Leah pulled back a few steps and charged with her hammer throwing her full weight into the attack and blew the doors the orcs beyond stumbling backward as she tumbled into the space beyond. Arrows and spells filled the air over her head and wrought destruction in the open ranks as Leah nearly fell into the next room. Micheal and Mike fired off their ranged abilities and Forgen stepped forward with his shield raised and sword out each flaring with sliver light.
“Cover Leah!” Forgen roared.
He cut down orc and goblin alike as he covered Leah's rise to her feet and then the two were back to back as Vivian's and Micheal's spears thrust out to cover them. Leah, once back on her feet, choked up on her hammer and made quick efficient strikes that still seemed to crush blocks and guards and break arm bones behind shields.
Micheal formed up with them breaking off to the right through the door, the orcs and goblins there falling back as he swung his sword spear overhead to chop down on an orcs neck and then thrust and blocked with the end of the spear taking necks and hitting arms and cutting hamstrings as Jack followed up on his side.
Mike and Vivian were on the other side behind him cutting a path and soon Julia slipped in front of Micheal. Her close combat and his long polearm worked in concert much like working with Jack did in the tight corridor they found themselves in. Julia's tight boxer form and quick steps made strikes over her head easy using high stance spear style thrusts. He would even block and catch weapons for her to give openings that she would punish with lightning fast strikes that made quick brutal work of most of the orcs.
Finally they broke into the temple proper, the group having to split to cover either side with a roar of overlapping orders, battlecries, and shouting.
The temple was a grand hall of brilliant architecture that seemed carved from a single great marble rock brought low with the filth of its orcish host. The door they entered seemed to have two siblings down the way hidden in clones of the yard and a half wide corridors that made the outer ring of the temple. Each of these walls were stone curtains, carved into patterns like lace. Many of the openings that would glance down into the pool below had been filled with wretched orc totems and fetishes. The outer ring was mirrored by a center floating ring that stood on slim pillars over a deep garden pool below. Three walkway bridges with no rails lead to this center ring where orc shamans and their bodyguards did what they could to turn the strange mythical creature to their side.
Each bridge was evenly spread from the others and offset from the doors forcing one to walk left or right down one of the marble halls to then take the incline of the bridge to the center platform. The walk would have once provided glimpses of the shining crystal in the heart of the structure, but the glorious blue gem seemed to be dangerously tainted. The creature’s howls shook the very stones of the temple under their feet now, and drowned out the sound of combat when it cried out in pain.
Taken from above the temple layout would look like that of an eye, with its iris divided in three equal sections, the pupil being made up by the surging water elemental spirit. Micheal couldn't help but imagine what this place must have looked like when it was first made and the elemental within bound to protect and balance the mana of the land.
The sound of the elemental spirit shrieking was growing more and more tense and painful. It was a wild and ghostly sound and the curving halls beyond the support walls ahead were shown with harsh green light on the moss covered white walls and in the rippling curtains of water that lined the circular layout of the temple.
More pig ogres came squealing and shrieking from the other doors, filling their halls, like the one which they had come, but in the tight quarters they could only approach one at a time realistically, but that didn't stop them. Some even fell into the water as they spilled from the mouth of the constricting halls lacking any sense but knowing that prey was near. The ones that fell into the pools couldn’t swim. They sank and screamed in the murky water.
Micheal killed two of the horrible ogres with lancing strikes to their necks as Julia rushed in to pound their knees and exposed grotesque genitals to unusable, and cripplingly painful states. The resulting barrage of attacks had them falling over and back on each other off the walkways and into the pools, their own bodies becoming a barrier and shield preventing the others from joining the fray. Goblins rushed at them, and died in numbers enough to nearly block the hall with water spilling over them from above like curtains dividing the corridors into sections as they poured over the corpses. Still the group pressed on behind them in the other direction coming around the support wall and going for the other bridge.
Just fighting with Julia at his side showed again how she had been able to hold that side of the field almost by herself. She was a little terror in close quarters fights. The two of them working together made battle into brutally efficient work, but Micheal could feel the toll the fighting was taking on him. Adrenaline was like a fire in his blood, keeping him strong, and pushing his limits, but he would find them soon.
