They threaded through streets as people hurried from building to building. Some used buckets, pans, and whatever they could to try to douse the fires tearing through their homes. Others called out and cried, rocking back and forth, having lost more than a home.
The broken remains of homes littered the streets.
“Incoming.” Valter raised his hand as rocks smashed through buildings around them, turning them into shrapnel.
Petor glanced at the sky, trying to read the incoming trajectories, following them back over the wall in the distance.
A section exploded outward, spraying stone and fighters.
Mercenaries scarred from battle and with hardened eyes that had seen too much moved through the streets at a jog, wearing necklaces made of plates of bronze, led by those wearing silver plates.
“Get out of the streets,” a woman leading a group growled, blue runes carved into her skin and iron studs running down one side of her nose.
A fire pot crashed over a home, spraying it with flammable liquid that turned into a river of fire over its wooden roof. The heat curled Petor’s hairs.
A family ran out screaming. The animals that shared the home with them squealing and hollering right behind them. The mother grabbed mud from a side alley and got some children to throw mud on the house to try to stop the flames. The eldest ones were sent after the animals.
The father coughed, and kept running in and out, pulling his children with him, more hands to save as much as they could.
“Petor.” Mya grabbed his arm and hurried him on, with Valter pushing him.
“We can help them.”
“Their lives, their choices. We need to get the hell out of here.”
Rocks smashed into the street behind them, and another hit a burned-out building, hurling the remains everywhere.
They moved from alleyways to streets, as alleyways became mud traps.
“Move out of the way!”
They barely had time to get out of the way of a group of guards thundering up the hill on their mounts.
Desari led them onward without stopping, weaving through streets still. The four of them watched others as they passed.
Occasional stone buildings gave way to wood buildings, rough and crude in their design. Stone roads ran down the main thoroughfares, the rest gravel and churned mud.
The wall stood in the distance. Smoke filled the area behind it, buildings broken by stone and fire, leaving black skeletal fingers reaching skyward.
“Rain be coming.” Mya sniffed the air.
“All I smell is the smoke and dead,” Valter said.
“Shit.” Petor hissed as a section of the wall blew inward, the top of the wall raining into the street behind it.
“Here,” Mya said.
Petor pulled his gaze away.
On the corner of the curving road that looped from one side of the mountain to the other and the straight roads that radiated out from the cathedral through the city, lay a two-story building of nailed wood. Moss and rot grew from the wood in places, the inn’s sign just rusted holes in the wood, the words Head Rags barely visible anymore.
The roof started to patter, the first raindrops landing.
“Told you it was gonna rain,” Mya said.
Bells started to ring. Petor stilled and listened.
“That’s in the direction of the wa—” Desari cut off her words as another bell rang out. “The attackers are inside the city.”
“How can you know?”
“Bells are only rung for major problems, and the fact that bells are sounding all over the place and being cut off means that some are getting silenced,” Valter said. “Saboteurs probably, behind the walls. Like the ones we met.”
A scream rose from the road around the inn, leading toward the wall.
A woman with her baby turned the corner and ran past them. A man ran after her, stumbling as he turned onto the street. An arrow stabbed through his chest as he dropped with a choking cry. A cruel laughter came from several throats in the direction the arrow had come from.
Petor drew his sling, a stone already loaded as he whirled it and walked around the corner. An archer was almost lazily drawing back his bow, with four others jeering in the middle of the street. The secondary street, that ran from the upper reaches near the cathedral, just before the slums and the walls beyond, was covered in stone. The group wore armor from one of the groups from the temple under the cathedral.
“Hey!” Petor yelled as he released his sling. The archer’s head snapped back. The stone cracked his skull with a flush of essence. Petor loaded another stone.
Desari came around the corner with her bow.
The fighters seemed stunned that someone was fighting back. They started to turn as her arrow went through the eye of the man wearing the finest armor.
Valter’s arbalest sounded more like a ballista as it went through an armored man’s chest and threw him backward, pinning him to a wall. Petor’s sling whirred, mana flowing through the strap into the smooth stone as he released it.
It hit a fighter in the neck and detonated.
Petor lowered his arm as he looked at the scene. The last fighter had been caught up in the explosion and was coughing and spluttering.
His eyes darted to the man on the ground, a grim finality overcoming him as he strode forward, drawing his hunting dagger.
The stone-peppered fighter reached up to push him away, blood foaming at his lips.
“A life for a life.” Petor kneeled, pushing the weak arm away as he stabbed his blade up under the man’s armor, right into his core.
It was solid Red, two core levels below his own red mixed with orange, its essence too weak to increase his own. But it was filled with mana.
