Chapter 36: Diversion
Mist drifted along the blood-soaked fields of the previous campaign, and the wind carried the distant cry of a crow—lonely, accusing. The heavens were overcast, heavy with clouds the color of ash. It was the kind of sky that remembered every man who had ever died beneath it. The Southern Crusade, first attack, having lost its entire twenty-five-thousand-man vanguard to a hailstorm of gunpowder and iron, had halted its advance. A simmering shock, fury, and disbelief replaced their previous confidence in their number.
However, they could still besiege the fort at Ashen Pass at any time. Their lifeline was the border town of Cany. A bustling trade hub belonging to the neutral Claudia Grand Duchy, Cany was the only major settlement that connected the southern kingdoms to the Leonese border. It had become the crusade's indispensable rear base, a critical artery pumping supplies, mercenaries, and gold to the front. Unlike the chaotic frontline, Cany was peaceful, its streets booming with the commerce of war.
On the top of the watchtower of the town's stone wall, two guards stood sentinel, their pikes resting against the merlons as they gazed out at the sprawling, temporary city of the crusade's main camp miles to the south.
A guard sighed. "Thomas," he said to his partner, his voice laced with boredom, "do you ever think we're on the other side of this wall?"
Thomas, an older, more cynical man, spat a sunflower seed shell over the edge. "What, and miss all this? Look at it, Mathis. The taverns are overflowing, the merchants are paying ten times the usual price for grain, and the brothels are making a fortune. This war is the best thing that ever happened to Cany."
"I suppose," Mathis said, unconvinced. He shivered, pulling his cloak tighter. "It's the stories that get to me. The onesfrom the survivors of the pass. They talk about the Leonese heretics wielding weapons of thunder and smoke, killing knights from half a mile away. It doesn't seem natural."
Thomas scoffed. "Drunken campfire tales. I'll tell you what's not natural: a boy-prince telling his nobles they can't own slaves or have their armies. That's why this is happening. The Grand Prince of Leo spat in the eye of tradition. The southern kingdoms are just reminding him of his place. Now stop your worrying. No one's stupid enough to attack this town, passing the main army. We're safe as houses."
What he said was not wrong. To reach the Cany town, you have to pass through the main highway that connects to Ashen pass, where the main army of the Southern crusade is stationed. But there is another way, it is to climb through the two mountains, which is harsh terrain and would take days to pass through, and on the other side, you will already notice the march and already prepare for what is coming. With fatigue from climbing the mountain and fighting the prepared army, itis one way to lose a battle with much effort. Nobody would try that if they were right in their mind.
This time, He was wrong.
The two Guards heard a faint, rhythmic thump-thump-thump, like a giant's heartbeat, growing steadily stronger.
"Earthquake?" Mathis asked, his eyes wide.
Before Thomas could answer, the ground in the main market square, fifty yards from the town's main gate, erupted. The cobblestones buckled and split, and a huge section of the earth collapsed inwards with a deafening roar, creating a massive, gaping maw of dirt and splintered rock. A great cloud of dust billowed into the air.
From the depths of this impossible hole, men began to emerge. Soldiers of the Leonese Second Legion poured out of the tunnel mouth, forming perfect shield walls and pike squares in the heart of the town before the shocked garrison could even sound the main alarm.
At their head was a figure of immense power, his Aura a steady, deadly light. Commander Bestiaus, the Swordsman loyal to Varrus, drew his longsword. "Secure the gates!" he roared. "Secure the barracks! No mercy for anyone who resists! Do not harm the civilians! For the Grand Prince! MARCH!!!!"
The southern soldiers, a disorganized mix from a half-dozen different kingdoms, were caught completely by surprise. The Leonese, emerging from a tunnel that Alexius's genius had conceived and Borgin's new dwarven drilling machines had carved through the mountain's root, struck at the town's nerve centers simultaneously. The main gate was seized in the first five minutes. The garrison barracks were surrounded and stormed before most of the soldiers inside had even buckled their armor.
The thousands of mercenaries and war merchants in the town, who had no loyalty to the crusade, either fled or wisely barricaded themselves in the taverns. Within three hours, the Golden Lion banner of the Leo Principality was flying from the watchtower where Thomas and Mathis had once stood. The crusade's supply line had been severed within just three hours.
....
In the grand command pavilion of the Southern Crusade, the air was filled with the scent of spilled wine and cold fear. The lavish feast laid out the night before in anticipation of a swift victory now became a humiliated defeat that shattered the Southern Kingdoms' pride. Outside, a miserable, persistent rain fell against the silk roof, each drop a small, accusing tap counting out the ghosts of the twenty-five thousand men they had lost.
