Heretic spellblade 8, p.46
Heretic Spellblade 8, page 46
Several cities and fortresses expanded in size on the map, and blinked red. They included Soreaux, Waier, Fertheim, Aleich, Tartus, Gharrick Pass, and even Straub.
What followed was nearly thirty minutes of detailed deployments, as Kara and Seraph ran through the Champions and began moving them to different areas. Fortress commanders sometimes intervened, often with knowledge of the situation in their city or castle or else the state of the portal, and deployments might be modified.
Ester noted that most binding stones outside major cities were left with a single Champion to defend them. Dozens of Champions were being sent to battle Arcadia.
Even with a hundred Champions, Kara needed to make a choice. Thirty binding stones required a lot of Champions to defend, but so did quelling sabotage attempts.
An invading army needed a lot of Champions, especially on short notice. Trafaumh and Falmir were exhausted after the recent war, even if Trafaumh had been able to rebuild much of its military by rapidly freeing and recruiting from its slave population. The Empire had pushed hard for a year now, but even it couldn’t easily fight yet another war with so many of its soldiers still committed in the west.
More importantly, Ester knew much of the Empire’s mobility came from Nathan’s teleportation. His spymaster, Reine, could teleport around small armies, but nothing on the size of a war between nations.
So Champions and their ability to tear apart soldiers would play the most important role. As would sorcerers and the Lodges. She’d heard the stories of the Triumph of the Torrovium Fields and the ancient spells used to summon a tornado the size of a city, earthquakes, or even floods.
With so many committed to Arcadia, it appeared Kara made the decision to limit active deployments to portals and focused on the threat of enemy agents. For her part, Ester agreed. She wasn’t sure the other Champions would, but Kara and Seraph directed most of Nathan’s logistics and military operations, with help from Fei and Narime at lower levels.
As the angry wolfgirl from earlier had said, who here had the experience to question them? Ester sure as hell wasn’t going to.
The meeting broke up once deployments were given out, and Champions defending active portals hurried off to check on them. The fortress commanders huddled by the stage, including Ester’s, who was a duogem human sorceress who worked with the Inquisition Arcana. Many of the fortress commanders had been reassigned to Arcadia, as they were all duogems, meaning some needed to hand over command to monogems in their absence.
“Looks like we’re still in Soreaux,” Lizbeth said. She grabbed Ester by the hand and led her to a corner of the hall, away from the mass of Champions trooping to the mental gateway. “I’d say this is a mess and question what the spymaster and Inquisition have been up to, but fuck me if we haven’t seen how busy they’ve been.”
Ester nodded. “If Nathan got caught in this trap, I imagine he didn’t have much choice.”
That sentence sounded stupid, and her face reddened after saying it. Traps, by definition, didn’t offer somebody a choice.
Lizbeth either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Her wolf ears flattened as she sipped her ale and stared up at the map, which remained in place at the end of the hall.
“If what we’ve been dealing with the past few weeks is lighter than what we’ll see over the next few days and weeks, I can’t imagine it,” Lizbeth said. “How are you feeling, by the way? I’m at least a little used to this, both in terms of the chaos, but also what we’ll be dealing with in Soreaux. Part of being a Royal Knight required training to root out spies, patrolling Aleich, doing raids and that sort of thing. Not sure about you and the Corps.”
Ester grimaced.
She had to admit, her time in Soreaux as Nathan’s Champion wasn’t what she expected.
When she’d defended one of Dominic’s portals outside Soreaux, the waves of demons had been consistent and relentless. The portal was older and larger than Deverese’s, and only by the time of the cascade did Deverese’s portal at Fort Arrinsy become as dangerous.
So she’d expected the same at Soreaux, if not worse. A relentless schedule of training, fighting, and sleeping to keep demons from swarming up into the capital.
Only to find the portal barely active. Demons trickled through every so often, and sometimes in larger amounts, but never in numbers great enough to even trouble a monogem. Ester once did practice drills with her sword, as lesser demons couldn’t even hurt her and the automated defenses by the exit would pulverize any demon who got past her.
