It looks like we were unable to hit the goals this week. I reduced them for us!
1st bonus chapter: 100 powerstones
2nd bonus chapter: 150 powerstones
3rd bonus chapter: 200 powerstones
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The Volantene host did not rush the walls in reckless fury. It arrived as a machine unfolding into position.
The Demon Road terminated in a wide, open plain scarred by old works and new fortifications. Mantarys had cleared its outer approaches long ago; no dense woods or high ridges offered cover within bowshot of the walls. The land was flat and hard, broken only by shallow trenches and irregular earthworks that had been carved in anticipation of siege.
The Tiger Triarch, Malaquo Maegyr, rode at the front atop a massive elephant clad in layered bronze plates. His armor gleamed in the harsh sun made of blackened steel chased with flame motifs and striped accents of his faction. His helm was crested in tiger-orange plume, his cloak falling behind him like a predator's pelt.
He did not hide behind ranks. He wanted to be seen. He raised his sword toward the walls of Mantarys, toward the statues of twisted forms and ribbed towers that loomed above them.
"Behold," he declared, voice carried through bronze horns, "Our new conquest for Volantis. Let us bring this wayward city back in line, into its proper place beneath us heirs of Valyria!" The Tiger Party lived for moments like this. For spectacle. For conquest. For legacy.
Then the siege engines came forward. The Volantene engineers had marched with purpose, and now their work began in earnest. Timber wagons rolled into position under heavy guard. Frames were assembled with disciplined speed. Ropes stretched and wound tight around capstans. Iron fittings were hammered into place.
Trebuchets rose like skeletal giants, their arms lowered and waiting. Heavy scorpions were dragged into alignment, bolt tips gleaming. Shielded rams were assembled beneath layered coverings of soaked hide to resist flame or alchemical retaliation.
Siege towers were constructed in segments, fitted with reinforced plating and narrow viewing slits. Elephants were harnessed for hauling, their bulk turned from intimidation into logistics. The Legion established outer lines first, fortified trenches dug in semicircles facing the city. Stakes driven into earth. Defensive berms raised. Mantarys would not sally without meeting a prepared wall of steel.
The mercenaries spread along the outer flanks, screening the wider plain. Cavalry detachments rode outward in patrol arcs, ensuring no surprise relief force could approach unnoticed. The Red Faith established its own forward sanctum with braziers planted into the earth, flame rising steady and defiant before the monstrous walls.
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Meanwhile behind their gathering lines and across the city was the Sea of Sighs that took Jon breath away. It lay to Mantarys' southern flank like a wound that had never closed. The waters were the color of blood red.
No fleet anchored near it with not even a single Mantarys fishing boat. No one in their right mind even thought about sailing these seas. The Sea of Sighs had not always been so eerie and terrifying.
It changed when the Doom came. Some said the shockwave that shattered Valyria had rippled beneath the ocean floor, fracturing volcanic seams and stirring up minerals and ancient deposits from below. Others claimed that sorcery, once poured into the very foundations of the Freehold's infrastructure, had bled outward when containment failed.
Whatever the cause, the waters of the Sea of Sighs were no longer natural.
In daylight, the surface seemed sluggish. Waves did not crest cleanly. They rolled in uneven pulses, as though the sea breathed out of rhythm. Foam gathered in thick, reddish streaks along the rocks. At night, faint lights could sometimes be seen beneath the surface.
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What lived within it had adapted to a changed world. The Doom had not merely altered stone and sky. It had twisted life. There were stories whispered of bloated shapes drifting beneath the surface, their hides mottled and translucent, veins glowing faintly red like coals banked beneath ash.
Some creatures that once swam in those waters had grown larger. Slower. Their bodies swollen with strange growths and bony ridges that had not existed before. Others had become thin and eel-like, their movements sinuous and deliberate, slipping between reefs where the water shimmered faintly at night.
Thankfully those things did not attack them and everyone avoided the sea like the plague. Getting to their jobs and keeping out of their mind this eerie sea.
