Glory to the Brave (Ascend Online Book 4)

by Luke Chmilenko

  Followed immediately behind by another and another, the rapid flash of auric light caused everyone in the square to turn towards it.

  Feeling my stomach completely drop out from beneath me as I saw what I knew to be the telltale flash of respawning adventurers, I forced myself through the crowd and towards its source, arriving in time to see a familiar face appear.

  “Freya!” I exclaimed in a hushed tone as the blonde woman abruptly shimmered into existence barely an arm’s length away, prompting me to rush forward towards her just in time to offer a steady arm to catch as the effects of death sickness visibly washed over her.

  “Lyrian, you’re back,” she breathed in an exhausted voice as she turned to look at me in surprise, fresh lines of corruption that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen her visible across her face. “I-I’m afraid we just lost Valor’s Point.”

  Chapter 51

  “We never had a chance of stopping them,” Freya announced in a tired voice from beside me as we stood at the head of the room, our eyes scanning over the assembled crowd of adventurers and townsfolk staring back at us, an aura of palpable exhaustion and nervousness emanating from them.

  “I know that’s a cliché and even useless thing to say,” the woman continued a second after her first words faded from the air, her gaze continuing to wander from face to face as she spoke. “But for those of you who were there with me, you know it’s the simplest and most accurate truth I can offer. One minute the orcs were settling in for the night, then the next, they were all rushing towards us. And by all, I mean all. From what little I was able to catch as the battle began, they didn’t even leave a reserve behind. They all just…charged forward in a complete rage, unlike anything that we’ve faced so far before.”

  A wave of muffled murmurs followed the woman’s words as she paused to allow everyone a chance to process what she’d said, and also for those in the crowd who had participated in the battle to share their own experiences with those around them.

  It had been a long night since the fall of Valor’s Point, the hours since I’d first seen Freya and all of the other adventurers respawn in the town square filled with a flurry of activity and all-too-little sleep. Reacting first with shock and surprise at the loss of our base, our immediate concern afterward was to secure Aldford against the possibility of a follow-up attack. Manning the walls of the town’s now mostly finished palisade while we sent out a wave of scouts to find the enemy, we all found ourselves battling exhaustion as we waited for their report. Eventually, after staring into the night gloom for what felt like ages, our scouts finally returned, confirming that the orcs hadn’t pressed any further than claiming the now razed remains of Valor’s Point. Relieved that we wouldn’t have to fight, it was only then that we let ourselves finally relax, standing down from our alert and attempting to find what rest we could before the new day began.

  Which as they often do after a crisis, began far too soon for our liking, leaving us bleary-eyed and exhausted as we tried to figure how to pick up the pieces that our defeat had left us with.

  With one of the worst pieces being the fact that we’re all dead tired and are running on, at best, four hours of sleep, if not less, I thought as I looked out towards the assembled group of people staring back at us while trying to hide my own exhaustion. Comprised of the leaders from Aldford’s various factions, including Garr and his companions, the assembled group represented all of the major decision-makers in the town, which were eager to find out what happened earlier in the night.

  At least those who already don’t know, I added as I scanned over both Aldwin and Veronia’s face standing on one side of the room, before continuing onwards into the crowd. Among the adventurers, it was easy for me to pick out those who had been there for the attack by the subtle symptoms of death sickness, the not-yet even eight hours since the attack leaving the effects of the debuff still active. Those so afflicted gazed up towards the front with glassy eyes as they tried to listen to Freya, a small portion of them having missed being online for the battle, logging on this morning to find the chaotic memories flooding into them.

  “We did our best to hit them with everything that we had as they charged us, but nothing we did had any effect. They just kept coming, completely ignoring their losses as they smashed straight through our defenses and started to pour into the base, claiming the first two switchbacks in less than ten minutes,” I heard Freya continue once the chatter began to fade. “It was once they were threatening the third, without I might add, the help of their constructs or spirits, that I determined that the battle was lost and ordered the abandonment of the base. Because of this, we were able to save all the non-adventurers stationed at the base, along with all of our surviving ballista and supplies without turning it over to the orcs.”

  There was a second pause as Freya fell silent once again. But this time instead of giving everyone a chance to catch up, it was her that needed a few seconds extra to find the words that she was looking for.

  “This…success as many of you have already found out, came at a substantial price, unfortunately,” she said, finding her stride once more. “As of our current count, we have seventy-four adventurers with at least one lost soul fragment at Valor Point. Fragments that at the moment we are not likely to recover before they decay significantly, if not completely. This represents a fairly serious loss in both skill and ability among the afflicted adventurers that we are unfortunately going to have to absorb and find a way to overcome.

  “That said, however,” Freya continued, “this loss is somewhat mitigated by the casualties that we managed to inflict on the orcs during their reckless attack, which were quite large. More so than any battle that we’ve fought with the orcs so far.”

