Talia and Calisto tore through the door into wagon seven right as its driver jumped in the seat to get it moving out onto the bridge. Torval hung limp between them, the side of his face coated in drying blood, with more trickling slowly through the awkwardly applied tourniquet on what remained of his shoulder. The usually stoic chronicler—tears drawing streaks through the dust on her face—let out a hoarse croak, summoning Lazarus from where he was stripping the plate-mail off a groaning delver.
One of the vanguards from the gate.
The injured man’s side was speckled with finger-sized holes that seemed to have gone straight through his thick, black-enamelled breastplate as if it wasn’t even there. Talia winced as she heard the wheeze of a pierced lung, recognizing the clean ‘cuts’ of an arcanic resonance blast.
When the elf caught sight of the delvemaster hanging insensate in their arms, he spat out a flowery curse snapping out orders to his apprentices like a whipcrack, almost losing his balance as the wagon lurched into movement.
“Mirielle, finish that bandage job on Ila, then get this armour off Davin. If he wants to live, he will need a sealant patch of yagweed for his lung, and her splint can wait. Gregory, bring me my kit and a bone saw, then light the furnace and set a bar to heat.”
“Yes, Master,” both apprentices replied in unison.
“Set him down here,” Lazarus ordered, pointing to one of the empty cots before fixing his gaze on Calisto as they did as instructed, “Syndra, we have two options. Neither is guaranteed, and neither is good. Either way, he loses the arm.”
Calisto hiccoughed, her eyes wide and red-rimmed. She sucked in a deep shuddering breath.
“Tell me,” she croaked.
“Talia, help me strap him down, if he wakes up, we do not want him struggling,” he said, turning to his apprentice, “Gregory! Once you are done with that, get me a vial of muscera tincture.”
“Right away, Master.”
Lazarus looked back at Calisto while he applied a second tourniquet above the first, giving it a vicious tug with practiced hands. Talia kneeled silently, the chronicler’s shell shock infectious, and began tying down Torval’s chest with the provided straps, remembering all the times she’d done the same in her father’s clinic.
“Hopefully the sedative will help, but we do not have time to wait to be sure; he has lost too much blood. Now, I can take it at the armpit, and do a standard nerve seal, so he might be able to get a prosthetic. Or—and this is what I recommend—I take the whole shoulder and cauterize. The odds of him being able to get a replacement are next to zero, as the heat will damage the nerve beyond use, but he’ll have a better chance at survival.”
The healer’s words were clipped, matter-of-fact. Calisto stared at the delvemaster as if she hadn’t heard, her face pale and bloodless. Her stoic demeanour had vanished like a drop of water in a magma flow.
Were they…?
Talia’s thoughts were interrupted by the crash of stone being sprayed against the walls of the courtyard outside. Jolting to life, she gave Torval one last, long look before bolting out the door. She skipped off the eaves of the wagon right as it crossed onto the bridge, picking up speed as it began its way across.
‘Wait’ she clicked, but the driver either didn’t hear her or didn’t care to.
So much for retreating together.
Looking back into the courtyard, Talia looked over to where Darkclaw was organizing the remaining defenders. They’d been organized into what she now recognized as a standard defensive formation, with a half-score of bow-wielding defenders standing behind the same number of delvers equipped with shields, facing the ruins of the gate.
The titanic stone doors to Karzurkul had crumbled and fractured, tearing ancient gears with them as they collapsed into a pile of rubble. The gatehouse still stood; the guts of its internal mechanisms exposed for all to see, the occasional gear or bent piece of metal tumbling from on high. Here and there a black metal sheathed arm or leg stuck out from the pile of stone, the only remains of the delvers who’d held the line.
Talia winced as she spotted the sheer, blackened holes that peppered what remained of the gates that had stood for centuries. Then she cringed harder as she thought of the holes that had peppered Davin, and probably the other delvers that had defended the breach. Some part of her wondered how much of it was her own fault.
