Grobert, Eugene, and Norman sat at one end of the long table while the chef brought out food. Yeah, an actual chef. It was another change that Norman was having to get used to but he could definitely see why people with money hired other people to cook for them. It just freed up so much time to do other things.
Not that Norman had cooked much in the last year. His culinary chops consisted of pouring milk over cereal and making a sandwich from time to time. Grobert had taken over most of the cooking after he learned just how bad Norman was at it. That was until Norman agreed to take leadership of Ashvale. It meant Grobert was too busy for that task anymore. So he found a recently deceased master chef and brought him on board.
The chef was more than happy to be not dead and agreed to take the position. Which was a good thing as Norman couldn’t exactly force him to do it if he didn’t want to.
Tonight's dish appeared to be some sort of meat stew along with a loaf of tough bread and a bubbly beverage that Norman didn’t know the name of.
The gron loved their alcohol but the greykin couldn’t get drunk. So their tastes had shifted away from alcoholic beverages to more flavorful drinks. Norman didn’t mind the shift at all, as it also carried over into their food. Everything was always an explosion of flavors, many of which Norman hadn’t ever experienced before.
As soon as the food was set down, Eugene dug in, groaning contentedly as he took in each bite.
“If I knew being undead was gonna get me fed this well, I would have asked where to sign up from the get-go.”
“Amen!” Norman exclaimed around a mouthful of the rich and hearty stew.
It earned him a chastising gaze from Grobert, but the man was also shoveling the delicious meal into his mouth and didn’t want to spare time to admonish Norman verbally.
When the bowls were empty, the bread devoured, and the glasses emptied the trio sat back to digest their food.
The cook eventually came back to clear away the dishes, leaving a clean table behind.
Once that was done and the three were left alone again, Norman broke the silence. “Ugh, that was good. So, Eugene, I hear we have news?”
Eugene let out a burp before responding. “Yeah. Our tracker followed them back to a city about a week farther south than the one you visited. The tracker wasn’t able to get inside as the city was walled off, much like Ashvale is now. Only their walls were much larger.” Norman could hear a bit of envy in the big man’s statement. “As we expected, the city is situated along that same river. It also seems to cross the river and acts like a fortress. The tracker said it looked like the city controlled all trade up and downriver through gated passages and a large bridge that spanned the distance. He also said the city looked to be about ten times the size of Ashvale. But he couldn’t be certain as he couldn’t get close enough to get any sort of accurate count due to the guards on the walls. Guards that were all wearing the Radiant Brotherhood insignia,” Eugene added.
“Shit.” Norman had hoped this was some small splinter group or out-of-that-way monastery. But from the sounds of it, they were a large, well-established, and wealthy force.
All of which meant nothing good if they decided Norman and his fledgling kingdom were a problem that needed to go away.
“What about the prisoners?” Grobert asked.
“The scout spotted some of the male ooraki in chains being led into the city, but he didn’t see any sign of the Priestess. It's possible they realized how important she was and took her ahead as a VIP Prisoner. It’s what I would have done.”
“Either case, that is not good.” Norman stood and paced about the room as he thought over the issue. “A frontal assault isn’t an option, not that I assumed it would be,” he added before either of the men could respond. “I also don’t think we could get a small team in there.”
“Why not,” Eugene asked, sounding annoyed by Norman’s statement.
“Simple, magic. We don’t know what they are capable of. Sending a team to try and rescue the prisoners could be as good as sending them to their deaths. We already know they ward against intrusive magic. Who’s to say they don’t have their entire wall warded to prevent people from slipping inside? That’s assuming a group of greykin could even get inside the city undetected.”
“What about the magic item I used to avoid the gron surveillance?”
“Yeah, it might work for one person but it's not like it makes you invisible to the naked eye. I’m guessing these people rely far more heavily on simple eyesight than the gron did. And they are going to be on high alert for anyone that stands out. So unless you have purple skin, you are going to stand out.”
“A fair assumption,” Grobert added. “These people do seem to have more advanced knowledge of magic than they should have, at least in terms of artillery spells. That siege wagon wasn’t all that complex, but it should be beyond most people who were born in a null-magic layer. At least for a few more years.”
Norman nodded at that. Grobert had told him about the null-magic layers. It was a fancy term for layers without magic. Like the ones humans had come from as well as these other humans. That was another fact that the gron President had filled Grobert in on.
Apparently, the gron studied every species that fell into this layer. Norman didn’t know what to think about that, a little annoyed perhaps. But it wasn’t like he could do anything about it.
“So you think someone is helping them along?” It was the only thing Norman could come up with for how these people had advanced magics.
“It seems like the most likely option,” Grobert added. “I don’t want to consider the other option.”
“Other option?” Norman asked, his interest peaked.
“Someone like you,” Grobert spoke reluctantly.
“Um, another necromancer?”
“No,” Grobert shook his head and sighed. “I didn’t want to say this because I didn’t want you to have an inflated ego. But I’m talking about a magical prodigy.”
