by Vic Connor
Each of these spells should cost him so much power as to make him useless, now. He should have burned out casting just the last one, and it should never have grown so powerful—but the ruby ring is lending him its aid, refilling his magic faster than he can use it up, and Nikë undersold the black iron vambraces—they are adding extra force to everything Aremos casts, increasing his damage and range by up to a hundred percent.
His power replenishes once more as the Time Warp ends, and Aremos reaches one hand out. This is my last ever spell, he thinks, as a great beam of bright, white light leaps out from his palm. There is a lumbering beast up ahead, twenty feet tall, muscle bound and with the horns of the devil sprouting from its forehead. The horns are black and look hard as iron, curling back from the demon’s head. Its eyes burn a sickly yellow and as it roars, eldritch flames crackle in its mouth. But Aremos’ beam hits it straight in the chest, pushing it backward, ripping skin and flesh from its torso to expose ribs and breastbone, making ichor drip as the demon crumples, dying with a hideous, bellowing cry.
And with that, the demonic army falls upon Aremos. The fastest beasts are just thirty feet away, outriders in the mighty charge. They are lithe, one-eyed creatures riding reptilian steeds that look like velociraptors. Each one carries a long, dark pike of black iron and wears gossamer-thin, copper mail which floats like mist behind them as they skip and weave, hauntingly elegant, over the cracks rent in the ground. They are hunters, come to finish this pesky mage so their captains and kin might roll unimpeded over this ripe land.
Aremos channels his power into his shields, now glowing bright with the pendant’s magic, and into his staff, ready for the final melee before he is destroyed.
As the first couple of riders dart in close, however, first one and then another fall, three-foot-long arrows plucking them from their saddles. Smaller arrows pincushion the steeds, felling them as they run.
Aremos glances behind him. Smiling, towering at least five feet above even the tallest of elves, stands a half giant with a great bow in one hand, an arrow the length of a spear in another and thick, hide armor over his body. A bushy beard sticks out from his chin and his bald head is criss-crossed with scars. At his side stand two human hunters, a man and a woman, clad similarly to the giant and with small hunting bows in their hands. They work quickly, letting loose a couple more arrows as Aremos watches.
Next, a forest goblin shaman materializes, dressed in bones and rags. But he’s a level forty-six with more spells than Aremos has ever seen in anybody’s litany, and as soon as he appears, he begins to throw bolts of light into the advancing enemy lines, scything through them with ease.
More and more people arrive, some teleported into place by wizards, some flowing down from the town; some are coming in through a Realmgate outside of town and charging in to join ranks with their comrades, dozens of them arriving to fight alongside Aremos.
He turns to face the enemy, grinning, as a line of fellow casters comes to stand beside him. “We need time for our forces to assemble,” one of them says—an elf of indeterminate gender. As the elf speaks, it reaches high into the heavens and plucks a comet from the sky, sending it crashing into the enemy lines and killing dozens in the resulting explosion.
“Agreed,” adds a wizened old necromancer, limping up to join the line. He’s a level forty-three and although his hands appear frail, they’re nevertheless firm as they clutch a simple, blackwood staff. He gestures and a dank wind blows out from his hand, rolling over the plain to disintegrate every demon it hits. As it passes over the diminishing open space between the two armies, the ground begins to shake in dozens of places, small disturbances which are revealed a few seconds later. Bony hands reach out of the soil, followed by skeleton minions, climbing out with rusted swords and armor to face the enemy.
Another couple of necromancers and dark magic users do the same, so that the demons clash against a small army of wraiths and skeletons, slowing their advance. Then a trio of white magic casters step forward, holding up their hands. A barrier of bright, golden power appears, moving inexorably toward the demons. Aremos taps into their spell, lending his own energy, and feels the pulsing, vibrant magic pushing toward the horde. As it reaches the front few demons and covers them in clean power, they evaporate. The others are forced back, retreating all together, running back several hundred feet in a route.
“It can’t be so easy,” Aremos mutters.
