Sons of Ironstorm - Book 4: Griffon's Stand

Crimson Skulduggery

Sweeping the cloak close about him, Agdin strode forward, hard on the heels of the officer. The tjor'riin, a general by rank and the most trusted of Bren's shadow elf officers, was a key. Turn the veteran soldier, alive during the height of the empire and preserved for hundreds of cycles by a dark magic sleep, in the right direction and the network Bren had built to service the impending Kaal Eran invasion of Reutha would collapse. At least, that was the hope. If the council could trigger a failure, or somehow induce the allies to fall upon each other, that could eliminate the need to confront both Bren and the Kaal Eran directly on the battlefield. Not to mention letting the Kaal Eran destroy Bren for them. While it would be a pleasure to slay the traitorous sorcerer themselves, knowing how powerful Bren was gave the council members more than a little pause in doing so. Better to leave it to the Kaal Eran and their vast army and foul magic.

The council's missive secreted on his person, its taut words commanding him to both betray and undermine Bren, Agdin passed through the opening into the breeding chamber, eyes focused on the officer ahead of him. All around the sounds, sights and smells of the chamber at full operational production would've slowed a lesser man. But immured against the tumult by experience and his burning purpose, the sensory assault slid by him unnoticed. Eyes hard, he watched the Tjor'riin officer approach one of many ladders leading down from the observation walkway the entrance to the pits ran immediately onto, swing himself over the edge and begin to descend.

Having traversed the ladder down onto the main breeding floor more times than he cared to admit, the officer swiftly and confidently made his descent. Still the wiry sorcerer followed, unnoticed as he silently eased down the ladder above the officer, always staying several paces distant.

Screams echoed through the chamber as the officer's boots touched down on the packed dirt floor of the breeding chamber, wrenched from the throats of dozens of dark elf females forced into labor by magic. Strapped naked to rough wooden birthing tables, the women were helpless, prevented from even protecting themselves as a cluster of nearby acolytes and sorcerers cast their spells. Those spells reached into their wracked bodies to stimulate the seed planted there several turns before into full growth, drawing on the life force of the unwilling mother to unnaturally speed its way through development.

Other spells triggered the birth process and literally pulled the Tjor'riin newborn from the woman's body, uncaring of the damage left behind. The child was immediately rushed to the maturation cluster where more magic forced it to grow to full size within days, leaving the woman dazed and broken on the table behind. After some rudimentary and careless healing, it began again with the implantation of a new seed, crafted in sorcerous vessels lining each birthing room. The woman was used until her life force was exhausted. She was then released, dragged to a death room to lapse into a coma and die shortly afterward, her body no longer willing to live.

The women were brought into the chamber the first time after their second naturally birthed child, if she was fertile enough to have children, as soon as she became sexually mature if infertile. It didn't require a working womb for the magic to work, only a place for the seed to parasitically attach and begin to drain life from its hostess. It was brutally efficient, allowing a full division to be ready within a tenday, if enough women were available.

Agdin ignored the flare of bright blue and red light that cascaded across his path from his right, magic being cast in the maturation cluster where dozens of Tjor'riin infants and youths were secured in great vats of thick nutrient fluid, the magic pushing them towards maturity as it danced through the gel all around and through them. The officer in front of him ignored the light as well, having seen it many times before. His goal: the command centre at the pit's far end, a low, rambling structure of stone where the sorcerers working in the pits lived and took their meals. If the wiry sorcerer were to take him, he'd have to do so before he reached the command centre and the sorcerer who summoned him, most likely Master Bren himself.