AO 5 Ch 1

The Garrish forces had been washed away by the mountain I’d turned to sand, but in the distance, they were regrouping, pulling their men out. The mass of an army was still churning forward.

“I can’t believe what you did to my fort.” Melida gasped again. “My grandfather is going to kill me.”

“Again. It wasn’t me!” I held my hands up, the picture of innocence, making myself wince as my head throbbed. Throwing around so much magic had strained me.

Cyam landed the carriage in a rushed, bumpy landing on the ruins of the fort.

“Brusset, get me a pair of boots and a coat. I need to get something thicker than my nightgown to take on an army.” Melida huffed and stormed out of the carriage even as it melted away. “Ard, get going. Emlyn, Zuri. We’re going to deal with the pass.”

I didn’t focus on what else she said, instead sitting down amid the ruins and focusing on my soul, bringing myself to Soulgard as Maribelle and Aurelia took up on either side of me.

It didn’t take long for me to find myself once again in the giant fortress city. Though, calling it a city was a little bit of a misnomer. A city wasn’t just the buildings, it was the people and currently there were none.

A section of the wall gleamed as it had been turned to bluesteel.

That part had withstood the onslaught from Colin.

The spot that crumpled inward had pushed material out and broken the stone sections alongside it. Nearly half the wall around Soulgard needed repaired from my deconstruction of the mountain.

I rolled up my sleeves and got to work only to look up as my eyes went wide at what I saw there.

***

Melida looked rather gruesome as Brusset handed her a dead Garrish soldier's coat. The woman had no issue putting anything on that provided better protection. Anything had to be better than the nightgown and bare feet she had run from the Fort in. 

Meanwhile, Finley was quickly moving through the dead soldiers, trying to find a pair of boots that would fit.

"How'd you want us to reshape the pass?" Emlyn asked. The woman was technically their commanding officer, though she doubted Ard was going to give Melida that kind of respect.

Not in a bad way. Ard just didn’t put much stock in formalities. 

"Well, if I understood everything correctly, you have Ard's earth magic," Melida said, eyeing a pair of boots that Finley brought her. She slipped her feet into them with a satisfied sigh. "Don't look at me like that. It's freezing up here, and I'm not going to go through having frostbite healed on my toes ever again." She pointed at Emlyn. "The best we can do is buy time. Zuri, you said you sent a letter back?" 

"Affirmative." The House Trevis anchor fell into a military salute. Emlyn hadn't bothered with such formalities. In some ways she was more like Ard than she’d ever admit.

"Good." Melida bit her thumb and climbed back atop the rubble. "Emlyn, your job is going to be creating as many pits and drop-offs as you can. I want Garrish forces to be walking single file through this last section of the pass." 

Emlyn glanced at the ground in front of her. "I think there's a misunderstanding. I don't actually know how to use earth magic," Emlyn said, glancing back at the older mage. 

"Well, figure it out. After all, Ard did, and you wouldn't happen to be worse at something than Ard." 

Emlyn gave her a sardonic smile. "You know, there are other ways to motivate me than using Ard." 

Melida gestured at the destruction around them and the oncoming army. "Great. Let me know if you have anything else time-sensitive to discuss. Right now, my one and only goal is to get everything moving as quickly as possible." 

Emlyn's nature was to rebel against such remarks. However, she knew Melida was absolutely correct. Time was of the essence. Time they couldn't spend bickering. 

"Yeah, Ard did this," Emlyn said to herself. "How hard could it actually be?" She stepped forward, frowning, as she put mental effort into shaping the ground in front of her. She just needed to make a really big hole.

And for all the mental strain that she exerted on that desire to make a hole, one appeared, about the size of a fist.

She could almost hear Ard mocking her, telling her it was harder than it looked. The mocking Ard in her head only made Emlyn more determined. 

This time she decided she didn't need to learn how to make an entire thing out of magic. Instead, she stepped forward, drawing out her sword and stabbing it into the ground. With explosive energy, lightning charged out of her sword. And the ground exploded, making a hole. 

