Chapter Fourteen
The first thing was the shakes. Met’s whole upper body began to shiver and shudder, as though her torso was being jerked around by a massive invisible hand. She started to choke, her eyes forced close by the violent wracking coughs that forced themselves out of her mouth uncontrollably. Tears streamed down her face and the coughs pushed her to her knees, bile beginning to creep out along with the coughs as she rubbed her lungs and throat raw.
Will darted forwards, holding her up and helping point her face down towards the ground, panic and alarm rushing through his veins. This wasn’t unexpected, given the strength of the Bloodline and its regenerative effect, but it was still terrifying. The other Chancers looked on in worry, and Metrodora fully transitioned from coughing to vomiting, her body emptying itself at rapid pace.
After a few minutes of this, though, Unk gave an excited yelp.
“Look at her arm!”
Will did as instructed, quashing the slightly nauseous feeling that swept over him at the sight of Metrodora’s stump bubbling and twisting. The flesh rippled and warped, looking like soup being cooked on too high a heat, and as the Chancers watched in awe bones began to form, pushing against the thin flesh cap of the stump and constructing a new arm in real time. Daphne made an exaggerated noise of disgust, and even Will felt the desire to look away. He contented himself to focus on Metrodora’s face, even screwed up and pained as it was, and will her all of his good thoughts to help get through the process.
Despite the fury with which the change had begun, it lasted for only a few minutes before Metrodora retched one final time and slumped back, leaning against the base of the room’s couch and trying to force in a proper breath.
“How do you feel?”
Daphne was the first to ask the obvious question, as Metrodora panted and huffed, doubled over from the vomiting and coughing fit.
“Better every second.”
She looked up, a grin forming on her pale face, and then thrust her arms into the air. Arms, plural. The new one was thin and wiry, the muscles barely formed. Despite that, and despite the way it shivered and drooped just from the effort of being momentarily raised, the sight of a working limb where once there had been a magically sealed stump shocked the reactions free from the rest of the party and a cheer went up.
Will swept Met up in a hug, feeling her wrap the skinny arm around his back and whooping with joy. Only cold pragmatism had him calling for Brunjar, wanting to inform the man of the potential that the Sandwyrm’s Bloodline held without wasting any time.
Brunjar’s bearded face popped itself around the doorway a few minutes later, consternation giving way to excitement as he too noticed the change in the party’s Alchemist. He gave a good natured chuckle, striding over to Met and giving her a heavy pat on the (not-brand-new) arm in congratulations.
“Knew you’d figure it out eventually.”
That part was directed at Will, and he allowed himself a tiny pat on the metaphorical back at the man’s words. True, he had been the one to promise Met that he’d get her arm back, and the one to suggest the Bloodline as a way of achieving it.
Met was starving, her body having burned every calorie she had access to in the process of purifying her internal organs and rebuilding her arm, so they gathered the squad leaders for the upcoming assault and the Towerfall leadership and settled down for a half feast half strategy meeting.
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Not for the first time, Will's mind boggled at the scale of his Clan. He'd been on the edges of the FCA during the first timeline, and even after their destruction he'd not been one of the important people in the whole system. Looking at the men and women Brunjar and Dane had designated to lead squads against the criminal Climbers, mentally noting aspects of their Items and builds that were visible, he felt optimism warring with a hefty impostor complex.
Shrugging the feelings off, he tuned back into the conversation as it started wrapping up. Other than big-picture strategy and giving a clear assessment of his own abilities and the War Enhancer Elite Class, he'd not actually been called on for much of the ground-level strategising. That had been the domain of people like Dane and Orion – a man from one of their Clearing Squads who'd already earned himself the nickname "Shining Blade" for his exploits and skill with a sword. Will wasn't familiar with the name from the first timeline, though he only knew the most famous S and A Rankers and could easily have missed one or two. Still, it meant that Orion was worth paying attention to, just in case.
“So we’re agreed. Squad 6 will take point, Squad 7 in reserve.”
