“Saidh, do you really have to do that right now?”
The dark skinned man bowed down on his small carpet and finished his prayer without hurry, before he looked up.
“What, pray?”
“Yes, that. How can you pray? We have all seen what awaits us in the afterlife. The freaking Atheists were right. There is no heaven, there is no god, just eternal nothingness.” Alex their groups [Ranger] said angrily while he fiddled with one of the arrows in his quiver.
“Seriously guys, an argument over religion? Just shut up and play some dice with us.” Clara one of their [Warrior]s said from the other end of the camp fire and shook the dice enticingly.
Saidh smiled, but shook his head.
“No, thank you.”
“I am just saying, it makes no sense to pray. All of us have literally died and have been resurrected. It just drives me crazy how you can still try to pray towards Mekka when the place does not even exist in this Universe!”
“I don’t believe this is the afterlife” Saidh said calmly and rolled up his carpet with slow deliberate movements.
“The void, this tower, all of it is just a form of Barzakh, or purgatory as you would call it, a place to suffer and wait for the judgment of our sins in the last life. Or maybe it is hell and we are here to wash away all sins, before we can go to heaven. I don’t know. But this is a supernatural place. How else do you explain resurrection? How else do you explain magic, explain all of this?” he pointed at the weapons, at the wall, at Korin, their captain, playing with a flame in her hand as she rested near the fire.
“But they explained it to us, Emnu resurrected us, he created our bodies, he snatched our souls back out of the Void. God had nothing to do with that at all and this is no Barzah or whatever. Its a giant bootcamp to create soldiers for that guys wars.” Alex said and slammed the arrow he was playing with repeatedly back into his quiver, before pulling it back out.
“Then Emnu is acting in gods name, he might not be a prophet, but maybe he is an angel sent from god.”
Alex literally facepalmed and let out a sound of impotent rage while he wordlessly tried to protest.
“The darkskin has the right idea. I am no believer, but many in the Tower believe in Emnu as a messenger from a deity or some such religious figure.” Kretis, a warrior from a different group said while he slowly turned a roasted piece of meat on a skewer over the fire.
Alex was ready to explode when Korin sighed and let the small flame she had been playing with pop loudly in her hands.
“Shut up, all of you, we have a task to do, you can talk religion whenever you want in your private time.”
Alex wanted to argue, but a single gaze from the woman shut him up. There was something terrifying about the mages in the tower and since they always were the team captains they had the authority and not just the literal power to shut people up.
“Sorry, I am just anxious and this sitting around is driving me crazy.” Alex said eventually and Korin nodded.
“You should not call Saidh a darkskin though. Its racist.” Clara said with a frown and Kretis blinked at her.
“What? But he is human isn’t he?”
“Well yeah, obviously.”
“So how can it be racist then? I would understand if he is beast-kin or some form of demi-human, but he is not isn’t he?”
“It...it just is, just don’t do that.”
“But how else am I supposed to point out that I am speaking to him if I don’t know the man’s name. He has dark hair too, is that a better indicator?”
“What?”
“If I were to call the [Ranger] Blondie, would that be racist too?”
“No, why? It might still be rude, but its not racist.” Clara’s answer left Ketris incredulous and the tall man blinked and frowned deeply.
“So the color of your skin matters more than your hair color in your world? Why?”
“It just does, okay? Lots of history there.”
“I personally do not mind people calling me darkskin. But I would prefer my name. Saidh.” Saidh said with a smile towards the warrior and a small shrug towards Clara.
Clara frowned, scoffed and let it be.“Another of your Earth sensibilities?” the warrior said to himself and sighed, but nodded amicably to Saidh.
“Are we really going to…” Korin’s words were interrupted by a scream and they all shot up. A man tumbled towards the fire, clutching his thigh and suddenly all hell broke loose.
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“Alarm!” “He has been shot!” “Shields to the front!” “Masrix? Masrix?! Are you okay?” “Where did that come from?!” “You fool, get behind a tree, we are under attack!”