Emlyn smiled. "Yeah, that will have to do. And I did do it with magic, technically," she said, looking at the lightning dance off the tip of her sword.

During the battle at the fort she had moved earth better, it seemed it was easier in the heat of the moment. She thought about Ard's sputtering start as a mage. There were more than a few times he had overdone his magic, making mountains or filling the sky with lightning.

Perhaps she’d end up doing something similar.

She scoffed. "Yeah, right. I'll be better than Ard in no time." She jumped forward, lightning empowering her legs. Before she landed, she stabbed her sword into the ground once again, exploding another hole.

She was at least accomplishing what Melida had set her out to do. Even with a different set of tools than expected.

Emlyn glanced over at the sound of rocks grinding, only to see Melida waving her hands, reconstructing the wall of the fort.

Zuri quickly took position on the first fragment of the wall to be finished, drawing her bow back. A glowing arrow appeared, which she fired off into the reforming army. 

Emlyn grumbled and went back to blowing holes in the pass.

The thousands of gleaming helms and commanders shouting for them to move forward gave her motivation to hurry.

The men at the front pushing back against those who were trying to march forward. Ard’s collapsing the mountain and Zuri's continued assault had struck fear into the army.

She felt bad for the soldiers at the front and the war between Garrish and Avente. Basic soldiers were nothing but expendable. They were tools for the mages and anchors to use as they strategically fought in small bursts. The mass of soldiers were a buffer to be used defensively.

A single anchor, even a poorly trained one, could take on several dozen soldiers on their own. It took overwhelming odds for soldiers to even kill an anchor, and they did so only by wearing out the magic an anchor had stored and tying them down.

Emlyn felt Ard's sphere connected to her, and even as she was blowing chunks in the path, her magic was being restored.

She stabbed her sword in, flicking it upwards as she surged magic like a sudden thunderstrike into the ground. The rocks got caught in the air. She waved her sword, calling on that earth magic, feeling her heart pump and hurling shards of stone at the army.

Watching as a group of soldiers flinched back, Emlyn chuckled to herself and continued on as arrows of light exploded amongst the soldiers.

She did her best to keep them back. Even if her shards of earth fell far short of the distance between her and the advancing army, it was enough that she bought Ard the time he needed. 

***

I had fallen into my meditation, returning to Soulgard, now standing up above the city that I created to guard my soul.

A swirl of ephemeral magic shifted in bright colors like the northern lights. The cracks in Soulgard glowed in tune with the light show above, and I watched as all of the soul juice that Missy had given me was repairing the cracks and enlarging my soul. 

I could tell now that not only was my soul damaged from the use, it was also unstable as the mass of magic continued to pour energy into Soulgard, and the walls stretched. Unfortunately, stone did not stretch very well, and gaps appeared only for more of the energy from the soul juice to patch up those holes. 

"Missy, you really went overboard," I murmured to myself as I watched. I needed to stabilize my soul as quickly as possible. I put my hand down on the ground and imagined a pulse rippling out from the center, carrying the buildings, the stone walkways, and even the walls out with each pulse. Greater cracks appeared all over, even in the blue steel wall I had made previously. 

As the soul juice continued to repair the walls, I focused in and repaired them with more blue steel. The walls were cracked stone, filled in constantly with blue steel, like shiny spider webs glittering across the surface of the stone. Each pulse grew in intensity as I shoved Soulgard wider and wider, knowing that I had received some soul juice from Missy before, and I'd never had this effect of the glowing lights above. 

I could only assume that I had gotten an extreme amount. It seemed that the ridiculously simple-named monster Colin had indeed been feeding gluttonously on Aventi mages. But that wasn't a consoling thought, as I focused once again on enhancing Soulgard, this time feeling Emlyn draw from my wolf spear. Both lightning and earth magic were tapering away into the simulacrum of Emlyn that lived in Soulgard. 

Meanwhile, Maribelle seemed to press closer and closer to the serpent spear, like she was trying to become one with it, though that was typical Maribelle behavior.

