Chapter 27
The cold grip of death
It was a quiet morning. A good amount of fog was hanging over the village, and everything was a little wet from the early morning dew when a scout came running into town. Not many people were awake, seeing as it was around six in the morning, but the scout had found a sentry on the walls, and now that sentry was knocking on Beth’s door. The guy knocked hard enough that I could hear it from my room a few doors down the hallway. I was awake now, and something was clearly going on for someone to be pounding away at someone’s door, I was assuming Beth’s door, like that.
I opened my front door, still in my PJ’s, and looked around. I saw a sentry banging on Beth’s door. I stared at him for a second, a little pissed that I had just been woken up. By that point, Beth had opened the door, and Janet was now sticking her head out of her door as well. I saw her and nodded as Beth let the sentry into her apartment. I met eyes with Janet, and she nodded. Then she walked over as Trish took Janet’s place at the door. Trish waved at me but chilled at the door, waiting for Janet.
“What’s going on?” Janet asked me.
“Don’t know, just poked my head out a second before you. Hey Trish.” I answered Janet, and then I winked and waved back at Trish. Maybe this morning could be salvaged. Janet saw me wink at Trish and lightly slapped my arm,
“stop that. What if it’s something serious? I think that was a sentry from the walls. We’re overdue for another visit from The Master. Maybe there here?” I thought about what Janet said, and fuck, she was probably right.
“Okay, Let’s see what’s going on,” I said. Janet and I walked over to Beth’s door. Seeing this was becoming a thing, Trish said she was going back to sleep and disappeared into Janet’s apartment. Janet and I walked over to Beth’s room, and as I raised my hand to knock on the door, it opened. The sentry ran into me, and with the difference in our stats, it was like a foam football hit me in the chest, but the sentry ended up on the floor. I helped the guy up to his feet, and before I could say another word, he thanked me and then ran off. Janet and I were confused at the man’s behavior but just turned to Beth, standing in the doorway.
“What’s going on?” I asked Beth.
“Yeah, what was all that about?” Janet mimicked and then yawned. That got me, and I yawned. Then Beth yawned, and that had us all yawning one more time.
“Damn it, stop that you’re making me sleepy, Janet,” Beth said. Janet just gave her a look mid-yawn that said, what, like I’m doing this on purpose?
“Come on, what the fuck is going on?” Janet said.
“Well, we better walk and talk. You guys have your gear with you?” Beth asked us, and we both said we needed to stop and grab it quickly. We both ducked into our rooms and were back in the hallway in no time. We started walking towards the elevator that would take us to the ground floor. Beth, Janet, and I equipped our gear as we walked, which we could do thanks to our bags of holding, fucking things were damn useful. While we were standing in the elevator, Janet asked Beth,
“So what’s going on?”
“Fuck, right. Well, it seems that The Master’s forces are back, but it looks like they brought a lot of fighters this time.” Beth finished, and I could tell Janet was thinking the same thing I was. fuck.
“The sentry you saw enter my room is waking people up and recruiting others to help him on my orders, so people should start getting to the wall in the next twenty minutes or so. Beth seemed a little too calm to have just heard an army was at the gates or would be soon.
“What’s going on? Is there a plan we are not aware of? Why are you not freaking out a little more?” I asked Beth, curious. She let out a breath and then said,
“I think I’ve just come to terms with the reality of the situation. I see two outcomes. Either we win the day in which our people will remain safe for now, and we will continue to grow and progress. The other outcome is that we lose. In that case, we’d all be dead anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. We have to win this battle. We have to, or it’s the end of us, the end of Treehouse Village.” We all stood in the elevator quietly after that, and I could tell we were all coming to terms with that fact. This was a defining moment for Treehouse Village, and we had no choice but to claim victory today.
We made our way to the walls and climbed the stairs to the ramparts. Standing atop the walls, we could just make out an army of creatures approaching the village. Every street coming from the west was filled with creatures slowly marching at us in an unending flood of doom. We just stood atop the walls, watching their inevitable march. At some point, I took my eyes off the army and realized while we had been watching the enemy, our fighters had joined us on the walls. As more and more of our fighters joined us on the walls, there became less room, and our forces had to spread along the walls. Even then, more of our force was on the ground behind the walls, ready to take the place of any man or woman when they fell.
