Chapter 34

  Reyn lay flat on his back, arms outstretched as if he wanted to embrace the entire sky of Wolfsgrund—or simply prevent it from crashing down upon him. The ground beneath him was hard, cold, and vibrated with the rhythmic stomping of the Siege-Crabs, but to Reyn, this dirt felt more comfortable right now than the softest feather bed in Thulegard.

  Above him, the sky leaned in that unnatural violet his magic always left behind when he had pumped too much of it into the atmosphere. A few meters away, the last Aurum-Titan buckled with a grinding sound. It wasn't a spectacular death; the construct simply gave up, its arcane connections dissolving and the golden luster fading until nothing but a pile of overpriced pebbles remained.

  "My Lord, shall I send in the Storm-Riders?"

  The voice belonged to Corven. The man was an excellent general, but he had the unfortunate timing of a rain shower at a picnic. He stepped into Reyn’s field of vision and stared down at him, blocking the perfect view of the passing thunderclouds. Reyn blinked. Corven’s helmet was blackened by soot, his armor dented, but his eyes burned with a drive for action.

  Why must he hide the view of the storm from me? Reyn thought, annoyed, but he let nothing show. He was the master strategist. The man who carried a god within him and moved stars (or at least claimed to do so). He couldn't simply admit that his brain currently felt like a sponge that had soaked in vinegar for too long.

  "Not yet," Reyn said. His voice sounded steadier than he felt. He forced himself to maintain the facade. He was Reyn the All-Knowing, always five steps ahead of everyone else. In truth, he felt more like he had just run a marathon while simultaneously trying to build a house of cards in the wind.

  Even with that pulsing divine splinter in his soul—an almighty gift that sometimes felt more like a parasite—he had nearly overextended his powers. Magic, even Cosmic Mana, was not an infinite source; it was a currency, and Reyn had been throwing gold coins around today as if he were the richest man in the world. Now he was almost bankrupt and desperately needed rest.

  "We’re saving the Storm-Riders for Barwan and Drymon," Reyn continued, remaining prone and making no move to get up. "The crabs are my final card against Wolfsgrund. If the walls are still standing after this, then the Wolves have earned the right to rot inside them."

  Corven nodded, looking a bit surprised. He expected Reyn to send wave after wave until the enemy simply suffocated under the weight of corpses or magic. That Reyn was drawing a line here was new. But Corven was a loyal soldier. He asked no questions that might cost him his head. He bowed briefly and stomped back to the edge of the battlefield to coordinate the next wave of siege towers and the impatient barbarian tribes, who were itching to finally plunder something.

  Reyn stared into the clouds again. He had lied, of course. He still had a few cards up his sleeve—a few dirty tricks, a few forgotten curses—but for Wolfsgrund, he truly had nothing left. The crab constructs had been his great investment.

  He remembered the beginnings. Back in Thulegard, when he had hypnotized half the city into toiling in the deep, ice-cold mines beneath the Ice-Claw Mountains. Years of planning, tons of dark iron, and arcane amplifiers had flowed into these machines. He had built them in secret, far from the prying eyes of Caleon and other spies. Built for only one purpose: to crack the hardest walls of the continent like a nut.

  So far, there were fifteen of these specimens. Three were currently in use here. Reyn prayed fervently to whatever power was listening that he wouldn't have to burn through all fifteen for Caleon. The energy sources for these things were no ordinary mana stones. They were ancient artifacts he had painstakingly wrested from the Ice-Stampers—those frosty guardians who didn't exactly give up their treasures voluntarily. These stones were irreplaceable. If a crab was destroyed, not only was the metal lost, but a piece of history and a vast amount of power.

  "I desperately need Morgaine and her Dark Elves," he whispered into his collar. The thought of the Dark Elves was bittersweet. They were effective, cruel, and—most importantly—they didn't drain his personal energy. They were a resource he urgently needed to factor in if this campaign wasn't to end in a colossal failure.

  And then there was the Scar-Horde. Uzug and his Orcs. Reyn had spent a long time convincing Uzug. Orcs weren't exactly known for their diplomatic streak. You convinced them either with force, the promise of so much loot that their grandchildren would still be full, or with revenge. Reyn had done all three.

