*********On The Banks of Zel, Haven of the Iriel'en************
Taipan's face was locked into a rictus of fury and hatred as she drove the envenomed broadhead of her arrow, shaft gripped firmly in hand, through the eye socket of another of Prosper's soldiers. The dying man screeched briefly before he fell at her feet. Losing not a moment on her most recent victim, she smoothly nocked the arrow to Blinder, her recurved laminated bow, it's [Forest Lord] bone core, thin layers of [Steelwood], and glassresin binding sending the bloodied arrow streaking to claim yet another life, this one a spearman about to run through a Melondi axe fighter from behind, taking the Prosper spearman through the heart as if he wore no armor.
She glanced momentarily at a swathe of the battle field that had contained a small flanking regiment of light cavalry trying to encircle the fighting retreat of the Eastern Aktinian sabers and pin down the Orlethrem. The thicket screening the flankers was devoid of life now, a sinister red glow rising from the ground there. In a few seconds, the drizzle of blood that was all that remained of those men and their mounts would fall, reaped by the Blood Moon. In his waning condition he could only manage such an exercise of power once every few hours. It had been enough, so far, to discourage the Prosper forces from using the dense formations that might allow them to punch through Elven defenses. They had learned after the first such regiment had evaporated in crimson light. That her father had felt pressured enough to spend his strength was telling.
[Umbral Armor]
Taipan summoned the Iskios in her core and melded it through her [Nightblade] class, cloaking herself from view. She blitzed across the battlefield darting from cover to cover and, this time, dove down from the lower limbs of a sapling [Heartwood] only twenty meters tall, reappearing in a dervish of razor-edged shadow blades.
[Shadow Manipulation-Lancet]
Midnight spears like a flickering sea urchin stabbed through the commander's group for this block of pikes, shredding their leadership and morale before their assailant was gone, vanishing again in a heartbeat.
It was getting harder to find the leaders, they'd stopped wearing their helmets, or, in some cases, passed them to subordinates to trap her. They were fools. When a man wearing an ill-fitting front-line bascinet is coordinating a turn of the cohort, while a man wearing an officer's helmet silently grips their spear and waits for orders, it took no genius to recognize the game. Twice she had sprung the trap deliberately, for it was now horrifying for the men's morale when an officer's helm was presented to them, and that fear spread like plague.
Taipan would sow terror in these men, sow it into their bones, and harvest it from their veins when it was most ready. Then she would drink her fill. Iriel would drink its fill of them.
She skirted along the tree branches, and saw a small Hunter detachment with like minds to herself. She saw them and they saw her when she gave a birdcall to signal them. Pointing to the siege engines that were under construction, the third set of mangonels so far, she made the hand signs for enfilading fire and retreat. They signaled with their fingers and thumbs in a circle, fingers extended, for the affirmative. In a minute's time they finished their stealthed approach. Taipan took a deep breath and called on her Hunter's class, raising an arrow to signal the ambush.
[Archer's Cadence]
Three breaths later, three arrows had joined those of her peers, killing half the carpenters building the mangonel and all of the men directing them.
Crossbows turned to the tree tops and loosed a volley but the Hunter squad was already gone. Taipan had dropped down to the forest floor and was crawling along ground level keeping her belly just above the damn leaf litter, like a spider closing on an inattentive bird.
She saw the siege crew drag their dead away from the half-constructed engine and a new lot of much more nervous looking men replaced them, taking up the tools of their not so fortunate predecessors and beginning again to construct the dangerous machines which could spread fire behind Aes'r lines, and smoke to reduce the visual advantage of the Hunters in smoke filled tree tops.
Taipan waited, four minutes, perhaps five, while the men reorganized. Slowly, she moved through the low ferns and broad-leafed bushes, leaving no rustle of foliage or sound to mark her advance on the blind spot of the man standing next to the commander on the horse. Her target wore a breast plate but was clearly not accustomed to it. Her clipped accent and darting eyes told all who cared to see of her displeasure at being so close to the fighting. She worked her hands into her robes absently, fidgeting.
The pair had naturally drifted slightly apart from their men, unspoken contempt for the lesser soldiers from their betters in the leadership unconsciously creating a separation. None saw Taipan rise from behind the mage and drive her belt knife through the woman's temple, the almost delicate appearing brown hand covering the mage’s mouth to guarantee she died without a sound. Before the corpse even hit the ground she had her hand into one of the tiny embroidered sheathes and deft fingers pulled free its miniscule but potent weapon. The Shadow’s hand flickered forward and withdrew. The poisoned needle she’d planted in the man elicited an absent slap of the hand to the commander's thigh as he issued orders towards his men, but Taipan was already leaving the way she'd come, her mission accomplished.
