Sar let loose another spear of purifying flame, and watched it arc gracefully to splash down into the city.
Fire truly was beautiful.
It was just so boring, stationed out here beyond the walls, so he’d fallen to occupying himself with igniting more of this cursed city. Ideally, he would be in there with the Battle-Master and his men, hunting down the necromancer that had humiliated him months prior. But it wasn’t to be, not with the dampers the soldiers were installing throughout the city. He was a powerful mage, but under the influence of those artefacts his magic would be barely stronger than a child’s.
Instead, his role was lurking out here, overseeing the construction of the barricades and ensuring no one tried to flee downriver. And that was a task he’d completed perfectly. A row of magebane and metal chest-high walls had been assembled in the open fields around the gate, with barrels of magebane bolts positioned every few arm-lengths along them. If the necromancer decided to sally forth, he’d find his forces cut down by an unrelenting hail of death. They would then riddle him with so much magebane he wouldn’t be able to touch even a thread of mana.
A shout drifted over the crackling of a city burning.
Then another.
Then figures burst from within the billowing smoke, recklessly charging out of the city and towards Sar’s men. Sar raised an arm, gathering incinerating flame, preparing to blast these creatures into oblivion.
“The Ironjaws! Activate the Ironjaws!” Roared a distinctive voice.
Sar paused, reevaluating the figures. Not an undead attack, as he’d first thought, but the soldiers that had entered the city maybe a half-hour before. And in their midst, running like his life depended on it, was the Battle-Master.
What in Idia’s name had happened in there?
“Arms! To arms!” The Battle-Master roared again as he skidded around the fortifications and stopped, turning back to the city. “Enemies, right behind us!”
A ripple of confusion went through the ranks, before the captains repeated the cry. Immediately, the men started loading crossbows with black bolts taken from the drums staked into the ground, moving with the practised precision of countless hours of drills.
Sar marched over the Battle-Master, lowering his voice to a growl. “What in His Holinesses name are you playing at?”
“Too many undead, we were overwhelmed.” He panted. “The dampers did little to stop them. Not helped by the excessive fire you set.”
“You retreated from just that? I would have thought-”
“Not just that.” The Battle-Master spat back. “There was an… abomination. It fired a beam that scythed through our ranks like they were nothing. I fear it’ll be beyond even your abilities to handle.”
“An abomination? What-”
“Contact!” Came a shout from the men closer to the city.
Sar looked up to find another wall of figures bursting out of the smoke. They were clad in the familiar blue, silver, and black of the Seeker armour. For a moment, Sar thought they may be stragglers of the invasion force, following the Battle-Master’s call to retreat.
Then he saw the faces of the men.
“They’ve been turned! Attack!” He shouted, unleashing a fireball into the wall of zombies. Once the smoke shrouding them had cleared, the devastation of the men was fully visible. Most of them sported gushing head wounds, some partially or fully dismembered. None of the injuries slowed them even a little, however.
“Fire!” The Battle-Master's powerful voice rung out from his side.
The twang of hundreds of crossbows sounded out in unison, a dark wave of bolts slamming into the onrushing horde. Some zombies fell, but most shrugged off the impacts of the projectiles with impunity, even as chunks were torn from their bodies. Sar’s fireball clipped the edge of a zombie’s magebane armour and the spell collapsed, turning into a burst of non-augmented flame. The power he’d dumped into it, however, meant it still contained enough destructive potential to melt the zombie into collapsing.
Still, he’d have to be far more accurate with his attacks going forward.
The front lines of the zombies crashed into the closest fortifications, figures throwing themselves up to scrabble over its top and try to swipe at the men behind. Steel clashed against steel as the soldiers abandoned their crossbows in favour of their blades, hacking into the wave of undead consuming their position.
“Where are my Ironjaws!” The Battle-Master roared.
Out of the corner of his eye, Sar could see the operating crews of the weapons scrambling to activate their complex machinations, pulling levers, connecting tubes, and pushing buttons. It wasn’t an easy task to activate the Ironjaws, intentionally so. The sheer cost of running one was something the empire couldn’t afford to waste.
It was honestly a miracle they’d been granted a set to use.
