Chapter 066: Desertion

The most troublesome part was actually getting our hands on Captain Fabulous. I was now almost officially a commander of nearly a hundred of soldiers and adventurers that came from Ambryxis. I had divine authority as a Chosen One. Layla and four other witch-hunters decided to be loyal to me.

And while they followed me, they were still at least partially loyal to Ambryxis. They were supposed to doubt me. I wanted to talk to Captain Fabulous alone, and that was troublesome. Layla seemed to have some sort of personal attachment to Deviation (I don’t want to dig into that), and that pushed her slightly towards me, but the rest…

These idiots actually wanted to ‘interrogate’ our prisoner to find out details about the imperial involvement in this mess! 33% genuine religious zealotry, 33% hope that the Ambryxis would reward them (with money and influence, of course), 33% idiocy. Ugh. We wasted half of the day on this bullshit. Half of the day during which we lost about 40% of the district (The Hand of Freedom was pissed off by the kidnapping).

What’s worse, enemy forces (including most of the White Guard) stormed the temple of Vanvyra. The one where the local guardian deity resided. While deities like that were explicitly forbidden to fight openly in battles like that (Gods dislike messing religion with politics like that), the aura he spread over city still helped us a lot.

Aura that was going to be unmade the second the temple falls. That particular rule was constant for all history and well-known by everyone. A deity could fight openly only against supernatural threats, but since the Hand daemons (if they even had any summoned) steered clear of the city, Vanvyra had his hands tied. I doubt we’ll be able to hold for more than a day after the temple falls, as this sweet buff to mana, lifeforce and stamina regeneration (a freaking 300% buff) was going to disappear.

When that happens, they will just tire us with prolonged combat, forcing us to spend our mana and stamina, and then send reinforcements to push through. They had numerical superiority after all.

Even that idiot tribune understood that, so the fighting at the temple was fierce. He even sent the witch-hunters into combat. Officially they were as apolitical as guardian deities, but as they were mortals this rule wasn’t equal to physical law.

They managed to push the White Guard back. Half of them died or suffered serious wounds. Tomorrow morning the Cult will storm the temple again. By the evening they will clear the remaining holdouts in the city centre, and then wipe out the rest, attacking us from every direction at once.

Let’s hope it isn’t too late.

***

“So, a commander finally shows himself.” Captain Fabulous didn’t seem to be inconvenienced by being kidnapped. Not even in the slightest.

He sat on the rather simple chair in the badly lit room. In the basement. Witch-hunters at their finest. Despite this, he still looked absolutely dashing. Ugh.

“Yes, yes.” I answered. Syna and Leria entered after me. They were required in my plan to persuade him to help us. I sat on the opposite side of the table, right in front of him.

The plan to use him as a hostage - that I presented to the others - was terrible to begin with. It was bound to backfire terribly. Besides, how far could we potentially escape? Even with him as our hostage, they were probably going to let us go only so far.

Sooner or later they were going to try to get him out - worse case scenario they would just send one of the Crows, if they had them in their group, and I doubted we were good enough to stop him.

And then they would turn us all into a mincemeat. We had to make a deal with the Hand. But, of course, no servant of Ambryxis could be persuaded to do something so… heretical. So it had to be between the two of us.

“Before we start this… interrogation.” I said. “Let me inform you that as far as I know, not a single one of your bodyguards and soldiers died when we were kidnapping you. We might have ruptured some eardrums with the stunning part, but other than that they should be fine.”

He looked at me weirdly.

“Judging from the fact that the people guarding me and the witch-hunter that paid me a friendly visit said something completely different… and from the fact that you don’t look like witch-hunters… I presume that you want something from me. You have my utmost attention, I assure you.”

Despite the weird look, he was calm. Completely calm. Ugh. Looks like someone is good at playing poker. We could kill him if we wanted, and despite this… he acted like he was having a friendly conversation in a tavern.

He did eye Syna with a tint of curiosity. he must’ve recognized her armour as one of the 101st Infantry Division.

“Well, I’ll be frank. We want to get out of Vanvyra and have free passage to Ambryxis.” No reaction. “Almost a hundred soldiers and adventurers. We have provisions and winter clothing prepared, so all we need is a way out of the city and a promise that the cult warriors standing outside of it won’t fight us.”

