Glory to the Brave (Ascend Online Book 4)

by Luke Chmilenko

“To an extent,” the warrior answered with a sigh. “Before, when I was still young, their incursions almost always revolved around either gaining territory for an expanding tribe or raiding for food and other supplies. Slaves were occasionally taken in these raids as well; however, it was never a unified push with a great number of tribes behind it. Often times it began with a mad and reckless assault with a single or occasionally, a pair of tribes, focused on some short-term goal, then ending just as quickly when we rallied, or their own infighting ruined their momentum. This war, on the other hand, had a dozen, if not more, tribes behind it.”

  “However, regardless of those changes in orc tactics,” he continued, his voice hardening as he spoke. “We might have been able to stand up to their attacks if it hadn’t been for one of the tribe’s warlords, Krol, and his heralds.”

  “Aryana told us a bit about him,” I said, recalling our conversations with the resistance leader. “She told us that he was responsible for unifying the orcs together again after our war.”

  “That and so much more. For he is a defiler unlike any other in memory,” Garr answered in a savage tone, taking over for Arcturus. “Bearing powers and magic that we had no answer for. Worse amongst them being the corruption that now plagues us.

  “But all of that we discovered later in the war, for, in the beginning, Krol’s and his followers’ influence amongst the orcs was muted, and their tribe was among the smallest. Yet as the war unfolded, they easily proved to be the deadliest and most vicious of the orcs. Wherever they appeared, their magic soon spoiled what food we had been able to harvest and store, followed by the corruption they wielded, weakening our warriors until they were too weak to stand unaided, let alone fight,” Garr said, pausing for a few seconds as his voice broke with anger and grief. “And, of course, they were responsible for the monstrosities that began to appear.”

  “I’m sorry, Garr,” I offered softly, feeling the pain in the man’s voice as he recounted that part of his story.

  “It was the arrival of those new horrors that truly broke the war for us, the sheer number of them forcing us back to Kata, where the orcs besieged us, content to trap us in place while they continued their war elsewhere,” Garr said, offering me a nod in thanks as he continued to speak. “By the time mid-spring arrived, the clanhold’s fall seemed all but guaranteed, with the only option seemingly left being to sell our lives as dearly as we could when our defenses failed. But despite the certain death and enslavement that awaited us, we refused to stand idle and simply wait for the orcs to come over our walls. Instead, we turned to our own magics in hopes of answer and began a spirit calling ritual unlike any of our shamans have ever attempted before. One to call a great spirit that we prayed would bring succor to us—or if failing that, avenge us.

  “And so, with the orcs baying at our walls, we prepared for the calling, spending nearly a week to lay the groundwork for the ritual,” Garr continued, his eyes alternating between Amaranth and I as he spoke. “Then, once it was ready, we began.

  “For three days and three nights did we work the ritual,” he went onto explain. “And for three days and three nights did we weather a nigh-unstoppable onslaught from the orcs, their shamans and adepts having sensed the scope if not the purpose of our ritual. Yet despite their best efforts, we only barely kept them at bay. Our defenders buying every precious hour we needed for the ritual to complete with rivers of blood. Then finally, when we thought we could last no longer, the ritual finished, and a spirit answered our call.

  “Or at least what we thought was just a spirit,” Garr said, pausing to clear his throat, losing himself briefly in a memory. “I wish I had the words to describe its vengeance when it took the field against the orcs. But anything I could offer would pale in light of what had actually happened. In just hours after the ritual’s completion, the orcs besieging the walls and those gathered beyond were scattered like leaves on the wind.

  “It wasn’t until afterward, once the orcs were broken, that we’d realized what had truly answered our call for aid. It hadn’t been a great spirit of the land as we’d intended, but an ancestral spirit of our people. A spirit out of legend named ‘The Shasine’. On returning from the battle, it told us that we needed to flee, that it would not be able to protect us for a second time when the orcs returned with renewed numbers. It tore at us to abandon all those that had been captured by the orcs or remained besieged in other clanholds, but there was little else that we could do. To linger was to risk death or enslavement, and if we were to have any hope at surviving, we had to flee.”

