In hindsight, there was no way the Arcane Corps was going to get into formation on top of the hill in time to mount a proper defense. Soldiers tried to don armor, some rolled about sleepily in their beds. Some of those who were combat ready headed toward the hilltop. Others refused to listen, as Thequen was not their direct superior officer. Thequen gave up on shouting warnings and decided to focus only on what he could personally do. Within a couple of minutes he had acquired a wooden shield and a short spear from a soldier’s tent. Someone would miss them perhaps, but being better armed in the moment outweighed the longer term social consequences, in the moment. All around him horns were being blown and pockets of allied soldiers were trying to get organized. A few squads made it to the hilltop just as the enemy reached them. Thequen was about to run back up the hill himself when the something atop the hill exploded and he froze, hesitating. A rush of hot air, a burst of orange-red flame from the hilltop. The screaming of freshly injured people. Thequen dropped down on one knee and got his shield up as the explosion occurred, then peeked around the curved edge.
He was not the only one who had stopped halfway up the hill. To his left and right there were others who seemed unsure whether they should advance or not. One older man dropped his spear, turned, and ran away. The hilltop smoked. There were more detonations, further away. From over the crest of the hill a heavily armored figure emerged from the smoke-- his skin glowing red, with streaks of orange moving underneath as though he had something alive inside him. His chest and thighs were heavily armored, but his arms were bare, and he only wore one boot. He had no helmet, but it was hard to make out the details of his face through the shifting colors. Except his eyes-- his eyes looked like they were on fire. He screamed and held his two-handed sword above his head, then sprinted down the hill toward Thequen.
Thequen’s next action was textbook in its execution. He planted the butt of his spear in the dirt, and then crouched down and held his shield in front of him, clutching the shaft of his spear tightly with his other hand, and keeping the point trained on his foe. His glowing foe swung downward and Thequen took the blow on his wooden shield, his whole arm ringing with pain as he absorbed the force of the blow. Thequen’s spear-point screeched across the chestplate of his foe, and then sank into the exposed flesh of the man’s shoulder.
The moment the spear broke skin Thequen had a feeling he’d made a horrible mistake. What looked like raw red mana leaked out of the wound and immediately caught fire. Then Thequen’s foe screamed louder and exploded in a fiery blaze. The pain and the heat of the burns was intense and the only thing that saved Thequen’s life was probably that stolen wooden shield. He had the breath knocked out of him as he landed on his back some distance away. The spear he had held was gone and he struggled to his feet, dizzy and in pain, the smoldering remains of his shield still strapped to his arm.
The camp had been thrown into chaos. All around him the enemy sprinted in, engaged, and then exploded. Tents were on fire. The forest was on fire. Here and there were smoldering dark craters among the grass, ringed by the fallen and injured, mostly Thequen’s own allies. He fumbled with the straps on the shield until eventually it fell from his arm. Thequen was no coward. He ran back up the hillside and reached into his pouch. It was easy enough to tell which gem was which purely by feel. He grabbed the silver gem in his fist and squeezed as he ran.
Mana suffused his body and he felt energized, as though he’d just woken up and eaten a mouthful of raw coffee grounds. His pain and fatigue faded from his awareness. He sprinted, performing a short incantation and a gesture-- one of the simplest pieces of wind magic that he knew. He felt the spell hit his legs, he coiled into a crouch, tipping forward a bit from the momentum of his run, and then he jumped.
He soared upward, accelerated by burnt silver mana, further than even the best athlete in the world could hope to leap. In a moment he was up above the battlefield, above the hill, above the town. In the absolute sense of things, this was still not very high up, but it was good enough to afford him a bird’s eye view of things as he reached the apex of his leap. No glowing burning men were left on the field. Fire spread through the camp and the woods. Efforts made to put it out were scattered, disorganized, and unlikely to succeed. On the hilltop a thin defensive line had been made. The rest of the enemy’s troops had taken to the field, heavy infantry moving forward with agonizing slowness as their archers followed along behind. More red-robed priests were mixed in among the ranks of infantry and archers.
Something had clearly changed for them to go on the offensive after spending all that time digging in along the ruins of the wall. Thequen plummeted downward just as some of the archers below noticed him and started to take aim. Their arrows went wide. The earth rushed up to meet him as he pushed more silver mana into his legs. He slammed into the ground feet first just in front of a few mercenaries on the slope of the hill and they whirled on him, weapons already out. The mercenaries relaxed a little when they saw the color of his tabard, and the fact that he held no weapons. “Which was is the Commander?”, he asked one of them. They pointed down the line to the right. Thequen ran, letting the remaining overcharge of silver mana burn out slowly, lending him a literal lightness to his steps.
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By the time he found Commander Cardon in the center of a group of officers the enemy archers had stopped and were forming ranks on the open field. Ilthur and Ariana were there as well. “Commander! The camp-- it’s all on fire. I saw from above.”, Thequen gasped as he reached them.
