Arcs of energy erupted from the crystal with that same tesla sound that happened during the test, causing my body to seize. It wasn’t as bad as the first time around, but that was probably because I knew exactly what to expect, so the pain didn’t catch me off guard with its intensity. The soldiers in front of me, however, were completely unprepared for the sudden storm that appeared in their midst.
The first lance of electricity to connect with the line of soldiers hit them with the immediate effect of dropping several that were directly in front of me. Their lines faltered, what resistance they were prepared to give suddenly evaporating in the face of an unknown attack. They stumbled over their fellows behind them only to be struck by a bolt themselves which caused a brief convulsion before they fell to the ground. There was a chance that they were simply knocked unconscious, but with multiple hits landing on them, the odds were low.
I was only able to take three big steps beyond the point where I activated the crystal before my body locked up entirely. Holding up the crystal took all my concentration and effort as more bolts lashed out angrily at all the attractive metal targets around it. Every second that passed another dozen bodies collapsed in an ever-expanding ring of destruction around me.
The noise of the electricity arcing was nearly drowned out by the screams and shouting of the Thrainian soldiers and their commanders who were desperately trying to control the situation. If nothing else, then this was certainly a tool of chaos and fear, a combination that I wasn’t sure how to feel about. Though, right now, most of my feelings were pain.
My clothes were scorched in several places, and I was certain that the back of my shirt caught fire. If it was, then the burning sensation was simply swallowed up in the constant overstimulation I was experiencing as every nerve in my body was slowly burned out. Whoever thought that electroshock therapy would work was a damn sadist.
Time crawled forward for every second that I remained under the influence of the crystal. It felt like it had been going on for minutes, but it was likely less than one. Eventually, my body gave out as the damage that was being done to me could no longer be sustained by the artificial stimulation. I felt myself teeter on my feet before my vision rapidly faded and a brief sensation of falling took over me as I was enveloped by nothingness.
While floating in the inky blackness of death I could only wonder if the recovery effort and subsequent fight would progress smoothly. To not be in control of my body in the middle of a war was a disconcerting thing. I counted the seconds until the voice of the goddess finally reached me.
Again.
When I came to, I found myself staring at the moving ground from an elevated position. After getting my bearings, it became clear that Hargon had decided to simply throw my corpse over his shoulder and hightail it out of the line of fire. My squirming alerted him of my reawakening, and he stopped running for a second to put my feet back on the ground.
Back on solid ground, I could now gather my wits alongside some information about the aftermath of the crystal activation. “What happened? Did you get the crystal back?”
“Yeah, got it here,” Otar said from my side, prompting me to turn and see him holding the now very dimly glowing crystal.
“Good, and the fight?”
“Too early to tell, but you did open a rather sizable hole in their ranks that we are exploiting,” Hargon explained.
I tried to get a view of what he was talking about, but an army composed largely of Ulgor’s was a difficult thing to see through. “Can you give me a boost so I can see?”
“Sure.” Hargon stooped down and offered to lift me. It was slightly awkward as he grabbed hold and helped me sit on his shoulder. I felt like a kid being held aloft by their dad, but it did the job, and I got a clean view of the situation, with conflicting emotions regarding what I saw.
True enough, a large divot had been formed in the ranks of the Thrainians as hundreds of bodies lay motionless in the mud because of my creation. The coalition was throwing themselves into this gap and using it to disrupt the already devastated formation of the enemy. They were scrambling, trying to mount a defense against the horde of powerful infantry fighters that were currently picking them to pieces bit by bit.
Magic flew freely from deeper in the ranks of the Thrianian army. Water, fire, and earth were all moved in large quantities to try and slow the coalition down in some way, but our own mages were working double time to counter them as I saw fireballs fizzle out, earthen walls crumble, and rushing water become stagnant. True, we weren’t throwing any of our own magic at them, and some attacks slipped through, but that hardly mattered when we had the advantage in close combat, particularly when they weren’t organized.
