by Simon Archer
With that, I picked up the horn that the Herald had dropped and snapped it over my knee. Admittedly, I had to infuse a touch more Aura into the action to get the job done in one blow then I’d expected, but everything I’d done had the desired effect.
As we turned on our heel, The Herald finally found his voice. Only, it wasn’t his voice. No, it was deeper and throatier.
“You have sealed your deaths.” I turned back toward the Herald and found that his eyes were now black as pitch, and what’s more, his face had gone totally slack.
“So, are you the King or another lackey?” I raised an eyebrow. “Because I have no time for lackeys.”
“Oh, it is me, adventurer, and do not worry, your boldness has guaranteed a violent and long-lasting death for everyone here--”
He probably would have said more, but I took the opportunity to grab hold of the musical magic coming from just beyond the town’s gates and turn it into my own. With a snap of my fingers, I turned the Herald into a solid block of ice and then shattered it into a million scintillating shards.
37
“Well, if your plan were to piss them off, I’d say it worked splendidly,” Jane said as we arrived back inside the gates and made our way back to the top of the wall. “Because the Hobgoblin King seemed really angry.”
“His anger will amount to less than nothing,” Queenie said with a shrug. “Because he is facing master, and master cannot be broken or beaten, even with an army a hundred times this size.”
“That’s not true,” I said as I watched the army out across the field prepare for war and tried to figure out how they would attack. “The first part, I mean. His anger will be his undoing.” I smiled as the Giants began to march forward, no doubt to kick down my walls. Once that was done, the rest of the army would flow through to rape and pillage as they saw fit.
“So, what do we do about them?” Jane asked as each lumbering step shook the ground. “Hole ‘em?”
“No.” I shook my head. “That is our big play, so we need to save it for the majority of the army.” I glanced at Queenie. “How many Giants can you take at once, do you think?” There were sixteen in total, but most of their names were light yellow which meant they were at most a level higher than me. That said, they were just normal monsters, so it would just be a matter of ensuring our blows delivered critical hits to take them down.
“Given enough time I could take them all,” she said as she studied the enemies. “How much time do I have?”
“Not much,” I admitted. “We cannot let them reach the gates, so maybe a minute and a half?”
“I suspect I can take out six then.” She nodded and clutched her dagger. “I regret I cannot do more than that.”
“It’s perfect.” I glanced at Jane. “How many can you take?”
“By myself?” she asked, eyes a bit wide in shock. “I dunno. Giants are big, so it is hard to kill them with a sword.” She held up her Overseer’s Blade. “Maybe one or two.”
“Let’s go with one.” I turned to the two Hobgoblin Archers beside me. “That means the two of you need to get four to five each.” I smacked them on the back. “I believe in you.”
They both nodded but didn’t say anything because they weren’t high level enough to speak.
“Their arrows will never pierce the Giant’s flesh, but if you think you can do it, I’ll trust your judgment.” Jane looked like she wanted to argue more, but instead, she merely nodded and leaped off the walls. She hit the ground with a wet splat as her legs squished unnaturally to absorb the force of the fall, and then she was off, surging toward the closest Giant.
I watched her for a moment before turning to Queenie. “Can you work on the ones to the back?”
“It will be done,” she said as her giant dragonfly-like wings began to flap. A second later, she was hovering above the wall and then she took off toward the far giant, her dagger glinting in one hand. She hit it full in the face before Jane had even reached her giant, and the force of the impact as she drove the dagger into its eye was enough to fling the beast onto its back.
It howled in rage as it clutched at its ruined eye, injured, but not dead. Queenie probably could have finished it off, but instead, she merely retracted her gore-covered arm, and with a flap of her wings, turned in midair and launched herself at the Giant to her left. She held her dagger out in front of her, and as she slammed into its ear canal, point first, her arm drove into it up to her shoulder. The creature cried out in agony, and as it began to slump sideways, she planted her feet on its collarbone and then thrust upward with her legs as she tore the dagger out.
Needless to say, the giant was already dead as it started to fall, and then she was off again.
Still, I didn’t have time to watch her. Instead, I commanded my two Hobgoblin Archers to ready their arrows, and as they drew back on the bows the town’s crafters had made for them, which were quite a bit better than the ones we’d had before, I reached out and put a hand on each of their shoulders. Then I grabbed ahold of the musical energy still coursing from the musicians down below and infused it into their arrows.
As a green glow began to fill the projectiles, that glow grew and grew until it was almost like staring into an emerald sun, and then, when I could no longer take the strain of acting as a conduit any longer, I gave the word.
“Loose!”
My Hobgoblin Archers launched their arrows simultaneously, and as they rocketed across the battlefield like miniature comets, Jane reached her target.
The slime girl transformed her legs into modified springs as she launched herself upward and collided with the giant’s face, and then, instead of slashing at it, proceeded to just cover its head like a giant blue balloon and suffocate it. The creature reached up, trying to claw at the slime girl, but even as his fingers carved furrows in her that instantly reformed, I saw his head beginning to smolder and dissolve.
