Chapter 071: Silence before the storm
“Hi.” Lena looked up at me from the spot she sat on, on the very edge of the stone platform. “I didn’t know you were into fishing.”
“Nice to kill time, master.” Ugh, I wish she didn’t have to call me that. It’s a pretty irritating thing when you have problems such as mine, especially since recently I… started enjoying it all a bit too much.
I’m a horrible human being. And I enjoy that far too much.
“Still, not something I pictured you doing.” I sat on the very same edge, but in about a metre away. Personal space and so on.
“Kovacs mentioned that it’s a good way to calm yourself.”
I decided to muster all my skills in observing and figuring out people… and use it for something good, for once. Yhrezerach actually helped me - I already knew that I wouldn’t notice anything out of ordinary.
We all need to unwind from time to time, so finding a hobby is useful. Our blacksmith combines it with her work - she just loves hammering things. I’m reading books (and teasing Simea)...
Crap, I got back to sex again. Ugh.
Well, now that I know that there is a problem - because of Yhrezerach - I had a completely different point of view. Something was wrong with Lena (obviously, unless Yhrezerach lied to me and that was unlikely - and even then the lie would probably be done to save our asses in some currently unknown way). Her needing time alone was probably a symptom.
“You needed calming down?” She made no reaction, so I decided to quickly salvage the situation. “You should ask Leria for help, beating some recruits to shape should be pretty relaxing.”
Isn’t it tantamount to sadism?
Ugh. Being a pervert should be considered a disability. The fact that I was getting lightheaded each time she called me master wasn’t helping. I should reaaally talk with Simea about getting a bit further with our little… games. Though it was only a temporary measure, like taking a bit of a drug to weaken the withdrawal symptoms.
It’s really hard to be a free person when you are enslaved to your desires. Figuring out that was the important step on my route to no longer being a major dick. Understanding you had a problem was always important, though trying to fix it kinda didn’t work thus far. At least not in a degree that would satisfy me.
“I do not consider beating a pleasurable act.” She answered briefly. Not even looking at me.
That’s when I understood she was furious. But she was hiding it pretty well.
Oops. I might have stepped on a landmine. I can either retreat and try again, charge ahead hoping for the best… or surrender unconditionally, hoping that Yhrezerach won’t throw me into the river.
Let’s try the second option.
“Listen, my social skills are pretty horrible… but I’m pretty sure you have a problem. You are trying to keep it inside… but it’s a bad thing to do. It’s going to blow up sooner any later.” She finally moved her head to face me, though her face was pretty expressionless. “I don’t know what’s your problem, but… if it gets really bad, you could always… you know… talk to someone about it?”
Something in her face briefly softened up. Briefly. Then she returned to fishing.
“I’ll think about this.”
I guess there is nothing else for me to do here, right?
***
Surprisingly enough, Yhrezerach didn’t throw me in the river. He didn’t even look like he had an urge to do that.
“Not the worst outcome from those I imagined.” Was this a compliment?! “In other words, you didn’t screw up anything, but you also didn’t achieve the desired outcome. It might have been a small step forward, though. It’s beyond my prediction ability.”
“You’re going to tell me what’s her problem?” That would be pretty damn useful.
“I guess I’ll have to.” Is that a way of making fun of me? And why I’m so insecure to even care? “But for now, I’ll give you a minute to train your atrophied social skills and empathy. Try to figure it out yourself. Think what might be a problem. You have all the knowledge necessary to succeed.”
Atrophied social skills, riiiight.
Well, I might as well try.
The only thing I could think off at the end was the way the DFI screwed her up. She… went through rather rough stuff, even if it didn’t last for long. And ever since, well, she was biologically forced to remain a slave. No way she would like that, right?
I shared my (hopefully valuable) insight with Yhrezerach. He nodded.
“Fifty points out of one hundred. You are more or less right. But there are things you don’t know, mostly because of stubborness and complete lack of common sense so typical for a mortal being. She ‘forgot’ to mention how exactly her genetically encoded mental sculpt of a blood elf manifests.”
Mental sculpt? She has it? As a player? The depth of player incorporation into the world’s mechanics reaches scary levels.
