20. N #3
Once questions started, his momentum would bleed away, and he would be bogged down.
Hurry. Hurry.
The first of the guards emerged from the shed that held the copper shot. He carried two boxes slung up over his shoulder. He had taken the time to pad his shoulder with a piece of cloth.
“What’s all this, then?”
Haldeen turned, and felt his heart sink.
An older elf approached, wearing work coveralls and wiping breakfast crumbs from his short beard.
This would be one of the specialists, and not so easily cowed as the green underofficer.
Haldeen glanced back at the shed, and saw two guards emerge, each carrying two of the ceramic magic jars that would power the furnace.
With that, I can blast myself all of the way through the rock.
Less useful though, for blasting me out of this.
He turned back to face the older elf. His brazen act had just gotten a lot more difficult.
He took a step towards the elf, looking to use his body to cut him off before he could intercept the guards.
The star rising in the southeast showed green through the city’s shield, and just over the shoulder of the older elf.
He was actually looking out over the city wall and into the forested Wastes beyond, when the rising star went from green to yellow.
He might have missed the shift, if the star’s light hadn’t been nearly in his eyes.
It took him a moment to register that the city’s outer shield had suddenly, and unaccountably dropped.
One second the green ripples distorted the morning, and the next he could see the star’s yellow light shining, unfiltered, across the stones of the battlement.
He had just enough time to open his mouth when the elf in coveralls sensed the shift, and turned.
The elf let out an oath and started sprinting back to the wall.
A half dozen heartbeats later, an alarm began to sound, followed by another and another, as the garrison slowly responded to the calamity.
The guards on the wall, distracted by the drama between Haldeen and the older elf, proved slow in returning to their duties.
A single flying thing with too many wings passed through the empty space where the shield had gone down, and flew into the city.
A larger creature came behind, also winged, an iridescent buzz as it flew past Haldeen.
He went to one knee and turned to follow it with his eyes.
It ducked low, rose just high enough to clear the safety wall, then dove down into the courtyard behind the wall.
Haldeen heard a meaty thud. Then the screams began.
The soldiers guarding the wall finally responded, as more flying things came in through the gap where the shield had gone down. Two guards ran to a locker and gathered up crossbows, while one armed himself with a solitary handlance and scanned the skies.
Three more flying things came into view.
The handlance took out one, a bright blot of flame that launched from the tube and burned the monster to a cinder.
Haldeen swore, said a quick incantation, then made a hand-pass, flipping his fingers up.
The other two flying creatures, robbed of their wind, fell to the stone battlements.
“Get them, you fools!” he yelled to the crossbowmen.
One shot, killing the flailing creature.
The other, a bit slower, but perhaps more resourceful, grabbed a pike in his free hand and rammed it into the remaining flier.
A moment later, he shot a bolt at another in the air.
It dodged, flying low and fast, then rose to sweep down into the city beyond.
The city’s wall guards quickly recovered from their surprise and began to respond to the alarms.
Yawning, half-dressed elves came stumbling up the stairs from their barracks.
Haldeen watched as expressions of resentment …
not another drill! … turned to fear as they saw the protective shield had fallen.
Haldeen held his ground, and cast incantation after incantation, driving flying things back out of the air, or stealing their air so they fell to where the soldiers could dispatch them.
A few got past him. Something with six iridescent wings launched itself straight towards him, the upper half of its body the size and shape of a drawn sword.
Haldeen managed to get his spell off in time, pushing it to the right just enough to deflect it.
Its blade-beak cut through his cloak and shirt, pinking his arm, and drawing blood.
He turned, covering up the wound with his hand, and feeling his spells fail as the pain flared and his blood spattered on the stone walkway.
He wanted to flee, to run from the insanity.
He looked back, and saw four guards, laden with the magic jars and copper shot, crouched down as more flying things swept past his fallen defense and into the city.
He had no idea of what had happened to the fifth.
He gestured to the four, and pointed to the stairs. “Go! Get that to my lab!”
He had no time to see if they followed his orders.
He heard a scream behind him and turned on his heel, crouching down as something else winged and lethal passed overhead.
