Asheron's Fall: The Power of Ten, Book Six

Probably nobody was more surprised when the thrust of our own attack turned north instead of west than the Gotrok themselves. After such a horrific defeat, it only made sense that we should follow up and pursue them all gung-ho, capitalizing on the momentum of our great victory.

That totally did not happen.

Instead of an army tromping towards Linvak Tukal to valiantly take back the city of the lugians, the Gotrok instead were forced to contend with scores of teams of Royal Scout-led adventurers wiping their Summons off the landscape, and also Sealing the spawn points so that no more came in.

The agile teams were all over the place, raiding in, taking their tolls, Sealing the points, and withdrawing with speed and stealth. Summons perished, Burned in unwhite flame, and were not replaced.

It was very much not a lugian kind of fight.

Our intelligence sources in Linvak Tukal, a couple of whom had been Marked in secret by a certain overly-stealthy Imperial Princess, relayed that Muldaveus, leader of the Gotrok, was throwing bellowing fits at our complete lack of follow-through, with cautious word that his ‘great surprise for the weak-minded fools’ was not getting used and was still waiting for us when we tried anything.

Evil chortles all around, mind you.

It was probably a complete coincidence that security around a great number of old mines that didn’t seem to be generating all that much output increased, and no, no, we didn’t notice and weren’t curious about whatever was inside.

Nor were we curious as to where all the output from their active mines was going. Nope, hadn’t occurred to any of us at all.

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Our forces rolled north, now that Mayoi was secure and nothing was going to be getting through the high walls without great numbers and attracting a lot of attention. The undead left behind would have no problem holding the city, and if needed, Master Ben Ten and his Moon Legion could run down the peninsula from Tou-Tou and be there in only a couple hours.

Or faster if I ‘ported there, made up a Disk Train, and he and his senior students towed the rest of them with increasingly adept lightfoot. They were doing a lot of meditation and testing of ki techniques while they patiently watched and waited for the vivus here to finish Burning and complete its task, fully expecting it might take months to do so.

If I had promised to come fetch a bunch of them, including Master Ben Ten, via Teleporting if we saw some serious action, well, the Sho in general and Master Ben Ten in particular had some very bad blood with the Hea.

They’d killed him the first time, after all, finally avenging the great stand he’d made at Yanshi almost two generations ago that had driven them from the Sho town (now occupied by mosswarts) and its environs. He was quite eager to return the favor to them with some true deaths of his own making, even it meant risking his own final dissolution.

He had seen the living return, Tou-Tou fall, the lugians driven back. Only the Hea remained behind for him to reach contentment, and all regrets leave him.

Which was not to say the potential of me returning them from the dead via Resurrections was not also being waited for patiently. The undead paramounts who’d never bothered to have children were consumed with the thoughts of starting families if they could return to life, and finally leave behind a true legacy of their own, I’d been told.

The extra years of the Matrix method would give them all the chance to do so.

The army rolled up the road through the oft-contested settlement of Nanto, which had gone through the hands of so many tribes and been attacked by shades so often it had basically devolved down into a trading center for the tribes to meet at, since none of them could hold it on their own.

The many tribes of monugas, banderlings, drudges, mosswarts, and even mites were not happy to see an assembled army of Isparians, lugians, and tumeroks coming through the area, but they couldn’t muster the numbers to equal us quickly, and definitely didn’t have the mass and discipline to be a threat to us.

Those who thought sniping around us, and maybe trying to steal something from the camp, got dead quick, and that nonsense stopped fairly soon, points taken and proof given on all sides of relative weakness.

The tribes were also aware we’d snuffed out every Summons point all the way to Hebian-to and well past the lugian-controlled hillside town of Lin. They really were too busy enjoying areas not occupied by hostile Summons of all sorts to really care about us moving an army through, as long as said army wasn’t turned on them.

If the wisest of them realized the implications of us managing to marshal such a force, sending the Gotrok running and the Hea slinking away, well, the tribes weren’t known for their long-range planning, and we’d see what would happen when it happened.

Our scouts said the Hea were already gathering at Soushi, preparing to defend the town they’d taken from the Sho energetically… and the scouts also reported hovering shadows moving about, and strange hums of energy and inhumanoid voices in the air.

The Hea still had the reputation of being the favored servant race of the virindi who had made them into what they were, whereas the lugians had basically been bribed into serving them, instead. The hooks of the virindi were deep into the altered race of the Hea tumeroks, and it looked like they hadn’t shaken free of them.

How we were going to deal with that was going to be interesting. After all, there was no place for the Hea to run away to, unless the Virindi or their Shamans knew a way to send them back to Marae Lassel, where the tumeroks had first come to this world, and which the Aun had basically left to them.