“And… how exactly it manifests?” Do I even want to know?
“Imagine an overbearing voice in your head, regularly screaming words of obedience and submission that you can suppress temporarily only with a lot of willpower. Coming back randomly, but always when you, her owner, are mentioned.”
“She gets that… all the time!?” He nodded.
"Mostly, it's pretty random as the magic of the 'Playerhood' seems to partially suppress it. Partially."
“And she gets that... from the start?!” He nodded again. “And she didn’t tell anybody?!” He nodded once more.
“I told you, you mortals absolutely lack common sense.” I searched for a witty answer to that… but failed. “But then, it got worse.” What? “Well, it was pretty obvious thing for an outside observer. She is infinitely jealous for Simea’s miracle that fixed her problems.”
That… that actually makes sense. She even conv… wait.
“She converted to khardism hoping for a miracle on her own?” It wasn’t a really smart thing to do, honestly.
Gods are reaally above our heads and they prefer us to know our place. Praying to them for help is one thing (they will probably make some arrangements if the Great Game allows that and the effect will actually be to both our and their liking). Converting while having certain benefit to gain in mind is something else.
You don’t buy things from Gods in exchange of doing things they like. You convert because you really feel it’s a good idea to follow them and their religious doctrine simply convinces you. You do things because you think they are good and fit the God/s you worship (worshipping beings you fundamentally disagree with is idiotic to begin with).
If Lena converted to Imperial Religion and decided to follow gods of Black Pantheon in hope of direct benefit like that… well, some would exploit her, some would actually give her what she wanted (with small print that would make her regret that) or actually help her in exchange of making her become… less nice of a person in the long run, even without magical corruption. White Pantheon would simply disregard her or make some attempts (obviously undetectable to mortal in question) of fixing her attitude.
The monotheistic Gods, in the same time…
Yhrezerach noticed the look I gave him.
“If we condemned people only on the basis of stuff like that, 90% of you wouldn’t even get close to having decent afterlifes.” Riiight, I forgot. “It’s still a problem, if only because her growing existential angst is partially directed at Overtyrant. Frankly…” He shrugged. “If she actually learned to tolerate it - not to accept it, just to be ready to bear with it - He would probably make a move and fix it already. Bonus points if she decided to bear with it in His name.”
Which once again stresses just how important we - for some reason - are in this clusterfuck called the Twilight War.
I mean, come on! We are running into Gods’ fingers fixing and changing things around us every damn minute. It’s not natural. Even in this world. Which is pissing me off so much that I just can’t stress this enough. Ugh!
“Of course, if I just tell her that, she won’t be able to truly accept her problem truthfully and in its entirety - at best she will say something akin to ‘ok, I accept it!’ and that will be all. So I have to make sure she improves herself without directly showing her that I know of her problem in details, since that would ensure my own defeat by making her naturally react negatively to someone trying to change her life against her will and generally acting like a Big Brother. How am I supposed to do that?!”
The look Yhrezerach gave me was self-explanatory. Eh. It’s kinda the same thing he struggles with on a daily basis. He, and all of the Gods that actually care about mortals.
Especially monotheistic ones. Even good-natured Gods of most polytheisms have very limited interests in terms of ethics. I mean, what sort of ethics could be supported by a God of Agriculture?
“I guess I’ll try to figure something out.” I caved in after few seconds of a dead-fish stare. “Alright, I’ll consult it with Simea, since she is the one in that marriage that actually has social skills.”
“Congratulations.” Yhrezerach answered with a lot of irony in his voice.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
I guess I’ll go check out other things now.
***
Yhrezerach decided to accompany me, who knows why.
In the end I went to have a talk with Firewing. A bit of a last-chance talk before another shitstorm hits the Hold. She was a bit too busy doing things. Mostly changing Hold into an economic and military powerhouse.
A single archmagician, if given enough time to properly prepare, could easily cause a downfall of average kingdom (their political basis tended to be their only achilles heel - ‘I want to take over the world!’ isn’t a motivation that makes competent and faithful people flock under your banners). She was easily organizing new sources of income (like red honey) and equipment. She took Menara and that elven theoretical sorcerer whose name I totally don’t remember under her wings.