  “And so that is what we did when the sun broke the sky the next morning,” Arcturus said, switching once more with Garr. “With the Shasine’s protection and guidance, we then escaped past the broken orcs and fled as fast we could manage, the spirit promising to lead us to a safe sanctuary where we could recover and hopefully rebuild our society.

  “Unfortunately, however, the orcs were quick to react from their defeat, and before long, we found ourselves harassed relentlessly, at first in small numbers, then in larger ones as entire warbands moved to cut off our escape. Their delaying tactics eventually allowed for Krol and several other tribes to catch up to us when we were just shy of finally reaching our promised refuge,” he continued with a note of finality in his voice. “It was there that they offered us the same ultimatum that we’d often heard throughout the war for one final time. Surrender and be allowed to live as slaves or refuse and die.”

  “That isn’t much of a choice,” I replied in a soft voice, feeling a low surge of anger course through me at the gronn’s words.

  “We did not think of it as much of one either,” Garr agreed. “And so, their offer was rebuked, followed by what we thought would be our end as they moved to see their threat through. Yet to our surprise, as the other orc tribes advanced towards us, Krol and his tribe did not join them. Instead, they stood apart and watched the battle from afar.”

  “Hang on a second. He did nothing at all?” Halcyon interrupted, all of us having hung on all of the two gronns’ words so far. “Even after chasing you all that way?”

  “Oh, he did far from nothing,” Garr replied, putting a special emphasis on the final word as he shook his head, a scowl coming across his face. “It was just that his actions were not directed at us for the majority of the battle.”

  “It wasn’t?” I asked, noticing the man’s expression and choice of words. “What do you mean?”

  “He turned against his people,” Garr stated in a flat voice, his hazel eyes moving upwards to meet mine. “He waited until the battle between us and the other tribes was fully joined, and then began to work his magics against his allies, ravaging them as he once ravaged us.”

  “He did what?” I exclaimed in shock. “Why the hell would he do that?”

  “Why else do orcs turn commonly on one another, Lyrian?” Garr asked in a soft voice. “To rid themselves of a rival.”

  “A rival?” I repeated, feeling my eyes widen as a realization then crossed my mind. “You mean the other tribes.”

  “Indeed,” he answered with a nod before continuing the story. “At first, we didn’t understand what was happening as the orcs collapsed in on themselves and their corrupted monstrosities began to tear through their own ranks. But within short order, we began to see Krol and his followers viciously slaughtering the other orcs.”

  “But for all the attention his followers paid to slaying his rivals, Krol himself had his mind focused upon a greater goal,” Garr said, anger lacing his voice as he glanced back into the fire, its flames dancing in his eyes as he spoke. “The Shasine.

  “Striding across the battlefield as a moth would to a flame, he bore no hesitation in approaching the spirit, a great well of dark magic forming itself around the weapon he carried. Then, just when he stepped within reach of the Shasine, he struck, the scythe he bore carving a vicious wound into its side and sending it falling to the ground, writhing in agony.”

  “He did that with just
one spell?” I asked in disbelief, glancing between Arcturus and Garr. “How?”

  “We do not know,” Garr stated in a quiet voice. “But whatever his goal with the attack, it only served to stun the spirit for an instant, the Shasine rising up afterward with truly unrestrained fury, even more so than what we saw after its calling. It smote Krol with enough force to see him thrown across the battlefield, the two of them exchanging a blinding torrent of magic as they warred with one another. The result was enough to ravage everything around them—enough so that it broke all of our forces, causing us all to flee from the chaos.”