Aurelia and Zuri were both lifeless, neither of them having connected themselves to my soul to the same degree as the other two. I hoped to grow closer with them because even if they weren't quite at Maribelle and Emlyn's level, I never wanted to lose them. My mind flashed to Maribelle's most recent death, which caused me to falter in my expansion of the soul card. Rather than pulse out in all directions with the next thought, the tower wrapped protectively around Maribelle and my serpent sphere. My subconscious desires were making themselves known. I desperately wanted to protect my anchors. I couldn't stand losing any of them. There was simply no life worth living in which I lost one of them. 

I watched as the tower that held the serpent sphere turned into blue steel, protecting Maribelle's soul even further. I let that idea take hold and turned Emlyn's tower as well into blue steel, wrapping both of them protectively within my city.

A pair of heels suddenly clicked next to me as the mistress of the night, the goddess herself, who I prefer to call Missy, appeared next to me. Her body was draped in a cloak of starlight, preventing me from seeing any details. 

"I see you're going for ‘fortified’ rather than ‘huge’," she said. "That's probably for the best. Because your soul will no longer be as safe as it has been recently. The garish King Martin has been dabbling heavily in soul magic." She gave me a warning. 

I glanced at her, regaining my focus and expanding the city, filling in the expansion with the toughest material I knew, blue steel. 

"Is that what you meant when you were cursing after you failed to connect to something after defeating Colin?" I asked. 

She snorted, "I did not fail. There was simply not enough of a connection between the two for me to do what I had wanted." 

"Sounds like failure to me," I shot back at the goddess, causing her to glower at me. Even if I couldn't see the details of her face, I could feel the glower. I was familiar enough with the similar looks that Emlyn gave me. 

"It's alright, you're allowed to fail," I smirked, getting no end of satisfaction in taunting a goddess. After all, how many people could say they had a direct conversation with a goddess, much less survived taunting one? Emlyn would say self-preservation was not my best attribute. 

Missy just huffed and turned away. "Well, I was here to offer you some advice, but you clearly have it all in hand. After all, you are very competent." 

I grinned and put a hand on my hips, the picture of overconfidence. 

"Arden," she said, her tone softening. "You need to take this threat seriously." 

"I am taking it seriously. I am clearly doing whatever it is that I'm doing." I wasn't entirely sure what exactly I was doing besides relying on instinct to make myself stronger. 

Missy brought a hand to her forehead and gently massaged her temples. "One of these days, I think you're going to find someone that does not put up with your tongue as well as I do." 

"Oh, don't worry, Emlyn will do her best to keep me in check," I replied. 

"I certainly hope so," Missy said. "Either way, you need to be more careful with your soul. You can't always be repairing it after every time you do something miraculous. You have limits. You're not a god." 

"Well, clearly gods have limits, or you would have just, hey, waved my hand and said, 'poof, all your problems are solved.'" 

"Yes, well, I'm glad you think so highly of me," she replied dryly, letting out a deep sigh. 

"Arden, be careful," she said this time with a serious enough tone that I nodded along with her. 

"Fine, fine. I will be as careful as I can be. In case you haven't noticed, there might be an army on my doorstep." 

"Oh, I noticed," Missy said. "One of Martin's little drones is among the army. However, he's not focusing on it right now," Missy explained. 

"Drones?" I asked. 

"Martin has split his soul to the very brink and inserted it in a number of bodies. He can draw on the magic of all of the bodies and channel them through one. However, his soul is only a fraction of the soul that is currently in the body. It requires his full focus to completely control it. Instead, you can think of it more as a dog that he's given a basic command to. That body will continue to act it out until it perishes. In the fight to come, if you can understand what its most recent commands have been, then perhaps you can use that to your advantage." 

With that guidance given, Missy did a dramatic swirl and vanished. I shook my head. Missy loved her theatrics.

