Fortress Al-Mir

Arkk didn’t like leaving the fortress behind while an active threat circled his territory.

In the short time it took to gather a team, the dragonoid hadn’t managed to find even the false fortress. It just looped around overhead, continuing even as night began to fall. It was a good thing its ice-covered body glinted in the twinkling stars and moonlight or else the scrying would have been much harder. He was a little surprised that it kept up its search even as night fell. Some beastmen couldn’t see well at night, others could. He supposed dragonoids fell in the latter category.

Confident that his scrying team would alert him if it found anything that posed a real threat, Arkk had gone along with his other plan.

It was high time to get rid of the Evestani threat. They weren’t quite to his territory but they were close enough that he wasn’t at all willing to let them continue.

“Careful,” Arkk said as Eiff’an and Orjja lowered a thick wooden plank down to the ground. Lines of brass on its surface linked up with adjacent planks as the two orcs latched it in place. Stepping away from it, they hurried back to the teleportation circle to gather up the next plank.

Arkk knelt at the edge of the platform, grasping hold of a small brass nub that stuck up. Rotating it around and around caused interlocking gears to turn a larger section of the forming circle.

He looked off into the distance, narrowing his eyes as puffs of white mist clouded in front of his face with every exhale.

Gleeful Burg had managed to get their fires under control in the six days since his assault. The Evestani occupiers had sent out scouting forces to every village within a day’s ride, likely searching for more food. Ilya’s efforts at evacuating all the surrounding villages and hauling their food stores, livestock, and anything else of value back to the fortress had paid off. Evestani found nothing. Their resupply caravans weren’t arriving thanks to Kia and Claire’s strike teams.

They weren’t in an all-out panic just yet. They must have had some food supplies outside the burg’s warehouses. Likely food brought with the army. Even with that staving off hunger, for the time being, they were getting a bit more frantic about searching nearby villages. They had to be running low.

Arkk adjusted the brass knob, altering the angle and distance as the orcs placed the final plank in its slot. The maximum distance he could set was barely enough. Since that avatar seemed to be able to detect anathema like the teleportation circle, he had appeared at the furthest distance possible.

The orcs brought in glowstones and placed them on the wooden planks where people normally stood to power the assembled ritual circle. Glowing magic spread out through the brass but a small modification made by Zullie and the blacksmiths kept the ritual circle from activating before he was ready.

Arkk made a few final corrections, double-checking his work with a crystal ball set to view the entire burg from far overhead. White mist inside the ball partially obscured most of the central keep and its surroundings. It was the same tactic they had used near Elmshadow to hide their camp from scrying. Unfortunately for them, while good at hiding some low-to-the-ground tents, it couldn’t hide the tall keep all that well.

Arkk let out a long breath, creating a stream of misty air.

This was it.

There were civilians in the city. Regular citizens of the Duchy. The Evestani army wasn’t leaving them alone. They were acting like raiders and pillagers, taking whatever they wanted from the people who were unable to stop them. They weren’t the target of this. Nonetheless, Arkk held no doubts that they would suffer because of what he was doing. They would have suffered anyway.

He planted his hand on the fresh modifications to the ritual circle.

How did one fight an army with only a few hundred employees?

By not playing fair.

Arkk pulsed magic through the ritual circle. The four glowstones dimmed just a hair. He adjusted the brass knob, just a little to one side, and pulsed his magic again. Then adjusted the knob and pulsed. In the span of a few seconds, he repeated the action a dozen times, draining the glowstones down to a barely visible dim glow.

“Swap!” Arkk called out when he felt his next attempt at pulsing the ritual circle fail.

Orjja and Eiff’an hurried forward, exchanging the expended glowstones with fresh, brightly lit ones.

As they worked, Arkk focused on the crystal ball.

The first boulder dropped a few seconds after he finished, slamming down against an invisible barrier around the keep. It broke apart, crumbling to pieces just as a second boulder hammered down. A third and fourth quickly followed. Then a fifth and sixth. More and more. Each impact following the first made that barrier flicker. Some bits of rock and stone fell through, even while most of the crumbling boulders slid off toward the middle of the city.

Even at the distance he was at, the absolute maximum range the boulder drop ritual circle allowed, he could hear the delayed impacts. They sounded like distant thunderclaps rolling over the hills.

Arkk had been on the other side of this very ritual circle at Elmshadow, working with several others to power the defenses of that burg. He knew the strain and stress that even a single boulder caused. He almost felt bad for the poor spellcasters who had likely been chatting idly in their defensive ritual circle right up until that first impact.

Now, they would be scrambling. People would be rushing to wake all the reserve spellcasters, getting them to move into the ritual circle as soon as one collapsed.

When Arkk had been defending Elmshadow, Evestani had only launched one boulder every few minutes and then only for a short while before their spellcasters had to rest.

