bit confusing to say the least.

Agnete stared one moment more before turning away. The overseer didn’t try to stop her this time. It couldn’t even move.

Also, it might have been too damaged to give a response. Some of the servitors would likely come along the moment she wasn’t around and fix it up. Or scrap it. One of the two. Either way, Agnete wasn’t concerned about it.

Who, on the other hand, folded her arms as Agnete turned back to the portal. She had recently drawn up some preliminary ideas for giving Who a proper face, one she could manipulate mechanically to show off emotions or move a mouth in the hopes of disturbing others a bit less. Right now, Agnete didn’t need any kind of complex clockwork face to see the disapproval radiating off the construct.

“Was that really necessary, Agneᛏe?”

“Maybe not. But I did ask nicely several times over my stay here and was always denied access to the portal.”

“You didn’t ever fill out the proper form…”

“I can requisition material in five minutes with a single word. These forms they keep talking about are just there for obstruction purposes. Besides, they never once delivered a form to me when I asked.”

Who shifted. If she had a face, she would have looked exasperated. “You probably forgot to fill out the Preliminary Acquisition Document for the Acquisition of Standardized Form Requests.”

“I’m not going to fill out a form to request a form,” Agnete said with a shake of her head. “Especially because I’d probably have to fill out a form to request the form request form. If you want to go fix the overseer, be my guest. I’ve got a job to do.”

Who let out a warbling whistle noise that gave the impression of a sigh. “Would you like for me to activate the inserᛏer?” she asked, gesturing toward the mechanical arm near the bank of keystones.

“If you would,” Agnete said, reaching into the breast pocket of her fresh suit. Despite her activity, there wasn’t a single scorch mark on the fabric. The paper she pulled from the pocket was more than ash. She couldn’t help her smile. She probably looked silly, grinning at a diagram of the archway and all the configuration changes she needed to make, but holding proof of her control’s precision felt good.

Contrary to her words to the overseer, she was somewhat leery that the one being here would object to her actions. The Burning Forge had given her that control. While Agnete felt like she had fought for it and managed to keep her powers through sheer willpower, that control and her powers in general could likely be taken away just as easily.

Agnete didn’t feel like THEY would throw away an avatar over relatively nothing, but a god’s mind was impossible to read almost by definition.

During the meeting with the Burning Forge, Agnete had effectively offered to build a city in Mystakeen in the Anvil’s image. In exchange, She offered aid. Hopefully, a little miscommunication with the overseer wasn’t going to change that.

Either way, Agnete needed to get back as soon as possible.

The whale ships weren’t like the flying ship that had bombed the hell out of the undead army. Lexa could wrap her head around that ship. It was an ocean-faring ship that could fly. Strange and unusual, yes, but considering everything else, a flying ship wasn’t worth a confused blink of an eye.

But the whale ships… something about them filled Lexa with unease. A disquiet in her chest at the mere sight of them wormed its way under her skin. It wasn’t something she could easily explain. If it had just been a whale, she might not have noticed the oddity. If a ship could fly, why not a fish or whale or any other creature of the sea? But the whale ships weren’t quite like that.

Lexa stood there, watching the wind twist and curl in unnatural patterns where the ship was resting. Small swirling clouds of dust chased each other across the trodden-down dirt until they lost their energy and died, only to be reborn elsewhere as fresh wind picked up. Although she could see the whale ship, it felt like there was something else there as well, lurking in the space around it.

The ship itself felt wrong as well. It was metallic and hollow, given the ports on the sides where workers were moving supplies and gear. On any other ship—on regular ships, carriages, and even Arkk’s walking fortress—she might expect to see someone up top, driving the vessel. The helmsman’s bridge, the carriage driver’s seat, and the fortress command room with its great windows looking down below. Given that the whale ships didn’t look like people were meant to sit on its back, Lexa figured the ship would have something akin to the walking fortress. Large windows with a helm somewhere behind.

There were no windows.

There were eyes.

Uncannily fleshy eyes. They swiveled about, glistening with moisture as they rolled in their sockets. They blinked with heavy metal shutters clamping down before slowly lifting back up. They weren’t human eyes. Nor like any kind of demihuman or beastmen eye that Lexa had seen. The eye itself had dozens of colors all swirled together. A squiggly black line cut through it, almost resembling the smile of a cat in how the corners and the middle were lifted up while the rest swooped downward. The line widened and narrowed like a pupil as it focused on anything that moved in its surroundings.

The fins bothered Lexa as well. Their movements, even lying on the ground like this, were far too organic. She had peaked into the Anvil through crystal balls and seen the mechanical creatures within. Those creatures moved with a stiff rigidity befitting of their metallic nature. The whale ship should have been the same, but it wasn’t. It was like some kind of cross between a living creature and one of the Anvil’s mechanical beings.

