Sofia did her best to analyze the situation while the Sunless slowly approached her first line of defense. She had anticipated a few things, but the current situation was worse than her planned worst case scenario. There were just too many of the advanced types of Sunless.
The Engineer skeleton climbed up to the top of the tower through a trapdoor, carrying a bunch of small colored flags made of torn cloth on bone sticks, Sofia acknowledged him with a nod before he quietly sat cross-legged near her.
Pareth. Slight change of plan. You focus on hunting the homunculus. We absolutely cannot have them come close or the heart will be in danger. We will manage everything else, somehow.
Bookie, dispatch five soldiers to each corner tower, they need protection from the flyers.
The army of Sunless slowly approached the ring of mana-storing ritual circles.
Alright, focus. Thin, strong beams of light.
Sofia raised her scepter, and light erupted from the catalyst, an umbrella of rays of holy light spreading from the tower, and perfectly hitting the distant ritual circles all around the plains. She was multicasting her own heavily edited version of [Heal Undead], something she had been working on to have more efficient ways to apply the rot.
As the first line of Sunless started to glide over the ring of rituals, small patches of black erredian rot started spreading all over the ritual circles. The easily accessible high amounts of mana allowed the rot to grow explosively, in an instant, the rot engulfed thousands of drones, quickly propagating even further thanks to all the excess mana at its disposal.
The drones were dying so fast that Mr Scribe did not even try to count and display the kill notifications, but the Amalgams kept advancing despite the rot, and the smarter homunculi simply flew up to avoid the land-bound rot.
Sofia stopped spreading the rot when her mana hit the halfway point.
This should be enough. Now the flyers.
The small bird-like Sunless gliding over the plains were fast-approaching; they were a new kind of Sunless that Sofia had never seen, but she had been expecting that possibility. After all, the Sunless Nightbringer that Sofia had briefly seen near the start of the trial was a giant flying creature.
Paladins, take up arms!
Bookie’s twenty five Paladin class skeletons were waiting within the walls. Castles usually had such hiding spots for archers to be able to shoot arrows safely through thin slits. Sofia knew about it from her time in the Holy-See. The paladins were already trained with the bow and arrow, but Sofia had the Engineer skeleton prepare something better, his own brand of elemental muskets. Usually the Engineer’s constructs were temporary, but with ample time to prepare, Sofia had gotten him to make permanent ones.
The flying Sunless approached the fortress in straight lines, they were easy targets. The paladins fired, and twenty five Sunless flyers fell and impaled themselves into the countless rows of bone spikes surrounding the walls.
Keep shooting! Don’t save your mana, when you’re out, take up a lance and go up to the ramparts!
Sofia quickly changed her view to Pareth’s, she watched him jump over a black lance and cleave a homunculus in half as he landed.
“Alright,” she whispered, relieved that he seemed to be doing well despite the horrendous situation he was in, surrounded by countless Sunless. She trusted that he would teleport back to her if his situation was getting desperate.
The first amalgams are coming! Sirhellions, charge your bolts!
The Sirhellion skeletons were mounted like ballistas on rotating bone constructs spread into three corner towers in a triangle around the fortress. This was needed since they could not fly at night without ambient mana. They each had a soldier Kidjikkik responsible for rotating the structure, and now were also all surrounded by five more soldier Kidjikkiks as protection.
The trenches carved around the fortress were right at the limit of the Sirhellion’s range, any further and their lightning attacks would become inaccurate. As soon as an amalgam tried to jump over the giant trench, it received a lightning bolt. It was not enough to kill them, but the bolts came with a debilitating effect that would prevent the amalgams from jumping, and their momentum would send them barrelling down the trenches.
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The first amalgam was hit by the lightning and fell into the trenches, getting pierced from side to side by giant bone spikes. It was still not dead, but the rot would finish the job.
Good, this is also working.
Keep it up.
So far, the Paladins managed to keep all the flyers at bay, but already, a few amalgams were getting past the trenches. There were only three Sirehllions, and the Sunless amalgams came by the dozen. The zone beyond the trenches was all spikes and freezing mist, so they were injured as they landed, some were impaled, but for the amalgams with more than one head, their sheer power was enough to break most of the spikes they landed on.