She heard the agonized gargle as the man's blood congealed within his veins and he fell from his horse. Startled shouts found the corpses of both soon after and the unaccompanied builders fled their post back to the rearmost lines. When the Hunters group swung back around, they would set fire to the unfinished mangonels and steal the tools being used to build them. No throwers would lay fire behind her kin's backs, trapping them.
When she had circled back around to the ground still held by her people to rest and recover her mana, she breathed a sigh of satisfaction. She'd been trying for that Adept Mage for six hours now. The woman had gotten lucky when the first arrow only clipped her ribs, after deflecting off a fortunate passing helmet. Fortunate for the woman that is, the helmet was holed through and through and its owner quite beyond saving. Not so for the Mage who had the antidote to [Striped Bark Viper] venom on her person. Well, it did her no good now.
Terrified shouts came from the front line and Taipan saw a massive cloud of crystalline particles, like ground glass, drift through the ranks of the invaders, almost half a kilometer across. Horror and choking cries of pain rose soon from the area as the incredible demonstration of Terra manipulation by Bald’rt’s second wife Shor sent the blinding, lung shredding quartz dust through their ranks. That entire frontal advance stalled and Aktinian sabers, Melondi axes, and Iriel'en great blades swept into the sagging, debilitated forces, hacking them apart along the trailing edge of the spell, ensuring there would be no survivors of the crippling magic. As it dissipated, the melee warriors retreated, having drawn their share of blood without shedding any. A flight of Hunter's arrows cleared another group of crossbows before they could loose into the backs of the fighters, advance and retreat both carving away at their opponent's hope for victory. As was the way of the Dance.
Taipan's attention was drawn from her resting vantage towards the Western edge of the battle, a piece of river shoreline where the Zel, a tributary of the Zelas ran strong with melt water. The steep banks made footing treacherous and Taipan saw what had drawn her attention. There, a lone figure wearing closefitting white combat robes without armor on her body, the only metal enclosing her gauntleted hands and the grieves running up to her knees, tore into a group of heavy knights with a berserker scream of endless rage. The Golden Beast Bathe punched through breastplates, shattered anything she could whip her legs into, and broke armored men like wooden dolls. Many jumped from the steep banks into the river most never to rise above the flooding surface rather than face her.
The former Iriel’en princess could only marvel at the normally sedate woman’s fury, when she snatched an armored man by his feet and used him as a flail against his comrades, to gruesome effect.
When none remained before her, she started chasing those that fled, bringing them down like a wolf hunting stoats. A trio of Royal Guards encircled her and guided her back out of the frenzy so that she did not exhaust herself further in her assault. This was a cycle that had run for over two weeks. The Elf warrior queen would dive into where the enemy deployed their heavy fighters, there, she would crush them until they were routed or her energies were completely spent. Once she had rested and donned a new set of white robes she would go out again. And again. White robes were now enough to cause banners to turn aside completely or reserves to be committed to try to hold their ground.
Through it all, Lumyt'seit, son of Bald'rt, acting Crown of Orlethrem received scouting reports and directed forces. He had managed to reposition his detachments as soon as he had word of Prosper's strategy, splitting half of the planned attacking armies to immediately close the Zelas with a blockade of scuttled ships and lay into the backs of the advancing forces with everything they had. The army was forced to turn to repel the Elves who were inflicting terrible, terrible damage to their rear lines and supply chains. Heavy losses did that half of the Elves’ force suffer but their sacrifice allowed the complete evacuation of two thirds of the Havens along their subterranean escape routes and half the remaining peoples were already underway of the same. From there, Lumyt'seit organized a campaign of terror. Everything from poisoned arrow storms, to sharpened stakes hidden along trenches cut across roads, to a never-ending play of flutes, discordant, menacing, and never allowing the armies a restful moment. Troops sent in after the flutes did not return and the sorrow song did not stop. It seemed a minor thing, on its own, but it was combined as one part of a symphony to terrorize the invaders.
Speaking of which, Vedyr, her dam, had not been seen in three days but the pigs soon to be wallowing in shallow graves for Prosper had stopped using command tents to sleep their officers and Taipan had heard several of the leaders she'd slain speaking of many of the mages refusing orders to appear in the open any more. Furthermore, entire supply wagons loaded with grains, water, and medical supplies were being thrown out because their contents had been poisoned and slews of soldiers had died before the source could be traced. The Heartwood Spear was stabbing at the hearts of these invaders, piercing their courage.
