Glory to the Brave (Ascend Online Book 4)

by Luke Chmilenko

  “That all depends on what truly happened,” Aryana replied, giving me a shrug as she exhaled a slow breath to steady her nerves. “Because without his using magic, I can’t imagine how Senzin would have killed a single person, let alone somehow several. While he may be skilled in his own regard, he is not a warrior capable of such. And if he did use his magic, despite being apparently collared, the orcs would have likely killed him on the spot.”

  “So it’s as good as a mystery when it comes to where he’s being kept in the camp then,” Constantine stated. “And we have no idea what actually happened to him to land him there in the first place. It might not even be related to the reason why the orcs started rounding up all their spellcasting slaves.”

  “I’ve put out a request amongst the slaves, asking if anyone knows the true story of what happened and where he might have been taken, but until then…” Aryana said, her voice trailing off for a few seconds before she resumed speaking. “I might be too hopeful in saying this, but there is a chance that he may have just been a bystander for whatever happened. Perhaps there was a conflict between the orc slavemasters and the arakissi and a fight broke out. There is certainly no love lost between them, and it would not be the first time that one occurred.”

  “Or,” Berwyn added in his trademark flat tone, “whatever Senzin did or was caught doing is what prompted the orcs to take action and begin collecting the slaves for questioning in the first place.”

  “That…is possible as well,” the woman agreed, inclining her head towards the monk. “Though I truly hope not. Senzin’s role in our plans was easily the most sensitive of ours and much relied on him remaining outside of any action that would bring him risk for as long as possible. Because aside from helping Garr and the other earthspeakers to create the ritual to blight the gardens, his task was to try and secure an escape from Khudazal for as many of us as possible.”

  “Right, I remember you mentioning that briefly,” I said, recalling the basic overview that Aryana had given me of the resistance’s plan during the hurried conversations we’d had before splitting up. “But where exactly were you all thinking to escape to in the first place? The only way I can see out of this place is straight into the forest and that’s just…”

  “What? Crazy? Suicidal?” Aryana suggested with a raised eyebrow after I trailed off. “If so, then good. It is our hope that the orcs will think the same thing as well and choose not to chase us beyond a token effort.”

  “Wait, are you serious?” I asked, caught a little off guard by what she’d said. “You were planning on leading the slaves straight into the Hartwyld?”

  “Not entirely, no,” Aryana replied, shaking her head. “At least not unless things turned truly, and I mean truly, desperate and there was no other choice. A death by the creatures of the forest would be a much cleaner and quicker one than the orcs would give us should we manage to blight even one of the gardens and fail to escape afterward. At the very least, I would expect a punitive cull of those who remained behind, either by being forcefully turned into one of those abominations or being worked to death until starvation took us.”

  “I suppose that’s fair,” I said, unable to find fault in the woman’s logic, as morbid as it might be. Even without being given extra reason, the orcs were cruel enough in their treatment of the slaves, and I could only imagine what they’d do if they decided to be purposefully vengeful. “So what’s your plan?”

  “It was to escape into the Fens of Swyn by way of the Hartwyld,” Aryana answered, her eyes scanning over each of us as she spoke. “It is our hope that with a bit of speed, luck, and timely intervention that we would be able to avoid most of the creatures of the forest as well as Sthera’s forces to regroup with Senzin’s clan or one of their allies. It was his task to ensure that they were ready and in position to aid us once the time came.”

  “Hang on a second there,” Cassius said eagerly. “You’re saying that like Senzin has a way of contacting his people from inside here. Does he?”

  “After a fashion, yes,” Aryana replied, nodding at the man. “Among his people, Senzin is known as something called an astral walker. It is a type of mystic that is able to cast his presence to others he has met regardless of the distance between them. Ever since we have been able to free him from his collar and allowed him to regain his magic, he has worked to reach out to those among his clan. Last I heard, they were making great progress in preparing to help us…but that was several days ago. I have no idea how things may have progressed since.”

  “A-are you serious?” Cassius demanded the instant that Aryana finished speaking. “You’re certain he can really talk to people at a distance? He’s just not saying he can, right? Because if it’s true…”

  “I know it sounds surreal, but I can assure you that he is not lying,” the woman assured, turning her head to look directly at the man as she replied. “I held similar reservations until I saw him appear before me for the first time, despite knowing he was on the opposite side of the city. Furthermore, without his ability, I daresay that this resistance would have likely floundered in its infancy. It allowed us a way to pass messages between us without physically needing to meet, something that the orcs would have certainly noticed if given enough time.”

  “Shit, if that’s the case, then finding Senzin just became critical,” Cassius said, his voice tinged with excitement as he turned his attention towards me. “Think of the possibilities, Lyr. If we can manage to save him and make contact with these other arakissi he’s allied with, then we can potentially open up a second front against the orcs here. And actually have help in dealing with them. Plus they’ll likely have adventurers of their own too.”

  “That certainly would be helpful,” I said slowly as I considered what Aryana had told us about the lizardman. “But I can’t help but wonder if it’s because of his ability that he might have been taken? If he was confronted by Sthera’s people, then maybe they finally caught on to what he was capable of.”

