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The last runestone was stood up and powered on without any issues.
It would seem the unfortunate escape of Victoria and Bianca wasn’t turning out to be too bad for us in the short run.
Our scouting parties had reported an increase in active patrols atop the walls and it had become difficult for Hanna’s SI-Minervia agents to bring back detailed reports today, but the trade-off was the undisturbed completion of our three runestones.
Under Julius’ advisement, my guard knights and I decided to remain in the camp during the setup with the rest of my attendants.
We were on standby, ready to help if needed.
However, the entire process went smoothly. The Renaultians must have been preoccupied with devising another poor attempt to kill, capture, or otherwise dispose of me.
I didn’t mind the sense of calm in the camp.
From the spine-chilling void-beasts to skulking camp assassins and divine magicka overload-induced comas, just one normal day wasn’t too much to ask for.
When the runestone defense division returned with the elven artificers, it was officially disbanded and the members were given a day to rest—well deserved after being tossed around like rag dolls yesterday.
The artificers weren’t so lucky, though.
Command had become quite busy. One half of the large tent had already been filled with communications equipment and strange whirling aetherline devices. In the last two days, the other half had been stacked full of what honestly looked like more of the same.
Though, allegedly, these metal boxes were all different from the other metal boxes.
Hard to believe, I know.
While the artificers and engineers from Umbraedomis were busy tuning their toys, Flik gave us a linguistics—runistics?—lesson on the third stone’s primary rune: syg.
ᛋ
It stood for light or sun.
What the three of these runes together would accomplish she did not know.
Luckily enough for me, I had a brilliant younger sister who loved this kind of stuff and had become close friends with the quirky elven warder responsible for the project.
Rias and Warder Lira were engrossed in their work and didn’t notice me and my retinue of knights looming over them.
Lira had some kind of map in her hands. It had a multitude of lines drawn over it, intersecting each other at weird angles.
She traced her fingers along the paper and called out orders to other artificers plugging cables and wires into their equipment, “Okay, so, cable oed-seventeen needs to be plugged into the back of the aethernet-switch alpha-one, then take the main conduit on the alpha-one switch and connect it to router upsilon-delta.”
“Oed-seventeen connected, ma’am!”
“Alpha-one connected to upsilon-delta.”
Two engineers from behind the stack of equipment called back that Lira’s orders had been fulfilled—somehow they understood the nonsense she was speaking, even being fluent in the techno-babble themselves.
Rias’ head perked up from her station, “Connection to upsilon-delta is showing up. Can we patch in the Tolin connection now?”
Lira nodded and called out another order to the technicians, “Enable the secondary conduit on switch alpha-one.”
“Alpha-one secondary conduit enabled.” came back a response.
Two screens flickered to life above Rias.
One showed our dwarven artificer and journeyman blacksmith, Dörien, sitting in what I recognized to be the Citadel’s retrofitted Commander’s Quarters.
The other showed a strange room with huge shiny metal contraptions in the background and a row of desks manned by elves.
“Signals are looking good,” Rias commented, “How do things look on your end, Dori?”
“Hallo, lil’ tinkerer—or shouldae be callin’ ya’ Princess? Hah!” Dori laughed heartily, her thick accent almost unintelligible over the broadcast, “Ever’thin’ looks fine on ma’ end.”
This technology-laced interchange continued on for entirely too long.
I struggled to follow along.
None of my attendants understood what was going on either. Flik had helped where she could with the meaning of runes but fell flat when it came to the aethernet side of things.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
The other knights were barely above my level of understanding, having been exposed to some devices in their day-to-day serving in the Divisionals.
Abeno led a fairly sheltered life in the Church.
Taryn and Nikolas were too young, having not ever attended a formal academy or private schooling.
Our only hope of understanding what was going on was to either break their concentration and ask, or hope any of the remaining attendants Julius had stuck onto me knew anything.
There was Nashe and Ellis Furia, two archnoble administrative scholars who came with us to Tolin. They were brothers who had originally worked for Adellin, but he happily transferred their responsibilities under me when Julius asked him to provide some ‘desk jockeys’.
And Neya Sestia, a mednoble bookkeeper who’d been caught up in the same shenanigans and ended up in my retinue.
It was a miss on all three of them.
I was about to give up hope when a familiar face entered the command tent—Matriarch Aisling shuffled in with a look of exhaustion.
Beno prepared us some revitalizing tea, spiked with his energy tonic, and I prodded her for answers.
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If I understood Aisling’s explanation well enough, the iọ stone acted as a sort of power source for the other two runestones. The first stone that was set up, oed, connected back to a command center in Umbraedomis. She referred to this one as the command stone. And finally, the syg stone acted as the group’s catalyst for spell encoding.
