by T J Marquis
Loose portions of the ground near where the wall had been slid into the void the Monstrosity was evacuating. People were screaming as more of the mega-giants began to emerge, forming a wall of horrid flesh where once there had been one of blessed stone.
Pierce turned again and dashed toward the first hand he'd seen, drawing his sword in a flash of blue. The giant was now visible up to the elbows, seeking purchase on open ground. Pierce let loose his battle cry and swiped viciously at the hard, black flesh. His bone-melter blazed and cut easily into the huge appendage, severing muscle and tendon, the slightest contact beginning to melt bone so that it flowed out of the gash along with the thing's black blood.
He hadn't severed the arm clear through, so he struck again and again, skirting around its circumference, and the arm crashed to the ground like a felled tree, but twitched as the last bits of its weird life ran their course. Stone from the uprooted wall fell from the dead hand's fingers, smashing into the ground like hammers as Pierce dodged out of the way.
He found himself thinking back to the sculpture of the Blacksmith in the depths of the Everlasting Temple. That hammer falling, again and again.
These Monstrosities were far bigger.
The giant's other arm swung toward him blindly. It was too long. He wouldn't be able to dodge. He braced himself to be crushed.
The massive forearm flinched, fingers splaying, an instant before the lightning was visible. It was like something exploded beneath the dark flesh, so fiercely as to split the arm in two. Pierce heard a distant echo of Agrathor's voice, screaming something unintelligible. More lightning followed, cracking and ripping down from above, thrumming up from the ground below. Pierce danced away from the growing wall of mega-Monstrosities to form up with the rest of the defenders.
Another horn signal sounded. It seemed too soon in a battle for this, but looking down the line of the ruined wall, Pierce had to agree it was the right call. The defenders began to retreat toward the city center. The Temple had to be defended.
Agrathor looked down on the destruction from his perch upon the minaret. The dozens of Monstrosities, bigger than any he'd ever seen, reared up out of the ground all along the city wall. As he tried to understand the situation, he continued to call lightning down on their heads, their reaching limbs. The mega-Monstrosities did not chase the garrison troops in retreat, but continued to sweep their arms about, razing buildings to the ground, catching hold of anyone close to them and breaking their tiny bodies with impossibly strong hands. Some were eaten.
The giants were every bit as nasty as their smaller counterparts, with hard to resolve features scarred as with fire, sparse hair and scraggly beards still wet with muck from the Underlands. Their deep-set eyes were clouded beyond recognition of color.
They formed an oppressive wall, clearly to keep the Grondellites within the city's confines. It was a cruel joke, supplanting the ramparts and inverting their function.
If they weren't here to attack, what were they going to do?
Some of the mega-Monstrosities seemed to realize who was responsible for the rending bolts of lightning, and began to throw huge blocks of stone at Agrathor's perch. Agrathor did not panic, managing to blow a few blocks into pieces with lightning from his spear. Ultimately, he knew the minaret would not withstand this assault, and he vaulted down to the ground dozens of feet below, relishing the shudder the impact sent reverberating through his bones. The top few floors of the tower came crashing down behind him, wrecked by a volley of stone from the giants.
The garrison soldiers were in retreat, and Agrathor caught sight of the kid.
"Pierce," he yelled. The kid caught sight of him and they fell into step. "Go back and take out a few of those scum-suckers?"
Pierce shook his head, continuing to jog up the street, "I want to, believe me, Agrathor. But you can tell they're up to something. This isn't the whole of it."
"I can see that," Agrathor snapped, but he didn't argue.
Up ahead, Grondellites were fleeing from something, pushing against the flow of the retreat.
Behind them, a row of apartments lifted off the ground and fell apart, wreckage spilling into the street. Dozens of people were crushed, their sounds of terror silenced. In place of the apartment building was a twisted obelisk, rising from the ground. Something like heat waves shimmered across its spiral-ridged surface.
Better wreck it, Pierce thought.