I turned my focus from the dying giant in time to see the Hobgoblins’ arrows collide with the two giants to either side of the creature like fucking cannonballs that blew apart their skulls like watermelons at a Gallagher show.
Beside me, the two archers had already nocked new arrows, and as they targeted two more giants, I reached out to infuse them with Aura once more. It was harder than the first time since I was tired now, and certainly more painful, but I bit my teeth and pulled in the musical magic coming from the musicians below.
As their arrows began to glow with concentrated Aura, Jane sprang off her now dead Giant and hit the next one square in the chest. Then she began to climb up its body while leaving a burning snail trail in her wake that caused the giant to bat uselessly at her body. Only as it did, it splattered more and more of her slime across its hands and chest, which also began to smoke.
My Hobgoblins loosed again, and as two more Giants fell, Queenie crashed into the back of another giant’s neck while spinning like a drill. Her dagger cut into its flesh in a spray of blood and bone right before she burst through it.
She hovered there with gore cascading off of her body and splattering across the ground far below her, looking to all the world like an avenging goddess before setting her eyes on another giant, and as she did, my Hobgoblin Archers were already lining up their sights on new targets. I quickly infused them with Aura once more, and when two more giants went down, I realized there were only three more left.
While Queenie and Jane were more than enough to take two of them down before they reached the gates, I wasn’t sure they could get all three, and it was too risky to fire empowered arrows from this distance. So, I did the next best thing. I jumped down from the wall and raced out into the battlefield until I was within range of a felled giant. Then I raised my hand and used Auric Extraction.
Pattern: Forest Giant has been learned. Would you like to create a Forest Giant?
A moment later, Atlas was born, and he wasted no time in picking up the tree beside the giant’s corpse and hurling it at the last remaining giant. As the tree struck t
he creature in the side and sent him staggering, Atlas charged forth across the battlefield and slammed his forearm into the enemy giant with a vicious lariat that knocked the creature to the ground.
As the Forest Giant’s head smacked into the dirt with a sickening thud, Atlas raised a boot and then proceeded to stomp a mudhole in the other giant’s face. A moment later, there was nothing remaining of the giant’s skull but a wet smear on the ground.
That was when the battlefield went strangely silent, and it was during that silence that I commanded Atlas to pick me up, and the giant quickly knelt to do my bidding.
I quickly stepped onto his palm, and as the giant raised me high into the air, I turned my attention to the figure sitting behind the curtain and yelled at the top of my lungs, “Is that the best you’ve got or is this really all you have?”
No sooner had I spoken when a horn blast erupted from the Hobgoblin’s camp and an ungodly horde of the creatures came rushing toward us. I had half a second to regard them carefully before commanding my giant to put me back on the walls. He’d barely deposited me beside my archers when Queenie flew back toward me with Jane, wrapped in her protective cloak, in her arms, and chasing her was what had to be the entirety of the Hobgoblin King’s army.
“You must have really pissed him off,” Jane said as she dropped onto the platform beside me. “Let’s hope your plan works.”
“It will work, just let me know when they are just about banging on the gates,” I said as I raced down the wall and headed toward the musicians.
“I will,” Jane said as Queenie took up a position high in the air so she could give me a separate perspective.
Admittedly, part of me wanted to send the Atlas in, if only to fuck with the Hobgoblin King, but at the moment, I was inclined to wait. After all, I might need him later.
Instead, I raced over toward where Morlaon and the others were still playing, and as I reached them, I paused momentarily to gulp down a breath. When my heart stopped trying to beat its way through my ribs from exertion, I smiled at them all.
“Here’s the moment we’ve been practicing for,” I said, and when I met Jay’s eye, he nodded and hit a gnarly riff on his ukelele.
“For the Destroyer King!” Morlaon cried and then launched into the ode he’d sang when I’d first met him. Only this time, all the other gathered musicians joined in. As their music swelled through the air and reverberated through the ground, I turned my attention to the other performers.
“And the rest of you,” I said as I swept my eyes over the fire-eaters, jugglers, and mimes, “perform your hearts out!”
All at once, the square turned into a flurry of sound and activity as actors acted out monologues, jugglers threw batons in the air, fire eaters ate fire, and mimes, well, mimed. With each successive movement, each well-rehearsed line and swallow of flame, I felt the magic around us rising into a raging crescendo.
A crescendo that I gathered up inside me. It was like trying to drink from a fire hose, and as I pulled on all the power in the air and felt it fill me to the brim like a balloon about to burst, I slammed my open palms on the ground and channeled the energy into it.
That’s when I started to smell burning flesh, and I realized the energy was starting to consume me, to eat away at my body like it was so much dry paper, but I didn’t care. I forced the energy out through the earth until I couldn’t see, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. Still more came rushing through me, so that by the time I heard Jane and Queenie cry out in unison, I almost didn’t have the strength to pull through.
Almost.
As a grimace spread across my face and the world turned black and spotty around the edges, I unleashed all the power I’d summoned in one titanic wave that shook the whole of the earth.
In an instant, the thin layer of stone I’d magically spread over the massive hole we’d dug out of the battlefield opened.
