All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 231: Return of the Mess Makers

Bee and Tony sat across from each other on a grassy knoll, munching contentedly on a plate of sandwiches. They were having lunch together in a rare, quiet moment in between their otherwise frantic schedules. She only had half an hour's break, but she had been convinced very politely by Mary and a few others that she needed some time for herself. So when Mary had sent her son her way with a serving basket of lunch, they had gone on a little impromptu picnic.

Tony was his usual charming self, doing an excellent job of joking with her and keeping her mind off of what was going on. He managed to make her feel like things were almost normal. Not that they'd ever really been normal, but it was as close as Bee had felt in a long while.

Then, that 30-minute imposed break ended, and everything got a lot worse.

Bee felt significantly more relaxed. But as soon as they packed up and started to head back, she had been ambushed By a messenger waiting just around the corner. Apparently, she'd been summoned to the command center where Arthur, Captain Major, and Susan were waiting.

"Do you know what this is about?" Bee asked the messenger, and he shrugged a little bit.

"Um. Yeah. Some reports came in, and apparently, we got some more news about the troop allotments."

Bee frowned. That didn't seem urgent enough to warrant a meeting like this. They had a rather rough idea about infantry versus cavalry and all that, but it wasn't going to massively change their strategy, at least not that she was aware of.

When she reached the meeting room, she saw the taut and drawn faces of Susan and Captain Major, along with a rather haggard-looking Arthur. That was when she realized that there might have been something else to the report than she'd been led to believe.

"What's this?" She asked. Susan and Captain Major exchanged a look, for once putting their rivalry to the side. Rather, they each seemed to be hoping the other would speak. Eventually, Arthur's frown deepened, and he took charge.

"It seems that we have a problem. Some of our scouts have been reporting odd anomalies for a bit. The saboteurs have been running into more resistance than they should. And recently, when we hit them hard enough, we discovered why. Apparently, many of these soldiers aren't actually as human as they appear. When pressed, some of them will transform into demons."

Bee frowned. "What kind of demons?"

Captain Major and Susan finally found their tongues. Susan spoke first. "No particular kind. As far as we can tell, there are some lesser demons and various elemental varieties. Even a greater demon took an entire squad out at one point."

"That's concerning," Bee said as she processed the news. "The lower orders of demons aren't intelligent enough to act human, much less disguise themselves. How do we not see this? How do they interact with the people around them? Do the regular humans in the army know what's going on?"

The slew of questions was mostly met with confused shrugs. "We've only gotten some initial reports. My second is out looking for himself," Susan said, indicating the first group of people she had trained. "We'll know more when Ruarch gets back."

Captain Major said. "We have some reports from the military scouts, too, confirming. As far as we can tell, most of the army isn't aware of it. The areas that have encountered more resistance usually are all isolated incidents where every one of them is a demon. And it appears that maybe some select officers are aware of it and keeping them separate from the rest of the camp. As to how the demons are acting human-ish, we don't have the magical expertise to make that call. Perhaps if we bring some back to you, you might be able to tell."

Bee shrugged. "It's worth a shot. I won't know for sure. It might be best if I go out there and see for myself."

Arthur grimaced, but Susan and Captain Major both nodded.

"It might be best," Arthur said, "but it's a risk we probably don't need to take. If there are actual greater demons in here, you might be in more danger than you think. And it's not worth risking when you'll find out in a day or two anyway. Let's get you a corpse of one of the lesser demons or something for you to examine. Then we'll go from there. There's no point in putting the horse before the chariot."

Bee didn't like it but saw the logic. It wouldn't be as good as a live specimen, of course. But it made sense to take things one step at a time. "Is there anything else we know about this?"

"No. It just matches what we've been hearing about the king through our spies. Apparently, he's become far more paranoid than before. Some say he's gone mad. We're getting reports from our first people to reach the capital, and they confirm that things have gotten a lot worse in the kingdom recently. I think that we have to seriously consider that there is some dark influence in the King." Arthur said in a weary tone.

Bee remembered something they'd spoken about earlier. "The adviser you spoke warned you about this."

Arthur nodded. "Yes. He was having significant doubts about the King, and while I initially thought that he might be overblowing concerns that the king had been compromised, now I believe he might be correct."

