Crown of Velúndé – Chapter 22: XCV — Monsters (Patreon)

Chapter 22: XCV — Monsters

Cloudhave’s moon was a pale thing, washing the hills in cold light and laying the battlefield bare beneath its gaze.

Below, men stood in two broken seas of steel—one half clad in ringmail, the other in lamellar plates. Kayode commanded the larger force. The heavier one. The men in lamellar were his.

They were drawn up in six lines while the enemy did not form their own. They gathered into a dense wedge, shields locked tight at the front and ranks pressing inward behind, its point aimed like a spearhead towards his troops.

At the head of Kayode’s host stood Dame Varghelt and Ser Jorren Gold—his Oathguards—each mounted on horseback. Their plate caught the moonlight cleanly, their silhouettes rigid and unyielding beneath the eyes of the enemy.

High Chief Siegfried ‘Stone-spine’ Sern rode no horse.

He sat upon a wolf—a Warwolf, massive and thick-limbed, a beast native to these hills and bred for battle. With his blood-red hair and the crimson pelts of his riders behind him, Siegfried’s force cut across the field like blood from an open wound, oozing upon the white.

An omen, perhaps. Of what was to come.

His eyes were not on the soldiers before him, but beyond the battlefield, over their heads, fixed on Kayode and his retinue standing up on a hill.

“He doesn’t seem to very much like you,” Lami noted. She was standing next to Kayode, Oathguards behind her, a biscuit in hand. She took a bite. “Want some?” she asked, waving it in front of Kayode as she chewed.

“No,” Kayode replied.

“Those damn animals,” the Lady Kestrel said next to Lami. “I can smell their putrid aroma from here.” A handkerchief covered the lower half of her face, but just her eyes conveyed the vitriol well enough.

“Dame Varghelt reports that the men do not appear massively weakened by the supply-line assaults,” Ash said, standing beside Kayode as words were scribbled onto a pad he held. “However, they seem filled with desperation that may yet translate into an unaccountable fervour in their fighting.”

The pad was a Relic, its gem glowing faintly at the crown. A Relayer, it was called—anything written upon it would be mirrored onto a twin pad held by another messenger at Dame Varghelt’s side.

Ash happened to be literate. So Kayode had chosen him as his messenger.

“Siegfried chose to attack now while his men are still fresh, rather than wait till hunger has withered them,” Kayode said. A lesser leader might have dwindled their forces in futile attempts to reopen supply lines.

“Not as much of an idiot as I thought he was, then,” Lami hummed.

Siegfried drew his blade and pointed it at Kayode. Eyes of the Throne let him know the man was speaking, he even heard some noises catch the air. But nothing was intelligible. “What’s he saying?” Kayode asked.

Ash scribbled something onto the pad, and a moment later his reply came. The boy frowned a moment, hesitated, and then read out loud. “Dame Varghelt reports that High Chief Siegfried ‘Stone-spine’ Sern has made mocking remarks regarding the size of your muscles, the plate you wear a-and your manhood.” he read. “He insinuates not only that he will deliver victory tonight, but also your romantic interest’s very first orgasm.”

“Charming,” Kayode sighed. He was trying to lure Kayode down the hill to face him. That wouldn’t be happening. “Spire,” he requested. A soldier placed it into his hand. The Spire was a span of wood about the size of a quarterstaff, its length wrapped in adornment shaped like a coiling serpant. Along its side, a Relic Stone was set into the top.[Relic]

Name: Resonance Spire

Type: Communicator

Tier: D

──────────

[Material(s)]

— Relic Stone (D)— Relisan Steel resonance housing— Vibrational Housing

— Alloy transmission veins

──────────

[Bound Skill(s)]

— Echo (I)

──────────

Sovereign’s Presence.

Kayode willed the shape of the world to bend around him, casting him as something to behold—an object of awe and enforced respect.

Then he spoke.

