Rebirth 1.6
*
The Achaemenid Persian army's composition differed from place to place, as was proper considering it was an empire that stretched from Anatolia to Egypt to Iran. In each region, the local satraps, who acted as imperial inspectors and governors, recruited from the local population sort of like the auxilia that later Roman emperors did, to supplement their Persian infantry. They also had innovations in warfare, such as being some of the first to use heavy shock cavalry in any form.
Prince Xerxes had brought five hundred companions, who were also his personal bodyguard retinue, along for this journey. Anymore and he would have been declaring a campaign, and that required him to declare an heir along with many other stringent rules.
Those companions, whose names were also immortals in their tongue, wore the scaled armor that covered all of their upper torso, and heavy, triple-layered cloth armor. They slung a bow on one shoulder, carried with them twelve arrows, and also brought along a heavy, wooden tower shield that was colored with a deep purple to symbolize they were Xerxes' guard. Yes, Xerxes loved to indulge in purple, I had never seen such rich colors in this life until I met him.
But that was the problem. He might have had a decent education. He might have had competent commanders in the field with him. He might have done all those things right. But we weren't facing human soldiers… and he didn't bring the full arsenal of the Persian army.
I didn't mean he needed to bring a million men; that was never possible, and I was well aware of the logistical trap that such a feat was.
Instead, what I meant was that he could currently field three types of troops: heavy shield-bearers with one handed short spears, heavy infantry with a long two-handed spear, and shielded archers. Those shielded archers deployed in a standard sparabara formation, such that one man in front wields the tower shield and six behind him enter three rotations of shooting, with one spearman to protect the rear, were an innovation for their time. Yet, he lacked light infantry—slingers and javelins—and he didn't bring any cavalry outside of messengers.
Since every shield that was brought forth were the sort of tower shield that reached from nose to toe and held the width of a man, this meant that those in the front line weren't going anywhere. And with how the Persians were in this matter, such that heavy infantry was spread thin and most of the men took up bows, it meant that they had very little to protect their front. If that single line of infantry collapse, oh say, due to charging giant spiders, they would all be fucked.
And then I would be fucked. Why the fuck was I procrastinating by counting his men and analyzing their formations when I ought to be thinking of some excuse to get out of here?
"Your mind seems occupied," Prince Xerxes approached me on his horse while I was in the wagon.
I hurriedly stood and lowered my head, I knew proper etiquette once they thought me. "I was just thinking about the things to come."
"Yes," he nodded. "You are named Aisa, it is a name of the Goddess Atropos, yes? I have heard of similar Goddesses who shared that dominion, going by names of Ashima. Do you wish for a temple to be built in the Goddess' honor, Oh Conjurer of Mysteries?"
"Son of the King of Kings," I shook my head in denial. Maybe if I blasphemed, he'd tell me to go home? "I… I do not know if even Atropos exists."
He turned his bearded face towards me fully, and in the darkness of the early morning, I could barely make out the features on his face. "Ah. You are one of those. I understand. It is curious that you do not… well, I do not question it. The Empire has a place for all people. Do you know this?"
"I am not sure what you mean?" I looked over at my father, but he kept his eyes on the road and seemed keen to avoid meeting my gaze.
"My grandfather is a great man. They call him Cyrus the Great, for he loved all men, and all women." He looked over at me as if expecting me to get the joke, but he was met with a look of confusion. Seeing this, he acted if he had not tried humor, recovering remarkably fast. "The Empire is the only place on this Earth that all men and women can worship how they wish and who they wish. I had thought you a priestess of your Goddess, but it seems I was mistaken."
Perhaps part of the reason why the Achaemenid Empire held itself together so long were its relatively egalitarian policies (for its time), being one of the most tolerant lands in the world at the time. It certainly was the most powerful, to deem to call itself just 'The Empire'. I nodded along. "I can see that. While I might be blessed by many gods, I must say that I am not educated in the ways of a priestess. It doesn't seem like a life of any choices to me, anyway."
"I see. Then perhaps… well, we have more time to discuss in the future. Is this what you are worried about, the future?" He chuckled in rhythm with the trot of his horse. "Worry not, Little Aisa. You shall be in the back lines, and well protected. I just require you to call upon your Gods when we require it."
It was almost as if he, due to his closeness to power, didn't believe so much in the deities as much as himself. It almost made sense, in a way. "But you do not know what I can do."
Prince Xerxes shrugged and smiled in that sort of darkly charismatic fashion that told me he didn't just simply inherit this empire while he had so many other brothers. "You will know what you need to do. I am sure, even if the Gods do not whisper in your ears. A simple sign from the Gods will be more than enough to boaster our morale."
"That's… not the problem," I said, less to him and more to myself. It was never the problem of morale… it was the problem that we were sending normal people to fight fantastical monsters. And more importantly, he wouldn't let me go no matter what I did! "I… I guess I can only try."
*
As we crested the green hills of the Anatolian plateau, we noticed a white dot on the horizon. The further we trekked along the trail, the bigger it got, until it was visible to the naked eye.
We had ridden at the head, though not the front, of the line. Because of how thin the dirt road was, we had thinned our lines so that Xerxes' immortals marched behind us in a double column, where as each wagon could only go alone one at a time. This meant much of the supply wagon of foods that trailed behind us were even slower than our pacing was.