While the forces loyal to the tribune still held most of the gates, the territory outside was packed to the brim with cult forces. Mostly former slaves, still busy drilling themselves into shape. But if we try to go out just like that, they will massacre us. There were even damned magicians in there, and unfortunately none of them was in the district when we rebelled against the tribune.

“Understandable.” He answered, still calm. “But what will we gain from that?”

Seriously? He is kidnapped and surrounded by witch-hunters, that had basic torturer skills as a part of training. We could murder him at every given second - which would be illogical, but mortals rarely act logical especially when go emotional - and yet he acts like that?

He even was shackled to the chair with antegnite shackles. Anti-magic. He couldn’t even defend himself if we wanted to torture him.

“Well, for starters you won’t end up killing key members of another resistance group. One operating from Ambryxis and very interested in having the Masked Council… kinda die.” I answered him. Equally calmly.

This time he chuckled.

“Resistance group?” She shook his head. “A good idea. Trying to pass for members of another group like the Hand, I give you that. But it won’t work, because…”

Like I care why it won’t work.

I raised my hand. Leria fired her Transcendental. Captain Fabulous was silenced immediately. And was in visible mental pain. He didn’t scream, nor seemed really damaged, so the effect of Fervent Accusation was negligible. If in combat, pure adrenaline might have pushed him out of the paralyzing effect. Here, he was taken by surprise, so it took him few seconds to shake the effect off.

There are no sinless people. Ok, no adult sinless people. Children have it easier. But the only way for an adult to ignore a character-aligned Holy Magic spell was to get hit while leaving a confession booth.

Of course, most of the stuff is… well, simple sins. There is a grave difference between thinking mean of someone and killing said person. Character-aligned Holy Magic (and Gods) recognizes it, and unless you committed some major sins, there was going to be no damage. Only a brief recapitulation of the things that you did wrong, with an intention of making you improve yourself.

Momentary paralysis - like in case of Capitan Fabulous - at worst. He was most likely an Imperial Religion adherent (like all imperial houses), so there were places where Overtyrant’s Holy Magic caught him off guard, simply because his religion didn’t consider something a sin. He might have been sleeping with that slave-tattooed dark elf, for example.

For the Imperial Religion it wasn’t even a problem unless said slave was forced to do that. There was an official category for sex slaves in the Imperium, but conversion to it required consent… and the owner was supposed to deduct twice as much money from the slave’s value in case he or she wanted to buy themselves out of slavery. It led to a situation in which pretty (and ambitious) slaves were almost ready to kill each other to actually end up such a slave.

And it’s not like they had to free themselves after they worked off their ‘debt’ - but since then, they had to be paid. It wasn’t unheard off for noble families to hail from a slave out of nowhere, that earned money and freedom that way (though they obviously preferred to not talk about that). Getting enough of the former to start a business or marry well (despite being 30 or so years old, which was considered being veeeeeery old for marriage, and being a thoroughly used goods) after finally freeing themselves.

According to khardism, at the same time, it was a sin of lust. Minor, as long as neither owner nor slave were married, but still.

“O...kay.” He was less calm now. “Using character Holy Magic does prove something.” Especially since Leria didn’t even flinch. Sinners could use Holy Magic like that as long as they were technically members of the corresponding religion and had faith… theoretically. Because it meant that they too would be subjected to the spell’s effects any time they used it.

“Using character Holy Magic TRANSCENDENTALS.” I added. Oh, this time he seemed really surprised. “My dear sister had a little randezvous with Overtyrant. He told her to kill Ambryxis. Details include a lot of murders, searching through abandoned places, discovering new Dungeons and meeting First Shards squatting right beside Ambryxis. In person. This sort of thing. Quite boring, so I’ll spare you details.” Awww, I love acting like that. Shocking people. Actually showing Leria to the world is absolutely awesome.

That’s precisely why I told Simea to guard the door. From the other side. She would probably jab me or something for acting like jerkass.

“Chosen One. There is a Chosen One in Ambryxis?” He mostly asked himself out loud. I guess my little presentation did shock him a bit. Well, let’s continue the battle! LAUNCH TORPEDOES!