Unimportant Tals, you can fall apart later. The more important question is why we’re defending here, and not on the other side of the bridge.
Had Darkclaw forgotten the plan?
Running over, Talia thought she understood what the battlemaster had planned, but she didn’t like it. Osra kneeled behind the lines, her eyes screwed shut in concentration and her palm flat against the ground.
He wants her to buy us more time. But she won’t be strong enough.
Pulling her wand from its holster and cursing the loss of her sword, Talia lined up between the ranged fighters and the shield wall, starting to click her suggestion to Darkclaw but stuttering to a halt as the battlemaster gave her a Look and pointed to the rubble.
Is that…?
Goosing mana into her mindsense, Talia bit back a curse. They weren’t setting up within the fortress because the battlemaster wanted to buy time. They were standing their ground because if they didn’t, they’d never get across the bridge in time to blow it behind them.
The Aberrant were already here.
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‘Steady; Shields up; Hold fire’
The was an audible gasp as the first of the Aberrant sapients burst through the pile of rubble with a crash of stone and the cracking of bones. Even Talia, who’d had a strong hunch, was taken aback.
The creature looked like the skeleton of a dwarf had been seared over coals and then stretched, its chest cavity filled with black sludge and silver metal. A crest of metallic spines had been drawn in jagged streaks across its bare, scorched skull, and its right arm had been fused and melded into a crude approximation of a curved blade. Its legs had been…altered, cantering backward like the limbs of a tunnel drake or a cat, with a pair of wicked metal talons where the heel should be.
It looked to have forced its way through the remnants of the gate through sheer brute force, bits of rock caught in between exposed, shimmering tendons and in the gaps between bones. Once it was through it just…stood there. Examining them. Considering them.
‘Fire wands; half’
Talia fought the instinct to shut her eyes, stepping back into the line of ranged fighters as they flung five balls of flame at the abomination, the impact tossing it back into the rock it had just emerged from with a discordant screech.
When flame and smoke cleared, the psion felt the minds around her tighten in fear like the white knuckles clenched in death grips around the hilts and hafts of maces and swords.
The Aberrant stood, its spine somehow bidirectional, curling sickeningly back upright before its limbs followed. The sludge that filled its chest cavity steamed and bubbled, smoking globs splattering down at its taloned feet.
Then, without warning, it rushed them.
Talia flared her mindsense as the shield wall buckled under the unnaturally fast shape of the fallen dwarf. Its crescent blade bounced off a steel shield with an ear-shattering ping that left a sizable dent and threatened to send the receiving beastkin to her knees.
‘More; Incoming’ she called, right as Darkclaw gave the order for the ranged line to switch to bows and crossbows.
If fire doesn’t work, then maybe—
Flicking through the activators on the Infiniwand, Talia gasped at what felt like a gut punch as the artefact tore mana from her core, ripping a full third of what she had left to fuel the function she’d chosen. For split second, she worried she’d made a mistake.
Reggie did say to be careful—
The incandescent bolt of electricity zipped across the intervening space, a stray arc snaking down to shock the defender whose shoulder she’d shot over and making her yelp in pain before streaking toward Talia’s true target faster than the eye could see.
The Aberrant dwarf-skeleton-thing was springing back for another charge when it hit.
It seized mid-step, falling over and convulsing erratically, limbs flailing around, bending in impossible directions as the current ran over it like maggots through a days-old carcass.
—around metal… Holy shit.
Even as another pair of bipedal Aberrants tore their way through the rubble to join the fight, Darkclaw seized the opportunity presented by Talia’s attack to swoop in and ram at the incapacitated monstrosity with his battleaxe. The battlemaster chopped the still-twitching enemy to bits while arrows flew to meet the new arrivals, leaving the first attacker as a pile of sparking metal bones and smoking sludge before moving back behind the lines.
‘Again Arcanist; question’
Talia shook her head in amazement.
‘Two more’ she replied, hoping he’d understand what she was saying.