Morale was plummeting fast in the Thrainian lines as each soldier felt that they were fighting alone against a much stronger opponent, and we certainly were trying to keep them in that mindset. Thrainians were grabbed out of their clusters and beaten down in front of their fellows. I even saw a Droln pick up a body and hurl it into a group of enemies, knocking down several of them and probably doing psychological damage alongside physical.
Things were going well as far as I could tell. What little resistance seemed to be present was quickly targeted by our allies who were surging with vicious roars of vengeance for all the suffering they and their people had to endure at the hands of the Thrainians. They saw this as their chance to release all that pent up frustration in a single savage blow.
It looked good for us, but I wasn’t planning on being a spectator for much longer. I gave Hargon a pat on the back to signal that I wanted to be let down, and he dropped to a knee to allow me an easy hop off his shoulder.
“Alright, we need someone to look after the crystal and keep it away from the Thrainians.”
Two of the knights that Larvell loaned to me stepped forward. “We will take charge of the crystal and its safety, Lord James.”
A pair of armored Ulgor was certainly a formidable defense. I doubted that many, if any, Thrainians would find their way into the back lines of the coalition forces with the way things were going right now. Showing consent with a nod, Otar handed the crystal to them, and they made a quick retreat to the back lines. It was not a glorious task, but still an important one as it was possibly one of our most important assets. I shuddered to think about what the Thrianians might do with it if they somehow stole it and deciphered its functions. Alathos probably wouldn’t even care that it killed its user and have it mass produced.
The most sure-fire way to prevent that from happening would be to assist as much as we can in the fighting. “Okay, everyone else, stick close. We’re going to fight.”
“Finally!” Jorn Exclaimed. “I’ve been itching to get a piece of them, and with you stealing the show like that, I got to work extra hard. It’s the first time I've tested your prosthetic in a fight like this.” He seemed extra eager to contribute, and I saw similar looks of eagerness in everyone else and they readied their weapons.
“Can’t help you if you break it, so don’t go too hard.” I drew my own blade and turned to face the army before us. “Let’s kick their asses all the way back to Fulvrist!” They met my words with a battle cry as we fell in with the rest of the coalition forces as they pushed farther into the Thrainian lines.
It wasn’t long before we reached a point in the formation where we encountered our first enemies. It was a pocket of Thrainians that had been separated from the main force and were being surrounded. Divide and conquer was a strategy as old as the concept of strategy itself, and for good reason. You had to be prepared to exploit every weakness in your enemy if you wanted to win.
The group of Thrainians numbered about a hundred strong and were positioned in a tight circle in an attempt to weather the storm that raged all around them. They were doing a decent job at it, keeping the stronger and larger members of the coalition at spears length, but they wouldn’t last, especially now that I've shown up, and I had very little regard to my own physical wellbeing.
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Strengthening my resolve, I took some inspiration from my observations of the battle before and turned to Hargon with a request. “I want you to throw me, just behind their front lines if you can.”
His head whipped towards me with an utterly flabbergasted look. “What? Throw you? Is your brain still cooked in your head or something?”
“Hey, I’m just here to open up holes in their formation, so let me do my damn job.”
“Well, you don’t have to be so damn suicidal about it!”
“Wait, what?” Kala apparently heard a little of that over the roar of combat. “What are you talking about? James, what are you trying to do now!?”
“Just trying to win the war a little faster.” I gave her a non-answer, which she didn’t really seem all that happy with. “Come on Hargon, the quicker we do this, the more lives we potentially save.”
He shook his head, but more in a resigned kind of way. “Fine. I can honestly say I've never done something so crazy, and I'm only doing it now because this group is going to lose anyway. If there was a chance that you would be lost with this, then it would be a stern ‘no’ from me.”
“Thank you, I'm touched, now go for distance.”