Lexa pulled her shadowy cloak around herself a little tighter as the creature’s eyes swept over her hiding spot.

It was her job to take it out. If possible. Given the restricted loadout she was able to carry as a small gremlin, the few alchemical bombs she carried in small clay orbs might not be enough to do serious structural damage. She couldn’t carry one of the big clay jars even if she wasn’t trying to sneak around. So, the plan was simple: she was to sabotage it in any way she could, likely by blowing up anything that glowed or had too complex of a magical array.

To do that, she had to get closer.

Worse, she had to get inside.

Given a highly secured manor like that of the Duke’s, she would be in and out without even thinking about it. A prison? Couldn’t hold her any better than it could hold water. But that thing? Lexa shuddered, stomach twisting.

She took a step forward. Unsettling or not, she had a job to do.

Two workers stepped out of the side hatch as Lexa crossed the field. She had been watching for a while now, noting the people coming and going. Unless a bunch of people had been hiding out prior to her arrival, the craft should have only three people in it right now. She almost wanted to wait around and see if they would leave too, but she couldn’t risk the whale taking to the skies. If that happened, she would have to sulk back to Arkk with a failed mission on her hands.

And if it took off while she was on it, sabotaging it would become a rather awkward affair.

She was a gremlin, not a harpy.

Nothing stopped her from reaching the ramp into the whale ship. Guards—armored in the Eternal Empire’s white and black—were posted around the perimeter and at the entrance. Between her shadowy cloak and the stealthy spells she knew, not a one of them so much as glanced in her direction. The eye of the whale ship didn’t seem to notice either, but it was harder to tell which way it was looking with its odd shape.

Creeping inside, Lexa slowed even further.

The inside was worse than the outside.

She expected something like Fortress Al-Mir except condensed down into the space of the whale ship. Hallways, rooms, and metal or wood holding it all together. What she got was a strange fusion of meat and metal. The walls pulsed slightly under her fingertips, expanding and shrinking like the metal could breathe. Every so often, a thin membrane like the wing of a bat stretched across a corridor or doorway, blocking access. At one of them, she could hear voices on the other side—the other workers, presumably—so she figured they could open. There were no levers or handles or anything to indicate how.

Other thresholds were open, letting her peek inside various storage areas. A worker pried open a crate within one, pulling long metal tubes out to hang on hooks on the walls. Parts for the ship? Or weapons of some kind? It was hard to tell. If they were metal versions of Arkk’s clay bombs, it could be a worthwhile target for her sabotage.

For now, she would keep looking and see if there was anything more guaranteed.

A slick squelch almost had her making a noise. One of the membranes pulled back right in front of Lexa. She pressed herself up against the wall as another worker stepped out. With the talking earlier and the worker at the crate, she had thought she had an accounting of all the people. But this guy stepped out looking exhausted. His outfit, a black tunic with the white swords of the Eternal Empire embroidered on his chest, was slick with sweat—Lexa hoped it was sweat.

He didn’t notice her. He walked right past, movements stiff and more mechanical than the metal whale. Like a puppet on strings. A foul alchemical stench wafted in his wake.

The membrane slid closed behind him, squelching once more. He made no motion to close it, so she figured it must be something like Fortress Al-Mir. The doors wouldn’t open unless someone part of the place was there to open them.

That could pose a problem going forward. Would knocking one of the workers out and dragging them in front of a door work? Or did it take a conscious effort to open them?

Savren might have been the better infiltrator if the latter was the case.

The deeper Lexa went, the more the surroundings changed. The metallic components seemed to grow ever more organic, pulsating and oozing. The walls grew slick and damp while the air grew heavy and humid. The thick smell of rot started to overpower the fresh air coming in from behind her.

A sudden fear that she was walking down some creature’s digestive tract welled up inside her. The whale ship already had her uneasy but walking herself in to be eaten? It was enough to make her want to give up. What was a failed mission compared to being slowly digested in the bowels of some monster?

It was hard to stay focused. There had to be something she could blow up. Some vital-looking component or a magical array that kept the whole thing alive. Those racks of metal tubes from earlier came to mind, but it was so close to the outer edge of the ship that it probably wouldn’t even damage the bulk of it. Was that enough?

Lexa took a step back, then another. She turned around, only to spot an opening she had walked right past in her distracted thoughts. The corridor beyond was even more meat-like. Even the floor went from metal to thick yellowed cartilage. Veins in the walls pulsed and thumped to a steady beat. A beat which she could hear, coming from further down the meaty corridor.

Another membrane and the end of the corridor separated her from whatever was making that noise.

Her imagination filled in the gaps.

The repeated thumping. The pulsing in the walls. The meat.

It was a heart. Not like the maze-covered stone that was the Heart of Fortress Al-Mir or the shadowy orbs that served as the cores of the walking fortresses. This was a heart. The core of a living being. Whatever monster this was—she doubted the Eternal Empire had built them here, more like grown them—it was alive and this was its core.

