The bastards that they were, the Brotherhood did not give Norman the time he needed to come up with a solution to powering the spell before they next attacked. He wasn’t even sure how they were traversing the distance between their city and Ashvale so quickly. It should have taken weeks. It certainly wasn’t with just the snake horses.
This time the enemy brought their own classers to the fight. After the Brotherhood repeatedly bombed the front gate, the enemy forces pushed their way into the city in a bloody melee that lasted nearly an hour.
Norman hurried to join the fighting with his new guard detail at his sides. A man in white enameled armor stepped out from between two houses and aimed a rather large bow at Norman.
“Die HERETIC!”
Norman was pushed aside as one of his guards took the ballista bolt-sized arrow to the chest in his place. Norman couldn’t even spare the time to check on the man as his other guard rushed the attacker. His guard never made it to the man though as Norman pulled out a spell anchor and broke it, releasing the Plague Ray contained within.
The armored man jerked backward as he was struck by the magic, looking surprised for a moment before his face exploded into bloody black boils. Thankfully Norman had tested the spell thoroughly over the last weeks and determined all greykin were immune. Norman also turned out to be immune to the spell's effects, a fact he discovered purely by accident when one of the exploding boils splattered against his skin during a test.
He had taken all necessary precautions during that test and was well outside the normal range of the secondary effects of the spell. But an unexpected wind gust had pushed the substance twice as far as it normally traveled. It was another unpleasant reminder that Norman wasn’t immune to stupid mistakes, no matter how much he prepared.
Norman raised his arm to cover his visor slit a moment before the armored man burst like an overripe watermelon inside his armor. The death was a good example of what hydraulic pressure did to his spell as the liquids of the man’s body were forced through every crevice of the armor at high speed. Especially interesting was the head as it was shot over a hundred feet straight into the air. The rain of black infected blood covered a significantly larger area and Norman heard more than one person shriek in pain as the substance landed on them.
Good, maybe the bastards would think twice before attacking next time. He was a bit confused as to why some of his spells triggered the Brotherhood’s defensive magic and some didn’t. He had expected that guy to simply burst into flames as soon as the spell struck him. Unfortunately, Norman didn’t have a group of willing test subjects to figure it out.
The spell wasn’t what broke the enemy's advance, although it did probably make them pause and reconsider. It was Grobert and Eugene who eventually forced the enemy to flee after they killed four of the enemy's classers.
The enemy retreated under the covering fire from their siege weapons so it wasn’t possible to chase after them. That was fine, Ashvale had come out ahead once again in this battle.
A new gate was quickly erected and the bodies were cleaned up before Norman met up with his advisor and guard captain.
“This isn’t working,” Norman spoke quietly. The three of them had returned to the castle to discuss this latest attack and what to do about the enemy's obviously escalating tactics.
“What more can we do?” Eugene asked. "We are already outnumbered, and each time they hit us, they bring more and more men to the fight. These classers weren’t all that strong, but what about next time? Or the time after that? Eventually, they are going to bring their own mages, then we are going to be in serious trouble.”
“I don’t know!” Norman yelled in frustration. “That’s why I’m asking you.”
“Please calm down, Norman. Eugene is doing the best job he can with what we have.”
“I know,” Norman replied to Grobert’s statement. “Sorry, Eugene, I’m not mad at you, I’m just frustrated. I think we all know where this is heading if things don’t change?”
Both men gave solemn nods.
“Ideas? Anything- Anything not related to me being seen as a religious symbol that is?”
That got a chuckle out of both men.
“I ain’t no general or military man,” Eugene stated, “but when you are outnumbered and outmatched, you need to become crafty. We could do hit-and-run tactics on their troops. Eliminate their mounts to take their artillery out of play and slow them down. We could also booby-trap the most likely paths they are taking to get here. If we cause them enough wounded they might turn back.”
“Alright, do it,” Norman stated.
“Which one?”
“All of them. Gather our fastest people and give them bows or guns if we have them. Tell them to kill the Brotherhood's animals but otherwise not engage. Booby-trap the routes they have taken so far. I’m also going to give you all of the feral undead I have. They probably won’t be super effective, but if even one man dies to them, it’ll be worth it. Release them near the border of our zones.”
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Norman had about forty of the feral undead. He hadn’t found them to be all that useful in the fighting so far, except in that first battle. Everything since then just happened so fast that Norman never had time to utilize them. He had thought about deploying them inside the city, but he decided against that. For one they did not smell very good, and they also kind of got in the way with their weird herd mentality.
The ones he was giving Eugene were not normal ferals. Norman had dosed them all with the Orb of Decay essence that worked wonders against Eugene back when Eugene was still his enemy. The energy made the undead faster, and stronger, and it gave them the ability to inject that energy into their target. Even if all it did was trigger the stupid Brotherhood’s protections, it was worth it.
“Grobert, any luck on figuring out how they are spying on us?”
“Not yet. I have eliminated a few possibilities, however. They aren’t using long-range scrying. The magical sensor I picked up from Grothlosburg would have detected that. Same with invisibility or something like what Eugene used to avoid detection in Grothlosburg.”
