A Legacy of Blades - An Epic Tower Fantasy

The fortress walls rose before them, black against the clear mountain sky. The air billowed, cold and crisp, bringing with it a sense of freedom. Anilith could feel the distance the Wind had traveled, unbound from the ground and free to chase any passing fancy, winding, and looping, and seeing.

This breeze had seen more, remembered more, than any she had touched before, and it brought with it a sense of how limited her view of the wind truly was.

Below, in the fields beneath the mountain's foothills, the air was caught in the grips of everything that lived. She saw its touch for what it was, an infusion of life's essential ingredients into everything below, and yet the Wind was denied its truest purpose, which she only caught a glimpse of here, at the peak of the earth. She knew, in that moment, that there could be no life without the Wind, but was only beginning to see the bigger picture.

The Wind brought with it secrets, riding invisible currents from near and far, imbuing the land with new life. It had a relationship with the plants that she couldn't begin to grasp, so complex was their interplay, but could plainly see the influence the Wind, and the beasts that rode its currents, had on the world below.

High as she stood, atop this mountain, it was only a lazy leap above the land in the vastness of the Wind's domain. The true scope of what the Wind encompassed was beyond her comprehension, and for the first time, she considered how deep the earth must run, how high the skies must climb, and how little she knew, even after all her growth.

Above, the skies soared, seemingly endless. The clouds billowed around the mountaintop, sometimes touching down as a mist, gifting the thin air with density she wouldn't have imagined something so immaterial possessed. She saw herself, an insignificant speck, standing there at the pinnacle where the earth met the sky, a stark boundary she hadn't envisioned.

Slowly, she shifted her supernatural senses between the Earth and the Wind and witnessed the boundary from each side, each painting an incomplete picture of beauty that eluded her grasp, unable to see the full image in any moment.

The mountain spread as far as her senses could travel, the familiar tunnels they had traversed acting as a guide as she stretched her senses to the limit. The farther she pressed, the more detail she lost, even as she began to see the majesty of the mountain, a solitary watchtower jutting from the earth.

She followed the currents of the Wind, letting them carry her senses as far as they would, losing perspective as she lost herself in the Wind's whimsy. Thinking she could ever control something so all-encompassing was laughable, at best, and she knew her approach to utilizing the Wind was flawed.

It was not something that could be tamed, merely harnessed.

The land spread beneath its domain, an insignificant blip in a greater expanse of pale blue mystery than she had ever seen. It took her a moment to understand the Wind showed her the mirrored surface of the water surrounding the land the mountain sat on.

From the peak, she let her senses take a step back, getting lost in the grand interplay of the natural world, relinquishing what control she had to see more. Her mind reeled at the truth of just how little she saw, humbled at the realization that she had been too close, her perspective letting her see the minutiae of detail, yet missing the scale of everything, the patterns only visible from so much farther away.

The thought tickled her brain, triggering…something, but she just couldn't figure out what it was. Perhaps, in time, she would understand enough to comprehend that itch, but for now, she had more pressing matters.

"It ain't as cold as I imagined up here, small blessing that is," Orion said. "Cold, yeah, but bearable. Somethin' seems off about that, but I won't complain."

"Still colder than I'd like," Razhik replied with a shiver, "Sure we can't go back in the cave? I liked it there."

"Unfortunately, Lord Razhik," Anilith said, "We're here for a reason. We've got a decision to make, and we need more information to make it, I think."

"We've been watching a while now, though, and we've hardly seen any gobbers! No ogres or anything bigger, either. What do you think, they're just gonna get up and show us what they're hiding? I say we just let the Mud-grumpin Grokar at 'em and poke the bear. At least we'll have a buffer, then."

Orion shook his head as he rubbed his chin. "It may come to that, buddy, but ain't nothin' wrong with gatherin' some more information. You never know what's gonna save your skin, not until it's already too late, anyway. Folks get so worried about the things they do know, especially in hard times, that they forget; it's the things you don't know what come back to bite you in the arse."

"I guess," Razhik groaned, "but gathering information is just so boring." He perked up. "Maybe I can go get a little more up close and personal, really see what's going on? They won't even know I'm there; you didn't!"

"Not sure that's a great idea, Razh. We don't know much about their defenses yet, and you triggerin' an alarm all by your lonesome is about the last thing we want right now. Sure, you might get away, slippery as you are, but you'd be takin' any element of surprise we have right with you."

"I regret to inform you that I don't hate to agree with Orion, here," Anilith added, "Why don't you go practice your shadow stepping in the cave or something, let the adults handle this boring stuff."

"You guys always talk down to me like I'm some kid—"

"Orion literally calls me kid nonstop, you know."

"…who doesn't get it. But I do get it, it's just boring. Wake me up when you're done here, I'm gonna go take a nap. It's been too long since I've just taken a good nap, thanks to you overachievers."

As Razhik slunk away into the shadows in the direction of the cave, Orion and Anilith settled in, taking careful note of any enemy forces they saw, particularly any that may have any nasty surprises for them.

For all Razhik's complaining, they actually were making decent progress and had learned a fair bit about the fortifications.

