The sun hung high in the sky as Zeke gazed at the castle across the street. When morning came, he had been forced to descend from on high, so the view wasn’t as pristine as he would have preferred. However, he could still see the steady stream of healers going back and forth through the gates. The ones headed in had their heads held high, but the ones leaving all wore defeated expressions. Each and every one of them looked exhausted, with slumping shoulders and shuffling gaits.
Eta had assured him that the poison, while not lethal, was almost entirely incurable. The only thing that could banish it was if someone were to utilize a healing-related path, and even that was only possible if it was fairly advanced. She’d explained it by describing the mana-laced structure, but Zeke was ill-equipped to understand that sort of nuance. Instead, he’d simply taken her word for it – a good decision, given the results he saw before him.
“Do you think we should wait?” he asked, glancing at the sky. It was only just past noon, so nightfall was still hours away.
“I don’t think you should do this at all,” Eveline answered. “But if you have to do it, then you should go when you think the Knights are at their weakest. You need to figure out what you intend to do about civilians, though. Do you intend to murder everyone here?”
“No.”
“But are you prepared to do so if that’s what it takes?” she persisted. “Because these people may not surrender. They may choose to fight, right down to the last one.”
“They won’t.”
“Are you sure? You’re not just killing a few bad guys here. This is an assault on their entire way of life. Do you really believe that they’re going to willingly start working those fields? Do you think they’ll choose to start cleaning their own city? That they will give up their little elven toys without a fight?”
Zeke frowned as he leaned against a building. He wasn’t completely unobtrusive, but he’d garnered far less attention than he had expected. Still, he wasn’t concerned with a few curious glances. By the time those turned into angry demands, he would have already made his move.
But Eveline posed a perfectly valid series of questions. Heartwood’s entire economy – indeed, their way of life – had been built on slavery. Suddenly yanking that out from under them was never going to be anything but disastrous. It wasn’t outside the realm of expectation that they wouldn’t surrender to that without a significant struggle. So, the question remained – how did Zeke intend to respond to their expected resistance?
It was easy to contemplate killing soldiers and slavers, but it was something else altogether to exterminate shopkeepers and tradespeople.
At the end of the day, though, Zeke knew that he couldn’t afford to leave them alive. If they resisted, they would have to be dealt with, and harshly. Anything else would put the entire operation at risk. However, if the citizens of Heartwood surrendered or chose not to oppose Zeke and his army of kobolds, then they would be spared.
“They’ll end up being a problem,” Eveline predicted. “If you leave them alive, it will assuredly come back to bite you.”
“And if I exterminate a bunch of innocents, I’ll be a monster. I can’t do that, Eveline. Not without trying to avoid it.”
“The kobolds would be happy to do it. They don’t have your morality problem,” she stated. “You just have to point them at whatever you want to kill, and they’ll do it. They don’t care about humans any more than they cared about hill giants. Or monsters. Or anything else.”
“They will,” he responded. That was key to sapience, Zeke thought. The ability to value life, even if it belonged to your enemy. Some of the kobolds were already there. Certainly, Kianma was. But most of the centurions and legionnaires were still a long way off from displaying real empathy.
“Empathy and war cannot coexist. The moment you start trying to empathize with your enemy, you will lose the ability to win the war,” Eveline stated as if it was absolute fact. Zeke didn’t dispute her claim – at least not explicitly – but he vowed to give the subject some thought.
For now, though, the time for action had come. According to Eta, the poison had had plenty of opportunity to work, and the steady train of healers seemed to support that. So, there was no reason for further delay.
Zeke pushed himself from the building upon which he’d been leaning, then joined the flow of pedestrians as he made his way to the appropriate location. As it turned out, his destination was a large, disused building only a few blocks from the castle. It had clearly once been some sort of warehouse, but for whatever reason, it had been abandoned. That made it the perfect staging ground for his army of kobolds.
Once inside, Zeke summoned his gate, and signaled for the first group of kobolds to exit the tower. The force, which was composed of two entire talons – a hundred kobold legionnaires and ten centurions to each talon – filed out of the gate to gather inside the warehouse. It was a tight fit, but there was just enough room for all of them.
