The troll heaved a sigh which made the library door creak on its hinges.
I packed the scrolls into my inventory and walked upstairs.
Christa’s demonic combat avatar was the same height as the troll: slimmer and not so broad-shouldered but probably just as strong. A smoky veil of protection spells clung to her new custom-made cargonite armor. The weak glow of her signature Fire Shield was barely visible through the murky gloom.
Enea was still wearing her Forest Nymph robes. Still, today there was something imperceptibly predatory in her looks.
In other words, the girls had come prepared.
Yorm squeezed his eyes shut and froze, clutching a huge club in one hand and a stone shield held together with rusty old anchor chains in the other.
Confidently Christa cast the spell which enveloped the troll in a thick dark haze.
“That’s it. You can open your eyes now,” she said in a husky voice.
Enea chimed in, her own voice sweet and flowing despite her combat avatar. “It’s all right. Don’t be scared. Just do it. We’ll be late.”
Yorm shifted his feet, undecided. I couldn’t see his face behind the magic veil. On top of sunlight protection, the spell had some other very useful stats, like partial water, air and fire damage absorption.
“This is good!” Yorm said in surprise. “I can see everything!”
He swung round and unhesitantly walked out of the cave into the sunlight. Here on the ice-locked Lost Isle, the sun always hung in its zenith overhead.
“How interesting!” the troll’s voice came from outside. “I’ve never been here before!”
Seeing me, Enea and Christa exclaimed simultaneously, “They’re coming!”
“I know,” I said. “We need to get Yorm back. We don’t have the time.”
Just as I was saying it, the troll walked back into the cave. “I’m ready! Let’s go! You’re nice!” he slapped Christa’s shoulder.
The portal to Warblerford was already open. We hurried back to the river.
* * *
The village of Warblerford was unusually crowded. While our two clans were busy posting our warriors and wizards to their previously assigned positions, solo players walked around wherever they pleased, climbing the precipitous bank and peering into the impenetrable mist.
The arrival of Yorm caused quite a commotion. A troll enveloped in a veil of dark magic can be a scary sight, I tell you. His name tag was crowded with buff icons which both Christa and Enea had generously showered on him.
Christa’s Infernal avatar created quite a stir too. Most players gave her a wide berth, unwilling to stand in the way of a high-level demon.
Our bank was enveloped in what appeared to be a heat haze even though it was a cool chilly morning. The great many spells we kept casting had caused the air to quiver, dissolving in flashes of light as groups of clerics hurried to cast more auras and blessings while support wizards continued to activate passive shields.
A few last-moment portals popped open. The place went quiet.
Deep silence hung over the village. Dogs choked on their own barking. The intense anticipation of the past few weeks had now reached its climax.
The frosty haze on the opposite bank began to swirl.
“They’re setting up portals targeting our rear!” Stephen’s voice resounded in the battle chat. “Time until opening: 5 sec.”
“To all wizards: let them get on with it,” I promptly replied. “Archers, keep your heads down and wait for them to arrive.”
The opposite bank erupted in flashes of light.
Over fifty portals! Very well. We’d expected something like this to happen, hadn’t we? We had a plan to counter it.
The portals opened behind our lines, disgorging crowds of badly equipped, poorly armed NPCs.
“Harvesters sighted,” Stephen reported. “Five of them. Levels 100+.”
“We’ll take care of them,” White instantly replied.
This wasn’t the attack yet, rather a recon under fire. The Reapers had engaged the dregs of their army in order to test us, collect some logs and expose our defenses. Also, they probably wanted to see if we had anything to counter their portal tactic with.
The dirt road which ran along the bank became the arena of some desperate combat. The archers stayed out of it. I wasn’t going to reveal our potential to the enemy quite yet. The solo players who hadn’t bothered to join either of our clans now found themselves in the thick of it.
They were actually rather good. They invested all their enthusiasm in the combat, seeing as the enemy was quite doable. White, Allan, Archie and their groups got busy tackling the Harvesters. Three of them they’d smoked on the spot. The remaining two were about to absorb the dead ones’ neurograms when the warriors came down on them like a ton of bricks.
“Harvesters eliminated,” Stephen reported.
The short-lived scuffle was already dying away, falling apart into separate skirmishes.
A faint bluish haze trailed over the ground. Luckily, all those neurograms belonged to the slain NPCs. We hadn’t lost a single player yet.
The grass was smoldering in places from all the fire spells. The road was littered with NPCs’ avatars. Darkness hovered over the Harvesters’ bodies.
“Well done!”
Once again the air on the opposite bank began to swirl into portals, more powerful this time. The Reapers must have believed that we couldn’t disrupt their portals’ work. Now they were going to use them to send some serious forces our way.
“Support wizards, get ready!”
The portal deflection spell which I’d received from the goblin shaman worked similar to the castle’s defenses. Iskandar, Rodrigo and myself had taken some time improving it though. After a number of quite risky experiments we’d managed to work out that you could actually enter any coordinates you wanted into the deflection scrolls, choosing an exact spot where the spell would then redirect the portal.
