BECMI Chapter 168 – On the Road Again, I just can’t Wait to get on the Road Again…

“Well, then, shouldn’t they apologize for spreading the plague here in the first place?” Laurentine spoke up, never one to let an argument go by if possible.“If you gave someone a cold, and they killed your sister for it, would you apologize to them?” I asked her, silencing her ready comebacks almost instantly. “There is no Darkrot Plague outside Zanzyr, it’s just blackgum, even to humans. This land is what makes it lethal. Not dwarves. Don’t live here, and it’s not a threat.”

Their expressions worked a bit at that idea.

“It is a weaponized attack on Zanzyr. It’s not deadly to orcs, dwarves, or goblins at all, or anyone else outside Zanzyr. Inside Zanzyr…” I shrugged. “But that is not the worst part of things.”

“Because if that Ghoul Hands made it once, he can make another, different one, an’ Zanzyr be not having the Clerical power to fight back against it then, either…” the Mick conjectured, trailing off as his eyes followed the fact this road looked to have cut directly through a hillside, whose remnants were arching up and over the road like an impromptu bridge or something, smooth and fluid and with nary a pick mark on any of the stone. Hammel in particular looked very impressed at what had been done here. The slope on the road was so gentle as a result that caravans coming up it would have no difficulties at any particular stretch of the journey.

“Lady Edge, how was so much earth moved around?” Hammel finally had to gasp. “It would take dozens of Elementals to do the job over days, even weeks!” he finally gasped out for everyone. In particular, the wall to the side was now over a hundred feet above the road, completely blocking off any capability to expand to that side, or move inland from the road itself.

“Cryptomancers have different ways of moving Earth than the Geomancers do, Hammel,” I reminded him. “Geomancy is more about commanding the magic of Elemental Earth and its denizens, rather than controlling earth itself. Geomancers use spells to control the earth, and are better at them than normal mages, but moving dirt and stone around is not what their skills are designed to do.”

“I… see.” He didn’t, but he had no idea how much earth Belle and I could shift around, how quickly we could do it, and how fast we could move while we did it. Moving around hundreds of thousands of tons of earth, and the soil and plants atop it, wasn’t that difficult at all. Runes of Life could also easily command normal plant life to move itself, uproot it here, and plant itself over there, which is how many of the trees had been shifted around to accommodate things without having to cut them down and root them out.

The Rune of Earth was becoming very popular among the Cryptomancers now, as they finally realized the utility of being able to speedily move around massive amounts of the land, adjusting the terrain to what was needed without having to tear it all apart with tools in a radical way. While elves loved natural settings, they also loved beauty, grace, balance, and flow… and they also were anything but unaware of the military implications positive and negative for their love of nature.

Wide open land was wonderful for traveling, hunting, planting rare flowers and herbs, and allowed the wildlife to move around freely.

It also allowed raiders to slink across their border with the Bleaklands and try to infiltrate to raid and plunder the more plentiful and productive elven lands here.

In a way, you couldn’t blame them, as the Bleaklands were a horrid place to have to live, especially if you didn’t have any common sense and simply couldn’t fathom how to adapt your home and make it productive and a stronghold and bountiful in its own way, like the dwarves did.

To them, the green hills, farms, forests, and ranches of the elves and Zanzyr in general looked like the bounty of heaven, which we were greedily keeping for ourselves and preventing them from living here amid the plenty. The fact that if they were living here these places would soon turn into desolate mockeries of what they were from over-hunting, lack of maintenance, constant battle, random urges to destroy, and other self-destructive behaviors that characterized their species was naturally of not the slightest importance at all.

No, they came down to take what was owed them, punish those who didn’t give it all up freely, and maybe beat them even if they did, so there’d be no trouble the next time, too. Lack of planning for the future was a feature, not a bug in their culture, and living for the moment and that moment flaring and dying was a heroic thing in their violent society, while overly clever planning for a future that was unlikely to get here in their short and nasty lives in general was frowned upon.

Also, plotters tended to plan the downfall of their superiors, and that wasn’t the preferred mindset desired by those who controlled the hordes.

Courtier Sim Eska ran a along the eastern border of the Principality of Erendyl every day now, easily covering a forty-mile radius and basically the entire length of the border, along with a good stretch into the Bleaklands themselves.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

She thus had knowledge of movements of large numbers of everything moving about there, all the subterranean passageways, tunnels, hidden caves, buried caverns, and campsites, as well as normal and game trails used by animals and sapients alike. That included groups of nifloids trying to steal over the border, set up ambushes, raid farms, and the like, as their impact on the land was very different from normal packs of animals.

It also meant that over the last month, the defense of the eastern border had become a deathtrap the Bleakers had not escaped from. Then it was the elves’ turn to go stealing across the border, and do a lot of ruthless reaping of their own.

