Chương 417: 13.3

Jewel marched at the head of her forces, her wyrmish sorcery braced in the air above her, denying the Magarskans their advantage in the air. The peculiarities of the world's obedience was still only diverting sufficiently rapid dives from the lesser Gryphons. She'd still not found a proper barrier within her means to command for more than that. But the slower, far less rapid sweeps permitted to the war beasts dampened their deadliness.

Flesh and blood beasts no matter how large found death as the Magarskan's fliers dived when men had spears sufficient to pin and stall them. For the rest? Jewel's vehement denial, refusal and forbiddance sufficed. The thing that she still yearned to call flame spilled from her mouth awash in her order to cease, and the air, water, earth, flesh and metal split under that command. Pure denial pouring away from her mouth in all the fury that had earned it the name of Wyrm Doom.

She had however begun to feel almost silly with her growing understanding of her flame. Jewel wished Tsulogothulan was there to discuss the nuance of it, she had been right! Her sorcery was in fact all her flame, but more than that it was also all her 'word' her 'will' manifested in 'flame'. Ugh, none of it quite fit, all the words of men she knew, Ridgevaulic, high Magarskan, Old Cantor, The court's tongue of the realm which confusedly was called 'Mannish'?

No word uttered in sound sufficed to match what she had found wyrmish sorcery to be! Not even the whispers without sound that every wizard made for workings matched, similar perhaps, recognizable as a kin of sorts to it. But also in many ways as distinct from her own commands onto the world as a wolf's howl was to the tittering of birds! What she had thought of until just a few days ago as flame, what Tsulogothulan had called the Anathema, and her father named Wyrm Doom?

It was barely more refined or coherent than a child's wailing cry, raw, unbridled denial and dissatisfaction. Compared to a proper spell, to even the raw and barely coherent feelings that had driven and been made manifest for her 'dictated sorcery' it made Jewel feel like she was shrieking at the world like a child. Uttering out a raw barely coherent denial at whatever displeased her!

It really reduced the majesty that ballads and songs used to describe Wyrm flame when you realized it was little different from a wailing infant displeased with a soiled nappy. Still if Jewel's cries of displeasure would disperse her enemies she would use it in war. On her right the Magarskan army was moving to try and encircle, still held at bay by a few slightly more concentrated and shaped refusals towards the general existence of whatever approached the vicinity of her men.

White clouds of twisting 'flame' contorting and spinning across the battlefield, shining like lightning and roaring in thunder enough to illuminate the world beyond the heaven's false light. The light called up by the Magarskan diviners did not touch Jewel or the men directly under her wings. It left her scales looking black against the divine illumination.

"Lord Sergej! Rally the Kaeketeh and Juhvizvah footmen to the front! Murad charges into the jaws! It is time for them to close!" She took in a deep breath, filling her lungs and then spilled flame from her heart into them, forced the anger up her throat and into her mouth, shaping as much of her wroth towards Murad into a singular force as she could afford. Then she spat the hatred into the ranks of Murad's army. Turning away even as she heard the sound of bodies, earth and metal come undone.

With that last distraction offered in defense Jewel leapt ahead of her forces, closing on the spear head of Murad and his princes, running well and truly ahead of the rest of their army, directly towards the apparent softness of the less defended lines that made the middle of her and Vladimer's formation. The hulking shapes of Giants lumbering forward, not at a run as a man would do it but a kind of humorous sort of long strided walk.

Making the tallest of Magarska's soldiers appear at a casual stroll rather than a furious charge. A spear point of sorcery armed lords leading the swelling sides of an arrow point. All of Magarska's army pouring into the gap she and the Count had left open for them. Tempting Murad's forces to strike where mere levy appeared to shift and shuffle forward well behind either her or Vladimer's army.

Ranks in the gloom of the night, but assuredly to any reasoning of men no more than the least capable of forces, not even soldiers. It was the only way that Jewel or Vladimer could have rallied the numbers that teemed in the dark. And High King Murad had seen that fact. A weak core unable to truly stop him from taking the flanks of either of his real forces. Jewel surged forward, and across from her she saw a small core bound from the Vlach's curving horn of troops.

Leaping higher than any man could have soared unaided by sorcery, falling just short of the place she had declared forbidden for 'missiles'. Behind them, moving at the pace mere men could manage the curving sweeps of their combined armies began to close into the surging charge of Magarskan soldiers straining to follow the sorcerously empowered forces of the Princes.

