novelxo Into Twilight: Chapter 1
Viceroy Paltai Amberell stood at the helm of his voidship, a victorious smile plastered across his delicate features. Well, he wasn’t a viceroy yet, but he may as well be.
In the inky darkness of space sat a new world, blue and green, a sapphire hanging in the dark ocean of the void. Somehow, despite its strategic location on the border of the Orakh warfront, it had remained undiscovered by any of the civilized races. Teeming with life and ripe for the taking, it sat waiting for the right person to pluck it from the vine.
His seers had identified it as a human world. Their reports told of a massive population of the primitive beings, their numbers almost without end. That population was something the Tellask Empire desperately needed.
The Orakh of this sector had united under a new warlord, Grosk. Or maybe it was Groksk? He could never keep their names straight. It all sounded like meaningless grunting to Paltai.
Regardless of Grosk’s name and origin, the Orakh were unified once more, and that meant they were making a push against the Empire’s borders. Already, five tributary states and two colonies had fallen. Needless to say, the Imperial Court was not pleased.
They would be pleased with Paltai.
According to the seers, there might even be a hundred million humans on the new world, and the Empire needed warriors more than anything. Humans didn’t make the best mages, being too short-lived to actually have any serious accomplishments in magecraft. But, given a little training and proper motivation, they fought adequately.
Obviously, the average human was no match for an elf; they simply didn’t live long enough to learn the finer points of warfare. But enough of them could overwhelm even a superior opponent. Quantity being a quality of its own, of the Tellask Empire’s non-elven inhabitants, humans made the best soldiers by far .
Some of the more conservative forces in the Empire opposed the heavy usage of humans in the Imperial army, but Paltai disagreed with them. Humans were fine so long as you treated them with a firm hand. They were a shifty and untrustworthy bunch, prone to low cunning and churlish outbursts, but if properly directed, they were valuable tools for the Empire.
Of course, Paltai reflected as the blue sphere grew in the viewport, the conservatives did have something of a point. Almost 70% of the common soldiers in the Imperial Army were human. That was an awful lot of any race to keep under arms at the same time, let alone stubborn humans that all too often needed to be reminded of their place.
It was a boon, however, that the humans were a fractious and warlike lot. Although they didn’t enjoy their rightfully inferior position to the elven leadership of the Tellask Empire, they were more likely to vent their displeasure on their fellow humans than an elf.
For some reason, minor shifts in their coloration and language were enough reason for the various tributary states to constantly clamor at each other’s throats. No, the problem with human army units wasn’t desertion or rebellion. It was ensuring that your unit didn’t tear itself apart with infighting.
Paltai strode away from the glass viewport and approached the ship’s seeing stone. The Viceroy’s Pride, as Paltai had renamed it as soon as the seers reported an unclaimed and populated planet, was a bigger voidship. Not quite the size of the great warships of the Imperial and noble fleets, but it was large and well appointed through the considerable effort and expense of his house.
Despite its bulk, the Viceroy’s Pride only boasted one seeing stone from which the ship’s seers could target its spell crystals or view enemy formations from afar. It was a point of pride for Paltai. After all, many lesser vessels didn’t even mount a seeing stone, instead having to choose between fumbling aimlessly through the great dark or relying upon reports from allies who did mount a seeing stone.
To power the solitary seeing stone as well as the voidship’s engines and armament, the Viceroy’s Pride was equipped with three mana forges. Usually, a vessel of its size would only require two, one for its engine and defenses as well as one for its weapons and seers, but after calling in some favors, the ship was gutted and almost entirely retrofitted.
It was Paltai’s pride and joy, boasting a massive spellcannon capable of punching through a lesser voidship’s shields in a single blast and a massive capacitor hooked to the teleportation drive. It could outshoot anything in its weight class and outrun anything else.
As for the seeing stone, it was of such size and power that it required the dedicated mana flow of an entire forge when in use. Personally, Paltai credited the oversized seeing stone with the discovery of the new world.
Already, the seers had focused the stone on the patch of space where the Pride would be teleporting in. Per standard first contact procedure, they paused at the outskirts of the solar system and performed reconnaissance via scrying. Immediately after discovering that the new world boasted no magic use whatsoever, Paltai gave the order to jump.
The Pride housed 300 imperial marines armed with the most affordable enchanted weapons and armor that the Empire could provide. Although disposable in the grand scheme of things, the marines’ enchantments and magic users should be sufficient to cow the locals into submission.
If the marines were insufficient, Paltai had the 25 rangers of his house guard, elite elven warriors sworn to House Amberell. Each of them had trained for at least a hundred fifty years before earning such a prestigious post. They moved with a speed and deadly grace that an unenhanced human simply could not match.
