Blood Shaper

An army marched from Avalon, headed east. Standard soldiers, led by officers, all commanded by the General of Avalon Curcius marched following the roads that had been built headed to the border, all workers and materials originally earmarked for building new towns and villages shifted to make it easier to move eastward. The soldiers weren’t peak fighters for their tiers and possessed no extreme builds with varied Classes that built themselves into something amazing, they were standardized, with each soldier being as similar as possible in build to those they fought side by side with. They were uniform and unremarkable and together they were a powerful fighting force ready to defend their homes and their families, just like every other true army on Torotia.

In front, behind, at the sides of, and even quite far away from the army traveled Avalon’s Sentinels. Combatants and adventurers that couldn’t fit within the uniform environment of an army but wanted to serve the nation of Avalon directly. Split into small parties like every adventuring team they moved as best fit their members, making the fastest time they could to the mustering site. Scouts, sneaks, rogues, and explorers led their parties through paths and trails that no army could take while less mobile groups simply kept pace with the troops.

Independent adventurers brought to the fight by the Adventurer’s Guild’s call or simply in the area and willing to pitch in moved similarly, but with less efficiency. The Sentinels were organized and methodical under the command of Meten, even if they weren’t as organized as the army. The independent adventurers didn’t have that and many fell behind as they got lost, embroiled themselves in minor conflicts with each other, and in some cases just couldn’t keep up.

Kay, King of Avalon, didn’t march along the roads or travel through rough trails. He didn’t walk on the ground at all. He formed a massive shell out of blood that he filled with his Blood Guard, Eleniah, and himself that he picked up with Blood Manipulation and flew toward the looming battle.

“Why does this feel like cheating?” He muttered, keeping his focus on his S.P.S artifact as he essentially levitated his craft forward. Having the artifact had solved the issues that had cropped up before with this idea and allowing him to actually use it. He was also curious to use his new Blood-Sight Skill to literally see through the outer edges of the craft he’d made, but the part in the description about “sensory overload” made him unwilling to experiment with it at the moment. “I get that it isn’t cheating, but something about moving so much fast than everyone else is bugging me.”

“It’s because we can’t start the fight until we have everyone there.” Eleniah told him. She turned in place on the red couch sitting across from Kay, frowning as she tried to shift to a more comfortable position and failed. “These couches aren’t right.”

“I’ll focus on making more comfortable furniture on the fly later. Why is that bothering me? The reports we got said that it’s one monster or creature empowering and leading the undead, so if we take it out we win, right? Why not just fly right past everything and kill it?”

“Quality versus quantity. I mean, there’s no guarantee that killing the thing makes all the other undead just stop, they might just go wild, which would be a big problem without more people there to mop them up and make sure none of the stragglers escape, but it’s more about the fight itself. Can you guarantee that you’re stronger than the necromancer creature? Enough to destroy it before it can do anything.”

“No, I can’t.”

“So it having and army becomes a mitigating factor. If you can’t kill it in the first attack you then have to fight it and it’s army. Your army is coming to keep the enemy army off your back while the elites fight. It’s pretty standard fare.” She finally decided to just sit up instead of lounging. “It’s what happened in the Shatterplate War even if you weren’t really processing that and the same thing happened against that goop back in the isles. Most of the goop came after you in the end but all the other fighters there helped keep it back long enough for you to cull it. Our army and ‘lesser’ elites fought their army and similar elites while you took care of a dragon and Glowl back home.”

Kay shifted the craft higher to make sure it didn’t clip some particularly tall trees they were passing over and made a mental note to check and see if anyone had looked them over yet. Massive trees didn’t necessarily mean anything interestingly magical or powerful was in that location, but giant trees were cool on their own, and just because they didn’t always equal a good find didn’t mean they never did. “Okay. You’re right that I wasn’t really processing what I was doing during the fighting in that kind of analytical way. It also explains the way the System and the cultures of the world have made leadership into a power contest if I think about that aspect. If you don’t have elites around you’re going to get bodied by anybody that does in a fight, and what’s the best way to keep the strongest guy around?”

“You give them enough privileges that they want to stick around out of self interest then slowly whisper about duty and responsibility into their eats until they think it’s their own idea to be a guardian.” She grinned cheekily at him.

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“But why do I feel uneasy about it?”

“Because of the duty part. You’re big and strong and want to solve all the problems so the people weaker than you don’t get hurt, but that’s not possible. You know that the right thing to do is bring the lower tiers along to fight their battles but you want to sweep away the threat yourself. Too bad that you aren’t all-powerful.” She leaned forward and tapped him on the nose, drawing Kay’s attention away from the artifact. “Don’t lose that feeling.” Her grin became wry and a little sad. “Without that feeling of discomfort and those regrets you’ll turn into a heartless monster of some variety. I’ve seen it many times. It sucks to watch people die, but people have to have the opportunities to grow.”