The Iriel'en woman rose, fully rested and ready to continue her role in her brother's plans: To be a [Shadow Panther] in their midst. For an entire moon cycle, she had aided her people’s war, fighting down the attempt to bring a surprise attack against the civilian population hidden in their sanctuaries. By this point, she had claimed more lives than she had any desire to count, a hundred at least. Still, there were more, but the ragged edges of the enemy’s morale were in sight. They could not endure the wrath of the Deep Wood.
Fierce joy did she take in her part in this play. It was only in the quiet moments that she wondered what sorts of trouble her mate and Honor might be finding himself in, without her there to limit his insanity.
*********Dingy Basement and Recently Cobbled Together Alchemical Lab, Bartala**********
Ulric sneezed and looked around, slightly paranoid. Furtive eyes found nothing out of the ordinary and he let slip a slow sigh of relief that his sudden spasm did not cause the apparatus before him to jostle. If it so much as vibrated there was a non-zero percent chance that the entire room would detonate. That might have been the paranoia. Or maybe not. So long as no red-brown smoke appeared, he was likely in the clear.
He hadn't slept in three days. He’d been feverishly laboring over this project for a week. Probably. Time was a little suspect at the moment.
An alchemist had provided all the reagents he required and the equipment, when Ulric offered him a Sil crown. The alchemist could probably retire for that amount but it had saved Ulric having to shop around and got him all the reagents he wanted, with some even being obtained from fellow alchemists courtesy of the plump little man’s own self going to get them. A few more Sil Squires hired some low-life shoulder thumpers to haul his glassware and supplies to a ruined basement that they then forgot existed. He'd stabilized the sagging structure with a few strategically positioned [Stone Walls]. The basement was damp, dingy, and smelled faintly of sewage, due to sitting below the positions of some leaky gutters, but it was in a seedy part of town that didn't even know the Baron of Bartala's name.
Ulric had only had to cripple two men that tried to mug him and break a cutpurse woman's arm in to convince the locals to leave well enough alone. As a token of his esteem, the alchemist, who recognized a fellow practitioner of the arts of Metamaterial recombination, or alchemy, offered Ulric his own stash of some kind of incredibly potent stimulant. The little blue pills tasted like cough syrup distilled through piss and dried overused socks but they acted similarly to an old psychostimulant and treatment for hyperattention disorder he tried once or twice. He'd stopped using them because of the comedown. But there was no come down if you just keep using them. Brilliant Ulric.
Thusly motivated and focused by hatred, cool, cold, sub-zero hatred, he'd assembled a surprisingly effective distillation, extraction, and purification rig. From there it was a matter of a day to work through the synthesis, more or less the same as in the Before, with a few tweaks involving very miniscule applications of [Absolute Zero] to keep his potential products from accidentally triggering. Cold liquid purified product mixed with an immaculate porcelain clay did, in fact, create a stupendously potent explosive that responded with exquisite sensitivity to small electric arcs. He had had to reapply his [Stone Wall] supports twice over during testing and the defensive wall he hid behind had lethal shrapnel indentations to warrant Ulric's caution.
Another entire day he lost to figuring out the detonator situation. It was harder than it should have been because he didn't know enough of the rune inscription techniques to make the ritualistic spell that would cause a spark applied to one rod, made of pure platinum, known as [Caelis Sil] or skysilver, to also transfer to the others simultaneously. He had a work around though. A very small [Arcanite Diamond] embedded in the metal rod could be "trained" to Ceraun, as Adept Werona Autumnclaw had shown him not so long ago, to emit a weak [Voltaic Riot]. It was a single use thing, on purpose. He did not want to leave any of these things laying around for someone to reverse engineer.
The result had unexpected benefits. When the small philosopher's stone responded to his Ceraunic pulse, weaker even than [Ceraunoperception], more an effort of will on his part, it resonated, induced the arc of [Voltaic Riot], which would trigger the explosive putty about a quarter second later. Before that happened, however, thanks to the minute amount of [Arcanite Diamond] being used, it also saturated with Ceraun residue and transformed into Deathstone exploding with an antimagic pulse just before the plastique's shockwave manifested.
What that achieved was to shred magical barriers or resistances before the wave of pure physical force annihilated everything along the wave front of the shaped charge's primary axis.
Eighteen immaculately sculpted blocks in the shape of a hollow cone were stacked with their remote detonators embedded inside, ready to trigger.
The flask of liquid Ulric had just purified would be enough to make the thirty or so button explosives that he intended to use to knock the bottoms out from the ships in the harbor. He was about to do that very thing when he realized that there were two flasks and that his hands wouldn't stop shaking. Hmm…it would appear that he had run out of the Alchemist's cache of staybusy's. Unfortunate. The comedown was even more unfortunate.
