by Rosie Scott
Azazel rushed into the middle of the chaos. The life shield I'd given him was immediately chipped at with the weapons of our allies. He gave himself an absorb magic alteration shield and prepared the area of effect paralyze spell, eager to stop them all before more people could be hurt.
I yelled at our soldiers to retreat as Cerin prepared to throw enervat, and Azazel's hoarse cries for him to stop went unheard. Cerin shot the spell at me before he could be paralyzed. The orb of black exploded against my chest and spread outward, and allies around me began to drop like flies. I felt a split second of terror before I became too drained to feel anything at all. I distantly looked down at my chest, where the black fog of my life force was escaping through my armor.
There's so much of it.
Azazel's screams rang through my subconscious. I felt nothing more.
Forty-one
I came to with a desperate gasp. All of the Seran Renegades save for Holter stood over me, while Cerin was crouched by my side after giving me energy. My ears were bombarded with sounds of battle. Screams. Firing cannons. Roaring beastmen. Cries of injured and dying men.
“You killed me,” I blurted to Cerin, confused. All around me were the dead assassins that had been hit by the same spell.
“I could have, Kai. I'm so sorry.” My lover's voice was hoarser than usual with mourning. I could only imagine how awful he felt. Cerin had never forgiven himself for turning against me in Quellden, even though it was magic which influenced his head.
“It pulled enough energy out of you to kill someone,” Azazel informed me, as Cerin helped me up to continue the battle. “But as you'll recall from healing me in Monte, your reserves are growing.”
I thought of all the beasts and necromancers we'd fought in the past who did not die immediately as a result of enervat. Many of the Icilic necromancers were not only unaffected, but they had also remained conscious. I was not that strong yet, but the fact that I was growing so quickly in power was fascinating. It had only been a decade, but the events of the war granted me thousands of opportunities with which to leech.
“I'm getting harder to kill,” I deduced. It shouldn't have been surprising. Draining my reserves in Monte was proof of that. Even so, being reminded of it during battle like this made it seem so much more real.
There was no more time to think upon it now. My friends had only paused in battle long enough to aid me and gather themselves, but the fight had continued on without us. Calder's flying beastmen were attacking Hallmar's upper wall, swarming defenders and siege weapons. Far to the east, Altan and Kirek's armies were first to breach into the city through piles of rubble.
Then, with the grinding of two massive iron gates, the dwarves moved forth to the next step of their defense plan. Hammerton's horde of armored boars was set loose, pouring forth from the city like a flood of grunting and squealing masses of steel and coarse hair.
We were far from the southeastern gate, but the cavalry on our side was rushing for us first. My army was closest to the left entrance, and the dwarves knew the boars were worthless against the giants. As the stampede rushed straight for us while trailing clouds of upturned dirt and clips of grass, I formulated a plan.
“Necromancers! Raise the dead!” I shouted. Within seconds, thousands of black tendrils slithered through the grasses. Most of the corpses were allies, but a few were dwarves who had been killed by our initial assault of the wall. There were even some older skeletons which burst out of the ground after decades if not centuries of being buried.
“Send your dead forward! Prepare enervat!” My next order was immediately followed, masses of the undead shambling forth to serve as a wall of protection against the initial charge. As the dwarven cavalry neared, I screamed, “Fire!”
Hundreds of black orbs shot through the masses of dead and into the frontlines of the charge. Boar and man alike collapsed, their bodies sliding forth from their momentum. All at once, the necromancers in the ranks behind me were newly high with power, and the air was filled with their yells of exhilaration. The energy throbbed against my skull as I watched the rest of the boars collide into the hordes of the dead.
Already dead bodies were flying through the air, some of them newly gored. Multiple corpses were impaled by thick tusks. Dwarven riders were splattered with blood as they urged their mounts right through the wreckage. The corpses attempted to get hits in on the foes that passed, but not many succeeded. First and foremost, I'd wanted the dead to break up the initial charge and lower its effectiveness, and my plan was working. Even though the boars ran head-first into the bodies, the impact still slowed them down, leaving us more time to harvest their life force and prepare.