He consumed the mana in his channels, in his very core.
It was like breathing lightning, invigorating as it was terrible. Polluted green veins covered the man as he actively drew; essence and mana flowed through him, filling his core and spreading out through his channels. Holding it too long he’d start to come apart from the inside. For a short time it was possible—and he was going to need every part if healing Desari had been any indication.
The man coughed and writhed, then settled.
His channels shuddered with the power, too long and they would start to tear and crack as they had before.
He cut the attacker’s purse free and moved up the street to the man on the ground with the arrow through his chest.
He coughed weakly, blinking against the pain and rain.
Petor dropped to a knee next to him as Valter turned him on his side. The woman with the babe let out a strangled cry from the doorway of the tavern. A large woman held her back, trying to wrestle her inside.
A man stepped out: scars on his cheeks, a broken nose, a well-worn sword in his hands.
Valter snapped the shaft of the arrow going through the man, the rain and blood running over his hands and glanced at Petor. “Ready?”
Petor kneeled next to the man and put his hands around the wound, the rain mixing with the blood washing over his fingers. He felt that resonance, knew the damage under his fingers.
He locked eyes with Valter. “Ready.”
Valter tore the arrow through and out in one clean smooth motion.
The man coughed and whimpered. Petor knew the damage instinctively. He directed the mana within his channels. He didn’t understand the path, it just felt right, as it had when he healed Desari. It passed through his hand and resonated with the man’s wounds and body.
He had greater control now, not just undoing the damage, he directed the mana, it shifted within his channels by degrees.
First he stopped the man’s blood from flowing into the wound, it was choking him out and if he lost enough he’d die. His lung pulled together; the muscles pulled the bones into place. His body knew the way it should be. Petor gave it the power to return to that state.
The man’s breathing normalized and he slumped unconsciously.
“He’ll live.” Valter glanced over his shoulder.
The woman was weeping, being pulled into the inn. The larger man with a sword glared at them.
“Make friends with the locals,” Petor muttered.
Valter turned back to him. “Ain’t that the way.” He settled the man so he wouldn’t roll facedown into the mud or river of water draining down the street toward the wall.
Petor gritted his teeth against the mana headache and stood, holding up his hand to the man with the sword at the entrance to the tavern. “He’s okay! Take him inside before he gets cold!”
Petor shrugged. “Guess the locals ain’t too friendly.”
“Well, their city is getting sieged.” Valter shrugged. “Everyone gets tough days.”
Oh, I’m going to like you.
Petor grinned, and they walked toward the bodies, Mya, and Desari. He checked his core quickly Still red mixed with orange. Going up so slowly now. He’d blown past what he’d achieved in his last life, though it only left him hungrier for more.
Mya hummed as she looted their bodies, tossing slips of paper and tablets to Desari.
Desari kept some and threw others away, her brow furrowed. “Time to get a move on, lest you want to get caught in a demi-god’s feud.”
“Day one back in the Mortal Plane and we’re hip-deep in the shit,” Petor said dryly. “Figures, really.”
“I gotta say, Limos is zero out of one on destinations so far.” Mya cut a coin purse free and disappeared it into a storage device.
Petor wiped his blade clean on a dead man’s shirt. “What are those weapons on your belts?”
“These here are called bandoliers and these are pistols. Lil bit of powder, paper, and a metal ball, got yourself a weapon that can break even castles.” Mya gave a too-wide grin and winked, slitting off an armored breastplate with quick knife work.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Impressive.” Petor nodded.
“Thanks.” She tilted her hat with a forefinger and thumb as she stood.
“Let’s go.” Desari started to jog. Petor and the others followed.
He glanced back. The big man from the inn door picked up the man on the ground, hurling him over his shoulder. They met each other’s eyes; the big man nodded before hurrying back to the inn.
The door shut as soon as he was through.
Looks nice in there…warm, dry. Petor sighed, hearing the sounds of fighting that had gotten down to melee range and the fires spreading through the slums.
“Did you learn anything else, Desari?” Valter asked.
“The ones who put an arrow in the guy—they’re here to cause chaos and distract. You see the markings on the armor?”
“The clouds over the stream?” Valter asked.
“That’s his crest. The mountain one on the buildings, that must be Jorai’s. The other ones that had the bow and the tree are another god’s.”
“Great, in the middle of another fight between the arrogant fuckers.” Mya spat to the side. “Gods, and their bullshit. Always getting someone to die or fight for their causes. Fuckers.”
“Different from Jorai, who’s the god that the people here follow.”
“In the middle of a god piss up,” Valter said.
