A thick, blocky fortress rested on top of a tall cliff overlooking a dark sea, the whole structure made of gray and blue stone. One large tower lorded over the castle, a bright yellow flame burning at the top, acting as a beacon to any ship or sailor treading the water within sight. Huge structures showed themselves built into the side of the cliff, leading down to the shore hundreds of feet below where a walled town had been built against the base of the rock face. Beyond the strong walls and three-story buildings dominating the city’s skyline, the white sails of dozens of moored ships peeked into view.
Far Felsen was an impressive sight, one that had Jadis’ inner fantasy geek squealing in delight. This city was exactly the kind of place Jadis had been hoping to see when D had first told her about the fantastical nature of Oros.
From what Gerwas and the other mercenaries had told Jadis' several selves, Far Felsen as a city wasn’t all that old, relatively speaking, but the fort on the top of the bluff had been established nearly five hundred years ago. The place hadn’t changed much since that initial founding, until after the last demon invasion had been repelled some one hundred and thirty years ago. The emperor at the time had ordered the port around the fortress expanded, the city built up around it to support the needed infrastructure, all so settlers could be encouraged to move to Weigrun.
The exact details were still a little nebulous to Jadis, but the gist of the situation she’d gotten from the mercs was that Weigrun had been a largely untamed land in the south with few inhabitants until some intrepid explorer had discovered eleria in the mountains on the north side of Weigrun.
Eleria was a rare and valuable material necessary for crafting enchanted items, like the tool Ludwas had used to identify if Jadis was a demon or not. With the revelation that large deposits of the magical mineral were to be found in the Kalters Wall Mountain Range, thousands of people had hopped onto ships and made their way to Far Felsen and Weigrun, hoping to strike it rich.
Jadis supposed it was a bit like the American Gold Rush, just more magical.
A lot of money had been put into the infrastructure of the blossoming colony, the previously empty land growing in population by leaps and bounds over the course of a century. While not as fast growing as the American frontier as Jadis understood it, Weigrun had spawned dozens upon dozens of small mining towns all over the north part of it, with dozens more farming villages set up to feed the growing populace. Up until about two years prior, there had probably been hundreds of thousands of Imperial citizens inhabiting the southern land.
With the demonic blitz, though, that number had shrunk significantly.
Those ordinary farmers, miners, and townsfolk that hadn’t been killed by the initial surprise attack of the demonic invasion had undergone a massive evacuation. Tens of thousands of men and women set sail from Felsen and the other smaller ports, heading back to the central continent and perceived safety. The growing communities that dotted the land had turned into ghost towns, not unlike the village Jadis had found herself living in. The populace dropped to a mere fraction of what it had been at its height.
Not everyone evacuated Weigrun, though. There were thousands of soldiers and stubborn ordinary people who had stayed to defend the city of Far Felsen, as well as a few other large towns elsewhere on the subcontinent. The empire had withdrawn much of its citizenry from Weigrun, but it wasn’t a complete retreat. The value of the Eleria mines couldn’t be discounted.
Once the demon lord’s war-of-attrition-plan had revealed itself, the empire had put great effort into reclaiming Weigrun so that more Eleria could be mined. Hence, six months ago, the Second Prince Kestil had hired multiple mercenary companies to occupy the land around Felsen, slowly working their way inland, slaying the demons infesting the hills and forests to make the place safe for workers to resume mining operations.
All of the information Jadis had learned about Weigrun, Far Felsen, and the demonic invasion of the land she’d learned about during the day long wagon ride to the city had prepared her for a medieval fantasy city that had been worn down by war and rife with refugees. She imagined the place had to have struggled to feed and safeguard the thousands of fleeing people that must have passed through its gates for the past couple of years. Maybe it had at one point, but the city Jadis saw before her was anything but worn down or overwhelmed.
Far Felsen’s stout walls stood tall and clean with colored flags and pennants flying high. The road leading into the large gates was wide and clear, with a steady, orderly line of people moving in at an efficient pace. There were no shanty towns or decrepit buildings lining the outer edges of the walls, no camps of starving asylum seekers begging for entrance to an uncaring city. The city was, for lack of a better word, shockingly clean.
At least, Felsen was clean on outward appearance. Jadis wasn’t sure if the image would hold up once she was inside the walls, but first impressions indicated the people in charge were running a tight ship, keeping the populace safe and fed while maintaining a strong and disciplined defense.
Jadis wondered if that was the doing of the magistrate she’d heard the mercenaries mention, the prince who was supposedly backing the whole reclamation of the area, or if the way Far Felsen looked was just an accurate example of how all cities in the empire were treated. Demonic invasions were a reoccurring thing on Oros, from what she understood. It made sense to Jadis that any group of people that had been around for generations of the attacks had probably learned well how to deal with such situations in an efficient manner.
As Jadis mulled over possibilities, the wagon drew up to the gates, bypassing the short line of what looked to be farmers and workers being checked by the gate guards before being allowed entrance to the city. Passing by the line of about forty men and women, Jadis couldn’t help but stare at some of the people she saw. More than half of them were humans no different from the mercenaries she’d already met, but several were elves like the one man she’d seen back at the camp, though they had different coloration, looking more reddish in color compared to the mercenary elf’s blue skin.
There were also races Jadis hadn’t seen before but could guess at what they were.
At least one man had to be an orc, his olive-green skin and large frame signaling him as one. Oddly, despite standing head and shoulders taller than the humans around him, Jadis didn’t find him to be all that intimidating. Maybe it was because she herself still towered over him? That, or it was because the orc had a massive potbelly and long gray beard that made him look a bit like a seasick Santa Claus.