  “Which unfortunately for most of us here, ended up being the wrong decision to make,” Arcturus said, his head thrusting forward to indicate Garr and the other gronn accompanying us. “Lost and confused in the fog of war, we fled in the direction of what we thought were our people, but instead, we found ourselves deep amongst the enemy. Some took the opportunity to fight to the death…while others, such as us, were not afforded such a luxury and were taken as slaves.”

  “Damn,” I whispered quietly to myself as the story reached its climax, finding myself nearly speechless as a result. “So you all don’t even know what happened to your people then? After the battle, I mean.”

  “Only vague whispers and rumors from those who were captured later than us,” Garr answered with a shake of his head. “Some speak of our people escaping in the aftermath of the battle, while others said they wandered across fields of dead, seeing no living soul as far as they searched. The only common word that we heard from the chaos was that both Krol and the Shasine survived their exchange with one another, but each with serious injuries.”

  “So then you don’t know if your people made it in the end,” Constantine said. “To wherever the spirit was taking you.”

  “No, I am afraid we do not—not for certain at least,” Garr replied. “And even if they did, we have no idea if they have survived since, for it has been a season since our capture and enslavement within Khudazal. It is possible that none survived the battle, or if they did, that they’ve been slaughtered by the orcs since.”

  “But,” the druid added in a hopeful tone, “if the Shasine did truly survive the battle with Krol, then there is hope that my people may have found a way to survive and are yet still fighting this war as best as they can manage.”

  “And you want to find and rejoin them if they still are,” I said, now having a much better understanding of the gronn’s motivation as well as their curiosity about my condition.

  “We do,” Garr affirmed with a nod. “And if we are able to return to them with a way of mitigating or even curing the corruption…then perhaps all the suffering and death that we’ve endured will have been worth it.”

  “I see,” I replied, pausing to weigh my next words carefully. “And if there is anything that we can do to help you all with that, we would be glad to. In the meantime, though—”

  “There is the more immediate concern of the horde of orcs heading towards your home,” Garr interjected with a nod. “Rest assured that we all full well understand the path that Fate has put us on and that if there is any chance of us reuniting with our people that it will not be until after Khudazal has fallen and the orcs within scattered. Or is that not what you were about to speak of?”

  “Um, it was actually,” I answered, any sheepishness I might have had fading away in the reassuring expressions I saw both on Garr and the other gronn. “And we appreciate the understanding.”

  “And we appreciate your rescue from what would have otherwise been a truly torturous end, while also allowing us to strike a blow against orcs in the process,” Arcturus stated in a gracious tone. “I would also like to say that if the only way to be reunited once again with our people happens to be by climbing over a mountain of dead orcs, then I would consider it a journey worth taking twice.”

  “So would we all,” Garr agreed with a growl, all of the other gronn following suit. Afterward, the man fixed all of us with a hopeful look, his eyes scanning among our ranks. “I hope now with our tale told that you all understand now where our hearts lie with regards to this war and what it has already cost us.”

  “We certainly do,” I replied, the gronns’ story having filled much of the context that we’d been missing from what I now realized was a colossally sized world event. One large enough that it completely dwarfed all of our experiences so far.

  Which all of this must have been leading up to, piece by piece, I thought in the back of my mind, recalling of all the minor events that had led us to this moment. I couldn’t help but wonder how events would have looked had we failed to stop Graves and the slave-king possessing him, or if not that, then the events of the Twilight Grove and the ruptured ley line. Maybe they would have headed this event off completely. Or hell, more likely, made it a thousand times worse. Especially if both Graves and Carver somehow ended up at the helm driving it.

  “Hey, if it’s okay to ask, I actually have a question after all of that,” Constantine said, his uncertain voice pulling me out my thoughts and causing me to shift over and look at him. “But it might be a little bit of a stupid one.”

  “In my experiences, there are few questions that truly are such,” Garr replied with a gentle shake of his head. “What is it that you wish to know? We would be more than happy to answer if we can.”

