1st bonus chapter: 100 powerstones
2nd bonus chapter: 150 powerstones
3rd bonus chapter: 200 powerstones
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At last, movement. Scouts reported Tolos had begun marching with Elyria marching parallel, though not fully integrated. Their combined forces approached the Black Cliffs in a staggered advance, cautious and probing.
Kynvarra and Kinvara did not wait for them to fully consolidate. They struck first. The pass became chaos of confined combat with shield walls locking tight while flame-shapers carved corridors of controlled fire through narrow approaches.
Tolos infantry attempted flanking maneuvers through side ravines. Elyrian archers rained disciplined volleys from elevated ridges. But the choke point worked.
The numbers could not deploy effectively. The battle lasted three days. In the end, neither side achieved a decisive breakthrough. Tolos and Elyria where left with no choice but to withdraw not defeated yet but for now held back.
The fighting from here on out would become much more bloodier.
…
Over the long months of siege, Mantarys situation got worse and worse. The city tried to endure as it always had grim, defiant, convinced of its own monstrous resilience. Mantarys had survived the Doom itself. It had endured centuries of isolation and hardship. A siege by Volantis, even a massive one, seemed merely another trial. But tenacity had limits.
It had endured bombardment, hunger, sabotage, mining, sallies and uprisings. Its towers were scarred. Its gates were reinforced with grafted bone and fused cartilage. Its battlements thickened not merely with stone, but with layered biomantic growths that clung to cracks like scar tissue. It's people on constant edge. The city was looking less and less like a fortress with every passing week and more like a living organism desperately sealing its own wounds.
Within the city, food stores thinned. The population had been culled quietly converted into nutrient slurry for the war machine. The slaves kept on rebelling, given promises of freedom by the red faith. And even being in bondage under Volantis was better then the grisly fate that awaited them in the flesh alchemists labs.
There were soldiers constantly deserting, with the common folk tired of all these months of hunger and captivity. The nobles in the city wanted to give in to the besieging army since no aid was in sight. Something needed to be done or else this city would cave in.
The Father of Monsters knew it. Thus he made the difficult choice to come down here. He was a tall, gaunt man wrapped in layered robes stitched from hides whose origins were best left unexamined.
He descended into the lower sanctums through corridors that no ordinary citizen of Mantarys would ever see. His skin bore fine, surgical seams that were precise and deliberate. His fingers were long and steady, stained faintly from years of alchemical practice.
Beside him walked the Mother of Monsters. Where he was skeletal restraint, she was coiled intensity. Crimson-black silks wrapped her form with a veil over her face that only left her eyes showing which glowed a blood red color in low light.
"Where are we going?" the Blood witch asked. Above them the city trembled from bombardments which flew past the city's wall.
"To meet the city's true master," the man simply answered in his deep, gravelly voice. The descent led beneath laboratories. Beneath holding pits. Beneath breeding chambers where chimera and other monstrosities were cultivated in silence. Deeper than the vaults where the Flesh Alchemists practiced their craft.
They were heading into a place much older than the city. Something that was here before this place was even founded by the ancient dragonlords of the freehold. The air changed first.
The stone walls around them were no longer clean black basalt. They bore subtle curves. Slight irregularities. The texture was wrong for simple rock. It was porous in places, smooth in others, faintly warm to the touch.
They walked through a passage whose ceiling curved downward like the inside of a ribcage. At the end of it, an immense chamber opened. And there it waited.
The chamber was vast and organic-like. The walls were layered in overlapping folds of dark tissue fused with ancient stone. Great pillars rose like spinal columns from floor to ceiling, each faintly pulsing with slow, rhythmic motion.
A great skull, large enough to fit a castle on its own. It had no clear face. It was man shaped if you can call it that. Its surface bore ridges, nodules, partially formed shapes embedded within its bulk. At irregular intervals, faint tremors passed across it, as though something beneath its outer layer shifted in uneasy sleep.
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The skull seemed to be part of the rock outcroppings deep down here as if it was the very foundation of the city. The bloody waters from the sea of sights flowed into the chamber, pooling along shallow basins that reflected the dim light. The Father and Mother approached and the giant skull stirred.
This was the God of Flesh and Transformation which was predominantly worshiped by the residents of the city. Only a few knew that it was a long dead thing which persisted in spite from beyond the grave.
When it spoke, it did not use sound. The chamber vibrated. The pillars quivered. The sensation entered their skulls like pressure behind the eyes. "What brings you here, child!"
The Father bowed his head to the old being, "Great One. We require aid. Enemies are at the gate! The city can not stand long."
The surface of the skull pulsed. "The city shall endure. The occupants might come and go but in the end nothing ever changes."
