Chương 170: AF Chapter 169 – The Gotroks get Got

Service to the Crown is its own reward. The reward of honor is immortality in the hearts of the true. By service are you made, by Glory you endure forever. The honorable are recognized by their devotion and rewarded for it. Jorgio Bellenesse curled his lip as he did whenever he thought of the platitudes ground into all enthusiastic young Viamontian youth as they were raised to fight the battles of their lords and betters.

Be it with steel or magic, the nobles of Viamont took you to serv ic e, made you into loyal servants, and then sent you to war to die for their desires. The most insistent of those families that this was the proper way of things was naturally the Corcosi, the Royal Family of Viamont. Their demands for honor, loyalty, and service from those below them, while not holding themselves to the same standards, were well-known to all those who had fought under the flag of Bellenesse.

He was only an outlier in the family, so far from the main bloodline he was barely worthy of bearing the family name, and he had only his service to distinguish himself and raise his status of his lord, lady, and their people.

The murder of the young Lady of the Bellenesse and the death of her ideals of a more egalitarian realm where birth did not determine position had been a knife in the craw of the many men who had fought for her, and the Corcosi name and their Red Bull sign was the equivalent of calling upon the devil now. He had indeed found a new king, and perhaps to spite the Corcosi, he was a man descended from the Aluvians the Viamontians despised so much.

A man who adhered to the Code of Osric and Pwyll III, both of Viamontian descent, men still acclaimed as great and wise rulers for the justice and fairness of their laws and rules. Viamontians lived to serve. It was built into his bones. Joining the High Queen Elysa Strathelar, born a mere peasant woman, had been utter vindication of his murdered lady's ideals, and many of his kin had come into her service, and by extension, to her son when he succeeded the Slayer of the Olthoi Queen. And then had come the Fall.

The chaos in magic, his own fortune in not having his owned Gear upon him when the massive amounts of Artifice looted from the dead Summons all exploded. The shades. The undead. The virindi. The Gotrok, the Hea, the burun, even the drudges daring to rise up against them as their best and brightest died in explosions of mana and the murderous extinction and sundering of the lifestones. No, the deathstones. So much more appropriate a name.

Nightmares of the retreat up the Tou-Tou peninsula, fights against undead who kept returning after being slain, brave men and women perishing by sheer attrition as they grappled with slow mana returns, lack of proper equipment, and foes who didn't seem much hindered at all, who attacked with the same assurance his own people once had, the knowledge that they couldn't truly die… Celcynd the Dour's sacrifice in closing the Portal behind them as the undead tried to catch the last of the refugees with a final assault.

Mighty and bellicose Ulgrim serious for one time in his life as he had spent far too much power opening that Portal in the first place. Shadows of influence watching from behind and sneering at the Isparians who thought they'd dominated and owned this island, watching them Fall. He reached out to Harald, a point of light gathering on the long armor-piercing point of the arrow the archer had drawn. The new compound bows were far easier to maintain a draw on.

The archer's attention didn't alter in the slightest from his target, and Jorgio had barely withdrawn his hand before the arrow went whistling out. There was a momentary skipping, as sounds momentarily cut off from their surroundings, wind blowing through leaves, returned. Not Silenced, that was a different spell, but just cut off by a Bubble of Sound. Both variations had their benefits, but the Sound Bubble was actually easier to Cast if you didn't want to cover a huge area with it.

With the release of the arrow, the Scouts and Blueblood Guards charged out of the scant cover, the former unleashing shots from their Bows, the Bluebloods discharging single shots from their Crossbows before racing with Spears and Glaives to engage the lugian in the bright red armor and horned helmet who towered over them. A Tiatus Gotrok Summons, a powerful enemy waving around an axe five times heavier than anything an Isparian dared to wield, and that with one hand.

How a Summons manifested a chorozite weapon was a mystery for the ages, but after the first arrow buried itself into a mighty thigh, the bound spirit of some Gotrok warrior turned on them, bellowed out a challenge, and stomped on the charge towards them with unflinching zeal and readiness to fight. Not that they could hear the shout. The s tanding orders for Gotrok Summons were to shout loudly, and for all other Gotrok Summons in the area to respond to a warning shout.

Such a thing could bring in reinforcements for some distance, turning a fight against a seemingly lone Gotrok into a massive brawl against more and more Gotrok Summons coming in… and the ir movement s would certainly attract the attention of the scattered Gotrok Border Watch who watched over the lines of Gotrok Summons that secured the borders of Linvak Tukal and the kingdom they'd stolen. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

The Tiatus kept bellowing as per orders as the warriors closed in on it, swinging its axe as its armor dealt with anything coming at its center of mass. That forced the Isparian warriors to strike at exposed limbs, while armor-piercing arrows cracked and jutted from its breastplate and greaves as they hit with incredible power. Nobody was going to hear it. The Summons' primary job was to warn the others, fighting was secondary. It didn't realize that no one could hear it, which it would have if Silenced.

