The spell wiped out the negative feelings that had afflicted everyone. Blaze yipped in delight and beat his wings, slapping the back of Hawke’s helmet several times before he calmed down. He followed up the spell with Aura of Light, which had a smaller (30-foot) radius of effect but continually healed everyone, keeping the deadly energies contaminating the forest at bay. Only problem was, his Shroud of Twilight stopped working as soon as he started to glow like a thousand-watt bulb. Invisibility wasn’t an option for him while his Light-based auras were up, although Tava and the Assassins could still stay in stealth. It was better than being slowly drained by the blight the Revenant had unleashed, though.
“Do you think it’s using a power source? Like a Mana Node?” Hawke asked. Grognard gave him a funny look, but the rest of the party knew about his conversations with the sword and ignored him.
This is a mess, Hawke thought as they walked deeper into the forest. And it’s up to us to fix it.
If it comes to it, I guess.
Thirteen
They had walked a mile through the ancient forest when the attack began.
The old growth trees made aerial scouting difficult, but Hawke and Gosto had kept a flying critter up nonetheless. There were breaks among the thick canopy overhead, and the eagle construct would spot something long before Tava or the Assassins could. On the other hand, the Guardian was also in plain view of anybody who bothered to glance at the sky. The first sign that something was wrong was when a barrage of Minor Death Curses struck the flying scout; the cumulative damage-per-second blotted it out of the sky a couple of moments later.
Hawke had been flying the eagle construct at the time. He felt its destruction and called out a warning to the group:
“Battle stations, everyone!”
Tava. Luna and Rabbit had been scouting about two hundred feet ahead of the group. He reached out to her through the mental link with Saturnyx and repeated the warning.
Come to me, she sent back. There is a defensible position nearby.
On our way, he replied before speaking out loud: “Follow me. Rogues, stay in stealth but don’t stray too far.”
The group picked up the pace, with Hawke and Digger leading the way and Grognard bringing up the rear. Gosto was casting on the fly, applying Bark Skin spells on each Adventurer. The single-target spell provided twenty-seven points of extra armor and raised the target’s resistance to Elemental effects by forty-five percent. When he cast it on Hawke, he hit the cap of 95% Resistance to all Elements. It was always nice to know that he could survive Death spells that would turn anybody else into a thin smear on the ground. He might not have a shield at the moment, but he could still tank like a mother-effer.
Hawke couldn’t see Tava at first – too many trees in the way – but as Party leader, he could see her position in the virtual map that filled a corner of his field of vision. The computer-like interface might be magic, but it worked just as well as the technology he had grown up with. A couple of minutes later, they reached the spot Tava had selected.
It had been a Woodling camp, if the fire-pit in the middle of the cleared rise of land was any indication. Thick hedges, either planted or grown magically by the former occupants, formed chest-high walls around the campsite, with only two clear paths to the center of the rough circle. Hawke was reminded of the Legion camp layout that Markos had described, except this version wasn’t quite as well-fortified. It was still a lot better than being attacked out in the open.
He placed Rabbit at one of the openings, Digger at the other, and had Grognard act as a mobile reserve to deal with anyone coming over the hedges. The Assassins stayed outside the camp, trusting on their Stealth, and Gosto and Olaf stood behind the living barriers, using them for cover. The Priest cast a Blessing of Shining Father on everyone, increasing their resistance to Undead effects by twenty percent and adding another eight percent to their Resistance to Undeath and Death magic, which didn’t help Hawke but increased the damage mitigation of everyone else. The fate of the flying Guardian had made it clear that the attackers included spellcasters. Hawke cast Consecrated Ground, the tried-and-true spell that would heal friendlies by 51 Health per second and inflict 153 damage to any Undead stepping on it. Since he could repeat the spell every eight seconds and the 15-foot radius area lasted three minutes, he had time to bless the entire camp. The hedges, which had turned purple as Undeath infected them, sprang back to their normal green color as the healing magic restored them. Any zombies entering the camp were going to receive a warm welcome.