"These are the ones that call themselves the heir of the Dragonlords," the flesh alchemist whispered.
The chamber grew colder. "Dragonlords you said," in a very calm tone. Then all hell broke loose as the very city seemed to tremble like it was struck by something deeper than siege engines. "They hunted my children."
The pillars quaked. Red water sloshed violently against the floor."They tore them from earth. They caged them. They broke them. They annihilated them."
"Yes, and now their daughter comes," the father of monsters said. Feeding the thing's madness and rage. "They wished to break this city you have guarded since the doom."
The face shifted again, more violently now. A ripple passed across its surface, revealing for a moment shapes embedded within of curved bones. A partial skull that had a deep claw mark fused into the dark tissue before vanishing again.
"If it is aid that you seek then you shall find it from my children."
The Mother's voice was very low and careful as she asked, "What do you mean, Great One?"
"They put my children in your walls. They hung them as trophies on the city's walls. Your walls are not stone. They are graveyards."
Images entered their minds, ones that were not gentle visions at all. Dragonlords laughing as massive shapes were dragged through the streets of Mantarys centuries ago. Creatures with elongated forms, armored hides, too many eyes. Subterranean giants deep from the earth who used to call the Painted Mountains their home.
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The dragonlords had hunted them for sport in the hills, beneath the earth, and everywhere else they could find them as they came to conquer these lands. They were butchered, dissected, experimented upon for their insolence in daring to war against the masters of the world.
Some though had much worse fates. They did not get killed. They were embedded.
The images shifted. Mantarys' walls being raised made not only from stone, but layered with bound flesh and bone. Giants encased alive within the structure. Fused through ritual and sorcery to serve as living bulwarks. Their consciousness suppressed. Their bodies immobilized. But not dead. Never dead.
There was a long silence that followed at that revelation. The Father's breath came slower and he broke the silence. "How many?"
"Enough," the city's god answered.
The Mother's voice sharpened. "And if we awaken them?"
"They will rise. They will tear. They will hunger. They will remember."
The chamber trembled as a pulse of raw emotion radiated outward. "And they will hate."
The Father understood the risk immediately. "They will not distinguish friend from foe."
The head shifted in acknowledgement. "Just because I made peace with your old city lords and people does not mean you share blood with the Dragonlords."
The Father closed his eyes. "We were broken like all others everywhere under the dragon's might."
Silence. "The decision is yours to make. You asked for aid. This is the answer."
…
The master mages left the chamber behind and the great skull. Above them, the siege continued. Trebuchets groaned. Wyverns circled. Legionaries tightened trenches.
Mantarys was thinning. The Flesh Terrors were fewer each week. The chimera were being cut down before they could produce more. The Father and Mother climbed from the depths in silence.
In the corridors above, the walls seemed different now. More textured. More layered. More alive.
"Who was that?"
"Don't your mages on your isle keep records of it?" the flesh alchemist asked without turning to look at her.
"We are cut off from the outside of the world. We make do with what we can," she shook her head.
"That," he said quietly, "was once a Giant King."
She froze.
"One of the rulers of the old races who made war against the dragonlords. For that it paid dearly for it."
"So will you go with its insane plan?"
Looking up at the city which was near the breaking point, he answered. "The city is already doomed. None are coming to our aid. So if we are going down…" He turned toward the walls. "Let's take down our foes with us."
-
Mantarys had endured the siege for many months now but it was on its last legs. Everyone could see it and feel it in the air. Soon it would be fighting in the streets as the city is sacked.
The towers still stood, though shattered and scarred by constant bombardment. Their black stone faces were chipped and cracked from the endless rain of trebuchet stones. Entire terraces had collapsed into the streets below. Whole districts had been abandoned as damage spread faster than the city's strange biomantic repairs could seal it.
Where once markets bustled and chimera handlers drove their beasts through narrow lanes, there were now silent streets choked with rubble. Fires burned unchecked in collapsed districts where no one remained to extinguish them. Smoke hung over the city like a funeral veil.
The walls still loomed but they no longer looked like walls. They looked diseased. Layer upon layer of strange organic reinforcement had grown across their battered surfaces. Pale bone lattices filled breaches where stone had crumbled. Veins of dark tissue threaded through the masonry like roots through soil. The Flesh Alchemists had tried to keep them alive and they succeeded for this long but the result was monstrous.
Inside the walls, desperation spread. Food was gone. Riots broke out in food lines. Slave uprisings spread through the city. Barracks burned in the night. Work gangs sabotaged gates and water systems. Even the soldiers faltered.
Everyone knew time was almost up and so did the city rulers who made their desperate gambit. Across the inner city, Flesh Alchemists began gathering in hidden chambers. Few among them knew the full truth of what they were about to do but the Father of Monsters did.