As everyone settled in for the long siege and the bombardments started up, the true command of the campaign which did not rest with the Triarch as he was only the figurehead. The puppet for the hidden pillars of the city.
That night, those leaders met beneath layered canvas and guarded by Old Blood household guards and Red Guards alike, the real architects of the war gathered.
The command tent stood at the heart of the encampment, marked not by ostentation but by presence. Jon was summoned there alongside other adepts of the Red Faith and several adepts as well representing or leading some of the Old Blood families.
Inside, the air was thick with oil lamps and quiet intensity. At the center stood four figures. Draxor Paenymion — the Wyvern Lord. Kynvarra Aerteris — the Maiden of the Old Blood. Moqorro — the Black Flame. Kinvara Aerteris — the Red Matron. Between them, the campaign would truly be decided.
The masters' presence made the tent feel smaller. Four pillars of power. The Wyvern Lord with aerial supremacy and shock assault.
The Maiden with sinister flames and deadly archers. The Black Flame with destructive force and strategic foresight. The Red Matron with great authority and logistical insight.
Jon stood among lesser adepts and felt the weight of history pressing down. Mantarys was not simply a city. It was a survivor of Valyrian experimentation. If it fell to them, the balance of the eastern hinterlands would shift permanently.
Volantis would be able to control everything from the Orange Coast to the Painted Mountains. A big chunk of the old Freehold lands. It's motto of being the heir of Valyria would become all that more true.
Draxor stood first. Tall, armored in dark plates etched with faint crimson sigils, his expression sharp and predatory. Outside the tent, the faint hiss of his chained wyvern could be heard shifting in the night.
"We do not fight Mantarys alone," he began without flourish. "Tolos and Elyria raise their armies."
A map lay unfurled across the central table with inked terrain, ridges, and passes marked carefully. "Mantarys fields fifteen thousand," Draxor continued. "Tolos can muster twelve. Elyria nine."
Thirty-six thousand combined. These three former colonies did not have that great of a population to draw up like Volantis or with vast swathes of lands under their control. Nor did they have the deep pockets to call upon plenty of sellswords or ancient legacies of the First Daughter.
So they could only barely gather a force near to it at best combined.
"Yet they do not move," Kinvara added quietly.
Jon listened carefully. The Red Matron's voice was calm, but there was steel beneath it. "They wait," she said. "They wish Mantarys to suffer."
Draxor pointed to the map, "There have been no sights of Tolos stepping out of their Black Cliffs yet not has Elyria forces even left their island."
Kynvarra nodded once. "Mantarys has grown powerful. Its fleshcraft advances. Its war-beasts multiply. Worse a new power has settled in this city now, the Blood Witch who none knows where she comes from. Tolos and Elyria fear its rise. Together they can overpower Mantarys' strength a bit. Alone though they barely rival it now. They will not rush to its defense unless forced to at the very end."
Draxor tapped his blade. "They want Mantarys bloodied before committing."
Moqorro's eyes flickered in the firelight. "And if Mantarys falls?" he asked.
"The fools barely think that far," Kynvarra replied evenly. There was no outrage in her voice. Only recognition. The former colonies were not united by loyalty. They were united by fear and calculation.
"Well their mistake is to our benefit," the wyvern lord grins savagely. "If we can take down this city promptly, it would be very simple to clean up the rest."
"Besieging the city itself will take a very long time, who knows when its defenses will crack open or when it will starve out," Kynvarra remarked.
Jon knew the process of taking down a very well fortified city was a near impossibility. He could attest to that since he held his ground against a more powerful, numerous, and persistent foe than himself in his previous life.
"Yes, and we do not want to get caught in between all three colonies forces when the others finally decide to sally forth. It will just end in our route as we get crushed between the city's wall and the other attacking from our flank," Moqorro added.
They discussed for a while going back and forth on different ideas, looking at the map it was clear to Jon what was the best plan. Even though it was counteractive it would be better if they split their forces in two.
Someone seemed to share his thoughts as Draxor straightened. "We divide." The tent stilled.
