Chapter 17

  In the northern borderlands, where the lush forests of Caleon slowly merged into the gray, merciless wasteland, there reigned a silence that had nothing to do with peace. While in the south, in the magnificent city of Drymon, servants were stretching silk and cooks were pre-tasting the finest wines for Thivan’s unification celebration, a storm was gathering in the north that was not made of clouds.

  Here, near the border of the House Ironfist territory, Reyn had set up camp. It was an ironic twist of fate that Thorsten Barwan and Ulrich Ironfist had for years engaged in a childish feud over who held the right to the name "Iron Fist" for their golems or their banners. Soon, both lords would have to realize that metal and pride were worth little when the very foundations of the world began to shake.

  Reyn stood in his tent. It was a functional construction of heavy fabric and—what made the location so strange—dragon scales. The thick, shimmering plates had been offered voluntarily by the Dragonfolk. Where once they had been shackled and tormented by Caleon's traders to obtain their precious goods, they now served Reyn with a devotion bordering on religious fanaticism. Reyn’s true power lay not just in destruction; it was his ability to bend the will of the masses. The more power he invested in controlling his servants, the freer and more passionate they seemed to follow his orders. It was a perfidious reversal of slavery.

  But today, his magic was reaching its limits. Between him and his guests stood a desk of dark wood, placed upon a thick carpet that struggled to keep the dirty grass of the North at bay. Opposite him sat two figures who could not have been more different: Uzug, the leader of the Scar-Horde, an orc whose massive body was marked by countless battle scars, and Morgaine, a Dark Elf of cool, almost fragile beauty, whose eyes, however, possessed the hardness of polished diamond.

  Both had arrived via precious teleportation resources—a sign that they at least took Reyn’s call seriously. But Reyn felt the resistance. Uzug possessed a mind consisting of a mixture of granite-like pride and a certain instinctive stupidity that made him immune to subtle psychological manipulation. Morgaine, on the other hand, benefited from her people's natural resistance to external mana interference.

  Reyn took a deep breath. If magic was not enough, the word had to suffice.

  "You have come," Reyn began, his voice calm and melodic. "That speaks for your foresight. You know as well as I do that Caleon is a cancer feasting on the marrow of your peoples."

  Uzug snorted, a sound like a breaking branch. He leaned his massive fists on the table, which creaked threateningly under his weight. "Caleon has walls. Caleon has golems. And Caleon has shining armor. The Scar-Horde is hungry, yes. But we do not run against metal walls just because a human in a pretty robe asks us to. What do you have to offer, little man? Can you even hold a sword without falling over?"

  Reyn smiled thinly. He knew that orcs only respected strength. He tried to amplify his physical presence with a small mana-induced pressure, flooding his muscles for a moment with latent energy to counter Uzug’s intimidation. But the orc only laughed darkly. The raw, natural physique of the mountain of flesh was unimpressed by Reyn’s subtle aura. Uzug saw in Reyn only another mage hiding behind words.

  "My strength is not measured in arm circumference, Uzug," Reyn said, glossing over the failure of the physical demonstration. "It is measured in the world I will create after the fall of the Sothar and High Elves. A world where the orcs are no longer banished to the wasteland."

  He turned to Morgaine. The Dark Elf had observed him in silence until now, her fingers playing with a small, violet-glowing crystal.

  "And you, Morgaine? The Dark Elves were driven from the forests that are now combed by the golems of the Barwans, Ironfist, and to the west, the High Elves. Do you not believe that the gods demand justice? My patron, the Lord of the Shadows, has shown me that the old order must fall. He demands a sacrifice that Caleon will provide."

  Morgaine froze. The coolness in her eyes instantly transformed into icy rage. She did not stand up, but the air in the tent became noticeably colder.

  "Gods?" she hissed, and the word sounded like a curse. "You dare speak of gods to a Daughter of the Deep? We Dark Elves left the gods behind eons ago. We believe in blood, in steel, and in the end of all things. Your 'patron' is nothing more to us than a parasite feasting on the imagination of mortals. Never mention him in my presence again, human, or our conversation ends here and now in blood."

  Reyn felt that he had committed a strategic error. The metaphysical track was not a path to the goal with this people, but a dead end. He had underestimated the bitterness the Dark Elves felt toward anything that smelled of divine guidance.

  "Forgive me," Reyn said quickly, his voice perfectly neutral again. "I forgot that your people choose their own path. But the path leads us to the same goal: the end of the Sothar."

