XXXIX
We had five more days to spend with each other and we became well acquainted. We shared our strategies in combat with the Night Guild, from formations to abbreviated commands, and in return, they taught us different techniques and practices to hone our skills on the battlefield.
“Attack!” The sentry announced as he rushed to our hideout. “Overlord Ceiros is crossing the bridge, and the king is in danger! The king requests your presence immediately!”
I quickly sent Kadava to the Night Guild’s hideout to deliver the sentry’s same message as the seven of us packed for the incoming war.
It wasn’t long before the thirteen of us arrived on horseback to the castle walls that circled Tenebris. The framework for the South Wall and the two fallen towers had been rebuilt in a surprisingly short amount of time, and the other towers and walls were fortified with pieces of strong metal bars and slabs of stone. We crossed the bridge and entered the palace, arriving before the king.
“The invasion’s coming from Overlord Ceiros, and it isn’t pretty. He’s gathered an impressive army of extraterrestrials, aligning his forces with two other nations from beyond our galaxy.”
“At least we didn’t march to Lord Crothus’ island,” Tarsus pointed out.
“Yeah,” the king muttered embarrassingly. “I don’t tend to make mistakes the third time. Anyways, his forces are large, and though my men are well rested, we can’t take on these numbers. Every other army we’ve faced has had significantly lower amounts of warriors, but Ceiros is commanding throngs of hundreds of thousands. I summoned all of you here for suggestions. I...don’t know what to do.”
“How far are they?”
“One day and a bit from Tenebris.”
“That’s all the time we need,” I boldly spoke, formulating and devising a plan instantly in my head.
“What are the extraterrestrial forces? Anything we’ve faced before?”
“I’ve caught a glimpse of one. It’s a sub-Nirvonian race; the Faedrixes.”
“As if I knew what that meant,” Tarsus replied.
“The Faedrixes are lowly-armoured humanoids with flaky skin and two pairs of large, ugly wings, as if they were a cross breed between an ogre and a dragonfly.”
“Great, is their low armour our key to winning?”
“I don’t know much about them, but from other accounts, the Faedrixes clone themselves when hurt. Say, if you were fighting against one Faedrix, it could multiply into an army of a thousand if it isn’t killed immediately on the spot.”
“That might be a problem...”
“The problem doesn’t lie there. We don’t know the second race of extraterrestrials, and if Ceiros managed to harness a peace between those two nations with Grozorg, he would have gotten very powerful. Do you have any ideas, Ulterium?”
“You still have the crossbow on the roof, right?” I asked.
“Yes, never bothered hiring anyone to take it down.”
“It’s automatic, right? What’s the firing rate?”
“The most skilled ballistic adepts can fire three shots in one second, but they haven’t trained ever since the War of Zxyx.”
“It should hold off the Faedrixes. We need to send word to your adepts immediately to start practicing. As for the other extraterrestrial army, we’ll just have to wait until they arrive.”
“We need to evacuate Tenebris. It isn’t safe to be in the capital anymore.”
“There’s nowhere else to go, Fulcan.”
“The bunkers from the War of Zxyx are too old to provide refuge. They’d shatter into pieces instantly. Our best bet is scattering the people all across Mainland Grozorg.”
“Tyrannust’s men are still patrolling the area!”
“There’s nearly none of them left. Most of them have returned to Zxyxngrad where Tyrannust is forming his legion. It should be safe enough for the citizens to go out of these castle walls.”
“I’ll tell the citizens that the main priority now is to fix the bunkers, then the wall,” Tarsus volunteered. “Ulterium is right, it’s a suicide plan if you scatter the people. Where are the bunkers?”
The king thought about Tarsus’ proposal for a while, placing his chin between an index finger and a thumb.
“You summoned us here for advice, so take our advice!” Tarsus shouted at the king’s hesitation.
He wanted the good for his people, but he didn’t know what was good. An intransigent attitude conflicting hard-learned humility.
“General Hoshea! Bring me the map of the War of Zxyx!”
“At once, my lord.”
The general returned with a dusty, old map that represented a detailed Tenebris. There were strange black boxes scattered around the magnified capital city, fifteen to twenty dark boxes signifying the location of the bunkers.”
“Take this map and gather as many people and resources as you can to fix the bunkers. We only have a day before the confrontation, so you must hurry. Also, some bunkers may not be there since Zxyx destroyed parts of Tenebris in his dark conquest. But make haste and shelter as many citizens as you can, and if they ask what’s happening, don’t hold back from telling them the truth.”
“At your service,” Tarsus and his guild quickly bowed, departing hastily.
“Ulterium, please go through the archives with your men and women to find any documents on extraterrestrial invasions that could give us an edge in this war.”