“Men!” The Spire took his voice and hurled it across the battlefield, booming with resonant force, Stone glowing and dulling as Kayode spoke. “I am not one for speeches. Not one for long, droning mantras. There is only one thing you need to know. The enemy being driven from their walls is already a victory—proof that they are afraid of you, of what you are capable of. And yet they stand here. Which means their fear does not run deep enough. Tonight, you will show them the error of their ways.”

He felt his Skill reach outward across the sea of bodies, touching every single one of his men. There was no resistance—no pushback, no friction at all. The moment he spoke, they were captivated.

Sovereign’s Presence had never carried such reach. Kayode first assumed it was a function of his Level, and to some extent, it was.

But on second thought, he realized that wasn’t the true source.

What had changed far more than his Level was his standing. He was an established Great Lord now—head of a Household, a Baron commanding an army of men who had never known the weight of being led by one of such stature.

This was Sovereign’s Presence, yes.

But it was Sovereign’s Presence multiplied by what it meant to be a descendant of the Ancestors. It was Sovereign’s Presence, with a sovereign’s presence. 

“For the Baron!” a section of the army cried out. The shout caught, spread, and then the entire force took it up. “For the Baron!” The chant boomed across the field—fists thrust into the air, weapons brandished high, blades struck against shields in a thunderous clatter.

They raised their shield, planted their feet where they were, and waited for the enemy to come.

And they did.

First, the army transformed as one, men turning into hulking blue beasts, white horns bursting through helms, split tongues lashing as their bodies swelled with power.

Then the High Chief transformed.

And the difference was immediate.

Where the others warped, he reformed. His already massive frame grew, and settled, flesh reshaping with a near flawless fluidity. Horns split and curved back like a crown of whitened bone, thicker, heavier, etched with faint veins of burning blue light. His jaw broadened, fangs baring, and the air itself seemed to draw tight around him, as if his magic had commanded it.

He felt the energy of the High Chief’s army change at the sight of it, saw how fear was banished from their eyes—certain, beyond a doubt, that they could not lose when led by a creature so ferocious.

Then the High Chief’s wedge formation came charging—angry men brandishing even angrier blades—driving toward a single point in the shield wall. Their roars tore through the air like rolling thunder, weeks of anger, frustration, and hate channeled into a single, violent surge.

Arrows and spells lanced through the air from both sides. And when they struck, Kayode saw proof of the enemy’s loss as their formation began to shed men, bodies sloughing off onto the snow like discarded skin—turning from blue to pale.

Still they came, still they were unyielding. And then they met Kayode’s wall.

Shields pressed against shields. Men pushed against men. There was yelling—roaring—cursing; the scrape and shriek of blades dragged across shield rims as each fighter tried to force past the guard of his enemy.

For a moment, it looked as though neither side would give. Then one did.

Kayode’s side.

Ash paled. “D–Dame Varghelt reports: Line one has brok—”

He never finished.

The next line collapsed as well, raw hatred and momentum tearing through the Velúndéan line with savage force. Then the next. And the next. And the next.

“Oh no,” Kestrel croaked. “No! No! No!”

The Northerners moved with ferocity, the wedge driving deeper and deeper into Kayode’s ranks, less like men and more like a force of nature given flesh.

“Line five—they’ve broken line five—” Ash croaked. “They’re monsters…” he whispered.

It was easy to see how one might view them like that. The night rang with the Northerners’ beastly roars, and wherever they surged forward, Velúndéan men were forced to give ground, formations breaking as though just the bloodlust burning in their eyes was more terrifying than the blades in their hands.

“Monsters…” Kayode echoed softly.

It was a fitting word—one often used for men who seemed to act beyond the limits of what ought to be possible.

But men were not monsters.

Men did not do the impossible.

They were confined wholly and completely to the predictable.

Lami took another bite out of her biscuit.

“Tell Dame Varghelt: close lines one and two,” Kayode commanded. Ash froze for a heartbeat, then scribbled on the pad.

