The man had not lied, the Crusade really did come all at once. The efficacy of war magic had redefined the concept of war, armies wouldn't bunch up in tight ranks very commonly. Kul and the orcs had refused to stand with the formation for that very same reason, a force trained and experienced in fighting humans and their tricky magics.
Bursting from the flanks and operating in a similar capacity to archer cavalry in widespread independent units, with bows capable of blowing a man off their feet and easily piercing common plate. Running a looping circle that progressively harassed the crusaders in a bid to whittle down their mounted elements, the orcs slayed as they were so known for.
But they were like gnats before a hurricane, reaping their toll and engaging in a fighting retreat as they had in the past. Barely whittling at the first rank.
They all stared, baring teeth and blades, expecting some epic clash of slamming shields and piled corpses. The horns blared, the men roared their victory cries, sprinting down the edge of the crater with their banners whipping in the wind. A tidal wave of bodies to come crashing down on them, come to wash away a city.
“Everybody stay inside the disruption array!” Brenn cried out, surrounded by a great ward of blazing gold, dropping his voice to whisper to Astrid, “I feel like I'm going to vomit at any moment... I don't know how long I can keep this up...”
“Pop. That. Is. What. She. Said. Pop.”
Brenn whipped his head around, looking for that bizarre gurgling voice, but couldn't see anything – and Astrid clearly hadn't spoken. Her eyes were filled with wild energy, staring down at the host charging them, their cavalry choosing to ignore the orcs, drilling straight toward their front.
“Pikes!” Astrid called, the first rank took a knee, while the second crouched, the others behind extending the long bladed poles through the gaps in the formation. A forest of spikes designed to stop a cavalry charge, back before warhorses were typically equipped with displacement and shock arrays on their armor, that is. All down the line the command was repeated, the orcs dashing around their rear with their long loping strides and preparing to come around in yet another a flanking maneuver,
As Raddick had claimed, they'd sent the crusaders forward in concentric waves, a half circle of around eight ranks with a dozen meters between whatever constituted as their legions. Very little in the way of a proper legion strategy, mages and archers between each line preparing to bombard them.
“They're within range, sir!” Someone shouted.
“Artillery!” Tiber shouted, standing tall and raising an arm, the sky painted all colors of light as arcing spells and emissions from the mana towers atop the walls began digging into the enemy. Blowing the cavalry apart and sending the rest wheeling about for a re-engagement, how idiotic this scheme of theirs was...
“We're going!” Sigi barked, joined by Alex and others, a wedge of mostly battlemages, with the black sleet of arrows being slapped out of the air by defensive wards. Jura on the right, with her trumpeting terrormaw smashing its tail into the ground, and on the left was Raddick with his lion and mounted brethren looping their hammers silent and baleful, and at the center of it all was Iscari followed by the rest in a tight grouping.
Designed to cut off the head of the snake, forge deep before retreating and throw the frontal ranks into a panic where mages could pick them off at long range.
It's odd how quiet such a loud thing as war could be in that final moment, right before the lines clashed, close enough to see their blades twinkling in the late afternoon sun. How angry and righteous those crusaders looked when facing off against their brethren faithful that had chosen the side of the underdog. Hundreds of personal spells barked through the air, Iscari could feel his hair rising in tandem with the white tendrils of lightning wreathed in violet Alex was letting loose with.
Men died, by their score they died, roasted to charred husks and yet they still charged, rank by rank towards they deaths. Without fear, regret, they simply screamed and ran roughshod into it.
A spray of water shot from cracked earth as Sigi made herself know, the ignition of mines all over the field and the screaming men they left behind with limbs missing. Iscari couldn't hear any of it, just the thumping of her heart and the sound of her breath. And then, all at once, the noise came with all the tyrannical force of thousands of men attempted to murder one another.
They met, the first rank slammed into their own, Brenn saw Jura's mighty terrormaw leap skyward with a bellow, whipping its tail through the air to propel itself downward into pulping dozens of men with every swing. Stomping, it rose, up and down it bucked to maul dozens of men, mulching them before its massive, clawed feet.
Kirk was made into a living battering ram by Camilla's enchantments as she rode him, a rapid chattering and a sound like bending steel and popping rivets as he slammed into men and mounts alike, claws wreathed in lightning and fire, blowing men apart with every swing.
They didn't stop, those crusaders lost in the red madness of their minds, bodily flinging themselves into the buckler of a very confused Brenn. They weren't fighting like humans, more like... Beasts... But he didn't have much time to think about that either, swamped from every direction as they rattled all manner of implements against his armor. Swinging his own with a roar of regret, each touch of hammer to breastplate they crumpled, his strength enough to cast them skyward – a raging bull.
