The meeting with the Council of Leadership and the rest of the nobles had gone even worse than he’d expected it to. And that was saying something considering how low his expectations had been to begin with.
Between the weaker nobles who were ready to flee Dorchester and wait for the kingdom to refound it, the pragmatists who were more concerned with positioning themselves in the eyes of the expected auditors, and the few who were more concerned with assigning blame for the disaster than dealing with it, all he’d been able to do was deploy his subcommanders to answer their questions and retreat. He had more important matters to attend to than wasting words with the nobility who’d already accepted defeat. Namely finding out why in the damned hells there were dwarven Battleborns among the Mithrilstrike clan, and why no one had known about them.
Unable to stop his shoulders from slumping from the stress he was under, Commander Dahl tried and failed to keep his tone cordial as he attempted another angle. “I understand that you cannot comment on the fall of your previous kingdom, but you must understand that you violated the terms of the treaty by not disclosing the Battleborns in your citizen registry. Without that treaty, you and your people have no right to found your city anywhere within the bounds of Oglivarch.”
Sitting across from Commander Dahl at the table, Crusher looked bored more than anything. The commander didn’t know whether the dwarf was being intentionally obtuse or if he really wasn’t concerned about the political ramifications of what was going on.
Idly picking out some earwax from his ear before glancing at it with annoyance and flicking it off his fingers, Crusher replied, “First of all, it’s not my kingdom, it’s me king’s. How am I s’posed to know everyone who’s still aligned with the clan? And the other thing… the second thing that is… You should be thankin’ whatever god’s ye be praying to that they're here, otherwise we’d all end up on some miserable fire plane trying to find a way to reverse the anchoring ritual. Don’t know about you, but I’d rather not be spending the next century picking kobalds out of me armor while the runed priests argue about how best to go about it.”
Rubbing his temples in pain, Commander Dahl asked, “The treaty, Sir Crusher. What about the treaty and the fact that Clan Mithrilstrike didn’t disclose the presence of the Battleborns?”
Crusher looked across the table with a confused expression on his face. “What about it?” he asked innocently.
Commander Dahl felt his fists clench with rage as he glared at the unhelpful little monster sitting across from him. “As the current dwarven ambassador between our two cities, I need you to answer the question,” he replied through a clenched jaw, practically spitting out the words.
Crusher seemed to realize that Commander Dahl was reaching the end of his limited patience. Therefore, he held up both his hands like he was trying to calm an unruly child. “Easy there. No need to rip yer beard out, or whatever it is you humans do since you prefer shaving. While I can’t speak for me king on this matter, I have a pretty good idea as to what happened.”
Suddenly becoming uncharacteristically serious, Crusher leaned forward to stare the Commander in the eye. “When our kingdom fell, and no I won’t be discussing that, it was true that we lost our Battleborns. It was a dark time and we were left with very little hope since tha kings weren’t willing to get off their thrones and help us… but that is neither here nor there. We managed to save who we could.
Many of the noncombatants became immigrants among the other clans, spread out between the greater cities. Even with our losses, our numbers were too great to all stay in one place. Yet we all remembered who we were, and knew that one day we’d rebuild. Not a single dwarf forsook their oaths and joined another clan. Not any true dwarfs that is… there were a few clay-cursed fools who-” he grumbled in anger before his speech faltered into a string of incomprehensible dwarven curses.
Seeing as Crushing was getting distracted with his ranting, Commander Dahl interrupted him, “The Battleborns, Sir Crusher!”
Snapping out of it, Crusher slapped his palm down on the table and exclaimed, “Right! The Battleborns! And stop calling me ‘sir’, it’s distracting.”
Rolling his shoulders and refocusing on what he’d been trying to say, Crusher continued, “Ye see, we were spread out, not knowing who was still living and who’d been called to the stone. But we remembered who we were. So when the call went out that ‘ole King Mithrilstrike was rebuilding his kingdom, every one of us picked up our lives and came running. Were probably just luck that a few of the old Battleborns were still hiding out somewhere and happened to hear the call. While I weren’t there when they showed up, I bet the king was mighty happy to see them. I bet ya some of them were among the ones who raised him. Prolly quite the reunion.”
Commander Dahl didn’t believe a word of it but was unwilling to be the one to call the dwarf a liar to his face.