Breathing deeply, I returned to my body. Maribelle grabbed my arm and hoisted me to my feet. The short, curvaceous maid always surprised me with her strength. All of the anchors did, well, save for Aurelia. She looked like she could bench me. 

Maribelle dusted me off, her tight, blonde curls bouncing as she went through the motions. Her blue and white maid uniform jiggled around her curves. The only thing about her that wasn't in motion was the blue steel collar that had been magically sealed around her neck. A huge diamond was set in the center to help protect her neck. Maribelle had received it as a gift from me. I had requested it as a reward from Missy after giving her plenty of soul juice. 

Given Maribelle's serpent sphere, and the fact that she was a life anchor, she was incredibly difficult to kill. The only way to kill her was to remove her head. Granting her an enchanted collar that would protect her neck was my way of protecting her once upon a time. 

She had gone far further than I ever intended, giving up her body and her soul and thrusting herself into Soulgard through the bond that we had made. Should she die now, she would snap back to Soulgard. Tethered to it rather than to her own body, we had already experimented more than I would like. Luckily we had found that I was completely capable of shoving her soul back into her body after I repaired it. 

The rest of my anchors would probably say that I was only semi-competent at shoving souls into bodies. There had been a few mistakes. Early mistakes, of course, when I was just learning this technique. Not everyone's perfect the first time they do a new skill. The fact that I got it right after just a few tries was actually quite impressive. It's not like Soul Magic came with a handy-dandy instruction manual. 

Maribelle dusted me off and straightened her outfit, which was currently leeching her Life Magic to repair itself. It only had a few cuts on it. Her outfit was steeped in the essence of Azurebloom, giving it Avente's regal blue color. It allowed mana to be channeled, magic to be channeled through the outfit. She had discarded the standard Kingdom Blues for a stylized maid outfit made out of similar materials. 

"Are you feeling up to the task?" Maribelle asked, her tone light despite the trouble ahead. 

"Don't think there's much of an option. Thank you, Maribelle." I nodded towards her and started striding towards the wall that had sprung out of the rubble. 

Melida was storming back and forth across the broken stone, waving her hands and trying to restore more of the wall. The rest of our motley crew was up there with her. Her two anchors, Brusset and Finley, were keeping themselves several strides behind her like two protective shadows. Meanwhile, Eva stood at the far end away from her, her own protective shadow, Lord Vulcan, standing close to her. Eva was powering Zuri, draining her magic into my anchor with a hand on her back. 

Aurelia had her gifted bluesteel axe braced against the parapet as she leaned over the stone outcropping, watching what was going on beyond. 

"Could you get me up there, Maribelle?" I asked, only for my anchor to scoop me up in a princess carry and casually hop up the 30-foot stone wall as if she was skipping during a children's game. She landed and put me down quickly before folding her hands behind her back, ever the subservient maid. 

"Aurelia," I walked over to the manticore kitten. I would never tell her that to her face. She had accepted being called my manticore, however, I had seen a soft side of her as we had grown closer recently, and sometimes I tried to think of her as my manti-kitten. 

I would have normally asked Zuri for an update, but it seemed my anchor was busy launching arrows of light into what looked like an ocean of shining helmets. 

"I'm glad you're on your feet," Aurelia said, glancing over my shoulder where I could almost feel the Lida storming up behind me. I turned and gave her a sloppy salute. 

"Officer, what are my orders?" I asked. Melida stared at me for a moment before rolling her eyes with a sigh. 

"I was really hoping you would tell me how you would solve this in a single hand wave. You know, like bringing a mountain down." I shrugged. "Sometimes it's easier to just be a follower." 

"Yes, when things get tough, it's very easy to follow and even harder to lead," she poked me in the chest, "and I don't think you're going to be much of a follower. I want one of your out-of-the-box ideas, like when you couldn't get Emlyn and you trapped her in a fucking mountain." 

I glanced out at the army, not quite as afraid as I thought I should be. At this point, the approaching soldiers seemed more like a bunch of grains of sand coming this way and not people ready to murder me. They didn't have the malicious intent that I had felt from monsters, especially those who could think like Colin. 

