Chapter 118: Chapter 114: Border Skirmish

Amelia lazed about in the fortress’s bedroom, waiting for the first skirmish. Their intelligence told them that the coalition was going to try and probe the defenses near the Spine first, under the logic that the Spine formed a natural defensive barrier and would make their defense of the fort easier.

It was logic that worked in traditional warfare, but this wasn’t a traditional war. For one, the swarm operated in the Spine, and though the terrain was less than ideal for moving an army through, an attack was still completely viable. They’d still have to devote resources to guarding that area if they did take the fort, and if they got lax…it would spell doom for them.

Of course, that was only if they were actually able to take control of the fortress in the first place. As things were, that was plausible, but as the swarm amassed more and more monsters and fought more and more battles, their defenses would swell, and digging them out of the entrenched position would become much harder.

And that was the biggest reason Amelia was here. She was serving as this fortress’s trump card, a way to nigh-ensure that it wouldn’t fall. The other reason she was here was to monitor the state of things; she needed to see how well the armies of Aura adapted to their new selves, and how effective they were in battle.

Amelia was, of course, confident that they would prove to be far more competent than they were before. Their level might have been reset, and some of their stats were potentially lost, but that was a minor thing when they gained so much more flexibility, and those stats could almost always be regained by way of leveling up a few times, so it wasn’t a big deal.

She had been here for a couple of days now, and was starting to get really bored and lonely, both of which were relatively new sensations for her. They were emotions the Urge never let her have, and for once she was somewhat thankful for that. She had had a facsimile of being lonely before, as she only felt proper feelings when Lia was around, but she had never been bored, and she hated the experience.

Being bored felt…just bad; she wanted to be out and doing things, but she knew she couldn’t, because that could potentially tip their hand. Lonely was likewise an emotion that she hated; she wanted to be with her lovers, but she couldn’t teleport back and forth between the World Tree and here without wasting a ton of Mana, and if an attack happened while she was at the World Tree, she would have no way of knowing until it was too late.

So, she was stuck here, scrying the area around her and keeping an eye out for the enemy. Fortunately, scrying over this short of a distance was a relatively easy and cheap thing for her to do, and her regeneration barely outstripped the cost of keeping the scry up, so she was able to maintain the scry at all hours.

And she did; she had chosen to skimp on sleep, trusting in her myriad of Skills that reduced exhaustion to keep her alert and prepared for battle. She slept for only a couple of hours each day, and only did that because Lia would be very cross if she didn’t. Fortunately, it worked out for her; around one in the morning on her third day there, she caught sight of a platoon of soldiers making their way towards the fortress. It wasn’t anywhere near a force large enough to actually threaten the fort, but at fifty or so strong it was too large to be a standard scouting party.

Amelia cast her scrying out wider until she eventually found an owl that had been made part of the swarm, and was serving as one of their scouts. While it couldn’t take complex commands or relay much information, it was fully capable of reporting back when it encountered a large group of people that weren’t part of the swarm and leading a retaliatory force to the location.

Amelia nudged the owl, sending it on a course to intercept the platoon and report its location, then found another which would be tasked with keeping an eye on the platoon while troops were rallied. And, to Amelia’s great satisfaction, the platoon didn’t suspect a thing, paying no mind to the non-monstrous wildlife.

That was something they would have to learn the hard way. No longer would they be able to determine if an animal was an enemy spy by checking the flow of Mana or detecting the presence of a tamer’s Skill, those that were part of the swarm were completely ordinary otherwise.

She’d have them jumping at every rabbit, squirrel, and bird, never quite sure if the seemingly harmless animals were secretly relaying their every move to their enemies unless they chose to identify each and every one of them. The paranoia would slowly but surely set in, and the toll it would take on people couldn’t be understated.

Of course, the real threat to their information security would be insects, but the swarm wasn’t quite at a point where using insects was feasible. Getting good information from dumber animals like birds or lizards was hard enough even for people who had Skills to help with it, but insects were a step further than even that. Eventually, someone would appear that could handle that, but the swarm was still in its infancy, and people would need more time to adjust before that was viable.

