Reud struggled to focus on controlling his horde as mana rampaged through the air. First the Seekers had implanted those strange spikes, artefacts that tore the mana from the skies and dumped it forcefully deep underground. Then they’d activated this new weapon of theirs, and filled the air with new mana, great waves that thundered through the minds of every mage around. There were still some of the spikes throughout the city, and Reud could feel them draw the new mana into the ground as well, emptying the air only for a new wave to refill it once more.
The constant oscillation between those extremes was giving him a pounding headache.
Dealing with the other spikes could wait, however. For now, they were doing nothing but annoy him, and he had larger concerns. Like the new weapons tearing through his minions. Twisting the Sightstone, Reud observed the battlefield from where he was hidden, just beyond the city gate. There was no need to reveal himself when he could use the artefact to command the undead from such relative safety.
The weapons the Seekers had unleashed, the giant metal figures wielding the spell-charged darts and the blade-disks on their waists, were burning through mana like nothing he’d ever seen. No wonder they’d needed to flood the air with such an excessive quantity of the stuff. The magic used by both attacks were a fascinatingly destructive application of localized spatial magic, and they tore through his minions with impunity. The blades were smaller in scope than the darts, but operated much the same, simply scrambling the matter it touched randomly, the result being anything it touched turning to a kind of fine dust. The metal giants themselves were packed with yet more intricate magic. Reud could feel no less than three souls packed into each, twisted and warped, but held together with intense biomancy. His fingers itched to take one apart and see what had been done to create these beautiful devices of destruction.
But this was no time for Reud to marvel at another mage’s innovations.
Reaching out to his army, Reud pushed them to press the Seekers harder, putting an end to their attempts to disengage. At least if the strange new figures were going to cleave through his undead, they could cleave through the Seekers too.
The figures moved with a sort of single-minded precision. They charged the nearest undead, shredded it with the disk on their waist, then moved on to the next. Anything between it and its target it ignored, be that a magebane fortification, a cart, a stack of bolts.
Or a group of Seeker soldiers.
Reud refocused his forces on pulling the metal giants through as much of the Seeker army as he could. Instead of engaging the giants directly, an endeavour that hadn’t yet even managed to scratch their armour, he instead pushed the undead to dart into the ranks of the soldiers, and any that couldn’t would fall back from the figures. Screaming filled the air as the buzzing disks on their waists cleaved through magebane, metal, and minion alike. In the places the figures were not, he redoubled his efforts to crush the Seeker forces, pressing them hard before falling back as the giants redirected themselves towards the weakening position.
Still, there was no sign of the giants slowing even slightly. Their armour was just as pristine as when they’d started, not even the viscera of their foes sticking to its brilliant surface.
He would have to bring in a real heavy-hitter to overcome that level of defences.
A pattern of heavy crunches approached Reud from behind as the spider-walker made its way up the street. Reud spared it a critical glance as it passed. Really, he would have liked to have worked on it for a few weeks longer, to really refine its spells and shield some of its more vulnerable areas. Maybe even some artistic decoration to make it look less… well, less of a complete mess. But needs must.
A field test of the weapon would provide him priceless insight, after all.
When they’d killed the dungeon boss in the Metalflow Caverns, no part of the great spider had been wasted. The blade-like legs had been refined into greatswords, one of which Bo had taken for his own. The tough chitin that had made up its body had been cut down with great effort and turned into armour, a set of which Bo also wore.
And its mana-core, the source of its destructive beam attack, had been refined into this.
Three skeletons and their souls and been woven through the remains of the dungeon boss’s own, forming the spider-walker. He’d fitted the mana-core into a frame of the silver-green metal collected from the dungeon, with a tube that helped focus and direct the energy of its attack.
It was the only time he’d raised a long-term undead whose sole purpose was to be a weapon, and it showed. The incomplete spells had rendered it entirely unable to function in the areas sapped by the spikes, leaving it lagging far behind the rest of the undead force. It had needed to blast itself a new path through the city to arrive at the gate and join the fray.
