“Then what does that mean for the battle ahead of us?” I asked, feeling extremely curious to know more about the orcs’ social structure. “Would it be possible for us to make a thrust straight towards this war chief and see if we could kill him?”
“If he makes an appearance?” the old knight qualified. “Absolutely. Though I highly doubt that they will make themselves visible so soon, for that in itself would make them look weak. Instead, I expect that they would allow for the other chieftains and tribes to compete against their own. The better that they perform compared to theirs, the more favor and status these other tribes would receive afterward.”
“That sounds…complicated,” Halcyon said as we all listened to Aldwin’s explanation with rapt attention.
“No more or less so than our own politics in Eberia,” Stanton replied. “Though their version is quite less subtle than the game played between the various noble houses.”
“Yet no less deadly, I imagine,” I stated, earning a slight nod from the spy.
“Certainly not,” Aldwin agreed. “In either case, beyond their politics, it is important to never forget how this tribal structure of theirs dictates the way they wage war. As tempting as it might be to think of the horde as a single unified military force, with similar skill sets, equipment, or even training, they are not. Instead, you must think of them each as their own groups of various skills and armament who happen to be sharing the same battlefield with one another.
“But instead of using their talents to complement one another as we would, they fight independently, looking to establish themselves as superior in both skill and glory. While this single-minded focus gives them a vicious ferocity in battle, it allows for them to be isolated and defeated, even when in the middle of mass combat, for rival tribes will never come to the rescue of another. They will wait for them to be defeated completely or flee the field before joining the battle on their own terms.”
“Hm, that’s really interesting to know and explains a few things that we saw while we tried to delay them,” Freya said once the bann had finished talking, all of our attention dropping towards the map. “We’ll need to take this thinking into account for the battle, though. Because while we might be able to destroy or rout entire units of orcs, it also means that we’ll be facing fresher troops constantly throughout the entire battle.”
“That it does,” Aldwin agreed as we all clustered a step closer to the table and began the process of planning out how we would array our forces throughout the base and what tactics we would to meet the orc assault. “So, given our advantage in positioning, our best options would be…”
Chapter 24
Wednesday, April 17th, 2047 – 7:02 a.m.
They attacked at dawn.
There was no ultimatum or even an attempt to parley between our two sides. Instead, the orcs simply began to move as the sun broke the eastern horizon, their purpose obvious to all of us watching from a distance. Beginning slowly at first, their ranks started to shuffle as the tribes within the horde arrayed themselves according to whatever their surprisingly complex internal politics demanded. With increasing speed, more and more orcs filtered forward from within the horde, their leading edge starting to advance towards us, the familiar hulking shapes of the corrupted constructs taking the place of the army’s vanguard.
Far from idle as we watched the orcs ready themselves, word of their movement made its way through the entirety of Valor’s Point, causing something akin to a sigh of relief to echo throughout the base. The waiting was finally over, and the battle was finally about to begin.
“Everyone’s reporting in ready, Lyr,” Sierra said as she calmly walked up to us at a measured pace, having just returned from a final walkthrough of the base while our core group formed up on a rise roughly in the center of the base. “The show will kick off as planned as soon as our guests reach their places.”
“Good,” I replied in a cheerful tone as I continued to watch the advancing line of constructs ahead, counting that there were at least forty of them advancing towards us in a staggered line. “Let’s hope that they’re entertained.”
“I think they will be, Lyr,” Constantine commented from beside me, his hand reaching up to point at the far-right portion of the orc vanguard. “Look, they’re starting to speed up. They can’t wait to get here already.”
“Huh, so they are,” I noted, shifting my attention to follow the rogue’s finger and seeing that a group of the constructs, all corrupted guardians specifically, had broken into a lumbering run, gradually outpacing the slimmer dervishes. Lagging a few seconds behind that group were the larger constructs, whatever command that had signaled the charge taking its time to work through the ranks.
Saying nothing as we watched, the eight of us simply stared onwards as the line of constructs descended down upon us with the orc horde following a few dozen yards behind. There was little doubt that the charge had been designed to intimidate and unnerve us by making us focus on the monstrous creatures first, and it would have worked, had we not had an ace hidden up our sleeve. Having waited until this very moment to reveal that we had a way to bypass the constructs’ damage reduction, we’d been able to outfit not only everyone with an arcane-edged weapon but also the bolts used by our ballistae.
As the advancing line of corrupted guardians painfully found out.
Thundering out as one perfectly timed snap the instant they entered into range, sixteen fast-moving shapes suddenly leapt out from all around us, their path taking them directly into the mass of charging creatures ahead, which promptly withered under its onslaught. In an instant, I saw five of the leading abominations go down as perfectly aimed bolts slammed into their center mass and continued straight through, or even in one case, a shrouded skull, the impact shattering it completely. Where the bolts did not completely outright kill the target they hit, they staggered them, punching large holes through their muddy exterior and causing the spirits animating them to scream with agony. In the seconds that passed afterward, the entire orc charge slowed as a wave of surprise passed through their ranks.
