-Warlord Kris! The newest spawn of creatures coming out of the Shadow Vortexes is only half the size of the previous ones!-
-Excellent news, Hilga! Stay under cover and keep watching!- the distant Warlord /replied to the advanced Scout of the Mole teams, a young Wizardess who had dove into the illusion and stealth-related magic taught by the Magos with great zeal.
Hilga Zehnshine was hiding in a shallow stone pit, enough Wards around her to neutralize scent, body heat, magical presence, and the like. She was watching the town from an overlooking hill with Eagle Eyes from a mile away. It had taken her almost two days to get into position, she and the other Moles dispatched well ahead of time, and she’d been feeding updates on the maddened Shades storming out of the city constantly this whole time.
She’d had whole troops of shades, marguls, and grievvers crawl right over top of her, simply waiting and reporting after the berserk creatures moved on.
The zefirs were the big annoyance, as they flitted about everywhere. She had to slide down the Shaped stone visor slit to cover the normal opening every time she saw a cloud of them flying nearby. They investigated everywhere and everything, and three times she’d heard an unnaturally sharp claw rasp against the stone of her slit from the passing touch of one of the murderous little fey things.
The Disk she was on floated above the ground, meaning she was making no contact with the stone of the small cave around herself. The observation point was only enterable by Blinking or in Gaseous Form, both of which she knew how to use, and staying out of contact with the stone meant things like the grievvers, who could sense vibrations through the ground and thus contact with the stone, were also unable to sense her.
They could feel the hole down here, but that’s all it was, a hole. The grievvers didn’t know it wasn’t supposed to be there, and they were driven to fight, not to dig.
It was still very dangerous, and now, now it was very important. Watching a random bunch of Shaded things come out of one of the living rifts in reality that were the Shadow Vortexes and go ambling off in a random direction meant advance warnings very useful to the patrols, who would know what to expect to fight and could adjust tactics, even knowing what direction the things might be coming from.
But now, now, THIS was important!
The Vortexes had been churning out endless numbers of Shaded and sending them out of the town constantly. Hilga had guessed that they were coming out literally as fast as they had been getting killed in the fighting, whatever restrictions on creatures the things could bring in being pressed to the limit continually.
And now, now she had seen the first evidence that the numbers it could churn out might have hit a limit. There was no recycling of souls, if that was what had been happening.
The word from the Warlord to the undead forces staving off the Shades was to delay. Fight them to exhaustion, use up their mana, tie them up, dump them in pits, get chased around, force them into clusters they could barely fight from… just slow down the killing as much as they could, tie the Shaded things up.
If the things didn’t die, they couldn’t be reborn!
Hilga glanced at the Detect Time clock in her Visual File, once again giving private thanks for the Magos and the Warlord Princess coming to this world. The incredible magic, with so much versatility and utility, was such a godsend to a girl who was five-feet-nothing tall, her career likely to forever be one of pure support Healing or maybe working in an archive, unable to get the vengeance for her dead mother and grandmother that her father had craved.
She had been directed not to use the Markdoor if any Shaded were around, because some of them MIGHT be sensitive to the telepathy as a Divination effect, and if that happened, she was likely going to die very quickly, indeed. But she could still peek past it at the Markscape, The Map, and the people beyond, even if talking to them was something she had to be careful about.
The Warlord was the center of the whole thing, without a doubt. Imperial Princess Kristie Rantha was the image of a warrior and killer in body, mind, and soul, her Mark image like liquid Golden flames surrounded by harsh cutting blades, wound about with serpentine dragons of terrible and subtle power.
The Princess was a woman who knew how to kill, who was extremely willing to kill, and had immaculate discipline about how and what she went about killing. She was also polite, tolerant, didn’t demand anything she wasn’t willing to do herself, and was tireless about giving away and empowering others with the knowledge to defend themselves and their loved ones.
The first time Hilga had cut the throat of an assassin stalking her friends, those Golden blades had been looking over her shoulder, assuring her that death was not something that Good people could not use, that she was doing the right thing, and that this killer in the night was getting his due for what he did.
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The Princess had taught a petite young woman how to breathe, how to move with the world, how to lay unmoving for hours, to endure timelessly and control her own mind, body, and soul to an incredible degree. It had been something she had done with energy and enthusiasm and zeal, and a thoroughness that only telepathy could truly make possible. Hilga had learned all the proper places to put a knife, the many, many ways different things could die, and how a mere hundred pounds of cute little brown-haired Aluvian young woman could work with others to kill things with deft and incredible speed.