Nevertheless, Xerxes was beside me when we saw that this white specter was no illusion at all but the destination we were hoping to reach. It had been mid-noon at the time, thus among the greenery, those white walls stood out rather clearly. Xerxes had raised a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, "By the Wise Lord, it seems Sardis is better preserved than I had heard!"
"That's no city," I frowned as we made our way closer and the details of the walls of the city became visible. Many parts of the walls were still lacking, having never fully recovered from the sacking, pillaging, and raping that the Athenians had commenced, but what was on those walls crawled not people, but spiders… and if the gates were the same size as the ones I was used to, these spiders were around two meters wide. "That's a lair of monsters."
And as if on command, the sound of hissing emitted from the walls. Those brown and black arachnid forms started skittering over, each the size of a unit of cavalry, horse and man together. There were a few of them—six in total.
Xerxes did not react so quickly as much as stop his horse with his eyes wide and features filled with confusion. His commanders were not so incompetent, and the bodyguard captain who led the five hundred by the name Artabanus rode forth from Xerxes' side.
Artabanus shouted commands left and right, "Get a shield line formed! Long spears behind them!"
But the problem of the immortals still haunted them. Due to a lack of light infantry, the lines formed slowly. These men were brave, but they wore a full set of heavy scales over their torsos and they had been marching since the early morning. A small line about twentymen wide formed before the spiders reached us.
They were three-man deep, which was about half the necessary depth needed to hold against charging spiders, or so I thought. I knew little of the foes we were facing, so I was holding my cards close to my chest and not about to just start tossing around what little resources I scrounged up over the past few months. Worse yet, the third man in the line were archers, thinking they were facing mortal men and that their front lines will hold.
Perhaps they were right to have faith. These weren't the scutums of the Romans. They were massive tower shields that were perhaps almost twice the weight and size of what the Romans used, and it was truly these shields that yielded the heavy in heavy infantry to the immortals, despite lacking as much armor as some of the Greeks.
Another point to the Persian archers, the giant spiders moved differently on their web-covered walls compared to the open plains. They didn't charge and build momentum like how horses or other types of ordinary, conventional cavalry did.
Instead, their charge was a slow thing. Off the webs, it seemed as if they had lost some of their mobility, or at least ability to turn at will. I had thought little of this, until one of them, close enough, leaped into the Persian lines.
It wasn't even a fast jump… I saw it coming as did most of the soldiers who moved out of the way.
One man, however, was unlucky in that we had traveled on a thin path, and his compatriots were beside him and behind him, leaving him stumbling as he tried to dodge. It was a few seconds too late, and the spider laid its chelicerae at either side of his head and tore it clean off with a snap.
"Jolt!" I tossed at the spider. A single streak of lightning escaped my forefinger and connected with the giant spider's blood showered head. Its dark brown shell darkened and much of the hair that seemed to grow on it singed off, but it seemed otherwise upset with me. "I shouldn't have done that."
Despite acting like mooks with only one hit dice, the Persian archers lived up to their names and reacted after I shot my electricity at the spider. More than a dozen arrows flew, and four of them even stuck into the massive creature.
At this time, its companions, the five other giant spiders, had arrived. They each leaped and tore into the Persian lines, without a sense of cohesion or discipline. They acted only on killer instinct, hungering for the flesh of men and attacking whatever irritated them.
Their claws were larger than spearheads and their was about a meter long—they could just as easily thrust through a Persian tower shield with their claw as easily as one spear might jab into one of their sides. There was a striking similarity in the results too; the claw would get stuck in the overly cumbersome tower shield, and some might even get twisted off the spider's torso when it tried to leap away… and spears would get stuck in spider shells, and break before their wielders could pull back.
I probably could have dealt massive damage if I went closer. The ice elemental school came with the Freezing Shards supernatural ability. It did in a five foot radius around me—around the same reach as the spiders' claws—three times the damage of the Jolt spell. It was a decent area of effect spell for my level, I had thought, as a silver lining, and the shards inhibited movement for everyone except me for a few seconds too.
The problem was however that I didn't want to throw my life away! I was sure if I had ever needed to get that close to the battlefield, I was dead anyway. I was a wizard, damn it!
But… I saw the people around me. I saw people screaming, dying, dead, struggling, even reaching out for me…
Xerxes looked over at me from the corner of his eyes…
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Shield. Mage Armor. The disadvantage that caused the Persians to rally so slowly—the narrowness of the path that squeezed that twenty-men width line into what looked like a five-men width line—also affected the giant spiders. As they closed in on their prey in a semi-circle, they squeezed themselves so much that they were climbing over each other to get at a bite of human flesh.
Blood and viscera flew, bones chipped and crushed, and entrails spilled onto the plentiful soil. I was moving too slowly, I couldn't make it in time, my timing was off, father tried to grab me and pull me back onto the cart, and I couldn't help but feel the sense of failure sinking into me.
I should have spent more time exercising rather than being locked in doors. I knew that despite what I had on paper, I could self-improve through planning and action and affect the numbers that were on the character sheet. Why didn't I ever bother? I wanted to complain.
I was huffing, lungs burning, mind spinning, and all around seeing spots by the time I reached the line of shields.
There were holes here and there, but there was no optimal positioning.
There was no time.