"That seems like a good thing to stop," he called over to Agrathor, who nodded and gritted his teeth. They rushed forward together, barrelling through slower people toward their goal. The minor injuries of bystanders were insignificant before the unknown purpose of this ebony monolith.
Other buildings were falling, being supplanted, and obelisks rose all around. Pierce saw Ess hovering above the crowd, arms outstretched. Her floating liquid orbs glowed like magma, and they shot back and forth through an obelisk's mass in wild patterns, punching holes until it lost integrity and began to crumble.
"Let's do what she did!" Pierce called out. "I'll take the far side!"
"Yah!" said Agrathor. Pierce didn't know what he meant by that, but the skeleton man dashed toward the obelisk, brandishing his sparking spear.
Agrathor plunged his weapon into the base of the obelisk with a crunch that sent a fissure running up its brittle surface. Pierce let his sword bite into the black stone, drawing it around the obelisk's circumference to create a deep incision. On the far side of the thing he stopped and began hacking at the stone like a woodsman felling a tree.
Agrathor roared, channeling electricity through his spear and into the core of the obelisk. The brittle stone couldn't handle the heat and pressure, cracks radiated out to the obelisk's surface, and a section of it blew out in hot, ragged chunks that pummeled Pierce's armor. The obelisk began to topple, and Pierce and Agrathor screamed for people to flee. It came to the ground with a resounding boom, crushing the remains of the building it had supplanted before splintering into countless shards.
Pierce and Agrathor dashed madly for the next obelisk. Above and beyond them, Ess too had chosen a second target. Small gangs of the city's mages had formed up and hurled fire, lightning and shockwaves at the wicked-looking obelisks, taking down their fair share. But like the mega-Monstrosities at the outer wall, the obelisks cropped up all across the city, too fast to keep up with.
The ones that reached their full height began to hum. It was a low-pitched drone that resonated in the buildings all around. Pierce could feel it in his gut. It buzzed in his skull. He could only imagine how Agrathor must feel, with no meat to dull the vibrations.
"We can't keep up with them!" Agrathor shouted to him in frustration as they toppled a second obelisk and fled before its collapse. "Even Ess can't be everywhere at once!"
Pierce huffed, too busy to agree, but Agrathor was right. How long had it even been since the attack began? And the city was already in a shambles, its garrison routed. They needed a dozen Esses, two dozen Agrathors to even have a chance at survival.
"Might as well join up with the others!" Agrathor hollered.
Pierce raised a hand and made a forward chopping motion, as he'd seen Scythia and Axebourne do before.
"That means, 'fire at will,'" Agrathor said, a laugh crouched in his voice.
"Sorry," Pierce puffed. "Thought it meant, 'go ahead.'"
"We'll get you sorted out after this, kid," Agrathor said, seemingly unwinded. "Probably should have taught you the signals before we got here anyway," he mused.
Ess caught sight of them as she cruised overhead, and began to fly parallel to them, her fiery orbs destroying every obelisk they passed. It wasn't enough. The more there were, the more horrible the drone was. People were falling to their knees in the streets, voiding their stomachs and retching helplessly. Some were crushed by falling debris.
"We need to get to Scythia!" Ess cried down to them. She looked at Agrathor. She seemed to expect him to know why. He shook his helmeted skull. "The Amulet of Silence
!" she yelled.
Agrathors flaming eyes brightened with remembrance.
"What does it do?" Pierce asked between breaths.
"Seriously kid?" Agrathor retorted. Pierce would have shrugged, but his body was busy running. "She uses it for infiltration, cancels out all sound in an area. Ess can amplify the field, keep us all safe!"
"Can you do the whole city?" Pierce called up to her. She looked chagrined.
"I cannot," she said heavily. "But we at least can survive to give aid, if any aid will suffice."
"There's gotta be a way," Pierce said. "Can you at least fold us to the Temple?"
Again she said no.
"It's a one-man ride, kid," Agrathor said.