He was soon violently ill and, after forcing himself to eat and drink, passed out on a ratty straw mattress thrown down in a corner of the basement that held the second least amount of water. The driest area was reserved for storing his lovely little bombs, of course.
"Oh Watcher's symmetrical tots of divinity, please show me, your faithful, mercy!" Ulric moaned into the damp half-light of the room.
His candles had almost burned out, and guttered fitfully in their stands. He'd gone light on the lighting to limit the risks of a spectacular end to his second chance life, if an open flame somehow managed to ignite a fume or wisp of his materials. It was just as well he had, obliteration aside. If he'd woken to a fully lit room the spike of chemical pain between his eyes might have done him in by itself. He was sick again, and only barely managed to drag himself over to the mess he'd made the night previous.
Misery didn't so much love company as create it. A man alone in a decrepit basement, where none venture but the rats, who would be found mysteriously lying dead outside not much later, would find that misery could manufacture its own entertainment. Such as Ulric Einar, attempting to expel his boots through his abdominal cavity. It was just as well he hadn't eaten much these past days. On his back, acrid bile burning in his throat, and some wracking shivers setting in, Ulric longed for nothing more than to be huddled around the fireplace in his primitive home. Oh, but to be surrounded by wilderness devoid of anything but beasts and even more wilderness!
To make matters worse, the mania had faded and Ulric remembered well what sequence of events had led him to this place. The attack on the Havens. The decay of Prespang, thanks to Prosper's fetid rot. The callous slaying of a decent man at the moment of his granddaughter's joyous wedding. He hurt more now, inside as well as out.
Ulric had not been a man welcoming of emotional attachment. It had always been a slow thing, gradual, and almost begrudging. He was, slowly, changing in that regard. First, the boy Elf whose courage and wit had impressed him. Then the teasing humor and passionate love of his people in the boy Elf's father. The peerless cunning, gentle strength, and alien brilliance of that father's wives. Then had come the daughter, eventually, when he figured out that she had worked as hard to hold people out as he had, and why. And still others. The Royal Guard, dedicating themselves to the protection of their kin. A reclusive smith as odd as anyone Ulric had met but who made himself a bastion for a lonely, struggling girl. Even more after that. But he'd never lost one of them. Now he had. Honored Elder Varrock was dead, killed by a Magister of Prosper because he refused to lower his Clan to become tools of the Gilded Thrones.
Caring hurt a lot more than he remembered.
A quiet minute of reflection and Ulric figured out what bothered him so much about the Lupid geezer's going out like he had. It wasn't the way he'd died. If anything, Old Man Varrock went out like he seemed like he'd have wanted, giving some sonofabitch a piece of his mind and his teeth if he could manage it. No, Varrock was a fighter, there was no shame in leaving this world standing up for your people against their oppressors. So very far from it, Old Man. What bothered Ulric was that none of the other Lupid had fought back. None of them had so much as raised a voice or growled the entire time, until the patriarch was dead. Only Varrock had stood against them. He knew now why the Elder Wolf lamented his Clan's decline. The Beastkin knew they wouldn't strike back, he knew, even with his best years long behind him, that it was only him left to show teeth.
My kin. No harm. The dying wish of a decent man. A free man. And Ulric had given his word.
Struggling through the retribution of the drugs, Ulric knew he had to get his ass in gear. Varrock's people were still in harm's way. The Magister was dead and so were the goons with him but somebody would know there had been a gathering, they would know that there were witnesses. They might question the events, and might lean on the folk there to get the answers they wanted. Keeping that from happening meant giving them something else to worry about and dismantling the power structures. He needed to deep-six the Baron, publicly. Create a threat that would draw fire away from the Lupid Clans, especially Varrock's granddaughter, the natural place Prosper would start trying to apply pressure. Unless he put pressure on them first.
Thus convinced, Ulric rolled to his feet and fought through a wave of dizziness.
"Oops," He commented aloud realizing he wasn't in any condition currently to do anything sensitive without fucking it up, "Might have gone a little too hard in the paint. I'm gonna need to visit the brothel again."
Get your minds out of the gutters, they were the only safe places to get a bath in that part of town.
He'd spent four nights there over the last week or so, and earned a reputation as a down on their luck with cash and a penchant for poor decisions. And also, a strange obsession with games, as the girls whose rooms he'd rented to take a bath in were used only for the tub, soap, and to play some bizarre card game. When it became obvious the John wasn't interested in pawing at the whores several came to hang out in the room to join in the games between jobs. He very nearly had one of the girls trained to play Uno to a competitive level. Alchemist Meth was a hell of a drug.