With them had come the dwarves of Darkmoor. Unlike the elves, the dwarves were perfectly happy to take that ground and hold it, especially when all the best mineral sites were pointed out to them for exploitation. The scattered nifloid hordes were vaguely becoming aware something dangerous was developing on the border with Erendyl, and numbers were starting to gather and investigate further in… as my Sims kept track of them from the Innspot, which was smack dab in the center of the place, naturally enough.

Used to the retiring and passive mindset of the Erendyl elves, this lethal aggressiveness had caught the Bleaker Tribes completely by surprise, as had the elves’ capabilities in both ambush and straight-up line combat. Tribes in the southwestern Bleaklands here were being completely annihilated, driven forth, and dwarves were taking that ground and holding it, while Cryptomancers sealed tunnels and buried caves and caverns in stone, eliminating subterranean ways in that were not desired.

It was a truism that avenging raids could be mounted into the Bleaklands, but they all inevitably petered out. The surface was hostile, the terrain was dangerous, and the true numbers of the nifloids were succored below, able to pour out onto attackers in numbers from all directions and overwhelm them. Nobody dared to attack and take the ground, because the ground seemingly had no value to it.

The Moorish dwarves obviously thought otherwise, and led by those who’d fought with the Free Company, they were murderously effective above and below ground.

The main difference was that many of the nifloids in the Bleaklands actually had Racial Levels, and so were far tougher than they appeared to be. The vast majority were just young runts, thrown into battle by their elders and buying time with their lives, but older orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, gnolls, ogres, kobolds, and trolls could actually be quite dangerous, surprising some of the attackers who’d only had to deal with the ever-changing Beastials in their wildly mutated types down below.

At least, these descendants of theirs were predictable.

They weren’t too happy when closer examination of the dead and their bloodlines revealed that the goblins had probably stabilized their forms by interbreeding with captured dwarves, the hobgoblins had done so with elves, the orcs with humans, the kobolds with hyn and gnomes, and the ogres with morlocks.

The trolls might have done so with hill giants, it was hard to tell… or were simply the favored of Nifl, with the blood of the Avatar of the Immortal in their regenerating veins. Certainly an adult troll was the equivalent of any of the natural Beastials.

“Every School has its advantages and disadvantages, Hammel,” I informed him over my shoulder as we zipped smoothly down the new trade road, while they marveled at the altered terrain around us. “The Geomancers have considerably more direct combat applications than Cryptomancy does, while also being adept with earthworks and construction. Cryptomancy, however, excels at downtime versatility. It is our strength. Your best play is to go with yours, which is the Elementals you will command and control, when it is time.”

While the road offered a clear path into Erendyl and Zanzyr, it was now blocked from the rest of the border entirely by doing so, meaning it was going to slam up against those fortified walls and really going to be punished for doing so. Invading reinforcements couldn’t come streaming in from the south to reinforce an attacker, at least not at all easily. My entourage couldn’t see what was on the other side of those increasingly looming walls.

Compared to the smooth and gradual incline of this trade road, the one across the river had ups and downs, several switchbacks, and was definitely of inferior quality. The Colorajo were aware of this, but simply were incapable of the amount of terraforming necessary to make changes like this. It was a stark reminder that they were a clan, not a clan, of elves. Now that the Erewan were stirring with Princess Brittabelle’s return and new resolve, the difference between them could only be seen to be growing.

“Yes, Lady Edge,” he replied dutifully, obviously considering what I was saying compared to everything done around us. “I… have never seen magic used to make such changes over such a large area so quickly,” he admitted.

“Earth Elementals laboring together could do much the same thing, Hammel,” I consoled him. “And they are much more dangerous in direct combat. All of you who aspire to Air, Water, or Fire should note the same thing. Elementalism is about the Elementals, not just the Element. You are powerful Summoners, while Cryptomancy is about control of what is there, and requiring the time to take advantage of it. Align your expectations with the School you aspire to, and you will excel. Depart from such obvious uses of your School, and you increasingly marginalize and diminish your own strength. Do not be fools.”

The chorus of assents came back reluctantly but dutifully. While supposedly I had no more power than did they, I had proven time and time again I had knowledge and resources that far surpassed their own… and it was quite obvious I was very familiar with what was going on in Erendyl. That I had come to the Great School on Belle’s approval was not widely known, but I was obviously a prodigy, and had proven it many times over directly in tests by instructors and my fellow students.

“They were advised by some good engineers, Lady Edge!” Hammel went on enthusiastically. “The rest stops, the relief stations, the shelters every so often, all manned by … these are real conveniences that the Colorajo cannot duplicate without significant investments!”

“I believe, Hammel, if you start totaling up the amount of gold the Colorajo would have to lay out to equal what was been done there, you will find out that such is exactly the reason it was done.”