  Reacting on cue to her statement, it was at that point that the woman shared the battle summary with all of the assembled adventurers, giving those who hadn’t been there a glance at how the battle had gone. Despite having seen the summary myself earlier, I choose to pull it up along with all the others, skimming over it so I could keep pace with Freya’s report, knowing that my part was coming up all too soon.

  Battle Summary War: The Town of Aldford vs. The Dread Crew & Orc Tribes of Khudazal

  Tuesday, April 23rd – The Second Battle for Valor’s Point

  Outcome: Defeat

  Allied Player Casualties: 101

  Allied War Assets Destroyed: 5

  Enemy Player Casualties: 16

  Enemy Non-Player Casualties: 431

  Enemy War Assets Lost: 8

  “With the late arrival of both the corrupted spirits and the constructs to the battle, we estimate that the attack on Valor’s Point cost the orcs no less than three hundred and fifty orcs and goblins, in addition to a handful of spirits and constructs. A stunning number, all things considered,” Freya continued after giving the adventurers a chance to skim over the battle summary. “Enough so, that the invaders have chosen to dig in and settle into what’s left of Valor’s Point rather than immediately press forward towards Aldford. Based on our initial reports overnight and this morning, they are looking to stay put and lick their wounds, likely until their reinforcements start arriving from Khudazal, which as you all already know could potentially be substantial.”

  Loud murmurs of agreement and worry rose up from amid the crowd, prompting Freya to hold a hand up to quiet them before they rose of control.

  “I know that you all have questions about this, but if you wouldn’t mind to hold them until the end, we would appreciate it,” she said as the room quieted. “We do actually have some good news to offer here in this meeting, along with a few revelations that will more than likely change your perspective of this war entirely. For that though, I will leave it to Lyrian, who as you can all see, is now back among us.”

  And that’s my cue there, I thought as stepped forward to take Freya’s place once she finished speaking, the woman taking a relieved step backward.

  “Good morning,” I said, seeing everyone’
s attention shift towards me eagerly, the few whispers that lingered throughout the meeting room falling abruptly silent. While we hadn’t kept our raid on Khudazal a strict secret from everyone, we also hadn’t made it an announcement either, only telling those who absolutely needed to know and letting the others focus on actively fighting the orcs. But with the popularity of the Dread Crew’s leaked feed that had prompted the whole thing, it hadn’t taken long for rumors to form once it was known that we’d gone somewhere.

  Rumors that then grew like wildfire after we’d returned with Garr and the other gronn accompanying us.

  “Now as I’m sure you are all aware, there have been quite a few rumors about just where exactly a few of us have been for the last couple days,” I said as I began my speech. “And I’m happy to confirm that those about us going off to raid Khudazal were correct. With how hard we’d been forced on the defensive, what we needed most was to try and find a way to hit the orcs where it would hurt them most. And despite what’s happened to Valor’s Point last night, I am happy to be able to stand here in front of you all and tell you that we did exactly that. In fact, we’re fairly certain it is because of our raid that the orcs attacked our base so savagely in retaliation.”

  Hooking everyone with my opening words, I spent the next several minutes briefing everyone about the details of our raid on Khudazal as well as what we’d managed to learn from it. Starting first with our journey through the Hartwyld and continuing through until we blighted the gardens, I left little out, only omitting details for the sake of brevity. During that time, I also made a point to introduce Garr and the other gronn that had joined us, the group having been a consistent point of interest for the assembled crowd, their eyes darting over towards them and back every few minutes.

  “So, based on what we’ve learned from our raid, we now know that the orcs are involved in a sprawling three front war spread across the greater region—one that until yesterday morning they’ve been steadily winning,” I said at one point as I began to wind my explanation down. “But with our success in both managing to free the slaves that they’d captured as well as destroy a substantial portion of their food production, we’ve finally managed to turn the tables on them. This advantage won’t last forever, though, so we’re going to have to work fast to make the most of it, which as I’m sure you all know by now is code for ‘I hope you all got enough sleep last night’.”

  I paused for a bit to allow a polite wave of chuckles and grumbles to wash over the room, the earlier nervousness and anxiety that we’d started off our meeting with having faded somewhat. In its place was now a tired stoicism as everyone prepared themselves for what I had to say next.

  “So, with that said, we have two goals for the day today. The first of them is to figure out just where exactly we stand after last night,” I eventually continued once the voices died down and everyone was listening again. “Because with the loss of Valor’s Point, we’ve also lost our vantage point to oversee the plains, effectively allowing the orcs to move across it without our knowing. This is something that we can’t allow, at least not until we can confirm if the orc reinforcements that we saw at Khudazal are truly heading towards us, or if they’ve been sent somewhere else.

  “Or, if by some stroke of luck, they have been recalled back to Khudazal to deal with the chaos we left there,” I added, despite not really considering that to be a likely outcome. With how badly we’d managed to bloody the orcs’ noses at Khudazal, I expected them to press forward towards us out of the desire for revenge if nothing else.

