by Dean Henegar
Before long we were ready to move. The order of march was the same as the day before, with the formation of dwarves forming up before bravo company. The dwarven pathfinders were added into the rotation with our scouts and I placed Rollox in charge of recon for us; I wanted to give a dwarf command of some of the joint force to let them know I appreciated their contribution. Since Ty was gone, Rollox was the most seasoned recon commander we had available, too. The dwarf was happy to receive the honorary title of sergeant that I bestowed on him, and his fellow pathfinders slapped him on the back, saluting him . . . until I advised them a sergeant in the legion was a nco and wasn’t saluted. As we marched, I examined the stonebreakers and the runesmiths. I was already familiar with the abilities of the pathfinders as we had fought together against the slavers previously, but the others were new to me.
Dwarven Pathfinder, Level 8 (17)
Dwarven Stonebreaker, Level 8 (91). The dwarven stonebreakers are the well-trained militia that protect the far-flung outposts in the wild. The stonebreakers are known for their strength and endurance, holding the line against their often more numerous foes. They are solid and reliable troops but unable to complete the complex maneuvers that the full time dwarven warriors are known for.
Dwarven Runesmith, Level 8 (4). The runesmiths fill a unique role for the dwarven clans. With a mix of mage, a bit of cleric, and the heart of a crafter, the runesmith does not use spells directly but instead can imbue carved runes with magical power. These runes can be used in combat for offense or protection, and some even hold creatures of the earth who are ready to defend their masters. On top of their magic abilities, the runesmith is also a warrior, having the same battle competency as a stonebreaker.
We made good time on the road, the condition of which slowly deteriorated the further away we moved from Hayden’s Knoll. The terrain was a mix of rolling hills to our left and forested areas to the right. In the late afternoon I heard a commotion coming from the forest on our right. A pathfinder ran toward the column from the east, waving his arms and shouting a warning. Fearing an imminent attack, I began to organize the column into a defensive position.
“Bravo company, form up on the right flank. Alpha, cover the east and south. Ignominia, you are in reserve in the center. Bhartak, have your forces cover the north,” I ordered. Bravo company hustled up from their position at the rear of the formation, forming a line by platoons. The platoons formed up in ranks two deep; I was comfortable with a long, yet thin line since we had a reserve to plug any holes. Alpha company formed up with three platoons covering the west and the remainder in the south. Bhartak sent fifty of his stonebreakers along with the runesmiths to cover the north while the remaining stonebreakers joined with the Ignominia platoon to form our legion reserve.
For now, Tavers left the catapults in their disassembled state, but he did have the new scorpion carts moved behind bravo company, ready to support them with direct fire or move quickly to any other threats. As the carts were being moved into position, a horde of Gul Dorg drones emerged from the woods. More and more swarms appeared from the forest and headed to encircle the column. Around six hundred of the things in total were moving about. I tried to toggle my Command Presence ability, forgetting that is was always active now that I had hit level 10. With nothing else to do I waited for the enemy to close into range.
The snap of the scorpions firing was music to my ears as the large bolts tore into the first swarm approaching our line. I paced behind bravo company, trying to ensure my aura’s bonus was affecting the whole line. The men launched a volley of javelins at fifty yards, another at twenty-five, and a final at ten. The three volleys shredded the attackers, dropping drones by the score. The soldiers in bravo company now easily outnumbered the attackers, something that didn’t happen very often to us.
Bravo company was holding easily so I turned my attention to the north. The dwarves there had met the swarm approaching them. The sagittarii moved in support of the less numerous dwarves, adding accurate and deadly fire to thin the enemy ranks. The dwarves had moved all the stonebreakers, including the reserve, forward to meet the numerically superior enemy. The sergeant leading alpha company had the northernmost troops attempt to support them with a javelin volley, but only a few of the soldiers were within range.
