1st bonus chapter: 100 powerstones
2nd bonus chapter: 150 powerstones
3rd bonus chapter: 200 powerstones
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With the fiery angels here now, they overwhelmed the old subterranean giants. For a moment, the giants looked like they would have won as they rampaged across the plain like walking disasters, tearing apart siege engines, trampling soldiers, and smashing through the ruined outskirts of Mantarys. It would have been a very costly affair to take them all down.
Now with the angels, the odds were in their favor. One by one the burning figures cut down the mad giants. The giants fought with terrible strength. The angels answered with divine fire. Across the shattered battlefield enormous shapes struggled and killed each other.
Giants roared, swinging limbs large enough to topple towers, while the angels moved through the battlefield like living comets. Their flames burned with a purity no mortal fire could match.
One by one though the subterranean monsters fell. Some burned where they stood, their massive forms collapsing into pillars of glowing ash. Others shattered beneath blasts of divine fire that cracked their stone-like skin apart. A few fought longer than the rest, staggering forward through the flames in blind fury before finally collapsing beneath the relentless heat.
The battle did not last long. For creatures that had endured centuries of torment beneath the dragonlords, the giants were incredibly resilient. But even their monstrous endurance could not stand against the power that had answered Jon's command.
Soon their roars began to fade. Though the mad giants were able to take down some of their foes in their last moments as they were a real contender for them. The last of them fell not far from the broken walls of Mantarys, its massive body collapsing into the dust after a final blaze of celestial fire consumed it from within.
When it was over the battlefield was silent. Where the giants had stood there remained only scorched earth and drifting ash.
Above the plain the angels hovered for a moment longer, their burning forms suspended in the sky like fragments of the sun itself. Then slowly, one by one, they began to rise.
The great tear in the heavens that had brought them widened once more, welcoming the divine host back into the realm beyond mortal sight. Their work was finished. The giants were gone. And the war returned to the hands of men.
Draxor Paenymion wasted no time. From atop his massive wyvern he raised his sword toward the shattered city. "Forward!"
The command carried across the field through horns and shouted orders. The Volantene host answered immediately, thousands of soldiers surging toward the broken walls like a tide finally released. The siege that had lasted months was ending. Mantarys was wide open for them.
The army advanced through the great breaches torn in the walls by the rampaging giants. Where once the city's defenses had loomed like an unbreakable barrier, there were now only jagged gaps filled with rubble and broken stone. Disciplined formations marched through the breaches, shields raised and banners flying above them.
The city of monsters had no time to recover. The chaos unleashed by the giants had shattered much of Mantarys' remaining organization. Sections of the wall had collapsed completely, and entire districts had been reduced to tangled piles of debris.
Fighting still broke out as the Volantene army entered the city. But it was no longer the desperate struggle of a siege. It was the slow, brutal process of conquest.
The defenders resisted where they could. Mantarys soldiers gathered in scattered groups, attempting to hold intersections or barricaded streets. Some districts fought longer than others, their defenders retreating deeper into the city as the invaders pressed forward.
But Mantarys had already been broken long before the walls fell. Months of siege had starved the city. Riots and uprisings had weakened its people. And the release of the giants had destroyed what little control remained.
Now the Volantene host poured through its streets in overwhelming numbers. The city could not stop them. Street by street the invaders advanced. District by district the defenders were pushed back or scattered. The fighting became fragmented as the army spread through the massive city. Some soldiers clashed with the remaining defenders while others secured gates, towers, and key crossroads.
Elsewhere the inevitable began. Mantarys was being pillaged. After months of hardship the mercenary companies and irregular troops wasted no time seizing whatever wealth they could find. Storehouses were broken open, vaults emptied, and abandoned homes stripped of anything valuable.
Even worse deeds were also happening, common folks and slaves were being cut down. Young women were getting dragged out of their homes to be the playthings of soldiers exhausted from long sieges.
Fires spread through several districts as the chaos of conquest took hold. Even the disciplined Volantene legions could not prevent it entirely. Officers shouted orders and attempted to keep their formations intact, but the sheer size of the city made control difficult. Mantarys was enormous. It was a city-state after all with hundreds of thousands of people living in it. Taking it would take time.
