AO 6 Ch 27

It took us another three nights to get close to Chillwind Pass. And now we were debating how we were going to get into Chillwind Fortress without somebody attempting to blow our heads off.

I was coming from enemy territory, which would make them attack first and ask questions later.

That was less than ideal and I’d like to avoid being attacked.

I frowned, glancing at the situation below, trying to figure out how I could make this work for me. Then it hit me. "Oh, I know how we're going to do this," I said, without any hesitation. I pointed up at the mountain that I had previously destroyed. "What if I start rebuilding that, you know, as an apology to Melida for tearing down her mountain? She said at the time that I was going to have to rebuild it," I quickly explained my master plan.

Missy was off to find another goddess crazy enough to shack up with the two of them, leaving me with my anchors and Eva.

“Well, she did say you had to fix it.” Emlyn offered. “I’m not one to stop you from cleaning up your own messes.”

I gave her the eye roll that she no doubt wanted before levitating up to the mountain I had sheared off, beginning to draw on my magic and prepare to do a classic Ard move.

“Can he do it?” Eva asked.

I huffed at that challenge. Could I do it? Pulling on an absolute ton of magic from the Ardenium Palace, I was no longer concerned that I could become corrupted and thus had begun stock piling magic. And really, it made sense. Soulgard was far too awesome to be corrupted. 

The Ardenium seemed to be an endless well. Thus far, it had soaked up every ounce of magic I could push into it, which meant when I needed to make a mountain, that magic was at my fingertips, coming as quickly as I called to the land.

The only limiter at the moment was my imagination and my mental fortitude to shape the world with my will. Sands flew up from the deserts below, twisting and spiraling into the air before pouring atop the mountaintop like water filling a vase. It didn't spill over the edge. Instead, it made a wonderful, growing peak that just happened to have a slight nasal-like flare to it.

Emlyn snickered beside me.

"That was on purpose. I'm sending a message," I shrugged.

What I did not say was that for whatever stupid reason, the noses I had practiced making out of clay for several weeks were fairly locked into my mind. I could make a nose like nobody's business.

It was easier making it a nose than a mountain.

So over the course of the next ten minutes, I reshaped the nose-mountain, feeling the amount of earth magic within the palace dim significantly. This was no small feat, but it wasn't meant to be small. It was meant to get the attention of both fortresses.

Once it was done and recovered my mental state, I floated down on my bluesteel plate towards the Avente side, waiting to see if we would be attacked.

Melida, with her hair not even properly braided, stood on the ramparts, swaying side to side with her hands behind her back. She looked particularly pleased with herself. "What do we have here," she said as I approached.

"I don't know. I was really hoping you could tell me," I said, coming in closer.

She smirked and shook her head. "If I didn't know better, I would say that was an apology for destroying my mountain pass." She said.

Playing a little aloof, I shrugged my shoulders. "Assume whatever you want, Melida. Now really, I'm the kind of man that if I break your mountain, I'm going to fix it because that’s the right thing to do," I said, the plate coming closer, only for me to pause. "Permission to enter your fort, captain?" I slapped a lazy salute.

"If you're going to do it so poorly, just don't even do it at all," she clicked her tongue. "Otherwise, I'm just going to encourage the rest of my men to have discipline as terrible as your own, and the war is as good as lost."

I shrugged helplessly. "It's not my fault that everyone wants to look up to me and do as I do." I ignored the sigh behind me from Emlyn.

"Ah, for a moment I had missed you, Ard," Melida said. "Though, that sentiment is wearing incredibly thin, so quickly. I remember why I was a little relieved when my grandfather sent you away. Please, come into the fortress after the display you've done. If I kick you out, it's only going to make the other side rush forward and you're going to destroy the mountain yet again." 

I chuckled, landing down beside her. The little bluesteel plate I had been floating us all on folded itself up into a rough-looking sword that then sheathed itself at my waist. 

