Chapter 18

COLLAPSE, RELAPSE, ELAPSE

The Progenitor was having a good day. A very, very, good day. Finally, all the pieces lined up, all her schemes in place, all the preparations complete. With the installment of the final section of the wall, everything was ready. Ready for her to destroy. She started calling together her troops. Many monsters from many dungeons accumulated on the east side of Flourish, gathered together in an uneasy truce by their dungeon masters. A sizable section of those monsters were her very own, and within her section of the formation, an orc shaman broke a way towards the city.

It was tall and bulky, with protruding tusks that gave it a brutishly square jaw. It wore robes of purple, studded with deep purple stones and crystals. It arrived at the very edge of the forest amongst a small wave of other monsters, just in time to witness the runic formation start crawling across the nearly completed wall. The weak willed monsters it was amongst served as a distraction while it performed a greater service to the Progenitor.

It waited and waited, until, eventually, the ritual was at its crescendo. Mana poured into the wall, rushing and swirling around it, and to this tidal wave the orc shaman added its own drop, its entire pool of mana condensed into one spell. Exhausted yet unwilling to leave the city any warning, it immediately started the long trudge back to the rest of the army. It would take a couple of hours for the spell to properly propagate, all the better to avoid premature detection and maximize victims.

It reached the Progenitor’s formation within half an hour, and promptly reported its success to the Progenitor’s herald. It was a bronze peaked parrot, the only true monster that possessed human-like vocal cords.

“Were you successful,” came the croaking question.

“Indubitably,” was the shampan’s reply. “No one is the wiser as of right now, I can feel my spell hiding and propagating.” With its success reported, the orc sat and rested until the attack started at noon.

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The warning came at noon. Igmail was just sitting around with Champion, shooting the breeze as much as a golem and its master can, when a trill of alarm resounded throughout the denizens of the entire bunker. From far off in the distance a spiritual cry for help sounded out, bringing Igmail and all his golems to full attention. It only took a second more for the realization to hit Igmail, and a second more for it to hit Champion.

‘The city is under attack, we need to go NOW!’ Champion told the other forty seven golems.

‘Go, go, go!’ reinforced Igmail. Without grabbing anything other than his spear he had already jumped up and pulled the door open, just in time for a sentient avalanche to pass through. The platoon of golems and their maker started a headlong sprint eastward, the direction of Flourish. They simply ran through any obstacles they encountered, so complete was their haste. They arrived at the forest edge with a swath of destruction trailing behind them after less than two hours of travel. It helped tremendously that they encountered exactly no monsters on the way, but it was really fast regardless.

As Igmail made his final approach and started to be able to peek through the dense foliage, his usual calm started to fall over him. It was do or die time, and his drill instructor had heavily discouraged the latter. With this new focus sharpening his vision, he began to evaluate the situation. The most immediately evident thing was that the outerwall had simply disappeared.

It wasn’t there. The wall they had just spent six months building wasn’t there. It was rather confusing to Igmail, though the presence of a truly gargantuan stone elemental probably explained that bit. Even now the towering humanoid pile of stone was working its way around the next most layer of the city walls, with the entire western half of said walls scattered. It threw ponderous punches that knocked chunks of stone off of the city’s primary defense system, traveling clockwise around the city.

The next most obvious thing was the high level combat going on in the sky above the city. Due to the distance, Igmail could not see the actual figures fighting, but he could sure as heck see the results. Blasts of flame washed off gigantic runic shields, diverting the titanic blasts from decimating the city. Huge swords manifested and swung by themselves, each attempting to hit the same point in space. Igmail could even see the occasional monster part simply appear for a brief second to swat at something.

The third thing that Igmail noticed was the remains of the wall festival. Scattered all throughout the trampled flat fields were bodies, living and dead, monster and human. A dense cordon of monsters was encircling the city in all directions, corralling many humans into desperate last stands. Pockets of resistance stood out here and there, each fighting just as viciously as the monsters for their very survival.

But, they were headed in the wrong direction. Every pocket that Igmail could see was struggling to fight their way back towards the city. Whether they believed the inner city was safer than the forest, or if they believed that escape wasn’t worth attempting without some left behind loved one, Igmail could not tell, but he thought them fools all the same.

