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A grating, mechanical siren blared from over near the guard barracks. Must be a Jean’in alarm system. But the guards would not be focused on the labor camp yet.
Howls, war cries from a half-dozen clans, and the occasional blast of gunpowder sounded from the far end of the river.
“To the ramparts!” yelled a clan warrior on top of the first major barricade.
The war party had cleared the first hurdle.
“Alright, let’s go,” Maat said.
Those who could still fight streamed out of the prisoner’s longhouse wielding rusty pickaxes, improvised war clubs, filed wooden shivs, rusty chains, and anything else they could get their hands on. With the wire cutters, they didn’t even have to bust through the gate chokepoint into the camp at large. The sick evacuated to the east, while anyone who could carry a weapon slunk through the fence into the lumber and supply depot.
This part of the camp was ill-lit. Without those electric torches it was hard to tell friend from foe. But the prisoners didn’t have any torches. It was easy enough to turn their improvised weapons upon anyone who did.
Maat rushed back to the dock. He could see brief flashes of gunpowder – from firearms on both sides, and larger bursts from Rita’s odd devices.
“Hit ‘em from behind!” Maat said.
Most guards had rushed to repel the massive war party attacking their flank. They were at the doors of the guard barracks before the escapees even encountered an organized line of Jean’in.
Maat beat the first behatted figure he could reach over the head with the wire cutters. That got him his first firearm and a big knife.
He promptly wasted the firearm’s shot, breaking a window on the barracks instead of hitting a line of soldiers standing in front of them. No matter, it still worked as a club.
These guards were some of the last to get up in response to the late-night raid, ill-equipped and barely dressed, their haggard line was obliterated by a highly motivated workforce.
The prisoners ran into retreating guards from the ramparts, who were in turn smashed between Maat’s line of escapees and the charging war party. Though the Jean’in were far better equipped, being attacked on two fronts, it was a massacre.
Maat and Rita met in front of the barracks. Angry prisoners burst into the building looking for another pound of flesh.
It was a big camp. There were other guard outposts. One inside the dam itself. A small garrison on the cliffs, above the dam, was already firing down at the camp. Their bullets were inaccurate to the point of being ineffective at this distance, but they were a constant annoyance. A beachhead at been established; the stormlanders were in the camp, and they weren’t about to leave.
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“Sappers. To the dam,” Rita ordered.
While the prisoners ran around marauding on a vengeful rampage, their war party of ‘regulars’ such as they were, heeded Rita’s command and fanned out in a staggard line as they split into two equal bands on either side of the river.
“We’re operating in units of eight,” Rita said. “Each squad leader has a satchel. The dam should have some kind of load bearing columns we can target once we get inside.”
There were more ramparts erected at the foot of the dam. Rita’d come prepared; she chucked a series of smoke bombs ahead to cover their advance, then exploded the ramparts with deadlier explosives.
No resistance yet presented itself, beyond the occasional ricochet from the high cliffs. The war party and what prisoners were still following orders rushed into the dam.
Rita struck a roundish reed cannister, and it bled a glowing substance that illuminated the chamber far beyond what could be expected from such a paltry fluid. A few choice party leaders lit their own glowing sticks.
“Hmm. Michael said this could be possible.” Rita threw one of these glowing sticks out over a ledge.
There was a ditch or divot built into the dam, within were round metallic structures. As for their function, these huts were currently dormant. No entranceways into these metal homes were visible. On the side of each hut was a metal emblem of the forgeborn hammer.
“These are called generators,” Rita said. “Don’t know much about them. Some Earth relic, before my time. But they can apparently generate power by turning wheels with river water.”
The explanation was interrupted when a row of guards rushed onto the opposite ledge.
“Get to cover,” shouted a stormlander, who was promptly shredded in a wave of flying lead.
The survivors jumped to the floor to hide behind the dead bodies of their fallen comrades. A scant few, Rita and Maat among them, hid behind great concrete columns.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“I could get us behind the generators with some smoke,” Rita said.
“What would be the advantage of that?” Maat asked.
“Eh, blowing the generators would ruin somebody’s day. ‘Course then we’d be taking fire from above. It’d be a bloodbath.”
“How do we blow the dam?”
“These columns should be load bearing,” Rita said. “Can’t rig ‘em while under fire though.”
Rita motioned to a set of stairs.
“Anyone who can move without getting shot, head up to the top of the dam!”
Smoke cannisters were thrown out by all who still had spares. Bullets whizzed through the fog, leaving grey trails that lingered in the musty interior.
“What will we do once we’re up there?” Maat asked, his ears ringing from the commotion all around.
“Find a way around to the other side for one. Should be out of range of the clifftop marksmen. Just get up there and cause some chaos. Consider it a flanking maneuver.”
A bullet bounced off their concrete shield.
“Go on,” Rita said. “I’ve actually planned for this. Promise.”
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Maat was expecting traps. Barricades. Ambushes and chokepoints. Most of the dam’s interior was just construction equipment and half-finished staircases. The brunt of their opponents remained downstairs or else still on the cliff.
Maat emerged, back into the humid stormheaths night. There was a light on the horizon where the sun was slowly making its way back around the fulcrum.
