Geron
Geron’s world had become blood, steel, and screams.
It had taken a lot to get to this point. Some would say fortune had smiled on them, but Geron believed that planning and the skill of execution had been a much more vital factor in their successful ambush.
The markers on their path guiding them to their destination.
The intel over the enemy patrol routes, paired with the ruthless assaults of the knights.
The tireless advance of the soldiers no matter the darkness or exhaustion.
They all felt exhausted from an entire night of marching. Mana did much to alleviate its toll, and no one was holding back. It was no use conserving mana; this fight would be over within the hour, one way or another.
All those acts of skill and determination had brought Geron into the middle of the speartip. Thirty knights, the might of the Houses Rowan and Grim, backed by the elites of their respective men-at-arms.
It had been a slaughter from the moment they had left the darkness. The guards were first prevented from raising the alarm by well-placed arrows and then trampled into the dirt by armored boots.
Their objective was simple, charge and fight. Don’t stop for anything until you reach the target, and the target is the enemy command tent.
They would cut their way straight into the middle of the enemy camp, splitting them apart and killing as many leaders as possible.
However, the tactics didn’t matter much right now as blood and screams were all that mattered.
Geron was near the front of the assault, Lord Grim to his left and Zeke to his right. The enemy resistance was disjointed for now, with small groups of inexperienced warriors charging them and being cut down in a spray of blood.
The more experienced enemies were pulling back from them, probably gathering into a larger force further inside of the camp. Geron hadn’t noticed any oathbound on a knight’s level yet, but mages were prevalent.
Fireballs, wind blades, and vines erupting from the ground were the most common forms of magical attacks that the wall of knights had to face. It would have slowed them down to a crawl if they had to face all that alone.
Kiran and Pan were running right behind the first line of knights. The two mages had become a deluge of mana as they labored to keep the formation from being disrupted by enemy spell attacks.
Geron had mostly managed to ignore these attacks, fully trusting in their support to take care of them while the knights advanced. It was risky but if you couldn’t trust the man beside you to do their job then the war was lost from the start.
Another greenhorn warrior threw himself into the way of the knights. He might have been imagining himself heroically sacrificing himself to stall the kingdom’s attack, but reality was seldom so forthcoming.
Geron’s sword cut through the youngster’s ax with frightening ease and split the man open from shoulder to his stomach. The difference in strength and equipment was too vast.
He didn’t even pay the man a moment of attention more as he simply stepped over him, trusting someone behind him to finish the lad off if needed.
Lord Grim next to him was a sight to behold. His sword danced as he dissected anyone foolish enough to step in front of him. A wicked smile was on his face as his aura surged out to put three men off balance. They would never manage to regain it.
Killing was easy right now, but it wouldn’t be for much longer as a wall of shields formed a few dozen meters in front of them.
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Michael
The magical circle hummed between his hands as Michael gathered the light of a dozen torches all around him. He was at the edge of the camp, far away from any combat currently raging but still close enough to hear it all.
Michael wanted to be fighting at the front too, but he had relinquished the overall command of this mission to his uncle due to his much greater command experience and now he couldn’t complain about the position he had been given.
He would have complained nonetheless if the task he had been given wasn’t important and he was the only one who could accomplish it.
And so, he stood at the edge of the camp between the torches and slowly pulled in more and more light while simultaneously pouring more and more of his massive mana reserves into the sigil between his hands.
It wasn’t an overly complex spell, quite the contrary really but to get the desired effect it needed a wagonload of mana. It suited him quite well. He had a lot of mana but didn’t consider himself to be overly talented in complex magic.
“How is the situation?” Michael asked while still concentrating on maintaining the increasing load of mana.
“The charge seems to still be ongoing; they have not signaled us to activate the spell early. The envelopment seems to be going well. The flanks are holding for now as expected and the outriders should be in position near the western escape path, we left open,” Lance explained. He and Erhen had been left behind with Michael to act as guards but also to serve as a response force together with the count if the enemy threatened to break through any part of their envelopment.
Michael wondered if Lance was unhappy with his assignment. Erhen surely wasn’t but Lance was much more ambitious than the archer. He shook those thoughts off quickly when he felt his mana quiver with his lack of concentration.
“Always leave the enemy an avenue to escape or they might fight to the death,” his uncle had said. And due to them being nearly two-to-one outnumbered it would be an ugly affair if they couldn’t make at least parts of the Rangda army rout.