Lexa’s fingers itched to pull her whole bandoleer of clay orbs off her shoulders and just set them right up against the membrane-like door. Although small, they were still volatile. Would they do enough damage through the door to take out the heart?

Lexa bit her lip.

No. She couldn’t take the chance. Better to ensure this abomination went to whatever hell it had crawled out from. She had to get the door open.

But how?

Drag a worker in front of it? That might work…

Or maybe…

An idea popped into Lexa’s head.

All she had to do was get one of the workers to open it on his own. Lure one here. Maybe make him think something had gone wrong inside and consciously open the door. That would surely work better than trying to shove an unconscious body into the membrane.

Besides, if she couldn’t lure someone, she could always try knocking someone out afterward.

 

 

The sun was beginning to dip below the horizon. Long shadows cast over the streets of Elmshadow, stretched out from the mass of freshly built buildings into eerie shapes. The twin mountains on the north and south sides of the burg made even longer shadows that covered huge sections of the valley. Even they looked curled and unpleasant.

Thorne shuddered.

Elmshadow was a creepy place. He thought that ever since he first arrived with the rest of Lord Bonsworn’s regiment. When Lord Bonsworn’s chief retainer came to him, levying him into service as part of the King’s Royal Armies for fighting off heretical invaders in Mystakeen, he had expected… anything other than what he had gone through. First being denied entry by the very people they were supposed to aid, then waiting while the Duke had been assassinated, the Prince taking over from the Duke, and finally arriving here… only to be told that they wouldn’t be fighting, then a few weeks later being told that they would have to fight after all. It had been six months since first setting out and he still hadn’t even seen the alleged enemy army.

Not that he was complaining. Some of the other regiments got it into their heads that they needed to be heroes.

They were probably dead by now.

Idiots.

But he couldn’t say he didn’t understand. The sooner he got away from Elmshadow, the better.

It wasn’t just the shadows every night. In fact, the shadows were about the only normal thing here. It was the mercenary company who held the burg like it was their own little fiefdom. They were a strange sort. The joint training that had started up since being told that they would be fighting the enemy at some point served more to demonstrate just how outclassed anyone normal was. Half the mercenary company seemed to be made up of orcs, all of whom had creepy shadowy armor that let them move as if they were wearing a light tunic while taking heavier hits than a fully plated knight. They had beastmen and demihumans and Thorne thought he had seen gorgon slithering about the place.

Strange.

But nothing was as strange as that tower. Yet another odd shadowy thing in the burg of odd shadows. Its bricks were dark and the maze-like designs that covered their bricks also seemed to cover near every building in the burg. An unsettling appearance that wasn’t helped by the wafting curls of black that flowed down its sides like fog.

Thorne shuddered again, deciding to turn away. He wished he was still up in those mountainside housings. They had been covered in maze patterns as well, but at least they looked like normal stone. Unfortunately, as one of Bonsworn’s captains, he had moved down here to observe the joint training exercises the rest of his men carried out.

“Something blew smoke up the hive tonight.”

Thorne glanced to his side, frowning as Rubee leaned against the house they had been assigned. She swept a lock of red out of her face, bringing a lit pipe to her face. She drew in, puffed out a few rings of smoke out the side of her lips, and grinned at him.

“What’s wrong? You look like you didn’t want to see me.”

Thorne shook his head with a small scoff. “Smoke under a hive tends to calm the bees,” he said. Bonsworn was a smaller vassal of the King out on the outskirts of Chernlock’s deserts, known for his vast fields and honey production. As such, Thorne knew a thing or two about beekeeping.

Rubee, on the other hand, came from Vaales. One of the Prince’s own handpicked. She wasn’t someone he particularly wished to draw the attention of.

Unfortunately, given that meeting like this had become a near nightly occurrence, it looked like he had failed to keep his head down far enough.

“Weren’t they your men who up and vanished?”

“No more my men than my men are yours.” Rubee puffed her pipe a few more times. “Tannen was in charge of them. He’s gone too. Raised a big fuss before he left, saying they needed to bring the fight to the enemy before it was too late. Bet they’re dead already? Or just decided to outright desert?”

“Idiots,” Thorne said, repeating his earlier thoughts. “Probably a mixture of both. Tannen might have believed in the fight. My coin in on half his men only joining to get far enough away to make a run for it.”

“Yeah, well, I can tell you that my Prince isn’t going to be happy about this. He’s sure to go on a rampage once he finds out…” Rubee trailed off, face contorting into a confused frown.

Before Thorne could ask what was wrong, he felt it. A low, thunderous groan rumbled through the air. The sound reverberated through his bones, making his teeth chatter like dice in a gambler’s cup. His head whipped around, searching for the threat as his hand went to his sword. A shadow swept over him, blocking the final rays of the dying sun momentarily.