She’d learned that any portal belonging to one of Nathan’s tamed Messengers became inert like this. Soreaux, Gharrick Pass, and probably now the Spires. Maybe he had more Messengers in secret, saved for a dangerous situation like the one they found themselves in now.
Ester still ended up defending portals, however. Whenever another portal raised the alarm, she and the other duogems would travel there and crush any invasion. The mental gateway network allowed Champions to converge in large numbers on any portal, and the monitoring system meant invasions could be predicted and planned around. Even invasions full of greater demons that dwarfed the worst she’d seen in her entire career fell to a defense force of a dozen Champions.
Most Bastions couldn’t even field a dozen Champions, let alone all of them to defend a single portal.
But that wasn’t where she spent most of her time. No, the primary purpose of Soreaux’s Champions was to aid the Inquisition. Her commander worked closely with Sen, Reine, and the Inquisition Arcana on research. Ester, Lizbeth, and the others were called upon by the spyhunters to root out and destroy enemy agents.
At first, she’d questioned the usage of Champions like this.
Then she’d kicked in a warehouse door and her diamonds had nearly been overwhelmed by a barrage of force blasts from mystic foxes. Lizbeth had roared in, cutting down the enemy’s force barriers. Before Ester even knew what had happened, enchanted bolts and spellfire cut down the enemy.
Nathan’s foes were dangerous. They possessed magic capable of harming Champions, crushing companies of elite soldiers, and likely even mental magic. The Inquisition were throwing everything they had at them, yet the foe kept coming.
No wonder Kara devoted so many Champions to defending the cities.
“We should go,” Ester said. “I bet there’s an Inquisition handler waiting for us in Soreaux already.”
She was wrong, it turned out.
Not about the handler, but that she would be from the Inquisition.
A familiar trigem sat in their barracks with a half-eaten tray of donuts. Frosted sugar dripped from her lips as she stared at Ester and Lizbeth when they walked in, as if she were a cat caught eating the canary.
“Uhhh,” Erica said, a half-eaten donut in her hands. “You’re going to walk out that door and come back inside in…” She glanced down at the donuts. “90 seconds.”
Ester and Lizbeth nodded without saying a word, spun on the spot, and stepped outside.
They stood outside the door, which was soundproofed and prevented them from hearing Erica scarfing down the donuts.
“She’s the assassin, right?” Lizbeth asked. “From Falmir? I got a chance to see her fight a few weeks ago, and I’ve heard about her before.”
Ester nodded. “She’s one of Bastion Gareth’s trigems. I… don’t think we should mention this to anyone.”
“Yeah, I’m taking this to my grave. One of my friends mentioned Sunstorm keeps severed heads, and I don’t want to know what this assassin’s fetish is.”
Sunstorm did what?
After re-entering the barracks common room, they found Erica leaning against the far wall. She grimaced. Her cloak shrouded her lithe figure, but she’d left her hood down. Three moonstones glittered in her collarbone.
“I’m not even going to try to act cool after that,” Erica said. “We all have our vices. Just don’t tell anyone about it. Now, you two are assigned to me. Pretty sure you already know the assignments, if what I heard about the big meeting in Aleich was right. Your commander is being sent to Aleich to work with her old mentor, Sen. The portal basically manages itself.”
Ester nodded. A token enhanced Champion had been left in Soreaux, and Ester guessed she was responsible for the portal.
“What about Kurah?” Lizbeth asked.
“She’ll be stationed here, but will be helping the Inquisition with the towns in the countryside,” Erica said.
So, a trigem, three duogems, and an enhanced Champion in Soreaux, and all but one were devoted to stopping saboteurs in the region.
Erica pointed at Ester and Lizbeth. “The two of you already know each other and apparently get along, so I expect you can cover each other. A diamond and an amethyst make for a great combination. The Inquisition’s agents can provide support fire and spellcasting, while I’ll add in whatever I can, given I’m more… flexible in a combat situation.”