"Taste the rainbow!" The spell, Color Spray, jet out of my palm. Three? No, four spiders were hit. They stopped moving. That was enough for me to squeeze through, and I muttered an apology to the infantry who were trying so desperately hard to hold the line.
Jagged shards of ice grew from my feet and stabbed into everything around me—giant spiders, broken shields, headless corpses, and even still injured and struggling men. I repeated it twice more, until the three spiders around me shuddered and died, but there were still two left and they were feasting.
In those precious few seconds where I could have spared another Color Spray from a scroll, they had mowed through at least six more men. I had still a Hypnotism prepared, and I moved my fingers and called out to them. While they did not stop entirely, they had turned their attention to me. In that moment, arrows sang through the air as the line of immortal archer infantry caught up and squeezed into the path.
Their screeching filled the air. I wanted to run away, but the smell of the dead hit me, and while I had been used to this compared to the last life with how rural living in Troad was, I was already feeling exhausted. No, more than that, I was afraid I was going to die here again.
My knees shook. My hands were numb and I fumbled to pull out a scroll of something, anything.
I fell backwards, a spider, bloody and bleeding and missing one leg, leaped at me, and slammed into the invisible walls that was the Shield spell, and as if on queue, it dissipated having run its timer.
I was shook, I forgot about my spells, and raised my hands to shield myself.
"Argh!" A wet squelch echoed through the air and I felt my entire front soggy before the heavy mass dropped upon me. Yet, I wasn't dead. I opened my eyes, only realizing I had squeezed them shut.
Above me, a heavily panting and equally shaken Eleni had grabbed a spear and stuck it through the spider's soft underside as it prepared to leap, and the other end seemed to be stuck in the part of the exoskeleton that protected its forehead. "… Aisa. I take it back. I want to go home."
I peered over her shoulder, and saw my father had cut down the other spider with help from Eleni's father and the other men. Oh, hey, it was that spider I threw my first Jolt at. I was wondering where it went… Behind them, Artabanus had kept Xerxes from moving too close, holding him back.
I let out a small sigh and laid back. I wanted to sleep. "Yeah. Me too."Rebirth 1.7
*
We retreated some distance to a river that flowed through Sardis called Paktolos. Father told me, as he carried me on his lap in our cart, that the legendary Phrygian King Midas had used this very river to wash away his golden touch. I couldn't bring myself to sit up to look for sparks of gold in those waters. I thought I must have dozed off.
I didn't know using practically all my spells was this exhausting.
When Xerxes asked which gods I worshiped, I was too tired to answer so Father told him of our gods. The Prince of Persia made to sacrifice three calfs, one to Zeus, one to Apollo, and one to Aphrodite. His commander Artabanus had established an encampment about two miles away from the city ruins along this river, and it was there we burned those cows. I was too tired to be scared the smoke might draw more creatures towards us.
Stakes were driven down, tents were set up, foragers were sent along, and scouts left the camp. I wondered why we didn't just leave. I thought we had completed the challenge, but that wasn't right. There was no smug message about my being barely substandard.
Each corpse of the giant spiders were desiccated—the Prince had prepared for success and brought men whose skill laid in the preservation of corpse trophies. I barely paid attention as I drank my soup; he had placed me beside him at the table, and the men looked on at me as if I were a strange creature. Their eyes were all hungry, but not for the food placed before them.
He regaled me with how he had already sent one of the giant spiders back to his father who had retreated from his defeats in Greece to Babylon. He had also sent for more supplies and more men from all the surrounding colony cities, meaning there were Greek mercenaries joining us soon enough.
Then he sang of the song of battle. Somehow, it had become a battle of spiders that towered over walls, of heroes who fought for their young prince, of a sorceress blessed by many gods who sounded more like a reincarnation of Athena than the potato who stumbled over her own legs that I was, and of course of the heroic prince who commanded them all and made the last thrust. The ego on the man seemed to already have written into his memories that this was how things actually played out, and that I had no say in the matter—as he had already sent this song along with the trophy to Babylon and to the many lands of the Empire.
After supper, three of the eighteen scouts sent out returned. He spoke of many such monsters we faced this day skittering about, though none seemed to leave too far from the city's ruins. One brave man had scaled the walls and seen a greater beast that he claimed to be thrice the size of these giant spiders resting at the center of the city, laying eggs and devouring corpses of anything caught in its web.
This was what happened if I ignored my challenge for a single year? My heart was already stricken by the loss I had seen this day.
If I had seen this less as a game where I scrounged up every last scroll and potion until the final boss fight, if I had been more willing to spend my resources… I could have prevented so many deaths. I could have done things so much better. I was already scolding myself, and now the realization that I couldn't run away from my problems hit me like an isekai truck.
I… I couldn't deal with this. I crawled into our family's tent, and I wrapped myself in the blanket that the Prince had provided and I closed my eyes. Sleep would make sense of things, I hoped.
*
The soldiers and all the other people of this world didn't grow as I did. I could still improve myself like they, but gaining experience was apparently only a quality that I retained for myself.
Those slaughtered creatures had provided me with enough experience to more than reach level three and still have a thousand experience points remaining. So I was level three. Was I lucid dreaming? It wasn't like this the time I gained the second level.
