There was another way to make the most out of his dwindling resource of Dominated monsters. Now that he knew his Sigils would only affect their bodies, there were only a few options left to him.
If he couldn’t find a way to shore up the wall, their enemies would break through easily. Once inside, the monsters would have the run of the place.
In the gap, they were forced through Hal’s maze but that wouldn’t last more than a couple of hours. And even when they weren’t forced through the maze, some traps still worked on occasion.
The gap was an efficient bottleneck. The trouble was they lacked the manpower to properly defend the full breadth of the wall. Still, it worked as designed, bottling up the superior numbers of the enemy and slowing the tidal wave of violence.
If they broke through, they could use their numbers to their advantage. The defenders would be quickly surrounded and defeated. There would be no way to fight against them, no retreat.
With more time they could have made several walls, falling back repeatedly as each wall was destroyed. But 7 days wasn’t long when most people in the Settlement barely knew the first thing about construction.
There was never time to breathe. Every moment of respite was just the calm before the next plunge into the abyss of chaos that seemed to swirl around him.
Ripping his focus back to the task at hand, Hal put his full attention onto the Disara once more. With a mental command, the creature found that same weakened monster it had tried to Dominate before.
Bounding toward it, the Disara leaped on the scaled back of the green-skinned lizard. Sharp horns stuck up along its back but the Disara was more than nimble enough to avoid them.
It lashed out with its barbed tentacles. The first few strikes stripped the scales like a fish scaler. The follow-up attacks hit bare flesh, the tiny hooks of its heart-shaped protrusion at the end of its tentacles siphoned strength from the already weakened creature.
The Disara drank its fill. More than its fill, in fact. It was practically humming with vitality. Exactly what Hal needed.
What he needed was to get his forces to the wall. But he had committed too strongly to the burning maze. The monstrous force arrayed against them had penned his minions in as well as any cage might.
In their weakened state, if they tried to leave, they would be easily picked off by the horde surrounding them. Only the barrier of eldritch flame kept them safe. And that was not a long-term solution.
Every fiery breath needed to keep the flames powerful enough to repel the monsters damaged his minions. And without his corporeal body to Dominate new targets, he would soon be cannibalizing his forces in order to keep up the maze.
He needed to change tactics.
But getting his minions to the wall was all but impossible. They were too spread out. The Disara, however, could blink across distances if it had enough strength.
Draining the last drops of the giant lizard, the Disara dropped the withered husk to the ground. It turned, using Hal’s awareness of his other minions, and blinked.
One moment it was there, then a subtle clapping sound echoed as the space was suddenly empty. Of course, the sound was impossible for anybody on the wall to hear over the din of battle.
Perched atop the Morbolger’s head, the Disara lashed its barbed tentacles into the creature’s flesh, joining them. Another blink and the pair were back at the wall where the Disara had just left.
Please work.
Hal reached within and invoked Crystallize, the second of Feril’s gifts. He felt the power well up within him, seeking a target. Rather than focus the power outward, he internalized it.
The Disara leaped off the Morbolger’s head and landed lightly atop the wall. The nearby defender looked curiously, then with great alarm as the Morbolger bit the wall and began to lash its vines all about the damaged Palisade and the stone wall of the gap beside.
Before the defender could do anything - Hal thought it was Milas - the Disara extended all of its whip-like tentacles and began to hiss at him threateningly.
Whether it was the glowing Gold Kol’thil clearly on display or the aggressive posturing, the defender fled. Most likely to get more help.
That was fine with Hal. In a few moments, he would know whether or not his desperate plan would work, or if they were doomed.
The Sigil wouldn’t work outside of the creature’s body, but maybe... on a whim, Hal used Vine Spear. One of the Morbolger’s flaming vines suddenly hardened and jabbed forward between two of the damaged bone spikes that Hal had made so long ago to replace wooden logs.
Bone broke and splintered. The vine dug inside the earth and there the Morbolger suddenly gained a brief surge of strength. But more than that, Hal could feel the Palisade as well.
Still holding the Sigil back, Hal suddenly let it go into the Palisade.
There was a faint ripple of force that blasted back the fires all around the Morbolger, putting out many of the fires it had started along the wall. In that instant of distraction, Hal was ejected from the Morbolger.
His attention suddenly snapped onto the Disara, turning the creature around. Only the Disara’s natural swiftness saved its life - and by extension, Hal’s plan - from ruin.
Leaping back, Hal watched through the Disara’s wide eyes as the Crystallize Sigil flash-froze the Morbolger and the Palisade. But it wasn’t done, like a fire it spread out from the creature.
Crystals sprouted and grew over the sheer stone wall to the west. Everything that touched its spreading crystals became Crystallized as well, feeding the magic until finally it slowed and stopped.
Hal waited for the Kol’thil Bleed to hit. He braced for the agony… but nothing happened. The Morbolger’s body was converted entirely to blue-gray crystal several feet thick.
One of those mutated worms with the bony protrusion on its front like a battering ram slithered up to the crystal and coiled its prodigious length.
The Disara tensed, ready to strike. He had no idea how strong the crystal would actually be. As he watched, the Disara’s jaw fell open.