“Do we have any priorities to protect to focus on? Soreaux is massive and while we’ve shut down a number of enemy operations recently, I don’t understand the bigger picture,” Ester asked.
Erica shifted slightly to face Ester more than Lizbeth, while the wolfgirl turned to face her as well.
“We think their biggest target is the Lodge, in order to limit their ability to aid in the war against Arcadia,” Erica said. “They’ve stopped attacking merchants, but are still focused on the populist faction. Other than the political angle, we think they might try to arrange false flag attacks that look like they’re conducted by the Inquisition, beastkin, or Imperial soldiers. The illusion powers of the foxes are dangerous, but they’ve been held back by their lack of numbers. Nobody will believe a massacre by beastkin if they’re raining down ascended magic from fifth rank spell frames.”
Even commoners with little knowledge of magic knew enough about magic to know how rare it was, precisely because they couldn’t use it. Without a natural gift or extensive training, even casting second rank spells was difficult, and third rank spells was where most people hit the ceiling.
Ester reminded herself of that fact with how often she encountered sorcerers and Champions throwing around fourth rank spells or higher. Anything fifth rank or stronger was typically a ritual spell for ordinary sorcerers.
Ironically, the popularity of books about famous Champions, particularly Nine-Tail Slash Tarako, allowed many to understand this. As a swordfox, Tarako battled a lot of evil sorcerers in her books, and authors frequently explained spell frames and their rarity to an audience who had potentially never seen a spell frame in their life.
Now Tarako’s popularity limited the ability of traitor foxes to commit a massacre.
The next few days went by in a blur. As Lizbeth and Ester had worried, enemy activity soared. A brazen assault on the largest mage tower of the Omrian Lodge was launched in broad daylight, with cloaked figures emerging from unmarked carriages and breaching the atrium doors during ordinary hours.
The defenses had sprung up instantly, blocking half the attack force outside, while sorcerers sprung into action below.
Reine had spotted the plot in motion and advised Erica, meaning Ester and Lizbeth were already inside the atrium when the cloaked foxes burst through the doors. They’d gone down swiftly enough. Erica herself remained outside to deal with any nasty surprises.
Later that night, a fire broke out during a party held by a popular merchant. Reine missed this one, as a servant had apparently illusioned himself as a fox for weeks in anticipation of the party. While Erica caught him and took out his cell in the city, many died in the blaze before mages could put it out.
An entire town appeared to go mad and attempt to start an uprising. Ester expected to hear they’d all been put to death, given the obvious signs of mental magic, but they’d apparently been quarantined.
“Why? They’re corrupted,” Ester asked Erica.
The assassin had just returned from a brief visit to Aleich, presumably to her Bastion and Reine. Ester had heard that Gareth was assisting with matters in Aleich, where riots had broken out between beastkin and humans due to an outbreak of Nationalist-era rhetoric.
“Nathan’s trigems are pretty sure the Twins should take a look before we start condemning thousands to death,” Erica said. “You’ve met the Twins, right?”
“The titty succubi who make lewd jokes and rub their tits against Nathan all the time?” Ester sighed. “Yes, I’ve met them.”
“Yeah, you never forget them. Nathan trusts them, so I trust them, and so should you. One of them even escaped the trap in Arcadia and told us what’s going down, and is now settling the situation in Fertheim.”
Ester frowned. “More riots?”
“No. An assassination attempt on Prince Maxwell’s life. It helped to finally have a succubus around to tell truth from lie, because the situation was a fucking mess.” Erica shook her head.
“Why did she leave Nathan?”
Erica raised an eyebrow. “Because he’s fucking Nathan. You’re his Champion, right? Guy eats most Messengers for breakfast. Teleports armies around, makes shit disappear with a wave of his hand. Nobody’s complaining about a Messenger helping us, especially as it sounds like he had things in hand with three other Messengers and Fyre there.”
Ester nodded. They had work to do.
Unfortunately, that was where things began to unravel.