Micheal came around his end to glance over his shoulder to see the last of the other end of the group disappear before they came to another entryway to the center of the temple like what was just off to his right. Cascades of water fell from the ceiling into massive pools like ponds all around a raised center platform in more clear curtains of water that were slowly twisting from bright blue in color to a sickly green. Heavily armored orcs held the paths nervously looking to the three shamans that were contending with the raging tower of water that rose from the center of the platform.
The temple spirit had a vaguely humanoid shape, but was completely unrefined in any way other than having arms and hands, a head and the impression of legs set among a rising vortex of water, stone, and various plant debris. It screamed and held its head as a glowing green spirit mark of kind flared on the center of its forehead however it moved.
To his left down the outer corridor however there was another door leading to a hall like the one they had come down which the dead pig ogres and goblins now piled together blocking the path lead. The fighting on his end had stopped, blocked by bodies where Julia and he had fought them back, but he could see the others still going on theirs as the forces on both sides between him and them now. They had no choice but to go around lest they risk being dangerously exposed trying to climb the small mountain of bodies.
Goblins and orcs spilled out from the next hall as he watched. They caught arrows and lances of magical power fired his friends still at his back as the others charged. Slowly a pile of bodies began to spill over there too until Micheal caught the first glimpse of Leah's hammer as she led the way at the second of the three entrances to the center temple stone catwalk bridges. Mike and Vivian doubled back to him then and looked around the support wall to see the fighting on the far side of the room, and the orcs directing the flow of goblins out from the other hall.
Lindsey was firing across the gap of the temple center into the foes facing their friends, and so were some of the Brazen Boys who had ripped totems and fetishes from the stone windows of the hall to use them as firing slits.
The orcs in the center watched and held steady at the orders of their shaman leaders as the fighting went on, but the ones just before Micheal and his two friends on the stone catwalk were bashing their shields and weapons together. The ones guarding the other side were shielded from a charge by a hastily erected barricade of bodies Leah had fought through, and wooden racks of some kind, but already some of the other Brazen boys were taking pot shots at the Shamans where they could manage. The orcs there finally pressed forward as they saw the fighting spilling over the edges on the sides and tried to charge and mount the barricade to stop the arrows flying their way.
Dexter stepped past Micheal and shot one of the far orcs in the back with his heavy war bow. The arrow took it in the neck and sent it tumbling into the deep pool below the catwalk.
“GO GO GO! Hurry or they'll bind it!” Lindsey urged as she watched the shamans with wide eyes rushing back to them with her husband as the others fought on in the other direction.
They held half the room now, with their cleared door at their back. The fighting progress of the others was stopped as they fought to hold a tide of green skinned foes from piling through the second of the three entrances to this inner chamber. Lindsey pushed Micheal and her husband forward, but that was all the prompting it took. Micheal charged with Mike and Julia at his side.
Vivian stayed behind watching their backs. The fighting across the way was fierce and bloody. He could hear Pelanna's chants and saw the effects of Luna's wand as she fired one orc after another at great cost to her mana even as she tried to keep up another bolstering song. Jack roared and took an orc to the ground where he fought between Leah and Forgen on the other side. Jack was covered in blood and cuts, but Luna was unharmed.
Micheal guessed Jack really took his orders seriously. He would defend Luna to the end.
Julia nodded to Micheal as she took position in front of him in Jack's place. They had practiced this. Micheal took a high spear stance and moved forward with Mike and Lindsey ready at his side. The orcs guarding the Shamans were banging their shields and cursing them with their best Ruldanjan common, but none of them listened to their jibes.
Eva's magic flared over them, the last to join their little half of the assault force after dividing going through the door. Then they closed on the heavily armored orcs guarding the shamans.
It became clear immediately that these orcs were veteranized, and years older than the others. They fought with wicked intelligence and brutal cunning. Mike was instantly hard pressed and his shield was getting battered as much as his poise even in the heavy armor. Lindsey, his ever faithful wife helped him keep his ground as her wand flashed over his shoulder slamming the orc with lances of ice that struck like hammers. Each spell seemed to drag on her, but even when the orc caught them on his shield they slammed him back, and nearly toppled him over.