“Straightaway,” I responded, leading my guild out of the castle.
The castle walls surrounded the glorious capital of Grozorg, and within the tall walls were cobblestone streets that weaved through busy marketplaces and trade stores, hotels and houses, alleys and plazas. Having spent most of my life on Mainland Grozorg, I knew every nook and cranny of the streets on the back of my hand. We took a quick right, then a left, then another slight left again until we reached a dead end where the archives were located. The door was unlocked, as always, and we stepped into the dark room, bringing it to life.
The wind rushed in and the darkness poured out as we opened the door. Rows of scrolls and thick manuscripts covered all four lofty walls, neatly organized from shelf to shelf. The archivist was not present at the moment, the small empty desk at the entrance failing to greet the seven of us.
“How’s it sorted?” Drog asked.
“Don’t remember,” I admitted. The last time our guild was here was when we memorized the legends as part of our training, before the fourth high lord was corrupted and declared war.
There was a tall ladder that could slide from one end of a shelf to another, and I ordered my guild to split up. Soon, two of them were looking at the bottom right corner of the grand shelves, two of them searching the bottom left, one scaling up and down the ladder, and the rest of us seeking in between, trying to find information on extraterrestrials.
“‘The Nirvonian Race’,” Mirage read out loud. “I think it’s over here.”
“Keep that on the side. It may come in handy.”
She placed thick cerulean leather book onto the ground and continued searching.
“‘Homo sapiens: From you to I’,” Foku spoke from the ladder, blowing the dust off the pages of the hardcover. “What does that even mean?”
“Irrelevant. Keep searching!”
“These books are all based on life outside of Grozorg!” Foku exclaimed, placing back his hardcover and reading the spine of the books aligned on his shelf. He was high up on the ladder above Mirage, and the only person who could reach those books in that area was him.
“Toss them down!” I quickly yelled.
One by one, books fluttered down, filling the whole room with a cloudy haze of dust. As the dust smeared across our garments, we caught most of the books thrown down and began our quick search through the titles.
“‘Earth, a House Divided’,” Glo read. “Is it this?”
“I’m not sure. Scan through the book to see if there are references to Faedrixes.”
“‘Destination Prodiga’... I think this is it!” Mirage shouted. We all gathered around her as she turned the first page, revealing an accurately drawn Faedrix. Or at least it looked accurately drawn.
“Prodiga, the origins of the ancient Faedrixes,” Mirage began to read patiently.
“Next page,” I ushered her.
“There’s a letter on this side,” she spoke, flipping through a chunk of the book. “The Faedrix manipulate through rapid gene cloning only known through local culture,” she began again, “and I have ventured deep within Prodiga, but with no avail did I find out their esoteric craft. I was forced to abort the mission when my two crewmates were brutally hunted down and killed by the Faedrixes, and I have no intentions on returning to that dreaded planet.”
“Who wrote the book?” Drog asked.
“That letter was from a Chad Fliedirs, co-pilot and biochemist, but this whole encyclopaedia is a collection of authors; a potpourri of accounts from different sources,” she answered. “There’s another one here, by astrobiophysicist Screheim Chiriderf: ‘The rapid cloning of genes is caused by an extracellular component, in which I shall give the name nuclonium for now. Nuclonium is both an enzyme that catalyzes cell division, as well as a retrovirus, in such a way that it receives an undivided cell’s genetic information and duplicates that information as well. It travels in and out of a nucleus at ease, and catalyzes the deoxyribonucleic acids within to a rapid, rapid pace of replication. Through my time spent on Planet Prodiga, I have seen the wonder of nuclonium work with my own eyes. Through isolated experiments, the results show that a nuclonium accelerates the cloning by immeasurable standards. A normal Faedrix cell takes a week to divide, but with nuclonium present, the cell divides in three minutes; eight seconds the fastest I have recorded. It is a fascinating component, acting both as a living and non-living organism, and somehow, the nuclonium can target specific cells to duplicate; namely, if an arm was missing, the Faedrix could easily grow it back due to nuclonium. Only Faedrixes and no other species seem to possess this in their flaky epidermis.”
“I don’t know what half his letter meant, but all I know is a ‘nuclonium’ is involved in this,” Kadava spoke.
“Didn’t the king say Faedrixes only divide when hurt?” Arcanor asked.
“Good question. Mirage, what else does it say in there?”
“Give me a second...got it. This excerpt is anonymously written, and it reads: ‘Sir Chiriderf’s research has given me insight to seek the mystery and motivation behind the Faedrix’s duplication...’ hold on...” she spoke, sliding her finger down the page to the end of the paragraph. “‘...when a Faedrix is injured, the bodily sympathetic nervous system is immediately triggered thereby increasing the production of nuclonium three hundred times, allowing the beast to quickly duplicate itself within minutes.’”
