It was good to be flying again. Noivern emitted a joyous shriek as we took to the air accompanied by a flight of harpies. I hadn’t ridden him since coming to the north, and the wyvern must have felt neglected.
Furtur had been unable to provide me with much in the way of specific intelligence about our enemy. The demon didn’t know the names of the Orkhans and seemed to think of them as being interchangeable. We knew that there were three main groups causing trouble in Grimwald, each with its tribal leader, but I was ignorant of the relationships between those leaders. They acted independently, but were they rivals, or did they recognize one of their number as being a chief among chiefs? How would the others react if I captured one of them?
The Atlan force had split into two segments, angling to surround my army in a pincer. Both groups were made up entirely of cavalry, though they looked nothing like the heavily armored knights of the Free Kingdoms. Their mounts were squat and shaggy, and the riders were lightly armored, if at all. They didn’t burden themselves with long lances, but every one of them carried a bow and quiver on their backs.
I was on the lookout for flags or identifying uniforms, but whatever hierarchy they followed was subtler than that. At least from a distance, it was impossible to tell who the leader was, or the shamans. The ground was mostly flat, with a few hills, but nothing they couldn’t ride over. What vegetation there was had been stunted by the influence of the storm. Dry scrubs, patchy, brownish grass, and scattered stands of mushrooms.
All I could hear was the wind rushing by my helm and the powerful downstrokes of Noivern’s wings. The people of Atlan were adept at mounted archery, but I wasn’t bad myself. I’d promised Fladnag not to drop any bombs, but I had other tools at my disposal.
Using my knees to guide Noivern, we banked so that I was nearly sideways in the harness, holding my gauntlet out over the front line of their company. Accessing the Storage Ring had become second nature, the phantom digit that I used to select inventory boxes felt like it was a part of me. The utility of coins and medallions allowed me to keep a virtually unlimited quantity of resources on my person, but accessing them was awkward. Coins had to be converted back into their original form, and without a solid surface to bounce them on, I could still do that by slapping them into my palm, but the Storage Ring was a convenience on an entirely different level.
I selected a stack of granite in my inventory and proceeded to drop stones. This wasn’t a targeted attack, actually hitting a moving unit while hurtling through the air would have required ridiculous timing and precision. But I was dealing with a mass of men here, and even if the initial bombardment didn’t hit anyone directly, it could cause major problems for the whole group.
As we flew over, I released a series of granite blocks in quick succession, and they dropped like what they were, rocks. A cubic foot of stone falling from hundreds of feet in the air is nothing to joke about. I didn’t hear the impacts, but the wind carried the screams of horses and men as they landed. The caws of the harpies sounded like laughter. As we curved back around, the effectiveness of the maneuver was evident.
Horses and men had been crushed under blocks, and parts of the column were forced to come to a chaotic halt to prevent a pile-up, while others swerved around the fallen riders. Baal and Furtur remained with the monster regiment, but Malphas was with me. I saw him dart through the air to one side, rising nearly into the clouds to cast a spell. I made another strafing run, which was less effective than the first now that the column had broken up, before pulling Noivern around to get us and the harpies out of the way of what was coming.
Malphas raised his arms and called out an incantation in the rough tongue of demons. His sleek, black feathers shone with eldritch light, as his fingers moved through an intricate series of arcane gestures. The horsemen wheeled below, disorganized by my assault, but not in chaos. They seemed to work in teams, groups of eight or ten that stayed close together, moving in tandem, even as the column spread out. Arrows launched up into the sky, unable to reach us, scattered by the building winds.
The storm responded to his will, twisting into a spiral that increased in speed and ferocity with every passing second. The vortex tightened and stretched, becoming a thin tornado, a finger of the heavens reaching for the army below. The roar of the winds was deafening, and the harpies retreated further to prevent themselves from being torn out of the sky by its relentless force. Noivern banked hard, pulling his wings in tight to maintain control of our flight as we circled the enemy.
Three separate beams of light sprang up from among the horsemen. Two lanced into the burgeoning tornado, cutting through it like blades severing a reed. The third was directed at Malphas, and I heard the demon’s agonized screech even over the roar of the winds. The spell broke, the winds he had summoned dispersing in an instant as Malphas retreated to the cover of the clouds.
The shamans had revealed themselves. Visually, the effect reminded me of nothing so much as Gandalf banishing the Nazgul outside of Minis Tirith in the last Lord of the Rings film. They weren’t pointing staffs, but each of them held up a fist-sized crystal that continued to glow after the beams of light died.