As soon as Orjja and Eiff’an moved clear of the ritual circle, Arkk started up again. Another dozen house-sized boulders manifested high over Gleeful Burg, letting the force of gravity carry them straight down.

Before the second of the newest volley could slam into that shield, a blinding ray of gold, wide and large, went straight into the air.

That wave of boulders never made it down. Nothing impacted. Just as the rays of gold obliterated streaks of land, they took out the falling rocks as well. And yet, despite that, Arkk had to laugh. “Swap!” he said.

From his experiences in both Elmshadow and Gleeful, Arkk didn’t think the avatar could use that strong blast of magic in rapid succession. After blasting away an entire street, the avatar had swapped to thin, narrow beams rather than the wide blasts.

And Arkk still had a whole crate of glowstones.

From their perspective, it must be like he had found hundreds of high-level spellcasters, all operating multiple ritual circles.

Another dozen boulders started toward the keep in short order. The first hit the barrier, causing it to flicker. The second shattered it.

Ten more boulders fell, pelting the keep to rubble. Arkk didn’t stop there. As soon as the orcs moved new glowstones in place, he carried on, directing another dozen in the area around the keep. Most of the soldiers were concentrated just outside the keep’s inner walls. Some, however, were stationed at the burg’s outer walls. From earlier scrying, Arkk felt he had a fairly good idea of where most troops stayed at night.

None of his identified targets were spared. With the barrier down, he didn’t have to waste half a dozen boulders on a single target.

In less than thirty minutes after teleporting in and getting everything set up, the majority of Gleeful Burg was little more than a pile of rocks. Arkk tried to avoid the areas where he knew the civilians of the city had been relegated. At the same time, he spared not a single thought of mercy toward the Evestani.

He doubted he got the entire army. It was likely he wouldn’t even know how much damage he had done until days later after Evestani dug out any survivors. He still felt that he had done some damage. The largest concentration of their army in the Duchy was, hopefully, no more. Hopefully, Hawkwood and the Duke’s Grand Guard would be able to move in and begin reclaiming burgs and territory.

As the last of the glowstones faded, Arkk stood up, fingers tingling from how hard his heart pounded in his chest. “Pack it up,” he said, crushing his fingers in his grip.

Stepping through the door to the library, Arkk found Zullie seated at one of the large desks. She was shifted to one side of her chair, arm fully on the table from her elbow to her chest, with her head resting against her knuckles while her glasses sat off to one side. She didn’t move as he entered the room. Her eyes didn’t even open.

Hale sat a desk away, nose in a book. Arkk recognized it as one Zullie had recommended to him. A treatise on magical theory for ritual construction. It was thanks to that book that he had been able to craft a few of the specialized circles he had used. She looked up upon his arrival.

Noticing that Zullie hadn’t moved, Hale sighed. “She came in about five minutes after you left, opened her book, and immediately fell asleep.”

Acknowledging Hale with a nod, Arkk cleared his throat. Then cleared it a little louder. “Zullie,” he tried, keeping his voice soft. He didn’t want to startle her but he did have a few things to discuss. “Zullie.”

The witch’s entire body jerked. Her head fell off her knuckles, dropping to her chest before she caught herself. She pressed herself back in her seat with both hands flat on the desk. Arkk caught a brief moment of alarm in her eyes before registering the situation around her.

Heaving out a sigh, Zullie closed her eyes again. For a moment, Arkk thought she was going to go back to sleep. With another shake of her head, she looked up to him.

“You’re back.”

“Are you alright?”

“Of course.” Zullie picked up her glasses, straightening them on her nose. “How was it?”

Arkk pressed his lips together. Back at the fortress, far from Gleeful Burg and the possibility of the golden-eyed avatar blasting him off the face of the world, an unpleasant nausea had settled in.

There had been between eight and ten thousand people in the Evestani army. Anywhere from one to five thousand citizens of the Duchy depending on how many fled, how many were killed, and how many welcomed their new masters with open arms. Arkk still didn’t know how much damage he had done. Yet…

“Gleeful Burg has been buried under a layer of rubble.”

“Oh.” Zullie yawned. “Good. The glowstones performed as I expected then?”

“Each group of four got about twelve usages out of the ritual circle, give or take. There were—”

“Only twelve?” Zullie said with a frown. She blinked twice, looking down at the book open on the desk. Shoving it aside, she grabbed a parchment and quickly scrawled out a few notes. “You should have gotten sixteen to eighteen boulders out of each group.”

Arkk just shrugged. He didn’t particularly feel up to arguing at the moment. The ritual circle had failed after twelve most every time. Only once had he gotten thirteen. Given that he hadn’t designed or even sketched out the ritual circle—it had been premade—he didn’t think he could be at any fault for the discrepancy.

Frown turning to a scowl, Zullie returned to the parchment. She tested out the equations in a few different ways, substituting a variable here or there to try to figure out what went wrong. Hale scooted over, peering over her shoulder with obvious interest. Arkk would normally have been the same. Now, he just felt too drained.