I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared about leveling up. What if another challenge spawned on me? How much longer would it take me to clear that one? The resources and people of this Earth were limited, and things like the giant spider had no natural predator. If I didn't kill them all, I could accidentally end the world by sheer negligence.
It was a heavy burden.
I couldn't even bring myself to think of the errors I had made this day. Should I take the Spell Penetration feat due to how my damaging spells seemed to just barely tap these spiders? Should I take the Combat Casting feat so I could, by fiat, not freeze up in fright mid-combat? Maybe I could take a crafting skill… no, I didn't have time.
I wasn't about to sit back and watch people die. I had more empathy than that. Even if I could say that it was blamed on them for choosing to attack the lair of the giant spiders, I was the one responsible for bringing those creatures into this land in the first place.
I was the one who changed history. I might have even changed the destinies of empires.
I didn't want that responsibility.
In the end, I chose Combat Casting. You are adept at spellcasting when threatened or distracted. That was what it said. It must have looked rather strange from an outsider's point of view, for me to be so distracted and fearful in combat one day, and then suddenly not have this issue the next. I wondered how Father, or Eleni, or Eleni's father might have thought of this.
I wondered what Xerxes thought. I could deduce what he was planning for the majority of the time. With my current knowledge skill, I could tell that he was not the eldest son of the current King of Kings. He was fighting for the right to be heir, because he had already heard of the rumblings of rebellion in Egypt… a King of Kings must designate an heir before leaving on campaign.
But this couldn't be it. Just the trophies alone wouldn't be enough. He wasn't a warrior either, he was a manipulator… a politician, a speaker, a leader. He compared himself to the myth of Heracles in comparing the Sardisian Spider to the Nemean Lion, but he thought himself better than Heracles, who became a god in myth.
… did… did he want to tame them? He would have had a better chance serving giant spider innards as a delicacy in Babylon.
Nevertheless, he was my only ticket into a third path in life. Other than overwhelming political might or a flex of overwhelming physical violence, I only had two options—become a wife or a priestess. And honestly, I didn't find either appealing, though I wasn't exactly against them too. I was so young, shouldn't I be allowed to live my life first? Or was this a luxury not afforded to people before the industrial revolution?
Alright. Slap yourself in the face, I told myself. It was just the combat exhaustion. The drain of adrenaline. I had mighty arcane forces at my disposal in a world that was supposed to be identical to the mundane yet still wondrous Earth that I had once lived. Even if I had a billion years, I wouldn't have seen all the beauty of the universe. Pick yourself up.
At the level three, I had access to three new second level spells.
First, I needed a spell for dealing with the grown original giant spider. It was probably one class larger than it used to be, and I couldn't rely on the Persian lines to hold it like they did the later spawned giant spiders. If it was thrice in size, then we were dealing with not something similar to heavy cavalry and more something similar to an elephant cavalry. The Romans had dealt with elephants by tying flames to riderless camels, or something to that effect. This creature could probably be dealt with in a similar manner if it couldn't use its leaping charge.
To that end, I chose the Blindness-Deafness curse spell. It allowed me to permanently curse a target from about 130 feet away with either blindness or deafness. That was a good distance away, and that was the minimum of how far I wished to keep things that wanted to kill me.
Second, I knew everyone around me had their own interests. Father had his interests in family, the city, and his duty. Eleni had her interests in friends, fashion, and luxuries. The Prince had his interests in political power, a lasting legacy, and controlling what he could. I needed an escape plan, or something that allowed me to leave if necessary.
With that in mind, I chose the Invisibility spell. It granted me or anyone I touched with invisibility. It was rather self-explanatory in that way. It only lasted three minutes at my current level, but three minutes was enough a difference between life and death.
Third, I was in a bind. Being in the ice elemental school of magic meant I was cut off from most of the damaging fire and earth spells, such as Scorching Ray and Acid Arrow. I still needed a long range damaging spell that didn't require my running up to the front lines. I never wanted to do that again. I was about to pick one of the damaging spells, but I thought better against it—archers could do more damage, and Persians had crude siege works already, so any damage I could do with magic, they could do better.
In the end, I wanted to pick summoning meat shields, the spell Summon Monster II, since having them around for eighteen seconds was already good enough for me. After all, even if I couldn't cast Fireball without it being too costly, there was no reason I couldn't summon a fire elemental to do the same thing, could I? I wasn't actually about to summon elementals from another plane of existence however, but throwing several poisonous snakes at a spider might still do something, right?
In the end, I picked these things because I couldn't do them. They were new, strange, peculiar sensations that I wanted to experience for myself. I once had a mentor who told me that 'It's better to follow your talents than your passion. At least you will have success', but I was already mainlining wizard levels only, so I wanted to diversify while I could.
Honestly, I could have taken spells like Enlarge Person, despite it being a first level spell, just to test my boundaries with Prince Xerxes. I could have asked him to provide his champion heroes that he sung so much about and sent them off into battle alone…
… if he had been anything but kind, but Xerxes, despite being someone who was so obviously false and scheming, was kind to me. He was not just kind to me but to my father and my friend too.
I couldn't bring myself to act against him when he didn't act against me.
Not yet.
*
The next two weeks passed with impossible slowness.
Xerxes sent out small groups to hunt down stray giant spiders that left the fortifications of the ruins of Sardis, but he never sent any true siege works towards the epicenter itself. Neither did he allow me to join any of these expeditions.