Coiled up to strike, the worm lunged at the wall. It should have shattered the fragile-looking crystal. Instead, its bone made a sickening crack, and a dozen splintering lines formed all along it.
The thing shrieked, and Hal’s Disara wasted no time leaping on its vulnerable back. Using Siphon Lash, Hal drained the creature of its vital energies, transferring them to the Disara to top it off.
Unlike the weakened lizard creature, the worm wasn’t on death’s door. That was actually preferable. The worm didn’t have much in the way of defense, it was clearly designed - oddly enough - specifically for breaking down walls.
He didn’t like the intentional purpose behind those designs.
Back to full, Hal searched out the next Morbolger and blinked. Back and forth the Disara transported his Morbolgers, both mutated and normal. Each time, the Disara leaped on the back of the progressively weaker battering worm to drain its life force.
Only a few minutes had passed and already several sections of the wall had Crystallized. By the time Milas returned with a couple of Rangers, they were greeted with a most bizarre sight.
The crystal had grown along the walls, over them, and through them. It changed the earth, stone, wood, and bone into shining faceted creations that splintered the light in a brilliant, dazzling display.
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Durvin turned aside a thrusting spiked claw with the flat of his greataxe. He continued to twist with the deflection, turning the blade perpendicular and letting loose a torrent of destructive rage-filled energy.
Vicious Cyclone swept the creature and its three companions off the wall and the ruby energy of the attack cut like falling axes into their tough chitinous hides.
Black blood burst from their bodies, their lifeless corpses falling to the ground. One of them landed half on the wall. Before Durvin could boot it off, one of its fellows scaled the wall, using the dead body as a grip.
With a hearty ove
rhand chop, Durvin sliced the corpse in half. The climbing creature fell with the other half of the body. It never made it to the ground as Vorax sent out his barbed tendrils, grabbing the creature and stuffing it into his voracious maw.
Breathing hard, Durvin laid the tip of his axe on the wall and used the handle to hold himself up like a staff. He hadn’t fought this hard in decades. Rather than make him feel weary and old, it invigorated him.
He felt younger - and happier - than he had in an age.
This is what it means to live, he thought.
All along the flame-filled gap, the monsters continued coming. They wouldn’t stop. It seemed as if the entire of the Shiverglades had been emptied out like a dwarf shaking out his last spark from his coin purse to buy the latest bauble.
“The boy’s a beast,” Athagan said, squinting past the blood streaming down his face. “How much longer ye think he can keep it up?”
Durvin looked out at the horde of burning monsters making their way toward them, intent on breaking down their already-battered walls. “As long as he needs to,” Durvin said sternly.
“Charged!” Myla said to his left. Durvin motioned for his party to give her room.
The Ranger shouldered her bow and reached out toward the empty air. As she did, motes of golden light filled the space where she grasped and coalesced into a bow of sunlight several times larger than any bow had any right to be.
Myla readies Ultimate: Luminous Barrage.
Predictably, a slithering thing tried to reach up to Myla but Durvin’s axe was there severing the limb in an instant. Without thinking, he leaped off the wall and onto the monster’s head.
It was a smaller Morbolger, only about twelve feet tall, but it could still do quite a bit of harm. Durvin had seen firsthand how much damage they could do against the few Earthen Bulwarks they still had. If their vines reached through the Palisades, they could deal considerable damage to the walls.
Atop the Morbolger’s head, Durvin went to work like any good lumberjack. Every overhand swing cleaved into the monster’s head. Rather than foul-smelling (and highly flammable) sap, a black stinking ooze leaked from its wounds.
It was all the same to Durvin’s sensibilities.
As soon as the creature was dead, Durvin reached one hand around the rope tied around his middle. He gave it two quick tugs and before the next monster, a charging black centipede the size of a wagon train, could crash into his body, he was pulled up to the top of the wall by his party members.
Myla’s bow had sprouted several dozen arrows all along its length. Beads of sweat gathered on the Ranger’s brow as a warm wind began to kick up and swirl around her.
When Durvin had first heard that Hal wanted a Ranger in every party possible, he wasn’t entirely sure what he was up to. Now he understood. One by one, every party on the wall began to build up their Ultimate. With the Rangers spread out, their devastating ranged Ultimates were poised to do significant damage.
A bright flash nearly blinded Durvin, forcing him to squint against the glare that was Myla’s Ultimate. She loosed it with a grunt of effort. Dozens of dazzling lines of light lanced out from the golden bow.
Nearly a quarter of the Gap was filled with streaking arrows that twisted and wound their way through the air unlike anything Durvin had ever seen. They weren’t seeking out their targets, but they were clearly drawn to them on some level.
The cluster of monsters that had been approaching was vaporized in an instant and those behind it. The gap was so filled with monsters that nearly every arrow found its mark. Glowing with brilliant light, the monsters simply vanished once they were struck.
Myla uses Ultimate: Luminous Barrage.
It bought them a brief reprieve, time enough for Athagan to get that wound on his forehead checked on. Durvin looked over his shoulder, down the ramp that led from the wall to a nearby white tent.