The command stone would receive the order to fire from our command center and that would set off a chain reaction to the iọ and syg runestones to collect ambient Aether and begin casting the desired spell.
With this system, we could fire Strategic-class spells, complicated magick that required dozens of mages with INTELLIGENCE attributes above eighty-five.
Something not even Rias could assist with yet.
You’d need a party of mages as strong as Annaeus to bring something like that into play, which wasn’t common.
Most magick practitioners would hit their growth limits well before then. No matter how much you train, nothing can break those limits.
Well, that’s unless you’ve been blessed by a Goddess and have undefinable affinities to every attribute.
The command stone was also capable of interfacing with and providing the Aestori ballistae with some form of target locking and aim assistance, like the MARK TARGET ability that Mei’s eagle companion could provide at a small scale.
To summarize everything Aisling tried to impart, the runestones were essentially extremely powerful magick artifacts that increased our combat potential by a massive leap.
My entire ‘bust down the walls to prevent a prolonged siege’ plan was built around how well the army could deploy the ballistae, so I welcomed any increase to their power.
Aisling made a point to stress that with the runestones now online, we could begin our attack by midday—but that seemed awfully quick.
Considering how lacking our intelligence was after the Renaultians stepped up their defense, I wasn’t prepared to blow apart the city’s gate and be swarmed by void-beasts or something equally terrible.
A two-day coma would put a hamper on things.
I called for a war room and within an hour I had all of our commanders or their representatives.
From the Crimson Seekers, I had both Hanna and Luke. They came with the heads of their SI-Martia and SI-Minervia divisions, Knight-Lieutenant Garrett and Knight-Lieutenant Baker.
Julius was here for the Order of the Scarlet Wing.
The Aestori Divisional Cores—all three of them—had their own representatives, but Aisling was there to oversee them all.
And lastly, Hailey was here for the incorporated divisions that now fell under the Imperial Army.
“Alright,” I started, “I’ve brought you all here for this call-to-order to finalize and set our siege plans into action. I’ve gone over and approved Julius and Aisling’s proposals for division assignments. In addition, we’ve decided to go with Luke’s suggestion for using team names over communications.”
Nashe and Ellis distributed a packet of documents to each of the participants.
I continued with my briefing, “Details are enclosed for your divisions, review those later. Outside of any interference or news that could change our plans, we’ll be firing the first volley of ballistae and rune-powered magicka bolts at Axio, tonight—in about ten hours. We’re hoping to disturb the Renaultians regular sleeping and patrol schedules to cause as much chaos as possible.”
I signaled to Flik and she laid out a detailed map of Axio—as we knew it to look months ago—out on the table.
“We will fire at the Maarin district gatehouse and outer towers simultaneously. Once the Scarlet Wing’s forward sentinel teams, Specter-One and Specter-Two, confirm a breach, half of the Assault teams from the Wing and the Aestori Cores will begin to clear a way through the district. Grand-Paladin Vynn will remain here and coordinate with her Minervia teams to keep communications up-to-date between all teams. Any questions on this part?”
I looked around the room but saw only the hardened faces of my friends and allies.
“Great. We want the entire Maarin district under our control by dawn. Grand-Waystrider Devins will lead the Specter teams up into the city walls and begin dismantling any Renaultian gendarmes they encounter. Once an inner tower is cleared, she’ll call Command, and Command will call an Assault team to man the structure.”
I traced out some painted lines and arrows that covered the streets of the city.
They were numbered and colored to coordinate with specific teams that would have those areas fall under their responsibility.
I tapped my finger against a spot where one large tower was indicated, “The Maarin Divisional headquarters was here, within the two great towers that overlooked the industrial and harbor district. Once this location is secured, Knight-Captain Mitchell and the Seeker teams will begin slowly moving supplies into the city and establishing a forward base. The other half of the Assault teams will be on standby and begin to clear the common areas and into the Vanixian district at sunrise. Questions?”
Once again, nobody had anything to add.
I wasn’t sure if that was the cause of my growing nervousness or if it was from something else.
It had been a while since I’d left something important up to a coin toss. Every decision lately had been concerning hundreds—now thousands—of lives. As much as I wanted to just flip a coin and let fate decide my course, I couldn’t bring myself to risk my people’s well-being.
Making these impactful decisions based on logic and guidance from others was something new, and it made me feel uncertain.
I missed when Julius and I could just let any whimsical plan be our course of action.
“Alright then, we’ll end it here and everyone can grab a quick rest before the action starts. Julius, be prepared to hand over command to Hanna before then.”
Julius smirked at me in an annoying way, “I am prepared to step down from my position as commander. In fact, I am already prepared for the worst case scenarios as well.”
I sighed, “I wish you wouldn’t prepare for such things without my permission. It would put me in a difficult situation if you were to encounter something you consider worst case.”