Once again, the drones did that strange thing where they all stood bolt upright before fleeing. Looking to the south, I could see the swarm heading there had turned back without making contact. After fifteen minutes, Rollox arrived with a handful of pathfinders and a few of my scouts. He ran up to me and I motioned for Bhartak and Brooks to join me.
“Raytak, those things are fleeing back north. Looks like they were trying to whittle down our scouts while everyone was focused on the attack. Groups of dozens of those things attacked the scouting force. I’m left with only eleven pathfinders and twelve of your men. We’ll head back out, but if they keep us this tactic we’ll be out of scouts before nightfall. My men and yours are good, but there’s too many of those things running about and the scouts are bound to eventually get cornered and cut down,” Rollox advised.
I thought about our situation and the implications of our opponents’ tactics. They were willing to spend hundreds of lives in foolish attacks which normally indicated they had a limited intelligence. Then they used sound tactics to try and blind us to their movements, which is something I would have done. It was almost like there were two enemy commanders out there: a moron and a deviously competent one.
“Bring in the scouts. We’ll tighten up the column. Set platoon-sized advance guards and flankers. They’re the tripwire to give us time to react,” I ordered. The column continued with a platoon in formation leading, and another on each flank, and a final one at the rear. We were attacked two more times before nightfall. The attacks were smaller, only a hundred drones at a time, but cost us more casualties as we had little warning until a swarm was almost upon us. By the time we stopped to construct our fortified camp I had lost another fifty-two soldiers. The dwarves had also taken a hit; twenty of their stonebreakers fell when a group of them were surrounded while taking their turn protecting the eastern flank. The quick intervention of the Ignominia platoon helped them to beat off the attack, but it was too little too late for some.
Our only consolation was that we had killed an estimated five hundred of the attackers since the battle last night. The dwarves had estimated their numbers in the thousands, so there was no way they could continue to take that many casualties. My only concern was how quickly they replenished their numbers. Was there a respawn mechanic, like my own troops? Where was their spawn point? We would find out only by continuing our advance, but we were in the dark and I didn’t like it one bit.
Chapter 34
Siren closed her mind off to the drones attacking the soldiers after their last failed attack. She was drained from the effort of controlling her drones from so far away. The daughter she had sent to help had done a competent job, but she was only able to control a small number. She showed promise though and would have to be watched. Most of the daughters were content to follow the master’s wishes, but this one had a mind of her own. Oh, she tried to hide it from Siren, but Siren knew what was going on. Soon this daughter would have to be named and sent off to start another hive . . . or consumed. Siren would abide no pretenders to the throne of her hive; here, only Siren was the master.
This human and now dwarven force vexed her. The guards and soldiers in the village had been so much easier to overcome, but even the Gul Dorg’s vast numbers didn’t seem to faze this “legion.” The soldiers were killing her drones at a rate of ten to one, a ratio that couldn’t be sustained despite the numbers of drones constantly added to the hive.
Her numbers had been increasing rapidly. After taking the gnoll tribe, the slavers, and the surrounding farmers she had over a thousand drones. The town of Holdfast, the soldiers, and the last of the settlements had brought her numbers to nearly three thousand. Unlike other humanoids, every dron
e was a warrior; even a child transformed by a Gul Dorg was a deadly opponent with its natural weapons.
The force she had sent to pursue the dwarven scouts had shown her where their settlement was. She was just about to send more drones to take it when the human legion showed up. Now her opponents, ones that should have willingly given themselves as hosts to their betters, had the audacity to march on Holdfast! The casualties were too great; Siren would have to recall her forces and break the human legion at Holdfast. The town was defensible, and she had many surprises in store for the attackers. Siren drooled in anticipation, something she would have never done before the instincts of the Cacklemaster became a part of her. Siren could tell that the baser desires and cruel stupidity of the gnoll leader was at war with her superior intellect, the gnoll mentality winning out more and more as time wore on.
She sent an order to the daughter shadowing the legion, recalling her as well. There were now twenty-two daughters and she would need each one for what she had planned.
