“Horrible, stinking, murderous monsters.”
“Are all the goblins banding together to fight them?”
“Yes.”
“All the tribes?”
“Yes.”
Vlisil saw his chance. “Let me go with you! I’ll fight the Chvaroks with you!”
The father glanced at him in distaste. “You just want to go so you can try to convince the other tribes to fight the sorcerer.”
“Well… that, too…” Vlisil admitted.
The father sighed wearily. “Fine. Perhaps the Chvaroks will kill you, and we will finally get some peace around here.”
The mother goblin’s voice shouted from inside the hut. “Killing it would be the nicest thing the Chvaroks ever did for us!”
Vlisil glared in her direction, then said to the father, “I, uh, I’m going to need one of your ponies to ride.”
The male scrunched shut his eyes as though he was the most put-upon goblin in the world.
“Do it!” the female called from the hut. “Whatever it takes to get him on the front line and spitted on a Chvarok spear – do it! It’s a small price to pay!”
37
Lotan
It had been a good couple of days visiting with the droths – seeing the beautiful underwater buildings of Peralso, visiting ancient ruins on the ocean floor, meeting other underwater species like the mer-folk. He’d even swapped stories over the underwater equivalent of a campfire: a glass globe full of bioluminescent jellyfish.
He’d found out a great deal about the droth culture during his stay. The elders of the tribe were traditional to a fault. They were intent on preserving their culture no matter what, even to the point of completely closing themselves off from the outside world. Apparently things had been different as recently as 60 years ago – but the wars that had torn the Shattered Lands apart had convinced previous generations to become isolationists, and isolationist they had stayed.
The younger droths were different. They yearned for something more than their parents’ narrow-minded way of life. They were intensely curious about the surface dwellers and couldn’t get enough of Lotan’s stories.
Because their society was so restrictive and dominated by the elders, the young ones didn’t voice their objections very often – and when they did, they were immediately shot down and reprimanded. As a result, there was a silent state of near-rebellion simmering just under the surface.
But the elders weren’t going to help fight against Eric, so Lotan knew that it was time to move on. There were other underwater cities in the droth kingdom to visit. He didn’t expect much better results, but there was nothing to be gained by staying in Peralso.
The young ones were unhappy to see him go, but they wished him well.
“If we could fight with you, we would,” was the common refrain.
“You can. Just come with me when I go back,” he told them, but they were still too frightened of openly defying the elders to consider it. A few of the young adults would escort him at dawn to the nearest droth city, which was a full day’s swim farther out to sea – but beyond that, they feared incurring the elders’ wrath and potentially being cast out from droth society, which was a very real danger.
He was saying his goodbyes when they heard the first BOOM rumble through the water, followed by several more.
“What’s that?” one of the youths asked. “It sounds like thunder, but closer!”
‘Thunder’ translated into dark air noise in droth.
“I think it’s an explosion,” Lotan said, unable to explain it with anything other than the made-up term fire expanding air.
Of course, the young droths were all eager to see what ‘fire expanding air’ was, so hundreds of them entered the Beraldian harbor with Lotan and swam to the surface.
What they saw filled Lotan with horror – and his companions with excitement.
Beraldia was under attack. Fiery explosions rocked the towers overlooking the city, and attackers poured in through breaches in the limestone walls.
The invading soldiers were disturbingly familiar to Lotan: clad in black armor, with white skulls covered in dancing black flames.
Eric’s here already, Lotan thought in despair.
Things got worse. The black-armored skeletons marched down through the city and out onto the piers, towards the mighty ships docked in the harbor. Lotan wondered why the ships weren’t fleeing – and then realized that the wind was barely stronger than a sigh. There wasn’t enough to get them safely out of the harbor.
As a result, hundreds of sailors were on the docks with cutlasses and knives, looking terrified as the skeleton armies advanced across the wooden planks.
“What’s happening?” one of the droth youths asked.
“That evil sorcerer I told you about? Those are his men, and they’re trying to destroy the city.”
“Those are the evil sorcerer’s soldiers?!” one droth asked excitedly. “We can fight them right here?!”
Lotan was about to answer when what the young droth said fully sunk in:
We can fight them right here.
I can fight them right here.
“Stay put,” Lotan ordered. He drew his sword and dove beneath the surface.
“Wait – where are you going?!”
“Just stay here!”
Lotan sped towards the docks, swimming as fast as he could.
What he had in mind was probably stupid – maybe even suicidal – but supposedly the guys at Varidian had decreased his lockout time, so ‘suicidal’ wasn’t as bad as it sounded.
When he was fifteen feet away from the pier, Lotan shot out of the water at a 45 degree angle. He soared through the air and slammed into the column of Hell soldiers, knocking two of them down onto the pier.
As the soldiers flailed around in shock, Lotan grabbed one of them and yanked him into the water.
As they sank beneath the surface, Lotan realized that the black flames flickering across the soldier’s skull weren’t fed by oxygen. The fire didn’t extinguish underwater.
