Day 03.

Lieutenant Altus Besk of Pella’s 2nd Artillery Company watched as the men and women under his command carried dozens of enchanted shot and cannon parts up and out of the magazine Colonel Verne had given him and the other artillery companies access to.

Weapons of this type, the hidden secret of Ilsylvania’s defense, hadn’t been fired in anger since the Siege of Araedi over five hundred years ago. And now they were being hastily assembled in place of Fort Pella’s non-enchanted armaments on each of her flanks as the multiple walls of fire in every direction made their way towards the fort and her village.

Beyond those flames, Besk watched hundreds of armored and robed Guardians of every color running towards his home through his binoculars. They were crummy things that barely extended his view beyond his naked eyes, but he needed them to determine range more effectively. He placed them at just under a mile and closing. They were slow walking ahead and beside their wall of flames and behind them, the miles of the blackened and charred remains of that destruction stood out almost like an ocean.

What do they want? Why attack us? What did we do to invite their wrath? All questions Besk had no answers to. The sudden, seemingly random and unprovoked nature of it all was the most horrifying part of all this. He and his men were fighting a nigh unstoppable enemy and the worst part was he didn't even know why.

“They sure do seem in a hurry to catch our shot,” Verne mused with a dry humor.

“We’re almost ready to give it to them.” Besk forced a casual tone of his own.

No one at this fort had seen any real combat beyond the occasional goblin hunting patrol in almost a hundred years. And now Besk was leading the battery that would likely be the first to fire upon the Guardians as enemies and not as allies as Pella had done nearly a hundred years ago to stop the great demon Azeban in her last great combat action.

But what really caused Besk to white knuckle the railing in front of him was the knowledge that this enemy couldn't really die. They could be killed, temporarily, but they would just come back and attack them again. He and his men were only throwing rocks at an unstoppable hurricane.

Supposedly there were two factions within the Guardians. Those outside the walls, setting fire to everything around them for reasons he couldn't even begin to fathom, and those within the walls. The latter group's numbers were far smaller, but there were assurances from them that they were still on the side of protecting Pella and her people.

Besk wasn't sure whether he could trust that second group. Clearly wherever the Guardians had gone for the last month, the experience had broken many of them. Was this a symptom of the new minds each Guardian now possessed? He couldn't know, he wasn't a philosopher. He was an artilleryman.

Verne pulled Besk from his thoughts. “When your men are ready and the enemy within range, send as many shots as you please.”

They both knew the Guardians were already in range and had been for a while now, if they were to use the maximum firestone charge these cannons were rated for. But this was a battle of attrition to stall for time. They needed to conserve every precious bit of ammo they had in the hopes that the faction supposedly on their side had some as of yet unknown means to deal with the attackers for good and they could do that before Pella was overrun.

Besk watched the men beneath him finish assembling their cannon, a near twenty foot long barrel with a twenty inch bore. It could deliver a thousand pound shot over eight thousand yards without breaking a sweat. Such weapons required a full platoon of thirty men in heavily enchanted armor to operate the nearly sixty-ton cannon, let alone the three men required to carry and load her shot and charge.

The nature of the enchantments placed on the shot was the real secret Ilsylvania had kept. One type could cause the shot to burst apart explosively into shrapnel and the other drew in mana as it flew, generating much more power behind the impact. The former was the “army breaker” and was being used against the Guardians. The latter, barrier busters, had been used in the great siege of Araedi. Though that enchantment hadn't actually been used against the barriers themselves, but the buildings. It was confidently believed that enough of these enchanted rounds could eventually penetrate it. Besk didn't want to be alive to see such a war where they'd have to test the claim.

“I have to see how the other batteries are doing. You have the deck,” Verne said.

“I have the deck,” Besk confirmed.

The two flanking gunner’s platforms each had their cannons fully assembled and were loaded for bear moments after the forward cannon was ready.

