----------------------

  Garen

  ----------------------

  Garen hid behind his spell with two of his trusted apprentices– students, he supposed he should now call them– crouched behind him, their faces protected by thick helmets pilfered from Tulian's armories.

  The former Tulian University had sported quite the collection of spell testing rooms, but only one of them had been suited for his purposes. Ensconced deep within the building's bedrock, it had clearly been tuned to contain only the most advanced student's spellcraft. The cobblestones were bleached white to better resist continuous exposure to hellish energies, the mortar that sealed them engraved with strengthening runes at a rate of one per three inches, peppered uniformly across the interior of the thirty foot cube. The room's light was sourceless and colorless, eliminating all shadows within the space, giving the space a difficult to define, ethereal air.

  Or it would have, up until the contraption Garen and his students had been pced on a pallet of wooden beams directly in the room's center. The mixture of cnking, groaning, whirring noises was certainly mundane enough to offset any sense of peace from the space, not to mention the source of the noises, which was currently rattling itself to pieces before their very eyes.

  "Stay down!" He chastised his student, a human boy whose bright eyes were at current liability to grow considerably duller, if he kept sticking his head over the barrier. While Tinvel was a natural-born mage, technically capable of becoming a proficient spellcaster, he had taken almost obsessively to artificery, spurred on by the unique demands pced upon him by the Champion's strange requests.

  "But the shield shimmer affects vision," Tinvel protested petuntly.

  "So does a bolt to the skull," countered Garen's other student, smacking him with her tail. A Vanara girl of her te teens, the second of her incredibly rare race Garen had met in Tulian. When Chona had successfully applied to become a student, he'd thought to ask if she were reted to the alchemist Sara had hired, but decided that would likely be a faux-pas. The girl's fur was darker than the alchemist's anyway, nearly jet bck, though he was unfamiliar with Vanara hereditary features.

  Chona at least showed a simir temperament to the bckpowder mogul of Tulian, if the way she scolded her fellow student was any indication. "If you wish to have a better view, you'll have to practice your actual spells, instead of spending all your time tinkering." The girl was peeking over Garen's shield, maintaing her own, clearer spell to protect her eyes, trusting her helmet to cover the rest of her head.

  "If I hadn't spent my time tinkering," Tinvel snapped back, "there wouldn't be anything to observe."

  "Silence," Garen said, focusing his own efforts on the protective shield he held up before them. While he was certain it would protect them from near anything, the machines Sara had requested he build had a terrifying propensity for exceeding his expectations. In a certain way, he was impressed with the simplicity of their power. Every mage of consequence was familiar with binding loops, pairs of spells which fed energy into themselves to fuel their mutual empowerment, and was frankly shocked no one had before attempted something simir in a more physical manner. Acceleration of objects was nearly always limited by the distance one had to accelerate them, so it only stood to reason that keeping the acceleration localized by spinning about a central axis, much like a waterwheel, greater speeds could be attained than ever before–

  –the thing began flying apart without warning, metal and wood shrieking as the bonds which held them was finally overwhelmed. Garen could no more track the flying debris than he could the flight of an arrow, the entire room echoing with endless cracks and pings as shrapnel bounced off the stone walls. It was a prolonged process, first some circur bands snapping, then others, each failing in different ways and different times. He would have paid more attention if he was not so focused on his shield, making sure none of the unfathomably rapid slivers pierced it through.

  A great number of pieces suddenly impacted said shield directly, embedding themselves in the getinous structure of the manifested energies in nearly the same moment he heard Chona gasp in pain. He couldn't immediately gnce back, seeing as ricochets and other failures were still pinging their way through the room, but he did expand his shield back and to the sides, until it met the wall in a tight seal.

  Finally, when the st remains of the gasping machination had finally given up on its tantrum-esque death throes, he dropped the shield, letting the held debris patter to the ground with little clicks. Only then did he turn around to inspect Chona.

  She had dropped to one knee, teeth gritted in pain as one hand covered the back of her furry thigh. A piece must have bounced off the wall to strike her from behind, Garen surmised. Blood welled up between her middlemost fingers, making Tinvel, who had knelt by her side, gasp in shock.

  "A-a-are you alright?" He asked, voice quavering.

  "No!" She snapped. "Your stupid fucking machine just bit a hole out of me, you idiot!"

  "Me?" Tinvel demanded, any concern immediately tossed aside in favor of affront. "That wasn't my fault! We were stress testing, we knew it was going to explode! If anything, it was Garen's fault for not making the shield wider from the start!"

  "Oh, sure, bme it on the professor of all things, that makes perfect sense!"

  Garen stepped in before their argument could gather up too much momentum. There were many reasons why he trusted these two to help in his experiments, but level-headedness was not among their virtues. As presently demonstrated by the way Chona's tail was reaching up to strangle Tinvel, as a matter of fact.

  "That is enough," he said sternly, waving a healing spell towards her thigh with one hand, the other going to restrain her tail before she could actually start strangling the boy. "Tinvel, the correct response to one of your crafts accidentally injuring your fellow student is an apology, not deflection of bme." Chona barely watched as the metal bolt was magically extruded from her thigh, too busy fixing her cssmate with a smug grin. "But Tinvel is correct, Chona, in that the fault lies more with I than it does him, even if it may not strictly be his pce to so cim."