*********On The Banks of Zel, Haven of the Iriel'en************
Taipan's face was locked into a rictus of fury and hatred as she drove the envenomed broadhead of her arrow, shaft gripped firmly in hand, through the eye socket of another of Prosper's soldiers. The dying man screeched briefly before he fell at her feet. Losing not a moment on her most recent victim, she smoothly nocked the arrow to Blinder, her recurved laminated bow, it's [Forest Lord] bone core, thin layers of [Steelwood], and glassresin binding sending the bloodied arrow streaking to claim yet another life, this one a spearman about to run through a Melondi axe fighter from behind, taking the Prosper spearman through the heart as if he wore no armor.
She glanced momentarily at a swathe of the battle field that had contained a small flanking regiment of light cavalry trying to encircle the fighting retreat of the Eastern Aktinian sabers and pin down the Orlethrem. The thicket screening the flankers was devoid of life now, a sinister red glow rising from the ground there. In a few seconds, the drizzle of blood that was all that remained of those men and their mounts would fall, reaped by the Blood Moon. In his waning condition he could only manage such an exercise of power once every few hours. It had been enough, so far, to discourage the Prosper forces from using the dense formations that might allow them to punch through Elven defenses. They had learned after the first such regiment had evaporated in crimson light. That her father had felt pressured enough to spend his strength was telling.
[Umbral Armor]
Taipan summoned the Iskios in her core and melded it through her [Nightblade] class, cloaking herself from view. She blitzed across the battlefield darting from cover to cover and, this time, dove down from the lower limbs of a sapling [Heartwood] only twenty meters tall, reappearing in a dervish of razor-edged shadow blades.
[Shadow Manipulation-Lancet]
Midnight spears like a flickering sea urchin stabbed through the commander's group for this block of pikes, shredding their leadership and morale before their assailant was gone, vanishing again in a heartbeat.
It was getting harder to find the leaders, they'd stopped wearing their helmets, or, in some cases, passed them to subordinates to trap her. They were fools. When a man wearing an ill-fitting front-line bascinet is coordinating a turn of the cohort, while a man wearing an officer's helmet silently grips their spear and waits for orders, it took no genius to recognize the game. Twice she had sprung the trap deliberately, for it was now horrifying for the men's morale when an officer's helm was presented to them, and that fear spread like plague.
Taipan would sow terror in these men, sow it into their bones, and harvest it from their veins when it was most ready. Then she would drink her fill. Iriel would drink its fill of them.
She skirted along the tree branches, and saw a small Hunter detachment with like minds to herself. She saw them and they saw her when she gave a birdcall to signal them. Pointing to the siege engines that were under construction, the third set of mangonels so far, she made the hand signs for enfilading fire and retreat. They signaled with their fingers and thumbs in a circle, fingers extended, for the affirmative. In a minute's time they finished their stealthed approach. Taipan took a deep breath and called on her Hunter's class, raising an arrow to signal the ambush.
[Archer's Cadence]
Three breaths later, three arrows had joined those of her peers, killing half the carpenters building the mangonel and all of the men directing them.
Crossbows turned to the tree tops and loosed a volley but the Hunter squad was already gone. Taipan had dropped down to the forest floor and was crawling along ground level keeping her belly just above the damn leaf litter, like a spider closing on an inattentive bird.
She saw the siege crew drag their dead away from the half-constructed engine and a new lot of much more nervous looking men replaced them, taking up the tools of their not so fortunate predecessors and beginning again to construct the dangerous machines which could spread fire behind Aes'r lines, and smoke to reduce the visual advantage of the Hunters in smoke filled tree tops.
Taipan waited, four minutes, perhaps five, while the men reorganized. Slowly, she moved through the low ferns and broad-leafed bushes, leaving no rustle of foliage or sound to mark her advance on the blind spot of the man standing next to the commander on the horse. Her target wore a breast plate but was clearly not accustomed to it. Her clipped accent and darting eyes told all who cared to see of her displeasure at being so close to the fighting. She worked her hands into her robes absently, fidgeting.
The pair had naturally drifted slightly apart from their men, unspoken contempt for the lesser soldiers from their betters in the leadership unconsciously creating a separation. None saw Taipan rise from behind the mage and drive her belt knife through the woman's temple, the almost delicate appearing brown hand covering the mage’s mouth to guarantee she died without a sound. Before the corpse even hit the ground she had her hand into one of the tiny embroidered sheathes and deft fingers pulled free its miniscule but potent weapon. The Shadow’s hand flickered forward and withdrew. The poisoned needle she’d planted in the man elicited an absent slap of the hand to the commander's thigh as he issued orders towards his men, but Taipan was already leaving the way she'd come, her mission accomplished.
