by Adam Drake
The Lookouts were knocked back and sent flying over the battlements. They tumbled screaming down the vast height of the Keep to the ground.
With this problem eliminated, Amara brought the eagle around the Keep and landed.
The archers moved close and loosened their bows.
But as the arrows zinged toward their mark, the eagle stood tall and flapped its mighty wings creating an incredible wind.
The arrows were knocked out of mid-flight as the wind intensified. In seconds, the eagle generated hurricane-force winds.
The archers tried to stand against this, but were sent flying to the ground, or tumbling into the trees.
While the great eagle maintained the attack with its wings, Amara jumped off its back.
The moment before she touched the ground she vanished.
Shadow Form.
My footmen, shocked by the attack on the archers, but still rooted to the spot I commanded them not to leave, looked about in confusion.
Oh, for the love of...
“Watch out!” I shouted at the footmen leader. “She's in Shadow Form!”
I rounded the final bend, and the Keep was in sight, but I was a good thirty seconds away.
The footmen looked about, apprehensive. They knew an enemy was nearby, but had no idea where.
Yuinnick continued its attack, buffeting the archers with the horrific wind. When one archer managed to get purchase and stand, he was immediately sent sprawling to the ground.
Your Banner Has Been Taken!
No, no, no, I thought. This cannot be happening. Not again!
Amara had snuck by the footmen in Shadow Form, but the moment she grabbed the banner she became visible. Crouched on the altar itself, banner grasped tightly in one hand, she killed the nearest surprised footman with a sword swing.
The other eleven footmen reacted, whirling to confront her.
The great eagle immediately stopped flapping its wings and charged forward at the footmen formation, shrieking loudly.
As some footmen engaged Amara, others turned to face the frightening champion moving in to attack.
I was ten seconds away.
Amara's sword was a blur of motion parrying sword swings from her perch on the skeletal altar. Surrounded and outnumbered, she appeared in a desperate fight to keep them at bay.
This attempt at the banner had been a tremendous risk to take. But fortune favors the bold, especially on the Battle Field.
Yuinnick snapped at a footman with its beak, slicing him in two. Then it crushed another with its massive talons while flapping its wings to keep balance. The great eagle moved in closer, forcing the footmen to scramble out of the way.
Amara noticed me galloping toward her and grinned while slicing the head off a footman.
“I'm coming for you!” I found myself shouting. My heart raced as the distance between us shrank.
Then Amara moved. She dodged a footman's sword swing, then rolled under another's attack.
Yuinnick brushed three footmen away with a giant wing, as if they were toys, and squatted down.
“No!” I yelled, changing my direction toward the great eagle.
Amara jumped and stepping off a fallen footman's back, leapt up and into Yuinnick's saddle.
The huge bird flapped its wings and launched up from the ground.
Unperturbed, I took Smoke directly under the eagle, its massive form blocking out the sky. Wings beat around me and the wind threatened to knock me to the grass.
But as Yuinnick ascended, I still had a chance at one desperate attempt to stop them.
I shifted from my saddle to my feet, and using my enhanced leap ability, jumped straight up from Smoke's back.
The next second, I found myself clinging to a leathery leg of the eagle as it ascended northward into the sky.
Below, I saw Smoke running about in confusion. The remaining footman looked up at me in amazement.
For a few moments I could only marvel at my own folly. What had been the point of this?
It didn't appear that Yuinnick noticed my presence, so large was the creature.
We sped northward, and the dense forest below moved past at an alarming speed. Did Amara intend to go to the center altar?
A quick look showed that my forces still firmly controlled the platform and the area immediately north of it. But her own army was pressing forward. They were closer than before.
Not waiting to give her any more satisfaction at snatching my banner, again, I decided to try something really stupid. There were few options for me, anyway.
My legs and arms were wrapped around the thick leg of the eagle. I released my grip with one hand and summoned my sword. Then I stabbed upwards.
Yuinnick shrieked with pain and its flapping wings lurched in surprise.
As if in answer to my attack, the eagle started to descend. I stabbed again and blood flowed from the wound under its huge feathers.
Now Yuinnick tried to use the talons on its other leg to swipe at me, but it couldn't reach.
When I stabbed again, I felt us falling faster.
I looked down just in time to see us fly into the tops of the trees.