Cardon nodded. “I figured as much. And our employer has gone missing. This is now purely a matter of survival.”, he grimaced.
“My offer still stands, Commander. Shall I work my magic as I did on the wall? I have no interest in dying here either.”, Ilthur rasped.
“Fine. Send messengers to either flank-- whatever mages we have left should focus on defense for whatever comes next. We’ll rely on Ilthur for offense and hope for the best.”, Commander Cardon said with a sigh.
The enemy loosed arrows. The 3rd Arcane didn’t have enough men with shields on one flank. Thequen could hear the screams. He scavenged another spear from behind the line and then moved to stand next to Ilthur as he pushed the remainder of his silver mana into a crude casting of wind armor for himself, just as he’d done yesterday. It had the added benefit of blocking out the stink of the sweating, burned things, and the dead. As the armored infantry marched up the hill, like beetles swarming a mostly-dead animal, Ilthur rattled off an incantation.
The most eerie thing about Ilthur’s death beam was that by itself it made no sound once it sprang forth from his staff. A solid dark purple beam extended, and whatever it touched in an arc in front of him simply crumbled, turning green, then black, and then to ash. Moment by moment he cut them down, but more advanced. He could only take down so many. Another wave of arrows was loosed and to Thequen’s right a footman caught three in his upper chest just above his shield and collapsed to the ground. Thequen crouched down over him and confirmed that he was dead, then took his shield from him. No enemy infantry got too close to the portion of the line where he was due to Ilthur’s death ray. But elsewhere they clashed with the remaining soldiers of the 3rd Arcane.
Given the sheer numbers the enemy had, and the abundance of arrows, Thequen was pretty sure the flanks were going to collapse. A few feet away from him Ilthur cursed quietly as his death ray spell suddenly came to an end. The enemy pushed forward, directly toward them as they clambered over the bodies of their fallen and partly disintegrated comrades. The first few heavy infantry waded into the center of the line. One man appeared in front of Thequen and he held him back using his spear, the tip bouncing off his opponent’s shield a few times.
Ilthur stepped backward as Ariana side-stepped around him. She carried no weapon, but she held out both hands and a large ball of water coalesced in her palms, then shot out to smash into one soldier as he jogged toward her. Thequen’s opponent swung his sword down against the shaft of his spear and cut the tip clean off.
“Damn.”, Thequen said as he hurled the length of wood at his opponent and stepped back. The spear shaft bounced off his armor as he stepped forward. Thequen leapt back as his opponent lunged forward-- his back slammed into someone else and his momentum stopped. The sword of his opponent darted forward. The point slipped between Thequen’s ribs and then withdrew. Pain blossomed like fire and Thequen crumpled to the ground.
The soldier who’d stabbed him stepped forward and planted his foot on Thequen’s chest, his face grim in the shadow of his helmet. “Sorry.”, he muttered as he raised his sword high. Somewhere behind Thequen, close by, someone shouted. Ariana was still to his left, trying to hold back the tide of soldiers by hurling conjured chunks of water at them at extremely high speed. The soldier hesitated as he was about to bring his sword down, lined up perfectly to strike Thequen’s vulnerable head. He looked past Thequen and down the hill.
Thequen grabbed a hold of the soldier’s boot, trying to relieve the pain of the additional pressure on his chest. He was too weak. He fumbled with his other hand to try and reach the one remaining crystal in his belt pouch, but it was trapped beneath his lower back-- his fingers dug in the dirt, unable to find the opening.
The soldier atop Thequen adjusted his grip as someone leapt and slammed into him. The pressure on Thequen was released in an instant as the soldier and his savior tumbled into the dirt. Thequen wiggled and got his hand into his pouch-- instantly the crystal was consumed and Thequen did his best to direct all the green mana he gained to soothing his chest wound. He sat up, his wound slowly stitching itself together without further input. He recognized, kind of, the person who’d saved him. It was Cody, Thequen could tell even from behind.
Cody straddled the enemy soldier, his body glowing bronze, his skin shifting with a metallic sheen as he slammed his fist into the soldier’s head repeatedly. With his other hand he gripped the blade of the soldier’s sword, his hand unharmed as the metal twisted and crumpled in his grip. The first blow dented the soldier’s helmet. He screamed. The second blow caved it in. Thequen looked away as he got to his feet. The third blow sounded wet, similar to a fruit being squished in a hand. The man stopped screaming. Cody stood up and turned. “You good?”, he asked Thequen.
“Good enough.”, Thequen said as he fingered the hole in his tabard, satisfied that his skin had knit back together. However, he was now once again out of gems. He avoided looking at what remained of the enemy soldier’s face as he took the knife off of the dead man’s belt.
For a brief moment, no more enemies seemed to be making their way toward the center. They’d moved off to either side. Thequen assumed it was playing out as he’d figured when he looked down from above-- that the flanks were collapsing. Somewhere behind the line a horn sounded. Three long blows. A pause. Three more. It was a standard signal-- the 3rd Arcane Corps was being given the order to rally, then retreat.