Kay grunted in acknowledgment and went back to focusing on the artifact, letting the conversation die out.

Isla’s expertise combined with Amanda’s control over a number of abolitionist groups, rebellions in Nelam that now had no purpose, and other similar organizations of freedom fighters, troublemakers, and dissidents had expanded Avalon’s supply of people good at going undetected and a large number of them had been sent into the desolation caused by the vampyr attack. Some of the people Amanda had been manipulation, directing, or controlling had been in the game of toppling a kingdom for power or other selfish goals, but she’d weeded out those folk as best she could. Those that were left were dedicated to making the world a better place and while marauding eldritch monster weren’t what they’d been preparing to face the saboteurs, spies, and scouts sent into what used to be Nelam were just as dedicated.

The most skilled among them had been sent to find and delay the creation of the ritual circles that they vampyr were dumping most of their resources into, but too many cooks could spoil the broth and the majority of the stealthy people in hostile territory were tasked with less vital jobs. Some were sent to contact or directly support the handful of towns and small cities that had survived the eruption of vampyr while others were doing their best to find and rescue any survivors outside those isolated refuges.

The most vital of them, in Kay’s mind at least, were out among the desolation acting as an early warning system for Avalon. Their theory that the ritual circles were there to cause another breach and allow more eldritch horrors through into Torotia was just that, a theory. With madness driving any planning that the vampyr could do there was no way to perfectly predict them and the real threat could be anything. Thus the large numbers of people good at hiding themselves that also had some means of quick communication spread out in a relay across the border. They were the ones to notice and alert Avalon of the incoming horde of undead early enough for Avalon’s forces to march out to meet it away from Avalon’s territory.

From what the reports he’d managed to read before the marshaling of troops had taken most of his time Kay knew that the undead army marching toward his nation wasn’t eldritch in nature, which raised several questions. The necromantic creature that was leading the horde didn’t outwardly seem to be a vampire, but it was also half-undead somehow according to the reports which sounded like eldritch bullshit to Kay. If it wasn’t somehow a vampyr or controlled by one, why would a necromancer of any sort, monstrous or not, work with the inherently world-wrecking creatures? Either way, the threat not being made up of vampyr or otherwise eldritch in some way made it automatically harder for Kay to deal with and reinforced Eleniah’s point that he needed his armies and troops for the battle.

The hills and forests began to peel away beneath them, marked in red by the Sanguine Positioning System and a tiny line in the representation of the ground marked the end of Avalon’s borders, which was a surprise to Kay. He hadn’t realized that the artifact would be able to mark geopolitical boundaries like that. After flying over the border the landscape became more flat with the cliffs and plateaus that began at Tumbling Rapids dominating the area for a short time before those too were passed and there was flat, open ground everywhere.

Most of the far east of the continent, at least this portion of that region, was marshy and contained many swamps. This was Kay’s first visit to the area but it certainly reminded him of his one trip in the distant past to the Florida Everglades with his family. There were bodies of water everywhere and the S.P.S showed deep holes disguised by much and tree branches that could swallow entire segments of the army whole. The stretch of solid ground less than half a mile across that Kay located was the only easily navigable land in sight, and it was the best spot in the path of the undead army to make a stand against it short of Avalon’s lands.

Kay set down the Blood Guard and Eleniah before lifting the craft back into he sky and shooting back the direction they’d come from. With powerful fighting forces in place to keep the area clear of threats, Kay was headed back to grab the next group of people. Earth Mages and Manipulators as well as fortification experts from the army were standing ready to get picked up from where they were marching and would start building a fort once Kay dropped them off. After that were a group of Water Manipulators and Mages who would hopefully be able to expand the solid land they had to allow for more troops to be brought to bear when the fighting began.

Kay had only fought in a handful of big battles, really only two, but the differences in between how the two had gone were massive. With a wall, solid planning, and the home field advantage the Shatterplate War had been short and decisive in his favor. The battle against the eldritch nanomachine beings had been just as short, but only because that had been a fight to stay alive against something that could not be allowed to live. This would be something in between with an horde of undead being a lot less adaptable and dangerous than magical nanomachines but also unable to surrender or see reason. The main thing Kay had learned from those experience was that fighting unprepared sucked. The early warning they’d gotten from the scouts in the east had given them time to prepare the battlefield and Kay wasn’t going to let a single second of that head start go to waste. ℟ÃƝòᛒƐṥ

Besides, he wasn’t all that traditional of a ruler and playing taxi wasn’t a problem for him.

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