“You are aware that they can’t stay here, right? Aside from your king, who has agreed to not personally involve himself in the day-to-day operations of your kingdom, our region isn’t rated for anyone over level 70 to take action. When your king signed the treaty, he agreed to follow the laws of Oglivarch as a subsidiary of King Oglivarch himself. He retained the title of King as a courtesy, but that does not make him above the law,” Commander Dahl declared.
He hated that he needed to be the one to stop the dwarves from deploying the Battleborns, as they would no doubt end the kobald’s ritual in quick order and then return to their mountain without issue. However, the last thing he needed was an investigation from the Tower of Law and a thousand-odd law bringers teleporting in from the capital sticking their noses into everything and causing panic. Few things called down the wrath of the bureaucrats like interference in the development of a city. Were they were to lose their city’s charter, it would be best if it were because of something they did rather than something they let happen.
Crusher didn’t seem concerned at all and merely leaned back in his chair offering Commander Dahl a grin. “Well, I never read the treaty meself, but I sure as shit doubt me king agreed to anything of the sort. But, ye’ll have to take it up with him. And if ye feel the need to stop the Battleborns from ‘interfering with your city’s development’ or whatever you keep blathering on about, then ye’ll just have to stop them. I wish ye the best of luck with that if ye head down that tunnel though, just let me know so I can find a sturdy table to hide under while ye do.”
—--
Nero was no stranger to the feeling of essence not cooperating with him. When he played with new spell form configurations or altered the way he looked at the essence flows to better understand the world around him, he’d become used to the strange and incomprehensible nature of essence in general. But somehow, what he was seeing with the soul stuff was different. It wasn’t behaving like anything he’d seen before.
There was no doubt that there was soul stuff floating around, he could kind of see it, sort of. He just couldn’t interact with it. It was… ignoring him.
Nearly stumbling off the small pillars he’d raised up under his feet, Nero dismissed them and returned to the ground. He also dismissed his spell form for his spell-shell-chucker as there was no point in maintaining it if he couldn’t power the damned thing.
If he couldn’t figure out what was happening, he very much doubted any of them would be getting out of this chamber alive. Well, they might… probably… if they turned around right now and evacuated into the tunnel leaving the kobalds to their ritual.
However, sensing the enormous desire to push forward coupled with their dread, Nero couldn’t see the Wacko’s agreeing to that. Their essence fields were overlapping in self-reinforcing loop which had them racing forward toward their deaths like it was their only option. Even when he reached out to hopefully join the personalized command channel that had been set up between the team leaders, Nero couldn’t feel anything other than determination and a desire to reach the wall.
With no other option, Nero was resigned to stumbling forward along with the rest of the formation and praying that he wouldn’t be run over if and when he eventually tripped.
He felt powerless, and it was not a pleasant feeling. No, it was not.
Unable to do anything else, he focused the entirety of his senses on the ether, trying to understand what he was looking at.
As he squinted with his metaphysical sight, he could see the soul stuff floating around. It wasn’t all that dense, but it was there. Interestingly, he felt like he could get impressions of where it had come from the longer he interacted with it.
No doubt, those impressions were how he’d come to the conclusion that they had come from ritual sacrifices to empower the ritual.
His perception field allowed him to see the open area of the chambers they were moving forward through, and he could only guess that this area used to house a ton of kobalds. There were clear signs of campfires and broken-down shelters. Had he not known what to look for, he would have missed the signs, but they were there.
Between the evidence of their former existence and the soul stuff he was seeing in the air, Nero was able to draw a few conclusions.
Most likely, the kobalds had collected the entirety of their local population up here before evacuating them behind their wall. Many of them had probably been sacrificed to create the wall itself, and the soul stuff he was seeing in the ether might be all that was left of them. There was probably a ritual around here somewhere that they’d either broken down or hidden.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
But what didn’t make sense was why the soul stuff was ignoring his influence. It was like it was there, but it also was not. It was like it was refusing to listen to him.
He hadn’t felt anything like it since…
‘Wait! That’s it. This is just like the feeling I had when someone stripped my influence from the ether. I couldn’t interact with the essence flows at all, and it was even a pain the ass to figure out how to see them,’ he thought to himself.
