Hope

Like the first time, it started with a sudden stop and the scream of gunfire, mere minutes after dusk. Irwyn and Desir were out of their wagon in a moment. And this time around, it did not end with one or two shots. It was a bona fide hail of bullets from what Irwyn was hearing. As tensions had been increasing the duo were not the only people quickly departing the caravan. Rumors had naturally spread over the last few days; a few people pointing out figures in the trees or thickets were naturally connected to the kobolds said to be in the area. Fear had been at its highest point the previous night and slowly receded as they neared Abonisle. A lot of people were becoming hopeful that they would be allowed to reach their destination undisturbed. And close it was indeed. Irwyn felt the city in the distance, like a beacon of magic. Though not the best judge of distance, he thought the caravan could get there by dawn if uninterrupted.

Of course, that was optimistic or maybe even wishful thinking. Irwyn worked with the worst assumption. That all the prior provocations and failed attacks were not just testing their defenses but were meant to slow them down for the real raid to gather.

And that seemed about right given the sheer quantity of kobolds he could see in every direction.

Illogically, the demons had chosen a place where most of the caravan was on the top of a hill. Though at second glance, that did not actually make their defences notably better, uphill having more of an effect with barricades and battle lines at work. What it did do was obscure the actual numbers of the kobolds while applying the psychological effect of seeing only demons as the eye could see in all directions.

Irwyn glanced at his blue-eyed companion, still covering up most of his face with a shawl and a cloak, and received a nod of confirmation. As people were either trying to run towards the center to cower or towards the front to fight the demons, of course excluding those frozen with dread, Irwyn and Desir found a place reasonably out of sight. Well, the demons could probably see them just fine but they found a spot obscured enough that it was unlikely any of the very busy guards would notice them. Irwyn dismissed his invisible Light barrier as he felt the man start a chant:

“A dozen fled

A journey of dread

And as one

In Void were gone”

Then a sphere of void magic enveloped them. The sound outside became a bit more muted and harder to see. Irwyn also felt strangely uncomfortable deep down, though he was pretty sure that was the conflict between any void magic affecting him in contrast to his affinity with Light. And they were probably much harder to see from the outside.

In the meantime the caravan itself continued fighting. Irwyn felt flashes of magic as one magical weapon after another was expended. Unfortunately for the caravan there were no actual mages present besides the hidden two about to desert and being in the Duchy of Black, most of those weapons worked on Void magic. Which the kobolds, being literal demons of the Void, were resistant to. Make no mistake, the blasts and spears and spikes still tore through them on direct hits, yet they were not quite as deadly as if they had been used against humans. An orb of black exploded, washing a large area in inky darkness as the kobolds staggered, then mostly shook it off and continued, only those directly at the epicenter being more than inconvenienced. A spray of ebony fragments was sent in another direction yet only good hits had any effect, glancing blows barely scoring any damage and partial hits not piercing quite as deep as they were supposed to. Of course, there were other spells imbued in that repository of magical weapons at the display. Sprays of fire or sudden growths of giant sharp grass cut through the numbers easily, anything to do with Light being particularly efficient, solid beams cutting through them and continuing into the distance, though there were very few of those. At that time Irwyn realized another thing: The demons were quiet. Far too quiet. As they were torn sometimes limb from limb they did not so even wheeze, much less scream. Not a single one

“Let’s go. It will fool the other people but not the demons. Though they will probably pretend not to notice us until we are properly surrounded. Be ready when I drop the spell,” Desir said with a nod.

And so they went. Irwyn decided not to glance back at the people they were leaving behind. If they got away from this siege everyone would just assume that the two them got killed and dragged away or something along those lines. If the whole caravan was overrun and everyone killed, well, Irwyn would feel bad; but not bad enough to risk betting his life on being even able to make a difference and then not being found by his pursuers because of the public display.

In the end, it has always been about protecting himself and those of his own to Irwyn as far as he could remember. That before anything or anyone else.