“That explains it. So how do we kill it then?” I asked.
“No time for that. Bring the books back to the palace,” Arcanor interrupted, his eyes a faint blue.
At once, the guild picked up anything that could possibly provide us with more information regarding the incoming attack. We slipped through the archive exit, snaked down the narrow cobblestone street, and headed back to Fulcan’s castle.
As we lay the books across the marble ground, I grabbed a quill and an empty parchment and wrote down everything we had just learned.
“Keep reading!” I directed, scribbling across the old paper.
Suddenly, the ground violently shook as something large collided into Tenebris.
“Kadava, Foku, go check what just happened! Mirage, Drog, Glo, protect the king in the throne room beside us! Arcanor, stay here with me!”
Immediately, my guild split up into three groups.
“What else does it say?”
Arcanor traced his eyes across the page, through the books, but nothing else was important for our cause.
“Has no one killed a Faedrix before? There are no accounts on how one kills a Faedrix,” Arcanor told me.
“Anything about its weaknesses?”
“Not directly, just a repeated mention of how the extraterrestrials are lowly armoured with flaky scales containing nuclonium that protects their slimy skin.”
“Okay, how about the other books? Are there other extraterrestrial races mentioned?”
Arcanor picked up books littered on the ground and began skimming through each one of them to find evidence of the second extraterrestrial army Ceiros was controlling.
“Humans, Martians, Faedrixes, Sulkons. That’s it.”
“Check the strengths and weaknesses of each race. Better to be over-prepared than underprepared.”
“That doesn’t sound like you,” Arcanor spoke, looking up. “What happened to ‘improvise’?”
“We’ll improvise when we find out what the second group is. But if we have the chance now, we’ll seize it before it’s too late. Quickly, what are humans?”
“Humans...”
Just as Arcanor was about to read the description, Foku and Kadava returned with the six Night Guild members, a calamity of voices filling the grand hall.
“A meteor just struck a kilometre from the palace!” Kadava proclaimed. “The archives...it’s all gone!”
“Are there any civilian casualties?” I asked, quickly rising from my ink and paper.
“The bunker was covered in ashes, but it wasn’t destroyed. The people there should be safe.”
The king ran into the room upon hearing the news.
“Did you finish?” He abruptly asked Tarsus.
“I couldn’t fit everyone in a bunker, so most of them are hiding in your underground passage. I told them not to venture off, explaining the dangers of the tunnels.”
“Good. Thank you, Tarsus. This means a lot to me. To the nation. The fact that you accomplished all this within an hour is amazing.”
“The people were actually nearly all in the bunkers before I announced Ceiros’ arrival. Your people brought the refugees of Ferrius’ domain to the hidden bunkers. If they didn’t have that head start, I wouldn’t have been able to get the rest underground.”
“Great. I just got an update from our messengers, too, and it isn’t good. Ceiros’ forces are less than ten kilometres away. They’ll be attacking any second.”
“What happened to a day away?”
“Did anyone manage to catch a glimpse of the second extraterrestrial army?”
“My messenger only claimed to witness Ceiros leading a pack of Faedrixes. Ceiros himself has his personal army of a thousand warriors too, but don’t expect much from them. They’re not well-trained; we’ll only need to worry about the Faedrixes and whatever the second force is.”
“And the meteor?”
“The Caelomancer. It was a showboater even before its corruption, so there’s no doubt it would give us a show before the attack.”
As the king finished his sentence, the ground shook again, this time a much greater magnitude than the first time.
“Army of Light and Purity!” The king shouted. “All men to their positions! Go!”
He quickly left the room, giving us final instructions on trying to keep the damage minimal, especially since the aftermath from the last war was already devastating.
The thirteen of us left the palace and we raced to the East wall a few kilometres away. As we reached the damaged wall, we scrambled up the nearest wall to witness Ceiros’ march.
Before our very eyes, the entire green terrain beyond Tenebris was covered in a sheet of grotesquely purple humanoids, evidently armoured men of Ceiros’ army. The sky was flooded with a swarm of faded green, and every three minutes, another would spawn.
Beyond the green and purple, far behind Ceiros and his Caelomancer, marched the second extraterrestrial force.
A hundred titanic Decimos.
Decimos, a newly-found race a couple of years ago beyond the edge of our galaxy, were too recently discovered to be recorded in the archives. They were titans of immeasurable strength and possessed an intimidating appearance.
And they were distant relatives to the four, legendary Primos.