A clatter behind him had him spinning, but it was just Rubee. She dropped her pipe. The long bit of wood made the noise against the ground.

Her expression had changed. Fear replaced the confusion. She stared, eyes wide and mouth agape at something over Thorne’s shoulder.

He whipped out his sword, turning to face whatever she had in her sight, only to freeze himself.

At first glance, nothing had changed. The burg stretched out around them. That massive fortress still dominated the skies with its towering battlements and countless arrow slits. But, it had changed. It was leaning, tilted off to one side.

For a moment, Thorne thought it was going to tip straight over, but it managed to stop itself.

Slowly, impossibly, one of the circular columns that had been built along its base began to rise. It pushed away from the rest of the tower, looking like the leg of a spider. Stones grated against each other, sending chills down Thorne’s spine at the unpleasant noise. More legs joined the first, unfolding from beneath the tower’s base.

The first leg came down onto the ground, helping to right the tilted tower. Thorne expected an explosive force, pushing outward, shaking the surrounding buildings to rubble. But the leg came down so gently. It still made a noise, but it was the noise of a distant, rumbling thunder rather than the violent shock of a sudden explosion.

Thorne staggered back, eyes wide, heart pounding against his ribcage. He bumped into the same wall Rubee had been leaning against. She hadn’t moved a muscle, but others had. Around him, the city’s inhabitants—almost exclusively the soldiers stationed here—rushed out of the buildings, ready to fight, only to freeze and gape alongside him and Rubee.

Those legs lifted, stretched forward, and settled down again with gentle thunderclaps. It moved awkwardly, like it was always trying to maintain contact with the ground with at least four of its legs. But that didn’t stop it from moving. In a mere four steps, it crossed over the western wall of the burg. Five more and it was about out of the field beyond.

It took a force of willpower to pull his eyes off the tower as it put distance between itself and the burg. He knew there was something creepy about this place. If there was anyone who could explain, one of the joint training captains would be the one. But, as his eyes swept over the crowd of people who had come out to see what was going on, he couldn’t find a single member of Company Al-Mir among them.

He was about to charge off looking for one of their hosts when movement caught his eye. Rubee bent. With trembling fingers, she plucked her pipe off the ground. She tried to smoke it again, only to find that it had gone out. Still shaking, she upended the pipe, dumping the contents with a light tap against the wall, before taking a fresh pinch of hash from her pouch. With a muttered incantation, she lit the pipe again using flames burning at the tips of her fingers.

Five wobbling rings of smoke later, she visibly calmed down. “Lighty Light,” she muttered. “Didn’t expect it to be so… mobile.”

“You knew?”

“Heard it could move. My Prince told us all.” She puffed at her pipe a few more times. “You didn’t hear about Company Al-Mir much, I take it.”

Thorne clenched his teeth, glaring around the streets again. Not a sign of even one mercenary among them. “Must have forgotten to tell us,” he ground it. “They’re gone? Just like that?”

“First they reject our help on account of Evestani being too powerful, then they ask us to help, and now they rush off without us. Typical.”

“Typical? This has happened before?”

“Well, not this exactly. Still, rather relax than fight anyway. Fighting hurts—”

A sharp shout cut through the growing noise of the gossiping soldiers. “Rally!” cried the grating voice of Magatherion Goth. He charged on horseback into the fray with an odd look of glee on his portly face. “Rally all soldiers!”

“Light,” Rubee groaned. “Spoke too soon.”

Thorne frowned, watching as Goth rode along, crying out to all the garrisoned soldiers. He didn’t like their obstinate commander. He had overheard the man giving out contradictory orders, seemingly for no reason other than his own amusement. Thorne doubted his competence and was willing to bet that the only reason he was in charge was because he was the childhood friend of some noble.

Unfortunately, he was in command.

Thorne shot Rubee a small frown before turning away. He had Bonsworn’s men to command.

“Is there something wrong with the tower?” Rekk’ar asked as he braced himself against the window frame.

The movement of the tower couldn’t actually be felt while inside. Some magic kept everything in place. Even a ball resting on a table wouldn’t roll off no matter how far the tower tilted. At least to a point. When Arkk had thrown those golden statues out of the tower during the siege of Elmshadow, he had tipped the tower near horizontal. Things had fallen, broken, and otherwise moved about then.

That didn’t stop Rekk’ar from holding on like he was going to be thrown around. It was somewhat understandable, given that he was looking out the window. Seeing the world around tilting and swaying messed with something deep inside. Several of Arkk’s employees refused to go near any openings to the outside world when the tower was in motion, a few after spontaneously vomiting. Rekk’ar wasn’t one of those. If anything, Rekk’ar was quite proud of his constitution.

Normally.

“It’s like we’re limping,” Rekk’ar said. “You fixed everything up after the golden ray hit the tower, right?”