They were producing new stuff like crazy. Kovacs’ team wasn’t getting enough resources, so Firewing began outsourcing some resource gathering. It wouldn’t be easy to issue a lot of assignments like that and not be detected by the ever watchful eyes of the witch-hunters (you didn’t have to be Einstein to figure out that some group was arming itself in a hurry), but now they had more important problems. And Firewing was cautious.
Our equipment was getting more and more personalized. She even had enough time to start arming the militia properly.
When we entered her lab/bedroom she was busy with alchemy.
“Hi.” She didn’t even look at me. Magical senses are nice. “Who is it with you?” Hehe. So she didn’t know that.
“Yhrezerach.” She immediately looked up from her alchemist lab. Looked at me, then her eyes immediately jumped at Yhrezerach.
He simply looked back at her and shrugged. Then she looked back at me, obviously curious at what was happening. It wasn’t normal to have Yhrezerach walk around the Hold like that.
“Something mean is going to happen. Probably another ‘adventure’. Or just another mess like Vanvyra.” Her eyebrow raised up. “It will start soon and Yhrezerach knows something but doesn’t really like to share it.” She gave me a weird look. “So I’m just killing time before fire starts raining from the sky and he kinda tagged along.”
“You keep running into weird things.” Firewing shook her head. “What really scares me is that I got used to it.”
Yeah, tell me more about it.
“So, I decided to check to see if I missed something around before the thing happens. Like, something important. And since I haven’t talked with you in a while…” She nodded.
“Sensible. Well, I’m quite busy recently. Doing a lot of things. I’m even teaching a few kids from the village alchemy. You’d be surprised how easy it is to pull people from poverty if their priests tell them that’s their God’s will blah blah and you teach them some practical skills.” This probably lifts some burden from her so it’s not like she is doing it from simple goodwill. “As for other things… well, the war is going to happen soon.”
What?
“I have one or two useful contacts east of the mountains.” In Imperium? “Well, archmagicians tend to know people. Or each other, at least. They also tend to know and see a lot. Figuring that the Imperium is strengthening its military presence on the continent and what does it mean doesn’t require being a god.”
None of the imperial archmagicians wants to associate with the OTHER Ambryxis archmagician, so it’s unlikely that they tell him. Imperium watches it's magicians closely. Very closely. Getting 'disappeared' solely because of possessing a naughty book from the Northern Aevaria was more of a legend than a truth... but legends have a grain of truth in them.
Makes you wonder if Tyranny of Ashkar knows it as well. The straightforward tyrannies like that rarely have people following it for ideology’s sake. It’s hard to get a good press in the free world where you are 25% random rogue state, 50% orwellian totalitarian regime and 25% something even worse.
Even betraying other countries in its name for money is plain stupidity, because if it wins and conquers your country… well, no totalitarian regime understands the term ‘gratitude’. If anything, they tend to act like Stalin, purging foreign communist party members during the Great Purge times since while they were communists, they spend too much time outside of True Communism and could get weird ideas from the capitalists.
If the spy doesn’t know he spies for the Tyranny, however…
If Tyranny knows, the war is going to be terrible. Former games tended to omit international wars (preferring the local, national versions of Great Game) simply because of how terribly devastating a war in a TRULY high fantasy world might be. Two vassal states of Imperium headbutting over borderline were one thing; the true empires that divided the world between themselves were something else. Imperium (essentially a patchwork crossbreed between early Roman Empire, European Union and Holy Roman Empire representing Europe), quasi-Persian Empire of Kasythia, seriously weird and high-tech Eternal Empire (China), Tyranny of Ashkar and Eagle Federation (essentially idealized United States, but headbutts with Imperium a lot and is still a monarchy). If they ever went all out…
Well, it will be fun. And then we’ll all die.
“I also checked what the Imperium knows about Tzikimi.” Oh? The weird eldritch civilization we encountered within the dungeon that seemed to rule the area before Xyl came, right. They came up so I’m almost sure they are important (Gods fingers, of course) and they will turn up sooner or later. “Frankly, not much.”
Reality ensues? “Even Imperium cannot know everything.” It works zealously to fix that, though.