My legs tightened around Noivern, and we angled for a dive as I summoned my bow from my inventory. I felt the tension of the string in my hand as an arrow materialized. The distance and the dive made it a difficult shot, but I targeted the nearest shaman and loosed. He was still focused on the area of the sky where Malphas had disappeared, and the missile struck him in the back. Knockback threw him from his horse and he bounced off a nearby rider before landing hard in the dirt.
“Snatch him!” I shouted over the wind, and Noivern accelerated our dive. Arrows whizzed by us, but the horsemen had not been prepared for this. One shattered against my armor, and another lodged itself in Noivern’s torso, but the riders scattered before us as we swooped in to collect the unhorsed shaman. Noivern seized as easily as a hawk catching a rabbit in the grass, and his wings beat hard to take us up out of the dive.
I guided Noivern away from the reeling group as harpies swarmed, adding to the chaos. This was touch and go, our goal wasn’t to break the army but to take a captive and get out as quickly as possible. The surrounding horsemen were recovering quickly, and we were met with coordinated
volleys of arrows almost as soon as we began to lift off again.
A barrier of wind sprang up around Noivern and me, deflecting the incoming missiles. Malphas had reappeared, looking ruffled, but otherwise unharmed, and we continued to make our escape. The shaman in my wyvern’s grasp was either unconscious or playing dead. He hung limply as we gained altitude and I turned in my harness to get a look at what we had left behind us.
The column was still moving, now spread in a wider formation, and I spotted one of the other shamans as he raised the luminous crystal in his hand again. His spell cut instantly through the space between us, and a column of blazing white light engulfed us. Noivern shrieked as his leathery skin sizzled, and his wingbeats faltered.
The enchantments in my armor allowed me to walk through flames unharmed, but this was something different. I felt my skin prickle painfully, and my vision blurred. A wave of weakness passed through my body, and we dropped below the beam.
The beam followed us, but the harpies rushed in as a living shield, their wide wings absorbing most of the light. Their cries were angry, but not pained. As we continued to gain distance, the beam faded, and Noivern’s efforts surged. We had come within a few yards of crashing into the earth, but he brought us up again, and we left the army behind.
What had just happened? The shamans had spells to banish the creatures of Bedlam and dispel the magic of demons, but the effect had extended to me. More than the budding horns, or my cat’s eyes, this was a sign of how deeply the taint of Bedlam had seeped into my body and soul. A spell meant to destroy monsters had caused me pain.
The enemy was chasing us, but their horses were no match for Noivern’s wings, even as burdened as he was. I guided the wyvern toward the back of the monster regiment, and we dropped the shaman before landing. Gaap had brought our army to a halt, and the monsters were spread out in a crescent to provide defense for the supply group. We came down between the wagons and a line of mounted hollows.
The shaman had a rough landing, rolling through the dirt, and coming to rest with his limbs flung out like a rag doll. He struggled to sit up as I dismounted. Noivern was wounded, with an arrow in his side, and his skin blistered from the touch of the enchanted light. His mouth was wide and panting, but he didn’t look in immediate danger of death, so I patted him and went to deal with the captive.
It was a woman. Her head was shaved, her shoulders and arms distinctly muscular, but now that I got a good look, she was unmistakably female. The leather jerkin she wore was burned with symbols of the sun and moon. As she struggled to sit up, I saw that her dark irises were outlined with shining silver.
“We need to talk.” I took a knee beside her. Fladnag had lent me a book written in the tongue of Atlan, and he hadn’t asked for it back. There was no doubt in my mind that he had known I would absorb it to learn their language.
She spat on my visor, her face contorted with anger and pain. “Demon slut,” she said. “Fallen one. There are no words between us.”
Slut? That was a little harsh. “We don’t have to fight. I want to speak with your leaders. Help me do that, and your people won’t have to die.”
Her crystal was gone, lost in the flight or in her fall, but pale light gathered in her hand, and she slapped my chest. The essence dispersed harmlessly against my cuirass, and the defiance went with it. There was blood on her face, and one of her legs twisted at an odd angle. The spell, or whatever it had been, seemed to have taken the last of her strength, and she allowed herself to lie back on the ground.
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“Kill me,” she murmured. “I will not betray my people.”
“That’s not what this is about,” I said, digging through my pack for a healing potion. “Here, drink this, it’ll fix you.”
Her eyes narrowed into slits. “Save your poison,” she said. “I will take nothing from you.”
I waved to a soldier who was watching us from the wagons. He saluted in return, his back stiff.
“Tie her up,” I said. “I’ve got a lot to do.”
I hadn’t expected her to sign on immediately, but it had been worth a try. Noivern snapped at me when I pulled the arrow out of his side, so I grabbed him by the neck and poured the potion into his gaping maw. He swallowed, and the damage to his skin was instantly repaired.