The Hell soldier floundered in panic. He tried to swim, but his hundred pounds of armor drug him down to the depths.
Lotan, of course, wasn’t similarly encumbered. He just darted around his enemy, waiting for an opening – and when he got it, spiked his wavy sword through the skull’s left eye socket.
The soldier stopped moving, and the black flames died out. He drifted down slowly to the seafloor, where he came to rest like some discarded statue amongst the seaweed.
Lotan hung there in the water, wondering what he should do next, when a half-dozen bodies crashed into the water above him.
He looked up in surprise, wondering if the skull army had decided to jump in after him – and realized that they hadn’t exactly done it of their own accord.
Young droths were dragging the Hell soldiers down into the depths, their webbed fingers hooked through the empty eyes of the skulls.
“What are you doing?!” Lotan yelled, unsure whether to be overjoyed or angry.
“Fighting the Evil Sorcerer!” one youth called out gleefully as he spiked his hell soldier through the forehead with a knife.
Every second that passed, another three droths splashed into the water dragging a skullhead behind him or her. Struggling, armor-clad bodies drifted down to the depths and began piling up like wreckage after a hurricane.
The young droths had seen Lotan take on the skeleton men, and it had looked like great fun – so now they were doing it in droves.
Lotan had just intended to harass the Hell army and help the sailors fight what was essentially a hopeless battle.
He hadn’t intended to start a full-scale insurgency – or a revolution.
But it was happening right in front of his eyes.
He swam up to the surface and watched in wonder as droths catapulted through the air, slamming into armored soldiers and knocking them into the water.
On the opposite side of the pier, the sailors – embolden
ed by the arrival of unexpected allies – were roaring and stabbing skullheads with abandon.
The Hell army was in complete disarray. They didn’t know what was going on. They’d thought they were going to slaughter their opponents, and now suddenly they were the victims of a massacre.
“Come on – we’ve got to fight the Evil Sorcerer!” one young female yelled at Lotan. She dove under the surface, built up enough speed, then jumped out and tackled another soldier.
“We’ve got to fight the Evil Sorcerer,” Lotan agreed, almost in wonder – and then leapt into the air and dragged another enemy down into the depths.
38
Korvos
The horned general watched the battle unfold from high on a cliff above the city.
The battle was going better than expected. His soldiers had arrived before dawn, under the cover of darkness. The city of Beraldia hadn’t known death was so near until it knocked on her door.
That fool Merridack had at least gotten it right when he reported most of the city’s defenses were trained on the harbor. Also, the walls were nowhere near as tall or strong as Blackstone’s, and the Beraldian troops were poorly trained. The day could have seen a complete and total triumph –
Except for what was happening down in the harbor.
Korvos stared in disbelief. Several platoons of his soldiers had been advancing along the docks, ready to kill every sailor who stood in their way –
And then giant fish began jumping out of the water and knocking his men into the bay.
No, not fish. Heads of fish, yes, but with feet and hands like amphibians, and arms and legs like humans.
First one attack by a lone wolf – followed by dozens over the next 60 seconds. And it wasn’t letting up.
Now his men were being picked off from the water and slaughtered by the newly emboldened sailors.
“Captain – what are those THINGS attacking our army?” Korvos asked a nearby soldier.
“I do not know, sir.”
“Then find me a human who does.”
The soldier reappeared a few moments later clutching a wounded Beraldian archer, who looked absolutely terrified.
Korvos sat atop his rotting horse and pointed out to sea. “Tell me – what is happening out there on the docks?”
The archer looked out at the harbor, then gasped in surprise. “What the hell…?”
“I SAID, tell me what is happening!” Korvos roared.
The archer cowered in fear. “It looks like… like the droths are attacking your army…”
“Droths?”
“Fish-heads. They live out in a city past the harbor. Don’t know why they’d be helping us… we hate ‘em, and they hate us, too.”
Korvos looked out thoughtfully at the bay.
“Sir, what shall I do with this human?” the skull-headed soldier asked.
“Kill him.”
“WAIT – ” the archer cried out, until he was thrown over the cliff onto the rocks below.
“Captain… lead a regiment into the harbor. March on foot from the shore into the water. We have a new enemy, one we did not anticipate. And whatever weapons we’ve seized here on the ramparts? Use them.”
39
Lotan
The battle was going well until everything suddenly shifted.
Lotan and the others had been knocking over Hell soldiers at will until the skullheads got wise and formed an outward-facing perimeter. Then any droth that launched himself into the air was just as likely to get skewered on a spear as to drag a soldier into the sea.
“STOP!” Lotan screamed immediately after the first youth died. “They’re on to us – wait until we can figure something else out!”
“We have to kill them for what they did to Folav!” one of the younglings raged.
Lotan didn’t bother to point out that the soldiers had only killed one droth, while they’d managed to take out over 30 soldiers. If anybody had the right to be mad, it was the Hell army.
“We will,” Lotan promised, “but we have to do it intelligently. There’s no point in more of us dying.”
