Chapter 45: DD2 Chapter 039 – Standard Redux

They rode out on horseback through the thick snow that blanketed the ground and towards the trailing banners that crested over the western horizon. Seven Terythian nobles, each with a personal retinue of five knights and even more attendants, accompanied Typh and her own entourage of misfit classers. Together, the sixty or so people made the short journey from the campgrounds to a vacant hill in front of the newly arrived host.

The mood was beyond tense, the humans—with the exception of one boy-necromancer—had yet to encounter members of a different species in such numbers before, and besides from the members of Typh’s party, the others had likely never even met a nonhuman without resorting to violence. Given the assassination plot that the nobles had in store for her, she did not count their interactions with her as an exception to this rule.

The humans had insisted on bringing along a white flag which was currently held aloft—tied to the tip of a knight’s lance where it billowed above them in the cold winter winds. Apparently, it was an old human custom that was supposed to ensure that Typh’s forces wouldn’t annihilate them over a minor slight while the game of diplomacy was being played. It amused her to no end, that a species so short lived would put such an emphasis on tradition to protect them, especially when the obviously sane thing to do, would be to just avoid insulting your betters when you were at their complete and utter mercy.

Rhelea’s nobility had managed to scrounge together a few hundred or so troops at short notice, who were now in the process of arranging themselves into an anemic looking battle line arrayed protectively around the western edge of the refugee camp. The mass of weary soldiers and conscripts, who had already fled the apocalyptic fall of a city, were unsurprisingly sluggish to form up in the snow. The idea that they could be about to face off against a force more than one order of magnitude larger than theirs was clearly not a popular one. Them being humans, it wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar prospect; ‘monstrous’ hordes did periodically descend from the Dragonspines in great numbers, but the defenders had always held the twin advantages of Rhelea’s warded fortifications and their own superior equipment.

This time they had neither.

Having known from the campground’s inception that this moment was coming, Typh had made sure that the few attempts to fortify the tent-city had focused their efforts on the eastern flank which faced Rhelea and the horrors contained within. She had also failed to clarify the misunderstanding that had arisen regarding both the quantity and true quality of the soldiers she intended to field. From her talks with her spies, the dragon knew that the nobles had been expecting to see a bestial horde that numbered in the mere thousands. Unclothed barbarians, feral beasts, and shit-covered goblins were what the humans had mistakenly assumed she was bringing to the table. 

It tickled her to know that they couldn’t have been more wrong, although as soon as she allowed that thought to cross her mind, she did notice one particularly grubby goblin on the periphery of her senses who began to roll around on a patch of increasingly discoloured snow.

Fortunately the nobles who conspired to kill her missed that specific degenerate’s actions. Instead their wide-eyed gazes were firmly held by the shining ranks of heavily armoured nonhumans in tightly regimented formations that put the humans’ lacklustre efforts to shame. 

The dragon smiled with all of her teeth while she watched the nobles’ previously confident expressions falter only to be replaced with well-masked anxiety and fear.

No beast tamers would be luring her army into a suicidal assault on Rhelea. Her troops may not be civilised in the strictest of human senses, but they were cultured, orderly and obviously intelligent. Any priests still amongst the refugees in the camp were about to have a very hard time reconciling this indisputable truth with the commonly held belief that humanity was the only sapient species in Creation. She knew that she was already a notable exception to this, but one, solitary dragon who spent most of her time looking like a human was much easier to come to terms with than this. Looking out at the sea of soldiers clad in shining steel, Typh was hopeful that she would finally be able to conclusively put to bed the prejudiced myth that ‘monsters’ were just level fodder. But, if her time amongst humanity had taught her one thing, it was that humans were rarely beholden to common sense.

She had left a host some fifteen thousand strong in Halith’s capable hands when she had first returned to Rhelea, but what she saw now was easily twice that, dwarfing the human defenders and even the refugee camp behind it. The army Typh had left behind had been built around a backbone of nearly ten thousand ratlings, collected from dozens of different dungeons, and it had made the furred woman the obvious choice for an interim-general. The other tribes, clans, nests, and herds of creatures that Typh had incorporated into her coalition, had simply lacked the numbers as a singular people to justify giving any one of them temporary command. 

