Siege State

Tom weaved through the battered orc ranks. All around him, orcs lay dead and dying, shards of glass sticking from their wounds. Some few had been bisected cleanly by shards bigger than a man. Others lay sweating blood from near invisible wounds caused by a storm of miniscule fragments.

The Hunters fighting to reach the centre were unharmed. Glass had opened the way for them. With her aerial view of the battle, as she fought the Lord, she must have appraised the situation, and with her final act, she had given them another chance. The sheer level of control she displayed to slaughter so many orcs, from so far, with such precision, was breathtaking. This was truly the power of a Flawless Idealist.

As one, they charged towards the Smith, and their trapped comrades. Tom couldn’t understand why they were just standing there. Whatever skill the Smith used must have been terribly powerful. Several Idealist orcs had begun to bind some of the stunned Hunters, but had stopped when the cataclysmic ending of the Lord and his dragon had captured everyone’s attention briefly. Now, they prepared themselves to fight, as they were charged by more Hunters.

Tom and Sesame were at the forefront. Tom had but a single thought on his mind: he needed to kill the Smith. He saw Rosa, and Val, and his mother, all just standing around as if they’d just woken up from a deep sleep, gazing blearily at their surroundings, unconcerned.

Tom reached the centre, and a pair of Idealist orcs stepped out to meet them. One rippled like a stone dropped in water, its form becoming distorted. Tom gave it no time to execute whatever nefarious skill it was building up. He flooded his spear with Silence mana, stutter-stepped to one side to throw it off, and then thrust his spear straight through its face. The ripples stopped abruptly. Tom didn’t wait to watch it slump to the ground.

The Idealist orc on the other side had begun growing in size as soon as Glass had rained death upon the army. It towered over them, almost eight feet tall. It raised its fists to smash them into the earth.

Sesame punched straight into it. The bear hit the creature just below centre mass, right in its legs, and the orc was slammed backward into the dirt. On the way down, Sesame’s jaws savaged the orc, ripping chunks from its midriff, even as his claws raked its thighs. Enchantments on Sesame’s barding flashed, repulsing the orc as it tried frantically to beat at the furious animal bearing it to the ground.

Tom ran onwards, and reached his stunned comrades. These Idealists were nothing to him! He had faced harder fights every single day against his father. He was better. He would not let them stop him. He wove among the other Hunters, trying to find the Smith. Sesame came on a second behind.

Suddenly, his head snapped to the side. There! Sere had picked up the Smith, moving through the Hunters not far off, giving orders to some of his Idealists to be relayed elsewhere. Tom changed directions, making directly for him. He had to stop this. He would stop this.

He caught sight of the Smith through his own eyes, and the Smith noticed him at the same time. He was a terrifying specimen of an orc, larger even than the orc with the growth powers that Sesame had just destroyed.

He loomed over his brethren and the Hunters alike, its head shaved on the sides and its long black hair worked into a queue. It was bare chested, hugely muscled, wearing only a pair of simple pants. It carried no weapon, but its underlings quailed from its imperious gaze all the same.

Fury burned through Tom. This was the creature who had killed so many of his friends. The orc responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. The one who had, by virtue of his existence, caused Tom to be captured and dragged and hunted through the Deep.

And now he had done something to his closest allies, his family, his lover. He would not allow it. He alone had the power to end this. He sent Sesame to guard Rosa and Val, immobilised next to each other. He would take care of the Smith himself.

He charged at the chieftain, who stood watching him, curious. Tom’s spear flickered, twirling, thrusting, becoming a blur. The Great Smith made only the most empiric movements, and yet still dodged every strike Tom threw against it. It was effortless. Then he struck back.

One of his huge hands snapped out, clamping around Tom’s spear and dragged him off balance. Then he backhanded Tom into the dirt. There was a shooting pain in his neck, and his body felt strange and sluggish. Tom struggled to rise, disoriented. His limbs wouldn’t work properly.

He began to feel a disgusting, sickening feeling, like some awful, revolting creature had climbed inside him. A great force began to exert itself on him, not a physical one, though, or even mental. Tom intuitively understood what it meant. He was being Forged. The Great Smith was Forging him.

Tom snarled, fighting it. He was sure he could throw it off, sure that he could win this tug of war. His soul was stronger than the Smith’s. He would prove it.

Tom struggled against the Smith’s pull with all his might. He slowed the drag on his soul to a crawl, but he could not stop it. He gritted his teeth, throwing all his strength behind it. He just needed to try harder. He-

He caught sight of Val out of the corner of his eye. She stood still, seemingly unbothered by the situation, but her eyes told a different story. They were terrified, desperate. And not for herself, either. For him. She was trying to tell him something.

The expression on her face, the emotion in her eyes, cut through Tom’s thoughts like a knife through cloth. Understanding jolted through him like sunlight flooding a room after curtains were thrown back.

This wasn’t him! What was he thinking?! Trying to fight the Smith alone, leaving his friends helpless. Entering a tug of war for his soul?! Madness!

The Smith was manipulating him, somehow, he realised. Playing with his emotions, perhaps. And now that he had recognised the true enemy, he could fight it.

