Ar'Kendrithyst

Half an hour ago, it looked like an easy victory, but now...

Erick watched as Ophiel targeted and annihilated group after group of red-armored soldiers. Kill Notifications scrolled past his sight, and Erick added each one to his running tally. He was up to four thousand, three hundred and nineteen, so far.

Occasionally, he spared a view toward the other powers scything through the red warriors, but not often enough, it seemed. The flying swords of that one guy were not flying around anywhere. Half an hour later, Erick came across those thousands of swords scattered across the land, inert and stabbed into the ground as if they had been tracking a target, and died along their flying path. Some swords stood upright in stone. Most were broken.

Sword guy was dead, for sure. Erick had no idea where he was, but he was dead, and the killer was still out there. In that instant, Erick wondered if Ari and Kaffi’s prediction of an ‘easy war against Terror Peaks’ was true, or if those words had been a boast, to cover their own gnawing doubt.

Erick conjured a [Cascade Imaging] in the sky over Eralis, targeting Raidu, and then he came back to himself and glanced over to Poi. “Their goal was to get Songli’s elites out on the field. Now they’re killing those elites. Right? Or am I reading that wrong?”

It was such a simple concept. Erick shouldn’t have been surprised that Terror Peaks would throw away soldiers to draw out the actual threats of Songli. But he was. Erick could never imagine throwing away lives like Terror Peaks had done.

With tendrils of thought around his head, Poi said, “The soldiers needed to be dealt with, or else Eralis would have fallen, but, yes, the soldiers barely mattered. Terror Peaks’ elites are out hunting now. Songli is still expecting a win, but they knew it was going to get worse.”

“If they have biological material from those elites then I can track them. Have Songli give me those samples; lay them out somewhere. Otherwise the target is on Raidu.” Erick said, “I’ll spend most of my time hunting the red army, but I will attempt to kill every target they give me.”

Poi nodded slowly as he spoke to other people. After a moment, he said, “Please cast your Imaging over Alaralti and Holorulo, as well. Your samples will be in Holorulo— No. They’ll be at Southern H— I’m getting conflicting desir— Your samples will be at the roof of the Sour House, in Darzallia. They’re coming through in a tiny [Gate].” Poi said, “I will be informed when more samples appear, as it is easier to gather samples than it is to actually hurt these people— No. Wait… There won’t be samples. They’re asking if pictures will do.”

That could work, too. Erick said, “Pictures, names, abilities. A short dossier. Defining items on the person. There might be false positives, but we can work through those.” Not exactly true, but Songli didn’t need to know his full capabilities right now.

“Understood,” Poi said, as he sent off instructions.

Ophiel was already over the Sour House, waiting.

Erick tried not to think too deeply about the state of the building.

The Sour House was half gone. The bodies of the proprietor and the wife laid half in the courtyard, and half spread out everywhere else, along with the bodies of others who had roomed there. Terror Peaks had struck this location; they had known Erick had been here.

Unbidden, the names of the proprietor and his wife came to Erick; Derix and Iyolza.

Erick had tried to keep his distance from them, but he recalled their names and remembered who they were, anyway. Nice people. Orderly. Proper. Worried for their future when a Scion came to live under their roof. Normal people. Perfectly normal people.

Dead.

Gone.

Erick did not wallow in misery. He focused.

The Sour House was half gone but a part of the roof remained.

Less than a minute later, a tiny purple-rimmed [Gate] appeared atop that remaining section. It discharged several wardlight images, cast onto the backs of paper, while the fronts held names and brief descriptions. Every single person was listed as a rank in Terror Peaks’ army, most of them as ‘Special Attachment’. Two were captains. Scion Raidu was one of the targets.

With dry eyes, Erick said to Poi, “Raidu is first.”

Poi nodded as he silently communicated with others, elsewhere.

Ophiels lightstepped over to Alaralti, and Holorulo, while another Ophiel went back to the map over Eralis to adjust that one so it wouldn’t interfere with the other two.

Erick briefly marveled at the other two cities of Songli, ignoring the fires and destruction and focusing on the beauty.

Alaralti was like Eralis; cosmopolitan and varied, with massive buildings and a large noble district. The Void Wall perfectly encircled the main city, but it was a hundred meters off of the ground, supported by stones the shape of clouds. The city itself spread out below the wall, like the wall was a tram running around the whole place. There were no demarcations that seemed to say ‘this is Alaralti’ and ‘this is some other city’. Everything ran into each other, and clan mountains sprouted wherever they felt like sprouting.

