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

Qalaba'r was the southernmost of the old towns mostly associated with the Gharu’ndim settlers who’d come through the original Portals from Ispar. They didn’t have the problems with tumeroks that the Sho and the Aluvians who settled further east had, but the lugian renegades coming down from the Linvak Mountains had been a constant source of pressure on them… until diplomacy with King Kresovus had managed to stop some of the hostilities.

The Gotrok warrior society hadn’t much liked that, happy to undertake continuous battle with the runty little Isparian people for practice and for glory, and if they died repeatedly, that only made them fear death less.

Until that death became real once more, and the crashing return of that fear haunted the elders among them now.

Like all the Isparian towns in Osteth, the eastern side of the island of Dereth, Qalaba'r had been abandoned and overrun. The force doing so had originally been the shades, but they had been quickly pushed out by the undead, who seemed to take delight in taking over the homes and libraries of the studious and bookish Gharu’n people, who had long been the Isparians most fascinated with magic and lore.

The lugians had been unwilling to press the undead too much about said occupation, as the undead had managed to reclaim most of their spellcasting ability through some unknown means. As few of the renegade lugians had any Casting ability whatsoever, even though they despised the undead, they also feared them as beings who could enslave them, kill them, and return them as obedient walking corpses, a deed they had actually done in the past.

As a result, the undead were kept at arm’s length, but the Gotrok never made moves on them, and so the undead got to hold Qalaba'r.

The city was semi-important to the undead, as it was the last true settlement on the road that led south around the Inner Sea into the dangerous territories of the Direlands, where the most powerful of Summons and creatures lived and the most magic was leashed. Shades were all over the Direlands contesting it with them, while the virindi stirred the pot and went wherever their inscrutable designs led them.

So, holding or clearing Qalaba'r sent a clear message to the lugians that their western flanks were anything but secure, and provided us a reasonable check on anything moving out of the Direlands from the south. The Virindi reinforcements to Rithwic and Soushi all came up from near Qalaba'r, presumably from a base or Dungeon along the southern Landbridge.

This was also the furthest holding of the undead from their bases of power in the north of both Dereth and the Direlands, equally as far as Yanshi had been, a place they could monitor the comings and goings of the virindi on this side of the Inner Sea from… although I didn’t doubt they didn’t actually see anything the virindi wanted concealed. Those trips to Rithwic to root out anything settling there were meant to be showy and intimidating.

It was a static position of undead, one that the undead hadn’t seen fit to vacate, even after we’d blitzkrieged through their positions in the south and they’d not managed to reclaim a single one of the dead there. Perhaps they thought we’d forgotten about them.

Kris took over the assault on the Hea, while Briggs and his Stonehold boys came along for the slaughter here.

I wasn’t nearly as massive and showy as I could have been, but everyone knew that I could be, and I was restraining myself so that they could get the experience and the karma for the direct fighting… and so I could keep them alive if anything happened.

The undead were marginally more alert than they’d been in the south, but it was obvious we were busy making life very difficult for the Hea, so why would a force of Isparians with Flaming Weapons suddenly show up out of nowhere on their doorstep, unseen by any of their sentry Summons out in the hills and deserts, and just butcher them?

Well, we were rude that way, and Briggs and the Stonehold boys had been harried and pinned in the north a long time by the undead. They had grievances to settle.

Me, I just wanted to get rid of them all, but I satisfied myself with Detect Undead at VI, showing the locations of every single damn one within four hundred meters of myself. I fed that into the Heavens-Up Display for everyone in the Fellowship Alliance Briggs was leading, then sat back and kept them all alive as they went all zerg-worthy on all the red dots… and utterly ignored the ones that were cool blue, as they had in all the other towns we’d blitzed through.

I was monitoring a lot of Status effects, but the lesser Healers along were taking care of most of the work as a point of pride. They didn’t want to have me step in and do their jobs, and I didn’t want to have to step in and do their jobs. It was the job of the officers in charge of each Fellowship squad to make sure I didn’t have to get involved, so only really bad luck was going to force my intervention.

Briggs was active in both the combat and managing everything, a fact which still surprised the Isparians from Freehold who weren’t used to Kris doing the exact same thing. The Stoneholders had long gotten used to his measured bellows and Warlord authority getting them to move thus and so at certain times, and the resulting carnage of strike and fade, sudden flankings, abrupt ambushes, drawing out the enemy and severing them from their forces, luring undead this way and that, and wolfpack surrounds that just tore the undead apart with the abruptness of multiple teams hitting from multiple directions.

It was a massive display of tactical battlefield control, and as always shocked the people fighting with how murderously effective it was.

