Reacting immediately to my flippant response, I saw a look of terror pass across Hido’s face as he finally looked up from staring at the ground at my feet, his eyes shooting up towards mine. It was something that I half expected, given his beaten and downtrodden appearance. What I didn’t expect, however, was the similar, if much more muted, expression to pass across Carver’s face, his eyes widening first with fear which was quickly replaced by anger.
“I have killed gloried warlords who have spoken with far less insolence in my presence, let alone an enemy who believes they have a sharp tongue,” Zhul stated dangerously before either of the pair could reply, hints of cold rage echoing in his voice.
“And we have died more times than any of us can count anymore, so you’ll find the threat of death to be a poor motivator for us,” I replied back to the orc in a dismissive tone while doing my best to appear outwardly unfazed by his anger, while, in reality, my thoughts raced at the fear I’d seen on Carver’s face. In my experiences, the man had been near unflappable, so to see him show a second of unease in front of the orc was something far out of character.
“So you think,” the orc stated, his head turning to indicate Hido standing at his right. “But we are well aware of what your kind is capable of. If death does not break you, then there are other means that will.”
“Well, doesn’t that just sound positively ominous,” I replied, wondering if Zhul had done something to Hido to turn him into the person I saw before me now.
“It should,” Zhul growled, his tone becoming impatient. “Now enough of this. I have given you my demand. What is your answer?”
“Yeah, about that actually,” I replied back to the orc, “it was pretty vague. I think I’d need to hear more about the terms you’re offering.”
“Terms?” Zhul repeated as if the word was something disgusting in his mouth. “There are no terms. You and your people will surrender without reservation or deceit, where you will then be collared and tasked to labor for the glory of the Unshackled Horde until your dying day. If you resist, all that you hold dear will be razed to dust and ash.”
“Huh,” I grunted as I listened to the orc’s words. “So it’s slavery until death or just outright death. I think that might be a little bit of a hard bargain to sell to my people. I don’t suppose I can put forward my own terms, can I? Something that I think would be more…acceptable?”
“No,” Zhul stated angrily, the orc’s patience visibility beginning to fray as he spoke, which prompted another anxious look from both Hido and Carver. “You will take the generous offer that my master has offered, or you will burn. It is on his will alone that I stand here to extend it to you at all, despite all the trouble that you have caused. Were it up to me, I would have not wasted my breath.”
“Ah, that’s a shame to hear,” I replied as my eyes shifted to glance between Carver and Hido. “Because I am going to give you my terms anyway. So I hope that you’re all listening.”
“You will free all the slaves you’re carrying into our care, right now, while also allowing any adventurer that wishes to leave this war the chance to accompany them free of harm. Afterward, you will march your horde back to Khudazal and go no farther than ten miles south of it. Once that is done, we will then meet to oversee the release of all other slaves within the city and discuss where our respective territories will begin and end.”
“You spit on Krol’s honor by speaking your useless words and thinking that you have anything more to offer him but your obedience,” Zhul hissed the second that I finished speaking.
“What I have to offer Krol, and you, for that matter, is your very survival,” I replied, not backing down from the orc. “What you don’t seem to understand is just how many of us adventurers are waiting for you if you decide to press on with this war. Not just here, but in the Fens of Swyn, Eberia, and beyond. You’ve already seen what a handful of us are capable of. Let alone thousands.”
“And you, in your arrogance, think what you have seen is the extent of what we are capable of,” Zhul countered as he shifted his stance in preparation to leave. “We are now free of the chains that bound us, hindered us, and the world will once again shake in our presence. Go back to your people and tell them of the offer that you’ve spurned on their behalf and let them see the fate that you’ve led them to.”
With that, the orc turned his back on us and began to walk back towards his distant mount, Carver belatedly moving to follow him after giving us a withering stare but remaining silent as he departed. Hido, on the other hand, stood standing for several seconds after the pair had turned to leave, before stumbling to follow, his head alternating between their turned backs and us, for a moment looking like he wanted to say something. But before he could make his decision a shadow fell over him, causing his eyes to widen in sudden panic, enough so that he promptly turned to follow Carver and Zhul, breaking into a jog to catch up to them.
“Huh?” I grunted in surprise to his sudden reaction, my eyes immediately darting upwards to look at what could have possibly cast such a large shadow. But as I did, I found that there was nothing there to see, the bright cloudless sky showing no sign of anything that could have cast it. “Wait, where is that—”
“Lyr, look,” Freya’s whisper interrupted me before I could finish speaking, both her and Amaranth on either side of me suddenly stiffening in surprise. “By the orcs. The shadows…they’re moving.”