Cerin and I passed our energy to the others before gathering more. I even called Holter down from the skies to give him a high that he could not get himself as his blood-kin. After that, we prepared sturdy life shields for as many allies as we could before the cavalry came so close we no longer had the time.
Arc a bolta. Lightning sizzled and popped in both hands as I stalked forward at the oncoming horde. I thrust both palms out, screaming with the exertion of power as an arc of pure purple-blue electricity flew through the air before me like a widening echo. Crackling snakes of blinding light spewed forth until they hit the metal armor of boar and dwarf alike, where they proceeded to split and crawl over the bodies, forcing them into seizures. One of the boars was hit, and the animal started to foam at the mouth before the bolts crawled over its armor to the rider, affecting her as well. Rider and mount both fell, electrocuted. As another boar dashed by, the remaining strings of air magic on its ally sought more destruction, arcing over and claiming another victim.
The magic did not discriminate, hitting standing corpses, rattling through the bodies until they fell from the damage. Beside me, Cerin released hundreds of hungry tendrils into the battlefield beyond. The dead began to rise again.
Holter flew through skies above the cavalry, swooping down to remove riders from their mounts and throw them to the west, where many of the dwarves died or were severely injured by the abrupt landing below. Their boars continued the charge without them, directionless but still in the midst of senseless rage.
Far ahead, Marcus had his giants causing chaos at the southwestern gate, where armored boars continued to pour forth. Much of their charge was broken as they tried to dodge stomping steel boots the size of dinner tables. Some giants were kicking through the masses, propelling animals and their riders at the nearby wall, where many proceeded to die from the impact alone. Marcus himself was swiping through the onrush with his spiked club, impaling and bludgeoning all at once. A few of the spikes of his weapon were bent or worn from colliding with heavy armor made of the finest dwarven craftsmanship. Still, the giant general had collected quite a few body parts on his weapon that were stuck between its nails. Every once in a while, Marcus would shake it free of its gore before throwing the weapon forward again.
The giants were helping my army immensely, breaking up the onslaught of boars to keep their numbers manageable. Our infantry-heavy army was still at a disadvantage, however. Even one boar charging by itself could be devastating. Throughout the frontlines of my command, allies with shields and without them were gored and thrown to the side like ragdolls. Because many of my soldiers were assassins, they were quick and nimble and dodged the boars easily, though they weren't as effective at fighting them with weapons made for stealth. While the necromancers focused on leeching and raising corpses, the other assassins worked with the undead to swarm foes, chipping away at their health and morale. What few earth mages I had in my army focused on turning armor and weapons to sand to leave dwarves and boars vulnerable.
The hisses and roars of the beastmen rose in volume to my right, where Calder led his army to the opposite side of the cavalry charge before us. Once again, Calder impressed me with his strategy. Not only did this aid our vulnerable infantry, but the initial dwarven plan of using a pincer attack on us out of the gates was now used again
st them. The boars were surrounded as they ran toward us, and the arrival of the beastmen convinced some of them to divert their charge and attack the beasts instead.
Despite receiving support from the armies of Marcus and Calder, there were still hundreds of boars rushing straight for us. Hallmar's numbers of cavalry alone were impressive.
Shing! One of Nyx's throwing stars grinned evilly from the eye of a boar, and it squealed and collapsed over its own legs. Man and mount were soon swarmed by the dead.
“I'm just going to go ahead and say that was skill, not luck,” Nyx quipped, her black eyes sharp with excess energy from a high.
“You wish,” Cerin retorted teasingly, swinging his scythe in an arc until it clashed against a dwarven ax. The boar head-butted the necromancer's shield until it flickered. One of Azazel's black arrows pricked the animal's eye, and it fell with its rider still mounted. As the man scrambled to pull himself off the ground, Cerin brought the scythe down over his neck, and hot blood spurted out from beneath the edge of the helmet. As the foe started to slow his movements, Cerin held him still with a boot to the chest and ripped the scythe through to the spine with a grunt of effort.
