Chapter 35: Southern Alliance
General Kaelen, Marquess of the Lihian kingdom, a renowned Sword Master of the Southern Alliance, knelt in the blood-soaked mud of the Ashen Pass, his breath coming in ragged, desperate gasps. His ears rang with a loud, thunderous voice that had not ceased, a sound that had ripped his world apart. Around him lay the ruins and corpses of his army—the Vanguard of the Holy Crusade. Twenty-five thousand men, the pride of ten kingdoms, had marched into their doom. Now, the sun was at its zenith, and Kaelen was one of only two hundred survivors.
He stared at the Leonese fortress ahead, a grim, squat thing of grey stone and angled earthworks built into the narrowest point of the pass between two colossal mountains. It seemed impossible. Five thousand defenders, the scouts had said. A relatively small number. They were supposed to have been crushed in a single, glorious charge; their walls had to be breached before noon with the might of a proud sword master.
Instead, they had unleashed hell.
Kaelen squeezed his eyes shut, but the images were imprinted into his mind. The charge had been perfect. His heavy cavalry, five thousand strong, had thundered down the pass, a wave of steel and faith that had broken armies a dozen times over. Then, from the walls of that damnable fortress, came the devil. Not the usual rolling of a catapult, but a sharp, deafening, continuous Bang-Bang-Bang that sounded like the sky itself was tearing apart, like thunder.
And the smoke. A thick, acrid, white cloud had erupted from the battlements, obscuring everything. His knights had charged into that smoke, and they had simply… vanished. Their screams were cut short by wet, punching thuds. When the smoke cleared, there lay the lifeless bodies of Horses and his men, their fine plate armor punched through with small, ugly holes from which blood streamed freely. They hadn't even reached the walls.
He, a Sword Master, had drawn his blade, his aura blazing, ready to leap into the battle and turn the tide with his superhuman might. But the enemy was too far away, hidden behind their walls and their smoke. His power, the ability to slay a thousand ordinary men in close combat, was rendered utterly, humiliatingly useless.
Panic had shattered his ranks. The infantry behind the cavalry had broken, turning to flee, only to be met with a new horror. Great iron balls, screaming through the air from an unseen distance, had begun to fall among them, each impact a catastrophic explosion of rock and shrapnel.
He had survived only because he was a Sword Master, his aura deflecting a stray projectile that would have torn him apart. The other survivors were his elite, two hundred expert-level warriors whose own enhanced speed had allowed them to escape the one-sided massacre before they were annihilated.
"How?" he muttered to the blood-soaked ground of the battlefield. "What godless sorcery was that?" He had never seen such weapons in his entire life. Never heard of them. The reports from spies had spoken of a Grand Prince of Leo forming a new army. They had not been notified of this new, thunderous, God-forbid weapon that can kill a person from a far away distance. He had led his men into a hell, not into a glorious battle. And now, he had to somehow first retreat from this place and notify the higher-up.
…..
Eight months earlier, in the sun-baked southern Kingdom of Barlius…
The man who had once been Bishop Valerius de Avarus of Leo was now Bishop Valerius of Barlius. His exile had not been an end, but merely a relocation. He became a bishop within a year in this kingdom from priest. The Conservative faction of the Holy See, though weakened by his failure, had not abandoned him. They had arranged his "placement" in this small, fiercely pious kingdom, a backwater, but one with its own unique strengths.
Barlius was a nation built on a single resource. Even though the country population is only 200000, a quarter of the Leo Principality population, and 1/5 of Leo territory, its capital, Ignisburg, sat at the foot of Mount Pyre, a perpetually smoldering volcano whose deep veins pulsed with the richest deposits of fire magic stones on the continent. The kingdom was small, its armies a fraction of Leo's size, but it was wealthy, and it was a bastion of the conservative faith that Valerius embodied.
The kingdom's ruler, King Pleonexia IV, was a weak, corrupt man, paralyzed by paranoia as his three ambitious sons and two scheming daughters vied for his throne. He was a king ripe for manipulation.
But the true power in Barlius was not the king. It was the Archmage.
In a twisted tower of obsidian that seemed to drink the very light from the sky, lived Archmage Ignis. He was an ancient, powerful figure who had served the kingdom for over a century, his life extended by the very fire magic he commanded. He was utterly neutral in all political matters, viewing the squabbles of kings and bishops as a tedious distraction from his true purpose: the accumulation of ultimate magical power and knowledge.
Valerius knew that the king was a figurehead and the archmage held the real power. To achieve his revenge on Alexius, he needed Ignis. And he came bearing the perfect bait.
