Those who had been rendered unconscious by their spells were carried into the growing fortifications.
The Stone Raiders charged into the heart of the Demon Horde. Bodies fell from the skies. Stone Raiders fell here and there, their death followed by a falling cloud of Demons.
Their lack of fear for death and whatever techniques they are using to gain more power—they’re using everything that might destroy themselves in order to harass and slow the Demon Horde. Efri remembered the days that he had gone into battle, eager to spill the blood of his enemies, to savage them and take their energies as his own. He had become strong, invincible in his mind. Now, he saw the error of his ways. He was strong, but nothing like the Stone Raiders’ titans who used their own destruction to take down thousands for each death.
Dwarven artillery howled over the crater as the other keeps that were in range and the artillery barrages that had been moved fired on the keep. Many of their shells exploded in the air as they met the Demon Horde.
All of the reinforcing DCA from Unity and the armies that were marching around the outside of Devil’s Crater made sure that they cleared out any other groups of the Demon Horde that landed quietly.
People moved with brisk efficiency. A number of them looked off to the Stone Raiders’ own battles that raged on just a few miles away.
The last of the forces from the keep rushed in. People were waiting for them to move them into different spots. Artillery wagons were turned, their legs dropping down in the dirt as Dwarves formed dirt and stone around the feet to brace the cannons.
The aerial fighting was chaos. The DCA retreated as the Demon Horde were greeted by spells. There were too many of them in the sky for the spells to take out.
“Repeaters!” Koza barked. Aleph automatons raised their repeater arms to the sky. Arrows started to rise up to meet the Demon Horde. Repair bots moved between the archers and crates filled with bolts.
“DCA, prepare to fly!” Efri yelled.
“Artillery, fire!” a Dwarf bellowed, followed by the artillery cannons firing across their line, bucking with the energies expelled.
“Mages, prepare your spells!” Lucy yelled out from the fort. Dust and debris covered the keep as explosions continued to fill the sky as unlucky Demons met Dwarven Mana artillery.
Still, the Stone Raiders continued to fight, filling the sky with a mash of magics and falling bodies.
The reinforcing Demons landed; their officers and veterans organized them into flying wings. The Beast Kin who couldn’t fly or the Demons who were too wounded to fly took up positions behind the Dwarves who were swarming the walls.
Efri rose into the air on his wings, headed to the rear of the fort while he looked down on the men and women who would follow him into battle.
“Many of your brothers and sisters and our allies have laid down their very lives in the defense of our homes. They have aided us in our weakest hours. They are out there now sacrificing everything that they have to try to give us enough time to prepare for the Demon Horde.” Efri pointed to the keep. His words fell over the ramshackle DCA in front of him.
None of them looked away from his powerful gaze.
“The Demon Horde has made it inside the crater. They have broken the keep and bring an army to kill your families and eat them! This, this is where we will hold. This is where we will stop the Demon Horde. We will not let our families be their food. We will sow their blood into the fields that our grandchildren will grow crops on for generations to come! Let us show why we had to be locked away for the sake of Emerilia. Let us show them the power that comes with standing beside one another and facing an enemy head on. Let us show that Dark Lord just who we are!”
Roars filled the area behind the fortifications. Over seventy thousand flying-capable warriors looked up at Efri, shaking their weapons.
Efri turned and looked to the destruction that was laid bare in front of the fortress.
The Stone Raiders fell from the skies, fighters from the Demon Horde following them.
“Follow me!” Efri’s wings beat as they pulled him into the air.
The other fliers activated their magic or innate physical abilities, rising up into the sky after their general.
Vrexu and Malkur caught up with him, spreading out to either side of him.
“Well, to victory or to death.” Efri looked to them all, recalling the old chant that the seven brothers had shared when they went off to fight.
“To victory or death,” the others agreed. They rose higher into the darkening sky, watching the massive flying Demon Horde that approached.
Chapter 23: Win Or Lose
Anna watched as Suzy’s creations started to fail.
Anna moved to help the summoner as her Air creation started to lose lift and form on her back. Power raged through Suzy; her Abscondita armor removed her fatigue and allowed her to concentrate.
“Summoner’s Bastille!” The top of Suzy’s staff zoomed into the sky as creation cores fell from her bag. Air creations formed and took flight. They created a swarm onto themselves, their wind blades cutting through Demons that lay around them.
The wind pulled at Suzy’s almost-white hair. Her eyes glowed white as she channeled her Air Affinity over all others. More and more Air creations formed and took to the skies, clearing areas around the party as they fought. Suzy’s choice to use her last resort move with the staff emboldened them and gave them energy as they pressed forward.
Anna let out a wolf-howl and dove into the Demon Horde. She carved out a path of destruction. She was a master of the wind, second only to the Lady of Air herself. The Demons had barely learned how to access her domain. While she was part of it, her blade howled, starting a song that danced across the skies. It was a song of hunger and blood, one of cold Mithril and cutting wind.
She became a blur moving through the skies, letting loose her shackles.
