Steel and Mana

Chapter 372 – Hope

Inside of what remained of the main castle within the capital city, the meeting chamber was a grand hall in name only. Yes, back in the day, it must have been a splendid display of power; its walls had to be adorned with banners and lively colored tapestries, all depicting Markoth’s strength and history... But now only faded cloths were hanging from them, or, at most spots, what remained was just a bare, stone wall. It was just as beaten down as the kingdom. Most of the high-arched windows were either cracked or boarded up, many of them replaced by hastily nailed wooden planks to keep out the wind. Or something else.

In the middle of it all, the long oak table had been fixed and reforged from scavenged pieces of other furniture, and the ornate chairs that should have been there were missing, replaced by mismatched seating. With a constant creaking, a large chandelier was hanging above it, multiple candles and torches attached to it, giving out enough light to make it possible to read and have a proper meeting but dim enough to mask the gaunt faces of the remaining rulers of the kingdom.

After entering the chamber, the Ishillian delegation took their seats, their expressions trying to mask their misgivings and shock at the state they found their hosts to be in. Duke Alaric studied the room calmly, his eyes scanning over the different signs that told him this place was breached. Probably multiple times. There were unmistakable claw marks on the floor and walls, blood here and there that couldn't be scrubbed away and now darkened into a stain... but he could tell. Realizing their source, his fingers tightened imperceptibly around the edge of the table, moving his eyes back to examine those who were welcoming them. Lady Sephane, a scholar with sharp eyes and sharper wit, was sitting next to him. She noted the same signs and couldn't help but be concerned. It was close to winter. What if... What if beasts came again?

At the head of the table stood the current king-in-name, Edric Vaelor, one of the last remaining members of the royal family of Markoth. He was supposed to be a young man, at least from what Lord Cedric briefly told them. Edric was only a third cousin at best but the last of those who carried any of the blood from the original royal line. He was made King out of necessity. By Cedric's words, he should have been only sixteen... Yet, instead of a youngster, what they saw was an aging man, his face filled with hard lines. They were coming from exhaustion rather than time, his stubble beard remaining unkempt and his clothes barely looking anything that a noble would wear. Beside him sat the remainder of his council. They mainly consisted of a handful of military commanders who were made nobles and a few scholars whose visage looked like that of a Shipslave. They... They had already given up deep inside; that was the feeling the Ishillians got from them.

"Please... sit..." The 'king' spoke, and his voice was coarse, like rubbing gravel and dirt together as he addressed the delegation. "Ishillia... It has been centuries since we made contact. You see ruin, but I wonder—do you know what has happened here? What truly happened? As far as my knowledge goes, your empire has a hell hole, just like ours."

"We do know what happened to your kingdom," Alaric met his gaze evenly, speaking calmly. "We have heard whispers while traveling, and now... We saw that Markoth has indeed suffered greatly. The long winters, even this far into the past, had taken their toll."

"Heh!" A sharp, humorless laugh escaped one of the Markothian councilors' lips, coming from a man in tattered garbs and a set of armor plates fastened to his chest and arms. "You speak of war and winter? If only it had been just that. We have been at war for decades; we know what war is. We survived winters; we know what cold is. This? This was neither. This was the freezing apocalypse and nothing but a massacre. I saw war... and then I saw an icy hell, Ishillian."

"That is enough, General Lothal." King Edric exhaled, his fingers drumming against the table. "We can't blame our guests for a different fate than ours." He sighed again, looking at Alric before continuing, "More than sixteen years ago, before I was even born... during what we now call the First Wave of Death, the beasts broke through Markoth’s Pass. Not just the usual type of creatures—no. It was a single great aberration, larger than any fortress! It towered over them like a child would tower over his toys... It was what came first. It crushed our walls like they were made out of hay. Entire battalions were lost, just slowing it down. But nobody could stop it."

"It killed two of our court wizards in the first week." A man on the right of General Lothal, probably part of the military commanders, clearly a grizzled veteran with a scar running from brow to jaw and even further down, spoke up. "I was there when it happened. If not for a miracle, I would have died... but somehow, when I came to, I was lying in a tent, being tended to. We spent the following year doing all we could to kill it... That abomination..."

"We called it the Maw." General Lothal added, "It ate men, whole platoons a whole. I watched as it swallowed siege engines like they were crumbs. Worst, it didn't do it to feed; it always spat it out. The only things it actually swallowed were our mages. It was drawn to them. So, we used our last witches to set up a trap in an old quarry. It took three days to bring it down. Three days of constant barrage from everything we had. When it fell... It released energy that decimated and collapsed the quarry, burying itself and half of our troops with it!"

"And it took a year to trap it...?" Lady Sephane asked as her pencil paused over her little notebook, writing everything down. "And after?"

"After?" King Edric’s gaze darkened, looking at her with a sneer. "We had to deal with those we ignored. Because it wasn't the only one. After it broke through came the swarm. Smaller beasts, but no less deadly. They spread like wildfire—through our fields, our towns, even into the forests. We thought we could hunt them down. We were wrong. The following years were just as bad as the rampage of that one demon. If not worse..."