I was quite upset, but also relieved at the same time. It was an internal struggle. Did I want to go out and meet danger for a chance of more experience points now that no taunting message of a second challenge showed up? Or did I want to stay within the confines of the fortified encampment where at least I had some semblance of peace. It felt like I was being Captain America'd, made to perform fake mysteries on a stage for the troops, but then not being able to experience the actual fighting with them.
Artabanus had actually built an encampment that was similar to the Roman encampments. It was rectangular with a central tent, watch towers on each side, a small ditch before the walls, and stakes had been driven into the earth after they saw how impaling worked well against the giant spiders. I almost felt safe here, if it wasn't for all the disastrous parties that returned. It felt like Attack on Titan, where the expeditions sent out returned with less than half their numbers, though most of the time they were victorious in some capacity.
It wasn't true victory. It felt like a war of attrition, and that was something humans couldn't outright win against monsters. Heroes killed monsters, monsters killed men, and men killed heroes.
"They need me," I implored, though my heart wasn't in it. The experience points, as delicious as they were, weren't much use if I died… but sitting here and doing nothing but scribbling more scrolls wasn't any better either. "You are still losing men."
"But there are less losses each time. The men who have returned have learned, and we have learned. The monsters do not learn, and so, we will outsmart them." The Prince was patient with me, like he was talking to a child… oh.
"So what will you do? Pour hot oil on them from atop a wall?" I asked. "How long will this take?"
Xerxes sighed and stood. This was his tent and only silent servants were present, yet he didn't lose his composure. "Yes. I am tired of the losses too. But I have provided all that you have asked for, have I not, blessed Aisa? All the papyrus and ink you asked for."
"And I have made my preparations," I stated. I had a small backpack filled with scrolls… so much so that they could fill a small book now. "I am ready, I wish to see it for myself. I can do more than sit at the fire, Prince."
"You do enough inspiring the men. I have even heard perhaps the start of a cult, as common as those are." He dismissed the thought.
"How do I inspire from behind?" I implored again, with the heat not from earnest yearning but from frustration at his dismissal.
He eyed me for a moment in silence. Then he waved his hand. "Enough. I will… think on your words. Go now. I will see you at supper."
"… by your will," I bowed and left the tent.
And immediately, I was ambushed by Eleni. She pounced upon me with an insufferable embrace that held the warmth of a family member's love. It was a rare, tender feeling that left butterflies in my tummy and my knees weak. Or maybe that was just my lack of strength. "It seems you have been denied again, Aisa."
"Oh, Eleni, I'm happy you have recovered your sunny smile, but must you torment me so?" I grumbled as we returned to my tent. It was one of those that had its flaps always open, to show the passing troops that I was always hard at work within. Truly, my hands were near bleeding from all that inscribing.
"You might fool everyone else with your prayers, but I've been behind the stage. You keep making errors in the arias provided by the Prince, why?" Her eyes glimmered. "Is it to spite him?"
I felt my cheeks heat up. "… a little bit, yes. I can memorize the lines just fine."
My self-proclaimed big sister chuffed a laugh. "You shouldn't antagonize the Prince so."
"I'm not," I whined. "I just want… less shackles, so I can do what I want."
"Isn't that what we all wish for?" She sighed as she played with my hair. It had grown long in this month away from home and I needed a new way to tie it. It was uncomfortable, and I refused to fashion it like a Persian soldier. "You already have more than most."
The smile on my face became strained and I turned to her gaze. "Yes, I know. I know how fortunate I am. Truly. Really. I… I suppose I am struggling for more. It is selfish of me, prideful. Can you fault me?"
She rolled her eyes, but I saw her grin. "It is who you are. Come, I hear there are Greek mercenaries who have arrived at camp! Let's go look!"
*
Xerxes had pulled me aside at supper. He was about to speak, but then he saw the thing I had been building, well, failing to build for the past two weeks, "What is that?"
"A crossbow. A weapon for people too weak to pull a bow," I waved at the mastercraft windlass powered crossbow that I failed to make just after the battle and waited a week to attempt again on. I had just barely succeeded on the third try.
"Ah, a gastraphetes? I have heard of Greeks who do not have the skill of archery using such a thing," the Prince of Persia rubbed his chin as he studied it with dark eyes. "It is well made. I see that giving you free access to the supplies was not an error."
I shrugged. "Yes, similar principle. Well, I am only a child, Prince."
"You may yet need it. The new Greeks mercenaries do not believe you anything but a charlatan. You will need to prove yourself to them, I think." He said.
"And you? You won't just command them to believe you?" I asked.
He smiled. "It is not I that they must believe in. But I see your point, child. No, they do not speak of their lack of believe, but such wariness is warranted. It is the poison of the mind that comes from seeing too many horrors, and mercenary killers are without honor, fighting against their own kin. Thus, they have no defense against the rot of their belief."
"Uh huh. So you're going to allow me leave to join the next expedition then?" I watched him, not quite sure what his game was. He didn't need these Greeks, he could have asked for more men from the capital of the Empire, couldn't he?
"The new men are Ionians, and have no love for I, but they love coin. They are led by Captain Walwates of Miletus. You will find him and twenty-three of his hoplites joining you tomorrow," he informed me.
My eyes narrowed. "Hoplites? Will they not break at the first sign of trouble?"
