It wasn’t a good plan, but that was to be expected. All of Hexeri’s good plans had gone out the window when her men were captured. And, at the very least, it wasn’t an awful one either. Certainly, it was better than hiding behind a rock and waiting to be caught.
At least, she was somewhat sure it was better.
“You’re ready?” She asked Baird, who grunted in the exact same way he had the other times she’d asked. He seemed to grunt a lot, on the mission, and Hexeri found the habit suddenly quite vexing. She made nothing of it though, rather too tied up with the prospect of her imminent death or capture to do so.
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Collin watched the Vampire sprint off into the night, and took another moment to appreciate just how quiet she was. Rangers trained for years to move like that, but off she went.
Well, probably she’d trained for years too. With centuries of life under her belt he imagined she’d gotten practice doing most things just incidentally. Then again, Shaiagrazni apparently hadn’t been in so much as a fist fight and he was barely younger.
Collin killed that train of thought dead, having more important things to worry about than the practice of his allies. Moments passed, quick and jagged as falling stalactites, then the distraction began.
Not easy, distracting Dark Elves. They were a diligent lot. One had to do more than just sprint through a sentry’s line of sight to make them commit. That was why the Vampire dropped down in front of one and neatly twisted his head off, then put her fist into the chest of a second. Quick, easy deaths. These Elves were good, but they weren’t inherently stronger than a human Knight. Fragile things of wet, crimson paper to the fists of a Vampire as old as Hexeri.
Well that got their attention. Through the dark, Collin could clearly see as men and women- the Elves ran a mixed-sex fighting force- leapt to their feet and came storming around to give chase. Hexeri was already sprinting her way from them, crossing a dozen paces before the first flash of burning magic could illuminate the night.
She really did look fearsome, in that light. Hair like coal, spattered with blood, eyes a deeper red than any of it. Collin had seen predatory animals interrupted from a feast with less gore and blunter teeth on them.
And that was a good thing, because the scarier a sight the Dark Elves saw killing their men, the more of them would be inclined to give chase.
She carried herself off at a surprisingly low pace, and Collin soon saw why. Only twenty or so Dark Elves were after her, the rest standing warily guard around their camp, suspecting exactly what was happening. For a second he feared the plan was doomed. Then Hexeri slowed, turned, and smashed into her pursuers.
It wasn’t as easy a fight as it might have been, but it was over quickly. Shadows and blood dancing around at her command, shredding the Dark Elves apart in mere seconds.
More importantly, proving to the rest that this enemy couldn’t be caught with half-measures. More broke off from the camp to pursue her now, many more. Twenty, fifty, a hundred. Then more still.
Hexeri sprinted off into the darkness, magic flying all around her, even being clipped by one particularly close streak of lightning. She disappeared, then her pursuers did.
Which left the camp relatively unguarded. Collin made his move.
To begin with, he started simply. Taking out one guard, then another. He was careful not to draw his bow back its full length, ensuring that the arrows didn’t produce the whip-crack signifier of supersonic flight and give away his position. Against enemies this fragile, four-tenths of their speed was more than enough.
One after another the Elves went down, falling as a singular corpse in some cases, blown apart at the seams in most others. Collin fell into the old rhythm of combat, barely thinking save to spot targets and run through the mechanical motions of loosing another arrow. His back and shoulders began to twitch with the low heat of muscular exertion, fingers numbing and burning at once. It was a manageable strain- another advantage to keeping the projectiles slow and weak. Soon enough he’d dropped more than a dozen Elves, perhaps a quarter of their defenders, and those who remained got clever.
Boots scraped together, shoulders meeting shoulders, and they formed a solid square around their prisoners. Bound and unarmed, the Kaltans were immobilised and unable to do anything but watch their captor’s backs while Collin watched their fronts.
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Magic flashed, shields rising up. He experimented with an arrow, which broke against the arcane barrier without penetrating. Collin was too far away for even his own eyes to recognise anything on the Dark Elves’ faces, but he couldn’t help but imagine smugness burning away behind their eyes.
Well, it wasn’t the end of his plan. He’d suspected they might have a trick up their sleeve.
And Collin had his own.