"Our forefathers' best option was to try and shoo them towards others." A younger noble, his eyes hollow with the look of a man who had seen too much too young, explained, "We couldn't deal with them, so we… passed them on to others."

"You... did what?" Lady Sephane asked, her eyes widening, but Duke Alaric raised a hand to stop her from speaking any further.

"Then... The Second Long Winter came," Edric continued without taking offense to her words. "And with it, another wave. We were already kneeling by then. What it brought down on us... was the end."

A heavy silence settled over the chamber after the King refused to elaborate on it any further. Not that he had to... the Ishillians could see it while traveling the land.

"What happened to the second wave?" Alaric leaned forward slightly after a moment of silence, his voice low while asking. "You mean to say the beasts just disappeared after? Returned to their land when there was nothing to plunder anymore?"

"Return? Why would they?" Edric’s laugh was bitter when he answered. "Oh, no. They never do. They don't go home... They find food wherever they can. The eastern borders were overrun, and we were not bothered to defend them by then. Our neighbors, the Kingdom of Airosia, fought them at their borders for years. They wanted to invade, noticing our plight... instead, they got to fight our executioners. Good riddance if you ask me! As for what of them? I don't know. We have never made contact with them since then, so my guess is that they are in the same sorry state as we are. As for the south... The Republic of Aymnes…" He trailed off, shaking his head.

"That we know for certain," The head general picked up the thread of his King. "Aymnes is gone. Not fallen—gone. In its strictest meaning. Their capital is a graveyard; I saw it with my own eyes. The Minacian Trade Company, a country I should compare to your Atuvian neighbors, lost half its fleet trying to evacuate the land, mounting their ships to cross the Sapphire Lake, but half of their ships had been sunk. The monsters could swim, you see... With much of their wealth ending up at the bottom of the great lake, even their precious merchant lords couldn’t buy their way out of that slaughter. Their territory was just as devasted as ours."

"...!" Lady Sephane's breath was caught in her throat as she listened. "We had no idea..."

"Of course, you didn’t," the General snorted at her words. "In the end, they were stopped because the Kuhlman Empire sealed their borders after learning about what was happening up here. They let the rest of us burn while they fortified their borders. By the time they marched out, it was only to keep the beasts from reaching their own lands. They had the luxury of time and preparation..."

"And... now?" Alaric pressed. "What remains? Why isn't the Kuhlmans pushing into your lands?"

"What is there to conquer here?" Edric spread his hands. "Markoth is only a name by now, nothing more. Airosia probably still stands, but barely. The Minacians trade in scraps now. And Aymnes…" He shook his head. "There are no current maps anymore that should have it on."

"But...!" Lady Rienne’s voice was panic-stricken. "And the Pass? The next winter is coming!"

The room remained just as cold as before, not answering her for a long time.

"There have been countless winters since then." The scarred commander’s jaw next to Lothal tightened. "The Pass is open. We don’t have the soldiers to guard it. Not after the civil war. Not after the beasts. Whenever beasts come, they pass through, almost as if they know... and they head straight to the south. Towards Kuhlman. It is their problem now; we just hunker down while it snows and become invisible."

Listening to his words, Alaric's fingers tapped against the table, his mind racing. They had come seeking information first and foremost, followed by trade agreements and alliances. What they found was land on the brink of annihilation—no, it was already annihilated. This was after the apocalypse.

"If you want to avoid them, I advise you to leave. Now." Edric’s voice cut through the silence like a sharp blade. "If the monsters come again, you will be caught out in the open, and we won't help."

"We understand," Alaric muttered, making the King lean forward once again.

"Now, I also have questions."

"Please," the Duke nodded, "Ask away."

"How are you here? It has to mean that Ishillia was spared. Did no monsters come through on your end?"

Exchanging a glance with the others, Alaric thought about what to say. He knew a lot, but he did not know everything. He visited Avalon, saw their inventions, and even saw the Pass they were guarding. He and many of the new Dukes were told that Avalon was defending not just themselves but the whole continent. He understood it now much better than ever before.

"Our Pass is defended."

"So you were never breached... You don't know what––" General Lothar snorted, but Alaric interrupted him.

"You misunderstand." He spoke firmly, his back straight, "Yours were breached... ours repelled them."

"Pft..." Multiple snorts echoed at the same one, disbelieving them completely.

But he was prepared. They brought something precisely for this reason. Exactly because they expected them to just scoff at their words. It was a joint invention between Avalon and Ishillia. A mix between the Ishillian Imaginary and the magic that allowed Ishillian spies to record images via magic.

Right now, it was just a tiny, ornate box with Avalonian and Ishillian markings on it. Alaric said nothing but put the device on the table, pulling out a small CC that the others immediately realized, their bodies stiffening. Before they could ask anything, he slotted it in, and an image was suddenly projected above it, slowly cycling through ten pictures. All of them show different inventions—the Avalonian miracles, mechs, their flying fortress, the trains, the bustling cities...

"Impossible..." King Edric mumbled, unable to look away from what he was seeing.

"It is not." Alaric said firmly, "And now that we know your plight, we can offer our help."