Excerpt From The Mad Scholar's Wall—
As we traveled to the center of the citadel, more signs of conflict were all around us. Half-standing walls and trenches filled the once garden.
One thing became abundantly clear to us, a massive battle had raged within these walls.
The outside face of the wall, while marked and scarred to a degree, was brand new compared to the desolation inside the walls.
Again, a silence settled onto us, and we took in what was.
The world around us shimmered, and instead of broken stumps and a few finger-sized twigs left over from a long dead bush, there was a lush garden.
Everywhere we looked were grass fields and flower-lined paths. The trees bore fruit, ripe and ready to be picked, and were being picked by children.
Elven children ran across the grass, laughing and playing with each other, or sat on blankets with their parents eating and relaxing in the afternoon.
It was paradise.
Then the world flashed before us, and the trees were charred to stumps, the crass burned to the ground, and the bushes stripped for the leaves.
In the place of the joyful children were countless elves, females and males alike, fighting brutally to the death. The rain of blood did nothing to bring back life to the dying garden.
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My steps were fast, nearly getting up to a jog, but I could not say I was quite there. The weariness deep in my bones was too much. If I got up to a jog, there was a genuine concern in the back of my mind that stopping would plant me on my face.
Still, I covered the thirty feet to the prow in moments. Without saying anything, I stepped up to the two-inch-in-diameter rope and brought my sword down on the rough cordage.
The strike might have gotten past the surface. Maybe a few strands deep if I squint and turn my head to the side.
"Fucking cut!" I grunted as I lifted my blade from the suddenly loose rope and brought it down again. This time I planted my feet and used my whole body to add to the force of my strike as I brought my arms down.
My lips twitched as I saw my blade sink halfway into the rope, then the smile vanished as the rope stretched as it tightened.
Stumbling forward, my hands stung as the handle of my sword was ripped from my grip. I watched in horror as the blade spun around the rope until it smashed into the deck.
The pummel hit the wood so hard that it left an indent. For a long breath, I looked at the sword, waiting to see if my luck was so bad the handle or blade would break from the impact.
Sighing in relief, I knelt lower, reaching for it, only for my head to snap up as an alarm filled the mental network.
A dome of white surrounded the tower barge leading to the bridge on the northern side of the river. I had no time to act, as the moment I looked at the dome, it exploded.
I felt the cold depths of winter strike me in the face causing my skin to go numb and my eyelids to grow heavy. Quickly, I raised my hand to shelter my squinting eyes from the piercing wind.
When it stopped, I moved my hand and looked at a land of ice.
The air glittered with the sunstone's reflected light as frozen water droplets floated through the air. A layer of frost was on the deck of the boats, and the river itself was a dark sheet of ice.
Beneath my feet, the deck rocked, and the creaking of strained wood and ice echoed off the walls of the Triad as thunder rumbled overhead.
My eyes flicked to the motion breaking the stillness that filled the surroundings after the burst of cold. On the decks of the tower barges, the knights and mage beastkin fought.
The barges glowed a shimmering blue, and even as a knight slammed an armored fist or stopped a foot into the tower or ship, they could do no damage to the structure.
I could only see one knight still trying to damage the structure, as the rest were trying to kill the beastkins radiating mana by standing in glowing circles or having blue light shine from their skin. I thought I could see shockwaves from the blurring speed and impacts of the fighters.
Everyone still alive on the ships was moving too fast to get a proper count of the number of figures, but I got the feeling that there was more beastkin than knights.
"They're coming over the fucking ice!" Someone shouted, snapping me out of my daze of watching the epic battle taking place a few hundred feet away.
Taking a couple steps forward, I watched the beastkin in the ship before us begin leaping from their ship onto the frozen water. It was a good choice.
While not that noticeable on deck, the barges had an incline to them. The prow was ten feet higher than the stern making it easier to leap from one ship to the next but nearly impossible to go back, even for the beastkin.
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The ice had only made it worse, pushing the prow higher.
"Hah!" Called Celeste to my right, voice laced with scorn, "Those fur faces are trapped in the ice! Serves them right!"
Ignoring the bitch after discovering she wasn't calling out in alarm, just showing who she really was. I continued my turn, looking back down the river… and the hoards of beastkin charging in our direction.
"Guardians protect us." I whispered before shouting, "They're coming from behind!"
I felt Markus focus on my words and felt the shock mirroring my own as he looked at the on-rushing beastkin. The command he was going to voice died on his lips.
Five people could manage to hold off the beastkin when they had to leap back to our ship from the downstream ship. It's hard to dodge a spear when hanging in the air, and these beastkin weren't suicidal. Those coming over the back and shoreside of the boat were in a similar situation.
Beastkin were never the best swimmers, to begin with. And the bigger they are, the worse they swim. Weighed down with gear, there was little chance they would stay above the surface.