"I haven't sensed any new squads entering the courtyards," Anilith said, "just the same patrols moving through. Gives a solid fifteen squads, by my count, with a few dozen sentries stationed along the wall. Trouble is, I can't get a read on anything that isn't in the open air. My Earth-Sense hits a wall at the…wall. How much trouble might we be stepping into?"

"Hard to say, there. Even takin' on fifteen squads with sentry support is pretty far beyond our means, unless you have any more surprises for us."

"Nothing that comes to mind, unfortunately." She thought for a moment on how different the Wind felt here, but decided not to get Orion's hopes up over a feeling. "We could always try to draw them out, bottleneck them at the cave like we were."

"True enough, but that relies on them not having any surprises for us. Somethin' tells me the gobs we fought comin' up that way weren't a great measure for what we'll face up here. Still, we could whittle their numbers down a bit. Question is, can we win without relyin' on the Grokar, and is it worth the risk?"

"I'd like to say yes, but honestly, I'm not sure I'd want to chance it. So much rides on this going well, and there are still so many unknowns."

"I'd say our odds for victory go up if we take the beasts up on their offer," Orion said. "But I guess we just have to ask: how much do we want to gamble, and are we willin' to bet on ourselves?"

"I know how you feel about chance, but—" Anilith cut herself off as she remembered something she'd put away in her earliest days in the Tower, putting the thing entirely out of mind. She summoned a simple coin; one most wouldn't look twice at. "Care to ask for a second opinion?"

Orion furrowed his brow. "And what, exactly, do you have there?"

"Just a gift from Mingus from my first day here." Anilith rubbed the back of her head and averted her gaze. "I may have forgotten about it, but there was so much to see and learn…it was all pretty overwhelming. Can you blame me?"

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"I guess that really depends what this gift does, don't it? That gonna level the playin' field for us? Rain down doom from the skies?"

"Nothing that drastic," Anilith laughed, "Gods, imagine if I'd forgotten about something like that. No, this just weighs in on difficult decisions. Shall we give it a shot?"

"Hold on a sec, any other 'gifts' you've conveniently forgotten about?"

Anilith briefly thought about the third item Mingus had entrusted her with. "Nope! I'd never do anything like that. What'll it be, coin: do we go it alone or risk accepting aid from the Grokar?"

She flipped the coin, realizing she'd never assigned sides to the choices. "Shit, well—"

As the coin stopped tumbling, it lay on the ground before her, displaying a smiling Grokar that looked disturbingly like their chieftain, giving a thumbs-up, no less.

Anilith's jaw dropped.

"Well, kid, I guess that answers that."

"Gods. He told me how it worked, but I never thought to ask him how it worked."

Clapping a hand on her shoulder in consolation, he laughed. "Oh, cheer up, kid. At least we can go tell Razh the good news now and get this whole thing started!"

"…he's going to be cranky, isn't he?"

"Nah, I've never known him to be cranky."

"Oh, come on, Razhik," Anilith started, still clutching the coin displaying Kewrok's visage, "Don't be like that."

"And what, exactly, am I being like?"

Anilith ignored the decidedly not cranky creature. "I already told you; we decided to go with your idea and take the Grokar up on their offer…does it really matter how we arrived at the decision?"

"You really don't see any difference between you guys deciding to listen to me for the brilliance of my idea, and deciding to go with my idea because a magical coin, that you conveniently forgot you had until now, might I add, told you it was a good idea? No difference at all?" Razhik let out a mighty snort. "This is exactly the problem with you soft-skins," he grumbled.

"Nope, bud," Orion responded, "Gonna cut you off right there. Don't make a lick of difference whether we decided to listen to your kingly advice or to a magical trinket that, might I add, is specifically meant for situations like this. Fact of the matter is, we probably need the Grokar's help, and we need you to talk to them for us, so get your scaly hide up, talk to the spy they sent with us, and tell him to go get his boss."

"Could have at least let me nap a little longer," Razhik continued grumbling under his breath, slinking off into the shadows to, presumably, deliver the message.

Anilith shook her head, her hand covering her face as she looked down. "Gods, Razhik is impossible sometimes! Even when he gets his way, it's not enough unless it's for the right reason. We should have just lied and said we thought he was a genius, and we were overthinking the whole situation."

"Nah," Orion rebuffed her, "That would never work. Razhik knows I'd never say that. He's all sorts of clever, when he wants to be, but praise goes right to his head. Better off avoidin' that route. Plus, we did cut his nap a bit short. Three hours is next to nothing for him; I'm surprised we could even wake him up that quickly."

"Fair enough," Anilith conceded, "You have known him longer. Still, he's a special kind of pain in the ass."

Orion laughed, "Aye, that he is, kid, that he is. Difficult lives can lead to difficult people, but he's relatively easy to deal with, so long as you know his quirks. There's no good substitute for a genuine companion, and, despite all his oddness, Razh is nothin' if not genuine."

"Yeah, fine, but he's still a pain in the ass."

"I heard that," the shadows growled, "They're on their way. Should we ask your coin to make us a battle plan?"

"It doesn't really work like that, your lordship. Either of you have any ideas?"