The distant, calculating part of his mind, the part that could still do the math while the rest of him froze in terror …
that part told him that the monsters outside had no more been prepared for this than the defenders had.
He looked around, looking for one of the mages … the Manipulators who worked the firelances, and were trained for this sort of thing. None to be had. Probably still at breakfast.
The first crawler made its way up across the battlement, a thing with hundreds of legs …
more like cilia … on which sat a very canine-looking head.
Haldeen didn’t allow himself even a second.
He called up the half-remembered spell, fumbled the incantation, and felt the magic leak away.
It came towards him, covering the ground rapidly.
The missing bit came to him, and he stuttered out the correct words, sending a gout of flame from his hands that burned it where it stood.
A second crawler followed, this one with tentacles along its underside.
He burned it as well, then a flying thing that rose above the battlements.
He felt confidence rise. He had not been trained as a war mage, but had tested high Blue, powerful enough to cast and kill all by himself.
He stood up, the better to see, and then cast the incantation to raise a protective wall around him and the soldiers nearby, a miniature of the one that had guarded the city.
He steadied his mind, calmed the fear, and summoned the magic, using his personal stores to guide and shape the much more powerful ambient around him.
Only a fraction of the usual power came to his call, and the shield barely held, and felt weak.
Something’s off. It shouldn’t have been that hard.
He ducked as a flying thing hit the shield.
It should have been stopped cold, as though flying into a wall.
Instead, it slowly oozed through, then fell to the ground.
The soldiers sprang into action, stabbing it with spears until it stopped moving.
The drain of the burning spells cost him, and he struggled to hold up his shield.
He tried to draw in more ambient magic to keep the flickering going, but it wasn’t enough, and the shield failed.
What in nineteen hells? There should have been plenty of power …
a waterfall. Instead, the ambient magic felt like a trickle.
The distraction of the failed spell nearly killed him.
Another flying thing, all teeth and wings, flared up over the battlement and straight towards him.
He got the incantation out just in time to burn it down, but was spattered with fluids and burning embers.
Another came for him, so another flame, then another crawler, also reduced to a scorched puddle.
He took a quick glance around. He held his own for the present, but these things were insignificant, parasites when compared to the big Predators.
Fear flared and he stumbled through an incantation, too late for the one that raked his shoulder as it passed.
He heard a scream behind him, and glanced back to see an elf stumbling back and clutching at the creature as its razor talons tore into his face and shoulders.
Haldeen glanced frantically around, looking for someone … whose damned job this is … to take over before he got killed.
He burned another flier to a cinder. Then, he scorched a crawler, not enough to kill it, but enough to burn off two legs and slow it down long enough for the wall guards to impale it and send it tumbling back down the wall.
He lost track of time for a while, burning monster after monster, until he felt weak and weary.
He looked away for a moment, looking for help.
He saw a younger mage, a woman he didn’t even recognize, in military dress, casting her own spells, elegant hand-passes as she launched fine streams of fire and lightning into the flying things that increasingly swarmed through the gap in the city’s shield.
She moved with a grace and efficiency he could never match.
He went to call out to her, to yell encouragement, when something the size of his fist slipped past him, and past her guard.
He saw the red ruin when it hit her, and the headless body falling to the stones.
He stood, shocked for a moment, then heard a yell and ducked.
A similar thing … part life and part weapon …
had only just missed his head, and buried itself into the wall-stones.
He burned it, and turned back to where the attack continued.
Another. And another. Haldeen cast as quickly as he could, learning to use the bare minimum needed to draw the fire, then release it, his flames growing more unfocused as he grew tired.
The ranks of the guards thinned, trading their lives for time …
time for wizards to come to the city’s defense, and time for the Machina Manipulators to bring their machines into operation.
Where the hell are they? They should be here by now!
He burned two, panting now as the spells came harder.
He glanced up to where the female wizard had fallen …
. That was the Manipulator. She never made it to her station.
A larger creature, some kind of bounding thing with arms and tentacles, came up the wall, and smashed through the thin screen of guards.
This was bigger than the others, twice the size of a farm horse, and all teeth and tentacles.
He focused on burning it … hitting it with spell after spell.