After weeks of careful maneuvering, Valerius was granted an audience in the archmage's inner sanctum. The room was a furnace, the air shimmering with heat. Ignis, a gaunt figure in robes the color of cooling embers, his eyes glowing like hot coals, looked down at the Bishop with bored impatience.
"You waste my time, Bishop," Ignis rasped, his voice like grinding stone. "I have no interest in your crusades or your politics."
"Nor I in yours, Archmage," Valerius replied smoothly, his heart pounding. "I come not as a politician, but as a fellow scholar. A bearer of a unique opportunity."
From a lead-lined box, Valerius produced a small, cloth-wrapped object. He unwrapped it. On the velvet lay a stone fragment, no larger than a man's heart. It glowed with an internal, golden-red light of such purity and power that it made the very air in the sanctum hum. It was a light that promised infinite energy, a key to unlocking the deepest secrets of fire magic.
Archmage Ignis, who had not shown genuine emotion in fifty years, gasped. His ancient eyes were wide with a raw, insatiable hunger. "It cannot be," he breathed. "A Phoenix Stone."
"A mere fragment," Valerius said, a triumphant smile touching his lips. He had his hook. "Stolen at great cost from the royal treasury of Leo. The legends are true, Archmage. The first king of Leo was said to have been gifted the heart of a dying phoenix. He broke it into five pieces. Four of the fragments remain in their vaults, the source of their dynasty's 'divine right. 'This is the fifth, which my agents secured."
It was a masterful lie, woven from a tapestry of half-truths and lies. The Leo dynasty did possess the Phoenix Stone, but where it is is unknown. The First King of Leo put Phoenix Stone's fragments in five secret places throughout the realm. Valerius got it only by his luck from the ruin of the western province with the help of his brother, the late Duke Valerius. He kept it secret until now to use it as a card to play in politics at the right time and place.
"Imagine, Archmage," Valerius continued. "Imagine the power you could unleash if you possessed all five fragments. You could sustain this Magic Tower for a thousand years. You could achieve a level of mastery over fire magic that no mortal has ever known. You could become a god."
The Archmage's greed, the pure, untainted greed of a scholar for ultimate knowledge, was ignited. "What do you want?" he hissed, his eyes never leaving the stone.
"A partnership," Valerius said. "The current ruler of Leo is a heretic named Alexius. He has cast down the nobility and abolished the sacred traditions. He is weak, and his realm is in chaos after his reforms. Help me launch a crusade to reclaim it, and the Phoenix Stones in his treasury are yours."
The alliance was forged in the fire of the archmage's ambition. Together, they went to King Pleonexia. Ignis, whose neutrality had been the bedrock of the kingdom's stability, now promised the king overwhelming magical support for a war of expansion. Valerius provided the holy justification, framing Alexius's modernizing edicts as a profound heresy that the pious Kingdom of Barlius had a sacred duty to correct.
Fueled by the promise of the Archmage's fire magic and the wealth of the magic stone trade, they began to build a coalition. Envoys were sent to the other ten minor kingdoms of the southern part of the continent. They were promised land, wealth seized from the 'heretic' lands of Leo, and the eternal blessing of the Church. Five other Sword Masters, kings, and queens of their respective realms had gladly agreed to the alliance with the glorious promises. Within six months, they had assembled a force the likes of which the South had not seen in centuries. An archmage and his fire mages, five sword masters, twenty swordsmen, five hundred experts, and a grand army of two hundred and fifty thousand men.
…..
After 8 months,
The great crusade marched north under a cloud of dust that could be seen for miles. It was a river of steel, a chaotic but immense force, filled with the proud belief in their own numbers and the righteousness of their cause. They knew of Leo's new, small professional army, but they scoffed at it because of the difference in numbers. What were a few thousand well-drilled soldiers against a quarter of a million men and the might of an archmage?
General Kaelen, the most respected of the five Sword Masters and Marquess of the Lihian kingdom in this newly found Southern Alliance, was given command of the vanguard. His orders were simple: take his twenty-five thousand men, breach the Ashen Pass, and seize the first Leonese fortress to open the way for the main host.
He rode at the head of his column, his heart swelling with pride and certainty. He was a Sword Master, leading the charge of a holy war. Victory was not just probable; it was divinely ordained. He could already taste the ashes of the heretic prince's capital on his tongue. He had no idea he was marching towards a living hell, a new age of warfare that would render his power, his faith, and his entire world utterly meaningless in a storm of thunder and smoke. (Continue….)