The Undying Emperor [Grand Conquest Fantasy]

The high clergy were still in debate when the true battle began. Some thought it was their duty to reinforce the palace and rescue the king, while older men recognized that they had no way to discern saboteurs from loyalists. More importantly, if they committed themselves to the king's protection then there would be no defenses for themselves. They too feared the mob's noose.

It was the men of the port who first realized the danger. The signs came in a creeping, dreadful manner. First, the gulls began to flock and cry across the harbor waves. As vicious as rats, they attacked the water, squabbling and gulping as the water turned black. A clamor rose from the guide towers as a series of sea hulks began to drift toward the city. Nothing but warning bells at first, for what seemed to be a late fisherman's vessel which had lost its mass. An oblong shape drifted in along the edge of the harbor, passing right at the foot of one of the towers, but it was no ship. It was no whale either.

Half of one of the great sea serpents drifted like carrion in the ocean, trailing a cloud of blood that blackened the sea.

The clamor of bells changed to panic and runners were sent to the naval office. The Admiral At Port, charged with guarding the harbor since the worker riots earlier that year, received the runner as he stood arguing with Leomund about the disposition of cannons. A runner had long since been sent to the palace and returned with the news that it was in chaos, putting a halt to the preparations of the naval soldiers. It is hard to fault the man. Deploying the ley cannons to the port front would prevent their use by the guards to put down riots, but it was ultimately costly.

His order to raise the harbor chain came as skittish merchants were attempting to flee from the city. This led to a deal of confusion in due time, as it appeared to be a pre-emptive sortie, but again was no more than another loss of life. At first, the chain seemed to have failed, but the oxen teams broke it loose of its coral tomb at the sea floor. Link after link dredged up from the murk as cannons were prepared and firing rods rushed out of hiding.

Men with far-seeing stigmata reported sightings of ships with their sails dyed black, but the fleet was still at a distance. The first attack came when the Aillesterran flagship erupted from beneath the water, the same arcane trickery it had used in the Misty Isles. A dozen shots were hammered at it while the artillerymen scrambled to adjust their aim, only to learn the real threat was much closer.

A sight no Vassish man had seen–and lived to tell about–in centuries emerged from the bloody wake of the sea serpent. The feral maw of a leopard, nearly the size of the palace itself, emerged from the sea, gripping the chain. It thrashed its head, spraying water hundreds of yards in either direction as the rusted links ripped in half. The screaming only began after the behemoth rose up to its full height, one paw capsizing a merchant vessel almost flippantly.

To see one of the behemoths outside of Aillesterra was an unprecedented act of war. The fact that any of the angelhosts was in support of the attack baffles me to this day. Not that I do not understand their motivation, but the gall to trust a foreigner that Acheliah would be absent from the city. Had the angel still stood guardian, the behemoth would have been slaughtered. She would have reaped its head with her scythe and flown it back to Aillesterra herself. The amount of influence the Cyclops had with the eastern clans was far beyond my predictions. Perhaps because Lucius had encountered her during Rodrick's rebellion he suspected something of her danger, for I would not have prepared for such an attack. Indeed, had I thought it a possibility, I would not have been the one to draw the angel away. Let the divine beasts wound one another.

I digress. Their impetus was clear, and was proven by their flagship steering direct for the port. They followed the angelhost's(1) wake, slipping between the scattered Vassish navy to land soldiers upon the docks. There is a military maxim that weakness is a provocation, and the same can be said of newfound strength. The year prior the clans had become aware of the potential of ley cannons. They spent months attempting to recreate the weapon, only to realize that Vassermark would be mass-manufacturing the weapons while they were still struggling to procure ley. The angelhosts would not be sufficient advantage for long enough.

They had to attack Vassermark. Three objectives compelled them. Firstly, the capture of functioning cannons. Secondly, the capture of artillerymen. Thirdly, the destruction of the factories. Gratefully, their intelligence of Vassermark was not perfect, for the capital merely had the experimental grounds for ley cannons. The first factory was in fact being built in Forum, so far within the defended heartland of Vassermark that no pirate raid could threaten it. To accomplish either of the primary objectives, they had to overwhelm the very bombards assailing them.

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The Vassish artillerymen did not struggle to aim at the behemoth.