Norman laughed, “You’re joking, right?” When Grobert didn’t smile, Norman realized he wasn’t kidding. “Wait, I’m hardly a prodigy. I knew people that were doing magic way before I was.”
“Uh, huh. How much of that was magic and how much of that was based on innate skills?”
“Um, how would I know?”
“Exactly, you wouldn’t. But I do. If you see someone casting magic without preparing it ahead of time or using a spell circle, that’s a skill ingrained in them from their calling. They know how to use it on a fundamental level. Then there are true mages. My ability to create teleporters for example.”
“Ok, but I still met mages like that. My former boss was a fledgling ice mage. I saw some of his spells.”
“I don’t doubt that. But what makes you a prodigy and not him is the fact that elemental mages are a dime a dozen. I’m sure he didn’t come up with most of his spells. In fact, I would bet he didn’t. Then there is you, Norman. You literally developed a type of magic not seen in this plane of existence by yourself. Sure you had help from people putting stuff together online, but as I understand it, you have moved beyond simply cobbling spells together. Maybe not far beyond that, but still. I can list on one hand people I knew that created their own spells from scratch. And one of those people is me. So as you can imagine, facing off against another magical prodigy is not something I would want to do.”
Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.
“Well, fuck. But you don’t think it is a magical prodigy though?” Norman decided not to dwell on the fact that he was supposedly a magical prodigy, he had enough shit on his lap at the moment.
Grobert shook his head. “If it was, we would have seen unique magic. Not this basic artillery spell.”
“Who could be helping them then? This god person they talk about? What was his name?”
“Apolon,” Eugene grunted.
“Right… Anyway, back to the scout. Did he notice anything else that might be useful?”
“Not much. He said the buildings inside the city didn’t look much different than the small villages he passed by. All except a central structure that rose above the wall. He said it looked like one of those Mayan ziggurats, whatever that is,” Eugene shrugged.
“It’s kind of like a pyramid,” Norman muttered. “So we have an enemy with more people, better defenses, a possible “god” and what seems like a lower technological level than humans. Not that that last part helps us all that much since we’re practically starting over here. Fuck! When I say it out loud it doesn’t give us many good options in this fight. Help me out here, what do we have to bring to the table?”
“Well, we have the greykin. They are tireless, hard to kill, and devoted. You may not like this suggestion, Norman… but you could lean into the whole deity thing like the priestess Noorani wanted you to. It could go a long way to evening the odds.”
Even though Norman knew Grobert was just trying to cover all of their options, the suggestion irritated him.
“No, absolutely not. And I don’t want you ever bringing up that possibility again. I am not taking on the role of a deity and will not be turning this conflict into some insane holy war. One group of fanatics is one too many already.”
Grobert lowered his head. “I apologize for bringing it up. I will not mention it ever again.”
The trio brainstormed ideas but continued coming back with nothing, at least when it came to assaulting the enemy city. They just didn’t have the manpower or resources to carry out any attack on that scale. Even if Norman spent all of his mana every day raising new greykin, it would still take over two months just to add another thousand to their population. And most of them would be non-combatants anyway.
Besides, it was getting harder to snatch bodies out of Grothlosburg with the President cracking down to try and catch Grobert through their little game. Not that it stopped the man from sneaking in, but it did make it more annoying to supplement their forces.
No, the only solution the three of them were able to agree on was a defensive one. At least until they could build up their forces to an acceptable level for a ‘counter-offensive’ as Eugene liked to call it. Nobody was really happy about taking on a defensive role but they needed to be practical about what could be accomplished with their current resources.
Now that they had a plan going forward, Norman headed back to his workshop. He had been toying around with area-of-effect spells but hadn’t really dived into them very far due to some limitations. That would have to change though. The area of effect spells involved laying down massive spell circles for them to work, it was both a strength and weakness of that type of spell.
Norman hadn’t quite worked out how he was going to power such large spells or even come up with a working prototype that covered more than a few feet yet. But thanks to the little magical compass in the back of his head, he knew he was on the right track at least with increasing the area they covered.
There was also another bit of magic Norman was working on but that wasn’t something he had divulged to anyone just yet. If it worked, it would be a game changer, if it didn’t… well, he didn’t want to get anyone's hopes up before it was proven.
As with everything recently, Norman wasn’t allowed to research uninterrupted. Another attack occurred in the middle of that very night. This time the city and guards were ready to repel the attackers.
But the enemy had changed their tactics yet again. Instead of trying to breach the front gate – which had been changed from the original wood to thick stone slabs – they simply launched a dozen firebombs over the walls and retreated.
Suspecting a trap, Eugene ordered his guards not to pursue the Brotherhood forces. That’s not to say Ashvale didn’t claim its own kills during the attack. Ashvale had physical and dexterity-based classers now and a couple of mages.
The enemy – not suspecting the counter-attack – was caught off guard. An arrow launched from a bow, that only a physical classer like Eugene could wield, packed a lot of power.
