I couldn’t recall the last time I had gone to the very edge of Zairgon, to the outer bounds of Ring Four beyond which there lay nothing but empty wastes. Not that I was paying much attention to what lay beyond Zairgon right then. My focus was solely on the group of tired, wounded, haggard but still somewhat ferocious people making their way into the city.

  The Councillor had led his little procession back with no small amount of fanfare, despite their terrible physical condition. I was pretty sure the drummers and trumpeters had been pre-planned. Probably even the other people cheering.

  I wasn’t paying attention to those either. My heart felt like it was throbbing in my throat as I waited and waited and—

  My heart unclenched. There.

  The Scarthralls looked… odd. Not physically hurt, which wasn’t saying much since they had strong regeneration to count. They were bloodied, though, and caked in dirt. It was their expressions that made my relief take an arrow to the knee. A forced determination masked their faces, similar to the strange fanfare welcoming the excursion force.

  The vastly diminished excursion force.

  There was no formal reporting or anything involved. Most people who had volunteered weren’t part of the military or even the guards. As such, they were free to disperse as soon as they had entered the city.

  “I’m glad you all made it back,” I said, actually counting to make sure all the Scarthralls were present. Sigrouen, Jalais, Vandre, Atholaine, and Lujean. Yep, that was all of them, thank the Banished Gods.

  “Yes!” Sreketh said, bravely maintaining her hold on her cheerfulness. “Welcome back!”

  “Thanks.” Vandre smiled softly. “We’re glad to be back.”

  “I don’t want to have to listen to the Councillor,” I said. “Mind telling me the gist of what’s going on? I can, uh, take you to our temporary new home as we talk.”

  They exchanged looks that made their earlier determination falter. My throat clogged up a bit at that, but I reminded myself that temporary was the key word. We were working towards something here.

  The Scarthralls knew that too. Probably why they didn’t complain and did their best not to show any further dismay.

  As we got moving, they took turns explaining everything that had gone on. The excursion force had met the Blight Swarm after only a few hours after leaving the bounds of the city.

  “It… there were just…” Lujean faltered for a bit. “So many.”

  Vandre was shaking his head. “Nothing could have prepared us for just how many of them were waiting beyond the walls of Zairgon, Cultist Ross.”

  “The little invasion we had the other day…” Atholaine scoffed, then laughed mirthlessly. “They really were just probing us.” She swallowed. “They filled the entire horizon, Cultist Ross. End to end. We saw nothing but bugs and monsters everywhere. Big, small, annoying, tricksy, aggressive, every kind.”

  The mechanics of the excursion itself had been rather limited in the face of such opposition. Seeing the enormity of what they were facing, the Councillor had decided to take a page out of the Blight Swarm’s book and just probe the outer forces of the gathered monsters.

  There shouldn’t have been any point to such an exercise. The best decision would have been to return immediately.

  Instead, the Councillor had stayed and had gone through with his plan. Which explained why the excursion force had obviously lost people. The Councillor had been targeting specific monsters within the Swarm. No one had managed to learn from the Councillor himself as to the real reasons why, other than the reason he himself had stated.

  The main tenet followed by the excursion force had always been surprise. Not only in when and where they were attacking, but also in when they pulled out too.

  And every time, they had retreated, they had always done so after the Councillor himself had landed a strike on a giant insect that had stood out from the rest of the bugs.

  “Rumour is,” Atholaine said in a conspiratorial whisper. “That the Councillor was also hitting out at the leaders, lowering the bugs’ morale by attacking them.”

  Vandre shook his head at that. “If that was true, then why did we leave every single time without killing a single one of those leaders? It just looked like he wanted to deliver a blow. That’s what he even said too.”

  “Maybe that’s it,” Sigrouen said. “That’s how you hurt their morale. By showing them that you know where their leaders are and you can reach them at any time.”

