Chapter 14 - Rebels of Val Foret (4) (Patreon)

"The Reckoning will come. The fires of destruction, the blaze of an inferno sweeping all Heretics and Pagans that resist the Light of the Maker and Astrals. The false prophets will fall and be destroyed, and those who blaspheme against the Order will perish in the flames of purification. Only in the Fundamentalism the Order would be restored and balance returned to the world. Only in Fundamentalism would one find salvation and return to the embrace of the Maker."

- Orange Fundamentalism Bible, Revelations of the Reckoning, 1:1 - 1:15

***

Underground Sewers of the Val Foret, Around the Same Time

The sewer system of the Val Foret was cleaner than one would have expected from the underground sewer system, as everything was being reconstructed according to the standards of the Orlesian Cities and also improved with the Magic.

Hygiene was important, and with Magic, they achieved perfect waste disposal, preventing the spread of disease and the gathering of rats and other disease vectors.

Commander Drautos led a group of twelve Kingsglaives into the underground sewers of the Val Foret as he chose to apprehend or kill the so-called leader of the rebellion forces, Morelet Laurens. 

The fanatic of the Andrastianism that started this entire mess and was the public face of the rebellion, at least on the surface, aside from the two Clerics of the Cult of Andraste, Amabilla Chappelle and Petellia Martiana.

Commander Drautos held his sword in his right hand as he was locked in a fight with several warriors of the Cult of Andraste and rebels. His Glaives were outnumbered five to one or six to one, but that was of no real consequence.

All of them were Mages and trained warriors, compared to the ragtag civilians who barely knew how to wield a weapon. On top of that, His Highness created a rather ingenious application of Magic called "Reinforcement Spell".

The Reinforcement Spell allowed the Mage to draw the purest amount of Magic and strengthen their physical capabilities, essentially enhancing their attributes like speed and strength.

As the Commander of the Kingsglaive, he was also the strongest one and was at the Gold-Tier, even though his capability to cause destruction was actually lower than Prince Kordillus or Lady Cirilla.

But on the other hand, both of them were pretty special in this regard.

Nevertheless, in front of these rebels, who were all just ordinary people, with only some of them reaching the Steel-Tier by some chance, he rushed among their ranks and with each swing of his sword, one of the heads rolled.

Commander Drautos's combat style was mostly centered around using his Swordsmanship primarily and Magic to boost his physical attributes, or he used Spells as a supportive means, because he was mainly a close-quarter combatant.

In the current set-up, he was basically an unstoppable Grim Reaper on the battlefield who took lives here and there. The other Kingsglaives were too, because most of these people couldn't really counter Mages as a whole, and fortunately enough, they didn't have Lyrium for their crudest Anti-Magic application.

Though even if they had, it wouldn't really change anything, as the Glaives would just adjust their combat style. Every single one of the Kingsglaives was also trained how to deal with the Anti-Magic and Anti-Mage oriented style of combat.

They were thoroughly educated on how to deal with the Dimeritium Weapons or how to deal with the ones that were using Lyrium to negate the effects of Magic. In truth, it wasn't the hardest thing around, as Commander Drautos often told and demonstrated.

In a mere moment, most of the rebels in this part of the sewers were killed by the Glaives as the unit moved forward. Navigating through the various tunnels and corridors would be pretty hard if not for the reconnaissance Magic that allowed them to reconstruct the approximate map of the entire underground sewerage system in the form of a small illusion. 

That was the thing that was keeping them from getting lost.

Another added bonus was that the people here didn't have any means of communication, as they lacked Mages, so they wouldn't even know that several of their patrol units had already met an unfortunate end.

No sane Mage would willingly or even unwillingly work or join the Cult of Andraste.

"Regroup and advance toward point A."

Commander Drautos was taking basically the shortest route towards the hiding place of the Morelet Laurens, who was hiding in one of the underground storage rooms. There were several places like this across the sewer system, and they were supposed to be safe places where the city's administration could store arms and food.

In the case of a siege of a city.

Unfortunately, the buildings were built, but they were not secured before they were taken over by the rebels. Fortunately enough, they were empty when the Andrastianists took over them, so there were no weapons or anything useful in them.

Yet, they still managed to obtain a rather suitable hiding place that could be easily defended against attack. Of course, these defenses were nothing against the might of Silver-Tier Mages, much less against Gold-Tier ones.

With the lineup of the Kingsglaives under Commander Drautos's command, they advanced pretty fast through the corridors and destroyed any sort of resistance that they encountered. 

It was becoming something akin to a pattern, because Commander Drautos noticed that the resistance wasn't really strong, and most enemies fell within range of one Spell and several strikes.

The interesting thing, though, was that the farther they ventured within the sewers, the more they encountered something that could be considered as "properly trained" or "skilled" to a certain degree.

Once they reached the inner perimeter of the base of the rebels, where the Laurens were cooped up. It seemed that their advancement through their ranks wasn't going unnoticed, and now, they were facing rahter organized resistance towards their advancement.