‘Though, I’m not much better, am I?’ Igmail realized as he put together a plan and put it into action. ‘Champion, split them into eight groups of six, I don’t care how, and send them to help escort the nearest people to the bunker. I want one team to form a wagon and fill it with people before delivering them to the dungeon, I want one team right here to guard the extraction point, and I want five teams to save as many people as possible. Gather the civilians, recruit the fighters, kill the monsters. I want the last team on me; we are going to get my parents. Go!’

Immediately, at the speed of thought, Champion divided the groups up and set them their duties, placing himself on the parental extraction team. It took less than a minute for the rest to learn of their assignments and begin to perform them, and less than two for Igmail, Champion, and their five strongest golems to start their own assignment. Champion was unpleasantly reminded of his assault on the goblin village, but that only made him work harder.

Igmail’s team arranged themselves into an arrow-like formation, with Champion forming the tip and everybody else forming the shaft. With three dozen ghostly outlines converging on his form, Champion led the charge through the army of monsters, many finding themselves trampled to death, and several others discovering a spear point in an inopportune place. He shrugged off a verdant ape, crushed the head of a blood straw, and decapitated a giant badger all within the first three steps of his charge, and it didn’t let up from there.

But, his sheer overwhelming force meant that they made it past the outer cordon with nary more than scratches. Past that dense band of monsters, there was actually a little room to breathe, though pursuers hounded them from the back and Champion still couldn’t take five steps without one of them being on a monster.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

They had managed to make it maybe halfway to the remains of the still partially standing wall when a more serious challenge interposed itself. To their left was a pocket of resistance led by a person standing on a platform made of water, and in the course of their battle, this person tossed a tier five blade golem right in their path. It was an animated bundle of blades at its most basic, with mismatched swords for limbs and a very thin torso.

Champion tried to knock it aside like all the others, but it was too fragile for that. The dangerous magical metal construct instead ducked right under the gorilla’s sweeping arm and towards Igmail. Moving so fast that he could barely see it, the golemancer wheeled back in surprise, causing a commotion in the line of golems behind him. In this startled state Igmail still was able to deflect the beast’s blows, once, twice, thrice, until Champion finally reacted.

Ethereal hands reached out of Champion’s still turned back to restrain the monster, getting minor cuts in the process but giving Champion the microsecond he needed to complete a one eighty turn and smash his metallic cousin to pieces. This loss of momentum caused other problems, however, such as the pack of pine wolves now bearing down on their formation. They first had to destroy all eight of those before it was safe to start moving again, but of course the dire squirrels also pitched in half way through the fight, and before the golems and Igmail knew it, they were bogged down in a quagmire of beastly bodies and bloody mud.

After this interruption their progression slowed down by half, though that was still better than the slow trudge the larger, more civilian groups had to deal with. It took nearly ten more minutes of non-stop fighting, all under the threat of the tumultuous skies, for Champion and crew to finally break through to the streets. There was a surprised lack of monsters running amuck on the other side of the ring of rubble that used to be a wall.

This allowed even more haste to be made, though only a couple hundred feet in Igmail realized they had a problem. ‘Men- er, golems. We have a problem. I don’t know where my parents are. They hate wall festivals for what are now wildly valid reasons, so they’ll either be at the family restaurant or their apartment. Champion, can you locate Toto?’

‘Yes, I am able to sense his broad vicinity,’ replied Champion.

‘Excellent; I’m pretty sure he is at the restaurant. Go join him and take two golems with you. You two,’ Igmail said telepathically as he pointed to a couple of his golems, ‘come with me.’

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Champion watched for a second as Igmail dashed off in a different direction. It seemed unwise, from his perspective, to separate the most vulnerable member of their group from the strongest, but he was given a direct order. Champion took an additional second to bring his connection to Toto to the front of his mind, then he started his own dash. He ran down one street, his two assistants at his flank, then took a turn onto another. He ran for several minutes and in all that time he saw naught but houses abandoned mid meal and a couple of monsters. All the humans must have been elsewhere, probably in emergency shelters already.

When he finally reached his destination this visual boredom ended. The spiritual tether that Champion was following led into a smallish restaurant on the ground floor of a tall building, though Champion noted that all the buildings in Flourish were tall. It had two large windows on either side of the double doors, each proudly declaring “Aime’s Dinner, upscale classics” in red arched letters. There were benches set out under those windows, though the inhabitants of the sidewalk led to questions about whether that was their original placement, as did the metal grates that covered the whole store front.

