A fire blast left my hand simultaneously with a streak of lightning from Lyre’s hand. The closest group of dark elves disappeared from view in an explosion of white fire and coruscating lightning.
Steve chuckled darkly, and a ball of gray miasma followed our strikes. The fire cleared, and there were a few on the edges still hanging onto life, while the majority of them were dead, blackened, and burned. The ones that survived looked stunned, a very nice secondary effect to a lightning strike. Steve’s ball exploded in their mist, and the gray miasma sunk into all the corpses.
The soldiers were sending out arrows and spells toward the charging horde, good, it was our job to take care of any footholds anyway. If we all focused on the dark elves on the walls we’d have been overrun, though things would be ugly for a bit, even if splitting our attentions was successful.
Damn dark elves. Sneaky bastards.
Spells of darkness, fire, and death went off all around us, and my mana shield drained precipitously. There was no cover, nothing to hide behind. If I hadn’t been a journeyman with two thousand mana invested in my mana shield, I’d have died right there. My hit points were still kind of pitiful, at my current level anyway. That was going to mess with my mana management, as I pumped more into the shield even as I prepared to cast my next spell. Hopefully there’d be a lull after we retook the walls, but somehow, I doubted it.
Anlyth raced forward with his staff, firing an explosive stone spike at the same time, to finish off the last few dark elves still alive in that first group of twenty.
Gwen swiveled her hips at the last moment, seeing they were dealt with, and released an arrow covered with darkness at the next group. A globe of darkness appeared around them all, and I could hear their sudden cries of both rage and pain. She must have pumped almost all her mana into it, because when the sphere disappeared half of them were dead, the other half of them were attacking each other. I imagined some might have escaped the curse, but they were forced to fight the ones who didn’t anyway.
I snickered, as the dead dark elves Steve hit rose to their feet, and immediately manned the mini-ballistae and fired into the charging horde. A charging giant was skewered through the chest and knocked down on his ass. He wasn’t dead, yet, but his heart’s blood was already staining the field. The rest of them started to fire arrows down at the charging horde, which was getting uncomfortably close to the walls.
Robert’s party had managed to take down one and a half of the dark elf groups on our wall as well, which left thirty on their half of the wall, and a little over twenty on ours. They were good, they just weren’t at our level yet.
Steve threw another ball of gray miasma at the second group as Anlyth finished them off, which would add another twenty undead dark elves to our defense. In a way, that meant we’d already replaced two thirds of our losses from the surprise attack, though I’d rather have the live soldiers. His mana regen was high enough to get the third group of twenty as well, but no more than that. Of course, we had to kill them first.
At the same time he did that, Lyre and I annihilated the third group in fire and lightning. Gwen took out the last two, who were on the edges of our area of effect and were hurt but it hadn’t been quite enough to kill them.
Lara cast healing on several nearby soldiers that had taken damage from the dark elves last attack. I was going to have to talk to her again. Somehow, she’d discovered a way to make healing an area of effect. That was twice now she’d demonstrated abilities I’d never even considered possible. Maybe she combined it with detect life somehow, which was an area of effect? Kind of how I did with entanglement? I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t have time to think it through at the time.
Later.
Strangely, the tightness in my chest was gone, and I found it a little disturbing that I was actually enjoying the challenge of it. Of course, knowing I couldn’t stay dead was probably a big part of that.
We’d re-secured our half of the wall, but there were hundreds of orcs and hobgoblins trying to climb the walls, not to mention volleys of arrows were starting to fill the sky, to keep us pinned down and unable to lean over to knock them off or blow them up. Robert’s party had taken out another group as well, leaving just over ten left for them to take out. I decided not to worry about it, they had it handled.
As I suspected, Steve cast a mass control undead spell at our last group of twenty dead dark elves.