Above his head, the shield being held up by the mages continued to struggle under the onslaught coming down on them, and Nero could feel the mages alongside him faltering. Every foot forward seemed to sap them of their will to continue. Nero knew this couldn’t go on, but at least they were getting closer to the wall. He could only hope that Harry and Cathleen had a plan for when they got there.
Putting his concerns about their life expectancy aside for the moment, Nero returned to his contemplations. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he mentally worked through the problem.
The issue was simple, the soul stuff in the ether wasn’t responding to him, and without that soul stuff, he couldn’t imbue enough potential into his spells without killing himself by draining his center. So, he either needed to find a way to interact with the soul stuff or find another way to power his spells.
The soul stuff was from kobalds, and it had already been claimed. How? Probably the ritual.
Could he disrupt it from here? Or maybe at least interact with it?
Reaching out, Nero scanned the essence flows for a clue. He manipulated and futzed with his sight, altering his perception in as many ways as he could think of. One moment, he was seeing the essence flows in the typical way he’d become used to, the next, he was seeing the connections spread out in a web showing him currently active command channels. Then, he focused on the soul stuff floating ‘under’ it all. His metaphysical sight was like one of those weird old-timey goggles with various lenses that altered what he was looking at.
‘It’s just like that Nicolas Cage movie… the one with the Declaration of Independence… National Idiocy or Treasure Seekers or something? Not the time, man,’ he chided himself before refocusing on what he was looking at.
Separating the various ways he was able to see the world around him was stressing his mind, and he could feel like he was causing his brain to overheat. Ignoring the problem, he doubled down and pushed his sight further.
The essence flows were humming, each one being influenced by multiple essence fields along with their own currents. Interwoven between them were the mental connections and the other emotions from people radiating out in waves of their own. It was a confusing mess of interconnected forces that all influenced each other and altered the ether on both a macro and micro level. The more he looked, the more he saw. There were so many levels and ways to look at the ether that it was giving him a headache. His lone influence was like a tiny lever trying and failing to find a place to insert itself.
Nero struggled to understand why he was having so much trouble with the soul stuff, he had no trouble influencing the essence flows themselves.
Mentally ‘surrounding’ one of the little balls of soul stuff with his presence, he tried to wedge his perception closer. It was like trying to grip an oiled ball of gelatin, but every second he stayed in contact with it improved his understanding of it.
The soul stuff was a remnant of potential left here after the kobald, who’d nurtured it over his short and unimpressive life, had died. But the difference between it and the soul stuff he’d interacted with before became clear in a blindingly strong explosion of understanding.
The kobald had known what it had been dying for and had been more than okay with it. It had dedicated its soul to the ritual, imbuing it with a purpose of its own. It was like an enchantment, being powered by the soul stuff itself. It had and still did ‘want’ to go to the ritual.
If Nero wanted to be able to use it, he’d have to overcome its desire to be used for the ritual which would completely defeat the purpose of what he’d be using it for. It would take center and effort to reforge it, and Nero doubted it would be worth it. He could just tell the net gain in potential would be practically nothing.
Growling in annoyance, Nero recognized an inherent flaw with his use of soul stuff. He needed the people and sentients who died to not care what their soul stuff was being used for. All it would take to counter him was the knowledge that he could use their soul stuff to empower his spells. Even just the feeling of not wanting their souls to be used for a purpose at their time of death would be enough to counter him.
So, how did the kobalds usually overcome the problem? Was it like an information campaign where they kept their plans secret from their subordinates, or maybe brainwashing? And how were the kobalds able to use human souls if all it took was the humans to die without worrying about what their souls would be used for?
Suddenly, Nero had a disturbing thought. Were the humans just being idiots? Had they just ‘accepted’ that they had no control of their souls after they’d died? By believing that the kobalds could use their souls for their spells, were they themselves responsible for giving them the power to do so? It was a horrible thought and one that aligned with everything he’d learned about the world he’d found himself in.
This world was all about perception and the very literal imbueing of meaning into essence to create matter. Hell, the only reason there was a floor under his feat, or air for him to breathe was because the essence had been given an identity detailing how it was supposed to function.
‘What a mind-fuck,’ he thought to himself before setting it aside to stress over later.
Understanding the reality he’d found himself and isolating the problem he was dealing with would not help him solve the issue with the wall, his inability to use the soul stuff, or the fact that he was currently only alive because the mages were holding back hundreds of kobald spells. He needed to come up with some options, and he was running out of time.