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Micheal had his hands full just keeping the orc from overwhelming Julia as he thrust in over her head and at her side.
Lindsey kept on shooting over Mike's shoulder when she could, like a spear or crossbow man over a shield wall, but it was clearly hard for her to make her shots. Vivian and Eva were busy dealing with a last minute rush of goblins who had held back in the dank dark hall beyond and waited to crawl over the wall of bodies until there were less enemies to face them.
Julia opened the orc up, but each blow Micheal tried to land from overhead was deflected until finally he got the spike of his cross guard into the orc's shoulder, but that only enraged it like the one that was beating Mike back toward the edge of the bridge right beside it.
Their orc kicked Julia in the stomach and nearly toppled her off the edge, but Micheal roared and struck back at it making it stagger back and come dangerously close to falling off the platform itself. Micheal seized upon the opening and laid into its pair beside it with a wild swing giving Mike and Julia the chance to gain on their feet again. In one instance he had managed to overwhelm the two orcs in a burst of rage. He hadn't hurt or wounded them badly with that attack, but they knew him now. He could see it in their eyes.
But the orcs hadn't been fighting for what felt like hours though and recovered faster than Micheal could manage on his own. They saw an opening and took it, their eyes gleaming with malice as they sought out his friends.
Micheal's sword spear was knocked clear in the air and light flared around Julia as the orc they were fighting tried to slash her with its axe only for it to rebound with great force. Julia fell back as if struck, but Pelanna's magic saved her from the devastating wound she might have taken. She punched the stunned orc in the head with a snapping jab as it stumbled back and kicked its axe out of its hand with her feet as she rose with that snapping leg trick like the movies that usually takes some kind of cable assist in action movies.
Micheal fell in on it with heavy blows from above as Julia struck now inside its guard and screaming like a fighting alley cat. It was only then Micheal had the time to fully realize that Julia had just spent Pelanna's protection spell, the one that turned away a single fatal blow.
Mike similarly was locked with the other orc as Micheal and Julia fought their own and took a blow that flashed with light and then another that crashed into his armor and made him and Lindsey behind him cry out as he fell back. Lindsey charged and shot spell after spell at it as Mike fell backwards losing his feet and posture, stunned by attack that blew through his armor near his neck. Lindsey blew away the orcs weapon with a rushed stab with her wand, but the orc charged and managed to bull Mike onto the ground and charged over him going for Lindsey's throat with both hands tackling her over her fallen husband who was desperately trying to push the orc away from prone; the average man he was against the orcs gigantic NFL lineman like size and strength.
Micheal was forced to turn and rain hammering blows on the orc leaving Julia to hold off the orc they otherwise would have finished to save Lindsey and Mike. He slammed his sword staff into its back and when the weapon proved stuck in the creatures back or armor he drew his thick bladed short sword and half mounted the creature atop Lindsey as it still held its ugly meaty hands to her throat abandoning its shield as it went after her in a rage taking her to the ground nearly atop Mike.
It was growling and swearing and telling Lindsey how it was going to rape and defile her. Micheal heard it all as he wrestled the orc’s head back and ran his sword across its throat with such force that he actually decapitated it instead of ripping the orc from atop Lindsey.
There was a sharp grunt and Julia screamed in pain behind him. And the sound of a bone crushing blow followed it. Micheal kicked the headless orc free of Mike and Lindsey and off the platform bridge into the water below to turn back to aid Julia was crawling backward toward him on the ground with her shoulder split open through the mail. Blood poured down the front of her and her face was white and filled with rage and pain as she retreated on hands and knees, but that wasn't all. She arched her back and squirmed as she moved under the effects of some spell cast by one of the shaman's who were coming away from the slowly changing spirit of the elemental. Something rose in Micheal filling every fiber of him like his anger had become electrically charged.
Enraged Micheal came forward and in a show of force that should have startled him, but he was just too furious to care. He flung the orcs' weapon out of its hand with a blast of force when it charged him and ripped past his shield using nothing but his free hand and another burst of magic from his open palm. He headbutted the orc and rammed his sword up into the armpit and up through its neck. Micheal turned trusting his instincts and caught the next spell from the loose shaman with the orc's body.