Jewel could practically taste the power enfolding each of the Magarskan lords, the way that it pulsed out from their hands, most with only one ornament bellowing commands to their limbs, bones, muscles and eyes. But the core of them suffused in the order of two, in one case four. High King Murad's entire body was practically drowned out by the fury of a dozen distinct voices washing over him.

A tumult of different whispers discordantly commanding the world within these men, making them faster, stronger, harder to pierce. Whispers of stone, sand, wind, fire, metal and so many other aspects that they must assuredly have been the work of just as many wizards as there were rings! Echoes on echoes of bound power making mortal men a match to vampiric strength, what Vladimer had called Djinn rings.

When she had first felt them only Murad had borne such power but now she saw all his princes leapt with the summoned strength of such artifacts. She pulled on her flame, on the will that could command the world, her body rising against the pull of the earth as she filled herself with it. Murad and his princes met the exposed and unprotected lines first, the heavens' touch cutting down around him to bring light where darkness had reigned.

Revealing the soft leather gloves and straw woven shirts and trousers of Hewer of Wheat, standing in his thousands, tools or just simple wooden sticks held at ready like spears. Jewel could only blink in the moment it took the High King of Magarska to realize the ruse. He was leaping backwards from the line of empty faced figures and sailing over the heads of his princes, from charge to retreat in seconds.

Those that had followed him, who bore fewer rings were slower to respond, but in time enough to gasp they too bounded backwards from the threat of a full weird on the field of battle. Jewel pressed herself harder to close the distance, he'd realized there was a trap, but Murad was still on the battlefield, he still stood before her, Vladimer bounded and in a flash of furious blades and clashing metal the land around the two erupted in motion.

It would however only stall the High King for so long, Jewel threw her body forward, straining every muscle, lightening herself as much as she could to make the leaps go further.

Murad's princes were turning, half towards Vladimer and the vampires, the other half for Jewel, she shifted her flame preparing to brace- In another blink they were upon her, swords scattering in blows over her limbs, the flame held in her scales and flesh straining to hold her body intact under the thundering strikes that fell like steel rain. But a quick rebuttal, a single burst of white flame drove them off and cleared a path for Jewel to come up on Murad's left.

He glanced her way momentarily, face a blurry smear of action, but in the wind of his motions she smelled hate, he was already trying to break away from Vladimer, to escape her. The vampires dove in to close off his escape, delaying him a moment longer. The man was moving too swiftly for her to discern his gaze, his body a another messy blur of motion, only abruptly held still where it met with the equally ferocious motions of her ally.

The princes came up on her flanks, she spared a glance, realizing they had in the moments she lost sight of them traded their swords for dragonslayer spears. They would not be enough to stop her before it was too late. She could simply demand he cease, but to do so would catch Vladimer in her wroth. Furthermore, mere death did not fully break the bonds that bound Murad's armies. Even if he fell, Magarska's slavery would drive their soldiers on.

She had seen it in the battles before, another lord or prince would claim the mantle, rally the forces and drive her people before them. Jewel turned her focus forward and inward, honing her gaze on the blurring maelstrom of Murad. The howling wind, but most important of all the touch of the heavens upon him, the way that the oaths shifted and swayed out of him like a web of blades. A shattered stone crackling through the world.

Chaining the princes around him in bondage, but more than that she saw what she had tasted and felt brushed over every one of the soldiers, the men who stood stinking of terror as so called nobles ordered them to walk into her doom. She'd felt the workings of the gods all over Magarska's soldiers, she saw their cutting touch in the world all through the sky, reaching down in endless intercessions up and down the lines. And all of them converging through the stars above onto one man."

Murad the First, Betrayer, Kinslayer, Butcher, Liar." Her words rang out into the world, the fury of her hate carrying in the cutting of her words, the touch of the heavens trembled, their light unable to reach her. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. Leaving her scales black against their false light.

The man, the traitor, the awful butcher tried to leap free of the melee with Vladimer, but the first of Hewer of Wheat's bestowed spells came forth, vines tearing their way free of the earth, wrapping around the legs of the man before he could finish pulling free, the clinging plant life hitching what should have been a clean bound into a stumble that barely brought the man a dozen feet away, well within reach of the Vampires to continue the harassment."