Unfortunately, the enemy didn’t have to close in to hurt the party.
The first sign of trouble came by long-range delivery. Dozens, hundreds of arrows rose into the air, in arcs just below the canopy that acted like a natural ceiling. The missiles were not shot at individual targets but at the campsite itself. Hawke had been on the receiving end of a mass volley of arrows before, and he hadn’t enjoyed the experience.
“Take cover!” was all he had time to say before shafts came raining down, two or three dozen every second.
Most of them came nowhere near them, of course. Many of the hundreds of arrows hit tree trunk or branches before reaching the camp. Most of the rest scattered randomly, striking the ground or the hedges harmlessly. Hawke didn’t seek cover; he wanted to see if the enemy was taking advantage of the arrow-storm to rush the campsite. He got hit six times – and took no damage. His magical armor and defenses were too high for the low level creatures’ missile attacks. Hawke had learned that a Critical Hit would do a minimum of 1-2 points of damage regardless of his defenses, but a regular hit had as much effect as a .22 bullet against the front plate of a main battle tank.
He cast a Healing Wave as he looked around. On the Party Interface, he didn’t see anyone’s Health dip noticeably. Even the lightly-armored Gosto and Olaf took only minimal damage from the arrows, and they only got hit once or twice apiece. Hawke searched for a target. He found them just as a second volley landed on the camp. He ignored the impacts much as he would raindrops, and saw several small figures rushing forward, darting from the cover of one thick tree to another:
Woodling (Minor Fae)
Level 6 Hunter
Health 80 Mana 60 Endurance 80
Raised Woodling (Minor Fae, Undead)
Level 6 Minion
Health 120 Mana 120 Endurance n/a
Regular Woodlings were working with their Undead counterparts. Hawke wasn’t surprised; he had seen the Wild Sidhe follow the Revenant, after all. It still didn’t seem right. Fae and Undead hated each other. Seeing them fighting side by side was disconcerting. Not disconcerting enough to keep Hawke from dealing with them, of course.
As soon as some of the critters were in range, he fired off a Fireball. The magical flames were intense but short-lived, and there wasn’t a lot of foliage or underbrush to light up, so he wasn’t too worried about starting a forest fire, not at that time of year. The explosion tossed several figures aside; with an average damage of 93 points, the spell was deadly to the fire-vulnerable Fae. Most of the living Woodlings in the area of effect didn’t get up. The Undead among them leaped over the smoldering corpses, however, damaged but still able to move and fight. Three of them targeted Hawke with Death spells, Minor Death Curses that ignored armor and inflicted 6-24 Death damage on a target for several seconds. Against Hawke’s 95% Resistance, the spells did a minimum of one point of damage each. They stung a bit, but his healing auras repaired the damage faster than if was inf
licted.
The spellcasters were in range of Hawke’s Burning Light, which delivered more than enough damage to destroy every Undead caught in the cone of purifying energy. And he followed that up with another Healing Wave that undid any damage the rest of the Party had taken while also burning any walking dead within a hundred feet. He followed up with his Hammer of Light, targeting a higher-level champion who had survived the initial magical barrage. The eighth-level living Woodling went down. Hawke had wiped out over two dozen enemies. Unfortunately, more were coming, and the archers had closed the range enough to loose arrows onto individual targets rather than to try to saturate the area.
Hawke wasn’t just paying attention to his part of the fight. His Party Interface kept him informed about what was happening around him. The Woodlings were attacking the camp from every possible direction, trying to find a weak spot where they could break through the hedges and surround and overwhelm the defenders. It didn’t matter how tough you were, once enough critters attacked you, Critical Hits began to add up. And there were hundreds of them. Unfortunately for them, their charge was met by the magical equivalent of machine gun fire.