Everyone was talking over each other, people ran around like headless chickens, only some reacted well. Ketris had snatched up his shield from behind the stump he had sat on and was in the front of the [Archer] that was getting patched up by one of his teammates. Others just stood there gaping at the blood. Some had flattened themselves against trees or on the ground, taking cover. It was chaos.
Then a red spark leapt into the air and burst only 20 feet above their heads, showering the whole group with harmless red sparks.
“Shut the fuck up!” Korin shouted and people froze.
“Melees up front, ranged behind, target the rocks that way.” She pointed towards the hills and people leapt to obey. They formed up quickly, at least compared to the unorganized mess before and soon they had a rudimentary shield wall and archers behind them peering into the darkness, towards rocks and long shadows of the hills towards the wall.
A second mage joined Korin, lightning arcing around the man’s staff.“Could not spot him in the dark and I did not want to give away my position, considering my spells are pretty flashy.” the man smirked at the pun, but Korin just nodded.
“We got orders not to pursue, stay alert everyone and be ready for an attack!”
Everyone was sweating with nerves and the silence stretched out until it felt suffocating. Everyone peered into the darkness, looking for any hint of movement, but nothing moved, nothing happened. Other teams nearby had also formed up and had even sent people to ask what had happened. The [Archer] that had been wounded was by that time already patched up, his leg bandaged and the wound closed with a healing potion. The group spent a tense 20 minutes staring into the darkness before they stood down.
“Nothing to worry about guys. Just a little scare.” Clara said while she nervously fiddled with the strap of her shield.
Everyone half expected the cultivator to rush them right then and there, but instead nothing happened for another 10 minutes. Then a spark flew up and exploded somewhere down the line and woke everyone out of their stupor again.
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Aaron took aim at a nervous man looking around furiously, his crossbow clutched tightly in his hands. This would be the 5th attack of the night and Aaron had no plans of stopping. His attacks had mixed results so far. His first shot had hit the man he had aimed at in the leg and not in the torso, as he had wanted to, his second one had missed horribly and his third had only grazed the mage he had targeted because the man had somehow deflected his arrow.
His last shot had hit the man dead in the chest and the ensuing commotion had been massive. They had sent back 5 minutes of spells and volleys of arrows towards the hills, but Aaron had not been anywhere near that location anymore and had watched the fireworks with growing amusement from a distance.
He took a varying amount of time in between his shots and tried not to have a conceivable pattern in his target selection either. It was a mix of opportunity and forced randomness. This man for example had been the man he had grazed earlier that night and he was already back on watch. Poor guy. But he should not have come to hunt him down if he did not want an arrow in the chest.
Aaron did not aim at the head or anything equally stupid. He was just glad when he hit something, anything to be honest. The reactions of the besieging Aspirants had been eye opening though. The first thing they did was send up sparks to indicate that something was wrong at their location. Then they would move into formation and a short time later another group would arrive. A very familiar group.
As soon as Aaron spotted the Archer that had almost killed him, he ducked behind a rock and moved away in the cover of darkness. They did indeed have a quick relief force and Aaron was giving them a nice little workout running from one end of the siege camp to the other.
Some of the guards had already adapted and had taken more concealed positions in the cover of the trees. But that in turn limited the amount they could see and spot. Which was just what Aaron wanted.
Quite honestly, seeing the furious face of the mage who led the high level group made this entire night worth it. Aaron was always ready to capitalize on a mistake and he was fighting ready to leave, ready to escape at any moment, but so far no opportunity had presented itself. He was slowly but surely figuring out their plan. They held position and closed ranks in all adjacent groups to react quickly if Aaron moved to escape or attack the group. He had been tempted to shoot them a couple more times while they all lined up, but he had discarded that notion almost instantly. The idea was not to inflict damage. With his little bow and his accuracy at this distance it was almost impossible for him to kill unless he got a lucky hit. No, the idea was not to kill them, it was to scare them, to keep them awake and off balance.