Bee scuffed to the ground with her toe. "I suppose this means that once we defeat this army, it's not going to be the end of it, is it?"

"It never was, Miss Bee. It never was."

The meeting wrapped up with very little else to decide. It felt really important at that moment to do something about what they'd just learned, but there wasn't much they could do besides wait for more information. It was frustrating, but she luckily had an outlet. She trudged her way back into the castle after holding some quick conversations. That hopefully would help to keep morale up.

She worked her way up to the laboratory, where she found Miranda working tirelessly for the war effort. The fireworks that she had made for Void actually had shown great potential for military applications. Apparently, the ones deployed at her birthday party were heavily modified to emphasize the color and lights rather than the explosive power. If they just undid that, they made excellent projectiles for the siege equipment. Scatter shots of multiple vials could be launched from trebuchets, or they could be attached to a ballista bolt and cause much more damage in a specific area than a simple stone.

Now that Bee knew they were dealing with demons, she had some ideas about injecting demon's bane into the fireworks or something along those lines. They would really need improved siege equipment if it was going to be used against demonic forces rather than just simple humans. That wasn't the only solution that she and Miranda had, though, and in some ways, they weren't the most practical. Each vial was expensive and slow to make, and when they had so many targets, each vial could only do so much. Some of her ideas, though, would be more useful.

Bee had carved out enough research time for herself that she had learned some basic enchanting. It was a fascinating discipline where she could inlay runes with material or draw them on something to imbue it with certain magical properties. The basics were simple enough that she'd even had some successes. It was similar in principle to the warding circles from demonology, but just in a slightly more permanent method.

The runes were finicky to get right. Unsuccessful ones had a chance of fizzling out. Still, if you did them wrong in a very particular way, a cracking explosion could be obtained. And that was just what the doctor had ordered.

Today, Bee strode over to a large pile of uniformly sized stones. They would work in trebuchets and catapults where they were enchanted to explode on impact. A few of them were already armed and dangerous, but she had a lot of work ahead.

She actually had some proper enchantments she was working on as well. They were a lot harder to pull off and more likely to fail. But she had learned how to give the rocks extra momentum, for example. But her experiments on homing or improved accuracy so far hadn't achieved more than a few stubbed toes. Something that would guide a thrown object toward a designated target was a very complicated ask, especially considering how much she was pioneering in this field. She had to both work with how long the thing would be in flight and then also somehow designate a target.

If she could somehow mix that with anti-demonic explosives in the vials, perhaps they could be used a lot more effectively. It was going to take a lot of experiments to work, and they didn't have much time. Luckily, Maranda had taken to magic even more than she had. Well, Bee definitely had an edge on her in certain aspects. But Maranda was a true savant. Perhaps they'd be able to figure something out together.

---

I was stuck. I had determined that the mountain was alive, but I didn't have a good way of communicating with it. I didn't want to leave to go find Daedalus while the snowmen were still vulnerable, though I supposed they would probably be okay if they had survived as long as they had without me. And I couldn't just remove the offending rock monsters on my own. It was quite the conundrum.

Just as I was about to despair, two broad sets of dragon wings appeared on the horizon: one red and one white. Within a few minutes, I was no longer alone in the sky.

I quickly replayed the scene of what happened for Daedalus and Thucydides to see, and they both groaned as they watched. Daedalus looked over at his little brother with a cloudy expression. "Thucydides, how did you fail to mention that you were living next to a mountain spirit?"

Thucydides looked anywhere but at us. "Yeah, I… well…" He spluttered, starting several sentences before giving up and just shrugging. "I didn't know. Either it's fairly young, or it just was dormant the entire time I was here. It's not my fault."

Daedalus shook in laughter. "Oh, you silly thing. This is what you get for all your meditation and symbol-scratching."

Thucydides shot his brother a baleful look. "Hey, it wasn't really something I thought to check! Who would even think that? Besides, it wasn't causing any problems anyways."

I quickly disabused him of the notion that it hadn't caused any problems by replaying a few of the scenes of me absolutely chopping apart a rock creature and it just reforming like nothing happened. Thucydides winced. "Yeah, I suppose that could be a problem. But normally, on their own spirits don't do much."

Daedalus grumbled. "I suppose I'll go talk to it. Mountain spirits aren't generally unreasonable. Just a little bit slow."