“Wish one of them could do something about this mist/half-assed rain crap,” Petor said.
“Bah, barely a spray,” Mya said.
“Our best bet is to get to the wall, over it, and the fuck out of here before anyone notices.”
“Not our fight,” Valter agreed.
Petor opened his mouth and closed it. Trying to stick up for people and being a paladin had turned to shit for him already. He didn’t know these people or their problems.
They carried on through the streets, closing on the city’s wall. Signs and the sounds of fighting rang out in the city as they headed for the wall, some two hundred meters away.
“Don’t use your mana, special gear, or abilities unless you must. The less others know about us, the better,” Desari warned as they moved.
“Prepare yourselves.” Mya drew her pistol as they turned a corner, facing the last of the houses and the gate out of the city.
A group of twenty guards wearing the symbols of Jorai and random mercenaries fought in the middle of the street against a larger group of some sixty fighters wearing the same symbols as those in the cathedral underground.
“Support the defenders.” Desari gritted her teeth and drew her bow, searching for a shot.
Mya fired, knocking an attacker flat. Valter fired his arbalest, slamming into another and throwing them backward. He cranked on the built-in lever and pulley system to draw back the metal string.
Petor fumbled with his sling as Mya fired again. Her shot took a man in the face and hit another in the chest, both who were hauling on the portcullis chains to raise it. The portcullis shuddered, half falling; those remaining grimly continued on their task.
Desari’s arrow buried itself in a woman’s eye; she tottered backward before her body realized it was dead and fell over. Petor whirled his sling and released, hitting an enemy fighter in the head, dazing them enough for a mercenary to stab them in the stomach with a spear.
Smoke billowed around Mya as she fired. Valter’s arbalest sounded like a wall’s crane in his hands. Desari’s movements sure and deadly.
“Bastards,” Desari hissed, drawing another arrow as the portcullis slammed into the ground. Those who had been hauling on it abandoned the chains. Her arrow dropped one to the ground, the others joining into the fight.
“Too close to the locals to pick them off,” Desari said.
“Close with them,” Valter called out.
Petor dodged a javelin as Mya fired at the thrower, opening a hole through their armor as they clutched at it, gawping like a fish on dry land.
Valter and Petor closed with the Ithram fighters. Valter stored his arbalest and pulled a sword and shield, wearing the clothes Petor had loaned him, instead of his armor.
Petor jogged with him, building up speed.
Desari drew out a sword as Mya pulled her cylinder free, replacing it with another, snapping the whole pistol closed as she drew her saber.
Valter slammed into the enemy, throwing one backward into a spin. He bashed another blade away from the left; a man to the right turned to stab him.
Petor pushed into the gap, his spear stabbing through the side of the man’s neck. Mana flowed as he channeled it into his muscles, fighting to protect Valter’s side.
Mya blasted one Valter had thrown back. Desari weaved between Valter and Petor, taking off another’s limb.
Petor cut him down as an axe swung over her head.
Valter got the edge of his shield up, diverting the blow, and got torn to the side, a red line across his arm.
Mya’s shot left Petor’s ears ringing. The axe fighter’s headless body slumped away from Valter.
Desari blinked against the blood in her eye as Petor stabbed over her, catching a fighter in the side. Mana flowed into his channels, he twisted and tore the spear free, essence following after.
A man slammed his shield into Valter as he got his feet set and stabbed at Mya, cutting her pistol arm. She slashed out at his hand, but he’d drawn his blade back too fast. Desari drove her sword up and into his side.
“Kill the bastards!” a mercenary with the Jorai yelled.
“Karenthal, take me!”
“Guide my blade!”
The attackers’ eyes turned crazed as they redoubled their attacks, not caring for the wounds they took on. Defenders fell back in surprise.
Petor was pushed back. Valter could only defend with his shield. Mya’s arm dripped blood as she fought off sharpened iron with her sword. Desari countered and gave ground.
Petor gritted his teeth. Power flowed through his spear from every wound he inflicted. He sunk into a daze, relying on muscle memories without the memories of gaining them. He stopped trying to control the fight, sinking into that place of actions and reactions. That place where muscle and sinew, training and experiences took over before his brain could ever think or process it.
There was a purity, a freedom there. He stopped fighting; reacting, he started to read.
A jab here, a slash there; advancing, turning. He moved through forms ingrained to his very being, utilized by instincts built up through a lifetime of fighting.
The enemy piled in, using numbers to overwhelm, to find Petor’s spearhead waiting for them. His blows broke bones, his feet set in the ground. Spear met necks, tore through openings…shield used as protection as much as weapon.