My heart is gold but my hammer is cold, he repeated this in his head, reasserting that though he must kill, he was yet righteous. In faith this had to be true.
No form to it... Shields and hammers and spears all mixed up alongside axes, no regiment to the composition of their individual units. It was a motley horde of little skill or power, and thus he was further confused.
Brenn ducked a return blow, feeling it whistling toward his helmet, rattling his bascinet against the head of a helmetless man and sending him screeching to the ground. The only one of them he could see with any clarity in the chaos was Iscari, resplendent in his red plate and effortlessly slaughtering dozens of men with every lightning quick swing of his spear. No stabbing for him, strength alone was enough to cleave men in half and send the rest flying with tremendous force.
One hundred meters ahead of the main body of the army, still letting loose with spells and return fire of mana engines, while absolutely none of the enemy thought to do the same. Astrid sighted a robed mage in their ranks, cocking a brow as he tried to stab her with a metallic focusing rod, raising her leg in a hammer kick and squashing him flat. A mage, as in someone capable of using magic, trying to stab her with a device designed specifically to conduct it.
Certainly a unique approach, she mused.
“Bastion!” Brenn rolled again to his side, narrowly avoiding the wild charge of a horse, a one armed man still intent to gore him on the head of his lance. A lance that would've shattered on his iron body and armor regardless, but still he behaved as though a typical, mortal man, a great shield coming free of his open hand and stopping the next, too confident knight. “Something is wrong, we should disengage! This is a trap!”
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“Disengage?” Astrid laughed. “But I'm having so much fun!” She made an attempt to charge off into the mess and away from everyone else, but Sigi managed to catch her by the back of her collar and restrain her for the time being.
“Something is wrong,” Sigi growled. “Look,” To make her point, she stomped several spikes out of the ground, allowing them to watch as the crusaders skewered and spit themselves on the bladed stone. “This is forbidden magic. Mind control or a rage enchantment, I'm not really sure what's happening, but this is bad.”
Brenn grunted, again piled on by the crusaders under the yoke of whatever had been done to them, thus far he'd tried to focus on merely disabling them. Breaking legs and giving them an opportunity to live by slapping them about, he didn't want to kill anyone. Not much they could do with all of their limbs broken, and it wasn't like they were particularly able...
The hooked end of a warhammer caught as though it were swung by a child, he'd been terrified of first falling into this mess of theirs... But pain was worth knowing that he was on the right side, Her side. However... They truly were weak, and he just stood there letting all manner of attacks rain down on him. Nothing... He had no need to even move, lazily slapping them unconscious with a confusing collection of emotion rattling in his head.
So different from the others who slaughters, and there was a righteous aspect of war, even though he soured in the observation of it.
“Won't this just make it easier for us, though?” Micah was dressed appropriately this time, in his suit of armor, still having trouble walking after his injury and whatever else had occurred to him. But he could gate around freely now, using the opportunity to catch what projectiles he could with his magic and send it right back at the enemy. All arrows, only a handful of crusaders were bothering with using magic and it was nothing they couldn't handle. “They aren't even casting back at us...?”
“Well...” Alex pointed, her expression obscured under that dual layer of helm and bandage. “Wards!”
And so the trap was revealed, as none of them had expected the churches to so flagrantly break the law.
On the hill were dozens of carriage sized metal frames fit with long spires, a crystal on the end of some and a barrel on others. Akin to cannons, back when armies had used black powder, the obvious difference being that they were essentially massive foci used by 3-5 mages who would all pour their energy into one device or another. And in this moment, they were all without exception leveled to point below the lip and directly at their own army.
“Wards! Wards! Wards!” Alex repeated as loudly and often as she could, Sigi was violently digging a hole in the ground and throwing paladins and her friends into it alike. In unison, they all slapped the discs on their belt, calling out all manner of warding and shield spells to defend against the incoming assault. Huddled beneath a layer of earth, water, arcane barriers, and their own manaskin made dense until it was difficult to so much as move a finger.
“This is illegal!” Micah shouted, “Can they do that!?”
Brenn could smell their sweat. A tangy, salty scent mixed with the sick that had suddenly come from Micah, all buried down here in a tight pile of bodies beneath the earth, but nobody complained. It was either that or all be wiped away. The use of mana engines directly on men was a violation of the Kriegstad Accords, and to think they'd them on their own army...? It was... shocking, to say the least.
And so it came.
The ground split and rattled, the heat of molten earth until that wall of conjured stone they'd thrown up began to buckle, becoming cherry red and hissing.
