A blue-crested thundersaur roared as it charged.
The gigantic beast’s two legs shook the ground with each thudding step. Its clawed forelimbs jerked forward, grasping at prey that was still hundreds of meters away.
Indeed, its movements were noticeably twitchy. Not at all like the sleek and sure-footed, for its size, apex predator that Al was familiar with.
Upon its head, pressing down on its crown of feathers was what looked like a nest of breeding snakes.
Blood-crusted cables glinted in the sunlight as they plunged into the poor beast’s tough hide.
On a hunch, Al shot an anti-magic arrow into the tangled nest where his Skill highlighted a weakness.
The writhing mass of metal cables suddenly fell limp.
The thundersaur staggered, shaking its massive head.
Al saw the light return to its vacant eyes even as it veered into another five meter tall beast.
The second beast was a skinless monster skittering on five pairs of legs.
It too had a tangled nest affixed to what looked like its head.
The thundersaur lashed out in pain and fear.
Claws scored deep gashes in the skinless side.
Toothy maw large enough to bite a man in two took a bloody chunk.
Al sought another target as the two creatures turned on each other.
A shambling mound of what looked disturbingly like twisted human babies seemed a good target.
Three arrows in one shot.
Spread perfectly to maximize the explosive damage.
The mound erupted.
Instead of one horrible monster there were now hundreds of twisted human baby things dragging themselves across the blasted landscape.
Al aimed high.
Arrowstorm.
On arrow went up, a hundred came down.
He repeated it twice more to the awe of the soldiers near him.
“I can’t repeat it.”
It took five explosive arrows to blow the central head off a monster with many. Which was all he needed to do to disable it. His Skill had told him that without the smallest head tucked in the chest the monster couldn’t move its legs leaving the rest of its heads to writhe uselessly on long, sinuous necks.
All across the wall, specialists like Al used their best abilities and ammunition to whittle down the large monsters.
One massive beast, a mix between a razorbeak turtle and a mound of rocks resisted everything shot at it.
The ground rumbled at its feet, lurching and rising to knock it back.
Command had decided to activate their last remaining powerful automaton.
The Hecatoncheires-type all-purpose assault automaton erupted out of the ground with weapon limbs blazing. Named after the hundred-handed Gods for its hundred limbs, each one bearing an artifact for attack or defense, the automaton crawled from the hole it had been hiding in.
Dazzling light flashed from the spell gems in its limbs, bathing the rock turtle beast in every manner of attack spell an eager mage could dream of.
Ice froze the beast’s face.
Heat cracked its rock-armored hide.
Thin beams disintegrated chunks of the softer flesh beneath.
A distortion of the air around it was the only indication of gravity used as a weapon to keep the beast in place for the automaton to carve it apart like a butcher does cattle.
The young soldiers near Al cheered as the automaton crawled up to the stricken beast to stab adamantine-tipped tendrils into its exposed flesh.
The manticore venom finished the job.
Al’s face remained impassive.
He remembered.
There had been more than one Hecatoncheires-type automaton when he had first arrived at the fort.
For all its seeming invincibility… well… it just wasn’t.
There was an old maxim of the hunt he had learned early.
The simple fact was that there was always a bigger or deadlier predator stalking the forest.
Being at the apex was tenuous at best.
Bright light bloomed overhead with a crash that made the mightiest thunder sound like a tiny songbird’s cries.
The soldiers ducked, covering their heads.
“The shields will hold or we’d already be dead,” Al remained standing.
They gazed up at him with wonder.
He didn’t know why.
It wasn’t as though he was being extra brave.
He was merely being realistic.
If the shields failed then the hierophants’ artillery spells would wipe them off the wall in an instant.
The shield emitters atop their tall poles grew brighter and hotter with each shot they absorbed.
Mages raised their hands to feed mana into the artifacts.
The fort returned fire, but without spotters it was down to guesswork.
Kilometers of forest burned, brightening the gloom of dusk.
Smaller, weaker automatons joined the Hecatoncheires-type as it mopped up the remaining monsters.
“Danger!”
The cry went up across the wall.
Danger Sense spiked.
Al had dropped the Skill for a better one years ago. He trusted in his own instincts and experience.
High up in the sky the empty air seemed to shiver.
Al pointed and relayed what only he could see.
The captain, voice wavering with every word, repeated the words into his comms gem.
Empty space ripped open like torn cloth, elongating into a jagged-edge smile opening wider with every moment like a madman’s crazed laughter frozen in time.
A humanoid figure stepped through onto a glowing platform of strange script conjured out of nothing.
It wasn’t one of the golden-winged angels, which Al had expected, but rather a delicate-featured woman with perfect pale skin, long alabaster hair and knife-like ears.
It was difficult to judge size with distance and a lack of environmental cues to compare, but Al had Skills.
