Halls of Ivory

Chapter 10 - Boiling Point

Kryta's darkest hour in the age before Salma's rule was also the time when the Shining Blade accomplished its greatest feats. They walked circles around the White Mantle, who outnumbered them and was better equipped for war, they braved the jungle and conquered its growth, they provided sanctuary for the chosen of the Flameseeker Prophecies and sent them on their journey to the desert. And they ventured back into Kryta and with the help of said chosen ones, retook it from the White Mantle.

All of this was centuries in the past, and since, the Shining Blade had gotten comfortable resting on the laurels of their predecessors, never shy to lord those accomplishments over the citizenry and the Seraph, as though they were their own. But they were not delusional, at least not in this regard. They knew that their order had not been put to the test since and their confidence in their ability to measure up the next time was dwindling. It was no surprise that with desperation slowly creeping up, they were only too receptive to the promise of perceived brilliance, when tempted by a foreign power.

The abrupt ending to the Commander's discussion with the Minister had taken the wind out of his sails. All he could do from there was have the Skritt guide him back out of the cave system and to the Seraph's camp.

To not start rumours or mumblings among the guards or the civilians, the Commander thought it best to walk a stretch away from camp with Logan before filling him in on his encounter with Lord Aldryn and the offer he made. The thoughts he added were the same ones that occurred to the Commander when he spoke to Aldryn. The Separatists' speculation had planned out the Seraph's potential flight to the west better than they did, Logan didn't have anything concrete in mind when it came to growing roots somewhere. So far they had just been winging it.

Logan listened intently for most of it, but when the Commander expressed his concerns over what the Separatists might plan, the Captain disagreed strongly with him. "If Aldryn wanted the princes dead, he could have just let the Shining Blade go through with having them executed. And if he wanted to take them away, he would have when we were at the hideout. His play is elsewhere. It's Divinity's Reach. The Separatists taking the city - that's bad. Really bad. Since the Seraph aren't reinforcing the Shining Blade, they might actually have a shot assuming they can navigate past the Charr. Separatists, Shining Blade, Charr, with most of Divinity's Reach caught in the crossfire, what's brewing there is a bloodbath worse than anything before. Are you sure he wasn't bluffing?"

"He seemed very confident about this. And he didn't seem that worried about us stopping him either. We're in a bad spot for preventing this and he knows it. Doubtless Anise is still furious, if we return to try to help them, she'll turn it around on us."

Logan winced. "There's got to be something we can do. Something to buy time. We have to stall them and find out how well equipped they are to pull this off. And if he's confident, that means the Charr aren't deterring him. He's got to have some major ace up his sleeve. We have to find out what that is."

They were both silent for a while. Their anger, left unexpressed, slowly turned to resignation. After a certain point, the Commander spelled out what both of them were thinking: "Are you proposing what I think you're proposing?"

"If we snub them and keep running, there's no way we can find out what he knows - or stall him. So we make a compromise with him. We take him up on his offer but it has to be conditional."

"Agreed. We can't just let him have his way on every step." With their decision made, they moved to notify the troops of their new course and to wake up the civilians. The trip wasn't nearly as long and arduous as their trek through Kryta and with the Skritt guiding their way, they found the entrance easily.

Once past the Skritt tunnels, the inside had plenty of room, even for a crowd as enormous as theirs. Every family that had joined the Seraph's exodus in full, found a chamber for their own to occupy and the two men at the front of the endeavour followed the rat-like creatures up the wooden platforms back to the Minister's house. The lights were on, but the door was closed. But since he was a man eager to blink from place to place it was unlikely that he was legitimately absent.

They both marched up to the front door and with his gauntlets still on, the Captain of the Seraph knocked twice. The door sprang up and the Minister greeted them with wide-open arms. "Back so soon, what a pleasant surprise."

They met Aldryn's smile with fierce and sinister expressions. "We MIGHT accept your offer, but we have demands of our own."

The minister shrugged. "I'm all ears."

"You will hold off on attacking the city - or making any sudden moves like that."