Five days after Nathan’s disappearance, another attack was launched against the Lodge. Once again, Reine barely spotted it in time as foxes darted across rooftops.
In the bloody aftermath outside the tower, Ester got her first glimpse of the unfolding disaster.
“Erica, did you order the citadel to activate its defensive barrier?” Ester asked, staring up at the glowing dome of light flickering to life over the towering dark fortress that loomed over Soreaux.
“What the hell are… you…” Erica closed her eyes. “Shit.”
Whispers and gasps rippled through the crowd as all eyes turned to the citadel, which had activated its defensive barrier for the first time in living memory. Not even during the cascades had the barrier gone up, largely because it had been inoperative.
“Fucking shit,” Erica snapped out. “Ester, start gathering up all the nearby soldiers and knights. Lizbeth, head into the Lodge and use their wireless to try to contact the citadel. If you don’t hear anything, change channels to the garrison in the city and order them to gather at the citadel’s gates.”
Before Erica teleported away, Ester cried out, “What about Aleich, how do we tell them?”
“Reine already knows.” With those words, Erica blinked away. She’d be darting toward the citadel before any of them could hope to get close.
The citadel proved unresponsive, and Ester gathered up every soldier and knight in the vicinity. Plainclothes agents swarmed out of the woodwork, presumably because they’d been informed of the operation at the Lodge, and reported in, so Ester added them to group marching to the citadel’s gates.
The hour it took to muster and reach the citadel felt like an eternity. Had the enemy already cut down everyone inside?
Impossible, she told herself. An entire garrison of elite Inquisitorial Corps soldiers stood at the ready in there, and Nathan’s mental gateway ensured Champions could respond from all over the world. Reine would be sending everyone she could, despite the war against Arcadia.
Hundreds more soldiers milled about outside the lower gates of the citadel. Not a soul could be seen above them, save a single shadow lurking in the gatehouse.
Men jeered at the shadow, which told Ester they’d been here for a while.
“You’re here,” Erica said as she blinked behind Ester.
“Sorry it took so long. I—” Ester began to say.
“It’s only been an hour and the city is huge. If Reine hasn’t already solved the problem with trigems through that fancy mental gateway network of Nathan’s, something’s very wrong,” Erica said. “I haven’t been able to hear battle. The individual buildings all have barriers, right?”
Ester nodded. “They can be individually activated. The Hall of Order and keep have stronger protections, including internal wards and barriers, because of their role in governance and their connections to the old citadel.”
“So even if the outer citadel is lost, the defenders can retreat farther inside. A pitched battle out here isn’t needed, especially with Nathan’s fortress in the old citadel,” Erica said. “My guess is that unless everyone was taken out immediately, the defenders are holed up. I checked with the Lodge, and they confirmed that no major spells have been used. So nothing big enough to shatter the sort of barriers Nathan would erect to keep intruders out has been cast.”
Relief washed over Ester. “So we’re not too late.”
“Gareth would have teleported here and blown up the barrier if we were worried. Didn’t get a chance to speak with him or anyone else, so Aleich might be in a mess as well. Gut tells me simultaneous strikes against palaces in Fertheim and Aleich at the same time. Maybe even Tartus, although Archduchess von Clair is in Aleich.”
“So we’re on our own.” Ester looked up at the shadow in the gatehouse.
Then she frowned, as it had vanished.
Instead, another figure stood atop the gates. Ester struggled to make this one out, but she swore the figure had two tails.
While she watched, the figure swung her arms out at the barrier.
“What the fuck is that?” Erica snarled, following Ester’s gaze.
The next moment, claw marks ripped through the barrier some fifty feet above them. Each claw was easily as thick as Ester’s head.
Cracks ran from the impact zone, then the barrier burst into pieces. The citadel’s strongest line of defense, intended to stop a demonic invasion or even magical assault, collapsed under a single attack by an unknown individual.
“Formations!” Erica snapped out.
The soldiers began forming up, while the agents rushed to the side and drew weapons. A concave shape was formed, facing the gate, as if their foe would appear from it.
