The Fey Conquest, # 17— "Blooding the Recruits, Part Two"

[Short stories. Images generated by hotpot.ai]

Numyst and Wyatt ensured that all the Fey auxiliaries were dug in and at the ready for Krest to cast his spell.

“Bear in mind that this spell is a two-edged sword,” said Krest, “they’ll come, but they’ll fight like— well, demons.”

“They are demons,” said Numyst, the war-priest.

“Well— angry demons,” said Krest. “I’m about to start the incantation. Are you sure this is what you want?”

“No time like the present,” said Numyst.

“Very well, then. I’ll begin.”

Krest was a wizard from Ivalice, whose powers differed from Numyst’s, as well as the powers granted to their growing army by means of slain ‘espers’. When the deserters from Ivalice had attacked and killed the espers that lived among the people of Iceglass about half a year ago, they discovered that their bodies left behind a mineral Krest had dubbed ‘magicite’. If you made a spiritual pact with the soul of the esper residing in the mineral, it became merged with the flesh in the form of a rune. It could thereby be activated to gain a measure of the esper’s power.

Training with runes and using them required effort, pushing your spirit and taxing your mind and even your body, causing exhaustion almost as certainly as physical exertion. Krest, and to a lesser extent Numyst, were experienced in ethereal matters and manipulation, and therefore had more talent with using runes, along with the few other company wizards from Ivalice. Once Krest had augmented his power with magicite, he became quite formidable.

However, the spell he was muttering was from the school of wizardry he attended in Ivalice, called Red Provocation. It was not accomplished with runes. Of the entirety of Swain’s army, he alone could perform this task.

Wyatt, the appointed officer of the Fey auxiliaries, said to Numyst, “Our people have not confronted Dark Espers for many decades.”

“It is abject cowardice,” said Numyst.

“It is, but for those who don’t want it, they’re the first to be targeted.”

“That is why Zakarum has sent us. To punish the wicked. I have never felt more anointed, along with our Liege. He is ordained to conquer.”

“Some of us are going to die, today.”

“Why do you fear uncertain death when your people give your children to certain death? To feed heathen gods?”

“...what was that word you used? ‘Abject’?”

“Cowardice.”

“Yes, abject cowardice. Whatever that means.”

“It means, well..” Numyst paused, “...something tells me you already know.”

Wyatt gave the merest of laughs.

Krest finally struck the ground with his staff, and shouted the last part of the incantation: “ENDURAS NAUGHT EXPITATION.”

These would be nonsense words to both Fey and the Separatists, but this was the nature of the arcane.

There was an eerie quiet.

Then crows began descending on the auxiliaries, along with songbirds.

“KILL THEM WITHOUT AMMUNITION,” boomed Numyst with thaumaturgy. It was easier said than done, and before they were driven off, one of the auxiliaries nearly lost an eye, her face gashed across her eyelid.

Then they heard the screams of the Cait Sith, from not too far away. Along with the demon cat seductresses, their thralls that served them also cried out, the combined din sending a chill throughout their position.

The Fey recruits steeled themselves, knowing they only needed to fight until Swain took them in the flank.

Since it was wilderness, they did not see their enemies until the dreaded Cait Sith came bursting through the foliage. They screamed like a combination of an angry woman and a hungry mountain cat.

“FIRE,” roared Wyatt, the Fey officer, and a combination of arrows and offensive rune magic decimated the first wave, though the dark espers leapt like wildcats; in any case, a few managed to reach the conscripts’ line of defense, yet their training had been thorough, and they used their spears together as a bristling wall of defense, though most did not have shields. A single cait sith smashed into a fey male, and would have tore him to shreds unless his countrymen had not closed in and filled her with their sharp, biting metal. Nevertheless, she had nearly inflicted a mortal wound on his throat with her claws.

As the next wave attack rapidly closed in, what they did not expect was a bear to come barreling out of the woods on their right flank, as well as angry deer, which plowed through the surprised auxiliaries. The deer weren’t especially deadly, causing some broken teeth and bruises, but the bear went straight for the throat of one unlucky Fey male, who was put to death before Numyst himself unleashed his own runic magic, channeled through his mace and empowered by Zakarum: an ethereal hammer was hurled like a harpoon and smashed the bear with a concussive blow to its head, and after it fell, it didn’t move.

The Cabal of the Cait Sith now surged forward in full force. The auxiliaries outnumbered them by at least threefold, yet because of Krest’s spell, they hurled themselves headlong at their defensive position. The ill-favored looking men and women of the cabal were animated by the demonic energy of their patrons, and the dark espers themselves were able to overcome some of the walls of spears and missiles of Swain’s men, using blades to cut down a number of the Fey recruits.

With the din of battle, It felt much longer than it was when Swain arrived with his cavalry, taking the Cabal in the rear. This textb

ook maneuver was enough to crush the dark espers and their thralls, as the nature of their cult was a descent into a cycle of cruelty and lust, having little to do with pitched battles.

The Cabal had gained control of the villages through enslaving the townspeople by lust, combined with dark magic. Their ways were the ways of stealth, seduction, trickery, sorcery, intrigue, skulduggery. But thanks to Krest’s spell, they were drawn into pitched conflict, and there even the Fey Folk could manage the resistance.

With enough spears and drilling, that is.

The Fey Folk took up a cry of jubilation when their foes were routed.

At last, the recruits had gotten a taste of battle, and they tasted the fruit of both victory and loss. Twenty-seven of the fey folk had been killed, but the triumphant victors were animated by the success of confronting a cabal, and such insidious organizations had gone unchallenged in their lands for decades, even centuries. The townspeople of the Cat Esper were liberated and had begun rehabilitation, and would eventually do more than replace their countrymen slain in battle.

Every single Cat Esper welcomed rebirth as runes, and the soldiery was invigorated that their cause now had the mandate of Liberation, Swain alone having the power and will to root out the covens and cabals. The majority of the Fey levies now embraced Swain’s rule, as their eyes were opened to the evil that had been allowed to metastasize in their lands, with the conqueror bent on cutting out the rot.