She heard the agonized gargle as the man's blood congealed within his veins and he fell from his horse. Startled shouts found the corpses of both soon after and the unaccompanied builders fled their post back to the rearmost lines. When the Hunters group swung back around, they would set fire to the unfinished mangonels and steal the tools being used to build them. No throwers would lay fire behind her kin's backs, trapping them.
When she had circled back around to the ground still held by her people to rest and recover her mana, she breathed a sigh of satisfaction. She'd been trying for that Adept Mage for six hours now. The woman had gotten lucky when the first arrow only clipped her ribs, after deflecting off a fortunate passing helmet. Fortunate for the woman that is, the helmet was holed through and through and its owner quite beyond saving. Not so for the Mage who had the antidote to [Striped Bark Viper] venom on her person. Well, it did her no good now.
Terrified shouts came from the front line and Taipan saw a massive cloud of crystalline particles, like ground glass, drift through the ranks of the invaders, almost half a kilometer across. Horror and choking cries of pain rose soon from the area as the incredible demonstration of Terra manipulation by Bald’rt’s second wife Shor sent the blinding, lung shredding quartz dust through their ranks. That entire frontal advance stalled and Aktinian sabers, Melondi axes, and Iriel'en great blades swept into the sagging, debilitated forces, hacking them apart along the trailing edge of the spell, ensuring there would be no survivors of the crippling magic. As it dissipated, the melee warriors retreated, having drawn their share of blood without shedding any. A flight of Hunter's arrows cleared another group of crossbows before they could loose into the backs of the fighters, advance and retreat both carving away at their opponent's hope for victory. As was the way of the Dance.
Taipan's attention was drawn from her resting vantage towards the Western edge of the battle, a piece of river shoreline where the Zel, a tributary of the Zelas ran strong with melt water. The steep banks made footing treacherous and Taipan saw what had drawn her attention. There, a lone figure wearing closefitting white combat robes without armor on her body, the only metal enclosing her gauntleted hands and the grieves running up to her knees, tore into a group of heavy knights with a berserker scream of endless rage. The Golden Beast Bathe punched through breastplates, shattered anything she could whip her legs into, and broke armored men like wooden dolls. Many jumped from the steep banks into the river most never to rise above the flooding surface rather than face her.
The former Iriel’en princess could only marvel at the normally sedate woman’s fury, when she snatched an armored man by his feet and used him as a flail against his comrades, to gruesome effect.
When none remained before her, she started chasing those that fled, bringing them down like a wolf hunting stoats. A trio of Royal Guards encircled her and guided her back out of the frenzy so that she did not exhaust herself further in her assault. This was a cycle that had run for over two weeks. The Elf warrior queen would dive into where the enemy deployed their heavy fighters, there, she would crush them until they were routed or her energies were completely spent. Once she had rested and donned a new set of white robes she would go out again. And again. White robes were now enough to cause banners to turn aside completely or reserves to be committed to try to hold their ground.
Through it all, Lumyt'seit, son of Bald'rt, acting Crown of Orlethrem received scouting reports and directed forces. He had managed to reposition his detachments as soon as he had word of Prosper's strategy, splitting half of the planned attacking armies to immediately close the Zelas with a blockade of scuttled ships and lay into the backs of the advancing forces with everything they had. The army was forced to turn to repel the Elves who were inflicting terrible, terrible damage to their rear lines and supply chains. Heavy losses did that half of the Elves’ force suffer but their sacrifice allowed the complete evacuation of two thirds of the Havens along their subterranean escape routes and half the remaining peoples were already underway of the same. From there, Lumyt'seit organized a campaign of terror. Everything from poisoned arrow storms, to sharpened stakes hidden along trenches cut across roads, to a never-ending play of flutes, discordant, menacing, and never allowing the armies a restful moment. Troops sent in after the flutes did not return and the sorrow song did not stop. It seemed a minor thing, on its own, but it was combined as one part of a symphony to terrorize the invaders.
Speaking of which, Vedyr, her dam, had not been seen in three days but the pigs soon to be wallowing in shallow graves for Prosper had stopped using command tents to sleep their officers and Taipan had heard several of the leaders she'd slain speaking of many of the mages refusing orders to appear in the open any more. Furthermore, entire supply wagons loaded with grains, water, and medical supplies were being thrown out because their contents had been poisoned and slews of soldiers had died before the source could be traced. The Heartwood Spear was stabbing at the hearts of these invaders, piercing their courage.