“We could destroy the dock,” one of the younglings suggested.
Lotan considered. That could work. The pylons that held up the pier were made of concrete, so they were a no-go – but the wooden planks were vulnerable. If they could weaken the planks beneath the soldiers, they might collapse, dropping the soldiers into the sea. And the half of the dock that jutted out into the middle of the harbor would remain untouched, leaving the sailors safe.
Lotan swam underneath the dock, directly beneath the Hell soldiers. He could see their outlines through the gaps in the boards.
There was about two feet of space between the water and the wood over his head – plenty of room.
He swung his sword upwards –
THUNK.
The wood was slightly rotten and an easy target. His blade sunk a good inch into the wood, though he had to brace his feet against the underside of the dock to pull his sword out.
Lotan dove underwater and shouted, “Everyone pick a board and start hacking away at it. Don’t get too close to each other or you’ll hit the droth next to you. You ten – go closer to land and weaken a section so that they can’t escape or bring reinforcements!”
With that, the droths set to work.
They began whacking away at the underside of the boards. Once again the soldiers above were taken by surprise. They didn’t know exactly what was going on – not until the first board split beneath their feet.
Most of the soldiers were smart enough to get away in time, but one Hell soldier’s foot dropped through the gap. Two of the droths tried to drag him down by his feet, but his upper armor was too bulky to fit through the gap.
“Ignore him and break more planks!” Lotan ordered. Seconds later, the board he was working on cracked and buckled in the center.
At first none of the soldiers fell into the water – they simply moved from weak planks to stronger ones. But then the droths moved to the strong planks and began attacking those. Within sixty seconds, there was only a patchwork of planks for the soldiers to stand on – and four or five soldiers standing on one plank increased the weight so much that the plank would split with only a few well-placed blows.
Boards snapped and soldiers began falling into the harbor four and five at a time, at which point they were easy pickings.
The Hell army was under siege. The sailors menaced the front line and forced them back; the rear guard’s path to retreat was quickly cut off by a huge gap in the pier; and everyone in between began tumbling through the pier into the water, where knives and swords plunged into their skulls.
It looked like a lost cause for the bad guys… until reinforcements showed up.
Thousands of foot soldiers and cavalry spilled out of the city streets and marched down to the docks. Except they didn’t go out on the pier – they jumped into the shallow water at the edge of the harbor and began marching underwater. Apparently they didn’t need to breathe, because not a single one of them hesitated.
Lotan watched in amazement as rows of hundreds of soldiers advanced, joined by dozens of rotting horses with riders. The bottom of the harbor was filled with silt and slime, so it was slow going for the army – but the soldiers pressed on relentlessly.
Lotan knew that at some point they would get out deep enough where the droths could simply swim over them without worry. That wasn’t the issue.
The issue was, what if they kept going past the harbor?
What if they marched out to Peralso? What then?
They probably just want to drive us out of the harbor – but then the sailors all die, and the ships get captured.
Why do they care about killing the sailors so much? Lotan wondered, and realized that they didn’t – it must be the ships they wanted. But why?
He figured out the reason immediately: They want to seize the ships and use them for a navy.
They could travel up and down the coast quickly if t
hey did that, wreaking havoc on the entire seaboard and building their navy harbor by harbor, ship by ship.
“Fall back, fall back!” he yelled at the droths as the undead rank and file approached.
“What’s going on?” one of the youths asked.
“They want the ships,” Lotan said, “and we can’t let them capture them. Is there a way to get one out of the harbor? Can we push it out, maybe?”
“Are you joking?” one of the youths asked, amazed. “Those things are monstrous.”
Lotan didn’t bother explaining how massive ocean liners were moved by relatively small propellers. “Let’s try the one farthest out in the harbor and see what happens. Everybody go and line up – I’ll be there in a second.”
As the droths took off, Lotan swam up and surfaced right by the sailors. “Hey!”
A cheer went up from the hundreds of men on the deck.
“Bless ya, fish-head!” was a common refrain.
It was a nice sentiment, even if the term was kind of racist.
“Go down and get in the last ship on the pier,” Lotan ordered. “We’re going to try to push you out.”
“Push us out?!”
“There’s not enough wind – there’s no other choice!”
“We can’t leave our ships!” one of the men roared. “Are you mad?”
“You’re not only going to leave them, we’ve got to burn them.”
They went from blessing him to cursing him.
“You’re going to lose them anyway, because they’re going to commandeer them to build a navy!” Lotan shouted back. “Whatever happens, we can’t let them do that or they’ll destroy the entire coast! Look, I think we can save your lives, but you’ve got to go now!”
“We’ll take our chances, thanks,” many of the men sneered.
Lotan had no idea how he was going to convince them when the Hell army did it for him.
Suddenly a massive steel harpoon arced down from the sky and pierced three sailors in one blow. There were horrified screams as their blood gushed all over the pier and dripped into the water.
Shattered Lands 3 Demon Wars: A LitRPG Series Page 13