“James, what are you--” Kala was interrupted in her thoughts as Hargon grabbed me by the waist and hoisted me above his head. “James! Hargon don’t you da--”
The rest of her words were lost in the wind as I suddenly found myself flying over the heads of our allies and down onto some very surprised-looking Thrainian soldiers. I ended up doing a tackle straight out of a wrestling clip as I took down three men and a few more behind them that got caught in the domino effect that followed. It was not a soft landing, and I was dazed after colliding with their armored bodies.
Shaking it off quicker than my unfortunate victims, I bounced back to my feet and then did an about-face before staggering towards the row of shield bearers holding back the coalition. There wasn’t much of a soft target to hit in the heavily armored individuals that had their backs to me, so I ended up driving the pommel of my sword into the helm of the man directly on my right, while doing a more conventional tackle to the one on my left. Both were caught so off guard that they couldn’t resist and ended up tumbling forward and out of formation.
While I was sprawled out on the ground once more, there was shouting from the Thrainians as they quickly figured out that I was not on their side. I turned back just in time to see one of them coming at me with a spear. There was no way for me to react to him, so I could only grit my teeth as he stabbed me just above my hip.
A growl of pain escaped me, but this was far from the worst thing I've felt. I glared at my attacker and swung my sword at him. The only target I could hit was his upper arm, and the attack only succeeded in making him flinch as my blade bounced off his armor.
After my ineffective attack he yanked the spear out of my side and then aimed for something a little more vital. Before he could follow through, I saw his head snap up as he looked at something behind me, and quick as a blink, a long spear was thrust into the gap in the armor around his neck. His hand grasped the haft as a gargling sound was all he could manage to show his shock. The spear was extracted quickly, leaving him to fall backwards.
Looking towards the source of my salvation, I saw Ulthises had extended his upper half into the gap in the line to assist me. His lower body coiled and sprang like any other snake. That combined with his spear allowed him exceptional reach in any situation and a quick retreat as he was able to simply pull himself back.
The gap in the formation was small, but it was quickly exploited. Coalition soldiers rushed it, attacking those who were trying to fill it in and prying it wider. I caught sight of Hargon, an easy task when the man was head and shoulders above his fellows. He swung his war hammer with vicious efficiency as the deadly implement of war looked like a small twig in his hand, yet when it connected with the helm of a soldier, it folded the metal like a soda can and pulverized the skull of his target.
Otar and Jorn were beside him, fighting with synchronicity that was born out of their close bond and experience fighting alongside each other. Otar used his sword to parry blows and get into grapple range where he likely broke limbs before his brother would come in and finish them off with a few blows of his ball mace attachment on the prosthetic. Jorn’s motions were still a little awkward, like he didn’t quite know the proper form for using his weapon, but his raw strength was enough to cause considerable damage as he hammered down on his target until they stopped moving.
As I struggled to get back on my feet with a bleeding wound in my side, I finally got eyes on Kala, and she was fighting with Velian as they worked in tandem to take down their opposition. She jabbed at the head of the soldier with her spear to keep his attention while Velian went low and attacked at the back of the legs, slicing tendons and joints to make them an easier target. Once immobilized, the smaller man would find some gap to slip his short sword into which would promptly put an end to the fight.
This little pocket of Thrainian resistance was falling apart fast now. The soft core of their formation was vulnerable, and what little morale they had was being sapped further by losing their coherency. I doubted they had any officers to rally them or give orders more advanced than what they had drilled into them.
The soldiers of the coalition were now cleaning things up, which allowed me to be swallowed up in the sea of friendly bodies. My escort found me soon after, and at least one of them wasn’t happy with me. Kala had that furiously annoyed look on her face that made me wince in a way that wasn’t at all related to the constant ache that was the bleeding hole in my side.
“What in the damned pits themselves made you think that any part of that was a good idea?!”
“The part where the Thrainian formation crumbled faster?”
