by Logan Jacobs
When I looked over to my left, I locked onto one of Clodia’s fireballs and turned it into three more, so they all fell onto the priests like burning pieces of hail. When I glanced to my right, I saw a group of Elite soldiers as they tried to advance with their shields toward two priestesses, so I froze the priestesses in place for a few seconds to give the soldiers a little bit of an advantage.
I felt a sudden draft at my back and realized that the wall of fire had finally collapsed, and I knew that meant the priesthood was just about done for. If they didn’t have enough energy to sustain the wall, or if there just weren’t enough active casters to keep it active, then we were about to win.
By then, I had to turn my attention back to the priestess behind my shield, but I saw that Penny had already beaten me to it. The pixie thief had started to sneak around to try to take the priestess from the back, so I could take her from the front while she was distracted.
But just as I started to move toward her, the priestess flung aside my shield and sprang toward Penny like a snake. I saw her reach for the red-haired pixie with her fingers outstretched like claws, and before I even knew what I had done or how I did it, I felt a sphere of pure-white energy suddenly appear in my right hand.
Instantly, I hurled it at the priestess, and it caught her in the side of the throat right before she could grab Penny. But I wasn’t content to leave it there, so I pulled out my sword as I raced forward, and then while the priestess still gurgled from her half-melted throat, I swiped her head clean off her body.
“You okay?” I demanded.
“Y-yes,” Penny gulped. “She was faster than I thought.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Just stay close.”
“Oh, don’t you worry about that,” the pixie thief said. “I’ll stay right the fuck beside you from here on out.”
But when I turned to see how the rest of the battle was progressing, I saw that there was only one priest still on his feet, but all the rest of the elves were either dead or had been taken prisoner by my troops.
“Did you change your mind yet?” I called over to the last remaining elven priest. “Will you surrender?”
“Death first!” the elven priest screeched.
“Suit yourself,” I said, “but you won’t like what I have in mind for you.”
The priest tried to hurl more magic flames toward me, but this time, I didn’t even wait to catch them and send them back. Instead, I just felt my own flames spill into my palms, and I threw one after the other at the elven priest. My magic caught him in the shoulder, in the arm, and then in the stomach, so he collapsed with an ear-piercing shriek before the Elite soldiers moved in to bind his arms behind his back.
We had just defeated all the priesthood in the elven temple, but I wanted to make damn sure that no more priestesses were hidden inside the temple itself, so before we celebrated, I grabbed my shield and gave Ava and Penny instructions to watch our prisoners.
Then with Clodia right by my side and just one squadron of Elite soldiers right behind me, I moved into the temple itself and started to search from room to room. We searched the entire temple, from the private chambers to the sacrifice rooms, but the only bodies that we found were the corpses that were supposed to be burned as offerings to the sun and moon.
But based on the small number of corpses left, it looked like the priesthood had been burning bodies overtime to try to pull a victory out of their asses. Too bad for them that all their burnt sacrifices didn’t mean shit, not to the Ancients and certainly not to me.
“Light the rest of these bodies on fire,” I told Clodia. “There’s no reason to keep these rotten corpses now, not when they deserve a proper send-off.”
“I will,” the night elf said, “and I’ll make sure the flames stay contained to this room.”
Once Clodia had set a huge funeral pyre for the remaining corpses, I left two Elite soldiers there to watch it until the flames went out, and then we returned to the temple courtyard to check in with the others.
“Everything’s clear,” I announced when we strode out of the temple. “So, how many snacks do we have for Azure?”
“Exactly six,” Penny said with a smile. “Four priestesses and two priests. Will that be enough?”
“We’ll see,” I said as I surveyed the prisoners. “As a matter of fact, I think we better go see about that right now, before anyone gets any ideas that they might try to escape.”
“You’ll never succeed,” one of the priestesses snarled. “The Blood City will come and crush you, and they will kick you back to the gutter you came from, right before they--”
“The thing is,” I interrupted, “I’ve already conquered the Blood City, too.”
The elven priestess looked like her face might turn inside out, so I turned my attention back to my troops.
“Never let it be said that elven magic is greater than human determination,” I said. “You’ve won a great victory today, and I hope it is one that you will tell your children about, so they will one day tell their children, and then no human will ever feel powerless or weak again.”
The Elite all cheered, while Penny and Ava both pressed a hand to their stomachs. They were thinking about our children, just like I was, but the thought of our future together only made me more eager to keep moving forward, so that when my children finally came into this world, everything would be ready for them.
After I left a small squadron of the Elite to keep watch over the temple, I dismissed the rest of the troops under Ava’s direction to rest and regroup before I gave them new orders later this afternoon. At the same time, Clodia and I loaded up the captive priests and priestesses into the back of a wagon to take out into Falrion Forest. Clodia sat in the back to keep an eye on all of them, while Penny and I sat up front, and then I began to drive quickly down through the city.
