AR Chapter 487 (Patreon)

No longer so foolish as to throw myself into the waiting embrace of a heavily empowered beast, I fought more intelligently. With my presence and not being held down by one of the spawn of Illan’Klli, the fights on the walls turned more in our advantage, even if they remained bloody. The blood of what certainly was hundreds of my people slicked the walls all around, and I saw dozens of brave fighters fall to rise no more.

With the intimate connection I had with all sounds around me, I couldn’t help but listen to the sound of crunching bone and gasping breaths, but I shunted away any of the emotion that came with the knowledge that my people died all around me. What came as a shallow reassurance was the sound of the repeated calls of all of the different phrases of the Words of Power around me. My people’s faith didn’t waver, even as they bled and died.

With the recovery fromVictor’s Spoils and slaying the first spawn, I was more than capable of serving as the front line against three other thrashing beasts in quick succession. Instead of me throwing myself at the enemy in a brazen attempt to defeat them in a duel, I used my spear to limit their movement before flooding the area with ambient magic and flashes of Destructive Wave. Once half a dozen pairs of gnashing jaws found the core of the wounded spawn, its wounded and crippled flesh could no longer hold against the implacable assault. My people, whether Kha, Khatif, or Keel, shredded through every enemy they could reach, regardless of how they suffered to do so.

With the fall of the fourth spawn on this section of the walls, Nievtala’s approval swelled in the back of my mind until it nearly incapacitated me.

“Give me space,” I snarled at her. “I can’t fight like this.”

Fortunately, she didn’t do anything but immediately comply with my demand. A small part of me had dreaded her whirling on me in a rage, but fortunately, my goddess was intelligent enough to not flood my body with unwelcome ecstasy in the middle of a fight. Or at least, not continue to do that.

Even as my people shredded through the attacks on this wall, I had the distinct impression that something was happening, something that wasn’t nearly so easy to deal with. A sense of dread, something I couldn’t place, refused to give me space as I led the charge against the fifth spawn. It wasn’t long before I got an answer as to where that prophetic fear had come from. Just as I was locked in combat against the fifth spawn on the wall, I heard a rumble on the opposite side of the city.

The rumble of thousands of pounds of stone falling.

I snarled in rage, unable to fully extract myself to see what was happening. Instead, I threw myself with even greater aggression at the spawn while Brutus charged a wyrm. It distended its monstrous jaws and began to slip into shadow, but he was far too competent to be thwarted by that. Instead, Brutus closed in and sunk his claws deep into the wyrm’s beady eyes and hauled it out of the shadow. As soon as it tried to fight back, he ducked under a bite and, with a bite of his own, ripped the throat out of the wyrm. The beast’s sticky blood sprayed over my legs as my Alqat bodyguard lifted the corpse of his foe and hurled it into the mass of thrashing tentacles. 

The huge body smashed through many of the beast’s defenses and gave my people an opening to swarm into its body. On the flank, more wyrms hustled forward as Misti Hawar-controlled shadows slashed wounds in every unprotected flank and side.

Even with so many things in my immediate vicinity demanding my attention, Brutus and other soldiers beside me fought to give me enough space to attempt to see what was happening on the opposite side of the city. I stretched my neck and my awareness to see what it was, but the distance was too great and too many obstructions were in my way to be able to see if it had been the wall being felled or something else that caused the sound.

I didn’t attempt to hold back the snarl of frustration as I stepped into the fray and yanked my spear free of the mostly dead spawn. The creature was in its death throes, throwing its attackers away as fast as it could, but our numbers were too great. An unholy screech filled the air as it was ripped to pieces, and I left the corpse behind. Then, running, I stabbed with my spear at whatever enemy came close, wyrm, spawn, or Misti Hawar. Blood slicked up the handle of the spear, though the leather wrapped around the metal haft was more than enough to keep me from losing my grip.

In just a few short seconds, I managed to run far enough around to see what was happening, and my blood ran cold.

Despite Nievtala’s assurances to the contrary, the Great Hunter had managed to create a plan. Now that the plan had been, apparently, completed, I could see what it was—to perform token attacks to the north, east, and west while flooding the south. That would keep our troops spread thin, and as time went on, we would commit more and more to the south to make sure to hold there. Then, once the vast majority of my forces were committed, the trap would spring. About a fifth of the enemy force that they’d held in reserve would charge towards the northern wall which was holding on against a force half the size of what it now was. And, by the quality of the shadow magic that was shredding through my people, the Nyust’taa was leading that charge.

The source of the sound was just what I’d feared. A couple of the spawn had managed to do what they were attempting to do in the south—anchor themselves on the ground outside the walls and literally pull it down. A stretch of wall maybe thirty feet across had been brought down completely, and the still bodies of dozens of my people were scattered through the rubble. The Saharliard fought against the invaders, but deep shadow swelled up in the sky and then snuffed the vast majority of the torches there as I watched.

Two flames exploded into existence, one of them definitely Hala, though I couldn’t place who the other was. The shadows, and especially the wyrms, swarmed towards the source of those flames, where I could only see the impressions of the desperate battles that were fought there. I wanted to rush to their aid, but more worrying than the prepared warriors on the walls fighting a battle they were prepared for were the dozens of enemies that I could see throwing themselves into the midst of my city. To slaughter the noncombatants.

Standing against the enemy was every creature that could stand. Lightning crackled into existence, frying some of the attackers, but again, the shadows deepened and threw themselves at every resistance.

I was done watching, though, and, trusting the ranks of my soldiers here on this wall, I threw myself from the wall with Spear of the Many pushing me to greater speed and strength. I hurtled through the air, straight towards my enemies, my heart thundering in my chest, as I remembered what the ruler of my enemies had done upon her first appearance.

She had shown mercy to my eggs that day. She would not do so again, I knew.

Fearing for my mate and my children, I sprinted through the streets, praying that I would be fast enough.