"Well, we could simply remove the path, but their own earth mages are likely preparing for us to do so," I said, feeling some significant resistance at the end of dropping the mountain on them. "There's someone over there who might be able to match me."

That statement made Melida's face drop into a frown. "What we need is to buy more time. How long ago did Zuri send the letter?"

I glanced at the rising sun and did the quick math. "A little over half a day. We were about two hours out from the fort when she sent it."

Melida seemed to be doing some math in her head. "Then we just need to hold out as long as we can. I need traps. I need pits. I need spikes."

I looked at the encroaching army where Emlyn was making holes before waving my hand and drawing on my earth sphere. I channeled it through Emlyn into the ground in front of her, stone rising up out of it into another large wall, one that was a poor mimicry of the one we stood on in the fort. It didn't need to be nearly as sturdy, though. I used the same interlocking pattern I'd learned from the city walls and Sienna. Right behind the wall, I waved my hand and dropped a pit out from under the wall before filling it with stone spikes as long as my arm.

"Why the wall?" Melida asked.

"Well, I figure if you put a wall there, they'll have their mage forge and anchors jump in," I said, "Spike pit behind, maybe we'll catch some of them. And if we don't catch any of them, then someone will have to fix that for their soldiers to walk through it."

"Best case scenario," Maribelle said from the side, "they try to conserve their magic and just make a small path through, one that limits how many soldiers they can send.”

“A bottleneck.” Melida substituted the word. "We can put someone at the bottleneck to hold them."

Maribelle raised her hand. "I'll happily do it. It would be even better, though, if I could get a corpse."

Melida stared at the anchor dubiously. Aurelia shruggged and jumped down amidst the ruined fort, looking for something, only to come back up with a woman's body and lay it down in front of me.

"I assumed you'd prefer something that was at least marginally attractive, though I couldn't find something to fit your exact specifications." She glanced down at Maribelle's chest.

The maid looked at the body and said, "It will do. After all, it's something we are just going to throw away. Find a few others. I think I will need some backups."

I glanced at Aurelia, who seemed unbothered, picking through corpses, and then running back into the ruined fort. Melida was nodding along.

"All right, so how does this..." Melida jerked as Maribelle collapsed. Trying to catch her and failing, the top-heavy maid going down fast. I managed to snag her arm and prevent her from hitting the face first.

Something about watching her collapse just didn't sit right with me, but I could feel Maribelle had rejoined Soulgard and was poking about. But that's not where she would stay.

I knelt down and lay a hand on the corpse, repairing it to the best of my ability by stuffing it full of life magic before thrusting Maribelle's waiting soul into it.

Maribelle gasped and sat up in the unfamiliar woman's body, only for her to draw from my Serpent Sphere and I saw the woman's body compress slightly, losing several inches, and shifting her weight around till it closer resembled Maribelle, at least in profile.

Maribelle and her new body stretched, adjusting to it before getting to her feet.

Melida stared wide-eyed. "I don't think I could ever get used to seeing someone do that."

Maribelle cracked her neck back and forth. "Hopefully I'm not doing this too often, but I will do what I must. Weapons," she asked, glancing around.

Finley produced a crude blue steel short sword, likely one of Garish's make. They didn't have the supply of azurbloom. Avente kept an iron grip on that. And theirs were often streaked with blue, rather being the brilliant blue steel I had usually seen my anchors wield.

Maribelle took it, flipped it in her hand back and forth before nodding. "Usable. If you can get me more, I'm sure we'll have trouble retrieving them when I'm done."

Without waiting another second, Maribelle simply walked off the wall, landing on her knees, bending only slightly as she let the shock of the fall right through her body and her life magic repair herself. Then she started marching straight into the enemy army.

"Is it okay just to let her…?" Melida waved at my anchor. 

"Oh, I don't think any of us could stop her." I offered.

"You certainly could," Aurelia said, returning to my side and dropping off two more bodies next to me.