Which, of course, was right when the catapults fired.
Launching in unison just as the ballistae had, I looked upwards in time to see eight large orbs sail high overhead, their spinning metallic forms glittering faintly in the light of the rising sun. Reaching their peak quickly, it didn’t take long before the orbs began to fall back towards the ground, their target being the small space directly between the advancing orcs and their constructs. Vanishing from sight as they descended out of view, there was a brief delay where nothing happened, followed by a sudden spray of distant metallic shapes shooting upwards and in every direction. Far too distant to see their reaction from my position, I could only imagine the orcs’ reaction as their shock of seeing the constructs fall to the ground was compounded by the arrival of hundreds of caltrops being strewn directly in their path.
Which, on that note, reminds me to never get onto Léandre’s bad side, I thought, recalling the elder craftsman’s devious look when he first explained to me the concept of the weapon. Consisting of a hollow iron shell packed completely full of the four-pointed metal stars, it was designed to be fired by a catapult towards a distant target. Then, when the heavy object landed, the impact caused its shell to come apart, which with the aid of a few strategically placed springs sent a cloud of caltrops flying in every direction, seeding the surrounding area with their presence.
“Well, they know that we’re serious now,” I commented as secondary waves of magic and arrows also lanced out on the heels of the two siege engines’ attacks, further blanketing the oncoming charge with a storm of destruction.
“I sure hope so,” Freya replied as, despite the success of our initial salvo ravaging the constructs’ ranks, they continued to press towards us, the distance between them and our forwardmost trenches gradually decreasing with every second that passed. “I’d sure hate for all of the work that we’ve done to be for nothing.”
&n
bsp; “That would be tragic,” I agreed, all of us continuing to watch the conflict unfold, there being little for us to do, other than wait for our enemies to come into range. Right now, the early stages of the battle were our best chance to deal as much damage as possible to the orc horde before things devolved into chaos.
And the orcs started to spring their own tricks on us.
So we watched onwards as another loud twang of ballista bolts echoed through the air just as the leading edge of corrupted guardians finally reached our front line, plowing straight into the tribuli-filled trenches. Aided by momentum, the creatures attempted to use their innate resistance to damage to blaze a path through the spike-filled pits for their allies to follow through. But no sooner did they make it halfway into the trenches, did some of them come to a lurching stop, letting out a pained howl as they did so. Having expected the creatures to simply bull through the tribuli and spike-filled pits and trample them to pieces, we’d taken steps to hide dozens of arcane-edged spears amongst them. So that when the constructs attempted to bowl their way through the trenches with sheer brute force, they also impaled themselves on the one thing that their defenses had no answer for.
“And there goes our last surprise,” Constantine stated as a handful of the charging guardians were stopped cold in their attempt to force a path to the front line, their struggles lasting just long enough for the mages and archers to turn their attention onto them. “Now things are going to really get down and dirty.”
“You’re not wrong on that front!” Halcyon called out, something in his tone prompting me to look in his direction and see that he was staring upwards with ætherscope in his hand. “The wards are starting to light up! Looks like the orcs are tired of watching us wreck their charge and are starting to hit them hard!”
“With what?” I asked, reaching out to grab my own wand from a pocket, activating True Sight as I did so. Ever since their arrival yesterday, and for nearly the entirety of the night that followed, the orcs had relentlessly probed the base’s magical defenses, sending strange phantoms rippling along its surface, which despite our best efforts we couldn’t identify. Even my enhanced sight wasn’t able to catch sight of whatever the orcs were attempting, at least not anything more than vague flickers in the ward’s magic.
“I don’t know, but—” Halcyon started to say, only to have his eyes go completely wide as a brief flash of magic filled the air above us. “Shit! The wards are down!”
Following almost right on the heels of the mage’s words, I had just enough time to process what he had said before an alien wave of exhaustion unexpectedly slammed into me, causing my entire body to flinch and feel heavier. Fighting down the unexpected sensation that surged through me, I forced myself not to react to the surge of panic that shot through me, instead focusing on the burning red text that flashed in the center of my vision.
You have been afflicted by [War Hex: Weakness]!
Cursed by an exhausting magic, your muscles and mind have grown sluggish and heavy, reducing your ability to fight. Effect: Your Agility, Strength, Willpower, and Attack Speed have been reduced by 5%!
“Well, that looks like that answers that question!” Drace said with a growl as he tried to shake off the magical fatigue that had fallen over us. “They were trying to debuff the entire base!”
“Damn it, this is the last thing we need!” I cursed while scanning the base around us, seeing that all the other nearby adventurers were reacting in a similar fashion as us to the orcs’ magic. “Can you somehow use the wards to block this, Hal? Even if it’s for a short while.”