While a large part of her army’s recent growth was regrettably goblin in nature, the quantity of soldiers who lacked green skin and oversized heads had more than doubled. Clearly when she had given Halith instructions to recruit more people to her banner, the woman had taken that as a personal challenge.

The dragon stifled a chuckle at that; she hadn’t realised it until now, but she had missed the company of nonhumans. She loved Arilla, and maintained a soft-spot for humanity, but they were fundamentally different from the other creatures on Creation who still retained their species classes. Nonhumans were less erratic, less unreasonable, and far more likely to show her the respect she deserved. Typh was a sovereign dragon after all, and sometimes it was nice to spend time with creatures who recognised that for what it really meant.

In the three months Typh had spent on campaign travelling through the Dragonspines, she had become intimately more familiar with the myriad of species that called the foothills surrounding the mountain range their home. While she had never seen them as less than people, her upbringing—fraught as it had been—had taught her to view them as less than a dragon. She had never heard it stated outright, but she knew that many of her own species viewed the stunted races like goblins and ratlings with disdain. As if their crippling at the hands of the ancient humans had been due to some kind of moral failing, rather than just bad luck and humanity’s old hatreds.

As dungeon after dungeon had fallen to her forces, she had overseen the assimilation of countless different societies into her little war machine. Many had flocked to her banner voluntarily, forgoing the need for bloodshed, but all of them had integrated without forming new grudges. They all knew the fight she had collected them for, and while many had their own ideas as to how it could best be fought, not a single people had wanted to run from the threat that the Monsters posed. 

They were all thoroughly hers. Her coalition of the unwanted was composed entirely of lesser species, those who had been so thoroughly crippled by the humans’ ancient meddling that they now stood no chance against the rising tide of Monsters—at least not alone. While she would have killed for a mere hundred elven swordsmen, orc shamans, or dwarven battlesmiths, she couldn’t help but take pride in what she could see.

Ratling steel and siege equipment bristled along the entire length of the war lines. Goblin skirmishers roamed back and forth, crowding the space between the two disproportionately sized forces. Kobold mages arranged themselves into large ritual circles where artillery spells were swiftly carved into the freshly cleared soil. Earth sprites moulded the uneven terrain until it was perfectly smooth for massed warg charges, or provided cover for ranged troops. Woodling archers readied their bows, dipping their arrows into the potent poisons brewed in great vats by fungoid herbalists. More creatures than she cared to count readied themselves for battle before they stood at the ready, staring off into the distance. Their eyes—those who had eyes—barely even glanced towards their much hated foes, the humans. Instead their resolute gazes fell on Rhelea in the distance, the city that teemed with horrors and the Monster that would end them all. 

Her soldiers were low-levelled and weak with not a single iron rank standing amongst them, and that vulnerability only made her love them more. They had marched day and night for almost a week to fight against a Monster they knew they couldn’t kill. Despite the fear they must have felt they had still come, in part because she asked them to, but also, because it was in their blood. Their ancestors may not have fought against a Monster for over a thousand generations, but that drive to defend Creation from the eldritch horrors that sought their collective ends was there all the same. 

Before the Sundering, when the humans had carved the majesty out of them, they had all been more, but right now, even as lesser shadows of what they once were, they hadn’t forgotten their duty. Typh felt a momentary pang of shame, for she had once sought to flee the fight she now found herself leading the preparations for, but if a mere goblin could march into the jaws of near certain death, then who was she to turn away?

While the dragon waited on the hill surrounded by humans, she saw the familiar silhouette of Halith ride out to meet them along with what seemed like a representative from every species arrayed before her. They were all mounted on the back of equally improbable beasts, each one likely the prized possession of a dungeon that put the horses the human delegation rode to shame. 