Micheal tossed the orc down into the water and raised his hand to catch the next cast of mysterious energy from the shaman with his Ward and charged him down howling in rage as he did. The shaman raised his gnarly twisted staff, but Micheal had trained against Vivian using the sword as well as the staff and this orc wasn't nearly as fast as her. It was childishly easy to tear into the orc shaman. He closed and cut one arm down to the bone and then caught the orc in another headbutt as he drove his sword home into its guts and chest again and again.
Something smashed into him from the other side, but his blood was too hot to care for the pain and the soul withering agony of the hexing curse as it crashed into him. Something in him flared against the energy, raged against it, and threw the hexes and sickly energy aside even as it burned into his armor. He raised his ward as more magical blows came.
Micheal charged across the platform the other way and dealt with the second shaman by ramming his blade through its throat after catching its club on his mailed arm. His left hand went numb, but he tossed that orc aside too and charged the last as it frantically tried to complete the very last stages of the binding.
At the last moment it raised its staff to defend itself as the light in the temple flashed a sickly and dark green, but Micheal crashed into it and tackled it down to the ground roaring at it even as its staff pressed him back. He chopped at its arms and head with brutal savage blows not aiming to kill it, but seeing something of Gorgaan's face in the thing he couldn't make himself stop until he somehow saw one of the other heavily armored veteran orcs rush to him. The shaman was a ruined mess and unable to move, but still breathing and writhing missing fingers and parts of its face and upper torso.
He rolled out of the way and found his feet among the other dead shamans with the armored orc quick on his tail. He was aware of his lungs burning, his side aching, and his heart pounding in his chest like a hammer on an anvil. There was a small exchange of blows that Micheal held off before a crimson dagger took that orc in the eye, but he had no time to think or react as the orc staggered and fell limply off the bridge. His instincts screamed and the lightning in his blood roared. His breath couldn’t seem to come fast enough. Fear started creeping in at the edges of his mind as he fought for his life.
Somehow he felt the rush of energy coming at him from behind and raised his ward even as he heard Lindsey scream a warning. He could see the fighting on the other side breaking apart, but suddenly the noise behind him was deafening. His ward was flaring wildly with his loose control and he was being pushed back even as he turned to face the center platform. The fighting resumed on the other side and he was vaguely able to see the wounded Mike holding off orcs that pushed through the piles of bodies to flank them. The other group was vainly trying to get to him as orcs piled in from the other door, but they were unable to do anything but hold the line or shove each other, making them more vulnerable and unable to defend themselves.
The bodies of the last orc shaman were blasted away as the torrent of water and energy crashed against his raised ward. It quickly became all of Micheal’s attention. He could feel the corrupted spirit weighing down on him, gathering itself to crush him as its body rose up within the pupil, the very center ring of the temple. He was pushed back and back slipping on the wet and mossy tile floor of the bridge as he came to rest alongside the body of the orc that had once held his spear. Lindsey held the weapon in her hand now and was suddenly at his back pressing against him and giving him a backstop. Her wand flared with magic right alongside Eva, each of them blasting away at the orcs that were attempting to overwhelm Mike.
Then, finally, he had a chance to fully realize what he was fighting against. The elemental spirit held that green sickly rune on its head and was screaming in rage as it tried to destroy him with all of its might. His will was barely hanging on as it tried to crush him. Water sprayed over his ward like a river against a boulder in a sudden flood.
Lindsey fired off spells and kept his back to his as Vivian and Mike on their flanking bridge were pressed back by a pig ogre and another small horde of goblins each of them fighting with valor equal to his display earlier.
Julia remained behind him clutching her useless arm and badly injured shoulder beside Lindsey unable to continue the fight with her shoulder disfigured from the bones that had broken there. She was downing potions, but they would take time to take full effect.
The fighting was too close to chance her spells though she looked like she was about ready to try. Vivian and Mike were both bloodied as they fought side by side both howling challenges in the furious combat to hold the bridge they stood upon, but they were only buying him precious time to fight against the turned elemental.
