Chương 70: Chapter Seventy

Elanor Blackstone watched the territory of William Redwater burn. A bucket brigade had already formed before her people had even touched the ground and it was now supplemented by her own marines and mage-knights as they sought to fighting the last remnants of the flames. Whatever feelings the locals might have had about being aided by 'invaders' had quickly been placed on the backburner in the face of the 'disaster'. Then again, that was pretty standard in Elanor's experience.

Most peasants didn't truly care which flag flew over the nearby manse. And even if they did, there was precious little they could do about it when an airship flew overhead. Of course, those feelings might change when we begin rounding up the more problematic parts of the population, but for the moment there's not been too much fighting, she thought. Which was convenient because whatever had been used to start the blazes here had been nasty stuff.

The smoke it unleashed was thick and oily, biting at the lungs and refusing to go out even when doused with water. Certainly, it was no natural flame. Then again, given the territory was once home to an alchemist's guild, that is perhaps to be expected, she thought as a cindering ember floated past her. The warhound at her side didn't react at all to the small bit of flaming debris. The well-trained beast remained as silent and stoic as he'd been from the moment she stepped off her ship.

Others of his kin formed a loose ring around her along with their handlers. Also silent. The beasts would bark for one thing and one thing only – prior to being let off their leashes to tear it to shreds. And it seemed that beyond this final act of defiance, Yelena hadn't left any other 'surprises' behind. Then again, she supposed it was to be expected. The numbers of her personal guard would have been severely depleted by the most recent Lunite attack.

"Except, was this Yelena?" the duchess murmured. Other fires had been set in the capital itself and had already been extinguished prior to her visiting them. Albeit, not before doing their job, that being destroying the critical infrastructure and workshops Elanor might have used to repair and then maybe expand her fleet. Those blazes had not been quite so… intense as this. Nor as widespread.

Yelena's sabotage had targeted the workshops in their entirety, but when it came to other things like warehouses that had supplied those workshops, the buildings themselves had been spared. Emptied, certainly, their contents dragged out and set ablaze, but the workshops themselves had been left untouched. That was in line with Elanore's expection of Yelena.

Admittedly, perhaps the sabotage seemed so light because the capital had already been attacked – and as such – many of the facilities that would need to have been broken were already in disrepair. Specifically the sky-docks and ship manufactories which were still little more than rubble, but Elanore thought otherwise. Because food store houses remained intact. Hospitals untouched. Town halls continued to function. Even the sea-docks continued to function, though the warehouses that supplied them were now empty.

The academy still stood, nearly untouched. Yes, the mithril-core that once ran the simulators, the hangar shards and the communication orbs that once overlooked the arena had all been removed - but the structure yet remained. Likewise, the palace – for all the damage it had already taken – still stood. The throne room more or less intact, barring some holes in the ceiling. Even the throne yet remained. The only things that had been touched were related to shard or airship production.

Again, that was all in line with Elanore's understanding of Yelena. She fought cleanly. Not because she was some kind of bleating heart, but because she, like most elves, tended to take a long view of things. Her absurd plan to end orcish slavery was a result of that. The notion that rather than spend generations fighting the beasts, it was easier to make peace with them and in turn draw on their strength. Elanore could even see the logic in it.

After all, if the conflict ended that meant there were less mages lost fighting in the North and more mages she could recruit from. Because for all their many issues, their was no denying that orcs could produce just as many mages as humans did on average. It was a win-win. And utter horseshit, Elanore thought. It was the typical arrogance of an elf to assume that just because other races weren't elven that they were all alike.

Orcs were little more than brother-fucking beasts barely a step above the wyverns they rode. Sure, they were possessed of a certain low cunning, but the fact that they lived in mud huts and skulked about in the mountains while every other race developed proper cities should have been proof of that. They were a backwards people who could do little more than steal from their betters rather than go through the effort of making things of their own. The world would be better off without them.

She shook her head, dismissing the reason she'd been forced to go down the path of rebellion. The point was than as an elf, Yelena clearly didn't want the city to fall into anarchy in her absence, lest she be stuck dealing with the after-effects of that kind of carnage years down the line once the war was over. The slums and organized criminal enterprises that tended to form in times of crisis could be difficult to dislodge even once the cause of their development was addressed.

Again, all of this assumed she won this conflict, but that was just typical elven arrogance. Which was why she'd chosen to sabotage only things related to the immediate conflict – and had done so in a measured and controlled manner. Here though? The sabotage had been anything but. Her eyes flitted to the distance, where the lord's mansion had once sat. She said once because it had been burnt down to the cinders. As had the nearby alchemist's workshop.

