This type of fighting wasn’t within Rose’s skillset. Walking in formation and hiding behind shields while confronting the enemy directly was practically the direct opposite of her preferred method of combat. Suffice it to say, she was not a soldier.
Attacking from concealment, striking the enemy when their attention was elsewhere, that was what she was good at. She was a hunter.
Yet, here she was… fighting the good fight for the sake of glory and valens. Or, more accurately, she was NEXT to the people doing that while trying not to draw attention to herself.
Currently, she was sitting quietly among the shadows, watching Lord Walker’s growing forces fawn over him from a distance. It was impressive how the young lord was able to convince so many people to follow him through the reflection of their own core values. ‘He makes it seem so effortless,’ she thought to herself.
Across the room they were resting in, she saw Lord Nicholas Salvatore-Verena speaking with the current battle leader, Cathleen Averett. Reading their lips, as she wasn’t nearly skilled enough to interpret sonic fluctuations at this distance, she listened in on their conversation.
Lord Verena had sensed Lord Walker’s essence signature and was currently in contact with him. ‘That explains why Battle Leader Averett called a halt to our blitz,’ she concluded.
While Lord Verena thought of Lord Walker as some kind of budding magical scientist, Ms. Averett had made it clear that she saw the young lord as a future warrior of legend. It was amazing to see them working together to support the lord while maintaining two completely contradictory opinions about him.
But, it wasn’t just them. Looking around, she couldn’t stop herself from frowning at the penal conscripts that had recently fallen under the young lord’s spell. Each and every one of them was under the impression that Lord Walker was some kind of social champion whose primary goal was the protection and development of humanity.
She’d been unlucky enough to listen in on one of the penal conscript’s leader’s recruitment speeches, and she still wasn’t over it. The delusional criminal believed with every fiber of his being that Lord Walker had rallied them to his cause with the express purpose of redeeming their honor and humanity. He’d gone into great detail interpreting the young lord’s exploits in the most ridiculous manner possible. To him and the other penal conscripts, Lord Walker had been chosen by fate to remind the citizens of Dorchester what it truly meant to be ‘noble’.
She wasn’t exactly sure what Lord Walker’s actual reasoning was… but she was positive that they were wrong… completely and utterly WRONG.
That wasn’t to say that she wasn’t amazed at how quickly the obviously false narrative had spread. Between the men and women that their little alliance had saved, their numbers had been growing faster than she had thought possible. This room alone probably had over 60 people in it, and she knew for a fact that there were at least three more rooms just as large, each one filled to the brim with people extorting the virtues of the ‘Great and Honorable Smiling Lord of Dorchester’.
‘Idiots… delusional idiots the lot of them,’ she thought to herself.
And even worse, it wasn’t just the penal conscripts who were likely to sign their lives and futures over to the little lord. Glancing to her right, she remembered Captain Angleton standing there in all his glory, his sergeants surrounding him like his own faction of supporters.
Barely holding back a snort of amusement, she listened in on his proselytizing. The man had somehow come to the conclusion that Lord Walker was some kind of honorable young man whose personal ethics compelled him to act for the betterment of humanity. Whatever personal beliefs the man held, he had for some reason attributed every one of them to Lord Walker. He spoke of the young lord’s brash and confrontational demeanor as evidence of his disdain for politics and games. Incomprehensibly, he had become a true believer in the myth of Lord Walker’s unshakable integrity.
While she’d signed up as an adherent, she’d done it knowing full well what kind of man the little lord actually was.
He was a survivor just like her. He adapted to whatever terrain he found himself in like a true predator, hiding his true self behind whatever cover seemed most appropriate at the time.
Yet, these fools are actively deluding themselves into believing whatever stories they want. She had to give the little lord credit, he truly was a genius.
‘Wait a minute? Has he fooled me too? Am I being blinded to his true nature by the narrative I’ve constructed off what he’s shown me? Would that make my interpretation of him MORE likely, or less?’ she wondered, before visibly shaking her head to forcibly banish the circular argument she was falling into.
Either way, she would continue to watch, wait, and listen. Eventually, she’d solve the mystery of the little lord… After all, the most important factor in any hunt is patience.
—--
The relatively newly titled unique, Lord Nero Walker, was struggling to keep his smile from fading. He’d never in his life felt so much like a politician on the campaign trail then he did right now.
Instead of being able to take a breather so that he could reflect on all that had happened, he’d been immediately surrounded by people who wanted nothing more than to talk to him and tell him their story.
He’d barely taken a seat when the first group of three had brazenly walked up, handed him a ration bar, and began professing their undying loyalty to his cause. It had taken every bit of his arguably high willpower to stop himself from asking just what ‘cause’ they were talking about.
Over the next hour or two, he must have heard from over a dozen people. Each and every one of them having given him their heartfelt promise to follow him on his personal quest to defend humanity from the perils of the wilds and the machinations of the uncaring nobles. Only after expressing their regret for whatever heinous act had gotten them in trouble, of course.
