On our way to Try’s Hold, we made sure to keep a slow pace. After leaving half of our herd behind at the location for our new city, we were not confident enough to brazenly challenge every herd that we passed. Even if we could still defeat them in a fight, that did not mean we could do so without any losses. Especially now that Hyumahn chose to stay and help build the city. Without his help in finding the medicinal herbs, we were on our own for recovery.
Still, even without Hyumahn’s help, we were able to make it to the city of Try’s Hold within a couple of weeks. This was the first time that I had been to the city since I visited it with Dalin shortly after we met. At that time, the spiked wall had seemed like it was about to fall apart under a heavy storm, yet now it looked intimidating.
Several of the spikes serving as the foundation for the wall had been dyed red with blood. Right now, the city looked more like I had expected it to the first time I was here, with recent battles being obvious. Even when we approached the walls, I could see them getting ready to fight us.
“State your business here and begone!” One of the guards in front of the gate called out. His horn made him obviously identifiable as a unicorn centaur, and his face showed disgust as he looked at me and my herd.
“We come bearing a message.” I shouted, amplifying my voice with my ki. Thankfully, this did not create any weird fire effects. Although my status as a normal centaur might make me less liked by this group, I had nonetheless become the default leader. Signalling Dalin, I saw him focusing to prepare a barrier spell if they decided to attack. “We have been tasked by Tryval to create a haven where all of his children may live together. As such, anyone who wishes to may seek his guidance and find it to live in peace.”
Hearing my speak, the face of the unicorn guard turned practically red in an instant. “You dare to proclaim that you speak for Tryval? You, a savage wanderer and his herd? We should put you down for this offense.” Saying that, he turned to look at those behind the walls. “Show them how we treat blasphemers!”
At the same time as the arrows and shards of ice flew into the sky, Dalin had already erected the barrier. Though, he had to create one large enough to encompass all six of us, so even the small attacks were enough to create visible cracks in it. “Namor, if you would be so kind?” He asked, gritting his teeth as he focused on maintaining the spell.
The qilin nodded, raising his hand. What he casted was a simple fire spell, but in his hands it became so much more. As a qilin, he had a natural ability to control fire even without the use of spells. Thus, though the simple fire looked unintimidating, it quickly flared up, becoming a small inferno that swallowed up the wall of the city. The fire swerved, maneuvering under Namor’s control to destroy their bows and intercept their spells. Out of all of them, the only variant he actually attacked was the guard, who found his body covered with flames. He could only yell out pitifully as he tried to cast ice magic on himself to put out the fire. Unfortunately, Namor’s flames were not that easy to put out, and his bar of life was soon extinguished.
Once the guard had fallen, we turned to leave, Namor keeping his flame present as a defensive shield. As long as it was there, the people from the city could not accurately target us with magic. However, keeping it up for too long was simply impossible. While a qilin did not need spells to control their fire, they did still require mana. As such, we hastily made our escape, so as to prevent him from overusing his energy.
Roughly five minutes later, the flame shield had been completely extinguished, and although Try’s Hold was still within sight it was a fairly good distance away. Nodding at that, I gave him a slight smile. “You did good, Namor. Rest now, and recover your energy.”
“Thank you, Ashur.” He spoke with a weary smile, closing his eyes to relax as his body continued to walk forward at a slow trot. Ki could be recovered through eating and sleeping, but mana would recover through calming the mind, allowing your mental fatigue to be eliminated slowly.
“Okay… where do we want to go next?” I asked, looking to Dalin and the others. Now that we had delivered the message to Try’s Hold, we could move on to the wandering herds.
“Not just yet.” Dalin interjected, glancing back at the city. “We should make some preparations while we get further away. Only when we can no longer see the city shall we plan our next step.”
Although I was confused by his judgement, I decided to trust it nonetheless. It was rare for Dalin to directly oppose anything that I said, yet when he did it was often for a good reason. This time, I was able to see the reason within a few moments. This can’t be good…
Five white-winged centaurs had flown up into the sky, immediately after a bright light shined behind the walls. Even at this distance, I could tell that they were coming straight towards us. Yet, none of them carried any weapons, only holding a single promise scroll in each hand. Still, I had a bad feeling about this. If they were coming to join us, that would be a great thing, but otherwise…
As the five of them flew directly over us, the scrolls in their hands began to glow in a bright light before shattering. This was the sign that the promise had been fulfilled, and generally meant that the prize was about to be bestowed. However, in this case, the ‘prize’ came in the shape of giant rocks that fell from the sky, falling down towards us.