Dave rested in the center of them all, conjuring rock underneath him constantly, so he didn’t fall as he buffed their spells and gear, and conjured amulets and items on them to increase their strength and power.
Deia’s swords added to Anna’s song with the roar of Fire. The heat of the flame and explosion when the intense heat met Demon superheated their bodies’ liquids.
Feeling a disturbance in the air, Anna sent Air blades into a pack of Demons trying to get past her. She hovered there, watching as the people of Devil’s Crater took to the skies. Their own army rushed to join swords with the Demon Horde that dared to enter their home.
Pride swelled up in Anna as she returned to her attacks. She had once been Anna of the Beast Kin. They had accepted her, taught her and called her one of their own. She still shared those memories with them.
But now I am Anna, an Air Blade Dancer of the Stone Raiders.
She looked to her side as groups of Stone Raiders here and there ran through the Demon Horde. The forces on the ground had lost nearly half their number but inflicted massive casualties.
The Stone Raiders in the sky numbered less than thirty, and although they hadn’t stopped the Demon Horde, they had given their allies time enough to make a fort, to defend their people.
The DCA clashed with the Demon Horde, two clouds of people tearing at one another in a mind-bending display of aerial combat.
Anna fought through another group of Demons, only to find herself in open sky.
“Potions and water! Be ready to hit the Demon Horde again!” Deia said, sounding half delirious as her training spoke before her tired mind caught up to it. “We’ll help the forces on the ground first.”
The party descended toward the surviving Stone Raiders on the ground. Now, the Demon Horde was clashing with the DCA. It was more likely than not that they’d kill their own allies with a misplaced spell.
Anna fought to control her descent.
“Suzy!” Dave yelled as Suzy lost control over her creations. The cores rained down toward the ground as she and Steve tumbled.
Anna felt power surg
e through her as she caught Steve and Suzy, arresting their downward plummet.
“Uh, Anna, please don’t drop me,” Steve said.
“Sounds like you’re scared of heights.” Anna’s words were sluggish as it took all she had to concentrate on the spells she was controlling.
“Well, I didn’t realize how high up we were!” Steve looked directly down at the ground.
“Your mom has a way to cure a fear of heights. I think I might be out of Mana.” Dave slumped over, unconscious.
Deia grabbed him before he could get more than twenty meters down.
Anna increased her descent, knowing how Mana fatigue could catch up on a person at the worst times.
Dwayne and Kim had been killed, but Josh was mostly alive. He was missing a foot, but his ability to move through shadows with his blades made up for that.
“Group together on the ground; get potions into you and gather your guild mates’ packs and gear. Someone, help me grow my damned foot back!” Josh growled. “Feel like I should be on a pirate ship instead of with you bunch of weirdos.” His pride was clear in his voice, however much he tried to hide it.
They gathered together. Induca appeared some time later, emerging from the ground as Malsour stumbled on his feet.
All of them looked on the brink of falling over with fatigue. They downed potions and gathered the gear of everyone who had fallen.
As they worked, they watched the Demon Horde and DCA clash.
The Demon Horde was able to flow through the gaps that came with aerial formations, attacking the fort. The Dwarves were waiting for them with crossbows and artillery.
Anna looked at the Demon Horde’s numbers. By Jukal. Their ragtag group of Stone Raiders had reduced the Demon Horde to nearly a hundred and fifty thousand.
The DCA might be tired from constant fighting, but they were better trained and higher level fighters. They systematically carved through the Demon Horde. With over seventy thousand in the air and another ten thousand on the ground, the Horde was being ground down.
Dave pulled himself up. His potions and armor worked to bring him back to the land of conscious. His groans stopped as everyone watched the fight above the hastily made fort.
Gamers were very good about seeing not only what was in front of them, but how it fit with the bigger picture.
“They’re coming apart!” Dave said. The others nodded and made noises of agreement. The Demon Horde didn’t know their own numbers in the chaos of aerial battle, sometimes killing their own people without a friend-foe overlay.
The DCA ate through the Demon Horde, attacking from every angle they knew. Here, their skill and abilities shone through as the Demon Horde thinned drastically.
Anna dropped into a squat to watch the fight.
In minutes, the Demon Horde broke, a few trying to get away. Repeaters or the DCA hunted them down. DCA groups set off, hunting down more of the Horde that the Aleph scouts had picked up.
If they grouped together, they could be an issue.
Anna turned to look at the battlefield. There was a sea of tombstones from the keep past her to the fort. The ground in between had been churned up. There were burnt patches, projections out of the ground, and the debris of massive spells and the victims they’d claimed.
The keep had been torn apart, with its walls holed. In places, the stone walls had melted from the Dwarven artillery.
A sea of Demon bodies with the occasional body from another race dotted the terrible landscape.
“Take a seat. I’ll see where we’re needed.” Josh sounded relieved and as tired as Anna felt.
She let herself fall backward and leaned against the side of a crater. She pulled potions from her hot bar for Stamina recharge. She let her Mana recharge by itself. Using the armor to fill it would leave her with a massive headache.