Along with every warehouse, every hangar, every guard post, every storehouse, and every grain silo. Anything and everything that might allow for a smooth transition of power was gone. Destroyed by enchanted incendiaries on a delay. The whole territory looked like a warzone now, because many of those warehouses were in the town itself, and more than a few nearby houses had been caught up as the blaze spread on the wind.

And House Blackstone beyond just stopping the flames now, would be forced to intervene going forward – lest the whole area go to shit as starvation and lawlessness set in. For much the same reason Yelena chose to avoid doing exactly this. Starving and desperate people did not allow for smooth governance. And Elanore would need smooth governance here if she planned to prosecute her war in the South.

Unfortunately, doing all that would tie up manpower that she could have used elsewhere – specifically in solidifying her current gains by seizing the keeps of 'loyalist' houses she'd skipped over in her drive towards Lindholm's capital. Elanore Blackstone watched a human family weeping in front of the burnt out husk of what had likely once been their store. No, Yelena Lindholm wouldn't have done this. Nor would Elanore Blackstone. Hell, she couldn't. Her own people would have rebelled against her.

At least, if she asked them to do it to any of her own territory given they were her soldier's homes. … She might get less push back if she gave such orders here in the South. She'd certainly done worse when dealing with orcish infestations. No, this was likely the work of William Redwater, she thought. Given he had a number of alchemists on retainer – and they were always pyromaniacs to a woman and not recruited locally – she had a feeling they'd been the ones given this order.

Without informing any of his more local troops. She supposed it would have been easy enough to do. With the chaos of the evacuation, no one would have noticed them skulking about in places they needn't have otherwise been.

"Tala?" The girl jumped at her mother's sudden words.

"Tell me everything you know about William Redwater," the duchess of House Blackstone continued. Elanore knew Yelena. She knew what she was and what she was capable of. Destroying one of her own ships to destroy two of House Blackstone, cripple three others and damage two dozen more wasn't something the Queen would do. No, this spoke of another actor. Young. Brash. Foolish and brilliant. Driven. … Petty.

The kind of person who'd burn their own territory and forever garner a black mark against his name merely to inconvenience an opponent. Because however this war ended, William Redwater would never be able to lord over these lands again. The people would tear him limb from limb the moment he descended from his airship. Elanore had dismissed her daughter's words on William Redwater once before. Perhaps unfairly. She'd thought the girl's view of him warped by personal grievance.

Elanore knew herself well enough to admit she likely wouldn't have been entirely objective about a former fiancé who'd both broken off said engagement and publicly humiliated her in the process. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. As such, Elanore had attributed most of the boy's actions to him being Yelena's puppet – and Tala's insistence that he was the driving force behind both the innovations and the plan to discredit her merely as wounded pride.

She'd been blindsided twice now because she'd dismissed that possibility as improbable. As improbable as an airship that exploded with the force of an erupting volcano despite not having nearly a large enough magical presence to allow for it, she thought. Because it should have shone like the sun to any of our mages if had possessed an enchanted payload large enough to create that explosion. Never mind the cost of such an endeavour.

That amount of enchanted munitions would have emptied the generational stockpiles of three or more noble houses. No, Elanor Blackstone had a feeling she'd just experienced firsthand the Queen's mysterious 'Kraken Slayer'. A non-magical way of generating explosive force. She'd gotten rumours of such before she'd attacked, but she'd dismissed and downplayed them. Void, even if she'd believed them, she'd never have even conceived of someone sacrificing an entire airship as delivery system for an attack.

But someone had thought of it. Likely the same someone who'd burnt down half of his own territory just to inconvenience her occupation of it. William Redwater.

The Duchess of New Haven reclined on a plush divan in the upstairs grand salon of an abandoned noble's manor. It was passable, she supposed. Still, after weeks confined aboard her flagship, she'd have settled far something far less grandiose if it meant gaining access to solid ground and a decent bed. For all that New Haven preferred to think itself more cultured than their brutish eastern neighbour, House Blackstone, they were still a marcher house.

And that was reflected in the relative lack of amenities aboard their warships. No, the airships of House New Haven were no floating palaces like those of the South – and Faline's personal ship was no exception. The elven woman smiled as one of her attendants andpoured herself a cup of the pilfered tea from the manor's stores, allowing her shoulders to relax for the first time in what felt like an eternity as she inhaled the subtle scent of the beverage.

For all that the noble was lacking as an interior decorator, Faline would still congratulate them on their choice in tea. Glancing out one of the nearby expansive windows, she watched as her marines patrolled the grounds of her temporary home, securing the perimeter against any lingering loyalists that might still be skulking about in the city beyond. There'd be a few. There always were. Those too dim or too stubborn to shift with the changing times.

For now, though, the duchess savoured the quiet, her fingers tracing idle patterns on the rim of her cup. Relaxation would no doubt be a rare indulgence in wartime in the months to come, so she seized it here, letting the tension of command ebb away.

