Chapter 65: Birds of a feather

Viv’s older colleagues always had a faraway look when they mentioned Serbia and Kosovo. Now, Viv knew why. Out of all the heinous things people could do to each other, the wholesale slaughter of civilians topped the list, if not by horror, at least by frequency. It should have come as no surprise that funding an expedition to take land did not attract the most empathetic people, and that gathering raiders out of the group would lower the bar even more. Viv had simply not thought about it.

Corpses were strewn haphazardly through the rings of buried houses. Boys. Men. The raiders had bound older women to the flat walls of the communal hall. Their white hair fluttered in the wind under scarlet scarves. The slingers had used them for target practice. Farther down the road, cages waited, some of them open and their captives crashing on the ground in tears. The three Hadals were liberating the rest with a pilfered key.

“Marruk, could you let the others know that the prisoners need help?”

The shield bearer left without a word. Distaste was clear over her large face and Viv could guess why. The Kark had made her opinion of human practices clear enough.

They found Corel lying on his side in a pool of blood. Anybody on Earth would have died of shock minutes before but not him apparently, not with the stats fuckery. Viv wondered how that worked exactly. Was it magical energy that carried oxygen to his brain? Because most of the original fluid filling that role had left his body. Viv’s spell had hit him in the left clavicle. It had left a crescent of missing flesh reaching to his shoulder. Where the spell had hit, flesh and armor had been sheared off cleanly. There were no signs of burn or acidity. It was just gone. She noticed in passing that the spell had punched through at least two walls before digging into the ground. It had been a risk. There could have been civilians, but in her mind, eliminating a powerful leader had been worth it.

Corel saw her then, and smirked in the bitter fashion of those who have lost too much to cry. It made Viv feel angry, with the background of slaughtered civvies. Someone who had stooped so low had no right to feel sorry for himself.

“Squeeeeee.”

Arthur had left to sniff the body of a kid. She did not appear to understand, and neither did Viv.

Corel knew things. She had to… she had to ask him.

She was just too angry.

“I suppose this is my fault as well?” she asked loudly, arms spread to expose the disaster around.

“Cockroaches clinging to their mountain slope. Useless. Let Kazar down,” he growled weakly.

“But not as much as you, Corel. I simply don’t get it. You were a cop for fuck’s sake. I know that it was you who showed the raiders the path to the hidden mountain refuges. Only a local notable would have known and you are the only turncoat so far.”

“Talk all you want,” the man gasped, “Kazar is dead. The one that mattered, not the gathering of idiots you’ll use as a stepping stone, Bob the Calamity. Resh was the city. You are just a parasite moving its corpse around.”

“Are those your last words? Is this how you want to end up, killed in a bandit raid you led yourself? A slaver, murderer and a rapist? Because the woman you admired died?”

Corel was gasping now. He had stopped trying to save himself and the last of his life was quickly leaving. Viv knew that interrogating him now would yield no results. He was too stubborn, and he was dying too quickly.

“Better to destroy it all… than let you steal it…”

“You are insane.”

“Hah.”

The fallen captain’s eyes left her and focused on a point by her side. Inquisitor Denerim had come, followed by his apprentice. He was both livid and detached.

“Are you here… to judge me?” Corel rattled.

“Yes.”

Denerim’s hand whipped like a snake and fastened on the fallen captain’s forehead. Meanwhile, his eyes shone like orbs of molten gold and the hair of his grey-streaked beard lifted from some invisible wind radiating light from some unknown source.

“Know what they endured,” he roared.

Corel screamed. He screamed until he died.

Denerim shuddered. Viv was a bit disappointed. No information from the man, and yet he did suffer an absolutely horrendous and pathetic death so there was that. She would take all the victories she could.

“You need a moment?” she asked.

“Yes, please. Sometimes, I learn things from such punishment but this time I did not. I am sorry. It had to be done.”

“Don’t worry, it was not like I absolutely had to kill him with my own hands.”

“No, ah, I forgot that you were a traveler. Sometimes, carnage can give birth to aberrations. Abnormal monsters that actively hunt humans. I had to purify Corel’s soul or dark magic could have focused on his powerful resentment to turn him into something even worse.”

“Ah yes, Farren mentioned something of the sort.”

