Stone Raiders' Return (Emerilia Book 6)

by Michael Chatfield

  He checked his map once again. Loughbreck reported that his forces had moved up to a position beyond Verlun and were ready to move forward with the attack when ready.

  Esamael took in the sight. The sun was falling, turning the skies red as it dipped below the horizon. “Are our agents in position?” Esamael asked.

  “Yes, my lord,” one of the aides answered.

  “Good. Pass on the order—we strike now,” Esamael said.

  The aides and generals who were around him talked into their interfaces, orders passing through the ranks.

  After a few minutes, there was a connection from Haugr. A flare came through the portal and lit up the sky, the agreed upon signal for the agents.

  Soldiers rushed forward, the elite forces. They would secure the teleport pad on the other side as the lower-leveled and weaker soldiers moved out into Haugr, increasing the area that they held and then striking out toward the royal palace.

  The soldiers had trained till they had nightmares about it and executed their jobs with precision. Not once was the flow of troops even slowed in the slightest as they charged through.

  “Tonight, the revolution begins, and tomorrow will bring a dawn to a new leader of Gudalo.” A hungry smile spread across Esamael’s face, his eyes hooded as he looked at the teleport pad as if he could see the bounty that lay on the other side.

  ***

  Deia shook her head at the scouts’ attempts to sneak up on the Stone Raiders’ Guild Hall. They were decent by most standards, but compared to someone who had been a ranger for a few decades, it was easy to pick them out in the flattened fields around the guild hall.

  The access to the Aleph scouts and drones doesn’t hurt, as well as this thermal vision gear. Those magical coders do come up with some pretty interesting stuff. She looked out over the open fields with the twin glasses that had been magically coded, lighting up any heat signatures.

  The scouts had some decent stealth and sometimes looked like heat shadows, but Deia’s trained eyes quickly picked out what was a scout and what was a hot spot.

  Once she found them, she sent out Aleph scouts, guiding them to the scouts to confirm their position and shadow them. They appeared as red dots on her map, the Aleph scouts faithfully following their prey.

  She took off the glasses and rubbed her eyes.

  “Looks like the main force is on the move.” Steve had been controlling the Aleph scouts, following what she was saying and deploying them through the fields around the guild hall.

  “All right—seems these buggers are making a move. Everyone, get ready. They should be within range for us to move in twenty minutes,” Josh said over the guild-wide channel.

  Deia felt as if she had an itch she couldn’t scratch. Not being able to go into battle with Dave at her side just felt odd.

  She trusted in Bob saying that he would be fine. If she andDave were gone, Party Zero could handle themselves, but she didn’t want to let them down. If she wasn’t there and something bad happened, she knew she wouldn’t have been able to forgive herself.

  ***

  Dwayne looked over the assembled forces. Around the teleport pad, Stone Raiders stood in rows of three, waiting for word.

  Behind them, Kala waited with her brigade. They each bore new weapons and sturdy leather armor. Beast Kin wore armor that they had from before joining the Demons.

  Behind them stood Aleph formations with their commanders.

  Behind them, there were ragtag groups of warriors.

  The teleport pads had been moved from the housing complex to inside Terra. Trying to exit the spinning city and get into the housing complex would have led to more than one person getting injured.

  “Prepare to move!” Dwayne’s words passed through the formed-up units. People stood and checked their gear one last time.

  The teleport pad opened, showing night on the other side.

  “Forward!” Dwayne barked. The formations crossed through the teleport pad, headed off to whatever lay on the other side.

  ***

  Josh rubbed his eyes, drinking out of a ceramic thermos of Xer as he looked out over Verlun. The guild hall was off from the city center. The main hall was three stories tall, with stables and small stores to the right of it. To the left, lay the teleport pad with roads leading in and out. A wall was erected around the teleport pad and around the Stone Raiders’ compound.

  Along the road that now snaked through Verlun, stores had risen up, peddling their wares.

