Deathless

Deathless Chapter Thirteen: Flamebearer

Chapter Thirteen: Flamebearer

The old, ruined walls of Seapoint lay on the horizon, the crumbling stones piled onto each other seeming like thorns of stone rising from the earth. Vanya and her companions had finally emerged from the Lacus Forest, having finally navigated through the winding passages of the dense shrubbery.

“Thank the gods,” Lindale muttered, stowing away the machete in his pack, wet with dew and speckled with leaves and roots. “We’re out of that hellhole.”

“Indeed,” Vanya responded. “Seapoint, finally.”

“And our contact in the harbor?” Sirya inquired. “Where might we find him?”

“Her, actually,” Risselyn replied. “It’s Captain Adelca, of the Imperial Navy Fleet, or, well, what’s left of it.”

“We should be able to find her on the town’s outskirts. She should be waiting at one of the Empire’s lesser-known ports.”

As they proceeded towards Seapoint, Sirya noticed the security getting tighter. Imperial guards patrolled the plains surrounding the city, their eyes sharp and their blades sharper. They encountered a company of men on horseback, wearing billowing capes that flew behind them embroidered with the seal of the Eagles, a soaring eagle with sprawling wings with two crossed daggers shining behind. They paid them no notice, even upon seeing the seal embroidered on Risselyn’s shield, a pair of lions with locked claws, the seal of the Lions, the primary fighting force of the Battalion.

Their group of bounty hunters was not completely ignorant of the events that had transpired during the war. They knew of Admiral Lasaron and the legendary Dragonfire’s defeat in the Bay of Kings, and that Ashmur’s fleet had swept across the Archipel Islands, expelling Imperial influence in those isles.

She also knew that what remained of the Imperial navy was now holed up in Seapoint, the twin flagships of Windbearer and Stormblazer, commanding naught but thirty warships, a measly resistance against Ashmur’s monstrous warfleet.

Seapoint was massing what troops it could to prepare for a naval strike upon the isle. The rebel navy had been silent since two months ago, when they had sunken Lasaron’s fleet. Iepenel’s advisor, Caswil, suspected that Ashmur was once againmassing yet another fleet at Ictus City, and soon enough, his wrath would eventually wipe the Imperial Navy off the face of the earth.

As they passed through the ruined walls that surrounded the borders of what used to be Seapoint, Sirya also noted that the walls were nearly abandoned. They passed by the abandoned buildings that the citizens had left behind as they fled northwards, which were now used as barracks for the Imperial troops now residing in the city. Most military occupation had been apparently moved to within the walls.

The Old City that surrounded the Inner City of Seapoint was filled with neatly cobbled streets and marble homes. Many of the homes were now abandoned, but some had been taken by the military as bases. The sun was dipping lower and lower on the horizon, and the old walls of the city seemed then like the teeth of some stone giant.

They walked through the abandoned streets, many of them lying in ruins, with the stones upturned and grass growing where neatly paved cobblestone used to be. Seapoint had never fully recovered from the War of Liberation, and after that, it was forced to face another foe in the Second Great Serenian War, from the empire of Xernas.

In those days the city of Seapoint had been bustling with activity, with the height of the Imperial Navy patrolling the seas and merchants and traders transporting and peddling their goods from Seapoint in the north to Southport in the south. And then in the horizon, the boar-headed longships of the Xernian Empire entered the Archipel Island and launched their assault upon Seapoint. The Imperial Navy fought bravely, but eventually, Seapoint was taken and razed to the ground.