She was a Royal Scout, out in the very front of the front lines, in the most dangerous places to be. She was not a War Mage, or a Healer sitting behind armored brutes and waiting for them to be injured so she could be useful!
A Mole, a Scout meant to get into the places where they weren’t supposed to go or be discovered, and there report on what they found, operating on their own for days or weeks as they carried out their duties.
The Magos was over there in the Markspace as well, the sight of her making Hilga shiver.
The Warlord was an extraordinary woman, with a mind sharp as a blade, burning like a fire, resilient as the sea. But her very power and identity was rooted in the physical world, a martial artist and warrior pursuing a path of physical and spiritual mastery.
The Magos rose above the Warlord mentally like the Warlord did the Magos physically.
Her Electrum image was quiet and it was subdued, until you looked right at her. Then, then it was obvious she was a titan here. You were staring at the equal of a dozen archmages, all of their thoughts moving too fast to follow, spirals of magic dancing around her, soft music to the eyes that thrummed in the soul, so much awareness, so much power, so much impossible depth…
Hilga had never imagined she would be able to learn the things she had, especially as fast as she had, but when the Magos taught something, it became so obvious, so easy, as if all her instinctive attempts to deny and question and resist just didn’t matter, and yep, this was how it was, there you go, now just get better at doing and using what you know.
So much magic there, waiting to learn, waiting to be tapped, able to satisfy her dreams. A future of magic more wonderful than anything she had imagined, but alas, for now she had to wield that wonder in defense of everything she loved, and do what her aging father could not.
And last there was Lord Mick.
He was Orange, glittering with some Rainbow edges to him, dashes of Yellow here and there. He wasn’t… bright and lively, or even overly emotional, but it was clear to anyone who looked upon him that his emotions were more valuable to him than any fancy thinking, and he wore them proudly and deeply and wasn’t going to change that about himself.
His love for his lost bride hung about him like an ethereal cloak of the most delicate pink hue, as deep as the evening sky. He probably wasn’t even aware of it, and those who saw it certainly weren’t going to say anything to him about it.
There were plenty of people she could see in the Markscape who were lovers, and had the emotional bonds it represented, but the simple depth of the Mick’s love for the woman he’d lost shamed all of them.
That delicate veil powered her paramount lord’s sword arm like an engine of burning vengeance even now, fires determined to take their revenge and make sure nothing like that happened to those he cared for again.
She wanted a man to love her like that, to build a life on the strength of their fire and their love. Maybe she would be able to, someday. At least in the Markspace, you couldn’t lie about your feelings to someone like that, you could touch your very thoughts and understand one another as words and fears might not allow you to do among normal people.
I will just have to find one of my own, and hope they are Good, Hilga thought, looking at the White-Silvers, Yellow-Golds, and Orange-Rainbows of the Markspace, with only a few Greens and Blues here and there.
Notably, King Borelean was not in here, nor his mother or daughter. This Markspace was not a place where he reigned at all, and Hilga had the distinct impression that if he did, he would wind up kneeling to the Warlord himself soon enough.
Her Visual Clock chimed, and she leaned forward slightly, looking out the narrow slit in the rock from her Mole Hole, and waited for the next spawn to materialize out of the Shadow Vortexes.
There was a delay, and she mentally forced her body to relax as she wanted to tense up, waiting, waiting, clearing away any hopes, just measuring the moment and waiting for what would happen, reading nothing, nothing…
There was a hiss and spitting as less than a dozen shades walked and floated out of the Shadow Vortex.
-Warlord,- she /reported, keeping her /voice steady, -the Summons was one hundred and forty-nine seconds late, and there were only nine mixed shades. They are running off to the south, perpendicular to me.-
-Excellent,- was the immediate /reply, Warlord Kristie’s grim appreciation coming through very clearly, indeed. -Moving onto Stage Two. Moles Four, Five, and Six, light up the Lures. Relays, pass on that it's working, and once the Dusk Animations come in, the undead are to slaughter everything and press forward. If the Lures work, reinforcements should be minimal.-
The Lures were a clever use of illusion and enchantment magic, basically forming a glowing orb of The Light of Heaven up in the air, guaranteed to get the attention of anything Evil around and stoke their fury. However, it only shone towards Tou-Tou, and when an Evil creature got close, it winked out… and then the next one lit up, pulling those chasing The Light along, the illusion making it look like it was fleeing.
The Lures would pull them down to the coast, and then start them on the trail to the south, looking like it retreated faster than they could run and follow.
The Undead would roll up the peninsula, take up defensive positions, and block the Shaded from escaping in any other direction, while the fresh Shaded were lured to their annihilation.
The living just had to hold on long enough for it to work.