  Chona's grin fell as Tinvel's rose, and with her thigh now healed, they both stood.

  "Now," Garen quickly said, before the argument could further itself, "let us inspect the results of our testing, shall we?"

  Though it took a few minutes of under the breath grumbling before both of their minds were fully on the task at hand, the debris scattered across the testing room was gathered up and organized in short order.

  Today's test had been a retively simple one, even if the machinery involved was anything but. With the Governess's emphasis on the importance of what she called the "material sciences," they had wished to find the limit of current metallurgy and carpentry in regards to enduring various forms of stress. This particur test had been on resisting centrifugal forces, perhaps the most relevant of forces in their endeavors.

  The machinery with which they had tested such was simple in its purpose, complicated in its design. Sara had repeatedly emphasized to Garen that she had little interest in wasting his time on engineering work, which was to say the construction of practical machines that could readily be used for real-world applications, and far more interested in his talents being spent on developing a supply of power for future innovations. She took it as a matter of course that someone would come along with bright ideas about how to invent the engines she so desired, but was incredibly anxious about the method by which they would be powered. By her recollection, which Garen heavily suspected was incredibly biased, her old world was awash with soot and smog, the fires of industry pouring unfathomable volumes of poison into the air all across the globe. To avoid reproducing such a hellish ndscape in her new home, she had tasked Garen with finding a method, whatever it may be, of powering such devices with spellcraft, rather than the noxious fumes of her homeworld.

  Thus, the machine he and Tinvel had constructed. Garen reasoned that the simplest spells, which were therefore the most energetically optimized, would be the best starting point for powering machinery. Following this logic, he had decided that his initial experiments would use as their base the most elementary of force spells: a foot-long projection of energy, repeated ad nauseam. It was among the earliest spells a mage would learn, requiring only to summon a foot-long, inch wide column of force, which would jut forward, then dissipate. Nearly every mage knew the spell by heart, but only because they had spent countless hours as a youth perfecting its casting, building up the fundamentals they would ter need for more complex work. Though it was widely considered useless for anything other than practice, it was still an incredibly efficient spell, such that Garen could have cast it thousands of times in a day without exhausting himself, and with a minor bit of tweaking, he could even accelerate the rate at which the force was projected.

  Thus, the spinning. The device Tinvel had created was little more than a free-spinning top wrapped in bands of varying materials, with a cross-shaped metal spoke mounted amongst the interior. An enchanted gem set slightly below the spoke was drawing upon Garen's reserves to repeatedly project a force spell up into the spoke, repeatedly smming into the metal. Garen had no ability to control the rate at which the force spell repeated itself, seeing as enchanting a spell to constantly cast in such a manner was utterly alien to him, and the early stages of its acceleration had been a cttering, nerve-wracking mess. Eventually it reached its maximum speed with one gem, which was when Garen had activated the second, which was set to repeat its spell at a greater frequency, and with more force. It had accelerated further, and he had activated a third, and shortly after, it had torn itself to shreds. He had no idea what speed it had ultimately topped out at, but judging by the violence of its disintegration, it had been an impressive number of revolutions per minute.

  Obviously, it was far from a practical machine, useless for anything other than spinning itself to bits, but that was what they wanted. As they collected the painted debris throughout the room, they could study the results. Chona and Tinvel stood beside him as they walked down the rows, inspecting the failure point of each material.

  "The woods pretty much failed when and how we expected," Tinvel said, pointing to them as they went. "Weakest grain to strongest, showing signs of linearly increasing stresses. Probably didn't even need to include them, honestly."

  "While they behaved as expected, it is always nice to confirm," Garen said. "Remember the Governess's 'scientific method,' Tinvel. Events must be consistently demonstrated to repeat themselves before we can assume they will always do so."

  "I know, I know, but I still wish we'd had more room for different metals," Tinvel said, hurrying past the wood.

  Chona nudged the first shattered piece of metal, a circlet of low-quality copper. "I know for a fact that this one shattered first, at least as far as the metals are concerned. And look at how banged up it is."

  Indeed, the extremely thin pte of copper was torn in a number of pces, and not just from impact damage with the wall. The strange putty-like attribute of stress shearing was evident, as if the metal were mud that had been pulled apart by a bored child.

  "The iron fared better," Garen noted, pointing to the next circlet. "But not as much better as I anticipated."

  "Yeah," Chona murmured, crouching down next to the thin pte. "Maybe it doesn't work as well when it's pressed so thin, while copper does?"

  Garen immediately thought of the Champion's tales of wire and electricity, the thin fibers of copper strewn across entire cities to carry lightning like the veins of some great beast. Clearly, copper was not directly inferior to iron in all material respects, as was commonly thought. He did not make the comparison aloud. His two students were very far away from being trusted with the greatest of secrets, both his and Sara's.