I felt it more than saw as the Hobgoblin King’s army, now firmly in the kill zone, suddenly found no ground beneath their feet. They tumbled down onto the many thousands of spears that filled the vast trench, and as they did, their shouts of pain and surprise filled the air, louder even than all the music and performers.
That’s when phase two started, and I watched as our archers shot flaming arrows into the trench, igniting the lamp oil we had poured into it. An instant later, flames rose up from within the trench, nearly white hot as the oil caught and burned all that stood in its way, which, of course, was an entire army’s worth of Hobgoblins.
38
“Not so strong without your army, eh?” I called as I made my way through the gates and stood at the edge of the trench. Inside, the Hobgoblin King’s army still thrashed and burned, and as I watched the flames burn through them, I couldn’t help but feel pretty damn good about my plan.
Across the field of dead and dying Hobgoblins, I found myself staring at what remained of the army that had once stood against us, and realized that all that remained were the Elite Goblin Knights, their Scorpions, and what was waiting on the throne on the far side of the trench.
“I am quite strong,” the voice from within the curtained throne spoke, and it was like ice and fury. It chilled me to my core and made gooseflesh sprout on my arms. Instantly, the music that had been playing behind me died out, and as the sound faded and the battlefield descended into a silence only punctuated by the crackle of dying flames, a cold wind howled through the valley.
It was the sort of wind that ripped through the night and threatened to take you all the way down to hell with it. The kind that ushered in frigid nights of freezing death and left famine in its wake.
And yet, it felt familiar in a way I couldn’t explain.
“I know you are not afraid, master,” Queenie said as she moved beside me and took my hand, “but I am. Though I know that you will win, I am scared.” She squeezed my hand. “And that will make our victory all the sweeter.”
“Who wanted to live forever, anyway?” Jane said as she moved to my other side and took my hand.
Then we watched as the curtain was pulled aside and what stepped out had to have been hewn from my deepest, darkest nightmares.
The Hobgoblin’s yellowed skin was covered in glistening, oozing pustules, and his eyes were nothing but red coals. Shadowy darkness seemed to cling to him as he stepped onto the earth, and as he did, the very grass beneath his feet seemed to die. His armor was unlike anything I’d ever seen before, either in game or out, and appeared to be woven together of icy metal. The chest plate itself was modeled after a leering, fanged skull, and his pauldrons were still two more skulls that spewed blue fire into the air. His knees and elbows were covered in still more spewing, silver skulls that sat emblazoned upon a black, icy metal that caused frosty mist to swirl around him.
But worst of all?
Worst of all was the crown of jawbones he wore about his head so that when he moved, it was like all of Hell was laughing at you for your impertinence.
And all of that said nothing of his size. He was huge, massively so. His muscles bulged almost obscenely, and with each and every movement, it was as though the world itself struggled to contain him.
That’s when he drew a pair of swords from the sheathes on his back, and I realized that he was holding what looked to be a six-foot claymore in each hand. While both of them were similar, possessing a skull for a handguard and had large sapphires set into the pommel, it was the blades themselves that truly made me wish I didn’t have to fight him. Both were black as night and seemed to absorb not just the light that fell upon them, but all of life, death, and everything. And when he clanged them together, lightning zipped up the left blade while blue flame roared up the right one.
“So, maybe you neglected to say just how badass he was,” I said as I swallowed hard. Even though we were several hundred feet apart, I could feel the Hobgoblin King’s presence like a massive wet blanket had been thrown over me on a hot summer’s day.
“I’ve never actually seen him
before,” Jane whispered from beside me, “but even if I had, I don’t think I could have done him justice.”
“No, I suppose not,” I agreed.
“You are lucky this day,” the King said, his words like thunder crackling through the heavens. “For you will not have to face my wrath just yet.” His lips curled into a cruel smile that revealed his horrific fangs. “Because my minions have not yet fallen.”
Then, with a wave of his hand, a terrible scream ripped out from the bowls of the trench, and it was then that I saw the dead, burning hobgoblins begin to rise.
“Necromancer.” The word was but a whisper on the wind as I saw them begin to claw their way out of the pit. Giant, hobgoblin, dire bear, all were rising, and once they were out, we would be screwed. Worse, even if I somehow had the energy to seal the pit, I knew they would claw their way through anything I could conjure.
“We have to take him out before they rise,” I said as my eyes fell upon the Hobgoblin King. He stood there between his Elite Guards and waited like he had all the time in the world.
The thing was, he didn’t.
“Queenie,” I said without bothering to look at her. “Do it.”
“Yes, master,” she said and twitched her antennae.
“I thought you were supposed to be tough,” I called and took a step forward, and as I did, the Hobgoblin King just threw his head back and laughed.
“You’re confident. I like that,” he said as his lips twisted into a cruel smile. “It will make it more satisfying when you beg to die. Only I will not let you die. Not truly.” He nodded toward the pit where the dead were starting to pull themselves free. “Yours will be a life of perpetual servitude.”
“Hard pass,” I said as my Giant Ants burst from the ground just behind the Hobgoblin King and ran at the bastard and his guards.