A squadron of heavy ratling infantry followed behind the nonhumans in equal numbers to the knights fielded by the nobles, and while their armour may have been comparable, their levels certainly weren’t. Still, despite the humans holding onto that one advantage, it was impossible to believe that the two sides were on anything resembling an even footing. 

Halith and her officers stopped short, remaining on their mounts a good twenty paces away from the humans who did the same. 

The nobles’ well-groomed faces looked up at the large standard draped in a multitude of hanging banners. Each dungeon that had fallen to Typh’s host was represented by a piece of dyed cloth with the residents' chosen symbol stamped atop it. Above them all was a large statuette of a golden dragon that everyone recognised as the sovereign dragon's true form, and while the humans stared, their counterparts looked to the white flag blowing in the breeze. 

Both sides waited in complete silence while Typh and her entourage spurred their loaned horses on, and crossed the space between to stand with the dragon’s nonhuman officers. The sound of horse hooves crunching through the snow was deafening in the face of such austere quiet. There hadn’t been a meeting like this in a very long time and in the ages since, relationships between humans and everyone else had more than just festered.

Typh could smell the barely constrained rage that wafted off of everyone gathered on her side of the hill. While it was not remarked upon that she had brought humans with her, she could tell that it was not approved of. She knew that if she ordered her army to march on the humans, defenceless refugees and all, that the only complaints would come from Arilla, Liam, and maybe Tamlin.

Hopefully if everything went well such drastic actions would prove to be entirely unnecessary.

“Lord Sovereign, we came as fast as we could. I am glad to see that you are unharmed,” Halith said. The ratling woman then bowed as low as she could whilst still remaining atop the hulking rat ogre that served as her mount.

“It was a near enough thing. I can see that you’ve followed my orders with… enthusiasm. I know I sent you recruiting, but goblins, really?” Typh asked, absently noting how oddly familiar she found the small green creature who shifted uncomfortably astride the back of a particularly feral looking dire wolf.

“They more than met your criteria for recruitment, Lord Sovereign.”

“Very well, we can discuss this and the status of your preparations later, after we deal with the humans.”

Following Typh’s dismissal, Halith and the other officers cast sidelong glances towards Arilla, Tamlin, and Liam, before turning their full attention to the nobles waiting atop their horses. The humans were looking increasingly concerned by the second, and the dragon didn’t blame them. Typh had brought the largest ‘monster horde’ in well over a century to their front door, and at least three of them planned to kill her and to then try to lure it away with less than a score of specialist adventurers.

While that plan was clearly doomed to failure, Typh had learned her lesson about leaving trivial threats unaddressed. Slowly, so as not to spook her horse which was already trembling in fear from its close proximity to her allies' more exotic mounts, she turned her horse around to face the humans with a pleasant smile on her face. 

“Lady Domine?” Typh enquired.

“Y-yes Lord Sovereign,” the noble in question quickly responded.

“I think now would be a good time for you to call off the adventurers you’ve hired to kill me, don’t you think?” the dragon asked. The high-born woman didn’t even flinch, but Lords Melias, Bidden, and Ignatious were not nearly so circumspect, and Typh caught them all briefly glancing towards either the swords at their belts, or the knights behind their backs.

“Lord Sovereign, you must be mistaken! I would never even dream of betraying our alliance!” Lady Domine protested, and from the earnest sound of pain in her voice, Typh would have been tempted to believe her if not for the copious amounts of evidence that her spies had managed to dredge up.

“Of course you would, you’re human. But I think you can now see that my army isn’t half as bestial as you thought it would be. Should your adventurers succeed in killing me, your tamers will be unable to manipulate my forces as you desire, and I promise you that Halith here would like nothing more than an excuse to butcher your people down to the last man,” Typh explained, while the ratling to her side ran her tongue along her teeth with excitement at the thought. “So before we get started, now would be a good time to call them off. I would so hate to be interrupted by an over-eager adventurer who misread the signal.”

“There’s been a misunderstanding—” Lady Domine began.

