20. N #4
Fresh, it would have taken him a number of solid hits to bring it down.
Wearied and depleted, he struck it a dozen times before it faltered.
Time slowed, and his world shrank to killing the thing even as it sawed into what remained of the wall guards.
He had trouble following the speed of the action, and caught only individual moments.
A red puddle of blood. A single hand, neatly severed at the wrist.
A cut tentacle landing between two guards, the stump on fire from his spell.
A scream and thrust as one cast his spear into an eye.
A shriek. Its right side lit up a lurid red as a guard launched a carefully hoarded handlance into its spell-burned side.
He stepped back then, to let the soldiers finish the creature.
Two died before it stopped moving. They bought him time to catch his breath.
It felt like a hundred years had passed since the battle started.
He felt exhausted … far wearier than he should have.
He’d mastered simple fire spells years ago.
The world wavered a bit, and got dark around the edges.
He felt dizzy, and bent forward at the knees trying to catch his breath.
His ears rang. Someone shoved him out to the side, and he felt a thud as something struck close to where he stood. He looked up.
Wizards came up the stairs and onto the battlement, stepping over the bodies of the fallen.
More guards as well, trooping along the wall …
from other sectors? Then, the whole wall hadn’t fallen.
Just this portion. That was important. He roused himself and turned to thank the elf who’d pushed him.
That one stared at him, lifeless, slumped against the battlement’s back wall, with a foot of some kind of projectile sticking out of his chest.
Haldeen turned. Firelances came into action as the battle grew to close quarters.
A dozen things, elf-sized with a thick carapace, some kind of horn or antler, and …
six legs … eight legs … swarmed over the outer wall.
Haldeen roused himself, called his flagging reserves, and tried to burn them, focusing his wrath on the closest.
The carapace resisted his fury, and in the time it took him to burn one, the others managed a foothold.
He saw the wizards’ first efforts … initially confident, then faltering as their spells failed.
One died, killed when his defensive magic failed to bite, and a crawler launched itself, engulfing his head and throat.
The others went to smaller magics, the close-in spells that only sipped the ambient, if they touched it at all.
Haldeen, nearly spent, turned and focused on the next creature.
A city guardsman dove, tackling him as metal shafts pierced the stone wall where he stood.
Haldeen, knocked to the ground and winded, twisted under the guard who had knocked him out of the spears’ path.
He looked up and saw the elf, blood on his hair and very blonde beard, pierced in a half dozen places by the spikes that would have hit him.
Haldeen tried to frame words, a response to the sacrifice, but the light in the guardsman’s eyes faded before he could speak.
He shifted out from underneath the elf’s body, seeing the metal shafts that had pieced the stoneworks and his rescuer.
He tried to stand, before being knocked to his knees again, Three Skydancers blasted through the gap in the city’s defenses, their iridescent wings howling as they passed overhead, barely more than an adult’s height over the walls.
Haldeen saw lines of crystalline darts emerge from the belly of the closest ’Dancer, slicing into the carapaces of the monsters and cutting them down where they stood.
It was gone in an instant, crossing the wall, and diving down the front.
Haldeen could still hear the howl of its wings, below him and outside the city …
low enough to have to dodge tree stumps.
He stumbled forward, through the blood, the monsters’ ichor, and the fallen bodies to see out over the southern fields, twenty times his own height to the ground.
The Skydancers flew low enough he could see down into the Manipulator’s seats.
He watched as one Manipulator gripped a handle on the inside of the narrow control cabin.
The seat was barely wide enough to make a decent coffin.
The Manipulator’s hair blew out behind as he?
she? gripped a handle tightly as they swept the Skydancer up into the steep turn and sprayed crystalline darts out ahead.
A second Skydancer swept low before looping up and tilting to one side to engage the creatures that had yet to reach the city.
A long stream of darts sprang from its side, looking like a stream of silver as it caught the sun.
Where the stream touched the creatures on the ground, it left carnage.
The second ’Dancer made another steep turn, nearly brushing the distant tree line and clawed upward, seeking altitude.
Haldeen could see a half dozen specks pursuing it, with more emerging from the tree line that marked the end of the effective range of the city’s weapons.