  “Well, maybe it’s less stupid, and more just basic,” Constantine said as more eyes started to shift over towards him. “But can you tell us what a spirit exactly is? Because in your story you mentioned something about both a great spirit and then an ancestral spirit, and I know we have all these…uh, regular spirits that we’ve been forced to deal with too. I’m starting to have a little bit of a hard time keeping track of them all and understand why they’re so different. Heck, until this all started, we didn’t even know that these kinds of spirits even existed in the first place.”

  “Truly you did not?” Garr replied in surprise, his eyes scanning over each of us as we all nodded in response to the rogue’s question. “Your people did not have any contact with the spirits of the land at all before this?”

  “Maybe some did, but by majority, no,” I said with a shake of my head as the druid’s gaze fell onto mine. “As a society, we tend to lean towards the arcane arts when it comes to magic. The closest thing that we ever would have come in contact with would be the spirits of the undead, such as ghosts and specters, and I know just enough to realize how different those two are from the spirits we fought earlier.”

  “As different as the day is to the night,” he stated. “This is a very good question to ask, and one that we will need to answer first before we can speak of the corruption.”

  Pausing to collect his thoughts, Garr fell silent as he considered what to say next, eventually speaking out in a confident voice. “To begin with, the simplest definition of a spirit would be to think of them as an aspect of the world around us. An easy example of this would be to look at the pure elemental spirits, which embody the more primal forces of nature. Elements such as fire, wind, water, and stone, to name a handful.”

  “Such spirits like these are the simplest in purpose and in thought. They simply exist as an extension of the element that birthed them and will quickly disperse when not in its presence,” the gronn continued to explain. “But above these primal spirits, there are more complex spirits that embody other and often more intricate aspects of nature. Examples of these can again be rather nebulous to define, such as those of the essences that you found, Lyrian, while others are as specific as a spirit representing that of a wolf.”

  “But aren’t wolves also alive?” Constantine asked as we all followed along with Garr’s explanation. “Wouldn’t a spirit of a wolf be the same thing as a ghost of a wolf then?”

  “Not necessarily,” he replied with a shake of his head. “For while the two may be similar in appearance, their purpose and embodiment vary greatly, if only for the simple fact that spirits are considered to still be alive while
ghosts are considered undead. It is perhaps too a fine distinction to make, but it is an important one. Beings that leave a ghost behind on their death are those who have died in the grip of great distress or emotional upheaval, or if not that, they have been cursed by dark magic to remain tethered to the mortal world.”

  “That part we are familiar with,” I said, recalling Shelia’s old explanation of how ghosts tended to fixate on a single purpose that was important to them in life. “The ghosts we’ve dealt with all died trying to protect a place, but they refused to pass on afterward. Instead, they thought they had to keep protecting it.”

  “And nothing in the world would ever change their mind on that,” Garr stated. “That is because only an echo of their past selves remain. Enough to have them endlessly repeating a single purpose, but not enough to actually think. In contrast, a spirit is completely aware of itself and its surroundings and can adapt to change.”

  “Okay, I think I understand that,” Constantine said with a nod to show that he was still following. “But how does that end up with a spirit wolf then if they aren’t quite ghosts? Or really any spirit animal for that matter?”

  “Because much like my example with the primal elements, a spirit animal is a representation of the very concept of an animal in question,” Garr answered patiently. “Or better described, it is the ideal vision of what the animal itself is. To use a wolf as an example once again, a spiritual version of itself would essentially be the simultaneous embodiment of the hunt, the pack, the wild, and all the countless other attributes of nature that help define it. It is even possible for a spirit animal to truly have been an animal once, having transcended into a spirit upon its death because these ideals were so potent within it. This is commonly how great spirits are born, for they are best described as true exemplars of a lesser spirit, both in the potency of their presence and the power they command.”

  “That…sounds really complicated,” I replied as I listened to the gronn’s description, finding his explanation a fair bit deeper than what I had been expecting.