"Why aren't they here yet?" Faline's eye didn't twitch, but it was a near thing. For alas, she wasn't alone – excluding the servants and her guards, who naturally did not count one way or another.

"Patience Princess," she turned to regard Solanna Lindholm – who had already availed herself of the manse's wine cellar.

"My people inform me they shall be here to present their findings soon." The young woman tsked.

"Don't they know to hurry when royalty commands their presence?" Faline tactfully didn't point out that Solanna commanded nothing, for the people of New Haven were not hers to command. Instead, she remained silent. Before long, a soft knock at the door broke the relative silence of the parlor. After a languid gesture from Faline, the door was allowed to creak open, admitting Liriel, New Haven's chief alchemist, who bowed deeply before approaching.

The elf's robes were smudged with soot and something oily, but her eyes gleamed with excitement. In her hands, she carried a small, sealed black vial and a sheaf of notes scribbled on parchment.

"Your Grace. Princess," Liriel said, her voice steady and precise, "we've concluded our initial examination of the royal naval craft's wreckage. Or at least, those we could find. The remains are... intriguing. We've isolated a residue that was seared to the remains. Whatever the liquid was, the craft must have been positively filled to bursting with it. What it is, we cannot say at this time, though our investigations reveal it was likely enchanted at some point."

"At some point?" The duchess set her teacup down with a delicate clink.

"But not at the time of the explosion?"

"No!" Liriel said excitedly.

"And we double checked to be sure. But it appears that while at some point the original chemical had undergone an alchemical process, likely to imbue it with some other conventional element, the void energies involved had long since faded by the time of detonation." Faline frowned.

"So the explosive was some form of natural substance? Not enchanted."

"Just so! It bears some resemblance to bear-blood," Liriel elaborated, holding up the vial where the viscous, dark substance within swirled faintly under the light.

"The odour alone could allow a layman to discern that much, even after carbonization. But the sheer power of the resulting explosion could not be accomplished with the base materials of crude oil. I would dare say that the power involved had more in common with, if you'll forgive the base term 'demon-piss' – except any of our mages would have sensed such a concentration of said liquid long in advance and steered well clear of the loyalist craft." She frowned.

"Not to mention the inherent difficulty and danger that would have been present in simply collecting such a large amount of that particular lidquid in one place. It would have been more likely to spontaneously detonate than be used as an effective weapon system. Especially when fired upon by the other parts of the royal navy. Even if none of the incoming shots had penetrated, the vibrations from the impacts on the hull would have likely served to ignite the payload."

"So what? You come to us with nothing but a fairy tail and suppositions that my ship might have been filled with a liquid you can't even identify?" Solanna hissed as she glared at the alchemist.

"Horse shit. We all saw the navy firing on that ship. My mother used some sort of new secret weapon to keep my loyal people from defecting to their rightful ruler. Like those new shards for the peasants that boytoy of hers had. He said they didn't need magic. The cores nor the weapons. That's how they downed my ship." The duchess suppressed an eye-roll, maintaining her composed facade.

Solanna had been like this since the blast, drunkenly sulking, clinging to delusion that the ship truly had been defecting had been vaporized by some kind of new weapon of her mother's design. Internally, the duchess scoffed at the very notion. If Yelena Lindholm possessed a weapon of such remote devastation, their entire rebel armada would be smoldering husks by now.

No, that the loyalists had access to some manner of explosive that couldn't be sensed by magical means, and that they'd stuffed an airship full of it before sending it on a suicidal attack, was far more likely. … Though that notion was a little hard to swallow. Ramming was not unheard of, but to deliberately destroy one's own ship to damage others? Faline shifted uncomfortably.

"I think, ladies," she interrupted the growing tirade the princess was launching at her chief alchemist.

"That either way, we may have discovered the mythical 'Kraken Slayer' Yelena has been using to amass Mithril Cores." Surely enough, if she had an explosive substance that didn't require magic to operate, then even the largest Kraken's anti-magic defences would be powerless before it. Which smarted a little, given House New Haven had long prided itself on its Kraken hunting ability – and invested both time and considerable funds into researching better methods of doing so.

"Then what do we do?" Solana asked blearily.

"If Mother already has such a powerful weapon, how can we hope to win."

"First of all, if my alchemist's investigations hold weight, this weapon is not some kind of wonder construct. It was so effective only because we were caught off guard by its delivery method. Sufficient quantities of enchanted munitions could create the same effect – though we would have seen it coming by its magical presence." Once more, Faline resisted the urge to roll her eyes, cutting off Solana's arguments that the ship had been destroyed from afar and not from within.

