Turning Point (Part 2)
Galvar stood staring across the bodies and turned, motioning for the Scout that had brought them all out there to come down. The fighting had died to a manageable lull in many places for the moment and the Scout obeyed.
“Tell me the rest,” Galvar said, voice grim, “How did this happen?”
The Scout stood, and looked over the dead, lips trembling as his eyes stopped first on one face - one of his companions? - and then another.
“Three of us,” he said, “they sent three of us to the village for help. I was the only one that made it through.”
Galvar sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose at the weight of the news before continuing, “We’ll find them too. But all of this. It’s insane. What happened?”
The Scout took a long pull from a flask, offered it to Galvar, then continued, “Once we saw the storm was coming this way it was too late. We would have had to run straight through the thing to get back, so most of us decided it was best to hunker down. Wouldn’t be the first time, Chaos Storms are dangerous but usually its just strange feeling. Uncomfortable.”
He paused a moment before continuing, “But the dungeon. The dungeon went berserk. Drones come out now and then - it can do that - but they don’t usually go far and they’re usually just out to grab materials and run back in. Not this time. It was dozens all at once. Hundreds before we really knew what was happening.
“Men and women, heads down, trying not to let the storm get to them, praying it doesn’t change them and then suddenly all around us was monsters. Must have been a hundred of the bastards. That was when we lost the most, right at first. But after the first wave it only got worse. It was like the Hive was feeding its energy directly from the Chaos storm. And while the storm raged it did nothing but create more and more of the things.”
Eana listened from where she was healing near the north wall, closest to the Hive. With half an ear to the conversation she continued to heal the unconscious man in front of her. He had been hurt badly. She had found him passed out against the wall close to one of the gaps facing the hive, holding his guts in with his shield. The big blue kite shield had been covering him almost completely and so Eana and the rest had taken him for dead. If he hadn’t coughed once he probably would be.
She had handled the worst of it but the torn open gash in his stomach was requiring an enormous number of healings and even Eana, with a mana pool so deep she for some reason didn’t know the size of, had to stop and wait to recharge between healings.
The Scout continued his story, “It wasn’t just the Drones though. We lost a few and took wounds in that first wave but once we understood the game we all know how to take care of ourselves. Leaving didn’t make sense now that we were in the thick of it. Chaos storms don’t last long. But the storm changed them. It changed so many of them.”
He gestured toward one of the bug man dead that hadn’t yet been cleared away. It was larger than the typical drone though not quite Soldier size. Like the rest of them it had no skin, but an exoskeletal carapace, but where the others had almost human like proportions this thing was mostly body, and that body was mostly jagged toothed mouth.
“They come at you snapping. Still easy enough to take down if you’re careful but the drones flood you, and then they come. Then the Soldiers arrived. Running meant a rout, so we doubled down, pushed them out of the redoubt, manned the walls, and that’s when they sent us.”
“But they’re still coming,” Galvar said, “The storm is over and they’re still coming.”
The Scout shook his head, “I don’t know why. I don’t know why they came to begin with. Maybe they’re running out though?”
“Seems like,” Galvar said.
Eana returned her attention to the man she was healing. She cast Assess for what must have been the tenth time and continued to stack regeneration with Recover supplemented by Light Heal. He was stable now, and she should probably move to the next person who…
The air. She felt the change like a physical thing. That charge had been building, always there, always asking her to notice it and say something, to move away and let it dissipate. But she hadn’t. She had been told to stay here and heal and so she did. And it had been building, threatening to sweep straight through her with its current.
And then it did. Her whole body suddenly felt alive with energy, of what kind she couldn’t say but it felt like a million tiny ants were scrambling over her. And out beyond the redoubt she heard clicking like the music of the sensation spreading over her skin.
“Huge group pushing the north wall!” a voice above her shouted.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“How many?” Galvar shouted immediately.
“I don’t know! All of them!” the voice shouted back.
“Numbers, you moron!” Galvar shouted back, “We’ve got other walls to -”
The voice shrieked back, cutting across Galvar, “ALL OF THEM!”
Galvar himself charged up the wall as men and women, walking wounded and those still waiting to be treated looked up at the wall. The owner of the voice, a woman wearing the trademark bandolier of potions common among Alchemists, was tearing off everything she had remaining on it and hurling it off the ramparts.
Explosions sounded and lights, bright against the gloom of the dark clouds above cast shadows across the redoubt. Galvar, now at the top turned and shouted, usually calm voice overwhelmed with urgency, “EVERYONE TO THE NORTH WALL!”