“I assure you there has not. Now call them off. I can wait,” the dragon ordered, and from the sound of clinking steel that arose around her, she knew that the ratling heavies had readied their weapons.

“I—”

“Lady Domine, call off whatever you have planned immediately. As your Liege Lord, I command it,” Lord Traylan snapped, silencing the woman’s protestations.

“Why am I not surprised that my cousin has come up with a fool plan to have the dragon killed?” Lord Ignatius mused.

“Are you honestly going to pretend that you weren't involved, Iggy?” Lady Domine sniped.

“I would never stoop so low! My cousin—”

“SILENCE!” Lord Traylan ordered. The old man must have used some sort of skill to enforce his command as an instant later, every noble mouth—bar Typh’s—snapped shut.

The nonhuman delegation watched all of this with muted amusement while the effects of Lord Traylan’s skill wore off. Once she was able to talk again, Lady Domine summoned and dispatched a runner from her retinue who hurried back towards the campgrounds under the watchful eyes of everyone present.

“Now that that unpleasantness is behind us, let us discuss terms,” the dragon said.

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The humans blinked.

“You claimed to have brought your forces here to slay the monster, what need is there for terms?” Lord Traylan asked.

“I did bring them for precisely that purpose. The Monster’s mere existence is an existential threat to us all. But I am not so forgetful to ignore that you tried to cut my head off last week, and Lady Domine’s attempt hasn’t even been called off yet,” Typh said, gesturing towards the messenger still retreating into the distance.

“If you want assurances of your safety, we can arrange that,” the old noble offered.

“I have an army that utterly eclipses yours. I have supply lines stretching back to the Dragonspines that will bring food, weapons, and eventually reinforcements. I don’t need your protection,” she spat.

“Then what do you want, Lord Sovereign?” Lord Traylan was eventually able to grunt out.

“I want you to know your place.”

“I’m—I’m not sure that I follow.”

“Yes you do. You’re human. It’s in your nature to think of yourselves as more important than we are. Just as much as I want your gold and treasures, you want to be in charge, to order around the savages who will bleed for your city in your stead. Wasn’t that the essence of Lady Domine’s plan?”

“I—” the noble woman began.

“QUIET!” Typh roared, her voice momentarily that of a dragons, all bass and rumbling thunder, rather than her usual delicate tones. Horses reared and whinnied, while searing pain lanced through her chest as [Alternate Form] weakened, bridging the gap—if only for a fraction of a second—between her two forms. 

She clutched at her chest and breathed several deep panting breaths in an attempt to steady herself while she waited for the pain to recede. The dragon caught the hungry looks that quickly spread through the gathered crowd of humans, who noticed her brief bout of weakness and looked ready to pounce. She knew then that she had never been more right about anything than ever before, and any thoughts of giving them the benefit of the doubt evaporated.

“When we’re done, and Rhelea is saved, you’ll want us to go on our way without compensation for our losses, or even a chance to lick our wounds. If we try to stay you’ll demand that we kneel at your feet and beg for scraps while you use and discard us like the animals you still see us as. I’ve seen what your kind does if given the chance, and I refuse to allow that to happen to my people.”

She watched them as they stifled their denials, the lies coming instinctively to them, but they couldn’t call her a liar as much as they may have wanted to. The prices set in the adventurers guild and backed by the King of Terythia were too well known to all present. Nonhumans were monsters, and monsters were there to be exploited for levels and money. That belief was fundamentally ingrained into human culture, and would take a long time to extricate. The idea that after the threat had passed, they would then go on to thank Typh and her coalition for their aid was farcical and everyone knew it.

“What are your terms?” Xan asked, her calm question stalling out the gathered nobles’ unconvincing attempts to allay her fears.

“I will provide food, clothes, and shelter for all the humans who have fled Rhelea. In exchange you will all submit to my command for the coming battle when we retake the city. I will not have my subjects treated as disposable fodder in some human scheme to soften us up for hostile renegotiations.” Typh announced.