I walked through the town, men and women with flaming Weapons and Bows moving around me with speed, leapfrogging one another with speed and confidence, dashing around corners, letting off volleys at startled undead, running away, and then the chasing undead crashed right into heavily-armed Melees totally willing to Burn them away forever.

The undead tended to be naturally much stronger than many of those fighting… but they didn’t mass what the lugians did, nor could they out-muscle the stony giants. The Vanguard fighting style was becoming explosively popular among them, and the lugians loved the idea of being in full armor, shield up, and just pounding right through the most dire spells and magical effects to crash into an enemy position, shield-slamming them, flattening them, or pancaking them into an available wall or rock.

Got to use it a lot here, to the dismay of many a wall or door that gave way under bodyslamming impacts and happy bellows from purple-gray brutes clocking in at half a ton.

The undead in charge were arrogant and chose to remain until the fighting was close, at which time they sought to flee via Item Magic Teleportations of some kind.

Interdiction was long since up, and they went absolutely nowhere. I felt the ping of their spells hitting the Veil, where they were from, and Briggs altered course to both get his own Source Field over top of them and to cut off anyone from running away, with two teams of his people circling it from the flanks to cut off anything trying to get away.

While it is hard to interrupt Isparian Magic, it’s still impossible to spellcast when you are sticking out of a wall, or when a lugian is kneeling on your hands while he’s whaling away at your face, too.

The trio of senior undead, not knowing I could track them, did indeed attempt to leave hastily. The instant they came outside, my Shards slammed into them and quite literally smashed them back inside the building, looping up over the roof and down and around to Seek them out.

Briggs was in and on top of them before they could pull themselves to their feet, and blazing undead bodies went flying through walls and ceilings rapidly right after that, winking out of my Detect as they died.

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I thumbed through the missives in the ancient script of the undead, written in three different languages, so long was the history of the Empyrean peoples. They weren’t languages I’d had any problem learning in spoken or written form, and I scanned through them quickly.

A translator would have been pretty annoyed with how fast I worked, able to go through the various paperwork that the fighters were bringing to me from all over the town as if I was a native speed-reader.

A lot of it I was filing to the Markspace, sending off to analysts to start adding to our matrix of who was who in the command structure of the undead, something also added to by a lot of former Eldrytch Web members who’d dealt with undead of one sort or another in their duties, and even the rare older diplomats in royal service who’d survived.

Our insight into the various undead factions and placeholders was increasing, and it was quickly plain there were still hundreds of various nobles of some power scattered around… and who knew how many thousands of undead whose will had left them and were now slaves to the System here, fit only to die.

“Hey, there,” Briggs said, coming into the room. “Staying intellectually busy, I see.”

“You should take the Polyglot Feat,” I noted for him, continuing my quick riffling of paperwork. Saved a lot of arduous time for normal translators back in the Vesayans.

“Planning on it, next Expert Level,” he agreed patiently. He reached out into the Markspace, a couple chatrooms with data, connections, and timelines there, adding a few things. “The Town Crier was a font of useful information the undead probably didn’t want us to have, as normal.”

Mira shifted over to look at what he was putting in place with great curiosity, a few Isparians who were working intelligence murmuring as they confirmed events of the past, or new things that were happening in the North and the Direlands.

The undead were plainly upset by what we’d done in Zaikhal and points north, but still hadn’t motivated themselves up into an alarmed state after that. The Royal Scouts working the area to shut down Summon points had noticed the lazy state of affairs here, and we’d decided to take advantage of it.

“How long before you start on the walls?” he asked patiently, knowing I was still working.

“I can start on them now, if you like, but I believe the lads are going out in all directions and might like not having to put up with them for a few hours. You aren’t intending to garrison the place suddenly, are you?”

“Not unless you’ve managed to whip up a Town Portal like they like to talk of, which I could use to reinforce the place at the drop of a hat, no,” he confirmed, his Disk snapping up from his Masspack of shreth-hide and forming something to sit down on that could take his weight. He didn’t mass what a lugian did, with their dense bones and flesh, but with armor on he was still clearing five hundred pounds.

“We’ll have to wait until there’s more Nines, and they blaze a path across the desert and hills to here. Teleportation is far more restrictive than what they used to have in the past.” I shook my head. “Even back in Ispar, Item Magic wasn’t so permissible as it was here. The disruption in the ley lines also snapped all the ties they had to the dimensional anchors used to anchor the spells. You know that just being able to pop open a Portal to ANYWHERE is like the equivalent of a Valence VIII or IX, right?” I shook my head, eyes not leaving the paperwork that Mira was going through like a champ. “Even with a super-Focus on this end to anchor it, it’s still a VII. You can move armies through the things, even if they are only around for a minute at a time!”