"Sometimes, in the heat of battle, you just kinda lose sight of everything else around you, and all you got left in your mind is to kill the guy or gal you're fighting against. It happens a lot, but sometimes, it happens to a lot of people at once.
When that happens? Forget strategy. Forget tactics. All you got, and all you need, is just to kill." - Fargrim Obderhoede, retired veteran mercenary, formerly of Barnaby's Brewers.
When the three remaining gates fell, one by one, Reinhardt could feel the change in the air. It suddenly felt more stifling for some reason, foreboding, even. As if something bad was about to take place soon after.
His hunch proved correct when not five minutes later, explosions happened at several places along the four walls, and he even saw a couple mangled dwarves - their survival unknown - thrown off the walls by the explosions in question.
Right around then, he heard a shout of alarm from Elfriede. He quickly dispatched his opponent with a swift strike to the neck, then kicked the body towards the rushing crowd behind, before he turned to look in his wife's direction.
He saw one of the zealots - a younger woman, which was rather rare, since most of the enemies he had faced the past few days were middle-aged or older - trying to throw a vial with transparent liquid inside to the ground.
Elfriede would have none of that, however, and before the woman could throw the vial down, her wrist was severed by one of Elfriede's blades, while her second blade opened the woman's throat up.
Reinhardt noticed how his wife caught the falling vial - severed hand still clutching to it - with one foot, and tossed it back up where she caught it with her right hand without releasing her blade.
Then Elfriede hurled the vial towards the crowd, far away from where they held the line against the zealots.
A sudden, loud explosion ensued around where she threw the vial. The blast killed several of the zealots closest to it, and injured many others. Both the zealots in front and behind the blast paused for a moment in surprise at the unexpected blow.
Reinhardt gestured for the second group of fighters to take over, and Grünhildr smiled at him as she passed him by in their lead, pushing back the surprised zealots halfway through the gate.
He himself went to Elfriede, as clearly she knew more than him what was up just now with the explosion.
"That was Dragonfire Brew," stated Elfriede without preamble once Reinhardt and Mischka approached close to her. "A goblin concoction. Very volatile, and reacts explosively to most anything that's not air or specially treated glass."
"Where in the ten hells do they get shit like that!?" barked Mischka in question. The therian matron looked genuinely baffled at the idea of the human supremacist Holy Kingdom having a stock of explosive goblin concoctions. "I thought those cocksuckers don't touch anything not human-made?"
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
"The gobbos didn't exactly keep the recipe a secret. You know how they are. Most any alchemist worth their salt would know how to make some… though few would be crazy enough to actually use the damned thing," replied Elfriede in turn. "I should've guessed the bloody lunatics would've used it this way. What would be a more reliable delivery method than a believer willing to die to carry it where it'd have the most effect?"
"Good point. Nicole, get the rest of your team and share this info with the rest," said Reinhardt after a mere moment of pondering. Then he turned towards Mischka. "I assume you'll brief your son and the third team about this yourself?"
"I'll let Yuri know, yea. This sort of bullshit isn't what we're trained for," replied the towering therian matron with an annoyed huff. Her son-in-law Yuri headed the third team of combatants, as he was her second-in-command for the family unit. "Won't the second team need to be told as well though?"
"Nah, we'll brief them when they rotate out," said Reinhardt as he turned to look at the second team, which had almost pushed the enemy force out of the gate. "Grün ain't gonna give them a chance to even pull that shit on her."
Within the narrow confines of the gate, Grünhildr, as a void mage, proved overwhelmingly lethal as she led from the front and massacred everything before her. Any enemy that entered the range of her axes found themselves missing body parts moments later, and her ferocity alone had pushed the enemy far back.
The blades of her axes were covered by a thin sheen of void magic, which extended the blade in both directions. Grünhildr wasn't a strong mage, so coating her blades and then some were the most she could do, but even that was plenty.
Where the sheer nothingness of the void passed, none remained. The void-coated blades cut sharper and smoother than even the sharpest of surgical knives. Limbs and torsos were severed as easily as a hot knife slicing through butter.
Grünhildr herself played it smart. She remained at around three-quarters into the gate, and stood her ground there. That way her enemies were forced to engage her within the narrow confines of the gate, and also had horrible lines of sight to use ranged weapons.
In a sight none of the other fronts had seen, the frontmost line of the zealots actually wavered before her. They only went forward because they were pushed ahead by those behind them. Needless to say, the ones behind soon became the front, and they found out the hard way why their comrades had been so hesitant in going forward.
After an hour of slaughter and playing deterrence, Grünhildr and her group withdrew to the back. The zealots charged in after them, but found themselves on the receiving end of a counter-charge of a good twenty burly orcs, dwarves, and therians the instant they cleared the gate. Yuri and his third group took over for Grünhildr's second group.
Led by the massive elephant-therian man, who was even taller and larger than his mother-in-law, the third group crushed the zealot wave between their charges. Yuri's own massive tower shield, as wide and tall as the man himself, bashed people as the warhammer he wielded in his other hand struck in tandem with the metal cudgel he wielded with his trunk.
Niko, Mischka's second son and Yuri's husband led the other hand of the group. He was only a tad smaller than his imposing mother, and wielded a tower shield much like his paramour, with a massive cleaver-like blade in his other hand.
Under their cover, Grünhildr's group had little issue disengaging and withdrawing from the front.
"The fuck!? You could've told me that before I went there and chopped those fuckers up!" complained Grünhildr as Reinhardt and Elfriede explained about the explosive vials to her. Even then, they could hear an explosion going off from time to time, but not many. It seemed that either the zealots didn't have that many vials with them, or the forewarned defenders succeeded in cutting off most suicidal attempts.
"Well, we did learn of it after you went and chopped them up," dithered Reinhardt to a chuckle from his wife. "And besides, we figured they'd be too busy being scared shitless to try that shit on you anyway."
"...... Fair point," admitted the brusque woman as she plopped down and laid on her back besides the couple. As deadly as she was in combat, her stamina was by no means unending, and an hour of intense combat was tiring, no matter how one cut it. The brawny woman was also bleeding from a few cuts on her body. Fatigue was the main reason they had three groups in rotation to hold the gate.
"So what do we do to deal with this shit?" She asked as she gulped down a whole waterskin to quench her thirst. "Just keep chopping them up to the point that they never get a chance to blow their own asses up?"
"Pretty much," admitted Reinhardt with a sigh. "Or if you can, toss their explodey brew back at them."