The Commander stepped past the Captain. "And we demand that you show us how you plan to get past the Charr."

"That last one - showing you our methods - I'll do you one better, we won't just tell you how we get around, I'll have my men teach you. The former of the two however - do you genuinely expect me to not see through this? I'm supposed to make sure you have extra time so you can hash out the ins and outs of how you double-cross me?"

"You can't expect us to not be cautious."

"But I can expect you to be aware of your situation and adjust your demands accordingly. You're a cornered animal with no-where to run. You're not in a position to make demands. Will I show you how we operate? Happily. But you can't expect us to pass up a golden opportunity like this."

"At least give us an idea of how much time we have."

"There are three heavily armed legions between us and the city. We don't plan to move out as long as those are in the way."

"Something tells me you don't plan to let them keep you from the city."

"I have an idea what to do about them, but I don't have the details worked out yet."

"So you got nothing, works for me."

"In that case, a deal's a deal." He reached for Logan's hand with both of his, shook it and then repeated the exercise with the Commander. "Welcome to Scarycave. Enjoy your stay. I'll have some of my men come by and stand guard - take you on a recon mission here and there - and before you know it, we'll make Separatists out of you yet."

Easier said than done. Consorting with Separatists was a tough sell, even for the Seraph loyal enough to stick with Logan through everything so far. He addressed them all within the safety of the caves and told them who had provided this hideout. He told them of the Separatists' help to uncover and stop a plot to assassinate the princes and princesses but kept it vague on whose plot it was. And he told them they were free to leave and who to ask so they were guided back outside.

When one of the soldiers asked why the Separatists would expose themselves so willingly, the answer was simple: They didn't. At the time, the minister was here only with the Commander, the Seraph and the civilians from Divinity's Reach. Besides Aldryn, there weren't any Separatists here, so even if the Shining Blade knew of this location, they would only know of the Seraph's and the citizens' whereabouts. Even later, the minister only ever kept a small number of outlaws in this place, so there was no ground to gain against the Separatists if something were to happen to Scarycave. It was the Seraph's hideout entirely and the few Separatists here were barely enough to manage circulating the food and supplies they brought in to keep the Seraph and the citizens fed.

Aldryn made true on his promise to show them the Separatists' ways. Within the next day, two of the outlaws that joined them in the cave system approached the Commander and offered to take him on a simple patrol mission. The outlaws were simple men with nothing on them but their shirts, shoes, trousers and a bow and quiver each. The Commander wasn't sure how they would hold up if faced with a contingent of Shining Blade or a band of Charr, but if the empty camps seen on the way to the jungle were any indication, they must have taken down a lot of Charr warbands at the very least.

Immediately upon leaving the caves, their chosen path diverged from any path the Commander or any of the people that had come here with him had taken before. They remained within the thicket, concealed at all times by several layers of trees and vines, and took a path along the mountains northeast. Instead of joining with the beaten paths below, they led him up a hidden slope which at its top, featured another cave. A direct way to Kessex Hills. The exit wasn't far from the Centaur fortress.

Several times, he braced himself for combat. Throughout his first day of traveling, he was expecting this to be some kind of execution, but every cue turned out to be harmless. This wasn't the only hidden pathway they showed him either, they had means like this to travel all the way to the forest in the north. And from within the trees, they spied a target. Shining Blade scouts. One with their usual shield and sword and the other with a bow. The Separatist with the bow was already preparing to line up a shot when the Commander pulled him back. "Wait, we don't have to do this." He whispered. "We can't seek a peaceful solution if we just kill any Shining Blade we see."

The other Separatist countered: "Maybe a year ago, we would have agreed, but we've suffered a lot of losses since then and a lot has changed. Our new leader has always maintained one thing. Remember it, or we will repeat it a lot of times: 'No pulling punches, no holding back, there is no political solution'. You don't negotiate with enemies, you kill them."

"Who said that? Aldryn?"

"The minister only coordinates local efforts. Our leader is over in Ascalon."

He pressed them further. "Who is this leader?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Refusing to answer was understandable. Why would they just give away the identity of the head, only for the Commander to pass on the information to someone willing to take them out?