A handful of dire slugs were assaulting the store front, spitting acid at the metal clad door from their weird proboscises. A harsh green steam was already wafting from it, indicative of the damage being done. Champion and his helpers had made their booming advance very obvious, so even as they were turning the corner they were under fire from the high hydrogen molluscs. Champion rolled under the worst of it, though splashes still impacted his back. His companions were not so skilled, and the one on his left took a splash full on to the face.

‘You,’ Champion mentally said, designating the less injured of his entourage. ‘Take him and hide around the corner. I got this.’ Since this communique was purely in the realm of mind and soul it was made in time for Champion’s helpers to simply duck back around the corner without being exposed to any more damage. That left a lot more acid for Champion instead. He juked left, then right, then right again, before rolling all the way back to the left. Now that he could see it coming, dodging it became easier, though even his tier five speed wasn’t enough to dodge it all.

It was, however, enough to get him to the monsters, and once he did, it was over. The slow monsters had no defenses of note, so Champion simply splattered them. He lashed out hand and foot with inelegant blows, each strike a kill. His spear went completely unneeded, its range would be counter productive in terms of keeping the slugs from spitting more acid.

Once he was done, he called his support back over and very calmly knocked on the door. It went unanswered for several seconds, so he knocked again. After the third time he simply kept going until the door itself was knocked down. The front of the cozy restaurant was mostly empty, just a destroyed pile of tables and chairs formerly lodged in front of the door, so he proceeded to the back. During this walk he passed the door to the kitchen, where Toto had prepared an ambush, but said ambush ineffective on Champion. He silently joined the squad when he realized who he had just struck.

Champion found several people huddled in the stone walk-in freezer of the restaurant, armed with kitchen knives, table legs, and grim expressions.This latter piece of equipment was destroyed when the employees started to recognize Champion, or, at least, who must have made Champion.

“Golem, is Igmail here? Has he survived?!” frantically asked an older woman with brownish gray hair, apparently the epinonimous Aime. She wore an unbuttoned chef’s jacket over casual clothes and wielded a meat cleaver in her right hand as well as a platter in her left. Champion shook his head to the first question and nodded to the second.

“So he isn’t here, but he is alive?” Aime asked in clarification. Champion simply nodded, then gestured for Aime and her employees to follow him. The other employees, seven in total, looked rather hesitant, but Aime’s trust in these strange stone gorillas cajoled them into action. Soon they were speed walking in a tight huddle, makeshift weapons still in hand, surrounded by a tripoint formation of Champion and crew. Toto was in the middle as well, the last line of defense.

Unwilling to brave the cordon with so few reinforcements, Champion called out mentally to one of the available six golem rescue teams he had assembled. The two groups met at the edge of the city, and started to ford the river of monsters together. The battle back to the drop off point was difficult, and several of the citizens sustained minor injuries, including Aime, but everybody there had been trained to fight, so they made it through.

At the drop off point thirty or so people lingered within the tree line, under guard by the assigned gorillas. They, to a man, were gazing back at the city, whether it be at the narrowly contained natural disaster which was the sky battle or at the various running battles as golems struggled to convince groups to follow them to safety. From his vantage point Champion also realized that the rescue teams had gotten some human back up. Each group of gorillas that was fighting through the cordon was supported by four or more humans with arms and armor.

Additionally, there was a man hurrying around the extraction point healing people’s worst wounds with a greenish light that emitted from his hands. It took fifteen minutes for the next carts to arrive, though that too had changed. The golems had constructed a wheeled box out of thin yet strong stone, then pulled it by hand. This, however, was a wooden cart pulled by two horses and driven by a man with an old looking hat, apparently a porter who had managed to escape the city with his cart.

Champion, upon seeing the vehicle in the distance, located Aime helping dress people’s wounds. He let her finish bandaging the latest patient, but afterwards motioned for her to get on the next cart. Igmail had indicated through his actions that his parents were the highest priority objective, and so Champion ensured that his mother got on the first available cart, even through her protestations. He even assigned Toto the job of making sure she didn’t try to make her way back.

Afterwards, he gathered back up his two supporters and once more breached the cordon.