The discussion petered out. A dozen soldiers were helping the caged prisoners down and towards the main group under the watchful gaze of the three Hadals. Temple guards went from body to body to touch them and stop them from rising as revenants. The wounded were taken care of by their fellows with bandages and magic. Not for the first time, Viv felt completely useless. Fortunately, Solfis had a great sense of timing.

//Your Grace, there is the matter of the archer that tried to kill you.

“Oh yeah. Are you ok by the way? I saw damage on your frame.”

//The mark six version of the mage-killer frame has an integrated self-repair mechanism for long deployments.

//At the cost of durability.

“It’s the first time that I saw you damaged.”

//Indeed.

//We operate under strenuous circumstances and I had to make do with improvised equipment.

//In an optimal setting, the dragon bone would have been treated with precious oils.

//And the glyphs would have been etched with silverite powder or an equivalent.

//The use of second-rate materials has led to this.

“Maybe we can give you an armor or something.”

//No, Your Grace.

//Anything you come up with now will reduce my overall performance.

//Please consider that my loadout was designed by the Empire’s top engineers.

//The mage-killer can absorb and disperse all but the most devastating of spells.

//In exchange, my frame is vulnerable to physical damage.

//An armor would reduce my mobility, which is where my greatest advantage lay.

//I am a strike golem, not a guardian golem after all.

“I realize that I never asked about your abilities. You told me that you were dedicated to hunting monsters and high-value targets but I never dug deeper into the question.”

//You saw what I could do when I slew the necromancers.

//This was an accurate demonstration of my capabilities.

//With my current frame.

//As for why I stayed by your side instead of hunting, it was to protect you.

//Since this was the battle’s only point of failure.

“What do you mean?”

//You are a smart and resourceful heir, Your Grace, just as I had hoped.

//For example, using an arrow from a scout to guide your spells is a method that was recorded in my database.

//But it did not occur to me, because my ability to think outside of the basic parameters remains limited.

//It did occur to you, which shows that I can trust you to fulfill your role.

//As such, I calculated that we could only fail if you were disabled.

//I also calculated that there was a not-insignificant chance that the prince would send an assassin to take you off while you were distracted.

//By using the fallen captain as bait.

//It is the sort of cheap, honorless tactics my prediction algorithms have come to expect from that thin-blooded upstart.

Solfis walked and led Viv and Arthur to a small hovel behind which a man lay dead. He was dressed in what she could only qualify as a medieval Ghillie suit, complete with terracotta dust and pieces of grass. The interesting part was his bow, which was very large and looked deadly. It was made from a dark sort of wood Viv had never seen before.

[Killer yew bow, enchanted: this bow requires a large amount of power to draw. It is best suited for dedicated paths.]

It looked nasty, but not as nasty as the barbed javelins that served as its arrows.

“So, Prince Lancer gathered all the disgruntled among his group and threw them at us with the hope that they would inflict enough damage before they died.”

//Historical records hint that just getting rid of them could have been an equally important objective.

//A summary analysis of the marauders’ equipment indicates that most of it was their own.

//The quality is simply too low to have belonged to a proper regiment.

//Additionally, there was a high likelihood that you would show up.

//Hence why he sent a sniper to take you off, just in case.

“He’s really taking the cheap investment, high return approach every time. He must really need the money.”

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//Would that alter your plans, Your Grace?”

Viv thought about it for a moment then shook her head.

“I don’t think so. The way I see it, he’s going for the low-hanging fruits in a bid for his father’s seat. He got the money from the settlers, then he’ll get the money from the slaves he’ll bring back since there are at least six to eight hundred people who did not evacuate in time. He’s fulfilled most of his objectives, and after he’s gone he won’t really care about Kazar. It was never a strategic objective anyway.”

//The iron mine will change this.

“Yes, but only after he takes the throne, I think. We’re all secondary concerns to him. He’ll want to do the bare minimum then piss off to the power race that will come with the season for war. We wait for him to leave, then we take the city back.”

//I must ask, Your Grace.

//You take the city back then what?

//You will be the most driving element in what is technically a separatist revolutionary government.

//Against one of the continent’s most powerful kingdoms.

//Is this how you envisioned your stay in Nyil?