"You will be followed," Xerxes added, "by forty-eight of my immortals. If you must know, my commanders have suggested a change in tactics. If great shields cannot stop these creatures, then we shall use a wall of spears. They throw themselves atop such points well enough."
"… that's promising," I allowed slowly. While I didn't like the idea of meat shields running away when they ought to protect me, I also didn't like watching impotently as people died in front of me. "Have you tried this out yet?"
"No!" Xerxes clapped. "But that's why we have you! Now, sleep well. You have a long day ahead of you tomorrow!"Rebirth 1.8
*
We didn't just set out with twenty-four mercenaries and forty-eight immortals; my father had come with us as did two lightly armored scouts. Father drove a chariot and I rode beside him, and the scouts rode what looked like large ponies.
This was good because my stubby little legs couldn't keep up with everyone on the move, and we needed scouts. Where the Persian infantry wore heavy armor of scaled iron, the Ionians wielded the triple layered hoplon shields, which were thick, wooden shields with a sort of handle no other shield currently had, with a layering of bronze facing enemies and a layering of leather facing its wielder. This meant our main group couldn't maneuver quickly and needed skirmishers to watch our flanks, as well as scouts to point us the right direction.
The captain of the small group of immortals was a kindly faced middle aged man named Kourosh. He smiled at me as I greeted him and promised to lay his life down before I could be met with injury. That was nice, but then he started kissing my foot in a sort of ritual worship. Thankfully it ended in an instant or else I would have shown my disgust in a squirming motion that probably would have offended everyone there.
Father seemed displeased about things, even as we set off. I watched his stoic, stony face, and I couldn't help but ask, "Father, why do you not like the Persians?"
"I…" He spoke, but quieted his voice. "I do not dislike them. I do what I must, daughter, as you do. I smile to them and pay them my dues, because they are not as good as they pretend to be."
"Shouldn't that make you less willing to do their bidding?" I remarked, despite knowing the answer.
"It is not because they are kind that people fear them. Did you know your eldest brother worked for a time in Eretria? Many of his friends, the boys of our city, stayed in that city after the start of the war." He said. "And one of the main reasons for the King of Kings to invade Greece was to punish Eretria."
I had known that many of our kinsmen had left our city to fight in Greece, and I had known that many of them died. I didn't make the connection that people who used to live in our city are dead because of Emperor Darius until that moment. I didn't know what to say. "Oh."
"So why do you fight for them, eh? Why do you perform your tricks for the Persians, eh?" The captain of the Ionian mercenaries, Walwates of Miletus, was a cocky, younger man who was probably around the age of my eldest brother if he was alive. He sneered at Father, "You work for the people who hurt your kin, what does that say of you?"
Father glared down at the other man, who had slung his doru spear over his shoulder. It was a spear over twice his height, with a leaf-blade on one end and a sauroter spike, a lizard-killer, on the other. "You do not fear the gods, boy?"
"Ha. Gods. I am Walwates of Miletus. Do you know Miletus, old man?" His sneer darkened, and for a moment I thought he would strike at Father.
"I know. I know your tyrant Aristagoras was a fool," Father retorted.
Aristagoras, the absolute ruler of Miletus who could have been called a king having inherited the position from his father-in-law, was one of the key players in the ill-fated Ionian Revolt. This was the main reason that the Persian eyes had turned west. Where many cities were spared or treated fairly by Darius the Great after the Persian victories in Anatolia, the King of Kings had taken special consideration to punish Miletus.
In his punishment, Darius had enslaved all women and children of Miletus, killed all the men, and made eunuchs of all the young men. He had done this to prevent any attempt at the recreation of Miletus. Considering that Walwates was a young man now, and the Ionian Revolt occurred almost ten years ago, it would most likely mean that he was a child who suffered enslavement at the hands of the Persians. It must have been a miracle for him to even learn of how his fate came to pass… and calling himself 'of Miletus' seemed to be his attempt at directly snubbing the King of Kings.
Before any hostilities could break out, the Persian captain Kourosh returned to the group. He looked between Walwates and Father suspiciously before reporting, "We have found a colony of three monsters that have lingered at a collapsed part of the city's walls. We can go north and use that location to draw more spiders out."
"Then let's do it." I cheered, acting absolutely oblivious to the sort of antagonism between Father and Walwates.
"A prayer for us first, if you will, blessed child?" Kourosh requested.
"It will be my pleasure." I shrugged—saying a few words cost me nothing, and gained me much in terms of endearment from the Persians. Even the Ionian mercenaries, scarred by war as they were, believed still in the gods.
Our group moved in four columns—the first six rows being Ionian hoplite mercenaries, followed by two rows of immortal long spears, followed by my chariot, then by five rows of immortal archers, and finally by five rows of immortal shield wall. In truth, there was an emphasis on mixed arms, as the hoplites also carried swords and all immortals carried bows, but they all kept to their duties.
The scouts returned again just as we saw the three spiders along the broken section of the city's northern walls. Our scouts were not to engage in the spiders but to keep their distance and warn us of surprises.
"Lines!" Kourosh called out, raising a banner of the Achaemenid Empire above. Immediately, the immortals spread out and the four columns of immortals became a line three-man deep.
"Greeks! Time to earn our pay!" Walwates called in response.