Each crew danced about their respective weapons, with grunting men shoving the cannon about its pivot as the young and nimble exchanged ley rods. As fast as fresh shot could be rammed down the muzzle, the mightiest of their men swung the firing hammer. Most often, they were trollkin whose great strength would have been of little good save for the felling of trees, but now their blows were amplified into piercing slugs of steel that soared at the monster. While some went wide, striking allied ships or even skipping across into the buildings of the harbor, many pierced the thick muscles across its back.

Its own blood mixed in the harbor as it swam, at times diving beneath the surface to scratch and kick against the sediment before breaching for air ever closer to the chaotic city. Woe to the criers who tried to rally the men of Vassermark to their own defense. Nothing they said could have moved the guards, the mercantile thugs, let alone the common man. What words of attack and danger would be believed as the cries of revolution were spreading like fire in a field.

Only because the acolytes of the cathedral kept their own watch did the clergy of Sapphira realize the threat. They left Golden, in the guise of Lucius to weep and lament within an empty treasury as they called upon their paladin. While they wavered in respect to the palace, an angelhost within the city had clear demands of them. Men of venerable age who had only ever learned rituals by practice hastened to find their dusty tomes and swear their hearts to the goddess of the sea.

Let it be said, she is not the goddess of knowledge and mystery for naught. Despite generations of disuse, there had been no corruption of their ritual. Perhaps it was because their faith did not dictate they go toward the enemy, but away from it. However, no matter their desire to at once be at the eastern gates, they possessed no means of flight. For a time, they were just another group of men with truncheons, beating down a panicked mob to clear a way down the city's thoroughfare.

This was when the Aillesterrans threw up their scaling ropes. Rains of arrows began clattering across the harbor and piercing the flesh of defenders. The wastelanders moved in formation, joining the vassish where they could, but their aim was to keep a perimeter about the cannoneers. When explosions began shattering windows and lighting the night with thunderous roars, ever more disarray befell the Vassish.

Leomund leapt upon his horse and road to the heart of the harbor as the angelhost sprang out. Its feet smashed through piers as its clawed hands raked the city stones. Lucius was yet to arrive, facing much the same struggle as the clergy who fled. While there were surely other men in the city with stigmata able to threaten the behemoth, none proved to have the heart to fight it save him. As much as he loathed to so exert the power the angel Vita had given him along with his life, he knew what would be the cost of his hesitation.

A power surpassing even the gods gripped the behemoth, for even those ancient minds never assimilated gravitation. Leomund had never pushed the limits of his power so far before. To bring a courtyard to its knees at the Bureaucrat's Coup was trifling in comparison for they were shocked and confused mortal men. The angelhost understood the attack at once, in essence if not in mechanism. It fell upon hand and knee, crushing the street beneath it. Every instant that passed meant thousands of pounds of sea water spilled from its sodden fur as the very stones of the harbor were crushed. Every instant also meant time for the cannoneers to turn their weapons entirely around.

Another volley thundered out, aimed now at an immobile creature. The balls ripped through flank and hide, piercing through to its innards and it couldn't even roar in pain as the magical weight pressed upon it. But not every shot was true. One caught Leomund's horse in the leg. Its pelvis shattered as the animal bucked and cried out. The northman was thrown from his saddle and dashed upon the harbor, breaking his concentration upon the spell.

When the angelhost rose once more, the clergy knew they had no more time to waste. Collateral damage had to be accepted as they activated the guardian statues at the eastern gates and attuned one to their paladin. As it had months prior, the golem awoke, but this time with direct life. Like the trained soldier controlling it, the gargantuan weapon pivoted and raised up its spear. From across the city, it had but one chance to fell the beast in time. Before it could thrash through the streets, the golem stepped in and flung its spear with all the might the machine could muster.

The harbor exploded as if a slumbering volcano erupted within it, thousands of pounds of flying stone striking the angelhost true. It was flung back into the water, yet kept from sinking. The shaft of ancient stone held it aloft by its own chest. When the storming roar of falling water subsided, the first voice that could be heard was Lucius von Solhart commanding the defense against the incoming fleet.

As it is an antiquated term now, readers may benefit from a definition. Previously in this history, I discussed the arcane art that allowed angels of the central kingdoms to thrust their consciousnesses into the bodies of remote devotees. An angelhost can be considered the reverse process. A devotee relinquishes their body to give martial prowess to one of the many emissaries of the fey goddess. The great monsters of Aillesterra were made of a similar mold as the sea serpents, crafted for might rather than wit, but Titania gave them the secret of angelhosts to compensate.