“Oh, I dare ya, ya son of a bitch!” Maggie's growl of determination pulled my attention away from my lover's prowess. A screaming dwarf rampaged straight for the engineer, his mount's heaving breaths of adrenaline blowing like gusts of wind. Maggie charged the two herself before throwing her war hammer in an uppercut. The blunt weapon hit the boar's head with such strength that its skull collapsed from front to back in its armor, bits of broken bone and brain matter oozing from the eye holes of its helmet. The abrupt halt threw the dwarf into the masses of dead beyond.
Pfft! Azazel's life shield was sprayed with gore. Beside him, two assassins were skewered together by a ballista dart. The woman on top grasped at where she'd been impaled, taking a few raspy breaths before her body stilled. On Hallmar's wall, the defensive siege weapons were once more being manned. Calder's flying beastmen had cleared them out earlier but had since moved on. The dwarves were desperate to gain the advantage, and somehow they'd managed to retake the wall. I could hear the armies of Altan and Kirek raging in the city, but they either hadn't gotten far enough or had allowed foes to slip through.
The rest of the armies were still on the plains and vulnerable. And though Calder was near us with many of his beastmen, the flying ones were nowhere to be seen. We couldn't order them if we couldn't see them.
“Holter!” I yelled. The oozlum-kin was in the middle of removing another dwarf from a mount, but the foe's boots were stuck in his stirrups. The dwarf grabbed at Holter's scaled foot with one hand, while using the other to flail madly up in the air with an ax. “Holter!”
Holter finally heard me, abruptly letting go of the man's head. The dwarf fell back in his saddle, bleeding from multiple puncture wounds of the throat. Holter flew over, hovering in the air just high enough to be safe from melee weapons, his eyes waiting for orders.
“The wall, Holter! They've retaken the siege—”
BOOM!
My life shield was sprayed with so much blood it actually weakened and dulled as if the pressure of it was too much to handle. I was left disoriented, my ears ringing with the lasting echoes of a nearby cannonball hit. My friends were screaming in panic, but when I rose my eyes to the sky, I found Holter was safe, screeching as he dove toward the wall to fulfill my request. Feeling light-headed, I turned to look behind me.
Maggie's war hammer was thrown over the ground after it'd flown out of her grasp. Not too many yards away from it was part of her right leg. It was more of her foot, really, attached to several inches of flayed tibia. Bits and pieces of her bone and flesh were scattered through the grasses in hundreds of places. I swallowed down nausea as I allowed myself to look at the rest of her, a piercing ringing in my head as I tried to come to terms with another tragedy.
Maggie was somehow still alive, screaming in agony and grasping at her right thigh. That was all she had left. My eyes traveled back to her severed limb, double-checking to make sure I understood what had happened.
A cannonball had torn straight through the front of her knee with so much pressure it'd shattered both the kneecap and parts of her tibia and femur. She only had half a femur still attached, but the only thing left intact on the field was part of her ankle. The pieces of bone and flesh surrounding us on the grasses was everything else.
Seriin. I sent the illusion magic into my own head, calming myself when I needed it most. I rushed over to Maggie, aiming my hands at the ground between her and Hallmar and erecting a wall of stone, protecting her from more hits. Maggie's cries of pain shuddered through the air, so I gave her dull senses next. She continued to sob, though her pain lessened, and she attempted to catch her breath.
“Am I gonna die?” She asked, her ordinarily jovial voice shaking with fear and trauma.
Despite the calm spell, I was still in mental shock born out of the overwhelming task of healing her. The wound was so severe that piecing all of her bone back together and melding it back into her leg would take hours. I could hear the open wound leaking blood into the grass. Maggie didn't have hours. And I could only heal life, not create it. I couldn't get her tibia to rebuild itself when the entirety of it was in pieces away from her, unattached.
