Author's Nightmare: Chapter 158 (Patreon)

Beam POV: Day 144

Current Wealth: 213 gold 21 silver 32 copper

Rockets took to the air, screaming wheels of death cutting bloody tunnels through the space between human and orcs and blowing apart multiple bodies at once. Grenades rained down on the enemy and erupted amid them to send blood, scrap metal and limbs spitting into the skies. All the time, there were more attackers. More dangers, more chances for death. One of our men went down, helmet taken off by one blow and skull split apart by another. He wasn’t the last to die; 

Our solidity was starting to give as the orcs continued their endless onslaught, stepping over the bodies of their own men to reach us. I did what I could to stem them. What I could do, though, wasn’t that much. 

My hearing was just about gone, so intense was the killing frenzy. Everything in the world was near-monochromatic light and adrenal heat. My weapon was so fast even I barely saw it as a blur, and tracked its motions more by the bodies splitting open in its wake. There was no counting the kills I made, so I studied their effects on the battle instead. I had no clue how long I spent fighting. Five minutes? Maybe ten. It was a long affair in any case, too long. 

Our neat formation broke just as the final wave of them stopped its advance, and fleeing orcs barely made a dent in the terror of what came next. The dregs of the battlefield were all we had to kill, but there were hundreds of dregs against dozens of us. I steeled myself for it and backed up.

They were surrounding us, now. This fighting would be more intense than any we’d done before now. And I had no clue if we’d all survive. 

Well, some of us already didn’t. Another of the men went down as a spear slipped the gaps in his armour. One more fell and was trampled to death, a third retreated into our back ranks as he took a nasty wound to the leg. We held, and stabbed, and battered and thrust. Every moment more orcs dropped, but nowhere near as fast as before now that our munitions of rockets and grenades were dried up. The gatling gun continued pounding away and Corvan’s periodic fireballs kept blasting several new corpses into being, but even still we were losing ground. 

The formation broke clean at the middle, and from it came…Solitaire. Solitaire moving fast, as ever, and plugging the gap with his own body. He was a terror, reared up to his full height- taller than most of the orcs- and swinging around an oversized meat cleaver of a weapon that took limbs and heads off in one swing. The enemy backed up from him as if his violence were emitting heat that pained the skin. But only for a moment, because then another orc came forth. Bigger than Solitaire, just as strong, almost as fast. I started trying to barge my way over to him. Too slow.

He was being swamped with orcs, attackers pressing in from all sides and actually bowling him over like he was trying to stand in a riptide. My brother disappeared from my sight, and as I closed to catch him something smashed into the side of my head.

I went down, lights dancing in my eyes. Everything was loud and bright and frenzied, thoughts scattered and mouth tasting of blood as feet stomped around me. I blinked, gathered myself, stood, snarling and hissing. Animal noises that came from some deep part of my psychology long buried by the calm of modernity. Now it reared up and beared its fangs.

Orcs fell back as I shot to my feet, swinging and punching. Kicks, fists, everything I had at my disposal went in every which way I could throw it, thoughts not even on the fighting anymore. I was killing with gut instincts alone, and I couldn’t do it fast enough. Ten orcs dropped dead around me in two seconds and there were still more blocking my path.

Ahead, I saw Solitaire raised up from the mass of bodies around him. They were grabbing him. Carrying him. My guts squirmed as I saw him taken farther from us. My time was running out. 

Something slammed down in front of me, a towering orc who had the look of some champion. He might have been a brother to the one Solitaire just fought. One mountain-range muscle convulsed as he brought his weapon around and I ducked, hacked up with my own and took his arm off at the elbow, then cut again and again before he could reply. He was dead in a heartbeat and I smashed his falling corpse aside to close on Solitaire.

But more orcs flooded me, more. I realised it was deliberate. Solitaire was their prize, and they were sacrificing everything they needed to to secure him. 

I headbutted one, stars dancing in my vision as the iron helmet caved into orc bone and killed the enemy instantly. Something grabbed me from behind, then went flying as I moved and landed hard. I killed, killed, killed. Broke out of the mass and screamed as the world turned into shrapnel and pressure at the impact of something too fast to catch and too big to avoid. 

My feet left the ground, and I flew. Landed, rose, sprinted. There was another magus among the orcs, levitating stones around himself just like Guraganar had and staring straight at me. Solitaire was dozens of metres back now, almost at the main mass of orcs. My heart was beating so hard I thought it might burst out of me. 

Where are you? I desperately asked, turning my thoughts inwards. Please, if you’re listening, if you’re there, whatever I did to fight the King of Blades, I need it now. Please.

But no answer came, and more orcs did. I screamed. A long, feral cry that seemed to give them pause before I carved into them. Solitaire was still moving though, and they just kept on fucking coming. My friend disappeared from my line of sight just as I buried my sword deep into a spine, twisting it out and staring into the churning horde of retreating orcs to find…Something. Anything.

But there was nothing. He was gone.

I stared, as if staring might bring him back. Orcs moved around me, slow as ever. I had all the time in the world to stand and do nothing as my friend disappeared. But then more sounds hit me, the fears of a failing formation. I turned to see our men were on the backfoot still, defence crumbling as the orc dregs pressed it. I swallowed, mastered myself, and got to work. There wasn’t time to mope about. I’d been given more power than anyone else on our side and I was going to fucking use it.

Even if I couldn’t save the one person I needed to.

Argar stumbled back with blood gushing down his side, a spear tip having bitten between armoured plates. I cut its wielder in half. Elizabeth was hiding behind an increasingly battered shield as two orcs pounded it, neither of whom survived a moment longer. Several of our men were already dead, recruits who’d never turn into veterans. I couldn’t know for sure I’d avenged them, but I killed two or three orcs for each one who’d fallen. With the enemy already in retreat at their main body, and a mere hundred engaged now, the clean-up didn’t last long at all. 

The air smelled of blood and defeat as they started pulling away, and it was all Helena could do to bark back a few of our more enthusiastic members into place rather than letting them give chase. We watched the enemy forces peel back. 

Solitaire was with them, still. Alone, captured. Again. For the second time my brother had been taken from the rest of us, and this time I’d been there to stop it. I screamed, kicking a dead orc and watching the body roll several paces away with the impact. It didn’t do anything to mitigate my rage, and certainly not to bring back my friend.

Looking around, I saw plenty of dead enemies and a good few dead friends. We’d accomplished nothing else today. Just death.