"Secondly, if the attack on that ship was launched from afar by the royal fleet rather than from within, whatever the Kraken Slayer is, she has limited access to it. Were that not the case, we would all be dead and Queen Lindholm wouldn't have felt the need to flee the capital." She paused, letting those words sink in.

"Furthermore, I think it likely that great stockpiles of it whatever this substance was were expended during the most recent pirate attack on the capital, if this Count Redwater's words about non-magical munitions are to be believed." And she was going to investigate that. Last she'd heard, the brute Eleanor had headed out to the man's former seat.

And while she didn't exactly expect the woman to find an itemized list of how to create the substance – it wouldn't be hard to work out what went into it by investigating which materials the small province had been importing prior to the attack. With those, it's possible we might be able to recreate this Kraken Slayer in time, she thought.

"In the meantime, we push South hard. Don't give them time to replenish their stockpiles of whatever this substance is." If the Kraken Slayer had been created once, it could be recreated. Along with more of these… coreless shards. She knew Elanor wanted to remain and shore up their gains, but it was clear that was a losing move. No, Yelena had already fled once before them – which meant she didn't think she could win a standing engagement.

Now, if they moved South they'd wouldn't just be facing the Royal Fleet but the Southern Duchies as well, but Faline was just fine with that. Preferred it even. Because while House Blackstone had to be miserly with their forces for leaving them open to attack from Solite or Lunite invasion – House New Haven had no such fear. No, we perform repairs and push south. As soon as possible.

William sat on 'his' seat on the Jellyfish's bridge. It was 'his' seat because it wasn't the command throne. Olzenya had that spot – and was practically daring him to demand it back. He had no inclination to do so. Rather, his mind was less on who got to sit in the big chair and more on… well, it was strange for him to feel regret, but… it was something close to regret. Not quite there, but of roughly the same shape. A niggle of sort.

"Xela, I know I asked you before, but I find myself feeling the need for further reassurance. You said Redwater's bucket brigades were well drilled when I asked you before we left." The wood elf smirked, eyes twinkling with amusement as she crossed her arms over her chest.

"It's funny, sometimes I think you a cold fish, my lord – given the contents of your mind and the plans it births. Then you have moments where you act like any other young lord or lady given his or her first command. Fretting over his lands and people as if they were his children." William didn't wince, but it was a close-run thing. She was… sort of right. If you squinted a bit. He was concerned about Redwater – though not really because of what the North might do to it.

If anything, he was kind of hoping they didn't dally too long in reaching his old home. Xela continued, her tone shifting.

"I drilled those people myself, and I promise you they're as good as any sailor in our royal navy in a bucket line. Or close enough. Rest assured, if any fires happen to spread during the takeover, they'll be ready for it." Ah yes, Xela had been present for some of the asset denial operations. Some. Not all. Not even most. That had been Piper's job. The mage-knight leaned against the throne's armrest, her smirk softening into a genuine smile.

"Honestly, kid, relax. Most transitions of power are actually fairly bloodless once one side has airship dominance. It doesn't benefit anyone to rile the peasants up - and it doesn't benefit the peasants to rile their new rulers up either. When you get back, it'll all be as if you never left. Honestly, for the average person, it likely won't be any different beyond the flags changing colors." Her tone darkened slightly.

"Provided they're not an orc." William nodded slowly.

"Right." Still, that last bit was a good reminder of why he was doing these things. … Even if he wasn't sure all of the little surprises he'd left behind were entirely neccessary. And he mostly thinking about just those that had been a result of his own actions - let alone the ones he'd delegated to the alchemist's guild. In his defense, a lot of the ones he'd done himself had been implemented in the middle of the night, just after he'd finished jury-rigging the Trojan Horse.

He'd been essentially running on fumes and adrenaline at that point. Honestly, it was kind of a miracle he'd not blown his own fingers off. Or worse. Maybe letting Marline go South was a bad idea? She'd likely have had something to say about… everything. Unfortunately, he'd only had Verity and Olzenya. Verity hadn't really understood what he'd been doing… and it was possible Olzenya was even more cold blooded than him. Without the Harrowing possibly being responsible for it all.

And what if they found one and managed to disarm it? He thought. He'd have basically just handed them an intact example of gunpowder. The good kind. He sighed. … Well, if it happened, it happened. The secret was always going to get out eventually, so there no point in being miserly with his inventions. He could only hope they were so caught up in putting out fires - literal and figurative - that no one thought to check a random barracks bunk for explosives. Or the armory. Or that one outhouse.

Or any of the other dozen random places he'd visited in a sleep-deprived haze. Had… had he gone to the palace at one point? Maybe? He shook his head. It'd be fine. Probably.

"Royal Navy good, right?" he asked. Xela chuckled.

"Yes, My Lord. Royal Navy good. Whatever House Blackstone does, they'll be ready for it." Right. Yeah. It'd be fine.