Fighters fell under his spear as he brought his breathing under control, linking it with his movements, everything a building block of lethality. Instead of relying on his strength and reaction, he used his skill with the spear.
His lungs clenched with silent cries, once learned, now remembered. Not wanting to give the enemy a single hint of his attacks, carving a bloody path.
He saw it now, the fear that filled the enemy’s mind. His own mind turned to battle, to bloodshed, honed and finely tuned.
Theirs despaired at what lay among them.
Valter’s bloodied shield arm straightened with a shout. Throwing his attacker back, he stepped into the new space. His sword shot out like a smithy’s bellows and retracted with two different yells. He advanced with cold finality, not a single motion wasted, his body low to the ground, protected by his large shield.
Desari drew her sword up, smacking away a spear aimed at her neck. She turned along the length of the spear, grasping it and jerking it. The wielder staggered; her blade slid deep and across his neck, flicking the blood into his companion’s eyes and setting upon them with her blade.
A wolf among chickens.
Petor caught only glances, categorizing his allies’ actions, sensing whether they required help…glances where their eyes connected, showing they did the same.
Petor continued his attacks, not allowing pause, not allowing the fatigue in, adjusting his actions as he moved. To slow was to invite weakness.
“Come on now, I got plenty for all of ya fucking varmits!” Mya cackled. Her pistol threw up clouds of smoke around her, as she fired from her hip with her wounded arm. Her sword deflected attacks.
Dark clouds covered the mountain and the rain pelted them. The dirt turned into churned mud that sought to steal one’s boots and their stance. As deadly as an unseen blow.
Thunder pealed through the clouds.
Mya spun, storing one pistol and drawing a replacement, as she cut down a fighter with a savage blow and three others with her pistol.
She sheathed her sword and drew a second pistol, unleashing a hail of rounds.
Petor felt the air push against him as two passed him, hitting opponents he tried to ambush from the side.
His feet stuttered, his spear brought high and to the ready in a haze, looking for the next opponent. His spear dripped in blood; men and women panted, mercenaries and guards marked by the church of Jorai.
He tensed, action and thought fighting with each other as he released a breath, holding back from attacking.
“To the walls!”
He turned a circle, checking the others.
Desari rose and flicked her sword, laying two lines of blood on the ground, unimpressed. Bodies, blood, and gore covered the cobblestones. She pulled out a piece of cloth and cleaned her blade. Valter did the same, both searching for the next threat.
Petor stepped forward, stabbing the bottom of his spear into the mud, and checked Valter’s wound.
Valter’s eyes flicked over Petor and back to the wall.
Cheers rose from the mercenaries and guards, fear turned into elation. Those who had expected to breathe their last were alive in a way few could understand.
“Flesh wound.” Petor pulled out ointment, covering Valter’s wound, followed with a bandage and wrapping. Healing took a chunk of mana and it wasn’t life threatening in anyway.
“Will you stop moving around?” Desari muttered, grabbing onto Mya’s bloodied arm. She’d sheathed her sword and armed herself with bandages and ointment.
“What do you—”
Desari smacked Mya’s hand out of the way as she ripped up her sleeve.
“Hey!”
“It was already mostly open.” Desari put on ointment and bandages.
“Bedside manner is like eighty percent of the reason people go to healers, you know!” Mya complained.
“And the other twenty percent?” Valter asked, amused.
“Mortal injuries and stuff, y’know.” Mya waved it off.
“Stop moving!”
“Hey! Sorry I’m interested.” Mya kept trying to sneak looks at her wound. It went through her skin and muscle and revealed the moving parts underneath.
A man cleared his throat behind Petor.
He whirled around, reaching to draw his spear.
“I come in peace, lad.” One of the mercenaries held up both his hands with a grin, rivulets of blood-tinted water turning clear under the rain. “Just wanted to say thanks. You lot saved our asses. Name’s Ornell. My band’s called the Riders of Cadenfell.” He waved to several others moving through the dead, or helping one another. They wore similar helmets, bronze armor, and green tunics.
Petor shrugged. “No problem. I’m Petor of the Four Horsemen.”
“Let’s get to the wall,” Desari said.
“We’ll catch up with you,” Ornell said.
“Good to meet you.” Petor tapped his hand to his head and moved after the others.
“Good luck!”
They ran after the guards; signs of fighting in the city drew them away as Desari led them toward the wall.
A house came apart in a spray of wood and stone, torn apart by a catapult’s payload. Fires flickered and smoldered against the rain. The lower slums were now little more than burnt-out husks.
A section of the wall shattered from a catapult impact, spilling guards, priests, and Adventurers.