***
The Gul Dorg daughter that Siren had messaged replied submissively to her master, keeping up the charade that she was totally under Siren’s control. The daughter had watched her master throw away lives for little gain against this legion. Only the daughter’s strategy of focusing on the legion’s scouts had given them a better chance at victory. Siren’s plans were wasteful, foolish, and more proof that the master had inhabited an unacceptable host. The daughter was fond of her host. She had savored its mind as she grew inside, relishing the vast stores of knowledge it contained. For a brief time, she considered joining in symbiosis with the human she inhabited, but by the time she had considered it, the host had become consumed with madness at the knowledge he was slowly being devoured by the parasite.
The host had been a teacher, guiding the minds of young students and teaching them what they needed to know to survive in the world. His intellectual capacity had been many orders of magnitude higher than that of the master, stuck in the mind of a moronic gnoll. She would have moved sooner against the master but was, in her own way, limited by the nature of her host body. The teacher was brilliant but physically weak. Despite the enhancements that the Gul Dorg made to the host’s body, it was still constrained by age and size.
The daughter had taken the final step that would allow her to form her own hive, or to kill the master and take her place—she had given herself a name, a task normally reserved for the master to bestow upon her. She was intelligent, cunning, and deceitful. She was Guile. She understood what the master had planned for her once she returned to Holdfast, and the fate of the other daughters as well.
On the trip back to Holdfast, she tested her limits as the master’s mind was focused on constructing the trap that she would spring on the legion. Guile’s mind approached each member of the hive traveling with her, feeling out which of them she could sway to her control. Already there were a few that responded only to her voice. She would test more when she returned to Holdfast, then she would see if the time was right for revolt, or if it was instead time to flee and start her own hive.
Guile and the remaining drones quickly returned to the town since they didn’t need to stop for rest. The master took control of the drones again and put them to work on various tasks. Guile made her way throughout the town, finding the few drones among the thousands that she could pull away from the master, leaving them temporarily under master Siren’s control until she was ready to make her move.
Siren sent a command to Guile, ordering her and the other daughters to join their master and do their part for the defense. Guile knew what this meant and took her chance. Grasping control of dozens of drones, she fled to the north. Guile left the north gate of Holdfast and had made it only a few hundred yards from the town before a wave of anger smashed into her mind.
“Daughter! How dare you defy me! I had great things in store for you and was even considering giving you a name and now you betray me and your hive!” Siren projected directly into her. Pain laced through Guile’s head and she took damage as her former master focused her mental attack on the unruly daughter.
“No! I have my own name and require nothing from you. I am Guile! Let me flee and set up a new hive far from here in the next zone. We are more powerful with two hives and I could come to your aid if you are threatened by a large army,” Guile said, trying to convince her former master that it was better to just let her go.
“No, I will not allow one of the cackle . . . I mean hive to challenge me for dominance. My drones will hunt you down and bring you back to perform your duty,” Siren raged at her. Guile could tell that Siren was slipping further into the instincts of a gnoll as she became enraged. Knowing what awaited her if she returned, Guile continued to flee north. This unworthy creature, this gnoll that master Siren inhabited, did not deserve to be a master of the Gul Dorg.
“I have seen what you have planned for your daughters and I know the result. You would use us up to create a weapon against the legion, I will not be destroyed for so mundane a task. I, Guile, will found the true Gul Dorg empire and leave your little, ignorant, gnoll-infested mind to its fate,” Guile taunted, feeling even now the pressure release from her mind as the separation between the two, both physical and mental, grew.
Something popped inside Guile’s head as she completely severed the link between her and Siren. She could still feel the hive and knew it was near, but that was all. The few dozen drones that accompanied her did the same, destroying their own link to the old hive, becoming completely hers at last.