The panic in both lines vanished almost instantly. Shields locked. Boots dug in. Blades turned inward, to meet the enemy now trapped between them.

“Now lines two, three, four, and five,” Kayode added, already moving on.

Those snapped into place as well, the motion precise and rehearsed—splitting the enemy formation into smaller, far more manageable pockets, forcing them to fight a force that closed from both sides like the jaws of some great shark, cutting them into more easily digested chunks.

“We’re winning, Baron—we’re winning!” Ash exclaimed.

“Yes!” Kestrel nearly laughed, a famished ferocity in her eyes. “Yes!”

“Tighten around the enemy,” Kayode ordered.

Ash scribbled the words down. Kayode saw Dame Varghelt take up the command, her roar carrying across the lines—and that was when the killing truly began.

The formation constricted around the High Chief’s men like a bear trap, shearing through flesh and chain alike. The night that had once carried their roars now overflowed with screams. Kayode watched their lines collapse, watched men try to flee—only to run headlong into waiting blades.

Kayode saw Siegfried rein his Warwolf hard, eyes raking across the field—counting the lines, counting the gaps, trying to figure out how he got here.

Too late.

They would die. All of them.

Men of Bracklocke reduced to torn chunks of flesh and bone on the field, for the crime of charging into a battle they never had a hope of winning.

It was no way to perish, so they wouldn’t.

“Pull back,” Kayode ordered.

Ash scribbled furiously.

A shouted command later, Kayode’s lines loosened and expanded like a cast net, giving the enemy room—space enough to breathe, but never enough to escape. Ready to constrict again at a moment’s notice.

The High Chief’s men recoiled when the pressure eased, but they did not capitalize. They did not regroup. They gathered their wounded, mourned their dead, and waved weapons in shaking hands at Kayode’s forces, as though facing wraiths rather than men.

As though facing monsters.

“Tell them to yield,” Kayode said.

Men detransformed. Slowly at first—no one eager to be the first to admit defeat. Then faster. Soon, nearly all were in their human forms again, on their knees, arms raised in mute displays of harmlessness.

A few broke and ran at Kayode’s men—out of pride, stupidity, or that special thing in between. They were cut down against a wall of blades all the same, their brief defiance serving only as fuel to drive the rest more swiftly to surrender.

There was only one pocket still fighting—the one trapped between lines one and two.

The source of that defiance was the High Chief himself, driving the men around him to fight with a ferocity that bordered on madness. For every one of his men cut down, two Velúndéans were sent to the dirt in return.

That alone was testament to the High Chief’s strength—and to the kind of leader Kayode had chosen as his enemy. His Warwolf clawed and raked apart lamellar with just as much fervour as the man riding it.

But even he had his limits.

“Apply absolute pressure on Line one and two,” Kayode ordered.

Ash wrote his orders down, and both Varghelt and Gold went galloping towards the High Chief. The pair of Knights carved through his men like a mace, punching deep and tearing out the other side. There was a trail of wet blackness and screaming men in their wake. Utter pandemonium.

And then they were circling back for a followup attack.

“Ease up,” Kayode ordered. “Give them a chance to yield.” No need to make this fight more barbaric than it already was, that would only increase Kayode’s own casualties as well.

The Knights pulled back their horses before impact, and circled the pocket from beyond the wall that caged them.

Kayode did not hear when Dame Varghelt asked that they yield, but he knew they had when Siegfried roared with defiance, and a man dropped their weapon in terror.

He saw the High Chief round on the man and take his head clean off with one brutal swing. 

And yet that did not stop the next from dropping their arms. Nor the next after that, or the next after that. Soon the High Chief only held his weapon up high, and he seemed to have no intention of dropping it.

Varghelt looked at a young girl next to her and said something.

She wrote something down on her pad.

Ash looked at his notepad and reported the message. “Dame Varghelt asks for permission to execute the High Chief.”