Her work done, Amelia settled back into scrying, alternating between the monitoring owl that was already beginning to head back to the fortress and the platoon, waiting for the conflict to begin. The soldiers manning this fort were already aware that Amelia wasn’t going to give much aid unless she deemed it necessary, and that Amelia didn’t want to be briefed on everything, so Amelia didn’t have to worry about being interrupted as she began to tidy up the room.

This confrontation would mark the end of her stint here for at least a little while, as she would have to report back to the capital about the results of this battle, so she wanted to make sure she was ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Yes, she hadn’t brought anything with her, and it wasn’t like she had to clean up, but…it would endear her to the rank and file, and she was bored anyway, so it couldn’t be that much worse than just doing nothing.

And, after a few minutes of cleaning, she had decided; it was that much worse than just doing nothing. She couldn’t figure out why, but something about cleaning was just…worse. She’d much rather just lay on the bed and watch everything with her scrying spell. Still, it wasn’t too messy, so it only took a few minutes more before she was finished.

In that time, the first owl had reported back to the fortress, and the defenders had begun to muster a response. As they did, Amelia turned her attention back to the platoon, and began trying to figure out what they were actually doing. The group was an odd bunch; they didn’t seem heavily armed enough to come remotely close to threatening the fortress, and there was only one mage among them, but they also weren’t lightly armed enough to be considered scouts.

They were moving slowly and deliberately, watching their surroundings carefully and making at least some effort to be stealthy. Perhaps they were attempting to circumvent the fortress for some reason? But…Amelia couldn’t fathom why they would want to do that, unless they were going on a suicide mission to take out a village or something.

No, that seemed completely unreasonable. By all accounts, the coalition seemed to be acting under the impression that any soldiers they would lose would come back to fight against them, and attempting any sustained operation within enemy territory was incredibly risky. There was just no reward for trying to sneak past the fortress that was worth the risk.

On the fortress’s side of things, an interpreter was busy trying to get as much information as she could from the owl, eventually coming to the conclusion that there were about forty people, headed roughly in the direction of the fortress. It was…close to accurate, but Amelia wasn’t going to correct their mistake; they needed to learn for themselves, and Amelia wouldn’t always be there to bail them out.

There were just under five hundred sapient defenders in the fortress, and the commander chose to rally eighty of them to deal with the platoon, along with another eighty of the fort’s three hundred or so monsters. She gave instructions for those with nature magic, excellent night vision, or good mobility to be prioritized for the strike force, and while the strike force was assembled, she had several more owls sent out to scan the area and make sure that the platoon wasn’t just a diversion for some larger force.

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As far as Amelia could tell, there were no other enemies in the area, but she was glad they were being cautious; the better they did in this battle, the more likely it was that Amelia could stay home for an extended period of time, instead of fighting on the front lines. She’d almost certainly have to come back when they decided to go on the offensive, but the Glens had to bring its army to bear before that, so it would be a month or two.

It took around ten minutes for the strike force to be assembled, and Amelia figured it would be another forty-five minutes to an hour before the two forces met. Though the distance between them was relatively small, only three or four miles, both parties were moving slowly and stealthily, slowing their paces considerably.

After an agonizingly long time, the two groups were within half a mile, hidden from each other by the hills and forest. The leader of the strike force motioned for the group to stop, then split it into two groups, those who could proceed quickly while remaining stealthy going into one group and moving to circle around the platoon, while the rest kept heading directly for the platoon.

The slower group was to engage immediately, trusting that the faster would be in position in time. Unfortunately, this wasn’t quite the case; by the time the slower group reach the platoon, the faster group had successfully circled around the platoon, but was still five or six hundred feet to their rear, and wouldn’t be a minute or so late.

The leader of the strike force gave the signal for the slower group to engage, and fifty women escorted by seventy monsters charged towards the platoon, causing a cry of alarm to be raised and the platoon to snap to awareness. The strike force’s mages cast a series of spells, clearing the undergrowth from in front of the charging swarm members while attempting to entangle the platoon. The platoon’s mage, however, turned out to be surprisingly competent, and was able to negate the spells that aimed to tangle them up.