It was early afternoon by the time we reached Adrian’s cottage in the woods, and the blue-scaled dragon was as happy to see us as ever. I didn’t want to waste too much time out in the woods, not when I knew that Golierian should be arriving back into town today, so we quickly pushed all our elven prisoners out the back of the wagon, and I told Azure to go crazy.
My dragon didn’t hesitate.
Before the elves could even finish their shrieks of terror at the sight of a massive blue dragon, Azure had breathed his fire and roasted them all into nice, crispy morsels for him to eat. Of course, he had probably survived mostly on small game, maybe the occasional deer, so I had no doubt that Azure was hungry as hell.
Once the elven prisoners were all dead, Azure started to rip into them one at a time. His fiery breath had been impressive, but it was even more impressive how fast he ate. Less than half an hour after we delivered the six elves to him, he had consumed every last one of them, and he immediately started to grow in size.
Azure was definitely taller and broader than he was before, and his head now towered above the wagon. He was almost as tall as the trees themselves, but I couldn’t help but feel like he still needed to grow some more.
“What do you think, Clodia?” I asked. “Is he as big as any dragon that you’ve ever seen before?”
“I think he could grow bigger,” Clodia replied. “He is very impressive, but… yes, I think another round of priests might do the trick.”
“Then we’ll just have to make sure we break into the temple in the Blood City, too,” I said, “and hopefully, that will be enough magic to swell him up to his full size.”
“Be good,” Penny told our dragon.
Azure leaned his head down until we could scratch him under the chin, and I just laughed at the fact that even though he was as big as a small home now, he still wanted to be scratched and played with like a big puppy.
“We’ll see you soon, my friend,” I told him. “Stay as hidden as you can until then.”
After Azure trotted back toward Adrian’s cottage, the three of us returned to the city in the wagon and headed straight for Twila’s dancehall to see if
Golierian had made it back to the city yet. As it turned out, I had barely hopped down from the wagon before Golierian himself hurried out of the dancehall, flew down the front steps, and immediately knelt in front of me.
“My king!” Golierian said. “How can I serve you?”
“Good to see you, too,” I said with a grin. “Why don’t we go inside, and we can discuss things there? And Clodia, why don’t you go find Ava and tell her to make sure the Elite are ready to move out? I have a feeling we’ll be headed back to the portals before the afternoon is over. Oh, and tell her to bring the map back here.”
“Right away,” Clodia said with a nod.
Penny and I followed Golierian inside the dancehall and found Cimarra and Twila at the kitchen table. It was too early for the place to be open, so Twila’s girls were all either asleep or off on errands, and since Ashlin was taking care of some business for Cimarra, that just left Cim, Twila, Penny, and me to discuss matters with Golierian.
Cimarra and Twila pulled out chairs for us, but before we could get started, Cimarra threw her arms around my neck, and Twila brought out a whole tray of food and drinks for us.
“Don’t worry, we’re fine,” I laughed. “We even managed to take a number of the priestesses and priests alive, so Azure grew a little bigger and stronger.”
“Of course, you did,” Twila said as she grabbed a cloth to wipe some of the bloodstains off my armor. “Those elves never stood a chance. No offense, Golierian.”
“None at all taken,” the night elf replied. “I’m just happy that you think I can be helpful to you now.”
“And you didn’t run into any trouble on your way back to the city?” I asked.
“I ran into a few elves, but I led them into an ambush where I knew your human guards were,” Golierian replied.
“Damn!” Penny said. “Nice work.”
“It worked out well,” Golierian said with a shrug.
I caught Golierian up on the state of the revolution so far, just so he would be informed about our progress. The night elf was one of our allies, after all, and if I wanted to work with him, then he needed to know a certain amount of information, like the fact that we now controlled every city in the goddamn empire.
By the time I gave him the rundown of events since the start of the equinox festival, Ava and Clodia arrived back at the dancehall and entered the kitchen to join us.
“The Elite are right outside,” Ava said, “and we’re ready to move on your orders.”
“Thank you, Ava,” I said. “Now, Golierian, let’s get down to the reason that I asked you to come back to the city.”
“Please,” the night elf said. “Just tell me how I can help.”
“Do you know the location of all the wilderness forts in the empire?” I asked. “I was told that only captains of the guards in each city knew this information.”
“You were told right,” Golierian said, “and I do.”
“Could you point them out on a map?” Penny asked.
“Of course,” the night elf replied, “but I’ll have to sort through my old office and try to find a good map to use as a base.”
“Will this work?” Ava asked as she pulled out our map and spread it across the kitchen table.
“Absolutely,” Golierian said.
“You can see here that only five wilderness forts were on the map originally,” I said, “but we discovered the approximate location of two more, so we marked them down as well.”
“Can you tell us where the last three are?” Penny asked. “And if those two ones that we marked are accurate?”
“They are,” Golierian said as he studied the map, “and, uh… someone get me a pen, would you?”
Twila instantly handed him one.
“So the one closest to the Blood City is… here,” Golierian said and marked a spot. “There’s another one way over here, and if I remember right, it should be about… here, and then the last fort is over here.”