  Uzug slapped the table flat, causing an ink bottle to tip over and blacken the carpet. "Words! Nothing but words! You speak of an end, but so far we see only a camp in the dirt. Caleon is strong. Thivan Sothar is a fool, but he has the resources of an entire empire."

  The orc stood up, his massive frame darkening the light of the oil lamps. "I’ll tell you how it’s going to work, mage. We will not die for your 'order.' But we are no friends of Caleon. If you manage to give Thivan a bloody nose... if we see that your army of Dragonfolk and barbarians can actually shake the walls of Hammerfell or Drymon... then the Scar-Horde will come to eat the rest."

  Morgaine rose as well, her movements as noiseless as a shadow. "Uzug is right, as much as it pains me to agree with an orc. We will reconsider once you have defeated Caleon. When the first fortresses fall, send us a message. Until then, you remain to us only an ambitious human with too many documents and too little ground under his feet."

  Reyn watched them as they turned to the exit of the tent. He felt no anger at their rejection. It was a logical consequence of their history. To them, he was still a blank slate, a promise without proof.

  "You will hear the news!" he called after them, while the tent flap was already fluttering in the wind. "And when you hear it, the price for a place by my side will be higher than it is today."

  Morgaine paused briefly, looked back over her shoulder, and a thin, dangerous smile appeared on her lips. "Then make sure the message is loud enough, mage."

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  Then they were gone. A short time later, Reyn felt the magical tremor of their departure; two powerful teleportation spells leading back to the depths of the southern deserts and the underground.

  Reyn remained alone in the tent. He looked at the soiled carpet and the trembling desk. He had not convinced them—not yet. But he had awakened their greed and their hatred. That was enough for a start.

  He stepped out of the tent. Outside, his generals were waiting—Dragonfolk in shining cuirasses and barbarian leaders with tattooed faces. The wind whipped against him, cold and merciless.

  "Lord?" asked one of the Dragonfolk. "What is the result?"

  Reyn looked southeast, toward where the Black Woods lay and where Luken, Vin, and the others were forging their path. He knew they were coming. He knew that the Inquisition in Neros was likely already reacting. The pieces were on the board.

  "They are waiting for a sign," Reyn said softly. He raised his hand, and small, black lightning bolts began to twitch between his fingers. "And we will give them a sign that will haunt them into their dreams. Prepare to march. We wait no longer for diplomacy. We bring the storm."

  -

  We stood at the edge of the Black Woods, where the dense, oppressive gloom of the undergrowth abruptly gave way to an artificially cleared open space hundreds of meters wide. Before us rose Drymon, the proud capital of House Sothar, and the sight took the breath even from me—someone who knew the cathedrals of the Inquisition and the vast halls of the Paladin Academies.

  It was no mere stone from which this city had been built. The walls, which rose at least fifteen meters vertically into the sky, consisted of a white, flawless material that seemed to positively glow in the pale afternoon light. It looked as if the builders had cast the moonlight itself into blocks. Every joint was sealed with liquid silver, and the surface was polished so smooth that the distant treetops were reflected in it as if on the surface of a still mountain lake.

  But the beauty was merely the mask of an absolutely lethal defense. Every two meters, a soldier of the Sothar Guard stood upon the battlements, as motionless as a statue. I had seen many armies in my life, but these men wore armor that shattered any notion of massiveness. They were no simple cuirasses; they were layered plates of white gold and reinforced steel, so heavy and thick that an ordinary man would have collapsed under their weight. Their spears were not simple weapons, but nearly three-meter-long lances with broad, leaf-shaped tips engraved with runic channels.

  Everywhere on the masonry, between the battlements and along the massive archways, blue-glowing runes burned. They pulsed in a slow, threatening rhythm. I didn't need Gravor's senses to know what these signs meant: Absolute Execution. Any unauthorized intruder attempting to scale these walls or penetrate them magically would be burned to ash or torn apart in a wave of kinetic energy within a fraction of a second.

  Behind that, staggered like the teeth of a predator, rose at least two more rings of walls, each slightly higher than the one before, bristling with countless watchtowers pointing into the sky like threatening fingers.

  "So, uh, I’ve never actually seen Neros, even though I was trained in a Paladin Academy a bit further away. But this..." I began hesitantly, trying to grasp the sheer scale of this fortress.

  Maira interrupted me, her voice unusually quiet, almost reverent. "Is madness. It’s an insult to any attacker. The architecture... it almost comes close to the capital of the High Elves."