Melida gave the performance an appraising look. "You've gotten better."

"Something like that," I replied. "If you wouldn't mind, I would absolutely love something warm to eat and maybe a fire to sit by. I might even be so inclined to regale you with the wondrous stories of where we have been."

Melida jerked her head to the side. "I was going to invite you in regardless." 

I fell into a step behind her, Eva and my anchors just behind me. We cut a ferocious figure, having just come down from remaking a mountain. All four of my anchors exuded a power and prestige that they hadn't the last time we'd been in the fort. 

Melida swiftly went into the central keep, Brusset rolling around the corner and falling into a step with Eva behind me. 

"Seems the young cub has returned victorious," he said. 

"Something like that," I called back. "Personally, I'd consider killing four chancellors, flipping over a city into the hands of someone who's actually going to take care of the people and out of the hands of King Martin, a success." My tone was dripping with sarcasm. 

Melida turned slightly to me, an eyebrow cocked. "And here I thought my grandfather was just getting you out of everyone's hair."

"Oh, he was," Eva said hurriedly. "The only difference is..."

“There were plenty of opportunities that I took once out of your hair.” I interrupted quickly, letting her crack a smile into a bold laugh.

"Well, to what pleasure do I owe you returning to our side of the fence?” Melida asked.

“One, I have news, and not good news. Two, I may have blown up a fortress."

She chuckled. "Only a fortress? I would have thought you'd taken the capital city and picked it up like a child throwing a temper tantrum and launched it off its plateau."

"No, but maybe I'll do that next time," I humored her. "But seriously, Melida, I may have destroyed the fort and the northernmost of Garrish between them, and the barbaric lands. I may have also set some Northmen buildings on fire. Well, I didn't." I hooked a thumb at Aurelia and Emlyn. "They did, and then lured the barbarians down to the fort that is now theirs to take and occupy."

"What he's not including is that the fort they will be occupying," Emlyn air-quoted, "is barely standing."

"Hey, there's at least a waist-high wall left there somewhere," I retorted. 

Emlyn rubbed her forehead but didn't get into it with me, not in front of our commanding officer. 

"So, you killed one chancellor there. Where'd the others die?" Melida pressed for information.

"Oh, right. Well, there were three that chased me into the badlands, and then Lord Snappykins got them."

Melida gave me a blank look and blinked twice. "Perhaps I'll need the full story for any of this to make sense."

"That'd probably be best," I agreed. "It would be a shame for me to try and summarize my meritorious and heroic deeds."

"Surely," she said with a wry smile. "In here," she gestured into a room that was cozier than I expected from her. There was a hearth on either side, with a desk in the center. Both hearths, despite spring coming, were lit with a modest fire inside, making the room almost balmy.

*****

Melida leaned back in her chair, her fingers steepled as I drank my third cup of hot tea.

I mixed a good fistful of sugar into each cup, much to the painful expressions of everyone else in the room. 

"That is unbelievable, Ard," Melida said before hurriedly correcting herself. "Not that I don't believe you, it's that if I didn't know you as well as I do, I would certainly call you a liar and throw you out of here." 

I stared into the cup and saw the large residue of sugar clinging to the bottom. I needed to drink faster and get to the best part of the drink. "Well, luckily you know better, because it's all the truth," I said.

Melida's eyes raked over my anchors as if testing my assertion. 

"He may have left a few facts out actually, to make it more believable," Zuri sighed, siding with Melida.

I hadn't exactly made the connection between my mother's anchor being a goddess and another goddess of beauty joining. Really I was avoiding all the mentions of gods in general. It kind of blew it all out of proportion. I just said I did soul magic things and struck at King Martin, which Melida had accepted handily because even though the mages of Avente practiced some form of soul magic, I was leagues beyond them in terms of power and strange things that I could do. 

"So King Martin's soul is currently injured. You are targeting the rest of the chancellors so you can weaken him enough to kill him, which will also likely cause him to cannibalize any remaining mages within Garrish," Melida summarized. 

