image [https://i.imgur.com/ewjIzeW.png]

The gap in the shield wall was about thirty feet wide. Several ranks of soldiers had been killed, knocked down, or thrown clear. Jagged spars of stone protruded from the ground, radiating out from the blast’s origin. And in the epicenter, wreathed in residual smoke, towered a warrior in full bronzium plate armor: a master terramancer.

And behind him, a fresh company of heavy infantry, ready to charge.

For a precious second, fear and panic mixed in Volthorn’s veins, turning him still as stone as he foresaw his battle line crumbling, his troops pressed from all sides as the gap turned into a torrent and then a flood.

But it was only a second. And then he replaced the emotions with action.

“Follow me!” he roared, snatching his shield from where it lay close at hand. He grabbed the standard marking his command post, yanking it out of the ground and tossing it to an aide. “Follow me! Every last soul!”

He charged forward. The aide took up the call, close on his heels. Then the dozen staff and officers at the command post followed suite, grabbing whatever weapons were near at hand and yelling to the menagerie of messengers, scouts, engineers, and camp assistants that circulated behind the front lines.

“Elandriaaa!” Volthorn bellowed. “Elandriaaaaa!”

He was still a hundred yards out. The enemy terramancer was striding through the gap, dispatching the handful of stunned warriors who tried to get to their feet to oppose him. The enemy infantry followed, forming a tight formation as they charged over the broken ground and began hammering the exposed sides of Elandria’s battle line on either side of the gap.

Volthorn needed to buy time for more of his men to arrive! As he ran, he passed his right hand over the talismans at his belt. Rock-shard grenade? No, it required too much precision at this distance. Acrid dust? Only good for close quarters. Double-down stone? Perfect.

Volthorn yanked on the slipknot holding the double-down stone to his belt. The stone, a unique strain of pegmatite about the size of an apple, had a hole bored through it for a thong of leather—for both attaching it to his belt and for throwing it. Volthorn pressed a finger to an amethyst on his belt, sucking purple terracharge into his hand, then poured the energy into the stone. His terramantic sixth sense felt the stone come alive with power, just waiting for a rupture to be released. With the leather thong, he swung the stone like a sling, accelerating it with three quick rotations before launching it high into the air.

He was eighty yards out now and closing. Activating and launching the talisman had slowed him down, and his men were catching up to him, taking up his earlier battle cry.

The talisman impacted the ground just ten yards in front of the enemy terramancer. A ring of purple light issued from the impact, sweeping outward until dissipating after about twenty yards. The effect on all those caught in the impact area was immediate. They staggered, their movements suddenly sluggish and labored. Shields and sword tips clanged to the ground, their bearers struggling to lift them back up.

A double-down stone released a force field that temporarily increased gravity. Based on how much terracharge he had poured into this one, it was probably magnified gravity by about fifty percent. Volthorn knew from experimentation the shock the effect had on the body: the sudden increase in weight, the resistance of every limb becoming one and a half times as heavy as normal, the incredible extra attraction that any armor or weapon had for the ground.

All action at the gap ceased almost instantly. The Calamarvan soldiers struggled to take short, halting steps forward. The double-down stone affected friend and foe alike, meaning as Elandrian soldiers on either side of the gap pressed forward into the affected area, they too fell prey to the increase in gravity.

“Ten seconds!” Volthorn shouted to the scattered soldiers behind him. That was about as long as they had before the double-down stone’s effect fully wore off—theoretically, anyway. With how many terramantic devices were being thrown around the battlefield, creating hot spots of residual terracharge and disrupting the ground’s natural energy field, certainty quickly began to break down.

Ahead of him, soldiers began to move more naturally again, as both the gravity surge decreased and they adapted to the extra strain. The figure in bronzium plate armor cast his spear at a soldier in his way. With a flash of red light, the spear punched through the Elandrian’s breastplate like it was a piece of leather.

Volthorn ran straight toward the man in the bronzium armor. “I’ll handle the terramancer!” he warned the soldiers behind him. “You keep that infantry busy!”

Thirty yards out now. Volthorn’s opponent towered well over six feet, augmented even more by the red plume on his helm. At his belt hung a variety of terramantic tools and weapons. His armor glowed with a green aura.

image [https://i.imgur.com/GHhNHFb.png]

Volthorn held back a grin. A duel between two terramancers. These could get fun.

With his free hand, Volthorn transferred energy from an emerald and a sapphire to his shield and armor, until the metal hummed around him. Like his opponent, Volthorn wore armor made principally of bronzium. The special alloy was weaker than both iron and normal bronze, but it manifested incredibly useful properties when enchanted with different types of terracharge. Each color of terracharge bestowed a different property. The green terracharge stored in the emerald gave the armor extra hardness, while the blue terracharge from the sapphire created an energy field around the metal that would slow or deflect high-velocity objects.