While he couldn’t see it with his eyes, he was able to witness the moment the front line of the formation arrived at the wall. Harry had led them to one of the gates and slammed into it with both his magical and physical shields. Multiple other shield-bearing fighters hit it right alongside him. It was a coordinated assault that shook the ground as much as the wall.
Unfortunately, the gate itself refused to budge and the entire formation collapsed on top of itself. One after another, people ran into the person in front of them. The only positive was that it reduced the number of kobalds who had a clear line of sight for their spells.
Nero could see the entire formation flattening against the wall, the mages spreading out to cover everyone. Letting himself follow the flow, Nero stumbled forward to approach the wall nearly 50 ft from the gate on the right. While the mages kept the shields up, they were now much more spread out.
It was both an improved position as much as a liability since the more they spread out under the wall the fewer kobalds could see them but there were also fewer mages to defend them. As a result, they weren’t fairing any better than when they were all grouped together out in the open.
Opening his eyes wide in horror, Nero saw several groups of kobalds begin dragging giant cauldrons of something toward the edges.
‘Shit! They’re going to drop hot oil or something! If it’s not a construct, would the shields even do anything?’ he mentally screamed in panic.
His perception field was both a blessing and a curse as he could see so much happening but had no power to influence it. Many of the melee fighters were still whacking away at the gate while the rest of the approximately three hundred soldiers hid under the mages' protection.
Terrified and out of options, Nero shoved his way through the tightly packed crowd and shuffled himself up next to the wall.
‘This fucking thing is coming down, one way or another,’ he promised himself.
Wild-eyed but determined, Nero placed both his hands on the wall and focused. He blocked off his perception field, thanking whatever god was watching that there didn’t seem to be a cauldron of death hovering directly over him. He needed time to come up with a plan.
Everything but the rough and pitted sensation of the wall under his palms fell away as he closed his eyes and focused. His entire being was turned toward understanding the wall… nothing else mattered.
His senses showed him the wall’s identity. He could see how it was woven from multiple essences and imbued with a purpose. It was an almost living being with a desire to fulfill its destiny. He could see the memory of the kobalds working on it. They had spent days imbuing it with essence, reinforcing and shaping its identity.
It was solid and real. It is just as real as the ground, and nothing at all like a simple construct. In time, the world would understand that it was supposed to be here, and would become a permanent fixture in reality. But, it hadn’t been here long enough yet, and it was still malleable… sort of.
Having an idea, Nero began infusing his will into the stone, urging it to change. He felt like he was pushing against a… wall… an unfortunate pun if there ever was one. It was clear as day that he needed more power, more potential, otherwise he’d drain his entire center long before he managed to affect it.
Reaching out into the ether, he awkwardly tried to request the soul stuff to help him ‘fix’ the wall. He didn’t specifically try to connect with any of the remnants, instead, he just urged them toward the wall. It was their wall. They were kobalds. They should help fix it.
Nero could almost sense the confusion radiating throughout the area as the soul stuff considered whether or not to help.
In a burst of devious insight, Nero projected the desire to create a gate, infusing the ether with his desire to copy the stone formation of an open gate without the door. The door itself would come later, now he just needed the stone to reshape itself.
Checking his identity, he winced at the fact that his center had already dropped below 90%.
He wasn’t even sure what he did, but whatever he’d done, it had worked. He could already see the soul stuff begin merging with the wall in front of him.
It looked like a slight breeze was pulling in all the soul remnants, and all he needed to do was convince the wall that there should in fact be an open gate here.
His eyes remained closed, and he couldn’t be sure that it was working as well as he’d hoped, but he didn’t want to break his concentration. He continued to project his desire for a gate, praying that the stone under his fingers would comply.
Then, almost as if the stone was evaporating, his hands were clear and he stumbled forward.
Opening his eyes wide in wonder, he was faced with a legion of kobalds who were staring at him with confused and horrified expressions on their faces. There were hundreds of them, just waiting for their turn on top of the wall. Both the clones and real ones were equally dumbfounded by the appearance of the gate, every one of them paralyzed with shock.
Grinning with an evil smile, Nero muttered, “Well hello there.”
Without giving them a chance to react, he pulled out his sword and shield from his personal space while summoning his mage armor. He needed some fresh souls for his spells, and he was going to enjoy claiming every one of them that he could.