Tom flooded his body with Silence mana, and the pull on his soul stopped like a horse coming unhitched from a cart. The Smith grunted, its bored expression piquing with interest. Tom tried to gather himself after the assault on his soul.

Curious, the Smith said, its voice deep and resonant. Tom’s wisp translated for him. You are the first to defy my powers. What Ideal is that?

Tom gave a wordless snarl of fury at the beast, but he could not find his feet. His body wouldn’t respond to commands properly. The Smith had broken his neck with that backhand. Just how strong was he?

He retrieved his axe from his storage, determined to put up a fight, but his arms would not obey him. His spear had been taken and discarded by the Smith. His soul felt like it had been through a mangler, forced to adopt a shape too small for it as the Smith tried to pull on it. His body felt no better. There were not enough nearby orcs for his aura to heal him as quickly as it had before.

No matter, said the Smith, seeing that he wouldn’t answer. We are almost done here. The pride of this city is like a bonfire. You humans are fat with it. If I had known how gross you were with it already, I would not have wasted so long stoking it instead of attacking.

The Smith looked at Tom, unhurried, unworried. There are plenty more human cities to come. Plenty more to bleed with my Pride. I will not make the same mistake twice. The Smith gave an absent gesture to a pair of nearby Idealists, giving them permission to attack. The hulking pair advanced on him immediately.

Tom’s mind swum, even as his soul settled. The Smith had Pride? And he was using it to manipulate them? He had been using it this entire time?

The Council, the Church, the Lord and his followers, had all made ignorant, stupid decisions, one after the other. They had refused to see reason, had let their own pride blind them. For that matter, the Hunters had easily been baited into making several mistakes. It had cost Scriber his life. It had almost cost Tom, and everyone else, theirs, just now.

It was masterful, insidious in the extreme. All this time, the Smith had been stoking their emotions, feeding them, manipulating them. And yet the blame was not solely the Smith’s; he merely fattened what was already there. Were the Council, the Lord, were he himself, not so prideful, the Smith’s work would have been far more difficult.

Even so, the range and power of his skills was unlike anything Tom had ever heard of. It sounded like some sort of control skill, but the range must be so extreme as to defy belief. And yet, the orcs had been defying everything they knew about them, over and over, since they had returned.

Tom refused to be baited or bullied or manipulated any longer. His friends' lives hung in the balance. He had a job to do.

He cast Hush on the Great Smith. Every Hunter he had stunned with his skill suddenly jerked into motion again. Tom’s arms would still not respond to his movements properly, so he summoned his miracle mouse into his mouth and bit it as hard as he could. He felt a tooth crack against the wood, but it repaired itself an instant later, along with the rest of his body, when the enchantment broke and flooded his body with Healing mana.

Tom surged to his feet. One of the Idealist orcs was already thrusting at him with a two-handed sword. He leant aside, and the blade rushed past him. He struck out with the axe in return, the blade crackling with arcs of pink Suffering mana. It bit deep into the orc’s side, pink lightning digging into the wound.

It gave a shriek of pain and disengaged, its partner circling around it to attack Tom instead. This orc carried a crude club, little more than a young tree with its branches shorn off. It swung at him in a great arc, perhaps trying to force him back.

Tom flattened himself, pushing up with his offhand, tipping the club away from him, then snaked forwards, slamming his axe into the orc’s knee. Its own momentum, no longer able to be supported properly, dragged it off balance and it stumbled, the club smashing harmlessly into the turf. Tom slapped the blade of his axe into the side of its head with a wet crunch.

With one Idealist dead, and the other retreating, Tom took stock of the battle as it renewed around him. Hunters, freed from whichever insidious skill the Smith used on them, reengaged his honour guard with zeal.

Rosa was fighting two Idealists, keeping them at bay with lances of fire, trying to buy herself space to use her bow. Even as she did, she helped other Hunters about herself, blinding orcs with smoke or preventing them from being overwhelmed with walls of fire. Sesame was at her back, ensuring she was not overwhelmed herself.

Tom could not see his mother, but he trusted she was okay. He found the Smith, looming over the battle, engaging Val and Errol by itself. Tom moved to join them.

As he approached, the Smith raised a dismissive hand at Val, and a shield flared into being, preventing her from striking at him. Green, acidic Hate mana fizzed and sputtered as it struck the red barrier.

The Smith reached out with his other hand to Errol, making a grabbing gesture and then clenching its massive fist. Errol screamed with pain and collapsed, dropping his ritual club. It disappeared as he lost control of its summoning.

Tom was stunned. How powerful was this creature? It shrugged off his Silence debuff almost immediately, and could use skills with ranges of thousands of miles. It was far too dangerous to be left alive, but could they even destroy it? The hundred odd Hunters they had brought as an assault force suddenly seemed pitifully few.

Tom cast Agony on the Smith as he closed. It showed no pain, but its eyes did flicker towards him, taking in the combatant rejoining the fight. Val circled it, trying to get around the shield it was maintaining.

Tom caught her eye, and wordless understanding passed between them. They had spent almost a year, fighting together, killing monsters, learning to work as a team. They were seamless. This was their fight. Together, they would bring him down.