The Ionians spread and became a four-man deep line. The men in the very front lowered their spears completely while the second men lowered their weapons half way. In such a small group, they were able to form up and face the enemies much faster than the renowned phalanx that got destroyed by Roman manipular legions.
The giant spiders came without thought, responding without fear. They scurried over and leaped into the thick of battle.
Our problems immediately became evident—the Ionians only just met these monsters for the first time, had they had not overcome their initial fear of the unknown yet. While the Persian archers had already loosed their first shots over the hoplites' helms, the Ionians did not charge. They barely had time to brace before impact.
A phalanx charge downhill or on a flat plain was a terrible foe to face in battle. Even Roman legions couldn't face a specialized phalanx on an open field without uneven terrain hampering them. However, these weren't the Swiss halberd-pikes that were three times as long as a standing man that could halt nearly any cavalry charge. The Ionians came with two problems—their spears, at two and a half meters long, was too short and broke easily, and they themselves had no armor outside of shin guards and helmets.
That was to say the first spider leaped into them and died to a mix of arrow fire, a Jolt spell, and a wall of spears, but the spears got caught in its exoskeleton. Not all of them were caught, just mainly the half-raised second line of spears were caught, and they broke under the weight of the spider's corpse.
A second spider charged into a different place in the line and met the same ending, thankfully without casualties. The third had moved slightly away and chose to attack at us from a flank.
It met a Color Spray, a solid rainbow that shot from my palm and stunned and blinded it. Because the immortals behind the Ionians were in a wider line, the shield wall slammed down on the third spider before it could regain its senses. There, they all just… fell, with surprising ease.
"That wasn't so hard." Walwates remarked with a smug grin.
The confrontation had ended with surprising speed, partly because the hoplite spears were longer than the immortal's weapons, and partly because we had time to form a denser line. Nevertheless, looking at how we had lost seven spears, I rolled my eyes. "Don't be an idiot. Now, you seven, bring your spears and all their parts over here."
Even the Ionians couldn't keep themselves from gasping in shock and staring wide-eyed as a simple Mending spell put their spears back together.
*
We met with two more groups of giant spiders, which pushed me into a total experience pool of 12,000. This allowed me to reach level four and increase my intellect by one. After lunch, a messenger from Prince Xerxes arrived and told us that the Prince had waited long enough and wished to take the city.
The actual act of taking the city wasn't supposed to be difficult—we would take the city walls first and then funnel the giant spiders to choke points using the ruined buildings within the city. From there, we would draw out the spiders until we would have our final confrontation with the original and largest of them all, that was called by the Prince, the Sardisian Spider.
It sounded like he had already decided everything for us, so there wasn't anything left for us to do but to go with him. He wished to sit above the city gates and watch as the monsters were slaughtered in a courtyard below, and no one was there to tell him he couldn't have that.
With a rather lackluster goodbye, we departed from our morning group back to the encampment where the Prince's servants beckoned us to the Prince himself.
"I have heard you have killed ten more spiders," Xerxes spoke to me with an almost tender gaze.
I had thought it my imagination, but it seemed that people around us thought it slightly strange that the Prince treated me so… equally. Come to think of it, that was rather strange. "I had help."
"So modest." He clapped. "Very well. You know that almost all of the lesser beasts have been slain. I have even taken some of the silken webbing. We could probably make something of that."
"… so what you're saying is that only the biggest one is left?" I asked.
"Precisely." He nodded. "I shall require some of its eggs, of course, you understand?"
I shrugged. He was the Prince, and I was just some city's oligarch's daughter. "If that is what you wish. Just know that it's probably never going to be safe for eating."
"Eating? Ha! A joke? Yes, I will not be eating them. Just, ah, trophies." He explained. "But as to the Sardisian Spider, I am currently wondering how we could kill it. According to the many scout reports, it is bigger than the city gates, having gorged itself on so many men. It will need to die, of course. How will you wish to kill it?"
"I… was going to curse it with blindness and deafness. It would then just do what it does, but it would tire itself out. Then, we could just kill it while it has nothing left of itself," I paused and thought about it. Then I added, "I might throw some vipers at its face."
Xerxes' eyes twinkled. "You are truly amusing! Fine, it shall be as you say. I have lost enough good men as it is, and I wish to lose no more of my bodyguards in this adventure. Let us do as you say."
Soon, I would have his approval. Then I could just return home and live out a life of raising cats or something. No more getting married to old people, no more going out to adventure and risking my life, no more trouble.
Yes, everything was going as planned.
*
Nothing was going as planned!
Okay, everything started fine.
We had cleared out the lesser giant spiders with relative ease. They didn't have any intellect beyond their bestial instincts. Sure, they moved faster in the city, where every square inch was covered in webbing, but it wasn't much of an improvement as much as they stopped tripping over their own legs as much.
Then we found the original giant spider, whom I had decided to call Aragog. Aragog wasn't… as big as the Prince had claimed in some of his songs. He had sang of a monstrous beast the size of titans, and then started singing about how it was a child of titans, and, well that was about as much as I could make out as I didn't have proficiency in 'Old Persian'.
I was sure he was singing about an Angra Mainyu at one point…
Aragog towered over the surrounding buildings. It laid many eggs, which our chariot ran over, and that probably upset it enough, if I hadn't also cast a curse of blindness and deafness over it. I… I must have forgotten something rather basic when I thought of this plan.
