Chapter 64: Chapter 55 – A Return in Grief

"Having a popular and charismatic military leader has its advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, soldiers would have their morale boosted while their beloved leader fought alongside them. On the other hand, should said leader fall in battle, morale would either plummet, or control over the soldiers would be lost as they tried to avenge their leader." - Marzban Hasdrubal Saleem, Military commander of the Assadun Emirate's Gupta district.

It was three days after the battle that scouts from Ciarran's detachment reached the hill. Ciarran's destination was the furthest, which was why he had ordered his children to head for each other's aid should they finish their fight early, instead of going to his aid.

 

As for his own detachment, they similarly found the elves while they rested in a ransacked village, and like Faerghus, set up an ambush for the elves. There were only around a thousand elves where they went, and no warchief to boot, and Ciarran's troops won a relatively easy victory, with less than a hundred casualties on his own side, to the near annihilation of the raiders.

 

At the same time, they received reports from the south that reinforcements from Ptolodecca had arrived, with Aoife and Mimia amongst them. The main reason Aoife had visited Ptolodecca was to aid in Mimia's training, as they discovered that she could still control an existing undead, or even wrench away control of an undead from a necromancer with her new affinity.

 

She could not raise her own undead, however, and Aoife went over to see how Mimia's new skills would react with her pets. To everyone's surprise, Mimia seemed to be able to communicate with the four undead constructs, and it was from her that the Bone Lord confirmed his long standing theory that Aoife had somehow infused her animal friends' souls into the undead they became when she raised them.

 

The souls had by now, gained a measure of intelligence and sentience, still animalistic in nature, yet also more at the same time. All four of Aoife's pets got close with Mimia quickly, and she was practicing communicating with them while they toured the country when the elven raiders struck.

 

Unlike Vitalica, Ptolodecca had a far sturdier defensive force around every village. Two villages were ransacked in total, while the losses the raider had taken in the process allowed the next villages in line to repel them handily.

 

The third group of raiders had the misfortune to raid a village Aoife and Mimia happened to be visiting, and other than Aoife's pets which she always had with her… Mimia was given a dozen bone beasts by the bone lord to bring around with her.

 

Such fierce resistance broke the raiders that attacked the village on the spot, as they were backed by the undead skeleton soldiers that regularly kept the village safe. The raider incursion on Ptolodecca thus ended unceremoniously with minimal losses, and after Aoife sent a winged messenger to apprise the Bone Lord of the situation, she and Mimia, together with the local necromancer in charge of the village, marched to Vitalica to help her husband and children.

 

They actually entered the country behind the elven raiders, and followed their trail with haste until they ran across a group of several hundred raiders who were fleeing for their lives - remnants of the group that Diarmuid and Aideen defeated -, to whom they showed no mercy.

 

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At Dersonc, they met members of Diarmuid's Death Guards, who pointed them to the north, and they followed the route, this time just Aoife and Mimia on their faster mounts, while the necromancer who travelled with them went back to his village.

 

It was by a stroke of fate that Aoife and Ciarran arrived at the hill where their eldest son laid down his life in defense of his country on the same day, from different directions.

 

Neither had blamed Diarmuid or Aideen, they all knew the risks they took when they went into battle, and the elderly couple just grieved silently in the tent where their eldest son's body laid, as they hugged each other to find solace in their grief, as parents that had outlived their children.

 

Thirteen years ago, they were faced with the same situation, with Aideen. Now… some parts of their hearts hoped that the same miracle might occur again, yet they also resolved themselves for the more likely case that it would not.

 

Mimia had not known what to do. She was well aware that she would have little success trying to get the grieving family to cheer up, and with the losses Vitalica had taken in the raids, even the militia were in a somber, grieving mood.

 

No less than seven villages and small towns had been ransacked in their entirety, and the death toll, likely reached over ten thousand, including the soldiers lost in battle to repel the raiders.

 

Thus, when the combined troops had gathered, and scouts had confirmed that what few raiders remained had fled beyond the country's borders, they returned towards La Fiachna, not in triumph or glory, but in somber grief, for all the lives needlessly lost in the past couple of weeks.

 

Most of the bodies were buried on the hill, where they fought their last battle, while Faerghus' body was brought back to La Fiachna for burial, with Aideen keeping it in pristine shape using her magic along the trip.

 

Aideen lost count on how often she cried over her brother's body during the weeklong trip back home, yet did her duty as best she could. When her father asked if she was all right, she insisted - perhaps a bit brusquely - that she was fine.

 

It was only when her mother came and talked kindly to her, sharing the grief she too felt over Faerghus' passing, that she broke down in tears and allowed her emotions to overwhelm her. That night she cried like a child on her mother's lap, until her tears ran dry and she fell into a dreamless slumber.

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