Chapter 17 Breaching the Walls
We move around the corner of the equipment shed.
The two guards spot us immediately. One shouts an alarm while the other draws his sword and charges.
The charging guard goes straight for Luca. I move with him, keeping the anchor in sight.
Luca steps forward, shield raised, and catches the first sword blow with a clang that echoes off the buildings. The impact drives him back a step, but his arm holds steady.
The second guard circles toward Nella, blade ready. She's barefoot, seemingly defenseless, exactly the kind of easy target he expects.
She throws a rock at his face.
It's not elegant. It's not magical. But the fist-sized stone catches him square in the nose with a crack that makes me wince, and he staggers backward with blood streaming down his chin.
Suki appears behind him and kicks his legs out. He goes down hard.
I run for the anchor.
The shimmer at the base of the metal post is clearer now, a crystalline structure that pulses with wrongness. This is what holds the suppression field together. This is what I need to break.
A third guard appears from inside the main building, sword already swinging toward my head.
[RESONANCE STRIKE (A)Activation: Emergency defensiveEffect: Disruption pulse, close range]
I don't think. I react. Mana flows through my hand and releases in a pulse that catches the guard's sword arm and makes his whole body seize. His swing goes wide, the blade passing inches from my ear.
I keep running.
I reach the post with the guard's blade still ringing behind me.
I press the ward-breaker against the crystalline structure and feel it hum in my hand.
The first charge releases.
Not an explosion. Not a wave of light. Just a resonance that travels from the focus into the anchor, finds every flaw and weak point in the constructed magic, and tears it apart from the inside.
The suppression field ripples. Wavers. Falls.
[WARD-brEAKER: Charge 1 expendedTarget: Outer ward anchor (contact disruption)Outer suppression field: CollapsedCharges remaining: 2The outside is open. The inside is still waiting.]
Magic rushes back into the world around me, sharp and clear after the muffled pressure of the suppression field. I can feel everything again. My mana flows freely, my senses expand, the wrongness that had pressed against my mind retreats.
But I'm tired. Using the focus, the Resonance Strike, running while maintaining awareness of everything around me. The cost adds up.
The guard I hit with the Strike is recovering, shaking off the disruption. Behind me, I can hear more shouts as reinforcements pour from the buildings.
Luca appears at my side, his shield raised against a sword blow that would have taken my arm off. The blade rebounds with a spark of light.
"Projection's still working." He sounds surprised. "Not much, but enough."
A fourth guard swings at him from the left. Luca's shield flares again, the projection extending just enough to deflect the blade. The effort costs him. I can see it in the way his arm trembles.
Cali darts between the guard's legs, claws raking across his ankle. He stumbles, curses, swings wildly at empty air.
Suki takes him down with a blow to the back of his head.
Nella's voice cuts through the chaos. "More coming. At least four, from the central building."
We're not going to win this by fighting every guard in the compound. We need to move, find the prisoners, find Lyra.
"Fall back to cover." I grab Luca's arm and pull him toward the equipment shed. "We need to regroup."
We make it to the shed just as the reinforcements arrive. Four guards, these ones armored in leather and chain, moving with the coordinated precision of people who train together daily. They fan out as they approach, two coming straight toward the shed while two others circle wide to flank.
"They're splitting up." Nella has her boot flaps open, feet pressed hard against the packed earth. "Two moving left, trying to get behind us. Maybe eight meters out."
"Suki, watch the left." I position myself at the corner of the shed where I can see the direct approach. "Luca, with me."
The first two guards reach us before the flankers complete their circuit. One carries a short sword, the other a mace that looks heavy enough to crack bone. They don't waste time with demands or warnings. They just attack.
Luca steps forward to meet the swordsman, his repaired shield raised. Metal rings against metal as the blade crashes into the shield's face. The impact drives Luca back half a step, but his arm holds steady and the guard's swing deflects harmlessly to the side.
The mace-wielder aims for me.
I sidestep the first swing, feeling air rush past my ear as the weapon misses by inches. The guard recovers quickly, reversing his grip for a backhand strike that I barely dodge.
I aim at his arm, leaving Luca clear of the strike.
[RESONANCE STRIKE (A)Target: Mace-wielder's weapon armApplication: Motor disruption, localized]
Mana flows through my palm and releases in a focused pulse that catches the guard's forearm just below the elbow. His muscles seize, fingers spasming open, and the mace tumbles from his grip to land heavily in the dirt.
He stares at his twitching hand with wide eyes, then lunges at me bare-handed.
Cali darts between his legs at exactly the wrong moment. His foot catches on her body and he pitches forward, arms windmilling. I step aside and let momentum carry him face-first into the shed wall.