A karak was there in white robes - though it looked like the big brilliant bird was dressed in bedsheets - tending to the dwarf’s gash. The creature was shockingly adept. Though it had no fingers or hands, it held a small hooked needle in its beak and deftly sewed up the wound before applying a healing salve to it.
They were already out of potions and quick-healing items. What few they had left they kept in reserve on Durvin’s orders. Things were about to get much worse, and he wanted something at the end to keep fighting.
When they could no longer fall back to the tents, they would have to rely on those reserves alone. As much as Durvin wanted to believe that they could hold the walls, he knew from the outset that it was a delaying tactic.
The walls bought them time until they were in the thick of things, fighting in pockets. That was when the real casualties would start piling up. Until that point, they managed not to lose a single life, though several people might not make it through the night.
Despite his weary limbs, Durvin stepped forward when a Dire Spider - a great big hairy creature with spiked barbs all along its sharp-pointed legs and a nasty stinger on its abdomen - crawled atop the wall.
Myla pelted it with arrows, but its thick armor deflected most of them. A few found softer spots, but the Ranger was tired from hours of fighting. Her aim was beginning to falter.
All of them were beyond fatigued. Everywhere Durvin looked, haggard faces greeted him. There was a bone-deep weariness that went beyond physical constraints.
At his urging, Noth had ordered every single person to switch to Focused Classes. That way, every bit of EXP they got pushed them toward the next Level. If not for the multitude of Level Ups, nobody would be standing.
It was one of the only things keeping many of the young fighters on their feet. If they survived the night, many of them would have rocketed through their Levels.
Unfortunately for Durvin, his Warrior was so high it took a lot to Level Up. Athagan had Leveled Up right before taking a bite to the noggin but with Myla’s recent destructive wave, he had to be close to another Level Up.
The Dire Spider made a sharp screech as Durvin rushed at it. He tucked his shoulder and fell to the wall, rolling along and out of the way of the thrusting stinger he knew to be coming.
There was only one real way to defeat a Dire Spider, and that was to bait its stinger. Dwarfs, being rather short and low to the ground, always seemed to make the Dire Spiders eager to stick them.
With his heavy armor sounding like somebody just dumped all their kitchen pots and pans on the floor, Durvin sprang up to his feet beneath the Dire Spider’s soft belly. They had to lift their vulnerable bellies up high on those spiked limbs in order to thrust the stinger forward.
In the moment of the stinger’s retraction, they were vulnerable.
Mythril Cleave split the creature from stinger to thorax. Its stinking entrails spilled out, black as night and reeking to high heaven.
Durvin dropped his axe to the ground and heaved with all his might, pumping his short and stout legs. The Dire Spider’s dying body was flung from the wall to crash onto one of its companions down below.
Spitting on the creature, Durvin scooped up his axe and looked back at his fellows, all of them were looking to the west and east. “What’re ye gawkin’ at?” he asked, following their gaze.
He saw it then.
“What is that durned fool up to now?” Durvin mumbled aloud.
The walls were turning into crystals, shaped more often than not, like a rearing Morbolger ready to strike. Where the monsters struck against the crystals they were repelled. Magic and attacks that were aimed at the crystals reflected back on the attacker.
Rather than deal with the stuff, the monsters were steadily moving toward the more vulnerable walls. And so the defenders followed. Every section of the wall that turned to ice-like crystal freed up more defenders.
In short order, Durvin found himself with plenty of allies to fight the newest concentrated wave of monsters.
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Ashera lifted her hammer, crushing it into the slithering form of a snake
with black scales and a purple frill. The Spitter crashed to the side, and shook the section of the wall she was tasked with defending.
Safe in the belief that everybody was too busy fighting to notice her, she focused on her Occultist magic. Wither’s magic flowed in dark black lines across her battered gauntlet as she dropped to the ground and touched the dazed creature.
Wither worked its way through the creature’s scales as if it was paper. A dark purple light filled the Spitter’s body, spilling out from between its crumbling scales. The light raced up its long body until it reached its eyes.
Ashera grasped the thing, its head was a little larger than her own but her hand easily found a grip on its throat. She lifted the dying thing until she could stare into its face. In an intense flash of dark purple light out of the creature’s eyes, Ashera took part in its strength.
Her muscles bunched and she felt a new strength course through her body. It made her sick to use her Occult powers, but without them she would have already fallen. And once she started using them… they were hard to stop.
Dark thoughts flowed through her mind, pulling her deep into despair. She channeled the darkness into a black line that raced across the air where she pointed toward a large centipede that was beginning to climb up over the wall to her right.
The line of darkness struck the creature, and turned it to ash. Ashera braced herself for the recoil.
She was thrown to the ground in agony as the dark thoughts drove spikes into her mind. To use Occult Magic was to suffer the darkest of thoughts, the worst of yourself.
Ashera had experienced a great deal of suffering in her short life, it made her Occult Magic powerful but it also meant the recoil was much worse.
Images of her father turning into an unrecognizable monster. Her mother leaving, abandoning her family - abandoning her.
Emotion roiled within her, threatening to break free. She had spent so many years of her life pleasing those around her. Doing what others wanted for the sake of appearances, to try and appease them.
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