Zeke ordered the centurion in charge to wait for the signal before attacking their target. The towering kobold wasn’t the brightest among his peers, but he was intelligent enough to follow those directions. So, with that assured, Zeke dismissed his gate, then left the warehouse behind.
It took about five minutes for him to reach his second destination, which was a much smaller building on the other side of the castle. It was also abandoned, though its condition was much worse than the warehouse’s. At some point in the recent past, it had been afflicted by a fire, so its stone walls were blackened, and the interior had been gutted. However, it was still suitable for Zeke’s purposes.
Once again, he summoned his gate, and another group of kobolds exited. These were all centurions – an elite force of the most powerful warriors the kobold army could offer – and they were led by Silik himself. Zeke didn’t need to explain the plan; Silik knew his role, and if past actions were any indication, he was more than capable of accomplishing his task.
So, Zeke didn’t waste any more time before heading to the next destination, which was the third and final point of attack. It was also the most exposed, which was why he’d left it for last.
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The area was a small park on the north side of the castle, and though the flora offered a little cover, there was no way any sizable force could use it as a staging area without detection. So, Zeke had no intention of even trying. Still, when he summoned his gate, he did so beneath a sizable oak tree that he hoped would offer some obscurement.
Almost as soon as the gate was up, Pudge led a contingent of kobold rangers as well as a few of the stealthier former slaves – including Jasper – through and into the park. There were only ten of them, but each one had some ability in concealment. That, coupled with one of Jasper’s songs, would hopefully be enough to allow them to accomplish their mission unseen.
“You know what to do, right?” he asked.
Pudge nodded. “I do,” he said.
“Be safe.”
With that, Pudge led them away, each one shifting into some degree of invisibility before they went more than a few feet. Bringing up the rear was Jasper, who’d pulled out a set of reed pipes and had begun to play a haunting melody that Zeke recognized as the accompaniment of the bard’s concealment song.
The dark elf gave him a sly grin and a mock salute before fading from view.
That’s when the bulk of the army started to pile out of the gate. More than a dozen talons composed of a hundred-and-ten battle-hardened veterans. There were more kobold warriors that had remained within the tower, but that was a strategic decision. Zeke hoped to end the battle quickly, but the war against the giants had taught him to take fatigue into account with any battle plan. So, he’d gotten into the habit of keeping a sizable contingent of reserves.
Still, he hoped that he wouldn’t need them.
Once over a thousand kobolds had exited the gate, it was only a matter of time before they were noticed. Still, that was part of the plan. If everyone was looking at the main force, then the others were free to act according to their orders. The worst-case scenario was if, for whatever reason, the Knights as well as whatever other defense forces Heartwood possessed, didn’t take the bait.
As it turned out, Zeke was worried over nothing, and only ten minutes after the army had been assembled, the Knights responded. By that point, Zeke had already assumed his colossal form – as much to conceal his human-passing identity as for the benefits it offered – so he stood at the head of his army of kobolds when the Knights mounted a response.
A hundred cavalry, all atop pure white horses and clad in gleaming silver armor, sallied forth from the closest gate. The sound of hooves on cobblestone streets was loud even from a few hundred yards away, and in that moment, Zeke understood just how terrifying it must’ve been for ancient armies to face down a cavalry charge.
As one, the charging Knights lowered their lances as they prepared to sweep through what they probably assumed was a collection of monsters.
Zeke embraced [Hell Geyser], then stomped on the ground. A line of devastation cut through the park, throwing loamy earth high into the air as the skill raced forward to meet the charging Knights. Zeke had been practicing with the skill, but even so, it was difficult to time the eruption perfectly. So, he waited a little longer than absolute necessary, sparing the tip of the vanguard.
The others were not so lucky.
A gout of corrupted fire and earth exploded into being, engulfing the back half of the Knights’ force. Zeke felt an influx of kill energy, telling him that at least a few of them had died. However, most survived, as was evident when the flames died a second later.
They probably wished otherwise, though.