  If Uzug and the Horde didn't arrive in the southwest on time, Phase 2 of his plan would enter a critical state. The problem with Orcs was their unpredictability. They could perform a forced march that would make any human cavalryman blush with shame, or they could decide halfway through that a local dispute over a particularly juicy cow was more important than the fall of a kingdom.

  Reyn closed his eyes briefly. The mechanical scraping of the crab legs on the rock sounded like music to his ears, but it was an exhausting music. He felt Altron’s splinter vibrating inside him as if mocking him. Usually, his patron supported him, but even he was becoming impatient. “You want to be a god? Then stand up,” the thing seemed to whisper.

  "Shut up," Reyn muttered against the wind.

  He knew he would have to pick himself up soon. Corven would come back. The barbarians would want reports. The Dragon-kin would demand leadership. But for these five minutes, he just wanted to be a man lying in the dirt, watching his expensive toys do the work for him.

  The crabs were impressive. Every time one of the legs slammed onto the ground, he felt it in his stomach. The mechanical behemoths pushed inexorably toward the walls of Wolfsgrund. He had designed them not just for ramming; their sheer size served as mobile siege platforms. Once they touched the wall, they would anchor themselves and deploy stairs and ramps that no gate in the world could withstand.

  Reyn thought of Thivan. The young King was probably sitting in his fancy portal room, staring at his maps. He wondered if Thivan had any inkly how close Reyn was to the abyss of his own exhaustion. Probably not. To the world, Reyn was the dark mage, the unstoppable monster, the shadow that devoured the light. No one saw the man who currently had a backache and was wondering if he had planned enough provisions for the Orcs.

  The logistics of a new world order were damn tedious. It wasn't just about fireballs and dark summons; it was about sacks of grain, smithing coal, and the question of how to get ten thousand stinking Orcs and fiery Dragon-kin to run in the right direction without bashing each other's heads in.

  He rolled onto his side and looked over at the crabs. From a distance, they really did look like giant beetles scavenging a carcass. Wolfsgrund was a tough nut, he had to give them that. The golems down there were putting up more resistance than he had calculated. His Titans had melted away like butter in the sun, but that had been more or less factored in. The Titans were the showpiece, the noise intended to wear the enemy down. The crabs... the crabs were the knife you only drew when the opponent believed they had won the fight.

  "Three more days," he whispered. "In three days, the southwest must burn. If not, Drymon will have time to prepare."

  Reyn forced himself to sit up. His head throbbed, and for a moment, his vision went black. He leaned on his knees and breathed shallowly. He could not show weakness. Not before Corven, not before the barbarians, and certainly not before the Dark Elves, who could smell weakness like sharks smell blood.

  He brushed the dust off his dark coat. The fine silk was ruined, covered in a layer of ash and grime. He sighed. That was the problem with field work; you never looked as impressive afterward as you’d like in the prophecies.

  "Corven!" he shouted, struggling to his feet. He swayed briefly but found his balance. He squared his shoulders, put on his cold, superior face, and brushed his hair out of his forehead.

  The general came galloping over immediately. "My Lord?"

  "Inform the barbarian vanguard. As soon as the crabs have torn down the first section of the wall, I want to see them in the breaches. No prisoners in the lower levels. We need the space for the supply trains."

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  Corven saluted. "It will be done. And what of you?"

  Reyn looked toward the horizon, where he expected the arrival of his further allies. "I will retire to my tent and prepare the next phases of the opening. Do not disturb me unless the walls fall faster than expected."

  As Corven rode away, Reyn looked at the crabs one more time. They were almost there. The metallic screech of their drills mingled with the thunder of Wolfsgrund’s defensive guns. It was an ugly sound, but it was the sound of progress.

  He turned and walked slowly toward his command tent. He felt old. Much older than he actually was. The divine splinter inside him gave a satisfied purr, as if it had enjoyed the battle.

  "Easy for you to say," Reyn grumbled. "You don't have to check the payroll for fifteen mercenary armies."

  With a final look at the burning battlefield, he disappeared into the shadow of his tent. The crabs would do their job. They had to. Because if they failed, Reyn had nothing left up his sleeve for Wolfsgrund but hot air and a very bad conscience.

  He lay down on his cot, closed his eyes, and let the darkness embrace him for a moment. Outside, the war raged on, but in here, in the half-shadow of the canvas, there was only the exhausted strategist dreaming that his Orcs would arrive on time and his Dark Elves wouldn't try to poison his bodyguard. It was a modest dream for a budding world ruler, but at that moment, it was the only one he had.