The imperial forces would be heavily outnumbered the minute they touched down on the virgin world, but that was hardly a new thing. The Empire had invaded any number of unawakened worlds, and in all past engagements between a mana-less foe and the Empire, the natives’ numbers were meaningless. It hardly matters if you outnumber your enemy fifty to one if your spell shields simply stop all their attacks.
No, whether the inhabitants knew it or not, this planet was about to become an Imperial colony. The troops would want to collect some trophies, as was their right. Other than that, the goal was to arrive in a suitably intimidating fashion and convince the natives to throw down their arms.
If possible, Paltai wanted to maintain some semblance of the local governments, as ruling a far flung colony was an absolute chore without native assistance. But if he had to put some self-important human king to death to prove he was serious, so be it. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Finally, the seers relayed their report to Paltai. With ceremonial flourish, the coordinates for teleportation were set, and the space mages began the ritual. The lighting in the ship dimmed as magical seals hogged power from the forges, and Paltai took that as his cue to retire to his chambers to prepare himself for the triumphant conquest to come. Nodding to the seers and communication officer who stood on the bridge with him, Paltai returned to his boardroom and opened the chest containing his armor.
Reverently, he placed the armor on his meditation mat. The armor had been passed down in his family for over eleven thousand years. The pauldrons and greaves were made of mythril and etched with tightly-scripted runescripting to increase his strength, agility, and stamina. The breastplate was made of mythril inlaid with mana stones and covered in depictions of his ancestors defeating dragons, demons, and other beings of great power. Perhaps more important than the runescripting itself, the mana stones powered a high-quality spellshield. When activated, the magical field would absorb and repel almost all mundane and magical attacks.
Next, he placed his helmet on the mat next to his breastplate. It was only crafted from silver, a replacement when an unlucky uncle had been beheaded at the battle of Brot’Mattok over one thousand years ago. Even though the silver could not handle the density of runescripting or the same capacity of mana as the mythril original, it was still inlaid with spells that would translate any language, increase his senses, and allow him to slow his perception of time.
Finally, Paltai removed the most important piece of armor from storage, his vambraces. Fitted and created for him personally, they contained his attunement stones and seals. Without them, he was simply a strong and fast soldier. With their assistance, he could bend and create lightning and frost, his two chosen mana affinities.
In all, just the materials had cost five thousand Imperial Drak, enough to equip and pay an entire company of soldiers. Two senior Amberell family enchanters had labored over those materials for almost nine years. It wasn’t the most important piece of relic armor in the Amberell family, but then again, Paltai wasn’t the Amberell’s most important son.
He grinned savagely, examining the equipment lovingly set out before him. With any luck, the events of this day would change that status. Securing a new colony of this size and apparent wealth would do wonders for his social standing.
Paltai began strapping the armor on, carefully double-checking every seal, mana stone fitting, and rune pathway. Halfway through the process, he felt the brief moment of disorientation when the Viceroy’s Pride teleported from deep space to the edge of the planet’s atmosphere. It would still take almost an hour for the force mages to lower the ship on telekinetic pads, but they knew their business, and there was no need for Paltai to interrupt his routine to give them unnecessarily duplicative orders.
Forty minutes later, he gazed into the mirror in his chambers. Clad head to toe in the stately, gleaming silver of his mythril armor, Paltai looked every inch the part of an elven warrior. Nodding at his reflection, he placed the helmet over his brow and stared at himself through the crystal eyepiece. As he activated the runes in his helmet, a slight drain pulled on Paltai’s internal mana supply. Not much for him, but enough that a non-mage would have been troubled. Now, he truly looked like a noble son of Amberell, stepping forth like from the stories of old to conquer the foes of the Empire and bring honor to his family.
The Amberells needed that honor. The Orakh clawed at their holdings from without, while their enemies within the Empire mocked them and belittled their ineffectiveness. They caused as much damage with whispers and poisoned smiles as the barbarians managed through brute force and bloody conquest.
Of course, if the Emperor had sent more troops, the Amberell could have held the line, but the sabotage and libel of their family’s enemies and the need for resources across the Empire’s dozen simultaneous warfronts, no troops had come. Instead, the Amberell house guard and their retainers fought, almost always alone.
Sometimes they held, but others they were forced back, and over the last five hundred years, a worrying trend had surfaced. The Amberells usually won their battles, but they never had the troops needed to reclaim planets from the Orakh. Instead, every loss became a new breeding pit for the infernal monsters. Even now, their house risked losing everything while the vipers of the Imperial Court whispered and belittled them rather than sending assistance.