“Well, it did confirm a few things. The general size of the Tzikimi empire, that it was around exactly when we suspected, and that it’s ending was… weird. Interestingly enough, they seem to have successfully repelled several invasions of the Xyl Dominion.” No small feat. The Xylian Dominion would have won a devastating victory with Imperium of today, though without taking Gods into account. In pure military power the difference was massive. Comparing them to Earth’s countries was meaningless, as Imperium alone would score a devastating victory against entire world combined. “Actually, they were never defeated. Something happened, then the Dominion simply wiped out the remains.”
They really didn’t want the world to remember that there were ever any civilizations that weren’t them. They only steered clear of ruins of few older civs (mostly First Empire) that they seemed to be genuinely afraid off for some reason.
“So, they either performed a mass Ascendence, or killed themselves accidentally while trying to unleash something terrible on the Xyls… or something random killed them.” That was always a thing. Very popular before the Dawn War. Gods plays never killed everyone. Even if you screwed up literally everything, one of them always ended up saving some of your people’s asses, if only because they could be used to spice the Game later on (but most have other motives as well)
“The most possible outcomes, yes. I also checked the Overkill’s mask, but… the khardics archmages will not say a word to any person that’s even remotely close to this place. Unless we come up as having a Chosen One amidst us, they won’t help us at all. If you want to change that, you’ll need to have the Imperium tell them that we’re ok.”
Too bad I forgot to establish any sort of communication line with the Imperium. I was literally in the same room as the damned von Osten and I did nothing! I was an idiot for not thinking about that.
I turned towards Yhrezerach.
“And you probably won’t tell me what’s the deal with the Overkill’s, right?” He answered me with a dead fish stare. I sighed and turned back towards Firewing. “Any other ideas?”
She shrugged. “Gossips of new Chosen Ones here and there. Supposed rebellion brewing up somewhere in the Northern Aevaria, which might be backed by the Imperium. High Dragon burning a village north from here, probably thinking that nobody can stop him now that the Ambryxis is in flames… and he is probably right. Mess on the market. Talks of a regional defensive alliance of cities in the middle of the Dragonspine Mountains, but with the Ambryxis in the current state it’s probably impossible. Also, there is a sudden spike of mad ‘the end of the world is near!’ doomsayers.”
Typical day in this world. Well, it’s not like the fact that all of that was happening was weird. The number of them and the general trend, in the same time, were more than worrying.
The Imperium generally ignores singular events as exceptions and accidents, reacting to them according to the all-knowing protocols whispered by Gods to the ears of the Emperor long, long time ago. But when the numbers of events spike, and the trend shows up, Gods’ general suggestion was ‘try to figure what the fuck is happening and devise a proper countermeasure on your own you lazy bum’.
Military build-up in the area sounded like a decent plan. What we couldn’t find out from our current position was all the other things. Preparations of military storerooms and filling them with food and spare parts for warmachines, initial mobilization of local vassal state governments and armies, creation of first sketches of battle plans according to potential enemies, and transfer of imperial-contracted adventurers to the area to counter the expected raise in local daemon and beast troubles.
“At this point I estimate at least three additional divisions of the Imperial Army transferred to Aevaria.” She continued. “The counterespionage coverage is too good to learn anything more about them without a preestablished spy network, so I have no idea of their composition. Plus at least three warmachine legions and at least a single assault brigade.”
That’s SERIOUS military build-up. Especially if some of the divisions are the elite ones. Or, God have mercy on us, the Imperial Banner Division. Aka 1st. Infantry Division. Generally wartime extended personal bodyguard army of the Grand Emperors themselves. Literal army of people that were one-man-armies on their own.
The worst thing? The Imperium sending it all to Aevaria was actually quite possible in current circumstances, as it treated the Twilight War increasingly seriously. If Tyranny of Ashkar decides to try to take it down… well, they lack tough people to try to beat it in quality. They might actually end up pulling a zerg rush of insane proportions, hoping to keep charging it until its soldiers simply run out of mana… boy, I don’t want to be anywhere near to the battlefield. It will make Verdun look like bar brawl.