“Three.” He look at me, not understanding. “My sister, Chosen by Overtyrant. Me, Chosen by Deviation, though I’m not exactly working for her. And there is also a Chosen One of Malice running around and pissing off witch-hunters, though they officially don’t admit she exists.”

This time his jaw dropped. Heh. I guess even imperial nobles can have their mental fortitude overwhelmed.

Three Chosen Ones in one city at once? It was about as probable as… well, I lacked things to compare it to. Even winning a lottery was much more possible. There were maybe ten to twenty of them in the entire world normally.

Maybe an entire family (parents, children, grandparents) buying lottery tickets… and winning. Simultaneously. Yeah, something like that fit.

“Consider this knowledge our gift to you, and to the general in charge of your mission. To show good will and so on.” I sighed theatrically. “While we seem to have almost weirdly good luck in our mission, sooner or later something terrible is bound to happen, so having the Empire back us up would be nice. Especially since for some reason Deviation kept speaking her… prosaic limericks about some terrible threat looming over all of Aevaria and threatening every single living being there. Or worse. This is our advance payment for getting out of the city, by the way.”

“Worse?” He managed to ask.

“Actually, I didn’t really ask her. But I presume that the whole world is at stake.”

“Twilight War.” He answered. Huh? “At least that’s how the Palace of Prophets refers to a potential shitstorm that might, or might not, hit Aevaria is near future. Consider this a payback for no witch-hunter doing mean things to me until now.”

So he is back to being calm once again. Huh.

The Palace of Prophets was an important part of Imperial Religion. A sort of religious neutral ground. Sixty Imperial Seers overseeing a vast archive of prophecies that were confirmed to come from Gods. Even Pentagram had its representatives, even if they kept causing trouble.

Prophecies were essentially Gods’ Chekov Armoury of epic proportions. Most of them were completely random stuff. “If A happens, then B might happen if C is not done.” or something like that. There was always an opening requirement, the end result, and some vague suggestions to what happens in the middle.

Of course, with fate getting gangraped by Gods on a daily basis, even they’re never precisely sure when a prophecy comes to fruition. But if during their newest intrigue one of them managed to clear the opening requirements, the rest of the gods were supposed to obey the vague suggestions presented in the prophecy.

What really scared me was the name. Twilight War. It was the term coined in the World’s Requiem for the Darkness invasion. An apocalyptic, all out war between Gods and the Dark Ones. With entire countries perishing overnight, Reality itself broken on the daily basis, time being altered and Dark Ones figuring more and more insane schemes to break the Gods’ impervious defences.

On the other hand, none of the Dark Ones used even remotely similar methods to Glitches. Their actions lacked the Darkness’ natural cruelty… and working intellect. Besides, most of the Dark Ones hailed from highly magical universes, with the Dark equivalent that could be corrupted together with local gods and global consciousness into one, massive, and dimensionally transcendent maelstrom of hatred.

Machine Dragon, Dark One that planned to unleash a lot of mass destruction weapons and then an army of machines to massacre the survivors, was the closest thing the Darkness had to technology, and even he preferred brains and nervous tissue of sapient species as material to construct CPUs, so…

“This Twilight War is definitely bound to start at Ambryxis, I can tell you that much.” I said. “Overtyrant, Pentagram and even Deviation seem to have an itch in a place they can’t scratch whenever someone mentions the city and its deity. And there are also powers that seem to be involved, even if they don’t act openly. Inri, Shadow, White Sun. Nyrathzm. Zh… Zhrk… Zhrkrh, God I hate that name. There are also weird creatures called Glitches, that seem to be connected.”

“Glitches?” Oh, a wolf caught the scent. Even regardless of saving the world (or at least the continent or part of it), bringing back informations like that was bound to help his career.

“They seem to hail from different universes. Very high technology, but no magic. Like automatas. Seem to act completely stupid, in most cases simply standing there and raining bullets on their enemies. The weapon we stunned you and your soldiers was looted from one of them. I’m ready to give you one or two rounds for your magicians to analyze, to persuade your side that there truly is something weird going on. If after getting us out…” I said, putting an accent on after. “... You’d manage to find out if they are a problem farther from Ambryxis, I’d be personally grateful for that information.”