“Move!” I shouted, activating my world ki to quickly bring me away from the path of the falling stones. The attacking variants didn’t even stop to consider whether their attack worked, and had already turned around to fly back to the city.
The others all managed to escape the attack as well, though it was rather close for Namor. As he had still been focusing on recovering his mental strength, his reaction came a moment later than the rest of us. Though, he too had cultivated fire ki, and was able to activate it with a thought, his body darting forward away from the danger.
“Okay, so they don’t plan to just let us go.” I said with a slight groan, looking back to the city, the walls still burning. “I can understand that. I really can. So… we going to do this then?” I asked, looking around to the others. Aside from Namor, who was still recovering from using so much mana earlier, the others all nodded with grim faces.
Unfortunately, our only available mage at the moment was Dalin, and ki was not suitable for long ranged attacks. Or is it? I asked myself, glancing to the five boulders that had been dropped next to us. “Jayce, think you can break those?” I asked curiously. Although Karlin would likely be more useful for this task, I needed him for something else.
Jayce looked at the rocks, pursing his lips slightly. “I can try.” He said in a grim tone, walking up to the first boulder. When he got to it, I could see him clenching his fists tightly, preparing to draw on the Power of the Berserker.
With a low roar, he brought one fist up and slammed it against his chest hard enough for the bar of his life to visibly decrease. This was his power, to become stronger the more damage he takes. After hitting his chest a few more times, and making us hear a rather sickening crunch, he leaned down towards the first rock.
Each of these boulders were roughly half the size of one of us, but that was still enough to do some serious damage. Yet, when he brought his fist back, his veins bulging along his arm, none of us thought that the boulder would win this little fight. “Break for me!” He shouted, punching his fist forward to unleash all of the stored strength.
Once again, his bar of life decreased, but that was perhaps overshadowed by the crash we heard as the boulder broke apart into several smaller rocks. Looking at Jayce, I couldn’t help but wince, seeing his hand mangled with the bones sticking out. “I really hope you only need one broken.” He spoke through gritted teeth. “I’d like to keep at least one hand for a while.”
I nodded my head, signalling to Dalin, Dhalia, and Karlin. “Yeah, that should be enough. We’ll head back to the haven to get your hand treated after we are done here.” The three I signalled were the other monks of our group. “Everyone… grab a rock.”
As I said that, I leaned down and picked up a rock about as large as my fist, turning to look at the incoming unicorn attack squad. It had taken us several minutes to get as far away from the city as we were, so naturally they weren’t within attack range yet. However, that didn’t mean they weren’t getting there.
Since we lacked any magic to attack with currently, we could only go to our next best option. “Let me test this out.” I said, pulling my hand back as I gathered my world ki in my hand.
While putting as much of my strength into it as I could, I threw the rock towards the approaching forces. Of course, it didn’t travel as far as I wanted it to, falling to the ground roughly half way, but it did give me a measure of how far we could attack. “Alright everyone, you know what to do!” I shouted out as I leaned down, picking up another pair of large rocks.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Seeing my improvised attack, the others momentarily revealed a look of enlightenment as they reached down to get their own ammunition. Dhalia, the one closest to Dalin, turned to look at him curiously as she began channeling her earth ki into one of the rocks. “So, how far away can they shoot their spells?” She asked, a playful smile tugging at her lips.
“About as far as we can throw… depending on if they brought out anyone really powerful.” Dalin said, shaking his head as he looked out at the incoming group. “And they have more people than us, and can probably fire more spells than we have rocks.”
Dhalia’s eye twitched slightly as she looked at the group, which was almost to the rock I had previously thrown. “So, you’re saying that we have to aim really well.”
“Yes. That is what I’m saying.” Dalin chuckled. “Also, we don’t need to kill them all. Just scare them away.”
“Alright, here they come!” I called out, seeing that they had all stopped just after passing the rock that I threw earlier. Likely, they did not want to get any closer to us than they had to. Unfortunately, we didn’t bring either of our pegasus, or we could try the same strategy that they used on us.
Like Dalin had guessed, this was their maximum range, but that also meant that their options were more limited. Among the eight of them, they all chose to use the same spell. Eight fireballs appeared in front of them, flying straight towards our little group. “And fire!” I called out, throwing the first stone I had in my hand.