They raced on.
When at last they reached the concentric rings at the city center, the place was awash with disaster. Shops and shrines that had just been bustling with healthy activity that morning had been supplanted by the emergence of the obelisks. The low hum was acute and pervading all at once. Cracks were spreading across every stone surface in sight. Pierce continued to wonder what the aim was here. Why conquer a heap of rubble?
The city's defenders had fallen into formation on the Temple grounds, and everyone waited nervously for the next phase of attack. As yet they had seen nothing that had been expected. No infantry, no dogran cavalry, no siege equipment. Whatever power Kash had stumbled upon, it was unprecedented.
Ess, Agrathor, and Pierce were allowed through the ranks of men and women warriors, and soon they joined Axebourne and Scythia, and the officers now under the red-bearded man's command.
"If this sound gets any more intense," Axebourne was saying to Scythia, "You'll have to activate it, and we won't be able to talk."
Scythia nodded. "We'll have to rely on signals during whatever comes next."
"Can you protect the men?" one of the officers asked. "What's the range?"
Scythia looked to Ess and said, "I can do about five yards."
Ess mulled this over.
"As much as fifty yards," she said, but shook her head slightly. "But it will fluctuate according to distractions and my adrenaline. Do not trust the perimeter as a sure thing."
"It's better than nothing," the officer said.
"Alright," said Axebourne, "everyone clear on the plan?"
"Yes," said Scythia. "There isn't one." Her husband smirked.
It was true, though. How could they plan for whatever was coming next, if it was as unusual as all of this?
A drumming sound boomed from the city all around them, disparate pounding impacts that shook the ground and air alike. The deep, percussive strikes gradually came synchronized in a steady, simple beat. Agrathor's eyes dimmed as if he were calmed by it, but everyone else looked uneasy.
"Do it," Agrathor said.
Scythia reached into her tunic at the bosom and pulled out the Amulet of Silence. It was a narrow, white gem filled with misty light, cradled in a silver setting that dangled from her strong neck on a silver chain. Ess came near to her, but took no visible action. Scythia did nothing more than to grasp the gem, and the world went silent around her.
Pierce felt like he'd gone deaf. There was no sound to be heard. The air was still, though the ground continued to reverberate with the shock of collapsing buildings and the drumming of distant titans. It was an uncomfortable feeling, yet everyone around Pierce looked like some of their unease had been relieved. Though it hadn't been long since the appearance of the obelisks, their sickening drone had been so encompassing as to feel like a natural part of existence. They had always droned, cracking stone and voiding people's guts, and they always would.
No sooner had everyone settled into the relief of silence than the Temple grounds themselves shifted from merely rumbling to a violent shaking. It was like something a hundred times larger than even the mega-Monstrosities had the earth under the Temple in its hand, and was jostling it back and forth like a toddler with a new toy. A true titan.
Parts of the Temple complex began to collapse. Glass burst upward from galleries and the stained windows of domes and minarets. Walls fell outward or inward, fissures opened up in the ground.
No one called the second retreat, nor did anyone signal it. The garrison troops, officers, and Gorgonbane simply fled in the eerie silence, trying to get clear of the Temple grounds.
Rarely had Pierce felt this frustrated. Give him a clear enemy, or even a hundred foes, and let them be slain at the edge of his sword. This was... well it was unfair, dishonorable, crooked. It was exactly what one should expect of the Underlord and his minions. Why would they show themselves and fight when such utter destruction could be achieved with such apparent ease?
How did the Blacksmith expect this to temper his creations, his children?
It was not another obelisk that emerged from the ruination of the Everlasting Temple. It was the wide domes and towers of a citadel of dark, green stone. Its tightly fitted blocks dripped with the Underlands' pervading muck. They did not seem stressed in the slightest in pushing aside the still-collapsing walls and walkways of the Temple. The whole place was lit by a ghostly grey aura.
"Testadel," Axebourne breathed. "How..."