Will took a quick peek at the map to see where Brunjar was indicating. It was one of the villages that was being trusted to members of Towerfall he’d never personally met before, something that filled him with trepidation. This operation, as much as everyone was taking it in stride, was distinct from those in their past. This was an actual military raid, aiming to incapacitate and arrest as many of the bandit Climbers as possible, ready to work with EuroClimb to deliver them real justice for their abuse of the Denizens. The Earth authorities couldn’t spare the attention to care about non-humans who were out of reach of their institutions, and even though Will had been the one to place Towerfall as an alternative the idea of having to put his money where his mouth was still sat in his stomach like a stone for the entire rest of the evening.
Eventually, though, morning arrived and everyone began tooling up and arranging themselves in the Village centre ready to move out. The latest scout reports indicated that there were between thirty and sixty Climbers in each of the affected Villages at any one time, and even accounting for the fact that the average Towerfall member was stronger and better equipped that meant an equivalent force was needed to have good odds of taking them down.
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Okembe had been given his own Squad, with several of the men and women he’d been training in the Psion Subclass having met the requirements to come with. Unk and Daphne had one as well, though they’d split it in two with Unk leading the physical frontliners and Daphne planning to stay back with the other casters and archers.
Will himself had chosen to lead a Squad consisting of primarily melee fighters, Knights and Swords Dancers and Lancers and others who would act as the perfect targets for his War Enhancer abilities. They were taking on the largest, most fortified of the target villages and aiming to brute force their way through to where the man speculated to be leading the group was staying. He’d wanted to keep Met with him, but once she’d recovered from the draining process of acclimatising to the Sandwyrm’s Bloodline she’d argued him down. Instead, she was in charge of coordinating the forward camp they were constructing and filling with anyone that had a healing ability or Spell to spare.
Final preparations were done, final checks made, and as they prepared to set off, Irikaz surprised them all by leading a small unit of his own guards to join Will’s squad. They hadn’t discussed it beforehand, but just one look at the Mayor’s face was enough to make Will understand. It was an issue of honour, of not asking others to do your dirty work, and a move that made the respect Will had for the Denizen increase even further.
“Okay, everyone ready for transport. Squad One!”
Brunjar’s voice boomed across the village, and Dane’s team obligingly stepped up to where the Clan Overseer stood with a clipboard containing their plans. Beside him were a group of Climbers in various wizardly robes, wielding an assortment of wands and staves. The Transit Corps, a relatively new creation by Brunjar under Will’s direction, they’d been the primary end-point for most of the travel and teleportation related Spells, Skills and Classes that Towerfall and its allies identified. On this Floor, and even moreso on later ones, the ability to move longer distances at faster speeds was crucial. The Wayfarer’s Guild had been the ones to teach people about that in the first timeline, so the responsibility fell to Will this time around.
Squad One stopped in front of the gathered Casters, Brunjar making a tick on his clipboard and gesturing towards them. Routemaster Kara, head of the Transit Corps, was going to handle the first few Squads before she had to pass off to her subordinates. Her staff was one that Domovoi had purchased from the Store and handed over to Brunjar to distribute most efficiently. The Journeyman’s Staff of Returning boosted all teleportation magic that was directed towards a place the Caster had personally visited by a huge amount. Coupled with them sending Kara to the planned forward camp a few days ago, the Item was enough to let her fire off a portal that would remain stable long enough to get the first three Squads through.
Dane’s Squad went, then the Engineers who would be building their base camp, and then it was the turn of Will’s team. He looked over the dozen Climbers he’d be leading directly and gave a brief attempt at a motivational speech as they moved away from the teleport location and looked towards their target.