The path of my stone caused it to collide directly with one of the fireballs, which had two effects. First, it caused said fireball to explode. Second, it caused my rock to explode. That is not helpful! As I prepared my second rock, I began walking to the side to get out of the way of any more blasts.
Thankfully, their fireballs moved slower than we threw, so dodging wasn’t really an issue. However, our aim wasn’t really that great. Or at least, it wasn’t for most of us. The only one that actually scored a decent hit was Karlin, whose earth ki let him throw the rock far faster than any of us, and created a fist sized hole in the chest of one of the unicorns.
“Huh, this is rather easy.” He said under his breath as he gathered more rocks. Unlike us, he did not dodge away from the large boulders to avoid the fireballs. Rather, after seeing what my rock had done when it collided with a fireball, he put some ki into his hand to break his rock into smaller pebbles.
Each pebble was then infused with her ki, thrown one by one at each incoming fireball. Like before, the collision immediately caused a mutual explosion. Of course, at this point Karlin had more pebbles than there were fireballs, so he threw the rest at the unicorns. Faced with this renewed onslaught, the seven remaining had little choice but to cast barriers around themselves.
With their barriers in place, they weren’t able to properly attack us, so they seemed to be hesitating. However, their hesitation ended when we resumed throwing ki-powered rocks at their barriers, causing cracks to begin to form in the shields of light. Reluctantly, they began moving back, abandoning their attack.
I couldn’t help but click my tongue as I watched their retreat. While I was glad that they weren’t staying to fight to the bitter end, their retreat did show their level of resolve in their beliefs. Had our quest been to completely eliminate Try’s Hold, rather than simply send a message, I was sure that none of our herd would have refused Tryval’s words just because the situation looked grim.
“Okay, everyone. Looks like we’re done here.” I said, shaking my head slightly. “Let’s hurry back to the haven, and we can get ready to spread the message to the herds.” The others all nodded at my words, and we turned to move back to the haven that was being built. Thanks to our Power of the Scout, none of us needed to ask which way it was.
Honestly, Try’s Hold was the biggest obstacle I saw on the way to fulfilling our mission. After all, the herds did not possess any mages, monks, or druids that could hurt us. All they had were their spears and arrows. And, while some of the greymanes may have reached a certain level of mastery that would allow them to hurt us, it was easy to keep a watchful eye out for them, rather than be wary of an entire herd.
On our way back to the haven, we did our best to avoid coming too close to any of the wandering herds. Although they would not be willing to chase us down if they saw us on the edge of the horizon, coming much closer than that would surely cause them to give chase. After all, of the six of us, there were four normal centaurs, one qilin, and one unicorn. Unless they had an exception Power of the Hunter or Scout, they would not be able to tell the difference between us and a typical herd from that distance.
Thankfully, we did not need to wait to reach the haven before healing Jayce. This was because he happened to receive the blessing of Power on the way, increasing his Power of the Scholar slightly and healing his injuries. That said, we were still going to have Hyumahn take a look at it. While the blessing would heal almost any wounds, there were still side-effects, such as Jayce’s scar on his chest. Another side effect is that broken bones do not always heal properly, which is a fatal flaw whenever someone breaks their leg.
As such, even though he was ‘technically’ in peak condition, we still went the entire two week journey without allowing ourselves to get into any fights. However, what we saw when we arrived at the site we designated for the haven surprised all of us. Not because there was a dozen graves dug on the next hill over, that was within our expectations.
No, what surprised us was the city itself. The previously flat land we had left had underwent a huge change in the month of our absence. Now, there was a giant stone wall encompassing the entire area, at least twice my own height. The only opening was, conveniently, faced in the direction we were coming from, a small arch that took up half of the wall’s height to easily allow us through one at a time.
“What… how…” I tried to put into words how they had constructed such a large stone wall. More impressively, it was not a wall built of small stones locked together, but instead looked as if it was entirely one rock that had risen from the ground in its current shape. However, the answer to my quest came soon, as I saw a familiar figure running along the interior of the wall.
Hyumahn did not even seem to notice us as he continued running, his brows knit together in focus. It wasn’t until he made it all the way to the arch that he finally stopped, taking a deep breath. At the time he did so, we saw just how the wall had been made. Or, more specifically, we felt it.