By nightfall the Volantene army had secured the outer districts and much of the wall line. Camps were established within the city itself as commanders organized the next stage of the campaign. The conquest would continue in stages. Block by block. Street by street. Until every corner of Mantarys was under their control.
Jon stood among the Red Priests near the edge of the battlefield, watching the city burn. The fire in his chest had dimmed, though it had not disappeared entirely. Even now he could still feel its faint warmth lingering deep within him. Still he felt utterly drained from commanding those beings to come down.
He alone would have obviously not been able to let them through into the mortal world, that was why even at the great risk it came at the other priests needed to help and pool their magic with him.
Summoning Angels were just as dangerous as summoning Demons, those creatures that came from other worlds that were totally alien to their own. Angels on the other hand were also alien to this place but they served the gods and goddess worshiped here.
Each Divine being had his or her own host made up of creatures from their Domain.
Above the city the sky had returned to normal. The tear in the heavens had closed. The angels were gone. Only the smoke of war remained.
Around him the other priests were slowly recovering or were totally lost. Some still trembled from what they had seen, their minds struggling to process the glimpse they had been granted of their god's realm. Others simply stared at the city in silence.
Moqorro stood beside Jon, his dark eyes fixed upon Mantarys. "You have done what few mortals ever could," the Black Flame said quietly. "Truly you are the Red Son."
Jon did not answer at first. His gaze remained fixed on the burning skyline of the city. The towers of Mantarys still stood in many places, though they were broken and scarred from months of bombardment and the violence of the giants' escape. Smoke curled through the streets like a living thing as the Volantene army spread deeper into the city.
The war had reached its final stage. Mantarys had been worn down over months until it was finally broken wide open. Now it was being taken piece by piece.
Jon finally spoke. "It's over." He was tired of war, so very tired of it.
Moqorro shook his head slowly. "No," the priest said. "This is only the end of the siege." He gestured toward the vast city before them, where fighting still flickered through distant streets. "Now comes the conquest."
Patting him on the shoulder, the old man begin heading towards the city, "Rest for now. My work is not done yet. I have a fellow Great Mage to do battle with."
Jon watched as banners bearing the mark of Volantis rose above the shattered walls. The City of Monsters had endured the Doom. It had survived centuries of isolation. It had resisted months of siege. But at last it had fallen. And the world would remember that day. The day Mantarys burned.
-
Months later, Jon still remembered the smell of smoke. He stood on a balcony overlooking one of Mantarys' great avenues, the stone rail worn smooth by generations of hands that no longer lived to touch it.
The banners of Volantis hung everywhere. Jon leaned against the railing and watched the movement below. Months had passed since the walls were breached. Months since the giants had torn themselves free from the stone. Months since the angels of flame had descended upon the battlefield like falling stars. Yet the memory of that day still clung to him like heat trapped beneath the skin.
After the walls were broken, the fighting had continued for weeks. The city was simply too vast to be taken in a single assault. Mantarys had grown over centuries into a sprawling mass of districts, towers, laboratories, markets, estates, and slave quarters. Every section had its own defenders. Every street had its own barricades.
What followed was not a single battle but many smaller struggles scattered across the city. The defenders fought where they could, gathering in desperate formations in certain districts. Some places held out longer than others.
Yet the outcome was never in doubt. Volantis had come with an army large enough to swallow the city whole. Once the walls were broken, the end was only a matter of time.
The sack that followed was terrible. Soldiers who had endured months of siege took their reward. Treasure vaults were emptied. Storehouses were stripped. Noble manors were ransacked.
The rulers of Mantarys did not survive the city's fall. The Father of Monsters, the infamous master of the Flesh Alchemists, had made his final stand in the heart of the city. Jon had not witnessed the duel itself, but its aftermath had been spoken of endlessly in the months that followed.
The great square of Mantarys had been shattered by the battle between his master and the flesh alchemist. The Father had unleashed his final transformation, turning himself into a giant monstrosity of flesh and bone, a living embodiment of the grotesque experiments that had defined Mantarys for centuries.
For a moment it had seemed as though the monster might tear apart half the city before it could be stopped.
Then Moqorro called his fire. Black flames rose to meet the terrible thing the alchemist became. His burned differently than regular or even the divine fire that had slain the giants. Darker. Hungrier.