He activated a skill and, from where Eana was standing, disappeared back to enter the fight himself. Everybody who was still standing scrambled up to join the wall and soon the air was full of the clash of weapons on carapace, cursing and screaming men and women, and countless explosions of alchemical contraptions, spells, and empowered weapons of every type.
Eana pulled back, leaving the man with the blue shield she had been healing to stir into a drowsy wakefulness. She had to see what was happening.
Across the top of the wall was an array of glowing and moving men and women the likes of which she could never have imagined. Every protection skill, speed enhancement, strength modifier, or combat attack seemed to have been activated in a flurry of magic and death. The adventurers were emptying their mana pools. It was everything they had, nothing held in reserve, and all of it was on display.
And with it came the screeches and crackle of breaking carapace evidencing the destruction they were laying down at the foot of the northern wall.
Eana stood transfixed by the display of sheer power. Dozens of men and women forming an unbroken line of swinging weapons and magical might, backed up by wave after wave of projectiles. She didn’t know what was pushing against the other side of the wall, from her vantage all she could see was the backs of the frenzied fighters, but she didn’t expect it could withstand much more of that kind of punishment.
But the longer she watched, the more her mind acclimated to what she was seeing and, slowly, she started noticing the details. The terror in the eyes of a young Warrior as she plunged back into the fray. The frantic back and forth glances many of them gave to the adventurers to either side of them, as if they worried about being left behind. The last to hear the signal to retreat.
A hand suddenly grabbed her shoulder. It was boney, with sharp nails and it dug in immediately. Startled, she turned to see the frustrated visage of Gendra.
“We have one job. Do! It!” she growled through clenched teeth. The old woman left her to go tend to one of the badly injured but stable adventurers.
Eana moved to do the same but risked one final glance at the wall. Hadn’t there been a Rogue, a few people down from the far left? He had been using two hand axes with blades almost as long as the handle, she didn’t think she could miss him. She scanned the line again. Maybe he stepped off to get healing? Then she looked over the triage area where she and Gendra had been healing the wounded. But he wasn’t there either.
Come to think of it she couldn’t find the Alchemist who had called the warning either.
Looking back at the wall she saw Chrys. The call for everyone to fight on the wall had brought her up top where she engaged skill after skill, the Shield Maiden providing cover for the men and women fighting around her as well as dispensing death in her own right.
She had lost her helmet in the fighting and her hair, cropped short, was dark red with blood. Her pale skin showed fresh wounds, cuts, bruises, a few gashes. But she was fighting on.
Suddenly she turned, panic in her eyes so palpable it sent a chill down Eana’s spine. Chrys tried to run, but she didn’t take one full step out of the line before a large insect hand emerged from behind her and clamped down on her thigh.
She dropped her weapon and scrabbled frantically at the adventurers around her, but it wasn’t them that took hold of her. Another dozen smaller hands, arms latched on as insect faces snapped all around her.
She screamed, blood flecking from her flailing limbs as she reached vainly for any chance at life.
Then she was gone.
Vanished into what was resolving itself to be a roiling wave of insect monsters.
Eana watched, transfixed by the horror of it. The fight continued but she wanted to run rather than face this grim new reality. Chrys had been strong, easily the most powerful woman she had ever met. And she had just been…snuffed out. Warrior or not, what chance did Eana have?
She had to get out and the only time to do it was now. Nothing felt dumber than to return to the foot of that wall and to continue healing like she had not just seen a woman she knew, had spoken with only a few minutes prior, dragged off by whatever nightmare creatures had emerged from the depths of the hive.
But what else could she do? If she ran, and the adventurers won, it was over for her. This was supposed to be her chance, her turning point.
And they weren’t running. They were up there fighting.
Gendra was still doing her job. Still healing. She didn’t even seem to notice the fighting on the wall. Maybe Eana could do the same. Ignore it and just do her job.
Numbly, puppet-like, she returned to the foot of the wall and continued her healing of the man who, an hour before, had his guts laying in his own lap while he bled out.
Now though, she had seen the cracks in what had appeared to be an invincible wall of powerful adventurers, and her mind wouldn’t let her focus on anything but the fresh new screams coming from only a few meters above her on the ramparts of the redoubt.
Then the cracks began to widen.
A Drone pushed through. It dropped just off to Eana’s side. She flinched and cringed back, but she wasn’t about to be sent running by just one of these creatures.
She wasn’t that girl anymore.
That wasn’t her.
Never again.
Staff imbued and already grunting out a warcry as she activated Psych Up, she broke the thing’s head off its fragile bug neck. Her momentary flush of victory was cut short, as a shout rang out above her.
“We can’t hold them!”