As the army formed up ranks forty feet from our walls, we could see the true vastness of the forces before us. It was truly humbling to see, and I felt fear well up in my heart for the first time in a while. Before we knew it, the battle had begun. A unit of fifty or so creatures stepped forward. The next second, every creature in the unit started casting some kind of spell. Beth saw this and activated the force field seconds before it got slammed by one spell after another. Their numbers began advancing as their spell casters continued to throw spells at our shield.
When they were twenty feet from the base of our walls, there was a brief moment when the spells stopped flying. Another unit of fifty stepped forward as the first group of spell casters stepped back. Beth took the opportunity to drop the force field and activate the plasma turrets. At the same time, she signaled for the archers and other throw weapon users like me with my spears to let them have it. Our attacks punched into the enemy’s ranks viciously, and the enemy caster units seemed to take the worst of our attack.
A few of the larger tanker creatures got in the way to try and reduce the damage the spell casters were taking, but it didn’t help much. Their front line was getting thrashed. The plasma turrets, three large hovering balls of what looked like constantly moving Mercury, congregated over our headers and started firing on the enemy line. They could put out a shot roughly every seven seconds, but they hit hard and were cutting through the enemy ranks like a hot knife through butter, taking five to ten creatures out with each shot. It wouldn’t be enough, however, and before long, Beth turned off the plasma turrets to save build points. Our first strike force lept from the walls when the turrets stopped and charged the enemy.
We were about fifty-strong with our elite strike forces that jumped off the wall. The rest of our forces would join near the end of the battle if we needed to help, and we would most likely need the help before long. We were holding those stike forces back because most of their members were under level ten. The only exception to this was a few of the archers on the walls. Some had gotten the ranger class option when choosing their class, and they were too valuable to waste time on the front lines. It was better to leave that job to the classes built for infighting rather than waste their talents.
We hit the enemy’s broken front line like a freight train. We had to be careful to avoid ending up too deep behind enemy lines, or we could get surrounded and cut off from support. The archers on the walls were still firing to keep us from getting overwhelmed, and it was working so far. I was facing my first magic user and had to take a fireball to the chest to get close enough to kill the bastard. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but my new 10% to fire resistance must have helped me out. I took very little damage from the attack, and the look on the creature’s face when I broke through its attack was one of complete shock. The battle went on like that.
I had another close call when what must have been an ice mage froze my legs to the ground, and I very nearly got my head taken off. It looked like the mage was working with an ally because when I got hit with the ice spell, it was almost like the other creature had been waiting for that exact moment to attack. As I realized I couldn’t move my feet, I felt my gut warning me to duck. It was like that feeling you get when someone stares at you, but it is more intense. I listened to my instincts, and I felt the wind move over my head as I ducked. As I stood back up, I twisted my body and cut the creature, attempting to take my head in two. I then smashed the ice, trapping my feet, and used a step lightly to take out the magic user with a blade to the brain.
As I fought on, I got a cut from a dagger of corruption, and I knew I did from the familiar feeling that started running through my body. The pain wasn’t bad, so it must have been a light cut. I gritted my teeth through the pain and fought on. It was when I lost my arm and there was no end in sight to the waves of monsters I knew we might be in trouble. The next fuck up I made ended with a sword in my chest up to the hilt, and that was when I knew for sure we were in trouble. Only a few moments later, our forces that had been held in reserve joined the battle. This was bad. That meant we were losing this fight. It felt too early for them to join the battle already. Something had gone very wrong.
I killed my latest opponent, then used step lightly to retreat. I needed to get a better idea of the battlefield ASAP and get healed up. I made it to the base of the wall and jumped. I grabbed onto the edge of the wall and pulled myself up atop it. I found Beth and hobbled over to her. As I looked at the battle, one thing was clear from this vantage. We were eventually going to lose at this rate. We just didn’t have the levels or the numbers. Call a retreat. Maybe we can use the force field and plasma turrets. Go give us a moment to regroup and catch our breath. Beth looked like she was thinking, then nodded.
“Let’s try. It can’t get much worse out there. Can you support the retreat?” Beth asked, looking over my wounds with concern.
