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

But no. The scouts made it very plain that there was no attack incoming, there were no forces out there, and if any forces had snuck into the city, they were keeping to themselves and not ambushing any forces. Indeed, several patrols beaten black and blue were found, but not killed, with signs the refugees had passed them by… and vanished into sections of solid stone at least tens of meters thick, with no sign of how it had happened.

Now those left behind, the slowest, oldest, and most crippled members of the city, had hobbled their way up to the gates and were demanding to be let out, shouting at them that the virindi were going to destroy the city, that Muldaveus knew it and had already fled with his cronies.

Tukora Jigbril was prone to dismiss this as more rebellion, although he certainly saw the sacrifice for what it was. The women and children had been whisked away before the men had gone, and they’d even had tunnels in the very mines to take the majority of them away. The elders had stayed behind as the slowest, so as not to weigh down their children, and now were openly trying to leave, daring the Gotrok to do something about it.

They didn’t have the strength to force the issue, and everyone knew it, but the Gotrok didn’t dare to kill them, either. These were elders, venerated and taken care of, those who had built the city and forges and mines that all lugians now trod upon. Killing them, even if they were loyalists and of clans that meant little, was a terrible crime among the lugians and would basically condemn the Gotrok as the most evil of murderers and brigands on the face of Dereth.

Some of his own clansmen and vassals would be sure to desert if he ordered them to strike down the elders, rather than just push them back rudely and tell them to go home.

Then he looked up from the guard post where he was brooding over what to do, what to believe, and his blood ran cold.

The virindi were coming.

They came in perfectly ordered ranks, hovering just above the ground, their armored robes in a motley of colors from black to bright red, moving as swiftly as a lugian could run.

With them came dozens of their unsettling fighting Constructs, the crude caricatures called Hollow Minions, powerful things with great agility, speed, and crushing power in their blunt arms.

“The virindi will not tolerate your disobedience well!” he shouted at the elders who were defying them. “You need to return to your homes right now and wait for instructions, or for your cowardly children to return!”

“Hmmph!” an old Maker he knew to be a smith, judging by the arch to his back and curve of muscles that no longer worked a hammer. “If we are to die, then we die here, before the eyes of you fools who work with uncaring alien things, rather than as a sacrifice to them when they destroy the city we raised with our own two hands!”

It was a small spark, but a spark it was. Husband and wives, brothers and sisters, old friends stepped together, drawing strength in their pride as they stood up to face the aliens that the Gotrok had invited into their homes, and in doing so brought disaster upon them all.

Jigbril clutched his axe tighter as the force of virindi slowed to a halt on the other side of the crowd, who had turned silently to regard them. Even floating, the average lugian still towered over the virindi, but there was no denying the power that hummed around the alien creature and the arcane energies whose shadows played upon the floor and behind the mask that covered empty hoods. He had seen enough virindi die to know there was naught but a flash of energy behind those hoods when they crumpled, that nothing of flesh and bone was within them, or ever would be.

But even if he was a proud warrior and despised magic as a weapon of the weak and cowards, he could not deny that the virindi were VERY dangerous… and their Minions were likewise dangerous.

This force of virindi and their servants was likely capable of killing all of the lugians here!

“Non-productive lugian designates will disperse and return to their centers of habitation immediately,” the lead virindi, a powerful Virindi Inquisitor in smooth robes of bright crimson, announced in its stereo-toned, artificial voice. “Failure to disperse will not be tolerated among deficient lugian units.”

Jigbril’s veins ran like ice, especially when the elders refused to move.

“Die here, die there, all the same,” the old smith retorted proudly, not even glancing about and refusing to move. “You’re going to kill us all back in the city, why should we wait for it? Be about your bloodwork before everyone, now.”

The warbling among the virindi reached a frightening intensity. Jigbril felt his breath leave him in mounting horror. He knew what some of those exchanges were, he’d heard them before, years ago, when Isparians stumbled on groups of virindi and their servants, and combat ensured.

“Very well,” the Inquisitor answered, and the lightning exploded out in purple-white arcs of horrifying strength.

The old lugians there had no chance. They were all targeted, none of them escaped notice, and the deluge of roaring thunder and sizzling lightning was precise and overwhelming. The elders screamed helplessly as their ancient elemental enemy coursed through them, frying their nervous systems, roasting their brains, stopping their hearts, turning their muscles into twitching machines that made their corpses dance and spasm for long moments after they were already dead.

He didn’t need to look at his underlings to know that they were experiencing the same gut-wrenching horror and mounting fury that he was.

You just did not treat your elders that way! Lugian elders!