Using battle magic would have both made noise and set up a lightshow that would have attracted attention. Default wild Summons would ignore anything outside their immediate threat range, but the Gotrok Summons were instructed by the Border Watch who led them to a wider level of responses. His role was Healer support here. They couldn't even use proper Lightningphase Weapons against the Gotrok, for the things were far too showy, and their intimidation value against Summoned lugians non-existent, regardless.

Vassam finally caught the spinning, hacking brute's hamstrings, crippling its maneuverability and drawing the wolfpack of raiders in to slay it quickly.

All eight of the warriors converged on the dead brute, with his nephew Pasqual still having a broken arm Jorgio hadn't Healed yet, grabbing its limbs and hauling over a half-ton of Summons hurriedly back to the trampled stone and brush of its spawn point, even as the Final Rest Dagger assigned to each squad if they didn't have their own Vivic Weapons was driven into the false flesh of the thing.

They dropped the corpse into the Summon point, and waited, all of them backing off as Jorgio put his hand on Pasqual's shoulder and sent a Silver Healing spell into the younger man. Shattered bone twisted and refit as blood and bruised flesh reformed with a wet crunch of moving meat and bone. The follow-up Mending spell also restored the mangled armor that was pressing into the muscle of the young man's right arm, otherwise he would have had to remove his vambrace until a smith could get to it. Fwaz-woosh!

The incoming replacement Summons was devoured by vivus jetting up off the corpse that was disintegrating to less than dust, as all Summons did, even its chorozite Axe dissipating into nothing. The warriors all looked to him silently. His Mana Pool was basically the mark limiting the speed by which they all could advance. He absolutely refused to advance without at least half his Reserves, which was enough to Heal all of them at least once.

The greater their teamwork, the less he had to Heal them, the faster they could move!

"Eighty percent," he informed them precisely. Trust is truth, and must be given as well as taken, earned, and respected. The Magos had her own versions of codes of honor, especially for spellcaster s. F or all the many, many complaints that rose from the battlemages used to thinking themselves the elite of the fighting forces, th e demand that if they wanted the respect that went with their abilities they better god s- damn ed earn it, had struck the Viamontians in particular quite deeply.

With Loyalty must come Duty. If Duty exists not, then Loyalty is an empty lie that Honor attempts to gloss over with a false Code and uneven standards that make a joke of it. Do your Duty to those who show Loyalty, earn every ounce of it, and more. This team was his. His spellcasting, be it loud and showy or subtle and supportive, guided and limited them all at once. The better they did their jobs, the less work he had to do, and the more of these thrice-damned Gotrok devils they could kill.

His fingers froze in a finger-form they all knew as a grunt came from fifty yards away. The Imperil would assure that any Gotrok who came charging in would die quickly, but the sound and light of the spell going off would only attract more attention. His left hand gestured, and Ghost Sound grunted back the reply in a manner identical to that of a fellow lugian.

No Isparian could adequately duplicate the deep bass of the greater girth of the bigger race, but simple Wizardry tricks like this, a mere Cantrip, dealt with the problem. The regular checking of the chain of Summons to see if their neighbors were still there satisfied, Jorgio nodded. The Royal Scouts, the stealthiest of the squad, trotted off in silence.

If the Summons was in a particularly advantageous position where they could approach without being seen, the Scouts' opening attacks were sometimes able to kill their targets before any of the armored Guards needed to get involved. Iyazim, his second, counted off the thirty seconds with splayed fingers in silence, and the Gotrok-killing squad moved out after the Scouts, looking for signs of the red or maroon armor of the typical Tiatus or Juggernaut spawning here.

They'd cut a line through the much weaker Amploth, Laigus, Lithos, and Gigas Lugians, who were basically incarnations of the civilian and noble/overseer classes. The Tiatus and Juggernauts were formal warrior ranks of the lugians, while the Tukora were the most elite of those warriors… and far too many of all of those had chosen to fall in with the Gotrok warrior society, rather than deal with the Isparians, Aun, and their allies. Preferring the Hea and the burun, and being pawns of the v irindi.

Jorgio felt his lip rise and held it down as he paced after the lead men, the archers backing him up with arrows already nocked and wary eyes looking for their target. Over two hundred lugian spawn points were already closed behind them. They were slowed down only by his need to stop and regain mana to keep their progress unheard, and his inability to use spells to speed up the fighting without raising the alarm which would defeat the very purpose of them being here.

A mountain grossbeak called out a warning, complete with the faint beating of wings, and everyone froze. He didn't need to see them to see the eager smiles break out on all of their faces. A living Gotrok. Finally.