  "A really interesting property, if that's the case," Tinvel said, picking up the piece to study it closer. "I wonder if there's more to that, then? I know bcksmiths can't make metal ingots over a certain size, and that's because of impurities and cooling and a bunch of other stuff, but what if there's more to it? What if, perhaps, iron at X thickness is stronger than copper at X thickness, but at Y thickness, copper is actually stronger?"

  "An avenue certainly worth exploring," Garen said, though he suspected the topic had been studied before. After a moment's consideration, he decided to let the boy go through with whatever experiment he was concocting. If nothing else, devising the methodology would be a good learning opportunity, and Garen could simply "discover" a relevant book that either confirmed or debunked his results shortly after the test was concluded.

  "And finally, the steel," Chona said. They all stopped at the end of the row, studying the two examples on the floor.

  The first, common steel from an average bcksmith of Tulian, was not shattered. It had begun to deform rather severely, becoming oblong instead of the perfect circle it had begun as, and looked to his eye to be very near failing entirely, as if Garen could have pressed through the thin metal with a thumbnail.

  The second circlet, however, came from a different smith. Hurlish, the Governess's partner, had briefly volunteered her best efforts at making a steel band for this test. Her work appeared completely unchanged by the stresses it had endured, the painted lines across its surface confirming such as Chona re-measured them.

  "Not even a tenth of an inch's deviation," Chona said, pocketing the measuring string. "And I can't even see a scratch from the fall or it being hit by other debris, which definitely had to have happened."

  "Yet another confirmation of our hypothesis," Garen noted, pleased. "The skill of the smith makes a considerable difference in the material's performance."

  "Yeah, but is it the smith's skills, or their Skills," Chona asked, scratching thoughtfully at her stomach fur. She wore less than most human women, rarely more than a chest wrap and shorts, preferring to let her fur preserve her modesty. "Because if it's their Css's Skills, we're out of luck on testing further. They're way too variable to actually be consistent with, and it's not like anyone would actually tell us which they had."

  "I suspect Smith Hurlish would, at least," Garen said, thinking back to his occasional conversations with the woman. He'd never known someone so... free, in the way they talked about wishing for their pregnancy to be concluded, expining that the joy of getting 'knocked up' was by far her favorite part of the process. Compared to sharing that information, (unprompted, mind you), he imagined asking after her Skills would be a simple matter.

  "I do suspect that her Css's Skills contributed greatly to this result," Garen said, "if only because I know she has pced a great emphasis over the st year on increasing the quality of her steel, rather than the shape of it. Though, I suppose, that could still be down to improved technique... Hm. I'm not sure how we will control for such a variable."

  "We'll figure something out," Tinvel said dismissively, stepping over the debris to move to the now-shattered device at the center of the room. "What I'm interested in is seeing how the enchantments fared. Did you see how fast it was going?"

  "See? I felt it," Chona grumbled, rubbing her thigh once more. Garen shot her a censorious look, to which she rolled her eyes, but quieted herself. The st thing he wished was for the two of them to enter another quarrel.

  Garen sighed. Sara's suggestion that he encourage his student's individuality and independence had admittedly yielded considerable dividends in the rate at which some absorbed their course material, but it was a double-edged sword. Those least motivated to work had dropped well behind their fellows, while those most successful, such as Chona and Tinvel, were gaining an arrogance that well outstripped their experience. He was gd that they had progressed as far as they had in such a short time, Chona with her spellcraft, Tinvel with his artificery, but he feared they didn't realize just how small their proverbial pond was. Garen was but one of the great mages of Sporatos, and not the greatest among them, at that. There would be students all across the world which far outstripped them in every respect, and they seemed wholly ignorant of this fact. He only hoped the shock of their first failures would not shake their budding confidence too much.

  But they could be served well by at least a little bit of a shock, he decided. They really do need to learn how to cooperate with others better. Garen hummed thoughtfully, listening to Tinvel analyze the remains of the contraption aloud, interspersed with Chona's sideline comments, some of which were insightful, the others thinly veiled jabs. He wondered if there would be a way to arrange such a shock for his students, to ground them in the more practical realities beyond their small circle of peers.

  Best to focus on the task at hand, however. The Champion wanted an automated water pump capable of keeping the Tulian mines operating during the heaviest rains, and though the rotational speeds they'd achieved today were impressive, the methodology was far from reproducible. It had depended entirely on the presence of an advanced mage, both for activation and maintaining of its operation, which common mineworkers would never have.

  As he grappled with the issue, foreign terms floated through his head, concepts he had only a rudimentary grasp of. Vacuums, torque, work load, fuel purity, margins of error, fail-safe states. Many were cosmetically simir to concepts he knew from his own lifelong studies, but taken to an extreme that he'd once thought fanatical. He'd once thought Sara's emphasis on safety was an illogical obsession. His experiments with rotational energy had disabused him of the notion, thankfully. If he was going to create something capable of sustaining the energies the Governess wished of him, he was to have a long road ahead of him. Even now, with the fastest single machine they had ever created scattered to pieces about them, he didn't think they had reached a fraction of the many thousands of rotations per minute Sara eventually wished of his team.

