5.
Night came too quickly. Locked in the library with a growing headache, I had listened to the preparations. The mounting tension inside of the fort had been noticeable, even cocooned in the library. People’s disbelief at the situation we all found ourselves in, the quiet pleading to unseen deities to rescue them, the muttered curses to wake up from this nightmare. All in vain of course, my disdain for those who could not adapt bubbled red hot and had been growing hard to control. They insisted on holding onto false hope of being rescued, rather than save themselves.
The moon hung in the sky, silver light streamed on the black water lapping at the beach. The caves we had found ourselves walking out of this morning were invisible beneath the sea, the tall dune we had climbed was the edge of the beach. The visibility was good for it being the dead of night, the heavy moon and stars illuminated the soon to be battlefield. My team clustered around one of the scorpions on the wall, Agatha was the triggerwoman while Miguel, Bobby, and I were standing next to the seven foot long bolts the scorpion would be slinging. Made of the same onyx stone as the fort walls, they were heavy and awkward enough it took all three of us to lift one into place.
It had taken most of the day of the other teams dragging corpses into the hole and feeding the fort before it had awakened enough for us to unlock the armory and scorpions. The giant darts had been produced without sound, scores of them just appearing on the wall, seeming to form out of the very blocks of stone that composed the fort. Even that act had drained the fort, the pictogram's silver light fading away with the effort. We just had to hope that it was enough to get us through the night.
Opening the armory had given us access to spears, swords, crossbows, shields, and thick leather armor that we had all strapped on. The wall teams had taken crossbows with quivers filled with bolts and filled the upper wall. The team's Dan had filled out, primarily with the youngest and strongest men, had pulled the armor on and taken up the spears, swords, and shields before filing to the courtyard to try to hold the gate. I had no doubt that if I didn’t have the translation skill Dan would have tried to get me to stand in the middle of the fighting downstairs. Which I would have adamantly refused; there was no way I was going to be cannon fodder holding a door.
The information I read in the library had given me enough ideas on how to give me, and to a lesser extent my team, an edge. To fully utilize that edge though I had to stay alive and not become a shishkebab on some fishmen’s trident. Best way to do that was stay up on the nice tall walls and help fire huge darts down at the beach. None of the weapons we had seen around the dead fishmen had ranged weaponry. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
Each breath produced a plume of mist that expanded to cover our heads, a wind whipped off of the sea and battered us. The jumpsuits were good quality, keeping me warm, but my exposed face and hands were bitterly cold. Miguel was curled up on himself, hiding beneath the edge of the parapet to stay out of the wind. Bobby was next to him while Agatha stood next to the lever that would fire the scorpion with a look of concentration on her face as she stared down on the beach.
“When you level, don’t assign the points right away, just hold on to them,” I said quietly to my team.
“Why?” Miguel asked through chattering teeth. Bobby was watching with a curious look on her face and Agatha just looked confused at me.
“We can build stat points through our efforts up to a point. Same if we consume the mana hearts. At a certain point you get diminishing returns, but we can build our stats up without using points we earn by leveling,” I told them. It had been one of the last things I’d read, a small stone that had the title “In the Course of Training Raw Recruits”. It had been enlightening to say the least.
“How high can we get our points up through effort?” Bobby asked. She was inquisitive and I had a feeling she was frustrated that I had the translation skill and access to the library while she was stuck with secondhand information from me.
“It didn’t say. Just that one could improve themself to the average through effort.”
“What’s the average?” Miguel asked.
“I don’t know, I think we will have to ask around to find the average.”
“It’s five,” Bobby cut in. That caused me to raise an eyebrow at her.
“I asked around. Almost everyone has a five vitality, and are around that much for some of the harder to raise stats like constitution,” Bobby informed us.
We all looked at Agatha standing quietly by the lever to fire the scorpion. She looked back at us and raised her eyebrows in a questioning look. She was the lowest ranked of all of us, with the lowest stats. Bobby couldn’t raise any of her stats through effort, and Miguel only had strength to raise. Agatha on the other hand.
“So it’s fine for me to use my points I earn when I level?” Bobby asked.
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“No, I mean they’re your points and you can use them however you like, but it would be a waste. You can raise your points to average through effort, but you can also raise them through the ingestion of magical creatures. Most of the larger and more powerful ones have a mana heart, if you eat enough of the hearts you can gain stats from that. It’s slower and has diminishing returns, but every little bit helps right?”
“What stats do we get from these ones?” Agatha asked, finally being lured into the conversation.
“If the records are correct, the fishmen have no mana hearts, they're a mob enemy. There will be some giant crabs though. Or at least the description makes me think of crabs. If you cut them open and find their mana hearts,” I told them.
“Seafood buffet,” Bobby deadpanned. Not a good joke, but it cut the tension a little as Miguel giggled and Agatha smiled. Did her smile have an undertone of pity? Maybe.
“After the fight we have to get out onto the field and get to those mana hearts before anyone else has a chance.”
“Shouldn’t we share?” Miguel asked, looking around at us. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at him.The naivete of youth showed, he hadn’t yet figured out that this world was not going to be one of equality.
“No, we strengthen our own team first. You and Agatha need to be strong enough to find your families. I don’t want to be getting ordered around by Dan and, actually, I don’t know what Bobby wants,” I explained to him.
“Bobby doesn’t want to be in the power of a bunch of strangers,” Bobby filled in the blanks with a sardonic twist of her lips.