“Of course, head back in now,” I said as I popped a Senzuketa Bean in my mouth, then jumped off the wall to do just as I said. I leaped back into the battle with the intention of drawing the enemy’s attention so our fighters could get out of there. A whistle sounded over the battlefield, the official signal to retreat, and our forces began to pull back. I jumped around the battlefield, allowing our people to disengage quickly and move. Some of our fighters were still in the fray, but they couldn’t break free. Beth made the hard decision then to open fire with the plasma turrets. Cutting down monster after monster, as well as the few people from the village who didn’t make it out.
The force field was back up, and we all got to take a breather momentarily. During that time, I made my way over to where Beth, Devin, Tess, and Brianna were standing in a circle talking. When I got closer, I could hear they were trying to think of a way to win this engagement.
“We’d just be throwing ourselves to the slaughter. I’m not gonna go out like that. I can tell you that right now.” Brianna said, and she looked pissed off.
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“I’m not saying that, but we need to consider a fallback option if we fail to hold The Master’s forces here. That’s all I’m saying.” Devin said placatingly.
“Look, if we don’t stop them here, we might as well just kill ourselves. As far as I know, this is the only safe place in the whole area. There are too many of us now. Without the town-building interface, there’s no way to support all of them.” Tess said.
“Running is not an option for me either. I live through this, and so does Treehouse Village, or I’m going down fighting.” Janet said, and that seemed to be the end of that conversation. No one was going to let Janet stay behind alone, so if she was going down fighting till the end, it looked like we all would.
“Enough of that kinda talk. You guys are all so negative. I don’t know about you, but I’m killing all these fuckers, and if I have to do it myself, I will so either buck the fuck up or get the fuck out of my way cuz it’s clobbering… Okay, never mind. Let’s just fucking end this, and if The Master is out there, I’m gonna kill the fuck out of it.” I said to the group as I walked up. Everyone was just looking at me like, what the fuck. Except for Janet and Brianna, they were full-on with me. Brianna even clapped her hands together and said,
“That’s what I’m talking about. Let’s fucking do this!”
“You know you’re missing an arm, right?” Tess said.
“yeah, I think I saw you get run through as well. You okay?” Devin asked me as he looked me over.
“I’m fine. Just worry about yourself. I’ll be fine. Come on, let’s fucking do this!” I told them, blowing off their concern. After that, we started moving back to the ramparts. I thought I heard Brianna and Janet laughing at me, but I ignored them. I was fine… ish. When we were back on the wall, I pulled Beth aside.
“Hey, if it really comes down to it, I’ll give you and the rest of the civilians as much time as I can so you can make a run for it.”
“Travis, I’m not gonna just leave you…” I cut Beth off. If it really gets to that point, you run, you run, and you don’t stop. You’re the only hope for these people, so survive, Beth, and keep them alive.” With that, I patted her on the shoulder and surveyed the battle. I looked back to see Beth standing there in shock for a moment. She shook herself out of it and then returned to General Beth mode. I turned back to the battlefield. Most of the enemy had retreated and regrouped as well, but the magic-using creatures still alive were slinging spells at the force field with abandon. The enemy was still in range of the plasma turrets but was slowly moving out of range. The army of creatures was about eighty feet from the walls and still moving back. I decided it was time to amp up our fighting force a bit. I turned the force field off for a moment between spells, jumped off the wall, and turned the force field back on. The only thing I heard before I landed was Janet yelling,
“You fucking asshole!”
Once on the ground, I started moving towards the enemy at speed. I had to dodge a spell here and there, but I was fucking flying, and I wasn’t even using my movement ability yet. As I approached the enemy line, a spell hit the ground before me and threw a large cloud of dirt into the air. I stumbled briefly but then used the cloud to land a surprise attack. There were a few moments of silence before I burst forth from the cloud of dirt, activated quick strike, and step lightly at the same time, dancing like a phantom through their front line. Everywhere I moved, bodies dropped, and after thirty seconds, I killed over fifty creatures and left their front lines in shambles.
I was moving through the enemy, taking lives with every breath, when, from my left, I was hit. It was a spell that flung me into the air. I landed between the army of creatures and our own walls. I got back up to my feet, but I was left shaken by that stick. My face and the left side of my body were numb, and when I reached my hand up to feel my face, I could feel skin sliding around under my touch. Then there was pain, so much pain I screamed. That seemed to be the signal for the battle to start again in earnest, and I was smack dab in the middle of the battlefield.
