Rosslyn’s eyes took in every detail of the Deformed Forest as they entered that blighted and unnatural place.

The trees were even more grotesque than they had been from a distance. They grew in tangled and twisted structures, more so than any plant she had ever seen before. One plant growing half-sprawled over another, so that it was impossible that any of them could be getting enough sunlight.

Yet they also grew thick and strong. The thousands and thousands of branches were such a thick tangle that they blotted out the sun. Rosslyn was keenly aware that they could easily grow lost in such a dim place, though fortunately, there was a small crew of local lumberjacks who maintained a path large enough for a carriage to cross. They held a valuable monopoly on the logging rights in these woods, with the caveat that they could only cut a limited number.

The palace considered the forest to be a good defensive barrier. To go around it and enter Claustria from another side would take the Demon Army a full day. If the Empire sent its military on any route that did not go through the forest, the fortress would raise the alarm before it could be besieged.

A good defensive system, as long as the forest remained as dense and difficult to cross as it was.

The wood from the Deformed Forest was typically sold to noble families who thought they could use wood that was contaminated by the Empire’s experiments for magical purposes. Rosslyn herself was dubious as to its utility. She had observed that even aristocrats who knew they could make no use of the wood would buy it simply because other nobles were doing it and because it was scarce. They were simply trying to signal their status.

As Rosslyn’s convoy began to cross through the woods, travel slowed to a crawl. The horsemen held glass lanterns in careful hands, lest they spark a fire that might ignite the entire densely packed forest with them inside.

The light played on the trees, and in the strange, flickering light of the fires, Rosslyn thought she saw strange things in the trees. Owls, foxes, the occasional deer—but distorted. The owls looked to have human-like faces, not to mention the fact that they were flying around in the daytime. The foxes were their normal coloration, but they looked almost as large as wolves. The deer stared back at the carriages with glowing red eyes and looked to Rosslyn to be contemplating whether they could eat the humans traveling through their woods.

The animals in this place are just as deformed as the plant life, she thought, suppressing a shudder. It was slightly disturbing to think that this horrid place was a part of her father’s land. Give me an honest fight where I can see the danger I am facing over these creatures sneaking around in the shadows any day of the week…

There were a few hours of slow, bumpy, uncomfortable travel—the lumberjacks might have been doing their job in keeping the path just wide enough for carriages to pass, but they were apparently not clearing away roots that grew across the path—and then Rosslyn could see rays of light cutting through the gloom.

A few seconds later, she saw a gap in the trees.

The fortifications they had seen at a distance earlier pulled into view. So close. Remarkably mighty.

The trees quickly thinned out as they emerged from the Deformed Forest.

And the great walls of Stalenton filled the carriage passengers’ fields of vision.

“This is the fortified city of Stalenton,” Rosslyn murmured. The painted images she had seen of the city, the schematics in her textbooks on warfare and the Demon Empire, and even the verbal descriptions of her tutor who had traveled over much of the world—none of them did this great and terrible city justice.

“It looks like it was built by a divine being,” Carolien said. She covered her mouth as soon as the words were out of it and looked askance from Rosslyn to Lord Baranack and back.

“Relax, stepmother,” Rosslyn said lightly. “There are no clergy here to accuse you of anything.”

The remark was technically heretical, since the Demon Empire was the living embodiment of pure evil, the polar opposite of the Goddess’s gentle goodwill and creative powers. But Rosslyn could not help but admit that there was some truth in what Carolien said.

“It is a mighty stronghold,” Lord Baranack said evenly, neither passing judgment nor offering absolution. “Some have said that it is the greatest fortified city in all the world.”

“Once, the greatest fortified city in the Goddess-worshiping world,” Rosslyn said in a regretful tone.

“Yes,” Lord Baranack agreed flatly.

None of them said anything more. All their minds were going over the story. The conquest of this city in the last war. The city had changed little over time, according to the best available intelligence, because even during the conquest era, it was virtually impregnable by ground assault.

A city built in highly defensible layers in a shape like an onion. Each layer was at a higher elevation than the one previous, and each could be sealed from within against outside advance. The last layer was also the city’s peak, the infamous Castle Stalen, named for the ruler who ordered the city built. Though the Ursabian King had not lived to see the city’s completed construction, it was said that he laid the foundations in human blood and bone.

The city’s greatest defenses were the vast, high, and seemingly indestructible exterior walls, made from a magic resistant rock called Sylphan Stone—and the innermost layer of the city, the castle itself, which was made of the same material.

Its greatest weakness was the people.

In the last War of Demonic Aggression, the Empire smashed the Ursabian Army on the field in front of the city, and Stalenton naturally responded by closing its gates and sealing off the inner gates in the various layers that separated the strata of Ursabian society.