“Focus fire on as many clumped together as you can in a one-two-three rolling sweep.” Besk took one last look at the approaching wave of Guardians and the wall of fire behind them about a half mile away from the base of the fort's hill, then looked down at the three gunner’s platforms beneath him. “Fire one!”

“Fire one!” The first gunner, Sergeant Ruike, repeated.

The first gun boomed, sending out a sea of sparks, fire, and smoke. The large cannon jumped backwards, stopped by the web of arresting ropes behind it.

The second and third cannons followed suit. The three enchanted shots were placed just short of the Guardians with near perfect spacing that made Besk swell with pride at his soldiers’ gunnery.

Earth was kicked up and bodies were sent flying back into the flames behind them. Many turned into glowing crystals almost immediately as the enchanted shot blew apart, cutting through trees and bodies like a warm knife through butter.

Besk hoped that opening salvo might have dissuaded some of the other approaching Guardians, but like the fires burning behind them, they continued forward, closing the now four thousand yards of distance swiftly.

His gunners, undaunted, quickly moved to reload their cannons.

***

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Sinnamon and AnnaLee flew high above Pella. She could hear the thunderous booms of the fort's guns, watching them send out smoking arcs of orange in response to the closing fires.

From her overhead view, Sinnamon watched a trail of people moving from the outlying homes near the edges of the Pella’s walls towards a central building that dominated the village. A not insignificant number were also coming from the gun platforms on the fort overlooking Pella as well. Many of that group were being carried.

“Looks like they're staging the wounded down there,” Sinnamon said over the telepathic party chat.

“You guys are gonna have to manage your own from here. Look!” Owlie pointed back the way they'd come from.

Some players with flying mounts of their own had apparently had the same idea Weaver had. They'd trailed behind Sinnamon’s party and were now beginning to rain devastation on Pella’s defenseless rooftops from high above with fireballs of her own.

Larina and Owlie quickly turned back and Larina lit up the sky with a dazzling display of spells.

Though she'd have liked to turn and help, Sinnamon and AnnaLee were supports, not damage classes. They were useless in aerial combat, though even Owlie as a Dragoon wasn’t made for ranged combat, either. But she and Larina had to make due and Sinnamon and AnnaLee had to go where they were needed.

The pair landed close to the largest building where they found Halzy standing beside an open fast travel portal. A slow trickle of players came through, immediately going in different directions.

“How bad is it?” Sinnamon asked, from what she'd seen, it was already pretty bad, but she hadn’t seen everything Halzy and his guildmates could.

“Pella’s the largest village in immediate danger, but this isn't the only place this attack sprung up around. Delphianna's dealing with people setting fires and south of Araedi's burning, too. Whoever's coordinating it sure knew how to spread us thin.” Halzy shook his head. “Just from the size of the crowd outside the walls, you'd think they targeted Pella specifically.”

Sinnamon had to agree. There were some million or so players between Araedi and Delphianna. They couldn't, and many even wouldn't, be able to comb the entire continent to stop maybe a couple hundred or thousand. Though from what she'd seen in the air, it seemed like Pella had become the point everyone fixated on and gravitated towards.

“We saw a couple players flying this way. If you know anyone else with flying mounts, they'll probably want to go up.” Sinnamon said.

Halzy cringed. “Damn it. Most of our ranged are on the walls. Thank you, we'll figure something out. You might check out the library. That's where they're staging the casualties and the evacuation.”

Sinnamon knew a little about the cities beyond Araedi or Castera’s walls. But she did know each of them had a central location civilians could evacuate to in the event of a night spawn attack. Villages around the player cities hadn't really needed to use their bunkers for much, but that had certainly changed. Though Sinnamon wondered what good they'd do against players.

At the library, medics and healers scurried between wounded and… a lot of sickly looking people. They actually outnumbered the wounded considerably. Sinnamon looked around confused for a moment before she stopped a medic.

“Anna and I are healers. How can we help you?” Sinnamon asked.

