One of the other men, faster than the first, was coming for Arion before he could ready another attack- the distance between them, paired with his preternatural speed, almost too much to contend with. Almost. Arion’s magic had hardened air into another barrier just before his cudgel reached him. A big, heavy thing made of ugly, tortured iron that visibly cracked as it bounced off the barricade, then fell from its wielder’s fingers as the wall shifted and crushed the attacker against a far wall. Two more came, both dropping to the floor in multiple sections as Arion reworked his barrier into a number of scything winds that cut through chainmail and meat about as easily as each other.
When he looked back, the bitch had already laid another man out with that mace of hers- though failed to kill him- and was lifting the couch-dweller high in a single-handed grip. It was an impressive sight, for sure. Arion had seen men three times her mass without the strength to do as much as that, even when not weighed down by Paladin plate armour.
The man she held now was not three times her mass. Nor, indeed, was he even equal to it. He writhed around like a strangled rat, legs kicking beneath him, fingers desperately clawing at her wrist, though managing only to rip their own nails bloodily out of place. The bitch’s face was a mask of cold iron as she glared up at him.
“Do you have any idea how easily I could snap your neck?” She asked, voice low, quiet and dangerous in a way that certainly shouldn’t have been arousing, but rather was. “One squeeze, that’s all I’d need. One squeeze, a quick crack, then you’re dead. Only movement in you would be your legs kicking a few more times, and maybe some waste running down your leg as you soiled yourself.”
He was still, now, the sofa man. Still in that way only true terror could ever make a person. Arion recalled freezing like that, himself. The day he’d been scheduled to die.
“I won’t kill you if you tell me where the Godblade is.” The bitch spat, and Arion knew, then, in that moment, that two simple facts were immutably true. The first was that she genuinely, sincerely hated this man. And the second was that, despite that, she was telling the truth.
Perhaps drawing the same conclusion, the slab of human scum in her grip desperately nodded towards a wall at one far section of the room. Arion’s fingers twitched, sending a jet of air towards it.
It wasn’t diabase, that much was obvious. He smashed through the inch or so of stone with the magical equivalent of a flexed bicep, then banished the resulting dust cloud with another twitch of his fingers. Light spilled into a hollow space within the wall that revealed their prize, and the bitch dropped sofa-man to take it out.
“You can go.” She said, distractedly, taking the sword in her hands and eying it thoughtfully. The man went.
Even Arion hardly noticed him leave, however, finding his focus drawn to the sword. If the men watching outside were equal to the ones waiting indoors - and that was unlikely already- then they’d be of no real threat to him. The sword, though, was interesting.
“It’s heavy.” The bitch noted, though seemed to move it around without issue. It was, indeed, bloody heavy. Arion could tell that much just from a glance. The thing was ugly, its blade about two inches at the widest and stretching out easily five feet from the guard, with an oddly dull colouration and a jagged, irregular rhythm to its shape. As the bitch turned it in her hands, he got a glimpse of it from sidelong. Arion was shocked by the depth.
“Must be a good inch of iron at the thickest point.” He observed, noting the bitch frowning as she nodded.
“I’d expected more…Sophistication.” She replied, sounding almost disappointed. He let a smile grow.
“From a two thousand year-old sword.”
She glared at him. “It’s a miracle.”
“A miracle that this slab of pig-iron hasn’t snapped in half yet, yes.” Arion snorted. “Come on, whatever unknown magic-”
“-Divine power.” She interrupted. “Granted by God to arm his chosen warriors.”
“Yes, yes.” Arion sighed. “Whatever imaginary power is responsible for making it so effective in battle, the physical sword was still made by human hands and human minds. And the humans of two thousand years ago were still carving runes on their casters’ faces to let baby-eating Gods recognise them in the afterlife. Your miracle sword was not made by smart or knowledgeable people, I’m sorry to say.”
“Well we have it now.” The bitch snapped, and Arion enjoyed seeing a point so clearly scored. “Let’s just take it back to Silenos, before word gets out that we have it.”