“Alright, keep me updated,” Michael said and refocused on his spell.
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Kiran
Another wall of fire came rolling down the main path toward them. Kiran had already felt it coming so his response was immediate. Two spears of compressed water shot out to the base of the wall, exploding on impact and scattering the flames upward where they petered out without any fuel to keep them going.
It was all but an afterthought as he turned his attention back toward the atmospheric mana the moment the wall had collapsed.
He was burning through his reserves quickly, even while trying to be as minimalistic in his responses as possible. It was the price that two mages had to pay when trying to contest multiple times their numbers.
Fortunately for them, defensive actions were generally less mana-hungry than spells designed to pierce armor and harm-enhanced flesh. It did mean that they couldn’t realistically aid the advance in any other form as they approached a shield wall barring their path while concentrating on defense.
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“Pan, I am taking over. Prepare a covert disruption spell for the shield wall. A small breach should be enough,” Kiran ordered the satyr mage next to him. She nodded frantically with eyes wide.
He couldn’t blame her, it was her first battle, and not only that but as far as he knew her first bigger confrontation in total. Kiran couldn’t do anything but hope that she could take it. He wouldn’t trust her to defend the knights alone, so she had to do the disruption.
Kiran could feel a small tinge of a ripple in the atmospheric mana coming from her. No one would be able to feel such a small spell coming from farther away between the large waves that the fighting created in the mana-charged air.
Air magic always had an advantage against others when it came to offensive magic due to its mostly invisible nature, which made it perfect for battlefield disruption.
He couldn't pay her any more attention though. There were at least five different mages throwing attack spells at the knights right now and they were not some useless street magicians. Even though Rangda druids were more spiritual leaders and healers than they were battle mages they were well-trained, nonetheless.
With a flick of his wrist, he reorganized one of his sigils, and the water whip shot to the side cleaving another fireball in half. The remnants showered down on the empty ground between the advancing knights and the shield wall, drenching the whole fight in an eerie light.
He nearly missed another attack approaching from beneath the ground. The sigil in his other hand burst into life as the symbols rearranged themselves before Kiran threw it at the ground.
No one could see the effect, but Kiran knew that the spell would seek out the vines and drain them of moisture before they could reach their targets.
The next thing that approached was an invisible blade of air. Water was ill-suited to stopping air-based attacks, but he had little choice but to try.
I just wish I hadn’t deemed anti-magic to be unnecessary, he thought. If Rayakan were here, then she could probably stop all of them in their tracks while simultaneously throwing fire back.
He banished those thoughts. They were useless and only distracted him from the dance that was magical battles.
Luckily for him, he didn’t even need to stop the wind attack as it was met and cleaved apart by a mana blade fired off by Lord Grim. The attack had probably not been intended for the wind blade as it traveled on to break on the shield wall, leaving a large gash on it.
Just a couple more steps, Kiran thought.
A barely visible ball of mana flew past the front line of knights and toward the Rangda shields. Warning shouts rose from the mages inside their ranks, but it was too late. The warriors in the middle of the formation got hit by the expanding sphere of air and a gap opened up in the shield wall. It wasn’t large, the enemy mages had noticed the sudden attack and tried to counter it, but it was large enough and in front of the strongest man on the battlefield.
Lord Grim jumped into the small gap and just as he passed the shields his aura expanded violently. More shouts followed as men were pressed into each other from the sudden pressure and the gap widened.
The knights arrived a moment later. The gap, the disrupted bracing, and the magical weapons cutting through mundane arms and armor spilled a quick end to the attempt to halt the kingdom’s advance.
Something felt wrong, where were their oathbound?
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Samuel
“Three paces!” Samuel yelled and pushed his shield forward. The men to his left and right did the same as they took step after step while ramming their spears forward.
The barbarians buckled under the pressure and forfeited another three steps.
“Brace!” he yelled and reset his feet. The barbarians charged again, it was disjoined and without formation, an act of desperation and confusion.
Most of them were unarmored but they were still fierce.
“Lose!” Samuel could hear Richard yell behind him. Another volley of arrows sailed over their heads into the camp behind the enemy mass. Many of the arrows got caught in the trees but many more found their targets. The screams of the unlucky added themselves to the noise of battle and the sound of burning tents.
Chaos. That was the main objective of the volleys and also the torches being thrown far into the barbarian camp.
And Chaos they sowed. Alone or in small groups enemies emerged from the ruins of their camp. Some were brave or foolish enough to charge the line alone but most first gathered into groups to try their luck but with the chaos sowed it was the Telios soldiers who reaped.