They walked at a brisk pace, standing side to side and keeping close, choosing a moment when a rain of rock splinters created a hole in the line of demons before dissipating back into magic. Entering into the breach, there was an eerie lack of blood and viscera. It wasn't just that the demons did not bleed but most of them did not even leave a body behind after being killed. Irwyn spotted the last remains of those just killed melting into an inky liquid, then evaporating. That also didn't bode well for the caravan as the demons were not obstructed by themselves. No mountain of corpses rose to slow the horde down.

And a horde it was, Irwyn realized as soon as they could properly see downhill. The legion of kobolds simply did not stop. Much of his vision was obscured by the treeline but everywhere he looked he saw the little scaled creatures moving in unison. Another thing he observed was that despite their numbers they were strangely organized: They did not shove or get in each others' way. Just by the sheer scale, Irwyn would have expected them to constantly bump into one another but everywhere he looked they marched like a perfectly organized machine.

They made it halfway down the hill, the demons simply parting in front of the duo, as if something nudged them out of the way. The demons never so much as glanced in their direction, the army moving around them with unnatural seamlessness. And as they reached far enough into their ranks, every single kobold in their immediate vicinity suddenly turned and charged them without as much as a grunt.

"Now!" Desir yelled as the magic hiding them vanished, Irwyn already springing into action. He had put much thought into how much he was willing to reveal and how. He had been shown that although oaths taken upon the Aspects' Names were binding, they were certainly not unbreakable. Yet he had to weigh that against any immediate demonic risk to his life. So he would see how much he could keep close to his chest without risk and if he had to reveal more, he would.

“Burn,” he said and released a wave of flames imbued with the same intention as his word. He has had a chance to experiment with incantations along his travels, though nothing conclusive, they did indeed make magic ever so slightly easier to cast. It also made it infinitely less flexible. That fire he told to burn could only burn. He could not change it to be more physical, could not shift it into different shapes and alterations after it was already cast. Dismissing it quickly would become actually difficult, despite coming straight from his magic. In other words, the spell could only do what its description allowed. And the empowerment was simply not that significant. Irwyn could barely tell that, at least for him, simple spells were empowered by less than a single hundredth, maybe two hundredths if he spoke several lines. They were also easier to control in their established boundaries and consumed less magic by about the same amount but Irwyn’s control had undergone drastic improvement and internal reserves of magic had never been an issue for him, at least not yet. So, in conclusion, it was simply not worth it for Irwyn to use incantations, the benefits less than the time lost on speaking. He could re-visit the idea when he moved on to greater magics.

Of course, the exception was when he was pretending to be normal. Every caster around his level he had met had used chants. The only two exceptions were Calm and the shadow accompanying Alira, the latter being several dozen notches above him and the former being a complete unknown on the scales of power. So when Irwyn needed to not stand out, like when he was literally on the run, chanting was a good bluff.

That being said, the demons burned. He had dimmed the flames as much as he could under the chant’s constraints so they hopefully would not be too visible from the caravan under assault but that took nothing off of their efficacy. It was no Starfire, which he assumed would be exceptionally effective against any being from the void, yet the burn imbued flame still incinerated everything in a large circle around them in just a few breaths. He had expected them to turn to dust, instead, the kobolds directly dematerialised into that black mist he had seen their corpses dissolving into before. Then the second wave rushed them and he burned them away again, speaking “Burn,” and preparing for the third. Except they were not attacked again. No demons entered the area slightly larger than the circle he had burned around them anymore. In fact, they weren’t even looking at the duo, just completely ignored them and went around, not so much as sparing them a single glance.

“Are they… leaving us alone?” Irwyn hesitated.

“They probably decided we are not worth the trouble considering they have an actual target,” Desir said after a startled pause. “Good for us. I spotted a tall hill that way. Far enough to not be under attack but high enough we can judge the overall situation. From there we can either head straight for the road or go the hard way through the thicket if that’s too swarmed. Abonisle should be close enough to make ever forest journey manageable.”