He took a deep breath and drew the knocked arrow back in one smooth motion. At the apex of his draw he released the arrow while slowly breathing out. This time he did not miss and hit the man in the shoulder, making him scream. The man panicked, dropped his crossbow and ran. Aaron looked at his retreating back, knocked another arrow and sent it as quickly as he could.
The man went down in a crash of limbs and shouts of pain and a sudden volley of spells hit the whole hillside all around Aaron. Quickly he moved back into the darkness, vaulted over a few rocks and ran over a few canyons until he was far enough to be safe of any retribution.
Once again the night was filled with shouts and the organized chaos spread all along the line. Aaron continued, sending the occasional arrow into the waiting defenders over the next few hours, but as the night progressed there was a shift.
It started gradually and then suddenly everyone who was on guard stayed in cover. But Aaron had long anticipated this adaptation and went to aim at the people sitting at the fires beyond the first line of torches. It was a longer shot and he would miss more often. But it had the added benefit of making them feel unsafe everywhere. For now he planned to keep this up and sleep a few hours when it was daybreak. Then he would see what their plan was during the day. It was possible they would send the entire army into the canyons, but if that happened Aaron was only too happy to ambush and massacre the groups that were weak. Tight confined spaces were not exactly great terrain for teamwork unless you wanted to risk hitting your own teammates.
Aaron took aim at a sleeping form at one of the camp fires, drew and shot in one smooth motion, but the arrow landed short and there was not even an alarm. They had actually missed being shot entirely. He had to chuckle and took aim again, adjusting the arc of the shot to be higher and thus hopefully more accurate before he released an arrow for the second time. This time he hit and the commotion this time was massive.
It was a wildfire that spread through the camps and people started to take cover rather than risk getting shot.
But it was not enough. People grew irritated, anxious, scared, but they were still in position. They had not left their posts or made any mistakes so far. Aaron calmly studied the results of his newest attack and stopped dead in his tracks.
Where was the quick relief force? Where was the group with the archer and the mage with all the throwing knives? He waited for more than 20 minutes, but they were not coming. For a moment Aaron was tempted to just charge in, wreak havoc, but that would have been stupid. There were still enough people in the groups in front of him that it would be a struggle, if not impossible to beat them at all. Still, where was that group? Had they given up on running around for every little incident? That was a slippery slope right there.
Aaron ran along the edge of the forest, skipping over canyons and rocks, using his wind steps very sparingly, while he observed the line of defenders. People had shifted a bit, some were not in the correct position anymore, others had left small holes by taking cover. There were some bigger holes in the line now he noticed, but still nothing that really enticed him until he came to dark spot in the perfectly illuminated line. One of the torches had been extinguished, by what was not clear. But nobody had bothered to light it up again or replace it. The fires close to this spot were also further away than most. It was an almost perfect opportunity and Aaron hesitated before he scoffed.
If he had seen the high level group respond to his last attack he would have maybe taken the bait and ran into this obvious trap. But they had not and it was more likely than not that this was an ambush of them. After he got over his disdain and doubts if this wasn’t just exactly what it looked like, what he needed, he thought about how to take advantage of this new tactic.
If they responded to a new attack from him and left their post at this ambush site, this would be like leaving the door open behind them. But if they did not respond then that was an opportunity in itself.
This obvious hole in the torch line was relatively close towards the opposite side of stairways up to the second level. The reason for that was also obvious. The stairway side had a lot of flat terrain to cross if he wanted to escape there. It gave little cover and even if a torch had been extinguished in the small field and there were holes in that line of torches, it would still be difficult to sneak out that way.
But Aaron was not planning on sneaking out anymore. If they were waiting for him here, then this was his chance.
Without hesitation he activated wind steps and sped into the darkness, skipping over plateaus in a mad dash towards the open ground and the stairway up.
The time had come to see how anxious, angry and stupid these ‘fellow Aspirants’ really were. Aaron picked a spot a few fires away from his real target and shot 4 arrows towards their camp fire until he hit someone and they sounded the alarm.
Only when chaos reigned over this part of the line, he went for his real target a few fires down towards the stairs.