Prologue
Leifa the cambion hovered high in the cold late fall sky looking down at the moving black river of flesh and steel that was fast flooding into the Sea of Stone from the northeast. The party of cat folk adventurers from Ariel’s Gate hadn’t exaggerated in their dire warning earlier that afternoon. Their numbers must have been over thirty thousand, divided into two clearly different groups. Marching in front were huge men and women practically naked aside from the animal furs they wore over their privates. They were northerners, savage barbarians that had once pillaged and plundered the entire continent before being beaten back by the first crusibilis knights. Now it seemed they had finally been subjugated and were being used as front line shock troops.
Behind the barbarians, marching in distinct ranks were the disciplined knights and regular soldiers of the northern kingdom’s army. Given the size of this invasion, those men would represent about twenty percent of the kingdom’s total armed forces with the rest spread across the great desert or besieging the dwarven capital. Leifa was a reasonably well educated woman, and she knew a good deal about global politics. King Gault’s dream of a single unified kingdom on this continent was slowly coming to pass. If he were to subjugate the dwarves and giants of the Sea of Stone, he could then feed the war he truly desired against the the other two major continents.
She finished taking stock of what she was seeing and quickly took flight back in the direction of EDEN. She needed to get word to Tabula and Raj. Many hidden dwarven communities were near the path that army would roll over, and her Master was far away and had taken Niiya, their only means of contacting him along. They were scheduled to return tomorrow but how many lives might be lost before then?
She landed lightly in the courtyard of EDEN, and returned a friendly wave from a group of dwarven traders as they exited the building. They had adapted to the demonic appearance of her more powerful form remarkably fast.
The moment the doors closed behind her, she wasted no time in calling out to EDEN’s all powerful administrator.
“Lady Tabula, there is an emergency.” She began earnestly. “I would like all capable people to meet me in Conference Room 2 immediately.”
Unsurprisingly, several people beat her to the conference room. Raj, Hurstag, Leza and all four of her Hellcat sisters, Sapphire, and nine Cambions whom happened to be nearby were all present and anxiously awaiting her report. She waited until the remaining people that were on site arrived before she began speaking, however. Several newer faces, adventurers from Ariel’s Gate and even a famous party of A ranked adventurers from Crown City had joined their ranks in the past week. Only five Cambions, and the two dark elves were absent, away on missions to spread the word of welcome to the residents of the Sea of Stone.
“Thirty thousand enemies are marching hard into the Sea of Stone.” Leifa raised her voice to share her report. “The terrain is holding them back somewhat. The narrow canyons and steep climbs will perhaps give us an extra day before they reach the first reclaimed dwarven settlement. I propose sending our fastest out to warn and evacuate as many as possible while another group slows them down with hit and run tactics. Let them arrive frustrated, only to find empty villages to conquer.”
“Their aim is most likely to group up with the main force surrounding Grandring, and finally break the siege.” Sapphire noted, and many nodded. “Even if they’re weak individually, a force of that size will be difficult to defeat.”
“Can’t we disrupt their supply chains?” Lora, a red haired Cambion asked. “If they can’t eat, they can’t very well fight.”
“They will be utilizing specialist mages able to conjure food and purify water.” Raj said sourly. “They are rare, and guarded as fiercely as the king himself.” It was a sore topic to the tengu. The reason she had been banished from the inner ring was a proposal she had once drafted, suggesting that just one such mage be used to ease the poverty of citizens in the outer communities.
“As I see it, you ladies capable of flight can scatter, get ahead of them easily enough, and warn the people in the army’s path.” Hurstag said after a moment of silence. “You Hellcat’s can hit the rear of their force hard enough to make them look back, and get away before they organize a defense. In the best case scenario, a big chunk of their force might even chase you back here. We can evacuate Ariel’s gate in under two hours thanks to all the drills we’ve been holding. Tabula, what kind of force do you imagine EDEN could repel?” He asked a question that had crossed the mind of most that had looked upon the odd building.
“Rain alone is more than a human army of this world can likely handle.” Tabula said simply. It wasn’t a boast, just a fact.
“Can’t we just turn EDEN into a wagon like when we first met if that’s the case?” A normally quiet Hellcat named Asha asked with a raised hand.
“Only the master of EDEN may reconfigure or deploy it.” Tabula answered.
“Then in the meantime, let’s just take Mr. Hurstag’s suggestion.” Leza said, clearly growing impatient. “Maybe we can lure some of them back here.”
“We’ll raise the alert level in Ariel’s Gate to maximum.” Hurstag said, hopping down from his chair. “Let’s keep sticking thorns on that king’s glowing arse.”