A quiet night. Gunpowder-haze still lingered in the camp, which appeared like the Quarterchief’s miniature maps from this distance. For just a moment it felt like a perfectly peaceful early morning. An illusion that was shattered when the first bullet from up on the cliffs ricocheted off the dam far to Maat’s right.
Even at full height the dam only rose about halfway up the canyon. Still well out of effective range of the firearms. And they weren’t going to be firing into the onrushing stormlanders, not when there was a line of melee fighters waiting atop the dam.
Notably, though, there were lifts running up the cliff. Lifts that were now loading up fresh soldiers with a fresh supply of ammo and firearms. Within five minutes they’d be down atop the dam.
The war party would have to deal with the skirmishers on the dam now, or be overwhelmed.
Leading the Jean’in was a tall, imposing figure with a false wood-and-iron leg. He hadn’t shaved since Maat saw him last on the prison ship.
“Form a line!” the Warden declared.
They would try to stall the war party here, try to buy time for the reinforcements from above.
Maat ran out in front of the line of rabid stormlanders.
“Warden!”
A vein popped up in the Warden’s neck.
There we go, Maat thought. The Warden couldn’t possibly leave potential prey alive. Not after so many near-misses.
“Slow advance,” the Warden bellowed.
Alright, he’d taken the bait, though the steely Warden wouldn’t be provoked into blindly charging.
Maat pulled out his last explosives cannister. He threw it into the slowly advancing line of Jean’in.
There was no explosion, merely a spark and flash. More of a party trick. But the Jean’in didn’t know that. A few of the greener ones flinched, and the stormlanders charged.
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The Warden hobbled along on his artificial leg, wading through the battle and striking down random stormlanders and Jean’in alike on his beeline towards Maat.
Maat rushed towards the edge of the dam. The blockaded water gathered slowly, not even a fourth of the way up the dam’s height.
The Warden grabbed Maat by the neck and held him over the edge.
“Let’s see you survive this.” The Warden placed a handheld scattergun up to Maat’s chest.
At this distance all the whitewood armor in the world wouldn’t block the shot.
A familiar bauble sat around the Warden’s neck. It was the holy Torrent vial. Likely claimed as a war trophy, oblivious to its function, power, or meaning. Maat kicked until the scattergun wasn’t aimed directly at his heart, then grabbed at the bauble and ripped it off the Warden’s neck. Without a proper grip the vial went flying off the edge of the dam into the waters below.
How long would it take to hit the bottom? Probably a few seconds at least.
Maat closed his eyes. Waited for either a miracle or the Warden’s scattershot to fire.
Both came one right another. The scattershot fired past Maat. The blast sent his ear ringing and left him unable to hear on his left side for the time being.
The Warden yelled out something in his foreign tongue. Maat couldn’t make anything out. He kicked again and was swiftly thrown to the side. The Warden screamed, incoherent, firing off every available weapon on his person – of which there were several, all tucked into various pouches and pockets on his duster.
A slender swirling vortex of water was hovering over the dam. It snaked around, originating from somewhere in the reservoir below. It was the same kind of snaking tendril that had thrown the Warden out of the headwaters so many weeks ago now.
“Blast it all, this thing again!?!? What are you!?” he cried, emptying his last scattergun.
Pellets cut through the water, ineffective.
A figure rode up on the water tendril, robes flowing in the canyon’s steady breeze. He wielded a bow of river reeds, primed with a shimmering water arrow.
Aminia let loose his arrow, and a hyper-focused stream of Torrent water hit the Warden square in the chest, rocketing him off the far end of the dam and down to the ground far below
“Hopefully that puts him down for good,” Maat said, ear still ringing.
“Ma’at.” Aminia said, still riding atop his strange water spindle.
“Huh?” It was still hard for Maat to hear.
“Ma’athiel!” Aminia said again. “If someone could get rid of this concrete monstrosity so my river can run unimpeded, that’d be great.”
A mighty wall of water was crashing against the dam, now. As if the entire river was trying to climb up and over.
The lifts had stalled, having seen the deluge below. One even reversed and was traveling back up the cliff face.
The foreign soldiers atop the dam had seen their commander get pushed clear from one edge of the dam off the other and scattered, afraid.
Maat rushed back down to the ground level.
“What’s happening up there?” Rita asked.
The Jean’in here had slunk off through some cave or emergency escape route. Rita was midway through rigging the load-bearing columns to blow.
“Might want to go faster,” Maat said. “Just weaken it. River will do the rest.”
With a shrug, Rita prepped one last column and the pair ran out into the former prison camp. They ran to higher ground, near the cliffs, far out of the maximum reach of the Torrent.
A slender wire ran from Rita’s hip all the way back inside the dam. She took a minute to set up some kind of detonator, then pulled a long chord.
There was a delay, then a puff of smoke from inside the dam. Everything collapsed in slow motion. Bits of concrete blocks shook off from the midsection. Then a forceful jet of water punctured the dam near the top, and three more near the bottom. And soon all but a narrow bit near the western cliff face had been swept up by a newly-liberated Torrent.
The prison camp was submerged in an instant. The Torrent flowed free, washing away so much of the Jean’in presence on the island. It moved faster than was strictly natural, urged on by Aminia’s holy powers.
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