There was nothing I could do but hold on for dear life as Karalti cast Haste on herself, winging like a swift to draw the dragons to the wall, in front of the cannons. The battlefield was in complete disarray. Twelve dragons could do what fifty thousand zombies hadn't. Blasts of electricity shattered the heaps of dead, cracked stone and knocked dragoons from the sky, their screeching quazi convulsing as they fell. The infantry, formerly disciplined behind the protection of their defenses, were now a panicking riot. They were sitting ducks for the dragons. The Arpad was burning, sinking slowly toward the seething army below. Violetta and her wing had abandoned it to its fate, and were swooping and diving, snatching men from the ground and spitting lightning down among their ranks. Armored skeleton cavalry flowed through the gaps the dragons had created in a victorious wave, headed straight for the wall.
“We’re so fucked.” I clung to Karalti as she strove for speed ahead of our pursuers, still on our tail. When I looked back, I could still see Lucien’s stupid shit-eating leer. He wasn't even wearing a helmet, just a pair of goggles.
"The dragons have flanked the wall! They're going for the evacuation ships!" Istvan's voice cut in through the battle management chat.
I spared a glance at the battlefield, and my heart sank. Pockets of infantry were holding out, but the dragons had let the horde through the defenses. Ranks of giant metal scorpions scuttled over the flash-frozen mud and heaps of twitching, burning zombies with ease, headed straight for the last of the defenders. The men on the ground were covering the escape of their comrades up the wall. They would be the last load of evacuees. They were possibly not even evacuees. I checked the Mass Combat unit window: we'd lost about half of the original three thousand.
Grimly, I cycled back to the group chat. "Istvan! Immediate retreat! Suri, Vash, get off the wall with as many men as you can! Rin – blow the dam, now!”
“But… There's still people who aren't evacuated!" Rin’s voice was high and panicked. “What’s happening?”
"The Wall is getting swarmed, and if we don't flood the field, we'll lose everyone, including the ships that have already left. Blow the fucking dam!" I snarled back.
“R-Roger.” Rin cut her voice chat with a sob.
As Karalti and I closed on the center line, I could see that most of the elevators had already been destroyed, the men below clamoring, climbing over each other to try and get into the ones that still worked. A few had reached the gate, but hundreds of riflemen were stranded below. The western line of defense had collapsed, swarmed by undead. The wetter eastern side was doing better, but there were fewer routes up that side of the wall. The men there were now being attacked by the dragon that had stayed behind.
“We’re lining you up enfilade, Hector,” Suri said, her voice cold with focus. “Pull these cunts in front of me and Vash and we’ll blow their snouts back into their arseholes.”
"Come on, Tidbit! Push as fast as you can!" I turned on the saddle, hooking my feet under the hand grips so that I could watch our backs while Karalti concentrated on flying. She was at about half stamina from sheer exertion: even with exceptional Dex and boosted with Haste, Lucien's Level 55 monster was catching up to us, foot by foot. Lucien was riding him in the orthodox fashion: tied to the saddle, bent forward, gripping a lance in one hand and a small shield in the other.
“There they are!” Karalti’s mental voice was strained. “I have three seconds, two…”
"You’re in range! When I say stall, you two had better bloody stall out!" Suri's P.M blasted through my head. "One, two, three, four... STALL!"
Karalti gasped with effort as she swung her hindquarters forward and pulled her wings in, arching her back. Like a lady swooning in a faint, she halted her forward momentum and dived backwards toward the ground. The trio of dragons pursuing us shrieked in victory, closing in with claws outstretched... and then shrieked again, this time in terror as a volley of grapeshot blasted them from the side. The concealed 12-pounders nailed them in the ribs and under their wings. Lucien's dragon bellowed, but didn't fall; the other two NPC dragons wailed as the cannons roared a second time, blowing great bloody holes through their torsos. Gobbets of flesh, scales and mana blew out into the wind. One blue collapsed into a fatal headspin; the other rolled out, wings flopping, and plunged to the earth on his back.