  But those numbers were a penultimate goal, a star to strive for, years or even decades away. In the meantime, he had many more immediately accessible avenues of progress. It was only a matter of choosing which to travel down, and with an army approaching the city, he suspected Sara would have quite the opinion on which tasks to pursue.

  While Tinvel and Chona continued to half-study, half-argue over the ruins of the machine, Garen summoned a desk and sat down, preparing a letter to the Governess. Several of his earliest projects were finally nearing completion, and seeing as she was now technically his employer, he ought to know if she had any preference for which to finish up before the Sporatons arrived.

  ----------------------

  Voth

  ----------------------

  "Keep those shields up!" Voth roared, leading by example, digging the bottom of his pavise shield into the dirt. "Any one of you flinch, you'll have lives on your head, and yours'll be the first to go!"

  The line responded to his bellowing, tightening up and overpping their pavises into a wall of painted wood. Those behind the first ranks raised their shields high, covering the heads of their fellows, looking for all the world as if they were braced to withstand the weight of an avanche.

  Unfortunately, what was coming for them was far worse.

  Voth had no opportunity to roar orders before the beast charged them, its thundering gait sending soil leaping up past his knees. He watched it through the thin gap between his shield and that of his comrades, twisting the long pike in his right hand, ensuring the entirety of its weight was supported by the dirt. No one, human or orc, could have held back what was coming.

  Each of its scales were wider than Voth's outstretched fingers, shifting through every hue of greenish moss as they crawled from the beast's belly to the peak of its spine. There rose a sail, proportionally small on the monstrosity, but at least six feet tall at its apex, thin bones supporting the stretched skin that was currently flushed red and orange. The fp of skin was littered with arrows, the only stretch of its body any arrow had managed to penetrate, and he once again wished desperately for some of the firearms he had heard were proliferating through the Champion's army.

  Not that they would have done much against this particur foe, he feared. Its fifty foot length was propelled in serpentine fashion by its bow-legged limbs, meaty crocodilian tail thrashing the air and thin jaws snapping wildly. Chunks had been torn from it, scales pried open to let blood pour forth in waterfalls of crimson, and after its third attempt to flee had failed, the thing had finally realized this battle would only end with the death of Voth's troops. Its den was too close to the vilge, and it had picked off too many caravans over the st month. For the first time in its life since it had reached such a monstrous size, the beast was on the wrong end of a hunt.

  Voth had opportunity only to yell out a single "Brace!" before impact, and then all thought was consumed by the effort of simply holding his shield and pike steady.

  There was a rapid staccato of snapping wood as the steel-headed pikes of his militia shattered against the beast's hide, only a lucky few finding one of the gaps they had created over the long hours of the hunt. Voth felt long cws scratch against his shield, tearing at the shoddy enchantments, ripping the runes to ribbons, and in response, he dropped the fractured remains of his pike and drew his short sword, stabbing blindly through the thin slot between the pavises.

  All around him, others were doing the same, while the troops behind him were shouting encouragement at one another, trying to withstand the creature's weight as it filed at the block of pikes. The testudo was an unwieldy, impractical formation for the modern battlefield, vulnerable to the point of suicide against Knights and their enchanted armors, but the only possible response to a threat such as this. The interlocking shields and bristling pikes, when wielded right, turned hundreds of lone soldiers into one being, just barely capable of answering the brutality of true monsters.

  Voth felt his sword dig into something wet. He twisted the bde, shoving deeper, and was rewarded by feeling a hard jerk, the monster's foot lifted up and away as it hissed its deep, reverberating fury.

  The beast finally recoiled off the formation, repelled by their efforts, and stumbled back several steps, the grass awash with blood. It was panting heavily, posture drooping, clearly exhausted. The battle was nearing its conclusion.

  "Forward, MARCH!" Voth roared, smming his sword against his shield for emphasis. The block of pikes began to move, steps thudding, and not for the first time, Voth yearned for the Champion's supernatural aid. The ability to perfectly synchronize an entire army's footsteps could not be overestimated.

  The beast continued to limp away, but as Voth had trained his militia, the greatest of its wounds were littered across its legs. Not only were its scales thinner there, but the massive cws on each foot were among its deadliest threats. Now suitably mangled, it could neither attack, nor escape.

  Though the beast still lived, Voth felt the tension within him begin to ebb. The only thing left to do was drag the monster down and end its life, and in that, he was confident in the militia's abilities.

  In the end, it took another half hour of slowly advancing upon the creature, marching through the bloody mud its wounds created. When it finally did colpse, Voth had joined the crew of most experienced militia in wielding narrow-tipped warhammers, raining blows down upon its skull. It took them several minutes to break through the thick bone, dodging the occasional feeble snap from its long jaws, but when they finally did, the beast died with a final, prolonged shudder.

  Only then did Voth rip his helmet off, drinking deeply of the open air. The militia's tight formation disintegrated not with cries of etion, but sighs of exhaustion. Many men and women simply dropped where they were, eagerly peeling off the metal armor that had been baking them alive under the summer sun. Voth itched to join them, but he was supposed to lead by example, and so he only took his helmet off, hooking it onto his belt as he surveyed the beast.