  “That…could be possible,” Aryana replied, looking a bit startled at that thought. “I hadn’t really considered that they may have been able to detect his magic. We’ve been using it for so long without any consequence…”

  “Then it’s probably a good thing that those arakissi ended up dead,” Constantine mused.

  “Perhaps you are right,” the resistance leader agreed, pausing for a moment to think. “But if Sthera came seeking Senzin purposefully, then her minion’s death won’t stop her for long. It’s only a matter of time before they send more looking for him.”

  “Then we better not give it to them,” Cassius stated. “Because beyond what’s happening to Senzin, it looks like everything is starting to come to a head. The orcs reinforcements are on the move to Aldford, and the Dread Crew are in danger of finding the blightspikes you’ve all been hiding. If we don’t do something soon, like today, we might miss our chance entirely.”

  “I am tempted to agree to that,” Aryana said, her tone taking on a faint sense of urgency as she spoke. “Because while I was hoping that we would have had a little bit more time to finish our preparations, there are too many things happening at once to chalk them up to coincidence. The enemy knows something of our plans and is looking to ruin it. We can’t let them do so without a fight.”

  “I don’t disagree with either of you ,” I said as a chorus of agreements rose up from among our group. “But I have a feeling that’s all easier said than done. Because from what we’ve outlined just now, there are a ton of moving pieces that are all depending on one another, and we have a hell of a lot of unknowns to deal with.

  “First and foremost, we need to find a way to rescue Garr and his earthspeakers from the camp he was taken to, because without them, we can’t blight the gardens and hit the orcs where it’ll hurt the most,” I stated as I began to run through our objectives in sequence. “But at the same time, since we’ll be in there already, we’ll also need to try and find Senzin, who unlike Garr, is being kept somewhe
re unknown, forcing us to burn time and search for him. Then also on top of those two objectives, we have the slave breakout, which now that I think about it, I’m a little hazy about. How exactly are we supposed to organize that?”

  “You, specifically, aren’t supposed to at all,” Aryana answered, placing a heavy emphasis on the first word of her sentence. “The slave breakout has already long since been planned and the groundwork laid out weeks ago. It was one of the first things that we prepared for as we built the resistance over the last few months. All it would take is some time to spread the word amongst the other resistance members, and they would do the rest. There are even plans to create distractions amongst the orcs in the city in order to give us more time before they are able to respond to our attempt to free the slaves.”

  “That’s a relief, then,” I replied, happy that there was at least one less thing to worry about. “Okay, so after we’ve broken Garr—and hopefully also Senzin—out from the camp, we then need to actually blight the gardens using their ritual, which from what I understand, requires the caster to be actually in them, right?”

  “That is correct,” Aryana said. “From what I understand myself, each of the gardens needs to be blighted with their own separate rituals to trigger the blightspikes that we’ve implanted amongst the crops.”

  “Which is where I see us having our first major hurdle. How are we going to get to all three gardens in time if the orcs have rounded up all of Garr’s people together in one place?” I stated as I continued to run through the course of events. “Because once we free them, we’ll be rushing out of the southernmost camp, which is about as far away as possible from the northern garden. In order to get to it, we would have to either cut through the city, which is probably a terrible idea if you’re planning your own distractions there, or waste more time taking the long way around it. Not to mention too, we’ll need to split our group up three ways, instead of two if we’re going to escort them to where they need to be, and I’m not so sure that’s a great idea. We would be spread far too thin if something drastically wrong happened.”

  “You mean when something drastically wrong happens,” Constantine corrected, “because I highly doubt that the orcs are going to let us walk out of the camp unopposed, especially once the slaves start rioting.”

  “Neither of you is wrong in what you say,” Aryana answered, giving us both a nod as we finished speaking. “I thought the same thing the moment I heard that the orcs had brought everyone to the same camp. Fortunately, however, we’ve made sure to have a handful of contingency plans in case the blighting ritual failed or we were discovered early.

  “For this situation, I believe that our best plan would be to lead the escaping slaves from the northern camp into the garden to do as much damage as possible before continuing deeper into the forest. It wouldn’t be nearly as effective as the blighting ritual, but there are enough supplies within each of the gardens that we would be able to set several fires amongst the crops, which with some luck could potentially spread to consume all of it.”

  “And possibly a good part of the forest if it gets really out of control,” Halcyon pointed out a little hesitantly, his eyes noticeably flicking towards Constantine as he spoke.

  “If we are fortunate, perhaps it will,” Aryana replied, the prospect of starting a forest fire clearly the opposite of a concern for her. “But with how wet the season has been of late, and how quickly I would expect the orcs to douse any blaze to save the crops, I highly doubt it will spread any farther than the garden itself. If it does, then it will serve as good cover for the escaping slaves.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll have to do for the northern garden,” I said while mentally checking off that particular roadblock, realizing that our meeting had somehow seamlessly switched into a planning session of what we were going to do next.

