Marron woke up with a jerk, his cheek stinging and his face wet. His eyes darted about in the darkness before abruptly realizing that he had fallen asleep in the office and there was a smear of ink on his cheek mixed in with his drool.
His night vision was barely good enough to make out silhouettes in the darkness and the curtains drawn over the windows blocked the moonlight though it did give the said curtains a bright silvery border. Marron made his way there, stubbed his toe on a chair and cursed out loud.
“Rotter!”
A gentle snore from behind told him he wasn’t the only one who fell asleep burning the midnight oil, but all the light sources were off and he couldn’t yet muster the focus to light them up. He limped to the curtains and flung them open, letting in enough light to allow him to actually see around the room.
Niamh was snoring on her desk, proto messenger cranes stacked by her side. She was drooling, murmuring, and grinning to herself at odd intervals, which did nothing to mask her cute button nose and her delicate cheekbones lined with strands of her midnight black hair.
Shaking his head, he could still feel the sudden disquiet that woke him up. It certainly wasn’t his dreams as he barely remembered any of it. No, there was something else niggling at him, more than what was already there, taking up most of his attention. He was just about to find his journal and record the entire episode when the blaring wail of the alarm spell startled him and jolted Niamh awake.
“Ack!” She squeaked as she fell out of her chair with a thud. “I’m awake, wait…what?”
Marron was already sprinting for his locker, letting his Animus soak into the handle. A subtle click and he pulled it open, drawing his Plasma Caster and a leather pouch, which he attached to his belt. Shouldering the rifle, he sprinted out of the office and hurried up the stairs.
“Hey, wait!” Niamh jogged after him, carrying a duffel bag, and a side-blade on her hip. “Wait up!”
Marron didn’t listen, of course. The alarm meant that it was an imminent attack and his mind cycled through all the varied causes quickly before settling on the most obvious one. It was the Wave and his father and his team failed in their attempt to curtail it. That meant they were either dead or captured. Marron pushed down his fear, letting anger cloud his mind for a moment before he pushed it away too. The fires of hate burned in him and refused his efforts, but he persevered while he climbed the steps two at a time. Eventually, the burning wrath condensed into a small nugget that he shoved into the corner of his mind.
Assumptions were fine but he had to verify. There could be other reasons for the alarm just that the invasion was the likeliest choice. Others would have been a rebellion, a raid from the south courtesy of the City-States or maybe a raid from the north courtesy of the barbarians. If it were the north, then he had another big thing to worry about.
He wrenched open the door to the mid-tower battlements. He was one of the few real marksmen in the Watchtower and, so far, he was the only one there at the moment. Focusing his Animus into his eyes, he looked out over the west.
“Fallen Sun!” he cursed again. It was the Wyldling Wave after all. Pushing thoughts of his father's fate to the back of his head, he quickly aimed with his rifle, scanning the dark line of swarmlings stampeding over the barren earth between the tower and border.
His Animus was too precious to waste on the swarmlings. The Wanderers were an obvious target but something held him back from simply shooting their brains off. He counted at least a hundred of the hulking creatures but they didn’t look like they were leading the dog-sized critters.
Something else was, and he swept his gaze looking for it.
“Marron…” Niamh finally came up to the battlements, panting and trying to catch her breath. Once she finally managed to look over to the field, she let out an oath so coarse Marron looked at her in shock. She coloured fiercely and clamped a hand over her mouth.
“What…what are we going to do?”
“Follow protocol,” Marron said emotionlessly. “Find the high-value targets and kill them. Let them break against the Watchtower’s walls. They will not make it past.”
Already, the tower was like a disturbed anthill, and the people on the courtyard certainly looked like ants from where he and Niamh stood. The west gate had slammed shut and he could see the northwest and southwest artillery towers powering up. The red light from the plasma carronades reflected on the stones.
The pale green light was eerie but it did not deter Marron. He returned to spying on the incoming horde. They were a bit less than a longstride away now and there was still no sign of anything stronger than the Wanderers.
“Time to draw them out,” he muttered.
He marked three Wanderers in his mind before he activated his Facet and fed the pattern with his Animus. He felt the rifle warm up in his hand, taking in his power and mixing it with the reservoir near the trigger. His rifle model was different from his father or Yuriko’s. His had a reservoir of green jade, a cylinder half an inch across and about three inches long, plugged into the rifle stock. It contained neutral Animus that mixed in with his.
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The resulting Plasma Bolt didn’t hold as much penetrative power as it would if it had been fed unadulterated Animus but it allowed Marron to fire three bolts for what would have cost him to create only one. Sure, it would probably take a couple of shots to be as effective but it still left him with a gain of one.
The rifle buzzed in his hands and the muzzle lit up with a purple-green glow. Marron aimed at the nearest Wanderer and pulled the trigger twice in quick succession. Two brilliant bolts of purple-green careened off his weapon and splashed against the Wanderer’s Protective Field. One splashed and cracked the field while the second punched through the crack, hitting the precisely the same point as the first bolt, piercing through the monster’s head. It collapsed an instant later.
The third shot was still in the gun’s chamber and Marron shifted his aim but he let a bit more of his Animus charge up the weapon before he fired. Two shots, one to break through the field, and another to kill.
Hsst! Hsst!
He stopped after his ninth kill. The rifle hissed as steam jetted out from the side of the barrel away from him. He would probably need to refill the coolant system with more water. A glance at the battlefield showed that the swarmlings had finally reached the walls and were trying to scramble up them.