There were also several much smaller men and women, slender and petite. They looked to be somewhere around or below chest-height on most of the humans, which meant they were closer to thigh height for her selves. They all had eyes much too big for their faces and had strange symbols all over their tawny skin. Jadis couldn’t tell if they were tattoos or some kind of natural spotting.
None of the people in the line looked armed or armored, not even the Santa orc. Jadis had to wonder who the people were and what they were doing outside of the walls if they weren’t mercenaries.
As much as Jadis was staring at the people, they all stared right back at her. Dozens of eyes roamed over Jadis’ selves, expressions ranging from curious to confused to disbelieving. Some whispered to their neighbors, mouths hidden behind hands, while others just gawked openly. It didn’t seem as though any of them had ever seen a Nephilim either.
Jadis was starting to wonder if D had invented a whole new race when he put her on Oros in this body. At the very least he put her somewhere where Nephilim weren’t a common sight.
The wagon came to a stop in front of the city gates, off to the left side. To the right, several guards were checking each man or woman in the line as they entered the city, asking for their names and jobs which were checked against lists. Even the stoic, disciplined guards were slowing in their work, sending glances towards the three pale giants gathered around the wagon.
Jadis noticed that these guards weren’t dressed the same as the Bernd’s Blades mercenaries. These men were armored in steel chest plates and chainmail, with white surcoats that had some kind of blue eagle heraldry on it. They had halberds at hand, with wooden truncheons hanging at their belts. Their helmets were also different, with wide flat steel brims and no cheek guards, unlike what Gerwas and the others wore.
From an open door built into the wall just beyond the arch of the open gate, three more guards came out, one of them much shorter than the others. It took Jadis a moment to realize, but the short man in the lead was the same race as the other short tawny, almost orange-colored people she’d seen standing in the line. His beardless face also had thick lines swirling across it, dark green and decidedly tribal looking.
“Names and company?” the short man asked in a surprisingly deep voice considering his size. The guard kept his focus on Gerwas who had taken the lead of the mercenaries, but he, too, darted his eyes to Jadis’ selves periodically.
“Gerwas of Red Tree,” Gerwas answered, naming the rest of the mercenaries as well before announcing that they were with Bernd’s Blades.
“And them?” The guard pointed towards Jadis where she had decided to stand with all three of her selves to one side.
“Civilians from Kalters Wall, come down from the mountains because of demons. They’ll need registration,” Gerwas answered for her.
At that prompting, Jadis remembered the letter she’d been given.
“I’ve got a letter from Captain Renz,” Jay spoke up. “If you want to see that.”
With a nod from the man in charge, Jay retrieved the letter from her supplies on the wagon and passed it to the small man.
Taking the folded document, the guard slowly read it over, his eyes slowly rising higher and higher as he went over the contents. As he absorbed the details of whatever Renz had put in the letter, the other two guards moved towards the wagon, one of them greeting Aila in a familiar way.
“Evening, Bean Pole,” he said, “And, ah, Ludwas, what happened to you?”
Jadis couldn’t help but notice the way Aila’s face went stiff and blank when the guard called her the nickname Volker had told her about.
“Long story,” Ludwas grunted, still lying splayed out on the back of the wagon. “Short of it being we were ambushed on the way here. Might be bad luck on our part but might also be that some matriarch or two has gotten past the line and is breeding a new wave somewhere in the hills.”
The two guards voiced their dismay, peppering Ludwas and the others with questions as they did a perfunctory search of the wagon. Jadis wasn’t sure what they were looking for, but inspections like this seemed to be the standard practice for anyone entering the city.
“Well, you three are an oddity,” the short guard stated, grabbing Jadis’ attention.
He stared up at the three of her, one hand holding the letter up while the other rested on his hip. As he spoke, Jadis recognized a faintly different accent to his words, different from the Germanic inflections that Aila and the mercs had. The man sounded similar, but also somehow smoother, almost rhythmic in the way he spoke, like he was just about ready to break out into a song but never quite got there.
“From anyone else I wouldn’t believe it, but from Renz… Well. I will be confirming with a Detect Stone, you understand.”
It didn’t seem like he was asking for permission, unlike how Ludwas had, but Jadis got the feeling that the tiny guard very much had a say in whether or not she was allowed to enter the city. Not seeing a way around it, nor seeing any negative reaction from Aila or the mercs, Jay, Dys, and Syd all shrugged their assent.
“We’re not demons, so go ahead,” Dys answered, leaning against Syd, her hurt leg raised up a bit to avoid putting much weight on it.
The guard pulled out a stone with a hole in the middle, identical to the one Ludwas had used the day before. Speaking the word aloud three times, the guard used detect on all three of her, brow furrowing a little.
“The letter says you should all be level thirty,” the guard gruffly pointed out, his eyes faintly accusing. “How do you explain the difference?”
Jay waved behind her, indicating the road that disappeared into the hills to the north. “We fought some demons on the way here. It gave us two levels each in our secondary classes.”
“What, did you fight another matriarch?” he asked, his tone a little mocking as he flapped the letter in his hand a bit.
“No, it was a grundwyrm,” Aila called out from her seat on the wagon.
“And a dozen twisted wretches,” Ludwas added with a labored voice. “Can’t forget those…”
The guard looked between Aila’s stony, serious face, Gerwas’ nodding head, and the three pale giants who all simply shrugged in unison.
“Get inside the gates,” he said with a disbelieving sigh. “We’ll need to hear the full story on this one.”
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