“That’s incredibly helpful,” I said. “You just saved a lot of lives, Golierian.”
“I’m so glad,” the night elf replied, “but, um, there’s just one other thing.”
“Please don’t say that you don’t know anything about their numbers and weapons,” I said.
“No, no, I can give you some information on that,” Golierian said. “It’s just that… well, there’s an eleventh fort.”
“Shit,” Clodia murmured. “Even I didn’t know that. Where is it?”
“So the thing is…” Golierian took a deep breath. “I don’t actually know. Even as captain of the guard, there were some things that I just wasn’t allowed to know. Only elven generals could.”
“Like Tevian?” Penny grunted.
“Yes, like Tevian,” the night elf replied. “If I can get into the garrison here, I think I might be able to find out where it is. Tevian always left a paper trail, and I have a few ideas about where he might have jotted down the location and the details about what’s there. It’s worth a shot, anyway.”
“Definitely,” I agreed. “Cimarra, make sure that Golierian has some human guards to escort him to the garrison, so no one will bother him while he works.”
“I’ll take care of it,” the beautiful dancer said.
“Send me word as soon as you find anything,” I said, “but in the meantime, what kind of numbers are we up against from the wilderness forts? What kinds of weapons? And how long do you think it would take for them to march on all the cities?”
“There’s about twenty-five-hundred soldiers at each fort,” Golierian said, “but the ones that are closest to the smaller cities have more like two thousand.”
“How many of them are cavalry?” Clodia asked.
“I don’t have an exact number for you,” the captain of the guard said, “but I think it’s a little over half their forces, so that would be a little over one-thousand cavalry at the smaller forts, and probably around fifteen hundred at the bigger forts.”
“That’s a lot of fucking elves on horseback,” Penny grumbled. “Do they have any other weapons that we should know about, other than a fuck-ton of horses that they can ride in and use to trample us all to death?”
“There are some archery units, of course,” Golierian said, “but I think the bulk of their force just gets its strength from the horses. They have the standard lances and swords, but elven battle horses are… well, they’re not like other horses.”
“How so?” Twila asked.
“They’re vicious,” the night elf said with a shrug. “The real elven battle horses, the kinds that are stationed at the wilderness forts, are mean as hell, and they’ve been fed blood and meat like they’re wolves instead of horses, so they crave more.”
“So I guess Belis wasn’t the only elf who used to feed humans to his horses,” I muttered.
“Yeah, it used to be a pretty common practice,” Golierian said and then swallowed. “They stopped doing that kind of thing in the cities a long time ago, but at the wilderness forts… I guess the elves out there tend to be a little more stuck in the past than most, so some of them think the rules don’t really apply to them, and they still carry out some of the old ways.”
“Good to know,” Ava said. “So how fast will they be able to march on us? Or on the rest of the cities?”
Golierian dragged the map across the table until he could lean over it and study it in more detail. Some of the cities were clearly more in danger than others, but I wanted to let Golierian speak first, just to see if there was any other information that we might have missed.
“You said that the Gold City had already been attacked and defended, right?” Golierian asked.
“That’s right,” Penny said, “thanks to a little help from the wild orcs, anyway.”
“They certainly didn’t hurt,” I snickered.
“So since the Gold City seems to be on solid ground now,” Golierian said, “then Riverhome will probably be the next city to really be in danger. The fort is pretty close to the c
ity, and as I’m sure you already know, Riverhome doesn’t have any kind of defenses except for the river on one side.”
“And what about the timing?” I asked.
“It depends on how fast they hear about the revolution,” Golierian said, “and it also depends on whether Tevian is able to get word to them to all stay put until he comes to unite them.”
“How about just a rough estimate?” Ava asked.
“A week or maybe a week and a half,” the night elf replied. “But obviously, if Tevian gets a message to them first, then they won’t march on the cities and instead will unite into a bigger force to come fight us later.”
“Then let’s plan for the worst and hope for the best,” I said.
After Golierian went over the rest of the cities that would be most in danger from the wilderness forts, he also told us the standard battle formations that the elves tended to use, and some of them certainly matched up with what I’d seen at the Blood City.
Golierian had already proven himself more than useful, but after he went over the most vulnerable cities and standard elven battle practices, he also traced a possible route that Tevian could have taken when he fled. If Tevian had traveled from the Blood City to the closest wilderness fort, then there was only one really obvious route that he might take from one fort to the next, at least if he planned to unite all the wilderness troops into one great big army.
And if he did that, there were really only two places that he would launch his army against us. It would either be outside the Capital, or it would be in the fields outside the Blood City, but since the Rainbow Keys had shown me more than one vision about a battle outside blood-red walls, I had a feeling that our final showdown would probably take place outside the Blood City.
We would be ready whenever Tevian and the wilderness elves rode against us, and in the meantime, we just had to make sure that none of the other cities fell. Plus, the more troops that we destroyed from each wilderness fort, the fewer troops that Tevian would have to unite together and come against us outside the Blood City.