Pierce had the odd thought that seeing the place again was like returning to a friend's house. Now he knew where things were inside of it, and something of how the place worked. He'd even lived there for a short time, albeit in the dungeons.
Is Forgemaster 77 in there somewhere?
People who had taken refuge inside the Temple were caught up in the rising structure's ramparts and spires, trying in vain to get a grip on anything that might keep them from falling to their deaths. They must be screaming, but Pierce couldn't hear them.
He saw that mighty sculpture of the Blacksmith, carried up off the ground in the space between two greenish domes. The Blacksmith's look of pain and toil seemed appropriate.
Still, the defenders were helpless. This was not something any of them could fight. They would have done better to evacuate the city, rather than to become trapped behind its ruined walls, but no one could have known. Pierce had only guessed. He wondered how this was even possible, but there it was, happening right in front of him, a harsh blow of the Blacksmith's hammer.
Testadel ceased rising and its gates swung open. They were the very gates through which Pierce had escaped not too long ago. Then came a phase of the attack more like what had been expected, only from the wrong side of the walls.
Monstrosities emerged first, mouths open in silent roars, fists swinging at walls, archways, and people who hadn't been killed in the Temple's collapse. Behind them came werewolves, the hunting hounds of Kash's forces. They loped along in ragged lines, held in formation only by some brutal mode of training that had been ingrained in them. Their slavering mouths hung open in gleeful canine smiles, and their eyes shone a sickly yellow even at this distance. They held to their lines and began to fan out.
Next were the gen, natives of the Underlands. They were bipedal, armored, and of medium stature, very like the humans, but grey-skinned and with longer limbs. Only the males were known to march into battle. Behind the ranks of gen waited the painreapers in all their horrific variations, but these would likely not fight. They came only to live up to their names, a thing they would see to when the battle was over.
The ranks of defenders braced themselves, but surely each person knew they could not withstand this invasion.
This did not deter the members of Gorgonbane.
Axebourne gave the signal, and the fearsome band of five rode out from among the garrison troops. Unfortunately, this left several squads without the benefit of Scythia's enchantment of silence. Soldiers began to succumb to the sound-induced nausea.
Pierce knew he had to be extra vigilant - there would be no sounds signaling the approach and attack of the enemy. Everything would rely on staying in formation, covering each other's backs.
He couldn't help but wonder what they hoped to do against all the might of the invasion.
<
br /> Axebourne signalled again. The cone of silence was about to shrink for a few moments as Ess shifted her amplification powers to Agrathor. They would have to keep the formation tight. Ess held up a hand and counted down from five on her fingers. There was no discernible difference for Pierce when the enchanted area shrank, but even more common soldiers were left without aural protection.
Agrathor lifted his spear high, reflexively calling out a challenge or invocation that no one would hear. A pair of lightning bolts ripped through a Monstrosity's shoulders, bursting blood vessels and severing its arms. The thing's face contorted in pain and it screamed silently, toppling to the ground to crush a pair of genian squads. This instantly garnered the attention of the other dozen or so Monstrosities, and they began to converge on Gorgonbane. This had been expected.
Gorgonbane rushed toward the approaching giants, letting them get close. Each member had to take out at least two Monstrosities, and their time was limited. Ess signaled that she had resumed amplifying Scythia's amulet, and the group broke formation.
Axebourne and Ess dashed for the leftmost giants, Scythia took the center, and Agrathor and Pierce flanked right. The Monstrosities had been proven not to be entirely moronic, but they seemed to spare little thought for tactics, and were content to focus their malice on whatever was in front of them. This made it easier for Pierce and his comrades to mount their attack.
He desperately wanted to see the others in action, but this was not the time. He had to focus on his own task. He meant to take down three of the giants. At least these weren't the mega variety...
He dropped down off of Gash, sending the beast away. Then he plotted his course in his mind, connecting the dots, brainstorming solutions for when things inevitably went wrong.