The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2 novel Chapter 173

PART 25

A week after releasing the Education spell they participated in the first joint void exercise involving the militaries of every nation on Kellaran.

It began in the void opposite the sun from the real demons where Mark and his family had tested their power. There they faced simulations of the demons’ small rock world and every demon in it, all run by gods of Kellaran and The Triax. There was no way to know if the simulated demons’ strength matched that of the real ones, but they faced more than eleven billion demons in the exercise. Only a hundredth of them were greater demons, and there were only a handful of DemonLords.

Only those with a combat score of five thousand or less were allowed to fight unrestrained. Those with more power than that were allowed to command, but were forbidden from using their own power in combat, and only allowed to fight with spelled swords and shields that they were issued by the organizers that gave an expert fighter a combat score of about fifty. No concentration of power or simulacrums were allowed. Every soldier fought with his or her own power and their own bodies, along with whatever spelled items and equipment they could procure. They were still allowed to co-ordinate their forces with a Command Link, and they would certainly have been quickly slaughtered without it.

After fourteen hours of battle they had only defeated half the demons, and had destroyed less than a tenth of the tunnels and caverns.

Then their enemy surprised them by Translocating to Kellaran, where they all started attacking two Clan-Holdings in a desert in the center of Kletiuk with a combined area equal to that of Venak, and two sizable cities.

The demons had their way of it in the beginning of the battle in the void, and Kellarani losses were heavy. The Kellarani were just adapting to the challenge and turning the tide when the battle moved to Kletiuk. There the demons initially dominated the battle again, half of which was aerial and half was among the houses, buildings, tunnels, and underground caverns of the dwarves’ semi-subterranean cities.

The battle’s move to Kellaran did allow the Kellarani to bring much of their non-void-qualified fighters into the fray, and those reinforcements were sorely needed.

After another four hours the demons were losing badly again, so they retreated back to their rock in the void, where the battle continued in their tunnels and caverns for a final three hours.

When it was done, most of Kellaran’s forces, over half the total population of the world, had been ‘killed’. But all the simulated demons were dead. All the surviving void-qualified forces were so bone-tired that they were almost asleep on their feet, so reviews and evaluations of the exercise were postponed for ten hours.

“It seemed completely real in Quewanak’s dream training, except a minute or two between exercises.” Mark commented. “We really thought we were in battle. But there was always that slight air of unreality that even the most real-seeming dream has. And we never had to hold back. This wasn’t like that at all.”

“I’m not even sure how much of the exercise was real, and how much was simulated.” Povon stated with a slight edge of anger. “I don’t think we were ever really in Kletiuk today. I think the organizers had us completely fooled, including re-directing our Translocations without us realizing it. That’s a bit scary, but that’s gods for you, I guess. The pain of the injuries we took sure seemed real enough.”

“I faltered completely!” Val sobbed. “There was these two brigades of Sylvan, about a hundred thousand of them, and apparently their officers had lost their nerve and were refusing to follow orders while we were in Kletiuk. For some reason I was sent to straighten them out and lead them in this assault they were supposed to do.

“So there’s this huge grain warehouse with all these distribution tunnels leading down with rails in them for carts of grain, and it was one of the primary defense points for the civilians of the city. The demons had breached the warehouse, and the dwarves had fallen back to secondary defense points at the ends of the tunnels where there were big grated iron portcullises and they could direct a lot of fire at the demons who were restricted by the narrow tunnels.

“We were supposed to retake the warehouse and kill all the demons inside there and in the tunnels before they could break through any of the portcullises and get loose among the civilians of the city.