“Only by recasting all of them again around the base,” the mage replied as he cast a spell that I couldn’t make out, his scowl growing deeper. “The orcs hammered them completely flat and overloaded them. I’d need to start completely from—”
A loud scream interrupted Halcyon before he could finish speaking, its panicked words causing a chill to instantly shoot down our backs.
“Invaders in the base!” Bax’s voice shouted from nearby, similar cries ringing out all around us a second later. “There are spirits attacking the ballistae! We need help!”
Twisting as one to the sound of the voice, we all glanced towards the two ballistae that had been arrayed on our left, our eyes widening in shock immediately after. Crawling all over the machines, were over a dozen ethereal shapes, each of them seemingly cut from pure darkness itself as they attacked Bax, Natasha, and their crew manning the siege weapons. Staring in disbelief at their unexpected appearance, it wasn’t until several tags appeared in my vision pointing to each of the spirits that they were in fact animals, ones that had mutated almost past the point of recognition.
[Corrupted Beetle Spirit] – Level 23
[Corrupted Viper Spirit] – Level 24
[Corrupted Bear Spirit] – Level 25
[Corrupted Puma Spirit] – Level 25
“Shit! They’re trying to take out our ranged attackers!” Constantine called out, all of us seeing through the orc strategy as even more of the shadowlike entities continued to appear throughout the base, their focus being either our siege weapons or our mages and archers. “Damn, where did these things even come from?”
“Hell if I know, but we don’t have time to stand around! The orcs are going to be here any second now!” I replied as I pulled my eyes away from the sudden chaos growing throughout the base and towards the trenches, noticing that the first of the constructs had almost made it completely through. “We need to get them cleared away from the ballistae and have them firing again! Or all those guardians are going to steamroll our front line!”
Trusting that the group would follow me, I sprang into action and began to move, calling up a surge of magic as I did so and shaping it into Blink Step. Eagerly triggering the spell the second that it was ready, the next thing I knew was the world blurring around me as Amaranth and I crossed the distance separating us and the nearest line of ballistae in the blink of an eye.
And directly into the midst of the swarming spirits around it.
Arriving with a snap of magic announcing our presence, we found ourselves greeted by a trio of the corrupted spirits already spinning to attack us. Surprised by their fast reaction, I was forced to dodge away from a lunging beetle spirit while using Splinter to send a threatening cut in the direction of a coiled viper spirit in order to keep it at bay. As I managed the two creatures, Amaranth focused on the third, one of his claws raking itself across a near mirror of himself and leaving a jagged tear along its ethereal form.
I replied to the cat as I took a step back, narrowly evading a bite from the near seven-foot-long ethereal viper as it launched itself through the air towards me.
It wasn’t until the spirit beetle managed to land a bite on my forearm that I was pulled back into the present by two twisting sensations competing with one another. The first was a burning lance shooting through my arm as a portion of my mana was torn away from me and drawn into the attacking spirit. Yet as fast as the searing pain had hit me, I felt something else force itself into my body, causing an all-too-familiar wave of nausea to send my stomach roiling.
Ugh, not this again, I said with a mental wince, belatedly bringing Splinter to defend myself and slashing the Shocking Touch-charged blade directly through the head of the offending spirit, the blow finally managing to kill it. Watching it dissolve in a burst of darkness, I found myself with a brief opportunity to glance at my combat log just to make sense of what had happened, m
y hunger flaring and then settling itself as I read.
A [Corrupted Beetle Spirit] hits you for 87 points of damage!
A [Corrupted Beetle Spirit] drains you for 50 points of mana!
You have been afflicted by [Corruption]!
Your Corruption Counter has increased to 1%!
Your [Hunger] devours [Corruption], restoring 50 points of mana!
Your Corruption Counter has decreased to 0%.
You [Power Attack II] a [Corrupted Beetle Spirit] for 137 points of damage!
You have slain a [Corrupted Beetle Spirit]!
Damn it, this is bad! I thought as I finished skimming over the log, promptly dismissing it afterward and jumping back into the battle with the other two spirits. As I did, I felt my mind begin to race as I processed what I’d read. Whatever these things are, they can both drain mana and afflict others with the corruption that they’re carrying. It’s only because of my ætherwarping that I’m able to absorb it and have it not affect me. But everyone else on the other hand…
Feeling a newfound sense of urgency shoot through me as my thoughts trailed off, I redoubled my efforts in attacking the two remaining corrupted spirits, triggering Alacrity to give Amaranth and me a needed edge. Working from there, we unceremoniously carved through the pair of spirits, dispatching them both just in time to have the rest of the group arrive around us.
“Be careful! These things can spread corruption!” I announced as I fell into line with them, the eight of us rushing towards the other spirits attacking the ballista crew. “And they drain your mana too when they hit you!”
Glory to the Brave (Ascend Online Book 4) Page 31