The Iriel'en woman rose, fully rested and ready to continue her role in her brother's plans: To be a [Shadow Panther] in their midst. For an entire moon cycle, she had aided her people’s war, fighting down the attempt to bring a surprise attack against the civilian population hidden in their sanctuaries. By this point, she had claimed more lives than she had any desire to count, a hundred at least. Still, there were more, but the ragged edges of the enemy’s morale were in sight. They could not endure the wrath of the Deep Wood.
Fierce joy did she take in her part in this play. It was only in the quiet moments that she wondered what sorts of trouble her mate and Honor might be finding himself in, without her there to limit his insanity.
*********Dingy Basement and Recently Cobbled Together Alchemical Lab, Bartala**********
Ulric sneezed and looked around, slightly paranoid. Furtive eyes found nothing out of the ordinary and he let slip a slow sigh of relief that his sudden spasm did not cause the apparatus before him to jostle. If it so much as vibrated there was a non-zero percent chance that the entire room would detonate. That might have been the paranoia. Or maybe not. So long as no red-brown smoke appeared, he was likely in the clear.
He hadn't slept in three days. He’d been feverishly laboring over this project for a week. Probably. Time was a little suspect at the moment.
An alchemist had provided all the reagents he required and the equipment, when Ulric offered him a Sil crown. The alchemist could probably retire for that amount but it had saved Ulric having to shop around and got him all the reagents he wanted, with some even being obtained from fellow alchemists courtesy of the plump little man’s own self going to get them. A few more Sil Squires hired some low-life shoulder thumpers to haul his glassware and supplies to a ruined basement that they then forgot existed. He'd stabilized the sagging structure with a few strategically positioned [Stone Walls]. The basement was damp, dingy, and smelled faintly of sewage, due to sitting below the positions of some leaky gutters, but it was in a seedy part of town that didn't even know the Baron of Bartala's name.
Ulric had only had to cripple two men that tried to mug him and break a cutpurse woman's arm in to convince the locals to leave well enough alone. As a token of his esteem, the alchemist, who recognized a fellow practitioner of the arts of Metamaterial recombination, or alchemy, offered Ulric his own stash of some kind of incredibly potent stimulant. The little blue pills tasted like cough syrup distilled through piss and dried overused socks but they acted similarly to an old psychostimulant and treatment for hyperattention disorder he tried once or twice. He'd stopped using them because of the comedown. But there was no come down if you just keep using them. Brilliant Ulric.
Thusly motivated and focused by hatred, cool, cold, sub-zero hatred, he'd assembled a surprisingly effective distillation, extraction, and purification rig. From there it was a matter of a day to work through the synthesis, more or less the same as in the Before, with a few tweaks involving very miniscule applications of [Absolute Zero] to keep his potential products from accidentally triggering. Cold liquid purified product mixed with an immaculate porcelain clay did, in fact, create a stupendously potent explosive that responded with exquisite sensitivity to small electric arcs. He had had to reapply his [Stone Wall] supports twice over during testing and the defensive wall he hid behind had lethal shrapnel indentations to warrant Ulric's caution.
Another entire day he lost to figuring out the detonator situation. It was harder than it should have been because he didn't know enough of the rune inscription techniques to make the ritualistic spell that would cause a spark applied to one rod, made of pure platinum, known as [Caelis Sil] or skysilver, to also transfer to the others simultaneously. He had a work around though. A very small [Arcanite Diamond] embedded in the metal rod could be "trained" to Ceraun, as Adept Werona Autumnclaw had shown him not so long ago, to emit a weak [Voltaic Riot]. It was a single use thing, on purpose. He did not want to leave any of these things laying around for someone to reverse engineer.
The result had unexpected benefits. When the small philosopher's stone responded to his Ceraunic pulse, weaker even than [Ceraunoperception], more an effort of will on his part, it resonated, induced the arc of [Voltaic Riot], which would trigger the explosive putty about a quarter second later. Before that happened, however, thanks to the minute amount of [Arcanite Diamond] being used, it also saturated with Ceraun residue and transformed into Deathstone exploding with an antimagic pulse just before the plastique's shockwave manifested.
What that achieved was to shred magical barriers or resistances before the wave of pure physical force annihilated everything along the wave front of the shaped charge's primary axis.
Eighteen immaculately sculpted blocks in the shape of a hollow cone were stacked with their remote detonators embedded inside, ready to trigger.
The flask of liquid Ulric had just purified would be enough to make the thirty or so button explosives that he intended to use to knock the bottoms out from the ships in the harbor. He was about to do that very thing when he realized that there were two flasks and that his hands wouldn't stop shaking. Hmm…it would appear that he had run out of the Alchemist's cache of staybusy's. Unfortunate. The comedown was even more unfortunate.