Their armor still gleamed with silvery luster, but the people encased within screamed in horror and agony as the red hot metal melted onto their bodies. At the same time, their horses had been charred beyond all recognition, sending the Knights tumbling to the upturned earth where they writhed in agony.
Zeke only managed to get a brief glimpse, but that was more than enough to hammer home two things. First, the Knights were durable enough – whether it was due to the armor they wore or innate defenses – to endure one of his most destructive abilities. But more than that, he couldn’t ignore the very real cost of the battle.
Those were human beings. They were evil. Or at least they’d committed evil acts. However, it was hard to convince himself that they deserved to be cooked alive in their melting armor. Killing giants, dwarves, and monsters was one thing. Slaughtering human beings on such a massive scale – and in such a brutal manner – was something else altogether.
Still, Zeke was committed. He only had to think of the evil society the Knights had enabled to steel his resolve.
The remaining cavalry raced across the open ground, and Zeke stepped forward to meet them. As he did so, hundreds of kobolds – all hulking masses of scales, claws, and muscle – came with him. Zeke hefted his hammer and prepared to meet the charge.
When the tip of the vanguard reached him, Zeke swept his hammer out, knocking the Knight’s lance aside, then increased his weight as he braced for impact. His shoulder took the horse directly in the chest, stopping it cold. Bones crunched, and the horse screamed in agony – which sent a pang of regret through his heart – as the animal collapsed. The knight kept going, though, tumbling end over end until he landed amongst the second line of kobolds.
Zeke didn’t even need to look back to know that they took that opportunity to rip the unfortunate knight to pieces. A swirl of mana told Zeke that the man tried to activate some sort of skills, but the legionnaires buried him beneath the weight of numbers before he could bring his power to bear.
By that point, Zeke had already moved on to the next target. And thus, the battle began, but it only lasted a few minutes – filled with furious fighting – before the last Knight fell before the combined might of Zeke and a thousand kobold killing machines.
It was a brutal clash, but it was over much more quickly than some of Zeke’s previous battles. Clearly, the Knights had underestimated them and hadn’t responded with overwhelming force – either in terms of numbers or their most powerful warriors. If they had, Zeke felt certain that the fight would have been much more difficult. Or at least lasted a little longer.
Zeke looked down at the unfortunate victims. The Knights were his enemies, so he’d accepted their deaths as necessary and inevitable. Even justified. And yet, he hadn’t considered their mounts.
All around him, he saw dead equines. Some were charred as a result of the kobolds’ skills; they hadn’t used [Spear of Memories] because Zeke wanted to keep it in reserve, but they’d employed their light-based enhancements, which had burned the vulnerable horses.
“They weren’t particularly vulnerable,” said Eveline. “Didn’t you [Inspect] them? There wasn’t a single one below level forty. They’re just agility and dexterity focused. Probably why you couldn’t catch that scout before.”
“Still hate having to kill them,” he muttered.
“You committed to this.”
“I know.”
He didn’t have any room to lament his actions. He’d made his choices, and now, he just had to live with them. To that end, he turned to one of the kobold centurions and said, “Send up the signal. It’s time for phase two.”
The centurion nodded his scaley had, then darted back to the gate. He passed through, then reappeared about a minute later with one of the former slaves in tow. She was a tiny gnome wearing giant spectacles and sporting an elaborate hairstyle that doubled her height. When she arrived, she straightened her glasses, then cast a skill, sending a sizable fireball high into the sky.
“Thanks, Qin,” Zeke said aloud, his voice rumbling like an earthquake of clashing metals.
She shivered in fear, then curtsied before scurrying back through the gate.
Zeke just shook his head. Many of the former slaves were terrified of him. Part of that was due to his actions in Min Ferilik, but most had seen him fighting in enough battles since then to know just how fearsome he could be.
“Fear is necessary for any leader,” Eveline pointed out.
He ignored her, instead turning to the kobolds and saying, “Two minutes. Then we charge.”
In the back of his mind, though, Zeke wondered how the others were doing. The plan could work without them, but it would end with a bloody battle if they didn’t come through. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that.