Focusing back on the fight, Sar let loose fireball after fireball into the mass, aiming for the centre of the horde. All around him, crossbows twanged, the men reloading and firing as fast as they could. Yet, it did little to thin the wave. Each zombie took over a dozen hits to finally go down.
“Give me space, I’m going to deal with these minions.” Sar said, the surrounding soldiers quickly scrambling away to give him a wide berth. He walked forwards, stepping out into a bare patch of land.
And ignited his avatar.
In an instant, his skin burst into brilliant blue flame, incinerating anything non-magical he was wearing. With it, Sar felt his connection to the element of fire grow, the blaze consuming the city lighting up like a great beacon to his fire-sight. Raising his hands, he called a raging orb of azure flames into being, compressing it down to a single point and aiming it at the horde of zombies.
Then he unleashed it.
A beam of flames swept out over their surging ranks, exploding where it touched the magebane armour or burning through flesh and bone alike where it did not. Where the flames burst on armour, the resulting conflagration inflicted almost as much damage as the beam had, melting the zombies into uselessness.
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Moments after it had blasted from his palm, the beam ended, leaving a burning sea of bodies in its wake. The flames shrouding him dimmed along with the mana he’d just expended, a mere candle against the bonfire he’d once been. Sar closed his eyes and took a deep breath, drawing the stagnant mana in the air in to refill his reserves. An easy feat, if it hadn't had been for the dampers inhibiting its flow.
So he didn’t see the second wave bursting from the city.
“Swords!”
The shout of the Battle-Master snapped Sar’s eyes open. Walking skeletons charged out of the wall of smoke, fitful flames clinging to their bones. Unlike the zombies that moved with groans and gasps, these charged with an unsettling silence, only the clack of their bones on the ground denoting their approach.
“Triple line, form up!” Another shout came.
Soldiers scrambled to form themselves into groups of twenty, each a small block of men with alternating gaps to allow the block behind to pass between them.
Bone crashed against steel as the two forces came together. A match that should have been an easy win for steel, and yet Sar could rarely see a bone get broken by a blow. Sar threw a spray of fireballs into the undead mass, but unlike the zombies, the skeletons seemed barely affected by the flames. It took serious focus for him to concentrate his attacks on a single skeleton to finally turn it to ash.
And then a shout came from behind.
Sar span, only to find a second wave of skeletons charging the lines, emerging from the forest coated in twigs, leaves, and other undergrowth.
“Third line, about face! Engage! Engage!” The Battle-Master shouted.
A shudder ran through the lines as the rearguard turned and charged to meet the flanking skeletons, shields and swords lashing out and sending their bones scattering. The rear line was meant to act as a reserve, to swap with the second or first line as they tired, letting them outlast their foes. But now, that third line was engaged, and only the second line was left to act as the relief for both the first and third.
A dire situation for all the soldiers involved.
“All reserves, forward!”
The shout spurred all the remaining men to rush forward, entering the melee alongside their comrades, battle cries filling the air as they threw themselves against the undead horde.
There were just too many of the skeletons, though.
The rear lines of the necromancer’s horde broke off from the melee and started looting the bodies lying around the field, emerging with crossbows. Crossbows they turned on Sar and the Battle-Master.
“Get down!” Sar shouted, unleashing a spray of fireballs to catch the magebane bolts in flight. Mana was ripped from the spells as the esoteric metal disrupted his magic, but what remained was enough to deflect the bolts away from their intended targets.
But there were a lot of skeletons, and a lot of bolts remaining.
With a gesture, Sar raised a curved wall of fire between the skeletons and him. Even if his powers were not designed to stop such projectiles, he could at least break their sight lines. If they couldn’t see their targets, they couldn’t hit them.
Then an enormous flood of mana brought everyone on the battlefield to their knees for a brief moment. Living and undead alike.
An ear-piercing shriek of metal sounded from behind. Sar turned to catch the Ironjaws front halves snap open like some monstrous mouth, the source of their colloquial name, revealing the precious payload inside. A giant figure clad in gold and silver armour, its surface glowing with bright white runes. A Seraphic Guard, ready to reap the foes of the empire. Behind the… thing's head, stood a bewilderingly complex collection of disks, orbs, wires, and plates, each covered in uncountable tiny amethyst manastones, and each one of them moving with building intensity. As they twisted and span, they pulsed with iridescent light, pumping so much mana out into the air it could be felt by even those without an affinity.