The few that chose to head towards us instead of the shore were coming up with nothing but their claws. Though their claws were still dangerous, even the fish could make the strike easily.
Those that would be leaping to the deck fully armed from the ice, numbering in the hundreds? We stood no chance.
The thought of making a run for it crossed my mind, but I quickly discarded it. I would be running toward a battle I could not join in a meaningful way. That was assuming I could outrun the beastkin, which, surprise, surprise, I can't.
There was a hollow thump that sounded behind me. Turning to look, I saw nothing.
Then the river jumped as a thump sounded again, followed by cracking ice as a spider web spread over its surface.
The looks of anticipation on the charging beastkin's faces turned to terror, and they looked back at the nice ships they had just left in longing.
But it was too late.
A third thump sounded, and the faint noise of settling ice turned into cracks like thunder as the ice broke apart.
From the center of the river — a hundred feet away — ice flew into the air as the initial spear of stone was forced from beneath the surface. The object did not stop there.
What started as a six-foot rounded stone spike about three feet across at the base kept growing as more of the stone rose into the air. Three feet became seven, and seven became twenty as what looked more like a house with a tower on its top rose from the watery embrace of the river.
The whole time, all that could be heard on the river was the deafening sounds of multiple-foot thick ice breaking, and the river became a slurry of ice sheets ranging from fist-sized to twenty feet across, with beastkin clawing at the water to stay afloat between them.
Keeping my balance on the suddenly moving boat, a crack sounded that I felt through my feet more than I heard, and the barge settled into the water and started to float again.
"Cut the fucking ropes!" Markus shouted — though no one could hear — and transmitted to everyone even as the rock wasn't finished coming out of the water and breaking the ice.
Looking around the deck, I leaned down, grasping the sword's hilt, and yanked the blade from its temporary home.
Quickly raising and lowering the sword, I slashed most of the way through the rope as it was conveniently pulled tight. Raising the sword again to finish severing the thick rope, my eyes widened in fear as more force was placed onto the line.
"Ahh!" I screamed as a short twang cracked the air, followed by a hissing thunk. With my free hand, I reached down, clamping it onto the front of my left leg, feeling hot blood seep through my fingers.
I could see the two sides of the rope at my feet. One was hacked apart, while the other side had frayed ends that snapped under the tension of the rocking ships.
"Can't even cut a rope without getting hurt?" Celeste sneered at me from the side, the other rope cleanly cut, unlike the one at my feet.
Looking her in the eyes, I smirked before turning my back to her and looking out at the river.
The stifled rage of me ignoring her, and turning my back, was like music to my ears.
Actually focusing on what I was looking at after a moment of reveling, I watched the beastkin fighting for life. Most tried to use the pieces of ice as backboards as they pushed off them to speed their progress to safety. Some were climbing onto the surface of the ice sheets, trying to balance in the center. Few succeeded for long.
The total result of everything was a mess.
Unable to see the other side of the ice sheet, beastkin would kick or push a block of ice into one of their brethren, some of which I could see had enough force behind them to smash the skulls of beastkin. Splotches of red were everywhere on the chunks of ice.
Turning to what mattered, I watched the house-sized rock rise into the air and move over the right-side tower barge. The rock rotated until the point was facing the river, and it moved at an angle until it was dozens of feet above the deck.
As the rock began to fall like a falling moon, picking up speed faster than it should, a blue dome appeared around the ship.
The tip of the stone cone was the first to impact the dome. A ring of blue expanded outward with such force that I had to take a step back.
Even then, the rock still forced its way downward. The dome slowly collapsed inward without shattering like pressing into a taught sheet.
Despite the movement being as slow as syrup dripping down a wall, I wasn't deceived. Every few moments, another ring of energy would burst out from the conflict, and each one was as strong as the last, if not more so, as they pushed back the icy water, breaking it up even more.
After what felt like hours of watching the conflict between rock and energy, the rock had more than half of itself surrounded by the blue shield. And the blue had become so dark that I could no longer see the rock or those on the deck at all.
All at once, the sides of the blue shield exploded outward, sending out a wave along the surface of the river that was taller than the barges. Instead of being little more than a stiff gust of wind this time, the wave impacted the ships in front of me, shattering the boats into splinters and throwing the beastkin into the air.
Halfway through the ship in front of me, the wave stopped and was sucked back in. It then surged upward in a pillar of shifting blue.
As the light vanished, the rock, which had nearly reached the ship's deck, was moving upward fast. It was already halfway up to the bottom of the middle fort.
With a crack, the stone impacted the center portion of the bridge, burying itself deep into the stone before falling from the sky a moment later.
As the stone was still falling, a figure leapt from one of the barges, slamming into the stone. Brows furrowing, I wondered what was happening, then I saw color seep into the rock.
Lines of orange spread over the stone as it continued to fall. Then it unfolded, like a person curled in a ball standing up.
"The Molten Man," I said in awe.