The Runic Alchemist

Vidalia continued, “The army of Demons took every region of the Empire that they set their eyes upon. Very late after their arrival did we learn that the Obsidian Bastion had been robbed of this mana contract or runic tool that forbade them to harm humans, along with many invaluable runic weapons and dungeon relics. It was the work of a human cult that believed in causing nothing but chaos to everyone—led by the Shadow Reaver.

The emperor had long since started the migration of his people after he won against the Dawnstar. Still, not all were through the desert—the emperor sent his most powerful people to help his people cross.

The Demons did not let them go that easily though, and then started the war against the Demons. They were few in number at the start, but their black ships were fast, and their weapons and spells were far out of the Empire’s league. The Empire’s people fought bravely to protect their own, but only a fraction survived when it ended. The Demons imprisoned them, along with the rest of the Coaster Empire. The only reason the rest of the Empire was left unharmed was because the Demons did not have enough numbers to take control of each and every region.”

“Where are they right now? The Demons?” Damian asked.

“After nine years..” Vidalia said, her shoulders slumping a little, “At the border of Dawnstar and the Empire. We are still fighting to keep them contained there. Good thing the Demons’ population is not even a fraction of what our three countries have, so they can’t spread themselves too thin. But they are cruel, and sometimes come attacking just for sport.”

“Did you say we?” Kamisen asked.

“What does Eldoris have to do with it?” Karl added from beside him.

“The emperor was proven more cunning than ruthless—he managed to get his hands on some of the Demons and called for a meeting. He showed the representatives of Faerunia and Eldoris what Demons from our myths truly looked like. It was managed by the Sun Temple priests. The Empire had assimilated well with Dawnstar’s people. After the war ended, some believed the order of the Daragon Emperor’s rule was what the land needed. The Sun Temple’s full support behind him only spread the propaganda further and wider.”

Vidalia paused, looking away from all of them toward her people busy at work before them.

“The Demons are the enemies of humanity—there was a rumor about the Demon King being the strongest mage in centuries. When we faced him, it turned out to be more than just a rumor. Along with the revived Chaos Dragon, the threat was bigger than any of our inner conflicts. We formed an alliance to fight the Demons. The Empire, now assimilated with Dawnstar, was the one facing the most danger and used all it had to face them. We sent people over too, as many as we could.

For a while, we fought together. Managed to slow down the Demons and even gained a little land back. All our mages and runesmiths worked together to create a defensive structure to be installed there.

After the news of many Highswords going missing and seeing the chaotic environment, not many nobles’ children had entered the academy recently, but still, many children were there. At exactly that time, we got the four people back from the dungeon—The Four Wells of Mana.”

“Grace?” Sam asked before anyone else could.

Vidalia nodded, “Grace, the hope of Sanctuary. Sariel and Amy, the demon hunter couple, and Alex, the Faerunian Prince of Ruin.”

“What happened after they came back?” Karl asked.

Vidalia continued, “The three of them joined the Sanctuary for a while. The prince went back to his family. The things they revealed—what they had gone through—shook the world. With the story of the Demon Lord being back in the Land-breaker’s body, the fear of Demons doubled. The Demons got even more excited, awaiting their lord’s return.

When they revealed the infiltration of Highswords by the Chaos followers, and most of their demise by each other’s hands, the suspicion of our own people rose everywhere—in our home, in the alliance army, on the battlefield. It got to the point that we, the allied nations, started a joint mission with a few of our sharpest minds to hunt down all these Chaos follower cults from human lands. The Sun Temple fully supported that notion, and we did get some results.

People were tired of criminals like the Shadow Reaver roaming free with Highsword runic tools, causing mayhem everywhere. Looting villages, small towns, and even some parts of bigger cities in our three kingdoms. It wasn’t without issues though.

On the other side, the Four Wells of Mana had joined the battlefield against the Demons at the Empire’s border. Their ability to produce endless mana from a runic tool was proven very useful against the Demons. They could power giant runic weapons on their own. They had spatial storages that could hold whole rations for an army. It didn’t take long before they were called the Transcendent Seeds by everyone. But the Sanctuary, and by relation Eldoris, had connections to three of them, while Faerunia had just one.

And then the attack on Edgeheaven happened. The nearby lords realized what was going on and went for aid and fought against the Demons. We came after to help—and we did. We won the land back at a great sacrifice. But Faerunia had much better ships, and they had come with the intention of taking control at all costs. The issue broke our trust, and we questioned the Faerunians. Issues started arising in the alliance army.

Still, we kept at it. Years went by. The battle lasted as both sides built permanent defenses, better weapons, learned more about each other. The Demons were content with the land they had occupied, but they did not stop the occasional assault on Dawnstar, Eldoris, and even Faerunia—they were at all our borders. They had runic tools that could travel far and wide, even take short flights.”

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