The spider-walker stopped at the cusp of the city, within the ruined remains of the gate, smoke billowing around it. Its front legs dipped, and it aimed the focusing tube towards the battle raging beyond. As it did, the bulbous mass at its core started to glow, brighter and brighter, deadly mana building within the spell bound within.
Reud bent his focus back to the battle. The Seeker soldiers were breaking all across the field, caught between undead and the new figures, dozens of their number falling every moment. Each one that died stood back up mere seconds later, striking out at their former allies and sending yet more chaos through their ranks. The rear lines of the undead, those that had liberated crossbows and bolts, were keeping up a regular hail of projectiles down onto anyone who seemed to be trying to reduce the chaos.
It wouldn’t do to have some bold leader try to bring the battle back under control.
On the far flank, a bright blue figure burst into blazing life. The pyromancer, shrouded by his azure avatar. A spray of flames exploded out from him, cutting a line through the undead that stretched nearly to the city walls. Turning, he formed an orb between his hands before unleashing a ray that swept through the undead pressing the Seekers from the rear, dropping dozens more. A flashback of Littlestream ran through Reud’s mind, the Seeker standing amidst a melting wall of zombies, as Tel threw himself in to impale the man.
Well, the plan had worked then, so why not now?
Reud redirected the newest raised undead to charge the blazing man, before turning his attention to the skeletons in the back. All he needed was to get a single shot through to drop this pyromancer for good. A hail of bolts accompanied the charging undead, forcing the mage to split his attentions to a dangerous degree.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Then, he made a mistake.
One bolt tore through his arm, and his flames dimmed. Enough that a zombie could get in and ram a sword through his shoulder. The pyromancer went down beneath a great swarm of undead, the light of his flames vanishing from view. Soldiers charged in, hacking away at the zombies and pushing them back just enough to pull a bleeding figure back into their lines. Not that it mattered. Reud would break that formation soon enough, once he dealt with the only other threat on the field.
The giants had to die.
The smoke surrounding the spider-walker was blown away as it fired, revealing the undead in all its terrible glory. A great beam of cyan energy surged out, lancing across the battlefield to strike one of the giants dead centre. The mana in the air plummeted as it flooded into the spider-walker, powering the beam that continued on and on and on.
Slowly, surely, the giant stopped, its entire body struggling against the power of the magic hammering into it. The disk on its waist slowed, the halberd that made it up finally becoming visible once more. Then, like a great felled oak, it toppled backwards and slammed down with earthshaking force. The beam shot on past the figure to tear through the forest behind, before finally it flickered out.
A great smoking hole sat in the front of the giant's armour, revealing blackened metal, shattered crystal, and seared flesh beneath. Skeletons darted in, slamming blades through the gap and tearing through anything they could reach.
Yet, it was only a fleeting victory.
As Reud watched, one of the metal machines the figures had climbed from pulsed even more mana out, and the wound on the figure began to vanish. The armour that the beam had blown apart began to reform, the damage healing before his very eyes. One of its companions stamped over and sliced the undead away, giving the fallen figure the opening it needed to complete the restoration. Moments later, the giant twitched, then with jerky movements, it pushed itself back to its feet. As it did so, the weapon on its waist began to spin once again. By the time it was fully upright, there was no sign it had ever been injured at all.
Reud frowned. Magic like that… just how much mana had they dumped into this thing? Especially given how inefficiently they were using it, letting so much of it simply diffuse out into the surroundings. Extrapolating out from what he’d seen the metal machine pump out so far, they’d have to have easily enough mana to power a soul transplantation spell packed into that thing. There was so much of it dumped into the air and ground now he could feel it flowing back into him through the phylactery, all the way down in the dungeon.
That, however, was a concern for later. For now, he’d just need to refocus his attacks on destroying the machines.
A man stood beside one of them, gesturing with a rod to the spider-walker and tapping something into the side of it. One of the same men he’d seen activate the giants originally. If he could direct the giants to attack the spider-walker instead of the undead, that would be very bad.