“Nothing is broken,” Arkk said, standing in the middle of the large observation window with his hands clasped behind his back. He wasn’t sure if he had exceptional constitution as well or if him being the owner of the tower granted him some immunity to the effects of it moving—he didn’t feel a thing even as it swung from leaning to the left to leaning to the right like some kind of inverted pendulum. “The tower is moving exactly as I’m directing.”

“I hate it.”

“Then don’t look outside,” Arkk said with a shake of his head. “It’s what we discussed in the meeting. The tower needs to make constant contact with the rest of the land. Once a leg hits the ground, lesser servants rush out, claiming territory, digging tunnels, and connecting the leg to the rest of my territory. Yes, it makes the gait odd, but it is necessary.”

If the Heart lost connection with the rest of Elmshadow, even for a moment, his claim over the land would dissipate. Every building within its walls had been rebuilt using the magic of the fortress, granting everything the magical reinforcement necessary to survive the tower stomping around so close to the burg. While the Burg was far from filled relative to how it had been before the war, there were contingents of soldiers and even several civilians living within.

He couldn’t let the burg collapse on them.

Even after the tower moved far enough away, he wanted to maintain the connection for as long as possible. Indefinitely, preferably. Claimed territory was power for him and the Heart, it was tactically valuable for the rapid movement of his employees, and, generally, he just didn’t want to. Some part of the back of his mind identified the land as his. He wasn’t about to let it go if possible.

Things were easy right now. His lesser servants had been burrowing outward around Elmshadow, claiming underground territory about as far as the eye could see. It was a simple matter to send out a few lesser servants to bridge the tower’s legs to the rest of his land. Things would slow down immensely once he moved beyond his current territory. Lesser servants were already trying to dig out ahead of the tower, but even at the slowed gait, the tower would outpace them in only an hour. Two if they worked fast enough.

“Any evidence of our deserter friends?” Arkk called out.

The scrying pits were fully staffed today. Both crystal balls sat atop their pedestals with a trio of scryers watching each. Each crystal ball could only view one thing at a time but the extra eyes helped to spot things one person might miss as well as allowed for them to rotate who was manning the devices, giving each other breaks from what was often a monotonous yet mildly draining task.

Camilla popped her head up. Arkk tried not to wince at seeing her face. He only had a few fairies working for him. Camilla was one of them.

“No, Sir,” the blonde fairy squeaked. She coughed, clearing her throat, then continued speaking in a more average pitch, “No tracks or sign of a large group camping.”

Arkk couldn’t hold back a disappointed hum. If he hadn’t checked the barracks, he might have thought Mags was lying or misinformed. But a tenth of the soldiers really were missing. He expected some sign of them by now. Unless they hadn’t marched off toward Woodly Rhyme at all. It was entirely possible that he was being misled.

Speaking of Woodly Rhyme… Arkk turned to the other scrying pit. “Any activity among Evestani or the Eternal Empire? Have they noticed our departure yet?”

Luthor didn’t take his eyes off the crystal ball. “If they have, they a-aren’t showing it,” he said. The chameleon beastman squinted into the ball. “Most of Woodly Rhyme is still covered in that fog though.”

Arkk nodded, then asked, “Are the whale ships still visible?”

“Yes, Sir. Still on the ground.”

“Good. Let me know the moment something changes. I doubt we’ll make it a full hour before they realize we’re moving.”

Arkk was about to turn away when Luthor did look up. “Uh, Sir,” he said. “Seems like the Prince’s army is trying to follow us.”

Focusing on the crystal ball, Arkk frowned. Mags was atop a horse, leading presumably all the remaining soldiers. They were all outside the Burg’s walls. Not far outside, but outside enough to tell that they weren’t going to stop.

“Maybe we should stop and pick them up?” Rekk’ar said, wobbling a little as he stepped away from the windows. His hand gripped tight to a railing. “They want to be fodder, I say let them.”

Rekk’ar’s suggestion did little to ease Arkk’s frown. “The tower is large, but not nearly ten-thousand-people large.” He folded his arms, glaring at the figure of Mags at the head of the army. “I’m not too keen on inviting the demon inside either.”

“You say we’ll slow down once we reach the end of your current territory?” Rekk’ar asked. “Slow enough for them to catch up?”

“I suppose that depends on how fast they can move and how fast we can move. I’m not sure about us. Not like we ever tried to move while keeping everything connected before.”

Arkk could guess how long it would take for the lesser servants to do their jobs and keep the planted legs connected. He had worked with them enough to know how they handled themselves. But he wouldn’t know until they reached that point. Unforeseen complications might crop up. And he was a little wary about leaving a single, exposed pathway back. With no redundancies, it was vulnerable to enemy action as well as a single slip-up on his end.