The branches smashed into me at horrific speed. I tried to hide behind the eagle's thick leg but it appeared to be willing to take more damage if it meant I would be knocked off.
It worked.
I couldn't hold on while being attacked by speeding trees, and I was smacked hard again, losing my grip.
I had one last glance of the eagle's mammoth form flapping away, a gold beam of light shooting upwards from its back where my banner was being carried away.
Crypt, here I come, I thought morbidly.
Then I plummeted through the forest canopy.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
My avatar bounced unceremoniously from branch to branch as I fell through the trees.
Reaching bottom, I did a hard face plant into the ground, and my screen went black.
Well, that didn't work, I thought. Various alternate scenarios played through my mind as I waited to be reborn, but none would have ended well. Perhaps I should have waited until we were closer to the platform before attacking the eagle? My archers could have lent some support.
Mentally, I shrugged. Didn't matter now. Amara had the banner, again. While I...
I looked curiously at my view-screen. Nothing had changed, the blackness remained. Then I noticed the icons still on the edge of my vision. They usually vanished while I was being reborn.
My health indicator was at 2%. Oh, crap. I wasn't dead!
Pushing forward, my avatar lifted her face out of the thick loam of the forest floor. I blinked in confusion at my surroundings. Trees, lots of them, crowded around me like towering guards.
Looking upwards I could see the blue sky high above. The path of my fall was clear from all the snapped branches.
Feeling like an idiot, I stood and brushed myself off.
Then I looked to the map.
Amara appeared within view of my fighting units at the middle. She circled the platform once, but my army were still firmly in control of it. If she landed, she would be swarmed.
Then, as if deciding now was not the time, she flew northward, and her icon eventually vanished as she passed out of view.
My army still fought a protracted war. Units crashed against enemy units. Formations on both sides morphed as the battle situation changed. Amara's army was gaining some ground, but my double block of units kept them back.
Still, it was only a matter of time. Now that she had my banner, she could sit back at her base and funnel a constant stream of trolls south. Eventually, she'd break through or simply wear me down. Then the platform would be hers.
And the game would be over.
Getting angry again, I started to make my way west, the shortest distance out of the forest according to the map.
This terrain was not meant for travel, at all. Most of the way I had to climb up from the cramped forest floor with its huge root sy
stem that intertwined to make a living barrier. Carefully, I leapt from branch to branch.
I was mindful of my health. Yeah, I could purposely take a tumble and be back in my base in thirty seconds. But Amara would get Battle Points for it. Even if she didn't directly kill me, her big bird was the one that dropped me. She'd get 100 points, and I wouldn't let her have them.
Before I emerged at the forest's edge I had called on Smoke, who ran up from the base to meet me. When I finally escaped the forest gymnasium he was there, nickering in welcome.
I climbed up into his saddle. “Let's get to the Keep.”
As we headed south, I looked over the perpetual fight in the middle.
My units were smashed up against Amara's units and although she had more cavalry than I, more of my own horsemen were heading north or lined up down both approaches.
Grax still sat back from the main action, guarding the altar. His health had actually increased a little, perhaps to an innate regeneration ability for champions. But he still was not strong enough to move closer and assist. A single volley from an archer unit would do him in.
I was genuinely at a loss as to what do to next. Fight until Amara gained the platform through attrition?
As we arrived at my base, both the defending archer unit and footmen unit had retaken their positions. All their faces were sullen. In their minds, they had failed and lost the banner.
The cavalry unit I had redirected to the base stood by. I simply sent them north again.
“You fought well,” I said to the defending units as I dismounted. “And against difficult odds.”
This only seemed to mollify them slightly.
What else could be said? The banner was gone.
Before entering the Keep I looked northward. Far in the distance were two thread-thin beams of light.
Wonderful.
I also noted my scout had been spotted and killed by archers. Great.
I entered the Keep and sat in the middle of the floor. Above, a Lookout waved at me from the trapdoor and returned to duty.
At least the Lookouts respawn on their own, I thought absentmindedly.
As I watched my health regenerate, I glared at the unit icons on the map. This was not fun. Losing, that is. Worse, the knowledge I was going to lose, regardless, sucked even more.
Amara was in possession of both banners.
I could attempt to fight my way to her base. Even if successful, it could take forever to get there. I'd also have to secure both approaches because while concentrating on one, the other could be a threat to my advancing army's flank.
