Herald of Steel

While Alexander was getting some much-needed shut-eye, Amenheraft entertaining a few strange guests, and Manuk busy overseeing the funeral rites of the dead and the sacrificed, Nulafzam and a few others found themselves almost sprinting through the desolate, wet, pothole-ridden streets of Adhan.

Only the stars blinked overhead, their minuscule glow shading the pitch-black night in an eerie glow, the light making the city appear to be a necropolis, all its vitality sucked out.

The dingy, narrow streets that the men traveled by were jeweled by mostly ruined, barely standing shabby houses, many of them missing doors and windows, and even their occupants, most homes had turned to tombs and mausoleums for their dead occupants, whiles some housed people sprawled across the bare, floor as if they were dead, their hand and feet caked with mud and dirt.

Some could even be seen sleeping smack in the middle of the road, their faces half submerged in a dirty puddle, likely fainting after drinking from it.

These people slept with nary a care in the world, leaving everything bare to the elements for the drought had snatched all their possessions long, long ago.

Now, they lived only by the robotic instincts of their body to live.

The group had little fluctuations in their mood at this scenery.

They had grown inured to such display over the last three years and even before then, as soldiers campaigning to foreign lands, they had seen and arguably done things much worse.

But for Nulafzam, where it did hurt was that the jewel city of the east, Adhan had been reduced to this dried husk of a skeleton in just three years.

And it stung him even more that he probably would never be able to see this city again.

The group quickly crossed the city's outer ring into the inner ring, one reserved for the ones with not red, but blue blood- the nobles.

Nulafzam still would sometimes be astonished by how crossing just a simple wall could make such a big difference in one's experience.

There were no signs of the hunger, destitution, poverty, and desperation here that he had seen just earlier.

Everything here was clean, prim, and proper, with wide roads for carriages, magnificent architecture, and nice, clean air.

The inner circle wall seemed to have filtered all the unpleasantness out, separating the reality of being rich from the reality of being poor.

These things did sometimes ring inside the dubbed by the nobles- oddball Nulafzam, but not right now.

He had much more pressing concerns, concerns about his master- Ptolomy.

The group naturally made their way to the most magnificent architect piercing the skyline, the palace, flashing their unusual seal at every checkpoint to gain access.

As they approached the royal palace draped in the night's shadow with its spires reaching to the stars, these hooded men inconspicuously made a right turn, evading the main entrance and choosing to enter the palace by a secret passage.

It should be noted that secret passages were not all like what Hollywood liked to portray them as, ultra-hidden, narrow passages that attackers could sneak through to attack and take down an otherwise impregnable castle.

Although such things did happen, it was once in a blue moon occurrence, aided by lots of additional factors.

Usually, though secret passages were narrow, they were rarely 'secret'. Instead, they were mostly guarded and protected by both men and materials like gates, used to get things in and out of the castle.

It could be mundane things like food and livestock for the kitchen which would otherwise clutter the main entrance,

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Or it would be prohibited or shameful goods like whores and goods officially banned by the law.

It could be even a way to secretly pass information without the knowledge of the prying eyes of so many of the servants.

The uses for a secret passage were endless and so to prevent their exploitation by the enemy, they were designed with narrow choke points, made to funnel soldiers into narrow corridors and thus negate the attacker's numerical advantage and so allow a small number of castle guards to hold off against a very large number of enemies.

Nulafzam's group made their way to one such passage and were quickly let through into a dimly lit room.

Here the group stooped and Nulafzam alone was gestured to enter the heavy wooden door at the other side of the room, which he with practiced motion pushed open and enter.

The familiar room was dimly lit, with another heavy wooden door on the opposite side and empty, save a table and two chairs that decorated its center.

On the table lay some bread and a glass of water, refreshments for the spy as he waited for his master's arrival.

The famished man quickly sat down and started to wolf the meal, determined to finish it before the king and soon-to-be the ex-king arrived.

It would be a major breach of etiquette if a man of royalty was made to wait for his subordinate to finish his meal to hear a report.

With his meal quickly done, a few moments later, the heavy wood soundlessly opened, to reveal a thin, clean-shaven man with sunken cheeks and curly black hair, Ptolemy.