"Twenty-five thousand will maintain the siege," he continued. "The Legion core. The Red Faith red guards and militia. The siege engineers. They should remained to keep bombarding the city and prevent them from breaking out."
He gestured to a narrow chokepoint marked on the map leading towards the Black Cliff. "The rest, the Tiger Cloaks. The mercenaries. The Old Blood men-at-arms we should go here!"
He pointed at a mark at the intercept between all three territories which was a narrow coastal pass, the only viable overland route for Tolos or Elyria to approach Mantarys without a massive detour.
"We should build a small fort here and await the other two armies' forces to come up this path."
"It is a good location," Kinvara remarked. "It sits in front of the black cliffs mouth where Tolos' army have to come out of and across the shores where Elyria must land its forces from its main island."
Jon nodded his head, this was the best path. Rather than letting the three cities' forces unite it was better to divide and conquer them.
Even though Mantarys was the more powerful target, it was the one accessible unlike the other two which were either on an island impossible to land ashore on and the other hidden in cliffs which no one could navigate through.
It was better to let them come to them where they had the high ground, their armies were not as powerful and not built for land battles preferring instead the shadows and sea. Mantarys were the one best on land so it was better to trap them behind their walls.
This was their best plan instead of just waiting for more forces to come to make their odds much worse. Whichever battle they won, they can join the other and quickly finish this war.
"So we do not allow Mantarys to be saved," Kynvarra said sweetly with her young-looking face. "And we do not allow its rivals to dictate terms."
Moqorro's voice lowered. "If Tolos and Elyria move together, they will be outnumber in the field."
Draxor's gaze did not waver. "Yes, and we will have plenty of time to attack Mantarys since they will not move together quickly. Their distrust runs deep."
"And if they do?" one of the Old Blood adepts asked.
Kynvarra answered. "Then we break one before the other arrives."
-
The army split in the middle of the night beneath a sky the color of purple. It was not done with fanfare but in secret to not alert the city occupants that half the army left.
Twenty-five thousand men peeled away from the main encampment in disciplined columns, banners shifting direction, elephants turning under shouted commands. The plain trembled as half the host wheeled north-east toward the Black Cliffs, the narrow stone corridor through which any relief force from Tolos or Elyria would have to pass.
Kynvarra Aerteris and Kinvara Aerteris rode with that departing force. The Maiden of the Old Blood and the Red Matron of the Faith. One flame of lineage. One flame of god. They would hold the pass. They would bleed Tolos and Elyria before those armies ever glimpsed Mantarys' walls.
The remaining half tightened around the city like a closing fist. Mantarys did not attempt open battle. Its fifteen thousand soldiers stayed behind the walls, visible in disciplined rotations along battlements of warped stone. The Flesh Terrors stood shoulder to shoulder, bone-reinforced frames unmoving even beneath trebuchet impacts.
The first months were not dramatic. They were methodical. The Volantenes expanded their lines in widening rings. Trenches deepened. Earthen ramparts were reinforced with timber and stone scavenged from abandoned estates nearby. Supply depots were relocated further inland to avoid sudden sorties. Scorpions were repositioned daily to prevent Mantaryan artillery from zeroing in on fixed locations.
Draxor established a rotating bombardment schedule; never constant, never predictable. Stones fell at odd hours. Alchemical jars were launched at dusk. Heavy bolts struck gates before dawn with him sometimes even taking to the air to rain down flames upon the battlements. The goal was not to breach yet. It was erosion. Pressure. Sleep deprivation. Morale degradation.
Mantarys answered with its own patience. Occasional volleys. Precise counter-fire. Sudden sally from time to time with the Flesh Terrors surging through the gate under cover of smoke, striking at outer trenches before retreating in tight formation.
Jon witnessed that first sally from behind Legion lines. He saw a Mantaryan soldier take three spear thrusts and continue fighting until pinned down by sheer numbers. They were not myths. They were real. And they were terrifying.
Jon meanwhile hunkered in the encampment facing the city to continue his city of fire magic. His master Moqorro did not attack that much, preferring to hold his flames until the time called for him.