Nevertheless while they argued from within hiding, the Shining Blade members had marched on and were now at a distance at which the Separatist bowman couldn't reliably shoot his target. And they couldn't catch up without giving away their location either. The downside of the Separatists' secluded routes was that it made navigating the landscape very obstructive and while their mark could march straight west past the mountains, they had to take a detour to go after them.

They rushed along their usual path, back to the tunnel south of the road the Shining Blade took, and from there through more wound paths north to where they were. At some point, one of the Separatists gestured for the other two to stop. When the Commander peeked out through the thicket, he could see why. They had found the Shining Blade soldiers again, but they were too late. A Seraph had walked up to them and was talking to them. They were too far away to hear what they were saying, but at some point everyone seemed to have spoken their piece and both parties turned around to make their way back.

The bowman nocked his arrow again but the Commander yet again grabbed the bow and pulled it down. "No. We don't do this. We find another way."

This time, the bowman was much less understanding. "What do you mean 'another way', he's giving away our location! We have to take them out before they make their way back!"

A fair point, but if growing up as a noble gave the Commander one skill, it was arguing matters like this. "Scarycave holds only Seraph and civilians, the Shining Blade have nothing to fear from them, so they have nothing to gain from knowing where it is."

The bowman shook his head. "What nonsense! They'll get away, we have to-"

Once more the Commander pulled his bow down and gave the Separatist a stern look. "If you want us to cooperate with you, you have to cooperate with us. If you keep killing them on sight, our agreement is over."

The Separatists exchanged looks and the sighs and dropping shoulders signaled to the Commander that he had gotten his way. The two Shining Blade members and the Seraph would live another day. Maybe there was hope for an amicable outcome after all. The defeated outlaws led the way back to the Skritt hive, but not without one of them turning to the Commander and pointing at him. "This isn't the end of it. Lord Aldryn will know about this."

And know about it he did. When the Commander was still checking on the civilians, a Separatist notified him that Aldryn wanted to talk to him. And when the Commander arrived, the annoyed noble was already waiting outside his house. "I've been told that you pressured my men into committing a blunder. On your first recon mission no less."

The Commander would have none of this. "We don't just kill people on sight. Not even the Shining Blade."

"You forget that this war has been raging prior to you being forced to switch sides. Refusing to kill enemies when given the chance is the same mistake the old Separatist movement engaged in - and which they paid for with their lives. We don't do that anymore."

"We have not switched sides! And there was no real reason to kill them!"

The minister raised his eyebrows. "Wasn't there? Because from how the situation was described to me, it's pretty clear the Shining Blade now know where these caves are. You think they'll just sit on that information? They're going to come and kill you all now."

"You don't know that! We may not have parted on the best terms, but we did nothing to make ourselves outright enemies of theirs."

The minister flashed a derisive grin. "Their policies would see our people and the people of Ascalon brought to extinction. And deep down they know it. You seriously think they'd allow a group of fellow Krytans to outlive them and tell of their folly? Please, you should long have picked up on how much they obsess over perceived wits. Their lifeblood is getting to pat themselves on the back and tell themselves how smart and forward-thinking they are for being subservient dogs. They want our extinction as a people to come unwitting so that no human from Kryta or Ascalon can speak ill of their decisions in the future."

"Are you implying they'd kill us all out of nothing other than fear of being criticised?"

"Maybe it's fear of criticism, maybe it's fear of mockery. I'd wager the latter - the thought of laughs being had at their expense - that scares them more than the former. But yes. That is exactly what I'm saying. They're obsessed with 'being right' - or more aptly, having the final say - and cannot allow someone to say otherwise. They want to live their lives in ignorance and squalor and ever since you left the city, you are endangering their little game of play-pretend by living outside of the bounds that they set for you. The thought that you might outlive them and become a living example of just how short-sighted and bad their ideas are, that is the source of a visceral fear that they cannot shake."

The Commander knew that continuing this would only see them arguing in circles. "We'll see about all this."

And the minister shrugged. "I guess that we will."