‘Acknowledged; Hold fire’
It didn’t escape Talia’s notice that the leather wrap on the haft of Darkclaw’s axe was smoking.
Reggie wasn’t fuckin joking.
The sequence of runes was one she’d just learned when—
Not the time, Tals!
The duo of bipedal Aberrant was joined by a third, the path through the rubble becoming more and more passable. Just like the first, they stood stock still, tilting their spined necks in eerie synchronicity and examining the formation lined up before them, their empty eye-sockets tilting down to glance at their fallen comrade.
Is it just me or…
The corrupted sapients seemed to stare at her specifically, though without eyes to track it was hard to be sure.
A fresh pair of arrows and a thick crossbow bolt thunking home in their still forms was what sprung them into action, sending them racing across the intervening space to clash against the shield wall right in front of Talia.
The arcanist flinched as they smashed against the shield of the beastkin she’d shocked, forgoing strikes in favour of pulling at the defensive armament, seemingly to get at her. Luckily, Darkclaw reacted immediately, calling for the formation to tighten, collapsing in on itself with her at the center behind a wobbly ‘u’ shape, allowing defenders to get hits in on the single-minded attackers.
Talia’s hand clenched and loosened nervously around her wand, waiting for an opportunity to get in on the fight, but the Aberrant were too close, with more following close behind. Soon enough the line was crumpling beneath the concerted onslaught of nine corrupted sapients, with the final two crawling their way through the rubble.
Reaatcheeeeee
The flint-on-steel warble of the magmamander announced that the next Aberrant that made its way through the ruined gate would be beyond their ability to fight, its ponderous footsteps causing tremors on the ground. Cracks snacked through the walls of the gatehouse, sending more bits of rock tumbling into the gap.
Talia examined Osra’s thoughts with her mindsense, finding the girl in the midst of fighting the agony of manaburn.
C’mon Osra, you can do this—
The battle had its first casualty, a delver ahead and to Talia’s right getting torn from the formation and trampled. Wicked talons puncturing his breastplate while the psion could do nothing but watch, unwilling to risk her electric burst with so much metal near.
“AAAAAARGGGHHHH—” Osra screamed from behind them, her hoarse shout breaking off into a whimper that Talia barely heard over unholy screeching and the sound of metal on metal.
CRACKKAA—
All at once, the arcanist reacted, taking advantage of Darkclaw’s call for disengagement to send a hastily shaped blast of telekinetic force careening into the ranks of the Aberrant, sending them tumbling back into the gap. Unwilling to leave things to chance, she drained the rest of her mana into the Infiniwand, shooting off a bolt of white fury into the squirming, shrieking mass of horrors.
Right as the gatehouse fell.
BOoOM
A wave of dust and debris swept past them, the formation of defenders already breaking apart under Darkclaw’s orders to retreat. Delvers pickup up injured friends and ran with all they could toward the bridge, seizing the chance to make it across before the magmamander could get through the new blockage.
Talia stumbled through the dust, frantically searching with her mindsense until she found Osra’s collapsed form, the mage forgotten in the chaos and rush to get to the bridge. With strength she wasn’t aware she had in her, the arcanist slung the other girl’s unconscious form over her shoulder and made a break for it.
Behind her, the sound of the magmamander’s titanic steps had stopped, but Talia could still feel it seething in her mindsense, her psionics shying away from the sheer otherness of the monster’s twisted sentience.
Then the world shook, nearly sending her to the ground. Bits of pulverized rock and shorn metal flew past her, as the creature rammed itself into the barrier in its way.
REAAAAAATCHWWWIRRRRRR
When the tremor hit, this time Talia was ready for it, taking it in stride as she stepped onto the bridge and out of the cloud of dust. She made a beeline for the middle of the bridge where the explosive waited, not even daring to look back.
C’mon Tals, just a little more. One last stretch and then we’re home free.
BOOOOM-CRACK-THUD
The magmamander shrieked in victory as it finally broke through, its pursuit feeling like it shook the very foundations of the Under with every step.