  Josh turned as a red outline seemed to pass through Verlun, headed for one of the farmer cooperative offices that had sided with the Stone Raiders.

  Josh capped his thermos, storing it as he grabbed his daggers. He disappeared from one shadow to another. No one saw him as more and more red silhouettes showed themselves. The Aleph drones and scouts did their work to find anything entering the town.

  Josh stopped at a new perch atop an Altar of Rebirth building, the tallest building in Verlun.

  Around Verlun, thousands of troops were moving into position.

  Josh opened the guild chat. “Send the messages. They’re coming.” He slunk off into the darkness again. Red silhouettes faded to nothing as his stealth types dealt with the assassins sent in the night.

  ***

  “Sir, the scouts report that Verlun looks to be abandoned,” one of the lieutenant aides said.

  “Abandoned? Well, where did all of those people go? We should have heard something. There are a number of loyal people within the city,” Loughbreck yelled.

  “I will have the scouts look harder.” The lieutenant bobbed out a bow.

  “See that you do.” Loughbreck dismissed the man from his sight. Loughbreck’s eyes glowed slightly as he looked across his lines, using a spell to see through the darkness of the night.

  Up and down the field, there were thousands of his troops. There was only the sound of moving armor as the lines advanced through the darkness of night. Stopping them now wouldmean them having to take an hour just to get the lines sorted out again. Managing two hundred and seventy thousand soldiers in close formation was not an easy task.

  The front ranks of the formations started to pass through a dividing row of trees. They spread out, one single body moving into several different forces so that they weren’t fighting on top of one another.

  Only one of the moons was up tonight, the blue giant.

  Loughbreck’s war cat lazily followed. Once through the trees, he could see down onto Verlun.

  The city still had lights on here and there. Smoke came from chimneys to stave off the last of the winter frost and the crisp spring air.

  The Stone Raiders’ Guild Hall stood away from the city by two miles. Its dim lights showed a few large buildings and a simple stone wall around it all.

  Loughbreck and his forces were just three miles away.

  Suddenly there was a flurry of spells from the Stone Raiders’ Guild Hall, as well as arrows being let loose.

  “Barriers!” Loughbreck called out. He didn’t want to lose troops here; he would need them in Haugr.

  Mana barriers flashed to life across the formations.

  None of the spells or arrows were aimed at them. Loughbreck watched as all of his forward scouts were eliminated.

  “What the hell?” he muttered. He snapped at one of the nearby lieutenants, “You, I need more eyes on the guild hall.”

  “Yes, sir!” The lieutenant opened uphis interface, sending orders.

  Loughbreck already dismissedhimas he continued to look at the guild hall.

  His army continued to advance. Nothing else happened, but everyone was wary of what waited for them. They passed the two-mile mark and then started to reach the one-mile mark before anything started to happen.

  “Sir, scouts report that the teleport pad is activating!” a lieutenant said to General Loughbreck.

  “Well, what’s coming out of it?” the general demanded, shifting atop his war cat.

  The lieutenant’s voice fell si
lent as he used his party chat.

  “Sir, they’re saying the Stone Raiders are advancing out of it,” the lieutenant said.

  “Mages! Fire on the teleport pad. Kill anything coming out of it!” How the hell did they figure out that we were coming? Is there a spy in our ranks? Who would tell the Stone Raiders, a bunch of Players, about our plans?

  Mages who were moving with the army closing in started to chant and Mana filled the air. Spells illuminated the night sky, racing toward the Stone Raiders’ Guild Hall.

  A Mana barrier stopped the attacks cold.

  The general’s army outnumbered them by nearly five hundred times; he was confident in their victory.

  “I want mobile Mana barriers at the ready! I want all units to attack. Get me the forward group! We need to know what their spies see and how successful their attack has been. See if they can get into the guild hall and hit the Stone Raiders and their allies from behind!”