Paltai took a second to enjoy the time dilation provided by his helmet as he turned to leave his chambers. Perceiving the world as 10% slower didn’t sound like a huge advantage, but in battle it could easily be the difference between life and death. His father had often told Paltai that the time runes had saved his life as many times as the spell shield had. It sounded like an exaggeration, as his Father was wont to do, but that did not mean there wasn’t some truth to the advice.
Of course, he also had the personal runescripting tattooed into his skin. A series of swirling runes slowly inscribed in his skin over a year while he was in a potion-induced coma. The runes performed two major functions. First, they complimented his armor, letting him move faster, react quicker, and swing his sword harder than should have been possible. Second, they contained a handful of prescripted abilities: an ice cold aura that would chill any opponent within sword range, the ability to fire a handful of ice needles at extreme speed, and a field of thunder that would shock anyone with the temerity to strike him.
A fully-armored and runescripted elven warrior was easily the match for any fifty humans. If that warrior were a noble, with heavily-enchanted equipment and powerful personal runes, that number could just as easily become five hundred. These facts led many commanders to consider their human subordinates disposable.
Five minutes later, he stood before his assembled forces. The twenty-five rangers of the house guard were outfitted in similar, if less spectacular, armor. Veterans of innumerable colonial campaigns, they checked their weapons in silence. Behind them stood the three hundred soldiers of the Imperial Marines. Mostly human, but with a smattering of amphibious Mispbar and bestial Lythtal, they milled about nervously. Although the imperial marines were allowed to equip themselves, it was rare that one could afford better armor than that provided by the Empire. Instead, they were clad in standard-issue steel chain armor with silver pauldrons that contained their armor’s fairly straightforward runescripting. Nothing special, but still a good sight better than any of the demi-elves could afford on their own.
Nodding at the assembled soldiers, Paltai felt that a rousing speech was in order. They seemed hesitant, bogged down by pre-mission jitters. Clearly, they needed an oratory kickstart, something to get their blood flowing. Something to rouse their feelings of patriotism and greed in equal measure.
He smiled, sharp teeth peeking out from under his thin lips. The marines avoided his gaze. Most of the lesser races found elven mouths unsettling, claiming that they reminded them of predators. Good.
Paltai Amberell was a predator, and this planet was prey. Weak, injured, prey, unaware of the doom that perched just above it.
“Men and women of the Empire!” he shouted, his voice amplified by the runes in his helmet. “Today we stand ready to render a great service to our Empire and the house of Amberell!”
The rangers nodded, still silent. They’d already heard speeches before battle dozens of times, and they knew their duty. The marines, on the other hand quieted down, fixing their gaze on Paltai. Pride swelled in his chest. His first solo command, and here he was, about to render the greatest contribution to his family’s legacy of anyone in the last half millenia.
“Today we stand before that most sought-after of targets,” he continued, his voice swelling to fill the ship’s hold. “A world both rich, and poorly defended. There are millions of humans living on this planet. Soon you will have your pick of that wealth, of their most supple men and women. Soon we will have another loyal colony for the Empire, and soldiers from that colony will fight beside you as we protect the Empire from the Orakh hordes.”
Fire kindled in their eyes as his words reached them.
“House Amberell will finally have the soldiers needed to clear the captured colonies and reclaim them in the name of the Emperor,” he was almost shouting, his right fist raised above his head as he exhorted the soldiers. “We will not have to wait to avenge those who have died on the front. No, soon we will lead the charge ourselves. We will push back the Orakh and fight them in their home systems, far from our friends and families. Today, we take our first step towards making our loved ones safe. Today, we take our first step towards victory!”
The rangers led the marines in a cheer. Paltai suspected that one of the sergeants had ordered the “spontaneous” action, but he didn’t really care. Excitement lit their faces and their grips on their weapons shifted. They were no longer worried about what was about to happen, their anxieties and baseless concern about the coming battle forgotten.
They were conquerors, potent beyond the ability of some poor, mana-less natives to resist, and they had the confidence to match.
The Viceroy’s Pride jolted as it settled into the soft ground of the planet. Paltai idly wondered if he could get away with naming it after himself.
No, it was probably for the best if he was properly filial about the whole matter. He would name it after his father. At least that way, he could shut the demanding man up. A second later, a chime filled the bay and the door to the voidship fell downward, forming a ramp for the troops to exit over.
As was his right, Paltai stepped out from the Viceroy’s Pride first. Tromping down the metal ramp, he marched out into the harsh light of the new world and took a deep breath before wrinkling his nose. For some reason, the planet smelled like fire and an alchemists’ shop, the very air was tainted with chemicals and ash. In front of the ship, gleaming metallic construction jutted up towards the sky.