The two monsters fought for hours until finally the flames slayed the beast. The flesh alchemist collapsed in the center of the square, its body reduced to a charred ruin of bone and melted grafts.
The Father of Monsters died there. The city's greatest architect of flesh ended in fire.
The Mother of Monsters did not share his fate. She fled. Draxor Paenymion himself had pursued her.
Jon had watched the Wyvern Lord take to the sky that day, his old wyvern roaring as it carried him over the burning city.
The chase had carried them eastward toward the Sea of Sighs.
Few who saw the pursuit could say exactly what happened after that. Some claimed the blood witch attempted to summon the sea itself against him. Others believed she tried to escape through some dark sorcery of blood and shadow.
What was known for certain was simple. She disappeared. The Sea of Sighs swallowed many things, their fates things left better then to be discussed.
The Wyvern Lord returned alone. No one went searching for her. That sea had a reputation. Even conquerors knew when to leave certain waters undisturbed.
The consequences of that fall did not remain confined to Mantarys. News traveled quickly across Essos. Even before the city was fully secured, rumors had begun spreading along trade routes and through merchant caravans.
Mantarys had fallen. For centuries the city had existed as one of the last remnants of the old Valyrian colonies underneath the Painted Mountains. It had endured the Doom. It had survived isolation. It had become something strange and terrible in the years that followed. Many believed it could never truly be conquered. Now it had.
The First Daughter of Valyria had reached beyond its borders and taken one of the ancient cities. The reverberations of that victory spread across the continent like ripples through water. Merchants whispered about it in the markets of Qohor and Norvos.
Envoys carried the news to the courts of the Free Cities. Even distant policy took notice. Some saw opportunity. Others saw danger. Merchants spoke of new trade routes opening through the region. Scholars whispered about the ancient knowledge taken from Mantarys' laboratories.
Rulers of other cities quietly began calculating what the victory might mean for them. If Volantis could reach this far… What might it attempt next?
Several months had passed since Mantarys fell. The city of monsters still bore the scars of its conquest, but the worst chaos of the sack had long since burned itself out. The fires had been extinguished. Streets had been cleared. The rubble of collapsed towers had been pushed aside to reopen the great avenues.
Yet Mantarys did not look whole. It looked… wounded like a beast hunted down and now put on display. Dark towers still rose above the skyline, but many bore jagged cracks where trebuchet stones had shattered their upper levels. The once-organic walls of the city of grotesque biomantic fortifications grown by the Flesh Alchemists had been hacked apart and rebuilt in places with crude but solid masonry. Where living tissue had once fused with stone, Volantene engineers had torn it away.
The city's defenses were now becoming something simpler. Something that obeyed the laws of architecture rather than the nightmares of fleshcraft. But Mantarys would never truly lose its strange appearance. Too much of its nature had been shaped by centuries of grotesque experimentation.
Even now strange ridges of hardened cartilage still protruded from certain buildings. Old towers carried organic growths that had become so deeply integrated into the structure that removing them would collapse the walls themselves. The conquerors had decided it was easier simply to leave them. Better some strange towers than a collapsed one.
Volantene soldiers were everywhere. Legion banners flew from the battlements. Patrols marched through the wide market roads. Cavalry detachments rode through the gates at all hours escorting caravans and supply wagons that had begun flowing toward the city once word of its conquest spread across the east.
Mantarys had become a military city. A conquered prize. Yet the slow transformation back to normalcy had begun. Markets were reopening. Trade caravans had started appearing along the nearby towns and villages. The farmers arrived cautiously to trade their goods, testing whether the city would remain stable under its new rulers.
The answer, slowly, was becoming yes. Draxor Paenymion had ensured that. The Wyvern Lord had been named Governor-General of Mantarys. The rite had come from Volantis as soon as the city was conquered, putting it under his thumb.
Few questioned the decision. He had commanded the siege. He had broken the city. And perhaps more importantly, he possessed the temperament required to rule such a volatile place.
Draxor ruled Mantarys like a war camp. Military law remained in place across most districts. Legion patrols enforced curfews. Riots were crushed quickly. Banditry was punished brutally.