I looked at the map with its figure-eight formation and the grass plains which funneled units around like circles of death.
The trees were more than just a resource they were an impediment, too. So thickly packed that even a footmen unit could not pass through them.
Suddenly, I was struck with a thought.
I scrutinized the map more closely. Could it work?
Only one way to find out.
With my health bar at 100%, I left the Keep. Outside, I mounted Smoke. To the footmen and archer unit leaders, I said, “Hold fast while I'm gone.”
They snapped a salute. “Yes, Commander!”
Part of me blamed them for letting the banner be taken, but really the blame was all mine. Inexperienced and completely unprepared, I'd let Amara have the upper hand this entire time.
I rode northwest at a hard gallop. By the midway point of the bend I passed units who were waiting in line to get to middle and more were still coming from the base. Crazy.
One giant grindfest.
Maybe I could change that.
As I approached the final northern bend toward the middle, I kept Smoke close to the outer tree line. It was possible an enemy scout was watching me, but I decided to minimize the risk of being seen.
Roughly fifty paces before the turn opened up to the middle clearing, I jumped to the ground and dismissed Smoke.
Several of my units were in line here and everyone gave a wave and a cheer.
I grimaced. So much for keeping a low profile.
Then I slipped into Shadow Form.
Keeping to just within the trees I continued around the bend and headed east.
The mass of units got more dense as everyone crowded toward the platform, the only river crossing.
As I approached the last few trees before the clearing I could hear the ferocious fighting taking place just ahead. Screams of men dying, horses in pain, arrows zinging about, sword and spears clashing.
But there was another sound, just a short distance past the tree line.
Rushing water.
Carefully, I entered the forest at the western edge of the middle – the pinched waist of the map's figure eight.
I climbed over bulging roots and ducked under thick branches. Then the trees opened up to the river which flowed from somewhere deeper in the forest to the west and continued on to the middle platform to the east, just beyond my view.
The river was a good twenty paces across here and looked deep. No one was meant to cross it, such was its design.
No army units, anyway.
Using as much available ground as I could, I ran at the water. At the river's edge, I jumped. I used my Leap ability, which I'd been diligently assigning skill points to over the last few character levels.
These points paid off.
I landed on a massive root on the opposite bank.
Fearing an ambush of some kind, I froze in place, sword at the ready.
The only thing that assaulted me was the sound of the raging river and the cacophony of battle through the trees to the east.
After the count of ten, I moved, quickly and quietly. There was still the possibility of a scout nearby, so stealth was crucial.
Trying to ignore my fighting troops so close by, I headed due north. Something more important needed my immediate attention other than commanding doomed units.
I was going to take Amara's banner.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I cautiously made my way north, navigating the barrier of trees. It was slow going considering the forest was not meant to be traversed, but it made me relatively confident I would not be detected.
To the east I sometimes caught glimpses of troll units. Enemy units were so bunched up in the middle that they, too, had to line up and wait for their turn.
I kept my focus on the difficult terrain ahead. Jumping from branch to branch, scaling tree trunks, and avoiding impassible clusters of roots took all my concentration.
Soon, I was nearing the final northern turn to Amara's base, according to my map. The trees were even closer together here, and I decided to leave the forest and follow the tree line the rest of the way. As long as I was careful, I would be able to get close.
I changed direction to the east and dropped from a branch.
And landed right next to a troll scout.
I froze in surprise.
The troll scout whirled around, eyes wide with apprehension.
He did not look directly at me, but cast his gaze about trying to find the source of the sound.
Even this close, my Shadow Form was good. The forest was nothing but dark shadows and, as a result, made me fully invisible.
With a dagger in his hand, the scout slowly turned to take in his surroundings. I was only two paces from where he crouched.
Eliminating him would be easy, but then Amara would see the scout's death message and know instantly where I was.
I kept perfectly still and watched nervously as the scout continued to scan the area.
Suddenly, the scout took a step forward, dagger in front of him.
Uh-oh.
The green humanoid's large black eyes darted this way and that.
Great, I had to spook a real nervous one.
He took another step forward and the tip of his dagger nearly touched my vest.
Shadow Form would be lost the moment I engaged in combat, like striking out at the scout, or
with physical contact.
