Claiming undisputed rule of Stromgarde had gone off without a hitch. With his father and all of the older, close-minded generation of nobility removed, the Horde-ravaged kingdom could now rise to greater heights. Galen only slightly regretted the culling, even of his own family. But it was necessary, and the new king had to admit some satisfaction at resolving his resentment.
Mal’Ganis and Detheroc were right; it was because of so many unimaginative minds that held the kingdom from seizing its full potential. ‘Demonic’ and forbidden knowledge were not as damning as the tales lied. All that was needed was a wise mentor like Mal’Ganis to help Galen understand what spells and rites were currently beyond him, and provide the means of surpassing those limits.
As befitting such potent power, great sacrifices were needed, usually in the price of blood. It was a price Galen had already paid for, using his own blood to awaken and bind with a powerful blade that could cut through stone and metal, and drain its victims life to mend Galen’s own. His enlightened court and lackeys would be given such gifts as well, when the time was right.
Wise Mal’Ganis was right that the rest of the world was not ready to accept such knowledge, not yet. So most of Galen and his followers’ studies were done in the safety of the palace dungeons, well away from prying eyes, and conveniently in reach of prisoners to tap precious blood to fuel their secret rites. For the time being, the young court of Stromgarde granted themselves subtler enhancements: healthier and stronger bodies, keener senses, sharper reflexes. It came at the minor price of a hunger for raw meat and fresh, particular blood, but Galen and his court had become inured to supposedly gory sights after forging their wills during the culling of the upper nobility.
Those servants and guards that remained loyal to the new regime were given lesser versions of the boon (good help had to be rewarded after all), ensuring that the entirety of the Royal Quarter of Stromgarde City would be fully devoted to Galen. It sounded like a great strain on their secret resources, but thanks to Galen’s foresight and Mal’Ganis’ advice, there were just enough bloodtaps kept in the dungeons and other convenient locations to ensure everyone could sate their hunger.
Blood had to be rationed carefully and strictly; there were only so many merchants and travelers from Lordaeron, Khaz Modan and even Quel’Thalas that were being cultivated, and Galen was not such a despot that he’d feed on his own loyal subjects.
Now, if there were disloyal ones to be found though…
A shame that they’d had to conscript most of the criminals into penal companies, but the kingdom’s scum serving on the battlefield was arguably more worthwhile than serving as bloodtaps. The time for Galen to fully reveal his kingdom’s might was quickly drawing near.
The nearby troll tribes were contained for now, and could be destroyed at Galen’s leisure. Nobody in his court even considered those savages as valid blood harvests.
Lordaeron was quickly becoming a weakened thing with its plague and orcs.
Khaz Modan, while traditionally stout allies, would be easily held back at the Thandol Span if they decide to be unreasonable, thanks to the diligent preparations of Galen’s agents.
Mal’Ganis had assured him that Genn was in the final stages of his own preparation, and the seas would be secured.
The dwarves of Aerie Peak were a minor nuisance at best.
Quel’Thalas was dealing with its own internal matters.
Stormwind was too far away to be of any significance.
And Alterac, for all of its upstart king’s supposed brilliance and power, was content to hide in its mountains instead of being provoked into doing anything. A bit of a shame, since it meant Galen didn’t get the chance to gain prisoners to feed his court, but at the same time Kyle’s passiveness allowed Galen to skip a few steps to advance his schemes.
Now, with Mal’Ganis revealing himself to inspire and reassure the court of Stromgarde, all Galen had to do was wait for the right time. His armies stood at the ready, awaiting a culling of their own in combat to prove who deserved to ascend alongside their betters in governing a new Alliance. The populace was kept obliviously content, happy enough with the lifting of taxes and duties to accept the changes in governing. The few bands of orcs, trolls or gnolls still remaining in the kingdom were hunted for sport and practice.
There was little else for Galen to do but to further expand on his enlightenment and refine his plans.
It wasn’t exactly boring, but Galen had to admit he’d preferred if something more exciting occurred.
His wish was fulfilled one night, as palace guards ran into the dungeon to bring urgent news. Leaving his tome and exsanguinated prisoner with haste, Galen followed his guards out to the palace’s main entrance, and stared up into the patch of night sky where his guards pointed at. It took a hard look for him or any of his gathering court to pick out exactly what they were seeing.
High up in the heavens, betrayed by starlight and dim clouds, small, round shadows seemed to float right above them. The silhouettes were of some size and incredibly high up, judging by how small they appeared and how they blotted out the stars. There were pinpricks of light attached to them that could be mistaken for stars by themselves.
Knowing better than to gawk at the phenomena, Galen brought his gaze groundwards to command his followers. “Rouse all the guards. We-”
“Hello there.”
A voice, younger than Galen’s, drew everyone’s attention towards the steps leading up to the palace. The intruder had appeared out of nowhere, a boy just a few years younger than Galen. He was clad in gold plate studded with blue gems, with only a golden staff. With palace guards behind him mere steps down staring up in stunned surprise, he smirked at the king of Stromgarde and his retinue as he slowly climbed up towards them.