He crept closer, gliding through the territory as quietly as he could, keeping low and out of sight. Fortunately he’d had the metallic limbs of his bow darkened, as was standard Ragner tradition, and the rest of their structure was pure keratin, so there was no risk of his position being given away in a glint of moonlight. Collin closed until he was no longer confident of doing so without being sighted, just fifty paces from the enemy’s formation. Then he reached into his pack.
Shaiagrazni was a bastard, but he really did make some powerful weapons. Collin held one of them now; an unassuming ceramic cylinder, completely filled with liquid. Even he had a hard time imagining it would do what he’d been told it would, but there was hardly any choice in the matter now except to find out. Collin threw it.
Inside, the liquid had filled as close to one hundred percent of the container as Shaiagrazni was physically able to ensure. That had been the most important part of its creation, because even the slightest bubble of air inside would have made it not only ineffective, but crushingly deadly to its wielder.
The cylinder- apparently called a grenade- impacted its enemy. Collin let his smile bloom at the sight.
He’d known, intellectually, to expect a large explosion. But he hadn’t known quite how big it would get. The liquid contained within that weapon had been more powerful than the stuff Shaiagrazni’s cannons used to propel iron balls the weight of small children across miles of terrain, and Collin was fairly sure he’d even used more in that device than he did in the usual cannon blast. The Dark Elves’ shield shuddered, its entire length trembling and quivering as deep ripples ran along its suddenly-visible surface. It held, but barely, and Collin saw the weakness clean as day.
Feeling generous, he helped it along to failure by putting a supersonic arrow into the part that looked weakest.
The shield collapsed, the Elves stumbled as their magic broke, and before they’d even righted themselves a second of Collin’s grenades came down on top of them. He really was glad he’d stashed them in so many wagons, rather than keeping them on him. Glad, too, he’d heeded his father’s advice to always have a spare weapon hidden within grabbing range, or else he’d have snuck back to the site of their ambush and found nothing.
More than anything though, he was glad Shaiagrazni was so good at making weapons, because the sight of close to thirty Dark Elves being blown into wet meat was satisfying on a level he struggled to describe.
Collin recovered from the display before the survivors, which he reckoned was fair enough. An arrow caught a skull between its eyes, ripping off everything above the jaw, and those six or seven left turned and fled without another word. Also fair enough.
But they had friends out there still, and Collin was in no mood to fight more Dark Elves than he absolutely had to. He took his time putting each one of them down before they could meet their allies, and enjoyed it as he went. It was a shame, almost, that Shaiagrazni’s growing power was leaving him closer to the day where he’d run out of the Dark Lords bastards to kill.
It was what it was, he supposed.
He reached the captives quickly, and got to work more quickly still. Plucking Dark Elf blades from the ground, he freed a dozen and handed the weapons around with orders to loose more. They, in turn, helped to untie others. Soon enough men were being unbound at a rate of hundreds per minute.
“Rangers!?” Collin called out, desperately sprinting among the men, searching for his chosen best. “Bring me the Rangers, there’s another fight coming and we need every elite we can get our hands on.”
But it was dark, and Kaltans- even the best trained- were not Rangers themselves. Collin found only confusion among those he asked. Still, time was on his side. Hexeri must have been leading the rest of the Elves on a merry chase, because even with the passing minutes rapidly compressing themselves towards an hour, he soon found his men.
The Rangers were in sorry states, half-starved. Probably the Dark Elves had done that just in case of a break-out, as they were now facing. Clever bastards. Collin was quick about preparing however. He’d not been able to drag many weapons from the place they’d been ambushed, regardless of how many had been there there were limits to what he could carry. A steel bow for each Ranger, and a few dozen spears for those who weren’t already armed in Dark Elf weaponry.
It was a shoddy fighting force, outnumbered two to one by the enemy. But it was a damn sight better than they’d had before. Particularly with the Rangers.
Half-starved or no, they were still Rangers. And they all moved quick and calm as they got into position before their captors could return.
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Ado had not actually been sure what the first step of her plan would be until the moment she suggested it. She’d not much expected to even get so far as to give it voice before the King, let alone see him heed it. In the following night, though, she was given ample time to consider her words.
She found no better alternative. Either she’d chosen well or foolishly, but no matter what her strategy was the finest she herself was capable of.
Perhaps Silenos Shaiagrazni could have done better, or rather she was almost certain he could have, but she’d been alone and she’d made her move without help.
Now all that was left was seeing whether it had saved her.