The medic, a tall, thin man in guard armor, studied Sinnamon and AnnaLee briefly. “You're Guardians. Please, whatever you do, don't just start healing! Go talk to the senior medical officer over there in the blue uniform—” He pointed to a group of people, other players, sitting around a short man with thinning hair in the blue uniform. It looked like a class of some sort. “—he'll explain things. Your healing magic will do more harm than good until you've had proper training. Unfortunately we don't have time for that, so quick and dirty it is.”

Sinnamon moved to the uniformed man and listened intently.

“...use pulses of magic, slowly and with precise intent. Just enough to make them stable, my medics will take care of it the rest of the way,” he finished.

A couple of the players who'd been listening to him stood and mixed in among the sick and wounded.

“I'm not really an officer, just one of the most knowledgeable doctors here. The Army pays me well and I get to help those who need it,” Merriweather corrected after introducing himself. “You might have missed the beginning of my lecture, I've given it three times now. The key thing to note is you must heal slowly and pay close attention as you work. You don't want to harm the patient more with your help. Failure to heed caution could cause permanent disfigurement or disablement.”

“Good to know.” Sinnamon said. She knew some emergency medicine, having worked as an EMT a couple years ago. Her Cleric, School of Healing subclass had given her some knowledge she hadn’t had before. It seemed to augment what she already knew and filled in some of the gaps she didn't. She felt a bit of confidence coming to her with the realization. Not the confidence of someone who thought they knew more than they did, but the confidence of someone who knew they knew enough for the task ahead of them.

She dumped the points she'd kept in reserve into her Medic Profession, chosen as she was listening to Merriweather. More insights and knowledge came to her. Her hands seemed to know instinctively how to move in the often complicated gestures used to heal in place of physically performing any type of surgery.

AnnaLee didn't have a base of knowledge to work with, she hadn't ever done anything with medicine before, and so worked as Sinnamon’s assistant, bringing her bandages and cleaning wounds while Sinnamon worked her mana to set bone, mend flesh, or cauterize the places were fingers and limbs had once been.

The girl watched Sinnamon with rapt attention. She didn't shy away from the grevious wounds, but asked questions about anatomy that also had the effect of keeping some of the more lucid patients focused on the conversation instead of the pain they were no doubt feeling.

Sinnamon wondered if AnnaLee was intentionally doing it for the benefit of the patient. If that girl was, Sinnanon had no doubt that she would make a good nurse someday.

As she readied herself to stabilize the next person before her, Sinnamon received a message from Saiph.

Help is coming. Watch the skies.

***

Orbnus’ chainsword made that terrible buzzing sound as it cleaved through two Guardians who hadn’t had time to see it coming. She sheathed her sword and sent two jets of water from her hands into the fires the Guardians she’d killed had been following. Jack returned to his speed-boosting melody and off they were through the break she'd made.

The rolling drone of distant explosions told Tyree she was nearing Pella and the fort was unleashing its barrage of enchanted cannonfire.

Ahead of Tyree and her two powerful escorts, a group of twenty Guardians rushing for the city suddenly blew apart, their bodies instantly replaced with twenty purple crystals that continued on the trajectory the explosion had sent them on.

Orbnus quickly wrapped herself around Tyree, the clanking of shrapnel off the Guardian's armor drilled home just how close she had come to getting hit by friendly fire.

“Can you get me up to the fort?” Tyree asked Orbnus.

Orbnus let out a wicked smile as she donned her helmet and unfurled her large silver wings. She gripped Tyree about the waist and lifted off higher and higher above the battlefield.

Three orange lights streaked from the fort towards the wall of fire and were answered by smaller, far faster streaks of a rainbow of colors. Tyree watched the brave men and women manning those three guns, loading the charge and shot all the while arrows and mana streaked around them. Two of them went down, bloodied forms already lifeless as they hit the ground.

“There, on that artillery battery! Set me down there!” Tyree shouted over the howling winds and the din of battle.

Orbnus did as she was asked, but immediately pulled up and away as the right-most gun suddenly blew apart, sending shrapnel and bodies flying as two more explosions followed it, causing the entire platform to disappear in a rising cloud of smoke and debris.