Arthur landed on the clifftop the other griffon riders landing around him. In total he had raised ten-thousand griffon knights. To the west a glinting light could be seen on the horizon as thousands of knights marched together. The location of the Warlord was known he had been preparing for them for several weeks now and fortified his position.
A snow-white griffon landed on the cliff beside him carrying princess Helen. She wore bright scale-armor another griffon landed, and prince Atrel dismounted extending his hand and helping Helen down. Her armor couldn’t hide the bulge of her late pregnancy.
“My lady,” Arthur said bowing his head.
“Prince Arthur,” Helen said giving a slight curtsey. “My condolences for your father’s death.”
“Thank you,” Arthur said. “He will soon be avenged.”
“I will gladly help you strike down the Warlord,” Atrel said. “He killed my father too.”
“It was not Mordred who killed my father,” Arthur said. “But yes he will pay for his part in it. I have two million strong behind me what forces has your mother given you?”
“Not so many,” Helen admitted. “She is worried of attacks on our other borders if she commits so heavily but I have a hundred-thousand knights at my command with their squires and footmen.”
“Prince Bundren of Antolia is sailing upriver with a force equal to that,” Arthur said. “Mordred is a great warrior, but I have yet to see any tactical brilliance from him, he does seem adequate but if the Warlords of the past are any judge it wouldn’t matter if he were Ares himself. Like a boulder in a stream, we’ll carrying him away like flash flood.”
“I have underestimated him in the past,” Helen said.
“As have I,” Arthur admitted. “But I’m not holding anything back this time. We have prepared just for him by this time next month I will have his life blood spilled across the ground.”
---
Vone dismounted her horse and looked at the distant fortress. Its black towers and walls reminded her of films from her world, but they had been changed and adapted to also incorporate the fortification sensibilities of this world as well. She was uncertain why she was here or what she would do but her goddess had instructed her to go and so she had. She wasn’t the only champion either, not everyone had come with an army like princess Helen but champions from across the continent had been arriving in the camp daily.
This of course led to the constant attacks of monsters, but the sheer size of their army let them rotate fresh soldiers to defend against them so that it wasn’t even a problem and only served to grow their overall strength. There were at least a hundred champions in the army, she had stopped keeping track after a while; they hadn’t pledged their allegiance to Arthur, but they had all banded together for one task, kill the Warlord.
This had seemed like such an easy goal at first, but it wasn’t just his power that conflicted Vone. She had learned to push aside her fear of death, but he wasn’t a faceless villain anymore. She had met and spoken with him and knew why he did what he did. Her mind flashed back to the memory of walking through the streets of Camelot and the hundreds of thousands of dead and dying she had seen. That was why she had come, regardless of why he had done that the deaths of so many innocents were still on his hands.
Just cause someone was made a monster didn’t make them any less of monster.
She walked through the camp to the section that had been set aside for the highest ranking soldiers and the champions.
She had seen the world seemed to be primarily dominated by humans or at least very similar to human humanoids so the diverse range of races in the champions was a sight to behold. Elf like people with starlight skin or multiple armed humanoids covered in fur or scales. It was a bizarre sight but it filled her with that same bit of wonder she had when she first stepped into the world.
She took a seat as the champions gathered together to discuss the upcoming attack.
Arthur stood atop a stone platform as he looked over the other champions who had joined with him for this attack.
“Who here has fought the Warlord before?” he asked.
Vone couldn’t see a single person who hadn’t raised their hand.
“Then you know exactly what kind of threat we are facing,” Arthur said. “We will not be blinded by hubris; we shall construct our plans with the possibility always in our mind that Mordred can beat us. He is unpredictable, he may stay in his fortress, or he may come out with his army or face us alone.”
“You think he would be foolish enough to do that?” someone in the crowd asked.
Lancelot stepped forwards Helen gasped as she saw him. His movements were somewhat awkward as the living wood that had been grafted into his body made up the prosthetics that let him walk and swing his sword. He had yet to adjust to using them and Mira held his arm. They had married a week before after Arthur had married Guinevere’s younger sister.
Everyone looked away when they saw Lancelot, his appearance making them feel self-conscious. Even Vone had to admit she felt a shiver whenever she saw what had happened to him wounds that couldn’t be easily just erased with magic were rare and to see someone who had been robbed of their limbs. It put fear they didn’t want to admit they still felt in their cores.
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Lancelot spoke. “If the Warlord faces you head on directly it is because he thinks he can beat you,” he said, and his voice sounded rough as if he had breathed in a lungful of smoke a moment before. “And if he thinks that, he most likely can. None of you will like what I am about to say but it need to be said.”
Mordred is stronger than you; if you think you can take him, you will die. Arthur is one of the strongest fighters I have ever known, and Mordred beat him one on one in a match that heavily favored Arthur. You can try to self deceive yourself, you can say he used tricks and deception to win. All of this is true but the important thing is that he WON, and if you think he’s out of those tricks you will die like Sir Kay or Jamis.”