By the time Norman made it to the wall, the fight was already over and the enemy had fled into the forest. With nothing to fight, Norman helped to put out the fires caused by the enemy artillery. The damage caused wasn’t all that significant. Most of the homes were built from stone. It was mostly roofs, ceilings, and floors that bore the brunt of the fire damage.
The explosive damage was pretty localized to where the bombs struck, but it wasn’t enough to shatter stone. Norman was thankful these nut jobs didn’t have access to modern artillery. If they did, they could just pound Ashvale to dust from beyond view and there would be nothing Norman or anyone inside the city could do about it.
It did help Norman focus on the first goal of his new area of effect spell. If he could make the spell stop fires, that would go a long way to mitigating the damage their enemies were causing.
For the next week, that’s what Norman worked on. The preventing fire part of the spell turned out to be rather easy, as far as spell circles went. The issue Norman ran into was that it prevented all fires. So no cooking, no torches, and no heat in the winter.
Besides the torches bit, that was not going to work. The torches weren’t an issue because most of the city used magical lighting. The simple devices were inexpensive to purchase from Grothlosburg and Grobert and a few other enterprising citizens had supplied the entire city's needs. All they used was a bit of mana and the lights would remain glowing for hours.
That left cooking and heating as the main problem. Without electricity, the city relied on wood for both of those since it was abundant. Norman didn’t know diddly squat about generating electricity so that wasn’t a viable option at the moment. Sure they could use windmills or solar, but that required infrastructure, which they lacked. So Norman had to figure out a way to exclude stoves and wood furnaces from his spell.
For that, he moved to the testing room. It was a large open room buried into the hillside behind the castle. Made from thick stone all around, it was the safest room in the entire castle. Although it wasn’t designed as a panic room, Norman supposed it could be used as one in a pinch.
Norman covered the entire floor of the room in a magic circle. It was his largest spell circle to date, so he hoped he wasn’t wasting his time on it.
Once that was complete, Norman began drawing inverted circles around a small stove, and a wood heater. Neither of which was lit at the moment. The room didn’t have very good ventilation, so Norman didn’t want the smoke to fill up the room while he was drawing everything out.
As for the inverted circle, Norman had come up with that idea when he realized the voids in spell circles could protect or utilize what was in the center of them. So he asked himself, “What if they could exclude what was inside them?” It seemed like a simple leap in logic. So he swapped the magical script from one side of a circle to the other, thus inverting it.
He didn’t know if it would work as intended, but he did know the spell would still work based on his magical intuition.
After Norman finished drawing out the spell, he lit two of the fires. One inside an exclusion circle, and one not. There were two unlit fires as well. One inside a circle and one not. He needed to determine if his idea would allow the fires to be lit after the spell was active or not, as well as what happened to already lit fires.
Once that was done, Norman stepped outside the circle into one of the open corners and began to pour magic dust into the spell. It took four whole bottles of magic powder to activate the spell array. Norman decided on the terminology change due to the way the AOE spells were put together.
Unlike his magic diagrams, the area of effect spell consisted of one circle, with nested circles inside it. It also didn’t prevent passage into or out of the spell while it was active. Norman didn’t understand the reasoning for that shift so he asked Grobert about it.
Grobert hadn’t been able to answer that question either since he hadn’t ever worked with or bothered to learn AOE spells, at least not on the scale Norman was attempting.
Norman thought teleporters were a form of AOE spell, but Grobert corrected him on that. Apparently, teleporters were just normal spells with a very advanced triggering and targeting mechanism built into the technological portion that accompanied the magic.
Honestly, it didn’t matter what he called it. The nomenclature and terminology he used in his spells were for his own sake just to keep things straight in his head.
He realized his mind had wandered. Norman focused back on the slowly activating spell circle. He could get it to go faster by throwing more magic at it, but he couldn’t afford to be wasteful with his blood. He had a decent supply of stored blood, but it wasn’t limitless.
The spell eventually lit up, causing the room to flash red for a moment before it faded away, taking the light of the spell circle with it.
At first, he thought the spell had failed, but he noticed the one fire outside the exclusion circle was snuffed out. Not even an ember remained where the logs had burned and even the smoke seemed rather thin.
He walked across the space and tried to light the other fire outside the exclusion circle. He wasn’t even able to produce a spark using his lighter. That was a bit unexpected but he guessed he shouldn’t be too surprised, a spark was a form of fire after all. He left that area behind and moved to the last exclusion zone. As soon as he crossed the invisible boundary where the spell had been, he was able to activate the lighter and lit the wood.
It worked!
The exclusion zone opened up so many other possibilities for Norman. But Norman schooled his exuberance with the sobering fact that the cost to power a spell around the whole city would be prohibitive. He also wasn’t sure how long the spell would remain functional. So he spent the next hour testing to see if he could drag lit items across the boundaries. The spell would snuff them out immediately. Even the magical lighter he had picked up in Grothlosburg wasn’t immune to the effect of the spell, meaning the enemy's firebombs would be completely inert once they struck.
But Norman was happy, he had a working prototype. The rest he could solve if the enemy gave him enough time.