As lacking their diplomacy with one another was, the Commander's and the Separatists' cooperation went on unhindered. They still agreed to take him on recon missions, even if they now insisted on sending a second group along with his, who had explicit instruction to ignore any orders or threats coming from him.

They led him on more daring trips, and showed him the little tunnels they used to travel in and out of Queensdale. They taught him the extremely tedious detours they ran across to safely circumnavigate any Charr patrols, roaming warbands or Shining Blade scouts that traveled along the roads. Something that certainly eased the Commander's introduction to this life was the turning of the seasons. When he and Logan set out to leave Kryta with the Seraph and the people in their care, the Colossus was just making way for the Zephyr and ever since, they were in for three full seasons of weather that was at worst bearable - and at times, almost tropical. Apparently when the Colossus was cold enough for snow to fall, the Separatists were forced to take even slower and more reclusive routes, so as to not leave trails in the snow where the Shining Blade could find them.

Nonetheless, these secretive insurgents were much unlike the bandits that the Commander had known. The open field offensives with heavy casualties of days gone by were replaced with methodical stealth operations, focused on leaving no intel for outsiders and losing not a single man in the field. Any efforts to fly under people's radar on the Commander's or Logan's part were amateurish compared to what the Separatists showed him.

Whenever they came across Shining Blade members, the second group of archers and gunmen made sure that they wouldn't pass on whatever messages they were carrying, whether or not the Commander agreed to it. Every time they came back from one such mission, the Commander reported to Logan what they had done and what intel he gathered.

But Logan passing that on to his subordinates only worsened the situation within the underground city. While the Seraph no longer had to sit idly by as the Shining Blade forced citizens to accept their impending demise, they felt that little had improved in coming here. They were sitting ducks with nothing to do and no way of improving their lot and for provision, they were completely and utterly dependent on Separatist supply deliveries.

During the Commander's absence, some of the Separatists passing around food for the citizens got dragged into conversations with the Seraph. At first, they mostly revolved around what means to win in political struggles were acceptable, but those were just a thinly veiled excuse to justify what they really felt like talking about: Their past struggles, the skirmishes they had with each other, the hidden civil war between the authorities of Divinity's Reach.

Every time the Seraph cited a seemingly unprovoked act of aggression on the Separatists' part, the Separatists cited a more heinous act preceding it as its provocation. The more the Seraph insisted that the Separatists were not justified in opposing Jennah's rule, the more confidently the Separatists rejected this notion, citing with increasing frequency the more recent decisions of Jennah and Anise.

The conversations escalated into shouting matches and into physical altercations from there. At times Logan was not sure if he could reel his men in and feared they would spark armed conflict within the caves.

The tensions rose, but it wasn't as though the Commander could do much about it. As long as the Seraph were this adversarial towards the Separatists, the latter refused to teach them the lay of the land and how to navigate the hidden pathways of Kryta. The Commander had to be the pioneer on that and bridge the gap between both factions.

At least that was what he was telling himself when things took another turn for the worse. On what seemed like an ordinary recon mission, his group and the spare group of ranged assassins ran into an obstacle they couldn't just take out. The Shining Blade had sent a troop - no, an army - much bigger than the groups of two to five they usually relied on. Way too many for a few archers or gunmen to take out. And they were escorting workers who pulled along something big. Along chains and straps, a few recently indentured servants drawn from the citizenry pulled along a giant vat, held shut by a wooden frame built around it. It almost glowed in an unhealthy shade of green and large 'hazard' symbols were imprinted on its sides.

"Whatever this is can't be good." One of the workers was carrying a hose connected to the vat. The leader of the scouting party put down his binoculars. "This has to be some kind of weapon. And the hose, that'll be how they aim it."

"This doesn't look like anything made in Divinity's Reach, they must have brought this in from elsewhere." the Commander added.

"You mean Asuran tech?"

He had seen plenty of Asuran tech through the buildings and golems in Maguuma. That usually involved elaborate, blocky masonry with a bright glow as well as holographic panels and displays projected around them. The vat, frame and hose had none of that. "It looks nothing like Asuran tech either."

