Putting points into hydrology

The spell reduced gravity’s grip on her and the wall of water sent her flying downstream. She narrowly avoided getting crushed between a tumbling Shodai Sen and a rolling log and managed to fill her drake skin vest with air before the water sucked her down. She went limp and let her buoyancy drag her to the surface.

The moment she felt air on her skin, she cast out her silkhook to the darkening sky. A rope of deepspider’s silk attached to a cluster of adamantine barbed hooks, it latched into the high branches flying by overhead, and with a quick tug she zipped up into the trees just before the spell lost its effect.

With the roar of the river out of her ears, another sound took over. A sound so awful it almost made her scream.

The magi were still singing. She saw the formation, now over a hundred yards up river, surrounded by a hazy dome, like a thin layer of vibrating water suspended in air, marching up the bank toward dry land and the trail they had left behind.

However, their salvation hadn’t been perfect. Over half the column had been washed away, including three of the precious powder carts, the shield line was broken, the rocket carts were sinking in the mud and the remaining Shelled Lizards were struggling to move them deeper into the forest, a lone groaning Donra beast lumbered in the reeds, and the song of the magi was wavering.

All she could do was watch. The song continued. The sappers struggled. Bodies washed in the white rapids, got stuck on branches, banged against logs, as her force dropped flat bottomed boats from the trees. The river flowed against the knees of the Shodai Sen. The magi focused their song on the wall of water ahead. Their voices cracked. Arrows and bombs fell from the trees. More bodies joined the river.

Lindsey moved to her arrow stash. Horns sounded from the rocket carts up the trail. The detachment led by Pinespine was attacking the column across the river. They had laid in wait since the first of the fighting. Swiftly, boats forded the river and more forces gathered upstream and downstream from the column, and still the Magi sung. But it wouldn’t matter. She could feel it in the air. They were going to crush them.

Then one of Khianron’s lieutenants climbed atop a rocket cart, and blew the dragon horn.

It was no louder than a stern word from someone right next to you, but it cut through every other sound the way only dragon sounds could. She knew every living thing for miles heard it at exactly the same volume, and that they had only a matter of minutes to do as much damage to the column as they could, before the entire forest burned around them.

“When that dragon gets here, there’ll be nothing but trees and corpses!” Pinespine yelled, his voice magically amplified. The entire forest roared in agreement, and the final attack began.

As Pinspine’s forces cleared the river, the magi song died. A few moments later, the instant Pinespine’s forces threw themselves against the shield wall, the shrieks of the magi returned, now desperate. Man and tree fell in long razor sharp streaks of white.

Lindsey started killing Shodai Sen, alone at first, but after felling three of them, she got some help with it. Frog men struck out of the water, covered in mud, hooked the Shodai Sen’s shields and slashed them in the ankles with their barbed shortspears. The river boats were chained in a line, and bowmen rained hell from them. Paravel and her druid coven led a charge as water buffalo. Mossbeard barbarians lept from rafts and tore into the shieldwall with hooked long axes.

Lindsey put an arrow through Quetzlefire’s neck as he focused his Psionic waves to throw burning oil at a squad of attacking barbarians. A spellsword Frogman cut glowing arcs through a wall of Shodai Sen, until Doublerum dueled him with his long mace. Bombs were thrown as fast as they could be lit. Flamethrower nozzles melted from overuse. Arrows hummed like insects. Both sides knew the end was close and left nothing in reserve.

The collum had become a line once again and the attackers, unable to keep up the prodding attacks, due to lack of manpower and a complete absence of surprise, formed into two groups, one infantry clashing at the rear of the column, with the mosshsields in the front, and the other group, archers in the boats and in the trees, raining arrows and bombs.

“The carts! By gods get the carts!” Pinespine screamed. The infantry converged on a single cart, closest to a break in the line, and backed the guards against it. A single magi stood atop it, deflecting arrows and bombs and sending white streaks of death into the already withering group of forest infantry. Another magi led a charge with his singing sword, and cut Pinespine down.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Lindsey, as high in the branches as she could get, put an arrow through the magi atop the cart, timing her shot with the cadence of his shriek. She drew another arrow, pointed her bow at the sword slinging magi cutting through her routed forces, and had it half drawn when the sky exploded.

The dragon was as silent as the dead leaves rotting into the earth, and as dark as the deep evening sky, and faster than anything else in this world. Its breath sounded like a hurricane had been teleported above the forest, and the fire jumped half a mile from his snout down to the treetops in a matter of seconds.

