“I could have saved a few of them, but not everyone. I’m no god. My power has limits and back then I was much weaker than I am now.” Lith replied. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t have saved them anyway.”
“Good.” Colonel Varegrave nodded, making both the Tiamat and the members of his regiment stare at him in confusion.
“Good?” Lith echoed, taking the words out of everyone’s mind.
“Indeed. It means that even back then you were neither an idiot nor a monster. You were just a kid, dragged from his academy into a nightmare, who did everything he could to survive.
“We all have seen what happened after Meln Narchat revealed the truth about him.” Varegrave turned around to address the troops. “The same thing would have happened back in Kandria if major Verhen had single-handedly resolved the plague.
“General Morn or some other idiot would have ordered me to capture Archmage Verhen and I would’ve done it because it was my duty. At that point, no one would have stopped the civil war and by now Thrud would be already sitting on the throne.
“I know that hindsight sounds cheap, but let’s be honest. Even with no knowledge of the future, who among you would have forfeited their life and that of all the people you love for a bunch of strangers?”
The members of the regiment looked at each other, realizing that someone so young with so much power would have either ended up as a lab rat or be doomed to fight for a cause they didn’t believe in for the rest of their life.
“Also, I asked him the truth and I got it.” The colonel paced slowly among the ranks, his magically enhanced voice bellowing throughout the plain. “I’d rather have an honest answer I don’t like than a convenient lie.
“Major Verhen, Are you going to give it your all to defend Belius, or are you here just because of your deal with the Royals?”
Lith thought about all the moments he had spent in Kamila’s apartment. He relieved the memories where he had met the people who now stood in front of him. For Lith, they had been simply bystanders, people in the crowd he barely noticed.
For them, however, even though they had never managed to speak to him, even though they had just seen him from a distance, it was enough reason to be in the most dangerous place in the Kingdom.
Each one of them owed Lith their lives or those of their families and they had come to return the favor, no matter the cost.
“I’m here to protect my home.” The Tiamat replied.
“Welcome back, Lith.” Varegrave breached protocol by calling him by his name and patting his shoulders. “I won’t ask you to bring us back home alive, that’s impossible. Just make sure that our deaths count.”
The members of the regiment rhythmically stomped their right foot in agreement.
“Incoming!” One of the mages on top of a hill shouted and others soon joined his warning.
The keen eyes of the Tiamat could see Thrud’s army advancing quickly like a swarm of silver ants. The Emperor and Divine Beasts capable of flight circled around the ground troops, making sure that there was no mage ready to make death rain from above.
Lith spotted what looked like a seven-headed Dragon, a Sekhmet, and a huge bird comprised of black clouds and bolts of lightning. There were others, but they were still too far away for him to see more than blurred dots at the horizon.
“Fuck me sideways.” He said as Solus confirmed to him that the enemy forces were comprised of over 10000 units and more kept marching forward by the second.
They advanced slowly on the paved road, taking their time to get rid of the traps and the arrays that had been laid by the Kingdom’s forces in advance. Their purpose wasn’t to deal actual damage, just to stall for time and force the enemy Awakened to consume part of their strength.
“Take cover and don’t come out unless the enemy gets past me or I’m wounded.” Lith said and Velagros had his regiment take position behind the artificial hills.
The Tiamat stepped forward and away from them until he walked out of the elemental sealing arrays that surrounded Belius. In the past, they had helped him to keep the Void at bay by smothering its powers, but now they were just a hindrance.
Lith’s Abomination side was now fused with the rest of his life forces and he needed to tap into their collective abilities if he wanted to win. The feathered wings on his hips unfolded, releasing the souls they contained.
Trion, Locrias, and Valia took their respective equipment out of the pocket dimension as the mind link of the chains brought them up to speed. Lith consumed one use of Invigoration for each of them, bestowing them six eyes and the power of a violet core.
Then, he let his golems, Trouble and Raptor, out as well. The Spirit Crystal in their chests worked akin to an emerald heart, pumping them with a spark of Lith’s life force that gave them the closest thing to sentience and a direct link with their master.
They took position by his side so that when he called upon the Void, they acted as his anchors. The Tiamat’s life force resonated with that coursing through the golems, reinforcing the chains that erupted from his black scales beyond their limit.
The intangible constructs made of death energy plunged into the Void, reaching deeper than they had ever had as they scoured through the folds of time in search of the most capable individuals whose souls still wandered Belius’ plains.
Varegrave and the members of the regiment felt the chilly air of the north become even colder as the sunlight seemed to flicker in front of the wave of darkness that erupted from the depth of Mogar.
‘This makes no sense.’ The colonel thought as he found himself covered in a cold sweat and in good company. ‘Shadows are just a phenomenon that occurs when light hits something, not the other way around!’
Black pools appeared from thin air, devouring sunlight as they grew in height and size until they resembled a living being. Some looked like humans, others Beasts or Fae, and some were creatures that could only be found in folk tales.
The blackness gave the Demons a body, but no shadow until they had at least three eyes open on their faces. Then, nature seemed to take its course, only for the shades to start growing as well into a new Demon who spawned their own chains, starting the process anew.
Lith roared with effort as he tapped into the energy that he had stored inside the golems to increase his ranks from dozens to hundreds of Demons of Darkness. They formed an orderly line in front of the artificial hills.
An army of living darkness stood as the first line of defense against the shimmering light that the Adamant equipment of Thrud’s soldiers shed on the reddish plain of Belius as they advanced under the morning sun.
Once the energy inside Raptor and Trouble was spent, Varegrave counted at least 1000 Demons, making for one-fourth of the total troops.