Black lances started to form.
Bookie, send the foot soldiers.
Small trap doors appeared within the walls, from which small squads of lancier Kidjikkik soldiers crawled out one by one before falling into the sea of bone spikes. The tips of their weapons were hollow like fountain pens, and shone with a green gleam. The flower hero skeleton had been one of the skeletons hard at work for weeks during the construction project. Every night, Bookie had him create new flowers and try the poisons on Sunless drones.
The Soldier Kidjikkik could easily navigate between the bone spikes with their elongated worm-like bodies, each squad of five surrounded a different amalgam.
Sunless Amalgams had a weakness, while they could morph their body to defend themselves when channeling spells, they could not use their self-defense spikes at the same time they released the spells.
Sofia worriedly looked at the four pillars every few seconds, hoping to see them burn out and learn how long this night would last.
The first black lance shot forward. Sofia was ready, using her storage eye, she summoned a thick bone slate right in front of the attack. The black lance impaled the bone slate and kept flying forward. The slate impacted the wall first, dissipating a huge amount of force as it shattered. The lance failed to pierce the bone walls. At the same time, a Kidjikkik squad stealthily attacked the Amalgam from within the sea of spikes, only stabbing it once each, delivering some poison before making their way over to another amalgam. The amalgam’s lower body started to dissolve, in turn feeding the rot which the creature was already covered in. The rot flared up like a hot bubble of mana, and there was nothing left of the amalgam a few seconds later.
Sofia looked at the pillars again, but the flames were all still burning. It had not even been two minutes yet, but she dearly hoped that the second night would be shorter than the first.
She quickly transferred another bone slate from her bone storage to her eye, and swapped as fast as she could through all of her vision tokens to determine where the next lance was going to come from. She stopped the second lance, but they were already starting to come too fast. For each lance she stopped, two more pierced through the walls. The walls slowly repaired themselves, enough to sustain the damage without crumbling. This continued for a bit, and finally, the first pillar’s flame burned out.
This night is also twenty minutes long! We can do this!
The homunculi started to reach the trench.
Pareth had killed a good number already, but he could only cover a tiny portion of the battlefield.
Come back, we’re starting phase two! Sofia informed Pareth as she struggled to stop as many black lances as she could, spending her stock of bone slates at an alarming pace, littering the battlefield with broken bones.
Pareth teleported to Sofia, and without waiting, he downsized himself to his smallest height and jumped off from the tower. He grew back after stabilizing his fall, and squashed a fireball-casting homunculus as he landed, his role was still the same.
Sometimes an homunculus would manage to cast a spell, obliterating a section of the outer walls, but thanks to Bookie’s non-stop micro-management of the Kidjikkik and Paladin troops, they always managed to avoid being caught in the spells.
The drones were handled by the rot, the amalgams by Sofia, the Sirhellions and the Kidjikkiks, the homunculi by Pareth, and the flyers by the Paladins. This resulted in a tense push and pull, as the bone walls were destroyed and regenerated, without much real damage being done. The second flame burned out,
The fortress held out for about ten more seconds after the start of the second half, that was when the Engineer skeleton raised a yellow flag. The paladins had all run out of mana.
To the ramparts! Don’t let them in!
The Engineer also raised a blue flag, this one meant the Sirhellions were out. Between blocking two black lances with summoned bone slates, Sofia had to decide on what to do next.
They held for long… The templars are already on standby. Should I order the cast now?
She had only been distracted for a second, but it was enough for a black lance to get through the walls and hit the sky tower. The entire structure shook under Sofia’s feet.
Start the cast and hold!
Pareth, your health is too low, come back!
A flying Sunless attacked Sofia from above, it had managed to stay undetected by flying high, it was larger than the ones attacking below, and Sofia only noticed it at the last moment, too late to do anything. The Engineer skeleton had fewer things to focus on and was more aware of his surroundings, he had noticed an instant before, and before the Sunless could reach Sofia, he threw himself at it.
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