This was the tenth city Dee and Razark had visited in the last three weeks. They were checking the cities west of the great forest of the elves, while another group checked the northern border. Dee had been surprised by the number of different races living close to the forest. Her teacher had been right in the fact that these grasslands were a great place for raising cattle, and several races made obscene amount of money from the sales of that cattle. Many higher ranked communities simply didn’t want to be bothered with raising their own food but still greatly enjoyed meat. Someone had to step in to fill the void created by the demand.

Cattle wasn’t the only interesting thing in this area though. The elven empire was often unwilling to conduct large scale trade with others due to their isolationist politics, but the forest itself was filled to the brim with precious herbs and quality lumber. While other races where unable to get a permanent foothold in the forest, that didn’t mean no one sent gathering parties from the outside. Then there were the kind of cities the two were in now.

The city of Craghold was on the edge of the mountain range that signified the border between the areas controlled by the Autumn court and Winter court. The Sidhe of the Winter court preferred mountains over the forest, so the mountain terrain at the northern side of the forest was a natural territory for them. In fact, many of their cities were in the mountains. The city of Craghold was inhabited mostly by dwarves and gnomes. The area was rich in rare-earths and mana enriched Sulphur. Both materials were very useful in alchemy and in the creation of certain mana-tech equipment. Of course there were also the usual metals that dwarves liked to mine, but those went mostly into their own use.

“Seems like we’ve got another bust on our hands.” Dee commented. “I thought we would’ve run into some trouble by now, but nothing. Not a sign of enemies.”

“You’re jinxing it.” Razark said with a laugh. Not that the two were really worried. Even Dee could deal with a small army by herself even though that wasn’t her specialty, not to even mention Razark. “We’ll have to make another trip through the same cities, but it does seem this first round was a bust. I wonder if the others have found anything on the northern border.”

The two walked near a workshop that had a long practice range set up. There several dwarves were testing weapons Dee had not seen before. She’d heard about firearms, but they were rare and not widely used. Several dwarven warriors were testing the long barreled guns brought out by the apprentices of the workshop. The noise from the weapons was deafening, and puffs of smoke were everywhere.

Razark picked up one of the guns, which brought a slight protest from one of the gnome apprentices. The apprentice was waved down by one of the warriors who noted the power exuded by Razark, and the almost instinctual sense of danger he felt from Dee. Razark studied the gun for a while before presenting it to Dee, who received it with a raised eye-brow.

“Use that quick mind of yours and tell me why weapons like these are not more widely used.” Razark posed a little challenge for her.

Dee allowed her senses to study the minute details of the weapon, before placing it back on the rack where Razark had taken it from. The gun had several enchantments placed on it, and it took Dee a moment to identify them all. “Three main reasons that I can see. First one is the ammunition. The bullets fired are small and thus have very little room for enchantments. Additionally higher ranked archers instill the arrows with ki or mana, eventually shooting arrows purely of either, removing the need for ammunition. An arrow can carry a lot more ki than a bullet, and can more effectively deliver it to a target due to its shape. Unlike an arrow shot from a bow, the bullet will run along the barrel of a gun, dissipating some of the ki and perhaps even destroying the weapon. As a final insult, it’s much easier to transfer ki into an arrow you’re holding, or creating an arrow of ki on a bowstring than running that ki inside the gun.”

“Correct so far. Continue.” Razark nodded.

“The firing mechanism could damage the enchantments on a bullet, once again unlike bow and arrow. Good enchantments would eliminate this danger, but enchanting every bullet like that would be troublesome. The power involved in a high level gun capable of piercing the hide or armor of high level creatures would warp the bullet. The whole system is prone to breaking down with one thing going wrong. That’s not to say there’s no risk with a bow with powerful enchantments, but that risk is much smaller.” Dee listed the second problem.

“Correct, the reliability is worse.” Razark agreed with a nod. “And the last one?”

“The noise and smoke. No chance of taking a stealthy approach. You could theoretically enchant it to make the noise go down, but why bother?” Dee said with a shrug.

Razark laughed. “Of course you would think of that. Those aren’t the only reasons, but good enough. How about the good sides of such weapons?”

“Well, they’re fairly comparable with crossbows really. You could argue the gun has more penetrative power, but that depends on the weapon and range. Speaking of range, the gun probably beats the crossbow in direct fire, but is incapable of indirect fire. Though if that was your plan, crossbow would be shitty too. The noise and smoke could have a psychological effect, and using a gun would require a lot less training than using a proper bow.” Dee guessed. She didn’t have much experience in seeing the guns in action, so this was all guesswork.

“Correct. Dwarves are pretty much the only ones that have adopted guns into wide use, although they often prefer crossbows as well…” Razark was about to say more, but he was interrupted by a wave of magic suddenly covering the city.

This wave of mana brought alarm to pretty much everyone within the city sensitive enough to notice it, and that didn’t require much. Even those without magical abilities could sense the effects of the magic, somehow restricting them.

Razark jumped up on the roof of a nearby building, followed by Dee, and looked towards the teleportation station of the city. The gates had all powered down, and the duo could see that the mages present were unable to establish new portals. “War magic preventing the use of spatial magic and teleportation.” Razark said, recognizing the spell. “Dee, how about your portals?”

