“Long way from home, northern girl,” The man... He had a rat face, gaunt with protruding teeth just behind a pair of thin lips, the one they'd sent to parley, an inquisitor in the trappings of one, armor that looked awkward on his scrawny body. He was currently urrounded by a score of knights stamping their warhorses around in a circle surrounding Sigi. Never stopping the cantering of their steeds, some sort of masculine posturing. Only the inquisitor was a mage, and Sigi resisted the itch to show them how little protection that thin layer of armor really offered. Faith militant or not, she'd stomp on the grilles of their helmets until their gods themselves begged her to relent. “All alone? Where are your men?”
“As are you,” Sigi replied evenly, “I'm not sure what to call you. Southern boy? Noodle slurping whelp? You Milanese are quick to quack, but even ducks know when to scuttle away at my approach.”
“She's a barbed tongue of silver!” The inquisitor laughed. They hadn't exchanged names, but she doubted he'd wanted parley in the first place. It really was just Sigi here, nobody else. Tyr had told her that there'd be support waiting for her, an army, and she'd trusted him... Foolishly walking alone and waiting patiently for the arrival of this crusade force. No support had arrived, maybe they were all dead at this point. The only grateful thing about her in this moment was the fact she was a mage and well capable of ending herself before she was put in irons and raped. “I'll give you due respect for your family ties, princess. I'm a just and fair man. You'll come with us, no harm will befall you, and we'll send you back where you belong. After my men have their fun, of course, a woman who'd style herself a warrior will get what she wants in more ways than one.”
“Where I belong?” Sigi smirked, ignoring the threat. Feeling as if she might've been going crazy at that moment when she felt a gentle vibration beneath the earth. Somebody was... Down there? Again? How many undead did Tyr bury out here in this wasteland? “And where is that?”
The man shrugged casually. He was quite small for a man, not likely to break the five foot mark when off that big Varian destrier of his. “Oresund. Haran. Wherever you want to go. My bedchamber perhaps?” He smiled, and she grit her teeth as he waxed on about her 'proportions'. The men following his command chuckled at it, adding to the cold rage welling up inside of her. Break. She wanted to break them and dance to the tune of their squealing. Like the pigs they were, they'd squeal one way or another.
“One chance,” Sigi trusted Tyr for the most part. He was a man that knew how to get things done, even if not in the most elegant of ways. Never with anything even approaching grace. It was the cold and brutal efficiency of a predator, she liked that much about him. Didn't mind the red on his hands like Alex did, but didn't seek to understand him the way Astrid did either. He was just Tyr, nobody had any right to ask much else of him. If you didn't like it, you were free to leave for fairer climes, that had always been the agreement. “Surrender now, lay down your arms, and you'll live. Shall I explain what happens if you don't?”
“Oh, please do,” The man laughed full in her face, still staring down at her from his horse. These inquisitors and godly men had a sort of nonchalant arrogance about them that bothered her so much her jaw pained her, clenched so tightly her teeth might crack, but her face remained calm. Instead of words, though, she caught him by the leg and slammed him on the ground. A knight to her rear attempted to approach, whipping his horse into action. But the beast remained stilled, must've had something to do with the plated hands reaching up from the earth to catch at its legs. So tightly it couldn't even buck, followed by an armored figure that dragged itself robotically from the sand and gored it in the neck with the sharpened edge of a harshly angled kite-shield.
“You'll pay for this!” The inquisitor screamed in panic, blood from the screeching animal spraying all over his face and chest. Held be his ankle like that on the ground, looking like a child, Sigi could've laughed, he was quite small indeed. “Do you have any idea who I am!? W-what the hell are these things anyways!?”
“You should be more worried about who I am, little man,” Sigi replied, stomping down on his face. Feeling the glassy sensation of a mana barrier snap under the first blow, stomping again to silence his attempts to name himself. Stomping a third time to smash his skull flat against the dry ground. Feeling that sensation akin to planting her boot in jelly. Some 'mage' he turned out to be, she was almost disappointed if not for the raw satisfaction of it.
“Who are you!?” One of the paladins cried, scurrying away from his dead fellows, dismounted and staring with wild eyes at the ground below. Every single one of his comrades was dead within seconds. Waiting for one of those things to burst up and grab him the same way. Undead, based on what they'd heard, but his benedictions slapped harmlessly against their armor. They didn't react in the slightest, gunmetal gray and jagged at all the edges, looking like their armor was less of that and more of their actual skin. No eyes on them at all.