Turning to face Volthorn, the enemy terramancer touched an orange gem on his right arm. The infusion of orange terracharge—which typically displayed some sort of binding or attractive force—caused the spear he had thrown earlier to pull free of its victim, sailing back into the terramancer’s waiting grip. Volthorn drew his short sword in return, running his thumb over a ruby in the hilt to transfer red terracharge into the blade, turning the edge extra sharp.

As Volthorn and the man in bronzium faced off, soldiers on both sides gave Volthorn and the other terramancer a wide berth. Although mancery was employed frequently on the battlefield, duels between two masters were rare spectacles—spectacles easily fatal to those caught in the crossfire.

Volthorn stepped into a crouch, ignoring the rainwater pouring down his face. He kept his eyes trained on the man’s spear tip, which was glowing red like Volthorn’s sword. How sharp was the enchanted tip? It had sheared through a bronze breastplate as if it were leather—that wasn’t promising.

Stolen story; please report.

The man feinted toward Volthorn, his spear held low. Volthorn danced backward. Yes. Let him make the first move. This was one of Volthorn’s favorite strategies; let his opponent take the initiative and attack first, then strike back with concentrated power as soon as a weakness presented itself. He had already applied the tactic on the battlefield today, striking the Calamarvans as soon as they split their army. Time to apply it again.

Volthorn let himself slip on a bit of muddy ground, lowering his shield and exposing his torso. The terramancer took the bait and flung his spear with startling speed. For a moment, Volthorn’s life flashed before his eyes; then he raised his shield in time. As the red enchanted spear met the blue enchanted shield, terracharge radiated outward in two thunderous blasts of red and blue light.

The spear fell into the mud in front of Volthorn. Before his opponent had a chance to summon it back, Volthorn used the glowing edge of his sword to cleave the spearhead from the haft.

One weapon down.

Then Volthorn charged, closing the handful of yards between them. The human drew his own sword, but Volthorn rammed him with his shield, attempting to knock him off balance.

His opponent was the much heavier of the two, however, and dug his feet into the broken ground to avoid being knocked over. Then his sword came dancing around the edge of Volthorn’s shield, glancing off Volthorn’s helmet. Volthorn backed off, trying to fend away the blows with his shield. He could feel the charge in his helmet shredding away with each strike that landed. How much terracharge did that sword have?

Volthorn needed to end this. Soon. He darted forward, holding his shield up to cover his head as he slashed his short sword back and forth. It clanged off the metal strips on the Calamarvan’s armored skirt, sending sparks of light cascading into the air. Once! Twice! A section of the skirt sheared off, exposing his opponent’s abdomen. One more strike would—

A rock smashed into Volthorn from the side.

Volthorn backed away, eyes nearly blinded by the flash of light from his armor as it deflected most of the blow.

He peeked over his shield. The other terramancer held a metal rod in his left hand. Dragging on the ground beside him, as if attached to the rod by an invisible chain, was a rock as big as Volthorn’s head. Shadows! His opponent had a boulder mace.

The terramancer swung his rod overhead. In response, the rock lifted off the ground, whistling through the air in an arc headed straight toward Volthorn. He sidestepped to the left, letting the rock smash into the mud with a resounding splat. Then Volthorn’s sword swiped, the enchanted blade shaving a chunk off the rock. The chunk fell to the ground, no longer enchanted. Only a single point on the boulder was paired with the guiding rod, so every piece Volthorn could isolate was less mass that could hurt him.

The terramancer jerked his rod, yanking the rock back into the air and whistling it around to come at Volthorn from the side. Volthorn stepped back, letting the rock barely miss him. The terramancer reversed the direction of his rod, but again, Volthorn stepped back, this time raising his sword and cleaving the rock nearly in half. One piece fell to the ground while the other arced to the right, still invisibly tethered to the handle.

Volthorn smirked. Boulder maces! In certain situations, they could be brutal, knocking formations apart in a handful of swings. But in one-on-one duels, especially against other terramancers, they had too many exploitable flaws. He studied his opponent. Any second now and he’d either abandon the mace or sheath his sword to wield it two-handed.

The soldier in bronzium let the rod fall, bringing his other hand toward a gem on the handle to deactivate the terramancy.

Volthorn darted forward, taking advantage of the momentary distraction. He planned his attack in his mind’s eye: knock the sword aside with his shield, jab with his own sword, pierce the weak point left by the broken skirt—

The other terramancer stepped back, swinging his mace up. He had only pretended to disarm it! The boulder came swinging at Volthorn’s right side, the side not covered by his shield. It was too late to duck, unless he wanted the boulder to smash his head. Instead, Volthorn let the blow take him squarely in the shoulder.

