Chương 193: AF Chapter 192 – On Briggs and Such

Kristie flipped up a finger at Kopf's question.

"First rule of Dad singing?"

"Do not make him sing!" I snapped out instantly.

"He shattered their organization, and basically forced them out into the open and not coordinating with one another, so he could deal with them directly instead of having the Empress just slit their throats in the night. They were so incensed they challenged him to duels, directly fomented rebellion, and tried to stir up all kinds of havoc and chaos in their fury at him!"

"And he got rid of the heart and soul of the biggest network of Roulean fanatics by doing it, but all it did was move the venue from the night and unexplained deaths to the open and death by ruptured craniums. Don't make him sing!" Kristie reaffirmed. As if to confirm her statement, a horn blew overhead, right where the edge of the forest had been thinned out by cutting down some of the ancient pines and hardwoods here.

The gurogs had broken cover and were advancing around the plateau Stonehold was built upon toward the main gates along a clear and obvious trail, although for some reason there was nobody down below here working the area. Selena noticed it, too.

"The lack of work teams gathering more wood seems… strange?" she asked, moving her head to look through the trees, and finding nobody in the cleared area ahead at all. Everyone else picked up on it, too.

"Oh, ho!" Kris murmured, half-expectantly.

"Might there be some trouble brewing, and we've arrived in the nick of time?"

"You know, you did decide to come here instead of passing through Zaikhal first, although it was the better strategic option," I pointed out to her, as the edge of the forest approached. She glanced back at me slyly.

"I was just thinking the same thing, right?" She was out of the forest cover first, everyone else unhelmed and following behind her. It had been a triple note coming from the watchtower a few hundred feet above us. There was a clear delay before the three notes rang out again from the watchman… and fourth, lower note was added. The gurog noticed the difference, too, turning back to look at us momentarily, before continuing on.

"Protocol for incoming humans who were outsiders, despite not having any warning… probably," Kris pointed out crisply.

"You don't need to be wary of him, everyone, but be aware. He's probably going to seem overwhelming."

"So, like Her Highness, but a man?" Milee spoke up hopefully. Kris' cackling laugh had all kinds of razor edges on it.

"Nope. I'm the Quiet and the Free. He's the Sun and the Will. You're going to feel him all over your skin, you magical Powered person, you." Milee didn't know what to say to that to that, looking to me for an explanation.

"That's pretty accurate," I agreed, and she still didn't know what to think. Well, she would soon enough.

There was a steep set of broad stairs worked into the side of the hill now, with slings and hoists nearby for hauling up heavier loads. The gurog took the stairs without much effort, and we followed them at a respectful distance towards the main gates and the high walls that ran from one side of the plateau to the other now.

It was an impressive amount of stonework, definitely some lugian work there, but a lot of wood backing it, and some form of stone-Shaping magic and Ritual-type power, possibly from the Aun, helping out with a more organic feel, like much of it had just grown up out of the ground.

It stood to reason that the Aun traditions, not so tied into the System dominating here, would have been less affected by the disruptions to the magic back then, and likely had saved the lives of everyone in this place, and everyone who'd been brought here. There was a rather inordinate number of people on the wall, hurrying back and forth, definitely too many for the gurog, and likely even for us.

"Something's going on, an' not good," the Mick immediately piped up, looking over the activity.

"They're setting up for a wall defense. Something's coming?"

"My guess as well," Kris agreed, none of us stopping.

"Why, that would really make the timing of how we are here coincidental, wouldn't it?" she half-laughed under her breath.

"Does, does being manipulated by Fate like that get sort of tiresome?" Selena had to ask, a little wide-eyed as she digested that we might be here at this time just because it was the best time to do so for Briggs, someone she had never met.

"Hehe, no, it's awesome… as long as you're going with the Flow. If you're trying to work against the Flow, then yeah, it's utterly annoying, implacable and formless, thwarting stuff you're trying to do in subtle ways you can't stop and can't even see, guiding you to places you don't want to go to fight things you aren't interested in dealing with, and handling problems for others despite not wanting to help them at all. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road.

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"It's why Sources make such damn good Emperors. All that Fate working on their behalf to keeping the Empire humming along, and if you're on board, you hum right along with it. If you're not… then disaster keeps striking, one time after another.

"It was pretty easy to tell who was on Dad's side without even having to look at their Auras, just by their financials and the sheer amount of scandals that kept erupting around our detractors. So many business deals ruined, shady deeds exposed, schemes foiled, crimes caught in the act, and other things. They all thought we had the most gawdawful damnedest spy network in the land – and we did, but not the way they thought – and their paranoia only made their situations worse.

"It was pretty fun watching them spiral down into disaster and take their friends and families with them, while everyone else went marching on as if they were irrelevant, because they were."