I bobbed my head perhaps a little too quickly, growing a bit dizzy. I glared down at my sugary drink, wondering if I should slow down. "Yep, that about sums it up. The good news is that I've done most of the work. The problem now becomes that King Martin likely has several chancellors directly around him. Can't go after those," I held my hands up. "But I can go after the ones that are on the war front. They're probably dotted across the enemy lines."

Melida grunted and gestured for Finley, who went behind her desk and opened up a drawer full of scrolls. He wiggled his fingers before plucking three out of the stack and handing them over to his mage. 

"Alright, so when it comes to chancellors, it's a little bit of a crapshoot. They are our equivalent of elder mages, and though they have more of them than we do, comparing them to an elder mage probably isn't entirely sufficient, at least before whatever it was that King Martin did to them. It took one and a half to two of them to equal one of our Elder Mages," Melida explained as she rolled out the scrolls.

“Not that it mattered because should they enter the fight against an elder mage, both armies die regardless.” I understood the gist.

"But rather than actively utilizing them in the war, they are currently operating as command centers and recovery efforts." She then fished out another sheet of paper and began cross-referencing all three scrolls, scribbling down on another.

"What you're going to find is that we merely have speculations as to where they might reside. They're just a threat to prevent us from escalating with Elder Mages. So they are, in fact, letting themselves be known. We, of course, have to treat information like that with some small amount of skepticism, though you could also argue that they're strong enough that perhaps they don't feel threatened enough to hide their actual locations," Melida shrugged. 

Zuri leaned forward. "Intelligence and counterintelligence," she explained. 

"Oh, I know. I read about it in Eva's book. The flow of information is something that has to be carefully watched and maintained. If you can trick an enemy into thinking you are where you are not, you can even force them to close off valuable routes of advance or retreat without you having to have soldiers present for that pressure," I nodded and showed off a little. 

Melida raised a manicured eyebrow at me before going back to working on the paper. "That said, with the information that we have and my own interpretation, I'll give you my best guess for where the remaining chancellors are hiding." 

"That would be fantastic," I said, all smiles, particularly when other people were being helpful.

"Any news for us?" Zuri prompted. 

Melida didn't seem particularly happy with that question, which only made me increasingly wary. "Not great news. Our king, in his ever-pouring fount of wisdom, has decided to get aggressive. So if what you're saying with King Martin wanting more warm bodies to enter the grinder is true, then I'm afraid we're about to give them exactly what he desires."

That information was enough to make me ignore the last sugary dregs of my cup of tea and lean forward. "I see it on your face. There's more. What else?" I asked.

"Amongst his efforts included trying to force House Aldis to rebuild the desert watch center," she replied.

I frowned. "My mother and grandfather, I'm sure, can take charge of that operation without any issue.”

“But that is the most contested territory of the war right now. We gave too much ground and the Garrish forces know that. The entire area is completely mobbed." She told me.

"Okay," I said slowly. "But that's not too big of a deal, right?"

"Depends on what you define as a big deal, Ard. The area is at best unpredictable. At worst," she shuddered, "it's a death trap."

I scowled, understanding her concern. "So, House Aldis happened to draw the short straw."

"We both know there was nothing happenstance about the straw they drew, Ard," Melida confirmed my fears. "I've been asked no less than four dozen times since you've been gone for your location. I can only assume it is a magnitude worse for your family. And given that I'm fairly certain they don't even know where you are, and they couldn't answer, then that leads me to believe that this was their punishment." Her expression turned sour.

Since we disconnected with Uncle Valken there was literally no way for anyone to know where we were. Not that we were sharing in the first place.

"Okay," I stood up and started pacing. "So, I already knew the king wanted me dead, and now I don't have to differentiate which king I'm talking about. At least that’s easier."

"Ard, take this seriously," Melida warned.