You have broken all rites of hospitality, discarded all promises of nobility, despoiled all trust given you by your peers and Magarska herself!" She felt the world taking notice, she saw the wheeling touch of the heavens shifting and churning around the man that had made himself out to be her friend, had forced her into this war! For his ego! For his own pride!" You have wasted the lives of your charges and people for nothing!"

The ferocity of the princes trying to reach her churned and cut through Hewer of Wheat's avatars at her flank, but she could not afford to divert now, she could feel the proper words, the meaning, and the fulcrum to end it all, to fix all of this! This one man was the evil that had turned all of Magarska against her! Forced her to fight terrified men who stank of nothing but their horror of her and yet could not disobey.

Spear points found themselves in her flanks, pried, pressed with inhuman might into the skin, and she felt the strain on her flame, the price forming, drawing not just from the power in her mouth, but back into her throat, into her heart. Sapping at the fortification she was holding in her skin!" Murad the first! I declare you a false king! I declare all vows of fealty to the heavens and stars for you broken! I declare all your slaves free!

As Shining Wyrm and Lady of War of the Realm of Cantor Reborn I pronounce you ignoble and unkinged! May no vow hold fealty to you or yours from this day forward!" And then the touch of the world on her flame grasped and pulled! Her skin's fortitude vanished and the hooked blades of spear points sank deeply into both of her sides, the swept back spurs and serrated edges parting her flesh within.

For the second time in her life Jewel felt her own blood welling up from her wounds, but all around her, with a feeling like the frozen Vah cracking open in spring, the touch of the heavens departed, her flame buckled, wrenched, dragged its way up her throat and over her tongue, more and more vanishing away into the air, but she could feel the working taking hold in the world. She had won!

The princes stumbled to stillness, stopped, half way through skewering her in the sides as their slavery ended, two on her left dropped the hafts of their weapons and leapt away and into the night, her eyes fluttered with the strain to keep awake as a vast pit began to open up inside her, pulling ever more of her flame loose. She'd gotten as close as she could, saved as much flame as possible.

But she had done it, Murad's princes and all his other slaves were free, she'd broken the army- The spear in her right side stabbed deeper! Then its wielder twisted up and through her abdomen! The serrated hooks gouging and tearing her flesh before the grip of the man holding it dragged back and out! Jewel's cry of pain died in her throat as she turned her neck to gawk, at the man that when freed of every bond to the monstrous murad still stayed to fight! Who put every effort to disembowel her!

As her gaze slipped past the furious soldier dressed in the shining metal of a Prince of Magarska horror gripped her heart, the army all around her was not fleeing as she'd hoped! Yes some of the forces had broken, the heavily armed levy in the most part faltering, routing, shouts of terror going out all through the lines. The heaven's bonds had broken, shattered, scattered to the winds!

Yet she could already feel their intercessions returning in the bulk of the army, flares up and down the lines struck the world and left cutting contact as vows were renewed. Not to the High King, her working forestalled any repair of that leash, but to closer and lesser figures! The armored man glared at her with his spear dripping black in the night's light, he spat his words in High Magarskan." Vile black wyrm! Accursed beast!

Did you think tha-" His head was thrown from his shoulders by the sweeping arc of a scythe. The wide hat of Hewer of Wheat looming up behind him, framed by the swaying stalks of his fields. The star light above was lost in the black depths below his brim.

"A fine first blow young snake hen... But wars never end so cleanly as that. I promised you, there would be so many great wrongs I would be doing to owe you rights. Now up with ya we have greedy 'ignobles' to put in the ground and mulch for the good Vladimer's earth." And then he was away into the night sweeping into the rest of the disjointed and disparate army before her with impunity, where was Magarska's sorcerous support? Absent it seemed, leaving a Weird to prey unmolested upon mortal men.

All order and rank broke before him, Hewer of Wheat was moving like his namesake through a field of men, a sweeping blow with a scythe arcing in flashes of golden sunlight, heads parting from men's bodies in cascading waves with every stroke. Bodies stumbling over midstride after the separation, toppling and tripping those ahead that yet lived. The Weird's blows on the battlefield leaving only corpses and cowering men before him. Flattening hundreds in every blow.

Now the Magarskan lines were chaos, and it only grew as Vampires, Vlach and Viznove Soldiers swept through, more than half were now turning to flee despite the clumps of rallying forces around pools of brilliant light. The sound of fury and bellowing curses drew her back to look at the battle between Vladimer and Murad, the ground around them was a swamp of blood, intermingled with the broken limbs of men.