  The crabs stomped on. The ground shook.

  Like a flash of lightning, the image of a young woman shot through his head. She was standing on a training ground, her hair only loosely tied, her cheekbones prominent and proud. Reyn bolted up, startled, the cot beneath him creaking in protest. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. He wanted to open his eyes to dispel the vision, but the images burned themselves directly onto his retinas.

  Snow. Cold, white powder glistening in the sun, while that same face smiled at him—a smile that radiated so much warmth it made Reyn shiver in his tent. Then a change of scenery: a pillow, soft and inviting; the woman's face in the warm, flickering candlelight, her features relaxed, almost vulnerable. A dance in a hall that smelled of pine resin and mead. A hunt in the undergrowth, the adrenaline of the chase, shared laughter.

  And then, like a punch to the gut: the color red. Blood. Far too much blood. It soaked the wheat-colored hair; it clung to the hands trying to close the wound. A scream tore through the silence in Reyn's head, so shrill and full of despair that he wanted to cover his ears, even though the sound came from within. Tears flooded his mind, salty and hot.

  It was too much. The emotions weren't like a film he was watching; they were like a tidal wave of hormones, love, grief, rage, and hatred rolling over him, trying to wash away his own identity. His whole body trembled, cold sweats raced down his back, and he had to suppress the urge to gag as his stomach revolted against this emotional toxic cocktail. Even his mind, steeled by years of dark magic and the divine splinter, could barely withstand this flood.

  "STOP!!!" he finally roared into the emptiness of his tent. His voice was louder than he had intended, a desperate command to his own mind.

  The images flickered one last time and then obediently retreated into a dark, dusty corner of his consciousness. Reyn sat there, breathing heavily. He stared at his hands, which were still shaking in the pale light filtering through the tent wall. It took what felt like an eternity for the tremors in his limbs to subside and for the echo of the alien pain to ebb away into a distant background hum.

  "What the hell?" he whispered hoarsely.

  He cautiously lay back down, the pillow suddenly feeling foreign. He thought feverishly. This hadn't been an external attack, not a magical trap from Drymon. This was... something else. With the caution of a man examining a live bomb, he reached into his mind for the packet of memories he had just forcibly banished. It felt hot, pulsing with life.

  As he brooded over it, exhaustion finally overcame him, but it was no normal sleep. He drifted straight over into his mind-space.

  Reyn's mind-space was neither a magnificent palace nor a sun-drenched landscape. It was a vast, almost endless corridor that strongly resembled the interior of a gigantic, somewhat aging inn. Floorboards creaked under his mental steps, faded wallpaper hung on the walls, and there were branches and hidden niches everywhere. Every door he passed led to one of his own memories—neatly sorted, locked away, or ready at hand.

  But as he walked down the central corridor today, he noticed it immediately. An entirely new wing had appeared out of nowhere. The architecture here was different; the stone was colder, the wood darker. On the ceiling, directly above the archway to the new section, was a relief of a head with a deep crack running through it. The left half showed the black, relentless helmet of a Paladin; the right half showed the distorted features of a demon.

  Reyn stopped and stared at the relief. A slow realization dawned on him.

  "I still have a minimal, soulful connection to Luken," he murmured in the silence of his mind. He rubbed his chin. "Still... a remnant of a loose connection like that should never cause entire blocks of memory to be copied. Even if my mind control ran deep back then, this isn't a simple data stream. This is... as if his brain is leaking into mine."

  He shook his head, an amused but also concerned smile on his lips. It was almost ironic. He was trying to destroy or control Luken, and instead, he got the man's heartbreak as a free bonus.

  Curious, he stepped through the archway into the new wing. Here, it smelled of pine needles and cold metal. He opened the first door on the left—just a crack.

  He saw Luken when he was younger, maybe sixteen or seventeen. He was standing on a snowy training ground in a region Reyn didn't recognize—far from Caleon, in the highlands of the Elves. Luken was sparring with another student, his movements fluid, almost arrogantly confident. And there she stood again at the edge. Luminara. Lume.

  Reyn leaned against the doorframe of his own train of thought. "Respect, Luken," he whispered softly. "You had taste. A bit brittle, but definitely not a woman one forgets after five minutes."