“I see.” He sighed. “I guess I’ll have to get you out of the city, after all. If there truly is some supernatural religious shitstorm going to happen, letting Chosen Ones die and leave only a Chosen of Malice around would be a terrible idea.” Don’t go tsundere on me, please.

So, the Imperium still didn’t know about resurrections. Or, at the very least, a high ranked officer from the Imperial Army connected with imperial houses didn’t know. Otherwise, he would’ve at least asked if that isn’t a case, at least due to the fact that resurrections started around the time that the Twilight War started being in view. I was 100% sure that the Imperial Magic Guild and Raven Brotherhood already knew, but were busy gathering information to figure out how to react before making it public.

“Wonderful.” I concluded. “Then I guess we have an arrangement. Now, onto the details.” There are always some details to figure out. Especially when you are trying to fool a few thousand people at once.

***

We sent some random adventurer as a messenger. Officially to send a message to their remaining commanders about ceasing the attacks or we’ll send them Captain Fabulous’ head. Unofficially to relay his own orders to the cultist forces that were about to fully encircle us and then wipe us out hoping to free him.

It seemed that after his disappearance his knight replaced him as the imperial overseer of the assault of Vanvyra, which also meant being pretty much in charge of this mess. According to Gunther (I shouldn’t call him Captain Fabulous forever), he probably wasn’t very happy about the Captain getting kidnapped.

He was most likely happy to see him gone, though that particular type of disappearance probably wasn’t exactly in his taste. Huh. These two seem to have an interesting history, but I don’t think that Gunther is going to tell us anything.

I guess I’ll remain in my ignorance.

After we’d made a deal (took us the rest of the day, but at least the enemy stopped attacking), we marched out from the city in an orderly fashion. Even with carts filled with food. Cultists were eyeing us with a lot of hatred, but they were explicitly ordered to keep their distance. The enemy (if I could still use such a term to describe them) was disciplined enough to obey, even if I could see that they really wanted to kill us.

Judging from the magic I could feel, the second assault on the temple began when we were about to leave the city. Well, goodbye to you, Vanvyra. I can’t say I will miss you. What a shithole, even worse than Ambryxis. God, I hope the Hand burns the city to the ground.

***

According to the plan we’ve made with Captain Fabulous, we managed to quickly disappear from the line of sight of the group sent by the Hand to follow after us. It wasn’t that hard when the enemy actually wanted us to get farther from them.

Two days after leaving Vanvyra Captain Fabulous was freed by his compatriots. I made sure to have witch-hunters guard the cart carrying him when that happened. I knew the attack was going to happen, so I could at least make sure that the least liked members of our group was there when the Imperium struck.

Four of our witch-hunters were there. Only Layla was with us. I had no idea who exactly visited us. The dark elf? The crows operative? Whoever it was, everyone on the cart was dead. Besides the driver, who was really shocked when he discovered that rather than a prisoner and two guardians he was carrying two dead bodies. The other two witch-hunters were supposed to walk right behind the cart, but we never saw them again.

The Crows’ handiwork, most likely. Quite surprising that they had one in the area. I thought that if one accompanied them in the city, he would attack and free Gunther before we even managed to contact the Hand.

This freed me from the only potential competition when it came to commanding the group. Layla was completely swayed over to my side. The rest lacked authority to even try something funny.

We hurried towards the mountain pass that was free of the cult presence according to Gunther.

***

Firewing [N]: I think I decoded the documents you send me. It’s heavily incomplete, since the imperial who had them fired a mechanism that mostly incinerated them to prevent them from falling into your hands.

Firewing [N]: Most of it are simple reports, that doesn’t really give you anything unless you want to fight the Hand. Which I presume you don’t.

Firewing [N]: But… there are also important informations regarding the Great Summoning.

Uh oh. Interesting. Let’s see what it truly is.

***

“So… we know something about the Summoning?” Layla seemed very interested. Well, she was still loyal to Ambryxis - if the cult wanted to unleash something terrifying upon it, she wanted to know.

We were all sitting around campfire. My party, Lybaer and Layla. Though most of the rest were busy eating the meal before going to sleep. Short and interrupted by guard duty, since we had seen some soldiers down the valley.

I doubt they’re friendly, but I also doubt they would attack us.