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Chapter 1: The Immortal General
Commander Kane had never been a meek man. He had risen through the ranks of the Gault Kingdom’s armed forces through sheer force of determination and aggressive ambition. He carried himself with confidence in the face of any enemy, regardless of their power. That unshakable attitude he believed would one day land him in the ranks of the Crusbilis knights. The goal had seemed attainable even after meeting Gespar, who Kane secretly believed he could have beaten in a fair fight. It held firm after meeting the Green Knights, who also didn’t seem so physically imposing even if their more subtle skills made them a fearsome force.
Today Kane rode behind the subordinate of the Red Knight, a man (to use the term loosely) that all but shattered Kane’s delusions of grandeur.
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General Orkas was a monstrous creature. He towered a foot over even the legendary General Trasana, a nearly eight foot tall amazon warrior priestess and must have weighed six hundred pounds without a single wasted ounce. His features were buried beneath his blood red and black spiked full plate mail. His helm was a blank mask of the same red metal with no eye or mouth holes, fueling the rumors that he was in fact not human at all but some ancient construct or perhaps a death knight born from an extinct race of men. He was an unearthly quiet man as well, an unconventional trait for a general perhaps but then again there were only ever the same orders when it came to following Orkas into battle. Don’t get too close, and clean up the meager scraps he might leave behind.
The legends surrounding him were astounding. He had toppled entire countries, and by any sane measure should be standing among the elite of the Crusibilis Knights. He had not, and would never accept such a promotion though. His service was sworn to the Red Knight and no one else. Kane had never seen the Red Knight, and the only description he could get from those that had simply said ‘You’ll just have to see for yourself.’ when prodded. Apparently the mysterious leader of this army was somewhere nearby but Kane had no clue who they might be.
As of now, Orkas rode alone at the head of the line of soldiers and enslaved Northerners. The beast beneath him was a dire rhino from the Eastern Continent, a beast so powerful and heavily armored that Kane shuddered at the mere thought of being in its path. It had Two horns of descending size with the larger one on its snout measuring at least five feet with a wickedly sharp tip, and a second smaller one between its small dark eyes. Whenever the breeze shifted and put Kane downwind of the enormous man and his equally fearsome mount, a sickly sweet scent of carrion and rust assaulted his nose. Kane knew one thing for certain. With General Orkas on their side and the fighters at their command, he couldn’t imagine any force of dwarves, giants, or demons that stood a chance.
The gigantic knight suddenly halted his mount and held up a spiked gauntlet, stopping the entire army’s march. He held up three fingers and pointed to the right of the road at a seemingly blank section of the cliff face that the road hugged. Two brown robed figures that had been trailing just behind Kane reacted instantly by rushing up to the wall, mumbling incantations as they did so. A nearly twenty foot square section of the cliff vanished, revealing a gaping tunnel cut perfectly into the mountain stone. After another gesture, a group of ten specialist soldiers wearing dark stained leather and cloth armor vanished silently into the darkness. A single soldier returned around five minutes later, she spoke with a mechanical monotone.
“Another abandoned settlement, General Orkas.” She said as she knelt alarmingly close to the dire rhino’s flaring nostrils. “Thirty domiciles and two shops. Many valuables remain and the departure seems to have been made in excessive haste.”
“Someone is running just ahead of us and warning the enemy.” Kane muttered.
Orkas made a rumbling noise, a low and irritated growl that never left his immense chest. He then reached down into one of the dark leather saddlebags near his right thigh and produced a strange and roughly carved figurine with a vaguely humanoid shape. He tossed it to the ground where it shattered. Moments later, a circle of stony earth ten meters across suddenly turned to wet churning mud that began to rise in a column like a slow motion geyser. Features slowly emerged, and hardened. Another moment later, there stood a greater earth elemental. It was a twenty meter tall colossal denizen of the plane of earth and stone, an S class monster comparable to a natural disaster in destructive potential.
It turned its featureless gaze to Orkas’ blank helm and seemed to take some direction from the silence, for it immediately dove into the earth like a person into a pool. Kane could sense the monster’s presence fast fading to the south and knew that their enemies were in for a terrible day.
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“I’m going to do one last sweep to make sure no one is left behind.” The speaker was a cambion named Meri. She was a soft spoken and kind hearted former mother of two sons that were lost to the Warlord’s horde. She brushed her long rust colored bangs away from her demonic eyes which couldn’t quite hide her sweet nature.
“Don’t take too long, Mama Meri. I have a gut feeling we don’t have as much time as we think.” Leifa replied using the pet name Meri had earned by always being a mother hen to the rest of the traumatized women. Leifa hovered five meters above the deserted dwarven village street. She was casually demonstrating her immense talent with her demonic anti gravity magic by holding more than a score of wide eyed dwarves aloft with her as she spoke.
