Raiding The Church Camp

Robert looked up from his completed work to see a woman looking at him from across the room. She had bright red hair and pale skin. The woman -noticing his gaze- gave a small clap and disappeared.

"Who was that?" Robert asked.

[Sometimes it's better to not ask questions.]

"Alright... uh, I guess I better continue."

[Don't forget that you need to produce an apprentice artifact of runecraft.]

"Yup."

Robert read over his contract again, it just said that he had to produce an item of the correct tier each time that he increased one of his proficiencies and that the item had to be given to the representative of the Craftsman's guild that had issued the contract. So basically... the contract just said that Robert had to make cool stuff for Stella.

"How in the hell did she get this past her superiors?" Robert thought.

Robert duplicated the ring for Stella, then realised that giving a girl a wedding ring wasn't exactly something that he could take back. He fashioned a necklace with similar abilities, except the gem was replaced with a mana crystal for extra power. Robert had to meet Cicero in two days and it would take him a day to get there. He gathered the materials he would need to create dragonsteel.

Robert pulled out a shard of dragon bone and tossed it into the forge. He pushed fire elementals into the forge until the bone combusted. The bone began to burn and Robert took a sheet of iron from his prepared materials. He placed the iron into the forge and waited until it was white hot. Pulling the metal out of the forge he started hammering it into shape. Time arrays around the sword let it stay at the right temperature for longer and Robert used abyssal elementals to give himself a blacksmith's physique.

Robert was rather amateurish at forging but he managed to remove most of the imperfections in the helmet by late afternoon. He had finished the helmet by nightfall. It was a dull red colour, and the helmet seemed to change form slightly based on how it was placed. Watching the forging process on repeat in his mind palace, Robert noticed that each time the metal was placed in the forge it absorbed abyssal elementals until the helmet turned red. According to the books in Anders's library, dragonsteel was the metal of heroes, a strange metal that invigorated its user and allowed them to stay alive as long as they were touching it. Robert carved some basic arrays into the helmet to make it more durable, flexible and resistant to magic.

He copied the helmet and summoned his mana armour. It had turned a light purple colour and as Robert placed the second helmet on the armour he linked the helmet to him with his blood. The helmet turned the same colour as his armour and disappeared with the armour when Robert let go of it. Robert charged a mana crystal to full capacity and gave it to Adrian so that when he returned Adrian would still be there.

Robert turned in the items and headed out into the living wastes once more. It would take him four days to get to the Stellae Murum and another four to get back. He had spent three days meeting Stella and creating the new items. All in all, he would have ten days to kill at the Stellae Murum.

As Robert left the forge, one of Miles's men told him that they had a mission for him. Apparently, they needed Robert to destroy a church camp that was capturing satyrs.

"Wait, I thought that satyrs were allowed by the church?" Robert asked.

"At the start, the church only didn't allow heretics and the undead. But with each conquest they grew stricter and stricter. Most of the major powers only acted when they were personally threatened. I suppose that the church has got bored in recent years and feel that it's time for another round of genocide." the armoured man replied.

Robert got the location from the man and headed toward the royal dragon crypt. After a day of travel, he found Cicero sitting at the crypt.

"Hello little lich. Are we going to the Stellae Murum?" Cicero asked.

"Nope, we have to go aid some satyrs. The church is being itself again and the Underguild has asked me to help out." Robert replied.

It would take only a half day to get to the church camp by way of Cicero. So the pair debated what they should do when they got there. After Cicero explained the various priesthoods to Robert.

"It's going to be mostly red paladins, so we should try and stick to range." Cicero said.

"Hmm, I can do that. But my spells are limited." Robert said.

"Wait, spells? You're a lich, right? Use your innate magic." Cicero looked confused.

"My innate magic?"

"Yeah, we're not mages. We don't need to use spells and incantations to use magic. We just imagine what we want to happen and then... well, we sorta... hmm. It's kind of like you put mana into the idea... and then it happens."

"Like a staff?"

"Yes. The mages often use staffs made of innate runic combatants. It's seen as a taboo by those who are cannibalised to create the staffs." Cicero said with distaste.

"I see. Let's just head to the camp, we can do some improv once we're there." Robert said.

"That sounds like a terrible idea that will end with both of us in a huge amount of trouble... let's do it."

Robert rode Cicero near the camp until they got within sight. They dropped to the ground and began to head towards the camp -a group of red tents and metal cages.

The camp was in a small village of satyrs. It was empty now -save for a few cunning stragglers, but they would have to choose between survival and escape. Doing both would be impossible.

The camp had a total of around a hundred people. Sixty red paladins, twenty red priests, four yellow priests, two blue priests, two purple priests and a red general with armour and weapons that showed his status. The yellow priests swapped out in groups of two to scout the surrounding areas while invisible, but Robert could see them with his mana vision.

"Okay, I'll deal with the scouts while you freeze the general. Let's go." Robert said.

The scouts moved carefully, which mainly meant that they moved slowly and couldn't get out of the ring of fire that Robert conjured around them. They suddenly appeared behind Robert and he turned to face them. The ring of fire collapsed as Robert was distracted by a flash going off in his face.