Jon already picked up much on the road to the city they were besieging now but right now they had plenty of time so Jon took full advantage of it.
Training became routine. At dawn, meditation before open flame. Midday was practice from controlled exertion, different workings of the flame, to drawing in and out heat. Weeks passed like that as Jon was shone some of the more highly guarded and secretive techniques to apply flames.
This was why more than anything he sought out a order. There was only so far he could go to learn on his own. Magic had many different applications which each took many years to uncover and master. Now all that groundwork had been done, and he could enjoy the fruits of others labor.
He learned how to leap across great distances as the Black Flame made him surrender to the fires. Jon was made to stand before twin braziers, identical in shape and fuel. He was told to see them as the same flame, separated only by ignorance.
The first attempts left him coughing in smoke, reappearing half-formed in sparks and stumbling back into his original position. His eyebrows burned away once. Moqorro did not intervene. Eventually Jon learned to dissolve into the blaze. For a breathless instant there was nothing but roaring gold, and then he stepped from the second brazier, boots smoking. It was short distances only for now, lines of sight only. But a real start.
At nights he learned the more darker arts. Moqorro drew a circle in powdered charcoal and salt. Jon was instructed to feed it anger, conviction, fear, belief.
The first manifestations were mindless things: flickering shapes with grasping arms, collapsing into embers within seconds. But as his control sharpened, the flames began to take clearer form such as hounds of cinder, winged silhouettes, humanoid figures made of heat distortion and burning eyes.
These were actual demons, things from beyond the veil of this world which he was summoning. This was a very dangerous art that also ended poorly for most souls that participated in this. But as Moqorro put it, he must learn everything to become a master.
Then Jon had to make use of his upbringing as a child, the lessons under Maester Luwin came up as he started learning more intricate details of fire magic.
Combustion was mathematics; pressure, air, fuel ratios, ignition thresholds. He learned to cause flame not by spark but by friction of the atmosphere itself. A sudden vacuum collapse. A flashpoint triggered inside a sealed jar without touching it.
Thermal manipulation followed: drawing heat from one object into another. Frost forming across a shield while a nearby blade glowed orange. Making the air shimmer so violently that archers misjudged distance.
He practiced raising localized heat around his own body, creating a wavering distortion field with arrows veered slightly off course when passing through it. Subtle applications for now but good battlefield applications.
Then it was alchemy, which he was really no good at. Volantene chemists provided volatile compounds. Jon learned to accelerate reactions, to trigger mixtures mid-flight, to detonate with precision rather than spectacle.
Instead of a single large blast, he practiced chained bursts with smaller detonations rippling outward like thunderclaps. Siege engineers began consulting him quietly, incorporating his timing into their bombardments. Moqorro approved of this more than open displays.
-
While Mantarys endured bombardment, the true strategic tension lay beyond sight.
Reports filtered back from the Black Cliffs. Tolos had begun mobilization. Twelve thousand shadow-trained infantry, skirmishers, and their famed cavalry moved out.
Elyria had raised nine thousand which were lighter troops, swift and disciplined, accustomed to misted terrain and coastal maneuver.
But neither moved immediately. They watched. They waited. In the meantime, the army that split off reached the location where battle was most likely to commence and started work on their small fortification waiting for the pitched battle.
Palisades were raised across the narrow approach. Legions blocked defensive chokepoints. Mercenary cavalry patrolled the outer flanks constantly. The pass would become a slaughter ground if forced.
-
Summer heat settled across the plain. The Sea of Sighs breathed behind them.
Food was becoming hard to come. The countryside had already been stripped during the initial advance. Supply caravans from Volantis moved in guarded convoys along the Demon Road, but distance strained them. Thus Draxor implemented strict rationing.
Though the city worst of all was feeling it. Smoke from within the city thinned gradually. Nighttime torchlight decreased. Prisoners taken in minor skirmishes revealed food stores were being managed tightly.
The flesh alchemists were helping out by making strange fatty substances that filled a man for the day but with a population in the hundreds of thousands there was never enough to go around.
