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The Incompletionist
Chapter 50: Region Eleven: Final Conflict II

Chapter 50: Region Eleven: Final Conflict II

For the duration of the conflict with the goblin army each champion would be shadowed by a representative of each faction participating in the wager. These representatives would document and record the actions of the champions and their impact on the conflict for the purpose of determining contribution. If there was any dispute among the factions with respect to the assessments of contribution, the matter would be handed over to the region’s administrator. It was a bit of a convoluted system, but it had its own logic that made sense.

The draconic descendant champion was a mountain of a knight called Ezenirth and the champion from the human kingdoms was a powerful mage named Larune. They each sallied forth with our main forces as the goblin army finally reached the base of the plateau. My friends and I had been in Region Eleven for almost a year and it had all led to this. I was sitting on a wall watching everyone fight while I waited for my orders to attack. I most certainly heard some snickering from the human and draconic representatives as I simply sat as our strongest defenders battled the advanced contingent of the Unseelie Court forces.

The attackers broke off their exploratory engagement about noon and perhaps an hour later arrived in force with fresh troops. There were no easy ways to circumvent the climb up the south side of the mesa if you were heading to the Emerald Sea from the grasslands. Leirin and the rest of the leadership of the Emerald Sea had had ample time to prepare for the goblin’s advance and were well dug in and defended. Taking the outpost itself was a tall task. I expect that their strategy might have changed with time or other circumstances, but it was clear that the goblin army was looking to simply overwhelm our defensive position with sheer numbers. If they overran our position now with their full strength, this would be a relatively short conflict and the outpost itself could be easily surrounded.

No one sallied forth this time. Everyone manned the stone walls and related fortifications as we prepared to defend the wall at all costs. Leirin did issue a call for the enemy army to lay down their arms and surrender, but they didn’t respond with more than snickers and rude gestures. Goblins are monsters—smart monsters, but monsters none-the-less. They delight in setting vicious traps and take perverse pleasure in torturing their victims before killing them. There would be no negotiated peace in this conflict and no quarter for those taken prisoner in the fight. I was momentarily overwhelmed by the scale of this conflict and the impersonal, yet intimate nature of what was unfolding. I could disappear, but my friends couldn’t. I felt an obligation to the fae that I cared about mixed together with a sort of quiet terror as the goblins started to move. I wanted to do whatever I could to end it quickly and slip away back into a quiet and less populated place to think. This year had been a lot.

When Aquilian arrived with my orders a few minutes later, I put my faith in Leirin and I got to work. First, I launched the airship, without me aboard, and it sent it speeding over the enemy force. It was far too high for arrows or other projectiles to reach it, but some of the orcs tried anyway, apparently not too concerned about where their arrows may land among their confederates. It wouldn’t have really mattered if they shot it down, but doing so would have reduced the effectiveness of what we had planned. Once the airship had cleared the enemy force, it dropped a magical beacon and its payload of devices.

There was a second beacon with me on the wall and none of the devices would move past either beacon. The devices also had a horizontal range limited by the capacity of each beacon to generate a field of magic particles, but the beacons were powered by massive blue crystals harvested from the Giantspire Mountains, so that field was huge. The devices themselves looked like tops with sharp points at the bottom and a large sharpened disc around the middle with integrated hooked blades. They were made of a mix of materials from the Giantspires and were a good balance of durability and weight. You could stop the devices by destroying one of the beacons, incapacitating me or by smashing the devices themselves to bits. They operated in groups of ten and there were 20 groups. As the goblins pushed forward, these battle tops pushed forward right behind them.

The goblins were focused forward and we were holed up in fortifications at the top of the climb, so it took their leadership some time to realize that they were being attacked from the rear. Even then, they were slow to recognize the true level of the threat. The new devices and I had enough juice that each one had some respectable energy armor, which made them even harder to put down than one would expect from their simple construction from very robust materials. They spun, slashed, smashed, darted and pierced in a cloud of destruction and they completely cleared an area before they advanced to the next. They weren’t indestructible and powerful fighters like orc champions or hobgoblins with big mauls or similar weapons could definitely take them out if they got close.