One guy had nearly fallen into tears as he eloquently described his surrender into temptation which had led him to illegally trade unlicensed goods for an obscene profit. He’d gone on to explain that he had always blamed the poorly balanced system for his incarceration, believing that it was inherently unfair to commoners like him. But now, thanks to Nero, he was able to see that it was the personal responsibility of every citizen to uphold the values behind the law. After all this time, he was able to recognize that he should have immediately turned in the people that had approached him, and helped root out the evil power-hungry nobles behind them.
Nero still wasn’t exactly sure HOW he was responsible for the man coming to that idiotic conclusion, but he still smiled and thanked him for his support.
It had only gotten worse from there. He’d mistakenly thought that the people in this room were the only ones who wanted to join him as adherents or whatever the equivalent for penal conscripts who wanted to dedicate their social debt to him was, but he had been oh-so-very wrong. Based on how many people were cycling in and out of the room, he couldn’t begin to guess how many there actually were.
Not for the first time, he thought to himself, ‘What the fuck is happening right now?’
Now, when the overly thankful lady who’d been grasping his hands in a death grip finally let go, he replied, “That’s really not necessary. Seriously, I mean it. From what you said, you’ve only got like 2 years left on your sentence. I’m sure you’ll never again use your ability to hurl potted plants at your neighbor. Please calm down… You don’t have to convince me that you never meant to injure her. Besides, I’m sure the nosy woman had it coming. Please don’t think you owe me or anyone else anything at all. Live your life however you want. We all make mistakes. There’s really no need to offer me your life-oath or whatever it was you just said. I’m good… honestly. You take care now and keep your shield up!”
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As the now weeping woman was led away, Nero looked around at all these lunatics and wondered how it had come to this. ‘This was NOT what I signed up for,’ he said to himself.
Although, he had to admit it felt pretty good to be treated as some kind of righteous example of humanity or something. It was a heady feeling that was both exhilarating and embarrassing. After the 10th or 11th person called him an inspiration, he realized he’d have to be careful not to let it go to his head. ‘No wonder celebrities and cult leaders end up going mental,’ he thought to himself.
Luckily, right as the next person stepped forward for their five minutes of face time, he heard Cathleen’s voice echo throughout the room. “Five-minute warning. Get your gear packed, and your weapons ready, and don’t forget your courage. You’ll be needing all three. The rest of the army has finally caught up with us and now it’s time to end this battle.”
Like a bomb going off, everyone scattered. Blinking in surprise, Nero calmly stood up from the stool he’d been using only to nearly jump in surprise when someone on his left immediately stored it in their personal space. The man gave Nero a submissive nod along with a smile before going back to collect the rest of his gear.
‘Had I been stealing that dude’s chair this entire time?’ he wondered with no small amount of confusion displayed on his face.
Before he could offer the poor guy an apology, he felt one of the mental connections he’d been ignoring flair up. He wasn’t sure why, but he knew it was someone trying to speak to him directly. With a flex of his concentration, he recognized Nick’s essence signature and pulled the connection ‘forward’ in his mind.
“Hey man, this is a private connection, right? Did I forget to close this one? It doesn’t feel like one of the group ones.” asked Nero.
He could feel Nick’s amusement over the connection. “Unless I’m mistaken, you probably have all three somewhere in your mental space. All you need to do is focus on that part of your mind and you should be able to tell them apart. If not, don’t worry about it, you’ll get used to it. But, that’s beside the point. You need to get over here, Cathleen wants to talk to you,” he said.
Between a vague sense of direction from the connection and his essence field, Nero was quickly able to locate where he needed to go. Without even saying goodbye to his adoring public, he ducked his head and slipped through the crowd.
The moment he walked up, Cathleen immediately started talking. “You and Nick will be staying near the center of the formation. I don’t want you running off this time. We don’t know exactly what we’ll be facing, but if you’ve been paying attention to the command web, you’d know that scouts have determined the central chamber to be large enough to allow ranged spell fire from entrenched positions. So, you’re not to go anywhere near the front lines until we can get far enough inside to pull up our spell shields. Our healers will try and stay close enough to matter, but I doubt they’ll be able to. So I don’t want you dying to something so easily avoidable. Am I understood?”
Nero blinked a few times at the barrage of information before replying, “Um… yeah. Stay in the middle. Don’t get myself killed?”
Without another word, Cathleen turned and walked away while barking orders to whoever caught her eye.
Turning to Nick he said, “What does she mean the healers probably won’t matter?”
Nick, who was busy checking the straps on his gear, didn’t bother to look up when he replied. “Well, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, healers have to stay far enough away from the front lines for the sake of their essence control. In tight spaces leading to open areas that usually means healers are a fair bit away from the action. So, unless the people in reserve are really quick with moving the injured and dead, most bodies won’t make it to the healers in time to save them. It’s one of the reasons charging a fortified position without shields is so dangerous. You need to maintain a balance between shield bearers and fighters over open ground, but fighters at the start should expect heavy casualties.”