Feeling a sense of dread shoot through me at the woman’s words, I turned my gaze back towards the distant orcs and was rewarded with another flutter passing through my heart, followed by my blood going cold. Stretching outward from where the orc horde had come to a stop until nearly to where we stood was a massive expanse of deepening shadow which continued to grow darker with every second that passed. Amid the sprawling space closer to us, I could make out faint motes of darkness beginning to coalesce, forming first into a sphere before growing outwards into a vaguely humanoid shape. Staring at one of them, I saw a tag appear in my vision, identifying the dark orb.
[Shadow of Corruption] – Level 26
“I think it might be time to leave,” I said as I scanned the field, seeing that there were easily dozens, if not already hundreds of the growing shadows, a good number of them close to us.
“I was just going to say the same thing,” Constantine commented as he pointed ahead. “Look, some of them have finished forming already and are starting this way.”
“Then let’s get our asses moving,” Freya replied in an urgent tone. “Because if we don’t, we’re going to get swarmed! Come on!”
Launching into action at the woman’s words, the four of us turned as one and began to sprint back towards where we’d left the others as fast as our legs could take us. But like an animal sensing fleeing prey, the moment that we turned to run, so did all of the fully formed shadows move to chase, racing after us in our wake. It was only thanks to our head start and faster speed that allowed us to stay ahead of them for the duration of our flight, just barely managing to avoid getting pulled into combat.
At least until we all arrived back at Aldford and couldn’t run any farther.
Chapter 63
“I need a new ward over here! This one’s burnt out!” I said as I slashed Savagery through the attacking shadow of corruption before me, the blade sweeping through its incorporeal body and causing it to explode in a spray of inky darkness. Stepping forward with the momentum of the attack, I used it to propel me towards a second of the creatures, repeating the process for a second time with similar results.
“I have already placed one!” I heard Garr call out through the clash of combat around me, the sounds of shouting voices and exploding magic almost drowning the man out. “It will take just a moment longer to activate!”
“Good!” I called back to the man as I rushed towards another cluster of both shadows and corrupted spirits that had invaded the palisade with Amaranth by my side, catching sight of Arcturus and Drace among them as I arrived.
“Looks like we’re clear again here!” Drace called out after the last had fallen, the half-giant scanning down the length of the palisade for more threats.
“And so are we over here!” Aldwin answered back from farther down the line, his voice being matched by a handful of the others from our core group. “I think we have beaten them back for the time being.”
“At least until they next attempt to test us,” Arcturus stated with a low growl that only Drace and I could hear. “They will not stop until they wear us down to the bone.”
“And they’re doing a good job of it so far,” I commented with a sigh, feeling a surge of exhaustion shoot through me at the thought as I looked over the palisade walls and into the darkness that stretched beyond the tree’s light, the late night cutting my vision to only a couple hundred feet. “Anyway, where were we again before all of that interrupted us?”
“We just finished talking about Sierra, Kilgore, and the others,” Drace replied as our group slowly moved to reunite with one another along the palisade wall, the latest attack having forced us to abandon our walking meeting to fight it off. “They said they’re about as ready as they’re going to ever be, but need about two, maybe three hours’ notice before they kick things off. Past that, Fredric was about to catch us up on the state of the defenses right as things went sideways.”
“Right,” I said, recalling now where we’d left off as I turned away from the edge and glanced over towards the large warrior. “That was good to hear about Sierra and the others, then. I need about all the positive energy and news I can get right now.”
“You and me both, Lyr,” Drace grunted in a tired tone as a distant shout rang out from far down the wall from us, followed by several rapid flashes of magic, neither of us or Arcturus so much as flinching at the sound of it. “You and me both.”
It had been an especially long day since we’d been unceremoniously chased back to Aldford by the army of shadows that Zhul and his heralds had sprung on us. A day that had also effectively seen us penned inside the town for good, the rapidly growing swarm of summoned creatures that we’d been forced to drag behind us rushing to attack the settlement. Fortunately, however, with the adventurers in the town and our own forces, we were able to easily destroy those that had initially chased us, buying us a short time to recover and regroup.
At least until the next wave came, this one accompanied by a wave of corrupted spirits to aid them.
With our scouts spotting it approaching us long before it hit the town, we had plenty of time to ready ourselves for its arrival, once again fighting it back with little difficulty or damage. But as we discovered in the hours that followed, those two waves were far from all that the orcs had in store for us, with several more following after it in sequence, the gap between each growing shorter and shorter.
Until it vanished entirely.
Forced to deal with the constant pressure of the attacking spirits and shadows, we then found ourselves effectively besieged long before the orc horde even arrived at Aldford, all our efforts focused on keeping them at bay. So when they finally did finish their march southward towards us from Valor’s Point, there was nothing that we could do to prevent them from setting up their camp and digging in out of range of our weapons. Nothing except for watch them settle in from behind the palisade walls and array of wards that we’d managed to establish throughout the town.
Wards that we would be totally screwed without, I thought with a grimace as I twisted away from the warrior and glanced towards the newly replaced magical device, finding it glowing with a bright golden light with Garr standing directly beside it.