  He wasn’t sure the spies were really lying low anymore. The more he looked at the city with his own eyes, the more it looked as though it truly was deserted.

  This was supposed to be a simple mission, but now it had turned into a true battle. He needed to defeat those holed up in the guild hall before they could become entrenched.

  The general’s armies might have been stationed in different cities, so that the king couldn’t find them, but they worked as one to carry out their general’s instructions. Their training hadn’t been for nothing.

  “We have someone linked to a seer stone to show you the teleport pad.” A lieutenant held out a seer stone.

  Loughbreck took it and looked into the seer stone. He saw the teleport pad. The hell? I thought that there was only a few hundred of these Stone Raiders. It looks more like a thousand.

  Loughbreck did not like surprises and every second, it seemed that the Stone Raiders were coming up with a new one.

  The Stone Raiders quickly marched through the teleport pad, not showing any signs of panic. They looked determined and ready for what was to come.

  Loughbreck looked up, staring at the Mana barrier that surrounded the guild hall. It flashed with multiple magical attacks; even focused attacks by a dozen mages didn’t make the barrier even darken.

  The Stone Raiders broke into groups and moved to the walls. They scrambled up them, the impacts against the Mana barrier lighting up their movements.

  “The hell are those?” Loughbreck looked at the various creatures that followed after the Stone Raiders. They all wore identical armor. As soon as they left the teleport pad, they rose up into the air on their wings or spells.

  They didn’t seem to stop, rank after rank coming out of the teleport pad. The ground started to shake and rumble.

  The scout looked at the walls.

  “What in the seven Affinities?” Loughbreck looked from the seer stone to the walls.

  Stone Raiders stood on the walls like silent guardians. Metal rose out of the ground, forming around the octagon-shaped walls.

  The simple wall with a walkway and guard posts grew three times wider as the Stone Raiders were raised upward. Smooth, sheer walls appeared underneath them as their wall rose; dirt and debris fell as they rose from twenty meters in the air to nearly fifty.

  The walls didn’t look like a rural village’s anymore; they looked like the defenses that might be found around the Haugr royal palace.

  There were casting balconies and archery slits. Everything was made from polished metal, not giving any sign of handholds. Gates dotted the wall; they, too, seemed to be made of polished metal with no visible cut between the doors.

  In minutes, the Stone Raiders’ compound had turned into a fortress.

  “Stone Rai-ders!” a voice called out from the top of the wall.

  “Stone Raiders!” Hundreds of voices came from the guild hall. They checked their weapons, some chanting spells as Mana gathered around them.

  “Well, seems that they can yell pretty loud.” Loughbreck laughed, to the mirth of his fellow officers. “Seems that their barrier is strong. Walls are a bit flashy, though. We can break them easily with one of our grand workings. Let’s show this rabble what a real army can do!” Loughbreck raised his voice so the soldiers around him could hear.

  Grand workings were pre-prepared massive scale spells that mages imprinted upon specially made soul gems, thus they didn’t require a mage or extra power to be used and contained the equivalent power of hundreds of mages.

  He felt uneasy looking at the defenses that the Stone Raiders had seemed to have thrown up in just a few minutes. If he let that fear show, then his people would lose their confidence.

  Loughbreck looked back to the seer stone. Thankfully the scout using divinity to see into the compound was able to alter their spell, still looking into the fortress.

  The flyers landed in groups on the highest positions along the walls. More of their kind wearing identical armor flooded out into the main open area between the guild’s buildings, forming up into small fighting formations.

  Next, metal humanoids moved out of the portal. They moved as one complete body, not pausing as they moved for the walls, marching up the stairs to take up defensive positions.

  “Get our forces moving. We will secure that teleport pad before they can call on any more reinforcements,” Loughbreck declared. “Forward march—double time!”

  The formations picked up pace, moving forward faster.

  “General, we have a grand working that we believe will work best on the Stone Raiders’ defenses,” one of the mages’ leaders said.