My mind racked for options. I stared distantly at the shattered pieces of her leg over the grasses, and a quivering exhale escaped my lips. “I cannot heal it.” The words were a tumble of helplessness, little more than desperation carried on puffs of air.
“Oh, gods.” Maggie started to breathe so hard with panic she was at risk of hyperventilating. I fell to the grasses beside her, pain shooting up my knees from the impact. I reached over to her head, and before I even summoned a spell, she asked, “Are ya puttin' me outta my misery? I didn't think it would end like this.”
“No. Shh.” The words were meant to soothe her, but they came out jagged. The calm spell transferred to her head, and her breathing started to regulate. I took a deep breath and said, “I can save you, but I cannot save your leg.”
Maggie nodded shakily and rambled, “Okay. Okay.”
“I can...” I trailed off and swallowed, moving down to the open wound to take a look at the break of her femur. “I can rebuild your leg to the end of the femur. I can heal the parts of you that are still here. The rest...” I looked off over the grasses, where damaged tissue and bone shone pink and white. “There's nothing to rebuild. It's all gone.”
“But I'm not gonna die,” Maggie breathed, trying to keep herself calm.
My eyes teared up with a sudden wave of emotion as I promoted her immunity with life magic. “You won't die, but you'll be crippled, Maggie.”
Even through the illusion spells I'd cast on her to keep her calm, Maggie started to sob again. I began to rebuild her femur through tears until the knob end of it shone new and white a few inches out from the open wound. Then I started working on her muscle, only stopping to refresh dull senses on her when the last spell's effect faded. For the first time ever, I encouraged the muscle to heal incorrectly until it wrapped around the end of her bone and connected.
“Kai...” Maggie trailed off, her voice thick as I continued to heal her. “I'd rather be crippled than dead.”
I nodded softly as her skin grew slowly down the length of her leg, the organ building off of itself and spreading over bloody muscle like a salve.
“I just...gods, what am I gonna do?” Maggie sniffled. “I'm gonna be no use to anybody. I'm half-giant, and now I got half a leg. If anybody needs both their legs, it's a big lumberin' idiot like myself.”
I admired her ability to try to be light-hearted in such a situation. “You are not an idiot. You lost your leg, not your mind.”
“I 'spose that's true,” she agreed, though her stomach shook with held back emotion. “Can I come clean about somethin' to ya?”
“You can talk to me about anything.” The more the skin healed, the less bloo
d trickled out of the wound.
“I'm terrified of disappointin' ya, love. I was never accepted anywhere else. I spent decades of my life workin' for Tilda and got little out of it other than knowin' she wasn't gonna throw me out if I kept workin'. Now I spent all this time in Hammerton tryin' to make ya happy because ya gave me a chance.”
“You have made me very happy,” I murmured, using water magic to wash the blood off of the end of her stump before continuing to heal her skin. “You did so much researching and building that we barely got to spend time together. Working is all you've been doing. If anything, I feel immensely guilty about that.”
“But I spent so much time tryin' to figure out Tyrus's armor. Ya haven't asked me about it in awhile, and I haven't said anything, but there isn't any way for me to recreate it. I spent so many late nights in that forge with Mirrikh trying to take what we knew and put it into somethin' else. Nothin' worked, Kai. What's all that work for if nothin' comes out of it? What good am I for if I can't even make ya that armor? What use am I now with half a leg?”
“Do you honestly believe that's the only reason you're with us?” I asked her, as the skin finally reconnected over the stump of her femur. “If you never worked for me another day in your life, you'd still be coming with us to Chairel. But I know how much you love tinkering. I'll bring the workshop to you. You don't need a leg. We'll figure it out.”
Maggie's thick blonde eyebrows dipped together as she took in my words, overwhelmed with emotion and uncertainty. “How am I gonna get to Chairel like this?”
“Well, it's just right over there,” I said, pointing to the border.
Maggie chuckled sadly. “I'm serious, love.”
“Yes, well, so am I. We'll figure it out. Put you in a wagon if we have to. Whittle you a wooden leg.”
