Hoshun System
Sauridius Teleportation Portal
A massive circular portal of violet, blue and black energy burst into existence at the edge of the Honshu system in the shadow of the furthest planet where the light of its star dare not reach. Its edges cracked and jagged, like a glass window shattered. The portal swirled like inky water for a moment before the snout of a dark crimson Great Wyvern glided through it. Sickly green energy glowed and rippled in its eyes as it immediately sighted in on Hoshun. It swam through the black of space, dragging its body free of the portal, its tail ending in a wicked poisonous barbed tip. Several landing craft followed, more and still more trailed in its wake.
The dread lord Ominek gracefully arced back above the convoy of landing craft. His reptilian eyes surveying the ship's progress as they made their way to the isolated colony world. As tactical moves went, he understood the value of reducing a Federation world to ash, and harvesting its population as foot soldiers for the war effort. That said, he failed to understand his “father’s” vision or the strategic value of diverting so many resources this far out to this world. There were better targets to be hit than this planet.
Ominek received a prompt for a spell missive and willed it to accept. You do not need to understand why you are there to do what I have assigned you to do, little one. You need only do as I say. Now go. Leviathos’ voice rumbled in the back of Ominek’s mind. It caused him to clench his jaw, gritting his fanged teeth. Pain exploded in the center of his forehead between his eyes like needles being jabbed past the bone. Once his “father” had finished speaking, Ominek’s form streaked down towards the blue green world of Hoshun.
As the Dread lord descended, he quickly cast several defensive wards on the lead landing craft. If the world had surface-to-air defenses, this would blunt their attack. Amazingly enough, no fire was incoming. This puzzled Ominek. Normally, their arrival foretold the end of a world. Why was this one not defending itself? This felt like a customarily odd response, given his presence. Ominek held his suspicion close and orchestrated the landing with great haste. As each ship landed, it unloaded its contents cleanly. Orcs, Dragons, and twice as much undead from each vessel.
The troops were quickly organized into manageable combat groups as several smaller dragon shacklers landed, then cast transmutation spells to morph into humanoid forms and assumed control of their pawns. Ominek’s sleek form landed on the ground on its hind legs, then began his own morph spell. Quickly, the wings retracted into his body as his scales faded and shrank, recoloring from their natural crimson to a pinkish hue. Some of his pointy spines shrank completely until even the clothing appeared and Ominek was indistinguishable from other humans.
He ran a hand through his platinum shortcut hair, enjoying the feeling of it between his fingers. It wasn’t necessary for him to assume a human form. It just made infiltration easier. Being a 5th level spell meant it was difficult to learn, requiring a great deal of magic to even start, and centuries to perfect. His level of excellence was above the norm. There was a measure of pride he took in his ability to render his appearance this way. Like a master artisan’s work on display. Compared to the others, his appearance was unrivaled.
“Position your forces for now, but don’t strike. I want to know why the natives haven’t attacked during our landing. This entire venture may prove either entirely worthless or exceedingly valuable. But I want to gauge which it is.”
The 4 other shacklers all nodded, then stepped off in roughly the same direction, commanding through groups of orcs, hatchlings, and undead to follow them in formation. As Ominek strolled casually toward their targeted attack position, he could slowly detect some air magic strength. An air dragon died here some time ago. The magic was old, but pulsed evenly. It wasn’t Anazzi. They buried her on Prime, so the rumors held. No, this was likely one of her children. That proved a tempting treat. Devouring a small air wellspring of magic wasn’t why Leviathos had asked him to assault this world, though, so since it fell below Leviathos’ gaze, Ominek was struggling to grasp why he was assaulting this world. It contained a small colony of air nomads. Knocking this world out meant little in the tactical long run. This only teased his curiosity further.
“What are you hiding, father…” he mused to himself as he walked, the ground crunched softly under his leather boots. In the distance, he could see the soft, warm glow of fires in and around a village through spare tree cover. Street torches and enchanted lamps showing the size of the village weren’t a sprawling metropolis but a moderately sized agrarian town. Most of the architecture relied on local materials and simple designs that didn’t get too complex or magic intensive.
There were a few aether accumulators sponging up the ambient magic to fuel the lamps and so on, but the town fell below modern norms. It was also larger of a colony than he expected. They even had their own air temple. He recognized the architecture as being an Air Dragon aesthetic. Lifting his hand up, he drew several fire and mind runes with artful flourishes. The runes collided with each other and then swirled into a square shaped clear gem necklace. The link crystal glowed with swirling fire and mind aether, creating an ethereal illusion before him. The magic created a sort of screen or lens in font of him that enhanced his view, showing him what was happening in the village, without having to venture into it.