Them, the virindi, and the olthoi.

There was a lot of seething resentment among the Isparians to treat them as horribly as they had treated us, and neither the Aun nor the lugians would have said anything if we did the same back to them.

Princess Kristie had just snarled at that, and let them know that anyone who wanted to make war on non-combat females and children was welcome to go ahead and do so without her and her people providing any support, and they could parade around the corpses and skulls, maybe drink their blood and cook the dead over fires for supper, too.

The whispers kind of faded away in shame after that.

We were going to kill anyone who dared to fight, we were going to send them down to true death, and we were going to make them run away. They were still a hunting society, still didn’t have a military tradition, and now we had two warlords who were both very good at mass movement of troops, not just skirmishing and raiding bands.

And they just so happened to have an excellent Diviner with a bunch of eager students ready to put their Theurgic outdoor/Natural Detects on display sniffing out all the many, many ambushes and hidden Hea the red-skinned tumeroks were sending out, over and over again.

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The attacks commence...

Hea scouts died in startling numbers, and whatever rebirth mechanics their virindi masters had kept going for them? They didn’t work.

Like the Gotrok, the Hea had to confront the very same unwelcome truth that humanity had all those years ago: true death had returned, and now it was coming for them with pointed steel!

The sources in Linvak Tukal made it very clear that the Gotrok were very unsettled over the deaths of the younger generation of recruits in the attack on Mayoi, and the fact that the deaths of every single lugian there had been permanent!

Our wiping their external reinforcements and line of Summoned creatures had also unsettled them immensely. Even knowing that we were now pressing the attack on the Hea and didn’t have the forces that we’d had at Mayoi, the Gotrok made no attempt to move out in force, instead trying to hunt down the scouting forces raiding and sniping at their Summons points, Sealing them off, and ripping away their protectors and sacrificial army in slow, relentless layers.

The Hea made one attempt at an open battle, rounding up Summons from across the eastern plains of Osteth and sweeping down from Fort Dryreach with a veritable horde of over ten thousand of their Summons forming a sacrificial wall for the shamans and officers commanding them.

It did not go well for them.

The lugian vanguards basically smashed through the horde, while tight and disciplined lines of Isparian spears behind a shield wall guarded their flanks, splitting that horde open and dousing the whole area in vivus. The tumeroks used a lot of magic, which smashed into those interlocked shields and proved basically useless on the line of Isparians and lugians coming for them, while their archery likewise just bounced from full armor.

In return, their light armor of leathers, hides, and occasional mail was ripped through with far more deadly intent, especially if the Summons tried spellcasting in close combat.

More to the point, I was there to point out the living among the Summoned, light them up with Faerie Fire, and there were a whole lot of paramount archers and mages totally willing to snipe those tumeroks down very, very quickly.

As the living died, the Summons reacted ever more mechanically, instinctively, and ineffectively in the mass-combat situation.

As before, I was basically doing a lot of Healing instead of attacking, restricting most of my ‘attacks’ to pointing out targets for others. I didn’t want to have to add a tumerok Baneskull to my arsenal of the things, after all, even though I was capable of killing a lot of them all at once.

The numbers were five to one in their favor, with no walls equalizing things, and we still crushed the attack completely. The horde of Summons broke on a lot of shields and spears, our own magic ripped into them nicely, and disciplined squads of archers and mages proved far more effective than their rough and loose bands of kin and clansmen.

The living slunk away first. Despite all their martial zeal, they were not soldiers, had never been trained as such, and didn’t have the discipline or morale to face the tight forces, the slaughter, or our inexorable advance. They were in it for glory, single duels, skirmishes, raids, and ambushes. Running away to fight another day, instead of being ground up under our boots, was just how they did things.

This open slugfest was completely alien to their nature and way of living, and watching the tight mass of people and metal just crush everything in its way shocked the hell out of them with just how murderously effective it was. If we’d come in loose formation and fought a lot of small skirmishes, they likely would have stuck around, and we might have killed a lot more of them.

That was fine. Letting them run, letting them be chased, forcing them to evacuate their homes and families from places they’d lived in freely for a generation or more… they were now learning what it felt like to fall from on top of things, and see the peace they’d fought for savaged and torn apart by the same enemies they’d done the same thing to.

It was a lot of recycling of hate and anger, sure, and I knew it, and I also knew that they had it coming.

They had two choices as the campaign continued, our losses very light, our healing superior, as were our arms and armor and discipline. They didn’t really have any answers to them.

They could pull back further north, and start making troubles with the olthoi, or they could flee to Marae Lassell… if their virindi masters let them, as they didn’t have the skill or power to do so themselves. Indeed, being largely cut off from their home island had been very liberating, overall, judging by the words of the Aun and their social structure loosening up over time.