The Inquisitor drifted over directly in front of him. “Tukora Commander,” it recited in its emotionless, level voice. “You will keep the city sealed from any further efforts to escape or enter,” it intoned to him.

“Of course!” he replied with his usual bluff curtness. “I know my duty, Inquisitor!” he reaffirmed.

“Noted.” Cold, clinical, unfeeling. His subordinates weren’t looking at him as the virindi turned away, but he knew what they wanted to say, what they wanted to do.

Since when did lugians knuckle under to some murderous aliens wielding their filthy magic, instead of cold, hard metal grasped in strong hands with skill and force?

He simply stared there and watched the virindi turn around in place, their lurching Minions turning around as well, and headed back off as precisely and quickly as they had come.

He also now knew they were watching and aware that the population of the city was gone, and the fact they were gone had… upset them.

What then, if the rest of the lugians also went missing?

“Colgok, Margond.” They were two of his most unruly and rebellious subordinates, kept in line only by use of strength, ever eager to contest his decisions. He could tell they were sensing an opportunity now.

“Sir.” Not an ounce of respect in the word, it was almost spit at him.

Well enough. He’d probably spit at the fool in the mirror, too.

“Colgok, take two squads of soldiers and scour the city. I want anyone left behind the city brought to this gate and shown politely out the door.

“Margond, I want word spread to every patrol and guard station. When the last elder is escorted out of the city, we are leaving.”

The eyes of every Gotrok around there widened, first in disbelief, and then as the grim smiles spread, immediate understanding.

Even Colgok and Margond were shocked at his words, their opportunity to rebel slipping away. Their only way to stop this was to inform the virindi of his rebellion… and that, that would likely get them murdered by their own underlings right now.

And besides, they wanted to stick it to the virindi, too.

“It will be done!” Colgok bellowed, hitting his chest quickly, before turning and stomping off to get his team ready. By recruiting the patrols on the way, he could complete the job even more quickly.

“Azkoth,” he went on, the most senior and even-tempered of his lieutenants. The older lugian straightened ever so slightly, a gleam of admiration in his eye that had been lacking for some time. “Cover all the dead and arrange them with what honor you can. See if they can all be identified, and I want their names slated. Every single lugian leaving this city is to walk past them and see what the virindi did. If they have questions, let them ask our elders what they think.”

“SIR!” the Tukora lieutenant bellowed loudly, and began to gesture to those nearby.

There was little need for him to berate any of the Gotrok who were looking on. Those he didn’t call on abandoned their watchposts to help with the respectful moving and situating of the dead, calling out names of the fallen with all the reverence and respect they might give great warriors breathing their last. Two hastened to get slates to scribe the names down on, diamond chisels skirling over the stone and inscribing their time of death.

The Slaughter of the Elders was something that would shake the core of the Gotrok and make them question all the deals that had been made with the virindi over the years.

Jigbril still did not know what had become of the Hea, their erstwhile allies and partners in opposition to the dominance of the Isparians. When he found out and finally understood just how cold and uncaring their virindi ‘allies’ were on top of what was done this day, there would be no working with them ever again, just as none dared to work with the undead who had enslaved, slaved, and then reanimated the dead as their own undying workforce to mine for them.

The Isparians had not acted against non-combatants, even if they were scheming rats with their own unclean magic and cowardly attacks, raids, and ambushes. This, this was simply WRONG… and Commander Jigbril, proud warrior and leader of the Tukora, the most elite warriors of the lugian peoples, was going to have none of it.

If the King’s army decided to roll into Linvak Tukal, let them have it after the virindi were finished. And if Muldaveus didn’t like it, he could come and take it back himself.

---------

“Butchered over threescore elders by the main gates, proved what treacherous shits they are, and they likely don’t even realize it.”

Kris related what she’d seen coolly, but there was an eight-canine grimace on her face that looked just utterly savage. The grim lugians listening to her report who wanted to leap up and chop down virindi found their own rage dimming in the face of so much naked savagery being restrained. Stone peeled away like wood shavings under her black nails, and killing lust was in the air.

And it was held in place. Rather than racing down to avenge the fallen elders, Princess Kristie Rantha had pulled back and watched what was going on, not sniping even a single virindi down in revenge for the sacrifice of the lugian elders.

She had watched the Gotrok come out and attend to the twisted corpses of the old, even scribe down their names.

And then she’d watched them start filing silently out of the city, sometimes even escorting other elders out as well… even carrying them, if they had to.

Shame, it seemed, had finally touched the Gotrok.

“Perhaps there is some small hope for them,” King Kresovus murmured, ruminating from where he sat on an impromptu seat, thick neck bowed as he listened to what had transpired in the city of his people.