The pain was all there was for a moment. I started to sink into my subconscious as hundreds of creatures were barreling down on me, and there was no more time for pain. I tried to take a step forward and almost collapsed from the pain. So that was off the table. Guess I was making my stand here. As the mass of creatures reached me, it was like a wave as they washed over me. I used a quick strike a couple of times, and then I went to activate the step lightly, and something amazing and painful happened. I had moved to dodge as I would typically have done, but the pain in my legs was so intense I still couldn’t move them as I dodged all the mana that would flood my body, as when I usually used my ability, it was blocked from leaving my legs. There was a ripping sound, and all that mana shot back into the upper half of my body.
I twisted at the waist so fast I was taken off guard. It was as if my legs were too broken, so the mana had been channeled only to the area I could still move, and that was something I would need to see if I could do on purpose and without so much pain. That is if I lived through this. I only stood there alone for maybe twenty seconds, and before I knew it, Janet and the rest of our elite strike force were at my side fighting back the horde. After a few minutes of fighting, my left side had gone from. Holly fuck, I might pass out to manageable pain levels. By manageable, I mean it still hurt like hell. The Senzuketa Bean I ate helped, but I needed to be careful how many I ate to keep their healing effect. Not feeling like I was on the verge of passing out anymore was a good start.
It was around then that the fight started shifting in our favor. It was hardly noticeable at first, but as the battle continued, we began to push their forces back. I could see their numbers thinning. It was only a short while after that everyone seemed to see what I was seeing and began to attack with renewed vigor. We had almost pushed them a hundred and fifty feet from the walls, and they were losing fighters faster than ever now when something changed.
I noticed people were attacking the army of creatures from the rear. They weren’t our fighters and didn’t seem to be people from the village going rogue. I had just killed a creature and had some breathing room, so I took a look at our new companions in this fight. They looked to be teens or young adults and were moving as a team much better than our forces. It looked like they were fighting in teams of five, and as I was checking them out, one man met my eyes, winked with a smile on his face, then cut down a creature. He fought with two short swords and wore what looked like patched-together armor. That was fucking weird, but there was no time to think about it anymore, as an enemy was coming at me.
The battle continued on like that for another minute or two before everything went to shit. I was finishing off my opponent when a soft, low hum filled my ears. It was annoying at first, but then it started to hurt. I realized that everyone on the battlefield had stopped moving. Even the creatures who came here to attack us were frozen in place. I was in pain, trying to resist whatever was causing everyone to freeze up like that, but it didn’t stop. I could feel I was almost past the limits of what this spell could contain. If I could only push a little harder, I was sure I could push through it. The spell, because it had to be a spell, felt like a mental fog that seeped into your mind, then took over your neuro system and clamped down on it with an iron fist.
I had pushed it out of my body and was so close to pushing it out of my head entirely when a voice echoed out over the battlefield.
“So close and yet so far. You did well against my minions. They are not but fodder. Truly a marvelous and excellent attempt to live. Fighting for survival is such a wonderful feeling, am I right? Alas, that is as far as you will go. My forces may be weaker than yours, true, but today, I’m afraid to say that it doesn’t matter in the slightest. You see, I have set my eyes on you, citizens of Treehouse Village, and I always get what I want. Have I made myself clear? Oh, right, you’re all frozen. I’ll just have to answer for you then. We surrender, oh great and powerful Master. There we go. I, being the merciful and benevolent ruler that I am, shall kill you all and give you the privilege of feeding my power with your deaths.”
While The Master was speaking, he appeared on the battlefield and started walking through his troops toward our ranks. The Master was walking slowly, taking his time, as he had all the time in the world with everyone frozen. For lack of a better word, The Master was a skeleton. It looked like the skeleton of a man or woman, and there were pieces of rotting flesh hanging from its bones. He had bits of hair still attached to his head. He held a staff in one hand and a small orb in the other. The Master wore almost nothing except for a long black cloak and a crown that looked like it had been roughly cut from a sheet of metal and spray-painted gold and covered with what looked to be crayon-drawn ruins and crafting gens meant for kids.