Trees, branches, fields of wheat colored glistening black rose around the men like the blows of their swords and were cut down just as soon. Trailing and accentuating the sweeping, furious arcs of the Vampire Count. Her plan had worked? It had Failed? She was baffled, wounded and bedraggled. Murad's bindings of Kingship were broken! The heavenly vows of his army shattered! But the war continued?!

Her body was heavy from lack of flame, not as bad as when she had cursed the Waifs but she could feel there would be no flight for her that night. What was she supposed to do? Even trying to draw up the will to use her Wyrm Flame left her feeling light headed. Or was that the blood pouring out of her? Two spears still lay deep in her left side and a great gaping wound had been torn open, no, absolutely shredded in her right.

She pulled on a fraction of her will and even that was a labor like lifting lodestones in her youth, the blood stopped pouring, the flesh of her wounds was closed but not healed. She turned back to Murad and Vladimer, the speed of them making her dizzy in their sweeping strikes and riposte, the raucous noise! And then a familiar whisper, words Jewel recognized from last Magarska's allies had matched the Weird of Farms, the familiar tones from that awful day in the once king's throne room."

Ah, I see, how curious, surprising, yet very welcome. A pity though, so many prospectives came to us from these lands. The arrangement will be missed. But if so wills the heavens..." It was not quite like Fizzbunches and his corners, but it also was not entirely unlike it either, behind the wind was a hot baking sun and a freezing night. A thousand and one tales whispered in the air and rumbling beneath endless sands."

No-Man's King Murad, now heaven accursed is your name, through wondrous and unprecedented, unbelievable and until this very night impossible to conceive means have you broken that which should be unbreakable and forfeited all contracts and binding earned between your fathers and the Nation of Djinn." The armored and ensorceled man did not spare even a glance in his frenzied dervish, too engrossed in the whirling battle with the vampire."

So do I Sirazad of the Thousand Night Sands, in accordance with the will of the heavens and the stars revoke our gifts, and all boons once bequeathed you." Then the voice, her presence and every scrap of her sorcery and any not bestowed by the Weird of farms upon Murad and in fact all through the battle vanished, leaving nothing but the vicious whispers of Hewer of Wheat, and the dry cackle and screams of men unshielded from his wroth. Even in the tumult of that noise Jewel heard the High King of Magarska fall.

It was over before she finished turning her head and saw the ruin that had been his body sprayed out over the soil. Bereft of his enchantments the merely mortal man that had caused Jewel, Vladimer, and Magarska so much pain abruptly exploded under the fury of her ally. In one strike her enemy was no more, and yet the fighting continued all around her.

The Vampire came to a sudden stop, the blood spattered monster frozen, staring emptily ahead before slowly turning to gaze up at Jewel with furious hunger in its eyes. She stared back at the thing, the thing she had unleashed, then out at the collapsing army of Magarska, the screaming men who still refused to surrender, the banners of princes limping towards their lines, captains screaming orders that were not obeyed. She had sunk up to her elbows and knees in the blood soaked mud.

The vampire before her stared, hunger incarnate. It panted, wheezed, sucked at the air, then at more than that as the blood vanished from its armor, seeping between the battered plates, pooled around the both of them, churned, shifted and began running up its legs to join the rest in rivulets. Jewel found herself frozen, battered, torn open and barely held together, her side gashed badly, two spears swaying in her flesh if she dared shift.

Completely at the mercy of a hungering horror, awash in bloodlust and basking in having slain the only reason the two of them had been allied in the first place. A monster that she could feel sucking the very life of the world into itself until the ground around her limbs became dry and crumbling ash. Stepping through the now barren and dry earth closer, approaching her with that terrible hunger in its eyes, teeth bared in a wide grin.

Her heart hammered in her chest as he reached out for her right side, she would not be able to muster even a spark of flame against it! Then as she feared he was about to strike her down, Vladimer Tepes whispered the words that Hewer of wheat had taught him. She couldn't move, eyes fixed on the vampire, only then realizing when the pain faded from her side as he asked it to knit together that he had approached to heal her wounds." Come, ally of my motherland! Blessed Shining Jewel!

Let us join our countrymen in watering the earth with Magarskan blood!" And then, without another word, the Vampire vanished into the distance, leaving Jewel shivering in the dark.