Yet the Wyvern Lord was not foolish. He understood that a city could not live forever under occupation. Slowly, methodically, he began restoring order. Some local officials who had survived the conquest were reinstated under supervision. Guilds that cooperated were granted protection. Nobles families that held estates in the countryside were given back their lands once they swore allegiance to him and Volantis.
Taxes were lowered temporarily to encourage trade. It was a harsh peace. But it was peace.
The Volantene Triarch who had led the expedition did not remain long enough to see the transformation. The Tiger Triarch's position had been extended for nearly two years because of the war, but now that Mantarys had fallen the political winds of Volantis were shifting again.
Victory brought prestige. Prestige brought opportunity. The Triarch departed Mantarys in triumph weeks earlier, returning to the First Daughter with a great caravan laden with treasure and captives.
Word of the conquest had already spread through the Free Cities. Volantis was celebrating. Victory feasts were being held across the city everyday.
The Tiger Party roared with pride. Many believed the Triarch or another from his faction would win the next election easily. After all, who could deny the man who had brought Mantarys to heel?
But Mantarys itself was only part of the war. Far from the city another battlefield had raged with equal ferocity. The narrow passage of the Black Cliffs had become a killing ground. It was there that the other half of the Volantene army had held the line. And the cost had been terrible.
The Maiden of the Old Blood and the Red Matron had commanded that force. Two sisters separated at birth. Two women bound by faith and blood. And together they had stood against the armies of Tolos and Elyria.
Those battles had been far bloodier than the siege itself. Tolos and Elyria had known that Mantarys' survival depended on breaking through the pass. If they could reach the city before it fell, the siege might have been lifted.
So they fought all over the pass. Each assault came with greater desperation. Tolos sent its feared Shadowblade assassins into the Volantene camps at night. Silent killers who moved like ghosts among the tents seeking to slit the throats of the commanders.
Many died that way. Others were caught and burned alive as examples. Even the Shadow Lord took part as he called forth terrible things which resided in the shadows.
Elyria fought differently. Their warriors and sea-born women trained in sea magic and naval warfare. They summoned waves and mist from the nearby coastlines with the Sea Witch herself leading their rituals, attempting to drown Volantene camps or collapse the cliffs themselves with tidal force.
But the sisters held. Day after day. Month after month. The pass became a charnel ground of blood and death. The two fire witches even brought down their own dark fiery rituals as they summoned sinister flames. It was a terrible sight which was engraved in many soldiers sight as men were immolated from the inside by their hundreds. Their smoking corpses filling the air.
The narrow terrain prevented either side from deploying their full strength, turning the conflict into a brutal grinding struggle where every yard of ground was bought with blood. Bodies piled along the cliffs. Fires burned constantly. Neither side could break the other.
By the end of the campaign more than twenty thousand soldiers lay dead. Ten thousand from each side. The killing had been relentless. And in the end it had been meaningless. Because before the final assault could be launched…Mantarys fell.
The news arrived like thunder. Messengers rode through the Black Cliffs bearing news of victory for Volantis and doom for the two cities. Mantarys had been conquered. The siege was over. The city had fallen.
The armies of Tolos and Elyria suddenly faced a brutal truth. They were now fighting for a city that no longer existed. Morale collapsed. Within days the allied armies began withdrawing.
Volantene forces harassed them constantly during their retreat, capturing stragglers and destroying supply wagons. Many never made it home. The campaign had ended. Volantis had won.
Weeks later the battered army returned to Mantarys. The soldiers marched through the gates to a city already changing under new rule. There were few celebrations. Too many of the survivors had left friends and brothers buried beneath the Black Cliffs.
Funeral pyres burned outside the city for days. The dead were honored. Prayers were spoken. And then the war moved on. Because the campaign was not finished.
The sisters did not remain long in Mantarys. Their army had rested only briefly before receiving new orders. The war would continue. Tolos would fall first. The shadow city hidden beneath the black cliffs would be brought to its knees before the Volantene host turned its attention toward Elyria.
Half the army departed with them. With more soldiers drawn in from the newly sworn in nobles households, whatever sellswords could be drawn up, and the fresh new levies in the countryside of Mantarys.
Which left Mantarys in a dangerous situation. Only twelve thousand soldiers remained to control a city of nearly a quarter million people. It was not enough. Not truly. But it would have to be.