The woman, it was clear from the shape of her body he could see through her form-fitting robe that seemed to glimmer as though it was metal though it shifted with her movements like cloth, was tall, on par with Theron. In contrast, she was slender, which called to mind the automaton’s farmers used to keep their fields safe from thieving birds.
“It’s one of the High!” the captain’s eyes were wide as saucers. “There’s a High! She’s ten thousand meters overhead! I repeat! Single High at ten thousand meters above us!” he cried into the comms gem.
“So that’s a High. The description is lacking,” Al mused.
The High twisted her fingers and moved her hands and arms in an intricate pattern while her red lips barely moved.
“She’s casting.”
“What?” the captain’s voice had gone several octaves higher. “High is casting! High is casting!”
A bright pillar of light stabbed down like the finger of a God.
It seared itself into Al’s eyes and blinded everyone.
Precious seconds passed before healers managed to reverse the effects.
He blinked away tears.
A wide circle of the battlefield centered on the Hecatoncheires-type had been turned into glass.
The massive automaton had been reduced to smoking ruin. The only thing recognizable were parts of its inner skeleton and the odd gear or artificial bone and muscle.
He snapped his gaze back toward the High.
She was casting again.
This time he was certain that the fort was her target.
The shields could probably take one hit hit before most of them overloaded, which would leave them vulnerable to the bombardment from the forest.
One chance to avert disaster.
His best Skill, one he could only use once every few weeks, combined with a one-time activation of the magic in his sylph’s hair bowstring to loose his highest grade anti-magic arrow.
Al didn’t hesitate.
Nock, draw, sight and loose.
The gust of wind from his shot almost knocked him back off the wall and floored the soldiers nearby.
They screamed as their ears bore the brunt of the thunderous boom.
Broken fingers lost their hold on the bow. It crumbled to ash before it hit his feet.
The arrow covered the distance in three blinks of the eye.
The High’s magic shields fizzled on contact.
Three layers as if they were as tangible as smoke.
She reacted with impossible quickness, twisting desperately.
A shot meant for her chest turned into one that tore through her elbow.
Her wail was heard by everyone in the fort before she staggered back into the ugly rent, closing it behind her.
“What just happened?” the captain gazed at him with wonder.
Mindful of the moment, like Theron had taught him, Al stood straighter, ignoring the throbbing of his broken and burned hands.
“I disarmed the High. She’s running for her life.”
The soldiers cheered.
The captain relayed everything through the comms gem.
Stolen story; please report.
“Go to the hospital,” the captain nodded. “Tell them you need priority healing. I want you back here as soon as you can. You, uh, have another bow?” he indicated the pile of ash at Al’s feet.
Al nodded.
“Good, good. Because this isn’t over. The Dominion is really serious about it this time. Highs only show up when they’re really serious, you know what I mean?”
Al supposed he did.
At least the reports had all come to that conclusion.
In the hierarchy of power the High’s stood above the hierophants and below the golden-winged angels.
He had struck a true blow against the enemy by taking the High woman out of the fight so quickly.
He could hear the whispers of the soldiers.
His deed was already spreading across the wall.
The hospital awaited.
As it turned out the Dominion lacked the honor to wait for Al to return to the wall.
It had taken half an hour for the highest leveled healer to fix Al’s hands after which he had to run to his barracks for his spare shortbow, identical to the one he had used up. His supply of superior arrows had dwindled to almost none so he had to make due with the standard issue ones from the armory.
His section of the wall exploded just as he got within a dozen meters.
He dived behind a stout equipment cart on instinct.
Body parts rained down all around him.
The soldiers he had just stood with littered a wide swath of open ground.
More soldiers rushed forward to plug the gaping hole when the bloody parts began to vibrate.
“Corpse explosion!” Al cried out as he surged up and tipped the cart over so he could crawl underneath it like it was a turtle’s shell.
Somehow, his warning was received by the closest soldiers.
Mages cast shield domes as the rest clustered around them like frightened chicks underneath their mother hen.
The hierophants’ spell went off, turning every severed head, limb and torso into something akin to an explosive.
Bone turned into jagged shrapnel, shredding unarmored flesh.
Blood became caustic, like acid, melting through armor and clothing.
An ordered maneuver was thrown into disarray.
Instead of infantry blocks supported by ranged fire and magic protection what reached the hole was a motley collection of soldiers from different squads.
Predictably, they served as a minor obstruction to the cragants that poured into the fort.
The giant humanoids were led by what looked like one of the trihorns that Al was familiar with from his homeworld. Except, much larger, fiercer and carnivorous judging by the sharp teeth within its beaked mouth as it bit a soldier in half to swallow the still screaming man, armor and all.
A cragant rode atop the doubly-armored beast’s back. A banner in one hand held high to attract and absorb incoming fire and a thick metal rod in the other spraying a deadly shower of what looked like tiny metal balls.
