Born of Darkness: Cirenthian Chronicles (Erotic Fantasy) Book 3

by D. R. Rosier

Chapter 9

  When we got down to dinner I sat Sienna before taking a chair. I smiled and nodded to Amy, the old healer as I sat down. It was just the six of us. Dinner was served almost immediately as a few servants brought out plates filled with food and set them down.

  I was happy to see they didn’t look at all nervous or timid. Linden was definitely one of the good ones. We talked a little about the wall and wards, and I explained my charging plan.

  I asked, “So where are we going if we have to retreat?”

  Linden replied, “The capitol would be best, then you can bring us back later along with support to rebuild. Honestly I’m still hoping they won’t commit to throwing away enough lives to take us out if we give them a hard enough kick in the teethe. They seem more interested in getting where they are going than in destroying things. Of course that’s just a guess, or maybe wishful thinking, who knows how a goblin measures such things, or a Troll.

  “We’ll go over all the plans and strategy tomorrow morning. Our response is going to be pretty fluid depending on what they do; all we really have is a place to stand, and a place to retreat.”

  I pondered that. It wasn’t the best plan, but considering our numbers we could hardly man the entire wall. We’d probably just meet them where they came in, and depend on wards if they spread out. It wasn’t a battle we could win, more like a hit and run.

  When we finished eating Linden looked around the table.

  “I’ll tell you the legend, it’s written down in our oldest books. It’s also a common folktale for humans and it’s related to the world’s creation story. Wisdom states these old stories have a kernel of truth in them, the problem is it’s impossible to know which part is the truth and what is just nonsense.”

  Servants came in and started collecting the plates, Linden told them to bring out drinks and dessert. Once the servants were gone he started his story. I wondered if the Elves had a similar one, I noticed Ari and Alethea were paying close attention.

  Linden started, “When the goddess made our world, there were only two intelligent races. The humans and the elves. The goddess blessed some of us with the ability to channel from the four elements, and healing. For a time, we all worked together under the guidance of the goddess and her priests and priestesses.

  “As you know, fire, water, earth, and air all come from their own realms and dimensions. I don’t know if you’ve studied it yet, but just as there are dimensions or realms for those, there are countless other dimensions. Healers also get there power from one such dimension. What healer mages, or priests and priestesses do is access the realm of life. Much like the realm of fire is filled with elemental fire, the realm of life is filled with life force. It is the gift given from the goddess that enables them to tap into it that gives healers the power to heal.

  “Despite the goddess’ gifts to access these realms, some mages wanted more power. After all, there are an almost infinite amount of realms. Realms of energy, void, death, and so on. They weren’t happy being limited to just five.”

  Linden stopped for a moment and took a sip of his wine. I had known a lot of what he was saying, but much of it was new information.

  Linden continued, “So this world saw its first war. On one side were the priests and priestesses who were faithful to the goddess along with many others who had faith in her wisdom. They all believed her gifts to access the five realms were enough, and more than that, simply wise. There were realms out there inimical to life, to bizarre and strange for humans or elves to handle. They wanted to stop the second group from meddling where mortals ought not to.

  “The second group was just as sure that they were right. The followers of the goddess were fools, the goddess hadn’t done us a favor, she’d merely limited the scope of our powers. If they but reached out and figured out how to harness other realms they believed they could become gods in their own right.

  “It was the healers in this second group that had the ability. They could change the very nature of a person. It was haphazard guesswork at best, mortal minds trying to create. But they had limited success, enabling access to other realms by twisting the very gifts and affinities given to us.”

  He paused for a second, “Did you know that the healers have different oaths then all the other mages? It is a death sentence for a healer to do more than restore and heal. To this day they still hold the ability to play god, to twist life, or even create a new form of it.”

  I pondered that a moment, I had no idea healers were so powerful, but it was the name itself that gave it that implicit misdirection. They weren’t really healers at all, they were life mages. I had questions but held my tongue.

  He took another sip of wine before he continued.

  “Eventually, this second group’s experiments wrought a man who could reach into an unknown realm that should never have been contacted. Call it hell, the abyss, anti-life… it doesn’t matter. The subject of course was overwhelmed and had no idea how to use the power. But in connecting to that realm he released one of its minions.

  “Much like we can call sprites, undines, salamanders and gnomes. But in this case it was something that hated life, a destroyer of things. Call it a demon, a being born of darkness. Nothing you name it can cover what it is in its totality. When it came over, it destroyed its summoner, and all of the want to be gods in that location. Ironically it killed most of group two and all of its leaders, in essence solving our problem but creating another.

  “Once it was out, there was a connection between our realm and theirs that should never have existed. It stayed on our side and fed off of the power of life and the elements connected to this realm.”

  He paused again as the servants came in with dessert and refilled our glasses. I could tell looking at Sienna that this was the tale she was talking about, but in a lot more detail than she’d ever heard it told. I wasn’t sure what to think but held my questions. He hadn’t even gotten to the part that could possibly relate to our current circumstances.