He felt the shockwaves of terramancy sweep around him as the energy field around his armor took some of the blow and then burst, depleted, in a flash of blue light. The blow from the boulder knocked Volthorn to the mud, his sword dropping from his stunned right arm.

Instinctively, he rolled and brought his shield up.

Wham! His opponent’s sword smashed down, the red tip biting into the rim of his shield, inches from his head. The sword rose and fell again, completely shaving a corner off Volthorn’s shield. Volthorn kicked with his legs, striking against the Calamarvan’s boots but failing to knock his opponent over. His eyes were nearly blinded by rain.

Shock filled Volthorn’s mind. This was it. He’d been bested. Flat on his back, his enchantments drained, his sword gone, he wouldn’t last another two seconds. With him dead, what would happen to the battle? To his army? To his country?

“Rackatahaaan!”

The korrik war cry split the air as Kelzern appeared in Volthorn’s vision, driving a spear at the enemy terramancer. The Calamarvan stepped back, swinging his sword and clipping the spear in two. In his left hand he smashed his boulder mace into Kelzern’s ribs. As Kelzern stumbled from the blow, the Calamarvan stepped forward to finish him off with his sword.

But before he could, Trazar rushed from the opposite side, sweeping past Volthorn and snatching Volthorn’s dropped sword from the ground. Knocking away the terramancer’s attempted perry, Trazar drove the sword through the gap Volthorn had made in the terramancer’s skirt. Light flashed as the sword’s enchanted tip pierced the terramancer’s last defenses. Then the warrior in bronzium toppled.

Silence fell in that pocket of the battlefield as Volthorn, his brothers, and the surrounding soldiers processed the unexpected reversal.

Then chaos erupted as soldiers from both sides swept into the space occupied by the duelists. Two of Volthorn’s officers leapt in front of him, buying him time to get back to his feet as the lines crashed together around them. His mind still recovering from shock, he pushed his way over to where Trazar stood protecting a kneeling Kelzern. “Are you all right?!” Volthorn shouted.

“No—I’m all left!” Kelzern said through clenched teeth, clutching his rib cage. “As in, all that’s left of me is my left side, because my right side just died and went to the Halls of the Sun.”

“He’s telling jokes,” Trazar said as he fended off a probing spear tip. “He’ll live.”

“That was brave, charging a master terramancer!” Volthorn said. “As foolish as the Far Moon, but brave!”

“You’re one to talk!” Kelzern retorted, pushing himself to his feet with the stub that remained of his spear. “Good thing I meant want I said this morning—you do all the thinking, we keep your head from getting whacked!”

“Focus!” Trazar shouted, as a new clump of enemy soldiers rushed them. For a couple minutes, all was a thrashing melee of shields, spear tips, and helmets. A spear pierced the mail on Volthorn’s right arm, breaking a couple links as it stabbed his triceps. He’d nearly forgotten what a battle was like without enchanted armor.

After what seemed like forever, a fresh squad of Elandrian infantry arrived behind Volthorn and his brothers. “Commander Skarr!” an officer called. “Get back! We’ll handle this!”

Volthorn let a pair of soldiers take his place in the battle line. “I was just starting to enjoy myself!” he called to the officer.

“With that arm, I’m sure!”

Volthorn looked down to see the mail on his right arm stained with blood. “Hardly noticed,” he quipped. “I could keep going all day.”

But the break reminded him that he had duties far more important than helping one section of the line. He stepped away from the fray and surveyed the battlefield.

The center still held! His duel with the enemy terramancer, and the bravery of his staff, had plugged the gap just long enough to allow soldiers further down the line to rush to their aid. The fighting was still desperate and the battle line thin, but Calamar’s momentum had been checked.

Two messengers waited for Volthorn on the sodden hillside. He stomped up to them, wincing as the pain began to set in as his adrenaline ebbed. “Report!” he said.

The first was a swifter with drenched fur. “I just came from the left flank. Calamar’s entire flank has collapsed. Battalions in the center are fleeing as well.”

“Then the day is won!” Kelzern said.

“Not quite,” Volthorn said. “One piece is still in play—the ten thousand enemy soldiers somewhere between us and the river.” He turned to the third officer, General Embertail. “Any word?”

“It just came in,” Embertail said. She shook water from her wings. “With all this rain, the river’s a surging flood, twenty or thirty feet deep. They’re trapped on the far side, unable to cross.”

Volthorn wrapped the surprised griffin in a hug as he jumped up and down. “Then we’ve won! We’ve won! We’ve won!!”