Island Kingdoms' War

by D. L. Harrison

  Every so often, I’d skip a round of shooting fiery death in favor of a mass heal spell for our section of the wall, since Lara was far too busy with the boulders. Some of the siege engines were taken out, but overall the enemy was protecting them well with ice walls and walls of stone to take the hit from the large ballistae bolts. Regardless, the healing was effective in keeping our death toll down to immediately mortal wounds only.

  The enemy’s spells I wasn’t so worried about, not compared to the risk of a random arrow, I maintained my mana shield, and was keeping ahead of it, carefully managing my mana expenditures. The horde never seemed to end, an endless charge as they died on the ground, on the walls, and even in the forest if we caught sight of them between the boughs of the trees.

  It was mind numbing, and I just lived in the moment. One more spell, one more group of dead enemies. I was at least slightly heartened that outside of that first volley in surprise, the light and earth wielders kept the rest of the city and its citizens safe. I still had perfect recall with my very high intelligence, but the non-stop casting was still getting to me. For the first time since I was an initiate, I forgot to realign my mind back to the sphere of fire after casting a mass heal, which energized me momentarily with anger for failing to do so when my fire spell failed to be cast.

  I was numb even to the random deaths, I’d grieve later. Everyone in the party had been damaged, sometimes badly, but so far none of us had died.

  Perhaps a numb mind and us being in a rut of actions was exactly what the enemy was going for, to wear us down and dull our thoughts and our reflexes, because that’s when the enemy’s tactics completely changed.

  The enemy’s suppression spells doubled, and the ground started to shake as giants, ogres, ice wolves, and trolls rushed the walls, along with dark elves.

  My first thought was that the giants would start tossing the dark elves and ice wolves to the top of the wall, like they had back at the fort. If only we were so lucky.

  The dark elves arrived at the wall and turned. They used water and earth magic and started to toss up the giants, as well as the ice wolves, ogres, and trolls. Once again, my flying spells were biting me in the ass. The response should have been obvious, would have been obvious if we all weren’t a little brain dead and in a rut at that moment, so worn down. The light sphere wielders should have dispelled immediately.

  Of course, they all just went with what they were doing, and dispelled the next volley of boulders.

  Not that we didn’t do anything. The enemy was under barrage from all of us, but they gained the wall fast, and a lot of them got through. Worse, it distracted all of us allowing a few climbers of our lesser opponents to reach the wall as well.

  I kind of panicked when a giant landed right next to me crushing a soldier, not to mention the ogres, trolls, and ice wolves which weren’t all that far away either.

  I dropped an exploding fire spell at my feet, with about a thousand mana in it. That was a goodly way over three thousand points of damage, the giant had less than half that. I routed the fire around my party and allies, striking the enemies I felt in range only.

  The giant and many other enemies, at least within fifteen feet of me, died, the others within my fifty foot range took a lot of damage.

  Not exactly a bad thing, but the dark elves were still standing next to the walls, and more giants, ogres, trolls, and ice wolves were coming for launch assist. The orcs and hobgoblins started to pour over the wall as well. The soldiers, and the rest of my group took the ones still alive quickly, just in time for the next wave.

  We needed to kill the dark elves to stop this attack, but we were far too occupied with the wall being overrun. Also, the commander hadn’t said anything yet. We had to split our focus, while keeping most of it on the walls. My mind took entirely too long to think of an answer, as the screams of soldiers reached my ears.

  Finally, an idea shook loose from my dulled mind.

  “Steve, raise as many as you can down there, and target the dark elves.”

  The rest of us focused our magic and weapons on the enemy on the wall, meanwhile there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of orc and hobgoblin corpses at the bottom of the wall. The dark elves were standing in them practically.

  Steve shot an area of effect spell down the wall, and at least a hundred corpses started to stir. I didn’t think he had my regen rate, mine was one hundred fifty-two a second now, but he could probably maintain that many for a minute or two.