“I am Sigi Faeron-Mornstone,” She replied softly, sadly. With every word though, her voice and conviction grew along with it. “Wife of the White Wolf. Daughter of Sealord Askel, rightful heir of the Helm and Daughter of the Sea. Fourth level mage, princess of three great kingdoms, she of the salt, that which runs thickest in my veins. I wonder what runs in yours, holy man? I suppose we'll find out.”
“Ind--!”
Whatever cry he sought to send to his southron god, Sigi ended it, heaving her jorunn with all her might to split him at the sternum and crush the rest. Their army was in chaos, and barely any magic was needed. Allowing her the chance to look toward the south and wonder why that dumb bastard hadn't mentioned the fact that he'd buried all these golems out here. Or... How he'd even known to do so in advance. But the battle wasn't over yet, running with all haste toward the broken line of shields borne by the enemy. A silent band of blood soaked automatons at her back, she lifted her jorunn high and reminded them all of exactly who she was.
She am Sigi Mornstone. The last of her line. Of the salt. Of the sea. Of the reap.
–
“This strategy is...” Tiber frowned, not sure how to frame his feelings on it. He'd offered his advice, and Tyr had listened for the most part. But the majority of it had been the prince's own doing, it was likely nobody even knew that it was indeed his plan, and not Tiber's.
“Awful?” Tyr chuckled, flicking blood from his blade and sheathing it with a soft click at his waist. They had come from behind the army halted by Tythas' necromancy and shattered what was left of it. No losses. Not one man or woman on their side had fallen among the three northern elements he was commanding. Unless one counted the undead, he'd 'lost' a lot of those. Tens of thousands, probably, but Orlando and his lot just kept making more... They were nice like that, the only issue being that they were temporary and once broken apart they'd never rise again. True undead, unlike Orlando and the others who were symbiotically bound to the fomorian memory constructs he'd slammed inside of them as an anchoring component. Tyr didn't have the kind of talent with necromancy to do anything else, but technology, albeit inhuman in origin – could solve a lot of problems. “I told you I wasn't ready for this responsibility, but I don't think standard tactics are going to help us. I did my best.”
“It's certainly unique, but decidedly not awful,” Tiber replied, and the others were in agreement based on their unnerved stares at the crowfield. Not that any crows flew around the wastes like this, but he supposed the term could be used anywhere... In all likelihood it'd be fiends and corpse eaters, dangerous monsters that stalked battlefields in the night. “The enemy has no idea how to respond to this. Even without knowing - you're running a sub-legion system against what amounts to an archaic army composition, a horde strategy. I am pleasantly surprised at how deep the waters of your strategy run in all honesty. What the Kriegers call the 'blitz', the word the aptly named sports game calls itself by. Fifteen supply lines cut and culled to a man, 20,000 dead already and more on the way... I could never articulate how proud I am of you, you have a brain in that skull after all.”
It wasn't just that, but the speed at which it all happened. The easy excuse was 'magic', Tyr blew the horn and their feet seemed one with the wind, every man who'd heard it was faster, their stamina not taxed in the slightest. He cared for their over-exposure to the elements and ensured Lina was there to cool them down, Rafael to do the same and both to hydrate them, among other things. The mobility of their sub-legions were, for lack of a better word, insane, exceeding that of cavalry. Dazzlingly so, and from what communications they'd intercepted the enemy felt much the same, caught in a web of lightning quick raids on every possible front.
All planned far in advance, as though Tyr had known exactly where'd they'd be at all times, over a vast stretch of land.
Food and water supplies were poisoned, commanders assassinated, and the plague of a rumor spreading that Tyr was capable of 'teleporting' too. Being in so many places at once, from Milano to Amistad – where Scott was still occupying Tyr's throne as a decoy.
Not a war, no large battles beyond the one to the south, a game of smoke and mirrors to bait the enemy into disadvantageous position and butcher them. It was almost too easy...
“Three battles isn't a war, uncle,” Tyr corrected, but he looked smug nonetheless. A little of his old character returning. The old man missed those times when Tyr was just a confused boy and not seemingly possessed by a demon. No... Tyr had never been that boy, he'd just become so good at playing the game that not even the man who'd taught it to him could tell when he was engaged in it. “And I have concerns...”
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“As do I.” Harkon commented, attracting the attention of everyone in the tent. Whatever the preconceived notions and debunked myths, Harkon was still three centuries old and of an elder race. Older than Jartor, and among humans that was saying something. “I'm not sure how you humans wage war, but to us who might be called great patrons of the art... It seems as if they want to lose.”