Guile traveled fast, putting distance between herself and any forces that Siren might send her way. She doubted there would be much more than a token pursuit with hundreds of human and dwarven soldiers bearing down on Holdfast. Guile then moved a bit westward, losing two of her drones to the dreaded terror birds that inhabited this area. She neared the mountains and sought out the Gul Dorg that Siren had garrisoning the ruins where their hive had been so recently reborn.
All but a few of the minds there resisted her pull. Eight more arrived from the ruins to join her, but more importantly, one brought her the golden insect that Siren had used to slumber in for so long. It would now be the property of Guile, a last resort for her to hide from danger and another chance at an even better host than the one she inhabited now. Already her body was failing, breaking down from the age of her host. She pressed on, further north, all the way to the border with the next zone.
As her hive approached the northern border a new threat emerged. Something stalked her small group, something even the terror birds were afraid to approach. Tremors were felt in the earth as whatever was tracking them drew nearer. From the increasing strength of the vibration, Guile could tell that their pursuer was closing in on them.
At last, they reached the border safely . . . but they found it to be impassable. The ground dropped quickly into a chasm. The ruins of an ancient bridge showed that there had once been a way across, but now that path was gone. At the bottom of the chasm a raging river flowed over sharp rocks. Should they somehow climb down the chasm, the river would prevent them from crossing.
Guile was tantalizing close to the transition portal. Only a short distance from the bridge on the other side of the chasm it glimmered, almost taunting in its nearness. She stopped and concentrated, coming up with the solution a short time later. When she had separated from Siren and became her own master, she had unlocked many of the secrets of her race. She now used one of them to attempt to bridge the fallen span.
The drones linked arms and legs together, bracing themselves at the edge of the fallen bridge. The next few drones then crawled over their kin, finding holds on the stone bridge and extending their limbs further outward. They repeated the process again and again, slowly creating a bridge with their bodies. Within the mind of the teacher, Guile had seen this before; a group of ants could form a bridge with their bodies over a small stream that blocked their path. In moments, drones reached the other side and secured themselves
on the north side of the bridge.
Guile began her precarious trek across the drone bridge, and the last few drones that weren’t needed for the bridge followed after her. She made it to the other side and shouted in triumph before helping her drones across. Her shout was answered by a roar as the creature stalking them finally appeared.
Charging toward her bridge of drones, Guile saw a creature that was over twelve feet tall. Feathers covered a shaggy fur coat and huge claws extended from its feet. Black eyes were housed in a head that resembled a bird, complete with an enormous serrated beak. The creature reared up on its hind legs and howled again, before dropping down and charging the bridge.
Owl Bear, Level 12 Elite.
The shaking from the heavy creature’s charge broke the tenuous grip that many of the drones had, collapsing their bridge of bodies. Most fell to their death in the river below. A few drones clung to the side of the bridge that Guile was on. Pain flared as a drone grabbed onto her leg with its crab like claw as it sought to climb to safety. The drone flailed around, its weight threatening to pull Guile over the side. The others who had made it across with her tried to pull Guile to safety. The newly minted master, unable to concentrate through the pain, couldn’t command the drone to let go. With a sickening meaty snap, the drone’s claw finally cut through Guile’s leg completely and fell to the river below, sweeping off the remaining drones that desperately clung to the northern side.
The three remaining drones carried her to the transition point. Looking back, dizzy with pain, Guile saw the owl bear reach over the southern side of the bridge and snatch the last drones that clung there; satisfied, the creature contented itself with its feast and ignored the retreating Guile.
The transition point resolved, and Guile found herself in the new zone. Thankfully this entrance wasn’t guarded by any forces; she had taken a chance that this zone was too far removed from civilization for an organized guard to be present, even at such an important spot. But then the pain returned, and she could see her life force fading as blood pumped from her severed limb. She mentally ordered her last instructions to the remaining three drones as she held the golden insect. Concentrating, Guile forced her consciousness into the gold insect. The valuable item had been crafted by her kind long ago, the secret to its construction lost to time. They were used to store a master, keeping it in stasis until it could find a viable new host.