Moqorro increased magical pressure. Nightly flame rituals cast arcs of light over the walls, testing wards and weaknesses. Red Apostles maintained sustained fire bombardment on specific tower sections trying to shatter or just weaken structural integrity over time.
Mantarys responded with strange countermeasures. At times, fleshy growth-like reinforcements appeared along damaged battlements, as though something had been grafted into stone itself.
Jon saw it clearly through spyglass the ribs of hardened material protruding from cracks, reinforcing what trebuchets had fractured. Biomancy applied to architecture. It unsettled even the Old Blood observers.
They were not idle during these past few months, besides bombardments the Volantis engineers were hard at work with their mining operations, attempting to tunnel beneath the city walls. There was a hive of activities going on in the sparse bare trees outcropping where many holes were dug.
Also the red priests and old bloods were constantly scrying the city's walls for any opening. Some were even sending messages to the defenders promising great rewards and the safety of their lives if they opened the gates. They were attempts to map the city, get an understanding of the main powers that would bend.
Also occasionally they would actually attack the walls and all hands were required on deck during then in which Jon had to also join. Siege towers advanced under cover of heavy scorpion fire. Rams rolled forward beneath soaked hides. The Legion moved in disciplined blocks behind tower shadows.
Sometimes, it nearly seemed to work. Then the Blood Witch revealed herself. She did not stand upon the walls often, but when she did, the defenders' morale shifted palpably.
When bombardments struck and stone shattered, she walked the parapets with her cadre of blood mages. They were strange folks clearly not from this city, sorcerers who came from wherever she came from.
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They would heal all wounds and send them back to their work. She would also invigorate them with new blood, making them tireless machines that could stand for days. Curses rippled through to the attackers. There would be sudden dizziness, nosebleeds, wounds reopening, and much more slowing them down.
When miners dug too close beneath the city or they got too near, the Witch answered with brackish, blood-tinted water from the Sea of Sights.
Mantarys answered instantly with its own countermeasures. Alchemical fire cascaded from the walls in controlled arcs. Flesh Terrors positioned themselves in gatehouses. Archers rained down countless bolts.
Then the chimera emerged. The gate opened just wide enough. A dozen massive shapes lunged forward with their multiple heads of different animals, hard hide skin, horned skull, multiple eyes glinting beneath sunlight.
In answer Draxor's wyverns launched from rear lines, chains released. For the first time, sky met monstrosity. The beasts tore at each other while the men kept on scaling the walls while the defenders pushed them back.
If the Blood Witch turned the city into a circulatory system, the Flesh Alchemists turned it into a mutating organism. They did not remain hidden in laboratories with the city now under attack. They were deployed.
They kept the wall relatively intact, grafting tissue into shattered masonry, sealing breaches with rapidly hardened biomatter, reinforcing gates with layered organic composites tougher than cured hide and more flexible than iron.
They modified defenders as needed. Soldiers were given right on the battlefield hardened dermal layers before major assaults. Others were given heightened pain tolerance through alchemical infusions. They altered many over and over again for short bursts of strength or endurance, then cycled back before their enhancements burned them out.
When siege towers advanced, they deployed adhesive bio-resins to clog wheels and stiffen joints. In defensive emergencies, they could deploy rapid-growth barriers that expanded along inner corridors to slow breaches.
Against wyverns, they adapted chimera strains; thicker hides, altered wing membranes, improved coordination between multiple heads. Wounded soldiers who returned from their chambers often bore visible reinforcement. They returned not diminished, but changed.
Working in concert with the Blood Witch, they amplified one another's efforts. Where she sustained life, they reshaped it. Where she flooded tunnels, they seeded them. Where she thickened blood, they altered bodies to use it better.
Thus the siege dragged on. Volantis pressed with engineering, fire, discipline, and relentless pressure. Mantarys answered with blood, flesh, and adaptation. Each clash wore the city down incrementally, yet it refused to break.
The only worry that Jon had was that the Father of Monsters had not revealed himself yet. It made him wonder what on earth they were up to.