Around a massive campaign map, the architects of the holy war sat in a sollen, suffocating silence. King Regulus of Equitatus, a sword master, a giant of a man whose kingdom's entire identity was built upon the thunderous charge of its heavy cavalry, stared at the map with the hollow eyes of a man who had witnessed the death of his god. His finest knights, the pride of a dozen noble houses, were now nothing but broken, butchered meat in the mud of the Ashen Pass. His anger from the day before had burned out, leaving only a cold, terrifying confusion.
Beside him, General Kaelen of Lihia, the Sword Master who had led the vanguard, trembled with a rage of pure humiliation. His was a spartan kingdom of professional soldiers, and his reputation was the only currency that truly mattered to him. He had not just been defeated; he had been rendered irrelevant, his army annihilated by an enemy he had never even managed to engage.
Queen-General Amara of the Sunstone Queendom, a woman whose desert kingdom valued resilience and cunning over brute force, watched them both with a cool, analytical contempt. Her fingers tapped a slow, steady rhythm on the hilt of her scimitar. Although she is a swordmaster, she is also a cunning strategist, and she was trapped in a room full of furious, egotistical fools.
The Twin Sword Masters of the Azure Coast, lords of a mercantile kingdom whose power lay in their fleets and their gold, were doing a cold accounting of their losses. They had funded a third of the mercenaries in the vanguard. Their investment had been significantly wiped out in a single, disastrous battle.
It was King Regulus who finally broke the silence. He turned to Kaelen.
"The reports from the survivors make no sense," he said, his words filled with disbelief. "They say your knights never even reached their walls. They speak of a continuous, rolling thunder that shattered their armor from a distance. They speak of a black rain that fell from the sky and killed their horses. Explain it, Kaelen. Explain how twenty-five thousand men are slain by a force of five thousand without a single shield being splintered in melee."
Kaelen shot to his feet, his chair scraping violently against the floor. "Because it was not a battle!" he snarled, his voice cracking with a mixture of terror and fury. "It was an unholy slaughter! We charged into a wall of smoke and noise! A profane fire that does not burn but punches through the finest plate steel as if it were paper. It is a coward's weapon! An art of demonic sorcery, conjured by a heretic who has sold his soul for a shortcut to power!"
"Or perhaps," Queen-General Amara's voice cut through his burst like a spike of ice, "it is simply a new kind of weapon. One, we were too arrogant, too steeped in our glorious traditions, to anticipate." She looked Kaelen up and down, her gaze withering. "You call it sorcery. I call it a well-drilled line of army men. You call it black rain. I call it a new, unconventional weapon. You speak of demonic arts. I speak of a commander who chose his ground, understood his strengths, and used superior technology to achieve a flawless victory. We did not face a demon, General. We faced the future. And you charged at it with a pointy stick."
"Insolence!" Kaelen spat, his hand flying to his sword. "You dare question my honor?"
"I question your competence," Amara replied coolly, not flinching. "You led your men into a meat grinder because you could not imagine a world where a cavalry charge was no longer the answer to everything."
"This is pointless!" one of the Twin Sword Masters interjected, his voice sharp with a merchant's frustration. "Honor and tactics do not matter! What matters is that our supply line is now anchored to this cursed pass, and the enemy holds it with weapons we do not understand and cannot counter! We are bleeding gold and men for nothing!"
The alliance was fracturing, devolving into a bitter storm of accusations. It was then that Bishop Valerius de Avarus rose, his face a mask of profound, saintly sorrow.
"My children," he said, his voice a balm of practiced piety that instantly lowered the temperature in the room. "Please. This is what the heretic wants. He seeks to poison us with doubt, to divide us with fear." He looked to Kaelen with sympathy. "You faced a power that defies the natural, God-given order of things, my son. Your courage in the face of such profane horror is a testament to your faith."
He then turned to Amara, his expression shifting to one of wise agreement. "But the Queen-General is also right. Our faith must not make us blind. We must be as cunning as the serpent while remaining as pure as the dove. We cannot allow our noble traditions to be a weakness."
He let his gaze sweep across them all, his voice rising with theatrical passion. "It matters not if we call this a new weapon or a dark curse! Its source is the same: the heretic prince, Alexius! This blasphemy does not prove our cause is hopeless; it proves that it is more righteous than we ever imagined! We are not merely fighting to chasten a disobedient boy; we are fighting to cleanse this land of a profane new darkness before it can spread and consume the world!"