Olaf didn’t have Mass Blast Undead yet – the spell wasn’t available until sixth level – but the single-target version and his area heals did plenty of damage to the Risen. Tava’s deadly bow fire, including an Imbued Killing Arrowstorm every few seconds, mowed down dozens of targets at a time. Gosto’s spells created a variety of living snares that immobilized their targets while thorns the size of daggers tore into them. Grognard channeled his magic through the naginata in his hand, sending spinning discs of energy that hit for well over sixty points of Physical damage. And the Drakofoxes added to the carnage by breathing fire at any Woodlings that came within seventy-five feet of the camp. The tiny but deadly Fae creatures were providing as much firepower, pun intended, as any other member of the party.
None of the attackers in the first wave lived to reach the edge of the campsite, but hundreds more enemies were moving forward as their archers kept up their unending barrage. They might not be high-level, but quantity had a quality of its own.
Hawke grunted as six arrows hit him within a couple of seconds of each other. The Woodlings were using Ranger abilities to enhance their missiles’ lethality. None of the points pierced his plate armor, but magical shock effects hurt him through it. His Bulwark of Light took sixteen points of damage just as somebody dropped a 240-damage Death Cyclone into the camp. The swirling tornado of Death energy would have dealt dangerous levels of damage to most of the defenders, or would have if Hawke hadn’t cast Gift of the Martyr on all the squishies as well as Tava, who was pretty tough but had only one life to lose.
The problem with the protective spell was that any damage the subjects suffered was transferred directly to Hawke, bypassing his Resistance against Elemental magic. His Health dropped from 686 to 511, just as another handful of arrows and minor Death spells hit him and took him down to 468. He cast Healing Wave to recover some of the damage, but a moment later a second Cyclone hit. The bastards had at least a couple of medium-level Necromancers out there, Hawke realized as his Health declined to 330 despite all his healing abilities.
The deadly spell had a lengthy cooldown, however. Hawke looked for the source of the attacks, but unfortunately the continual arrow hits – dozens of Woodling archers were shooting at him from beyond the range of his spells – and the closing horde of spear-wielding attackers distracted him. He cleared the second wave of charging Fae and Undead with his area spell rotation while Gosto healed him back to full. If the little bastards coordinated their spells better, be might be in trouble, however.
Fortunately, the Assassins in his group hadn’t been sitting on their butts. The invisible killers had moved beyond the perimeter, risking taking friendly fire to come to grips with the archers – and the two Undead Necromancers casting the high-power spells. Hawke had kept track of the stealthy duo’s positions on the Party Interface and carefully aimed his area spells away from them. The cooldown for Death Cyclone expired, but no black whirlwinds landed on the camp, on account that the two Necromancers had expired as well.
The killings cancelled the Shadow Assassins’ tealth abilities, but neither Girl nor Alba fled or tried to hide. Instead, they charged the archers, shrugging off direct arrow hits and tearing into the Wild Sidhe like two mobile woodchippers. Girl had a saber in one hand and a stiletto dagger on the other. Each time either blade hit a target, the Woodling in question went into convulsions and died. Whatever poison she had on her weapons was some serious stuff. And she didn’t use only mundane attacks; every few seconds, she used an ability that sent her spinning into groups of enemies like a set of helicopter blades, slicing and dicing half a dozen victims at the same time. Maybe she could teach Alba that trick if Hawke asked her nicely. Alba Bastardes was no slouch, either. She killed her enemies one at a time, but did it so quickly and left behind a trail of twitching bodies as she rampaged through the lines of archers, who could do little to defend themselves.
The archers had all been regular Fae; unlike Undead, they could be routed, and they were. There had been well over three hundred of them, but after twenty or thirty of them had been slaughtered by each Assassin, the rest took off running. The living Woodling spearmen wavered as well, the worst possible thing you could do in the face of ranged fire, and spells or Tava’s arrows cut them down where they stood. Only the Undead pressed on, and the few that lived to reach the hedge walls began to burn from the Consecrated Ground spells and were soon torn to shred by the massive beasts under Hawke and Tava’s control.