Fwoom!
The plasma carronades spat out green orbs of superheated plasma which splashed against the swarmlings, melting a hundred or so of them to slag. The weakest Wyldlings didn’t have a field strong enough to do more than keep them alive in Rumiga, certainly not enough strength to protect them from the powerful weapons.
Militiamen lined the walls shoulder to shoulder, but the swarmlings were circling the walls and in a few minutes, they would have completely surrounded the Watchtower. The land around them was already carpeted with swarmlings. Bolts of multi-coloured plasma shot out from the battlements, taking out the Wanderers before they could jump up the walls though there were so many that some were sure to slip the net.
The door behind them opened and more marksmen and support personnel claimed their positions. Niamh held out a jade cylinder to him and he quickly replaced the spent cylinder on his rifle. With a practised motion, he added water through the collector in the rifle butt using his canteen.
“I’ll need more water,” he said quietly to Niamh. She nodded and dashed to the door. He could hear her barking orders to someone before she returned to his side. She was holding the spent cylinder by the ends, her hands glowing purple with her Animus as she transferred her reserves to it.
The swarmlings were piling up outside the walls. Marron thought they were probably stepping on each other’s heads to get up the ten pace high walls. He could only see them bunching up though.
The seemingly endless stream of swarmlings had ended, at least. The Watchtower was now surrounded by the Wyldlings for three hundred paces to each side. As he watched with mounting horror, half of the swarmlings peeled off and streamed away from the Watchtower.
“Ancestors and Chaos!” he yelled, “There’s too many of them.”
“The Gemheart,” Niamh cried, “There’s too many to be affected by its lure!”
They could do nothing while the swarmlings spread out. The plasma carronades barked and balls of plasma aimed at the fleeing swarmlings but even if each shot took a hundred of the critters, it wasn’t nearly enough to stem the tide.
“Word must be sent to Faron’s Crossing,” Marron said grimly. This Wave was bigger by an entire magnitude than anyone had expected. He hoped the defences at the town were enough, but he was suddenly beset with fear for his siblings. Two were in the town and his only sister was up north.
He aimed at the Wanderers heading in that direction. Armsmaster Byrne could kill as many swarmlings as he could reach easily but even he would have to take some time to kill Wanderers.
In the time it took to shoot as many times as his rifle could take, the swarmlings had reached the top of the walls. The Watchtower’s strength was in the low thousands, but none of the active members was anything less than Apprentice level.
He could see the varied glow of each militiaman’s Animus empowering their weapons as they quickly cut down any of the Wyldlings that popped over the wall. Marron impatiently waited for his rifle to cycle through its cool down phase. He could probably do this ten or so more times before he had to take a Dust Tonic to continue.
The night eventually gave way to dawn and the sun’s purifying rays illuminated the battlefield. The stench of the Wyldlings’ blue blood mixed with the smoke from burning bodies rose up the tower. There were a few ranged strikers in the Watchtower but most of their number was made up of destroyers. Together, their work eventually cleared the battlefield of the swarmlings.
‘A veritable fortune just waiting to be harvested,’ Marron thought sardonically. He could see some of the militiamen being carried on stretchers while others collapsed at their posts.
Marron heaved a sigh of relief. They would have to hunt down the swarmlings that fled but at least this was over. The Gemheart drew the swarmlings like flies to honey, drowning out every instinct but the need to get to the artefact. It made them dull and single-minded, exactly what was needed to take them out.
Niamh was on the floor with her back to the crenellations, breathing heavily. She had contributed much of her Animus to his shooting and her low reserves were making her lethargic. He reached down and patted her shoulder awkwardly. Niamh clutched his hand, squeezing with a death grip.
“Is it always like this?” she whispered.
“No,” Marron said, though he hadn’t fought in the last Wave as he had been too young to participate. Virgil and the other officers told a lot of stories though.
The veil above the border had returned to its usual multi-hued form after disgorging the swarmlings. Marron stared at it, hoping that his father was alive and would soon return. This time, he wouldn’t let Vice-Commander Stuart stop him from searching.
Already, several shuttles were powering up to hunt down the remaining swarmlings. Destroyers with enough Animus remaining would be sent, he was sure. That or they would be fed Dust Tonics.
He didn’t need them yet; his reserves sitting at around a third. He holstered his rifle, intending to head to the command post when a blast of wind struck them. He turned back and the veil had once again turned a pale green.
Animus focused on his eyes, seeking the border. A figure drew his eyes as it walked out of the border. Grey mist surrounded it for a few moments until the sun burned it away to reveal the shape of what appeared to be a rakishly thin man, with dusky grey skin, horns on the head, and black sclera with cat-like, slitted eyes of gold. Despite, or maybe because of, his exotic features the man was heartrendingly beautiful.
The man seemed to be staring straight at Marron and he could see his red lips smirking. The Chaos Lord, for he couldn’t be anything else, lifted his hand and pointed at the Watchtower. The veil between the Tidelands and Rumiga boiled and from it erupted a horde of swarmlings, Wanderers, and the rarely seen humanoid Hunters who almost immediately faded from sight.
The man kept his grin and the grey mist appeared around his body again. Then it faded away, and he was no longer there.
Marron’s hands trembled and he grit his teeth. He levered his Plasma Caster and aimed at one of the shadowy figures. His breathing slowed as he focused. His hands steadied.
He had a job to do.