“That makes sense, and I think we can live with that,” the man said, nodding approvingly. “And what about leadership? Let’s say we do decide to move our guilds up there, how are things going to work when it comes to decision making?”
“Honestly, at the moment that is an evolving process,” I replied. “Right now, when it comes to things that affect Aldford or the surrounding region, I more or less have the final say about what course we take, but past that, I stay out of everyone else’s business. As we grow larger, that’s obviously going to have to change or become a bit more formal at some point, but given how the last few weeks have turned out, just trying to stay alive has been higher on our priority list.”
“Yeah, I suppose that’s fair,” Elliot said, nodding in understanding.
From there, the meeting shifted into a barrage of questions between our three sides. Starting with initial logistical questions on what the region and Aldford itself could offer them, it then shifted into more speculative ones revolving around Carver and the orcs, as well as the inevitable war brewing between Eberia and the Ascendancy. Before I knew it, nearly two hours had passed, and I suddenly noticed a change in the demeanor of the three guild leaders. Their postures no longer looked hesitant or reserved as they had earlier in the meeting, and their voices were becoming filled with more excitement as they spoke. Hiding a mental smile as I noticed their body language and what it meant, I felt a single triumphant thought cut through my mind, followed by a wave of relief.
They were in.
Chapter 22
The Wilderness – Northeast of Aldford
Good morning! Welcome back to Ascend Online! The familiar text flashed across my vision as I once again logged back into the game, instantly feeling a sharp jolt shoot through my body as whatever I was sitting on bounced under me.
“Whoa!” I grunted in surprise as I landed on something hard under me, the swirling colors in my vision fading away and leaving me staring out at the flat countryside that was quickly moving past me. Several blinks later, I realized that I was sitting in a large wagon surrounded by familiar faces with something heavy across my lap, a wave of memories then flooding into my head.
“Look who finally made it back!” I heard Constantine’s voice announce from somewhere on my left as I mentally tried to make sense of everything that happened to me since I’d logged off last night, finding myself with a bit of a busier morning than I’d expected. “Here we were starting to think that you’d gone back to sleep on us.”
“It was tempting,” I replied, holding up a hand to stall any other comments as the faces around me resolved themselves to be Constantine, Halcyon, Amaranth, and Drace—though in the cat’s case, he was currently asleep and draped halfway across my legs, having curled himself into a partial ball in order to fit into the wagon. “Hang on a sec, though, let me catch up on the morning’s memory dump. I can’t think straight just yet.”
“Hurry up, man,” Halcyon grumbled from across from me. “We’ve been on pins and needles for an update all morning!”
Letting out a grunt in acknowledgment, I closed my eyes as I processed the morning’s events, the new influx of memories continuing to flood into my mind. Focusing my thoughts, I caught snapshots of the day so far, seeing that the majority of it revolved around crafting in the foundry early this morning. Then at some point afterward, I’d been conscripted by Léandre to help him finish off a few ballista components and help him assemble another two of the siege engines with a team of other crafters.
From there, once the machines had been finished, I’d helped load them along with several other crates of supplies onto a team of wagons before departing to Valor’s Point. Based on our plans, and the timing of the orcs advance, it was time for us to redouble our preparations in making sure that the hillfort was ready for battle. As such, I was moving up there along with the others to make sure that everything was in order and to make any last-minute adjustments that might be necessary.
Eventually finished with the inspection of my memories, I made to move to look back towards the group before remembering my earlier shower thoughts about Splinter’s upgraded state. While it was now several hours into the day and I was fueled with a healthy dose of coffee, I felt a sudden urge to check over the weapon, just to make sure that I indeed hadn’t actually dreamed of enhancing the weapon. Blinking at the mental thought, I called up my character sheet and brought up the item’s description, watching the sword’s stats appear in a faint box in the center of my vision.
Splinter
Slot: Main Hand
Item Class: Magical
Item Quality: Masterwork (+20%)
Damage: 45-60 (Slashing)
Strength: +12 Agility: +12
Durability: 160/160
Weight: 2 kg
Special: Æthertouched
Class: Any Martial
Level: 25
Oh, good. I didn’t dream that after all, I said with a mental sigh of relief, both shaking my head at the ludicrous thought while making a mental note to never work myself into such exhaustion again. Maybe next time, Marc, you should try getting more than ten hours of sleep over the course of three days. Then you won’t be so confused about what you have or haven’t done.
“Okay, I think I’m caught up now,” I replied as I shook off my thoughts and focused back on the moment, the whole process of sifting through my memories only having taken a handful of seconds. “It was a busy morning from the looks of it.”
“They all have been lately,” Drace answered in a dry tone from directly to my right, causing me to turn my head and see an eager expression on the man’s face. “And that’s not what’s important right now. How did the meeting go?! You were gone for nearly the entire morning!”
“Yeah, man, we’re dying here,” Constantine chimed in, prompting a similar impatient sentiment from Halcyon. “Did they bite?”