General Vizzini of the Demon Army wasted little time in trying to break through the walls themselves. Instead, he sent orders for reinforcements, and he besieged the city.

The Demon Empire knew already, through their famous intelligence network, that the Ursabians had sent for aid to their neighbor. This would not be the first time the Ursabians were attacked by the Empire—indeed, they had previously been conquered by the Empire, at the high water mark of its power—and they were one of the Holy Kingdoms, allied with Claustria and the other Goddess-worshiping nations that feared and despised the Empire.

So General Vizzini ordered catapults and reinforcements. The catapults, he used to launch alternating barrages of heavy stones, plague-infested rats, and propaganda into the city. He did not bother aiming at the exterior walls.

And the reinforcements, he used to ensure that no one could escape and no one could relieve the siege.

The Demon Empire had both a strong military and waves upon waves of soldiers.

The Parmonian Army rode to relieve the siege, but they were broken and scattered outside of the city walls, and the King slain in battle.

The Claustrian Army had coordinated with the Parmonians, but they arrived a day late, and they were defeated and forced to retreat back through the forest, which at that time was called by a different name. Though they retreated in good order, their force had been decimated, and they could no longer give the Demon Army open battle.

The Claustrians were reduced to using hit and run tactics, attempting to bleed the Demon Army and create some opening to sneak food and water into the city. Stalenton had some food held in reserve for just this eventuality, but the water shortage was more pressing.

The city was almost completely landlocked, unfortunately. A single river ran through Stalenton’s city center, but the Demon Army dammed it as a part of their siege effort. It seemed fate conspired with the Demon Empire on this occasion, as well, because their offensive coincided with a drought in the region. Damming the river was made easier by its weaker flow, and the Stalenton residents could not rely on rain to renew their supply of fresh water.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

With the Claustrian forces’ lack of success in breaking the Empire’s offensive, the first layer of the city surrendered and threw open its gates after a week and a half with no access to water.

General Vizzini treated the Ursabians of Stalenton with uncharacteristic mercy—this was a man who had a reputation for decorating his walls with the skulls of human warriors he considered exceptional, and that was how he treated people he respected.

The Ursabians of the lowest layer had been expecting their whole adult population to be either butchered and eaten or sold into slavery, which was how the General had reputedly treated other cities that resisted him in the past. They had surrendered because they reckoned that at least their children would be more likely to survive with the gates open and access to water a possibility.

Instead, Vizzini enslaved a relatively small portion of the adult population, only the fighting age men and some of the nobility, and he kept his troops’ pillaging to what historians described as “a restrained level.”

The subsequent layers of the city surrendered sequentially after seeing that, each one more quickly than the last, until finally Castle Stalen was the last holdout.

Vizzini did not offer terms to them. He knew he held all the cards at that point. Safe behind the city walls with his army, he could hold out even if the Holy Kingdoms mustered a force larger than his own—virtually impossible under their internal conditions at the time.

After holding out for a month, the castle surrendered.

The steward came out to deliver the news at noon. His face was skeletal, by all accounts. The entire Ursabian Royal Family had taken a fatal dose of poison at breakfast that morning—breakfast came in the form of the only food the castle had left, hard millet bread served with strong spirits—and at long last, hours later the heartiest member of the family had died. It was never entirely clear to Rosslyn if the story was one of mass suicide or of treachery from within the castle.

And General Vizzini did not seem to stress the question. Either way, this victory was a result of him successfully starving the castle’s inhabitants out.

He established his own people in control of the castle, awarded the steward a high noble title within the Empire using his wartime authority, and moved the army onward.

Rosslyn knew these events so well, because they preceded the Siege of Wayn. The closest Claustria had come to being conquered.

And now this is their capitol. As if they wish to taunt us with their proximity.

As she looked over the city walls now, she let out a breath she had not realized she had been holding.

“Formidable,” she said quietly, to herself.

Lord Baranack looked at her curiously, then nodded. “Yes,” he said. “It is wise to recognize the strength of your enemy.”

A postern gate in the mighty walls opened, and an armored rider dressed all in black issued forth, riding toward them.

“Halt!” he exclaimed in Ursabian as he drew a bit nearer. The man’s voice sounded like the cry of a vulture.

The procession of carriages ground to a stop.

“Who would pass into the Demon Empire?” asked the rider, his tone harsh and cutting.

Lord Baranack stepped out of the carriage and spoke in a calm, clear voice, in fluent Ursabian. “Sir, I am Lord Baranack, Ambassador of the Kingdom of Claustria. I have come to occupy the Claustrian Embassy in Stalenton and reestablish our diplomatic relations with the Empire. Please allow me and my staff passage into your fine city.”

The horseman dug his heels into his horse’s side, and the beast began to circle the carriages. Rosslyn gave up on trying to watch him through the carriage’s windows; they had several blind spots that the horse would ride through. Instead, she opened her other senses and tracked him that way.