“Feel better?” I asked, and the wyvern trilled. Malphas floated down beside us a moment later.
“They are approaching both our flanks,” he said. His eyes were bloodshot, and his feathers and robes looked like he’d been the one caught in a tornado. “How do you wish to proceed?”
“You feeling okay?” I asked. “What did that light do to you?”
“I survived,” he said, then ground his beak. “It was stronger than I expected.”
“Great. You and Gaap focus on protecting our people. I’ll keep harrying them from the air, and try to take out the shamans if I can. If they try to close with us, Gaap will send out the hollows and the trolls, but if not, I think they’ll wear down before we do.”
I spotted Furtur walking around the rear of the supply group. As he went, a short wall of brambles and vines rose from the ground behind him. The plants weren’t pretty, ashen, and dead-looking, but the hedge would be enough to discourage a cavalry charge from that direction. At least he was making himself useful.
Celaeno alighted on a nearby wagon, looking no worse for wear, though she had accompanied me on the assault along with the rest of the flock.
“Their archers are keen,” she said. “I lost sisters on this flight.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m going back out, but there’s not much you can do for me. You should take the gang away from here, and keep out of the fight.”
She gave an irritable cluck. “We protected you from the burning light. Without us, you would have fallen. We can be your shield again.”
“I’m not going to ask you to do that,” I said. “The way they’re shooting, it’s too costly to have you with me.”
“We will follow,” she said, “but remain above. It is our choice.”
“Thank you,” I said, and the massive bird bobbed her head.
Noivern and I took off again as our army was being surrounded, the rugged landscape falling away from us. The horsemen were still several hundred yards away when they started firing. The range was impressive, but our human soldiers and laborers were sheltering as best they could with the wagons and under shields, and the monsters wouldn’t care much whether they got shot or not.
As the enemy had split itself into two groups, I opted to focus on the fresher column. They were more likely to be aggressive, but if we kept them back long enough to turn this into a battle of attrition, the advantage would be ours. The demons could deal with the volleys, they were playing defense to avoid the shamans anyway.
The riders never stopped moving, stretching their column into a line that traveled back and forth along our flanks, unleashing an endless rain of arrows. With Malphas and Gaap working together, it was as if our entire force had become the center of a dust devil, and most of the missiles were turned up or to the side, spinning in the wrong direction and losing their momentum.
The shamans didn’t raise their gems until they were about to use them. But they were easy to spot when they did. Apart from the glow, I felt my eyes being drawn to them as they gathered essence, they seemed to become more real than the people and animals around them, even the ground itself. The white light made them brilliant, and yet everything else it touched became dull in comparison.
I had the eyes of a demon, and even from hundreds of feet in the air, my targets could not have been more clear to me. The bow creaked in my hand as Noivern dipped to one side, allowing me a shot clear of his wings. A beam of otherworldly light knifed through the air, slicing the windstorm, and opening a section of clear air. My aim was off, and my first arrow struck the shaman’s horse. The force of the Knockback effect broke the poor animal’s ribs, and it collapsed with the shaman still trying to ride. The beam cut up, then vanished as its caster rolled onto the ground, losing his concentration. Other horsemen veered out of the way, giving me an opening to fire again.
The shaman rose, setting his sights on me, and gathering new essence in his gem before being struck by my next arrow. It hit his shoulder and sent him spinning away, the gem flying from his hand. Flaming arrows would have been more efficient, but I wanted to disable the shamans if I could, rather than kill them. They had magic specifically geared toward defeating the forces of Bedlam. It was certainly inconvenient, given that I was currently working hand in hand with demons, but their existence was proof that another way existed. A path forward free from the taint of Bedlam, magic I could use to fight the shadow instead of making compromises with it.
Many of the horsemen were targeting me, and incredibly, their arrows could reach us even at this height. Most of their momentum was spent on the way up, but the missiles were coming in rapid succession, and one punched through Noivern’s left wing.
“Up!” I shouted, but the wyvern hardly needed to be told. With powerful pumps of his wings, he took us higher, rising until we were completely out of range of their bowshots. A second shaman raised his gem, and I loosed in his direction, but my skill was nowhere near the level that kind of sniping would require. My next couple of shots fell far from their target, and his spell activated, launching a lance of light intended to take us out of the sky.
Distance weakened the spell, its power diffusing the farther it was forced to stretch, and though its edge washed over us, Noivern did not burn. He shrieked his irritation, but our flight continued, and I returned my bow to the Storage Ring. Over the next few minutes, I emptied my inventory of stones. It was hard to tell if I hit anything, but the rain of blocks certainly gave the riders something to think about and disrupted their strafing. From this height, I could survey the shape of the entire battlefield.