Before he could take in all of the sights, a delegation approached him. Behind them stood several rows of men in identical uniforms, probably a merchant guild of some sort, as the uniform was made from cloth rather than any sort of metal or leather. Further behind those men sat several large, squat carriages with a large pole jutting from their front.
He dismissed the idiosyncrasy and focused on the man and woman walking toward him. The woman was in the lead, confident and commanding, while the man trailing behind her wore a pensive expression, his entire demeanor submissive and deferential.
She was their commander. It would be her who surrendered this planet to him while the simpering man performed the role of witness and scribe.
“I am Paltai Amberell, and I greet you on this glorious day,” Paltai activated his translation rune as he addressed the woman for the first time. “Today is indeed a momentous day as it marks the first day of your incorporation into the Tellask Empire. Rejoice!”
She stared at him in confusion for a second before stepping back and whispering to the man standing next to her. The man shrugged. She whispered to him again, and he said something back. She gestured emphatically at the man while whispering heatedly to him again. He shook his head, a helpless look on his face.
Paltai cocked his head, frustration furrowing his brow. Behind him, the marines stood in formation, their weapons in hand. Something needed to happen soon, before they lost their aggressive edge.
“My name is Jane Conway,” she replied, finally stepping away from her companion, “and this is my technical advisor, Daniel Thrush.”
The man smiled weakly at Paltai, the submissive grin of a beaten hunting dog.
“I’m not sure that we are interested in joining your Empire at this time,” she added with a grandiose flourish of her hand. “but we would be happy to discuss trade and…”
Paltai interrupted her with a lighting bolt from his vambrace. There had been enough talking, and this human clearly did not know her place. An example always needed to be made, and she seemed relatively important. By wasting his time and annoying Paltai, she had volunteered herself.
Her torso exploded as the lightning tore into her, and a sense of euphoria buzzed through Paltai as he absorbed a fraction of her mana. Behind him, the marines screamed a battle cry and charged, their spellshields flaring to life.
The sun glinted off of the towers of glass and metal behind the humans. Truly, this was a glorious day for battle. Their ancestors would see them conquer this hive and return House Amberell to its rightful glory.
A series of explosions thundered, and then Paltai was flying, his spellshield glowing a dangerous red from almost reaching damage capacity. He frowned. That was impossible; it could stand up to anything short of dragonfire.
The humans would need an archmage to land a blow like that, and Paltai had not felt the telltale accumulation of magic that would go with the sort of spellcasting it would take to deal that much damage in one attack.
Then he hit the side of the Viceroy’s Pride, the force of the blow robbing the wind from his lungs. The shield held, barely, but it clearly couldn’t take much more abuse.
He shook his head, staggering to his feet as the telltale red of his spellshield faded to translucency.
Before him, a scene out of hell unfolded. His soldiers’ charge had been stopped by a rapid series of explosions from the uniformed humans. Apparently, the rods they were carrying were some sort of ranged weapons, and even with the speed and strength enchantments covering the marines, they were cut down like wheat before a scythe.
The rangers acquitted themselves slightly better, their spells accounting for a handful of lives, but even with their supernatural power and grace, the strange ranged weapons simply fired too quickly. Many of the enemy soldiers were barely even aiming, instead spraying fire in the general direction of the rangers. Spell shields sparkled and failed one after another as elven warriors fell, silenced by the infernal weapons.
Paltai saw red. Everything had been going so well. He was going to be the Viceroy of this awful place, showered in wealth and women. A son of Amberell couldn’t let it end like this!
With a bellow, he charged.
Given his speed and the remains of his spell shield, Paltai almost made it to the line of enemy soldiers pointing their rods in his direction before the blows rocked him. The shield failed, a meteor shower of sparks erupting across its surface.
Then, it was like a hammer striking him in the chest. Once, twice, and finally six times in the span of a second. There wasn’t any pain, but when he tried to take another step forward, the world spun, and he collapsed.
His breath rasped shallowly in his throat, and the world began to dim. Distantly, he noted that everything was cold, and it had nothing to do with his ice affinity. He was going into shock. Without healing magic, he was as good as dead.
His eyes closed, his battered body unable to keep them open any longer, and the last thing he heard as the world faded to darkness was the words of an enemy soldier, still faithfully translated by his damaged helmet.
“Can you believe this shit, Roy? We finally get to meet honest-to-God space aliens, and they fucking charge us with spears and swords. Spears and goddamn swords.”
Their laughter mocked him as he slipped away into the next life.