A low roar seemed to echo out within the ground, before the land itself began to shake. Caught unaware, the six of us nearly fell flat on our sides as we barely maintained our balance. Looking back, we saw the dust rising on the wall, the wall itself rising by no more than a single hand’s length. Yet, this change seemed to happen throughout the entire wall, all at once.
Finally, Hyumahn let out a sigh of relief, at which point he seemed to notice our presence. “Oh! Hey, are you all back already?” He asked, surprised by our early arrival. Originally, we had not intended to come back until we had finished spreading the message through several herds.
I nodded my head grimly. “We needed to return for you to look at Jayce’s hand. It has been healing by the blessing, but he injured it rather drastically when we had to fight the Hold.”
At that, Hyumahn’s eyes widened, and he immediately approached Jayce. “Let me see it.” He said urgently, holding his hands out to take Jayce’s. Jayce couldn’t help but smirk as he placed his hand in Hyuman’s.
“Where is Liria, by the way?” I asked, hesitantly. I could only hope that she was not among the bodies buried atop the hill. Thankfully, my worries were unfounded, as I saw a winged shadow descend from above me, the pegasus guard landing in front of me.
“Did you need something from me, Ashur?” She asked, turning around to look at me, after which I motioned for her to follow me, so that we did not interrupt Hyumahn’s efforts to look after Jayce. Seeing that, she raised a curious eyebrow, following me as we went just outside the gate. “What is it?” She asked, worry evident in her tone.
“First of all, have you guys been alright while we were gone?” This was the longest our herd had ever been broken up since we formed it, so I wanted to ask that to be sure.
Liria smiled slightly, shaking her head. “We’ve only had one herd attack, roughly a week ago. By then, our wall was already too high for them to invade anywhere but the gate we put in.” She said, pointing one thumb back towards the gate. “It might be a different story if Try’s Hold attacked us, but against spears and arrows we don’t have anything to worry about.”
I nodded my head, relieved to hear that. “Okay, onto the more pressing matter. How in Tryval’s name did you manage to build this wall?” I waved my arms in an exaggerated manner, indicating the giant wall that should not even be possible to build, to my knowledge.
At that, Liria couldn’t help herself, letting out a long laugh. “You can thank Hyumahn and Serena for that one. She set up the plan, and he is actually making it. Four times a day, he’ll run the entire lap around the inside of the wall, doing something with his Power of the Druid. After that… well, you should have seen it just now. The wall simply rises up slightly every time, though doing so uses a lot of his energy. He wasn’t able to help out at all when the herd attacked, so it was up to the rest of us to take care of them.”
Seeing me nod again, she smiled slightly. “Now, it’s my turn. What happened while you guys were gone?”
After that, I explained to her about what we had seen and done at Try’s Hold. Although Liria’s face scrunched up slightly when I mentioned that we burned down part of their wall, that couldn’t compare to how ugly her expression became when I mentioned that the walls themselves were covered in blood before we got there.
“So… they’ve gone beyond simply not helping the herds, to actively hunting any that come close to them? They probably only waited to hear you out because Namor and Dalin were with you.” She cursed under her breath, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “How confident are you in dealing with the herds? While they might not be as strong, you’ll have to deal with a lot more of them, and you absolutely can’t let yourself wipe out any herds.”
She was right. Even though the normal centaurs among the herds were quite a bit weaker than the unicorns that lived in Try’s Hold, we needed them alive in order to spread the message. Otherwise, we would have to go and speak with every herd in the plains… and that would take many seasons to accomplish, if it was even possible within our lifetimes.
“I understand.” I said with a sigh, before looking back to the gate. “However, I want to leave Dalin and Namor with you when we leave this time.” As I said this, I noticed a brief flash of shock on her face. “Don’t worry, it’s only because I fear for everyone’s safety. Like you said, these walls might not stand up to the full attack of Try’s Hold. Now that we have delivered the message to them, they are sure to gather a group to come here.”
It took a few long moments, but Liria nodded her head. “I see… You’re probably right. If they are wishing for the variants and normal people to remain enemies, it would make sense to target this haven. And while we may not need to fear most magic, they could still drop rocks on our wall like you said they did for you. They could also have druids that would be able to attack the wall itself, so we will need people stationed to watch for their approach.”
With that settled, the two of us returned through the gate to rejoin the others. Because of Jayce’s injury, we would still need to stay here for a few more days before we left, but thankfully Try’s Hold would need more time than that to find us and launch an attack.