“Can the glowstones be refilled with magic?” Arkk asked, interrupting her calculations.

“Yes,” she said slowly. “But I’m not going to.”

“Is there danger in refilling them too many times?” he asked, suddenly a little more concerned.

“Oh yeah. A major danger that I won’t get any research done,” Zullie said, scratching out a few notes on the parchment. “Not going to lie, Arkk, I like being here. There’s always something interesting to research. But I did not sign up to babysit a bunch of rocks. And they do need babysitting. Leave them too long in those charging circles and they’ll crack. Or worse, explode.”

Arkk let his shoulders drop as the mild tension bled out. “Then get someone else to do it.”

“Who?” Zullie said. She turned her head, looking at Hale for a moment before shaking her head in the negative. “The only ones qualified are me and maybe Savren. For near two weeks, I’ve done nothing but stare at a bunch of rocks and I’m tired of it. Looking into how to fill them was good. Doing so is not. Give me something fun to work on again. Let’s go back to the old magic. Staring at rocks left me lots of time to think and I think I’ve worked out a few options for spells based on the three we know work—”

“Stop, stop. I am interested in old magic. But unless you’re about to say you’ve come up with a spell that can replace that bombardment ritual, we still need those glowstones. Even if you have,” he continued, not letting her get an argument in, “having someone else able to launch dozens of boulders at once would be even better. If Evestani rallies whoever is left at Gleeful and joins up with one of the other detachments of their army, we might need to do this again.”

Arkk hoped not. Just doing it once felt like it had taken a lot out of him. Not magically. Emotionally.

If they had to do it again, he would do it differently. While the army was on the move or camped out in the wilderness between burgs. In retrospect, he should have left them their food so that they would continue and he could have hit them later. But… the situation had just felt so… dire. Like if he had waited, Evestani would have reached Fortress Al-Mir.

Maybe they would have. But… Fortress Al-Mir, with its enchanted walls and maze-like layout, would have afforded him the time to figure out a better solution.

Throwing the doubt from his mind with a shake of his head—what was done was done—Arkk looked to Zullie. “You turned away everyone who showed up with an interest in magic. I know you think they would be useless for research purposes but can you not take on a few assistants? Go find some of them and teach them how to work the glowstone ritual. Then we can talk about old magics.”

Zullie bit down on her lip, slowly looking over to Hale.

The young girl’s eyes widened almost comically. She shook her head back and forth. “I… uh… Arkk has me working on other things.”

“Do I?” Arkk asked, mildly bemused.

“You wanted me to fix that inquisitor.”

Arkk opened his mouth, paused, then clamped it shut again. Hale’s face went entirely impassive and unreadable. Which, thanks to knowing her for years, Arkk could read easily. On anyone else, it would be a knowing smile.

Pressing his lips together, Arkk sighed. Although tempted to leave Hale to Zullie’s mercies, he looked to the witch and said, “Find someone other than Hale.”

Zullie groaned. “What do you mean, fix the inquisitor? I already healed her as good as she’s going to get.”

“That’s a good point. Both of us should go and watch what Hale is doing when she asks Astra if she can fix her hand.”

Hale flinched at the emphasis on getting permission but nodded her head.

Zullie just stared at Hale, suspicious.

“You’ll see when we do it,” Arkk said, cutting off Zullie’s impending question. “Helping her might be the most immediately pressing matter at the moment.”

Getting those glowstones charged back up would be important but given how long it took, losing a little time now wouldn’t matter in the long run. Meanwhile, Sylvara Astra was both injured and actively in pain. And she might be able to help with their dragonoid problem, which Arkk imagined would be something she would more willingly do if he healed her.

He was tired. Exhausted. He wanted to go to his room and lie down, rest a little before the next big emergency.

Helping Astra wouldn’t just help her, however. If Hale proved her method of using the spell was safe and viable, she could help others as well. Several had been injured in Gleeful and would surely be grateful to receive additional aid beyond what minor healing they had already gotten. Beyond his employees, there were plenty among the refugees who were injured.

And then… there was the fact that Flesh Weaving wasn’t designed to heal at all, but designed to mold the body into something beyond. He could easily picture Dakka and some of the other orcs asking Hale for some extra muscle mass, height… extra arms? Eyes on the backs of their heads? Arkk wasn’t sure what all the possibilities were.

Arkk peeked in on Astra, checking on the prison. She was still awake. That was a good sign. Hopefully, she would remain so.

“I’ll see if she is feeling up to it. If she is, we’ll observe Hale’s work. If not, I want you to train others in the glowstone rituals. Come up with a few names while I’m gone.”

Before Zullie could argue, Arkk teleported down to the lower prison levels, raised his hand, and knocked on the inquisitrix’s door.