Chapter 32
The Bone Dragon skimmed low through the night, its wings carving furrows in the smoke that blanketed the forest. The land beneath it had been burned down to scorched earth.
Lilith rode with the two Wood Elf guides, tracing the route Elowen had marked deeper and deeper south. The air grew hotter as they went, thick with the stench of blood and charred flesh.
"There." One of the elves pointed to a clearing below and dropped his voice. "The Portal stands in that open ground. A hundred Orcs guarding it, at least."
Lilith narrowed her eyes. Through the smoke and dark she picked out a wide area that had been cleared by pure brute force — dense woodland reduced to churned mud, the trees ripped out by their roots.
At its center stood a massive green Portal, nearly twenty feet tall, bleeding an ominous glow into the night.
Dozens of Orcs patrolled the perimeter, bigger and more heavily muscled than the warriors she'd seen earlier, each carrying something crude and lethal.
Behind the Portal squatted a rough altar of hides and bone. On top of it sat an Orc Shaman, swathed in furs, gripping a staff carved from bone, his lips working without pause to sustain the ritual.
So that was the Shaman. Even at this distance, Lilith could feel the unnatural power wrapped around him — and could see that destroying the Portal wouldn't be as simple as she'd hoped.
His magic sheathed the entire clearing in a translucent green barrier.
No surprise strike from above, then. They'd be breaking in by force.
She swept the area and found no other Elite-ranked presence. That, at least, was something.
"Any closer and they'll spot the Bone Dragon," Lilith said. "We should attack now."
The elf beside her had reached the same conclusion, and the signal went out at once: a single clear, melodic note drifting through the trees.
From the forest below, a massive green arrow shot skyward. It split apart in midair — one projectile becoming a storm of them — and rained down across the clearing. Arrows hissed through the dark, each one finding an unsuspecting Orc with lethal precision. Dozens died in the opening volley.
Lilith stared at the devastation. That power. That accuracy. She'd watched ordinary Wood Elves fight, watched their arrows struggle to bring down even common Orcs. This was another level entirely.
Then she spotted the archer. Elowen, having somehow beaten them here through the canopy, longbow already drawn for the next shot.
So that was the shape of it. Lilith had assumed the plan called for her to draw the Shaman out while Elowen lay hidden, waiting for the chance to pin him. Elowen had no intention of hiding at all — an Elite-ranked archer had nothing to fear from ordinary Orcs.
The surviving guards roared.
"Enemies!"
"Kill them!"
Veterans, clearly — leaner and denser than the common warriors, bloodlust burning in their eyes. Not that it made any difference. Elowen had just slaughtered dozens of them with a single attack.
They charged anyway, and Elowen stood alone in front of the horde and kept firing. Wood Elf reinforcements slipped out of the treeline soon after — not many, but every one of them belonged to her personal squad and carried years of fighting behind them.
The second guide turned to Lilith. "The rest is up to you." And he leaped from the Bone Dragon.
Only in that moment did Lilith sense his true strength. Tier 9 Veteran. One of Elowen's personal guards, sent along to cut down the strongest Orcs shielding the clearing.
Elowen had planned this carefully: the Portal was Lilith's to destroy, so the Wood Elves would sweep every obstacle they could from her path — though in truth, it hardly mattered whose hand struck the final blow. Odds were the Orcs had no idea another enemy still circled above them.
At the clearing's center, the Shaman finally opened his eyes. The ritual ended; his magic withdrew; the green barrier began to dissolve. He rose into a new incantation, and dark clouds massed overhead, lightning flickering in their bellies.
"Foolish elves," he growled. "You believe you can stop the Orc horde?"
Elowen registered the change instantly and loosed a fully charged arrow. It streaked toward the altar like a green meteor — and thunder detonated as it slammed into a lightning barrier around the Shaman, throwing off a violent shock wave.
The Shaman raised his bone staff. The storm swelled, gathered its lightning into a single bolt, and ripped it across the night sky. Elowen was already drawing again, emerald light condensing around the arrowhead — the concentrated natural power of the Wood Elves.
"Die, invader."
She released.
Arrow met lightning, and a ring of destructive energy erupted over the clearing. Trees snapped in half. Cracks tore through the ground. Dust and smoke swallowed the battlefield whole.
And that was only the opening exchange of an Elite-ranked duel.
Elowen drew on the forest itself, green light spreading through the surrounding trees as streams of natural energy poured out of trunk and branch and into her body.
The Shaman answered in kind, commanding the storm overhead while he siphoned the last life force from the corpses littering the clearing.
Then the two Elites cut loose in earnest.
Explosion after explosion rocked the forest. The ground shuddered. Orcs and elves caught near the clash were flung through the air without distinction, and even Lilith, circling far above, felt the crushing pressure rolling off the battlefield. Getting anywhere near them was out of the question.
So this was Elite Rank. The sheer scale of it unsettled her — and taught her something worth keeping: Elites could draw strength directly from their surroundings. From what she could tell, Elowen was running slightly behind the Shaman in that regard.
Not good.
Still, Lilith waited. Elowen understood she needed to pull the Shaman away from the Portal, and fortunately the Shaman wanted the same thing — attacks at that scale would damage the Portal if they kept trading beside it.
Over several long-range exchanges the two combatants drifted toward a nearby stretch of forest, their battle gradually leaving the clearing behind.
The Shaman spared no thought for the melee below.
The Wood Elf squad couldn't destroy the Portal — of that he was certain.
The guards would keep them busy until reinforcements arrived; Orcs from the outer battlefield would soon double back, and the next wave through the Portal was nearly ready besides.
When it came, the elves in the clearing would be surrounded and butchered.
He had accounted for everything.
Everything except Lilith.
She watched Elowen and the Shaman disappear into the deeper forest. There it was — the opening she'd been waiting on.
Lilith leaped from the Bone Dragon.
"My turn."