His heart began to pound like a drum in his ears even as things seemed to slow down. Was he about to die? Lindsey screamed with rage and fired a lightning bolt through a pig ogre's head as another came screaming around the corner bloodied and its mouth filled with gore, the first to take that bridge to stop him, to pincer them. Her strength faltered for a moment, but it returned as Julia lent her good hand to a soaking wet Eva as she was pulled back onto the platform staff still in hand. Micheal had no idea how she had ended up there, but was suddenly aware of the dead pig ogre not feet from his back.
“BY BLOOD AND RAGE! ARMOR CRIMSON!” She shouted holding her hands out to the battered fighters on the other end. Crystal armor encased both Vivian and Mike jeweled and glowing and shrugging off a hail of blows from surging goblins as they surged forth in greater numbers from the room.
“Kill the men! Kill the men!” The goblins chanted in their horrible little voices as they pressed forward, almost crazed with the fight and their lust to take the women.
Micheal saw all that, and heard it in a brief moment as his will was being crushed by the elemental's enormous strength. The weight of all the mud, dirt, water, and life in the wetlands about him seemed focused on crushing him and he could only stand a few moments more. Eva threw crimson daggers behind him, but she was bloodied and ragged. Her pack was missing and all she had was her staff and armor. She put her back to Micheal's next to Lindsey's even as he remembered he was still slowly slipping backward. He could do nothing, but watch with stolen glances and put all of his will into this shield. The two women pressed their full weight back against him and fought with everything they had. He had to hold on, but they couldn't win like this. Both of them were too worn out from casting to hold a ward like he was now. Even Eva's crimson shield spell would only last so long against this onslaught.
Across the way, through the body of the green and sickly darkening water spirit he saw Jack fighting side by side with Leah holding back the rush through the corridors meeting on the third bridge and denying reinforcement there. He struck at feet and legs opening up orcs to Leah's hammer and Forgen covered Jack on the other side. Dexter was there, firing arrows at the pack behind Micheal and screaming defiance. One of the Brazen Boys, just a broken bloody body now, lay dead near where Dexter stood, his corpse draped over that of an orc in a pile of bodies pushed aside.
In a desperate attempt after killing several orcs Dexter charged going for the crystal core, but then was blasted off the bridge by a sudden rush of water from the creature as he managed to get round onto the second bridge from the last flank that had yet to be overwhelmed. Luna screamed and fired her wand off at the spirit, but all it did was spout steam from where she pointed.
Leah turned in an opening of the fighting to look back over her shoulder in a terrified glance back at Micheal somehow clear in her eyes in the small slit of her helm. She at least could get out of here if she went wild, but she would lose all of her new friends and that moment he knew that idea terrified her just about as much as anything could.
He knew in that instant that she was true as she screamed behind her helmet and opened a whole new level of fury upon the seemingly endless orcs pouring in from the other end. Her hammer broke stone and almost cut more than crushed its way through the endless foes barreling down on her. Her screams were filled with rage and pain as she fought to keep from losing what little she had managed to gain in these past few weeks.
Something moved far off in his peripherals, and he saw the dripping wet face of a goblin come and then turn from the corridor they had first come from. He would be getting more of his kind and bringing in more from a third direction. That would be the end. This was it. The last moments.
Not knowing exactly what he was doing Micheal raised his sword hand and pointed toward the spirit with it. It was extremely dangerous to risk any more mana, but he had to try even if he was moments away from running out. His head was almost numb with the ache of mana lost in this struggle alone. His body was screaming, his heart pounding, and every mechanism of his body was firing to keep him going. He focused on his ward as much as he could as another spell formed through the blade in his hand.
He wanted to bind this elemental not to his will, but to one of its own, to offer it aid to cleanse the corruption inside it now, but all that was contained within a tiny crystalline moment. His will and something deep within roared, and a blinding light emerged from his weapon. The steps of its life as a weapon and side arm came forward in his mind once again, its watchful presence gathered in each step of its long journey adding just a little more will and power to the spell he was about to cast upon the elemental. He felt it surge. The power of countless steps, a lifetime, soaking into the plea of his spell to defend his friends. The blade shown in his hand like a holy weapon or divine power. He felt the spirit of its magic rage and filled him, their minds touching as once his mind had touched Vivian, Jack, Leah, and all his new friends.