  I wasn’t even sure the bug monsters were even capable of something like morale. But it was odd. Attacking certain bugs without even killing them, doing the process over and over, losing willing fighters to what had to have felt like a pointless exercise… It was weird.

  “How did the Councillor keep everyone going after the first few times he did that?” I asked. But I was starting to formulate the answer as soon as I had finished asking my question.

  It was his damn words. The influence he was able to weave into being through his speeches. I had recognized it, acknowledged it, felt its strange effect on me, and done my best to resist it. But how well would those who were unprepared have fared?

  “He was very convincing about the necessity of it,” Vandre said. “It would save Zairgon. He was, according to him at least, magically marking the bugs that would present the greatest threat. So while taking them out just then would have been too costly, once they invade Zairgon, they can be targeted more easily to rout the insects faster.”

  As good a reason as any, but clearly one that the Scarthralls didn’t necessarily buy, going by their earlier hypothesizing.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  They talked a little bit more about the fights they had fought, about the people who had died, about the monsters they had faced. I listened to it all patiently.

  It was interesting to hear that the guards and the military members hadn’t used the volunteers as glorified meat-shields, and had instead taken the lead, counting on the volunteers to deal blows once the bugs were vulnerable. Also interesting how they had all built up a sense of camaraderie as they had fought, and how there had been a sense of growing momentum as they kept fighting and fighting.

  The casualties were difficult to bear, though. Despite the military’s efforts, the greatest losses had been in the volunteers. There were men and women the Scarthralls had personally known, some they had even grown fond of, who had died during the excursions.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. Some of the names they mentioned sounded vaguely familiar too. I had a feeling I had either met the departed at the temple or seen them around on Ring Four.

  The Scarthralls themselves had suffered injuries. It had been a bit of a reality check for them to face off against hordes of bugs, many of which were way too strong for them to overcome. I supposed I should be glad for the lesson they had received, especially since it hadn’t been a fatal lesson, or even one with severe physical penalties.

  But I just felt sad for the psychological trauma they were going through. It was impossible to go through something like a war without coming out some level of messed up on the other side.

  At least they had grown stronger through their trials. All of them boasted about gaining new ranks in their Attributes, Aspects, and Paths.

  They received something like a hero’s welcome at the Anymphea’s residences. Generally, the innocent Scarthralls who had returned from the guards’ prison cells had their own residences that I had helped construct, but Vandre and the rest of that party had always resided at the temple. With that gone, they’d be coming with me.

  I was glad that the Anymphea were giving them a nice reception. It left me free to not worry overmuch about their mental state and extend my welcome to the rest of the Ring Four people who had gone on the excursion.

  The mood among them was a lot more sombre than with the Scarthralls. While a lot of those who had gone with the Councillor had been people without many friends or families, they were still mourned. Doubly so for those who had left loved ones behind. This wasn’t unexpected, but still. It wasn’t easy to bear either.

  After I made sure everything was taken care of and there wasn’t going to be any official address from the Councillor—well, there might still be later on, but I was too impatient to wait—the next day, I focused on preparing for the real upcoming assault.

  This meant training some more, especially with the new information about the different kinds of bugs we were going to be facing. This meant finalizing our prep ensuring that our Blight Swarm countermeasures would be ready to go at a moment’s notice. This also meant making sure we’d be ready for certain fallouts, like Ring Three attackers being rebuffed onto Ring Four.

  Just like what had happened with the first invasion.

  I had to deal with so many minutiae, it was starting to feel overwhelming by day’s end.

  “Are the braziers positioned correctly, Cultist Ross?” someone asked.

  “Yes, that looks right,” I said, “It doesn’t need to be perfect, just somewhere in the general area is fine.”

  And then, later on—

  “The incense is leaking,” someone else was wailing. “What am I going to do now?”

  The sack with the bug-repelling incense powder did indeed have a hole at the bottom that was slowly spilling out the powder.

  “Ahhh!” he screamed as the tear grew a little bigger when he desperately tried to stop the outpouring of powder.