Created by both the mages and the gronn, the wards that we were now using throughout Aldford were a combination of various spells and enchantments that had been purposefully created to protect against the corrupted spirits. Capable of a variety of effects depending on its design, the major use of the devices was to prevent ethereal beings from both crossing their threshold or simply phasing through the palisade itself. Fortunately, according to Garr, the latter took a notable amount of energy for a spirit to do and was generally avoided by most of them in favor of a more direct approach, which in this case involved jumping, climbing, or flying over the wall to attack us. Other versions of the wards at our disposal either hindered any spirits within their range, reducing their ability to fight, or burned and damaged them the longer they lingered within its range, such as the [Greater Spirit Ward of Searing] that Garr had just activated.
“This should hold them back for a time here,” the gronn announced, turning to look towards me as he noticed my gaze. “Long enough at least for us get another barrier ward in place and re-layer our defenses.”
“Here’s to hoping,” I replied, shifting my attention away from the man and towards Aldwin, who was approaching us with Freya, Veronia, Ritt, and Halcyon following behind him. “I think you were up next Fredric. You were saying about our defenses?”
“Erm, yes,” the bann replied with a slightly embarrassed cough. “Aside from the unfortunate timing of that burnt-out ward, I was going to say that we are in as good a shape as we can hope to be when it comes to our defenses, or at least our more conventional ones. We’ve managed to finish laying in all the additional trenching, murder holes, traps, and a handful of other surprises more than what we’d originally planned for on the town’s eastern side before these creatures attacked us.”
“I cannot say what the orcs’ plans are for a more physical assault, but I know that when they do, they will find themselves forced to climb through much in order to just reach the river’s edge, let alone the town itself.”
“During which, we’ll also be sure to make their lives as miserable as possible,” Halcyon affirmed, prompting a series of nods and grunts from everyone in the group.
“The rest of their short lives, I hope,” Ritt added, speaking in a surprisingly unperturbed tone given the battle that he’d just been a part of.
“If all goes to plan then, yes,” Fredric stated, his tone cautious. “Though I am certain they will try to find a way to do the same to us.”
“Well, we’ll be ready for whatever they want to try,” the merchant-turned-logistician said confidently as he took over for the bann, his hand coming up to the familiar form of Noodles that hung around his neck as he spoke. “Dunedin and I have made sure that we’re set up for everything that the orcs could possibly throw at us throughout every part of the town. We have water and sand barrels set up for fires, as well as caches for stuff like these new wards, potions, extra weapons, whatever, just name it. It’ll save on anyone running on shortages if things get rough or keep them from needing to run across half the town in order to resupply.”
“That’s perfect, Ritt,” I replied, full well appreciating the man’s organizational ability and insight to make sure that everything we could possibly need while fighting was readily at hand throughout the town. With the current orc tactic focusing on wearing us down with constant attacks by the spirits and shadows, we needed to make things as easy as possible for our defenders so they didn’t waste time or energy that they didn’t have just looking for supplies. “That’ll help us heaps in just being able to focus on the fighting and hopefully respond quickly to any surprises the orcs throw at us.”
“’Twas my hope,” th
e man said with a nod, his gaze wandering over towards Garr as he spoke. “Past all of that, we still have our crafters working on churning out what they can before battle really begins. But given the way the day’s gone so far, their efforts are largely being focused on making more of these wards with the help of the other gronn and spellcasters. We have a good stash of them to last a while…but we’re also going through them pretty quickly now.”
“Given how effective they’ve proven to be so far, you’ll hear no argument from me in making sure that we have an ample amount,” Veronia stated.
“Nor from me either,” Aldwin added. “Right now, these wards are the only thing allowing us to rotate defenders off the walls so that they rest. If only briefly.”
“Pretty much what Léandre and I thought too after the initial attack,” Ritt affirmed with a nod as he glanced over towards the pair, then back over at me, his face brightening with sudden recollection. “Oh! Right. Speaking of Léandre, he’s asked for your help if you have any time to spare, Lyrian. He said something about helping him assemble armor and weapons. But he understood if you, and I quote ‘were too busy keeping the town safe from unspeakable horrors that are looking to ruin all my hard work’.”
“Ah, yeah, that’s on my list to get to,” I replied, chuckling a bit at the craftsman’s choice of words, remembering that I’d promised him that I’d help finish creating another few dozen sets of level thirty gear. It had been unfortunate timing that the day had seen me running around outside of Aldford instead of spending it crafting, but one that had been necessary for us to start integrating the new adventurers into our ranks. “I’m going to knock on wood as I say this, but barring something drastic coming up, I hope I’ll be able to go help him soon as I’m done with my next meeting with all the other guild leaders.”
Glory to the Brave (Ascend Online Book 4) Page 81