Lindsey didn’t even breathe, she just fell. The fire drew a line right for her, the dragon flying parallel to the column, and half a second after she had slipped off the branch, the trees where she had been hiding were solid white-hot coals. She wondered halfway down if the river was even under her, but realized as the heat scorched her hair, it didn’t matter.

The fall wouldn’t kill her either way.

She plunged into the ice cold rushing river and dragonfire splattered the surface. The dark river was lit from above, as the thick liquid fire floated on the river above, and she saw the bed of white ash fly by beneath her.

After a frantic swim, she grabbed ahold of a submerged tree, and held on long enough for the dragonfire to float by overhead. Which wasn’t long. The river too was swift and strong.

She came up and gasped for air as quietly as she could, and it was burning chaos all around.

A dripping massive oak as thick as a semi cracked down the center and half of it fell on the scrambling Shodai Sen. The river boats were now floating pyres. The trees were lit up like Christmas lights and dripping sticky death on everyone beneath. People were screaming. Players were yelling.

“Stupid fucking dickhead piece of shit!” Double rum shrieked, watching half the Shodai Sen turn to ash. He was less than fifty feet away from Lindsey, screaming into an amulet of ghostspeak. Probably ranting to Quetzalfire.

“How fucking dumb do you have to be not to have your dragon use his God damn physical attacks when fighting a fucking forest ambush? Does this motherfucker even know what we’re hauling? Did he even look at the battlemap? Bro I am so sick of these rich dudes who brown nose their way into being a fucking rider. Next time I rise I’m rolling with the god damned Deeprock dwarves or something under the fucking ground, holy shit!”

He hefted his two-handed mace like he wished the Dragonrider would walk out of the smoke.

The surviving Shodai Sen formed up around him and the three carts, now essentially completely unopposed. Lindsey’s forces were either all gone or in full retreat.

“Is he coming back?” One of the guards asked Doublerum while looking at the dark burning forest with concern.

“Fuck no dude. Every second he’s not on the field that other dragon’s running train. I’m surprised he even showed up. Frockflower must be—”

“Get the carts moving! Now!” Siegemaster Garil’s voice slithered over the smoke.

“Over what fucking bridge, bro?!” Doublerum shrieked. “We gotta wait for the rendezvous team from the hill! Form up on the fucking carts and de fence!” he yelled the last part at the scrambling forces around him. The last singing magi was wafting the falling embers away from the carts and across the river. The forest was now fully ablaze, and Lindsey was certain she was all alone.

She felt heat at her back and turned around. A single dragonfire coated log floated by, roughly the size of a sedan. She sank into the river up to her eyes, hoping the light hadn’t given her away, and wrapped her cloak of twilight around her.

Suddenly, she had an idea.

She pulled a single arrow from her quiver and unwrapped it under water. It glowed sofltly like the moon shining through blue glass. A deep crystal arrow. She had been saving it for an impossible armored enemy, but she had learned a long time ago, in another world, not to squander today waiting for tomorrow.

She reached the arrow out of her cloak just in time to graze the end of thelog andd collect a single pinky sized glob of dragon fire on the arrow head.

No time to lose. She pulled herself closer to shore with her leg hooked around the tree submerged next to her, and raised her bow.

“Hey!” Doublerum pointed at her, but it was too late. She let the arrow fly and wrapped her cloak around her before it had reached its target. It sailed over Doublerum’s shoulder and disappeared inside the middle cart.

Lindsey gasped. She had expected it to sink into the hull of the cart and set it ablaze, but half a second after it vanished, she realized things had turned out far better than expected. The crystal arrow had sliced through the wood like paper, taking the smoldering dragonfire directly to the powder kegs inside.

The explosion was more violent than even the dragonbreath, and a lot more localized. It lit up the forest and cast dark razor-sharp shadows off the trees. The shockwave rattled the water around her and kicked up a wave of white dust and ash. The smoke cloud bloomed towards the canopy with dark orange flames rolling inside it and Shodai Sen and bowmen collapsed like dolls around it. Pieces of flaming wood went flying everywhere and the remaining survivors of the column scrambled to move the last carts away from the fire.

She watched them scramble, completely vulnerable, wishing she had just ten of her fighters with her. She would have cleaned them up in—

A light broke across the forest from upriver, blue and bright like a spotlight from another world. A mounted battlemage, with eyes glowing neon blue and a mirror shield reflecting the forest in nebulae hues, shined a beam from his staff, sweeping it across the river. She saw the water between him and the other bank shimmer, and the water flowing around her dropped ten degrees in an instant. He froze a bridge of solid ice and led his line of mounted paladins across it.

So, they had sent a rescue team.