He opened his mouth to swear, but nothing came out. The ground from the distant tree line to the city had come alive … the ground from the wall to the distant trees swarmed with bizarre creatures, from knee-high to things half the height of the walls.
The first Skydancer made methodical passes, cutting great swaths across the lifeforms that pressed towards the city walls.
A third Skydancer cut across the sky. Haldeen shaded his eyes to better follow it.
He wasn’t used to the brightness of unfiltered sunlight.
The third flew differently than the other two.
Where they had gone low, this one corkscrewed upwards, heading upwards for the morning clouds.
His eyes locked on its belly as it spun upwards, graceful and lethal.
So very lethal. A single silver cylinder nestled underneath, between the lower pair of buzzing, iridescent wings.
Haldeen felt his blood run cold. Actinics.
The last line of defense. With the city’s shield down and the city itself at risk, the king would order the star’s light to be brought to this place and set free.
There would be a vast brightness, then wind and heat, and all the Creatures near the wall would die.
With the city shield down, there would be nothing to protect the city when the star arrived, and many would die. Including everyone on this wall.
Haldeen looked around. His hearing didn’t seem to be working, but he saw the city guard fighting desperately against the things that crawled, flew, and slithered over the battlement walls. The defenders still held, but they were weakening.
Haldeen tried to stand, then fell. Looking down, he saw one of the metal pieces that had punched through the wall, and which killed the elf that had saved him, had pierced his leg.
Why doesn’t this hurt?” he asked himself, then gingerly slid his leg off of the spike that impaled it.
He saw smoke coming out of the hole where it had pierced.
Iron? It burned the wound and stopped the bleeding? Why doesn’t it hurt?
He dressed the wound, wrapping a clean cloth around it. His awareness of the world expanded then, and a wall of sound crashed down. He realized he missed the arrival of more mages, and more guards.
A battle raged between the monsters and the thin line of defenders.
More creatures hurled themselves up and over the wall …
the monsters strove to expand the breach, while the desperate elves scrambled to reknit their defense.
The cries and screams of the guards merged with the whispering and chittering that came from the Creatures from outside the wall.
In the distance, he heard the first Machina come to life.
Haldeen could just see the Manipulator, a younger man, extend his arm.
He watched the Machina emerge from its shed and mimic the Manipulator’s gesture.
The firelance’s arm bent towards the hole in the battlements, where more creatures streamed through, then gouts of yellow flame played across the wall, broken brick, and rubble as the Manipulator unleashed the Machina’s firelance at close range.
The fire, normally a thin column, seared a handful of creatures before impacting the inside of the battlement.
The fire splashed and sprayed, hitting monsters and guards alike.
Several of the city’s defenders fell to the ground, screaming as they burned.
Creatures from outside hurled themselves into the breach, some also burning where the firelance’s flame hit them.
Haldeen went to stand. Then, he felt the pain in his leg, a searing agony in his calf as he tried to stand and failed.
He fell backward, gripping the battlement as he tried to breathe through the pain.
An elf was behind him then, helping him sit up and dragging him backwards, towards the battlement’s back wall.
He looked at the elf, trying to form words. The other one stopped him. “Your fight’s over, lad. You’d best get to the stairs and to the courtyard below.”
Haldeen nodded. The other elf gave him a quick squeeze of the shoulder, then sprang away to aid another. Haldeen nodded after him. He might get aid, either a better dressing, or the rare healing magics that were doled out only in direst emergencies.
He had no intention of testing his calf, and started dragging himself towards the stairs built into the back of the city wall that led from the top of the battlement to the courtyard below.
He made slow progress. The wall was covered in the dead, both city defenders and the creatures thrown against them, and their bodies made obstacles he had to crawl over or try to shift past.
Reinforcements swarmed past, moving to where the assault came heaviest.
Several Machina had entered the fray, but needed sound footing, and couldn’t proceed until teams worked to clear paths in the fallen, dying, and dead.
The task was quickly done, but still one more delay in bringing the city’s strength to bear.
Four Machina turned as one, and Haldeen paused in dragging himself to see where they pointed.
He heard shot furnaces begin to spin, the rising howls as the launchers came up to speed, then felt the heat as first one, then two more, molten copper shot lanced skyward, arching well out over the fields, and towards the tree line.
The fourth had failed, its furnace sounding like a mewling kitten.