Dee tried to form the portal to the Astral Plane without success. “Nothing. The spell is stopping the portal from forming. It’s not a barrier that prevents traveling through it; it’s a blanket suppression field of all portals.”

Razark sighed. “So a high level spatial inhibition spell at that. Someone went through a lot of trouble this time.”

Just as his words finished, the two could feel the ground start shaking a little, even through the building they were standing on. They jumped along the roofs until they reached the sturdy city walls, where they looked towards west. At first they only felt the ground shaking, which was slowly becoming more and more noticeable. Then they saw a large cloud of dust being kicked up by an approaching army. A large army. Finally they started to hear the beat of hide drums and the chant-like singing of thousands upon thousands of voices.

Dee took a look at the approaching force with her Mindscape. She could see millions of approaching lights with a simple glance, many of those lights being bright enough to signify powerful minds. They also had multiple times that number of animal following them. “We’ve got millions of enemies on approach. Some really strong ones as well.” She reported.

“Millions? Are you certain?” Razark asked with sudden seriousness.

“Very.” Dee replied simply.

As the host of enemies approached, the two could start to differentiate the forms of the approaching beings. Centaurs ranging from a size bit taller than humans to large gigantic ones that reach the height of a dozen mels. Some were armed simply with bows and light armor, while some carried full plate armor and barding covering the horse portion of their bodies. Both male and female centaurs were armed to the teeth. Behind the army came an endless sea of cattle which formed the logistics of the approaching army. The all cavalry force of centaurs brought their own food with them.

The centaurs were all singing a weird throat-singing chant as if performing some ritual. “They’re announcing their approach!” Dee suddenly realized. There was no sneaking around for this host of warriors.

“That’s the pride of the tribes of Centaurum.” Razark replied simply.

“Centaurum?” Dee asked, noticing the strange name.

“That’s the name of the federation of centaur tribes of the plains. They usually don’t gather together to create warhosts larger than a few hundred thousand centaurs. They often raid the surrounding cities and communities with quick attacks before the Autumn court can respond. This is something more. This seems like a full tribe lead by a khan. And if there’s a full tribe here…” Razark guessed.

“The other cities?” Dee guessed.

“Most likely under a similar attack. If this was just a raid they wouldn’t bother shutting the portals or sending a host this large. The other tribes. It seems the whole of Centaurum is on the move.” Razark confirmed. His eyes narrowed as he noticed the centaurs had already spread before and were now approaching from all sides. The west side was simply the direction the main host was coming from. Warbands of thousands of centaurs were coming even from the direction of the forest. Just because the Centaurum had pride, that didn’t mean the centaurs were stupid enough to let anyone escape.

“What now?” Dee asked. She was itching for a fight, but a millions strong warhost was a bit much.

“That depends on what they have in mind. Are they here just to demand tribute, or are they here to lay siege? The dwarves make pretty strong forts around their cities and I don’t see much in the way of siege equipment. Of course a mobile host like this wouldn’t lug such things around. They must have mages, but how good those mages are at siege warfare is a mystery. The Centaurum has fought several wars with its neighbors in the past, but they usually don’t take land.” Razark thought out loud.

“There must be at least a quarter of a million dwarves and gnomes in the city. Only part of them are soldiers, but they have the defenders advantage they can all hold one of those guns we saw earlier. Besides, centaurs aren’t exactly ideal for this sort of thing. They make for great cavalry, but there’s a reason cavalry is rarely effective in sieges.” Dee pointed out.

“The city will run out of supplies at some point.” Razark pointed out. “Let’s wait and see for now. We’ll help with the defense if things get too difficult. We should try to get a word back to headquarters though.” Razark tried using a communications item, but found that magic blocked as well. “Well, we’ll need an idea on their capabilities anyway.”

It took several hours for the centaur warhost to completely encircle the city. Dee and Razark had expected either a swift assault or a negotiation of surrender, but neither of those happened. Instead the centaur mages drew magical arrays on the ground and started to perform some sort of shamanistic ritual magic. “Can you recognize those spells?” Razark asked. “I’m not really familiar with ritual magic.”

“I think they’re trying to summon something.” Dee said while squinting at the spell formations. The range made more specific identification difficult, and these spells were new to her as well.

“Oh crap. You need to get out of here.” Razark suddenly said, realizing the plan of the centaurs.

“What?” Dee asked in shock.

“They will be using elementals to assault the city. Judging by the size of the rituals, they’re planning on using big ones too. I’m going to write a report that you will need to deliver to the headquarters. I’ll stay and help with the defense of the city, while you sneak past them. With your skill at stealth that shouldn’t be impossible despite the precautions they seem to be taking.” Razark explained his plan.

“Couldn’t you just…” Dee waved her hand suggestively towards the enemy army.