The characters assembled behind him form up, ready for the fight. Scanning through their profiles, Aremos sees a mixture of player-led avatars—hunters nearing level fifty, knights and soldiers with devastating combat skills, creatures of the wild with otherworldly abilities he doesn’t recognize—alongside friendly AI and mod characters, proving themselves loyal to the dreadnoughts in their hour of greatest need. However, as strong a force as they are, they number only a hundred and fifty or so souls. The horde before them, retreating though it may be, numbers well over a thousand, many of the beasts of such size and strength as to rival even the giants themselves.
“But we have hope on our side,” a tall, armored knight says, stepping forward from the throng to face Aremos. He wears pitch-black armor with his insignia removed from the tabard, and carries weaponry unfamiliar to Aremos. It’s not until he lifts his visor and smiles that Aremos recognizes the great knight, Sir Rednaxela. “We can prevail, my brother, when the enemy flees so readily.” He draws a great sword from his scabbard, and the blade begins to burn with wicked-looking runes. Rednaxela opens his mouth again to speak, but a deafening noise cuts off his next words.
An otherworldly screech rends the skies. Every player present feels their morale dip by at least ten percent as the voice reverberates around the battlefield. The barrier between them and the demons dispels immediately. The demons’ retreat stops and they turn as one, grinning, baring their teeth, licking their lips. It was a feint, Aremos thinks, they would never truly fear us … of course, they wouldn’t…
The screech sounds once more and a dark ball of energy glows before the horde’s front rank. It grows and explodes, showering the fiends closest to it with demonic power. They heal and swell; their strength grows. They sprout extra limbs, extra horns, extra weapons, even, as the power of the new presence feeds them.
The presence itself coalesces out of that dark, demonic power. Where the ball had been, there now stands a creature of black shadow and bright, burning azure flame. It stands three times the height of any man and its lank, scrawny frame belies the strength that no one doubts it possesses. It’s clothed in robes of pure shadow and the head of a vulture sits on its shoulders, hanging down on a low, snakelike neck, and its eyes burn the same blue as the nimbus that surrounds it. Aremos can see no weapons in its hands save for a long staff of green marble, inscribed with dark runes and topped with a burning shadow.
Aremos tries to read the creature’s stats but they appear to be ever-changing. He learns this thing can command its health bar to change, its power and its strength, its defense—everything. As Aremos studies the new foe, he mumbles, “We hurt it and it replenishes itself… It casts and it immediately draws more power… It finds a tough opponent and it increases its damage to meet them…”
“The Osirion_mod99,” the elven mage beside Aremos announces. “I thought it was only a legend.”
“Tonight, legends come true, I believe,” Aremos whispers. The entire battlefield goes silent, everybody watching the Osirion_mod99 for its next move.
They don’t have to wait long: the creature raises its staff and the ground surrounding the flanks and rear of the friendly players’ formation disappears, dropping down and replaced with high-reaching flames. The only ground left is in front. They mean to kill us, brooking no retreat, Aremos thinks.
The Osirion_mod99 stretches and dark, shadowy wings appear at its back. It beats them, rising high above its army, and, pointing to Aremos and the rest of the front line, bellows a command in its own, black tongue. As one, the demons begin to march, run,
and skip, charging forward.
Aremos readies a few more combos and grits his teeth, waiting for the battle to be met.
The fight is long and it is arduous.
As the two armies stood before each other, each bought a little time by the works of their respective mages, and a shiver passed through the battlefield. Aremos and the army of Sanguis felt it: The desperation, the fear … the rage of having their hard work, their whole sense of their own selves, threatened by such an errant horde. The demons felt it, too, he was sure: The hunger, the joy in the random destruction, the warping influence of the programming, all bound up in this one final, mighty push.
Then, the battle was met. Each side charged into the other with a clattering of arms and a roar of thunderous magic which would be heard all over the land. Aremos grasped the Staff of Adamant in both hands, wielding it like a quarterstaff, and began to run as everyone around him did the same.