“Well there you have it. This isn’t going to be a nice place, Miguel, and if you want the strength to find your mom and sister you’re going to need to grab every advantage you can. Same with you, Agatha.” Hopefully that would be enough to keep them on the same page as me. I wanted them to work with me, but we all needed to have at least the same idea of what our long term goals were.
“Alright. I don’t like hiding information from others though.” Miguel muttered. I would have to work with him later, impress upon him the need for gathering strength to make sure the others couldn’t suppress us.
I looked back over the parapet and had to bite back a cry of surprise. The beach was rapidly filling with fishmen. As the lapping waves slid back they left the fishmen on the beach. Only a few hundred yards separated us, scores of black blurs of shadow that shambled forward in silence. I waved at the team to look and as they scrambled up to look, cries of surprise were being uttered down the wall from others not as disciplined.
“To battle stations!” Deacon yelled. So much for the element of surprise. The older former soldier was left in charge of the wall defense while the rest of Dan’s crew were down trying to hold the gates. Sixty men had been selected to hold the gates. Seventy of us were stationed on the wall, with another seventy sitting in the fort ready to move to reinforce either group. The six scorpions all had five man crews, aside from ours, with the remaining forty-one armed with crossbows to fire into the crowds below.
I heard the thunk of a crossbow firing followed by a shout of alarm. Agatha grabbed the handle of the scorpion and aimed down the sights of the beach. Dan and Deacon had decided to reserve the scorpions for the crabs that would likely be coming. In the meantime the firing of the crossbows were continuing in a scattered manner while Deacon yelled for people to hold their fire. Some of the shapes staggered and fell, but most kept forming up into a block of marching flesh. The chill that ran down my spine as I stared at the line of monsters had nothing to do with the cold. Reality had just pressed down on me; this was real, the abduction, the game-like world, the monsters marching up from the sea. Mixed in with the clammy fear and anxiety though, was a flicker of excitement.
“Alright, get ready!” I yelled, my voice cracked at the last moment. Bobby ran around to the other side of the scorpion. It would take two of us to use the mechanism to recock the scorpion, then two of us to pick up the dart. Most of the crews were one gunner who was firing, two working the rearming mechanism, and two picking up the bolts. I was big enough, and didn’t want a fifth person cutting in on our experience, that I had insisted I could do two jobs. Deacon hadn’t bothered to argue. The scorpion was already armed, the shining black stone dart glistening in the moonlight as it lay in the firing groove. Its head was a sharpened stone that I’d had the unfortunate experience to realize was razor sharp.
Deacon finally got everyone firing in the waves that we had practiced at. Four teams firing in continuous waves down. They had picked a few of the louder crossbowmen to be leaders of each squad, and their yells of “ forward, fire, back, arm” filled the air. The steady fire of the crossbows had a discernible effect as the block of fishmen stalled. Bodies were collapsing and their formation was growing ragged. They were going to make it to the fort’’s walls, I could tell that right away. If we could keep them from forming a mass wave, it would make it much easier for Dan to hold the gate. The crossbow firing finally fell into a steady rhythm. There were exclamations from people, I guessed they were learning that they were leveling.
The first of them came with a surge of water; ripping its way free of the surf, nine feet tall with dozens of legs scuttling its bulk forward. It was the shape of a crab, just a lot more legs, and some tentacles lashing out from its cavernous mouth. Its gray shell was dull and its arachnid eyes gleamed in the reflected moonlight. Well that was nightmare fuel.
“Shoot it!” Miguel screamed in my ear. Agatha obliged him by pulling down the lever. The big scorpion shuddered as it launched the seven foot long bolt with enough force it created a burst of wind. I watched in awe as the black streak of death cut across the field before slamming into the crab monster. Stone shattered. Shell cracked and blew apart as if a bomb had hit it. It screamed like a steamwhistle, piercing the general sounds of the fighting. The thrum of the other scorpions came right after, more bolts impacted it, driving it back as two more bolts hammered into it. The other three bolts exploded around it, shredding through the ranks of unarmored fishmen like a scythe through grass.
The monster reeled back, blood and seawater pouring out of it as it lurched around, crushing the smaller monsters in its death throes. It’s writhing mouth tentacles wrapped around a fishman and ripped it to pieces as it continued to scream. I turned my back to the floundering monster and grabbed the rearming mechanism. It was a simple crank, one on each side, and started cranking it to pull back the heavy cable. I could hear Bobby cursing on the other side as the stiff crank was a pain-in-the-ass to turn. With a distinct clank the wire stopped. I had to turn and immediately grab the next dart. Miguel was already at the base of the dart and I grabbed near the point. Bend the knees, keep the back straight, push with the legs and up the heavy stone dart came. We set it in the firing groove as Agatha aimed it. We all stepped back to get clear as Agatha fired again.
I spared a glance at the crab as Agatha’s shot took it in the eyes. The explosion of gore was muted by the poor light and I was thankful for that. The rush of warmth filled me again as the monsters screaming stopped, letting me know it was dead. Good to know that the warmth was kill confirmation and not leveling, there would be no being faked out by monsters. I was already cranking the wheel to rearm the scorpion. As Miguel and I sat the next dart in its groove and I spared a look at the beach I saw more of the crabs as they emerged from the sea. Nearly a score of them filled the beach, with the fishmen mobs streaming between their legs. I really hoped we had enough bolts.