“Not officially, but I am pretty confident that they’re on board,” I replied before going on to detail my meeting with the three guild leaders. In total, we’d ended up talking for nearly four hours before parting ways, with questions about logistics and developments around Aldford being the major focus. “…in the end they wanted a day to take the invitation back to their respective guilds and gauge what their members thought about the idea. They seemed initially nervous at first about our situation here with Carver and the orcs but warmed up to the idea as things went on. Apparently, things are bad enough there that rushing headlong into a horde of orcs is actually attractive.”
“Damn, I really hope that they’ll decide to come despite that then,” Constantine commented. “Things are only going to get rougher out here, and I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t think that we’re quite badass enough to carry this war solo.”
“Oh, no?” Drace asked in a mockingly concerned voice. “What happened to the confident and big energy Constantine that we know and begrudgingly tolerate?”
“He got a reality check,” the rogue replied, shaking his head. “Regardless of how awesome I think we are…quantity is its own kind of quality, and my nerves are starting to tingle.”
“Well, if we’re going to look at quantity, how many do you think that these two guilds will bring?” Halcyon asked, turning his head to look over towards me. “They’re both pretty decently sized guilds, right?”
“Yeah, they are,” I said, shifting slightly under a still sleeping Amaranth’s weight so I could easily see and talk to everyone in the wagon. “Between the both of them combined, they have about three-hundred and fiftyish adventurers, and then about three hundred NPCs of various stripes. But that’s at their current membership levels. There are likely going to be some players, and NPCs even, that won’t want to make the trip.”
“Yeah, and say they do come anyway, and we add that three-fifty to our current crop of adventurers, that’ll put us at what, five hundred or so?” Drace asked. “That means we just need to kill one or two orcs each and then go home.”
“So
mething tells me that it won’t be that easy,” Constantine replied, reaching up to scratch the back of his head. “But when you put it that way, it does make me feel a bit better.”
“Well, hold onto that thought, because I’m not sure how this next bit will make you feel, but while we’re talking about adventurers, that three-fifty number might end up increasing on its own,” I said, changing the conversation. “Because remember that guild war that I was talking about yesterday? Well, it’s apparently been heating up long before we found out about it and a bunch of guilds and people in general have started to leave Eberia and Coldscar in large groups and heading out into the wild.”
“Oh?” Caius queried, his voice sounding vaguely worried at my news. “And where are they going exactly?”
“Literally any direction that isn’t Eberia,” I answered with a grunt. “From what Mithaniel and the others were able to tell me, apparently a few hundred—yes, hundred—adventurers and counting have started to go north in the last week alone, straight into the Fens of Swyn. Apparently, people are either trying to start their own settlements in there to avoid the war or are cutting through it to get to the inner parts of the continent.”
“Assuming the Arakssi living in the swamp let them,” Caius commented. “Not to mention, the swamp doesn’t seem exactly hospitable either.”
“It sure doesn’t,” I agreed. “Anyway, other than that approach, they have also been heading out west towards us, but clearly not the entire way since none of them have arrived on our doorstep. Right now, rumor has it that there are a couple of scattered settlements out there but nothing solid.”
“Well, I guess that doesn’t really surprise me,” Drace said, having started to slowly nod as I spoke. “It’s a long way between Aldford and Coldscar. You could easily have a dozen or more places to settle without ever tripping over someone else. Not to mention that it was bound to happen as things got worse around Coldscar.”
“Oh, I’m not done yet. There’s still more going on,” I said as I began to share the news that Lazarus had left for us in our group chat. “…and that was it, he said he’d follow up in a few days when he had more information.”
“Shit,” Constantine cursed as I finished speaking. “Looks like we made the right call sending him back.”
“I thought the same thing,” I replied, sighing as I considered the sheer number of things that we were juggling. “Anyway, though, with all of that going on, chances are that we’re not going to be seeing any military help from Eberia anytime soon. Lazarus didn’t say anything specific about it in his message, but I know a long shot when I see one.”
“Yeah, me too,” Drace grunted. “If I was in his shoes and was just nearly taken out, the last thing I’d want to do is send away a crop of troops I could trust.”
“Pretty much,” I agreed before continuing. “Like I said before, I think our days as being off the beaten path are going to be coming to an end as these adventurers start coming our way. Over and above any extra attention our feed will generate and ‘tag alongs’ that follow our invitees.”
“And do you get the feeling that we should be worried about that?” Halcyon asked in a concerned tone. “With all of our focus on the plains right now, we don’t exactly have a large presence in Aldford if more people start arriving, let alone if those arriving do so with bad intentions.”
“I don’t know,” I answered, giving the mage the best shrug that I could manage while sitting down. “I don’t see anything that we can do about more people ‘possibly’ arriving at some point. It was simply bound to happen sooner or later. It’s also not like we can exactly avoid fighting the orcs now that we’ve found them either.”
“No, definitely not,” Halcyon stated, breathing his own sigh as he absorbed the information. “Assuming the two guilds are on board, what are we looking at for a timeline for them making their way towards us? If the orcs keep up their pace, or speed it up somehow, we might end up on borrowed time.”