  "Haven't seen one of these before," he grunted, running his eyes along its length. Even dead, it was intimidating to behold.

  "Neither have I," his first lieutenant said as she joined the troops in pulling off her armor. It wasn't proper for an officer to be doing that, but the militia was a lot less formal than the army was. She panted heavily, whiskers twitching, and covered her nose to escape the stench. Even for catfolk, Deenah's nose was sharp. "Don't think anyone here has, matter of fact."

  "Another one," Voth said.

  "Another one," Deenah confirmed.

  It was their third beast in as many weeks that had been entirely unknown to the vilgers who were suffering its assaults. Voth had lived his entire life in Tulian, and while his youth had been spent farther north than the jungle beasts usually roamed, he'd spent the years since the storms down south. It wasn't uncommon for strange aberrations to slink out of the trees, unknown to any and all, but it wasn't this common. Someone should have at least heard of the things before, even if they'd only ever shown up once, not enough to be given a name.

  "Give the troops an hour for rest, then get to butchering," Voth said. They would have to chop it up, distribute its corpse, or else its festering would draw so many scavengers that their numbers might create a rger problem than the beast had ever been.

  "Will do." Deenah nodded tiredly, then seemed to remember herself. "Yes, sir, that is," She hastily corrected, saluting. Voth didn't chastise her for it; they were all tired.

  He walked a ways off from the beast, lost in thought. Its den had been in a newer thicket of trees, perhaps a mile off the road that connected two small, nameless vilges. That was where they had eventually caught up to it, and the battle had circled its den over the morning hours and into the afternoon, churning the fields to mush as soldiers and beast had charged back and forth.

  Voth approached the thicket alone, no longer concerned that he would be snapped up in an instant. Though he'd never voiced it aloud, it wasn't the beasts over these st few weeks that had driven his increasing paranoia.

  He put a hand to the closest tree. According to the locals, this thicket had grown up over the st year. He looked up, higher and higher, until he could see the tops of the canopy some thirty or forty feet above him.

  That didn't happen in a year, not even in Tulian. He leaned closer to the tree, putting an ear to it, filtering out the sounds of the militia behind him. After a moment, he managed to hear a slow, low creaking noise. It was faint, faint enough he almost thought he was imagining it, but definitely there.

  He could hear the tree growing. That wasn't normal. This entire thicket, a half mile of dense vines and impenetrable shrubs, had grown up in a matter of months, and it wasn't the only one. Over the st year or so, shortly after the Champion had arrived in Tulian, the forest's growth had exploded. The jungle wall, which had been slowly encroaching on the open pins in the absence of the former Kingdom's clearing efforts, had sprung forward in leaps and bounds. Abandoned vilges, their ruins once accessible and visible for miles around, had been drowned by greenery, buried miles within the forest. Even his efforts to organize lumber-cutting parties hadn't done much other than send the price of wood into freefall, which had pissed off a lot of people, all for no result.

  Voth stepped away from the tree, observing it with crossed arms. He didn't know how to word his concerns without sounding insane. Sending off a report to the capital about increasingly frequent beast incursions was one thing, entirely reasonable, but sending a report about tree growth? Which he was ciming was a bigger problem than the dozens and dozens of deaths that had come from the monsters pouring out of the jungle?

  He shook his head. He'd send off his usual report, talk about the animal and describe its features for future reference. The Champion hated the superstition the southernmost vilgers held for the jungle monsters, what with their refusal to even give the things names, much less discuss them, and wanted Voth to build up a damned encyclopedia on their innumerable varieties. He'd do that as best he could, considering he was no natural philosopher, but the strange tree growth? He was going to have to sit on that one. He didn't have any kind of proof that it was bad other than a gut feeling, and that wasn't the kind of thing you wasted ink on.

  Yet again, Voth shook his head. The pay was good, but this job was a damned headache. He hoped the Champion ended up in charge at the end of the war, though, if only because he doubted the Sporatons would pay half as much, and dealing with nobles would only make the headaches twice as bad.

  ----------------------

  Emeric

  ----------------------

  It wasn't unusual to be summoned to the King's tents, in time of war. The ruler of Sporatos had several of them, each for varying purposes, arranged in a stately complex at the center of the warcamp, and receiving his summons while on the march was far less an honor than it would have been to be invited to his personal castle. What was unusual, however, were the Royal Guards ushering him not towards the command tent, with its great oaken table and multitude of maps, but towards the King's personal quarters, a grand awning of royal burgundy and fine golden threads.

  When the servants opened the fp for him, they did not announce his presence, and upon entering, Emeric was further surprised by the ck of occupants. There were only four individuals within the room.

  The King himself was sitting on an elegant, high-backed chair, its cushions tailored in such a way as to evoke the imagery of the traditional Sporaton throne. He wore a simpler suit of armor, thinner and lighter, better for maintaining appearances while traipsing out around camp. Emeric still had not seen his true suit of armor since the first day of the unveiling of firearms, and looking about the dispyed suits spread across the lush rugs of the King's tent, he did not find it present. He could only assume that the rumors were true, then, that the King had nearly been felled despite the protection afforded him by such a magnificent artifact.

