Chapter 254: Chapter 240.5 – Interlude – On the Northern Front

Chapter 240.5 - Interlude - On the Northern Front

Cadria did not always border the deadly Langgbjern mountains, nor was it always a powerful, unified threat of which its neighbours took note. In its founding days, the fledgling nation was but a tiny bean in a sea of hostile tribes, its entire population housed within a single village. There were a number of different accounts regarding the specifics, but most scholars agreed that its population ranged somewhere between five hundred and a thousand, rarely growing at all, courtesy of the sheer number of competitors spread throughout the region. Equally as mysterious to historians was the impetus behind the nation’s sudden expansion—there were no history books that detailed the precise happenings—but whatever the case, it practically exploded overnight. The warrior tribe absorbed the neighbouring villages, cities, states, and nations, growing and growing and growing until it could grow no more.

The army was eventually stopped, however, both by a foreign coalition and an unfortunate coincidence of the geography. Their conquest of the east ended when they hit the shore. The army, which at the time had consisted primarily of centaurs and cottontails, found itself at an impasse. Individuals were able to become sea bunnies and sea horses, but as a whole, the organisation was unable to adapt. Conquest was impossible aboard a ship. No marvel of engineering could overcome the advantages native species held in the sea, nor the fact that the targeted nations kept most of their cities buried within it.

The south and west had no such obstacles, but the surrounding nations forged a pact to keep the newborn superpower subdued. Having been outnumbered almost ten to one, the ancient Cadrians had no choice but to turn their blades—and subsequently their dreams of conquest—northward instead. Alas, it was not to be. The Langgbjern mountains were uncharted and packed full of dangerous creatures. Most of the expeditions that made their way into the sierra would fall, with only the odd man or two returning to tell tales of the unprecedented horrors. 

It was roughly a kilometer away from the foot of said sierra that the nation drew its outermost border. There was no official fence, only an ever-changing treeline that would grow and shrink with every passing season. One would suspect a barren wasteland so far north, but the Langgbjerns acknowledged no such concept. The native plants demonstrated exceptional resilience, with the evergreens in particular springing up like weeds. The wide-leafed pine trees were not only a common sight, but a common food source as well. Their fronds were among the most common winter vegetables, enjoyed especially by the centaurs and the cottontails. If technicalities were to be observed, the thorae could eat them as well, but their weaker stomachs often struggled with the needles’ digestion.

That was why Mariabelle Phlence had kept them off the menu. The soon-to-be Lady Postumus was seated in her fiance’s garden, happily humming a tune as she went through a list of dishes to be served. The choices prepared were so exquisite that she found it impossible to settle on an answer. Lord Marcellus, the head chef, had cooked everything from Cadrian favourites to foreign dishes whose names she had only seen in obscure texts. The common wisdom in such a circumstance was to select a series of local specialties alongside a few safer options, but Mariabelle was not so foolish as to opt for the standard fare.

Though Lord Marcellus hadn’t said anything outright, it was clear to the lady that her selection would double as an evaluation, an impetus to guide the servants in their future treatment of their new mistress. Most already viewed her as an enemy or an invader, present only for the purposes of her family’s benefit. And while her intentions were largely pure, it was impossible to deny that, as the daughter of a count, she had much to gain from marrying a warrior-class marquis like her beloved old friend. It was largely in trade that house Phlence was bettered; the merchants serving under it would be in position to negotiate more favourable deals with the northernmost province’s merchants. Perhaps if she was particularly lucky, her children would even one day assume the marquis’ seat and seize control of the house. All of that was, in and of itself, standard fare. The main problem that the locals had with the centaurian lady was that she brought no clear merit. She was not from a family with a particularly high standing, she had no notable classes or skills, and to make matters worse, she didn’t even have any diplomatic experience. She had left that to her father in favour of indenturing herself to House Augustus. Some even claimed that her time at the manor left her impure, that she had been used up by some soldier or other. And though Sirius had confirmed with his own loins that she had known no other man, his testimony was often dismissed as that of a fool in love.

His servants, particularly the jealous maids who still desperately pined for the seed in her belly, looked upon the newcomer with contempt. Though Marie had been one of Sirius’ close friends in early childhood, she had not visited his manor ever since she came of marriageable age, and as such, was viewed as a bolt from the blue, an unexpected wrench in their plans that threw their whole lives off course. Even the few girls that recognized her saw her as a threat once dismissed, a plague beaten back in the past, now present again to rear its ugly head. Not that Mariabelle was ugly. The careful, selective breeding that led to her creation ensured a victory, as far as the genetic lottery was concerned.