Things were rather chaotic, but all six of our mini-ballistae were now back in business. Perhaps I’d noticed the low numbers, relatively low, of dark elves in time after all. If they had held back until the arrow suppression was I range, and the orcs were already at the walls ready to climb, we’d have had a much harder time of holding on. The fight had almost been lost before it was started, but it could have been worse.
Still, things were just getting started, and thousands of orcs were about to overrun us if we couldn’t beat back this first wave. Thanks to the distraction, there was at least a thousand of them climbing the walls. They’d gotten farther than I felt was comfortable, at all.
At that moment, we were all hiding behind the parapet to avoid the rain of arrows. We could still pop up and get off a shot at the ones still charging the walls, and many of our troops were doing just that, but trying to clear the walls of climbers would be suicide.
“We need to suppress the archers, give our troops the chance to stand for more than a second at a time, and clear the wall climbers.”
Steve replied in outrageous bravado, “Is that all?”
Lara giggled, “Behave.”
Steve replied, “Yes, dear.”
Chapter Thirteen
Steve had a good point, that was stupid to say. Ten of thirty, or fifteen of forty-five, even twenty archers out of sixty attackers and we could suppress them. But… there were about thirty thousand charging the wall, and a good fifteen thousand archers. The arrows were pretty much non-stop, we could pop up for a second to cast a spell, and still take a random one in the face with a little bad luck.
We were outnumbered fifteen to one just by the archers, never mind the chargers. Although, I thought that would halve soon, I could hear the officers readying our second shift to join the wall. It must have occurred to them that we weren’t going to last very long at all, not after the dark elves had put us in such a bad position.
Point was though, we couldn’t suppress them at all, and would just have to take our chances.
Although…
I could feel them all climbing up the walls with life detection, there had to be a good hundred or so within my detect life radius. If I could feel them, I didn’t have to see them. Plus… I got a crazy idea.
“Lyre, cast lightning as soon as my spell is out.”
I reached up and put my hand on the top of the rampart, and cast control water, an inoffensive spell. Mana rushed from my core and out to my hand, as the wall was coated in a centimeter of water as far as I could feel. It reached the bottom of the wall from the tip of my hand, and reached fifty feet out to the sides, sort of in a semi-circle.
Lyre looked confused for a second, and then got a twinkle in her eye as she reached up and blasted off lightning. Her lightning spell normally jumped from target to more targets, to more targets, losing ten percent effectiveness for every hop, much like my fire blasts lost ten percent effectiveness every five feet.
Except… the target was the water, which electrified all the water with her maximum damage, including any creatures in it clinging to walls. I hadn’t been sure if it would work since this was a game world of sorts, but the hundreds of life signs I could detect simply disappeared. I wished I could have seen them all fry and fall off the walls, falling into those on the ground below them, but standing up was suicide so I’d settle for just feeling them die.
I yelled out what we had done, and some of the guards with water and air closest to us did the same thing. It spread across the wall like a wave, where the northern and southern walls picked up on the idea until soon the
y were all doing it.
There was no real way to know, but I imagined we’d wiped out a good two thousand of them just clearing the walls in such a manner. Of course, that barely made an impact to their numbers, but it did stop them temporarily. I couldn’t detect any new wall climbers coming into range. The arrows were still falling out of the sky, several thousand of them, and not all at once.
In truth, my heart was hammering, and I was terrified. This idea was insane. I was more afraid for Lyre and Anlyth than myself, or even the others who would come back.
I looked around and noticed Steve’s zombies had taken over all the mini-ballistae, allowing the live soldiers to take better cover. Anyone manning them was just too exposed. They wouldn’t last forever, several had an arrow or two, or even three, but just kept going. Anlyth was launching exploding stone attacks into the sea of enemies below, as were many of the soldiers with the earth sphere, without really looking. Gwen and many other archers were also firing arrows of our own at the enemies, hers were covered in darkness, others in flames. They weren’t standing up either, though they peeked before firing. Lara was casting heals at the nearby soldiers, those that had taken arrows.