"Whatever it is, we can't let them move this around unchecked. They're marching straight for Kessex Hills, we have to stay ahead and see where they bring it from there." They had to rush to make up for their detours so that within the shroud of the northwestern forest, they could observe the Shining Blade. As expected, as soon as they made it to Kessex Hills, they turned west, along the exact path Logan's army had taken.

"You think they're planning to take this to Scarycave?" the Commander asked.

The head of the scouting party agreed. "Looks everything like it." He tapped the shoulder of one of the bandits observing the enemy. "Artor, Benn, you two run ahead and try to warn the others. If you run into trouble, turn around and come back to us. We'll take the usual route." The other Separatists nodded and took his leave.

The Commander wasn't sure what the plan was here. "And what about the rest of us?"

"We have plenty of hideouts besides Scarycave. We don't know for sure that that's where they're going. The only thing pointing to that is that it's one hideout they'll know where to find. Which by the way is your fault!" The Commander could hardly fault him for holding that against him. The head of the party was referring to the one Seraph defector whose life he had forced the Separatists to spare. If they really were heading to Scarycave, then this was the Commander's responsibility and the first step to fixing his mistake was to stop them.

They rushed through the same old pathways, along where the Shining Blade were marching, all while regularly stopping to check if they had changed course. They had no such luck though. On every branching path the Shining Blade faced, they picked the exact route that would lead them to Scarycave.

Then, just past the former Seraph encampment, reinforcements had appeared. A small troop of Seraph with Logan at their helm stood in the middle of the Shining Blade's path. More Seraph and Separatists came the Commander's way within their obscured tunnel along the wall. "The scouts notified us of what's going on! We have more men lying in wait on the western side." They lay in wait in a position right above a safe drop onto the ground a little ahead of where Logan stood.

Even when they spotted the Seraph standing in their path, the Shining Blade troops didn't slow down. They only stopped when their frontman, who upon closer inspection was the same Seraph that had defected, now donning the armor of the Shining Blade. He was a broadly built man who chose to wear a helmet unlike most of the others, brandished his two-handed mace on his way to meet Logan face to face. "In the name of my lady Anise, stand down and surrender, traitors."

To the Commander's surprise, Logan had gathered the composure to stand tall in open defiance. "Traitors? That's rich coming from the Shining Blade."

The apparent leader of the Shining Blade soldiers raised his eyebrows and his head and continued with an indignant tone in his voice all too familiar from their last encounter with Anise. "I will not even entertain your propagandistic backtalk."

And Logan didn't entertain holier-than-thou bravado like that either. It no longer intimidated him. "What is that thing, Pavel? What's inside that container?"

"The solution to your treasonous naysaying. A gift from our esteemed consultant. Now stand down and surrender or face death. We outnumber you five to one."

Logan drew his sword and readied his shield. "I'm giving you one more chance. We can resolve this peacefully. Turn around and take this 'gift' with you."

"Death it is then." He waved at the worker holding the hose. "Servant. Show these narrow-minded buffoons what our esteemed consultant has made us capable of." The troops hiding along the wall took Pavel's intent to kill Logan as their cue to jump in position to attack. By the time the 'servant' had received his order to step forward and deploy the weapon, he had already been shot twice from an unknown direction and collapsed onto the ground. That was when the others descended upon the Shining Blade.

With screams to charge, armed Seraph and Separatists alike ran at the Shining Blade while archers and gunmen took out some of the enemies in the back from above. Pavel gazed in shock as many of his men were cut down within seconds. "An ambush! So be it then!" Instead of charging towards the Seraph working their way to him, he ran back to the vat. "I will not let this go to waste! Behold the prowess of our vast intellect!" With all his strength he struck out, swung and smashed his mace into the front side of the vat, causing a dent. An arrow pierced his side, but that wasn't enough to stop him. He swung again and the second time around, he broke it open and unleashed an unending torrent of white smoke.

The force with which the contents of the vat spilled forth took him by surprise, he immediately wound up screaming in agony as they filled his lungs. He couldn't even muster a single "It hurts!" before he died on the spot.