Directly in front of him stood a unit of forty or so mortal-looking knights belonging to the demonic throng, unmounted, with halberds, swords, axes and shields raised. However, the chainmail and tabards covering their bodies was thicker than any human could manage, and the runes carved into every inch of metal were of an unfamiliar eldritch design; surely the product of the errant program, imbuing them with a language and power set not previously known in Sanguis. They looked larger and stronger and more terrifying than any knight that Aremos had ever seen, each glowing with the power of their demonic masters.
He forgot the battlefield, he forgot the war for the realm; he forgot the Osirion_mod99 and he forgot the field of Flos Nocte. Everything narrowed into the slim scope of his current environment—the forty or so hellish knights in front of him, charging at him so that they would battle within seconds, and the handful of comrades at his side, Sir Rednaxela amongst them.
They clashed, and, as they did so, Aremos threw his full might into his shielding, turning it into a weapon. A golden orb enclosed his whole body, shining bright and burning with white flame. Two dark knights raised their weapons, attempting to hack into him as he empowered it: One got thrown back, badly wounded, just as the other disintegrated under the onslaught of the pure energy. A few more bounced off of him, unharmed yet dazed, and Sir Rednaxela charged them down, his broadsword swinging, while a few other fighters flanked him and made short work of some of the demonic knights.
That was an hour or more ago—and still, Aremos fights, standing in the middle of a seemingly endless horde. He has seen more than half of his own comrades fall, never to rise again as fatigue and wound after wound ground them down. Yet Aremos endures, spurred on by his new powers and war gear, replenished by the ring and kept almost unharmed by the mail. He throws curse after curse into groups of demons when the ranks thin around him and he has the time to work. When the fighting grows too close, he freezes pockets of the beasts in Time Warps, allowing his own comrades to make some ground; he empowers the Staff of Adamant and fights through the ranks of monsters, blowing them to pieces with each swing.
But it’s no use, he thinks, there are simply too many of them. A pack of dogs snarls and bounds over to him, their eyes glowing red. The size of small horses, they are like no hounds he has ever seen. Their muscles bunch and writhe, almost unbelievably strong. Untidy hair hangs in patches from leathery, scaly skin and claws of bronze and silver leave great scratches in the armor of the few warriors bold enough to face them. Their leader—alpha—stands larger than the others and its mouth glows with hellfire and ash as it faces Aremos, its pack encircling the lone wizard after all his comrades flee.
“I’ve fought worse than you this night, and no doubt will fight worse than you soon!” Aremos bellows to the dogs’ leader. “Come, make your deaths quick: I have work to do!”
He counts nine dogs in all, pacing around him. Five bound in on him in one dazzlingly fast charge, bowling him over so that he goes flying through the mud, dropping his staff as they knock the wind from his lungs. He takes on little enough damage, however: His HP bar is still at nearly seventy percent, even after all these hours of fighting.
One dog leaps on top of him, meaning to crush his head in its maw, but Aremos is too strong. Even without his staff, he can channel well enough. After the dog pins him down, breathing a charnel stench into his face, Aremos pours power into his amulet, causing a burning hot ward to encase his body. The dog’s own HP halves in one go and it pulls away, burned and smoking.
Aremos stands as the hounds encircle him once more, looking wary this time. Black lips pulled back in identical snarls, they drop dark saliva to the charred ground. The leader growls and barks orders in a strange, mangled tongue, and the dogs all bunch their haunches, preparing for the attack. Aremos holds out both hands, one to either side, releasing a spell combo. One hand draws the Staff of Adamant from where it fell fifty yards away. It flies back to him, its tip igniting with a dazzling, great, white light. With his other hand, Aremos throws another beam of light into the nearest dog, ripping it limb from limb; then he moves in a half-circle, hitting three more with the beam. Each strike does a little less damage as the spell runs out, but it’s enough to kill two and injure two more. Then he whirls his staff, gripping it in both hands as a sheet of fire springs up all around him. He tenses and the fire blazes outward, engulfing the dogs and knocking around thirty percent off each one’s HP.
Seeing him fight off the demonic hounds with such style, a trio of player-led orcs who had previously fled now run in, scimitars raised high, powerfully-built arms tense with the anticipation of the fight. They chop through most of the remaining dogs, leaving just the alpha and two of its pack alone for Aremos to deal with.