I took a deep breath, we were still in deep shit, but for the moment we’d blunted their attack, broken their charge, and earned some breathing room.
Of course, that didn’t last long. Not charging anymore, they changed tactics and started to toss spells of their own, to explode just as their spells rose above the crenellations of the ramparts. Fire, earth, blades of air, and spikes of ice tore into us.
This was insane. It also hurt, a lot. I had to pump a lot more mana into my shields, and even then it wouldn’t last long. We were too outnumbered. Several soldiers had died.
Lara did her best to heal the soldiers that took damage but managed to stay alive.
The second group, a thousand soldiers and eight more groups of undying, two groups per wall, joined the insanity. They didn’t go on the offense though, and instead went on defense. The Air Sphere wielders started up large air walls, a circular flow of air that was ablating the arrows. The arrows were on a steep curve, so there was about a foot and a half clearance between their spells and the top of the crenellations. I wasn’t sure how long that would last, they must have been using a lot of mana, but for the moment the non-stop barrage of arrows was dealt with. It also left us enough room to cast our own spells and fire our own arrows without getting tangled in their spells.
The ones wielding the Light Sphere started to dispel the enemy barrage while the spells were in mid-flight, they didn’t get them all of course, but the fiery explosions were definitely cut down by ninety percent or so, as well as the other attacks.
Steve asked, “We having fun yet?”
“Oh, it’s a blast.”
I heard several snickers and groans. Granted, it was a terrible pun.
The wall shook, and my sphincter tightened. Then it shook again, and again.
I rose up high enough to see, just a peek, and wished I hadn’t. The horde was like a sea surrounding our small lifeboat. Several hobgoblins and orcs were casting up at us, but even more were casting at the wall, no doubt to help weaken the grand enchantment. Most of the hobgoblins had magic, not so the orcs, but those that didn’t were shielding themselves and the spell casters with shields. I had to remind myself the enemy wasn’t stupid. I wondered how long it would take for them to break the enchantment, and take down the walls, and I also thought it would be rather unsafe for us once they did.
I also noticed several giants and ice wolves arriving, and suddenly wondered if the former were strong enough to throw the latter fifty feet up. It didn’t take me long to learn the answer.
I sent down an exploding fire blast and killed one giant, and several orcs, wounding even more, but it felt like bailing out a leaking boat with a thimble. Still, it was why we were there, and if we managed to even take out ten percent of them before a retreat it would probably be worth it.
Steve loaded a bolt, and fired at one of the ice wolves, with a gray miasma around it. The wolf died, but it started to stir almost before it hit the ground. Hopefully it would cause a little mayhem in their ranks before it was taken down.
Gwen shot a cursed arrow at one of the giants, and it roared in anger and started to take out huge swaths of the enemy with sweeping attacks.
Lyre fired more lightning into the horde, frying several of them and stunning the ones just damaged.
Scenes like that took place all along the walls, since we were temporarily protected for the most part, it made all the soldiers brave. Still, it hardly made an impact, and the other giants started to toss ice wolves, and orcs, up onto the walls. The shields of wind deflected arrows, but for a large mass like a wolf or humanoid, it made very little impact. It also made me wonder if they practiced that, the enemy rose above the ramparts by about five feet in a shallow arc, and then landed behind us on the wall. I snickered at the imagined mental picture of giants at practice, throwing the other races at certain heights in training. Most of us were flush against the rampart, using it for cover.
I stayed where I was, and I sent out a very controlled fire blast killing two orcs. Steve drew his sword, as did Gwen, and they joined Anlyth as the three of them fought off another foothold on the wall. The first enemy wave went down fast, but during the fight twice as many enemies were thrown up onto the walls. Both Gwen and Steve took damage, but Lara immediately healed them.
“Take out the giants!” I screamed the obvious, as I took my own advice and cooked one in white hot fire.
Lyre took out another one, with an arrow of fire.
I felt Lara explode with light magic, as she enchanted us again with plus three to all attributes, plus any of the soldiers as well within her reach.