He could try to run above-ground connections while digging out tunnels, but the latter would take far longer. And if the tunnels were directly beneath the overland claimed territory, that wasn’t much of a redundancy. Where was the sweet spot between speed and having a backup?

He wasn’t sure. But he had an hour to figure it out.

“Sir,” Luthor said, cutting into his thoughts. “One of the w-whale ships…”

Arkk focused on the crystal ball immediately.

All the side hatches were closing up. Lights along its sides started glowing like someone had planted dozens of glowstones into small ports. It looked like something from the Anvil more than it did anything he was familiar with, except some small part of those glowing blue lights gave him the impression of something organic.

The large fin-like shapes jutting off the whale ship started moving, gently raising and lowering. Slowly, befitting the colossal size of the thing, it lifted off from the ground. The shadow underneath shrank as it gained altitude.

Arkk scowled. He had hoped to get out there before the Eternal Empire was ready.

“The other whale ships?”

There were two others that looked ready or nearly ready to take flight. Luthor quickly switched the viewpoint of the crystal ball. Both others were still on the ground, hatches open with no lights on their sides. That was good. For now. Arkk wasn’t sure how far along the other two were. He considered another sabotage attempt. But after the disaster that was his last effort at destroying them…

Maybe something different?

“Rekk’ar, get me as many of the smaller alchemical explosives that you can. Nothing more than what Lexa can carry.”

 

 

Arkk could feel the demon at work behind the scenes.

How else would one thousand one hundred thirty-eight deserters slip away without anyone noticing? Most had been at the mountain hive where Arkk had sequestered the soldiers when he was still planning on them doing nothing but watching. They didn’t have the rebuilt walls of Elmshadow keeping them in. But still, someone should have noticed. There wasn’t much cover in the fields west of Elmshadow that would have hidden them from casual scrying.

His scrying team had been busy.

Had the demon caused the reveal with the Eternal Empire’s whale ships? Just to hide these soldiers, just to draw the Prince’s ire toward Arkk?

“Have you found them yet?” Arkk asked, arms crossed as he stood between his two scrying teams. He was well aware that his eyes were glowing more intensely than usual. He didn’t do a thing to try to stop it.

“No, Sir,” Harvey said, sounding upset. “How do a thousand people, presumably geared up in armor, hide themselves while moving like this?”

“Let’s just say I have suspicions about why we can suddenly see the Eternal Empire’s ships.”

What did one thousand people think they were capable of accomplishing against an army twenty times their size? Arkk had been planning on the same thing, but he had powerful weapons and personnel at his command. The Prince’s army were all regular people, mostly human with a handful of demihumans thrown in. No beastmen.

Even the greatest fools wouldn’t rush headlong into their deaths like this.

But if they had somehow acquired an artifact that rendered them imperceivable, their confidence might swell. A thousand invisible soldiers wouldn’t have a hard time slitting the throats of every enemy combatant while they slept. Or even while they were awake. Arkk doubted it would be that easy. In addition to those offensive rays, the Golden Order’s avatar seemed to specialize in defensive uses of that power. Defense seemed more prevalent, even, between using that power to march through the winter to using it to protect from Arkk’s various attempts at bombardment. Even possessing other bodies could be considered defensive.

But the idiots marching toward their deaths wouldn’t know that.

“Nothing in the f-fields,” Luthor said. “Expanding search area.”

“I’m about a hundred paces into the forest, sweeping up and down. If you want to start at the Woodly Rhyme end, maybe we’ll pincer them.”

“S-Sure.”

They couldn’t have gotten that far. Not unless Mags was lying about when he thought they had left—it wasn’t that Arkk trusted Mags, it was just that he doubted a thousand people could sneak off without supernatural invisibility. Assuming that came from the Eternal Empire, perhaps in the form of some artifact, there was a limit to how long they could possibly have been gone.

But he wasn’t holding out much hope for the scrying team to find anything.

“Keep searching,” Arkk said, turning away. “Don’t just look for the people. A thousand soldiers can’t march without leaving tracks behind.”

Unless the demon hid those as well.

If anything, this incident made Mags less likely to be the demon. The demon would be with the deserters, cloaking them.

It was a good thing he hadn’t had Kia and Claire kill the infuriating man.

Arkk teleported himself. All of his forces who were currently able were on hand today. He had even recalled Ilya and Vezta, taking time away from her learning how to construct rooms in order to utilize her abilities here. Priscilla was still out, unfortunately. Whatever caused her recent injuries left scars behind that weren’t healing as well as Hale thought they should. Agnete and Who had returned to the Anvil, temporarily, as they sought out some assistance.