  The commander of the Night's Eye, Graf Urs, stood some few feet away, as always locked into his militant posture and sporting his battered chestpte, listening to the King with one ear while he surveyed the room. As they had every time Emeric met the elderly mercenary, his eyes were drawn to the bcksteel bde at his hip, specifically the visible chip taken from the bde. Emeric would very nearly give away his knighthood to know what had been capable of damaging a bcksteel bde. Unfortunately, none but Graf knew a single detail of the story, save the public knowledge that the chip had appeared when the man was in his thirties, some fifty years ago. After Graf had returned from mercenary work upon the sea, if he recalled correctly.

  Emeric dragged his gaze away from the bde to the room's third occupant, who disquieted him the most. The wearer of the wooden mask, a member of the mage-advisors the King consulted on matters regarding the Champion's abilities, and whom the Champion cimed to be members of an unholy cult. Cosmetically speaking, Emeric could certainly see where the idea had come from. The expressionless wooden pnk which was fitted over their face could have been a simple matter of anonymity, as was oft a practice of the more paranoid mages when working among strangers, but its sheer ck of decoration made it a decidedly striking piece, if so. Their voluminous dark robes also fit the theatrical image of a dark practitioner, though they were equally expined either as the comfortable robes oft preferred by those who relied upon spells for their physical defense, or as another disguise for their identity, hiding their body's form. Emeric still did not know the mage's gender or species, after all, so the method was clearly effective.

  What struck him most, however, was the change in behavior since he had st seen this particur advisor of the King. When they had first met in the Eliah household all those months ago, the mage had been cool and composed, expertly toeing the line between nonchance and proper deference to the King, clearly a seasoned member of the nobility, if not a diplomat outright.

  Now their entire body trembled, as if afflicted with a deathly fever, and they were keeping their hands locked to the arms of the wooden chair they sat in, visibly straining to control the shivers which endlessly ran through them.

  "Ah, Sir Emeric, I am pleased to see you," the King said, rising from his chair, cutting off Emeric's evaluation of the mage. He strode over, offering his forearm, which Emeric shook.

  "An honor to be summoned, My Lord," Emeric said, nodding his head. "Though I cannot help but admit my curiosity at the circumstances. Not, of course, that I am displeased to be offered to private an audience."

  "Bah!" The King scoffed, dismissing the idea with a friendly wave. "We have had more private audiences than this, Sir Emeric, and I intend to have many more yet. You are a valued soldier, and your expertise as a Knight is beyond question. Squabbling over audiences is for Dukes and Duchesses, not warriors."

  "As you say, My Lord," Emeric said with yet another nod. He was genuinely honored to be in the King's presence, but he was always privately concerned he might develop some mady in his neck from the frequency of respectful head-bowing involved.

  "Come now, sit, and choose your chair freely, for I bring no favorites on the march," the King said, waving.

  Emeric was thankful for the crification, because his first thought had been to avoid sullying some of the plusher decorations with his armor. He chose one of the closest chairs, pcing it roughly opposite of Graf, so that the four of them formed a loose diamond shape. Best to pce himself equal among their number, to avoid accidentally implying he was higher station than any present. Between a foreign advisor and famed mercenary of low birth, where, exactly, an unnded Knight stood on the social dder was an awfully difficult quandary.

  "I may first answer what I imagine to be your most pressing question, if you'd like," the mage suddenly said, the buzz to their words hiding their true voice. They pried their fingers off the armrest, raising their hand up, where it began shaking even more violently, fingers jittering as if they were in the midst of a seizure.

  "I must confess I was curious," Emeric said, "but I equally do not wish to pry. If it is a private matter, I will accept such an answer and think nothing more of it."

  "Unfortunately, it was a rather public matter," the mage replied, returning their hand to its steel grip on their chair. "I understand that you only returned to camp with your cavalry yesterday, correct?"

  Emeric nodded again.

  "I see. Have you heard word of the Witch's attack?"

  "I have, but only in passing thus far. A dreadful thing, if the accounts are to be believed."

  "It was, and while I regret that I could not preserve the many hundreds of loyal subjects that she sent to rot, there would have been been far more casualties had I not been present." The mage sniffed, leaning back into their chair. "Though I succeeded in driving her off, it was not without consequences. The foul energies of a Jungle Witch are an insipid thing, prone to seeping into the very deepest parts of the soul. This... affliction I now suffer from, it is the result." The mage turned their head, addressing the King. "But I assure you, it has no effect upon my ability to practice my craft. Perhaps the lower ranks of mages would be hampered by the inability to form gestures, but not I."

  "I believed you the first time, Ser," the King said, nearly rolling his eyes. Emeric raised an eyebrow at that; clearly, the two were on more familiar terms than he had anticipated. "And I trust that your research will uncover some curative measure in a dusty old tome at some point soon. If you wish access to any Sporaton libraries under my authority, you need only ask."

  "I thank you for your generosity, Your Majesty." The mage turned their head towards Graf, who was still standing in silence, clearly disinterested in the conversation. "I believe it best we now move on to more immediate matters, however."