Holy shit, had it really only been five minutes since this mess started? It felt like forever since those dark elves appeared out of nowhere. The danger, fear, and adrenaline were all skewing my perceptions and time sense. Sure, we’d been in plenty of battles before, but nothing even close as harrowing as this one was. We were supposed to fight for days? I doubted we’d last more than a half hour, if that.
The walls vibrated and groaned as if to underscore that thought. Without masters of our own to support, charge, and protect the grand enchantment it wouldn’t last forever, or even very long. It was a shame the three races didn’t give us any for this experiment, perhaps we could have defeated the whole horde if they had, right there and then. I guessed we’d taken out maybe five percent of them, just in the first five minutes.
I wondered briefly how the other fort was faring, were they able to hold the walls? I assumed the enemy’s surprise tactics were the same in both places, and they’d had to deal with several hundred dark elves under cloak as well.
All the defenders on the walls, the offensive ones in my shift I mean, rained hell on the giants. There weren’t that many of them, relatively speaking to the other evil races at any rate, just a few hundred, maybe seventy-five for each wall. There were more than that, the enemy had held back about half of them by their command area. Perhaps unwilling to risk them all in this first battle of the war.
I felt several orcs and hobgoblins come in range of my life detection spell, I was about to call out more orders, but Robert the leader of the other undying party beat me to it.
He yelled, “Clear the walls when they make it half way.”
In the meantime, I peeked quickly enough to fire off a fire blast to take out one of the giants. They were falling fast, there weren’t all that many left. The enemy soldiers being tossed up on the wall were down to a trickle already. We’d lost some of ours, but the numbers coming up at that point were being killed fast. I also noticed that most of them were on an undead rampage, Steve wasn’t the only person on the wall with the death sphere. The undead giants didn’t last long before the enemy engulfed them fire, a zombie’s greatest weakness, but they wreaked a hell of a lot of havoc and damage in the few moments before th
at.
The enemy was half way up the wall, so I nodded to Lyre and then cast control water.
Unfortunately, as I’d mentioned earlier, the enemy wasn’t stupid and they could adapt. A centimeter thick sheet of water expanded out from my hand and coated the wall as before, but the enemy was ready for it this time. The water hanging in the air in a sheet along the wall broke down, and then rained harmlessly down on the enemy before Lyre could electrify it, as several dispel magics were tossed at the walls from the enemy ranks below.
Damn, so much for a quick kill on hundreds again. We needed a new plan, and fast. Despite my intelligence being boosted to twenty-nine, I was coming up blank in that moment.
The walls shook again, and there was a loud crack of splitting stone that reverberated through the air. I wondered how much longer the walls would hold. Had the dwarves, elves and humans really expected us to fight for days without masters to maintain the wards? Idiots. It hadn’t even been ten minutes yet. The enemy must’ve been pouring in tons of mana to break our grand enchantment.
Ice. Dumbass.
I cast the spell again, control water, and a centimeter sheet of ice grew from my fingertips and raced down the wall to form a half circle with a fifty-foot radius. The ice locked in boot tips, fingers, and claws of the enemy as a sheet of ice formed. The enemy’s spells of dispel magic slammed into the ice, which broke my spell, I no longer had control of the water on the wall, but since it was ice it just stayed there, stuck to the wall. It would melt, eventually, but it would last more than long enough.
The reason I used water the first time is because water makes a great conductor, all those loose ions conduct quite well. Ice is a crappy conductor, the ions were locked in place, which meant there was no point of Lyre trying to electrocute them. However, ice was an excellent and extremely low friction surface, especially when formed without imperfections. As soon as the enemy broke their limbs from the ice, they fell to the ground as they lost purchase. No, it didn’t kill any of them, even the ones thirty to forty feet up absorbed the drop easily, but it kept them from climbing the walls and overwhelming us in numbers. At that point, that was good enough.
Island Kingdoms' War Page 7