That left him with distressingly few specialists that he could send out. He was wary about having Kia and Claire move out of range of his teleports. He needed to be able to move them to the Heart chamber the moment he felt anything amiss. Lexa could slip through just about anything with her spells and the cloak, but an assassin wasn’t what he needed at the moment. Dakka and the orcs of the newly reformed Black Knights, the Shieldbreakers, and anyone trained to use the counter-demon equipment Zullie had produced weren’t slouches, of course, but he still wanted heavy hitters ready to deploy should the avatar, or demon, decide to act.

Arriving at the top of the tower, Arkk planted his hands on the crenellations, leaning over the side. He squinted, hair whipping around his head. The wind was a bit brisk today, especially as high up as he was. It wasn’t like he would have been able to see anything that his scrying team had missed anyway. He was up here solely for the way it helped clear his head.

The demon. The Prince. The enemy at their doorstep. The first was the most pressing issue. It was causing problems. Direct sabotage. Likely the only thing keeping them from being killed was his surprisingly good relationship with the Prince. Something the demon knew and was clearly trying to undermine.

Could he cut off communications with the Prince? Intercept any outgoing letters?

Unlikely. If the demon could orchestrate this mess, it could find a way of getting word back to Cedric. It probably couldn’t lie to the Prince. If it could, it would have been easy enough to say that Arkk had gotten all his men killed, negating the need to go through with this convoluted plot. Until the demon was found and dealt with, he had to be as accommodating toward the Prince as possible.

A brief thought of assassinating the Prince flickered through his mind. He dismissed it as quickly as it came. Not only would the mere action of ordering Lexa to attack the Prince probably count as becoming his enemy, but it would also result in a rogue demon on the loose. That would be so much worse than the current situation, he couldn’t even imagine…

Savren was working on something that would hopefully identify anyone who wasn’t who they said they were. Now that it had revealed itself and its capabilities, it wouldn’t be long before he had a proper solution.

After that, he would have to focus on the Prince. The man couldn’t be allowed to summon a second demon. It was best to not think about how he was going to go about that now, however. Not unless he wanted the demon showing up and killing him before he could get the thought out.

Then there was the problem of the actual army perched upon his windowsill. He had been letting them sit there, gathering strength, because he felt he had been gathering more strength. The longer they delayed, the more options, the more tools, and the more forces Arkk would have at his disposal. That was partially true, especially if opening up more realms brought him more equipment to use, but now he wasn’t sure that he was growing faster than Evestani.

Not with what the Holy Light’s avatar had said about those flying ships. They could rain down enough destruction to change the landscape.

His sabotage had destroyed a few, but not all of them. They were still grounded. They could even be building more of them elsewhere. If Arkk had that kind of magic at his disposal, he would be building a few here to get into the air as soon as possible while building even more at Fortress Al-Mir, ready to swoop in wherever they were needed.

Could he afford to let them get into the air? Between the ships and the avatar’s abilities, and the possibility that the Almighty Glory’s avatar was scurrying about like a rat as well, he wasn’t so sure about defending Elmshadow any longer. Even if he did use the Prince’s army.

Arkk frowned to himself, casting his gaze at the lands below the tower. Everything he had constructed here. All built with the power of the fortress, it would lose its reinforcing magic the moment he moved the tower. He had claimed territory as far as he could see, and even a bit further. No conventional army could stand up to even a hundred of Dakka’s Black Knights if he actively teleported them back and forth throughout his territory, helping them dodge any dangerous attack. It was part of the reason he had been so confident he could have taken on the combined Evestani-Empire army without the aid of the Prince.

Now his grand plan was holding him here. Keeping him from advancing forward with the force of the tower at his back, keeping him from sending Kia and Claire out into the field where they could do the most damage, keeping…

Arkk lifted an eyebrow. He looked up, eying the large fields, the river that snaked through it, and the forest beyond. Woodly Rhyme took a few days to reach by foot travel through the forest, less for horses.

Perhaps…

Arkk teleported down to the central meeting room. All his advisors teleported in from their stations at the same time. The last time he had taken a walk around the roof and come up with a plan, Kia had ridiculed him for not discussing it with his advisors.

Rekk’ar, Olatt’an, Ilya, Vezta, Zullie, Savren, Alma, Khan, Dakka, Lyssa, Lexa, Kia, Richter, and even Perr’ok stood around the table with varying levels of confusion on their faces. Most quickly adapted and took their seats. Vezta moved to her usual spot just behind his chair. Such teleports weren’t out of the ordinary and weren’t worth grumbling about. Richter was a bit slower on the uptake, though he quickly followed suit with the others, and Perr’ok looked surprised to be included at all. The blacksmith shuffled around, watching in obvious discomfort as the others all took seats they knew were theirs. Arkk, catching his eye, gave a slight nod to one of the empty chairs. With a grateful look, he sat down and quickly composed himself.

“I think,” Arkk started, planting both hands on the table as he leaned over it, “we have nothing to gain by maintaining the defense of Elmshadow.”

That noisy sort of silence filled the room. A breath as his inner circle processed his words.