  “Good. Once we’re inside that barrier, let it loose, and take out that damn wall,” Loughbreck said. His war cat picked upthe pace with the soldiers marching speed also increasing.

  Loughbreck kept his eyes glued to the teleport pad.

  The metal creatures stopped coming out of the teleport pad. A lone drummer came out. Loughbreck’s jaw tightened as the drummer started. The sound passed through the Stone Raiders’ fortress and could be heard over the fields that Loughbreck’s army was now running through.

  The drummer moved onward as ranks of Dwarves walked out of the teleport pad, their boots in sync. Their blackened armor made them look like miniature juggernauts, their shields held out in front of them as their hands rested on their swords.

  Each step was in time to their drums as more drummers came out, adding to the noise. Forces with the steel armor in the small formations broke off, moving around the Dwarves.

  Dwarven artillery and a group of Dwarven mages walked out.

  An entire Warclan?

  Another drummer walked out of the teleport pad.

  ***

  Kim looked over the field of battle. Loughbreck’s army was closing in. Their ranged attacks were hitting the Mana barrier, but nothing was getting in.

  Kim checked the power levels of the soul gem that had been planted underneath the guild hall. It could keep this up for another twenty minutes before it started to degrade.

  She stretched and started to gather her power.

  “If you want to stream, now’s the time to start!” Josh yelled across the fortress.

  Stone Raiders all over the place fired up their interfaces, turning on their live stream option that they had turned off since leaving Selhi Capital.

  “Ready your spells!” Kim said.

  Across the wall, mages started to glow with power, the balconies lighting up. It took a lot of Mana to light up an area with power. Something that made the mages of Loughbreck’s army pause as they entered within just six hundred meters of the Stone Raiders’ fortress.

  “Fire!” Kim yelled. Her word passed through all of the mages under her command.

  The world seemed to ignite with deadly spells.

  Lightning struck down from the heavens alongside ice spears and columns of light. The ground started to move as if waking from its slumber. Weeds grew to the size of trees, pulling soldiers down. Crops tried to spear them as rocks broke through the ground, creating
spears, or turning into golems that raged through the formation’s lines.

  Mana attacks slammed into the formations. Mages did everything they could to power their barriers and stop the powerful attacks from breaking through and tearing them apart.

  “Fire!” Dwayne commanded. His and Esa’s forces let loose with destruction staffs, repeaters, and arrows.

  The Stone Raiders mages continued to bring destruction down upon Loughbreck’s formations. The Earth and Dark Affinity mages were claiming the most lives, attacking from within and under the barriers.

  The formations continued to charge onward. The sound of battle rang out, mages and soldiers fighting the elementals that had risen inside their barriers.

  The elementals that formed outside slammed against the barriers, tearing at them, their magical constructs unable to make it through.

  “Concentrate on the barrier, mages! Reverse the power drain on your amulets,” Kim called out. She faced the mages with her and turned a dial on the simple metal necklace she wore. “I’ll create the first spell formation, then we’ll go counter-clockwise.”

  They all nodded in agreement. Kim looked over the battlefield. She closed her eyes as golden light started to form around her—at first just a silhouette before it grew more powerful.

  She weaved her spell, focusing it. The other mages looked into her spell formation, altering it, refining it and adding their power to it.

  Kim had asked Dave about how she could make spells more powerful. She’d taken his ideas and worked to improve them. It took a long time to create a spell and have others alter it to improve its strengths, but it could multiply the effectiveness of the spell.

  She felt the last alteration to her spell formation fit together. The entire spell thrummed with power as it was completed.

  Power surged outward from her and from her fellow casters as their amulets channeled power from a shared soul gem.

  Kim opened her eyes that seemed to be made of liquid gold, shining like beacons in the night. She pushed her hand forward. The night sky erupted into day as thousands of spears made from golden light raced across the sky. They focused themselves into packs.