He stood before a massive section of inner wall near the western district where bombardment had been heaviest. He placed his hand against it. Warm. Alive. Behind the stone something vast shifted slowly.
The Mother of Monsters stood beside him. "Are you certain?" she asked quietly.
"No," he answered. Then he began speaking the words the city's god taught him to awaken them.
The Father spoke in old tongue. The language of the giants. Harsh, guttural syllables rolled from his throat like distant thunder. The sounds were deep and grinding, like mountains shifting beneath the earth. Like trees groaning as they fell in storms. Like waves smashing against jagged stone.
The wall trembled. At first the gathered alchemists thought it was another trebuchet impact. But the vibration deepened. Stone shifted. Dust rained from the battlements. Across Mantarys the walls began to move.
On the outer siege lines, Volantene soldiers froze. At first they believed the defenders were attempting some new construction. Then the wall bulged outward. Swelling. A deep sound rolled through the air. Something breathing.
The first rupture came near the western gate. A section of the wall split open like a wound. Stone plates peeled away. Bone reinforcement snapped outward. And from within emerged a hand. It was enormous. Each finger longer than a man.
The skin was gray and thick like weathered cliff stone. Jagged shards of ancient masonry clung to its surface where the creature had been fused into the wall itself. The hand gripped the battlements. Pulled. And the wall tore open.
The giant rose. Slowly. Terribly. Dust and fragments rained down. It was massive. Its face was monstrous with multiple eyes blinked open across its brow with jagged teeth protruded unevenly from a massive jaw.
And its body bore the marks of cruelty everywhere. Metal growths embedded into bone. Strange rune-branded scars. Organic modifications grown into its muscles. The dragonlords had not merely captured the giants. They had remade them. Turned them into living weapons.
The giant inhaled deeply. The first breath in centuries. Then it roared. The sound carrying across the battlefield.
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And it was not alone. Across Mantarys the walls began to split. Ancient seams ruptured. Sections of battlement collapsed outward as more massive shapes tore free. Some giants were fully formed. Others were twisted things half-fused with stone.
One emerged dragging half a tower with it like a broken shell. Another crawled from the foundation beneath the gatehouse, its limbs grotesquely elongated from centuries of unnatural imprisonment.
As soon as they were released, they began rampage inside the city. The giants had no discipline. They were creatures who had endured centuries of torture and captivity. The first giant crushed a tower simply by leaning against it.
Another stumbled through the market district, smashing buildings apart with blind fury. Citizens scattered in terror.
Flesh Terrors rushed forward to contain them. It did not matter. One giant swatted aside an entire squad with a single blow. Bone-reinforced soldiers flew through the air like rag dolls.
Another seized a chimera mid-charge and tore it in half. The city of monsters had unleashed something it could not contain.
Outside the walls the Volantene army watched in disbelief. "Gods…" One legionary whispered.
The battlements of Mantarys were splitting open across their entire length. Gigantic figures climbed free from the living wall. Some stumbled forward onto the plain. Others remained atop the ruined fortifications, roaring at the sky.
Draxor Paenymion stood atop his command platform watching the chaos unfold. His expression darkened. "So that's their answer."
Jon could only watch everything unfold, it was like the walls were eggs cracked wide open pouring out monstrous looking giants.
The giants began charging at them and some started throwing ruined sections of the wall at them. Everything was fair game for them. And the siege turned into something else entirely. A War between city-states had become a war between ancient monsters.
"Priest, if ever your gods answers your prayers then it's time for you to call down a miracle," Draxor Paenymion roared as he mounted his beast. Breaking its chains and letting it fly into the air.
His children that rode their own smaller wyverns also joined him but they were not as insane as their sire as dozens of slave handlers kept to the ground holding the vicious creatures chains, preventing them from running rampant like the giants.
The giants advanced. They moved with terrifying speed for creatures of such enormous size. Their long strides devoured ground between the city and the siege lines. Each step shook the earth.
Mantarys' defenders did not control them. They barely survived them. The giants smashed through anything in their path. Walls. Towers. Citizens. Soldiers. Everything.
Some headed directly for the Volantene siege engines. Trebuchets were crushed beneath their feet. Scorpions shattered as massive fists swept across the battlefield.
The first giant reached the outer trench. Legionaries braced shields. It stepped directly into their formation. And countless soldiers died. Even the war elephants were no more than little pets for them which they crushed.
Jon watched from the rear line. He had never seen anything like it. The giants were not simply large. They were ancient and alien looking. They were nothing like the saggy giants of the North.