He was soon violently ill and, after forcing himself to eat and drink, passed out on a ratty straw mattress thrown down in a corner of the basement that held the second least amount of water. The driest area was reserved for storing his lovely little bombs, of course.
"Oh Watcher's symmetrical tots of divinity, please show me, your faithful, mercy!" Ulric moaned into the damp half-light of the room.
His candles had almost burned out, and guttered fitfully in their stands. He'd gone light on the lighting to limit the risks of a spectacular end to his second chance life, if an open flame somehow managed to ignite a fume or wisp of his materials. It was just as well he had, obliteration aside. If he'd woken to a fully lit room the spike of chemical pain between his eyes might have done him in by itself. He was sick again, and only barely managed to drag himself over to the mess he'd made the night previous.
Misery didn't so much love company as create it. A man alone in a decrepit basement, where none venture but the rats, who would be found mysteriously lying dead outside not much later, would find that misery could manufacture its own entertainment. Such as Ulric Einar, attempting to expel his boots through his abdominal cavity. It was just as well he hadn't eaten much these past days. On his back, acrid bile burning in his throat, and some wracking shivers setting in, Ulric longed for nothing more than to be huddled around the fireplace in his primitive home. Oh, but to be surrounded by wilderness devoid of anything but beasts and even more wilderness!
To make matters worse, the mania had faded and Ulric remembered well what sequence of events had led him to this place. The attack on the Havens. The decay of Prespang, thanks to Prosper's fetid rot. The callous slaying of a decent man at the moment of his granddaughter's joyous wedding. He hurt more now, inside as well as out.
Ulric had not been a man welcoming of emotional attachment. It had always been a slow thing, gradual, and almost begrudging. He was, slowly, changing in that regard. First, the boy Elf whose courage and wit had impressed him. Then the teasing humor and passionate love of his people in the boy Elf's father. The peerless cunning, gentle strength, and alien brilliance of that father's wives. Then had come the daughter, eventually, when he figured out that she had worked as hard to hold people out as he had, and why. And still others. The Royal Guard, dedicating themselves to the protection of their kin. A reclusive smith as odd as anyone Ulric had met but who made himself a bastion for a lonely, struggling girl. Even more after that. But he'd never lost one of them. Now he had. Honored Elder Varrock was dead, killed by a Magister of Prosper because he refused to lower his Clan to become tools of the Gilded Thrones.
Caring hurt a lot more than he remembered.
A quiet minute of reflection and Ulric figured out what bothered him so much about the Lupid geezer's going out like he had. It wasn't the way he'd died. If anything, Old Man Varrock went out like he seemed like he'd have wanted, giving some sonofabitch a piece of his mind and his teeth if he could manage it. No, Varrock was a fighter, there was no shame in leaving this world standing up for your people against their oppressors. So very far from it, Old Man. What bothered Ulric was that none of the other Lupid had fought back. None of them had so much as raised a voice or growled the entire time, until the patriarch was dead. Only Varrock had stood against them. He knew now why the Elder Wolf lamented his Clan's decline. The Beastkin knew they wouldn't strike back, he knew, even with his best years long behind him, that it was only him left to show teeth.
My kin. No harm. The dying wish of a decent man. A free man. And Ulric had given his word.
Struggling through the retribution of the drugs, Ulric knew he had to get his ass in gear. Varrock's people were still in harm's way. The Magister was dead and so were the goons with him but somebody would know there had been a gathering, they would know that there were witnesses. They might question the events, and might lean on the folk there to get the answers they wanted. Keeping that from happening meant giving them something else to worry about and dismantling the power structures. He needed to deep-six the Baron, publicly. Create a threat that would draw fire away from the Lupid Clans, especially Varrock's granddaughter, the natural place Prosper would start trying to apply pressure. Unless he put pressure on them first.
Thus convinced, Ulric rolled to his feet and fought through a wave of dizziness.
"Oops," He commented aloud realizing he wasn't in any condition currently to do anything sensitive without fucking it up, "Might have gone a little too hard in the paint. I'm gonna need to visit the brothel again."
Get your minds out of the gutters, they were the only safe places to get a bath in that part of town.
He'd spent four nights there over the last week or so, and earned a reputation as a down on their luck with cash and a penchant for poor decisions. And also, a strange obsession with games, as the girls whose rooms he'd rented to take a bath in were used only for the tub, soap, and to play some bizarre card game. When it became obvious the John wasn't interested in pawing at the whores several came to hang out in the room to join in the games between jobs. He very nearly had one of the girls trained to play Uno to a competitive level. Alchemist Meth was a hell of a drug.