  He closed the door and went to the next. In this memory, the two were sitting in a warming hall. It was loud, the fire crackled in the hearth, and they were sharing a cup of something steaming. There was no grand dialogue, just a brief clasping of hands under the table, a secret moment of bond. Reyn felt the warmth of this memory right down to his own toes. It was almost disgustingly sweet, but he couldn't help a certain spark of interest.

  In another chamber, he saw a conversation with an older man, a captain named Torv. Warnings about the relationship, subtle hints at the strict rules of the Elven Paladins.

  "Oh, the classic conflict between duty and heart," Reyn commented dryly, wandering further down the hall. "How original. That you nearly broke over this, Luken, fits your theatrical character."

  But the further he ventured into the wing, the darker the doors became. He sensed that the memories of the story's end lay back there—the bloody images, the pain that had nearly made him vomit earlier. He stopped before a deep black door that literally vibrated with suppressed grief. He placed his hand on the latch, then hesitated.

  Even for a man like Reyn, there were limits to what one would voluntarily put oneself through, especially after just leading a battle against golems. He knew enough now. Luken had found his memories again—or rather, they had exploded within him, and through the old, scarred connection of their souls, the shockwave had rippled all the way to Reyn.

  "That explains why he was so unstable in Drymon," Reyn mused aloud. He walked slowly back into the main corridor of his inn. "Gravor locked these things away to keep the weapon sharp. Now the scabbard is broken, and Luken is bleeding memories."

  He found it fascinating. Normally, soulful connections were one-way streets when based on dominance. But Luken's will—or perhaps the presence of the demon—had reversed the polarity. Or maybe it was the divine splinter in Reyn himself, acting like a sponge and soaking up everything drifting in the ether.

  "If I have these images, it means he has them all now too," Reyn concluded. He thought of the scene in the snow, the blood-soaked hair. "Poor guy. This will either turn him into an absolute monster or paralyze him completely. Both work in my favor, as long as I don't have to blubber every time he thinks of his sweetheart."

  He sat down on an imaginary bench in his corridor and stared at the new wing. It was a risk. If this connection became so porous, could Luken theoretically look into Reyn's mind as well? He shuddered at the thought. In his own head, there were rooms that even he only entered with a drawn dagger. If the Paladin saw his own abysses... well, that would be an interesting twist, but one he could do without.

  "I need to seal this door," he decided. "Or at least put a proper bolt on it."

  He concentrated and began to erect barriers in his mind-space. He visualized thick iron fittings, heavy padlocks, and a layer of emotional insulation. He didn't want to delete the memories—they might still be useful for manipulating Luken later—but he didn't want to be surprised by them anymore while he was trying to sleep.

  When the work was done, the new wing looked less threatening. Now it looked more like an evidence locker in a basement. Reyn nodded with satisfaction.

  "That's better. Your little romance stays in your head, Luken. I have enough of my own worries with Orcs and Dark Elves."

  He felt his mind-space slowly fading. The real world claimed him back. The distant stomping of the Siege-Crabs seeped back into his consciousness. But as he slowly woke up, a final remnant of Luminara's smile lingered in the back of his mind—a strangely peaceful contrast to the burning battlefield outside his tent.

  Reyn opened his eyes. It was still dark in the tent; the light from the distant fires cast dancing shadows on the canvas. He still felt exhausted, but the shock had vanished.

  He lay back down and stared at the ceiling. The connection was there. It was more real than he had admitted to himself. And somewhere out there, in the fortress of Drymon, sat a Paladin who was only just realizing everything he had lost.

  "Have fun processing that, Pal," Reyn murmured into the darkness and closed his eyes. This time his sleep was deeper, but he kept a metaphorical hand always on the latch of that new, dark wing of his mind. One never knew when the next flood would come.

  He was ready. If Luken had to suffer, then Reyn would at least ensure he was the one enjoying the role of the spectator without getting wet himself. The master strategist was back, though he had to admit that for one tiny moment, that girl in the candlelight had made even his own cold heart skip a beat.

  But that was just the exhaustion. Surely.

  In the distance, a Storm-Rider cried out, and Reyn finally drifted into a solid sleep while the crabs of Wolfsgrund marched untiringly on.