“This fight is about more than this Village. It’s about the future of the Climb, of Humanity. Before Towerfall, I considered calling our Clan Humanity’s Hope. It felt too grandiose, too silly, but the sentiment is one that I truly believe in. This Tower and the wonders within can become a curse all too easily, and stopping people like these bandits is what we need to do to prevent that. You’re all skilled, trained, many of you moreso than even I could claim to be. You know our plans, you know our goals. We move in half an hour, and we’re going in first. If you’re the type to pray, do so now. Not for yourselves, but for our enemies. We are not aiming to indiscriminately kill, and we will offer those we capture trials and healing, but we will not be going easy on them.”
With that, the clock was ticking and the countdown beginning. The rest of the Squads for this point arrived, and the march towards the village began. Will led the way, activating the new Spell he’d had Domovoi acquire. Fast March [D] was quite a niche, utility focused option, but thanks to Will’s Class he was able to extend its effects across the entire force and get them from the forward camp to the gates of the village in record time.
As they crested the hill and saw the village laid below them, Irikaz had stepped up beside Will. They saw sentries on the defensive wall around the settlement and heard orders begin to be barked in the distance.
“They know we’re here, so it’s time to go.”
Will’s words were quickly filtered through the rest of the group, and the charge began. Ahead, a group of archers and Casters stepped up onto the walls and began sending a bombardment. Will kept up his sprint, watching to either side to make sure his Squad were keeping up, and began to let the buffs flow.
His work with Galliar was already paying dividends to his efficiency, since he barely felt the tug on his Mana even as he provided every buffing Spell he had to the dozen people in his Squad. The gates of the village opened briefly and out spilled bandits, one drawing a huge two-handed sword and using some kind of charging Skill to dart into Will’s range, swinging for his head and roaring in anger.
First contact established, Will trusted in his crew. He absently noticed the clash of spells and arrows overhead, but one of his Squad – a man named Mason who’d done a stint with the SAS before the Tower – had the Bulwark Elite Class and an Item that drew enemy fire away from the rest of the team. Will let his opponent’s sword miss, twisting his body free of its reach and driving Whisper inside the man’s guard to bite into thick leather padding over the abdomen.
Though his primary focus was on keeping his Squad buffed, he could more than spare the energy to activate Vigorous Sharpen and send a flurry of strikes into the attacking bandit, deep wounds being opened across the man’s armoured sleeves despite their padding. The two-handed sword clashed against the ground, and Will kept up his pace, crashing his head into the taller man’s nose and sending him toppling to the dirt. A quick glance to his sides saw the rest of his Squad moving on from their first fights, but looking ahead he saw far more defenders than they’d planned for.
“Push through, I’m clearing a path!”
The voice that sounded in Will’s ear came from his right, and he recognised it as the another Squad Leader, tall and heavily armoured with a halberd which glowed green and sent a sweeping burst of energy forwards. It split the incoming forces just enough that Will and his Squad were able to move forwards and get closer to the gates. He sensed the position of every member of his Squad through the magical web linking them to him and providing the buffs, and as they hit another thicket of fighters and had to stop for battle he made sure the count hadn’t dropped.
Tom and Elise, a couple that had stumbled on a Hidden Event which earned them some kind of bonded Class where they were stronger fighting together, stormed forwards and started taking apart the cluster of sword-swinging thugs who tried to overwhelm Will. He flared their buffs just a touch before moving on, hearing someone on the other side cast a buff Spell of their own and following the sound.
Though the enemies seemed to have either been hiding their numbers from the scouts, or to have somehow learned of the offensive before it happened – and wasn’t that a worrying thought, one that made Will start thinking through methods of finding a mole – the combined forces of Towerfall were better coordinated and overall stronger. His Squad was knocking the enemies down and breaking through their lines, while the others behind cleaned up and kept their foes from either dying or getting back up.
He saw the person casting buffs, a man in plate armour atop robes wielding a sharp bone wand and firing pulses of invigorating blue light into every one of his allies in reach. A twitch inside his Mana reserves alerted Will that someone on his Squad was injured, and he flared Verten’s Vitality in response instinctually, drawing in towards the Caster and bringing up Shout to fire off its Skill and take down the force multiplier that was keeping them out of the village itself.