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“Interesting,” he mused to himself. There was quite an abundance of spell warriors with air magic. Typically, they’d been focused on Anazzi Prime. Finding an air mage colony this far out in the middle of nowhere struck Ominek as peculiar. He scanned the village more and noted that his previous assumptions about it held true. They possessed no clear tactical or strategic advantage he could see. But his father’s chilling warning rippled down deep into his bones. He had to eliminate this colony completely. Failure to do so meant that he was risking Leviathos’ wrath. He closed his eyes before turning to walk back to his camp. It would take till morning for his troops to position themselves. They could easily teleport, but that would spend magic: his shacklers would need as much of their AP as possible to order their soul bound and undead armies. Better to spend time rather than magic. This wasn’t Eryn after all. No need to be wasteful where he could avoid it.
He wrote out several message spells coordinating his forces, “Stage your troops in these positions. We’ll strike at sunup.” With that taken care of, Ominek strolled the landscape looking for a suitable over watch position to view the battle from. He wasn’t against being in the front, but, for a bunch of country air hillbillies and farmers, he didn’t see the need. There wasn’t anyone here of any value that would give his men that hard a time, besides perhaps the clan chieftain. He could cross that bridge when it came. All that remained now was to wait to conduct their ambush.
Ominek didn’t sleep through the rest of the night. Sleep was a habit lesser mortals engaged in. Instead, he entered a meditative trance where he traced every action and reaction to their eventual end state via divination spells. Initially, he’d begun so as any other preparatory phase of an attack. Something soon piqued his interest when he ran into a blockage he couldn’t see around.
This caused him to dig in like a predator with a stubborn prey animal. He had to know where the blockage was coming from and why he couldn’t see around it. During his divinations, where he plucked at the threads of destiny and time? He could see his attack proceeding as he expected it to until it reached a certain threshold, which usually involved the chieftain’s son getting involved.
In every possibility, in every potential thread, when this crimson haired man involved himself, Ominek’s visions halted because of the blockage. Try as he might, no amount of scrying could cleanse the blockage, leaving him to conclude that whoever put the block there was at least a demi-god or a full god. This wasn’t common magic stopping him, this was true divinity. That someone of that power scale would consider this worth intervening gave him great pause. Still, his curiosity about why his father was so motivated to invest a full strike force on a mere village of farmers and rural spell warriors still seemed odd when the broader scope of the sector lay at stake.
“Why indeed.” he said.
On the one hand, he knew this would displease Leviathos. On the other, he suspected Leviathos was already aware of this potential reality. Therefore, Leviathos wanted him to assault this backwater world so vigorously. Logically, that would mean this was a provocation attack to draw out some benefactor seeking to stymie Sauridius’ return. Possibly one of the very villagers here?
If someone here was under divine protection, then it stood to reason that they’d eventually run afoul of Leviathos’ plans. Which meant that would have negative repercussions for himself. Still, if there was some agent of the gods here, then perhaps that would provide him the distraction to Leviathos he needed in order to complete his own plan to escape Leviathos’ grasp. He would bind them, walk them back on a leash and make them tell Leviathos everything they knew.
The sky colored itself in hues of orange, pink, and blue as the sun started its eventual ascent. It hadn’t crested the horizon yet, so Ominek took the remaining few moments to gather himself from his attempts at divination to focus on the moment at hand. Let destiny and time play their games. He would remain rooted in the present. As the first hint of the planet’s sun rose above the distant mountain ranges, Ominek gave the unspoken command and his forces marched into action. He watched from a distance on a small ridge as the undead lurched into motion ahead of the orcs and shacklers. The undead were cumbersome and lacked finesse, but they made up for that weakness in sheer volume. Harvesting the corpses of your enemies meant that you never lacked for a reliable source of personnel on the cheap.
As his forces marched, the air grew thick with a brown haze of dust and cool morning fog, creating the perfect visible cover for his forces. It didn’t take long for the undead forces to converge on the small, sleepy clan. Moments later, screams echoed out from several of the huts. Soon after, a warm glow surrounded the village as multiple fires bloomed into life. Bolts of lightning cracked out, slamming into the front ranks of undead as they carved their way through the outer periphery of the village. The advance blunted when the clan’s spell warriors jumped into action, hurling spells, swords, and bodies alike as they crashed into the ranks of undead minions, chewing through them like human lawn mowers.
Ominek rose from his observational position, straightening out the suit he was wearing. In his free hand, he summoned his obsidian spell staff. He took a moment to admire the design. A jet black oval onyx, a ghostly white pearl that radiated soul magic, and a fire ruby floated in orbit, equidistant to each other. “Let’s go have some fun, shall we?”
His spell staff vibrated back eagerly to him. It was time to go on a harvest of bodies and souls. He strode off the cliff, the sound of the tune he was whistling carried out of hearing as he landed in the air rice fields below.