“Theoretically. That depends on how many strong individuals they brought along. Even with my power I can’t just wave my hand at them to make them disappear. An army like that most likely has ways to pool their powers together for joint attacks. With that many enemies even I’d be hard pressed to deal with them by myself. I’m pretty sure I can keep them out of the city for a while though. And if things take a really dim turn, then I’ll try attacking them directly. That’ll most likely wipe out the whole damn city in the crossfire though.” Razark explained. This was one of the reasons the Blades had such a large number of deaths on their conscience. In situations where they had to use their full powers everything in the surroundings wound up destroyed.

Dee had never seen an immortal in in full battle so she wasn’t entirely clear on their capabilities. Even during the events at the rift, Alexandra had barely qualified as an immortal and she had been busy fighting the enemy leader. That said, Dee was aware that real armies could join their powers together like the paladins used Aegis. Enough paladins powering the Aegis and even an immortal would find it difficult to break it. The centaurs should have their own ways. One of which they were displaying right now. Most of the warriors were lending their voices to join in on the rituals of the shamans. The weird chanting wasn’t just for show.

The rituals outside the city finished and large number of elementals came into being. Most were earth elementals that the centaurs planned to use against the walls of the city. There were also some high ranking fire elementals in the form of huge magma giants that were meant as a counter measure against high ranking defenders, like Dee. What made her frown though was the fact that a few of the rituals released a large number of lower ranked storm elementals that immediately spread around to close the airspace around the city. She wasn’t going to leave the city by flying with the storm elementals in the air. There were also several plant looking elementals that scattered around the camp and disappeared from sight.

“That might be a problem.” She mumbled. She wasn’t sure about the purpose of those plants, but she could guess they were a warning system of sorts.

Razark decided that now would be a good time to retaliate and large orbs of dark energy were shot at the larger elementals around the city. When the orbs hit the elementals, it was as if the elementals imploded, as all their elements that they were built from squeezed into a small space and just vanished. “That was new.” Dee commented.

“I have my own tricks.” Razark said with a grin. “Now give me a second to draft the report for the headquarters.

Razark’s words were punctuated by the sounds of the dwarven war machines firing on the remaining elementals. Ballistae, mangonels, cannons and trebuchets launched their deadly projectiles at the chosen targets. Say what you will about dwarves, but they made great war machines and all of them were heavily enchanted. The elementals didn’t make it even close to the walls, although some of the storm elementals threw small bolts of lightning at the defenders on the ramparts.

The centaurs were unfazed and continued their rituals. They would not commit to an assault without breaches in the walls. Hooves and the large frames of the centaurs were pretty bad for fighting on walls, so they didn’t even try. Instead they increased the numbers on each wave of elementals before they were sent towards the walls. The higher ranked mages and warriors of the dwarves and gnomes had to start taking part in defeating the elementals. The battle became one of attrition. The ritual magic of the centaurs was very efficient and they had much larger numbers, so it was only a matter of time before the defenders would start making mistakes out of tiredness. And that would be when the attacking mages would pounce.

The fighting carried on the whole day, with Razark and Dee taking part every now and then when the fighting got really heavy. When the darkness of the night fell, the attacks showed no sign of stopping, but the darkness was good cover for Dee as she slipped over the wall and towards the enemy camp. She transformed herself into as small of a version of her kitsune form as possible, and disappeared among the tents of the centaurs.

This was one of those times where her aura was only somewhat effective, same as the time she had slipped into the elven warcamp. All the enemies were of one race, and were alert. That said, she had plenty of places to hide, and her own control over the shadows to supplement her progress. The centaurs had created several active detection spells on their camp. Most of detection spells searched for mana or ki, so those would not be a problem for her. Active detection spells were a little different. They created waves of invisible mana that passed around the camp and would alert the centaurs if the mana came into contact with anything that wasn’t one of them. Avoiding those spells took a lot of time and effort on Dee’s part, so her progress was slow.

Finally she arrived at the other side of the camp and was almost ready to relax. She didn’t of course, as she wasn’t that careless, but that unfortunately didn’t help in this case. As she passed the final tents, a shrill cry of alarm suddenly went off close by. It only took a moment for Dee to realize what had happened. The plant elementals that had left the camp earlier had spread their roots into the area surrounding the camp, where centaurs knew better than to enter. Those roots felt for the slightest presences touching the designated ground, and felt even the softest of touches from Dee’s tiny paws. She could’ve avoided this if she had even considered the possibility, and she even knew the plant elementals were a trap of some sort. She just didn’t know what kind. And this had not been one of the possibilities she had considered. She had assumed they were detecting for presences, and hers was hidden by the Authority. That was the most logical use for plant elementals, where earth elementals should’ve been better for this job. The bloody centaurs had tricked her!

The alarm of course brought the attention of the centaurs and the nearby storm elementals. Now that Dee had been spotted, they had little trouble locating her, especially the elementals. Dee also felt several spells locking on to her. She cursed while enlarging herself to a size more suited for running, and cast several protective and buffing spells on herself, mainly focused on speed and countering the incoming spells. Then she blasted a large number of psionic weapons straight at the closest group of pursuers and bolted into the darkness.

She could feel that some of the spells were cast with the intention of tracking her. Her protections stopped the hostile spells that might have caused some actual damage, but she didn’t have the time to counter the tracking spells. “Well, this just turned into a chase.” She cursed with a soft voice.