  Luckily, a lot of the nearby guards with the death sphere noticed what Steve was doing, and did the same thing, leaving fighting off the foothold to the rest of us for a few seconds as they set hundreds of dead against the dark elves.

  I… got an idea.

  Beings were both water and life, which is why I couldn’t use control water directly on a person. I knew I would be able to at master levels and above, and even teleport, when I could mix the concepts from the water and life spheres together. Like Duchess Catalina in the Southern Kingdom had showed us her power as a master. Yet... I had an idea.

  I used the damaging spell ice bolt, but instead of one ice bolt I used needles, targeting all the enemies I could see within range down the wall. I also embedded concepts from control water into the spell, much like I do to explode the ice or control the fires to extend damage, except I used the same concepts I used to fly instead. My goal wasn’t to damage them at all. I couldn’t use my detect life to target, so those behind me got a pass, but every enemy in visual range was hit.

  It didn’t do all that much damage, less than a hundred really, and that was mostly due to my base damage being tripled, the ice did almost none at all. But, once the ice needles had dug into armor or flesh on all the orcs, giants, trolls, and ice wolves, the second part of the spell went off. About a quarter of the ones I’d targeted had the ice needles ripped out of their bodies as the ice went up and over the wall, but in most of the cases the needles stuck. Given my range for the spell was pretty much unlimited now, I cleared about three quarters the enemy along the entire wall in one direction, as they were lifted bodily with the ice needles stuck in their flesh, and then tossed off the walls.

  Gwen and Lyre laughed, and the battle paused for about three seconds as even the enemy tried to figure out what the hell just happened.

  I turned around, and then cleared the wall in the other direction. The wall curved, but I got a good part of it before it curved out of my visual range. I’d never thought of the spell before because it really didn’t kill the enemy, it just cleared the walls. A large-scale crowd control only, but exactly what we needed for a siege when a foothold situation became untenable.

  At that point, the undead were ripping apart the dark elves who were ridiculously outnumbered and overwhelmed. The third wave of approaching giants, ogres, trolls, and wolves were forced to abort. Plus, with three quarters of the enemy thrown back outside the city, the last quarter or so went down quickly and far more easily to the defenders’ arrows, blades, fire, ice, darkness, and lightning attacks. The earth and light folks were still dealing with boulders.

  The enemy retreated in confusion, or at least stopped attacking for the moment, so I switched to mass healing spells for the soldiers wounded in our close call. Outside of a light barrage of magical attacks and arrows there was nothing, even the walls were cleared quickly of orcs.

  The commander yelled, “Report! What the hell just happened?”

  I snickered, and then started jogging his way along the wall to report. I imagined it could be done with those stone spikes as well. Might be able to manage with air too, I wasn’t sure to be honest, but I knew fire had no concepts of gravity or mass in it, so that was out.

  It was a crazy battle, lasted half the night, and the only depressing part of it was the enemy only lost a little over ten thousand of their horde. Thirty thousand down, seventy to go? Or… fifty to sixty to go if they really will retreat at some point. Either way, a couple of hours later it was fairly clear the enemy was d
one with big pushes that night. They continued their minimal suppressive fire, in an attempt to deny us rest, but even the boulders stopped coming at that point.

  I guessed they probably would retreat, since they’d at least want to raid the rest of the undefended villages, and at least go home with lots of loot. Otherwise, what was the point?

  Chapter Twenty

  Gwen sighed softly, “You can stop doing that, in a few days.”

  I chuckled, and I continued to massage her neck and shoulders while she leaned back against me in bed. We were in the room assigned to us for the duration of the battle, which was finally over. It was late afternoon, an hour or so before dinner time. It’d taken us five more days and nights to whittle them down far enough so that they’d run, and I’d never call it easy, but thanks to my trick the water wielders on the wall had no problems keeping the enemy from gaining a solid foothold.