Desari took the wall stairs two at a time, slowing once she reached the top.
Petor followed the others. The wall rose above the houses. Some eight meters tall, with battlements at the top, formed of weathered stone blocks.
In the distance, he could see the remains of the cathedral, the dust dissipating under the rain. Thunder rolled in the distance.
“Lord Jorai, bless thy warriors who stand as you do, a protection against coming tribulations.” A priest guard had his hands pressed to a point in front of his head.
Petor recognized the blessing but nothing happened.
The priest suddenly shuddered and stepped backward, sweat dripping from his face. There was fear in his eyes.
Petor hurried past him.
The guards looked back from their position at the front of the wall, facing beyond the city. Dark mutterings passed among them.
Adventurers stood on the wall in their own groups.
The wall was about five meters wide, and plenty long, giving them all room to spread out.
He slowed as he reached Desari.
Guards talked in low, worried whispers, praying to their god, Jorai.
Over the wall, the ground was littered with burnt patches and craters, breaking up the farmlands. Two camps were being hastily erected. Siege weapons were in view as long-range weapons fired their payloads at the city.
The verdant forest beyond them was being cut down, trees turned into more weapons and a palisade wall. Farmhouses and barns were turned into shelter for mounted forces.
“Well, fuck.”
“Fucking Tuesdays,” Mya agreed somberly, rested her foot on a nearby crate and drew out a spyglass, to study beyond the wall.
“What day is it?” Petor asked.
“I dunno.” Mya shrugged.
“What are the burns?” Petor asked.
“The remains of a teleportation spell,” Desari replied absently.
“How, uhh does one make a spell like that?” Petor asked.
Desari frowned as she examined him. “You can perform a very high level healing spell already.”
“I can? I just channel the mana through my channels, out my hand and into the person.” Petor looked at his hand in wonder.
“Something must have gone wrong. They should have attacked with the others at the gates and inside the city.” Valter scratched his chin.
“We’ll talk on this later,” Desari said to Petor turning her attention back to the teleportation spell remains.
“They got totems set up and the other priests are empowering the catapults. While the defenders don’t even have a basic blessing on theirs.” Mya’s voice stretched, distracted, and she looked at the wall.
The other gods needed totems to act as points for their power to flow through to their priests. Jorai should have been able to imbue his people. That priest had a backlash for trying to call a blessing.
Petor checked around him and pitched his voice low. “The priests here aren’t getting any power, even though they’re in their sanctified city.” Petor’s eyes narrowed. “They should be able to get blessings and power from their god by the bucket. They’re cut off somehow.”
“I’m not seeing a way for us to get out.” Desari pulled out the map from Limos.
“Got riders in their camp, ready to sally forth, far enough back that they’ll catch anyone who makes a move,” Valter grunted.
“Are you looking for something?” Mya asked Desari, looking from the map to the mountains.
“Trying to figure out where we are.” She kept glancing, turning the map.
“Can I see?” Mya asked.
Desari looked at the map and her, passing it over. “Just don’t rip it.”
“Don’t worry a hair on your head. Maps and me are kindred spirits.” Mya grinned as she unfolded the map, reading it, and handed it to Desari again. She drew out a sextant, moving the dials before licking her finger and raising it, taking in a deep breath and nodding.
“We’re in Sorelli.” She pointed to a city on the map, putting her gear away. Desari folded the map back up to show the city. “Just at the edge of the Rekouth Mountain Range.” Mya tipped her hat with a grin. “A navigator’s never lost.”
“Based on the information from that roving band of fighters, they want something in that mountain behind the cathedral and they’re willing to fight another god and his faithful for it,” Desari said.
“Fanatics are the kind of enemy you have to destroy stem and root.” Valter’s voice hardened.
More guards ran up the battlements and to their positions.
“All right, Adventurers, head to the guild for your assignments. Guards, spread out to take their positions!” a woman yelled as she stalked down the back of the wall.
The ragtag groups wearing tags made of copper or iron headed for the nearest stairs.
“Come on.” Desari led them away from the wall.
“Gah, missed out on all the damn loot!” Mya grumbled.
“We’re under siege…not many places that we can go to now. We need to keep a low profile,” Desari said. “We’ll have to blend in and once we find an opportunity, we make a break for it.”
“Once the enemy gets through the wall and heads deeper into the city, they’ll be distracted,” Valter said.
“Hide away and then sneak out in the heat of the fighting.” Mya nodded.
“What about the people here?” Petor asked.
“Their god, their city, their problem,” Desari said. “First thing we have to do is get some Adventurer tags and a place out of the way.”
They reached the stairs, crowding with others in mismatched armors.