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As soon as the battle tops gained enough of an open field between them and the control beacon dropped by the airship, I was able to pull focus away from their advance and concentrate my attention on threats to the beacon or the battle tops. It was a little clinical, but those were my orders from Leirin and the strategy was a good one. The enemy army was now between the hammer and the anvil and we were going to keep them stuck there for as long as we could. I had a magic particle rifle at the ready with a store of energy packs, but initially I used a large bore sniper’s rifle, my goggles and my Heightened Awareness skill.

I don’t know how long the fight lasted, but it went on like that for some time. I targeted anything that could threaten the advance of the battle tops and the battle tops targeted everything else. Eventually, the goblins started to panic. Their army was large and they still had an advantage in numbers, but as the fight against the battle tops grew more urgent and their losses mounted. They had to pull more resources, especially elite resources away from the wall. Their push against our defenses grew weaker over time and my allies valiantly held the wall despite their numerical disadvantage.

The strategy that the defenders of the Emerald Sea had put together was simple and so was the plan that Leirin and I had assembled when I revealed to her the changes that I had made to the airship and the devices that it carried. Simplicity can be an advantage under these types of circumstances and in our case it allowed us to focus on the battle. The enemy eventually started targeting me, though I think more for the high powered ranged fire than the battle top attack. I took some hits, but my defensive items were able to shrug most of them off. The goblins eventually destroyed the control beacon, though almost all of the battle tops were down at that point along with over half of the goblin army and a majority of their elite fighters.

The attack had been disastrous for the Unseelie Court force. They were still more than combat capable and with the threat behind them neutralized, the path of their retreat was open, so they had a wide range of options, However, our forces had fared extremely well fighting from behind our walls and the strength of the goblin assault had steadily diminished as they struggled with the unexpectedly potent rear forces. We didn’t have another load of combat devices and most of what was left on the field was not repairable, so that trick wasn’t something that we could repeat. Even if we had been able, its effectiveness would also be significantly lower against an enemy that was prepared. As the goblins moved to retreat, recover and regroup for a new assault, we had to press our advantage.

Leirin again issued a magically amplified if perfunctory call for surrender which the goblins ignored, but this time they lacked the flair of their first rebuke. The goblins were a little panicked, but they were still an effective fighting force. It would take our forces some time to make progress against the measured retreat of the goblin forces, which gave me plenty of time to switch to the magic particle rifle and do what damage I could by targeting their commanders and units leading their retreat. I had plenty of energy packs, I burned through every one of them in rapid succession.

The goblins had powerful shamans and other casters who were capable of creating shields and other protections from magic based attacks, but their technology sucked. I hadn’t met anyone in Region Eleven with a great answer for the fully upgraded version of the magic particle gun I was currently using, especially when blue crystals were available to supply a dense source of magic particles to draw from during firing. There were reasons for this that would become apparent later, but the goblins were typically not able to mount an effective defense.

It was a complete rout. I ran out of power packs shortly before I would have had to stop firing for fear of hitting our own forces and took a short rest after what must have been hours of intense continuous focus with Heightened Awareness. My head swam for a moment as I finally relaxed. I turned to look at my observers and no one was laughing. The human kingdom representative looked at me with poorly disguised fear and the draconic representative had a look of what I think was reverence. The fae representative just looked smug, which I expect was pretty normal for him either way.

I wanted to find my friends, but I was resolved to manning my post as long as needed. About thirty minutes later, Leirin’s voice echoed across the battlefield in a declaration of victory. A massive cheer arose from our forces and as I turned to find my friends my head began to swim again. Everything around me went completely silent as it froze. The color began to drain away from the scene in front of me until everything went dark as I collapsed onto the ground. I couldn’t feel the cold stones below me. I couldn’t feel anything at all as I blacked out.