“I have been thinking the same thing,” Tyr nodded. “I suspected they were decoys from the get-go and that's why the others remain in Amistad alongside most of our military assets. Our purpose is to whittle them down, to tire and haunt them. Leo is in the north doing that as we speak. Andre is doing it in the south, poisoning their provisions and ensuring, at the very least, that their trip won't be pleasant. Share your thoughts, though.”
Hastur's plan seemed... Well, all of the man's plans were the absolute epitome of stupidity on the surface. He fancied himself a genius, Tyr had seen his narcissism, how he thought he was the world's savior and the only one with the talent and mind to do so, but not one of his plans had ever worked. None of them. Not through any clever maneuvering by Tyr, but just because they were flat out awful. Poorly conceived and ill considered. Random at times. For example, again, marching 10,000 men through a field of land that was bound to bring them to the point of near death? Tyr had killed over 1,000 of these men by himself with no aid from the magic Lernin and the others had rained down on them. Tiber had killed half that alongside him, barely anyone had stood and fought, all running off and begging for a mercy they'd not receive. They were ill, and the burn would take them even if Tyr didn't. Die to the burn and be cursed, trapped beneath the earth like so many others – but die to Tyr and they'd go to the Black and get their shot at an afterlife.
It was an easy choice to hunt them all down, though he'd do it even if that weren't the case. To be a monolith, Tyr wasn't interested in becoming a savior. He was going to become the thing in the shadows that haunted future generations for all time, and then he was going to leave this wretched place and drink himself silly until he was offered final rest. Who knew? Maybe he'd actually find someone strong enough to bury him out here.
“I'd launch into a diatribe on the strategy of our enemy and the wastefulness of it all...” Harkon paused. “But the only fact that concerns me is that none of these forces have any significant accompaniment of your human magicians. Three armies have been soundly defeated as of right now, and based on our intelligence they have all contained a rather decent number of important personnel. People that anyone would want protected, yes? This last battle saw no use of defensive wards and the few mages they had fought like children, that one killed eleven of them by himself...”
Mikhail was the man being addressed, his mouth stuffed with some kind of cobbler brought from his dimensional ring. “Wut? Why ish that sho shurprishing?”
“Maybe he real does just want to swamp us in bodies,” Leaning over the command table, Tyr pursed his lips in thought, he was aware of the odd state of things but the goal wasn't to win a war in Baccia in the first place. He'd come to kill people and get stronger, and in the process make all of his key players progress in the same way. His blood opened them up or used energy that already existed inside of them more efficiently, it did not directly make someone stronger. That, as expected of all nim, was their job. “By the way, I'm very proud of you, Sigi.”
“Thanks, but Hastur is smarter than that and you know it,” The recently returned Sigi crossed her arms, back turned to the group to look beyond the tent flap in contemplation. She was well schooled and versed in the art of strategy herself, as far as she was concerned, and this was making her uncomfortable. “You'll say 'is he?' in that smug self satisfied way that you do, but he is. He is crafty enough to become a thorn that the primus' couldn't remove. I know who he is, and what he's done. Stories and myth aside, Cortus has never been a dull man. He was always cunning, even in the time of my grandfather he was known for his wiliness. He is the coyote that will gnaw off his own arm when caught in a trap, he has a foresight in him, telling us all that Trafalgar was doomed and leaving long before it happened, though we didn't believe him at the time.”
“I agree,” Alex added, “That's why we should push our advantage, sack Taur and take that estate of his.”
“He doesn't care about Taur. Not the city, not the people, not Baccia,” Tyr said. “They are tools and implements to him and he isn't even there anymore. Nala says he's on a barge at the southern causeway with the bulk of the crusade. His haemonculi have scattered and his estate is totally empty. Leo checked, and found nothing but a warehouse cleared of any evidence.”
“How can you be sure of that?” Tiber asked.
“Because Hastur and I are a lot alike, maybe,” Tyr replied softly. The field was quiet, most everyone content to listen for the time being. “He's just smarter than I am, so smart not even the people I interrogated could so much as guess at it. I ripped their minds apart and yet I found nothing.”
“Don't sell yourself short,” Lernin scoffed. “My father is a cretin beyond anything you're likely to ever see in this era. Nothing is beyond him, he has no code and he is not honorable in any way shape or form. A lack of morals is not a sign of intelligence.”
“What if this...” Magnus cleared his throat, “What if these armies aren't the real army? What if they, all of them, are just decoys?”
“If this isn't the real army, then what is?” Sigi raised an eyebrow skeptically. Five hundred thousand men, they said, the largest army assembled in modern history. What was more real than that?