“Well, don’t be so happy. It’s all cryptic.” Which wasn’t exactly good. It was an unofficial rule of magic that the more cryptic, mysterious, elusive (and rare, but that wasn’t a case here) something was, the more power it hid. Mysteriousness made people’s imagination race, and that meant power. “In fact, I don’t think that decrypting it gave us anything. To truly know something about the cult’s plans we would have to decipher it again to understand what we just deciphered, and… well, it most likely doesn’t make any sense without the context, which we lack.”

“What do you mean?” Simea got curious.

“Well, there are daemons, especially servile ones, that were made precisely with a single summoning in mind. That they are tailored to fit as much as possible.” I explained. “Sure, such daemons are probably as active as all of them in the afterlives, but in Light they are supposed to show up only once in history. Because of that, their summoning requirements are purposefully crafted to be things absolutely unique, and in many cases people discover that they were fulfilled only AFTER the daemon in question gets summoned. Often accidentally.”

“I once saw a case of Beyond summoning gone horribly wrong.” Layla added. “There was something about a ‘pure vessel’ in the writings, and the summoner assumed that it meant a virgin sacrifice. While in fact the possession-oriented daemon in question had simply an extremely narcissistic personality and expected his vessels to be completely clean, and with their skin unblemished. So there are also metaphors that can be misunderstood. Or with their meaning discovered simply too late. Still, I’d like to hear it.”

Eh.

“Alright. But let me warn you, that it does sound pretty horrible, probably due to being translated from some older language, and with more poetic details omitted.” Which made the summoning even more dangerous and crazy. Ugh. I cleared my throat. “‘Guardian, bound in darkness, his duty fulfilled. An innocent, laid to rest in the valley of shadows. The blood of the martyr, willingly spent. Through it, He will come.’”

Which could mean pretty much everything. Especially because it could mean both all of those things happening in the same place, or to the same people. How were we supposed to decrypt what exactly it meant?

“Stone Throne.” Layla responded immediately, her eyes suddenly meeting mine. What… “The Guardian is Mr. Cuddles. The Innocent is the child who created him and who is responsible for the creation of the dungeon dimension beneath the fortress.”

...

We’ve been had.

This whole assault on Vanvyra was a distraction. Through some incredible stroke of luck we almost ruined the entire Cult’s scheme. We took over the place where the Summoning was going to happen… which probably was the only place in the world where it could be done.

And to make sure that we left the place and couldn’t return there, they went all out. The flashy assault on Vanvyra drawn attention of everyone on ‘our’ side. Me. Tribune. Hell, even Ambryxis himself was probably concerned mostly with what was happening in the city.

And the Stone Throne was more than twenty kilometres closer to Ambryxis than Vanvyra. If the being in question is tough and a good tactician… if the Prophetess makes sure that there are enough liberated slaves and cultists around to bolster its forces (and she probably disappeared from the city to make sure of that)…

They even control the key mountain passes. And a significant part of the Masked Council’s forces are about to get beaten into unconditional surrender… if it hasn’t already surrendered. If the summoned thing acts quick, they will knock on Ambryxis’ door before the city manages to call back the adventurers on missions beyond the city.

God, this is going to be a massacre. Though Ambryxis might still win - it depends on the summoned being’s strength.

This was all a desperate gamble on the Cult’s side, they lacked strength to face the city openly in a contest of mundane arms. They had to call a supernatural being to have a chance of breaching the city walls, and this meant that Ambryxis could go all out as well without breaking the Gods’ rules. No holds barred. Whoever wins the duel, will emerge victorious from the war.

It was going to be Featherclad all over again. Probably much worse, because he was merely a rampaging lunatic, with his entire army composed of antegnite-vulnerable daemons. And without the simplest tactics. Here we had an army of well trained warriors to back the attack up.

And now I probably cannot hope to persuade the others to leave the thing and go to Ambryxis. Layla’s loyalty had its borders, and if I openly sell Ambryxis to the Cult like that… a step too far, even for a Chosen One.

I guess we are going to go to the Stone Throne. For a last, desperate attempt to prevent the bad end scenario for Ambryxis. Or, in the case of my group, to try to sabotage the last, desperate attempt to prevent the bad end scenario for Ambryxis.

Mr. Cuddles defeated and banished. The body of his maker laid to rest. Only the blood of the martyr was unsure, but… I guess we will understand in time.