The white dragon, Vesper, thundered over our heads like a 747. He was too large and too clumsy to change course and come after my smaller, nimbler queen. Or, so I thought – until I saw his real destination. Violetta and her unit: they’d had flown back toward the center and were coming in along the top of the wall.
A flash of fear surged through my chest. “SURI! Get out of there!”
The night sky lit up with the breath of five dragons as they formed a line and blasted the parapet. The acrid mineral stench of ozone and slagged stone filled the air as they incinerated soldiers, blew chunks of debris into the air, and destroyed our weapons. Desperate soldiers sprinted down toward the bastions. The ones further away had wheeled their mobile 12-pounders around and were aiming at the descending dragons, resigned to their fate.
“We have to go help them!” Karalti strove for altitude, panting as she pumped her wings with sweeping, powerful strokes.
Of course we did – but what the fuck were we going to do against two Level 55 dragons?
Violetta pulled her blue up. Tempest roared, hovering over the parapet with his jaws agape. The three smaller dragons split while Lucien and Vesper circled, trying to get behind the fleeing soldiers. I fixated on Suri and Vash – they were marshalling people to escape, shouting soundlessly from our distance.
“Behind you!” I shouted over the chat.
Vash whirled as Vesper swung around, leveled, and swooped toward him. The rangy monk sneered as he stepped into a defensive stance, fists raised. He said something to Suri, who nodded and began to run, ducking her head. Lucien laughed with contempt as Vesper came in – not to breathe lightning, but to bite.
We weren’t going to make it in time.
Chapter 46
Vash stared contemptuously back at the dragon as it bore down on him, and shouted something as a whirling, churning field of dark energy ripped up a circle of fire around his feet. His gauntlets blazed to life, billowing with black fire , and as the dragon opened its mouth, he darted forward in a blur of shadow.
Vesper didn’t see it coming. When Vash reappeared, he slammed his fist into the dragon’s snout. A shockwave of raw magical force pulsed out, rippling down his neck. His head snapped up, and he bellowed and turned away, soaring back up from the point of contact and lurching as his wings began to stroke the air unevenly. But the shockwave went both ways: Vash was blown back, his arm exploding in a bright red welter of blood and bone. He pitched to the ground in a smoking heap.
Karalti and I yelled at the same time, angling straight toward him – and were bowled away as one of the smaller dragons smashed into us from the side. Karalti screeched, whirling to fend off the teeth and claws, while I turned to see the knight raise her lance. Without a second thought, I bounced up from the saddle and tackled her, taking her by complete surprise. Tied to her saddle as she was, she had no idea what hit her. I drove the Spear between the gap formed by helmet and armor, twisted it until blood sprayed, and then discharged a Shadow Lance with the blade buried in her flesh. She cried out hoarsely, slumping like a wet sack as her dragon kicked and snarled.
Suri’s shout of pure, berserk rage pierced the chaos. She was mantling over Vash’s fallen body as a silver dragon, the last of the NPC Knights, levelled up for a breath weapon attack. Suri had her sword clenched in her hands, her face a bloody, white-eyed mask of fury.
[Suri Ba’hadir uses Battle Haze!]
“Suri! No!” I wrenched my Spear free and kicked off the struggling dragon, back onto Karalti. “Get out of there!”
The silver swooped in low, and as it did, Suri charged forward. A boiling nimbus of scarlet energy built around her, and for a moment, the energy to
ok a writhing, Medusa-like form. The dragon tilted slightly as it sheared lightning down the length of the walkway – lightning that Suri soaked without breaking stride. With her hair standing on end, she roared and swung her huge sword up in a shower of sparks.
[Suri Ba’hadir uses Gorgon Overdrive!]
The dragon’s wings sagged, and instead of triumphantly soaring back into the sky, its head flew off into the air, spraying blood. The body crumpled and careened into the wall, smashing through the crenellations to cartwheel into the thirty-foot pile of zombies below. Violetta was nowhere to be seen; Lucien was turning around, his mount listing to one side from the blow to his head.