Regardless of her background, she was sure to find much suffering beyond the horizon if she failed the chef’s trial and proved herself as useless as her background suggested. She would be needlessly bullied by the various maids that sought to take her place, ignored by those meant to wait upon her, and gifted a countless number of calculated mistakes when it came to the arrangement of her attire. Such was often life for a woman in her position, and because some of the servants were noble themselves, it was difficult to simply throw them out without proof. And even then, to act on the evidence was akin to burning a bridge; there would only remain a chasm between the houses, of which a profiteering third party could easily take advantage.

Impressing the chef would allow her to take at least one blueblooded ally into her fold. He was her best bet; they had been acquainted prior to her arrival, and she knew him as the honest type. If he was willing to profess her competence when called to witness, her influence would easily grow. Of course, while the chef was certainly a dashing man of noble birth, he alone was not enough to sway the balance of power. Marie knew that she would need to cast a wider net, to show that she had meaningful relations, and that she was not to be trifled with.

And that was why she would be inviting to the ceremony a lady of unmistakable repute. With Claire as her maiden of honour, there would be no reasonable doubt of her influence. The only problem was that the maiden in question had failed to respond to her invitation.

It had been two months since they last saw each other. Mariabelle had left Vel’khagan with her fiance and his men in order to return to the province of Amrinia before the winter set in. All in all, it took roughly sixty days to march back to Cadria and another week to travel up to its northernmost city, built just a dozen kilometers away from the monster-ridden border.

From its position at the foot of the Langgbjerns, House Postumus’ manor was a beautiful sight to behold. To stand in its garden was to see great pillars all around, a veritable canopy of stone forests, each jutting into the sky and tearing the great blue apart.

Gazing in the opposite direction provided an overlook of the city below, a beautiful hub that demonstrated the power of the Cadrian people. The craggy, untamed foothills were barely hospitable; the buildings needed their structural supports to be carved perfectly to fit the rocks that they sat on. Even the tiniest space between the two would spell the end; water would inevitably leak between the base and the support, widening the gap by way of freezing and thawing. For the resident stonemasons to consistently overcome the problem was a feat in and of itself. It was no wonder they were lauded as Cadria’s finest.

More impressive than the absurd building standards was the average level. Because the langgbjerns were so close, and because the surrounding area was so hostile, the average citizen was somewhere around level one hundred, and that was discounting the spelunkers—though they were constantly being cycled in and out, the adventurers, mercenaries, and career soldiers made up roughly forty percent of the city’s population.

Seven of the sixty four dungeons that surrounded the city lay far enough outside the Langgbjerns range to be considered safe to explore, and each provided an extremely hostile environment that delivered huge bursts of experience to its conquerors. It was for precisely that reason that their guests were so common. Warriors of all sorts would visit Amrinia just to wrap up their third ascensions.

The lady known as common sense dictated that the dungeons must have appeared following the city’s construction, but while she was certainly a wise mistress, the violent horse-people did not always heed her advice. For as insane as it seemed, it was precisely for its the location that Amrinia’s founders had chosen its site.

The three-hundred-year-old city was built directly on top of a criss-crossing grid of ley lines. Within its boundaries, one could easily draw from the earth not one or two but sixteen different sources of magical energy, and it was precisely that energy that not only caused their problems, but also provided them with their solutions. Crops imported from other regions refused to grow not only because of the weather, but because they would be intoxicated by the mana-rich soil. They could only grow local produce; to live off the land was to consume an incredibly limited number of foods. But for what the citizens could not produce, their wallets could always afford.

By capturing the magical energy infused into the soil and storing it as ether, the city could easily and sustainably export a hundred times the amount it required to function. Cities relied on Amrinian batteries to keep their barriers active, artificers bought Amrinian tools for their accuracy and precision, and noble children were fed Amrinian jewels to grow up big and strong, just like the monsters that dominated the inhospitable mountains.

To the horror of many a visitor, the legendary-class beasts would attack the city on the regular, sometimes even twice or thrice in a day. Fortunately, the ley lines provided the settlement with an impervious means of defense. Because the barrier drew its magic from all sixteen magical veins, it was effectively an impregnable fortress. It was only through cunning that man-eaters could get themselves through the city’s gates.

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According to her dashing fiance, there had been several such incidents in the past. Stralphs, the region’s indigenous brain-eating baboons, were especially adept at sneaking past the town guard. They would dwell in the shadows of unsuspecting travelers and rise at night to fill their bellies. The teleporting statues and the sentient storms could also bypass the barrier, often in their dormant forms, but they were far less common than stralph invasions.