  Not that there was really any doubt that we would be getting involved here, I thought as I went on to consider the next potential issue that I saw, silently hoping that whatever desperate plan that we ended up cobbling together here would be enough to see us through.

  Because if it didn’t, it would be Aldford that paid the ultimate price for our failure.

  “Okay,” I said as I took a deep breath and tried to settle my sudden bout of nerves that had my hands shaking. “So the next snag I see after that…”

  Chapter 42

  Monday, April 22nd, 2047 – 12:02 a.m.

  My heart raced as I shifted my position slowly, bringing my body forward yet another foot. As I did, a line of sweat dripped down my face as I paused to listen for any signs that I’d been spotted, the cacophonous thunder of drums ahead making it difficult to hear anything above its incessant noise.

  Almost there, I announced mentally as a stray breeze mercifully passed over me, giving me a brief respite from the hot night air. Just a little farther…

  Breathing out a slow sigh, I lifted my head slowly and angled it towards my destination, my eyes fixating on the distant row of wooden spikes now just barely thirty feet ahead of me. It had taken us the better part of an hour to get this close to the slave camp without being spotted, the few roving sentries that the orcs had posted more than enough to warrant a cautious approach. Lowering my head back down, I paused for a second and checked party sense, silently hoping that everything was still going according to plan. After a few seconds of concentration, I became vaguely aware of Amaranth, Kilgore, and Constantine a short distance behind me, with Cassius and Berwyn farther towards the west, making a similar approach on the opposite side of the camp. The other, less stealthy members of the group, I sensed waiting patiently farther behind us and out of sight, their task to intervene if something went horribly wrong or once the slave riot began.

  So far, so good. Now, where are those orcs? I asked impatiently as I stared up at camp ahead and the stretch of rough dirt separating it from us. We’d crept as close as the cover allowed, the creeping undergrowth of the forest that we’d been hiding in ending abruptly a few feet before me, making the final approach to the camp a question of speed, rather than skill. But even that wouldn’t matter if we ended up sprinting directly into an orc, or worse, an entire group of them. They’re late coming around this time.

  Forcing myself to channel all the patience that I could muster, I settled in to wait, my eyes fixated on the camp ahead, waiting for the overdue patrol to appear. Minutes slowly ticked by with no sign of the sentinels, causing my mind to wander towards anxiety, thinking that something, somehow, had gone wrong with our plan.

  Stop it, Marc, I hissed mentally as I felt my thoughts go astray, forcing them instead to shift towards my responsibilities. Don’t stress about what the others are supposed to be doing or what isn’t happening on schedule. Your job is to find Garr and the others. Focus on that and what you’re supposed to do afterward. The rest of it will either fall into place, or it won’t, and you can worry about it when it happens. Not before.

  Exhaling a slow sigh as my thoughts came to an end, I risked a slight movement to rub the sweat out of my eyes along with the growing exhaustion that was also beginning to rear its ugly head. It had been a long day since we’d started planning our attempt to rescue Garr and the others earlier this afternoon, the hours since having blurred into a flurry of activity as we worked to put it into motion. Faced with a wide variety of tasks and objectives to accomplish and not nearly enough time to do them all in, that had forced us all to split up once again, each of us tackling our assigned responsibilities.

  For the spellcasters in our group, that task involved them helping prepare the rest of the blighting ritual, Caius, Halcyon, and Theia working along with the other resistance members to craft the remaining blightspikes that were needed to finish seeding the gardens. While they focused on that task, those that were exceptionally skilled in remaining unseen, a prestigious group that included Constantine, Kilgore, and Aryana, worked to procure more of the special keys we needed to unlock the mana-draining collars that the orc slavemasters he
ld. That then left it to us to try and plan out just how we were going to find a way into the slave camp where Garr, Senzin, and the others were being held, hopefully without alerting everyone in the process.

  Finding the camp easily after leaving the garden, we spent the remainder of the morning and the majority of the afternoon carefully observing it, trying to find any feasible way of gaining entrance without being detected. At first glance, the task seemed to be impossible as we initially inspected the camp, or perhaps more aptly put, suicidal, given the size of our group and how busy the various comings and goings of both orcs and slaves were. It seemed that every few minutes there was either a group leaving or arriving without any sort of schedule that we could determine. Fortunately for us, though, the orcs had designed the camp to only have a single entrance, which made it easy for us to make sure that none of those we were looking to rescue were moved from the place. But despite the constant activity surrounding the slave camp preventing us from figuring out an easy way into the place, it did give us a perfect opportunity to account for something that we hadn’t fully considered up until that point: the levels of everyone coming and going.

  Stretching from a measly level two goblin worker to a potent level twenty-eight orc warrior, the levels that we saw among the camp varied wildly with the majority of those in the camp leaning towards the midpoint of the range. At first, we were a little confused about why there was such a drastic level difference for this particular area, something that we’d certainly not seen during our battles with the orcs so far, or among the reinforcements I’d seen depart earlier. But after we gave the matter some thought, we easily came to the conclusion why.