The monsters reached the platoon first, and the sound of battle filled the air. Claws met shields, swords chopped into hide, and teeth bit down upon flesh, the screams of the platoon and the yelps of the monsters mingling in the air. The sapient part of the swarm hung back briefly, allowing the monsters to soak damage and whittle down the enemy, then resumed their charge once monsters began to die.

“Surrender!” The strike force’s leader ordered. “You’re outnumbered and outmatched. We wish to end this engagement with as little blood spilled as possible, and we cannot guarantee your safety if you continue this pointless struggle!”

“I’d rather die!” Someone from the platoon shouted back. “If I have to choose death or becoming one of you and turning against my family and friends, then the choice is obvious!”

“You will not be required to fight anyone if you so wish.” The strike force’s leader replied calmly. “You may retire from military service and live a peaceful life doing whatever you wish.”

As the first wave of sapient people reached the platoon, the tide of battle began to shift. The platoon had held up well against the monsters, but the addition of people made their task much harder. The strike force worked together, using monsters to take the brunt of the damage, while people darted in to create opportunities or capitalize on them by applying modeling wax.

It wasn’t a perfect strategy, the monsters were dying rapidly and many members of the strike force got wounded during their attempts to get in, but one by one soldiers were swallowed by cocoons, and the platoon began to falter.

“Retreat!” The same voice from before commanded. “We can live to fight another day!”

It was then that the faster group pounced. As soldiers began to march backwards, sticking close together and covering their allies as best they could, the faster group’s soldiers darted up behind them and launched a surprise attack, cocooning several before their presence was noticed by the main body of the platoon. As they moved, they had their monsters begin to spread out, encircling the platoon as it made its last desperate attempt to escape.

Then there was an earsplitting crack, and the ground shook, a gash opening up below several people from both groups of the strike force. And, as the ground began to seal itself back up, Amelia decided her intervention was necessary; she stood, magical circles manifesting in the air around her as she began to cast spells of her own.

The ground stopped shaking and closing in on itself, then a wall of earth pushed those who had fallen into the crack back upwards. Alarmed, the platoon’s mage began to cast another spell, and Amelia quickly whipped up a spell that would trigger the moment he finished his casting, countering the spell immediately.

Her arms waved rhythmically, spell after spell flying from her as she altered the trajectory of weapons, strengthened the spells of her allies, countered yet more spells from the enemy, and made the battlefield her own. She felt like the conductor of a symphony, directing each and every aspect of the battle, only pausing briefly once she ran out of Mana and had to convert all of her Stamina.

Fortunately, by that point the battle was nearly over. Had they had one more mage with them, or had they been able to hold on for a minute or two more, they maybe could have made something happen, but Amelia doubted it. Over twenty members of the platoon were cocooned, another three were dead, and the rest were thoroughly demoralized. For their efforts, they had only managed to kill forty monsters and wounded two people, Amelia’s intervention having neatly prevented the worst of the damage to the force.

Were she not there, the platoon might have fared better, but Amelia was there, and she wanted to ensure that this skirmish went as well as possible. She had seen where this was going, a somewhat drawn-out battle as both sides’ numbers dwindled, before the swarm’s numerical advantage destroyed any hope the platoon had of escaping, and there was no reason to let that happen if she had the power to change things.

The platoon crumbled as their numbers dwindled, and eventually there were only five left. Three of them surrendered, but the other two, the mage and a woman dressed in an officer’s uniform, nodded at each other, pulling out daggers and thrusting them at their own hearts. Amelia was impressed at the strength of their conviction, but less impressed with their actual strength. It only took a couple of relatively weak spells to freeze them in place, preventing their suicides until someone walked over and cocooned them.

As the last of the platoon fell, Amelia breathed a sigh of relief. First contact had been made, and the swarm had come out significantly better for it. It wasn’t as decisive as she would have liked, not without how much she had to intervene, but that was fine; this platoon’s disappearance would put fear and uncertainty in the hearts of her enemies, and that in and of itself was well worth the trip.