  "Of course." The King cleared his throat, and Graf's eyes visibly brightened, attention returning from whatever distant pce it had wandered. Emeric, too, felt his interest sharpen. This was far from a normal meeting.

  "Sir Emeric," the King began. "I have received your report on the battle via crystal, of course, but I would hear it again, so that the others present may be better informed."

  "Of course, My Lord," Emeric said, nodding his head. He spent a moment collecting his thoughts, then began. "We encountered the enemy in the night, and waited until the following morning to begin our engagement. The Champion and her forces proved entirely unresponsive to our feints throughout the early hours, and so, when they passed a bend in the trail, I elected to pce a charge at the apex of the curve, to exploit the separation of their forces. Assembling the cavalry in loose formation had the desired effect upon the enemy's artillery firearms, to which we suffered no casualties during our charge."

  Emeric's expression soured as he recollected the battle. "The first sign of danger came when the Champion withdrew these rge firearms into a pre-cut path in the foliage, preventing their capture. It should have been clear to me then that she had prepared for our charge, combined with the fact that her firearms had not yet opened fire, but with the pace of events so rapid, I failed to realize such." He shook his head, still bitter over his pse in judgement. "The charge was initially as successful as I had hoped. We easily broke open the enemy lines, and began to split in two to pursue the isoted groups that began forming defensive squares along the road. However, the moment we broke free from the melee, the Champion's firearms unleashed their volleys from the trees, while producing yet another foul weapon."

  "Another?" Graf interjected, leaning forward. "Distinct from the firearms, or of simir make?"

  "I am as yet unsure, but I believe they used a simir bck powder for their function. Remarkably simple things, just a sphere of iron filled with the stuff, but far deadlier to our horses than the firearms. As they rolled along the ground, our horses ran over them, where they detonated beneath their unarmored bellies. It took an awful toll on the formation, as you can imagine."

  "Fascinating," Graf said. Emeric waited for anything else to follow, but there was nothing, so he continued on.

  "To avoid these new projectiles, I ordered our forces to remain as closely engaged with the enemy as possible, as the enemy would not risk harming their own troops. This worked for a time, but only just. Each time the enemy broke and ran, leaving us exposed, we suffered ever more casualties." Emeric took a deep breath, steeling himself for the final part of the tale. "Deciding that the losses we were suffering was too great to allow a future assault, I elected to attempt to break the enemy utterly, reasoning that I would have no better opportunity in the future to do so. Upon leading the charge upon the next group of halberdiers, however, I was pulled off dear Galnt by the Champion's sve-consort."

  "Lady Evie?" Graf asked, leaning forward.

  "Er, yes," Emeric awkwardly said. He could see the King's eyebrows furrowing at Graf's words. The woman was a sve by the King's own decree, a traitor twice over to the kingdom. To call her 'Lady' was an incredible slight to the King's authority, much less referring to her by the traitorous Champion's chosen name. Emeric suspected there were very, very few individuals who could so casually insult the King.

  He forced himself past the moment, trying to ignore the King's simmering frustration. "As I had charged ahead of my cavalry, not anticipating the Champion and her sve-consort to have so rapidly adjusted their position, I was temporarily isoted, and was forced into an engagement with the sve."

  "She fought alone?" The mage asked. "You said her owner was present, no?"

  "She was," Emeric confirmed, "but she chose to focus on directing her troops. It was a strange thing, dueling an enemy while trapped–"

  "You dueled her?" Graf interrupted. Emeric was aghast; the man was visibly excited, stepping forward to better hear his story, and the King's jaw was beginning to clench. "I believe I advised our Irregurs to avoid combat with Lady Evie, if at all possible."

  "I was hardly given a choice," Emeric snippily replied, emboldened by the King's growing irritation. "She rather forced the point, as you might expect, if you knew her so well."

  "I am not surprised that she dueled you, Sir Emeric, only that you survived."

  Emeric's jaw ground. "I am a Knight of Sporatos, Commander Graf. If I could not hold my own against a single young woman, I would not be worth my title."

  "Ha!" Graf barked his ughter. "If you truly did fight her, you know she's no mere young woman. The child barely clings to her sanity, Sir Emeric. Seeing as our ever-present advisor here states she is bolstered by the Champion's Levels, I sincerely commend you for surviving the encounter." Graf paused then, gncing at the King, seeming to remember himself. He straightened his posture once more, clearing his throat. "Regardless. Please continue."

  Emeric did so without comment, but only just. "The duel continued inconclusively, until such time that my cavalry broke through to me. It was then that the sve was forced to terminate the duel with use of concealed firearms, which she had neglected to use thus far." Emeric patted his knee. "You would not know it, thanks to Your Grace's healers, but I very nearly lost the limb below the knee."

  Here Emeric paused, deliberating. The sve's parting words. Her cim that the Champion wished for his life in particur to be spared, supposedly the only reason she had not ended his life with another shot. It was a comment rife with implications, very few of which Emeric could gain a full grasp of. He feared the King's reaction, feared Commander Graf's reaction, in fact, and had no idea how the mage would react.