"You're welcome." Cali shakes herself and moves to a safer position.
The flanking guards round the corner at a run, catching us from the side. Suki meets the first one with a spinning kick that staggers him, but the second gets past her guard. His blade catches her brow, opening a shallow cut that immediately starts bleeding.
She hisses in pain but doesn't retreat. Her return strike catches his wrist and forces his sword wide.
"Suki, fall back." I'm already moving toward her. "Let me see that."
Suki keeps her eyes on the guard. "It's nothing."
I catch her sleeve behind Luca's shield. "It's bleeding into your eye. Fall back."
She disengages reluctantly, pressing her palm against the cut while I reach for her face. The wound is shallow but positioned badly, blood running down into her left eye and compromising her vision.
Quick assessment. Quick action. I channel just enough mana to encourage the bleeding to slow, to help the tissue begin knitting together. Not a full heal, not enough to drain me further, just stabilization to stop the immediate problem.
"Better." She blinks, testing her vision. "I can see."
The guard she'd been fighting presses his advantage, sword sweeping toward my exposed back. I hear it coming but can't turn fast enough.
Luca's shield appears between us, not the physical metal but a projection that flares into existence just long enough to deflect the blade. The effort costs him. I can see his arm shake as the projection flickers and dies.
"That's it." His voice is strained. "No more of those."
The guard who hit the shed drags himself upright. The four guards regroup, forming a loose line between us and the central building. They're not pressing the attack anymore. They're falling back, drawing us away from the outer compound and toward something they consider more defensible.
"They're retreating." Nella sounds surprised. "All four of them, moving toward the big building at the center."
"Let them go." I check my reserves. Lower, but nowhere near empty. Two Resonance Strikes and the ward-breaker charge have cost me, but I'm not running on empty. "We need to regroup anyway."
The swordsman who'd been fighting Luca is the last to withdraw, walking backward with his blade raised. His expression is strange, almost pitying.
"You have no idea what you've walked into," he calls out. "The master's been waiting for this."
Then he turns and jogs after his companions, disappearing around the corner of a storage building.
"That's not ominous at all." Cali's tail swishes. "I'm sure it means nothing."
I check on my team. Suki's brow has stopped bleeding, the stabilization holding. Luca's shield arm trembles but he's not injured. Nella looks exhausted from maintaining her Earthtouch under pressure, but she's unharmed. Cali moves without favoring any paws.
My own forearm stings where I didn't notice a blade graze me during the fighting. Shallow, barely bleeding, not worth the mana to address.
We're battered. We're tired. But we're still standing.
The guards have pulled back to the central building, abandoning the outer compound to protect something more important than the perimeter. Whatever they're guarding, whatever Matteo has planned, it's in there.
And so is Lyra.
The alarms begin wailing throughout the compound. A different kind of alarm than the shouts of guards discovering intruders. Mechanical. Urgent. Coming from the central building.
And underneath it, I can hear Matteo's voice giving orders. Moving the prisoners. Accelerating whatever schedule they had planned.
We've been spotted. The outer ward is down. But Lyra is still somewhere inside, and we've just made things much more complicated.
[LEVEL UPGREGORI | Archmage: Archon, LegendaryLevel 38 → 39 | Tier 2 of 4Maximum HP: 2,000 → 2,040 (not current)Maximum MP: 16,400 → 16,700 (not current)INT: 372 → 376 | WIS: 328 → 332Unchanged: STR 18 | AGI 26 | DEX 118 | LCK 24Ward breach and combat under pressure.You're exhausted. That doesn't go away with advancement.]
The level notification washes through me, the familiar warmth of progression. But my hands are shaking and there is still mana to draw on, but my hands need a moment to steady. More capacity does nothing for the breath I'm trying to catch.
"They're moving the prisoners toward the central building." Suki's ears are forward, tracking sounds I can barely hear. "All of them, including Lyra."
"Then that's where we're going." I check the ward-breaker. Two charges left. Two chances to break through whatever else they've built around this place.
The alarm keeps wailing. Guards are reorganizing, forming up near the central building instead of hunting us. They're pulling back to protect something more important than the perimeter.
Cali presses against my leg. "Can you keep going?"
"I have to." I look at my team. Luca's arm trembles from the effort of maintaining projections. Nella's feet are dirty and she's breathing hard. Suki's brow is stained with blood, but the cut is closed.
But none of them suggest retreat. None of them even look back toward the ridge.
"We go together." I grip the ward-breaker and step out from behind the shed. "We find Lyra. We free everyone we can. And we get out."
The central building looms ahead, and somewhere inside it, Lyra is waiting.