Otherlife Nightmares: The Selfless Hero Trilogy (43 page)

She didn’t face him at first. As if she were reluctant and afraid. She looked almost as if she were in pain. With all the power she had, he had no doubt that if she didn’t want something, it wouldn’t happen. Finally she met his eyes when it was clear he wouldn’t continue until she did.

“Do you hate me for it, Angel? I admit it. You are my pantheon. I would have you for my own and no one else. I would have you wear my colors and no one else’s. I would build your temples in my own design and allow no other. I have given you all that I promised you and would give you more all the while. Though I would have you all for myself.

“I have plans for this world. I would make a country of my own. I have to assume I will remain here. In this world. That I will never leave. And from Vix I believe an empire will spring. And of that empire will be a pantheon.”

Runner blew out a breath slowly, feeling exhausted mentally and spiritually. Her response would dictate so much.

“No. I do not hate you. Never that. My sisters trust you implicitly. Would give themselves over to you entirely. I can hear them on the other plane. They’re already excitedly chattering about what design you’ll make for their temples. I myself cannot deny I…well, I feel the same as they do.”

Grunting, she shook her head a little.

“Enough with this emotional mush. I’m no good with it. I came here for two things. One, to thank you for completing your promise to me.”

“Of course, Angel, though I really do love seeing this warm and soft as shadows side of you,” Runner said with a grin. All three goddesses were his. Completely. A dark corner of his heart ran around in circles at the idea of having a personal goddess harem on top of his mortal one.

He couldn’t deny the attraction to the idea. He already had enough lady troubles though. Didn’t need to add immortal lady troubles on top of that.

Ernsta had paused to consider his statement. Arriving at some type of answer, she finally continued.

“The other is that Lambart has activated the military branch of his priesthood. On top of that, he’s working to arm every worshiper. They are preparing their defense of Faren.”

“Ah…I see. I take it they have substantial numbers?”

“Around three thousand in their military arm on Tirtius. Quadruple that in worshipers.”

“So. I could be going up against something like fifteen thousand.”

“Yes.”

Chapter 17 - Only a minute -

7:01 am Sovereign Earth time

11/22/43

Much to his shattered hopes, neither Thana nor Katarina were able to keep him company these last three nights. For whatever reason, guard numbers had been increased to the point that no one was able to sneak out of their rooms. Not even Hannah. At least there were no nightmare episodes.

The days had gone by quickly, filled with building and more building. Tank and cannon production had been moved to the front of his queue after his little talk with Ernsta. Then the amount needed multiplied.

Which left him recruiting any and every single crafter who was willing to earn some hazard pay driving a tank or working in a cannon crew.

Final tally for cannons had leapfrogged to two hundred and the number of tanks climbed to one hundred.

He’d spent quite a bit of Queen Helen’s currency and he had done his best to repay her. Ten sets of basic artifact plate armor and appropriate weaponry had smoothed any feathers he’d ruffled. He’d considered making her a personal weapon to the best of his ability. That little trump card was valuable and he wanted to hang on to it if he could, though.

The extreme need for more cannons, tanks, and crafters was his only solution to the logistics problem. Runner needed force multipliers since troops were in limited supply. Using crafters had an added bonus that they were not part of the normal army. Which meant his force multipliers required no trained soldiers to operate.

Queen Helen had rounded up her new army and this morning she would be formally putting him at the head of it. In addition to that, every single one of his surviving soldiers joined anew. This put him happily at three thousand all told between the two nations’ soldiers and recruited crafters.

The biggest surprise came when the prisoners discovered General Faye Sennet had joined him. In the end, one thousand prisoners had sworn an oath under Ernsta to join Runner and his cause.

Faye and Runner had discussed how best to reorder everyone into new groups. No one unit remained as it had been and everyone had been blended together. Recruits with veterans, Humans with Barbarians, Sunless with Humans.

Faye had informed him that training would need to be increased if they wanted any hope of them performing adequately in a fight.

Which was why his inner circle was seated about a table in the early hours of the day.

“Morning, everyone. I know we plan to set out today, but I felt it would be a good opportunity to begin discussing our plans for this campaign before leaving,” Runner said, looking around the room. The attendance of this meeting had been mandatory for everyone here. Runner did a mental checklist to confirm this was indeed everyone.

Hannah, Thana, Katarina, Nadine, Isabelle, Sophia, Faye, and Srit. Good.

“This’ll be a bit different as far as wars go. We technically have two opponents. First is the Human kingdom and their capital, Faren,” Runner said, tapping the map laid out on the table.

“Sparky has been kind enough to fill us in on the composition of the garrison
,
which is a little less than two hundred. They stripped it pretty bare. I can only imagine the thieves’ guild is running rampant. Actually, now that I think about it. Minxy?”

“I’m all yours,” purred the goddess from behind his chair, leaning over his shoulder, her hands resting on the table.

“Course you are. Now, are the thieves running things at this point? I can’t imagine they’re being much in the way of civil obedience right now.”

Standing up straight at his immediate dismissal of her charms, she shrugged her shoulders.

“More or less. Very few are praying to me right now. Lambart has set his priests on the population like fleas on a dog. They kill my followers for the sake of killing them. Religious wars are tough. The glimpses I do get from those who pray…let’s say your friend has turned Faren into a very bad place. Even I’m appalled. Goddess of assassins and everything.”

“Right, then. That sounds to me like we’ll not have a problem with the population afterwards. Nor with our need to cleanse the country.”

“Cleanse? What do you m-mean by that?” Nadine asked, a worried note in her voice.

“Yes. Cleanse. For clarification, Sunshine, could you explain a bit how the world handles religious power?”