“Agreed,” Irwyn nodded and they were on their way. The moonlight was enough to walk unsteadily so Irwyn opted not to bring any attention to them with light of his own. It took them at most 20 minutes to reach the hill, after 10 the demons had suddenly cut off and they were no longer surrounded. Just another sign of their strange, downright supernatural coordination. But maybe that was usual for demons or for kobolds in general. Irwyn simply did not know.

When they arrived at the top of the hill, they watched the caravan battle winding down. The explosions of magic were almost gone at this point, just the last vestiges of their reserves still erupting. The whole caravan had shrunk, gradually overwhelmed as it concentrated around the vault itself. Even the gunfire was winding down and judging by the numbers Irwyn could see in the magical lights that had been set out at some point. From the distance their fire was rather muted. The population had been reduced… significantly.

Irwyn felt bad about it. But not horrible. They were all complete strangers and he would not risk his life for them, he reaffirmed himself internally.

Then there was a change. With an audible crackle, the vault inched open. Bit by bit the top slid out of the way until it was almost completely open. Then, the last part was pushed away far more quickly as something forced its way out. A giant black beak followed by an ebony head half as large as the vault itself. Then the body made it clear that the vault was far larger on the inside than the outside. The creature that crawled out was a massive bird, except none like anything Irwyn had ever seen. It had 3 pairs of wings larger than its body, 3 eyes and a second smaller beak tugged underneath the first, oversized onyx-like feather covering its body though they seemed almost like they were liquid, even from such a distance. As soon as it was free it looked at the approaching hoard, and well, it took a deep breath, gathering magic like a siphon. Then…

“Like solid bark,

Protection from the dark”

Desir chanted perhaps a second before the bird screamed. The screech was deafening even from so far away and judging by the rippling transparent film, it had also been imbued with something more dangerous than just sound. Irwyn was quite glad that Desir had seen it coming because he certainly had not.

“They were transporting an Aspect damned Wrathsinger,” Desir stared, apparently so taken aback he did not even try to hide that he knew what the thing was.

“How bad is it?” Irwyn glanced at him. It looked like a Void monster but Irwyn could not tell more.

“Well, just look at what the opening has done,” he pointed down and Irwyn saw that there were no longer any kobolds almost third of the way down the hill. He spotted the few last dregs of their bodies dissipating into smoke. There was also no longer much of a caravan left, the scream quite literally melting halfway through most of the carts and assumedly the survivors.

“That is a lot of power,” Irwyn nodded and immediately got to erecting barriers of flame; Light would not do much defensively against void magic. He had managed to make it mostly see-through by stacking 4 thin barriers together, imbuing each with protection. That way they could still watch the scene, even though it was somewhat red-tinted. Any incantation be dammed, he needed to be able to reinforce them if it got worse.

“If it wasn’t planarly restricted we would both be dead,” Desir shook his head. “Fully grown ones can supposedly just erase everything in thousands of miles around them in the Void itself, which is where they are native.”

“Then we better get moving,” Irwyn nodded and was about to just turn away when he noticed the change. Because fearsome the bird might be, it had not been the hunter that night.

There had been perhaps 2 thousand visible pairs of eyes staring at the bird after it screamed, reflected in the moonlight. And that was perhaps only a third of them, those facing in Irwyn’s direction.

Then Irwyn blinked and there were only a thousand. Before he processed that there were only 500, then 250, 125. By the time Irwyn realised what was happening there were perhaps 15 pairs of eyes that he could see, staring at the bird. But those pairs were larger. So much bigger that Irwyn could tell even from such a distance that they could not possibly belong to a creature as small as a kobold. The next thing he knew, 1 pair of eyes belonging to a behemoth walked up that hill. It was no longer the meek little creature. It was a singular giant in a scale mail, its snout hiding a jaw large enough to swallow buildings whole. And it was not the only one. Two more identical massive demons arose from closer downhill where Irwyn had not been able to see their eyes as they merged. Not until they began to tower over the trees.