Everybody in the Tyranny was its soldier. Men, women, children, elderly. They didn’t even need to have weapons, their bodies when piled high enough were weapons in themselves. Tyranny was a tyranny in pure, unadulterated sense, without all the depravity of the Dragonspine Mountains. Simply a country where possessing a conscience was detrimental to your survival chances.
Fun times ahead of us. Very fucking fun.
Each imperial division was essentially ~15 000 soldiers (with 10 000 considered a minimum) - which made each of them an equivalent of an army of a middlesized vassal state - but their exact composition varied. An infantry division stationed in a mostly mountainous province was going to be lightly armed, while those on plains were guaranteed to have a lot of heavy cavalry (with the rest being mostly light cavalry and at least an infantry brigade since somebody had to siege the cities).
Without knowing the composition you couldn’t exactly figure out the imperial battle plans. Were they going to march through Saltrock Mountains and begin one of the world’s most glorious cavalry raids through open plains of the Northern Aevaria? Or were they more interested in seizing the region of Ambryxis, seeing it as important in the Twilight War? Or maybe they had a lot of their equivalent of marines and were planning to go for Ashkar directly, while its main forces were going to be focused on taking down remaining ymririan states in Dragonspine Mountains?
They were probably investing a lot of money in fooling everyone. Fake divisions, illusions, buying materials they didn’t need (like buying a lot of horse food without any cavalry division in the region to make the enemy assume wrongly), fake orders issued when they expected them to be intercepted and so on.
What DID tell me a bit were the other things. Namely: assault brigades and warmachine legions. The former were vanguard units of the Imperial Army made from soldiers that were individually strong rather and fearsome rather than disciplined. So, orcs, ogres, berserians, pure-blooded succubi, even darklings. All of them trained to kill with everything including spoons, while fighting brutally.
Their fighting tactic was closer to adventurers than soldiers. But when it came to eradicating enemy soldiers defending that particular district in the city…. oh boy. Wherever the ‘simple’ disciplined soldiers couldn’t form proper formation, the assault units were going through them like hot knife through butter, tearing them apart (sometimes literally) at ease.
Warmachine legions in the same time exploited their inborn lack of morale. It tends to be VERY important for people, especially soldiers. Nobody likes to die (well I could name few exceptions but nevermind). But machines do not care. Normal military units tend to be considered annihilated after suffering 50% casualties in battle. It’s next to impossible to fix the morale slippage accompanying such a massacre in a reasonable timeframe. And machines? Huh.,
All decent commanders in the entire history did everything they could to ensure high morale. Read every roman war chronicle. Capturing some Persian scout and showing the smallest of them to the army with “and THAT’S what you are afraid of?”-type speech. Sending the biggest of your soldiers for a scouting mission to make sure that if they are captured, enemy soldiers are going to think “damn, these Romans are BIG”. And so on. All to motivate your soldiers to keep stabbing people (and demotivate your enemies from stabbing your own).
Machines didn’t care. They just marched forward. And even if every enemy destroyed five of them (wasn’t unheard off, when we talked about elite formations, mass-produced warmachines were of inferior quality), the sheer size of slaughter and casualties his side sustained (plus “ohmygodswhyaren’ttheystoppinghowmanyofthemleft?!”) could end up with the supposedly victorious side suddenly going into rout. And that’s what the Imperial Army used warmachines for - you find some not elite enemy unit, and then send machines at them until they cave in.
Which would suggest that the Imperium expects open battles more than assaults on the cities (or fighting in the mountains and forests, assault units excelled in them too). This would suggest them going either for Northern Aevaria (which would explain social unrest and supposed insurgencies) or directly for Tyranny of Ashkar, intervention in the Ambryxis region not looking like a very possible thing.
Or it was one big deception, and several assault brigades will suddenly arrive in one well coordinated (teleportation used for message delivery ftw) movement days before the fighting starts.
I should search for a way to establish more permanent contact with the Imperium. I’d automatically end up becoming one more chess piece of their geopolitical battle map, but at least I’d have their support. And at least some rudimentary understanding of what they are planning.
“Well, try to learn something. Or at least get in contact with imperial command.” She nodded.
“There is one more thing I have to talk with you about.” Firewing added.
Uh-oh.