The yellow priests appeared in multiple places at once, but Robert could find them easily. He walked through the illusions, casting Vigor and charging one of them with his staff. He knocked the priest out with his staff, unaffected by the flashes of light while using his mana vision. The second priest fled, trying to get back to his companions. Robert created another ring of fire and advanced on the priest, seeing through mana alone this time. He knocked out the priest with ease. Robert looked over to the camp where Cicero was freezing the general's tent into an iceberg.

Robert headed over immediately, reaching the camp just as Cicero was being overwhelmed. The dragon was able to stay away from the paladins by flying from position to position, but the yellow priests used flashes while the red priests grouped together and fired massive lasers at Cicero.

Robert reached the camp and channeled abyssal elementals through the living wastes to create vine like tendrils of woven grass that pulled the yellow priests underground, that didn't sit too well with the paladins who found him an easier target than the flying reptile.

"Uh oh." Robert said as eighty well built paladins in heavy armour and wielding swords, shields and a variety of other weapons.

More vines whipped at the paladins and sent them flying to the side -where they were swallowed by the earth- while Robert started counting.

"Eighty, seventy four, seventy one, sixty eight." and then the paladins were upon him.

Robert used his staff like a warhammer and smashed paladins out of the way, letting the ground swallow them up.

"Sixty five, sixty three, sixty, fifty- huh?" one of the paladins finally managed to block his strike as the others outflanked him. A sword cut across his skin as a mace came down on his staff arm -forcing him to drop it. Robert summoned his mana armour and formed a mossy shield around himself by channelling abyssal elementals into the wastes. But as Robert called on the wastes he felt something beneath the greenery.

"Hell yes." he said.

...

Cicero noticed Robert being overrun by the paladins, but was unable to help due to the barrage of lasers.

Cicero roared in annoyance as one of them grazed the dragon's flesh. As the next beam came from the group of red priests, a mirror of ice sent it hurtling away. A similarly mirrored armour of ice spread over Cicero as they charged the group of red priests with a tsunami of water spraying out of the throat and dislocated jaw at the priests. The drenched priests were surprised but mostly unhurt, until the entire group felt the water freezing on their flesh and ripping at their skin.

The group was disabled rather quickly and Cicero looked over at Robert to help him... as he burst out of the moss cocoon on the back of a huge skeleton, held together by moss and twining grass. The creature looked like an enormous snake and it threw the paladins away before returning to the ground so that it could swoop down and devour the paladins one by one.

Everything seemed to be going well. Cicero had gathered the remaining priests near the iceberg and was freezing them to in one by one. There were only about ten paladins left when the bones started to erode. The bones broke apart, creating fissures that were held together by a strange purple energy alone. The creature bucked Robert off and stared at him hungrily, it raised itself to its full height and came down to crush him within its jaws. The creature grabbed Robert within its gaping maw, but he held the jaws apart with his hands.

As the creature tried to crush Robert, the purple energy intensified all over its body. Until it began to devour itself, or rather the moss began to devour the creature. Straining around it and crushing in as the purple energy sparked wildly -trying to hold the bones together- before going out completely, lost to the wastes.

The remaining paladins were defeated by Robert and Cicero. Robert pulled the people that he had made the wastes swallow out of the ground, leaving only the question of what to do with them.

...

The church's lackeys were all gathered in one place and Robert and Cicero discussed what to do with the unconscious bodies -after setting the satyr's free and inviting them to come to the Stellae Murum and the new town. Cicero's jaw was still dislocated, an endless stream of water came from the dragon's throat.

"We should just leave them here." Robert said.

"If we do that then they will report to the church and they will send more people to search for us." Cicero replied.

"So what? You want to kill them? If we do that then we're killing people for their placement. We can't just kill people!"

"I don't care if we are as bad as them! I don't care if we're worse! That's already how the humans see us. All I care about is that we win."

"I won't allow it. They have lives! Each of them is a person with a life and family. Just mindlessly killing them won't get us anywhere."

There was a moment of silence between the two as they each tried to stare the other down.

"Do you know how the dragons lost to the church?" Cicero asked calmly "I'm stronger than the average dragon, but a normal dragon could defeat ten red paladins and still survive. So how could we have lost?" Cicero asked rhetorically, moving closer to Robert as the stream of water intensified. "It was because we did something that the human's didn't... we were foolish, complacent and worst of all... merciful." Cicero spat out the word in another geyser of water.

"The human's didn't show any mercy, they didn't take any prisoners. The dragons always seemed to be winning, to be in control. So it was quite a surprise when the human prisoners of war broke out of their cells and slit the throats of every dragon in the palace. I only survived because I was away at the time. But my family was there, my mother and father. I hear that the pontifex keeps their heads mounted over his dining room wall!" Cicero spurted out, the dragon's eyes were as cold as a frozen lake. "That is why they all have to die. I will not repeat the mistakes of the past. I will not suffer from laziness and ignorant rulers. Keep it in mind, villain." with that, the river flowing from the dragon's mouth froze.

The water had twined its way past Robert, all the way to the priests and paladins. If nothing else, they had been given a quick death. Cicero's eyes held no remorse, only hatred.