Their advance had been slow, just a couple of steps at a time. There was no reason to hurry after all. The soldiers of the envelopment weren’t supposed to be a hammer swinging hard and fast at the enemy. They were the anvil, a hard and unmoving surface for the enemy to shatter upon.
That was their purpose, and Samuel would see it done.
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Freya
“Wake up! Wake the fuck up!” Someone was shaking Freya and screaming in her ears. Her eyes snapped open, and she shot up, reaching for her dagger.
Samira was kneeling next to her with wide eyes and a red face.
“Finally. We are being attacked; we need to meet up with the others!” Samira yelled over the noise coming from outside.
Freya grabbed her thrumming head but managed to force herself on her feet. “What is happening?” she asked acting confused.
“I don’t know but arrows are raining from the sky, and half the camp is going up in flames, so you figure it out!”
So, they haven’t been warned?
Freya’s thoughts went to Eydis, where was she? The sky outside was still dark so it couldn’t have been more than half an hour since she got knocked out. The attack had happened and the Rangda were running around like headless chickens, so everything was going to plan, right?
She could leave. Without any idea where Eydis had gone, her mission was not achievable, so her own survival was the next logical objective.
Freya watched as Samira threw over a well-worn chain shirt and outside were multiple clan members running around screaming for gear.
“If you wake up before I return then get them out,” Eydis had said before she knocked Freya out. She wouldn’t have said that if she was gonna betray them, right? Who would ask their enemy to save their friends?
“Dammit, Eydis. You actually want it both ways,” she mumbled and then sprang into action.
“We need to get the others and then get out of here,” she said.
“What are you talking about?” Samira asked her with wide-eyed confusion.
“We got betrayed. Eydis went to the command tent to warn them and send me here, but I got knocked over the head before I could wake you. Ah fuck, my head. It was a trap all along to wipe us out. The whole Telios army is barreling down on us. We need to get out,” she began lying through her teeth.
Sure, it could be suspicious that she just asked what was happening and now knew about a plot, but she could always just point to confusion from being hit on the head.
“What? Who would betray us?” Samira began to look terrified as her mind began to weave Freya’s lies into her reality.
“Do you really want me to tell you the whole story about how we found out or do you want to save your clan?” Freya put the woman on the spot.
She fell quiet as her brain visibly worked to make a decision. It was her one chance, if she decided to not believe Freya then Freya would leave them behind without a second thought.
“Okay, I trust you. Let’s gather the others and get out,” Samira finally said.
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Michael
The magic was positively writhing in between his fingers. It was unstable, too much mana was pressed into the spell. He had to lay the same sigil multiple times to make sure that it didn’t break apart.
Two-thirds of his entire mana pool was gathered in this orb of light. Normally no one in their right mind would put that much mana into a single spell but with enough time and patience, it was possible.
“Lance, how much longer?” Michael’s voice was quivering under the strain.
The knight looked at two guardsmen who were standing with them.
“Thirty seconds,” said the first and the other one confirmed his count.
“Alright, get ready,” Michael huffed and returned his entire attention to the near-uncontrollable spell.
“Give the signal once ten seconds are left,” Lance ordered and a man with a horn nodded.
Michael didn’t hear that anymore. He was too engrossed in the mana. Its whirling and straining against his control. Mana didn’t like pressure differences, it always tried to balance out and the pressure difference between the orb and the surrounding air was massive.
“Ten,” the two counting guardsmen said in unison and a moment later a clear horn echoed over the battlefield.
Michael heard the horn and tensed up as the mana screamed bloody murder in his mind.
I can’t do it; he thought when suddenly a presence pressed against him like a man behind him bracing him in a shield wall.
Michael knew that presence, but he had no time to acknowledge Thomas’s assistance.
“Three.”
I need to hold it. We will hold
“Two.”
A leak. They bore down with the full might of their mind to stop it before it could even get started.
“One.”
The last second felt like an eternity but Michael felt sure of their combined might.
“Mark.”
Michael unleashed the ball of light into the air. It rose to the sky slowly, weighed down by the ethereal weight of its power. He could see it start to come apart the moment it left his grasp but that didn’t matter anymore.
Michael collapsed on his knees, finally free of the oppressive strain. He wanted to look up to see his creation but his mind was totally numb for a few moments
He knew one thing though; morning was about to come.