  Arik, standing beside me—his ashen-gray skin looking almost dirty in the bright glow of the walls—tilted his head inquisitively. His gaze traveled up the white cliffs of stone. "Isn't the Great Wall of the Elves three or four times higher? At least, that’s what I heard when I was still in the North."

  Maira nodded slowly, without looking away. "That’s true. The White Wall of Celebrian is gargantuan. But it’s just that one wall. A single, insurmountable line. This here... these are three in a row. A defense in depth. If you overcome the first wall, you're trapped between the rings."

  It was strange. The High Elves had relied on their one, perfect line for millennia, convinced of their inviolability. But the people of Caleon, especially House Sothar, seemed driven by a deep-seated paranoia. They didn't just build walls; they built labyrinths of stone and death. They certainly weren't careless—they were ready for a siege that could last decades.

  However, on closer inspection, I noticed something else. Something that seemed almost ridiculous in this martial context. I activated Gravor’s perception, that dark gift that broke the world down into energy flows and hidden details. First, I saw the soldiers—their mana signatures were calm, almost relaxed, despite their disciplined posture. And then I noticed the ornamentation.

  The armors were wrapped with fine, blue silk ribbons. The spear shafts bore golden tassels. Even the runes on the walls seemed to have been calibrated differently for this day; their glow was no longer merely a warning but had an almost festive, shimmering undertone.

  "Is all that... decoration?" I asked in wonder. "Is the realm preparing for some kind of celebration?"

  I felt Gravor grow impatient in the back of my mind. "Look deeper, Luken. Look behind the facade. The greed of men is often more colorful than their rage."

  I extended my vision as far as possible. It was a technique I used very rarely, as violently tearing open the demonic eye often came with a stabbing pain in the temples and nosebleeds. The world before me blurred into a gray shadow, only to reassemble with a clarity that went far beyond human measure.

  My gaze pierced the first wall, flew over the first inner ring where Barwan golems stood like silent sentinels in rank and file. It leaped over the second wall and dove into the heart of Drymon.

  What I saw was no military camp. It was a rainbow in the form of a city. Between the magnificent stone houses and the marble palaces of the upper class, thousands upon thousands of banners were stretched. Crimson, gold, emerald green, and the brilliant blue of the Sothar fluttered in the wind. Cascades of flowers hung from the balconies, and the streets were lined with carpets so colorful they looked from a distance like a flowing river of gemstones.

  Smoke rose from the great plazas—not the smoke of fires, but the sweet scent of festive roasts and expensive incense. I saw musicians tuning their instruments on golden platforms and huge wagonloads of wine being pulled through the gates of the innermost palace.

  Then it dawned on me. In the history of the Midlands, in the chronicles we had studied to death at the Academy, there was only one event that justified such a display of splendor. An event that would change the geopolitics of this continent forever.

  "The East is being reunited," I breathed, breaking the connection to Gravor and blinking as I rubbed my aching eyes.

  "What did you say?" Vin asked, stepping closer. Her face was pale. She knew Drymon, but even she seemed surprised by this version of the city.

  "The Great Unification," I explained, pointing to the flags now being hoisted on the watchtowers of the first wall. "Sothar isn't just throwing a party. They are celebrating the moment the renegade principalities of the East officially return under the crown of Drymon. Thivan is to be crowned ruler over the entire East. It is a demonstration of power beyond compare."

  Maira stared at the walls. "That explains the golems. And the exaggerated security. All the lords of the realm are here. Every single rival clan, every potential traitor, and every loyal vassal is behind those walls."

  "And we're arriving right at the climax of the party," I added drily. "The whole city is in a frenzy. None of them suspect that a storm is brewing in the north that will soak their pretty carpets in blood."

  It was paradoxical. Before us lay the most secure and magnificent fortress of the known world, a place almost bursting with wealth and complacency. And we stood here—a ragtag bunch consisting of a cursed Paladin, a corrupted cleric, an ash-born warrior, and the runaway fiancée of the host—carrying a warning that no one wanted to hear.

  The white walls of Drymon shone back at us, a symbol of an order that believed itself eternal, while we knew that the foundation was already crumbling.

  "We have to get in there," I said firmly, though my stomach churned at the thought of the runes and the spears. "And we have to do it before Thivan has the crown placed on his head. Once the unification is complete, he will no longer be accessible to reason. He’ll think himself invincible."

  The four of us looked toward the massive main gate, which was slowly opening to admit an escort of heavily armored knights. Drymon was expecting its guests. It expected brilliance and glory.

  It definitely did not expect us.