Al scrambled for distance, moving away from the direction of the cragant thrust.
Thinking quickly, he understood that he couldn’t hurt the lead cragant and her fearsome mount.
The attack-soaking banner glowed hot, but it didn’t look close to its capacity. While the trihorn-like beast was covered in thick plates of iron armor on top of its already formidable natural hide.
The beast lowered its head and speared two unfortunate soldiers, one on each of its main horns, while trampling many others.
Cragants in their orderly blocks of door-sized shields and thick armor rapidly filled the space around the breach in the wall, securing a foothold that they wouldn’t easily relinquish.
Al had one last special arrow.
He had been saving it for a truly dire emergency.
“Al!” Damaris beckoned him from behind the corner of an armored bunker a distance away.
Part of a second line of defense, soldiers rushed to it.
He gestured toward the breach and the cragants.
Hand signs the scouting corp used.
She gaped, hardened her gaze and nodded.
He nocked his special arrow, then had to dive out of the path of a cragant bolt.
The thick thing thunked into the ground, throwing up a cloud of dust.
The damn thing was the size of the ones they used in their heavy, mounted weapons.
“Covering Fire!” Damaris directed everyone in the bunker to turn their spell rods toward him.
Cragant bolts met an impossibly dense stream of conjured stone, metal and other things.
Al covered his face as shrapnel rained down on him.
What was instant death became slight wounds.
“Dust Cloud!”
Damaris’ Skill would only buy him seconds. And with their numbers, the cragants only needed to fill the space with their bolts to get lucky.
He ran away out of the cloud, keeping it between him and the cragants.
Nock, draw, loose.
The special arrow streaked on a straight line over the heads of the cragant formation.
Al watched it closely and triggered it with a thought.
The arrow activated as it reached the center of the cragant formation.
A black orb suddenly appeared.
Swirling darkness, deep, opaque, like the void above.
The space between stars and worlds.
It was one of the things that Adras claimed dominion over.
One of the strongest of his gifts to all his followers from the lowliest hunter to the highest eidolon.
The orb sucked in everything around it.
Cragants held onto each other and dug powerful fingers into the ground as they were pulled off their boots toward the swirling void.
Even the mighty trihorn couldn’t fight its inexorable pull.
The beast’s four legs strained, dragging deep furrows into the dirt against its will.
The mounted cragant dropped her weapon to grab the pommel of her saddle. Her legs flew back as she waved like a banner in the wind.
Al counted.
Ten seconds.
The orb winked out.
Mangled cragants compressed together with assorted debris into a disgusting ball fell with a dull thud.
The trihorn and its rider had been spared though she had lost her grip on the banner.
Al reacted without conscious thought and put an arrow through her helmet’s eye slit.
The cragant toppled.
The trihorn bellowed, stomping its thick feet and shaking the ground.
It turned a baleful glare directly to Al despite the distance and chaos of the battle.
The way its eyes were set made a head on shot nearly impossible. That wasn’t even accounting for the thick armor plate or the bony, saucer shaped crest that shielded the rest of its body.
Al tried a curving shot, which hit, but was stopped from reaching an eye by the steel mesh over it.
His next shot was a flare arrow.
The bright light blinded the massive beast and sent it careening into an equipment cart to Al’s left.
He dashed for the bunker chased by jagged wooden splinters.
“Please tell me you’ve got more of those arrows,” Damaris grinned, clasping his arm to yank him into the bunker.
“Sorry.”
“Eh, too bad. Mind taking a look up there?” she gestured to the ceiling.
It took him a moment to realize she meant outside.
With all the personal excitement he hadn’t noticed that the night sky was lit up with what looked like a meteor shower.
Their skyships crisscrossed cross the sky with fire, battling the Dominion’s flying monsters.
He told her as much.
“Makes sense why we aren’t getting any air support,” Damaris nodded. “Alright, I guess—”
The bunker shook.
Al heard it before anyone else with his superior hunter’s ears.
A song that wasn’t a song.
Music you heard, but didn’t.
It was in your ears and inside of you.
An image of golden fire bathing the fort filled his mind’s eye.
He saw himself, saw Damaris and the rest covered in a golden wave leaving them all as dust in the dirt.
They heard it a few seconds after him.
Eyes began to glaze, mouths opened, spittle dribbled down slack jaws.
Al shook his head, then slapped himself.
He took Damaris by the shoulders and did what one didn’t do to babies.
She jolted with a start, understanding crossed her face.
The two of them slapped and shook the others back into reality.
Mages cast countermeasures like they had prepared for this eventuality.
They’d muffle the song that wasn’t a song some, but it wouldn’t last.
“Prepare to retreat!” Damaris barked.
Soldiers not under her command complained.