Their body was elongated far beyond natural proportions. Segments of ancient armor had been grafted directly into their ribcage. Tubes and metallic implants ran along its spine like parasitic roots. Their skin was ashen and pale, ridged like old stone.
Jon remembered a tidbit of knowledge Wun Wun, a young giant he got to know. The older giants get the bigger and bigger they get. The thing that made these things terrifying was that they never stopped growing.
Wun Wun, who was a child, a few decades old was already the height of four men tall. These things were much much more than that. Their bodies bore scars of impossible battles. Some had chains still embedded within their flesh from whatever captured them. Others had stone fused permanently into their bones where Mantarys had imprisoned them inside its walls. They were living relics. And they were unstoppable.
Jon stared at the battlefield in stunned silence. Mantarys had become a nightmare made real. He turned to his master and simply asked, "What do we do?"
The giants rampaged everywhere. They tore through the city walls like prisoners clawing their way out of a tomb. The Volantene front lines had already begun to buckle with many fleeing for their lives.
The Black Flame's face was grim. "Stand with us," he said. "It is time to call on our Lord."
The Red Priests gathered. Half a dozens of them. Men and women robed in crimson. Red Apostles placed braziers were planted into the earth. Sacred oils poured across the ground.
Moqorro stepped into the center. Jon followed behind at the command of the man. "I have already taught you what you need to do. Now watch and follow."
Then the Black Flame raised his staff and the prayers began. The sky darkened with unrelenting heat. The air above the battlefield began to shimmer violently as he and the red priests called out in unison. "R'hllor… Lord of Light…Heart of Fire…Breaker of Darkness…"
The flames from their braziers rose higher. Higher. Jon felt the fire in his chest stir. Then something answered them. Jon lifted his head and the battlefield vanished.
Above him burned a sky that was not sky at all, but an ocean of fire. Golden flames moved across it like waves. Great rivers of burning light flowed through the heavens, crossing and spiraling in patterns too vast for mortal thought.
His fellow priest stood with him but just at the sight of this all, most went insane.
One priest dropped to his knees immediately, clutching his head as blood began pouring from his nose. Another staggered backward, his eyes wide and unblinking as if he had seen something no human mind could contain.
A third began laughing, not a normal laugh but a terrible, broken sound. "Too much," he whispered. "Too much… too much light…" His voice dissolved into hysterical sobbing.
The sky above them was not meant for mortal eyes. They had glimpsed the true realm of their god. And their minds were breaking beneath it.
Jon however had no adverse effect. Moqorro look to him and said, "Call them."
Jon wondered what he meant, but the old man severed the connection of the other priests and himself, leaving him standing there alone.
Then the host appeared from amongst it. At first Jon mistook them for stars. Thousands of burning points across the heavenly fire. Then the shapes came into view. Massive wheel of fire rotated slowly through the heavens, rings of burning gold spinning around a core of blinding white light. Within the rings burned eyes, dozens of them each glowing like miniature suns.
They opened and looked at him. Jon felt their gaze pierce through flesh and bone and memory. It did not judge him. It simply saw him. Jon felt very small. For a moment doubt crept into his heart. 'Why me?'
The question echoed through his mind like a whisper. But the fire answered. The burning warmth inside his chest grew brighter, spreading through his veins like molten sunlight.
A voice came then. It was no sound but something deeper. It was like standing inside a great furnace and hearing the roar of its flames translated into thought. "Child of Fire," one of the beings spoke.
"What is your command!" Jon's breath caught. The angels moved closer. They circled him like burning constellations not threatening but attentive towards him.
Jon slowly lifted his head and spoke one command, "Descend!"
Back to the here and now, Jon took in a deep breath as the Priest around him either wept or shook. The sky split open. A tear of pure fire ripped across the heavens. And from within it came shapes not gentle or beautiful shapes as told in the scriptures but terrible ones.
Wings of living flame stretched across the sky. Eyes like burning suns opened within twisting halos of light. Their forms shifted constantly, sometimes humanoid, sometimes vast wheels of fire, sometimes towering figures made entirely of burning radiance.
Angels. These were weapons of their Lord. Instruments of divine war.
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The first angel descended. It struck the battlefield like a falling star. A giant turned and roared in challenge. The angel extended a hand and the giant burned. It was no ordinary flame. This was Divine fire.
Its flesh peeled away in glowing sheets as the creature screamed in pain. However the beasts had endured terrible torture under the cruel hands of the dragonlords and even this was not enough to put it down. The two of them started brawling in the midst of them all. The earth tearing and rocks sundering.
More angels came dozens of them. They plunged into the battlefield like blazing meteors. Wyverns circled above them. Giants roared beneath them. Angles descended. The earth trembled. The sky burned.
And Jon realized something. This was no longer a siege. This was a war between gods.