Steve’s armored ass hit the dirt as he sat in the rather large crater. “Hey, Dave, maybe next time, you’ll stay conscious until the end of the fight?”
“Jackass.” Dave snorted and threw a pebble at Steve’s armored chest.
Induca fussed over Suzy, sitting on her legs once she confirmed Suzy was okay.
“So, Summoner’s Bastille—I guess that was your work?” Deia asked.
“Yeah. Suzy will either wake up in a little or die. That thing really plays hell with your Willpower. Don’t worry. If she’s not up within a few days, I’ll kill her so she can respawn,” Dave said.
Anna saw Induca flinch, but then settle down.
“After a few hundred years of being used to dying, having you immortals around is confusing.” Induca slumped down on the ground.
“Hey, you’re like a few centuries old!” Dave said.
“Yes, but we still have that fear of death. You lot, you run in with everything you have, holding nothing back because you know that you might die but you can come back again. Sure, you want to keep your levels and you’ll fight even harder for that, but in the end, death is just a minor annoyance,” Induca challenged.
“Different mindset.” Deia shrugged.
“Josh!” Steve yelled out.
“What?” Josh replied, flat out on his back a few meters away.
“Nice peg leg!”
A stone rang off Steve’s head. He never stopped grinning, unaffected by the rock.
“Arsehole,” Josh said, but Anna could tell that he was smiling.
Anna’s smile soured at seeing the bodies around her. She closed her eyes, setting a ward that would warn her of anyone approaching or attacking. How many more battles will there be like this before Emerilia can have peace? A part of her didn’t want to know the number for fear of how high the casualties would be.
Chapter 24: A Better Tomorrow
Alkao’s wings flapped as he looked over the battlefield from the keep toward the hastily erected fort. His mind thought back to the battlefields that he had lived on for the majority of his life. The sight of so many dead barely affected him before. Now, he saw the wasted lives of those who could have helped to make Devil’s Crater stronger. There was much work to be done, a future that was theirs for the taking and those who had died in front of him had done so, so that future could be realized.
He knew that among the dead it was not just the Beast Kin and Demons. There were Aleph, Dwarves, and POEs who had joined the Stone Raiders.
They came to our aid and died so that we might have a chance to carve out a future, a tomorrow. Now, it is our duty to make sure that tomorrow is better than today. Celebrate what they have given us with their final breaths.
Alkao hovered in the air. The DCA had been three hundred thousand strong, no small number, especially when thinking that most of the people had been level 200s with abilities that would have made level 250s wary.
He let out a heavy breath, slowly coming to step on the ground. The smell of death pervaded his senses. It would disappear after a few days if the resources from those who had fallen were not collected and their bodies started to dissipate back into Emerilia.
His heart was heavy with loss. He had spent months preparing for his people’s return. He had spent countless sleepless nights doing everything and anything he could to ready Devil’s Crater for their arrival.
They had escaped their demise for centuries, been given hope, created allies and turned from a wandering horde into a true community that cared about one another.
Still, they had not been able to sit by and consolidate their strength. His people had paid in blood.
He looked over the battlefield. His eyes saw the scenes of countless battles. Where his first brother had died. Silent tears left lines down his cheeks.
He gave a sad smile, his eyes itchy as his thoughts filled with memories of Lezar. It wasn’t the grand gestures, but the day-to-day things—a smile here, giving Alkao some of his water when there wasn’t much to go around—small kindnesses that created everlasting ties between people.
Alkao let out a deep breath. It seemed heavy, as if his own emotions weighed on him. He had
been hurriedly called the king of Devil’s Crater so that there was someone to be in control and command in Devil’s Crater’s time of need.
He didn’t want the responsibility. He remembered how his brother had charged forward with his blood-sworn. They had sacrificed themselves in order to give those who relied on them time. That was leadership: doing everything you could to lead your people to victory and sacrificing yourself in times of need to save those who look up to you.
In Emerilia, the strong ruled, sending out others to do their bidding. But leaders, they inspired loyalty for stepping out and saving these weaker people who carried out their orders.
I want to be a leader like that, a leader like Lezar was.
He made this promise to those who had laid down their lives for Devil’s Crater, for those who were weaker than them, for the idea that these people might gain a future, a future that they were willing to die for.
Alkao stood there for a long time, his inner pain numb within his body as he started to envision a path for Devil’s Crater. It was only when someone was so close to death that they were able to truly appreciate life and understand how fragile it was.
His wings extended. He rose into the sky with a few powerful beats of his wings. He turned and headed back toward the fort that was one big aid center dealing with the wounded and letting those who had fought find rest and get some food into themselves.
His blood-sworn followed, not saying a word.
Alkao’s mood improved as he came to land outside the temporary fort.
There was a sense of relief in the air, but also sadness. They had won out against the Horde but many of their fellows had died.
Koza found him as he walked the camp, checking on his people.
“We have found the remainders of the Demon Horde. The aerial DCA and the Dwarves are closing in on them. There are just a few thousand remaining.” Koza’s scouts had tracked down the remaining members of the Demon Horde, marking them for all of the allies to see.
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