  Two thousand one hundred and fourteen. That’s how many of the soldiers were left in the city when the battle was complete. We’d lost almost half of our defenders over those days. Many of the undying had died in battle as well, including Lara, but of course all of those had come back.

  Regardless, the war against the northern evil tribes was finished. The eastern and southern tribes were almost done with their preparations, but we had a few days to relax and recharge the batteries. We’d also all leveled again. I was level twenty-five now, and my mana went up a whole lot in that jump. I was starting to realize the mana difference in levels as they went up would start to jump at a much more obvious geometric rate. I now had over seventy-five hundred mana, and I got back one hundred and ninety seven of it a second. It really stressed how far out of my league a master level caster would be. They must have mana shields in the tens of thousands of mana for magical defense.

  Given the geometric rate, it meant the difference between me and a master, would be far bigger than between me and an initiate. And I knew an initiate spellcaster couldn’t touch me.

  It made me think a being in the master levels could have killed all hundred thousand without breaking a sweat, if they hadn’t been required to hold back to maintain the enchantment and counter the master level beings in the evil races.

  But, they’d done their job, obviously so, or one of the evil masters would have just swept the walls clean of defenders. It made me wonder what unseen dangers we’d encountered without knowing it, as a whole different level of the war was fought outside of our ability to detect.

  “Anytime, you know me.”

  Any reason to have my hands on her.

  She chuckled and stretched, “You spoil me.”

  I nodded in agreement but didn’t say anything. It gave me joy to do it, and I lived for these quiet moments when she was all mine and in my arms.

  She asked, “So what’s the plan?”

  “Relax, drink, celebrate tonight? Maybe take a walk around the city? Dance?”

  Neither of us had been partyers in the old world, preferring solitude to that empty existence, but there was a balance to everything. We needed to celebrate during the slow times, if we were to maintain our grip on sanity during the times we fought.

  She nodded, “That sounds nice.”

  I added, “Tomorrow we can relax too, but our enchantments are probably done, we can go to the western kingdom to pick those up so we’re ready to go on our new expert level enchanted equipment when we hit thirty-one. Other than that, I’m open to suggestions while we wait for the eastern or southern evil tribes to attack.”

  Gwen nodded, “We should also find a safe place to store this equipment, just in case.”

  I nodded in agreement, it was a lesson learned the easy way, as I remembered what happened to Cassie’s party. They’d lost all their stuff when they were captured. I kissed the side of her neck, and then wrapped my arms around her waist.

  She turned her head and pouted at me, and I chuckled when I went back to the massage. She took out her comm device and sent a few messages. It wasn’t very long before she read their responses.

  “Everyone agrees with those plans. This time was even harder than usual, we all need some downtime.”

  “Clean up before dinner, and party time?”

  She shrugged, “A bath sounds nice my love, but… let’s get a little dirtier first,” she finished teasingly in a sultry voice, as she twisted in my arms and claimed a kiss filled with the promise of untold pleasures.

  I was on board with that plan…

  The atmosphere of the whole city was jubilant, the only reservation was about the eastern horde who were still working toward getting ready. The tavern itself was pretty well packed with undying and soldier alike, all drinking and the din was getting louder as the night went on. I think that it would have felt a bit claustrophobic to me to be honest, if I wasn’t in the midst of a strong buzz myself. No violence, not even a bar fight had broken out, I think even the most aggressive personalities had their fill of violence the last week, at least for a time.

  I wasn’t one to brood over beer, so I was having a pretty good time as the six of us were packed in around a rounded table normally seating four. Gwen was against my left side, which surely helped to keep dark thoughts at bay regardless of the week we’d had, and the lives that were lost. We’d saved the city, and that had to be enough. I certainly wasn’t over it yet, but the anger I felt was temporarily buried.

  There was music, singing, and dancing, the latter of which Gwen and I were taking a break from.

  Lyre sat on my right, followed by Anlyth, Steve, and Lara who sat on Gwen’s other side. There was half-eaten platters of meats and cheese on the table, as well as a bowl of bread.