“Barring no surprises?” I qualified. “I’m expecting at least a few days once they start moving, which at the earliest won’t be until late Thursday, but more realistically Friday or Saturday once they get themselves sorted out and ready. Best case after that would put them arriving here anywhere from the twenty-first to twenty-fourth, depending on how easily they can get out of the Coldscar area. There’s a good chance they might need to detour the long way around or even fight their way out if a rival guild doesn’t allow them passage through their territory.”
“Barring no surprises,” Constantine repeated with a shake of his head as everyone processed my words. “The words that just beg fate to descend down from the heavens and give you a whack with a baseball bat.”
“That sure seems like how it’s worked for us in the past,” Drace said with a fatalistic chuckle. “But hey, maybe it’ll be different this time?”
“We can hope,” I replied as optimistically as I could. “In either case though, I think that we need to plan on being on our own for roughly the next week. At least until we know more.”
“Given what you’ve told us, I think that’s a fair assumption,” Drace stated, his words causing a series of nods to pass between us. “Which means if we’re going to last that long, we’re going to need to give the orcs one hell of a bloody nose if they decide to try and take Valor’s Point—enough to make them think twice about pressing us even harder until help arrives.”
“Well, I have a dozen ballistae and six catapults so far that should help us do that, plus whatever extras Léandre manages to send our way in the days ahead,” I replied, glancing back towards our cargo that we were ferrying and seeing two of the former siege engines strapped onto the large flatbed. “If all that doesn’t make them think twice, I don’t know what will.”
“Me either,” Drace grunted. “But at the same time, we can’t take them for granted either. I’m sure that the orcs will have surprises of their own to spring against us when the time comes too. Especially when it comes to this corruption thing we still don’t know anything about.”
“Without a doubt,” I agreed as I nodded at the man. Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, Donovan and Stanton had come up completely blank on trying to figure out what the corruption was, the pair admitting that they’d never seen or heard of anything like it. “Which is why we get to spend what time we have before their arrival to see if we can’t second-guess them and figure out what they could possibly do to make our life difficult when they finally reach us.”
With that, the four of us settled in for the trip across the grassy landscape, brainstorming how best to prepare for the orcs’ arrival. Unless something changed drastically in the days to come, it would be the largest and most critical battle that any of us had ever fought. One that, if we lost, could very well change the course of the war that we’d found ourselves in.
And not for the better.
Given that sense of urgency, we made sure to voice every single concern or idea that we had to one another, the next half hour until we finally reached Valor’s Point passing by quickly. Marked first by several columns of rising smoke on the horizon, the terrain around us began to change as we left the forested grassland that bordered the immediate Aldford area. Starting slowly as we drew closer to the hillfort, the land gradually sank on either side of us, with the stretch on our right sloping itself gently downwards toward the Hartwyld, and the scene on our left revealing the distant Greenwood. Continuing straight on ahead of us, the ground then peaked slightly before descending back into the vast sprawling expanse that was the plains.
“And here we are,” Constantine announced, the wagon turning under us as the driver readjusted our course, angling the vehicle towards a distant line of earthworks that slowly appeared on the horizon. “About time too, because all this bouncing around in here is making my butt hurt. I need to get out of this thing and back onto solid ground.”
“Amaranth and I are going to have to agree with you there too,” I replied, wincing from stif
fness as I tried to stretch in my seated position. During our journey here, Amaranth had woken up from his brief nap and immediately begun to move, trying to find a new way to settle himself in the moving wagon. “These wagons are great for moving a ton of stuff, but they sure aren’t comfortable, and this cat has been complaining through our link non-stop about it.”
my familiar replied grumpily, letting out a loud croak of disapproval toward me.
“It’s definitely not the best ride, but it beats running hands-down though,” Drace chimed in, chuckling at Amaranth’s obvious displeasure. “Then we’d be exhausted and sweaty instead.”
“There is that,” I agreed wistfully, our conversation temporarily lapsing as we stared out towards the rapidly growing defenses.
Appearing similar to the defenses that we’d built in Aldford ages earlier, Valor’s Point was a display of what could be achieved with enough shovels, time, and determination. Set on top of the hill separating it from the plains, the rear of the base was bordered by a thick earthen wall, complete with a deep ditch cut out before it. Yet where we in Aldford had to make do with flat land and a surging river nearby when building our defenses, the hillfort found itself instead blessed with only stone protruding from the ground, which we had readily incorporated into our plans. The result had given birth to a near-seamless blend of earthwork and natural stone that I knew would frustrate any attacker’s attempt to assault.
Traveling closer to the base, my eyes landed on a large wooden bridge that spanned the trench that we’d dug, providing entrance into the place. Designed to be removed and pulled into the camp itself during an attack, the bridge ensured that should any force somehow manage to get behind the base that they simply wouldn’t be able to walk in uncontested. Set just past the bridge, I saw a pair of waiting sentries already waving in our direction, no doubt having seen our caravan’s approach and signaling to the others in the base for our arrival.
Glory to the Brave (Ascend Online Book 4) Page 29