This second city of Songli was called the breadbasket of the Highlands, and while that moniker wasn’t wholly true, it was true enough. Outside of the main cosmopolitan area, the land was farmland, stretched out as far as Ophiel could see. Rice paddies. Wheat fields. Orchards and lands full of vegetables. Fish ponds that were attached to the Wanzhi River. Everything seemed attached to the Wanzhi River, with irrigation that went everywhere. Normally, it was a beautiful place.

But right now half of Alaralti was on fire and the Void Wall had been broken, its pieces crushing houses underneath.

Erick put up an Imaging for Raidu high above, then asked Poi, “Do they want rain to control the fires at Alaralti?”

“Yes,” Poi said, instantly. “Lighter rains everywhere else, too, if you could.”

Erick obliged. The sky turned dark over all of Songli, but especially over Alaralti’s farmlands as quick casts of [Call Lightning] sped up the process of cloud gathering. Rain began to fall. That Ophiel then moved on to start erasing the few red-armor soldiers he saw still in Alaralti’s streets.

Holorulo was less on-fire than both Eralis and Alaralti, but only because the city had less to burn. The place looked like China’s Forbidden City, but if those architects had had access to magic, effectively infinite manpower, and a penchant for white and gold.

The first thing Erick noticed were the massive, half-kilometer wide, half-kilometer tall towers all around the central space; they seemed like clan mountains, but different. They were scatters of gold buildings atop those clan mountains, with small golden nooks here and there all across that solid white expanse of the ‘mountainsides’. Those balconies and exposed courtyards betrayed the living spaces and hallway’d interior beyond, and the depth of architecture contained therein. From his brief examination, Erick saw individual rooms of some variation, with brown woods and greens and other colors, but the official exterior was dominated by white and gold.

Holorulo had a Void Wall that resembled Alaralti’s tram-like sculpture of Rozeta, which formed a hundred-kilometer ring, denoting the far exterior of the city. The clan mountain towers formed a smaller concentric ring at 50 kilometers wide.

But the inner 30 kilometer radius land was what truly looked like it belonged to emperors.

Those interior buildings seemed ritualistically organized, and ten times the size of what was necessary for normal living. They had exterior walls which were of white pillars, while the roofs were gold and shining. Gardens were sparse, but well maintained and architectural feats in their own right. Golden fire wardlights illuminated the white land from giant sconces, showing the stark beauty of it all, but the red and black ruined it all.

Red blood. Black soot. More soot than blood, for Holorulo was truly underpopulated. The fights which must have happened here were massive. Erick saw no soldiers, anywhere. He didn’t see any people. No doubt if any person showed, they would be targeted by one side or the other.

Erick set up a [Cascade Imaging] in the sky directly above the center of Holorulo, directly above what appeared to be a Void Temple-like space. To the north of that space was a massive building that seemed ceremonial because of its overly large size. Songli actually had a triumvirate, but if Songli had emperors, that’s where they would have lived.

If there were red soldiers here, Erick didn’t see them. Maybe they were inside the towers or the other scattered buildings? Maybe there were only assassins; Holorulo didn’t look like the sort of place that you assaulted with an army.

While the map populated, Erick focused on killing the red army in Alaralti and Eralis.

The maps populated. Raidu never appeared.

Erick informed Poi he was moving the map to the next target, and then he did so.

Almost instantly, a blue dot appeared in Holorulo, north-northwest, not thirty kilometers from the outside edge of the city’s Void Wall. It was close. Ophiel was available. The target maybe didn’t know they were pinged, yet. From what Erick was seeing, the target was inside one of the large, special clan mountains. Near the top.

The man’s name was unimportant.

He would soon be dead.

Erick informed Poi of what he was doing, and after confirmation, he went and did it. Ophiel lightstepped into the area where the blue dot had shown.

The room was empty. Boring. Small enchantments were here and there; upon the board game abandoned by the window, upon the light orbs up above, and in the walls, for silence. Aside from those small bits of the casual detritus of life, the small sunroom was empty.

Which meant, of course, that it wasn’t. The target was a man of illusion and assassination. But still. The room looked empty, to all of Erick’s Sights. Nothing there according to Erick’s mana sense. Nothing there on the [True Sight]. The walls were made of the same not-stone that other clan mountains were made of, so if this guy had an Elemental Body that allowed him to swim in that substance, then Erick might have been out of luck, but he doubted that.

A different Ophiel checked the map.

The target was still there.

Erick didn’t have time to search for the parts of the room that seemed off.

Ophiel abandoned [Greater Lightwalk]. [Fulmination Aura] was the preferred aura, now.