It meant a lot to us. Our front line was overstretched to say the least. One deflection spell wasn’t going to cut it. We had a good hundred portals to deflect, otherwise the battle might come to a bitter end pretty soon.
Support wizards stood posted all along the defense lines. Each one of them had three deflection scrolls with sets of coordinates already entered into each.
“Open the portals!”
The simultaneous activation of so many scrolls caused the air above our positions to thicken into a murky haze, dissolving into muffled claps of thunder. The sound crescendoed into non-stop rattle. Gusts of wind swept over us as the fiery circles of the Reapers’ portals flashed and immediately expired.
Deep in our rear, fountains of bog water, mud and silt shot up into the sky in the Toxic Moors’ worst impassable locations. You could probably see the explosions from Agrion city walls.
Even if any of the Reapers had survived this magic cataclysm, they weren’t in a position to fight now. This was our friendly offering to the hydras and other constantly-hungry bog critters as a small compensation for the inconvenience caused.
“Ninety percent portals declined,” Stephen reported calmly.
Some of our wizards must have been too quick on the draw, allowing a few smaller enemy groups to avoid their peers’ fate. Now they materialized just behind our positions.
A brief scuffle ensued. Seemingly fast and effortless, it was the result of all the daily training and the sleepless nights I’d spent in the Lost Isle’s library, nights followed by some dangerous experiments which had caused both Iskandar and Rodrigo to respawn several times.
Then it went quiet.
The bank behind our positions was lined with deep craters where the earth under the enemy’s feet had been ported to the moors with them.
The Reapers had suffered some impressive losses. We had no dead, twelve players respawned. I could see them hurry back from their tents to pick up the bundles with their stuff.
My heart pounded in my chest.
We did i
t! It had worked! We’d managed to trap and destroy about a thousand of the enemy. Even if they weren’t the Reapers’ elite, this was a serious loss for them.
Our fighting chances had improved manifold. Now Dietrich wouldn’t risk porting again. He’d have to cross the river.
* * *
The players who’d joined us looked visibly disappointed.
In their eyes, this was way too easy. They’d come here looking forward to the mother of all battles — but so far, our first victories hadn’t impressed them that much.
They had no idea the worst was yet to come. So far, these had only been the enemy’s first and quite predictable steps.
The opposite bank froze in heavy silence. The mist flowed freely now without forming any more portal vortexes. Our scouts reported thousands of enemy soldiers lurking under its cover.
“Wyverns!” someone cried out in fear.
A smattering of black dots appeared in the sky from the direction of the testing grounds, rapidly growing.
“Fifty mobs with riders,” Stephen reported. “The riders are wizards levels 90 to 160.”
This was a serious threat which called for unorthodox measures. “Enea, you think you can intercept them?”
She turned slightly pale. “I suppose so.”
She began casting the Summoning spell she’d received from the Mantis King.
A cloud of Black Mantises appeared above the moors. As they approached, the rustling of their wings drowned out all other sounds. They shot over the river and soared upward toward the wyverns.
The skies above dissolved in flashes of fire as a desperate battle unfolded over the enemy lines. The enemy wizard riders had come prepared. Gripping the wyverns’ fleshy reins with one hand, they used the other to cast lightning bolts and fireballs, launching ice arrows and conjuring up toxic clouds.
“Ogres!”
The thick mist parted, releasing the figures of giants. I’d had no idea ogres could be that huge. Each of them was carrying a large chunk of cliff.
Blinded by the mantises’ neurotoxins, several of the wyverns dropped down from the sky, breathing fire. The mist below dissipated from the flame; its licking tongues singed the ranks of the Reapers preparing to attack. The wyverns’ massive bodies collapsed on top of them, disrupting enemy formations.
In the meantime, a desperate dogfight unfolded in the air. The mantises were in their hundreds — but they were vulnerable to fire damage.
The flashing of flames eclipsed the sun. The losses on both sides were dreadful. The fearless insects aimed for the wyverns’ eyes, hacking through the reins and sinking their mandibles into the wizards. Still, their ranks dwindled rapidly.
The clouds overhead were boiling, dropping large flakes of soot.
In the meantime, the ogres began hurling their cliff chunks into the river. I’d expected this to happen and had already ordered our warriors to step back.
Still, the giants weren’t aiming at us at all. Not a single chunk of rock had reached our positions: they all dropped short into the water below.
The ogres were trying to block the river!
The water current frothed around the half-submerged rocks. No idea what purpose that might serve.
We engaged glaive throwers. Two of the ogres were pinned to the walls of the log cabins; the others made a hasty retreat.
The sky above showered us with fire and the sounds of furious chattering. The mantises had smoked thirty of the wyverns. The remaining twenty, wounded and desperate, had made it through to our positions. Their mass attack had failed — but even though their riders had lost control of their mounts, even these chaotic assaults could be lethal.
The glaive throwers’ positions had turned into a sea of fire. Toxic fumes flooded our bank. The swirling gloom of thousands of mass curses cast by Reaper wizards were halted by our raid buffs. We struck back with Ice Spears, ripping the darkness apart with bolts of lightning.
Once again our bank dissolved into a brief chaos of disorganized fighting.
