Judging by the agitation of the Hea on the walls and lookout posts, they found the mess about an hour before dawn. The virindi were probably expected to be doing some routine thing that looked absolutely purposeless from outside, and when it didn’t happen, the tumeroks cautiously went looking for them.
They found signs of magical spells blasting away, and circles of unwhiteness left behind with crumpled piles of flaky white ash, where probably the robes, scythes, and masks of the lesser Puppets, Servants, and Guards had died.
Then the probable locations of the two Masters anchoring the ends of the Formation were discovered, the crystalline matrix they’d been guarding and empowering shattered and still burning with vivus, crumbling apart as it did so. It was hard to tell exactly where the Masters might have died, and the way the interior of the building was fused and scorched indicated a few spells had gone off, but nobody had heard anything.
Racing urgently to the basement where the centrals Seals had been carved out of the stone, the Hea first stepped inside and saw that the floor was completely blown out and eaten away, allowing an uninhibited view down into the basement below. The guards on duty just gaped blankly, as they’d not heard a thing of whatever had done that.
The Formation itself was Burning mistily, vivus dancing and coughing up swirls of fog that had painted all the stone a soft and gleaming white to waist height down there. Whole sections had been blown out of the walls and floors by powerful spells, and hacking lines chewed through the rock where scything blades had torn through the rock in spinning circles. Stone was fused, scorched, shattered in brittle fragments, and slagged, and yet nobody had heard anything of such violent magic being released, things easily audible from hundreds of feet away.
The collapse of the floor alone should have been heard by a dozen guards in the area, but nobody had noticed anything…
It went without saying that the Portal Formation that was supposed to be their surprise and the doom of the invading human army was utterly destroyed, beyond hope of repair. They would have had to start completely over if they wanted to make a new one, but that was plainly not going to happen in time.
“My chieftain!”
Hea Kurugus had built up this captured human town into what he liked to think was a shining little jewel of tumerok culture and beauty. All the tribes who visited remarked on the comfortable air and design of the buildings, the liveliness of the atmosphere, and how nice it was to visit here.
The lands were prosperous, rich in game and crops easy to gather, the defenses were solid, and the elders strong in magic and wise in their restraints.
The Overlords and Masters out in the Direlands could claim greater fortifications and the like, but nobody wanted to live in such desolate areas, where even the delicious rabbits did not want to dwell, and the only meat worth the eating was dillo or shreth. Here there was fish and fowl and rodent and rabbits and frogs, rice and barley and wheat, occasional gromnie and auroch… it was a good place to live.
And now…
He turned his yellow eyes on the older warrior who had spoken up. Hea Guhon had lost a hand, a fang, and nearly his life during the Fall, only quickly healing magic saving the rest of his arm and leaving his face gravely scarred. No longer able to use a bow, the hunter had focused hard on mastering magic for the same task, and still wielded a spear in one hand, and could strap a shield about the stump of the other.
He was loyal and alert and hard-working, and also loved what they had built here, far from their masters.
But the Isparians had come back, and with them, the masters.
“My Chieftain, something is wrong with the Root,” whispered Hea Guhon, dread in his rough voice.
The chieftain did not need to be told which Root. He rapidly turned and strode for the central pagoda of the town, his own abode where he’d been sleeping on the second floor, the windows and doors open so that he could hear and rapidly step aside if there had been any calls from the sentries.
The Root of the magic that empowered the town walls was located in the basement of the very conical tower he’d been resting in!
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Hea Agutok was there, the elderly shaman inspecting the large and gnarled formation of intertwined Roots carefully. He was one of the few Hea who actually remembered some of the living arts of their ancestors, and had been enthusiastic about teaching them to the young Hea, instead of the harder and more brutal arts of war their virindi masters demand they learn.
As the magic had made the walls of the place strong enough to even earn the respect of the virindi, nothing had been said about them. But now…
Something was wrong. The Root, the interwoven ends of every tree that grew upon and over the walls, protecting them with bark and thorn, was obviously wilting and dying. While all eyes turned on him as he walked in and stood aside respectfully, old Agutok just mumbled softly, his hands glowing with pale yellow healing lights that obviously did nothing.
Kurugus turned to one of the apprentices. “Have the walls been checked?” he asked directly, foreboding in his voice.
“We sent four to do so, my chieftain. They should be back shortly,” Hea Rolgukgok replied immediately.
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Kurugus stepped up to the tangled roots, which once had exuded gentle yet palpable power from them, the ley line magic coursing through them, absorbed and then exuded by the trunks and the thorns.
He felt nothing of that now as he looked over the tangle.
Agutok waved his hands, shaking his head while saying nothing. His spells were not working, although there was no visible source of damage…
Hea Kurugus cocked his head slightly, picking out… something. It was not apparent in the shadows and twisting of the roots, perhaps a trick of the light…
He reached out, Agutok flinching in surprise at the motion, laid his strong hands on the roots, grabbed, and twisted just a bit.