“Suri! Get on the edge of the wall! We’ll pick you up!” My heart strained against my ribs, pounding in time with my head as I stabbed at the enemy dragon’s face. The spear burst through its eye. It lashed its head back with a cry of agony, then honked as Karalti clamped her jaws on her brother’s throat. She rabbit-kicked his belly as we spun tail over wing. I heard – and smelled – the moment my dragon’s hook claw caught and tore through the soft underbelly. The male white gave a piteous squeal, scrabbling weakly at the much tougher scales of Karalti’s ribs as she bunched up and pushed away, scooping the air. The eviscerated dragon ragdolled, tumbling bonelessly toward the seething necromass below.
“We’re coming, Suri!” Karalti cried out, winging back over.
Suri was braced in one of the crenellations with her grenade launcher, firing rounds at Lucien and Vesper as the dragon bore down on her. Time seemed to slow. We were coming at her from opposite directions, Vesper twice as fast Karalti in a straight dive. Suri cursed as she reloaded and fired, reloaded and fired, her scarlet hair plastered to her face with sweat and blood. The rounds didn’t even seem to slow Vesper down as he closed in, his jaws glowing with an intensifying nimbus of plasma.
No no no no no! I couldn’t breathe. A thunderous roar built in my ears, drowning out every sound as a torrent of lightning lanced from the dragon’s mouth and struck Suri square in the chest.
Chapter 47
“SURIIII!” I couldn’t hear my own voice over the noise in my head, getting to my feet without thinking.
[Suri used Dauntless! HP: 1/2076]
As the light faded, I saw a glimpse of crimson through the dust. Suri was still on her feet, clutching the edge of the shattered wall with one smoking hand. She had a pin in her teeth and the grenade in her other hand, which she lobbed at the dragon just before he wheeled back into the sky. It caught in his teeth, and he moaned, pitching from side to side as he tried to shake it loose.
The rumbling shook my bones. It wasn’t from my panic. It was water: eight billion tons of water, rushing down the riverbed from the north in a wall of mud, stone and debris. It swamped the barracks and the aircraft hanger, closing on them like a set of white-fanged jaws as it headed for the Wall.
My pulse thundered under my tongue as we closed in on Suri. Karalti dove with her wings drawn in, head and neck rigid, her scales burning with heat. Suri swayed as she turned to us and raised her arms. Karalti extended hers, and grabbed her, carrying her up into the air.
“Vash!” Suri said over PM. “Get Vash!”
I looked down. Vash was there, sprawled unconscious in a pool of blood, his right arm a shattered ruin. But he wasn’t dead – there’d been no notification.
“I can carry him and still fly fast!” Karalti dropped down so fast my ears popped, reaching out with her hind legs.
But I was worried. The water was almost on top of us, and the Orozlan was far away. There was no sign of the pair of dragons – that wasn’t a good thing. “Get him and teleport, Tidbit: we can jump to the Pass as planned.”
“Roger!” Karalti delicately snatched Vash off the ground by his waist, dragging him off into the air, and flew hard and fast toward the oncoming torrent. “Malkut sah’haro-”
Violetta appeared in front of us. One moment, our way was clear – the next, we were headed straight into a wide, blue, fang-lined maw. Karalti shrilled, then screamed as a great pair of talons seized all four of us from behind and carried us up into the sky. It was Vesper – and as his needle-sharp claws dug into Karalti’s arms, pinning them, I saw – and felt – her hands spasm with pain and Suri slide away.
“NO!” Before I knew what I was doing, I slid down my panicked dragon’s neck, clinging to her scales as I flung out a hand, a leg, my Spear – all just a second too late as Suri slithered through Vesper’s fingers and fell toward the tsunami as it smashed into the wall, still reaching for me.
“You live! You finish this fucking quest, Hector!” Her voice buzzed in my ear. Hard, determined. Dauntless. “I-”
The water took her final two words as it surged toward the wall, but I knew what they were. I screamed her name, recoiling from my HUD when the audio notification appeared, as impartial as ever.
[You have lost a Hero: Suri Ba’hadir]
Vesper wheeled lazily in the air, booming in triumph. He was twice Karalti’s size, and held my thrashing queen dragon up against his chest and belly in a possessive clutch that turned my stomach. My eyes burned, and bile – pure, ice-cold revulsion – curdled in the pit of my belly and forced its way into the muscles of my face. I had to grieve Suri later. She wanted to win.