  Linden took a deep breath, “And so we tried to fight the creature. The four elements could barely hurt it, and from being in our realm, he, or it had access to manipulate the same elements. The only thing that seemed to give the creature pause, were the healers. The… let’s call it the demon, although as I said earlier that’s just a pale comparison. The demon opened up gates to other worlds where his kind held sway.

  “That is how the goblins and trolls made their way to our world. The demon also used his power to twist the natural wolves of this world, make them bigger, more intelligent, and sadistic. He also created the ogres. Ogres are a mix of goblin and troll, add in a connection to the realm of life for regeneration and a hearty appetite for human flesh and he had an army.

  “You see he wanted to destroy this realm, but not until he’d had his fun, wrung out as much terror, misery, and death as he could out of the humans and elves. They were a plague across the land. Eventually though, a plan was hatched. It isn’t very clear exactly what happened, but the story says a group of healers who were priests and priestesses, with the goddesses help, managed to lure the demon into a trap.

  “They couldn’t kill it, it was already made of anti-life, how do you kill something like that? So they trapped it in an underground cavern, deep beneath a mountain. They say though the demon could not exercise most of its power or escape, it could still reach out with its mind and control the beings that belonged to it.

  “And that’s why since recorded history began, that the goblins, trolls, wolves and ogres never leave the mountains for very long, except a raid or two to satisfy their bloodlust and stomachs. You see, the demon doesn’t know exactly where it is; only that it’s trapped under a mountain. So since then the goblins have been mining and tunneling under the mountain ranges, searching for their demon-god in order to release it on the world once again and destroy it.”

  His face was grim, “So I hope it’s just an old story, because if all that’s true then the reason they are all moving is becaus
e they found what they were looking for, and are gathering together for war with a demon in control.”

  I… didn’t know what to say to that. Except I had a strong feeling this was why the goddess had dropped me here. Is that arrogant? Probably, but I’d do anything to keep my family safe, if a demon was added to my list so be it. Of course, air and water wasn’t supposed to be able to harm the damned thing.

  “So… Demon that is immune to death, we don’t know how to trap it again, and no one has a connection with his realm to send him packing. That about right?”

  Linden looked amused at my recap when he nodded.

  “Can’t life harm it though, if it’s anti-life?”

  Linden shrugged, “I don’t know, maybe? But if so it can shield itself against attack, otherwise the healers of old would have taken it out. Does this mean you’ve taken my story to heart? I wouldn’t put too much stock into it, although I believe something along those lines is happening, they are gathering for a purpose and war seems the most obvious given the subjects in question.”

  I nodded slowly. I didn’t want to argue about it, to give my explanation and theory about the goddess dropping me here, and giving me so many blessings in my new life, so I would fight this thing and destroy it sounded so… arrogant. I didn’t have a clue how I would do so either. I had a double elemental affinity but so what, I wasn’t the only one.

  I was also fast with a sword, but I had a feeling decapitation wouldn’t work either. Hopefully the goddess would throw me another hint, or I’d think of something. Either way I planned to keep my own counsel in this matter, even my mates would probably balk at the idea.

  I wasn’t entirely sure I wasn’t being a little megalomaniac myself for that matter. I wasn’t usually one to assign so much importance to myself or my own actions and it made me wonder why I’d immediately jumped to that conclusion.

  We changed the subject and chatted about other things as we let dessert settle, and I had one more glass of wine before we turned in. Tomorrow would be a long day. We didn’t quite go right to bed, my mates kept me up a little longer, but I wasn’t about to complain. Right before I fell asleep I checked my magic level. It was close enough to full so I turned on the drip feed to all the wards so I’d break even when I woke in the morning.

  The next day after the sword dance and workout we cleaned up in time for breakfast. All the commoners were gone now. There were forty eight soldiers, four mages, five including the healer, and Sienna left in the town. There were also two servants left to cook for us all. It wasn’t a whole lot of people considering our plans to dissuade about twenty thousand goblins, and a few thousand wolves, trolls, and ogres.

  Things could go wrong very fast.

  We heard voices out in the hall and we all looked as the door opened.

  “Good morning,” Maggie said, “I heard you have some trouble coming?”

  Behind her walked in Steve who was holding hands with Sally, and Carl.

  I asked, “So it worked?”

  Maggie nodded excitedly, “I tested it by myself for the first time this morning. I’d already sent a marker beacon here, so once I proved it worked in the capitol these three were happy enough to volunteer.”

  Linden frowned, “What are you talking about?”

  I explained, “Maggie’s a genius. One of the reasons we couldn’t teach fast travel to human mages was because we depend on our elementals for targeting. Maggie figured out how to create a beacon that pushes into all the elemental realms, so a human mage will know where to come back out.”

  Maggie blushed, “It wasn’t all that hard, it was just no one thought about doing it before now.”

  I snorted in disbelief.

  Linden seemed to recover, “Well, the more the merrier and the bigger kick in the nuts we can give the horde, did you want to join us for breakfast?”

  Sally said looking a little green, “Don’t mind if I do, I lost the last one.”

  Steve snickered and got an elbow in the ribs for his trouble.

  Carl groaned, “It’s true though, the lack of direction or gravity is really… the worst part about it.”