Honestly, it looked like a little kid decorated The Masters crown at school or something. The Master stopped his walk when he was standing three feet from one of our frozen fighters. The Master smiled, which was weird and creepy. I could totally tell he was smiling, but it was super gross-looking. The bones of its skull actually looked like they were stretching at the corners of its mouth. The flesh and sinew twisted horribly, making its face look distorted and truly terrifying. The man The Master was standing in front of wasn’t moving, but sweat was falling from his face in sheets. I could tell the man was scared out of his mind, but there was nothing he could do about it. The Master looked down at the orb in his hand the next second and said something I couldn’t hear. After a moment, a transparent white mist flowed out of the man’s body and into the orb. When all the mist was sucked into the orb, the man dropped to the ground dead.
That was all I needed apparently to send my battle against The Mmaster’s influence on me into overdrive, and before I knew it, I was free. I let out a hard breath and fell to one knee, but The Master was gone from my mind, and I was free. I looked over at The Master, and he was staring right at me. It seemed that he could tell immediately when I broke out of his control, and he did not look happy about it. Fighting off The Master’s influence had taken more out of me than I thought, and I felt weak, but I was still strong enough to kill this asshole. After moments of The Master and I just staring at each other, I moved. I shot forward. I didn’t have enough mana to activate step lightly, so I was on my own here.
Even without my abilities, my stats were high for level sixteen, and I used every last point to its fullest. I crossed the distance in seconds. As I did, The Master started to retreat, but I was not going to let that happen. Since all the creatures around me were still frozen, there was nothing to stop me as I flashed forward. The Master realized he couldn’t outrun me, so he turned and readied himself for a fight. I fainted with an attack to the face but, at the last second, swung the butt of my Teremnocal around and smacked the weird orb thing The Master was holding, sending it flying into the air. The Master turned and watched the orb fly off, then turned back to me and hissed. Then, as if driven by pure aggression alone, The Master throw himself at me.
For a caster, The Master could sure fight. I was moving as fast as I could and still taking hits. At one point during our battle, The Master jumped free of our engagement and spoke.
“Now, you have truly angered me.” The Master then said a few words in a language I couldn’t understand, and the creatures around me started to move again. At first, they all were moving in slow motion, but soon, the members of The Master’s army were on the attack again. This time, however, all our fighters were still frozen and couldn’t defend themselves. It was time to end this. If this fight went on much longer, a lot of people would die, or maybe it was better to say a lot more people would die. I charged at The Master with everything I had. Maybe I was too weak, or perhaps The Master was too strong. Even when I threw everything I had at him, I could not break through his guard, and the whole time we were fighting, I could hear my people dying around me. It was infuriating. I was mid-attack on The Master when, out of nowhere, I got hit with a mental puls of pain, and my vision fuzzed for a moment. Then The Master snuck a hand past my guard and stabbed with a clawed hand in the throat.
Blood started pouring from my neck, but I grabbed his hand so he couldn’t move. I only had one arm, and the look in The Master’s eyes as he tightened his grip on my neck was one of victory. I knew from that look I was dead. I was trying to fight and break free, but I was losing blood too fast. As I stared at The Master, I was determined not to give him the satisfaction of seeing my fear. The Master then started to worm his way into my brain. The pain was terrible, and I had nothing in me to fight back anymore. I was sure this was it. I was going to die. This was an enemy I couldn’t beat, and I was going to die. As I finally gave up, ready to die, an axe punched through the back of The Master and popped out the front of his chest. I looked at the axe in shock, then at The Mmaster’s face, who was looking at the axe head protruding from its chest with confusion.
Then its grip weakened, and The Master looked at me in shock, then anger, before his head was separated from his body and he was hit with multiple arrows and spells, ending The Master’s reign of terror. However, the fight wasn’t over, and now that our fighters were free of The Master’s hold, they went on the attack. It wasn’t long before every remaining creature was dealt with, and the battle was truly over. I was lying on the ground as Janet killed creatures around us, protecting me till the battle was done. I didn’t get to see the end of the fight. I had passed out from blood loss while lying on the ground, protected by Janet.
My last thought before unconsciousness took me was that I knew I was safe if Janet was there, and then everything went black.