  Which hopefully we can somehow use to our advantage if they do, I thought hopefully before continuing to speak.

  “Whatever the case, however, figuring out what we’re dealing with on the orc front will be key on how we proceed forward in terms of grand strategy,” I said while looking over the crowd. “Because until we know for certain when or if the orc reinforcements are coming, especially if they are armed with that massive construct we saw in the feed, we can’t afford to risk trying to retake Valor’s Point. The last thing that we want to do is to risk a total wipe, then we’ll have even more of our adventurers’ soul fragments trapped behind enemy lines. Or even worse, risk having some of them captured.

  “Now to that end, what we will be looking to do is to send a handful of volunteers through the Hartwyld along with one of our new gronn allies,” I went onto explain, giving the assembled adventurers an overview of the druidic Presence of Nature ability and how it had helped us in our return trip from Khudazal. “It will then be this team’s job to find the orc reinforcements—if they are still coming—while remaining undetected for as long as possible. They will become our eyes and ears on the plains going forward.

  “While this team is collecting the intelligence that we need on the plains, the bulk of our forces are going to focus on Valor’s Point. Which is to say that we’re going to make sure that the orcs don’t have a chance to do anything more than try and hold the place until help arrives. The details of how to best do this will, as always, be up to our field commanders. However, this time we will be working under a scorched earth policy. That is to say that those commanders will now have free rein on how best to deny the orcs the use and access to the Greenwood, Webwood, Hartwyld, and anything else in between.”

  The room abruptly fell into a deep silence as I finished speaking, what little chatter that there’d been fading away in light of my statement. Up until this point, even with all the fighting that we’d endured, there had been a few hard limits to our rules of engagement, one of them, in particular, being not to purposefully damage our neighboring forests any more than absolutely necessary. Together they represented an incredible wealth of resources for the area and had been instrumental in Aldford’s growth over the last few weeks.

  An incredible wealth of resources that I’d just authorized to be burnt to ash, so the orcs wouldn’t be able to use them against us.

  “I know that some of you think that this might be an extreme measure to take,” I said, breaking the stillness that had fallen over the room. “But it is one that we believe is critical if we are to truly take advantage of our attack on Khudazal. By denying the orcs the chance to live off the land in any meaningful fashion, we hope to exacerbate their logistical troubles, especially when it comes to food. Because as I’m sure you’ve all heard countless times before, an army marches on its stomach, and an army of orcs is going to have a particularly large stomach to fill.”

  There was a mixed rumble of both assent and concern from the crowd as they all began to murmur in response to my statement.

  “However, with that said, the orcs aren’t the only ones who will be facing logistical issues in the coming days,” I said, pressing onwards before the growing noise could get out of control, my eye landing on a particular group of adventurers standing all together on one side of the room. “Because as you are all aware by now, we have our own reinforcements coming, some of whom have already arrived, which brings us to our second goal for the day: to figure out how exactly to prepare for them given our current situation, assuming that we are even able to do so at all.

  “This is particularly important because while the arrival of more people can only help in our war against the orcs, the sheer amount of them that are making their way towards us is overwhelmingly more than anything we ever expected to deal with. We are still trying to get a sense of exactly how many new arrivals we might be dealing with, but at the moment, we are expecting at least a thousand. That number likely to only increase upwards from there as we get better information of what’s coming.

  “As many of you have no doubt already realized, this is already more than we could ever possibly hope to even fit behind Aldford’s walls should the orcs manage to push forward from Valor’s Point,” I went on to say, after seeing several eyes widen from among the adventurers in the room. “Especially since only a portion of these new arrivals will be combat-capable—the remainder being refugees and other folk that have been displaced d
ue to the guild wars now consuming Coldscar. The last thing that we want to do is make them easy targets for the orcs to either kill or capture by settling them directly outside of Aldford, which means we will need to find another place to do so. Somewhere preferably that the orcs will not be easily able to find or get to should we find ourselves besieged and unable to help them directly.

  “Fortunately, though,” I said as I began to finally wind my long speech down. “We still have a couple days to figure this out before they all arrive. During that time, myself and others will be reaching out to a few of you here to help figure out how we can best coordinate this and what our options are going forward. In addition too, with all of the new adventurers coming, we as a town will be counting on your collective leadership to ensure that few to no issues arise as they get settled to our way of doing things out here. We already have one imposing enemy bearing down on us from the outside, and the last thing we need right now are internal problems to divide our focus.”

  With those last words echoing through the air, I allowed myself a short pause to take a breath and look over the crowd, which was noticeably more alert now than it had been at the start of our meeting.

  “I know that this has been a lot to take in all once,” I said, while mentally bracing myself for what was about to come. “Which is why, as Freya mentioned earlier, we’ve set some time aside to go over some of the details that we’ve both just outlined before we all need to get on with our day.

  “So, with all of that said, are there any questions?”