Eugene chuckled at that memory, earning a disapproving head shake from Grobert. Norman found it weird sometimes how Grobert could flaunt and sidestep the rules of his society like it was nothing, but when an outsider did it, he found it distasteful.
“What does that leave us with then?” Norman asked, pulling Grobert’s attention off Eugene and back to him.
“Farsight, but I don’t see how that would be too effective since the land is so flat around here. No, my money is on a beast handler. It would explain a few things that are odd.”
“Odd, how so? And is that why I haven’t seen any birds or other animals near the town recently?”
Grobert nodded. “I’ve implemented a bounty on animals and birds. If it is a beast handler, that should severely limit what they are privy to. As for the oddness, I am referring to how fast they are able to travel. It shouldn’t be possible without technology or magic, and we have yet to see any mages with their forces.”
“Shit, we still have those stupid snake horses here,” Norman exclaimed, jumping out of his seat.
He was ready to head down to the stables and eliminate them this instant.
Grobert stopped him. “If I am right, and those animals are connected to the Brotherhood's spying, we should keep them.”
“What! Why?” Norman asked in confusion.
Eugene was the one to supply the answer. “You want to feed them false information?”
“I do. I also think if my suspicion is correct, we could easily use this to our advantage against them. It would be especially effective with your plan to lay traps for them.”
“Good, is there anything either of you needs from me to set these plans in motion?”
Both men shook their heads.
“Alright, I need a few weeks. If these plans earn me that time, I should have a solution in place. Do whatever you need to do to make that happen.”
Norman watched both men leave the room, off to fulfill their side of this bargain. He hoped he hadn’t just lied to them. He was pretty sure he could get the AOE spells working by then, but that was no guarantee. It's one of the reasons Norman was contemplating his contingency plan.
It was not something he had wanted to put into place so soon, but it seemed he was out of time and options. He needed to go speak to some people first to make it happen though, so he got up and headed into town, sans his security. Grobert and Eugene would be mad when they found out he left his guards behind, but he didn’t want anyone to know what he was up to.
After asking a few of the townsfolk for directions, Norman eventually found the stone masons. He really needed to explore the town more often, not knowing where something was in his town was embarrassing.
Norman walked into the building where four beefy-looking gron were shaping stone out of huge piles of dirt. At least Norman now knew how they made the stones. He cleared his throat to get one of the men’s attention.
The man closest to him looked up, his eyes going wide as he spotted Norman. “Sir, we weren’t aware you were coming by, if we had known we would have greeted you properly.” The man’s statement got the attention of the others, who all stopped working.
Norman waved them off. “This was a last-minute thing. I would prefer it if you would all pretend I wasn’t here today. I just need something made.”
“Sure, what did you have in mind,” The gron wiped his dirty hands off on an equally dirty apron while motioning toward a relatively clean table off to the side of the busy shop.
Norman walked over and set his diagram on the table and spread it out, using some small rocks to hold the ends of the blueprint from curling back up.
The man looked down at the blueprint with a bit of confusion. “This looks a bit like magitech, but why is it shaped like this?” The man twisted and turned his head as he tried to make sense of Norman’s drawing.
Norman chose to ignore the man’s statement that it resembled gron magitech. There was a reason for that resemblance. True the gron President did not share the tech with Norman or Ashvale, but Grobert wasn’t the only sneaky one. A few months after they had arrived where Ashvale is now, Norman had ‘borrowed’ Eugene’s device that made him invisible to the gron surveillance. He used this to steal one of the gron customs magic absorbing orbs.
It had been his hope to try and recreate the tech, not specifically the orb’s effects. But he hadn’t been able to figure it out. That didn’t mean it had been a complete waste. It made Norman realize he could wrap a spell circle into a third dimension, which opened up a whole new area of magic to experiment with. But he wasn’t quite practiced enough to pull it off yet. Which is why he came to the stone masons.
“It looks odd because it needs to be in the shape of an orb.”
The gron looked back to the blueprint and twisted his head a bit more. “Oh yeah. I can see it now. Huh, don’t think I’ve seen a magic circle so detailed before, what’s this for?”
Norman ignored the man’s question “It’s a spell component, can you create it?” He asked instead.
If the man had noticed Norman dodging the question, he didn’t say anything. “Hmm, not me, this is way too advanced. Varter, come here for a minute,” the man motioned for another of the crafters to come over.
The oldest-looking of the gron masons stood up and hurried over to the table. “What’s up?”
“Take a look, this should go on an orb. Do you think you have enough control to make it?”
“Ooh, tricky and detailed. How accurate do you need this to be?”
“It has to be as close to the design as possible,” Norman replied, his hope that they could accomplish this task slowly slipping away at the man’s words.
“I think it can be done, but I will need to practice a few times before I commit. Do you only need one?”
Norman was going to say three but thought better of it. “Make six of them.” This way he had some extras, as well as some to test with.
“I’ll get right on it. I should have them done by the end of the day, do you want them dropped off?”
“No, I’ll pick them up. Thanks.” The fact that the man thought he could make them took a load of worry off of Norman’s back.
With a sigh of relief, Norman left the stone masons to their work and headed home to work on the AOE spell issue he was still struggling with.