One by one, the wyverns plopped to the ground and attacked our warriors. I watched the monsters thrash around in agony as their life bars faded.
“Log rafts sighted upstream!” Stephen reported.
So that’s what the Reapers’ plan was. They’d blocked the river with the chunks of cliffs so that the floating rafts would get caught on them and form a makeshift pontoon bridge.
“White!” I shouted. “Smoke the remaining wyverns and come here, quick! The Reapers are crossing over!”
* * *
Soon the rafts reached the blocked part of the river and slowed to a stop, forming a natural bridge. On the opposite bank, the ogres reappeared with another helping of rock chunks and began hurling them in the water a few hundred feet further upstream. While they were thus busy, the first squadrons of Dietrich’s army descended upon us.
We still had a couple of wyverns raging in our rear. Still, several XP-hungry solo players were already taking care of them.
White hurried to deploy the two clans to their predetermined positions. Arwan’s archers met the Reapers with a volley of arrows. Those Elves didn’t miss!
Our trebuchets fired from afar. We’d already ranged in certain areas. Unfortunately, the Reapers had chosen to cross slightly away from our marks. We watched helplessly as the trebuchets’ projectiles splashed into the river to the left of the makeshift pontoon while the enemy pressed on. The river downstream was littered with arrow-pierced bodies — but the enemy didn’t seem to care about their losses. They were literally in their thousands, throwing fresh forces into battle non-stop.
Their avant-garde had already reached the middle of the bridge. Some of them hurried to build a shield wall; some of the others peppered the Elves’ positions with crossbow fire while yet others were busy bringing up wicker shields to create a small foothold for the approaching main forces.
“Right ten degrees!” the spotter shouted instructions in the battle chat.
The trebuchets fired again. More boulders tumbled through the air and crashed down on the rafts. Broken logs flew everywhere.
“Wyverns!”
The enemy’s pressure kept growing with every minute. The opposite bank was consumed in swirls of frosty haze.
“Multiple teleports,” Stephen reported.
“Deflect,” I replied.
The earth shuddered as our wizards broke the seals of their scrolls. Still, the enemy portals were empty. They’d tricked us, forcing us to waste our precious scrolls!
Twenty more wyverns were rapidly approaching, aiming for the groups White was now trying to draw to the bridge.
I stood up to my full height. “Enea, back me up!”
A spherical magic shield formed around me, powered by the forces of Nature.
My heartbeat slowed down. I grew calm and focused. The only thing that existed for me now was the group of approaching wyverns. They must not reach the bridge.
The enemy noticed me. Dozens of crossbow bolts, ice arrows and surges of lightning assaulted my magic sphere, reducing it to zero.
The air above the river began to rotate and swirl, forming a vortex in the water below. The words of the ancient spell fell from my lips, summoning the great primal force.
The wyvern riders hadn’t noticed the danger until it was too late. The rapidly growing waterspout swirled faster until it turned into a tornado which consumed both river banks, joining heaven and earth, uprooting trees and sucking the river dry.
Like giant fallen leaves, the wyverns got caught up in the twister. They couldn’t escape it now no matter how hard they tried. The riverbed had almost dried up.
Finally, I’d used up all of my mana and lost control of the summoned element.
The tornado slowed down. Whatever it had had in its grip, now crashed back to earth: rocks, the wyverns’ mangled bodies, lumps of earth, uprooted trees and tons of water.
The river banks quaked, sending most people on both banks flying to the ground. A frothing torrent of mu
rky water rolled past, washing away the makeshift bridge but not the cliff fragments.
A brief pause fell. Then wizards on both sides joined the combat.
I hurried to gulp down some vials, restoring life and mana. We were still going strong, and that was the main thing. The Reapers had sustained substantial losses. Until now, not a single one of them had managed to cross to our side.
The trebuchets’ positions, however, had suffered a lot from my magic tornado. You can’t avoid collateral damage when dealing with something on this scale. Had the wyvern group made it to the bridge, they would have made mincemeat out of our positions. This was the price I had to pay for using an uncategorized spell.
We’d leveled up way too fast. We had neither the training nor experience to control powers this huge.
Reports kept flooding in. We’d been suffering losses too. The enemy had deployed groups of high-level wizards whose spells could reach our side.
They seemed to be readying for a new attack. Dietrich was too mad about his losses to retreat now.
* * *
The wizards’ duel had soon stopped as I’d told my casters to quit wasting their powers and retreat to safer positions.
The opposite side was now consumed by the murky haze which was thickening and trailing low above the bank.
“Riders sighted,” Stephen reported unexpectedly. “Approaching in an extended combat formation. Levels 100 to 120.”
As if in confirmation, a ragged line consisting of a plethora of red dots formed on the map.
How many of them were there? Three hundred? Four?
“Riders at a thousand feet... seven-fifty... five hundred...”
They were galloping on at break-neck speed. What were they thinking of? They were about to plunge into the river rapids!
Seconds flew past, scorching my nerves. White’s cheek was twitching. Enea was pale. Christa’s eyes glowed with an inner fire.
The murky haze concealing the opposite bank eddied, then reared up.
The Reapers (The Neuro 3) Page 21