“I understand your concerns, especially given our shared history but—” Lord Traylan began.

“Oh I am not done,” she warned. “For our aid, I demand the immediate release of all creatures currently held in the Royal Alchemical Stables, fifteen thousand gold talents, and most importantly of all, I want Rhelea and the surrounding territory declared a permanent safe haven for all nonhumans with all active members of the alchemists guild and its agents banned from entry.”

“What?!” the noble exclaimed, while the faces of his peers around him went as white as a sheet.

“To enforce your cooperation, I will reserve the right to garrison the city with as many of my soldiers as I please. To better enforce compliance and the amicable mixing of our respective species,” she continued.

“Lord Sovereign, I’m not sure you understand the complex intricacies involved in what you’re asking for,” Lord Traylan began.  

“I completely understand what I’m demanding. Do you need me to explain it again using smaller words?” the dragon asked.

“No. You were perfectly clear…” Lord Traylan sighed. “But you’re asking for too much. Fifteen thousand talents is too much coin, and while my line rules over Rhelea, we do so at the grace of our King. Even if I wanted to—which I don't—declaring the region a safe-haven for monsters, banning the alchemists guild, installing a foreign garrison in Rhelea, and releasing the creatures in the Royal Alchemical Stables is far beyond my authority!”

“Twelve and a half thousand is not a sum I plucked out of thin air. I believe it is the price the Alchemists Guild was going to pay whoever brought me to them alive; it’s also the same sum you offered for Arilla’s head. I’m sure you can afford it. And don’t worry, I do have some sympathy for you in regards to the last part,” she said. “Xan?”

“Yes, Lord Sovereign?” the inquisitor asked carefully.

“In light of the Alchemical Knights' recent betrayal, I believe you can declare Rhelea’s branch of the guild traitors and renegades, can you not?” the dragon asked.

“I can… but it would be extremely premature for such a drastic action. There would be dire consequences when the Guild—” the woman explained.

“I dont care. Do it, and give me your personal assurances that you will do your best to fulfill the rest of my demands,” Typh instructed.

“Why should we submit to any of your insane requests? You said it yourself, the Monster is an existential threat to us all. We can just sit back and watch while you kill it for us and then give you nothing,” Lord Melias asked.

“Because, you dolt, if you don't give me what I want, I’ll have my army kill you all down to the last classer. You're right, the Monster has to die quickly, and harvesting the levels from the ten thousand or so refugees behind you would be an easy way to bump my army up a few levels,” she threatened. 

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me, human.”

Time stretched while she stared down the nobles. Typh heard every breath and fidget while they tested her nerve. She saw the look of dismay on Arilla’s face even behind her helm and felt the visceral fear that wafted off of the knights waiting behind the nobles. 

“When you say you’ll feed the refugees, can you be more specific? Humans need meat and grain to get through the winter, not to mention a supply of vegetables to ward off disease. I don’t know what monstrous species eat, but we have more delicate stomachs than a goblin for instance,” Lord Traylan asked.

“Don’t we all…” Typh said, smiling wide, for in that moment the deal was essentially struck, and only the details were left to be hammered out. 

Halith came forward with information on the resources they had to barter with and the whole confrontation quickly degenerated into a messy bit of haggling. How much food was required for a warrior to fight on, the exact definition of submission, how to best deliver the gold and in what installments. It was a long and gruelling process, one that almost certainly wouldn’t have gone as smoothly without Typh having the humans bent over a barrel. 

Hours later they were done for the day, and for all of their incessant complaints Typh felt like the humans had gotten off with a good deal. It was certainly better than what anyone else under her command would have let them have. She didn’t doubt for a moment that Rhelea’s nobility would try to renege on what they had agreed, but for now it would stand.

When her standard was dipped so that the humans could kneel and kiss the sculpted dragon, Typh finally allowed herself to relax. Under the watchful gazes of her officers, seven pairs of lips kissed the golden statuette, and just like that Typh’s coalition of the unwanted gained over ten thousand new members.

She would make sure to use them well.

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