Nero furrowed his brow in defiance of Nick’s casual acceptance of the inevitable casualties. This was a world of magic, and they couldn’t come up with a better plan than ‘sacrifice a few nobodies to buy some time for the shields to go up’?
On the other hand, what the hell did he know about magical warfare? He’d barely learned how to be useful in this kind of fight, so he shouldn’t get up on his soapbox just yet. ‘I’ll just have to abuse the hell out of the soul stuff in the ether and save whoever I can,’ he decided.
While everyone was starting to group up and get into formation, Nero let himself be guided by Nick to where he was supposed to go. As Cathleen requested, he ended up right in the middle of the pack, surrounded by soldiers taller than him. Groaning in annoyance, he spread out his essence field and actively started looking around.
As usual, the first thing he did was get a read on how the essence in the ether was looking. And as expected, it was already starting to firm up under the growing emotions of so many overlapping essence fields. He could almost ‘see’ the sense of anticipation tightening its grip on the flows.
He also noticed several odd ‘waves’ or ‘layers’ moving around. Just like Nick had taught him, he tried mentally squinting or altering the way he was looking at things. The result wasn’t as drastic as being able to suddenly see through the walls, but he could tell he was on the right track.
As he worked on fine-tuning his control, the formation began moving. The hallways were wide, but they weren’t THAT wide, so they ended up moving through the kobald tower like a game of snake. Although he struggled a little with his body coordination while he worked on his essence perception, he managed to get the hang of it in no time at all.
The trick he found was to relax his control over his field a little. It was kind of like a magic eye thing, he just had to stop trying so hard.
Once he was able to alter how he was looking at things, a lot of what he’d been missing suddenly became clear. He noticed that Nick, who was standing right next to him, was slowly collecting essence into a condensed field around his body for an essence shield of his own. And he wasn’t the only one. A lot of people were gathering essence for the shields.
But what he found surprising was how SLOW they were going. It was like watching toddlers trying to master dribbling a basketball. Even Nick, who Nero knew for a fact was a great mage was taking forever to pull in enough essence to matter. From what he could see, it looked like it was an issue of mental grip strength or something similar. For every little bit they pulled in, more than three-quarters of it was being left behind.
Glancing to his left, Nero checked on Nick to see if he looked like he was struggling. Unsurprisingly, he looked just as calm and collected as he always did. ‘Is this how it normally is for him? That’s just… I don’t know what it is,’ he thought to himself sympathetically.
Despite how many wonderful examples of the differences between him and everyone else, this one hit him right in the feels. It was a real, tangible example of how different he was from everyone else. Just hearing about it wasn’t ever enough to really convince him, but now, he could no longer hide from the fact that he was just… different.
Deciding that he should probably get his own shield up and running, he reached out and began collecting essence. Unfortunately, that was about ALL he was able to do.
With the multiple mental connections taking up space in his brain, he felt like he was already at the maximum capacity for things he could reasonably pay attention to.
Frowning in annoyance, he debated whether or not it was worth it to hold on to all of them. If he was going to end up having to heal people, he’d need to at least free up enough brain power to be able to cast a spell. Regardless of whether or not he was using soul stuff to power it, he still needed to carve the spell form, and that took concentration.
Over the connection he had with Nick, he asked, “Hey Nick, how many mental connections are you holding on to right now?”
Although he was standing right next to him, Nick didn’t bother to turn and look at him. He simply replied over the connection, “Five. I have one to the command web along with the unit connection. Then I have this one and another with Cathleen. I’m also currently having a discussion with Specialist Howard about how to improve the defensive properties of my essence shield.”
Sensing Nero’s shock, Nick misunderstood and tried to defend himself. “What? I told you I’m not very good with shields in general. I usually only bother with essence shields for a radiant heal effect and some damage reduction. I’ve always had difficulty with conceptual magic. It’s not like I don’t understand the subject, it’s just that I tend to apply things more directly. So, I’m working on it. Not everyone can do what you can do.”
Nero didn’t really know what to say, so he just replied, “No, I get it. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. But, just so I understand, you’re having that conversation right now? While also paying attention to all those other connections?”
Nick looked down at Nero with confusion. “Yes. Why?”
Nero shrugged and replied, “No reason. Just curious.”
As they both seemed to decide the conversation was over, they went back to walking in silence.
Nero carefully slipped the connection into the back of his mind, hoping to hide his emotional state. The moment he had it isolated, he immediately began to flip out. ‘Five! Five! All of them ACTIVE!’ he mentally screamed in outrage.
Taking a few subtle deep breaths to calm down, he said to himself, ‘Yeah, who’s the ‘unique’ one now? I need to make sure that I don’t start believing my own hype. Pride cometh before the ass-kicking. I ought to remember that.’