She could hear the sound of hooves trampling the ground and smell the odor of horse and sweaty rider as they moved—it was a bit warmer here than it had been on the other side of the border. Even with winter quickly approaching, the horseman had already worked up a sweat.

So Rosslyn was not surprised when the man poked his head into her carriage. He had removed his helmet, so Rosslyn could see the man’s full face. He appeared to be a human rather than a demon—he lacked the tiny horns that demonkind typically shared—with close-cropped brown hair and the narrow hazel eyes typical of Ursabians.

She turned her head toward him, feigning some level of surprise, because it seemed like the natural response to a stranger looking in at her and Carolien.

Rosslyn did not have to look at her stepmother to know how she was reacting. She heard Carolien suck in a sharp breath of air, but the Queen said nothing.

“Who are you two?” the rider asked. His voice was slightly softened at the sight of two women.

“We do not speak Ursabian,” Rosslyn lied smoothly. It was a language that was no longer spoken outside of the former Kingdom of Ursabia itself, with decreasing numbers of people speaking it even there, while Demontongue spread. So she had decided that it was unlikely that some bodyguard would know the language.

The man shifted to Claustrian. “Fine, then,” he said. “Do you two understand me now?”

“We do,” Rosslyn said.

“What is your purpose here?”

“We are part of Lord Baranack’s guard,” Carolien said. “Here to ensure he arrives in your Emperor’s custody safely.”

“Hmph.” The horseman appeared unconvinced. “Am I meant to believe that the two of you can fight?”

“I would be happy to demonstrate, if you doubt our identities,” Rosslyn replied.

“No, she will demonstrate,” the man said slowly, pointing at Carolien. He turned his gaze back to Rosslyn. “I believe you would not have volunteered if you were not confident. But if you are not both bodyguards, then we will seize all of you for questioning.”

Rosslyn and Carolien were both dressed in the part of bodyguards today. Carolien was armed and dressed in the fashion of a knight, wearing plate armor and a sword and dirk on her left and right sides respectively. She had a helmet at her side, and she wore her hair in a tight bun for this part of the journey so that it could not be easily pulled in the event of a fight.

But Rosslyn was nervous about this. She had never seen her stepmother fight.

Rosslyn opened her mouth to object—but Carolien spoke first.

“I will happily demonstrate for you,” she said, smiling beguilingly.

She rose and pulled her helmet on, then stepped out of the carriage.

The man stepped down from his horse and whispered something in the beast’s ear.

At least he seems to be less comfortable on the ground than he was on the horse, Rosslyn thought. The rider moved less steadily than he had on horseback as he walked slightly bow-legged and seemed almost to be getting his land legs back. That was something. It could make a difference.

“So, how do you want to do this, then?” Carolien asked.

“We will exchange a few blows,” the horseman said, his tone almost dismissive. “Then I will know.”

“Ready whenever you are,” she replied.

Well done, Carolien, Rosslyn thought. Get him fighting now, before he has the chance to get more comfortable on the ground again!

“Wait just a moment,” came Lord Baranack’s voice. He quickly moved over from the other side of the carriages to stand between Carolien and the rider. “Is this how the Demon Empire treats honored guests?”

“Get out of the way, ambassador,” the horseman said. “You may be some authority in your Kingdom, but I am responsible for security here. I will verify that this woman is your bodyguard.”

“My lord, please, get behind me!” Carolien said urgently, stepping up next to Lord Baranack. “This situation is dangerous!”

She was putting on a good performance as a bodyguard, Rosslyn observed. Carolien would have done well as an actress, if that were not a lowly profession unfit for someone of high birth.

Lord Baranack finally seemed to understand that he was not going to stop this, and he stepped backward and then into the carriage to sit across from Rosslyn and watch.

Unfortunately, his interference had robbed Carolien of any advantage she might have had from the rider still being adjusted to horseback. He had been maneuvering around the whole time he and Lord Baranack were talking, and now he was moving fairly fluidly on the ground as he had on the horse.

It was almost as if Lord Baranack was helping him, though the idea did not make sense. Even if Rosslyn thought his incompetence at matchmaking was an indicator of treachery, or that his views on the Demon Empire were suspect, why would he make certain that some random gate guard had an advantage in a fight with Carolien?

A large part of this trip was the King’s attempt to convince the Queen that the Demon Empire posed a near immediate threat. If she lost a fight to a guard, that would certainly push her toward thinking the Demon Army was more rather than less formidable.

Rosslyn shook her head. No, Lord Baranack was merely incompetent. At least on this occasion.

She focused on the two armored figures outside of the carriage. Both wore their helmets now. Both had taken their stances. To Rosslyn’s slight surprise, each looked practiced in their stance. Though Carolien must not have trained for years…

As Rosslyn watched, they began to move.