“Hang on!” Sigi roared, releasing her mana barrier and feeling the moisture on her face vaporize under the firestorm. She burned, but though they done so much to protect themselves, it wasn't enough.
“Sigi!”
There was only one thing to do, mana engines rarely hammered the ground. She screamed, howling against the agony scarring at her neck and face, extending her hands and clapping them together. Astrid did the same, though taking a wiser approach in keeping her face helmeted and not pointed up at the rapidly melting ceiling, joined by Lina. Their place in the earth had been made a kiln, and very rapidly they would perish unless something was done.
One to aid in keeping Sigi alive while the woman tried to stare down the combined might of a dozen mana engines capable of cracking cities, the other to rotate her water magic against Sigi's own in an attempt to cool it before they all became the world's worst crab boil.
Like some sort of fire safety squad, they sprayed the roof with as much water as they could, pushing the rest of it into the earth to bathe them in a protective layer of cracked mud. They might drown, but it was better than being burnt alive. They hoped...
–
They weren't sure how much time had past, the quaking had knocked many unconscious and using so much mana had done the rest.
“She's still out, but alive.” Brenn and Astrid alike loomed over Sigi, her face was quite a mess but it wasn't anything that couldn't be fixed given time, several droplets of molten earth had burned right through her cheeks and left long scars near her eyes, revealing more of her skull than he'd like. “They'll find us down here eventually.”
Sigi had, in sacrifice, saved them all.
“Somehow I doubt that,” Alex leaned exhausted against the wall of their artificial cavern, it was still hot enough to make the sweltering humidity incredibly uncomfortable. There were just shy of a hundred people down here and she didn't recognize most of them. Fortunately, those who'd been dragged down here by Sigi had the good sense to poke through the mud and bash the skull of any crusaders who had snuck their way in. “That emission was not a direct hit, otherwise we would've been dead, we're able but not that able.” She sad, frowning.
“How do you mean?” Micah asked.
“I mean, very obviously, they were shooting at something else – and the amount of mana those things were throwing off should've been a oneshot. As in they destroyed their own machines for whatever reason, overloading them...”
“...They weren't aiming at us...” Micah came to a dawning sort of horror.
“To shoot at their own army...?” Brenn squinted, making a realization in that moment, one that would explain Alex's hard glare. Iscari. Iscari had been the target, far ahead of the others courtesy of his ridiculous ability. “Oh no...”
–
Give it to me.
I will not surrender control of my body to anyone again, you should know that.
Father is too skeptical, he is a broken thing, you have given too much to the children and now they require guidance. I cannot speak to them all at once without your mouth, they will only obey you now, in this individualism you've given us.
Tyr hadn't been idle in his time in the dark place, at the core of that beating heart, as soon as he'd given them all 'selves' the first thing they'd done is start slaughtering everything around them. A mockery of sapience, to no longer simply feed when necessary but to proactively eliminate threats, they were gluttonous with it. But they obeyed his 'laws', whatever they claimed that they'd heard directly from his lips in the past, an order he did not remember giving. He communed with the swarm, and in new life he commanded them, but allowed them the freedom they were due.
So he set forth for them a new collection of laws, shaped and refined their minds yet further with the help of that man who'd come to drag him off his feet a hundred times or more. Never letting him give up, in this place that was so anathema to every ounce of his being, going far beyond something mundane like spira or mana, this alien environment had rejected him. There were gods down here and they did not want him to sully their kingdom with his light. Old things, and not of the earth, they came from somewhere else – the slumbering kingdom beyond the veil.
“What should I do?” Tyr asked the man leaning there on his staff, a large man with no mystery to his identity. Deep brown skin, an ageless handsomeness, and bright blue-gray eyes, a silver six pointed sigil emblazoned on his forehead. He wasn't much of a talker, that man, but he'd helped Tyr a great deal, instructing him in how to turn the threads of anima in just the right way until he'd created something even Solomon could never have. A new lifeform, one the world accepted, things with hopes and dreams and souls. But it came at a cost, that cost being Tyr, and now he was stuck here.
No body, nothing resembling a human, he had taken the heart unto himself and the heart had done the same. Because Tyr had to eliminate his current self from causality so as to ensure that nightmare wrought of his own attempt to control destiny did not come to pass.
“Die,” Solomon replied softly. A man who'd lived a longer life than any Primus, watching and waiting for the right time to make himself known. “Fall as we always have and show them the words on your page. Ravage kingdoms, cast down the false idols and bring balance to the world – excise the degeneracy that rots away at the heart of nim and remind them of what it means to know true law.”
“Will you help me?” Surely Solomon could, the most powerful mage to ever exist, but against all expectations the man shook his head. “Why?”
“Because I am you.”