Sobering, he nodded.
“Good idea.” Arion conceded, heading for the door. He hesitated before stepping through, then sent the wind churning outside once again.
Always irksome to do that, but rarely smart not to. Arion took a good few moments examining the sensation of resistance against his magic, using it to feel out the area around them. Sure enough, the number of men awaiting them had changed.
It had, of course, dropped down to zero. There wasn’t a single humanoid within a hundred feet. He allowed himself a smile at that.
“Clear.” He noted, striding out of the room. Sometimes it was awfully convenient to be the most ingenious caster in all of human history.
The bitch did not seem to share his enthusiasm.
Silenos had found more than one source leading him to several of the surviving warriors present upon the battlefield, the day the Godblade was taken. Fortunately all were within reach, once he took a few moments to fashion himself a means of flight. Such an approach would have been impossible to enter a Shaiagrazni arcology, which were sealed on all sides by thick sheets of metal, but the primitives of this new world seemed content to leave themselves open to any wise and powerful enough to claim the skies.
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Easier to travel a hundred miles by air than three by land, he’d always found, and that remained true as he swooped down into the city’s noble district, over hostile walling and alert guards. Those few who spotted him were easily neutralised.
He had learned from his fiasco at Magira, and since devised a means of producing potent intoxicants able to render a normal man unconscious within moments.
Silenos extended a spinal tail from himself, barbed with a sharp injection mechanism at its tip, and dosed men and women wherever they laid eyes upon him. Some had been remarkably strong, bodies magically strengthened in what seemed to be the way of this world’s residents.
He’d even needed to squeeze noticeably hard when emptying his toxin glands into one.
The first name on Silenos’ mental list was one Lord Valdaryre, a noble of some prominence who lived in a building that had clearly been fortified with magic, but sadly not nearly enough. Silenos, being in the hurry he was, decided to save time by merely smashing one wall down with a jet of blasting oil, then striding inside. Guards swarmed him, and achieved as much as any could hope against a being of his majesty, and soon enough Silenos had the noble before him,
Valdaryre was half-dressed in plate armour, having equipped a breastplate and greaves. The metal hummed with no small measure of magic, and the man’s musculature was clearly imbibed with power, too. The most impressive thing, however, was his instantaneous surrender. Recognising Silenos’ overwhelming superiority was a rare quality in this world.
“You want money?” He asked, desperately. “I can-”
“I do not want your pitiable currency.” Silenos interrupted. “Doubtless I will still be alive long after it has been replaced by whichever set of barbarians conquers your people. I am here for answers, you were present when Galukar lost the Godblade, explain everything you saw. Lie and I will know.”
That, itself, had been a lie. House Shaiagrazni had yet to discern a reliable way of telling truth from deception, nor forcing a person to veer from one in favour of the other. Being thought to possess such a skill, however, was often almost as valuable as the ever-sought-after ability itself would have been.
“I…I saw the Dark Lord take the Godblade, after defeating Galukar. He hurled the King’s body to the edge of the battlefield and flew off upon wings of night, weaved between ballista bolts and spells, rallied his forces for a fighting retreat and disappeared over the horizon within a minute, that’s it.”
The man had grown more fearful, then paused, before answering. Silenos placed a hand upon his head, with no particular measure of force.
“The Dark Lord flew back over the horizon, what happened before that? Answer quickly.”
The man frowned, blinking, sluggish.
“He…Rallied his forces-”
“And immediately before that, what happened.”
Another hesitation. People struggled, Silenos had found, to recite a false story backwards. When rehearsing them, they invariably did so in chronological order. Those recalling real memories found it much easier to swap the sequence of events than those reciting a manufactured account.
He let his magic seep into the man’s spine, fraying the nervous fibres that connected it to his legs. He dropped into a heap instantly, the panic on him barely a moment later.