"Sounds about right," I nodded at her story, watching their preparations as we closed in on the rising towers and thick doors of the main gates, all braced with Runewards that were going to make using magic to get through them an utter impossibility. There wasn't any War Magic that I knew of that was going to so much as nick one of those stones up there, with a level of skill behind them that was fairly familiar to me.

I also could see a lot of Aun tumeroks, lugians, and multiple Isparians among the defenders, including a lot of younger mixed-bloods, as was often the case of the children of adventurers, soldiers, and explorers. Purebloods like me were rarer, often of the older generation, or the more conservative civilian families. Thrust into such close contact, there was a lot more mingling of Isparian bloodlines than was typical back on Ispar. Just another change between one world and the next, and unsurprising.

The gates were rolled aside for the gurogs as they approached, flaming Axes raised to acknowledge them, and raised up in return.

"Those are weapons fer fightin' undead," the Mick observed.

"Acknowledging a common foe an' common cause, aye?"

"Logical. It's how Briggs would go about it. The Isparians didn't create them in torturous experiments out of hapless mattekars, then mindfuck them and make them fight and die over and over again at their commands, right?" Kris observed laconically.

"Common cause is one of the best of bonds to start a relationship with," Kopf stated in his deep, grim voice.

"Even ancient rivals and enemies can come together in common cause, it is known to us."

"Yes. I am eager to say how common our cause is going to be here," Kris agreed.

The gurog had offloaded their sacks of glittering stones onto waiting steel Disks there, and were escorted inside, while a new group of representatives had gathered up to meet us as we came up to the gates. Mostly Isparian, mostly Aluvian, the main population here before the Fall, but about sixty percent others or mixed now, with a couple curious Aun hunters and looming lugian juggernauts in full armor there to inspect us. The lugians didn't have Gotrok colors on their armor, however, which was unsurprising.

The Gotrok warriors would never fit in with a multiracial force like this. We let the Mick take the lead, not the least because we could see some people recognized him, and he them.

"Verdentine! Suzahara! As I do live and breathe, ye aren't pushing up the ice lilies yet!" the Mick blathered jovially as we walked forwards.

"I see yer choice o' chitin caught on a surprising amount, ye daft bug-watcher! And how's yer brother, Suzahara? I hope he made it out o' the Beach Fort alive…" The former was a dark-haired Aluvian fellow clad in a mix of what looked like olthoi and grievver chitin armor, rather amazingly well-matched, and clutching a spear gleaming with acidic resin clearly made from a powerful grievver's forelimbs. The latter man was a graying Sho in plainer leathers, whose face turned down at the Mick's words in old regrets.

"Mikal McMikal, still alive and breathing, too!" the Sho said loudly, so all could hear and acknowledge that he had been recognized.

"My brother has long passed, Mick," he sighed as he stood forth to greet us, Verdentine coming up behind him. He glanced over all of us once, summing us up, and not finding us wanting compared to those about him, lingering a moment on Kris and I.

"Elder Oswald indicated that a band from down south might be finally making its way up here after all these years." His voice had an odd note of judgment, sympathy, and confidence, as doubtless the people here were far more informed of us than we had been of them.

"Ah, so he told ye of the Lady Magos, an' her Imperial Highness, Kristie Rantha o' the House of Briggs, Warlord of the Freeholders o' the Vesayans?" They didn't notice it, but his voice was pitched in a Warlord's Voice, and everyone within a few hundred yards could hear him just fine.

"DAMN! He was right?!" a very deep and powerful voice swept in from the distance. Everyone's heads turned that way immediately. Kris' eyes opened predatory-wide, and her smile was enough to make you scream in fear or swoon, depending on your inclinations. It didn't take more than three breaths for something heavy to impact the stones above us, and a second later come vaulting smoothly over the edge forty feet up, as smooth and clean as an ape.

He slammed to the ground mostly right next to us, straightening up without effort, and presented himself to us as the billowing force of his Sun Source swept out and over us like a gentle, implacable, and unstoppable warm wind and fire. It pricked and popped and worried at the lesser Buff spells on the scouts, and basically stripped them away in seconds as they swallowed, the sensation and his presence just overwhelming to confront the first time. He was over seven feet tall, so looking like a short lugian.

Like most Ancients, he was built with heavier bones and broad, slightly longer arms than normal humans, with a prominent brow, a brick of a chin, and a flat, broad nose. His eyes were pale green, almost the exact hue as new grass, with skin the color of fresh tree bark and rough, rigid auburn hair allowed only a single braid in back, parallel rows shaved in alongside his thick head in some nod to fashion… a style imitated and taken up by a good number of the locals, I noted with a hidden smile.

He had muscles on his muscles, moving like the tremendously powerful physical man he was, with no lack of energy, grace, or awkwardness for his size about him. If his eyes seemed small for his wide face, they almost glowed in the relative dark of his brow, and the impression his hooded forehead and general hairiness seemed to want to make. You met his eyes, you knew you were looking at a very dangerous and very powerful man, someone you could feel on your skin!