A hail of crossbow bolts tore through the man, putting an end to any risk like that.
Keeping up the suppressing fire onto the machines, Reud reached out to the spider-walker and infused it with his mana, accelerating its charging of the energy in its core. Cyan light blossomed to life in its depths once again, pulsing into ever heightening intensity.
Then it fired.
The second beam blasted through the air to slam into the interior of the closest metal machine, tearing through the wires, disks, and plates that whirred within its depths. Reud felt the manastones that studded them burst beneath the attack, the mana spinning out of control in an instant, cascading on throughout the contraption in a cascade of destruction.
It exploded.
A wall of mana, so dense it looked like a solid wall of prismatic light, burst from it. The men within a few paces of it simply… melted, their being losing cohesion as the mana warped reality to a deadly degree. The wall surged over the battlefield, shredding men at ten paces, cracking armour at twenty, and reducing to simply knocking everything down beyond that. Living and dead alike were swept off their feet, flattened like grass beneath a breeze as the mana-wall passed over them. It flooded on into the city and crashed over Reud, throwing him bodily down against the hard floor. The Sightstone in Reud’s hand flashed and shattered as it overloaded, shards of the artefact tearing through his hand.
Only when it hit one of the spikes further back in the city did it stop, the strange device redirecting the mana straight down.
Reud gritted his teeth, picking shards of crystal from his palm as he pushed himself up and staggered towards the gate. This battle was not won, not yet, and without the Sightstone, he’d have to actually see the field with his own eyes to control his forces. Pressing himself against the wall beside the spider-walker, he peered out onto the chaos beyond.
Or lack of it.
The battlefield was still, both sides flattened by the discharge of the detonating device. One of the giant metal figures lay motionless, face down on the ground. The other two stood like statues, twitching slightly but otherwise immobile. After a moment, they creaked into motion once more, seemingly no worse for wear, unlike their former comrade.
So, he just had to destroy the other two machines and it would end this battle once and for all.
“Lord Reud!” A voice snapped his head around.
Turning, Reud found Jessabelle running towards him, Aleida following behind her, her face streaked with tears that traced wet lines through the soot on her cheeks. Behind them ran Rachel, with the lifeless body of Leo draped across her arms, blood dripping from it to soak her bones red.
“Please, please help.” Aleida sobbed, falling to the ground. “I can’t bring him back…”
Reud cursed under his breath, glancing out into the field. He had a moment of quiet, but it was only a matter of time before the battle resumed in earnest. Before that happened, he had to get these fools away from the front lines.
“What are you doing here!” Reud shouted back, jumping down from the remains of the gate. “It’s dangerous, get back!”
“There were some Seekers, and Leo… he…” Aleida said. “I tried to heal him, but it didn’t…”
“I did not ask what happened to Leo, I asked what you are doing here!” Reud said, glaring at Jessabelle. “You’re supposed to be helping the fires, as far from the army out there as possible.” He gestured at the gate.
“I’m sorry, my lord, she insisted. And I… we thought you’d be able to… you know.”
Reud looked over them all, taking in the hopeful expressions in their eyes. “Gods above, we’re under attack. What were you thinking…”
Rubbing his forehead, he let out a sigh. “Just get back, you’re in danger here. I have to focus on the Seekers, and I can’t do that with you both around. After, we will deal with Leo, but not-”
His words were cut off as a spike of pain stabbed through his mind, the result of mana discharging along his link from his phylactery. The mana-wave must have reached the dungeon core and overwhelmed the mana-regulation spells installed down there. The spells must have pushed it down the only path they had left, which was into him.
Reud’s eyes widened as he followed the logic. If the regulation spells were overwhelmed, that meant that the mana was many times more powerful than it had been even when the dungeon was fully active, if even for a moment. Which meant there was definitely no mana-free zone down there any more.
Then he felt it. The stirring of the thing down there. The thing that had lain dormant for centuries, locked by desperate spells in the only mana-free place Reud could produce.
And the wave had just given it the jolt it needed to break free.
Oh.
Oh fuck.