  Gwen entwined her fingers with mine as she claimed my hand, an action which never failed to put a smile on my face. In short, we were having a great night, and a well-deserved one. The buzz of conversation around our table avoided the war altogether. I was curious about the flow of battle to expect on the Eastern side, it had to be different with the dwarves living in the mountains, but that could wait.

  “Can we talk to you all for a minute?” asked a familiar voice.

  I craned my neck and took in the familiar forms of Cassie and Dan, and then noticed they were holding hands and looked a bit nervous. Not about holding hands, about talking to us, and I was curious why.

  Gwen stood suddenly, “Take a seat.”

  I was confused for a second, until she slid onto my lap, put an arm around me, and giggled into my ears. It was a bit distracting, but in a good way.

  Lara gasped, and when I looked over her face was bright red, and she was firmly in Steve’s lap. Dan and Cassie took the seats, and both looked unsure where to start.

  “What’s up?” I prodded gently, in a friendly voice.

  Dan took a sip of the beer he held to buy himself a few moments to order his thoughts.

  “We were wondering if you had room in your party. We’ve had… a difference of opinion with Robert, we can’t group with him anymore. You’re also the only party we really trust, especially after all you did for us. I’m good with a sword, Cassie uses a bow. I’ve got Earth and Fire, she has Air and Light. We also won’t have a problem following your orders in battle.”

  I thought about it a second, or I did my best to think with the love of my life sitting in my lap while I was buzzed. Her sweet feminine scent and soft supple body were driving me crazy, even if it hadn’t been that long since our fun time and bath. Part of that of course was the hour or so of dancing, the way she moved made it foreplay. Point was, I was rather distracted.

  Fortunately, though Gwen was besotted with me as well, she managed to ask the question that was nagging my mind but had eluded me thus far.

  Gwen asked, “Difference of opinion? We like you both, but I just want to make sure you’ll be a good fit. Robert didn’t seem like a bad guy, and he seemed like a good leader when we fought on the fort’s wall together.”

  Dan and Cassie shared a glance, this time it was Cassie that answered. I kind of und
erstood why she took over a few moments in, because guys didn’t like to air relationship laundry.

  Cassie said, “It’s personal, but I suppose you have a right to know if we’re wanting to join you. Robert is a good leader. The problem is this. Jade and Anthony have been lovers and together since day one. I could tell right away when I joined the group both Robert and Dan were attracted to me.”

  She paused for a moment to make a face.

  “I decided in the beginning, perhaps foolishly, that I wouldn’t date either of them, keep the drama down. Plus, the world was new, we were all a little freaked out, and I didn’t want to fall into a trap of having a relationship for all the wrong reasons.”

  That made sense to me, it was why Gwen and I had moved so slowly that first week, even though we were both attracted to each other right from the start. We’d wanted to make sure it wasn’t a shallow thing only first, and as I’d gotten to know her better she’d just become even more attractive.

  Cassie shrugged, “It all changed for me when the rest of the party was taken alive and tortured all day. I realized then that I loved Dan, and that Robert’s flirtations annoyed me. I also decided that I didn’t want to wait, or be alone anymore, not when…” she trailed off and looked at Dan, the same way Gwen looked at me, and Lara looked at Steve.

  Dan looked equally smitten, if not more so.

  She smiled, “It’s actually another reason we want to join your group. The other reasons Dan gave are valid enough on their own, but since you’re actually three couples, that kind of kills any chances for relationship drama and triangles getting in the way of fighting, having fun, and leveling.”

  Yeah, I could get that too. I looked around the table. Lara and Steve looked on board with the idea. Lyre nodded with a smile on her face, and Anlyth just nodded. I knew Gwen was okay with it, just by her posture, but I looked at her anyway. She just smirked at me, as I got a little lost in her gorgeous green eyes, even if she was as equally fascinated with mine.