Kruegar leaned his twelve-foot form over on his new Barghest and slashed with his massive seven-foot blade. The head of the enemy chieftain rolled from its shoulders, the four-eyed, eight-foot orcs head bouncing into the muck of the swamps.

The Barghest kept running, and Kruegar rode as his mount slammed into the front lines, plowing through them. Kruegar slashed about him as well, the speed of his blade enhanced by his Wyld magic. Every hit slew an orc, and his combination Entropy and Wyld magic took the stolen life and vitality and fed him. He was Level Seventeen now, and a nearly unstoppable force. He had needed to wade through an insane amount of orc blood to accomplish it, but his last battle had been his entire orc army against a collection of the elite of most of the tribes of the East swamp that had opposed him—and he had slain many of their greatest chieftains.

I seriously doubt Leo has been able to keep up, Kruegar though as he butchered the orcs around him.

Although I still have less power than even Veltress, to say nothing of Felrin.

Kruegar pushed it from his mind and focused on the task at hand. He had punched one hole in the enemy lines, and as he glanced around, he saw that Victor had punched another, and Jeremy and Liam together had punched a third.

The entire line was already wavering. Kruegar was almost positive that one more hit would collapse it. He spurred his Barghest forward, triggering his Wyld powers to increase his own speed at slaying. He hewed his way though the enemy in a move that would have been suicide if he wasn’t a Level Eighteen near-god.

He reached a group surrounding one of children of the enemy chieftain. His target turned to run, screaming, seconds before Kruegar rode over him and stabbed downward, silencing the pathetic worm forever.

The enemy lines collapsed, the various orcs streaming away, each falling into its local tribal groups as it ran.

His own armies poured over them.

***

Jeremy rolled the map out in the giant yurt that acted as Kruegar’s command tent. Kruegar and his command team—Jeremy, Victor, Liam, and now the Imp Bogrith—crowded around. Jeremy started placing command markers, but Kruegar already knew the practical result—they had conquered the entire East Swamp. Technically, his nascent empire now stretched over almost four hundred miles of territory east-to-west, and more than a hundred miles inland.

But the reality was different. He had the beginnings of massive latifunda style farms and burgeoning new cities—hell holes of filth, waste, and terrible architecture that barely deserved the moniker ‘city’—all throughout the ‘Green Crescent’ on his far western side. It was the only place inside the traditional orc territory that wasn’t a swamp, and it was extremely fertile, with Wyld nodes throughout. He could feed millions from there. But his only cities were Red Port, near the green crescent and on the ocean, and the fortress city of Gevid Fields on the Barrier Isle. Between the two, he controlled the waters just outside the heart of his realm—but no more.

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“So, we won the territory between here and the Dark Warren now, but that changes… almost nothing?” Kruegar asked.

Bogrith nodded. “Between Steelport, which has turned on you, and the Reborn Kingdom of Averia, whose merchant marine ships and the rejuvenated fleet of House Orsini, if we stray any distance from our home ports our ships are obliterated. If you want your realm and the Dark Warren to truly be one, you’ll have to build a road.”

Kruegar clenched his fists. “Even that will be of limited utility. It’ll be a coast road for half its distance, easily raided by the same ships harassing our shipping. Additionally, four hundred miles by land, even over a nice road, isn’t a practical distance to trade with our current technology.”

Bogrith looked slightly confused by the use of the word technology, even though it was a word that the Blood Cant did have.

“So… what do you suggest?” Bogrith asked.

Kruegar sneered. “We take all the slaves of the Eastern Swamp tribes, and anyone we can make a slave, and move them to the Green Crescent. We build an empire there. It isn’t as valuable a location as Leo, damn his heart, has… but it’s not bad. And we have far more population. Hell, we have more elves alone as slaves than he has in his kingdom, quite possibly by… ten times as much.” No word to say ‘order of magnitude’ in the Blood Cant.

Bogrith nodded. “It could—”

The flap to his Yurt swept aside, and Veltress strode in. She was, for once, not naked, instead wearing a crimson dress that Kruegar didn’t find flattering—it was almost the same color as her skin. She carried a small chest as she entered.

Veltress made her entrance dramatic, her wings spreading after she entered, he horned head held high, her tail poking out under the dress. But as Kruegar watched, he could see she was moving carefully.

Is she hurt? Or is this because she is outside the field she has that protects her from the ravages of this ‘low magic’ world?

Veltress walked up to Kruegar, shorter than his twelve feet height by a good four feet. She put her hands on his shoulders. “An excellent plan, my servant. But I have news of importance that supersedes your petty empire games. Leo has returned to his realm, and our divination reports that he has taken the bait. He aims to invade and destroy you once and for all. He will sail for the fortress city of Gevid Fields, on Barrier Isle, soon. From there, he will most likely invade Red Port. So long as he holds it, we will never have any chance of moving on him.”

“What do you plan on doing about this?” Kruegar asked, his voice a near-feral growl of rage. “I understand that accept for his Prime Minister, your assassin was a dud. My realm is being sacrificed for nothing.”

Kruegar was about to cut Veltress down—he thought, between himself and his followers, they could do it. But he reined himself in. I can’t fight Duke Felrin!

“What do you plan to do about it?” Kruegar ground out. “Or am I to just be grist for him?”

“No. We’re going to move some of our lesser demons, and as many orcs as you can find, into the fortress at Gevid Fields. His fleet will break itself on the attack, and he’ll starve before he takes the fortress. You’ll have the numbers and be on the defensive.”

Kruegar sneered at her. “It’s not called Gevid Fields for nothing. For an island, it has ridiculous food production capabilities. Volcanic Soil, protection from the winds, and the double Wyld node… he’ll be able to sit for ages and live off the land. I’ll be trapped and starve.”

“Then burn it all to the ground,” Veltress said, her voice completely unconcerned. “he’ll have to assault you.”

Kruegar winced. It could work. And the Green Crescent will be an agricultural mecca… but still, I hate burning my realm down. Also, Leo does have a tendency toward tricks…

“If that doesn’t work?” Kruegar asked.

Veltress pulled an object from her bag that radiated intense magic. “Then we have another solution… He will fall, one way or another.”