Which made Commander Drautos frown.

Because he could see that in front of him, there were several Silver-Tier Knights who were wearing proper heavy armors that were forged with the use of Lyrium. 

Lyrium-infused Armors were pretty rare, and they were usually made by the dwarven Forge Masters; they were extremely pricy. While the Lyrium-infused Armors were not capable of negativing Magic entirely, they were often doing a pretty surprisingly good job.

The dwarves created this method to combat the Darkspawn, as they were able to take Lyrium and use bits of Lyrium to infuse it into the melted metal. It was a pretty efficient method to create some sort of basic anti-magic weaponry and armor.

Not the best one, but it was better than nothing.

It paled to the usage of Dimeritium or other metals that were capable of negating Magic.

"Implement the formation number 17!"

Titus Drautos shouted to his troops as he grabbed his sword, and everyone suddenly changed their stances as they immediately started collectively chanting a spell while the heavily armored knights started charging towards them.

In a split second, a huge Magic Circle appeared below the Kingsglaives, as several tens of lightning bolts cracked around them and shot toward the charging knights of the Andrastianists.

The lightning bolts crashed directly against their armor, breaking them apart as their power was too great for the armor to block, even if it was infused with the Lyrium. Collective Spell Casting was one of the greatest strengths of the Kingsglaive, as they were taught how to cast Spells together as one.

Everything happened too fast, because within mere moments, more than half of the Cult's Knights were charred by the lightning and killed. While the remaining Knights were deeply shcoked, and some even started running in the opposite direction for their very own lives.

Or they were going to warn their compatriots back in the base...

At this point, nobody could be really sure.

Nevertheless, the moment after the numbers were evened down, approximately half of the Glaives used the Reinforcement Spells as they drew out their weapons and rushed toward the Andrastianic Knights and attacked their vital points.

Most of the armor had some weak spots.

Either in the joints that were not covered by the armor or in other places, and these weak spots were being precisely exploited by the Kingsglaives that were trained for this style of combat.

The ones that were not rushing to meet with the opponents in the close combat, were providing support from behind the lines with their Spellcasting as they were cutting down one armored Knight after another.

Titus Drautos, as the leader, was at the forefront of the combat as he was using his super strength enhanced with the Reinforcement Spell to cut down anyone who was foolish enough to approach him.

Even though these Knights were at the Steel-Tier, the disparity between the Tiers was relatively significant, not to mention, in his opinion, they seriously lacked in experience and skill.

Unfortunately for the defenders and rebels, it didn't take long for them to reach the base where the supposed leader of the rebellion, Morelet Laurens, was hiding. This part of the sewers was indeed protected very well as the Glaives stood before something that resembled huge vault doors.

Made entirely from steel, it was pretty hard, and there were other defensive mechanisms, but it was unknown if any of them were activated or not. Around them, the entire area was littered with the corpses of the Andrastianic Knights and other fanatics of the Cult of Andraste that defended this palace.

But to no success.

All of them perished pretty fast.

In the end, this was the place where the Kingsglaive were at a total advantage over the rebels.

The Andrastianic Rebels were depending on the numerical advantage to overwhelm their stronger foes. But the sewers didn't really allow for such a thing because of the pretty narrow, limited space in the first place.

So they were forced to place here some of their strongest fighters and protect this place this way, but they were deprived of their strongest card in turn. While the Kingsglaives were small in number, every single one of them was an elite, trained Silver-Tier Mage and warrior.

The comparison between the two was almost impossible.

"What shall we do, Commander? It seems that the doors are locked."

One of the Glaives that cast an Analysis Spell on the Vaultdoor stated to Commander Drautos, as the man in question scoffed at such an obvious thing.

"Blast them apart."

The rest of the Glaives looked at their Commander with a questioning gaze, not knowing if this was really the best idea.

"Commander, if we blast them apart, it's probably that if the explosion is uncontrolled, we may collapse this entire area right on our heads."

The same Glaive stated that this was somewhat risky due to the uncontrolled explosion in the underground. That was the reason when they were fighting here, all of them were refraining from using really destructive spells that could or would cause massive damage to the structures of the sewers.

Hearing that made Titus Drautos stop as he considered the words seriously. 

Most of these underground vaults were designed to resist the might of Silver-Tier Mages at their full power. So breaking through them would usually require multiple Silver-Tier Mages working together or a Gold-Tier Mage casting their Spells.

Or similarly tiered Knight that would be able to tier through them.

But no matter the method, they were risking the collapse of the entire area on their heads.

"Then what about melting the vault doors down?"

Another of the Glaives suggested, this time it was one of the few women in the squad, as most of the members of the Kingsglaive were men.

"That could work, but it would require Commander to do it personally because only a Gold-Tier Mage would be able to control the Spell not to go highwire."

Because all of them were Mages, it didn't take them long to come up with the most probable solution to the problem that they were facing right now.