Like a freshly quartered apple plucked from a tree, two quarters of the Root broke free of one another, held in place only by the pressure of their own congealed sap. They fell to the ground, snapping the brittle stems which should have supported their weight easily.
As the Hea watched in shock and disbelief, the other side of the Root also fell in two quarters, plopping limply to the ground.
Inside of them, the whole core of the Root had been reduced to a pulpy charred mess, as if both acid and lightning had run through the thing, and then out each and every root that extended up from the floor, all now revealed to be hollowed, cored, and charred.
Kurugus snapped off a root three inches thick with a flick of his wrist, requiring almost no effort at all. He brought it up to his nose, inhaled once, and then silently handed it over to the elder shaman.
Agutok took it and sniffed it as well. The old Hea’s face twisted, and he tossed the broken root back into the middle of the slimy mess at the center of the Root.
Acid, lightning, and some manner of acrid, artfully-directed poison. Either some inventive Isparian or one of their own Aun cousins had inflicted on the Root exactly what was needed to destroy it.
The killer had also gotten in and out of the town without being discovered by any of the Hea inside it, and obviously the wall had not stopped them or hindered them overmuch. The implications of that were horrifying.
He had been sleeping two floors above. Could not whoever had done this, cutting the Root cleanly apart, so precisely and finely the eye could not truly see it, have simply gone upstairs and removed his head with the same ease?
Why had they not done so?
Hastily-descending feet turned all their attention to the stairs. Two of the younger apprentices to the shaman were there, the dismay on their faces and in their eyes telling the chieftain everything he did not wish to see before they uttered a word.
Their fine defensive wall was down, likely dying as the Root had. They had only the low walls built by the Sho tribe of the Isparians, things made more to keep out wandering beasts and vermin, not attacking armies.
Up above on the top of the pagoda, the first horns blew, rapidly taken up and verified by the spotters at lower locations.
The Isparians were coming.
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Princess Kristie watched the Hea chieftain come out the doors warily, plainly considering a sneak attack possible, equally determined to face his fate head on.
It would only be death, and the Hea here were encircled and facing extermination. There were only two gates they could come out from in numbers, both of which were now blocked by Isparian forces in heavy armor that was shrugging off their bow fire, with lugians in likewise gleaming armor that looked more armored than anything the Hea had likely ever seen.
If he hadn’t come out, then the attack’s commencement would have been simple: alchemist fire in the hands of staff-slingers, starting conflagrations the Hea would have no chance of putting out. They would rapidly turn the area inside the walls into a superheated vortex, where breathing the air would roast them from the inside out.
Some Protection from Fire Life Magic would only draw the period out to a long and agonizing death of watching everything around you burn and die, instead of a fairly shorter agonizing death of being charred and cooked alive. Death by a sniper’s arrow was likely preferable to that, she mused.
And really, she could have killed him last night, and a good portion of the town, if she had so desired. Quaver’s Sound Bubble was made for covering up the sounds of death, and vivus for eating the smell of the suddenly deceased.
The Hea glanced at the tall form of the great shaman Aun Hemuna behind her, but that was the point. The Aun was behind her, clearly in a secondary role, and to address the elder shaman would be to utterly insult the scarred Isparian female standing before him.
He might as well draw his axe first and just swing at her, if that were his desire.
However, he was clearly surprised when she spoke first, and in his own tongue!
“Hea Kurugus. Words of your wisdom precedes you.” She bowed slightly, just enough to show courtesy, plainly having the upper hand. “I am Warlord Kristie Rantha of the Isparian forces.”
The Hea chieftain was a head taller than she was, easily able to look right over her at the forces arrayed behind her. It did not take much skill to notice the anger and sometimes outright hatred in some of those eyes… but that hate was not present in this female’s eyes.
However, there was instead something that made the hairs on his neck rise: a wild thrill for battle, a hunger and desire to see him fight… and to cut him down in blood and fire.
He had seen that light in the eyes of some very skilled and enthusiastic warriors, but never in the eyes of a cold and controlled leader of warriors like this.
She wanted him to fight, so she could kill all of his people! He could feel the truth of it in his bones, and had to repress a shiver.
“The female Warlord. The wild tribes have spoken of you, and your strength.” And the fact she spoke their tongues, as well. Her tendency to beat the ever-wailing life out of banderling chieftains and then talk with them after she pounded some courtesy into them had also followed her around. It was said they tiptoed around the eight-fanged female now. “What do you wish to speak to me about? Do you expect us to surrender?”
His scoffing tone was unfeigned. What the Hea did to those who surrendered to them was well-known: brutal slavery, or death if they had no use for a slave. They had no use for prisoners, even if they were not as cruel as the drudges or banderlings, who might well devour such helpless fools!