“I suppose that’s growing more powerful in numbers,” Desir muttered, spellbound by the spectacle, and Irwyn was also shocked. How would such merger even work? Completely ignoring the restrictions flesh should have, how could their souls possibly accept this sort of merger? Demons, unlike monsters, undeniably had souls after all. The inner mechanics were so beyond Irwyn’s understanding he could not even begin to imagine them.

Then the 3 titans rushed the Wrathsinger. It tried to scream them away again, yet they did not even flinch, just continuing to run uphil towards it. When it struck Irwyn’s barrier, he realized with surprise that the impact was orders of magnitude weaker than he would have expected form the sheer amount of magic, even dissipating with distance should not affect it so much. It did not even crack his first barrier while he was prepared to create additional, extra solid defenses in anticipation of the existing ones shattering. Seeing the Kobolds, if that was still what they even were, unaffected by its shriek, the Wrathsinger attempted to immediately fly away. Except, it leaped into the air, swung its wings and simply did not fly. It had a moment to be confused before the demons were on top of it.

The monster kept screaming and screaming as it was torn to shreds. But up close it seemed to have no other power besides its voice. At least no other power that it thought worth trying against the armored behemoths. The whole spectacle took perhaps less than a minute before one of the kobolds managed to dig its massive claw into the creature's abdomen and tore out a smooth black orb approximately the size of a room. Then, without stopping for a moment, swallowed it.

About 3 seconds after that, Irwyn felt a question get answered. The particular question was: Why would the kobolds bother attacking as a horde when they could just do this. The answer was quickly apparent as the presence of Abonisle, the city magical enough Irwyn could still feel it in the distance, became about 10 times more intense. The next moment, one of the massive kobolds was pierced through by a proportionally massive black spear which proceeded to suck the entire creature into itself before seemingly vanishing into itself. It looked a bit like a visibly melting icicle, except much faster and Irwyn felt little magic emanating from it. Yet still, it had instantly gotten rid of one of the 3 gargantuan demons.

Rather than escaping the remaining two kobolds barely moved. In fact, only the one who had not eaten the Wrathsinger’s core took a few steps to stand directly between the unmoving other demon and Abonisle. About ten seconds later, the city in the distance flared again. This time Irwyn refused to blink, still the spear appeared in the creature’s body faster than he could perceive. It simply was not there and then it was the next instant. No shockwave or whistle of the wind, no trail of magic in its path. In fact, the spear itself barely felt like magic. Though before Irwyn could understand it, it swallowed the kobold and imploded. Again, the demon was powerless against it.

The last giant stood there for a few more seconds before suddenly it grew. Within a few moments it became perhaps half as larger than it had been just prior. It stopped growing just in time for Abonisle to flare again. At the last moment the ends of the demon's limbs dissolved into a tightly packed smaller kobolds which immediately attempted to flee, however, when the spear once again appeared a moment later only perhaps a few dozen managed to not get sucked into it.

Then there was silence. Irwyn and Desir did not speak for a moment taking it all in.

“Did the kobolds… absorb the monster?” Irwyn eventually voiced out.

“Does not seem like a worthwhile trade for getting wiped out,” Desir mused. “But hey, demons of greed I suppose.”

“That only means they most likely did not get wiped out,” Irwyn shook his head. “How confident can we be that any of them were actually killed?” they had, after all, dissolved into smoke while paying no attention to their losses. So then, where did that ebony mist go? Even when that first spear appeared they did not attempt to flee in fear, just seemingly bought enough time to finish digesting, only furthering Irwyn’s suspicion. That perhaps kobolds did not truly die just because their flesh was destroyed. At least not when done in this way.

“Well, it doesn’t matter right now,” Desir sighed eventually. “I have a rather gruesome suggestion though.”

“Do tell,” Irwyn looked at him.

“How much wealth do you reckon survived that?” he pointed at the ruins of the Caravan.