  Maggie nodded, “Now that I have the principles I think I can make it into a spell.”

  Steve asked, “Will that help?”

  Maggie nodded, “Of course, I can add a touch of healing in the spell to counteract any vertigo or stomach complaints due to lack of gravity. Although for us to access healing it will take another half again as much magic, but I think it’d be worth it.”

  Maggie looked at me and said, “Your wife said to be careful tonight, and you’d better make it home, or else.”

  I shook my head, why send a private message when she could send Maggie who would have no trouble embarrassing me before my peers. The queen needed a spanking later.

  Linden called for more food and we sat down to plan. We had just doubled our offensive mage count, two of them were experts. Steve and Sally would surely help as well. I could hardly credit the woman I’d met a few short months ago had changed so much. Sally seemed genuinely happy and smitten with Steven, not to mention volunteering for this duty.

  I checked on the progress of the horde at lunch time, they were very close to Steve’s farm. At the rate they were moving we only had a few hours. I kept an eye on their progress throughout now. They were apparently in too much of a hurry for scorched earth, I would compare it to a rioting mob back on earth, they broke in the doors of homes, did some damage, but they didn’t flatten them, or even destroy the crops more than just trampling over them.

  Just on estimates I would guess when the farmers got back they’d get about half the normal yield from the crops, and it would take them a while to repair their homes and make new furniture for what was destroyed. It made me hope that a good kick in their teeth would make them route around the city, but then again, it could drive them into a rage and make them raze it.

  We would have to see.

  When they were about a half hour away we took our posts. Linden assigned six soldiers to each of us mages, to protect us as best they could from physical attack. With the goblin mages in the back of the column, we expected to slaughter a lot of them before a strong magical defense could be brought up. Sienna stayed with me and I created my usual offensive and defensive wards for us both.

  It was me, Ari, Alethea, Carl and Linden on the front line right on the wall. Maggie, Steven, Sally and the healer Amy were on the ground to backup whoever needed it the most. We waited until they were close, possibly too close before we opened up against them. I trusted the wards on the walls to protect us from climbers and magical attacks and we all went on the offensive.

  I picked out a grouping of the horde and fed my elementals power simply telling them to end their lives. I watched as miniature tornados, about twenty feet tall, were created in the midst of them. Inside the fast air funnels were small very jagged pieces of ice. It had about the same effect as a large blender and the enemy was literally torn apart.

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see similar attacks from Ari as whirlwinds mixed with fire making it hotter and the flames more powerful mow through and destroy hundreds of the enemy. Alethea was sending out spears of flame, hundreds of them falling from the sky in pinpoint accuracy. They didn’t kill as fast as Ari’s attack, or even mine. But they caused more panic as the enemy screamed, and ran in panicked circles while slowly burning to a cinder.

  Linden sent spikes of earth up out of the ground, impaling them by the score. Despite all that it was barely a dent in their huge numbers, although we did take a good percentage of their wolves, trolls and ogres out as they led the column.

  They returned fire with arrows and I could feel their mages coming into range as I sent out a second devastating attack. The arrows were broken or deflected by the wards. I didn’t want to feed too much of my power into them, but I took from the wards farther away that were idle and fed the ones that were busy blocking attacks instead of using what personal power I had.

&
nbsp; I felt a huge surge of magic from behind me. I recognized the caster as Maggie and I looked out in awe. It looked like a huge bomb had gone off and there was a crater around forty feet across with no sign of the enemy that had stood there. A few moments later stone spears rained down from above in a circle around the crater.

  Apparently magic spells could be used in battle if there was enough uninterrupted time to cast them.

  The goblin mages started firing back. Earth, air, water, and fire started to come our way. The wards were blocking them, but they were using up magic at a ferocious rate and I had to continuously move magic from the wards not under attack to the ones in front of me. Luckily they hadn’t surrounded the place yet otherwise I couldn’t have done it like I was.

  I sent out another air and water attack, this time it was hundreds of little attacks, icicles and slashes of air going for the enemy troops. It made sense; one big attack could probably be blocked now by the enemy mages. Still, only a little more than half of the attacks seemed to make it through. It was alarming how many mages I felt in range now, and more kept coming. I estimated over a hundred and counting.

  The trolls started to pick up two wolves at a time and toss them onto the wall. The soldiers attacked them and Sienna fired her bow quickly, taking out a wolf with each arrow. She flawlessly struck throat, an eye, or right in the chest time and again. I also used my magic to take a few of them out. Unfortunately though, one of my six soldiers was dead by the time we cleared the wall of the wolves.

  We had probably killed close to two thousand, maybe a little more, but that was still only ten percent or less of them, and they were rallying. We’d hoped to make them back off, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen.

  Part of me wondered what would have happened if we just left them alone, they might have just gone around the wall and up the mountain path. Still, the more we took out here, the less we’d have to face later. Every enemy death counted toward victory.

  I sent out another spell, and then another dealing even more death. Then I saw stone spears coming our way. I really hated earth, but Sally, who was an earth mage like Linden, redirected the spears down into their own troops. The walls were getting crowded now, the wards draining at a frightening rate as they killed all the would be climbers with air, water and fire.