He was masterfully reframing their humiliating defeat as a sign of their cosmic importance, giving them a holy banner to hide their fear and incompetence behind.
Through it all, Archmage Ignis had remained utterly silent at the head of the table. He had not moved, had not spoken a word, his ancient, glowing eyes half-closed as if he were dozing. He looked upon the bickering kings and queens with the detached contempt of a being for whom their entire lives were but a fleeting moment. Their talk of honor, tactics, and faith was the buzzing of insects.
But Amara's words—a new kind of weapon—and Kaelen's terrified descriptions had piqued his interest. This was not a simple political squabble. It was a paradigm shift. A new, non-magical power had emerged in the world, and it had defeated one of the greatest concentrations of martial and holy might in the South. This was no longer a tedious chore to be performed in exchange for some magical relics.
This was now the most interesting puzzle he had encountered in a century.
Bishop Valerius raised his hands, his face a mask of pained piety. "Brothers and sisters in faith! Let us not turn on one another. This is what the heretic wants! He seeks to divide us with his cowardly, dishonorable tricks. We must remain united in our holy purpose—"
He was cut off as the flap to the pavilion was thrown open. A messenger, his face ashen, his armor spattered with blood, stumbled inside and collapsed at the foot of the table.
"My lords… Archmage…" he gasped, his voice a ragged wreck. "The town… Cany… it has fallen!"
A stunned, absolute silence descended upon the pavilion.
"Fallen?" King Regulus repeated, his voice dangerously low. "Fallen to whom? Did the Claudia Grand Duchy betray us?"
"No, my King," the messenger choked out. "The enemy… they came out of the ground. In the middle of the town square. Thousands of them. Leonese soldiers. They defeated the town within three hours and now occupied it. Our supply line… it is completely severed."
They were shocked. The Sword Masters leaped to their feet, roaring in outrage and disbelief.
"Our supplies! Our grain! Our reserve armaments!" "We are trapped! Cut off deep in enemy territory!" "This is a catastrophe! We must retreat! We must retake Cany at once!"
Bishop Valerius stared at the messenger, his mind refusing to process the strategic disaster. His perfect, glorious crusade was unraveling, turning into a logistical nightmare.
Only Archmage Ignis remained seated, his glowing coal-like eyes narrowed in thought. The squabbling of the warriors was meaningless noise to him. This… this was interesting. An army that moves through mountains like a mole. Weapons that kill with thunder. A boy who consistently used tactics that were not found in any known military treatise. This heretic prince was not just a political problem; he was a source of new, dangerous, and utterly fascinating knowledge. He was a puzzle the Archmage now burned with a desire to solve.
As the debate among the Sword Masters devolved into furious, panicked shouting, Ignis slowly rose to his feet. His immense, fiery presence instantly silenced the room. The very air grew thick and hot, the torches on the walls flaring brightly.
He looked at the terrified faces of the kings and queens. Even though swordmaster and archmage are considered at the same level, the swordmaster can only fight in close combat; mages can fight both close and long-range combat. When an aura is from within your body, it is limited only to what your body can produce. Mana is in the air, and Mages' bodies justamplify that mana to use it. The higher the quality of the amplifier, the more mana you can use from nature, meaning mana is infinite. Therefore, considering that an archmage can use mana infinitely, along with his age and the countless battles he has fought, nobody is a match for Archmage Ignius—not even divine power users like Bishop Valerius, who rely on prayers and willpower, nor all sword masters combined.
"Fools," he mocked, the word crackling with power. "You fret over a single town, a single line of supply. You think like merchants, not conquerors. The heretic prince plays these clever little games of diversion and subterfuge because he is afraid to face true power."
He gestured vaguely in the direction of the Ashen Pass. "He has cut the root of our army, so he thinks we will wither on the vine. A childish miscalculation. He has forgotten that I am here."
Ignis's eyes began to glow with a terrifying, molten light. "I will not be distracted by this sideshow at our rear. I will solve this problem by eliminating its source. I will go to this Ashen Pass myself."
He turned to the stunned assembly, his voice now a low, rumbling promise of annihilation.
"I will melt his pathetic little fortress to glass. I will boil the blood in the veins of his 'Thunderer' soldiers. I will salt the earth with their ashes and show this upstart boy the profound, irreconcilable difference between a cheap mechanical toy and the absolute, elemental power of a true Archmage."
He paused, a cruel, predatory smile spreading across his gaunt face.
"When I am done, Cany will be irrelevant. Their leader will be broken. And you will be free to march into his kingdom over the scorched bones of his army. Prepare the main host. We march to witness a true battle." (Continue.....)