The brutal battle took less than ten minutes; Hawke timed it by how many times he had to refresh his continuous-effect spells. Silence returned to the forest as the last living Woodlings ran out of sight. Most of the fallen were Undead, but Hawke was sad to see that some eighty or ninety bodies around the campsite were seeping greenish blood. Unlike the Risen, those victims had families that would mourn them. They had probably followed the Revenant’s orders out of fear, and they might rise to fight again for him if he didn’t do something about it.
For Slaying Your Foes, you have earned 927 XP (115 diverted towards Leadership; 115 diverted towards Node Mastery).
Current XP/Next Level: 19,430/30,000. Leadership XP/Next Level: 15,912/25,000
Current Node Mastery XP/Next Level: 7,875/8,000. Current Guild XP/Next Level: 701/1,000
“Congratulations,” Hawke told Tava, who had hit twelfth level.
She nodded at him, not looking as pleased as she normally would. Killing Woodlings bothered her. The Fae creatures looked a bit like children, if children had bark-like skins and leaves for hair. Tava liked adventuring, but she wasn’t a merciless killer, the kind of person Hawke sometimes feared he might become – or was in the process of becoming. He certainly hadn’t hesitated when it came to killing the Wild Sidhe. When he fought, it was like he flipped a switch and focused only on how to win, with no thought given to the reasons he was fighting for, or even if he should be fighting at all.
“This was some messed up shit,” Grognard commented, leaning on his sword-staff while he chugged an Endurance potion.
“Nothing like back on Earth, is it?” Hawke asked him.
The Battle-Mage shook his head. “I couldn’t tell you, not really. I spent all my time in the Sandbox driving a truck. Never got shot at, or drove over an IED, nothing dangerous like that. Most excitement I had over there was when someone half a klick down the road opened up with a Ma Deuce at some insurgents I never even saw.”
“I guess this was more intense.”
“You bet. Ain’t the same as in a computer game, either. CGI toons don’t bleed and crap themselves when they die. Those poor bastards we killed here, the living ones at least, they were people.”
&nbs
p; “They were trying to kill us,” Hawke said weakly; he already felt guilty about it.
“I know. And they probably didn’t want to be here, shooting arrows at us, any more than we wanted to kill them.”
“They are working for a monster that is about to destroy this entire forest and then move on to the rest of the valley.”
“I know, boss. Doesn’t mean I gotta like it.”
Hawke looked at the tiny bodies scattered all over the woods around the campsite, individually or in clumps. Many were burned or mutilated beyond recognition; others had no visible wounds and appeared to be asleep. Death came in many forms, but none of them were pretty.
Grognard shrugged. “Some general used to say, ‘Nothing is worse than a battle won, except a battle lost.’”
“We’ll just have to keep winning, then, even if we don’t like the results,” Hawke said.
Fourteen
“This was a Grove dedicated to Akaton,” Gosto said.
The party had pressed on, leaving the Woodling bodies where they lay, but only after Gosto and Olaf had performed a purification ritual that ensured the dead could not be raised again by the Revenant. Hawke would have summoned an army of Guardians to bury the fallen, but they were outside his Domain’s borders and the minions could not operate beyond them. After a brief stop for lunch, eaten quietly under the shadow of the dying trees around them, they had traveled towards a tall hill that Hawke’s flying scout had spotted, hoping to use it as a vantage point to take a better look at the Foothills. There, they had found what remained of a Fae Grove.
Druids and Wild Sidhe did not build temples to their deities, but instead raised tree and stone formations in complex mystical patterns. This one covered the entire hill, with an outer circle of trees that had been magically grown into place, and a spiral of stones leading to the top, where large rock formations that would have required a small fleet of trucks and cranes to put into place on Earth had formed a sacred arrangements around a sacrificial altar. The place had been holy, but not to a friendly deity. The blood-covered altar made it clear that the Grove had been dedicated to the Fae Death god, who demanded sacrificial offerings from his worshipers.
Labyrinth to Tartarus: A LitRPG Saga (The Eternal Journey Book 3) Page 9