"He is," Emlyn waved her comment off. "That he's joking about this means he's worried."

I bit my lip and turned back to my anchors. "Perhaps coming back into Avente was a mistake?" I asked.

"No, it wasn't," Zuri took the sheet from Melida and was reading it over, her eyes jumping back and forth before she tapped the paper. "Based on her best guess, the reason no one can settle up to reestablish watch over the desert is because there's at least one active chancellor in the region. It means that your mother is likely being forced to throw House Aldis troops right into certain death. Unless, of course, she and your grandfather join the fray.”

“But that would be the direct escalation that everyone's trying to avoid," I pointed out.

"Pinned on the back of House Aldis," Melida sighed, "everyone knows this, and House Aldis has fought the orders as much as they could. The last I heard, they were pushing out from Strathmore territory at Crater Lake very slowly. And yes, your mother and grandfather were amongst the group venturing out."

My eyes darted back and forth as I put the pieces of what we knew together. "Zuri, King Martin's wounded, he's going to do something stupid, right?"

"I don't know if I'd say stupid. As we discussed, he's going to try to get stronger and recover, which will likely require live mages. That's assuming he doesn't have something like Missy's Pendant," Zuri pointed out.

"She was the goddess of souls, and perhaps that's why I could use a trinket. And King Martin's vampires had to be there directly." I pointed out

But I also understood where this was going. If both sides had some intelligence on what's happening, the garrisoned troops likely knew that House Aldis was pushing forward.

The Avente King would want to firmly frame up the operation as House Aldis' play. 

My family had been pushed into a corner. If they back out, everyone who had lost their farm or their family in that area was going to blame House Aldis for not stepping in and fixing the situation. And if my mother was forced to escalate by joining the battle herself, then all of the damages would be blamed on House Aldis as well. 

"Do you think it's almost assured to escalate?" I asked, looking for Melida's opinion. 

She nodded. "It's a snake pit. And the king is going to push someone into it. It's no surprise that his least favorite house, Aldis, is the one getting the boot."

Hopefully, Garrish forces didn’t have intelligence on my mother and grandfather’s involvement or things might shift completely out of control.

I nibbled on my lips. "Okay. Do you think we can make it in time?" I said, turning back to Zuri. "If we leave now, and I push hard on the bluesteel platform, I can maybe get us there in two days?" I squinted trying to guess the distance based on the map on Melida’s wall.

Zuri glanced at her aunt before pulling several other reports off her desk. 

"Please help yourself," Melida gestured and leaned back in her chair. 

"Thank you for your permission. That would be so much easier than having to ask for forgiveness," I commented, only to receive a glare in return. But I successfully shifted the blame onto me. In every way, I would protect my anchors.

"It's going to be close, Ard," Zuri said, finishing her quick scan of documents. "It really depends how cautious your mother and grandfather have been in their movements.

“They are as cautious as they come, especially that old man." I glanced off into the distance. Now would be a really great time for one of my other untested soul magics to do something helpful. Though, I wasn't about to activate light or life in the middle of Melida's keep. That was one way to get uninvited forevermore, especially if I blew it up again. 

"Well then, I won't hold you," Melida waved as if she was shooing us out. "If you can go save Gwen, a lot of people will be happy." 

I squinted, hesitating before jumping out and into the proverbial fire. "Is there something I'm missing?" I asked. 

"No, nothing in particular, Ard. Just a lot of people are putting their hopes on your mother and grandfather lately. People have been watching them, wondering if this is the point where they will turn around and buck the king. Standing up where no one else has been able to thus far, and actually changing the current. The war has gone on long enough, people feel the pain. The king and his leadership have lost a lot of favor because of Carmilla. Let's just say there are a lot of eyes on this right now. So if you're going to do anything, know that everyone's watching." 

"Oh, thanks. No pressure," I smirked before looking out into the distance. "But if that's the case, then perhaps you're right. It's time I make my move."