“I don’t care!” she snapped. “If we wait for command’s orders it’ll be too late. I’m not ending up in an ogre’s cook pot. I’m not waiting for eidolons to show up and do you ass grabbers want to be around when they do? Nope, not me. I’ve seen what happens when they fight the golden angel.”
Al turned his gaze back to the heavens.
A bright streak of golden light came in from a great distance, faster than it seemed possible.
It struck a skyship, piercing through the magic shields and enchanted, reinforced hull before coming out the other side.
The other skyships turned away.
The golden streak was content to let them withdraw.
It slowly drifted closer to the fort, ignoring the spells and projectiles splashing against its shining golden skin.
Strangely, it didn’t need to flap its wings to remain aloft.
Al wondered if they were merely for show.
The song caressed his ears like a lover. Enticing, asking to be let in.
He wanted to fall to his knees in worship even as the golden angel smiled down upon them all.
The fact that it had shark-like teeth slipped past his normally sharp attention to detail.
The cragants were emboldened by its presence.
Underneath the golden rays they charged deeper into the fort.
Spears the size of young trees stabbed into soldiers, lifting them up like wriggling fish.
Door-sized shields crushed through hastily formed lines.
Boots stomped Al’s fellows into the dirt, leaving deep, blood-smeared footprints.
I should shoot it, he thought.
The bow was in his hand and there were a few arrows left in his quiver.
Music slackened his grip.
He didn’t notice his hairs stand on end as the buzzing in the air heralded the opening of dozens of portals all across the fort.
“You’re done here.”
A huge hand grabbed his shoulder.
Al blinked.
“Theron?”
“Don’t worry. Bask in Adras’ divine presence to silence that bastard’s singing,” Theron grinned. “Though, how it’s doing that without moving its mouth…”
“What’s—”
“No time for explanations, but I’ll give you a quick one since it’ll take a bit to get everyone through the portals. Your fight here is over. We’re giving up the fort since that thing showed up,” he gestured toward the hovering golden angel. “Going to try to kill it. Thought we already did, but,” he shrugged massive boulder-like shoulders, “it appears that there is more than one or maybe it’s a clone thing or a puppet master thing. Regardless, we’ve been watching you. Good exploits. Taking out that High is quite an accolade. More importantly, Adras was watching. You’re going to meet him. Now, I don’t know why. He doesn’t tell us anything. So, I don’t want to get your hopes up, but just be true to yourself. It’s carried you this far. Wait for Akanthe. She’ll take you to our God.”
Theron gently ushered Al toward the portal in the middle of the bunker.
He watched as the soldiers quickly rushed through it.
Damaris looked back, reluctant to leave without him, but he waved her ahead.
An Eidolon of Ekra, the winged messenger God, the one responsible for the portals, brushed feathered wings against Al’s arm as she passed.
She was almost as tall as Theron, but slender with wiry muscles in the way of the fastest creatures.
Her streamlined armor gleamed even in the darkness of the bunker.
“You bring pride to your God, Theron’s ward,” she inclined her head.
Al moved slowly.
He wanted to see.
Through the bunker’s thin slits, he watched as Theron strode into view.
The golden angel turned its gaze downward.
“What about the fort?”
“It will be rebuilt,” the Eidolon of Ekra said.
Theron raised a clenched fist.
The air around him and the golden angel pulsed in spherical waves.
Dust and debris swirled.
Cragants and soldiers unlucky to be too far from the many portals were pulled either toward the golden angel or Theron.
The golden angel resisted the pull.
Theron suddenly shot toward it.
The impact of Theron’s fist created a shockwave that knocked Al to the floor and tore a large gash in the reinforced bunker.
The soldiers caught outside died instantly from their organs bursting.
The cragants were made of sterner material. All they suffered were serious injuries.
A deep, booming horn sounded from somewhere in the distance.
The cragants had the same idea.
The battlefield was no longer a place for mortals.
“Run along, little one,” the Eidolon of Ekra urged.
Belatedly, Al realized that there was a colorful shimmer around him just as it vanished with a lazy wave of the eidolon’s hand.
She had protected him.
He caught glimpse through the rent of other eidolons joining the fight.
Many.
From across the entire pantheon.
“Your part here is done. I know not what fate awaits you, but remember what you have seen and felt. There aren’t many among the living that have been this close to divinity unleashed in full.”
Al nodded.
“Thank you,” he remembered social convention. “I shall repay you if it ever comes to be within my power.”
The eidolon took a small rod from her belt.
A flick of her wrist turned it into a spear.
Though, it would be closer to a pike in the hands of a normal human like Al.
She saluted him with a flourish before bursting through the rent with a mighty beat of her wings.
Al staggered.
She had moved in a blur.
It was time for him to do the same.
He rushed through the portal chased by another thunderous boom.