Pavel's corpse spread the flowing smoke as it spilled across the area. Everyone who could, moved out of the way, as it appeared to move along the ground like a liquid. But not everyone made it. Numerous people on both sides were too close to the source and too far in the middle of the clearing, right in its path. "It's a poison! Don't breathe it in!" Someone shouted. Most of the fighting paused as Shining Blade and Separatists looked upon the victims with horror. They died within moments, their skin turned dark grey, pustules grew and burst on the surface, disfiguring their faces.

Barely after seeing what happened to the soldiers, the Shining Blade realized that any groups spread away from the Seraph and Separatists were still being hailed upon by arrows and so the crossing of blades resumed. Catching a glimpse of what the Shining Blade planned to unleash on the caves took away any and all inhibitions he had in openly fighting the order. The Commander seized the brief period of shock between combatants on either side to help shift the tide in their favour. This battle was ultimately about numbers, and the oldest trick of a necromancer was to create numbers. He recited within his mind the incantation for a type of spell he hadn't used in a while, fixed his gaze on a dead Shining Blade soldier and latched onto his body with his mind.

The soldier's corpse twisted and contracted, under loud cracking and splashing, its limbs tore and ripped from inside, shifting parts of its body until assembled from parts of the corpse, a creature burst out from it, known as a blood minion. The animated remnants of the corpse it was made from, raised as an undead minion with basic death magic. Its torso was just a faceless bundle of muscle mass and blood veins. Bent and broken bones connecting from it formed two arms and legs, with the white of those bones still looking out from between the thin trails of open bloody flesh wound around them. Imbued with the Commander's understanding of who was friend and who was foe, the minion charged at one Shining Blade who soon found himself more surrounded than before.

He summoned as many bloody bone minions from his enemies' corpses as he could and willed them to attack the few archers the Shining Blade brought along.

Wind currents summoned from above tried to push back the deadly vapor, but that only spread it even more, forcing combatants to retreat further into the alcoves and niches on the west and east. The fighting continued with casualties on both sides, but soon, the enemy numbers dwindled and collapsed under theirs. The reinforcements and the superior defensive position they had started with, saw the Seraph and the Separatists victorious.

And for the first time in their lives, the Seraph felt not an ounce of shame in defying the Shining Blade. Logan raised his sword and shouted: "Victory!" And his soldiers joined in raising their arms and chanting the same. For everyone not a Separatist, it felt as if a new door had opened in their lives. A path for them to walk no longer set by a higher authority like a queen or an uppish order, but determined by their own choices.

When at last they were sure that they could relax as the immediate danger from the Shining Blade was averted, they turned to collecting the bodies and looking upon the devastation wrought during the battle. The crushed shrubs and the bushes and leaves cut by stray blades were negligible, the truly disturbing sight was the landscape left behind after the poison spread far enough to thin out and vanish. The ground beneath it turned brown and brittle, all plant life in its path had died as quickly as the people. And because of how it seemed to hug the ground, this wave of pure death had carved its way south, long past the entrance to the skritt hive down past cliffs and waterfalls into the river below, where dead fish floated on the surface of the water.

So much death and destruction, despite it being out in the open where the gas would spread and lose its sting. To think that they planned to deploy this inside closed-off caves. The gas would have lingered and kept its potency. Everyone would have succumbed to its effects. All the skritt, all the Seraph, all the Separatists and all the civilians as well. "Terrifying…" the captain mumbled when the Commander finally stood back at his side. "That Anise would want to use something like that on…she must have known. She must have known how deadly this is and it's almost hand-tailored to be used on people hiding in caves. She was going to kill all of us. All of the people in our care too."

"From how this works…if they had gotten to the caves, it wouldn't work as intended if they gave people a chance to come out. If they just unleashed that on people face-to-face they would have gotten caught in the crossfire. They must have planned to deploy it from the entrance without a warning."

What both of them thought went without saying: Anise was dead-set to spare no expense hunting them down.

If peace had ever been an option, it wasn't anymore.