Orion smiled, but it was far from his normally pleasant grin. "Oh, I might have an idea or two. How do you feel about…"

"How did I let him convince me to come out here?"

Anilith stood in front of the walls, outside of easy bowshot, alone and staring at the beady eyes of distant sentries. After the initial commotion at her sudden appearance, when they'd blown a series of short, crude signals on some kind of instrument they each carried, there was a burst of movement behind the walls. She found herself incredibly grateful for the fact that they were gathering somewhere she could observe them through the Wind.

That comfort did little to settle her nerves in the face of more than a dozen assembled goblin squadrons, and she quickly noticed that their estimates were woefully lacking. The only real saving grace is that she didn't detect a single squad of warg riders. That would have made the next part of the plan a touch more difficult.

When the goblins had finally formed into a semblance of ranks, each squad loosely grouped around what must have been its assigned leader, with a larger squad bringing up the rear, the gates to the fortress slowly began to creak open. They moved with a slow deliberation, and Anilith couldn't help but wonder what was actually powering their movement. None of the goblins she could sense appeared to be utilizing any sort of ability to affect the gates. Their size suggested moving them would be no small feat, and she couldn't help but feel unnerved at the inevitable, inexorable pace at which they opened.

Like the sun creeping over the horizon at dawn, a gap opened between the gates, letting out the cries of the beasts. Even if she could catch the odd word here and there, most of what she heard had no clear meaning, but still served its purpose. A horde of bloodthirsty monsters, each contributing to the crazed chorus of impending battle, flooded forth from the gates. Even as far away as she stood, she watched as the creatures voraciously ate up the distance between them, moving with a swiftness that would put fear into the hearts of most men.

Anilith, however, was anything but most men. She stood resolute in the face of insurmountable odds, staring down a horde that outnumbered her by hundreds. When the wave seemed poised to swallow her whole, she turned and ran.

Empowered by the wind of the mountaintop, she ran with everything she had, achieving speed beyond anything she'd experienced.

The horde swept across the land, chasing their quarry with abandon, apparently unwilling to let the foolish creature escape. She felt the movement on top of the black, stone walls and saw the ripples a new signal sent through the air, even if she was too far to hear the sound.

Even with the horde outside the fortress walls, the enemy was still organizing their offensive. They'd known it was too easy to hope that they could draw out all of the monsters at once, that this force would only be the first challenge of the day, but that didn't soften the blow entirely. The army on her tail was larger than they had hoped, and there were more still to fight afterwards.

Not too far from the walls, there was a pond, a water source for the fortress, and, even atop the mountain, a sparse tree line approached the pond's distant shore. Each step brought her closer to the pond, and when she finally approached it, she skirted along its banks, making for the tree line. When the goblins saw their prey making an escape, the cries grew from a roar into a cacophonous thunder. The bloodlust the creatures gave off was palpable, blinding them to anything but their quarry.

They never saw the trap until it was sprung.

A mighty twang split the air, echoing across the thin air of the mountain. The projectile the sound announced carved a path through the densely packed beasts, hardly affecting their numbers despite the creatures dispatched in its wake. More than anything, it broke their momentum, sowing confusion among the simple monsters.

As the creatures reeled from the sudden attack, the waters of the lake roiled, announcing phase two of their trap.

Grokar hydromancers crested the surface of the water, launching a salvo of high-pressure waterjets into the disarrayed forces of their enemy. Armored Grokar juggernauts waded forth, ready to intercept any goblin who thought to assault their mages.

Anilith turned on her foes, taking the chance to join the fray. Her blades cut down goblin after goblin, finally finding an outlet for her fury as she moved through them like a reaper in the harvest season, the chill winds guiding her path of destruction. They fell before her like wheat, and she numbed herself to the devastation around her, even as she read the Wind's song and fell into the familiar trance of Blade Weaving.

Razhik was nowhere to be seen, and yet festering wounds began to accumulate on any goblins who strayed too far from the fray. Even if few of the wounds were fatal, time worked against each victim, and many lay dying, bodies in shock from the building effects of the toxin that wracked their bodies.

The surprise assault, coupled with the frenzied confusion of the beasts, helped the Grokar, with assistance from Orion, whittle down the goblin force's numbers, but after a few follow-up barrages, the hydromancers began to run out of steam, falling back to a more supportive role, deterring any organized retaliation and keeping the enemy in disarray.

Orion's rain of arrows only paused when he changed locations, keeping the enemy on the back foot.

Their entire plan had hinged on the bloodthirsty nature of goblins, trusting them to abandon their higher faculties in the pursuit of easy prey. Anilith, Orion, Razhik, and the Grokar would never have stood a chance in a pitched battle; the goblins were simply too numerous. By front-loading the battle as they did, they at least managed to level the map, so to speak.

When the goblins only outnumbered their force two-to-one, the first explosion rocked the battlefield. A blinding flash disrupted the battle, and Razhik was thrown from whatever shadow he had been in, sent skipping across the pond's surface even as countless goblins were thrown from their feet.

Two more explosions followed in quick succession, knocking Anilith prone amidst a press of grey bodies. Her focus fled her in the shockwave of the blast.

As it turned out, it was a bad day for her to be in the way.