The wind wall was still doing its job, and the column that I was harassing hadn’t been able to make any progress in their assault, but the other half of their army still had two shamans. It looked like they were taking a more reserved approach, perhaps hoping the demons would run out of magic before they ran out of arrows. Had they used up their stores of essence against Malphas and me on our first run?
My System hadn’t come with a mana pool, but my experience pool, and the essence I stole from monsters, put a limit on the number of enchantments I could imbue. Spellcasters, whether human or demon, had to have a similar cap on what they could accomplish. No one’s essence was unlimited.
As if in direct contradiction to my reasoning, my opponent far below unleashed another spell. It was as if he had spent the last few minutes charging up a single massive incantation, and the resulting beam was broader and brighter than any that had come before. A column of light twenty feet in diameter raced to meet me. It was slower than the previous lances had been, which had seemed to travel instantaneously. This column expanded closer to the speed of a projectile, which gave Noivern just enough time to swoop out of the way.
The column continued past us, inexorable, impossibly solid, and punched a hole in the clouds. The storm retreated from the puncture like a wounded animal as natural sunlight poured through. Noivern began to burn.
Golden flames erupted from his wings, and he let out a long, low wail as we plummeted. The storm still hung over the monster regiment, but its coverage was incomplete. The shamblers at the front of the army fled the rays of the sun, slowly opening a gap in the meat shield protecting the supply train. I tried to get Noivern under control, but he was panicking, and there was nothing either of us could do to stay in the air. The leathery flesh that made up his wings was burning away like paper held over an open flame.
Celaeno and the flock had been circling since the start of the conflict. They had kept their distance from me to avoid getting in the way of Noivern maneuvers or my attacks, and the archers of the Orkhans hadn’t wasted many arrows trying to pick them off. They chose this moment to engage, springing into action with the kind of coordination I would have been impressed to see from veteran soldiers.
The flock split into two groups, the smaller of which dove for me. Noivern had lost his mind, the golden flames spreading from his wings to his body. I’d seen monsters being banished by the sun before, but this was the first time it had made me feel something other than satisfaction. Noivern was my familiar, my friend, and he was dying in agony. I wasn’t afraid of being killed by the fall. I’d lived through that once before. But I was very, very angry.
Tumbling through the air, there was no way I was going to be able to undo the harness properly. I grabbed the strap that was keeping me in place with both hands and ripped it apart. We separated, and black wings descended. Harpies tried to clutch at my limbs to slow my fall, but I was heavy and spinning and Feather Fall could only do so much.
Talons latched onto one of my arms, and the unfortunate bird that had managed to get ahold of me was jerked along for the ride. It lost its grip a second later, and the others followed me to the ground. I tucked in my limbs just before impact and struck the earth like the bag of meat encased in supernatural metal that I was.
[00000000]
Something cracked, and I felt my shoulder dislocate. It was not pleasant. All the air rushed out of my lungs, and I couldn’t seem to get it back. I might have blacked out for a second, because the next thing I knew, I was standing up, facing the column that was riding perpendicular to me a hundred or more paces away.
My vision was blurry, and what I was seeing didn’t immediately make sense. A fist of darkness had descended over the enemy. The brunt of the flock, a tempest of talons and feathers, was attacking in a way that made it look like a single massive beast. A dark, flying worm.
The flock crashed down through the riders, taking many of them off of their horses, and rose again. Arrows flew and harpies fell, but they had left chaos in their wake. The column broke apart into the same kind of small, tight groups I had observed before. Something dropped from the rising flock, a ragged human figure. I didn’t see where it landed, but I had a feeling the shaman was done with spellcasting for the day.
My pack was crushed and torn, soaked through with ruined elixirs. Fortunately, I had a single stack of Healing Potions in my inventory. One of them appeared in my hand, and I lifted my visor to imbibe the bitter red liquid. The massive, throbbing ache that my entire body had become instantly receded.
I turned around in time to see the explosion. Riders from the first group had poured in through the gap left by the retreating shamblers. There were other monsters in their way, trolls, and hollows, but the shaman leading the charge was holding a blazing crystal, and the creatures of Bedlam could not stand against its light. It seemed like an insane plan, to drive forward into
the center of an encircling enemy force, but if they could kill the demons, then maybe the monsters wouldn’t pose much of a threat.
My gaze went to the center of the supply group where I knew my family was sheltering in Fladnag’s wagon. I couldn’t see it, there were too many men and monsters and wagons in the way. That’s where the explosion began. A pillar of flame thirty feet high, its roar drowning out the shouts and screams and the clashing of weapons as if they had never been. But this was no natural flame. When it reached its peak, it bent forward, writhing like a snake, and drove itself into the oncoming horsemen.