Telltale Tongue was trying to stay on his feet in the midst of the seething mass of warriors. She had already endured enough emotions for one night and she didn't need more. She focused her attention on keeping an eye on Izak Grottle.
The Beastmaster's personal guard of rat-orcs represented his best hope of protection in the coming conflict. Tell-Tongue seriously doubted anyone would dare attack the huge creatures.
So far, he gave the impression that the assault was going well. The Ratfolk forces had met little resistance in this area, and he could smell the burning smell and the distinctive scent of oil and gasoline from the flamethrowers. From the glow he saw to the south, he realized that some of the Clan Marchin flamethrowers were using their weapons against the buildings. He narrowed his eyes and could make out jets of flame shooting out of the dwellings. Fire licked and curled around the wooden constructions, and stone began to crack and split under the tremendous heat generated by the awesome and terrifying weapons of war.
Telltale Tongue wasn't so sure this was a good idea. He did not believe that the Black Magician Dhalthar would condone such indiscriminate destruction of his future holdings. Of course, if the message delivered by Tell-Tongue achieved his goal, the Black Magician would not be in a position to voice his objections; he would be dead.
Tell-Tongue wondered if the female named Elysia had managed to escape. A part of him hoped not, since he could still remember the terrifying hand that had gripped his shoulder; he felt pain where his iron fingers dug into her fur along with deep wounds where something like claws had damaged him; she that was not a human female, she was a monster, no, a demon in the form of a humanoid.
There was no sign that Elysia had been taken prisoner, no trace of her body; That doesn't mean anything though, thought Tell-Tongue. In those narrow alleys already crowded with victims of the ratfolks, a corpse could be almost anywhere. The ratfolk army had already begun to split and scatter, and some of the warriors, meeting little resistance, began looting and eating.
In addition, it was said that the demons did not leave a corpse when they were defeated.
Telltale Tongue wasn't sure that was a good idea either. He was sure that things couldn't be that easy. Weren't they going to meet a greater resistance than that? Where were the damned human warriors? His questions got no answer. Around him, all the buildings were burning.
♦ ♦ ♦
Chang was climbing the sheer drop of the cliff that led to the palace where the female human breeder named Emilia was located.
The multi-pronged hook to which the rope was attached was holding steady. The great weight of the rune-encrusted spy gem that had been entrusted to him personally by the Black Magician Dhalthar was safe in the pack on his back.
Chang braced himself, groping with his clawed feet to get a grip on the smooth stone of the cliff face. Things were going well. Minutes later, he would be at his post with the stone placed within the halls of the palace, ready to carry the powerful energy that the Black Magician Dhalthar planned to use. He would have played his role in that day's ratfolk victory, and would have gone a long way toward mitigating his fall from grace for failing to kill the armored warrior and his accompanying female. Hopefully, that painful memory would be something that could be forgotten before the night was over.
Suddenly, he heard the faint but distinctive shrieks of the ratfolk war cry below him, in the distance, and the answering shrieks of his human victims. He rotated on the rope to look back and saw the glow of what could only be flamethrowers shooting into the distance. But had the attack already begun? Those fools should have waited until he was inside the palace and Black Magician Dhalthar's plan had been executed!
He cursed and redoubled the rate of climb. The noise and sight of the fire would draw human sentinels and other onlookers to the battlements above him.
Chang couldn't afford to have the hook on the rope discovered. It would only take one human with a knife to cut the black rope and end his long and honorable career. As he controlled the urge to secrete the musk of fear, the Clan Furtim assassin continued to rise.
♦ ♦ ♦
The strange flame-like light that lit up the sky confirmed Elysia's suspicion that the invasion had indeed begun. She recognized the color of the flames as the same color that had produced the strange weapons that destroyed the Alchemist College.
Glancing back, she saw fire leaping from the roofs of the burned-out apartment buildings. The college was an isolated building separated by walls from its own campus. Instead, the houses in this part of town were packed as tightly together as drunks in a crowded tavern, many of them leaning conspiratorially over the alleyways. Some were linked by high bridges and buttresses in the alleys.
Elysia shuddered in spite of herself. The flames would spread rapidly, and the city would be consumed.
However, at least for the moment, she seemed to have misled her pursuers. There wasn't a single wererat in sight and, better yet, she finally recognized the street she was on and she knew it wasn't far from The Stinky Pig. She stopped and leaned forward with her hands on her knees, panting and shaking her head to get the sweat out of her eyes.
Once she got to the tavern, she could come up with a plan with Frey and the others.
Suddenly she, she coming from the mouth of a nearby alleyway, she heard a shrill war cry and, looking up from her, she saw a large group of ratfolks bursting onto the cobbled street. Gathering all of her strength, Elysia ran for her life.
♦ ♦ ♦
The Black Magician Dhalthar led his elite warriors towards his position. His keen intuition told her that just above them was the palace, as she could sense its presence.
He stepped on the corpse of a sewer guard and allowed himself to experience delight. So far, the assassins from the Furtim Clan had accomplished their mission. All the humans inside the sewers who might have alerted others to the invaders' presence were dead. At that time, the group of ninjas would be stationed at the base of the cliff on which the palace was based. With luck, Chang would be at the agreed site by now.
Dhalthar took the spy gem from within his robes and began the incantations that would connect to the twin stone carried by the head of the Clan Furtim forces. The time had come for a mighty feat of sorcery that would guarantee the ratfolks a quick and inevitable victory. To carry it out, Dhalthar knew that he would need enormous amounts of power, and therein lay the danger.
In order to acquire enough magical energy to power the spells he had to cast, Dhalthar had to consume an enormous amount of manastone, and that was at risk for him.
Not the smooth, refined powder he snorted from time to time, no, but the pure product, the very essence of magic concentrated and purified by the ratfolk alchemists. It was a substance capable of providing the user with astounding power, but the use of which carried equally astounding dangers.
Many great spellcasters had crossed the line of insanity because of the corrosive powers that substance had on sanity. Others, the effects of the substance had turned them into stupid brainless beings. Taken in large enough doses, it could turn those without enough willpower into an amorphous thing.
But what was that to him, greatest of ratfolk spellcasters?
Dhalthar was an experienced manastone user, capable of consuming massive amounts of it without ill effects. What happened to all those others couldn't happen to him. Definitely not…
For a moment, a brief doubt that troubled him flashed in Dhalthar's mind. What if the manastone wasn't quite right? What if it was not pure and was contaminated with other substances?
Things like that had already happened.
What if Dhalthar wasn't as strong as he thought? It was always possible to make a mistake with the dosage, though the Black Magician hesitated for only a second before regaining his natural confidence in his own powerful abilities.
He was not one to cringe at the risk that manastone posed. In fact, as he admitted to himself, he actually liked her. He reminded himself of this as he reached into his pack and placed the first luminous chunk of manastone on his tongue. It stung as he chewed it, and then memories of a remote youth came back to him and he recalled his initiation into the use of manastone.
"Nope." Dhalthar thought. "No have nothing what temor." With that thought, he began to prepare himself to be ready when the right time came to cast the spell that would guarantee the victory of his army.