"Greetings Your Majesty," Nulafzam did a full bow toward the simply dressed man.

"I am no king." Came a young voice.

This hurt Nulafzam more than it did the boy in his mid-twenties.

"This servant was useless and had no excuse." Nulafzam hung his head in apparent shame.

"And what could you have done differently?" Ptolomy asked almost with self-derision.

'Nothing' was the reply that formed inside Nulafzam's heart.

He suspected even if he were to back in time, he would be able to do nothing differently to change the outcome of the battle.

So he replied to his master with a wall of silence.

"Hahhh, well it seems Ramuh has truly blessed my brother." Seeing Nulafzam wallow in self-pity, Ptolomy let out a sigh of resignation.

He could realistically only blame his loss on luck.

Then he asked, "Tell me in detail what happened. I did hear bits and pieces, but I want the full details of the battle, both the battles."

"Yes," The spy started his recount, "We met the Cantagenan force of fifty thousand with our twenty thousand, but Manuk had hidden an additional fifteen thousand of the elite Raskun slingers in the woods to use as a pincer force.."

"So the Raskun slingers are really here! Do you know how Manuk bought them? And how did he get here in the first place?" Ptolomy asked a question he just could not find an answer to.

"I heard he put them on the cavalry horses and rode day and night," Nulafzam informed.

"Horses? Cavalry? Is the heavy cavalry here too?" Ptolomy had gotten no report of Adhanian cavalry being present.

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"No, he only used the horses from the cavalry. I heard most died from the march." Nulafzam said what he knew.

"I see. Then tell me about the lightning strikes." Ptolomy asked the thing he was most interested in.

"It's like I reported. The sudden lightning strike destroyed the charge of the Sycarian cavalry and it somehow then both destroyed itself and its infantry. The Raskuns only picked off the leftovers." Nulafzam revealed the tragic news with bitterness almost dribbling down.

"*Sigh*" Ptolomy heavily sighed and shook his head, 'So close yet so far.' his heart muttered.

In some unknown corner of his heart, he had hoped maybe Nulafzam's recount would contradict the report he sent via a spy.

"And the fog?" Ptolomy again asked, wanting to know just how much did Ramuh bless his half-brother.

He was still unclear on the details of this particular 'magical' phenomenon as it happened just a while ago.

"Yes, but before that, I have confirmed a stray lightning bolt had killed general Agapios just after the first battle ended." Nulafzam delivered another heavy news.

And this, as he had suspected, sent the young ruler's mind into a tumble.

He did not doubt the authenticity of the report for a moment as Nulafzam would never in a million years report something so grave without a hundred percent guarantee,

And he did not particularly care about Agapios's death either.

But he did care how he died.

Of the all things he could have been killed by it had to be a lightning strike.

Up until now, he had still hung onto the barest, thinnest hope that maybe, even with the appearance of two miracles, based on the terror Amenheraft's father had submerged the nation in, he could somehow fight it out.

Or at least negotiate some kind of peace settlement where he would give up all political power, in exchange for Amenheraft swearing in front of the gods to not hurt or kill him.

It was admittedly a long shot, but now, with Adhania's most hated general killed by a divine strike from Ramuh, even that possibility seemed to turn to 'fog'.

Noticing his young master dazed and dejected, Nulafzam could not really find words of comfort.

What words of comfort could someone say to a person who had the keys to controlling the strongest superpower in the east almost in his grasp, only to lose it not because of bad decisions or being outplayed by the enemy, but because of fate?

Hence he decided to carry on with his report like a drone, providing his master with the most accurate depiction he could draw of the peril he was in.

"The Cantagenans seemed close to breaking the cauldron when the fog rolled in and they lost their coordination, resulting in being caught by a counterattack that saw all of them captured."

Nulafzam delivered the hard news.

"Um, and I have seen all of them being sacrificed Ramuh," Ptolomy revealed an information even Nulafzam did not know.

From atop his chamber, he could see for tens of miles and he spotted the distinctive ritual taking place just outside the city.

"So what do we do?" The tall man then asked his spymaster.