Each one has claws of bronze or silver… Yes, he thinks, smiling to himself. It could be so simple, so elegant.
The leader springs forth, faster, stronger than the rest, and the remaining two follow. The alpha breathes a swathe of fire, catching one of the orcs and nearly killing him. The fire hits Aremos but his armor and amulet deflect it easily enough, leaving him free for the final spell. As the three dogs bound in, he washes them with white magic, pouring it into the metal of their bodies.
Their paws glow white hot, as do various other parts. The leader has a crest of golden spikes along its back, one of the others has copper scales lining its limbs and torso and the third has teeth of black iron and a tail spiked with steel—all natural, all grown from their own bodies, but metal nonetheless. They light up, aflame, their own bodies melting around them. It’s one of the more hideous deaths Aremos has ever caused—and a pang of doubt grips his heart for a split second—but their threat is over: the pack all falls dead.
A few hundred yards away, on the other side of a swarm of chittering, bug-like demons fighting some player-led elves and dwarves, bright lights flash and the unmistakable sound of furious magic casting rings out. Aremos knows that many demons here wield ferocious magic, and that not all casters are as well defended as he is. Nikë set him the task of holding the defenses together long enough for the dreadnoughts to fight the source software itself, and Aremos takes that responsibility to heart.
He opens a small portal, taking himself to the other side of the bug-demons, materializing before a grand duel with casters on each side making devils of themselves.
Running, Aremos plunges into a rank of five player-led casters—two elves, both black magic sorcerers; a troll shaman; a dwarven rune-smith with a large, two-handed hammer glowing and crackling with lightning; and the necromancer Aremos stood beside at the battle’s opening—all intently battling a line of demonic casters up ahead.
Aremos gives them a slight reprieve, sending up a wall of solid white magic to absorb the demons’ attacks. The five casters stagger backward, all exhausted, most of them reaching for flasks of potion to restore one set of stats or another. Up ahead, Aremos sees what they have been fighting. A slender being, looking almost like an elf herself, stands central to the demonic unit. She carries a long staff and is clothed in faint wisps of gossamer,
red smoke. Small, shiny scales cover her arms, legs, and chest, and tiny horns prick out of her head, poking through her black hair and betraying her demonic heritage. Cloaked minions stand around her, animal faces poking out from beneath thick cowls—and hoofs, claws, and tentacles in place of feet and hands. They all shriek and bellow, beasts of the direst kind, flinging projectiles at Aremos’ ward or pooling their magic together for the sorceress to use.
The sorceress cackles at Aremos’ shield as her minions try to fight it. She grips her staff in both hands and thrusts it forward before her. As she does so, an impact like that of a charging bull or a heavy ram hits the wall of white magic, smashing it to pieces. The force blasts into Aremos as his spell is ruined, stunning him, throwing him backward several feet, and as he struggles back up to his knees, the duel is rejoined.
The five player-led characters walk forward, recovered and rejuvenated somewhat. Some throw up shields to ward off the opposition’s curses; others begin to throw great bolts of sizzling energy at the demons. Two of the minions become engulfed in glowing, purple flames from the troll’s staff while the rune-smith washes them with lightning, chanting in his people’s guttural tongue as he curses them. A couple of his curses land, making the enemies forget their own spells, or else crippling their weapons.
But it’s not enough. As the minions fall, the sorceress stands strong. Nothing touches her: Every spell thrown in her direction evaporates before it reaches her. She returns fire, smashing aside their defenses. With a crooked finger, she beckons to the necromancer and his body goes stiff. Then, his spine begins to bend in an arch as he is pulled off his feet and dragged forward, knees bent and body buckling. He drops his staff and a black ring on his finger pops and shatters, falling in ruins in the dirt. After he flies the short distance to her, he lands, kneeling before the sorceress as she idly flicks aside spell after spell from his comrades. She holds out one hand and a knife appears, cruel and black, which she plunges into the necromancer’s breast. She tosses the knife aside and it vanishes into smoke; then she reaches into her victim’s chest and pulls out his beating heart, leaving him to die at her feet.