“And you nearly died! Again! You got hurt, you did something stupid, and I don’t know what I have to do or say to get you to value your own wellbeing more.”
She did have a bit of a point. We had talked about this before, and it was still a problem I had. Maybe I was a little bit insane. After all, it could safely be said that I didn’t know of anyone who would willingly put themselves through even half the shit that I had been through, particularly when most of it usually ends in death. More often than not it usually seems like I am committing complicated suicide.
I sighed with a wince as the wound in my side stung a bit. “Alright, look, we can talk about this later because now it not a good time for this conversation.” We were in the middle of the hell that was a battlefield, so personal conversations could wait.
“He’s right,” Velian added. “But we should still get your injury looked after, right?”
“No, let’s leave the healers to care for those who actually need it. I can keep going for a while, and even if I die then I’ll just recover. Let’s save the people who don’t have that benefit.”
Most of them nodded in agreement, but Kala still looked upset. She didn’t argue with me though, maybe because I had logic on my side or that she understood that this was not the time or place for that, but whatever the case we could now focus on the remainder of this battle.
Just as we were going to rejoin the effort, another horn sounded out, but this one was not ours. It sounded distant, and somewhat muffled like the sound itself was being blocked by something. Several seconds later there was a cheer from our army that slowly gained in intensity until the entirety of the side facing Yol’vastume was energetically shouting into the wind.
“Hargon, what’s going on? Can you see anything?”
It didn’t take long for him to identify the source of the disturbance, and there was a grin that spread across his face once he did. “It seems Durdan has decided to sally out, and he’s brought some calvary with him.”
“Really?” True enough, beneath the sounds of conflict I heard a dull rumble that sounded like a stampede. He must be using the city’s supply of horses for this charge.
By Hargon’s estimate, there were around a hundred mounted riders that were flanking the enemy formations and targeting their ranged support. A hundred may not have sounded like much among tens of thousands of people, but cavalry has always been measured disproportionately against larger forces. Mobility, power amplification through momentum, and the ability to trample the opposition. Historically, at least in the history that I knew, cavalry had ended more than one battle decisively.
It seemed that a similar fate awaited the conclusion of this battle. With their formation in tatters, their numbers dwindling rapidly, and the introduction of mounted troops targeting their soft underbelly, someone must have decided to cut their losses and try to save what they could. A new signal horn, one that was less bellowing and more musical than the coalitions, sounded from the Thrainian side of the battlefield.
This was evidently the signal for retreat as our army roared victoriously and surged forward as the Thrianians did their best to mount a fighting retreat. The officers tried to reign in the eagerness of those that wanted to pursue, limiting them to fighting only until the Thrainians were driven out of their own camp. Dispersing and trying to hunt them down as they retreated would spread out our own formation and make it easier for them to do some damage in ambushes or traps that they might leave behind. We would take their army’s supplies and then let attrition do the work for us.
Celebration washed over the coalition army all around us. Even my friends raised their weapons and cheered as their foes fled. It was a clear victory with minimum damage to our own side, so it was acceptable to celebrate, but I just stood there in the middle of it all in a bit of a daze.
We... we did it? That thought hardly seemed real in my head as all our concentrated efforts over the last month had built up to this moment, and yet when it finally happened, I didn’t know what to think. A part of me was glad, of course, but it was a reserved sort of elation, one tempered by reality and thoughts of the future.
Looking around at all the happy faces surrounding me, I noticed that none of them were looking at exactly where they were standing. Beneath their feet were the broken bodies of soldiers, both friend and foe. This sight would repeat itself again and again before we saw the end of the war.
Standing here, upon this field of corpses, I couldn’t help but feel the weight of history upon us. For better or worse, this moment would be recorded in the annals of this world’s archives, and it would be written in the blood of thousands yet to come. A necessity shaded in grey, and only time would tell if it would all be worth it. History is written by the victor, after all, and while the battle may be won, the war was still raging.