The boy gave a shallow bow. “King Galen Trollbane, I presume?”
“King Kyle Daelam,” Galen spat through blood-stained teeth. With what must be a magical teleportation, it couldn’t be anyone else. Yet…how have the wards not detected his arrival? Mal’Ganis had assured him that the blood-etched runes would detect and interfere with any magic attempting to infiltrate the city…
With the trespasser identified, the guards swiftly moved in to surround Kyle, while loyal courtiers put themselves between him and their king.
“To what do I owe the sudden visit?”
The mage-king of Alterac quickly switched to a harsh glare. “I’ve come to accuse you, king of Stromgarde, and your court, of consorting with demons. How do you plead?”
Silence drifted past for several seconds as everyone simply stared at the boy’s audacity. Then Galen finally scoffed with disdain at his supposed peer. “A bit hypocritical, coming from you, mage-king.”
“It’s only so because of your poor education to know the distinction,” Kyle evenly replied. “We might be able to correct that later. But first, how do you plead, King Galen?”
Anger took hold of Galen as he drew his blade and stomped towards the king of Alterac. “What gives you the right to appear here and make demands from me? Just because you scammed age-addled kings into accepting you does not make you my equal.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“It doesn’t,” Kyle agreed with a curt nod, and then repeated, “how do you plead on charges of consorting to demons?”
Unwilling to permit such impudence any further, Galen lifted his blade and aimed it squarely at the insolent intruder, willing its etched runes to glow a baleful red. “I’ve had enough of you. Let’s see how your arcane tricks fare against greater powers, mage-king.”
The sternness on Kyle’s face softened into infuriating amusement. “Is that an admission of guilt?”
“Blinkered fool,” Galen growled, and then gestured with his sword. “Seize him. The man who captures this upstart gets to keep him as a personal bloodtap. The man who kills him will be awarded a bloodtap from the dungeons.”
As the nobles around him turned their greedy gazes at the surrounded young king, and the guards began to grin with equal hunger as they brandished their weapons, Galen felt annoyed that Kyle’s irritating smirk did not waver. Instead, he simply glanced aside to address empty space.
“You got that?”
“Clearly,” came another voice, and a cowled man in rich blue robes materialized out of thin air. “No disruptions in the transmission. I’m sure King Terenas, King Magni, King Varian, and the Council of Six have heard all of that loud and clear.”
The court of Stromgarde froze for a moment, dumbstruck at what had just happened.
“Seize them both!” Galen roared, and fast as serpents his guards struck. Spears and poleaxes stabbed and chopped into Kyle, but the mage-king burst into a spray of ethereal fog as the weapons effortlessly went through him. Similarly, guards who charged the blue-robed man stumbled and tripped as they ran straight past his mirage.
“What-”
Kyle’s chuckle sounded from all around them, and Galen’s growl joined the surprised gasps of his men as multiple mage-kings appeared in their midst. He struck out at the nearest figure, roaring with outrage as his sword cleaved through glowing mist.
“To the king of Stromgarde, as well as his court and accomplices. You’ve damned yourselves by consorting with demons.”
More illusions were banished as the guards and nobles sought to find the real intruder, but Kyle’s judgment still came from all directions.
“To prevent further corruption of this storied kingdom, I, Kyle Daelam, king of Alterac, hereby declare a purge of the royal court of Stromgarde.”
It was only when the last word of the proclamation was given that all the remaining duplicates of Kyle decomposed to mist, leaving Galen and his court enraged.
“Send word to our armies!” the king of Stromgarde snarled as he spun about to rally his people. “Alterac has dared declare war on us! We wi-”
The palace grounds lit up as swirls of blue-white light shimmered into existence all around them. Galen barely had time to compose himself when the lights faded and massive shapes replaced them.
For a split second, he processed the spider-like…things that loomed over him and his court, and saw how their golden carapace glinted under the star and torchlight. They were bigger than a carriage, made of four bulbous legs and a dome-like body. There was no discernible head anywhere on, under or between their four legs, yet by the way they shifted, Galen knew the monsters had their sights fixed on the stupefied people before them.
Galen’s enhanced mind perceived all of that in a split second. It took the rest of that second for him to stare in horror as the upper carapace of the monsters’ body split open, and a blinding light bloomed from within. And then the incandescent balls of light were flung out, and then the screaming started.
*****
Vasyrgos let out a low whistle as he watched the carnage unfold. Kyle had conjured about two dozen of his golden walkers from out of nowhere to stand among the corrupted Stromgardians, and the first volleys from the constructs had simply erased their targets into bright ash before they could scream.
From Kyle’s rather novel scrying portal, set into a massive golden frame hung on a wall, the dragon disguised as a court mage drank in the details of the slaughter. Despite the current time, the portal’s arcane filter allowed Vasyrgos and the other more human spectators to pick out the details with clarity, and the sound that came through was as crisp as any archmage’s message spell. It made the spectacle all the more brutal to watch.