I had been referring my mental bestiary when I was thinking of how to defeat this spider. I had thought that Aragog was going to be like the Aragog in Harry Potter. I had expected it to act like a tarantula or something—the other spiders were the leaping kind, after all. Sure, it spun webs, and sure it held qualities of other types of spiders… yeah, I wasn't being very wise about this.
It lost its sight. It lost its hearing. What it didn't lose, as most spiders had, was the ability to sense vibrations in its web.
"Faster, Papa!" I cried.
"It's going as fast as it can!" Father shouted. His grip on the reins grew so tight that his knuckles were white.
The city gates were just so close too, and I saw Xerxes jump up from his seat above. I shouted at him, "It can see anything that stands on the web!"
He turned frantically to Artabanus, who immediately commanded the archers to get ready. A volley of four hundred arrows few, many of them bouncing off of Aragog's hardened shell. This only worked to piss it off even more.
"Hold on, daughter," Father said suddenly.
"Why?" I asked even as I realized why.
The gates were closed. Xerxes was so sure of victory that he didn't bother leave the gates open. And there were still infantry inside the city. Suddenly, the chariot made a sharp turn—too sharp that we flipped over and the chariot crashed into the walls beside the gate.
"Oomph." I climbed up from the wreckage. A combination of Mage Armor and Shield negated most of the crash damage, but I was still disoriented and feeling like I wanted to hurl.
"Hiss!" Aragog screeched, crashing through the stone structures in its path. All the soldiers on the ground scrambled to get out of its path, and more than twenty arrows were stuck in its armor, but only a few of them seemed to have actually caused any real damage. Most of them looked like they hadn't actually pierced the shell.
"Papa?" I shook him by the shoulder.
"Ugh," Father replied, climbing slowly up. He had many bloody scraps on his skin, but most of the damage had been absorbed by his armor, though he didn't look good. "This is the last time I'm going on a battlefield. My bones can't take it."
Seeing that he was fine, I sighed in relief and tore out three scrolls of Summon Monster II.
Three vipers dropped atop Aragog's head and bit in. Two eagles soared through the clouds and started pecking at Aragog's exposed parts. And then a giant centipede, a grotesque, twelve foot long giant bug, wrapped itself around Aragog's neck.
But Aragog still kept coming. It charged blindly and slammed itself right into the city gates, causing a portion of the walls to collapse. Xerxes and his guard barely held on, and many of the archers on the walls fell.
At that point, I was beyond panicking. I pulled every scroll I had out. Color Spray, Snowball, Magic Missile… I threw anything and everything I had at it. I threw so many things at it that I ran out of things and threw my bag at it too, though that was pathetic and didn't even reach it.
"Why won't you die?!" I cried.
Father laid a hand on my shoulder, shocking me into jumping. "Peace, daughter. It's dead."
"Oh." I fell to my knees. My cheeks were wet. I was crying. "Oh. Oh, good."
Then I collapsed. I really needed to stop doing that.
*
"Well, well." It was back.
I eyed it carefully. "Oh, it's you."
"Don't be like that." It touched its chest, as if hurt.
I watched it. "Then maybe you can tell me why you're here."
"I come bearing a gift." It smiled.
"The last time you gave me a gift," I said, "I was stuck with this terrible elemental school of magic."
"You don't have time to retrain?" It blinked innocently.
"Ah." I returned to nonchalance.
"Most of your problems are of your own making." It added. "You even forgot about your crossbow. It's probably ruined by the crash."
"… please, if you're going to rub it in, at least by me dinner first." I grumbled.
"I'll get to the point." Here, it passed me a sheet of not-really-paper. There were words on it. "It has been… interesting. A beast comparable to the Nemean Lion! How very… mythic."
I sighed. "Why ask if I'll take it if you know I'll take it?"
"The act of agreement," It replied, "is rather important. Just like all contracts. If you know what you're getting, and you agree yourself, it is more binding than something forced upon you. Don't you think so too?"
"I'll take it then." I made the decision.
Then I woke up.
*
Phew. After all was said and done, I was finally arrived at this point. Level Five Wizard. I had been too exhausted at this point; so this was what I picked.
Spell Penetration. Extend Spell. Feats.
Haste. Lightning Bolt. Phantom Steed. Spells.
First Tier Mythic Archmage.
Hard to Kill. A basic mythic ability. An extraordinary ability.
Mythic Power. A basic mythic ability. A supernatural ability. 'Mythic characters can draw upon a wellspring of power to accomplish amazing deeds and cheat fate.'
Surge. A basic mythic ability. A supernatural ability. 'You can call upon your mythic power to overcome difficult challenges.'
Wild Arcana. An archmage arcana. A supernatural ability. 'You can expend one use of mythic power to cast any one arcane spell without expending a prepared spell or spell slot. The spell must be on one of your arcane class spell lists and must be of a level that you can cast with that arcane spellcasting class.'
Crafting Mastery. A path ability. An extraordinary ability. 'You can craft any magic item as if you had the necessary item creation feats.'
Mythic Spell Lore. A mythic feat. 'You can learn a number of mythic spells equal to your tier and can expend mythic power when casting them to enhance the results.'
Mythic Haste. A mythic spell.