All to power the weapons that were climbing out from within.
One by one, the Seraphic Guard clambered out of their chambers and stood, their movements jerky, as if puppeted by some unseen hand. Then, suddenly, all three of the giant figures heads snapped around to focus on Sar.
“MAGE SIGHTED. MOVING TO ENGAGE.” The closest one boomed with its emotionless voice.
“Override! Override that order!” The Battle-Master shouted at the crews manning the open Ironjaws.
Sar scrambled away from the approaching Seraphic Guard, retreating towards the undead army. That direction was certainly not safe, but it was nothing against the unstoppable death the figures marching towards him represented. As one, they pulled a squat weapon from their sides, holding it out parallel to the ground. A haft shot out the bottom, and the top folded out into a shimmering blade. A disruption-halberd, the signature weapon of the Seraphic Guard.
Then, suddenly, they stopped.
“STANDING DOWN.” The Seraphic Guard said in unison.
Sar collapsed back to the floor in relief.
“Orders, Battle-Master?” One of the Ironjaw crewmen asked.
“Clear out the undead, then move on the city. We need to hit the abomination before it can hit us.”
“Shall we disengage first, Battle-Master? The targeting is a little…” The crewman looked at the melee, the jumbled mass of soldiers and undead. “We’ll hit our men.”
“No. We cannot afford to wait. Hit them now, and hit them hard. Those are your orders.”
The crewman snapped a salute and pulled out a short rod, emitting a thin beam of light. He tapped something on the side of the Ironjaw and swept it over the undead boiling out from within the city and forest, an action that was repeated by crewmen on the other two devices. Then, with a final tap, the Seraphic Guard juddered into motion once more.
“TARGET PAINTING COMPLETE. THREAT IDENTIFICATION, LOW. ENTERING AREA DENIAL STANCE.”
The backs of each Seraphic Guard folded open, revealing a plate filled with holes, each one containing a dart. The Guard bent forward, aiming the plate at the sky.
Whump
A thousand darts shot out of their backs and into the sky, each one trailing a faint blue mist. They flew in graceful arcs, fanning out in an even disk towards both attacking forces of undead, before accelerating towards the ground and into the midst of the melee.
Then the world went white.
Sar squeezed his eyes shut, raising a hand to shield his face against the agonizing radiance. An unbearable sound of the very fabric of reality tearing assailed his ears as the weapons discharged their payload of spatial magic. He’d seen one demonstrated years ago as part of an imperial parade, watched the spell it carried turn a building into a pile of dust in an instant. As he remembered it, the magic worked by shuffling everything caught within it with everything else, at a level smaller than the eye could see. Devastating on a structure.
Deadly on a person.
Sar opened his eyes to a scene of horror. Where each of the weapons had impacted stood an orb of gently settling dust. Where those orbs had touched men, the parts caught within were simply… gone. A perfectly smooth wound, as if the arm, leg, or torso had been erased from existence. The undead had fared no better, great chunks of their army now nothing but drifting dust.
Then the screams started.
A crashing boot startled Sar from his transfixion. Two of the Seraphic Guard ran past him, the third moving to engage the undead at their rear. As they ran, they fitted the halberds they carried into a groove on their waist, before stretching their arms out to either side. Then the groove began to turn. Attached into it, the halberd whipped through the air faster and faster, until its movements were a buzzing blur, a disk of death attached to a charging indestructible giant.
Nothing stood a chance against that.
The Seraphic Guard simply ran through the lines of undead, the spinning blade on their waist scything through soldier and skeleton with equal ease. Nothing either side could do seemed to make a difference against that level of destructive force. It was only a matter of time before this battle was theirs.
Sar watched the destruction with grim resolve. He knew that once he returned to Lightire, he would need to answer for the cost of activating the weapons. The mana required to power the Seraphic Guard, and the control structures in the depths of the Ironjaws, was an expense that he’d likely be working off for the rest of his life. Was it worth it?
Yes.
Absolutely, unquestionably, yes.