The balls of light spat out by the spider constructs were lethally accurate, engulfing panicked men and women and turning them into piles of ash with one hit. Some bothered to move their legs, crumpling men into limp heaps with solid kicks or just simply stamping on them into a bloody paste.
A good number of Galen’s guards rallied, credit to them, but for all their ferocity their resistance was predictably useless. Spears snapped against an invisible wall that strobed blue on impact well before they could make contact with the constructs’ golden plates. A few nobles revealed their true nature by conjuring and hurling Fel fire, which washed harmlessly against the same barrier to better define the invisible bubble protecting each walker.
Some men tried to flee into the palace, while guards came pouring out of it. Kyle’s constructs ignored them in favor of disintegrating the targets closest to them with cold efficiency. A boulder wreathed in green fire slammed into one spider-construct, exploding with enough force to incinerate the corrupted humans around it and actually causing the thing to stumble. That brief victory was quickly countered as the other constructs focused several bolts on the caster, leaving not even ash when the blinding lights faded.
“By the Light…” Terenas muttered, watching the carnage through a relay scrying portal Vasyrgos and Pelton created for the occasion. Beside him, the venerated archbishop Alonsus Faol had his eyes wide, but was otherwise grimly silent.
“It’s about what they deserve,” Magni said through another portal. “Better to get it done with quickly.”
From another scrying portal, the shadowed figures that made up the Kirin Tor’s Council of Six watched with quiet interest, no doubt trying to discern the nature of the constructs. Vasyrgos wished them good luck, he’d learned early on not to waste any time bothering too hard over anything related to Kyle’s psionics.
The sudden blinding assault eventually petered to a stop, leaving precious few survivors cowering on the ground, while the majority of the Stromgardians had fled into the palace. Ignoring that fact, the constructs began to move away from the grand structure, to head down into the Royal Quarter where a the view panned to reveal blooms of blinding light bursting all throughout the area as Kyle purged it of Fel-corrupted souls. What looked like flying golden daggers swept down from the night sky, sparking light to bathe the streets with detonations.
“Is this truly necessary?” Jaina asked from just behind Vasyrgos.
“It is justified…” Pelton reassured her. “It might be callous, but it is far more preferable than sending in and risking our own people in purging the whole quarter.”
Vasyrgos gave a silent nod at that. As his own dragonflight had learned in Northrend, trying to root out enemies in closed spaces was a tricky thing. If they had access to Kyle’s summoned constructs, perhaps things might’ve gone a lot smoother.
With the palace grounds left an ash-ridden mess, Kyle finally appeared in the flesh, walking towards the cowering figure of Galen Trollbane, pointing his golden staff at the stunned king of Stromgarde.
“Surrender.”
Around Kyle, swirls of light appeared again, and this time in their wake were a whole mob of spherical ‘probe’ constructs, no less than sixty of them by Vasyrgos’ estimates. Most of the probes swarmed into the palace, breaking through the door or windows and caused another round of panicked screaming to emanate from it. A few remained outside, flitting from one suitably cowed and whimpering noble to another.
Galen clearly was taking in the sights and sounds of what was happening around him before he finally turned to Kyle. “I will kill you,” he declared with potent hate as he rose up, bringing his curses blade up in a guard. “You’ll rue the-”
Kyle simply dashed forwards, his psionics boosting his movements to the point that it looked like he teleported towards Galen. In a flash, the golden staff had transmuted into a thicker shaft of a polearm. A blade of blue-white psionic light shone out of one end, pointed downward.
Galen’s severed hand hit the ground still clutching the sword, the glow of its runes fading. It took him a couple of seconds to register that fact before he fell to his knees and began screaming in pain.
“Surrender,” Kyle demanded again, this time aiming the flickering psionic blade at his agonized peer’s face.
In the background, a few figures crashed through the windows of the palace’s upper levels, their bodies host to bloody craters. Probes flew out after them, arcing lighting from their soulless irises to carve away even more chunks of flesh even before they landed.
Galen glanced at the gruesome treatment, and then seemed ready to concede to Kyle. But…
“Kyle!” both Vasyrgos and Pelton warned as they perceived a spike in dark magic.
The mage-king didn’t have time to act as something took over Galen and forced the crippled king face-first into Kyle’s blade, bisecting his head. The presence vanished immediately after that, and Vasyrgos tasted the smug satisfaction from the Fel energies lingering in Galen’s corpse.
Caught by the same surprise that hit every spectator at the sudden forced suicide, Kyle stared at the mutilated body for a moment, and then let out a trembling sigh.
“Valoghan.”
“Your highness?”
“We’ll have need of more prisoners after all. Prepare to send in the task force.”
A trio of probes zipped towards Galen’s body as if to guard it, then the mage-king turned and began stalking towards the palace.