“I’ll be right behind you.” Meri assured, turning away as she began to fly north where she suspected some of the larger homes might still have people hiding.
Her instincts proved correct, she found a dwarven woman with three young children on the outskirts of the village. The woman clutched a sturdy square sided mace and stubbornly refused to flee.
“I was you, once.” Meri said firmly. “I believed my home was worth defending.”
“No demon’s honeyed words are gonna trick me into going easy into their ovens for supper.” The dwarf spat and positioned herself firmly between Meri and the dwarflings.
Meri was going to say more, convince the woman that she could be trusted when a sudden tremor tickled her senses. The dwarven woman must have felt it too, because she looked at her feet in confusion.
“You three are coming with me. Come comfortably, or come screaming.” Meri spread her black leathery wings, and the building began to creak, and cracks suddenly spread in every direction along the walls. A second of silence followed and then the top of the house flew into the sky as Meri’s magic carried it away.
The three dwarves did begin to scream as their bodies left the comfort of the solid earth. The bottom of the sturdy structure exploded in that moment. Debris and a cloud of tan dust pelted Meri and the dwarves as they rapidly ascended. A stone head, enormous and crudely shaped in the likeness of a man appeared within the cloud followed by literal boulder shoulders and a torso that would have dwarfed the destroyed home. Meri reacted instantly by sending the dwarves floating as far as her magic could reach before letting them down gently on a roof top before flying in the opposite direction. Her instincts told her that she was the strange monster’s target.
A sudden violent gravitational pull sent her plummeting toward the ground. It took all of her might to keep from cracking into the stone. She landed hard, and bunched up her legs to spring back into the air. The creature was twenty meters away, and she thought she had enough time. Unfortunately that distance was but a step and swipe away, and the tips of stony fingers that must have weighed a ton each clipped Meri with enough force to send her spinning violently into and through the wall of a nearby house.
She was hurt. Her right arm and wing both dangled uselessly at her side and a few ribs were surely broken. That said, Meri was made of tougher stuff than the average person and she was smiling grimly as she yanked the cork of a potion out with her sharp teeth. She drank the contents and tossed the empty bottle aside, it scattered into golden dust and vanished as it hit the floor. With her body fully healed, she wasted no time in rushing out the open window opposite the hole she had created with her body. Half a second later, the home was reduced to fine rubble by a two armed overhead smash by the earth elemental.
The elemental’s blank faced gaze slowly panned back and forth then upward, homing in on Meri as she flew frantically to gain as much altitude as possible in hopes of evading the strange gravity power. She felt the tug briefly but sighed in relief as it lessened. She turned in flight just in time to see a boulder rapidly growing in size as it rocketed toward her with the speed of a cannonball. She rolled to evade it but the sheer force of the wind as it passed caused her to tumble out of control and lose some precious altitude.
A sudden and probably foolish idea came to her then. If earth elementals were empowered by the earth, what if they were detached from it? She steeled herself for the immense drain of Soul Energy and directed her anti gravity magic on the colossal body. It didn’t so much as quiver at first, but then slowly it began to rise, caught in a column of powerful anti gravity magic. Each meter was agony for Meri. Sweat beaded on her face as though she were lifting the creature conventionally.
The elemental went berserk. It thrashed and roared with a volume that echoed across the Sea of Stone for miles around, but still it rose. When Meri’s Soul Energy finally ran out, the elemental was fifty meters high, and its movements had become strangely stiff. Each weak twitch sent brittle shards of sandstone out from it, as though the power that animated it were weakening and returning it to simple stone. It appeared to all the world like a dying thing, and victory seemed at hand.
Then Meri’s spell failed. The unfathomably heavy body, still using its own gravity magic to struggle against its ascent suddenly shot toward the ground with enough velocity to create a sonic boom. Meri flinched for the inevitable impact and felt a shock wave like nothing she had ever imagined possible hit her with enough force to blast her into unconsciousness.
How long had passed she couldn’t know when her heavy eyelids slowly opened. She was inside one of the buildings of the village. Her eyes found focus slowly and then widened in shock and revulsion. The dwarven woman, and both of her children were dead on the floor before her. They had clearly been tortured. Garish wounds, missing digits and much worse were plainly displayed all over their poor mangled bodies. Only then did Meri realize that her hands and feet were bound to a wooden chair and she was back in her human form.
“Don’t worry, gorgeous.” A croaking voice from the open door heralded the appearance of a red robed man, with features hidden under layers of cloth. “I won’t kill you like them, but by this time tomorrow you’ll be begging me to. They certainly did. My name is Petracide, an agent of the kingdom’s special intelligence extraction unit. You and I are about to become very well acquainted.”