“What have you done?!” He demanded. Silenos ignored the question. There had been a strange amount of resistance in changing this one’s body, he supposed that was a feature of the natural magics imbuing it. Better to find that out now, rather than in the attempt to weaponize his Fleshcrafting against an enemy of sufficient power to threaten him.
“Tell the truth of what happened or I shall remove the use of your arms, then ask again. If you fail to do as told the third time I shall leave. Without killing you, without restoring the use of your body. I will warn you, however, that my skills are rather more precise than any healer you can likely reach, and irreversible to casters of their power.”
By the horror in Valdaryre’s eyes, Silenos knew he’d been believed. And he found what the man said next to be truthful, too.
As he had implied he would, Silenos took a single instant to restore the man’s legs. It would be dangerous to gain a reputation as one who could not be relied upon to uphold his word.
Then he flew from the building as fast as his wings could manage, hurrying for the King’s fortress. Hurrying to outpace the disaster.
----------------------------------------
It was almost surprising how quickly The Hand reacted to Arion and the bitch’s call for his attention, but then, sending word that one had obtained one of the most powerful and valuable things in the world tended to hurry people up. Arion barely had the chance to sit down before he was whisked away through the fortress, deep, deep, deeper still, until he and the bitch were ushered into a large, expansive chamber with walls of…
Yes, steel. Even he was surprised at the sight. Steel wasn’t really hard to make, of course, but the process of properly doing so was lengthy and resource-consuming, even with magic. To line an entire room with it, let alone one as big as the fifty-foot hemisphere he now waited in, must have cost a fortune. Or several. If the walls measured even half an inch thick they’d have held sufficient metal to equip a thousand men with plate armour, chainmail and polearms. Perhaps with some horse barding throne in for good measure. Even the door had been made of the stuff, and, by its sheer thickness, the hinges upon which it hung would have held against a troll being lynched from them.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Came a voice from one end. Arion turned quickly to see the Hand making his way in through the entrance behind them, smiling thinly. “Galukar’s eldest son had it made, back when the Dark Lord was only just starting to really threaten things. A last defensible position, was the idea, a funnel of steel able to force enemies to attack slowly and in concentrated areas, to be held by the Royals.”
“A chokepoint with no escape.” The bitch finished. “To die with as many dead enemies around them as possible.”
The Hand smiled again, sending a chill down Arion’s spine for some reason.
“Inspired by the old tales from the Eastern hoplites, said to have held a pass against tens of thousands with only three hundred of their own. Such stories are the backbone of Arbite’s culture, I suppose. We have been a warrior’s nation since our founding a century ago.” Something flitted across his face for an instant, too fast to examine, and then he continued in a different tone. “Galukar’s family is not a particularly optimistic one, I must say, but…Perhaps they ought to be.”
His eyes fell upon the Godblade, and practically glowed as they beheld it.
“No need to verify.” He said. “I know the real article when I see it, hand it over and you’ll get your reward.”
The bitch stepped forwards, doing just that, and Arion found himself frowning. Why meet them in a place like that? He studied the door. It was a wide thing, but not so wide that he couldn’t imagine five or six men holding it without being flanked. Five or six, not two.
“We didn’t do it for a reward.” The Paladin noted, as the Hand grunted. He strained at the sword’s weight, he forced a smile through his exertive grimace.
“No, of course not, forgive me Dame Paladin.” He let the blade’s edge hit the ground, rather than hold it more awkwardly, and turned. Moving to the door now. Arion saw the great slab of steel swing wide as the Hand approached it, and felt his heart sink at what lay beyond.
Knights. Dozens, all standing tall and armed in glinting armour, all moving as if their sixty pounds of protection weighed as much as a thick shirt. They parted to let the Hand move in between their ranks, eyes all affixed on Arion and the bitch behind visors that betrayed as much emotion as the sockets of a skeleton.
“And you must forgive me for this, too, Dame Paladin.” The Hand called, as he disappeared between his men. “But I cannot cede control of my city to that family of imbeciles again.”
The Knights charged.