“The more apt question, young lady...” Harkon was tapping his fingers against the crystals they'd found on every single member of the crusade, except for the officers and other leadership personnel. He had no clue what they were, or what their purpose was. “Is why they want all of these men to run toward their deaths.”
“We continue fighting,” Alex said. “Not much else we can do, I do not believe discussing it is of much help to us.”
“I agree. If we are destined to lose... We'll do so in the midst of an attempt to take as many of these worms with us,” Tyr nodded. “Micah should be just about ready. Are the golems and undead moving yet?”
“Back to Amistad, yes. Where did you even get so many of those things?” Sigi asked. “They're a bit tight at the joints, but they wouldn't allow me to examine them further. Kept pushing me away.”
Tyr shrugged. “I found them in the possession of one of the academies and 'borrowed' them. You'd be surprised at how much stuff is in those vaults that nobody seems to care about. Naming seemingly random objects 'forbidden', unfortunately most of it is disabled or beyond my understanding. And even though I am king the vaults don't recognize me as eligible to enter the 'black repository' without primus authorization. Kind of silly considering that I'm a primus, but I suppose they don't want me to release fungal swarm on everyone again... There's an AI down there and he's probably the most irritating example of that I've ever seen, and that's saying something.”
“Will you let us look at the vaults?” Alex offered, but Tyr shook his head. 'Not of much use' didn't mean he was ready to let the vaults be raided by anyone but himself. It was a wonder they hadn't destroyed most of it in the first place considering what some of those artifacts were capable of. Even out of the lower levels, some of the artifacts were pretty bad. He'd given Tythas one and that was the most he was ever going to do. As for the others, Tyr doubted any of them could get inside and survive through the experience.
Black books were relatively rare in Amistad and the church would tell anyone who'd listen that those were the worst. They weren't, Tyr had found some kind of spiritual entity locked in a common radish that contained a vampiric gestalt consciousness. Capable of stealing souls, and it was full of tens of thousand screaming minds who had tried to eat it, and been eaten instead. So many things, and considering it wasn't at the bottom-most level, it wasn't the worst of it all.
“Want some?” As usual, Tyr was eating just as Mikhail was now. It was always something, all of the time. Either some kind of pocket concealed snack or a whole meal at the oddest hour. This time, it was what they called a 'bagel'. Tyr liked these things, a doughnut shaped product of what had been Amateus. Crispy, with burnt onions and various seeds on its surface. He offered a piece of Alex in lieu of providing any explanation why he wouldn't let them see what the vaults contained.
“It's bread,” Alex frowned, looking at him like he was mad.
“Well, yeah...” Tyr's brows nearly touched. “...Do you not like bread now? It's toasted.”
“I don't eat gluten, Tyr. Obviously...” She stared at him in confusion, again looking at him like he was asking her to do something profane.
“Well you don't have to be an asshole,” Tyr raised his eyebrows, still chewing on his bagel. Relieved that he wouldn't have to share, in all honesty. He hadn't prepared very many in advance, the creamed cheese they put on those things was like something out of a fairy tale. “You could just say no.”
“An asshole!?” She piped up, a full blown marital 'disagreement' erupting out of nowhere in the middle of the command tent. Everyone but Tyr and perhaps the very amused Harkon looking a bit awkward. “You're the asshole! I have celiac disease, what the hell is wrong with you?”
“I have no idea what that is,” Tyr replied flatly. “It's just bread. It's not gonna bite you.”
“Oh man...” Sigi exhaled audibly through her nose. “Here we go.”
“How did you never notice!? It's a serious disease!” Tyr shrugged noncommittally, and in response Alex slapped him full across the face. But with the state of the man she was striking, he didn't seem fazed. It felt like she'd struck stone, hand and wrist smarting, turning about and marching out of the tent with a huff of indignation.
“Women...” Tyr mused, still chewing and looking for some kind of support from the others. None of which would offer any to him.
“That's on you, son,” Tiber sighed in disappointment. “And you should educate yourself. She'd get sick if she ate gluten, which means most products of barley and wheat. Be a better man.”
“Mmm,” Tyr nodded. He still had a long way to go before he was even remotely close to what someone would call a good husband. “You want some?”
Samson took not a piece, but the entire thing from him with a jerking of his hand. Some sort of lesson reflected in his eyes, frowning at Tyr and engulfing it with his mouth in a single bite. Damn... “Go say sorry.”
“Alright...” What the hell was celiac disease? One more thing to learn in an impossibly long list of things he was supposed to know, he guessed...