Vesper began to mutter the barely-familiar words of the Teleport spell. There was no time to lose. With a snarl, I charged the Spear with Shadow Lance and rammed into the soft webbing between the dragon’s fingers. It didn’t cost him much HP, but he roared in pain – and then in alarm as the Blindness debuff took hold. It counted down fast, but it was enough to make the titan veer off course. He scooped with his wings, instinctively veering away from the Wall as a towering rush of water slammed into it and blew the whole thing out into the battlefield. The Demon had only barely begun to recall his troops, but their retreat was fouled up by the craggy, cratered terrain. Rocks the size of train cars smashed into the clamoring zombies, followed by water - so much water that it exploded whatever it hit. Korona was smashed, and as the water blasted through the gates, it ignited with oily yellow-green flames, pouring a waterfall of sulfurous fire down onto the undead below. Spectral horns began to blare up and down the line, as the army tried in vain to pull its most vulnerable troops back from the destructive torrent raging toward them. But no one or nothing could run that fast - not through the swamp.
“What are you doing! I said Teleport!” Lucien’s angry shouting briefly broke through the thunderous noise.
“Hold on, girl.” I activated Spider Climb and scurried up over the dragon’s hand, forearm, and up to his bulging bicep. Impressive as he looked at a distance, up close, Vesper’s scales were buckled and lifted like old wallpaper. “As soon as he lets go of you, freefall and teleport to the Pass with Vash. You have the coordinates, right?”
“Yes. You have it on your map. But what about you!?” Karalti barked and honked as she struggled. She was so worked up that she was sweating blood through the seams of her scales, drops of mana blown away by the wind.
“I’ll respawn wherever you are.” I climbed Vesper’s arm like a palm tree as he began to chant again, faster this time. “You have to get away. I can’t lose you, too.”
Archemi dragons had few weak points. The only places that weren’t thick with bulletproof scales were the spaces between their fingers and toes, the lower arch of their belly around their privates, and their armpits. I scaled up to the white dragon’s armpit where his arm met his wing-shoulders, got a grip, and slammed my spear into the softer flesh there. Once it was wedged in, I grit my teeth and snarled. “EAT SHIT!”
Umbra Burst lanced out in a wave of searing, numbing cold.
[You have inflicted the Frozen debuff!]
An agonizing contraction wracked the dragon’s body. He let out a high-pitched squeal and flopped over on that side, the wing suddenly flapping and useless. Karalti wormed free, Vash still clutched in one back foot. She flipped over to blast the dragon’s other wing with fire, breath
ing the words of the spell at the same time. “Malkut sah’haro apsis!”
My dragon folded into a single point in space and vanished. I allowed myself a second to shake with relief, then bared my teeth and began to climb.
“What the fuck was that!? And why are we lighter all of a- Oh you fucking piece of Tier 6 trash!” Lucien was cursing his struggling dragon as Vesper powered through the debuff. “Do you know what Baldr will do to us if we don’t find her, you dumbfuck stupid-!”
I equipped the Boots of the Winding Path with a thought, checked my quickslots, and used the saddle straps to pull myself up behind Lucien. Like me, he had passed the Trial of Marantha and could see behind his own head. He whirled, mouth hanging open for a second before he tried to run at me and nearly fell flat on his face. He was still tied to his saddle with the anchoring lines, three quick-release straps snapped to solid iron rings.
“Kinky.” I darted at him Spear-first.
"How the hell-!" Lucien threw his shield and lance, then pulled his swords. After gaining several hard-won levels, Lucien's movements were no longer a blur to me. But he was still fast - real fast, fast enough that I had to focus on him or risk being overwhelmed before I could follow him. As we officially entered combat, I was finally able to see his level. I hadn't had time to notice it the first time, when he'd attacked me on the parade ground. But now that he was trapped, there was time.
“Thirty-five? You’re twenty fucking levels lower than your dragon?” I swiped at him as he slashed at the lines tethering him and stumbled back. “Damn, dude, seriously. I knew you had to be compensating for something.”
Kingdom Come Page 45