  I walked over to the man, grabbed the small sack, then turned it around so that the sack was pointing upwards. At the same time, I channelled some Gravity to lighten the load. The incense was heavier than I expected.

  “There,” I said. “Now take the rest to whichever brazier you were heading to.”

  “Thank you so much, Cultist Ross,” he sobbed. “I won’t let the rest fall, even if I have to die for it.”

  “No dying, please.”

  “What about…?” he looked down at the already-fallen incense and appeared to be on the verge of fainting.

  “It’s fine, we can create a makeshift brazier here with some wood.”

  “Oh, thank you, thank you.”

  He hurried away with the precious incense. I didn’t want to think too uncharitably about things like incompetence and what not. Not surprising at all that not everyone acted as perfectly as would be ideal. We were all people, after all. Plus, everyone was making a strong, honest effort, and that sent my heart soaring a little.

  But still, those turned out to just be the easy things. Then there were the little disputes.

  “We’re taking the weapons cache to the western post.”

  “What? I thought these ones were for the southern one?”

  “Well, they were supposed to be, but they got extra somehow, so I’m taking these to—”

  “You can’t just decide to do that on your own!”

  “Everyone was busy! What do you—”

  I cleared my throat loudly. “It’s alright. Just take them to a spot where people can make use of them relatively easily, please. Good enough is good enough.”

  They stopped arguing and dashed off. While that was the comparatively simpler case, the tougher challenge came at the unofficial border between the Sun and the Earth Cults. A group of people were arguing about taking some armour, one side claiming they needed it while the other complained they already had enough and should spare the extras for the ones lacking.

  The problem with solving arguments like that in the fairest fashion was that it would take up too much time. We would need to tally up the exact amount of armour sets for both aggrieved parties and then determine who really needed it.

  “It’s fine,” said the problematic Earth Cult girl. She tapped her chest, which was covered with… rocks? “We can create our own armour. Let’s get back to Lady Kanis.” She affected an exaggerated tragic expression. “Don’t ask too much from those poor louts. They already lost their home…”

  I shook my head with a little scowl. “They’re going to come after you, next. Just you watch. You’ve already let them inside.”

  “Don’t use your incompetence to drag the rest of us down. Our friends are actually helping us, if you must know.” She turned, flicking her hair insultingly before leading her cult’s followers away. “Come on, folks. The less we associate with losers, the less we’re likely to end up as losers too.”

  How rude. So much for Ring Four working together. It was interesting to hear that House Drihawk might actually be lending aid to the Earth Cult, though I doubted it was anything as substantial as sending people to assist with the fighting.

  At least the visits with the Wind and Sea cults went much better. They were cooperative and swore to assist if the need arose, and I promised I would do the same for them.

  “Only by working together will we truly ensure we will live to see the next day,” Durica said.

  We nodded.

  “Speaking of working together…” Favoile said after Durica and his Wind Cult delegation had departed. “You had news about the Earth Cult.”

  I nodded. It had been a while, but we hadn’t gotten to meet after I had learned the intel the Scarthralls had discovered on Ring Two. Not that what I had learned was anything that concerning, or even specific. Still, I relayed what they had said about an invasion.

  “That’s rather vague…” Favoile said with a sigh.

  “I could get something more specific,” I said, remembering a certain Affix I didn’t think about often. I’d need it, though. For the Blight Swarm and the Councillor’s plan to stop them for good. “But I’d need a live subject, or a piece of them, at least. Hmm… I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Please keep me updated.”

  I nodded that I would, then headed off.

  Tired though I was, mentally speaking, I still wanted to take some time to just sit down with myself and prepare. Over the course of the day, we had started spotting the horizon turning dark. The bugs were coming, the little ones obscuring everything in the distance.

  My mana core seemed to throb a little at the fight. I ignored it for now but kept it in the back of my mind as a certain connection was starting to impress itself on me.

  More importantly, the Blight Swarm was almost here for real. Time to see if my preparations were good enough.