  He chose the safest course, in the end. "Greater number of my cavalry pouring through the gap eventually forced their way to me and, seeing their commander incapacitated, elected to retreat. Due to the delirium of bloodloss, I could not countermand the order, though I wish dearly I had."

  "And this concludes your report?" The King asked.

  Emeric hesitated. "Yes, My Liege," he eventually said. "It does."

  "Hm." The King took a deep breath, chest swelling, then let the air slowly blow out, lost in thought. Emeric waited patiently, as did the others. Eventually, the King spoke.

  "I see no reason to disagree with your estimation that further use of the cavalry is to be discontinued," the King said, words which filled Emeric with a profound relief. "While the damage done to the enemy was great, peasants are far easier to repce than our grand Knights. Until this new threat is better understood, and counterspells or what-have-you created, we will allow the enemy to return to their capital unmolested."

  "I am honored to have your trust so, My Liege," Emeric said.

  "What use is a trusted commander if I do not heed their advice?" The King asked. His gaze turned to Graf, now. "And on that note, I would like to more openly discuss our private conversation, Commander Graf."

  "Of course, My Lord," the mercenary said, bowing slightly.

  Emeric's curiosity spiked once more. This meeting was not purely a review of their disparate forces, then, but a true strategic meeting, held only with the people the King presumably trusted most. That the advisor-mage was held in such regard was a concern, but it was not Emeric's pce to question.

  "At our current pace, it is over a week's march to the Tulian capital," the King said. "I intend to make use of that time in a number of ways, all of which are of particur relevance to those present. Sir Emeric?"

  "Yes, My Liege?"

  "You are to select from among your cavalry the Knights whose prowess on foot you believe to be greatest, yourself included. The cavalry shall not be entirely converted to foot soldiers, as I will not leave our forces so exposed, but I would have you create an elite fighting force from amongst their number. Irregurs amongst Irregurs, if you prefer. A varied force would be ideal, their talents adaptable to a great many scenarios, as the exact circumstances in which they will be deployed will naturally vary as the situation develops."

  "It will require but a few short hours to collect such a force, My Liege," Emeric said, nodding respectfully. "I am familiar with my Knight's abilities in detail, and will only require the time to extend the request personally."

  "Excellent. In addition, should Admiral Sheer be successful in his attempts to deploy his mercenary marines along the coast, you will be expected to evaluate their number and integrate your forces accordingly."

  "This will take slightly longer, of course, but not greatly so," Emeric agreed. He hadn't been aware that the King had begun to levy mercenaries in the conflict. His Lordship was clearly more shaken by his defeats than nearly any in the public were aware. Likely the reason for this meeting's intimate setting, Emeric supposed. He wondered who these mercenary marines were, then. Carrion, most likely, as they were the only force in a thousand miles with a half-decent corp of avaible mercenaries.

  "Excellent. And Ser," the King said, turning to the mage, "you will continue as we discussed. The archmages grow... discontented. This was to be a short campaign, their presence required only to counter whatever novel Skills or spells the Champion dispyed, and in this respect they have had little to study. They begin to trickle away like water through my clenched fist, returning to their isoted studies, and this cannot be tolerated. You will ensure they stay, by your usual methods."

  The mage nodded. "I will do just so, Your Majesty."

  Ensure the archmages stay? Emeric thought incredulously. By what power or offer is that mage capable of such a thing?

  "Commander Graf," the King said, turning to the elderly man with no small show of reluctance. "Your... advice... has been accurate to the point of prophecy thus far. In this respect, I..." the King's teeth grit, instinct keeping the words bit behind his clenched jaw. "I will entrust you with informal command of the army for the duration of the campaign."

  "I thank you, My Lord," Graf said.

  Emeric's scant diplomatic training failed him. He gawped at the man, who had spent all of five words accepting command of the entire Royal Army. He had not hesitated, nor reacted, nor shown any emotion other than the same stoic expression which had dictated the entirety of Emeric's interactions with the man.

  "This will not be a public transfer of command, you must understand," the King said. "In public, at all times, you will bow to my authority."

  "I would never do anything less, My Lord."

  "To excuse your commands being followed when battle is met, you will remain behind with the troops, while I take to the field personally."

  "Understood, My Lord."

  "I will emphasize once more that this posting is temporary, Graf," the King said. "And it is, as in all things, only through my benevolence that you are afforded such authority."

  "As in all things, My Lord."

  The King stewed, trying to think of anything further to say, to demur the indignity of signing command of his army over to a low-born, but seemed to come up bnk. Finally, as if growing tired of the farce, he slumped in his chair, waving Graf on.

  "Well, then? What is your pn of attack?"

  Commander Graf pulled a rolled piece of paper from his pocket, unraveling it on a low table to show it as a map of the Tulian capital. It was, unlike the King's own maps, exquisitely detailed, with its most recent revisions clearly demarcated as being made merely two days before. The King's own spies in the capital, Emeric knew, had gone silent nearly as soon as battle was met. Commander Graf's aged face split, a small smile rising. "Our pn is simple, My Lord. We will not attack."