Marie shuddered when she recalled the taxidermied alpha that sat in the manor’s foyer, but she quickly dismissed its six-eyed, four-jawed face with a shake of the head and returned her eyes to the dozens of dishes and images laid out in front of her.

Having noticed that she had zoned out, her centaurian attendants looked on with scornful glares, while the tiny cottontail chef thumped his foot against the floor. No one said a word, perhaps in part because she was in the middle of tasting a stralph pie, but it was clear that their patience was running thin. They had all taken time out of their busy schedules to hear her opinions, and they even tasked a trio of artificers with operating the various devices that kept the food and environment at the appropriate temperatures.

Of course, Mariabelle herself had asked for no such treatment. She had made it clear that she was fine with sampling the dishes cold, but there was little she could say to change the status quo. Her future husband had specifically requested everyone present to attend to her needs and she couldn’t simply overrule his command. It was not just a matter of his dignity, but the chef’s as well. To refuse to sample his best work was to deny the man’s skill. Even though he had personally apprenticed under the duke-turned-king’s personal cook.

“You’ve done an exquisite job with this one, Lord Marcellus. The herbs blend excellently to mask the meat’s otherwise gamey flavour. The mushrooms, which I presume are local, add a deep, earthy tang, and the butter you’ve used is clearly of an outstanding quality. It is incredibly rich and aromatic, both in the crust and the filling as well.”

It was a review that she only half believed. She had eaten three full meal’s worth, and her tongue was long numb to taste. That was in part why she had spaced out in the first place. Daydreaming served as an excellent escape from the urge to vomit.

The mare looked over the other items listed on the accompanying card and paused for a few moments to scribble a note beside each. The pie itself was a decent choice; it was a local specialty made from the meat of a high-leveled monster—the bloodthirsty noblemen from the capital were likely to enjoy it, but none of the accompanying subitems were likely to appeal to their wives. The creamy maize salad was too rich when paired with the high fat meat, and the chilled winterberry dessert was unlikely to be popular among the locals.

She shifted to the next table after writing down all her thoughts, and reluctantly looked upon its presentation. The soup was thick and creamy, dyed a warm orange by the various vegetables mixed within. But as much as she appreciated the carefully arranged dish, she couldn’t stand the thought of swallowing another bite. Both her human and horse stomachs were packed to the brim, unable to keep up with her rabid consumption.

Still, she couldn’t allow herself, or anyone involved with the operation, to lose face. So she raised a spoon to her lips and slowly pried them open. It was right then, as she resolved herself to another six tables of excruciating stomach pain, that she suddenly heard a distant song. She immediately set down her utensils and looked around the garden, but found nothing of note.

The others reacted similarly, with some of the maids remarking on the tune’s almost elvish beauty, and others questioning its source. The centaurs in the crowd stood up on their toes and stretched their ears overhead, but none were able to find it. Mariabelle gulped, her eyes immediately shooting to her host’s shadows, but thankfully, no giant baboons suddenly popped out from within them.

It was after roughly thirty seconds, following a slow crescendo, that the sound finally disappeared. Marie stayed on guard for a little bit longer, her eyes still focused primarily on the darker splotches, before returning her eyes to the crowd and finding them all curiously fixed in her direction. She immediately checked her own clothing first and foremost, inspecting it for stains before finally realising what was amiss. It was her bowl. There was a letter sitting on top of it. The message, delivered from who knows where, featured a glowing green seal and a thin shell of ice. Its pale light occasionally pulsed through the translucent envelope, revealing a set of magic circuits configured into a spell.

Marie was hardly enough of a mage to decipher its purpose, but she figured from the name inscribed into its center, the familiar handwriting, and the method of its delivery that the sender had no intention of causing her any harm.

She flipped it open and swept her eyes back and forth before turning back to the manor’s servants with a practiced, troubled smile.

“Please excuse me for a moment. It would seem that I have a rather urgent matter to attend to.”

“It does seem that way,” muttered the chef. “Never heard of an artifact that could deliver a letter like that.”

“Please don’t mind us, Lady Phlence,” said one of the maids.

Mariabelle ignored the venom in the failed seductress’ words and met her head on with a smile. “Thank you for your understanding. I will be back as soon as I can.” The bride-to-be dashed through the halls, sprinting up to her room, and after locking the door behind her, leapt into her bed and screamed a series of unmentionable curses into her pillow.

She was going to need a new plan. Because the ne’er-do-well that was the letter’s sender was too busy killing monsters to attend her own confidant’s wedding.

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