116 Chapter One Hundred and Sixteen – Running Sama, Inc. (1/2)

So, I was saving my intended family from a doppelganger invasion. Which, naturally enough, began to rapidly expand across the kingdom, then the Empire, as more and more of my Marked chimed in about certain people wearing jewelry with amberish gems with dark cores...

I punted the head of a Mana Weaver into a thicker mound of vivus, which accepted it happily. Its Spell Weaver master had been eaten by the Land, its two Staves blazing white torches over there that no one wanted to get close to, and this fight was over except for the mop-up.

Discussion among the Brotherhood and officers meant that I was going to be fighting warbands with sorcerers who might bring in Demons, the better to give the Land a snack, while any bands located that I couldn't get to would have such individuals quickly offed by the Brotherhood, who were also encouraged to remove certain elements of leadership for the fighting battalions sweeping in behind.

It was a novel experience for the Brotherhood, coordinating with forces on that scale. Shadowknife had also had me deliver certain messages with amicable Marked, and all the Brothers would soon be on their way to find us.

The doppelganger invasion was confirmed within hours, when one of my Scouts, who happened to have retired to a prominent position as a smuggler in his hometown, offed one of them that very night, a rival he didn't have a good opinion of anyways. The confirmation literally exploded across the Empire, chatboxes in my head were lighting up as efforts coordinated to find and kill them with sudden savagery.

After all, there'd been both arcane and divine Casters among my Marked, who were extremely good at getting the word out to non-Marked.

Brother Firesword had Moved the Names of Weep and Cry himself, a Void Diffusion Pattern unique to them... whose existence also seemed to turn him on his ear. He could Diffuse the magic of his enemies, or even rote gold, into his Voidbound Gear?!

As I told him as he left, fully intent on exploding the Arsenal and Slaughter on his new Sword to the limit, it was little things that turned things on their heads, taken over time and given power. He had a long view and could discern easily what those influences meant, but he'd never thought the principle would be applied to him!

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People were moving. Elves were relaying that several Orders of knights had troops moving along the edge of the Sidhete, heading north, accompanied by Aruans, Harsites, and Valusar, along with White Hands of Amana. Adventurers were bringing their own styles of battle along, while mercenaries seeking loot and glory were coming to either get paid or rob their opponents of wealth in an arena where no one cared if they did so.

Other forces aligned to more Neutral forces, such as Imprus, Hurn, and even Huul were sending agents to investigate, as the Warp had no friends among the other gods. Powerful servants of deities were moving to oppose them.

Brigandry was going to rise as a result, as forces that should be allied would prey upon one another if they could. Those who could be roped in and work together honorably might qualify to be Marked, maybe not. It wasn't like I couldn't restrict their use of the Markspace if I was so inclined.

But a good chunk of them were my Ironblood. Those whose roots were not too deep, and who were not too needed where they lived, were coming to join me, and I would welcome them once again, even as I had to start figuring out ways to support them. Such things hadn't worried me in Dream, but logistics was just another game at this point, and I was already starting to make money in mercantile fashion as awareness of distant markets and products was already starting to produce movement of them, and the resulting coin would be money I could use.

After all, a few hundred Marked pooling their wealth to start forming a trade route to supply the fighters up here in the North had already begun. The Churches, Orders, and nobles were opening purses, and startled to find both elves and men cooperating to an unusual degree to get the route open and moving.

There had been a few elves, dwarves, and hynfolk among my Ironblood. Not many, all of them people who had lived among humans for generations and so could be drawn into a human's Dream. But 'not much' were still contacts into non-human clans and families, which could blossom very quickly into additional backing. When Marked negotiated with one another for mutual benefit to all, terms got settled quickly, and things got into motion.

I had Fall in hand as I strode through the battlefield. Tremble was Singing next to me, amplifying my Warlord bonus... across two other battlefields and a hundred Scouts spread across the map.

The Glory awards were much less then offing a Greater Demon, but consistent, and not kill-stealing in the slightest, passing over the direct Karma earned by the men doing battle.

I popped off some fool who thought morphing his arm into a bear claw was something awesome, as a quarrel in the eye contested.

Briggs had a field day taking down some guy using Transmutation who found he couldn't teleport away, or fly away even when shapechanged, and tossing boom-pow spells at Briggs was next to useless. Briggs had even been nice and not thrown Endure at him, just crunching his way through the guy's guards, splitting the skull of his smoking nightmare, and then let the guy bounce off his armor a couple times before tapping his skull lightly and sending brains spraying into the vivic mist all about.

These elite troops really didn't seem to like dying to a Hammer wielded by a Neanderthal, either. Briggs, on the other hand, really enjoyed caving in their important bone structures with relentless blows. That guy with a fencing sword, that had been hilarious when he tried to parry and dodge, got his chest compressed back to his spine, and Estemar had tripped a fellow and impaled him through the throat on the protruding estoc... who uses estocs? Nitwit...

The smart ones tried to run away, and learned about elven magic and arrows the hard way, especially combined. Even minor combat magic used by a hundred Casters is a very nasty thing...

Amateur song-smiths were competing to add stanzas to Tremble, We Come, and Tremble was naturally vetting them all and quite happy to add them all. After all, if we were going to fight the same foe over and over, an hours-long section of stanzas wasn't at all out of place.

Of course, when the Bards found just how many stanzas of the song there were, and in how many languages, they were kind of stunned, but that was a different matter.

Half my head was running fights and allocating chatboxes, leaving me to fight and wonder about how this all happened.