The silence departed abruptly, replaced with a noisy sort of noise. Khan and Perr’ok refrained from joining in. The former, as was usual for the gorgon, simply settled down on his heated rock and waited. The latter looked around the rest of the group with an awed bewilderment. They were the only ones. Everyone else had to make their opinion known. Arkk was surprised at some of the sudden voices. Kia’s especially. While not as stoic as Claire, the dark elf was generally reserved.

“Running away?” Kia barked out, voice overpowering the rest for a brief moment. “We can take ’em! Send me and Claire in and we’ll grind them to paste ourselves!”

Of course, she wanted to charge headlong into battle.

“The people here are counting on us,” Ilya said, close enough to him to put a hand on his arm. “And if we stop the defense, the rest of Mystakeen… It’ll be just like before we took back the burg.”

Olatt’an, though his voice remained at his usual neutral level, managed to make himself heard through sheer presence. “I presume there is a good reason for abandoning territory we’ve fought and bled for.”

“Master.” Even Vezta joined in with a heavy note of disapproval in her tone. “I concur with the orc. We spent weeks claiming every scrap of land and burrowing beneath the land. All that effort claiming territory will go to waste if we move the tower.”

On and on it went. Rekk’ar thumped his fist against the table. Dakka and Lyssa agreed with Kia, wanting to fight rather than flee. Savren sought to scan Arkk, searching for subtle synapse stimulations that might suggest cerebral sabotage. Richter, having joined solely because Arkk was the one standing in the way of Evestani’s first invasion, was actually straining on the link. It was close to snapping in his case.

Arkk held up his hands, calling for them to calm down.

Alma bit her lip, chewing a little before trying to talk over the ongoing arguments. “You can’t possibly want to fight,” she said, not to Arkk but to her fellow werecat. Lyssa growled back, only for Alma to sit up straighter. “If Arkk says to leave, there is something out there that we can’t handle. Listen to your head for once, not your bloodlust.”

“Are we trying to escape the demon?” Zullie asked, “Because I think I have a few more ideas—”

“You haven’t finished formulating your freshest fancies, now you’re fishing for more? You’d contribute to this conflict more if you chose one idea and completed it counter to commencing continuous half-cocked creations—”

“Oh, like you would know. Found your notes yet?”

“You—”

“What of the avatar?” Lexa asked, her simple question pulled thin by the tension in the back of her throat. “We can’t leave that monster alive.”

Arkk snapped his fingers, teleporting everyone to a random seat at the same time. The sudden teleportation, following disorientation, and confusion as they found themselves staring across the table at someone they hadn’t been expecting bought him a precious moment of silence. A moment he used to slam his hands down on the table.

“If you all would let me finish,” he shouted, red eyes burning so bright that he could see his face reflected in Zullie’s rectangular glasses. He waited a second, making sure he wouldn’t be interrupted, before letting out a small sigh. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have started with that.

“We’ll be abandoning the defense to go on immediate offense,” Arkk said.

That noisy sort of silence filled the room. Again.

Arkk opened his mouth but didn’t manage to beat the sudden voices shouting across the table at each other. Kia, Richter, Dakka, and Lexa started shouting at everyone who advocated for more caution. Zullie and Savren picked up on their argument right where they had left off. Vezta was still concerned about losing access to all the territory they had claimed.

With a snap, Arkk shuffled the room around once more. “If I have to throw you all into separate corners of the fortress and talk to you individually, I will,” he threatened, skimming his gaze over everyone. He deliberately let the silence hang this time, daring someone to speak. Nobody took him up on it. “We aren’t going to get a better opportunity to attack. Those airships are grounded still, but they won’t be for long. More importantly, they are visible. Agnete is back and she is trying to requisition support from the Anvil. We have a full stock of charged glowstones.”

“What of the demon?” Olatt’an asked, speaking up in a deliberately respectful tone. “Is it wise to make our moves with that thing causing havoc?”

“That is the one blight,” Arkk admitted, allowing the interruption this one time. “But unless Zullie can accurately locate the demon now…” He paused, looking at the witch. She shook her head in a sorry negative. “Then the demon will only continue escalating the problems it has been causing until it manages to succeed in its goal of turning us against the Prince or the Prince against us. There is a minor benefit in that our enemies are also the Prince’s enemies. The demon may just put harassing us on hold to revel in the destruction of opponents it can actually strike at.”

Vezta’s lips twisted into a faint frown. “A dangerous proposition,” she said with obvious disapproval. “A lot can happen in the chaos of battle.”

“A lot can indeed,” Arkk said, nodding his head. “Which is why we’re having this meeting. We are going to eliminate as many risks—from demon, avatar, and conventional army—as possible.” He looked over the table once again. “Any questions?”

That noisy sort of silence hung over the table.

Arkk braced himself for the start of a very long meeting.