Helen and Mira both flinched and they weren’t the only ones as Lancelot reminded them all of the champions that Mordred had already killed.
“So, what are you saying?” a man from the crowd challenged Lancelot. “That we turn tail and run?”
“No,” Arthur said taking control of the conversation once more. “We are here not to win for our own sakes, when the Warlord is dead, I have no doubt we will go back to fighting amongst ourselves again. We are not here to win the game of the gods but to keep the Warlord from winning it. I am willing to die if it means he loses, if you aren’t willing to make that same sacrifice now is the time to leave.”
Not a soul left.
“Good, I am glad to stand beside you,” Arthur said. “Now let us plan for how to take that fortress from the Warlord and handle his army.”
Helen pulled out a stone spearhead and placed it on a table in front of the stone platform.
“This is a weapon made by the Warlord it will be the same type of material used to construct the fortress walls, its not indestructible but no siege weapon we can make is going to take down those walls.”
“That’s not necessarily true,” a dwarf said standing up he wore heavy plate armor made of carved stone and his beard went down to his waist. “I am the champion of Milgar, god of Fortifications and Stability. I can strengthen the durability and hardness of any building with my divine ability. I can’t outright destroy those walls, but I can turn them brittle, they’ll still be just as hard but they’ll be so brittle that if you hit them with a hard enough attack they’ll shatter.”
“How close do you need to be to do that?” someone from the crowd asked.
“Direct contact,” the dwarf admitted.
“The chasm blocking the way will stop you then,” Helen said. “Do we have anyway of closing the chasm or filling it up?”
“That’s a lot of empty space to fill up,” Arther said. “I don’t want to put the lives of my army in the hands of some bridge we create with some ability.”
“We don’t need to fill the chasm with our own ability,” a woman from the crowd said stepping forward she had light blue skin her body long and angular with elf like feature. “I am the champion of Zima goddess of Winter and Snow if you could fill the chasm with water, I could freeze it solid letting us cross.”
“Do we have a way to fill it with water?” Arthur asked.
“I have an ability to shift earth,” the dwarf said. “I could cut a channel to a river or lake bring in water from there.”
“There is the Javaren river a league from here,” Helen said. “It’s a fast-flowing deep river, plenty of water to draw from.”
Arthur nodded. “We can work with that; I’ll give you whatever soldiers I have in my army with other earth abilities for you to start on the channel. In the meantime, I and my griffon knights will keep them occupied so they don’t see what’s coming before its too late.”
“What about divine assistance?” Mira asked. “I haven’t asked my god but we could get assistance from…”
Arthur shook his head. “I’ve already asked, the System has locked out any divine interference, all our deities used up a lot of their leeway with the world bosses they sent against the Warlord, the System has decided since there are so many champions here this already counts as divine intervention. We won’t get any help from our gods this is a war that will be decided by mortals.”
That sobered everyone for a moment, but they nodded and accepted that they were all the help the gods were going to offer. They continued to make and discuss various plans and contingencies discussing the various abilities they could use and leverage to pry the Warlord out of his fortified shell.
---
“Should we go out and attack them?” Jeriah asked me.
I opened my eyes. I had just finished going through all my rank ups for my ability I’d gained from killing Kay.
Phalanx Commander (Rank 20): You are the leader of armies able to organize your troops into unbreakable ranks. While in a coordinated formation, allies within 1000ft of you your vassals deal Severe bonus damage with all attacks. Damage is spread out over the Formation, when one of your troops takes damage the troops next to him take damage but reduce the stage of damage by one; the higher the damage stage the more the damage is spread out reducing it to minor damage across a radius of seven troops.
While in a formation troops are able to instantaneously teleport to take the place of another allied member of the same formation.
Troops in your formation have a spectral increase to the reach of their range that can be toggled at will increasing the reach by up to 10 feet.
Movement speed of troops in this formation is tripled.
Max Rank Bonus: The marching speed of your troops can be synced up to adjacent formations allowing them to also move at x3 speed when not in combat.
Rank up this ability to increase the bonus damage it grants and the range of its effect. Each rank up increases your Mind by 1.
Cost:
45 mana per second while active
Casting Time:
Instantaneous
While not useful to me it would help my vassals in the battle. I hadn’t wanted some of the upgrades but Ares had convinced me to take them in place of ones that would have just benefited me. I turned my thoughts to what Jeriah had just asked me.
“No,” I said. “I’ve done that before Arthur will be prepared for it this time. But I will show him an old trick I’ve been working on.”
I removed a boulder from my storage pouch it was only a yard across but weighed over nine hundred pounds. I launched it with my telekinesis, there camp was out of range of my ability but I was able to launch and angle the projectile so it would crash into the middle of their camp.
The boulder spun through the air before bouncing off a translucent dome. I smiled when I saw it, Arthur had remembered that trick from the Event. Which of course was why I had another plan, if I couldn’t strike them from above, I’d hit them from below.