The arrival of the snowlords was almost anticlimactic. From the way that shamon had spoke of them i would have assumed them to be monsters like vampires, Twisting their environment just by revealing their presence.
I was expecting something dramatic like the crackling of thunder or a flash or lightning to reveal them or the storm to grow crazy or the ice mana in the region to suddenly start boiling or something like that. The only thing that these people looked like were a bunch of travelers that were stuck in a snow storm.
The only thing of note would be the fact that among the three beings i could see( one male and two females.) The male was not wearing a shirt and his chest was shining with tattoos, which i would assume for the moment to be some kind of a formation.
"my lord, does it seem like they are speaking something.", shamon, who is standing next to me suddenly speaks. The man is in a mood at the moment.
"I don't think so, maybe they are talking to each other." I reply, looking at these people that dared to live in a place that most would not dare to enter. "if they were talking to us, i am certain that they would have used some way to amplify their voice don't you think."
"well, what are they even doing. shouldn't they be attacking us.", shamon asks, his face not leaving the folks in front of us.
"well, i can think of a thousand reasons that they are waiting. somehow i don't imagine that they have much reason to hurry. they literally are fish in this frigid waters." I reply, wondering about the best course of action. "that looks like chanting to me"
I looked at the enemy, who had formed a triangle with the man standing at the head. it looked like they were controlling the mana in their surroundings to create something.
"well, it would be nice if we were already doing something." shamon speaks, his words trying to hide his worries. "somehow this is scarier than them just charging at us."
right now, me and shamon are standing at the western gate much to my relief. the southern gate would have been quite deadly for us. we are not taking any risks as all the soldiers are presently huddled in the fortress. at the moment they are nothing more than deadweight. shamon also should not have been here, but the man wanted to look at these creatures that he spent all of his life running away from even if it meant that he had to risk his life.
well, i have more immediate worries as i finally figure out what they are doing. they are trying to compress the surrounding ice mana into compressed balls, much like the ice beasts though i imagine a hundred of their attacks would still not match the mana in the one in front of me.
a few moments after this revelation the enemy releases their attack, which flies towards us like a cannon ball. well, this is not going to be easy.
plucking out four to five bolts from the quiver i shoot them at the ball one after another. the first bolt does little to affect their attack but the second is more effective and the third even more. by the time that the final bolt stuck it, the attack has changed its direction to somewhere to the left.
I turn back my attention to my three foes. It looks like things are not going to be as paced as I was hoping it to be. The process of destroying formations is not one bit how people like to hear it in stories. There is no sane team of elites that will sneak into the enemy fortress to either assassinate the enemy formation mage or to blow up some vital component of the formation though the ones in front of me are attempting that exact thing.
Instead it is a long process, of multiple skirmishes to understand the strength of the formations and it's many limitations and then break the formation on the basis of whatever weakness the enemy has found. For example, a weakness of my formation could be the time that it takes to actually create a decent iron skin.
That would make this fortress particularly vulnerable to any type of constant siege. The enemy only needs to attack once every couple days to distrupt the iron skin formation and prevent it from formly properly over the fort. The only reason that i have considered such a type of formation is that once formed, the performance of iron skin cannot be matched and with the way that people were worried about the storms it seemed to be a worthy gamble.
Getting back to the point, this is no drawn out campaign. The enemy has no intention of trading blows. They instead want to blow up or more accurately freeze the entire fort and the formation with it completely. This will make things easier and harder at the same time.
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
Thinking this i draw out a few more bolts to block another snowball of their which is not as strong as the previous ones though they did release it faster. At the moment, my mind is not really into the fight at hand. As long as the enemy keeps repeating what they are doing, i don't even need to focus on the fight at all. Right now, i am struggling to understand the behaviour of the enemy.
Every fight must have a reason for happening and the reason for this one has been eluding. If I were to believe what shamon has told me about the other forts, there seems to be too much attention to this fort. If the enemy were attacking me just for the strength of my formation, there would be no reason for them to send the initial group of ice beasts. The emissions of the formation i would have built by then would not have deviated too much from the basic formations such a place would have. Nothing to differentiate it from the forts at all.