The tall blonde tilted her head to one side as if considering.

“Each worshiper counts as a power node for a deity. The more they have, the more powerful they are. Killing one does inflict damage upon a god, though not as much as if they change their belief. Death merely sends them on to the god or goddess they worshiped.

“Destroying temples works especially well. The less power a deity has, the less can do for their worshipers. As a comparison, Amelia is significantly less powerful than Brunhild, though still powerful in comparison to a mortal.”

“Perfectly succinct, Sunshine. Thank you, my dear.”

Turning a deep red at the compliment, Srit stared at him. Her simple and honest responses to everything and anything made her adorable.

“We’ll not say his name or titles for fear of drawing his attention, but you’re all aware of who we’re at war with. Cleansing. I plan to kill, banish, or force every worshiper of his to recant or renounce their belief in his ways.”

“That’s terrible! Run-ner! This is n-not acceptable. The normal worshipers aren’t at war with you,” Nadine cried out at him, her palms slapping at the table.

“And yet I do what I must. If I am to weaken him, I must attack his power base. His power base is his worshipers.”

“No! This is wrong. You know this is wron-ng. We can’t do this, this is monstrous, it’s n—”

“Nadine!” Runner shouted at her. Having now interrupted, he closed his eyes and pressed his hands to his temples. Regret at raising his voice at her came quickly.

“Nadine, Rabbit, my perfect and lovely moral compass. I’m sorry for raising my voice to you. It wasn’t justified and it’s inexcusable. As to my plan…you’re right. It’s wrong. It’s wrong in a way that I will have to live with for the rest of my life. It’s the tactics a terrorist would use. A murdering madman. Yet I must.”

Runner lifted his head and met her eyes, a sad smile spreading over his face.

“I have no choice. Their number of combatants could be as high as fifteen thousand. Three times the size of our force. With a god backing that up. I admit we have our own divine backing, but even then. Even then it’s very likely we’d lose.”

Nadine scowled at him, her lower lip trembling.

“Rabbit, you know I care for your feelings. I loathe the very idea of losing your respect or concern. I truly feel that I have no other options. I’ll do my very best to simply banish them or have them recant. Killing them will be a last recourse. I promise to you, I will do my utmost to preserve lives.”

Nadine turned her head as if she were going to look away from him. She stopped herself in the act of it. Meeting his eyes, she nodded her head a little.

“Thank you, Runner. I know you’re doing your best. I’m sorry. It hurts me. I don’t like…this whole business. I want to go back to Vix and have us all travel together again. None of this n-nonsense.”

“Would that I could, Rabbit. Now, cleansing his power base. I’ve been able to craft a handful of banishing blades. They’ll do exactly as I explained. Minxy was able to confirm she could no longer detect me once I left the plane, even when praying to her directly on the other side.

“Nor was I able to send Amelia away permanently. I mean, I was able to send her current self there, but she just instantly reappeared.”

“It’s because I’m already in a few places at once. Hard to send someone to one location when they’re already in several. Though I will admit it was annoying. I lost a tiny fraction of myself for the span of a microsecond,” Amelia supplied.

“Another difficulty is that there is something to the order of three hundred thousand people, like me, who have sided with Jacob. And yes, that number’s relatively accurate. Three hundred thousand at the minimum.”

“Always a problem with you,” Katarina said.

“I know. You love it, Kitten. Though I do have a solution. I think. As you may remember, I bartered with Sunshine’s people,” Runner said, gesturing to the woman in question. “I got a medical server out of it that I’ve got up and running. I intend to load them all onto it. Then log them off. Effectively eliminating the problem and saving them from death at the same time.”

“Forgive me, dear heart. That sounds a bit too easy? A bit fairy tale like,” Thana said in a concerned voice.

“Probably. There it is though. I already tested it on someone to see if it would transfer, and it did.”

“Hm. I suppose we’ll be dependent on that then. I may not be the most strategic of people, but I do not think we could fight that number in any way, shape, or form.”

“No. We cannot. We’ll be hard-pressed against fifteen with only a small chance to win,” Faye admitted.

“I’m confident that if we can limit the amount of divine interference, the tanks and cannons will decimate them. They’ll have numbers, but I have their best general. Isn’t that right, Sparky?”

Faye bobbed her head in agreement and turned her face to the side to inspect a different spot on the map.

“That’s everything I’ve got for now. We’ll march south, train as we go. We’ll be camping near a small town this evening that has a local chapter of his worshipers. We’ll begin our war there. Hopefully without bloodshed. Questions on any of this?”

Runner met the eyes of each attendee. Everyone shook their head.

“Fantastic. I’ll see you later on the road,” Runner said, closing the meeting. “I need to get to work on potions. I can at least save some people with those,” Runner muttered, running a hand through his hair.

Everyone dispersed to their own tasks. Everyone had a job to do and few had the luxury of sitting around and chatting. He missed those days dreadfully. Nadine had the right of it. Perhaps when the war ended they could return to wandering around Vix for a time.

Runner shook his head to clear the cobwebs of his wishful thinking and marched off to his personal room. He had an hour before his meeting with the queen.

He pushed open the door, sat down heavily in one of the chairs lining a table, and pulled up the alchemy window. Glancing up, he found Sophia, Srit, and Amelia watching him from the doorway.

“Ladies?”

“I’ll be accompanying you,” Srit announced.

“Okay. Have a seat then,” Runner said, gesturing with his chin at the second chair. “Minxy? Grace?”

Sophia spoke up immediately, one hand resting on her hip. “I plan on hiring much of the guard from who we have currently. Any concerns, sir?”

Runner thought on it for a minute and then shook his head.