Ogre Tyrant: Chapter 34 - An evolving situation - Part One
Over the past two days, I had personally witnessed thousands of soldiers pass through the gateway of the recently acquired ruins of the riverside Settlent. Since founding the Settlent, dozens of notifications had inford of attempts to found other Settlents across the third floor. Furthermore, fresh waves of notification appeared roughly every twelve hours.
The Asrusian military was pushing hard to conquer as much of the third floor of the Hurst Labyrinth as they could, and for the first ti since founding Sanctuary, black notifications had begun appearing in my peripheral vision informing of individual lives lost in the attempt. The aggressive expansion was coming at a cost in the soldiers’ lives, although none of them seed afraid to make that sacrifice. Not openly anyway.
Michael, Douglas, Vick, George, Nicholas, Bert…The nas began blending together in my mind and I found myself actively staring ahead in order to avoid reading more nas. While I could disable the notifications entirely, I decided against it. Painfully aware of how hypocritical I was being, it felt like a betrayal to dispel their deaths from my sight entirely.
While the actions of the Asrusians were not directly my fault, I believed myself to be responsible regardless. At any point, I could bar them from attempting to found new Settlents, but I didn’t, I haven’t, and I won't.
Sacrifices…The actions and deaths of these soldiers were laying the foundation for the safety and prosperity of my…our…people.
History classes in high school had provided a romanticised sort of veneration for the Australian soldiers who died fighting overseas during the great world wars. But it hadn’t shied away from the horrors the great wars wrought on the civilian populations either. Murder, suicide, rape, torture…The collateral damage of war hadn’t changed much at all since the dark ages, only growing more efficient over ti.
With this in mind, I held no illusions as to why the Asrusian soldiers were so desperate to see their countryn sequestered away and hidden from the otherwise inevitable predations of war. Having been told the scale of forces arrayed against them outside of the Labyrinth, and although they would not admit it, how otherwise hopeless their position was, sacrifices, willing or otherwise, were now what would determine the future of their people.
Six days after having left Sanctuary, Ril recovered enough mana to open a portal and allow the six of us to return.
Sanctuary was more or less just as I had left it, only now seeming sowhat more peaceful. Wanting to relax and generally unwind after the events of the past couple of days, I made my way to the Grove and took a long bath.
I didn’t notice right away, but after an hour of soaking in the mana rich waters of the well, I realized that Hana and her sister were strangely absent.
Just as I was leaving the Grove in order to go looking for them, I felt a familiar nudge in my mind. Aware that this was most likely one of the Daemons trying to establish communications, I relaxed and lowered my ntal defences enough to allow the connection.
The excited Daemon’s ntal signature was unfamiliar to , so I was not sure which of the one-horned Daemons I was in contact with.
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