That means i can safely eliminate the formation. That leaves two other reasons for an attack. First is our location and the second is me. The second can be elimanated quite easily. If they knew my identity and my skills, they would have sent the snowlords a month ago.
The only thing of matter in this location is the ruin. This is the only place from which the ruin can be reinforced in a practical manner. Everywhere else will take too long. They could be trying to get rid of this place to take over the fort in a safe manner. After all there is a chance that any magical ruin can be converted into a massive bomb if messed with correctly. That is why we need the scholars in the first place.
That is the only thing that makes sense for now. They are targetting the ruin for reasons that i don't know. This could be the truth or not, but this assumption directly affect my charges and my soldiers. I have not worked so hard for so long to lose my soldiers for any reason.
Returning to the fight, nothing much has happen other than the enemy finally stopping to throw their magics at us. Even they seem to have realized the futility of throwing such massive spells at us. I can estimate that they have thrown an amount close to the amount of mana that is close to the mana i have in my formation base in such a short exchange. Granted, these beings will have access to all the mana in the surrounding that is still a large amount of mana.
Just that volley of attacks was enough for me to make use of nearly a quarter of the bolts in my quiver. The minute that I completed the class eight formation I have been using all of my mana to power the waterbolt formation. It is not as effective as using water mana to power it, but it has been still a pretty productive task.
I don't really have an exact amount nor i have the time to count at the moment but it should be close to a hundred. Normally the formation would be able to produce four times that amount if I were to use the formation base. I will not be doing so for the simply reason that the more time that i let the formation base gather mana the better the affects the moment i activate the class eight formation. The water bolts are not my only trick.
To be honest, i could have activated the formation the minute that the enemy came close enough but this exchange done correctly should have brought me a couple days to half a week. Now i think a single day is also too much to expect. A single day of time is nowhere near enough to grow the formation base in any significant manner though.
Well, now it is a matter of curiosity for me. I want to see just how effective I can be working with only the crossbow. After all, how else does one grow unless they challenge themselves. Also, i really need to gain an understanding of the enemies capabilities before i go about revealing my aces to them.
As for what they are doing at the moment. They seem to be meditating at the moment, though it cannot be for gathering mana. They are literally surrounded by the stuff. They can gather enough for their with a wave of their hands. That is why I think their magic seems to be focused on controlling external mana. They can make use of larger quantities of mana that way, i guess. I could try and attack them now, but i don't think it is going to be effective.
"What do you think they are doing, shamon", i speak to the man next to me who has been looking at the snowlords with even more curiosity than me. I guess the man must have seen them for the first time in his life and spent all of his life hearing stories of them.
"Well, i would guess they are trying to calm the mana that they are expelling.", he says.
"As i have told you before, the mana that they emit is capable of making the surrounding storm even more worse. To come to this place they must have gone full force essentially risking their location be revealed."
"If the snowlords could be tracked, i would have known it for certain shamon.", I say to him, remembering all of my reports on the snowlords. Yep, there is no way to track him and the snowwinders certainly would not have been hide such a crucial piece of information. We have been coming here every winter after all.
"Well, calling it tracked would be wrong lord. That would be like trying to find a fish in the lake. The commander is able to detect the abnormal change in weather that occurs due to the mana that they emit even from the frozen peak somehow. Nobody knows how he does it, but everybody knows that he has an idea of the location of each snowlord.", shamon speaks. "It is not very precise though, if the number of ambushes we had to face........
I did not get to hear him completely as I get up to see the male snowlord get up, his tattoos shining from the beginning of our conflict. Somehow, i don't even think that he is personally supplying mana to his surroundings.
He begins to run towards the fort, which would have looked quite funny with any other creature. I can feel the disturbances in the mana, like wind in a tornado. I aim and let lose six arrows one after another right at his head. He does not even stop as he blocks the bolts with his arms without even flinching. Well, i am fucked.